1.
Sorbs
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Sorbs, known also by their former autonyms Lusatians and Wends, are a West Slavic ethnic group predominantly inhabiting their homeland in Lusatia, a region divided between Germany and Poland. They traditionally speak the Sorbian languages, closely related to Polish, Kashubian, Czech, Sorbian is an officially recognized minority language of Germany. The Sorbs are linguistically and genetically closest to the Czechs and Poles, the community is divided religiously between Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism. An indicator of the degree of assimilation is the fact that the Prime Minister of Saxony is at present a Sorb, the ethnonym Sorbs derives from the medieval tribe, Sorbs. The original ethnonym, Srbi, was retained by the Sorbs and Serbs in the Balkans, by the 6th century, Slavs occupied the area west of the Oder formerly inhabited by Germanic peoples. The Sorbs are first mentioned in the 7th century, in the 19th century the autonym of the Slavic population of Lusatia was Lusatians. According to a study published in May 2011, Sorbs show the greatest genetic similarity to Poles, followed by Czechs. They show subtle evidence of genetic isolation but less than Sardinians, demographic history of the Sorb population since 1700, Sorbs are divided into two ethnographical groups, Upper Sorbs, who speak Upper Sorbian. Lower Sorbs, who speak Lower Sorbian, the dialects spoken vary in intelligibility in different areas. Sorbs arrived in the area extending between the Bober, Kwisa, and Oder rivers to the East and the Saale and Elbe rivers to the West during the 6th century, in the north, the area of their settlement reached Berlin. The earliest surviving mention of the tribe was in 631 A. D. when Fredegars Chronicle described them as Surbi and as under the rule of a Dervan, an ally of Samo. The Annales Regni Francorum state that in 806 A. D. Sorbian Duke Miliduch fought against the Franks and was killed, in 840, Sorbian Duke Czimislav was killed. In 932, Henry I conquered Lusatia and Milsko, gero II, Margrave of the Saxon Ostmark, reconquered Lusatia the following year and, in 939, murdered 30 Sorbian princes during a feast. As a result, there were many Sorbian uprisings against German rule, a reconstructed castle, at Raddusch in Lower Lusatia, is the sole physical remnant from this early period. Lusatian tribes are noted in the work of the Bavarian Geographer, the document contains a list of the tribes in Central-Eastern Europe east of the Elbe and north of the Danube to the Volga rivers to the Black and Caspian Sea most of them of Slavic origin. Having settled by the Elbe, Spree and Neisse in the 6th century, Sorbs living on the swampy broads of the Lower Spree have taken their name from the word marsh. The Milceni settled on fertile soil around Upper Spree, the name derives from the word měl’, the two groups were separated from each other by a wide and uninhabited forest range. The rest of the tribes settled themselves between the Elbe and Saale, among the many Slavic tribes, the Bavarian Geographer also noted a few Lusatian tribes, Glomacze - Dolomici, Milceni, Chutizi and Sitice
2.
Lusitanians
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Classical sources mention Lusitanian leader Viriathus as the leader of the Celtiberians, in their war against the Romans. The Greco-Roman historian Diodorus Siculus attributed them a name of a Germanic tribe, the Lusitanians were also called Belitanians, according to the diviner Artemidorus. Strabo differentiated the Lusitanians from the Iberian tribes, pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela distinguished the Lusitanians from neighboring Celtic groups in their geographical writings. After this, Lusitanias northern border was along the Douro River, while its eastern border passed through Salmantica, categorising Lusitanian culture generally, including the language, is proving difficult. The Lusitanians worshiped various gods in a very diverse polytheism, using animal sacrifice and they represented their gods and warriors in rudimentary sculpture. The goddess Ataegina was especially popular in the south, as the goddess of rebirth, fertility, nature, Lusitanian mythology was heavily influenced or related to Celtic mythology. Also well attested in inscriptions are the names Bandua, often with a name linked to a locality such as Bandua Aetobrico. The Lusitanian language was a language that clearly belongs to the Indo-European family. A second theory relates Lusitanian with the Italic languages, based on a relation of the name of Lusitanian deities with other elements of the area. They were a confederation, not a single political entity, each tribe had its own territory and was independent. However, they had a sense of unity and a common name for the tribes. Each tribe was ruled by its own tribal aristocracy and chief, many members of the Lusitanian tribal aristocracy were warriors as happened in many other pre-Roman peoples of the Iron Age. Kaukainos was another important Lusitanian chief before the Roman conquest and he ruled the Lusitanians for some time, leading the tribes in the resistance against Carthaginian attempts of conquest, and was successful. The name Turduli Veteres, a tribe that dwelt in todays Aveiro District, seems to indicate they came from the north, more Lusitanian tribes are likely, but their names are unknown. The Lusitanians were considered by historians to be adept at guerrilla warfare. The strongest amongst them were selected to defend the populace in mountainous sites and they used hooked saunions made of iron, and wielded swords and helmets like those of the Celtiberians. They threw their darts from some distance, yet often hit their marks, being active and nimble warriors, they would pursue their enemies and decapitate them. In times of peace, they had a style of dancing
3.
Prehistory and protohistory of Poland
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The area of present-day Poland went through the stages of socio-technical development known as the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages after experiencing the climatic shifts of the glacial periods. The best known archeological discovery from the period is the Lusatian-culture Biskupin fortified settlement. As ancient civilizations began to appear in southern and western Europe, among the peoples that inhabited various parts of Poland up to the Iron Age stage of development were Scythian, Celtic, Germanic, and Baltic tribes. Written language came to Poland only after 966 AD, when the ruler of the Polish lands, Duke Mieszko I, converted to Christianity, Polands Stone Age is divided into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic eras. The Mesolithic era lasted from c.8000 to 5500 BC, the Neolithic is subdivided into the Neolithic proper, c.5500 –2900 BC, and the Copper Age, c.2900 –2300 BC. Polands Stone Age lasted approximately 500,000 years and saw the appearance of three distinct Homo species, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. As elsewhere in Central Europe, the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic stages of Polands Stone Age were each characterized by refinements in stone-tool-making techniques, Paleolithic human activities were intermittent because of recurring glaciations. A general climate warming and an increase in ecologic diversity were characteristic of the Mesolithic era. The Neolithic era ushered in the first settled agricultural communities, whose founders had migrated from the Danube River area beginning about 5500 BC, later, the native post-Mesolithic populations would also adopt and further develop the agricultural way of life. Polands Bronze Age comprised Period I, c, 1100–900 BC, and Period V, c. The Early Iron Age included Hallstatt Period C, c, 700–600 BC, and Hallstatt Period D, c. Polands Bronze- and Iron-Age cultures are known mainly from archeological research, Polands Early Bronze Age cultures began around 2300-2400 BC, whereas the Iron Age commenced c. By the beginning of the Common Era, the Iron Age archeological cultures described in the article no longer existed. In Poland, the Lusatian culture, which spanned the Bronze and Iron Ages, the most famous archeological discovery from that period is the Biskupin fortified settlement that represented early-Iron-Age Lusatian culture. Bronze objects were brought to Poland around 2300 BC from the Carpathian Basin, the native Early Bronze Age that followed was dominated by the innovative Unetice culture in western Poland and the conservative Mierzanowice culture in eastern Poland. These were replaced in their territories for the duration of the subsequent Older Bronze Period by the Tumulus culture. Characteristic of the remaining bronze periods were the Urnfield cultures, in which skeletal burials were replaced by cremation throughout much of Europe, in Poland, the Lusatian culture settlements dominated the landscape for nearly a thousand years, continuing into the Early Iron Age. A series of Scythian invasions beginning in the 6th century BC, the Hallstatt Period D was a time of expansion for the Pomeranian culture, while the Western Baltic Kurgan culture dominated Polands Masuria-Warmia region
4.
