1.
Capital punishment
–
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a government sanctioned practice whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime. The sentence that someone be punished in such a manner is referred to as a death sentence, etymologically, the term capital in this context alluded to execution by beheading. Fifty-six countries retain capital punishment,103 countries have abolished it de jure for all crimes, six have abolished it for ordinary crimes. Capital punishment is a matter of controversy in various countries and states. In the European Union, Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment, also, the Council of Europe, which has 47 member states, prohibits the use of the death penalty by its members. The United Nations General Assembly has adopted, in 2007,2008,2010,2012 and 2014, non-binding resolutions calling for a moratorium on executions. Although most nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the population live in countries where executions take place, such as China, India. Execution of criminals and political opponents has been used by nearly all societies—both to punish crime, in most countries that practise capital punishment it is reserved for murder, terrorism, war crimes, espionage, treason, defection or as part of military justice. In many countries use the death penalty, drug trafficking is also a capital offence. In China, human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are punished by the death penalty, in militaries around the world courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offences such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny. The use of formal execution extends to the beginning of recorded history, most historical records and various primitive tribal practices indicate that the death penalty was a part of their justice system. Communal punishment for wrongdoing generally included compensation by the wrongdoer, corporal punishment, shunning, banishment, usually, compensation and shunning were enough as a form of justice. The response to crime committed by neighbouring tribes or communities included a formal apology, a blood feud or vendetta occurs when arbitration between families or tribes fails or an arbitration system is non-existent. This form of justice was common before the emergence of a system based on state or organized religion. It may result from crime, land disputes or a code of honour, acts of retaliation underscore the ability of the social collective to defend itself and demonstrate to enemies that injury to property, rights, or the person will not go unpunished. However, in practice, it is difficult to distinguish between a war of vendetta and one of conquest. Elaborations of tribal arbitration of feuds included peace settlements often done in a religious context, compensation was based on the principle of substitution which might include material compensation, exchange of brides or grooms, or payment of the blood debt. Settlement rules could allow for animal blood to replace human blood, the person offered for execution did not have to be an original perpetrator of the crime because the system was based on tribes, not individuals
2.
Torture
–
Torture is the act of deliberately inflicting physical or psychological pain on an organism in order to fulfill some desire of the torturer or compel some action from the victim. Torture, by definition, is a knowing and intentional act, in other cases, the torturer may be indifferent to the condition of the victim. Alternatively, some forms of torture are designed to inflict pain or leave as little physical injury or evidence as possible while achieving the same psychological devastation. The torturer may or may not kill or injure the victim, depending on the aim, even a form of torture that is intentionally fatal may be prolonged to allow the victim to suffer as long as possible. Although torture is sanctioned by some states, it is prohibited under international law, although widely illegal and reviled there is an ongoing debate as to what exactly is and is not legally defined to be torture. It is a violation of human rights, and is declared to be unacceptable by Article 5 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Torture is also prohibited for the signatories of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, despite these findings and international conventions, organizations that monitor abuses of human rights report widespread use condoned by states in many regions of the world. Amnesty International estimates that at least 81 world governments currently practice torture, the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which is currently in force since June 26,1987, provides a broad definition of torture. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to and this definition includes torture as part of domestic violence or ritualistic abuse, as well as in criminal activities. The Rome Statute is the treaty set up the International Criminal Court. The treaty was adopted at a conference in Rome on 17 July 1998. The Rome Statute provides a simplest definition of torture regarding the prosecution of war criminals by the International Criminal Court, since 1973, Amnesty International has adopted the simplest, broadest definition of torture. Title 18 of the United States Code contains the definition of torture in 18 U. S. C, §2340, which is only applicable to persons committing or attempting to commit torture outside of the United States. The Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 provides remedies to individuals who are victims of torture by persons acting in a capacity of any foreign nation. The definition is similar to the U. S. Code §2340, Torture grew into an ornate discipline, where calibrated violence served two functions, to investigate and produce confessions and to attack the body as a form of punishment. Entire populaces of towns would show up to witness an execution by torture in the public square and those who had been spared torture were commonly locked barefooted into the stocks, where children took delight in rubbing feces into their hair and mouths. The Age of Enlightenment in the world further developed the idea of universal human rights. The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 marks the recognition at least nominally of a ban of torture by all UN member states
3.
Human
–
Modern humans are the only extant members of Hominina tribe, a branch of the tribe Hominini belonging to the family of great apes. Several of these hominins used fire, occupied much of Eurasia and they began to exhibit evidence of behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago. In several waves of migration, anatomically modern humans ventured out of Africa, the spread of humans and their large and increasing population has had a profound impact on large areas of the environment and millions of native species worldwide. Humans are uniquely adept at utilizing systems of communication for self-expression and the exchange of ideas. Humans create complex structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families. Social interactions between humans have established a wide variety of values, social norms, and rituals. These human societies subsequently expanded in size, establishing various forms of government, religion, today the global human population is estimated by the United Nations to be near 7.5 billion. In common usage, the word generally refers to the only extant species of the genus Homo—anatomically and behaviorally modern Homo sapiens. In scientific terms, the meanings of hominid and hominin have changed during the recent decades with advances in the discovery, there is also a distinction between anatomically modern humans and Archaic Homo sapiens, the earliest fossil members of the species. The English adjective human is a Middle English loanword from Old French humain, ultimately from Latin hūmānus, the words use as a noun dates to the 16th century. The native English term man can refer to the species generally, the species binomial Homo sapiens was coined by Carl Linnaeus in his 18th century work Systema Naturae. The generic name Homo is a learned 18th century derivation from Latin homō man, the species-name sapiens means wise or sapient. Note that the Latin word homo refers to humans of either gender, the genus Homo evolved and diverged from other hominins in Africa, after the human clade split from the chimpanzee lineage of the hominids branch of the primates. The closest living relatives of humans are chimpanzees and gorillas, with the sequencing of both the human and chimpanzee genome, current estimates of similarity between human and chimpanzee DNA sequences range between 95% and 99%. The gibbons and orangutans were the first groups to split from the leading to the humans. The splitting date between human and chimpanzee lineages is placed around 4–8 million years ago during the late Miocene epoch, during this split, chromosome 2 was formed from two other chromosomes, leaving humans with only 23 pairs of chromosomes, compared to 24 for the other apes. There is little evidence for the divergence of the gorilla, chimpanzee. Each of these species has been argued to be an ancestor of later hominins
4.
War
–
War is a state of armed conflict between societies. It is generally characterized by extreme aggression, destruction, and mortality, an absence of war is usually called peace. Warfare refers to the activities and characteristics of types of war. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to legitimate military targets. While some scholars see war as a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, as concerns a belligerents losses in proportion to its prewar population, the most destructive war in modern history may have been the Paraguayan War. In 2013 war resulted in 31,000 deaths, down from 72,000 deaths in 1990, in 2003, Richard Smalley identified war as the sixth biggest problem facing humanity for the next fifty years. Another byproduct of some wars is the prevalence of propaganda by some or all parties in the conflict, the word is related to the Old Saxon werran, Old High German werran, and the German verwirren, meaning “to confuse”, “to perplex”, and “to bring into confusion”. In German, the equivalent is Krieg, the Spanish, Portuguese, the scholarly study of war is sometimes called polemology, from the Greek polemos, meaning war, and -logy, meaning the study of. Studies of war by military theorists throughout military history have sought to identify the philosophy of war, asymmetric warfare is a conflict between two populations of drastically different levels of military capability or size. Biological warfare, or germ warfare, is the use of weaponized biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, chemical warfare involves the use of weaponized chemicals in combat. Poison gas as a weapon was principally used during World War I. Civil war is a war between forces belonging to the nation or political entity. Conventional warfare is declared war between states in which nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons are not used or see limited deployment, cyberwarfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nations information systems. Information warfare is the application of force on a large scale against information assets and systems, against the computers. Nuclear warfare is warfare in which weapons are the primary, or a major. War of aggression is a war for conquest or gain rather than self-defense, the earliest recorded evidence of war belongs to the Mesolithic cemetery Site 117, which has been determined to be approximately 14,000 years old. About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death, since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare
5.
Suppression of dissent
–
When dissent is perceived as a threat, action may be taken to prevent continuing dissent or penalize dissidents. Government or industry may often act in this way, direct action tries to silence the dissenter via factors or influences in a forthright manner, often coercive. Indirect action tries to silence the dissenter via intervening factors or influences, self-censorship occurs when individuals are concerned about risking their employment status, standing in an academic course and/or ability to live without threat. Some dissenters fear direct actions taken against them, self-censorship makes direct and indirect suppression unnecessary. Suppression of dissent is undesirable in society for a variety of fundamental reasons, freedom of speech is a cardinal rule for a free society, George Orwell wrote if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. Dissent is essential to all points of view to be given. Censorship plays a role in the control of speech and other forms of human expression. It is most commonly applied to acts which occur in public circumstances, self-censorship is when an individual censors and/or classifies his/her own speech to avoid offending others, and without authority requiring them to do so. In democratic countries, self-censorship is also a phenomenon, particularly in times of crisis. In greater society the typical example of suppression of dissent is when a company fires a whistleblower, sometimes laws are enacted to suppress dissent, South Africa enacted the Suppression of Communism Act to ban organizations that supported communism. Some sociologists of science argue that peer review makes the ability to publish susceptible to control by elites, reviewers tend to be especially critical of conclusions that contradict their own views, and lenient towards those that accord with them. At the same time, elite scientists are more likely than less established ones to be out as referees. As a result, it has argued, ideas that harmonize with the elites are more likely to see print. To express the notion of intellectual dissent suppression, a situation has these features, views or techniques, methodologies, procedures, and processes in which dissent from is possible. An alternative source of power Generally, science is presented as a search for truth, in which advancement depends on inquiring about established ideas. But many dissenters experienced the dangers of dissenting against dominant views, scientific debate is a healthy and necessary part of science, but may collide with power dynamics within the academic world. Suppression of legitimate scientific debate can be considered as a breach of academic integrity, doing nothing against the acts of suppression often allows the state of being suppressed to continue. Furthermore, doing nothing does not give rise to support for the dissident views, if critics decide to toe the mark and keep out of sight, the critic may be re-accepted by the opponent
6.
Rebellion
–
Rebellion, uprising, or insurrection is a refusal of obedience or order. It refers to the resistance against the orders of an established authority. The term comes from the Latin verb rebellō, I renew war (from re- + bellō, the rebel is the individual that partakes in rebellion or rebellious activities, particularly when armed. Thus, the rebellion also refers to the ensemble of rebels in a state of revolt. A rebellion originates from a sentiment of indignation and disapproval of a situation, Rebellion can be individual or collective, peaceful or violent In political terms, rebellion and revolt are often distinguished by their different aims. If rebellion generally seeks to evade an oppressive power, a revolt seeks to overthrow and destroy that power, the goal of rebellion is resistance while a revolt seeks a revolution. As power shifts relative to the adversary, or power shifts within a mixed coalition, or positions harden or soften on either side. The following theories broadly build on the Marxist interpretation of rebellion and they explore the causes of rebellion from a wide lens perspective. Marx writes about the structure of society that must be elucidated through an examination of the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers. The mismatch, between one mode of production, between the forces and the social ownership of the production, is at the origin of the revolution. The inner imbalance within these modes of production is derived from the modes of organization, such as capitalism within feudalism. The dynamics engineered by these class frictions help class consciousness root itself in the collective imaginary, for example, the development of the bourgeoisie class went from oppressed merchant class to urban independence, eventually gaining enough power to represent the state as a whole. Social movements, thus, are determined by a set of circumstances. The proletariat must also, according to Marx, go through the process of self-determination which can only be achieved by friction against the bourgeoisie. In Marxs theory revolutions are the locomotives of history, it is because rebellion has for ultimate goal to overthrow the ruling class and its antiquated mode of production. Later, rebellion attempts to replace it with a new system of political economy, one that is suited to the new ruling class. The cycle of rebellion, thus, replaces one mode of production by another through the constant class friction, in his book Why Men Rebel, Ted Gurr looks at the roots of political violence itself applied to a rebellion framework. He defines political violence as, all collective attacks within a political community against the political regime, the concept represents a set of events, a common property of which is the actual or threatened use of violence
7.
