France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Aterian
The Aterian is a Middle Stone Age stone tool industry centered in North Africa, but possibly found in Oman and the Thar Desert. The earliest Aterian dates to c. 145,000 years ago, at the site of Ifri n'Ammar in Morocco. However, most of the early dates cluster around the beginning of the Last Interglacial, around 130,000 years ago, when the environment of North Africa began to ameliorate; the Aterian disappeared around 20,000 years ago. The Aterian is distinguished through the presence of tanged or pedunculated tools, is named after the type site of Bir el Ater, south of Tébessa. Bifacially-worked, leaf-shaped tools are a common artefact type in Aterian assemblages, so are racloirs and Levallois flakes and cores. Items of personal adornment are known with an age of 82,000 years; the Aterian is one of the oldest examples of regional technological diversification, evidencing significant differentiation to older stone tool industries in the area described as Mousterian. The appropriateness of the term Mousterian is contested in a North African context, however.
The technological character of the Aterian has been debated for a century, but has until eluded definition. The problems defining the industry have related to its research history and the fact that a number of similarities have been observed between the Aterian and other North African stone tool industries of the same date. Levallois reduction is widespread across the whole of North Africa throughout the Middle Stone Age, scrapers and denticulates are ubiquitous. Bifacial foliates moreover represent a huge taxonomic category and the form and dimension of such foliates associated with tanged tools is varied. There is a significant variation of tanged tools themselves, with various forms representing both different tool types and the degree tool resharpening. More a large-scale study of North African stone tool assemblages, including Aterian assemblages, indicated that the traditional concept of stone tool industries is problematic in the North African Middle Stone Age. Although the term Aterian defines Middle Stone Age assemblages from North Africa with tanged tools, the concept of an Aterian industry obfuscates other similarities between tanged tool assemblages and other non-Aterian North African assemblages of the same date.
For example, bifacial leaf points are found across North Africa in assemblages that lack tanged tools and Levallois flakes and cores are near ubiquitous. Instead of elaborating discrete industries, the findings of the comparative study suggest that North Africa during the Last Interglacial comprised a network of related technologies whose similarities and differences correlated with geographical distance and the palaeohydrology of a Green Sahara. Assemblages with tanged tools may therefore reflect particular activities involving the use of such tool types, may not reflect a substantively different archaeological culture to others from the same period in North Africa; the findings are significant because they suggest that current archaeological nomenclatures do not reflect the true variability of the archaeological record of North Africa during the Middle Stone Age from the Last Interglacial, hints at how early modern humans dispersed into uninhabitable environments. This notwithstanding, the term still usefully denotes the presence of tanged tools in North African Middle Stone Age assemblages.
Tanged tools persisted in North Africa until around 20,000 years ago, with the youngest sites located in Northwest Africa. By this time, the Aterian lithic industry had long ceased to exist in the rest of North Africa due to the onset of the Ice Age, which in North Africa, resulted in hyperarid conditions. Assemblages with tanged tools,'the Aterian', therefore have a significant temporal and spatial range. However, the exact geographical distribution of this lithic industry is uncertain; the Aterian's spatial range is thought to have existed in North Africa up to the Nile Valley Possible Aterian lithic tools have been discovered in Middle Paleolithic deposits in Oman and the Thar Desert. The Aterian is associated with early Homo sapiens at a number of sites in Morocco; some studies of comparative skeletal morphology have suggested that these people exist on the same morphological continuum as the Jebel Irhoud specimens thought to date to 160,000 years ago. The'Aterian' fossils display similarities with the Iberomaurusians and the earliest modern humans found out of Africa at Skhul and Qafzeh in the Levant, they are broadly contemporary to them.
Apart from producing a distinctive and sophisticated stone tool technology, these early North African populations seem to have engaged with symbolically constituted material culture, creating what are amongst the earliest African examples of personal ornamentation. Such examples of shell'beads' have been found far inland, suggesting the presence of long distance social networks. Studies of the variation and distribution of the Aterian have now suggested that associated populations lived in subdivided populations living most of their lives in relative isolation and aggregating at particular times to reinforce social ties; such a subdivided population structure has been inferred from the pattern of variation observed in early African fossils of Homo sapiens. Associated faunal studies suggest that the people making the Aterian exploited coastal resources as well as engaging in hunting; as the points are small and lightweight, it is that they were not hand-delivered but instead thrown. There is no evidence that a spear thrower was used, but the points have characteri
Stone tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either or out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric cultures that have become extinct. Archaeologists study such prehistoric societies, refer to the study of stone tools as lithic analysis. Ethnoarchaeology has been a valuable research field in order to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use and manufacture. Stone has been used to make a wide variety of different tools throughout history, including arrow heads and querns. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or chipped stone, a person who creates tools out of the latter is known as a flintknapper. Chipped stone tools are made from cryptocrystalline materials such as chert or flint, chalcedony, obsidian and quartzite via a process known as lithic reduction. One simple form of reduction is to strike stone flakes from a nucleus of material using a hammerstone or similar hard hammer fabricator.
