Alain Manesson Mallet
Alain Manesson Mallet was a French cartographer and engineer. He started his career as a soldier in the army of Louis XIV, became a Sergeant-Major in the artillery and an Inspector of Fortifications, he served under the King of Portugal, before returning to France, his appointment to the court of Louis XIV. His military engineering and mathematical background led to his position teaching mathematics at court, his major publications were Description de L'Univers in 5 volumes, Les Travaux de Mars ou l'Art de la Guerre in 3 volumes. His Description de L'Universe contains a wide variety of information, including star maps, maps of the ancient and modern world, a synopsis of the customs and government of the many nations included in his text, it has been suggested that his background as a teacher led to his being concerned with entertaining his readers. This concern manifested itself in the charming harbour scenes and rural landscapes that he included beneath his description of astronomical concepts and diagrams.
Mallet himself drew most of the figures that were engraved for this book. Allain Manesson Mallet, Description de l'univers, Paris: Denys Thierryv.1 v.2: Asia v.3: AfricaAll Mallet maps and views from different editions available at http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/mallet/ Treatises on line: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Auteur/Manesson_Mallet.asp?param=en
Resort
A resort is a self-contained commercial establishment that tries to provide most of a vacationer's wants, such as food, lodging, sports and shopping, on the premises. The term resort may be used for a hotel property that provides an array of amenities including entertainment and recreational activities. A hotel is a central feature of a resort, such as the Grand Hotel at Mackinac Island, Michigan; some resorts are condominium complexes that are timeshares or owed fractionally or wholly owned condominium. A resort is not always a commercial establishment operated by a single company, but in the late 20th century, that sort of facility became more common. In British English "resort" means a town which people visit for holidays and days out which contains hotels at which such holidaymakers stay. Examples would include Brighton. A destination resort is a resort that itself contains the necessary guest attraction capabilities so it does not need to be near a destination to attract its patrons. A commercial establishment at a resort destination such as a recreational area, a scenic or historic site, a theme park, a gaming facility, or other tourist attraction may compete with other businesses at a destination.
Another quality of a destination resort is that it offers food, lodging, sports and shopping within the facility so that guests have no need to leave the facility throughout their stay. The facilities are of higher quality than would be expected if one were to stay at a hotel or eat in a town's restaurants; some examples are Atlantis in the Bahamas. Related to resorts are convention and large meeting sites, they occur in cities, where special meeting halls, together with ample accommodations and varied dining and entertainment, are provided. An all-inclusive resort charges a fixed price that includes all items. At a minimum, most inclusive resorts include lodging, unlimited food, sports activities, entertainment for the fixed price. In recent years, the number of resorts in the United States offering "all-inclusive" amenities has decreased dramatically. In 1961, over half offered such plans. All-inclusive resorts are found in the Caribbean in Dominican Republic. Notable examples are Club Med, Sandals Resorts, Beaches Resorts An all-inclusive resort includes three meals daily, soft drinks, most alcoholic drinks and other services in the price.
Many offer sports and other activities included in the price as well. They are located in warmer regions; the all-inclusive model originated in the Club Med resorts, which were founded by the Belgian Gérard Blitz. Some all-inclusive resorts are designed for specific vacation interests. For example, certain resorts cater to adults, more-specialized properties accept couples only. Other all-inclusive resorts are geared toward families, with facilities like craft centers, game rooms, water parks to keep children of all ages entertained. All-inclusive resorts are very popular locations for destination weddings. A spa resort is a short l-term residential/lodging facility with the primary purpose of providing individual services for spagoers to develop healthy habits. Many such spas were developed at the location of natural hot springs or sources of mineral waters. Over a seven-day stay, such facilities provide a comprehensive program that includes spa services, physical fitness activities, wellness education, healthy cuisine, special interest programming.
Golf resorts are resorts that cater to the sport of golf, they include access to one or more golfcourses and/or clubhouses. Golf resorts provide golf packages that provide visitors with all greens and cart fees, range balls and meals. In North America, a ski resort is a destination resort in a ski area; the term is less to refer to a town or village. A megaresort is a type of destination resort of an exceptionally-large size, such as those along the Las Vegas Strip. In Singapore, integrated resort is a euphemism for a casino-based destination resort. A holiday village is a type of self-contained resort in Europe whose accommodation is in villas. A holiday camp, in the United Kingdom, refers to a resort whose accommodation is in chalets or static caravans. There are more than 1500 timeshare resorts in the United States that are operated by major hospitality, timeshare-specific, or independent companies, they represent 198,000 residences and nearly 9 million owners, who pay an average $880 per year in maintenance fees.