Bronze- and Iron-Age Poland
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The Bronze and Iron Age cultures in Poland are known mainly from archeological research. Early Bronze Age cultures in Poland begun around 2300–2400 BCE, while the Iron Age commenced in approximately 700–750 BCE, the Iron Age archeological cultures no longer existed by the start of the Common Era. In Poland the Lusatian culture, spanning both the Bronze and Iron Ages, became particularly prominent, the most famous archeological finding from that period is the Biskupin fortified settlement on the lake from which it takes its name, representing the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age. The Bronze Age in Poland consisted of Period I,2300 to 1600 BC, Period II,1600 to 1350 BC, Period III,1350 to 1100 BC, Period IV,1100 to 900 BC, Period V,900 to 700 BC. The Early Iron Age included Hallstatt Period C,700 to 600 BC, Bronze items present in Poland around 2300 BC were brought from the Carpathian Basin. The native Early Bronze Age that followed was dominated by the innovative Unetice culture in western Poland and those were replaced in their respective territories, for the duration of the second, the Older Bronze Period, by the Tumulus culture and the Trzciniec culture. Characteristic of the remaining bronze periods were the Urnfield cultures, within their range skeletal burials had been replaced by cremation of bodies throughout much of Europe, in Poland the Lusatian culture settlements dominated the landscape for nearly a thousand years, continuing into and including the Early Iron Age. A series of Scythian invasions, beginning in the 6th century BC, the Hallstatt Period D was the time of expansion of the Pomeranian culture, while the Western Baltic Kurgans culture occupied the Masuria-Warmia region of contemporary Poland. This settled agricultural societys origins consisted of the traditions inherited from the Corded Ware populations. Significantly, the Unetice people cultivated contacts with the highly developed cultures of the Carpathian Basin and their culture also echoed inspiring influence coming all the way from the most highly developed at that time civilizations of the Middle East. Characteristic of the Unetice societies was greater general affluence and developed social stratification, objects made of bronze, often of luxurious or prestigious nature, were in high demand as symbols of power and importance and are typically found in the graves of princes. Many concealed bronze treasures have been found, including a fine one from Pilszcz near Głubczyce, stylistically refined Uneticean ceramics show inspiration from the Achaean vessels obtained through trade. Fortified settlements were built, one actively researched site, that was utilized, remains of settlements and cemeteries were discovered around Wrocław and elsewhere in Lower Silesia, including an amber processing workshop in Nowa Wieś, Bolesławiec County. The nature of the weapons and other items found at Unetice sites suggests a chronic state of warfare, the Iwno culture, named after Iwno near Szubin, was a contemporary of the Unetice culture. Iwno thin-walled clay vessels were carefully finished and domestic animal rising was important for the economy, the Płonia group of a comparable period, named after a neighborhood of Szczecin, extended over central and western Polish Pomerania, it is known for stone chest burials. Mierzanowice culture was a society, frequently still using stone tools. The Pleszów group of the Mierzanowice culture originated the most significant of the Polish Bronze Age fortified settlements and it was constructed on a particularly suitable, elevated natural location, with the initial enclosed area of 0.6 hectares. It remained in use from about 2100 to 1300 BC and is often dubbed the Carpathian Troy or the Troy of the North
5.
Poland in Antiquity
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These people are identified as Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Thracian tribes. Other groups, difficult to identify, were most likely also present, characteristic of the period was high geographical migration rate of large groups of people, even equivalents of todays nations. This article covers the continuation of the Iron Age, the La Tène and Roman influence and Migration periods. It was followed by the period of Roman influence, of which the stage had lasted from 0 to 150 AD. The Celtic peoples established a number of settlement centers, beginning in the early 4th century BC, mostly in southern Poland, through their highly developed economy and crafts, they exerted lasting cultural influence disproportional to their small numbers in the region. With the expansion of the Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes came under the Roman cultural influence, some written remarks by Roman authors that are relevant to the developments on Polish lands have been preserved, they provide additional insight when compared with the archeological record. The northeast corner of contemporary Polands territory was and remained populated by Baltic tribes and they were at the outer limits of significant cultural influence of the Roman Empire. The first Celtic people arrived in Poland, coming from Bohemia and Moravia, around or after 400 BC and they formed several enclaves mostly in the southern part of the country, within the Pomeranian or Lusatian populations or in areas abandoned by those people. The cultures or groups that were Celtic, or had a Celtic element in them, after the Celts moved in, and during their tenure, the bulk of the population had begun acquiring the traits of archaeological cultures with a dominant Proto-Germanic or Germanic component. In Europe the expansion of Rome and the Germanic pressure checked and reversed the Celtic expansion, burial and other significant Celtic sites in Głubczyce County were investigated in Kietrz and nearby Nowa Cerekiew. The Ślęża group disintegrated eventually within the population, while the one at Głubczyce Upland apparently migrated out in the southern direction. In another hundred years or more two groups arrived and settled the upper San River basin and the Kraków area respectively and this last one, together with the local population developing at about that time the Przeworsk culture characteristics, formed the mixed Tyniec group, in existence 270–30 BC. In the 1st century BC another small group settled probably much further north, the Celts practiced advanced agriculture and favored fertile lands, they brought with them and disseminated the inventions, including a variety of tools, and other achievements of La Tène culture. Celtic farmers used plows with iron shares and fertilized fields with animal manure and their livestock consisted of selected breeds, especially sheep and large cattle. The rotational querns that they invented had a lower stone. Iron was obtained in greater quantities from locally available turf ores, its metallurgy and processing were improved, resulting in the manufacturing of stronger and more resistant tools and weapons. The ceramic shops used the wheel and produced with great precision baked, thin walled, painted vessels. Domed bilevel furnaces were used, the pots being placed on a perforated clay shelf, glass and enamel were produced, gold and semi-precious stones were processed for jewelry
6.