If the goal of the reduction strategy is to produce flakes, the remnant lithic core may be discarded once it has become too small to use. In some strategies, however, a flintknapper reduces the core to a rough unifacial or bifacial preform, further reduced using soft hammer flaking techniques or by pressure flaking the edges. More complex forms of reduction include the production of standardized blades, which can be fashioned into a variety of tools such as scrapers, knives and microliths. In general terms, chipped stone tools are nearly ubiquitous in all pre-metal-using societies because they are manufactured, the tool stone is plentiful, they are easy to transport and sharpen. Archaeologists classify stone tools into industries that share distinctive technological or morphological characteristics. In 1969 in the 2nd edition of World Prehistory, Grahame Clark proposed an evolutionary progression of flint-knapping in which the "dominant lithic technologies" occurred in a fixed sequence from Mode 1 through Mode 5.
He assigned to them relative dates: Modes 1 and 2 to the Lower Palaeolithic, 3 to the Middle Palaeolithic, 4 to the Advanced and 5 to the Mesolithic. They were not to be conceived, however, as either universal—that is, they did not account for all lithic technology. Mode 1, for example, was in use in Europe. Clark's scheme was adopted enthusiastically by the archaeological community. One of its advantages was the simplicity of terminology; the transitions are of greatest interest. In the literature the stone tools used in the period of the Palaeolithic are divided into four "modes", each of which designate a different form of complexity, which in most cases followed a rough chronological order. KenyaStone tools found from 2011 to 2014 at Lake Turkana in Kenya, are dated to be 3.3 million years old, predate the genus Homo by half million years. The oldest known Homo fossil is 2.8 million years old compared to the 3.3 million year old stone tools. The stone tools may have been made by Australopithecus afarensis —also called Kenyanthropus platyops— the species whose best fossil example is Lucy, which inhabited East Africa at the same time as the date of the oldest stone tools.
Dating of the tools was by dating volcanic ash layers in which the tools were found and dating the magnetic signature of the rock at the site. EthiopiaGrooved and fractured animal bone fossils, made by using stone tools, were found in Dikika, Ethiopia near the remains of Selam, a young Australopithecus afarensis girl who lived about 3.3 million years ago. The earliest stone tools in the life span of the genus Homo are Mode 1 tools, come from what has been termed the Oldowan Industry, named after the type of site found in Olduvai Gorge, where they were discovered in large quantities. Oldowan tools were characterised by their simple construction; these cores were river pebbles, or rocks similar to them, struck by a spherical hammerstone to cause conchoidal fractures removing flakes from one surface, creating an edge and a sharp tip. The blunt end is the proximal surface. Oldowan is a percussion technology. Grasping the proximal surface, the hominid brought the distal surface down hard on an object he wished to detach or shatter, such as a bone or tuber.
The earliest known Oldowan tools yet found date from 2.6 million years ago, during the Lower Palaeolithic period, have been uncovered at Gona in Ethiopia. After this date, the Oldowan Industry subsequently spread throughout much of Africa, although archaeologists are unsure which Hominan species first developed them, with some speculating that it was Australopithecus garhi, others believing that it was in fact Homo habilis. Homo habilis was the hominin who used the tools for most of the Oldowan in Africa, but at about 1.9-1.8 million years ago Homo erectus inherited them. The Industry flourished in southern and eastern Africa between 2.6 and 1.7 million years ago, but was spread out of Africa and into Eurasia by travelling bands of H. erectus, who took it as far east as Java by 1.8 million years ago and Northern China by 1.6 million years ago. More complex, Mode 2 tools began to be developed through the Acheulean Industry, named after the site
Israel
Israel the State of Israel, is a country in Western Asia, located on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. It has land borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan on the east, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the east and west and Egypt to the southwest; the country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israel's economic and technological center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, although the state's sovereignty over Jerusalem has only partial recognition. Israel has evidence of the earliest migration of hominids out of Africa. Canaanite tribes are archaeologically attested since the Middle Bronze Age, while the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged during the Iron Age; the Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed Israel around 720 BCE. Judah was conquered by the Babylonian and Hellenistic empires and had existed as Jewish autonomous provinces.