A reported 16% of the residences became vacation rentals. Baiae, Italy, a famous historic resort of the ancient world, popular over 2000 years ago. Capri, an island near Naples, has attracted visitors since Roman times. Monte Ne, near Rogers, Arkansas, a famous historic resort, active in the early 20th century. At its peak, more than 10,000 people a year visited its hotels. Two of its hotels, Missouri Row and Oklahoma Row, were the largest log buildings in the world. Monte Ne closed in the 1930s and was submerged under Beaver Lake in the 1960s. Tawawa House known as Tawawa Springs or Xenia Springs, inspired Dolen Perkins-Valdez to write her debut novel, when she read about it in an autobiography of W. E. B. Dubois; the book mentioned in passing that t
Ionian Islands (region)
The Ionian Islands Region is one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. The administrative region does not include all of the Ionian Islands; the population of the Ionian Islands in 2011 was 207,855, decreased by 1,50% compared to the population in 2001. The region remains the third by population density with 90.1/km² nationwide, well above the national of 81.96/km². The most populous of the major islands is Corfu with a population of 104,371, followed by Zante, Cephalonia and Ithaca; the foreign-born population was in 2001 19,360 or 9.3%, the majority of, concentrated in Corfu and Zante. Most of them originate from Albania; the fertility rate for 2011 according to Eurostat was 1.35 live births per woman. The regional Gross Domestic Product for 2010 was 4,029 million euros; the GDP per capita for the same year was 18,440 euros per capita, lower than the national median of 20,481. However, the GDP per capita of Cephalonia and Zante, 23,275 and 24,616 was much higher than the national figure.
Additionally, unemployment for 2012 was 14.7, the lowest among all Greek regions, much lower compared to the national unemployment of 24.2. The region is a popular tourist destination; the airports of Corfu and Cephalonia were in the top ten in Greece by number of international arrivals, with 1,386,289 international arrivals for 2012, with Corfu being the sixth airport by number of arrivals nationwide, while Zante and Cephalonia being in the top ten. Cephalonia Airport had the biggest increase nationwide by 13.11% compared to 2011, while Corfu had an increase of 6.31%. The region was established in the 1987 administrative reform, comprising the prefectures of Corfu and Ithaca, Lefkada and Zakynthos. With the 2010 Kallikratis plan, its powers and authority were extended. Along with West Greece and Peloponnese regions, it is supervised by the Decentralized Administration of the Peloponnese, West Greece and the Ionian Islands based at Patras; the region is based at Corfu and is divided into 5 regional units: Corfu Ithaca Kefalonia Lefkada ZakynthosThe region's governor is, since 1 September 2014, Theodoros Galiatsatos, elected in the May 2014 local administration elections for the Coalition of the Radical Left party.
Official website
Cephalonia
Cephalonia or Kefalonia also known as Kefallinia or Kephallenia, is the largest of the Ionian Islands in western Greece and the 6th largest island in Greece after Crete, Lesbos and Chios. It is a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, the only municipality of the regional unit, it was a former Latin Catholic diocese Kefalonia–Zakynthos and short-lived titular see as just Kefalonia. The capital of Cephalonia is Argostoli. An aition explaining the name of Cephallenia and reinforcing its cultural connections with Athens associates the island with the mythological figure of Cephalus, who helped Amphitryon of Mycenae in a war against the Taphians and Teleboans, he was rewarded with the island of Same. Cephalonia has been suggested as the Homeric Ithaca, the home of Odysseus, rather than the smaller island bearing this name today. Robert Bittlestone, in his book Odysseus Unbound, has suggested that Paliki, now a peninsula of Cephalonia, was a separate island during the late Bronze Age, it may be this which Homer was referring to when he described Ithaca.
A project which started in the Summer of 2007 and lasted three years has examined this possibility. Cephalonia is referenced in relation to the goddess Britomartis, as the location where she is said to have'received divine honours from the inhabitants under the name of Laphria'. During the Middle Ages, the island was the center of the Byzantine theme of Cephallenia until 1185. After 1185 it became part of the County palatine of Kephalonia and Zakynthos under the Kingdom of Sicily until its last Count Leonardo III Tocco was defeated and the island conquered by the Ottomans in 1479; the Turkish rule lasted only until 1500, when Cephalonia was captured by a Spanish-Venetian army, a rare Venetian success in the Second Ottoman–Venetian War. From on Cephalonia and Ithaca remained part of the Stato da Mar of the Venetian Republic until its end, following the fate of the Ionian islands, completed by the capture of Lefkas from the Turks in 1684; the Treaty of Campoformio dismantling the Venetian Republic awarded the Ionian Islands to France, a French expeditionary force with boats captured in Venice taking control of the islands in June 1797.