Poland in the Early Middle Ages
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The Slavic migrations in the area of contemporary Poland started in the second half of the 5th century CE, about a half century after these territories were vacated by Germanic tribes. The first waves of the incoming Slavs settled the vicinity of the upper Vistula River and elsewhere in the lands of present southeastern Poland and their early archeological traces belong to the Prague-Korchak culture, which is similar to the earlier Kiev culture. From there the new population dispersed north and west over the course of the 6th century, the Slavs lived from cultivation of crops and were generally farmers, but also engaged in hunting and gathering. The migrations took place when the invasions of eastern and central Europe by waves of people and armies from the east, such as the Huns. This westward movement of Slavic people was facilitated in part by the emigration of Germanic peoples toward the safer. The immigrating Slavs formed various small tribal organizations beginning in the 8th century, some of which coalesced later into larger, beginning in the 7th century, these tribal units built many fortified structures with earth and wood walls and embankments, called gords. Some of them were developed and inhabited, others had a large empty area inside the walls. By the 9th century, the Slavs had settled the Baltic coast in Pomerania, along the coastline, remnants of Scandinavian settlements and emporia were to be found. The most important of them was probably the settlement and seaport of Truso. Prussia itself was unaffected by Slavic migration and remained inhabited by Baltic Old Prussians. During the same time, the tribe of the Vistulans, based in Kraków and the region, controlled a large area in the south. During the 10th century, the Polans turned out to be of historic importance. Under Duke Mieszko I of the Piast dynasty, the expanded Polan territory was converted to Christianity in 966, the contemporary names of the realm, Mieszkos state or Gniezno state, were dropped soon afterwards in favour of Poland, a rendering of the Polans tribal name. The Piast dynasty would continue to rule Poland until the late 14th century, the main distinguished local groups were the Polesie group, the Middle Dnieper group and the Upper Dnieper group. The Zarubintsy culture developed from the Milograd culture in the part of its range. The Polesie groups origin was influenced by the Pomeranian and Jastorf cultures. Cremation of bodies was practiced, with the remains and burial gifts including metal decorations, small in number and limited in variety. The Kiev culture is mostly from settlement sites, the burial sites, involving pit graves, are few
7.
Biskupin
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The archaeological open-air museum Biskupin is an archaeological site and a life-size model of an Iron Age fortified settlement in Poland. When first discovered it was thought to be evidence of Slavic settlement. The excavation and the reconstruction of the settlement has played an instrumental part in Polish historical consciousness. The Museum is situated on a peninsula in Lake Biskupin. It is a division of the National Museum of Archaeology in Warsaw, the site is one of Polands official national Historic Monuments, as designated September 16,1994, and tracked by the National Heritage Board of Poland. In 1933 Polish archaeologists discovered remains of a Bronze Age fort/settlement in Wielkopolska, the site was excavated from 1934 onwards by the team from Poznań University, led by archaeologists Józef Kostrzewski and Zdzisław Rajewski. The first report was published in 1936, by the beginning of 1939, ca.2,500 m2 had been excavated. The site soon became part of Polish national consciousness, the symbol of achievements of the Slavonic forebears in prehistoric times and it was called the Polish Pompeii or Polish Herculaneum. The existence of a fortress,70 km from the German border, was used to show that the prehistoric Poles had held their own against foreign invaders and plunderers as early as the Iron Age. Biskupin came to feature in paintings and popular novels, when the Germans occupied Poland in the autumn of 1939, Biskupin was renamed Urstädt. In 1940, excavations were resumed by the SS-Ahnenerbe until 1942, when Germans were forced to retreat they flooded the site hoping to destroy it, but—ironically—it led to very good preservation of the ancient timbers. Excavations were resumed by Polish archaeologists after the war and continued until 1974, there are two settlement periods at Biskupin, which was located in the middle of a lake but is now situated on a peninsula, that follow each other without hiatus. Both settlements were laid out on a grid with eleven streets that are three metres wide. They consisted of two chambers and an open entrance-area and these houses were designed to accommodate 10–12 persons. An open hearth was located in the centre of the biggest room, there are no larger houses that could indicate social stratification. Because of the damp, boggy ground the streets were covered with wooden planks, the settlement was surrounded by a tall wooden wall, or palisade, set on a rampart made up of both wood and earth. The rampart was constructed of oak trunks that form boxes filled with earth, the rampart is more than 450 metres long and accompanied by a wooden breakwater in the lake. 6,000 to 8,000 cubic metres of wood was used in the construction of the rampart, the settlement at Biskupin belongs to the Hallstatt C and D periods
8.
Oksywie culture
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The Oksywie culture was an archaeological culture that existed in the area of modern-day Eastern Pomerania around the lower Vistula river from the 2nd century BC to the early 1st century AD. It is named after the village of Oksywie, now part of the city of Gdynia in northern Poland, a connection with the Rugii has been suggested. Like other cultures of this period, the Oksywie culture related to La Tène cultural characteristics, Oksywie cultures ceramics and burial customs indicate strong ties with the Przeworsk culture. Men only had their ashes placed in well made black urns with fine finish and their graves were supplied with practical items for the afterlife such as utensils and weapons. Typically buried with the man, this culture would also place swords with one-sided edge, womens ashes were buried in hollows and supplied with feminine items. Oxhöftkultur Andrzej Kokowski Archäologie der Goten 1999 Marija Gimbutas, the Bronze and the Early Iron Age of the Eastern Balts
9.
Wielbark culture
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The Wielbark culture or East Pomeranian-Mazovian is part of an Iron Age archaeological complex that dates from the 1st century AD to the 4th century AD. It replaced the Oksywie culture, in the area of modern-day Eastern Pomerania around the lower Vistula river, Wielbark culture contained Venedi, Rugians, Goths, and Gepids located mainly in Pomerania and West Prussia later spreading down the east side into Podlasie and the southern Ukraine. The Wielbark culture was named after a village where a place with over 3,000 tombs, attributed to the Goths. Many of the stones were moved, and many graves were damaged by the early German discoverers. The Wielbark culture started out covering the area as the Oksywie culture, around the present day towns of Gdańsk. Later it reached into the lakelands and stretched southwards, into the region around Poznań, in 2000, in Czarnówko near Lębork, Pomerania, a cemetery of Oksywie and Wielbark cultures was found. These reached their height before the emigration of the population to the south west began, a bronze kettle depicts males wearing the Suebian knot hairstyle. The people of the Wielbark culture used both inhumation and cremation techniques for burying their dead, whether one or the other was used varies from site to site and is believed to have depended on family traditions. A characteristic of this culture, which it had in common with southern Scandinavia, was the raising of stone covered mounds, stone circles, solitary stelae and variations of cobble cladding. No weapons or tools are found in Wielbark culture graves, unlike the Przeworsk culture for which it was typical to give the dead such gifts. Instead, the artifacts found are mostly ornaments and costumes, although a few graves have shown spurs, another feature of the Wielbark culture was the use of bronze to make ornaments and accessories. Silver was used seldom and gold rarely, Iron appears to have been used extremely rarely. The Wielbark culture has traditionally been attributed to the migration of the Goths from Scandza to Gothiscandza as related in Jordanes account of their origin. Archaeologists, though, are wary of ascribing ethnicities to archaeological cultures, as the origins of, for this reason they normally assign names to cultures based on the modern names of sites where artifacts are found. The current tendency is to resist making an easy equation between Wielbark Culture and migration of the Goths, as any single migration of peoples is unlikely to be its sole source. The cemeteries may give some indication in evidence as to which settlements could have been established directly by Goths, appearing in the later 1st century, this type is found between the Vistula and the Kashubian and Krajenskian lakelands reaching into the Koszalin region. szukacz. pl
10.