The successful Maccabean Revolt led to an independent Hasmonean kingdom by 110 BCE, which in 63 BCE however became a client state of the Roman Republic that subsequently installed the Herodian dynasty in 37 BCE, in 6 CE created the Roman province of Judea. Judea lasted as a Roman province until the failed Jewish revolts resulted in widespread destruction, expulsion of Jewish population and the renaming of the region from Iudaea to Syria Palaestina. Jewish presence in the region has persisted to a certain extent over the centuries. In the 7th century CE, the Levant was taken from the Byzantine Empire by the Arabs and remained in Muslim control until the First Crusade of 1099, followed by the Ayyubid conquest of 1187; the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt extended its control over the Levant in the 13th century until its defeat by the Ottoman Empire in 1517. During the 19th century, national awakening among Jews led to the establishment of the Zionist movement in the diaspora followed by waves of immigration to Ottoman Syria and British Mandate Palestine.
In 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency, rejected by Arab leaders; the following year, the Jewish Agency declared the independence of the State of Israel, the subsequent 1948 Arab–Israeli War saw Israel's establishment over most of the former Mandate territory, while the West Bank and Gaza were held by neighboring Arab states. Israel has since fought several wars with Arab countries, since the Six-Day War in 1967 held occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip, it extended its laws to the Golan East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories is the world's longest military occupation in modern times. Efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in a final peace agreement. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have been signed.
In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a democratic state. The country has a liberal democracy, with a parliamentary system, proportional representation, universal suffrage; the prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature. Israel is a developed country and an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member, with the 32nd-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2017; the country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentages of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. Israel has the highest standard of living in the Middle East, has one of the highest life expectancies in the world. Furthermore, Israel ranked 11th in the UN's 2018 World Happiness Report. Upon independence in 1948, the country formally adopted the name "State of Israel" after other proposed historical and religious names including Eretz Israel and Judea, were considered but rejected.
In the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term "Israeli" to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have been used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel and the entire Jewish people respectively; the name "Israel" in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, according to the Hebrew Bible, was given the name after he wrestled with the angel of the Lord. Jacob's twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. Jacob and his sons had lived in Canaan but were forced by famine to go into Egypt for four generations, lasting 430 years, until Moses, a great-great grandson of Jacob, led the Israelites back into Canaan during the "Exodus"; the earliest known archaeological artifact to mention the word "Israel" as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity and the Bahá'í Faith.
Under British Mandate, the whole region was known as Palestine (Hebre
Tortoise
Tortoises are reptile species of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines. They are distinguished from other turtles by being land-dwelling, while many other turtle species are at least aquatic. However, like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from other threats; the shell in tortoises is hard, like other members of the suborder Cryptodira, they retract their necks and heads directly backwards into the shell to protect them. Tortoises are unique among vertebrates in that the pectoral and pelvic girdles are inside the ribcage rather than outside. Tortoises can vary in dimension from a few centimeters to two meters, they are diurnal animals with tendencies to be crepuscular depending on the ambient temperatures. They are reclusive animals. Tortoises are the longest living land animal in the world, although the longest living species of tortoise is a matter of debate. Galápagos tortoises are noted to live over 150 years, but an Aldabra giant tortoise named Adwaita may have been the longest living at an estimated 255 years.
In general, most tortoise species can live 80–150 years. Differences exist in usage of the common terms turtle and terrapin, depending on the variety of English being used; these terms do not reflect precise biological or taxonomic distinctions. The American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists uses "turtle" to describe all species of the order Testudines, regardless of whether they are land-dwelling or sea-dwelling, uses "tortoise" as a more specific term for slow-moving terrestrial species. General American usage agrees. In America, for example, the members of the genus Terrapene dwell on land, yet are referred to as box turtles rather than tortoises. British usage, by contrast, tends not to use "turtle" as a generic term for all members of the order, applies the term "tortoises" broadly to all land-dwelling members of the order Testudines, regardless of whether they are members of the family Testudinidae. In Britain, terrapin is used to refer to a larger group of semiaquatic turtles than the restricted meaning in America.