Because of the liberal situation on the island, the Venetian governor Marc'Antonio Giustiniani printed Hebrew books and exported them to the whole eastern mediterranean. In 1596 the Venetians built one of Cephalonia's main tourist attractions today. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, the island was one of the largest exporters of currants in the world with Zakynthos, owned a large shipping fleet commissioning ships from the Danzig shipyard, its towns and villages were built high on hilltops, to prevent attacks from raiding parties of pirates that sailed the Ionian Sea during the 1820s. Venice was conquered by France in 1797 and Cephalonia, along with the other Ionian Islands, became part of the French département of Ithaque. In the following year, 1798, the French were forced to yield the Ionian Islands to a combined Russian and Turkish fleet. From 1799 to 1807, Cephalonia was part of the Septinsular Republic, nominally under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire, but protected by Russia. By the Tilsit Treaty in 1807, the Ionian Islands were ceded back to France, which remained in control until 1809.
In 1809 Great Britain mounted a blockade on the Ionian Islands as part of the war against Napoleon, in September of that year they hoisted the British flag above the castle of Zakynthos. Cephalonia and Ithaca soon surrendered, the British installed provisional governments; the treaty of Paris in 1815 recognised the United States of the Ionian Islands and decreed that it become a British protectorate. Colonel Charles Philippe de Bosset became provisional governor between 1810 and 1814. During this period he was credited with achieving many public works, including the Drapano Bridge. A few years resistance groups started to form. Although their energy in the early years was directed to supporting the Greeks in the revolution against the Turks, it soon started to turn towards the British. By 1848 the resistance movement was gaining strength and there were skirmishes with the British Army in Argostoli and Lixouri, which led to some relaxation in the laws and to freedom of the press. Union with Greece was now a declared aim, by 1849, a growing restlessness resulted in more skirmishes.
The twenty-one instigators were hanged, another 34 were jailed and 87 whipped. Cephalonia, along with the other islands, were transferred to Greece in 1864 as a gesture of goodwill when the British-backed Prince William of Denmark became King George the First of the Hellenes. In 1864, together with all the other Ionian Islands, became a full member of the Greek state. In World War II, the island was occupied by Axis powers; until late 1943, the occupying force was predominantly Italian – the 33rd Infantry Division Acqui plus Navy personnel totalled 12,000 men – but about 2,000 troops from Germany were present. The island was spared the fighting, until the armistice with Italy concluded by the Allies in September 1943. Confusion followed on the island, as the Italians were hoping to return home, but German forces did not want the Italians' munitions to be used against them; as German reinforcements headed to the island the Italians dug in and after a referendum among the soldiers as to surrender or battle, they fought against the new German invasion.
The fighting came to a head at the siege of Argostoli. The Germans prevailed
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Three centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse of Mycenaean Greece, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and colonization of the Mediterranean Basin; this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedon, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end of the Mediterranean Sea; the Hellenistic period came to an end with the conquests and annexations of the eastern Mediterranean world by the Roman Republic, which established the Roman province of Macedonia in Roman Greece, the province of Achaea during the Roman Empire. Classical Greek culture philosophy, had a powerful influence on ancient Rome, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean Basin and Europe.
For this reason, Classical Greece is considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Greek culture gave great importance to knowledge. Science and religion were not separate and getting closer to the truth meant getting closer to the gods. In this context, they understood the importance of mathematics as an instrument for obtaining more reliable knowledge. Greek culture, in a few centuries and with a limited population, managed to explore and make progress in many fields of science, mathematics and knowledge in general. Classical antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC and ended in the 6th century AD. Classical antiquity in Greece was preceded by the Greek Dark Ages, archaeologically characterised by the protogeometric and geometric styles of designs on pottery. Following the Dark Ages was the Archaic Period, beginning around the 8th century BC.
The Archaic Period saw early developments in Greek culture and society which formed the basis for the Classical Period. After the Archaic Period, the Classical Period in Greece is conventionally considered to have lasted from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 until the death of Alexander the Great in 323; the period is characterized by a style, considered by observers to be exemplary, i.e. "classical", as shown in the Parthenon, for instance. Politically, the Classical Period was dominated by Athens and the Delian League during the 5th century, but displaced by Spartan hegemony during the early 4th century BC, before power shifted to Thebes and the Boeotian League and to the League of Corinth led by Macedon; this period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon. Following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East; this period ends with the Roman conquest. Roman Greece is considered to be the period between Roman victory over the Corinthians at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC and the establishment of Byzantium by Constantine as the capital of the Roman Empire in AD 330.
Late Antiquity refers to the period of Christianization during the 4th to early 6th centuries AD, sometimes taken to be complete with the closure of the Academy of Athens by Justinian I in 529. The historical period of ancient Greece is unique in world history as the first period attested directly in proper historiography, while earlier ancient history or proto-history is known by much more circumstantial evidence, such as annals or king lists, pragmatic epigraphy. Herodotus is known as the "father of history": his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Written between the 450s and 420s BC, Herodotus' work reaches about a century into the past, discussing 6th century historical figures such as Darius I of Persia, Cambyses II and Psamtik III, alluding to some 8th century ones such as Candaules. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Demosthenes and Aristotle. Most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities.