Treason
–
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against ones nation or sovereign. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a lesser superior was petty treason. A person who commits treason is known in law as a traitor, orans Dictionary of the Law defines treason as a citizens actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the. In many nations, it is often considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government. At times, the term traitor has been used as a political epithet, in a civil war or insurrection, the winners may deem the losers to be traitors. In certain cases, as with the Dolchstoßlegende, the accusation of treason towards a group of people can be a unifying political message. Treason is considered to be different and on occasions a separate charge from treasonable felony in many parts of the world. In English law, high treason was punishable by being hanged, drawn and quartered or burnt at the stake and those penalties were abolished in 1814,1790 and 1973 respectively. The penalty was used by later monarchs against people who could reasonably be called traitors, many of them would now just be considered dissidents. His treachery is considered so notorious that his name has long been synonymous with traitor, christian theology and political thinking until after the Enlightenment considered treason and blasphemy as synonymous, as it challenged both the state and the will of God. Kings were considered chosen by God, and to ones country was to do the work of Satan. Many nations laws mention various types of treason, Crimes Related to Insurrection is the internal treason, and may include a coup detat. Crimes Related to Foreign Aggression is the treason of cooperating with foreign aggression positively regardless of the national inside and outside, Crimes Related to inducement of Foreign Aggression is the crime of communicating with aliens secretly to cause foreign aggression or menace. Depending on a country, conspiracy is added to these, in Japan, the application of Crimes Related to Insurrection was considered about Aum Shinrikyo cult which caused religious terrorism. A person is not guilty of treason under paragraphs, or if their assistance or intended assistance is purely humanitarian in nature, the only permissible penalty for treason is life imprisonment. Section 24AA of the Crimes Act 1914 creates the offence of treachery. The Treason Act 1351, the Treason Act 1795 and the Treason Act 1817 form part of the law of New South Wales, Section 16 provides that nothing in Part 2 repeals or affects anything enacted by the Treason Act 1351. This section reproduces section 6 of the Treason Felony Act 1848, the offence of treason was created by section 9A of the Crimes Act 1958
8.
Punishment
–
Punishment may be self-inflicted as with self-flagellation and mortification of the flesh in the religious setting, but is most often a form of social coercion. The unpleasant imposition may include a fine, penalty, or confinement, the individual may be a person, or even an animal. The authority may be either a group or a single person, negative consequences that are not authorized or that are administered without a breach of rules are not considered to be punishment as defined here. Research into punishment often includes similar research into prevention, justifications for punishment include retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation. The last could include such measures as isolation, in order to prevent the wrongdoers having contact with potential victims, if only some of the conditions included in the definition of punishment are present, descriptions other than punishment may be considered more accurate. Inflicting something negative, or unpleasant, on a person or animal, in addition, the word punishment is used as a metaphor, as when a boxer experiences punishment during a fight. In other situations, breaking a rule may be rewarded, finally the condition of breaking the rules must be satisfied for consequences to be considered punishment. Corporal punishment refers to punishments in which pain is intended to be inflicted upon the transgressor. Punishments may be judged as fair or unfair in terms of their degree of reciprocity and proportionality to the offense, Punishment can be an integral part of socialization, and punishing unwanted behaviour is often part of a system of pedagogy or behavioral modification which also includes rewards. Various philosophers have presented definitions of punishment, introduced by B. F. Skinner, punishment has a more restrictive and technical definition. Along with reinforcement it belongs under the operant conditioning category, operant conditioning refers to learning with either punishment as a negative rienforcer or a reward that serves as a positive reinforcement of the lesson to be learned. In psychology, punishment is the reduction of a behavior via application of an unpleasant stimulus or removal of a pleasant stimulus, extra chores or spanking are examples of positive punishment, while removing an offending students recess or play privileges are examples of negative punishment. The definition requires that punishment is only determined after the fact by the reduction in behavior, if the behavior of the subject does not decrease. There is some conflation of punishment and aversives, though an aversion that does not decrease behavior is not considered punishment in psychology, additionally, aversive stimulus is a label behaviorists generally apply to negative reinforcers, rather than punishers. During a period of heavy fishing and tourism that encroached on their territory, they started to live in groups, learning from each other, especially hunting techniques. Small, younger octopuses could be near the fully grown octopuses without being eaten by them, even though they, the authors also note that the octopuses adopted observational learning without any evolutionary history of specialized adaptation for it. There are also arguments against the notion of punishment requiring intelligence, there is proof of honey bee workers with mutations that makes them fertile laying eggs only when other honey bees are not observing them, and that the few that are caught in the act are killed. The authors argue that this falsifies the claim that punishment evolved as a strategy to deal with individuals capable of knowing what they are doing, certain scientists argue that this disproves the notion of humans having a biological feeling of intentional transgressions deserving to be punished
9.
Highwayman
–
A highwayman was a robber who stole from travellers. This type of thief usually travelled and robbed by horse, as compared to a footpad who travelled and robbed on foot, such robbers operated in Great Britain from the Elizabethan era until the early 19th century. In many other countries, they persisted for a few decades longer, the word highwayman is first known to have been used in the year 1617, other euphemisms included knights of the road and gentlemen of the road. In the 19th-century American West, highwaymen were known as road agents, in Australia they were known as bushrangers. The great age of highwaymen was the period from the Restoration in 1660 to the death of Queen Anne in 1714. Some of them are known to have been disbanded soldiers and even officers of the English Civil War and French wars, no doubt the warlike character of the age multiplied crimes of violence. What favoured them most was the lack of governance and absence of a force, parish constables were almost wholly ineffective and commonplace detection. Most of the highwaymen held up travellers and took their money, some had channels by which they could dispose of bills of exchange. Others had a racket on the transport of an extensive district. Highwaymen, along with rioters and smugglers, defied the government of the time. They often attacked coaches for their lack of protection, including public stagecoaches, the famous demand to Stand and deliver. Was in use from the 17th century, the phrase Your money or your life. He clapped a bayonet to my breast, and said, with an oath, Your money and he had on a soldiers waistcoat and breeches. I put the bayonet aside, and gave him my silver, there were many famous victims of highwaymen. Horace Walpole, shot at in Hyde Park, wryly observed, One is forced to travel, even at noon, during this period, crime was rife and encounters with highwaymen could be bloody if the victim attempted to resist. There is a history of treating highway robbers as heroes. Originally they were admired by many as bold men who confronted their victims face-to-face and were ready to fight for what they wanted, the most famous English robber hero is the legendary medieval outlaw Robin Hood. In 17th- through early-19th-century Ireland, acts of robbery were often part of a tradition of resistance to British colonial rule
10.
Grave robbery
–
Grave robbery, tomb robbing, or tomb raiding is the act of uncovering a tomb or crypt to steal artifacts or personal effects. A related act is body snatching, a term that is related to the taking of ones body, grave robbery pertains to the disinterring of a grave chiefly for the purpose of stealing a corpse and/or stealing other objects. Grave robbing has caused difficulty to the study of archaeology, art history. Countless precious grave sites and tombs have been robbed before scholars were able to examine them, grave robbers usually sell their goods on the black market. Though some artifacts may make their way to museums or scholars, chinese jade burial suits were believed to be myths for many years until two were discovered in 1968, it is now believed that most jade burial suits were removed long ago by grave robbers. Grave robbing is still problematic in 21st century China, the increase in technology, such as night vision goggles, air breathing equipment, and metal detectors allows grave robbers to better find and rob ancient gravesites. There are institutions in which you can learn how to rob graves– “for about 200 yuan a day, land surveying skills are first taught, before progressing to probes and shovels, then finally explosives. After 10 days, adepts have the chance to assist an instructor in a real tomb robbery”, Ancient Egyptian tombs are one of the most common examples of tomb or grave robbery. Most of the tombs in Egypts Valley of the Kings were robbed within one hundred years of their sealing, Egyptian pharaohs often kept records of the precious items in their tombs, so an inventory check is presumed for archaeologists. Oftentimes, warnings would be left by the Pharaohs in the tombs of calamities and curses that would be laid upon any who touched the treasure, or the bodies, there are many examples of grave robbing in the Ancient World outside of Egypt. For instance, the Romans also suffered decades of theft and destruction of tombs, crypts, there are also many grave robbers in Central and Northern Europe, mostly working with metal detectors. Merovingian graves in France and Germany but also Anglo-Saxon graves in England contain many metal grave goods, grave robbers often leave them, being only interested in gold and silver. Grave contexts, ceramics, iron weapons and skeletons are destroyed, modern grave robbing in North America also involves long-abandoned or forgotten private Antebellum Period to pre-Great Depression era grave sites. These sites are often desecrated by grave robbers in search of old, hence valuable, affected sites are typically in rural, forested areas where once-prominent, wealthy landowners and their families were interred. The remote and often undocumented locations of defunct private cemeteries make them susceptible to grave robbery. The practice may be encouraged by default upon the discovery of an unknown family cemetery by a new landowner. However, a secret agent was present and had notified the police beforehand. The buyers did not often suffer the repercussions of being in possession of stolen goods, todays antiquities trade has become a streamlining industry – and the speed these artifacts enter the market has grown exponentially
11.
Babylonia
–
Babylonia was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in central-southern Mesopotamia. A small Amorite-ruled state emerged in 1894 BC, which contained at this time the city of Babylon. Babylon greatly expanded during the reign of Hammurabi in the first half of the 18th century BC, during the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was called Māt Akkadī the country of Akkad in the Akkadian language. It was often involved in rivalry with its older fellow Akkadian-speaking state of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia and it retained the Sumerian language for religious use, but by the time Babylon was founded, this was no longer a spoken language, having been wholly subsumed by Akkadian. The earliest mention of the city of Babylon can be found in a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad. During the 3rd millennium BC, a cultural symbiosis occurred between Sumerian and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian and vice versa is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the millennium as a sprachbund. Traditionally, the religious center of all Mesopotamia was the city of Nippur. The empire eventually disintegrated due to decline, climate change and civil war. Sumer rose up again with the Third Dynasty of Ur in the late 22nd century BC and they also seem to have gained ascendancy over most of the territory of the Akkadian kings of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia for a time. The states of the south were unable to stem the Amorite advance, King Ilu-shuma of the Old Assyrian Empire in a known inscription describes his exploits to the south as follows, The freedom of the Akkadians and their children I established. I established their freedom from the border of the marshes and Ur and Nippur, Awal, past scholars originally extrapolated from this text that it means he defeated the invading Amorites to the south, but there is no explicit record of that. More recently, the text has been taken to mean that Asshur supplied the south with copper from Anatolia and these policies were continued by his successors Erishum I and Ikunum. During the first centuries of what is called the Amorite period and his reign was concerned with establishing statehood amongst a sea of other minor city states and kingdoms in the region. However Sumuabum appears never to have bothered to give himself the title of King of Babylon, suggesting that Babylon itself was only a minor town or city. He was followed by Sumu-la-El, Sabium, Apil-Sin, each of whom ruled in the same manner as Sumuabum. Sin-Muballit was the first of these Amorite rulers to be regarded officially as a king of Babylon, the Elamites occupied huge swathes of southern Mesopotamia, and the early Amorite rulers were largely held in vassalage to Elam
12.