Przeworsk culture
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The Przeworsk culture is part of an Iron Age archaeological complex that dates from the 3rd century BC to the 5th century AD. It takes its name from the village near the town Przeworsk where the first artifacts were found and they knew how to dig and build wells, so the settlements didnt have to be located near bodies of water. Thirteen 2nd century wells with variously constructed timber lined walls were found at a settlement in Stanisławice, fields were being used for crop cultivation for a while and then as pastures, when animal excrement helped the soil regain fertility. Once iron share plows were introduced the fields were alternated between tillage and grazing, a number of such micro-regions possibly made up a tribe, with these separated by empty space, zones of mutual fear, as Tacitus put it. The tribes in turn, especially if they were closely related, would at times form larger structures, such as temporary alliances for waging wars. A Przeworsk culture turn of the industrial complex for the extraction of salt from salt springs was discovered in Chabsk near Mogilno. The dead were cremated and the ashes placed in urns. In the 1st century AD this was replaced with a sharp-profiled shape, the burial gifts were often, for unknown reasons, bent or broken, and then burned with the body. The burials range from poor to rich, the latter ones supplied with fancy Celtic and then Roman imports, scholars view the Przeworsk culture as an amalgam of a series of localized cultures. Continuity with the preceding Pomeranian culture is observed, albeit modified by significant influences from the La Tene, the Przeworsk culture is sometimes associated with the Vandals. To the east, in what is now northern Ukraine and southern Belarus, was the Zarubintsy culture, much of this area was subsequently absorbed by the Wielbark culture. The main characteristic feature of the Przeworsk culture are burials and these were mostly cremations, with occasional inhumation. Warrior burials are notable, which often include horse-gear and spurs, some burials are exceptionally rich, overshadowing the graves of Germanic groups further west, especially after 400 AD. Pottery and metalwork are often rich and show a great variety The cultures decline in the late 5th century coincides with the invasion of the Huns. Other factors may have included the social crisis that occurred as a result of the collapse of the Roman world, in the late 5/6th century, the Prague-Korchak culture appears in the Vistula basin. Przeworsk culture settlements and burial sites Vandals Amber Road Mallory, James P. Adams, Douglas Q
11.
Polish tribes
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The Polish tribes are grouped together with East Slavic and South Slavic tribes as the Early Slavs with varying degrees of common ancestry and culture. In about 850 AD a list of peoples was written down by the Bavarian Geographer, absent on the list are Polans, Pomeranians and Masovians, who were mentioned later by Nestor the Chronicler in his Primary Chronicle. The most important Polish tribes were Polans, Masovians, Vistulans, Silesians and Pomeranians and these five tribes shared fundamentally common culture and language and were considerably more closely related to one another than were the Germanic tribes. The name Poland is derived from the most powerful of the tribes - the Polans and their name, in turn, derives from the word pole - field. It was also used for the eastern Polans that lived in the region of the Dnieper River, the tribes were organized on the basis of kinship groups. A tribes territory was divided into opoles, which constituted a group of neighboring settlements, most members of a particular tribe were yeoman peasants, although a small group of aristocrats was usually present. The following is the list of Polish tribes that inhabited the lands of Poland in the early Middle Ages and they shared fundamentally common culture and language and together they formed what is now Polish ethnicity and the culture of Poland
12.
Bronze Age
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The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
13.
Iron Age
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The Iron Age is an archaeological era, referring to a period of time in the prehistory and protohistory of the Old World when the dominant toolmaking material was iron. It is commonly preceded by the Bronze Age in Europe and Asia with exceptions, meteoric iron has been used by humans since at least 3200 BC. Ancient iron production did not become widespread until the ability to smelt ore, remove impurities. The start of the Iron Age proper is considered by many to fall between around 1200 BC and 600 BC, depending on the region, the earliest known iron artifacts are nine small beads dated to 3200 BC, which were found in burials at Gerzeh, Lower Egypt. They have been identified as meteoric iron shaped by careful hammering, meteoric iron, a characteristic iron–nickel alloy, was used by various ancient peoples thousands of years before the Iron Age. Such iron, being in its metallic state, required no smelting of ores. Smelted iron appears sporadically in the record from the middle Bronze Age. While terrestrial iron is abundant, its high melting point of 1,538 °C placed it out of reach of common use until the end of the second millennium BC. Tins low melting point of 231, similarly, recent archaeological remains of iron working in the Ganges Valley in India have been tentatively dated to 1800 BC. By the Middle Bronze Age, increasing numbers of smelted iron objects appeared in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, African sites are turning up dates as early as 1200 BC. Modern archaeological evidence identifies the start of iron production in around 1200 BC. Between 1200 BC and 1000 BC, diffusion in the understanding of iron metallurgy and use of objects was fast. As evidence, many bronze implements were recycled into weapons during this time, more widespread use of iron led to improved steel-making technology at lower cost. Thus, even when tin became available again, iron was cheaper, stronger, and lighter, and forged iron implements superseded cast bronze tools permanently. Increasingly, the Iron Age in Europe is being seen as a part of the Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East, in ancient India, ancient Iran, and ancient Greece. In other regions of Europe, the Iron Age began in the 8th century BC in Central Europe, the Near Eastern Iron Age is divided into two subsections, Iron I and Iron II. Iron I illustrates both continuity and discontinuity with the previous Late Bronze Age, during the Iron Age, the best tools and weapons were made from steel, particularly alloys which were produced with a carbon content between approximately 0. 30% and 1. 2% by weight. Steel weapons and tools were nearly the same weight as those of bronze, however, steel was difficult to produce with the methods available, and alloys that were easier to make, such as wrought iron, were more common in lower-priced goods
14.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
15.