Their scope is further limited by a focus on political and diplomatic history, ignoring economic and social history. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization. Literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. Objects with Phoenician writing on them may have been available in Greece from the 9th century BC, but the earliest evidence of Greek writing comes from graffiti on Greek pottery from the mid-8th century. Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities, a pattern dictated by Greek geography: every island and plain is cut off from its neighbors by the sea or mountain ranges; the Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period. It was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, though Chalcis was the nominal victor.
A mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC. This
Ancient Greek
The Ancient Greek language includes the forms of Greek used in Ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BCE to the 6th century CE. It is roughly divided into the Archaic period, Classical period, Hellenistic period, it is succeeded by medieval Greek. Koine is regarded as a separate historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it resembled Attic Greek and in its latest form it approaches Medieval Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects. Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians and philosophers, it has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects; the main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic and Doric, many of them with several subdivisions.
Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are several historical forms. Homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the "Iliad" and "Odyssey", in poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects; the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period, they differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek, but its relationship to the historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not than 1120 BCE, at the time of the Dorian invasion—and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BCE.
The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians; the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, Cypriot, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-west Greek is the strongest marked and earliest division, with non-west in subsets of Ionic-Attic and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Non-west is called East Greek. Arcadocypriot descended more from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age.
Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect. Thessalian had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek, spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, Northern Peloponnesus Doric; the Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek. All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, these colonies developed local characteristics under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects; the dialects outside the Ionic group are known from inscriptions, notable exceptions being: fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos, in Aeolian, the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar and other lyric poets in Doric.
After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BCE, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed based on Attic Greek, but with influence from other dialects. This dialect replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek. By about the 6th century CE, the Koine had metamorphosized into Medieval Greek. Ancient Macedonian was an Indo-European language at least related to Greek, but its exact relationship is unclear because of insufficient data: a dialect of Greek; the Macedonian dialect (or l
Greece
Greece the Hellenic Republic, self-identified and known as Hellas, is a country located in Southern and Southeast Europe, with a population of 11 million as of 2016. Athens is largest city, followed by Thessaloniki. Greece is located at the crossroads of Europe and Africa. Situated on the southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, Turkey to the northeast; the Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km in length, featuring a large number of islands, of which 227 are inhabited. Eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at 2,918 metres; the country consists of nine geographic regions: Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Epirus, the Aegean Islands, Thrace and the Ionian Islands.
Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilisation, being the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, Western drama and notably the Olympic Games. From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as poleis, which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Philip of Macedon united most of the Greek mainland in the fourth century BC, with his son Alexander the Great conquering much of the ancient world, from the eastern Mediterranean to India. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming an integral part of the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire, in which Greek language and culture were dominant. Rooted in the first century A. D. the Greek Orthodox Church helped shape modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World. Falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, the modern nation state of Greece emerged in 1830 following a war of independence.
Greece's rich historical legacy is reflected by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The sovereign state of Greece is a unitary parliamentary republic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy, a high quality of life, a high standard of living. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the tenth member to join the European Communities and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001, it is a member of numerous other international institutions, including the Council of Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. Greece's unique cultural heritage, large tourism industry, prominent shipping sector and geostrategic importance classify it as a middle power, it is the largest economy in the Balkans. The names for the nation of Greece and the Greek people differ from the names used in other languages and cultures.
The Greek name of the country is Hellas or Ellada, its official name is the Hellenic Republic. In English, the country is called Greece, which comes from Latin Graecia and means'the land of the Greeks'; the earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, in the Greek province of Macedonia. All three stages of the stone age are represented for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries, as Greece lies on the route via which farming spread from the Near East to Europe. Greece is home to the first advanced civilizations in Europe and is considered the birthplace of Western civilisation, beginning with the Cycladic civilization on the islands of the Aegean Sea at around 3200 BC, the Minoan civilization in Crete, the Mycenaean civilization on the mainland; these civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, the Mycenaeans in Linear B, an early form of Greek.
The Mycenaeans absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC, during a time of regional upheaval known as the Bronze Age collapse. This ushered from which written records are absent. Though the unearthed Linear B texts are too fragmentary for the reconstruction of the political landscape and can't support the existence of a larger state contemporary Hittite and Egyptian records suggest the presence of a single state under a "Great King" based in mainland Greece; the end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to the year of the first Olympic Games. The Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, which spread to the shores of the Black Sea, So