Neo-Assyrian Empire
–
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was an Iron Age Mesopotamian empire, in existence between 911 and 612 BC. The Assyrians perfected early techniques of imperial rule, many of which became standard in later empires, the Neo-Assyrian Empire succeeded the Old Assyrian Empire, and the Middle Assyrian Empire of the Late Bronze Age. During this period, Aramaic was also made a language of the empire. Upon the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BC, the empire began to due to a brutal. In 616 BC, Cyaxares king of the Medes and Persians made alliances with Nabopolassar ruler of the Babylonians and Chaldeans, Assyria was originally an Akkadian kingdom which evolved in the 25th to 24th centuries BC. The urbanised Akkadian speaking nation of Assyria emerged in the mid 21st century BC, during the 20th century BC, it established colonies in Asia Minor, and under the 20th century BC King Ilushuma, Assyria conducted many successful raids against the states of the south. Ashur-uballit extended Assyrian control over the farming lands of Nineveh. Tiglath-Pileser controlled the caravan routes that crossed the fertile crescent from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Much campaigning by Tiglath-Pileser and succeeding kings was directed against Aramaean pastoralist groups in Syria, by the end of the 2nd millennium BC, the Aramaean expansion had resulted in the loss of much Assyrian territory in Upper Mesopotamia. After the death of Tiglath-Pileser I in 1076 BC, Assyria was in decline for the next 150 years. The period from 1200 BC to 900 BC was an age for the entire Near East, North Africa, Caucasus, Mediterranean and Balkan regions, with great upheavals. Adad-nirari II and his successors campaigned on a basis for part of every year with an exceptionally well-organized army. He subjugated the areas previously under only nominal Assyrian vassalage, conquering and deporting Aramean and Hurrian populations in the north to far-off places. Adadinirari II then twice attacked and defeated Shamash-mudammiq of Babylonia, annexing an area of land north of the Diyala river. He made further gains over Babylonia under Nabu-shuma-ukin I later in his reign and he was succeeded by Tukulti-Ninurta II in 891 BC, who further consolidated Assyrias position and expanded northwards into Asia Minor and the Zagros Mountains during his short reign. The next king, Ashurnasirpal II, embarked on a vast program of expansion, during his rule, Assyria recovered much of the territory that it had lost around 1100 BC at the end of the Middle Assyrian period. Ashurnasirpal II also campaigned in the Zagros Mountains in modern Iran, repressing a revolt against Assyrian rule by the Lullubi, the Assyrians began boasting in their ruthlessness around this time. Ashurnasirpal II also moved his capital to the city of Kalhu, the palaces, temples and other buildings raised by him bear witness to a considerable development of wealth and art
13.
Jean de Thevenot
–
Jean de Thévenot was a French traveller in the East, who wrote extensively about his journeys. He was also a linguist, natural scientist and botanist and he was born in Paris and received his education in the Collège de Navarre. He was a nephew of Melchisédech Thévenot, Thévenot conceived a desire to travel from reading other travel writing, and his wealth allowed him to fulfill this desire. Leaving France in 1652, he first visited England, the Netherlands, Germany, at Rome he fell in with DHerbelot, who invited him to be his companion in a projected voyage to the Levant. DHerbelot was detained by private affairs, but Thévenot sailed from Rome in May 1655 and he remained in Constantinople until the following August, and then proceeded to Smyrna, the Greek islands, and finally to Egypt, landing at Alexandria on New Years Day,1657. He stayed for a year in Egypt, then visited Sinai and he now spent four years at home in studies useful to a traveller. In November 1663 again sailed for the East, calling at Alexandria and landing at Sidon, whence he proceeded by land to Damascus, Aleppo, and then through Mesopotamia to Mosul, Baghdad and Mendeli. This was difficult, because of the opposition of the Dutch, having visited the ruins of Persepolis, he made his way to Basra and sailed for India on 6 November 1665, in the ship Hopewell, arriving at the port of Surat on 10 January 1666. He was in Mughal Empire of India for thirteen months, and crossed the country by Golconda to Masulipatam, returning overland to Surat, from which he sailed to Bander-Abbasi and went up to Shiraz. He passed the summer of 1667 at Isfahan, disabled by an accidental pistol-shot, and in October started for Tabriz, Thévenot was an accomplished polyglot, skilled in Turkish, Arabic and Persian, and a curious and diligent observer. He was also skilled in natural sciences, especially in botany. The account of his first journey was published at Paris in 1665 and it forms the first part of his collected Voyages. The licence is dated December 1663, and the shows that Thévenot himself arranged it for publication before leaving on his second voyage. The second and third parts of Thévenots Voyages were posthumously published from his journals in 1674 and 1684, a collected edition appeared at Paris in 1689, and a second in duodecimo at Amsterdam in 1727. There is an early English translation by A. Lovell, orientalism in early modern France This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Thévenot, Jean de. The monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai and the Christian communities of the Caliphate, the bulletin of the Saint Catherine Foundation. Relation d’un voyage fait au Levant
14.
Avudaiyarkoil
–
Tirupperunturai, known as Avudaiyarkoil. is a Shaiva temple situated near Aranthangi in the Pudukkottai district of Tamil Nadu. One of the books of Tamil Saiva Siddhanta, Manikkavacakars Tiruvacakam. Manikkavacakar is said to have converted the king to the cult of Shiva, the presiding deity is formless, there is no Shivalingam but only a pedestal located in the sanctum, hence the name Avudayar Koil. His consort is worshipped as Siva Yoga Nayaki in iconless form, there is no Nandi bull icon. There is deep spiritual significance in the queerness, hinduism allows deity worship only for beginners in the initial stage. As the devotee and his devotion matures, he has to realise the truth of formless, to illustrate the theology, the temple has been designed. This is the only Saivite shrine in whole of India to portray the supreme truth symbolically, since the soul has no form, the deity is called Athmanathar. The Temple is located at the co-ordinates of 10. 076°N79. 043°E, as at Chidambaram and Tiruvanaikoil, here Vedic rituals are performed, unlike the Sivachariyar or Adhisaivar temples who follow Agama rituals. This agnivesha is also author of a magnificent ancient medical treatise called agnivesha kalpasutra spanning 77000 verses that discusses treatment for many types of diseases and medicines. They are said to number three hundred and are also called Munnothioruvar, at Tirupperunturai, as in Chidambaram temple, Aruvam is worshipped. It is believed that Manikkavacakar himself built these six sabhas, the temple is supposed to have been built by Manickavasagar. Being the prime minister, he spent all the given to him by the Varaguna Pandya II king to buy horses in building the temple. As he was bereft of money, Lord Shiva displayed one of his Thiruvilayadall by transforming foxes to horses, the temple is noted for the zephyr roof work. The ceiling of the Kanaga sabhai is a creation in stone. The ropes, rafters and nails all are made of granite, the bow wielding Muruga, Kali and Sivas rudra thandavam are the finest specimen in sculptural art. Many renovations have carried out, much of the current structure dates to the fifteenth CCE. The temple covers an area of over 10 acres and faces south, the thousand pillared hall has several delicately crafted pillars with depictions of the Oordhwa Tandavam of Shiva, Kaaraikkaal Ammaiyaar, Dhanurdhara Subramanya, etc. The annual festivals celebrated here are Aani Tirumanjanam and Maargazhi Tiruvaadirai as in Chidambaram Nataraja Temple, worship or Pooja is done six times a day
15.
Pudukkottai district
–
Pudukkottai District is a district of Tamil Nadu state in southern India. The city of Pudukkottai is the district headquarters and it is also known colloquially as Pudhugai. Pudukkottai district is one of the least urbanised district in Tamil Nadu, as of 2011, the district had a population of 1,618,345 with a sex-ratio of 1,015 females for every 1,000 males. The district has an area of 4,663 km² with a coastline of 42 km, the district lies between 78°25 and 79°15 east longitude and between 9°50 and 10°40 of the north latitude. On 14 January 1975, Pudukkottai was organised as a district comprising the former Pudukkottai Division of Tiruchirappalli district with some additions from Thanjavur District. The population of the district is 1,618,725, the district depends a great deal on the monsoon for its water supply. The district population is 77. 96% literate, according to 2011 census, Pudukkottai district had a population of 1,618,345 with a sex-ratio of 1,015 females for every 1,000 males, much above the national average of 929. A total of 179,688 were under the age of six, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes accounted for 17. 6% and. 08% of the population respectively. The average literacy of the district was 68. 62%, compared to the average of 72. 99%. The district had a total of 387,679 households
16.
Tamil Nadu
–
Tamil Nadu is one of the 29 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai, Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Puducherry and the South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. The state shares a border with the nation of Sri Lanka. Tamil Nadu is the eleventh-largest state in India by area and the sixth-most populous, the state was ranked sixth among states in India according to the Human Development Index in 2011, with the second-largest state economy after Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu is the second largest state economy in India with ₹13,842 billion in gross domestic product after Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu was ranked as one of the top seven developed states in India based on a Multidimensional Development Index in a 2013 report published by the Reserve Bank of India and its official language is Tamil, which is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world. Tamil Nadu is home to natural resources. In addition, its people have developed and continue classical arts, classical music, historic buildings and religious sites include Hindu temples of Tamil architecture, hill stations, beach resorts, multi-religious pilgrimage sites, and eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Archaeological evidence points to this area being one of the longest continuous habitations in the Indian peninsula, the ASI archaeologists have proposed that the script used at that site is very rudimentary Tamil Brahmi. Adichanallur has been announced as a site for further excavation. About 60 per cent of the epigraphical inscriptions found by the ASI in India are from Tamil Nadu. A Neolithic stone celt with the Indus script on it was discovered at Sembian-Kandiyur near Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu, according to epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan, this was the first datable artefact bearing the Indus script to be found in Tamil Nadu. Mahadevan claimed that the find was evidence of the use of the Harappan language, the date of the celt was estimated at between 1500 BCE and 2000 BCE. The early history of the people and rulers of Tamil Nadu is a topic in Tamil literary sources known as Sangam literature, numismatic, archaeological and literary sources corroborate that the Sangam period lasted for about six centuries, from 300 BC to AD300. Three dynasties, namely the Chera, Chola and Pandya, ruled the area of present-day Tamil Nadu, the Chera ruled the whole of present-day Kerala and parts of western Tamil Nadu comprising Coimbatore, Dharmapuri, Karur, Salem and Erode districts from the capital of Vanchi Muthur. The Chola dynasty ruled the northern and central parts of Tamil Nadu from their capital, Uraiyur, All three dynasties had extensive trade relationships with Rome, Greece, Egypt, Ceylon, Phoenicia, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Persia. Trade flourished in commodities such as spices, ivory, pearls, beads, Chera traded extensively from Muziris on the west coast, Chola from Arikamedu and Puhar and Pandya through Korkai port. A Greco-Roman trade and travel document, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea gives a description of the Tamil country, besides these three dynasties, the Sangam era Tamilakam was also divided into various provinces named nadu, meaning country
17.