Czech Republic
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The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, is a nation state in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast. The Czech Republic covers an area of 78,866 square kilometres with mostly temperate continental climate and it is a unitary parliamentary republic, has 10.5 million inhabitants and the capital and largest city is Prague, with over 1.2 million residents. The Czech Republic includes the territories of Bohemia, Moravia. The Czech state was formed in the late 9th century as the Duchy of Bohemia under the Great Moravian Empire, after the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power transferred from Moravia to Bohemia under the Přemyslid dynasty. In 1002, the duchy was formally recognized as part of the Holy Roman Empire, becoming the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1198 and reaching its greatest territorial extent in the 14th century. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the whole Crown of Bohemia was gradually integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy alongside the Archduchy of Austria, the Protestant Bohemian Revolt against the Catholic Habsburgs led to the Thirty Years War. After the Battle of the White Mountain, the Habsburgs consolidated their rule, reimposed Roman Catholicism, the Czech part of Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany in World War II, and was liberated in 1945 by the armies of the Soviet Union and the United States. The Czech country lost the majority of its German-speaking inhabitants after they were expelled following the war, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia won the 1946 elections. Following the 1948 coup détat, Czechoslovakia became a one-party communist state under Soviet influence, in 1968, increasing dissatisfaction with the regime culminated in a reform movement known as the Prague Spring, which ended in a Soviet-led invasion. Czechoslovakia remained occupied until the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when the communist regime collapsed, on 6 March 1990, the Czech Socialistic Republic was renamed to the Czech Republic. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved, with its constituent states becoming the independent states of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, it is a member of the United Nations, the OECD, the OSCE, and it is a developed country with an advanced, high income economy and high living standards. The UNDP ranks the country 14th in inequality-adjusted human development, the Czech Republic also ranks as the 6th most peaceful country, while achieving strong performance in democratic governance. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the European Union, the traditional English name Bohemia derives from Latin Boiohaemum, which means home of the Boii. The current name comes from the endonym Čech, spelled Cžech until the reform in 1842. The name comes from the Slavic tribe and, according to legend, their leader Čech, the etymology of the word Čech can be traced back to the Proto-Slavic root *čel-, meaning member of the people, kinsman, thus making it cognate to the Czech word člověk. The country has traditionally divided into three lands, namely Bohemia in the west, Moravia in the southeast, and Czech Silesia in the northeast. Following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1992, the Czech part of the former nation found itself without a common single-word geographical name in English, the name Czechia /ˈtʃɛkiə/ was recommended by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs
16.
Slovakia
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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
17.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
18.
Ukraine
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Ukraine is currently in territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014 but which Ukraine and most of the international community recognise as Ukrainian. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2, making it the largest country entirely within Europe and it has a population of about 42.5 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC, during the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus forming the basis of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the territory was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. A Cossack republic emerged and prospered during the 17th and 18th centuries, two brief periods of independence occurred during the 20th century, once near the end of World War I and another during World War II. Before its independence, Ukraine was typically referred to in English as The Ukraine, following independence, Ukraine declared itself a neutral state. Nonetheless it formed a limited partnership with the Russian Federation and other CIS countries. In the 2000s, the government began leaning towards NATO, and it was later agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum at some point in the future. Former President Viktor Yanukovych considered the current level of co-operation between Ukraine and NATO sufficient, and was against Ukraine joining NATO and these events formed the background for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, and the War in Donbass in April 2014. On 1 January 2016, Ukraine applied the economic part of the Deep, Ukraine has long been a global breadbasket because of its extensive, fertile farmlands and is one of the worlds largest grain exporters. The diversified economy of Ukraine includes a heavy industry sector, particularly in aerospace. Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate powers, legislative, executive. Its capital and largest city is Kiev, taking into account reserves and paramilitary personnel, Ukraine maintains the second-largest military in Europe after that of Russia. Ukrainian is the language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy, which has strongly influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature, there are different hypotheses as to the etymology of the name Ukraine. According to the older and most widespread hypothesis, it means borderland, while more recently some studies claim a different meaning, homeland or region. The Ukraine now implies disregard for the sovereignty, according to U. S. ambassador William Taylor. Neanderthal settlement in Ukraine is seen in the Molodova archaeological sites include a mammoth bone dwelling
19.
Montelius
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Gustav Oscar August Montelius, known as Oscar Montelius was a Swedish archaeologist who refined the concept of seriation, a relative chronological dating method. Oscar Montelius refined the concept of seriation, a relative dating method. Seriation is the procedure of working out a chronology by arranging material remains of a tradition in the order that produces the most consistent patterning of their cultural traits. Montelius’ method created a specific to the location, based on material remains. Later, when combined with historical references, objects could be provided absolute dates. He took the system, originally devised by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen to organize Danish museum collections of archaeological materials. He divided the Neolithic in Scandinavia into four numbered periods, I-IV, and he was the first to establish that the numerous Swedish petroglyphs were from the Nordic Bronze Age, by comparing axes portrayed in the petroglyphs with archaeological finds. Further he supported Thomsens typology of gold bracteates from the migration period and his diffusionist theories were eventually displaced by more complex views of cultural interaction but following refinement his system of sub-divisions is still effectively in use. Montelius was made a member of the Swedish Academy in 1917 and he and his wife, the feminist Agda Montelius, are buried in a dolmen grave in Norra begravningsplatsen in Solna, Sweden. The typologists then go on to demand professor chairs for themselves, remains from the Iron Age of Scandinavia. Om lifvet i Sverige under hednatiden, tombe ed antichità galliche in Italia. The Civilisation of Sweden in Heathen Times, la civilisation primitive en Italie depuis lintroduction des métaux, Part 1. Die Chronologie der ältesten Bronzezeit in Nord-Deutschland und Skandinavien
20.
Hallstatt culture
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It is commonly associated with Proto-Celtic and Celtic populations in the Western Hallstatt zone and with Illyrians in the eastern Hallstatt zone. Parts of Britain and Iberia are included in the expansion of the culture. Social distinctions became increasingly important, with emerging elite classes of chieftains and warriors, society was organized on a tribal basis, though very little is known about this. Only a few of the largest settlements, like Heuneburg in the south of Germany, were rather than villages by modern standards. In 1846, Johann Georg Ramsauer discovered a prehistoric cemetery near Hallstatt, Austria. Eventually the excavation would yield 1,045 burials, although no settlement has yet been found and this may be covered by the later village, which has long occupied the whole narrow strip between the steep hillsides and the lake. Some 1,300 burials have been found, including around 2,000 individuals, with women and children, nor is there a princely burial, as often found near large settlements. The community at Hallstatt was untypical of the wider, mainly agricultural, culture and these had been worked from time to time since the Neolithic period, and in this period were extensively mined with a peak from the 8th to 5th centuries BC. The style and decoration of the goods found in the cemetery are very distinctive. Finds at Hallstatt extend from about 1200 BC until around 500 BC, in this period, people were cremated and buried in simple graves. In phase B, tumulus burial becomes common, and cremation predominates, little is known about this period in which the typical Celtic elements have not yet distinguished themselves from the earlier Villanova-culture. The Hallstatt period proper is restricted to HaC and HaD, corresponding to the early European Iron Age, Hallstatt lies in the area where the western and eastern zones of the Hallstatt culture meet, which is reflected in the finds from there. Hallstatt D is succeeded by the La Tène culture, Hallstatt C is characterized by the first appearance of iron swords mixed amongst the bronze ones. For the final phase, Hallstatt D, daggers, almost to the exclusion of swords, are found in western zone graves ranging from c, there are also differences in the pottery and brooches. Halstatt D has been divided into the sub-phases D1-D3, relating only to the western zone. Major activity at the site appears to have finished about 500 BC, many Hallstatt graves were robbed, probably at this time. There was widespread throughout the western Hallstatt zone, and the salt workings had by then become very deep. By then the focus of mining had shifted to the nearby Hallein Salt Mine, with graves at Dürrnberg nearby where there are significant finds from the late Hallstatt
21.