Australian usage is different from both British usage. Land tortoises are not native to Australia, yet traditionally freshwater turtles have been called "tortoises" in Australia; some Australian experts disapprove of this usage—believing that the term tortoises is "better confined to purely terrestrial animals with different habits and needs, none of which are found in this country"—and promote the use of the term "freshwater turtle" to describe Australia's aquatic members of the order Testudines because it avoids misleading use of the word "tortoise" and is a useful distinction from marine turtles. Most species of tortoises lay small clutch sizes exceeding 20 eggs, many species have clutch sizes of only 1–2 eggs. Incubation is characteristically long in most species, the average incubation period are between 100 and 160 days. Egg-laying occurs at night, after which the mother tortoise covers her clutch with sand and organic material; the eggs are left unattended, depending on the species, take from 60 to 120 days to incubate.
The size of the egg depends on the size of the mother and can be estimated by examining the width of the cloacal opening between the carapace and plastron. The plastron of a female tortoise has a noticeable V-shaped notch below the tail which facilitates passing the eggs. Upon completion of the incubation period, a formed hatchling uses an egg tooth to break out of its shell, it begins a life of survival on its own. They are hatched with an embryonic egg sac which serves as a source of nutrition for the first three to seven days until they have the strength and mobility to find food. Juvenile tortoises require a different balance of nutrients than adults, so may eat foods which a more mature tortoise would not. For example, the young of a herbivorous species will consume worms or insect larvae for additional protein; the number of concentric rings on the carapace, much like the cross-section of a tree, can sometimes give a clue to how old the animal is, since the growth depends on the accessibility of food and water, a tortoise that has access to plenty of forage with no seasonal variation will have no noticeable rings.
Moreover, some tortoises grow more than one ring per season, in some others, due to wear, some rings are no longer visible. Tortoises have one of the longest lifespans of any animal, some individuals are known to have lived longer than 150 years; because of this, they symbolize longevity in some cultures, such as China. The oldest tortoise recorded, one of the oldest individual animals recorded, was Tu'i Malila, presented to the Tongan royal family by the British explorer Captain Cook shortly after its birth in 1777. Tu'i Malila remained in the care of the Tongan royal family until its death by natural causes on May 19, 1965, at the age of 188; the record for the longest-lived vertebrate is exceeded only by one other, a koi named Hanako whose death on July 17, 1977, ended a 226-year lifespan. The Alipore Zoo in India was the home to Adwaita, which zoo officials claimed was the oldest living animal until
Lake Bogoria
Lake Bogoria is a saline, alkaline lake that lies in a volcanic region in a half-graben basin south of Lake Baringo, Kenya, a little north of the equator. Lake Bogoria, like Lake Nakuru, Lake Elmenteita, Lake Magadi further south in the Rift Valley, Lake Logipi to the north, is home at times to one of the world's largest populations of lesser flamingos; the lake is a Ramsar site and Lake Bogoria National Reserve has been a protected National Reserve since November 29, 1973. Lake Bogoria is shallow, is about 34 km long by 3.5 km wide, with a drainage basin of 700 km2. Local features include the Kesubo Swamp to the north and the Siracho Escarpment to the east, both within the National Reserve; the lake is famous for geysers and hot springs along the bank of the lake and in the lake. In four locations around the lake can be observed at least 10 geysers. Geyser activity is affected by the fluctuations of lake level, which may inundate or expose some geysers; the lake waters contain large concentrations of Na HCO3 − and CO32 − ions.
They originate from inflow from the Sandai and Emsos rivers, from about 200 alkaline hot springs that are present at three onshore sites: Loburu, a southern group. Other springs discharge directly from the lake floor. Lake Bogoria contains the highest concentration of true geysers in Africa; the lake waters are saline. The lake has no surface outlet so the water becomes saline through evaporation, high in this semi-arid region; the lake itself is meromictic with less dense surface waters lying on a denser more saline bottom waters. Although hypersaline, the lake is productive with abundant cyanobacteria that feed the flamingoes, but few other organisms inhabit the lake e.g. the monogonont rotifer species Brachionus sp. Austria is found in high densities; the lake has not always been saline. Sediment cores from the lake floor have shown that freshwater conditions existed for several periods during the past 10 000 years, that lake level was up to 9 m higher than its present elevation of about 990 m.