Jakarta
–
Jakarta /dʒəˈkɑːrtə/, officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta, is the capital and most populous city of the Republic of Indonesia. Located on the northwest coast of the worlds most populous island of Java, Jakarta is the economic, cultural and political centre. The official metropolitan area, known as Jabodetabek, is the second largest in the world, established in the fourth century, the city became an important trading port for the Kingdom of Sunda. It was the de facto capital of the Dutch East Indies, today, the city has continued as the capital of Indonesia since the countrys independence was declared in 1945. Jakarta is listed as a city in the 2012 Globalization and World Cities Study Group. Based on the global metro monitor by the Brookings Institution, in 2014, Jakarta has grown more rapidly than Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, and Bangkok. Jakarta has been home to multiple settlements along with their names, Sunda Kelapa, Jayakarta, Batavia, Djakarta. Its current name derives from the word Jayakarta, the origins of this word can be traced to the Old Javanese and ultimately to the Sanskrit language. Jayakarta translates as victorious deed, complete act, or complete victory, Jakarta is nicknamed the Big Durian, the thorny strongly-odored fruit native to the region, as the city is seen as the Indonesian equivalent of the US city of New York. In the colonial era, the city was known as Koningin van het Oosten, initially in the 17th century for the urban beauty of downtown Batavias canals, mansions. After expanding to the south in the 19th century, this came to be more associated with the suburbs, with their wide lanes, many green spaces. The area in and around modern Jakarta was part of the fourth century Sundanese kingdom of Tarumanagara, following the decline of Tarumanagara, its territories, including the Jakarta area, became part of the Hindu Kingdom of Sunda. From 7th to early 13th century port of Sunda was within the sphere of influence of the Srivijaya maritime empire. According to the Chinese source, Chu-fan-chi, written circa 1225, Chou Ju-kua reported in the early 13th century Srivijaya still ruled Sumatra, the source reports the port of Sunda as strategic and thriving, pepper from Sunda being among the best in quality. The people worked in agriculture and their houses were built on wooden piles, the harbour area became known as Sunda Kelapa and by the fourteenth century, it was a major trading port for Sunda kingdom. The first European fleet, four Portuguese ships from Malacca, arrived in 1513 when the Portuguese were looking for a route for spices, in 1527, Fatahillah, a Javanese general from Demak attacked and conquered Sunda Kelapa, driving out the Portuguese. Sunda Kelapa was renamed Jayakarta, and became a fiefdom of the Sultanate of Banten which became a major Southeast Asia trading centre, through the relationship with Prince Jayawikarta from the Sultanate of Banten, Dutch ships arrived in Jayakarta in 1596. In 1602, the English East India Companys first voyage, commanded by Sir James Lancaster, arrived in Aceh and this site became the centre of English trade in Indonesia until 1682
18.
Anatomical terms of location
–
Standard anatomical terms of location deal unambiguously with the anatomy of animals, including humans. All vertebrates have the basic body plan – they are strictly bilaterally symmetrical in early embryonic stages. That is, they have left and right halves if divided down the centre. For these reasons, the directional terms can be considered to be those used in vertebrates. By extension, the terms are used for many other organisms as well. While these terms are standardized within specific fields of biology, there are unavoidable, sometimes dramatic, for example, differences in terminology remain a problem that, to some extent, still separates the terminology of human anatomy from that used in the study of various other zoological categories. The vertebrates and Craniata share a heritage and common structure. To avoid ambiguities this terminology is based on the anatomy of each animal in a standard way, for humans, one type of vertebrate, anatomical terms may differ from other forms of vertebrates. Thus what is on top of a human is the head, whereas the top of a dog may be its back, for example, many species are not even bilaterally symmetrical. In these species, terminology depends on their type of symmetry, all descriptions are with respect to the organism in its standard anatomical position, even when the organism in question has appendages in another position. This helps avoid confusion in terminology when referring to the organism in different postures. In humans, this refers to the body in a position with arms at the side. While the universal vertebrate terminology used in medicine would work in human medicine. Many anatomical terms can be combined, either to indicate a position in two axes simultaneously or to indicate the direction of a movement relative to the body, for example, anterolateral indicates a position that is both anterior and lateral to the body axis. There is no limit to the contexts in which terms may be modified to qualify each other in such combinations. Generally the modifier term is truncated and an o or an i is added in prefixing it to the qualified term, where desirable three or more terms may be agglutinated or concatenated, as in anteriodorsolateral. Such terms sometimes used to be hyphenated, but the tendency is to omit the hyphen. There is however little basis for any rule to interfere with choice of convenience in such usage
19.
Abdomen
–
The abdomen constitutes the part of the body between the thorax and pelvis, in humans and in other vertebrates. The region occupied by the abdomen is termed the abdominal cavity, in arthropods it is the posterior tagma of the body, it follows the thorax or cephalothorax. The abdomen stretches from the thorax at the diaphragm to the pelvis at the pelvic brim. The pelvic brim stretches from the joint to the pubic symphysis and is the edge of the pelvic inlet. The space above this inlet and under the thoracic diaphragm is termed the abdominal cavity, the boundary of the abdominal cavity is the abdominal wall in the front and the peritoneal surface at the rear. The abdomen contains most of the organs of the digestive tract. Hollow abdominal organs include the stomach, the intestine. Organs such as the liver, its attached gallbladder, and the function in close association with the digestive tract. The spleen, kidneys, and adrenal glands also lie within the abdomen, along with blood vessels including the aorta. Anatomists may consider the urinary bladder, uterus, fallopian tubes, finally, the abdomen contains an extensive membrane called the peritoneum. A fold of peritoneum may completely cover certain organs, whereas it may only one side of organs that usually lie closer to the abdominal wall. Anatomists call the type of organs retroperitoneal. For example, the stomach of ruminants is divided into four chambers – rumen, in vertebrates, the abdomen is a large cavity enclosed by the abdominal muscles, ventrally and laterally, and by the vertebral column dorsally. Lower ribs can also enclose ventral and lateral walls, the abdominal cavity is upper part of the pelvic cavity. It is attached to the cavity by the diaphragm. Structures such as the aorta, inferior vena cava and esophagus pass through the diaphragm, both the abdominal and pelvic cavities are lined by a serous membrane known as the parietal peritoneum. This membrane is continuous with the visceral peritoneum lining the organs, the abdomen in vertebrates contains a number of organs belonging, for instance, to the digestive tract and urinary system. There are three layers of the abdominal wall and they are, from the outside to the inside, external oblique, internal oblique, and transverse abdominal
20.
Thorax
–
The thorax or chest is a part of the anatomy of humans and various other animals located between the neck and the abdomen. The thorax includes the thoracic cavity and the thoracic wall and it contains organs including the heart, lungs, and thymus gland, as well as muscles and various other internal structures. Many diseases may affect the chest, and one of the most common symptoms is chest pain, in humans and other hominids, the thorax is the chest region of the body between the neck and the abdomen, along with its internal organs and other contents. It is mostly protected and supported by the rib cage, spine, arteries and veins are also contained –, bones. The area exposed by open-necked shirts, the V of the chest is sometimes the location of a skin disease polymorphous light eruption. In the human body, the region of the thorax between the neck and diaphragm in the front of the body is called the chest, the corresponding area in an animal can also be referred to as the chest. The shape of the chest does not correspond to part of the thoracic skeleton that encloses the heart. All the breadth of the shoulders is due to the girdle, and contains the axillae. Level with this line the second ribs join the sternum, at the lower part of the sternum, where the seventh or last true ribs join it, the ensiform cartilage begins, and above this there is often a depression known as the pit of the stomach. The bones of the thorax, called the thoracic skeleton is a component of the axial skeleton and it consists of the ribs and sternum. The ribs of the thorax are numbered in ascending order from 1-12. 11 &12 are known as floating ribs because they have no anterior attachment point in particular the cartilage attached to the sternum, as 1-7 are, whereas ribs 8-10 are termed false ribs as their costal cartilage articulates with the rib aboves costal cartilage. The anatomy of the chest can also be described through the use of anatomical landmarks, the female nipple is surrounded for half an inch by a more or less pigmented disc, the areola. The apex of a heart is in the fifth left intercostal space. Different types of diseases or conditions that affect the chest include pleurisy, flail chest, atelectasis, and these conditions can be hereditary or caused by birth defects or trauma. Any condition that lowers the ability to breathe deeply or to cough is considered a chest disease or condition. Injury to the chest results in up to ¼ of all due to trauma in the United States. The major pathophysiologies encountered in blunt chest trauma involve derangements in the flow of air, blood, sepsis due to leakage of alimentary tract contents, as in esophageal perforations, also must be considered. Blunt trauma commonly results in chest wall injuries, the pain associated with these injuries can make breathing difficult, and this may compromise ventilation
21.
Slovakia
–
Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Slovakias territory spans about 49,000 square kilometres and is mostly mountainous. The population is over 5 million and comprises mostly ethnic Slovaks, the capital and largest city is Bratislava. The Slavs arrived in the territory of present-day Slovakia in the 5th and 6th centuries, in the 7th century, they played a significant role in the creation of Samos Empire and in the 9th century established the Principality of Nitra. In the 10th century, the territory was integrated into the Kingdom of Hungary, which became part of the Habsburg Empire. After World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a separate Slovak Republic existed in World War II as a client state of Nazi Germany. In 1945, Czechoslovakia was reëstablished under Communist rule as a Soviet satellite, in 1989 the Velvet Revolution ended authoritarian Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The country maintains a combination of economy with universal health care. The country joined the European Union in 2004 and the Eurozone on 1 January 2009, Slovakia is also a member of the Schengen Area, NATO, the United Nations, the OECD, the WTO, CERN, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the Visegrád Group. The Slovak economy is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe and its legal tender, the Euro, is the worlds 2nd most traded currency. Although regional income inequality is high, 90% of citizens own their homes, in 2016, Slovak citizens had visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 165 countries and territories, ranking the Slovak passport 11th in the world. Slovakia is the world’s biggest per-capita car producer with a total of 1,040,000 cars manufactured in the country in 2016 alone, the car industry represents 43 percent of Slovakia’s industrial output, and a quarter of its exports. Radiocarbon datingputs the oldest surviving archaeological artefacts from Slovakia – found near Nové Mesto nad Váhom – at 270,000 BC and these ancient tools, made by the Clactonian technique, bear witness to the ancient habitation of Slovakia. Other stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic era come from the Prévôt cave near Bojnice, the most important discovery from that era is a Neanderthal cranium, discovered near Gánovce, a village in northern Slovakia. The most well-known finds include the oldest female statue made of mammoth-bone, the statue was found in the 1940s in Moravany nad Váhom near Piešťany. Numerous necklaces made of shells from Cypraca thermophile gastropods of the Tertiary period have come from the sites of Zákovská, Podkovice, Hubina and these findings provide the most ancient evidence of commercial exchanges carried out between the Mediterranean and Central Europe. The Bronze Age in the territory of modern-day Slovakia went through three stages of development, stretching from 2000 to 800 BC
22.