Trzciniec culture
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The Trzciniec culture is a Bronze-Age archaeological culture in Eastern Europe. It is sometimes associated with the Komarov neighbouring culture, as the Trzciniec-Komarov culture, the Trzciniec culture developed from three Corded-Ware-related cultures, Mierzanowicka, Strzyżowska and Iwieńska. These were succeeded by the Lusatian culture, which developed around Łódź, the areal of the Trzciniec culture corresponds to parts of todays Poland and western Ukraine. The best known settlements of the Trzciniec culture were in Złota Pińczowskia, Więcławice Świętokrzyskie, Goszyce, some of these sites include important treasures containing materials such as ornamental gold and silver like in Stawiszyce and Rawa Mazowiecka. Inhumation and cremation in a grave were important features of Trzciniec culture. Cases of inhumation were discovered in Wolica Nowa, in the form of kurgans, evidence of kurgan inhumation have been found at Łubna-Jakusy, whereas kurgan cremation has been found at Guciów. Prahistoria Ziem Polskich, tom IV pod redakcją W. Hensla Wydawnictwo PAN, Ossolineum, Wrocław, Warszawa, Kraków, pradzieje ziem polskich, tom I cz.2 Epoka Brązu i początki Epoki Żelaza pod redakcją Kmiecińskiego, wyd. PWN Warszawa-Łodź1989 Wielka Historia Polski, tom I Najdawniejsze dzieje ziem polskich, Piotr Kaczanowski, Janusz K. Kozłowski, poznańskie,2001 Encyklopedia historyczna świata tom I, Prehistoria, praca zbiorowe, opracowanie naukowe prof. Janusz K. Kozłowski, Agencja Publicystyczno-Wydawnicza Oppress, Kraków 1999 Kultura pradziejowa na ziemiach Polski zarys, Jerzy Gąssowski, PWN, Warszawa 1985
22.
Urnfield culture
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The Urnfield culture was a late Bronze Age culture of central Europe. The name comes from the custom of cremating the dead and placing their ashes in urns which were buried in fields. The Urnfield culture followed the Tumulus culture and was succeeded by the Hallstatt culture, linguistic evidence and continuity with the following Hallstatt culture suggests that the people of this area spoke an early form of Celtic, perhaps originally proto-Celtic. It is believed that in areas, such as in southwestern Germany, it was in existence around 1200 BC. As the transition from the middle Bronze Age to the Urnfield culture was gradual, the Urnfield culture covers the phases Hallstatt A and B in Paul Reineckes chronological system, not to be confused with the Hallstatt culture of the following Iron Age. This corresponds to the Phases Montelius III-IV of the Northern Bronze Age, whether Reineckes Bronze D is included varies according to author and region. The Urnfield culture is divided into the following sub-phases, The existence of the Ha B3-phase is contested, as can be seen by the arbitrary 100-year ranges, the dating of the phases is highly schematic. The phases are based on changes, which means that they do not have to be strictly contemporaneous across the whole distribution. All in all, more radiocarbon and dendro-dates would be highly desirable, the Urnfield culture grew from the preceding tumulus culture. The transition is gradual, in the pottery as well as the burial rites, in some parts of Germany, cremation and inhumation existed simultaneously. Some graves contain a combination of tumulus-culture pottery and Urnfield swords or tumulus culture incised pottery together with early Urnfield types, in the North, the Urnfield culture was only adopted in the HaA2 period. 16 pins deposited in a swamp in Ellmoosen cover the whole range from Bronze B to the early Urnfield period. This demonstrates a considerable ritual continuity, in the Loire, Seine and Rhône, certain fords contain deposits from the late Neolithic onwards up to the Urnfield period. The origins of the rite are commonly believed to be in Hungary. The neolithic Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of modern-day northeastern Romania and Ukraine were also practicing cremation rituals as early as approximately 5500 BC, some cremations begin to be found in the Proto-Lusatian and Trzciniec culture. The Urnfield culture was located in an area stretching from western Hungary to eastern France, metalwork is commonly of a much more widespread distribution than pottery and does not conform to these borders. It may have produced at specialised workshops catering for the elite of a large area. Important French cemeteries include Châtenay and Lingolsheim, an unusual earthwork was constructed at Goloring near Koblenz in Germany
23.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, 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 member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
24.
Hungary
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Hungary is a unitary parliamentary republic in Central Europe. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a member state of the European Union. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken language in Europe. Hungarys capital and largest metropolis is Budapest, a significant economic hub, major urban areas include Debrecen, Szeged, Miskolc, Pécs and Győr. His great-grandson Stephen I ascended to the throne in 1000, converting the country to a Christian kingdom, by the 12th century, Hungary became a middle power within the Western world, reaching a golden age by the 15th century. Hungarys current borders were established in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon after World War I, when the country lost 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, following the interwar period, Hungary joined the Axis Powers in World War II, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary became a state of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a four-decade-long communist dictatorship. On 23 October 1989, Hungary became again a democratic parliamentary republic, in the 21st century, Hungary is a middle power and has the worlds 57th largest economy by nominal GDP, as well as the 58th largest by PPP, out of 188 countries measured by the IMF. As a substantial actor in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds 36th largest exporter and importer of goods, Hungary is a high-income economy with a very high standard of living. It keeps up a security and universal health care system. Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 and part of the Schengen Area since 2007, Hungary is a member of the United Nations, NATO, WTO, World Bank, the AIIB, the Council of Europe and Visegrád Group. Well known for its cultural history, Hungary has been contributed significantly to arts, music, literature, sports and science. Hungary is the 11th most popular country as a tourist destination in Europe and it is home to the largest thermal water cave system, the second largest thermal lake in the world, the largest lake in Central Europe, and the largest natural grasslands in Europe. The H in the name of Hungary is most likely due to historical associations with the Huns. The rest of the word comes from the Latinized form of Medieval Greek Oungroi, according to an explanation the Greek name was borrowed from Proto-Slavic Ǫgǔri, in turn borrowed from Oghur-Turkic Onogur. Onogur was the name for the tribes who later joined the Bulgar tribal confederacy that ruled the eastern parts of Hungary after the Avars. The Hungarians likely belonged to the Onogur tribal alliance and it is possible they became its ethnic majority. The Hungarian endonym is Magyarország, composed of magyar and ország, the word magyar is taken from the name of one of the seven major semi-nomadic Hungarian tribes, magyeri
25.