At times it might have overflowed northward towards Lake Baringo. At times, during the late Pleistocene it might have been united with a larger precursor of modern Lake Baringo, but this is still uncertain; the lake area was the traditional home of the Endorois people, who were forced to leave the area in the 1970s and are now challenging their removal at the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights. Hotel accommodation is available near Loboi village at the north end of the lake. Camping is permitted at the southern end of the lake. Rift Valley Lakes East African Rift Rivers of Kenya Tiercelin, J. J. and Vincens, A. 1987. Le demi–graben de Baringo–Bogoria, Rift Gregory, Kenya: 30,000 ans d’histoire hydrologique et sédimentaire. Bulletin des Centres de Recherches Exploration-Production Elf-Aquitaine, v. 11, p. 249–540. Renaut, R. W. and Tiercelin, J.-J. 1993. Lake Bogoria, Kenya: soda, hot springs and about a million flamingoes. Geology Today, v. 9, p. 56-61. Renaut, R. W. and Tiercelin, J.-J.
1994. Lake Bogoria, Kenya Rift Valley: a sedimentological overview. In: Sedimentology and Geochemistry of Modern and Ancient Saline Lakes. SEPM Special Publication, v. 50, p. 101–123. North Lewis, M. 1998. A Guide to Lake Baringo and Lake Bogoria. Horizon Books. Harper, D. M. Childress, R. B.. Harper, M. M. Boar, R. R. Hickley, P. Mills, S. C. Otieno, N. Drane, T. Vareschi, E. Nasirwa, O.1, Mwatha, W. E. Darlington, J. P. E. C. and Escuté-Gasulla, X. 2003. Aquatic biodiversity and saline lakes: Lake Bogoria National Reserve, Kenya. Hydrobiologia, v. 500, p. 259-276. Renaut, R. W. and Owen, R. B. 2005. The geysers of Lake Bogoria, Kenya Rift Valley, Africa. GOSA Transactions, v. 9, 4–18. Minority Rights Group on the Endorois and Lake Bogoria
Sai Kung Town
Sai Kung Town or Sai Kung is a town on Sai Kung Peninsula, facing Sai Kung Hoi, part of Sai Kung District in the New Territories, Hong Kong. Sai Kung is the centre of the surrounding villages, hence the name may refer to the areas in its immediate surroundings; the name “Sai Kung” dated back to the early days of the Ming Dynasty. The Ming court had sent officer Zheng He and his fleets to sail to the Western oceans seven times during 1405-1433. After these voyages, many boats from countries in East Asia, Middle East, East Africa started paying tribute to and developing trade with the Ming court. At the time, Sai Kung was the port of the boats from the West; as time passed, it was called "Sai Kung"" in Chinese. Sai Kung Hoi was a fishing harbour and fishermen still gather there; the harbour is now a typhoon shelter, where motorized junks used in the local tourist trade are moored. They are boats that can be hired for swimming trips. Sai Kung town underwent significant expansion during the 1970s when the High Island Reservoir and associated water schemes required some villagers and fishermen to be rehoused in Sai Kung.
This provided a core of government-funded new development, both housing and commercial, in the town centre. This was followed by the Tui Min Hoi development under the government's market town programme. Before the relocation of the airport of Hong Kong from Kai Tak to Chek Lap Kok, the town was a popular residential area for airport staff from all over the world. Tui Min Hoi Chuen is a public housing estate in Tui Min Hoi, developed by Hong Kong Housing Society, it is the first rural public housing estate developed by Hong Kong Housing Society. It consists of 4 blocks of 5-storey buildings completed in 1985 and 1986 respectively. Lakeside Garden is a public housing estate and Flat-for-Sale Scheme estate on the reclaimed land, it is the third rural public housing estate developed by Hong Kong Housing Society. It consists of 11 residential blocks completed in 1997. Except one block for rental use, other 10 blocks are for sale. Sai Kung is served by double-decker buses, public light buses and green taxis.
There is no MTR link to Sai Kung. Ferry services are available to the neighbouring islands and isolated coastal villages in the Sai Kung Hoi, as well as to the public golf course on one of the nearby islands. Sai Kung is served by Sai Kung & Clearwater Bay Magazine, a free-distribution English language monthly magazine and the community website Saikung.com. Hong Kong Academy is in Sai Kung. Sai Kung Sung Tsun Catholic school is in Sai Kung. Sai Kung District Explore Sai Kung - Sai Kung portal
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