Ell
–
In English-speaking countries, these included the Flemish ell, English ell and French ell, some of which are thought to derive from a double ell. In England, the ell was usually 45 in, or a yard and it was mainly used in the tailoring business but is now obsolete. Although the exact length was never defined in English law, standards were kept, the Viking ell was the measure from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, about 18 inches. The Viking ell or primitive ell was used in Iceland up to the 13th century, by the 13th century, a law set the stika as equal to 2 ells which was the English ell of the time. An ell-wand or ellwand was a rod of length one ell used for official measurement, edward I of England required that every town have one. In Scotland, the Belt of Orion was called the Kings Ellwand, the Scottish ell was standardised in 1661, with the exemplar to be kept in the custody of Edinburgh. It comes from Middle English elle and it was used in the popular expression Gie im an inch, an hell tak an ell. The Ell Shop in Dunkeld, Perth and Kinross, is so called from the 18th century iron ell-stick attached to one corner, once used to measure cloth and other commodities in the adjacent market-place. The shaft of the old 17th century Kincardine Mercat cross stands in the square of Fettercairn, Scottish measures were made obsolete, and English measurements made standard in Scotland, by act of parliament in 1824. The Scottish ell was equivalent to, Scottish measures, 3 1⁄12 feet Metric system,94.1318 cm Imperial system,1.03 international yards,37.1 inches This article incorporates text from Dwellys Gaelic Dictionary. Collins Encyclopedia of Scotland Scottish National Dictionary and Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue Weights and Measures, by D. Richard Torrance, SAFHS, Edinburgh,1996, ISBN 1-874722-09-9
23.
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort
–
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort was a French botanist, notable as the first to make a clear definition of the concept of genus for plants. The botanist Charles Plumier had been his pupil and accompanied him on his voyages, Tournefort was born in Aix-en-Provence and studied at the Jesuit convent there. It was intended that he enter the Church, but the death of his father allowed him to follow his interest in botany, after two years collecting, he studied medicine at Montpellier, but was appointed professor of botany at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris in 1683. During this time he travelled through Western Europe, particularly the Pyrenees and he was accompanied by the German botanist Andreas Gundelsheimer and the artist Claude Aubriet. His description of this journey was published posthumously, he himself having been killed by a carriage in Paris and his principal work was the 1694 Eléments de botanique, ou Méthode pour reconnaître les Plantes. The principal artist was Claude Aubriet who later became the principal artist at the Jardin des Plantes, Tournefort is often credited with being the first to make a clear distinction between genus and species. Though he did indeed cluster the 7,000 plant species that he described into around 700 genera, concepts of genus and species had been framed as early as the 16th century, and Kaspar Bauhin in particular consistently distinguished genera and species. Augustus Quirinus Rivinus had even advocated the use of binary nomenclature shortly before Tourneforts work was published, the word herbarium also seems to have been an invention of Tournefort, previously herbaria had been called by a variety of names, such as Hortus siccus. His herbarium collection of 6,963 specimens was housed in Paris, now part of the Muséum national dhistoire naturelle. Media related to Joseph Pitton de Tournefort at Wikimedia Commons KUL Digital version of Elemens de botanique ou methode pour connoitre les plantes 1694–1695
24.
Algiers
–
Algiers is the capital and largest city of Algeria. In 2011, the population was estimated to be around 3,500,000. An estimate puts the population of the metropolitan city to be around 5,000,000. Algiers is located on the Mediterranean Sea and in the portion of Algeria. The casbah and the two form a triangle. A Phoenician commercial outpost called Ikosim which later developed into a small Roman town called Icosium existed on what is now the quarter of the city. The rue de la Marine follows the lines of what used to be a Roman street, Roman cemeteries existed near Bab-el-Oued and Bab Azoun. The city was given Latin rights by Emperor Vespasian, the bishops of Icosium are mentioned as late as the 5th century. The present-day city was founded in 944 by Bologhine ibn Ziri and he had earlier built his own house and a Sanhaja center at Ashir, just south of Algiers. Although his Zirid dynasty was overthrown by Roger II of Sicily in 1148, the city was wrested from the Hammadids by the Almohads in 1159, and in the 13th century came under the dominion of the Ziyanid sultans of Tlemcen. Nominally part of the sultanate of Tlemcen, Algiers had a measure of independence under amirs of its own due to Oran being the chief seaport of the Ziyanids. As early as 1302 the islet of Peñón in front of Algiers harbour had been occupied by Spaniards, thereafter, a considerable amount of trade began to flow between Algiers and Spain. However, Algiers continued to be of little importance until after the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. In 1510, following their occupation of Oran and other towns on the coast of Africa, in 1516, the amir of Algiers, Selim b. Teumi, invited the corsair brothers Aruj and Hayreddin Barbarossa to expel the Spaniards, Aruj came to Algiers, ordered the assassination of Selim, and seized the town and ousted the Spanish in the Capture of Algiers. Hayreddin, succeeding Aruj after the latter was killed in battle against the Spaniards in the Fall of Tlemcen, was the founder of the pashaluk, Algiers from this time became the chief seat of the Barbary pirates. Formally part of the Ottoman Empire but essentially free from Ottoman control, starting in the 16th century Algiers turned to piracy, repeated attempts were made by various nations to subdue the pirates that disturbed shipping in the western Mediterranean and engaged in slave raids as far north as Iceland. The United States fought two wars over Algiers attacks on shipping, among the notable people held for ransom was the future Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes, who was captive in Algiers almost five years, and who wrote two plays set in Algiers of the period
25.
Levant Company
–
The Levant Company was an English chartered company formed in 1592. Its initial charter, awarded on 11 September 1581, was good for seven years and it was granted to Edward Osborne, Richard Staper, Thomas Smith and William Garret with the purpose of regulating English trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Levant. The Company remained in existence until being superseded in 1825. A member of the Company was known as a Turkey Merchant, in 1580 a treaty was signed between England and the Ottoman Empire, giving English merchants trading rights similar to those enjoyed by French merchants. In 1582 William Harborne, an English merchant who had carried out most of the treaty negotiations in Constantinople to French protestations, but by 1586 Harborne was appointed Her Majestys ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, with all his expenses to be paid by the Levant Company. Throughout the Companys history, Aleppo served as headquarters for the company in the Middle East. By 1588, the Levant Company had been converted to a monopoly on an established trade route. The prime movers in the conversion were Sir Edward Osborne and Richard Staper, a new charter was granted in January 1592, and by 1595 its character as a regulated company had become clear. The Company as a result though had heavily armed ships some of which were used during the Spanish Armada campaign, James I renewed and confirmed the companys charter in 1606, adding new privileges. However he engaged in a verbal anti-Turk crusade and neglected direct relations with the Turks, the government did not interfere with trade, which expanded. Especially profitable was the trade as the Porte modernized and re-equipped its forces. Of growing importance was textile exports, between 1609 and 1619, the export of cloth to the Turks increased from 46% to 79% of total cloth exports. Piracy continued to be a threat, despite the anti-Ottoman rhetoric of the king, commercial relations with the Turks expanded. The kings finances were increasingly based on the derived from this trade. For example, James refused to provide support to Poland for its war against the Turks. By the charter of Charles II, the company was erected into a body politic, capable of making laws, the number of members was not limited, but averaged about 300. The principal qualification required was that the candidate be a merchant, either by family. Those under 25 years of age paid 25 pounds sterling at their admission, those above, twice as much
26.
William Blake
–
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a figure in the history of the poetry. His so-called prophetic works were said by 20th century critic Northrop Frye to form what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language. His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him far, in 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBCs poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Although he lived in London his entire life, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich œuvre and his paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as Pre-Romantic. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England, Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French, despite these known influences, the singularity of Blakes work makes him difficult to classify. William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street in Soho and he was the third of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. Blakes father, James, was a hosier and he attended school only long enough to learn reading and writing, leaving at the age of ten, and was otherwise educated at home by his mother Catherine Blake. Even though the Blakes were English Dissenters, William was baptised on 11 December at St Jamess Church, Piccadilly, the Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake, and remained a source of inspiration throughout his life. Blake started engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his father, within these drawings Blake found his first exposure to classical forms through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, Maarten van Heemskerck and Albrecht Dürer. The number of prints and bound books that James and Catherine were able to purchase for young William suggests that the Blakes enjoyed, at least for a time, a comfortable wealth. When William was ten years old, his parents knew enough of his headstrong temperament that he was not sent to school and he read avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake made explorations into poetry, his work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser. On 4 August 1772, Blake was apprenticed to engraver James Basire of Great Queen Street, at the sum of £52.10, at the end of the term, aged 21, he became a professional engraver. This aside, Basires style of line-engraving was of a kind held at the time to be old-fashioned compared to the flashier stipple or mezzotint styles. It has been speculated that Blakes instruction in this form may have been detrimental to his acquiring of work or recognition in later life. After two years, Basire sent his apprentice to copy images from the Gothic churches in London and his experiences in Westminster Abbey helped form his artistic style and ideas. The Abbey of his day was decorated with suits of armour, painted funeral effigies, ackroyd notes that. the most immediate would have been of faded brightness and colour
27.
Suriname
–
Suriname, officially known as the Republic of Suriname, is a sovereign state on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, at just under 165,000 square kilometers, it is the smallest country in South America. Suriname has a population of approximately 566,000, most of live on the countrys north coast, in and around the capital and largest city. Long inhabited by cultures of indigenous tribes, Suriname was explored and contested by European powers before coming under Dutch rule in the late 17th century. In 1954, the country one of the constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Its indigenous peoples have been active in claiming land rights and working to preserve their traditional lands. Suriname is considered to be a culturally Caribbean country, and is a member of the Caribbean Community, while Dutch is the official language of government, business, media, and education, Sranan, an English-based creole language, is a widely used lingua franca. Suriname is the territory outside Europe where Dutch is spoken by a majority of the population. The people of Suriname are among the most diverse in the world, spanning a multitude of ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups. This area was occupied by cultures of indigenous peoples long before European contact, remnants of which can be found in petroglyph sites at Werehpai. The name Suriname may derive from a Taino indigenous people called Surinen, British settlers, who founded the first European colony at Marshalls Creek along the Suriname River, spelled the name as Surinam. When the territory was taken over by the Dutch, it part of a group of colonies known as Dutch Guiana. The official spelling of the countrys English name was changed from Surinam to Suriname in January 1978, a notable example is Surinames national airline, Surinam Airways. The older English name is reflected in the English pronunciation, /ˈsʊrᵻnæm/ or /ˈsʊrᵻnɑːm/, in Dutch, the official language of Suriname, the pronunciation is, with the main stress on the third syllable and a schwa terminal vowel. Indigenous settlement of Suriname dates back to 3,000 BC, the largest tribes were the Arawak, a nomadic coastal tribe that lived from hunting and fishing. They were the first inhabitants in the area, the Carib also settled in the area and conquered the Arawak by using their superior sailing ships. They settled in Galibi at the mouth of the Marowijne River, while the larger Arawak and Carib tribes lived along the coast and savanna, smaller groups of indigenous peoples lived in the inland rainforest, such as the Akurio, Trió, Warrau, and Wayana. Beginning in the 16th century, French, Spanish, and English explorers visited the area, a century later, Dutch and English settlers established plantation colonies along the many rivers in the fertile Guiana plains
28.
World War II
–
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
29.