Scandinavia
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Scandinavia /ˌskændᵻˈneɪviə/ is a historical and cultural region in Northern Europe characterized by a common ethnocultural North Germanic heritage and mutually intelligible North Germanic languages. The term Scandinavia always includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the remote Norwegian islands of Svalbard and Jan Mayen are usually not seen as a part of Scandinavia, nor is Greenland, an overseas territory of Denmark. This looser definition almost equates to that of the Nordic countries, in Nordic languages, only Denmark, Norway and Sweden are commonly included in the definition of Scandinavia. In English usage, Scandinavia sometimes refers to the geographical area, the name Scandinavia originally referred vaguely to the formerly Danish, now Swedish, region Scania. Icelanders and the Faroese are to a significant extent descended from the Norse, Finland is mainly populated by Finns, with a minority of approximately 5% of Swedish speakers. A small minority of Sami people live in the north of Scandinavia. The Danish, Norwegian and Swedish languages form a continuum and are known as the Scandinavian languages—all of which are considered mutually intelligible with one another. Faroese and Icelandic, sometimes referred to as insular Scandinavian languages, are intelligible in continental Scandinavian languages only to a limited extent, Finnish and Meänkieli are closely related to each other and more distantly to the Sami languages, but are entirely unrelated to the Scandinavian languages. Apart from these, German, Yiddish and Romani are recognized minority languages in Scandinavia, the southern and by far most populous regions of Scandinavia have a temperate climate. Scandinavia extends north of the Arctic Circle, but has mild weather for its latitude due to the Gulf Stream. Much of the Scandinavian mountains have a tundra climate. There are many lakes and moraines, legacies of the last glacial period, Scandinavia usually refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Some sources argue for the inclusion of the Faroe Islands, Finland and Iceland, though that broader region is known by the countries concerned as Norden. Before this time, the term Scandinavia was familiar mainly to classical scholars through Pliny the Elders writings, and was used vaguely for Scania, as a political term, Scandinavia was first used by students agitating for Pan-Scandinavianism in the 1830s. After a visit to Sweden, Andersen became a supporter of early political Scandinavism, the term is often defined according to the conventions of the cultures that lay claim to the term in their own use. More precisely, and subject to no dispute, is that Finland is included in the broader term Nordic countries, various promotional agencies of the Nordic countries in the United States serve to promote market and tourism interests in the region. The official tourist boards of Scandinavia sometimes cooperate under one umbrella, Norways government entered one year later. All five Nordic governments participate in the joint promotional efforts in the United States through the Scandinavian Tourist Board of North America, Scandinavia can thus be considered a subset of the Nordic countries
26.
Vistula
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The Vistula is the longest and largest river in Poland, at 1,047 kilometres in length. The drainage basin area of the Vistula is 194,424 km2, the remainder is in Belarus, Ukraine and Slovakia. The Vistula rises at Barania Góra in the south of Poland,1,220 meters above sea level in the Silesian Beskids, where it begins with the White Little Vistula and the Black Little Vistula. It empties into the Vistula Lagoon or directly into the Gdańsk Bay of the Baltic Sea with a delta, the name was first recorded by Pomponius Mela in AD40 and by Pliny in AD77 in his Natural History. Mela names the river Vistula, Pliny uses Vistla, the root of the name Vistula is Indo-European *u̯eis- to ooze, flow slowly and is found in many European rivernames. The diminutive endings -ila, -ula, were used in many Indo-European languages, in writing about the Vistula River and its peoples, Ptolemy uses the Greek spelling Ouistoula. Other ancient sources spell it Istula, ammianus Marcellinus refers to the Bisula, note the absence of the -t-. Jordanes uses Viscla, while the Anglo-Saxon poem Widsith refers to it as the Wistla, the Vistula river basin covers 194,424 square kilometres, its average altitude rising to 270 metres above sea level. In addition, the majority of its basin is located at heights of 100 to 200 m above sea level. The highest point of the basin lies at 2,655 metres. The asymmetry of the basin is 73–27%. The most recent glaciation of the Pleistocene epoch, which ended around 10,000 BC, is called the Vistulian glaciation or Weichselian glaciation in regard to north-central Europe. The river forms a delta called the Żuławy Wiślane around the town of Biała Góra near Sztum, about 50 km from the mouth. In the city of Gdańsk the Head of the Leniwka branch separates again into the Szkarpawa branch, the so-called Dead Wisła divides again into the Przegalinie branch flowing into Gdańsk Bay. Until the 14th century the Vistula was divided into an eastern branch, the Elbląg Vistula, and the smaller western branch. Since 1371 the Vistula of Gdańsk is the main artery. After the flood in 1840 an additional branch formed called the Śmiała Wisła, in 1890 through 1895, additional waterworks were carried out up the Świbna. The history of the River Vistula and her valley spans over 2 million years, the river is connected to the geological period called the Quaternary, in which distinct cooling of the climate took place
27.
Pomeranian culture
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About 650 BC, it evolved from the Lusatian culture between the lower Vistula and Parseta rivers, and subsequently expanded southward. Between 200 and 150 BC, it was succeeded by the Oksywie culture in eastern Pomerania, the Pomeranian culture developed in Western Pomerania covering the entire range of Oder/Odra and Vistula River basin. It has been associated with the Bastarnae. The original homeland of the Bastarnae remains uncertain, the most characteristic feature was the use of burial urns with faces. The urns were often contained in stone cists, the face-urns have lids in the form of hats, often miniature ear-rings of real bronze are added. The faces are sometimes modelled very naturalistically, and no two urns show the same face, incised drawings on the urns show hunting scenes, chariot races or riders. Brooches of Certoza-type and necklaces of multiple bronze rings are typical examples of metal work, the economy was similar to that of the Lusatian culture. Rye was systematically cultivated for the first time, but still formed a component of the cereals. There were fewer hill forts than in the area of the Lusatian culture further west, southern imports were sparse as well. A related culture of the age was the House Urn culture in central Germany. In the later Iron Age, the Pomeranian culture spread southward, into areas belonging to the Lusatian, Wysoko-. In Masovia and Poland this mixture led to the development of the group with bell-shaped burials, Lusatian culture Przeworsk culture Nordic Bronze Age
28.