MythBusters
–
MythBusters is a science entertainment television program created by Peter Rees and produced by Australias Beyond Television Productions. The series premiered on the Discovery Channel on January 23,2003, the series was transmitted by numerous international broadcasters, including SBS Australia, and other Discovery channels worldwide. The show was one of the oldest—and the most popular—on Discovery Channel, being preceded only by How Its Made and Daily Planet, from 2006 to 2016, the show was overseen by British show-runner Dan Tapster, working out of Sydney, San Francisco and Manchester. Filmed in San Francisco and edited in Artarmon, New South Wales, Australia, during the second season, members of Savage and Hynemans behind-the-scenes team were organized into a second team of MythBusters. They generally tested myths separately from the duo and operated from another workshop. On October 21,2015, it was announced that MythBusters would air its 14th, the show aired its final episode on March 6,2016. On March 25, Discoverys sister network, Science, announced its intention of continuing the series with new hosts, the show, currently airing, is titled Mythbusters, The Search. Adam Savage has confirmed that he and his former cohosts have no intentions of reuniting for future team projects, MythBusters refers both to the name of the documentary and also the cast members who test the experiments. The series concept was created for the Discovery Channel as Tall Tales or True by Australian writer and producer Peter Rees of Beyond Productions in 2002, Discovery rejected the proposal initially because they had just commissioned a series on the same topic. Rees refined the pitch to focus on testing key elements of the rather than just retelling them. Discovery agreed to develop and co-produce a three-episode series pilot, Jamie Hyneman was one of a number of special effects artists who were asked to prepare a casting video for network consideration. Rees had interviewed him previously for a segment of the science series Beyond 2000 about the British/American robot combat television series Robot Wars. The highest rated regular episode featured two stories, straw through a tree, and talking to plants. The highest rated two hour special was Hollywood Myths, the highest rated Shark Week special was Jaws Myths which screened in 2005. During July 2006, an edited version of MythBusters began airing on BBC Two in the UK. The episodes shown on the European Discovery Channel sometimes include extra scenes not shown in the United States version, the 14th season, which premiered in January 2016, was the final season for the series. Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are the original MythBusters, and initially explored all the myths of the series using their experience with special effects. The two work at Hynemans effects workshop, M5 Industries, they use of his staff
30.
Code of Hammurabi
–
The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved Babylonian law code of ancient Mesopotamia, dating back to about 1754 BC. It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world, the sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a seven and a half foot stone stele and various clay tablets. The code consists of 282 laws, with scaled punishments, adjusting an eye for an eye, nearly one-half of the code deals with matters of contract, establishing, for example, the wages to be paid to an ox driver or a surgeon. Other provisions set the terms of a transaction, establishing the liability of a builder for a house collapses, for example. A third of the code addresses issues concerning household and family such as inheritance, divorce, paternity. Only one provision appears to impose obligations on an official, this establishes that a judge who reaches an incorrect decision is to be fined and removed from the bench permanently. A few provisions address issues related to military service, the code was discovered by modern archaeologists in 1901, and its editio princeps translation published in 1902 by Jean-Vincent Scheil. This nearly complete example of the code is carved into a basalt stele in the shape of an index finger,2.25 m tall. The code is inscribed in the Akkadian language, using cuneiform script carved into the stele, Hammurabi ruled for nearly 42 years, from about 1792 to 1749 BC according to the Middle chronology. On the stone slab are 44 columns and 28 paragraphs that contained 282 laws, some of these laws follow along the rules of an eye for an eye. It had been taken as plunder by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte in the 12th century BC and was taken to Susa in Elam where it was no longer available to the Babylonian people. The Code of Hammurabi was one of several sets of laws in the ancient Near East, the code of laws was arranged in orderly groups, so that all who read the laws would know what was required of them. These codes come from similar cultures in a small geographical area. The Code of Hammurabi is the longest surviving text from the Old Babylonian period, the code has been seen as an early example of a fundamental law, regulating a government — i. e. a primitive constitution. The code is one of the earliest examples of the idea of presumption of innocence. However, its copying in subsequent generations indicates that it was used as a model of legal and judicial reasoning, the Code issues justice following the three classes of Babylonian society, property owners, freed men, and slaves. For example, if a doctor killed a patient, he would have his hands cut off. Various copies of portions of the Code of Hammurabi have been found on baked clay tablets, the Prologue of the Code of Hammurabi is on such a tablet, also at the Louvre
31.
First Babylonian Dynasty
–
The chronology of the first dynasty of Babylonia is debated as there is a Babylonian King List A and a Babylonian King List B. In this chronology, the years of List A are used due to their wide usage. The reigns in List B are longer, in general, thus any evidence must come from surrounding regions and written records. Not much is known about the kings from Sumuabum through Sin-muballit other than the fact they were Amorites rather than indigenous Akkadians, what is known, however, is that they accumulated little land. When Hammurabi ascended the throne of Babylon, the empire consisted of a few towns in the surrounding area, Dilbat, Sippar, Kish. Once Hammurabi was king, his military victories gained land for the empire, however, Babylon remained but one of several important areas in Mesopotamia, along with Assyria, then ruled by Shamshi-Adad I, and Larsa, then ruled by Rim-Sin I. In Hammurabis thirtieth year as king, he began to establish Babylon as the center of what would be a great empire. In that year, he conquered Larsa from Rim-Sin I, thus gaining control over the urban centers of Nippur, Ur, Uruk. In essence, Hammurabi gained control over all of south Mesopotamia, the other formidable political power in the region in the 2nd millennium was Eshnunna, which Hammurabi succeeded in capturing in c. Babylon exploited Eshnunnas well-established commercial trade routes and the stability that came with them. It was not long before Hammurabis army took Assyria and parts of the Zagros Mountains, Hammurabis other name was Hammurapi-ilu, meaning Hammurapi the god or perhaps Hammurapi is god. He could have been Amraphel king of Shinar or Sinear in the Jewish records and the Bible, Abraham lived from 1871 to 1784, according to modern interpretations of the Old Testaments figures that have been usually reckoned in modern half years before the Exodus, from equinox to equinox. The Venus tablets of Ammisaduqa are famous, and several books had been published about them, several dates have been offered but the old dates of many sourcebooks seems to be outdated and incorrect. A few sources, some printed almost a century ago, claim that the text mentions an occultation of the Venus by the moon. However, this may be a misinterpretation, calculations support 1659 for the fall of Babylon, based on the statistical probability of dating based on the planets observations. The presently accepted middle chronology is too low from the point of view. A text about the fall of Babylon by the Hittites of Mursilis I at the end of Samsuditanas reign which tells about an eclipse is crucial for a correct Babylonian chronology. The pair of lunar and solar eclipses occurred in the month Shimanu, the lunar eclipse took place on February 9,1659 BC
32.
Hammurabi
–
Hammurabi was the sixth king of the First Babylonian Dynasty, reigning from 1792 BC to 1750 BC. He was preceded by his father, Sin-Muballit, who abdicated due to failing health and he extended Babylons control throughout Mesopotamia through military campaigns. Hammurabi is known for the Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest surviving codes of law in recorded history, the name Hammurabi derives from the Amorite term ʻAmmurāpi, itself from ʻAmmu and Rāpi. Hammurabi was an Amorite First Dynasty king of the city-state of Babylon, Babylon was one of the many largely Amorite ruled city-states that dotted the central and southern Mesopotamian plains and waged war on each other for control of fertile agricultural land. Though many cultures co-existed in Mesopotamia, Babylonian culture gained a degree of prominence among the literate classes throughout the Middle East under Hammurabi, the kings who came before Hammurabi had founded a relatively minor City State in 1894 BC which controlled little territory outside of the city itself. Babylon was overshadowed by older, larger and more powerful kingdoms such as Elam, Assyria, Isin, Eshnunna, thus Hammurabi ascended to the throne as the king of a minor kingdom in the midst of a complex geopolitical situation. The powerful kingdom of Eshnunna controlled the upper Tigris River while Larsa controlled the river delta, to the east of Mesopotamia lay the powerful kingdom of Elam which regularly invaded and forced tribute upon the small states of southern Mesopotamia. The first few decades of Hammurabis reign were quite peaceful, Hammurabi used his power to undertake a series of public works, including heightening the city walls for defensive purposes, and expanding the temples. In c.1801 BC, the kingdom of Elam. With allies among the states, Elam attacked and destroyed the kingdom of Eshnunna, destroying a number of cities. In order to consolidate its position, Elam tried to start a war between Hammurabis Babylonian kingdom and the kingdom of Larsa. Hammurabi and the king of Larsa made an alliance when they discovered this duplicity and were able to crush the Elamites, although Larsa did not contribute greatly to the military effort. Angered by Larsas failure to come to his aid, Hammurabi turned on that southern power, as Hammurabi was assisted during the war in the south by his allies from the north such as Yamhad and Mari, the absence of soldiers in the north led to unrest. Continuing his expansion, Hammurabi turned his attention northward, quelling the unrest, next the Babylonian armies conquered the remaining northern states, including Babylons former ally Mari, although it is possible that the conquest of Mari was a surrender without any actual conflict. Hammurabi entered into a war with Ishme-Dagan I of Assyria for control of Mesopotamia. Eventually Hammurabi prevailed, ousting Ishme-Dagan I just before his own death, mut-Ashkur the new king of Assyria was forced to pay tribute to Hammurabi, however Babylon did not rule Assyria directly. In just a few years, Hammurabi had succeeded in uniting all of Mesopotamia under his rule, however, one stele of Hammurabi has been found as far north as Diyarbekir, where he claims the title King of the Amorites. Vast numbers of contract tablets, dated to the reigns of Hammurabi and his successors, have been discovered, as well as 55 of his own letters
33.
History of Mesopotamia
–
While in the Paleolithic and early Neolithic periods only parts of Upper Mesopotamia were occupied, the southern alluvium was settled during the late Neolithic period. Mesopotamia has been home to many of the oldest major civilizations, entering history from the Early Bronze Age, Mesopotamia literally means between rivers in ancient Greek. The oldest known occurrence of the name Mesopotamia dates to the 4th century BC, later it was more generally applied to all the lands between the Euphrates and the Tigris, thereby incorporating not only parts of Syria but also almost all of Iraq and southeastern Turkey. The neighbouring steppes to the west of the Euphrates and the part of the Zagros Mountains are also often included under the wider term Mesopotamia. A further distinction is made between Upper or Northern Mesopotamia and Lower or Southern Mesopotamia. Upper Mesopotamia, also known as the Jezirah, is the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris from their sources down to Baghdad, Lower Mesopotamia is the area from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. In modern scientific usage, the term Mesopotamia often also has a chronological connotation. It is usually used to designate the area until the Arab Muslim conquests in the 7th century AD, with Arabic names like Syria, Jezirah, two types of chronologies can be distinguished, a relative chronology and an absolute chronology. The former establishes the order of phases, periods, cultures and reigns, in archaeology, relative chronologies are established by carefully excavating archaeological sites and reconstructing their stratigraphy – the order in which layers were deposited. In general, newer remains are deposited on top of older material, absolute chronologies are established by dating remains, or the layers in which they are found, through absolute dating methods. These methods include radiocarbon dating and the record that can provide year names or calendar dates. By combining absolute and relative dating methods, a framework has been built for Mesopotamia that still incorporates many uncertainties. In this framework, many prehistorical and early historical periods have been defined on the basis of culture that is thought to be representative for each period. These periods are named after the site at which the material was recognized for the first time, as is for example the case for the Halaf, Ubaid. When historical documents become widely available, periods tend to be named after the dominant dynasty or state, examples of this are the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods. While reigns of kings can be securely dated for the 1st millennium BC, there is a large error margin toward the 2nd. Despite problems with the Middle Chronology, this chronological framework continues to be used by many recent handbooks on the archaeology, a study from 2001 published high-resolution radiocarbon dates from Turkey supporting dates for the 2nd millennium BC that are very close to those proposed by the Middle Chronology. This transition has been documented at sites like Abu Hureyra and Mureybet, Jarmo Samarra culture Halaf culture The Fertile Crescent was inhabited by several distinct, flourishing cultures between the end of the last ice age and the beginning of history
34.
Mari, Syria
–
Mari, was an ancient Semitic city in Syria. Its remains constitute a tell located 11 kilometers north-west of Abu Kamal on the Euphrates river western bank and it flourished as a trade center and hegemonic state between 2900 BC and 1759 BC. Mari was first abandoned in the middle of the 26th century BC but was rebuilt and this second Mari engaged in a long war with its rival Ebla, and is known for its strong affinity with the Sumerian culture. It was destroyed in the 23rd century BC by the Akkadians who allowed the city to be rebuilt, the governors later became independent with the rapid disintegration of the Akkadian empire and rebuilt the city as a regional center in the middle Euphrates valley. The Shakkanakkus ruled Mari until the half of the 19th century BC when the dynasty collapsed for unknown reasons. A short time after the Shakkanakku collapse, Mari became the capital of the Amorite Lim dynasty, the Mariotes worshiped both Semitic and Sumerian deities and established their city as a center of old trade. The Amorites were West-Semites who began to settle the area before the 21st century BC, by the Lim dynastys era and they also revealed the wide trading networks of the 18th century BC, which connected areas as far as Afghanistan in Southern Asia and Crete in the Mediterranean region. The city is difficult to excavate, as it is buried deep under the layers of habitation. A defensive system against floods, composed of an embankment was unearthed. Other findings include one of the city gates, a beginning at the center and ending at the gate. The city was abandoned at the end of the Early Dynastic period II c.2550 BC for unknown reasons, around the beginning of the Early Dynastic period III, Mari was rebuilt and populated again. The new city kept many of the first city exterior features, including the internal rampart and gate. Also kept was the outer circular embankment measuring 1.9 km in diameter, at the heart of the city, a royal palace was built which also served as a temple. Four successive architectural levels from the second kingdoms palace have been unearthed, the first two levels were excavated, the findings include a temple named Enceinte Sacrée, which was the largest in the city but it is unknown for whom it was dedicated. Also unearthed were a pillared throne room and a hall that have three double wood pillars leading to the temple, six more temples were discovered in the city, including the temple called the Massif Rouge, and temples dedicated for Ninni-Zaza, Ishtarat, Ishtar, Ninhursag and Shamash. 2350 BC, which was sent to Irkab-Damu of Ebla, and in it, however, the reading of this letter is still problematic and many interpretations have been presented by scholars. The next king mentioned in the letter is Saʿumu, who conquered the lands of Raak and Nirum, the war continued with Išhtup-Išar of Mari conquest of Emar, at a time of Eblaite weakness in the mid-24th century BC. King Igrish-Halam of Ebla had to pay tribute to Iblul-Il of Mari, Enna-Dagan also received tribute, and his reign fell entirely within the reign of Irkab-Damu of Ebla, who managed to defeat Mari and end the tribute
35.
Euphrates
–
The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia, originating in eastern Turkey, the Euphrates flows through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf. The Ancient Greek form Euphrátēs was borrowed from Old Persian Ufrātu, the Elamite name is ultimately derived from the Sumerian Buranuna, possibly through the Akkadian name. In Akkadian the river was similarly called Purattu, which has been perpetuated in Semitic languages, the Elamite, Akkadian, and possibly Sumerian forms are suggested to be from an unrecorded substrate language. The earliest references to the Euphrates come from texts found in Shuruppak and pre-Sargonic Nippur in southern Iraq. In these texts, written in Sumerian, the Euphrates is called Buranuna, the name could also be written KIB. NUN. or dKIB. NUN, with the prefix d indicating that the river was a divinity. In Sumerian, the name of the city of Sippar in modern-day Iraq was also a written UD. KIB. NUN, the Euphrates is the longest river of Western Asia. It emerges from the confluence of the Kara Su or Western Euphrates, the same figures are given by Isaev and Mikhailova. The length of the Shatt al-Arab, which connects the Euphrates, both the Kara Su and the Murat Su rise northwest from Lake Van at elevations of 3,290 metres and 3,520 metres amsl, respectively. At the location of the Keban Dam, the two rivers, now combined into the Euphrates, have dropped to an elevation of 693 metres amsl, from Keban to the Syrian–Turkish border, the river drops another 368 metres over a distance of less than 600 kilometres. The Euphrates receives most of its water in the form of rainfall and melting snow, discharge in these two months accounts for 36 percent of the total annual discharge of the Euphrates, or even 60–70 percent according to one source, while low runoff occurs in summer and autumn. The discharge regime of the Euphrates has changed dramatically since the construction of the first dams in the 1970s, data on Euphrates discharge collected after 1990 show the impact of the construction of the numerous dams in the Euphrates and of the increased withdrawal of water for irrigation. Average discharge at Hīt after 1990 has dropped to 356 cubic metres per second, the seasonal variability has equally changed. The pre-1990 peak volume recorded at Hīt was 7,510 cubic metres per second, the minimum volume at Hīt remained relatively unchanged, rising from 55 cubic metres per second before 1990 to 58 cubic metres per second afterward. In Syria, three rivers add their water to the Euphrates, the Sajur, the Balikh and the Khabur and these rivers rise in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains along the Syro–Turkish border and add comparatively little water to the Euphrates. The Sajur is the smallest of these tributaries, emerging from two streams near Gaziantep and draining the plain around Manbij before emptying into the reservoir of the Tishrin Dam. The Balikh receives most of its water from a spring near Ayn al-Arus. In terms of length, drainage basin and discharge, the Khabur is the largest of these three and its main karstic springs are located around Ras al-Ayn, from where the Khabur flows southeast past Al-Hasakah, where the river turns south and drains into the Euphrates near Busayrah
36.
Elam
–
The modern name Elam stems from the Sumerian transliteration elam, along with the later Akkadian elamtu, and the Elamite haltamti. Elamite states were among the political forces of the Ancient Near East. In classical literature, Elam was also known as Susiana, which is a derived from its capital. Elam was part of the early urbanization during the Chalcolithic period, the emergence of written records from around 3000 BC also parallels Sumerian history, where slightly earlier records have been found. In the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan and its culture played a crucial role during the Persian Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded Elam, when the Elamite language remained among those in official use. Elamite is generally accepted to be an isolate unrelated to the much later arriving Persian. The Elamites called their country Haltamti, Sumerian ELAM, Akkadian Elamû, female Elamītu resident of Susiana, the Elamite civilization was primarily centered in the province of what is modern-day Khuzestān and Ilam in prehistoric times. The modern provincial name Khuzestān is derived from the Persian name for Susa, Old Persian Hūjiya Elam, in Middle Persian Huź Susiana, in geographical terms, Susiana basically represents the Iranian province of Khuzestan around the river Karun. In ancient times, several names were used to describe this area, the great ancient geographer Ptolemy was the earliest to call the area Susiana, referring to the country around Susa. Another ancient geographer, Strabo, viewed Elam and Susiana as two different geographical regions and he referred to Elam as primarily the highland area of Khuzestan. Disagreements over the location also exist in the Jewish historical sources says Daniel T. Potts, some ancient sources draw a distinction between Elam as the highland area of Khuzestan, and Susiana as the lowland area. Yet in other ancient sources Elam and Susiana seem equivalent, the uncertainty in this area extends also to modern scholarship. Since the discovery of ancient Anshan, and the realization of its importance in Elamite history. Some modern scholars argued that the centre of Elam lay at Anshan and in the highlands around it and they were Anshanites, Marhashians, Shimashkians, Zabshalians, Sherihumians, Awanites, etc. That Anshan played a role in the political affairs of the various highland groups inhabiting southwestern Iran is clear. Knowledge of Elamite history remains largely fragmentary, reconstruction being based on mainly Mesopotamian sources, the history of Elam is conventionally divided into three periods, spanning more than two millennia. At least three proto-Elamite states merged to form Elam, Anshan, Awan and Shimashki, references to Awan are generally older than those to Anshan, and some scholars suggest that both states encompassed the same territory, in different eras. To this core Shushiana was periodically annexed and broken off, in addition, some Proto-Elamite sites are found well outside this area, spread out on the Iranian plateau, such as Warakshe, Sialk and Jiroft in Kerman Province
37.
Ugarit
–
Ugarit was an ancient port city, the ruins of which are located at what is now called Ras Shamra, a headland in northern Syria. The polity was at its height from c.1450 BC until 1200 BC, Ras Shamra lies on the Mediterranean coast, some 11 kilometres north of Latakia, near modern Burj al-Qasab. Neolithic Ugarit was important enough to be fortified with an early on, perhaps by 6000 BC. Ugarit was important perhaps because it was both a port and at the entrance of the trade route to the Euphrates and Tigris lands. The city reached its heyday between 1800 and 1200 BC, when it ruled a trade-based coastal kingdom, trading with Egypt, Cyprus, the Aegean, Syria, the Hittites, and much of the eastern Mediterranean. The first written evidence mentioning the city comes from the city of Ebla. Ugarit passed into the sphere of influence of Egypt, which influenced its art. Evidence of the earliest Ugaritic contact with Egypt comes from a carnelian bead identified with the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Senusret I, a stela and a statuette from the Egyptian pharaohs Senusret III and Amenemhet III have also been found. However, it is unclear at what time these monuments were brought to Ugarit, amarna letters from Ugarit c.1350 BC record one letter each from Ammittamru I, Niqmaddu II, and his queen. From the 16th to the 13th century BC, Ugarit remained in contact with Egypt. In the second millennium BC, Ugarits population was Amorite, the kingdom of Ugarit may have controlled about 2,000 km2 on average. During some of its history it would have been in close proximity to, the last Bronze Age king of Ugarit, Ammurapi, was a contemporary of the Hittite king Suppiluliuma II. The exact dates of his reign are unknown, however, a letter by the king is preserved, in which Ammurapi stresses the seriousness of the crisis faced by many Near Eastern states from invasion by the advancing Sea Peoples. Does not my father know that all my troops and chariots are in the Land of Hatti, thus, the country is abandoned to itself. May my father know it, the seven ships of the enemy that came here inflicted much damage upon us, however, no help arrived, and the city was burned to the ground at the end of the Bronze Age. Ugarit also contained many caches of cuneiform tablets, actual libraries that contained a wealth of information, the destruction levels of the ruin contained Late Helladic IIIB pottery ware, but no LH IIIC. Therefore, the date of the destruction of Ugarit is important for the dating of the LH IIIC phase in mainland Greece. Since an Egyptian sword bearing the name of pharaoh Merneptah was found in the levels,1190 BC was taken as the date for the beginning of the LH IIIC
38.
Sidon
–
Sidon or Saïda is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located in the South Governorate of Lebanon, on the Mediterranean coast, about 40 kilometres north of Tyre and 40 km south of the capital, in Genesis, Sidon is a son of Canaan, a grandson of Noah. Its name coincides with the modern Arabic word for fishery, two castles there were cleaned and restored by the French in the early 20th century. Sidon has been inhabited very early in prehistory. It was one of the most important Phoenician cities, and it may have been the oldest, from there and other ports a great Mediterranean commercial empire was founded. Homer praised the skill of its craftsmen in producing glass, purple dyes and it was also from here that a colonizing party went to found the city of Tyre. Tyre also grew into a city, and in subsequent years there was competition between the two, each claiming to be the metropolis of Phoenicia. Glass manufacturing, Sidons most important enterprise in the Phoenician era, was conducted on a vast scale, the small shell of the Murex trunculus was broken in order to extract the pigment that was so rare it became the mark of royalty. In AD1855, the sarcophagus of King Eshmun’azar II was discovered, in this inscription the gods Eshmun and Ba‘al Sidon Lord of Sidon are mentioned as chief gods of the Sidonians. ‘Ashtart is entitled ‘Ashtart-Shem-Ba‘al ‘Ashtart the name of the Lord, a title found in an Ugaritic text. In the years before Christianity, Sidon had many conquerors, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, both Jesus and Saint Paul are said to have visited it, too. The city was conquered by the Arabs and then by the Ottoman Turks. Like other Phoenician city-states, Sidon suffered from a succession of conquerors, at the end of the Persian era in 351 BC, it was invaded by the emperor Artaxerxes III and then by Alexander the Great in 333 BC, when the Hellenistic era of Sidon began. Under the successors of Alexander, it enjoyed autonomy and organized games. When Sidon fell under Roman domination, it continued to mint its own silver coins, the Romans also built a theater and other major monuments in the city. In the reign of Elagabalus a Roman colony was established there, during the Byzantine period, when the great earthquake of AD551 destroyed most of the cities of Phoenice, Beiruts School of Law took refuge in Sidon. The town continued quietly for the century, until it was conquered by the Arabs in AD636. On 4 December 1110 Sidon was captured, a decade after the First Crusade, by King Baldwin I of Jerusalem and it then became the centre of the Lordship of Sidon, an important lordship in the Kingdom of Jerusalem
39.
Merneptah
–
Merneptah or Merenptah was the fourth ruler of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. He may have born in 1273 BC, ruling Egypt for almost ten years from late July or early August 1213 BC until his death on May 2,1203 BC. He was the son of Ramesses II and only came to power because all his older brothers. By the time he ascended to the throne he was almost sixty years old and his throne name was Ba-en-re Mery-netjeru, which means The Soul of Ra, Beloved of the Gods. It is presumed that Merneptah also was married to Queen Takhat and one of their sons would become the later Nineteenth Dynasty pharaoh, Seti II. They also were the parents of prince Merenptah and possibly the usurper, Amenmesse, Merneptah had to carry out several military campaigns during his reign. In year 5 he fought against the Libyans, who—with the assistance of the Sea Peoples—were threatening Egypt from the West, Merneptah led a victorious six-hour battle against a combined Libyan and Sea People force at the city of Perire, probably located on the western edge of the Delta. Later in the inscription Merneptah receives news of the attack and he has brought his wife and his children--leaders of the camp, and he has reached the western boundary in the fields of Perire. In the Athribis Stele, in the garden of Cairo Museum, it states His majesty was enraged at their report, like a lion, assembled his court and gave a rousing speech. Later he dreamed he saw Ptah handing him a sword and saying Take thou, when the bowmen went forth, says the inscription, Amun was with them as a shield. After six hours the surviving Nine Bows threw down their weapons, abandoned their baggage and dependents, Merneptah states that he defeated the invasion, killing 6,000 soldiers and taking 9,000 prisoners. its seed is no more. This is the first recognised ancient Egyptian record of the existence of Israel--not as a country or city, Merneptah was already an elderly man in his late 60s, if not early 70s, when he assumed the throne. Merneptah moved the center of Egypt from Piramesse, his fathers capital, back to Memphis. This palace was excavated in 1915 by the University of Pennsylvania Museum, merneptahs successor, Seti II, was a son of Queen Isetnofret. Seti was able to reassert his authority over Thebes in his fifth year and it is possible that before seizing Upper Egypt, Amenmesse had been known as Messuwy and had been viceroy of Kush. Merneptah suffered from arthritis and atherosclerosis and died an old man after a reign which lasted for nearly a decade, Merneptah was originally buried within tomb KV8 in the Valley of the Kings, but his mummy was not found there. In 1898 it was located along with eighteen other mummies in the mummy found in the tomb of Amenhotep II by Victor Loret. Merneptahs mummy was taken to Cairo and eventually unwrapped by Dr. G. Elliott Smith on July 8,1907, Dr Smith notes that, The body is that of an old man and is 1 meter 714 millimeters in height
40.
Libu
–
The Libu were an Ancient Libyan tribe of an Amazigh origin, from which the name Libya derives. Their occupation of Ancient Libya is first attested in Egyptian language texts from the New Kingdom, the earliest occurrence is in a Ramesses II inscription. There were no vowels in the Egyptian script, the name Libu is written as LBW or RBW in Egyptian hieroglyphs. In the Great Karnak Inscription Merneptah describes how hostilities between Egypt and Libya broke out and how the Libyans were defeated. Ramesses III defeated the Libyans in the 5th year of his reign, Libu appears as an ethnic name on the Merneptah Stele, also known as the Israel Stele. This name Libu was taken over by the Greeks of Cyrenaica, geographically, the name of this tribe was adopted by the Greeks for Cyrenaica as well as for northwestern Africa in general. In the neo-Punic inscriptions, Libu was written as Lby for the masculine noun, the name supposedly was used as an ethnic name in those inscriptions. In the Western Nile Delta, some time during the 22nd Dynasty of Egypt flourished a realm of the Libu led by Great Chiefs of the Libu and those rulers soon formed a dynasty, and they often had local Chiefs of the Ma as their subordinates. Here follows the succession of the known Great Chiefs of the Libu and they used to date their monuments following the regnal years of the contemporary pharaoh of the 22nd Dynasty
41.
Khaankhre Sobekhotep
–
Khaankhre Sobekhotep was an pharaoh of the Thirteenth Dynasty of Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. According to egyptologists Kim Ryholt and Darrell Baker, Khaankhre Sobekhotep was the 13th pharaoh of the dynasty and had a short reign ca.1735 BC, alternatively, Jürgen von Beckerath sees him as the 16th pharaoh of the dynasty. Sobekhotep appears in the Karnak king list as Khaankhre, a name Sobekpre is also given on column 6, line 15 of the Turin canon, which could be Sobekhotep I. However this identification is not certain and Sobekhotep Is chronological position within the 13th Dynasty is debated, contemporary attestations of Sobekhotep comprise reliefs coming from a chapel which once stood in Abydos and a fragment of inscribed column. Furthermore, the name Khaankhre Sobekhotep appears in an inscription on a granite statue pedestal once in the Amherst collection and, since 1982 and his reign was most likely short, amounting to three to four-and-a-half years. Ryholt mentions that Sobekhotep I may be identical with Sobekhotep II, List of pharaohs Media related to Sebekhotep Khaankhre at Wikimedia Commons
42.
Akhenaten
–
Akhenaten known before the fifth year of his reign as Amenhotep IV, was an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty who ruled for 17 years and died perhaps in 1336 BC or 1334 BC. An early inscription likens the Aten to the sun as compared to stars, Akhenaten tried to bring about a departure from traditional religion, yet in the end it would not be accepted. After his death, his monuments were dismantled and hidden, his statues were terminated and he was all but lost from history until the discovery during the 19th century of the site of Akhetaten, the city he built and designed for the worship of Aten, at Amarna. DNA analysis has determined that the man buried in KV55 is the father of King Tutankhamun, the future Akhenaten was a younger son of Amenhotep III and Chief Queen Tiye. The eldest son Crown Prince Thutmose was recognized as the heir of Amenhotep III but he died relatively young, there is much controversy around whether Amenhotep IV succeeded to the throne on the death of his father Amenhotep III or whether there was a coregency. Other literature by Donald Redford, William Murnane, Alan Gardiner, in February 2014, the Egyptian Ministry for Antiquities announced what it called conclusive evidence that Akhenaten shared power with his father for at least 8 years. The evidence came from the found in the Luxor tomb of Vizier Amenhotep-Huy. A team of Spanish archeologists have been working at this tomb, Amenhotep IV was crowned in Thebes and there he started a building program. He decorated the entrance to the precincts of the temple of Amun-Re with scenes of his worshiping Re-Harakhti. He soon decreed the construction of a dedicated to the Aten in Eastern Karnak. This Temple of Amenhotep IV was called the Gempaaten, the Gempaaten consisted of a series of buildings, including a palace and a structure called the Hwt Benben which was dedicated to Queen Nefertiti. Other Aten temples constructed at Karnak during this time include the Rud-menu, during this time he did not repress the worship of Amun, and the High Priest of Amun was still active in the fourth year of his reign. The king appears as Amenhotep IV in the tombs of some of the nobles in Thebes, Kheruef, Ramose, in the tomb of Ramose, Amenhotep IV appears on the west wall in the traditional style, seated on a throne with Ramose appearing before the king. On the other side of the doorway, Amenhotep IV and Nefertiti are shown in the window of appearance with the Aten depicted as the sun disc. In the Theban tomb of Parennefer, Amenhotep IV and Nefertiti are seated on a throne with the sun disk depicted over the king, among the latter-known documents referring to Amenhotep IV are two copies of a letter from the Steward Of Memphis Apy to the pharaoh. The documents were found in Gurob and are dated to regnal year 5, third month of the Growing Season, on day 13, Month 8, in the fifth year of his reign, the king arrived at the site of the new city Akhetaten. A month before that Amenhotep IV had officially changed his name to Akhenaten, Amenhotep IV changed most of his 5 fold titulary in year 5 of his reign. The only name he kept was his prenomen or throne name of Neferkheperure, some recent debate has focused on the extent to which Akhenaten forced his religious reforms on his people
43.
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence
–
There are great challenges in searching the universe for signs of intelligent life, including their identification and interpretation. As various SETI projects have progressed, their claims have been criticized by researchers as being too euphoric. Scientific investigation of the phenomenon began shortly after the advent of radio in the early 1900s. Focused international efforts to answer a variety of questions have been going on since the 1980s. In 2015, Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced a well-funded effort, There have been many earlier searches for extraterrestrial intelligence within the Solar System. In 1896, Nikola Tesla suggested that a version of his wireless electrical transmission system could be used to contact beings on Mars. On August 21–23,1924, Mars entered an opposition closer to Earth than at any time in the century before or the next 80 years. In the United States, a National Radio Silence Day was promoted during a 36-hour period from August 21–23, with all radios quiet for five minutes on the hour, every hour. The program was led by David Peck Todd with the assistance of Admiral Edward W. Eberle, with William F. Friedman. A1959 paper by Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi first pointed out the possibility of searching the microwave spectrum, and proposed frequencies and a set of initial targets. In 1960, Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake performed the first modern SETI experiment, named Project Ozma, a 400 kilohertz band around the marker frequency was scanned, using a single-channel receiver with a bandwidth of 100 hertz. The Soviet scientists took a strong interest in SETI during the 1960s, in the March 1955 issue of Scientific American, John D. Kraus described an idea to scan the cosmos for natural radio signals using a flat-plane radio telescope equipped with a parabolic reflector. Within two years, his concept was approved for construction by Ohio State University, with a total of US$71,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation, construction began on an 8-hectare plot in Delaware, Ohio. This Ohio State University Radio Observatory telescope was called Big Ear, later, it began the worlds first continuous SETI program, called the Ohio State University SETI program. In 1971, NASA funded a SETI study that involved Drake, Bernard M. Oliver of Hewlett-Packard Corporation, the resulting report proposed the construction of an Earth-based radio telescope array with 1,500 dishes known as Project Cyclops. The price tag for the Cyclops array was US$10 billion, Cyclops was not built, but the report formed the basis of much SETI work that followed. The Ohio State SETI program gained fame on August 15,1977, when Jerry Ehman and he quickly circled the indication on a printout and scribbled the exclamation Wow. in the margin. In 1980, Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman founded the U. S, Planetary Society, partly as a vehicle for SETI studies