Germans
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Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture and history. German is the mother tongue of a substantial majority of ethnic Germans. The English term Germans has historically referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages, before the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany in 1990, Germans constituted the largest divided nation in Europe by far. Ever since the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, roughly 80 million consider themselves Germans. Thus, the number of Germans lies somewhere between 100 and more than 150 million, depending on the criteria applied. Today, people from countries with German-speaking majorities most often subscribe to their own national identities, the German term Deutsche originates from the Old High German word diutisc, referring to the Germanic language of the people. It is not clear how commonly, if at all, the word was used as an ethnonym in Old High German, used as a noun, ein diutscher in the sense of a German emerges in Middle High German, attested from the second half of the 12th century. The Old French term alemans is taken from the name of the Alamanni and it was loaned into Middle English as almains in the early 14th century. The word Dutch is attested in English from the 14th century, denoting continental West Germanic dialects, while in most Romance languages the Germans have been named from the Alamanni, the Old Norse, Finnish and Estonian names for the Germans were taken from that of the Saxons. In Slavic languages, the Germans were given the name of němьci, originally with a meaning foreigner, the English term Germans is only attested from the mid-16th century, based on the classical Latin term Germani used by Julius Caesar and later Tacitus. It gradually replaced Dutch and Almains, the latter becoming mostly obsolete by the early 18th century, the Germans are a Germanic people, who as an ethnicity emerged during the Middle Ages. Originally part of the Holy Roman Empire, around 300 independent German states emerged during its decline after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years War and these states eventually formed into modern Germany in the 19th century. The concept of a German ethnicity is linked to Germanic tribes of antiquity in central Europe, the early Germans originated on the North German Plain as well as southern Scandinavia. By the 2nd century BC, the number of Germans was significantly increasing and they began expanding into eastern Europe, during antiquity these Germanic tribes remained separate from each other and did not have writing systems at that time. In the European Iron Age the area that is now Germany was divided into the La Tène horizon in Southern Germany and the Jastorf culture in Northern Germany. By 55 BC, the Germans had reached the Danube river and had either assimilated or otherwise driven out the Celts who had lived there, and had spread west into what is now Belgium and France. Conflict between the Germanic tribes and the forces of Rome under Julius Caesar forced major Germanic tribes to retreat to the east bank of the Rhine, in Roman-held territories with Germanic populations, the Germanic and Roman peoples intermarried, and Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions intermingled. The adoption of Christianity would later become an influence in the development of a common German identity
29.
Rudolf Virchow
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Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow was a German physician, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, writer, editor, and politician, known for his advancement of public health. He is known as the father of modern pathology because his work helped to discredit humourism and he is also known as the founder of social medicine and veterinary pathology, and to his colleagues, the Pope of medicine. Born and raised in Schievelbein as a child of a working-class family. Dissuaded by his voice, he abandoned his initial interest in theology. With special military scholarship, he earned his degree from Friedrich-Wilhelms Institute under the tutelage of Johannes Peter Müller. He worked at the Charité hospital under Robert Froriep, whom he succeeded as the prosector. Although he failed to contain the 1847–1848 typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia, his report laid the foundation for health in Germany. From it, he coined a well known aphorism, Medicine is a social science and he participated in the Revolution of 1848, which led to his expulsion from Charité the next year. He published a newspaper Die medicinische Reform during this period to disseminate his social and political ideas and he took the first Chair of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Würzburg in 1849. After five years, Charité invited him back to direct its newly built Institute for Pathology, the campus of Charité is now named Campus Virchow Klinikum. He cofounded the political party Deutsche Fortschrittspartei, by which he was elected to the Prussian House of Representatives and his opposition to Otto von Bismarcks financial policy resulted in an anecdotal Sausage Duel between the two. But he ardently supported Bismarck in his campaigns, the social revolution he himself named as Kulturkampf. A prolific writer, his writings alone exceeded 2,000 in number. Among his books, Cellular Pathology published in 1858 is regarded as the root of modern pathology and this work also popularised the third dictum in cell theory, Omnis cellula e cellula, although his idea originated in 1855. He founded journals such as Archiv für pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und für klinische Medizin, the latter is published by German Anthropological Association and the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory, the societies of which he also founded. Virchow was the first to describe and give names of diseases such as leukemia, chordoma, ochronosis, embolism. He coined scientific terms, chromatin, agenesis, parenchyma, osteoid, amyloid degeneration and his description of the transmission cycle of a roundworm Trichinella spiralis established the importance of meat inspection, which was started in Berlin. He developed the first systematic method of autopsy involving surgery of all body parts, a number of medical terms are named after him, including Virchows node, Virchow–Robin spaces, Virchow–Seckel syndrome, and Virchows triad
30.
Lusatia
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Lusatia is a region in Central Europe. The region is the home of the group of Lusatian Sorbs. Historically, Lusatia belonged to different countries. Being part of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown for three hundred years, alongside them it passed to the Habsburg Monarchy and from it to the Electorate of Saxony, the greater part passed to the Kingdom of Prussia in 1815 and the whole region merged into Germany in 1871. In the Polish part today Polish is spoken, and in the German part German, Upper-, the biggest Lusatian town is Cottbus. The name derives from the Sorbian word łužicy meaning swamps or water-hole, Lusatia is the Latinised form which spread in the English and Romance languages area. Lusatia comprises two both scenically and historically different parts, a hilly southern section and a lower region. Neighbouring regions were Silesia in the east, Bohemia in the south, the Margraviate of Meissen and the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg in the west as well as the Margraviate of Brandenburg in the north. Upper Lusatia is today part of the German state of Saxony, except for a part east of the Neisse River around Lubań. Among those villages are Niedercunnersdorf, Obercunnersdorf, Wehrsdorf, Jonsdorf, Sohland an der Spree with Taubenheim, Oppach, most of the area belonging to the German state of Brandenburg today is called Lower Lusatia and is characterised by forests and meadows. In the course of much of the 19th and the entire 20th century, it was shaped by the lignite industry, important towns include Cottbus, Eisenhüttenstadt, Lübben, Lübbenau, Spremberg, Finsterwalde, Senftenberg, and Żary, which is now considered the capital of Polish Lusatia. Between Upper and Lower Lusatia is a called the Grenzwall, literally meaning border dyke. In the Middle Ages this area had forests, so it represented a major obstacle to civilian. Some of the villages were damaged or destroyed by the open-pit lignite mining industry during the DDR era. The Lusatian Lake District will become Europes largest artificial lake district, some of the biggest lakes are Lake Senftenberg and Bluno Southern Lake. The Upper Lusatian Heath and Pond Landscape is the region richest in ponds in Germany, as Lusatia is not, and never has been, a single administrative unit, Upper and Lower Lusatia have different, but in some aspects similar, histories. The city of Cottbus is the largest in the region, and though it is recognized as the capital of Lower Lusatia. Historically, the centres of Lower Lusatia were at Luckau and Lübben
31.
Brandenburg
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Brandenburg is one of the sixteen federated states of Germany. It lies in the northeast of the country covering an area of 29,478 square kilometers and has 2.48 million inhabitants, the capital and largest city is Potsdam. Brandenburg surrounds but does not include the capital and city-state Berlin forming a metropolitan area. Brandenburg is one of the states that was re-created in 1990 upon the reunification of the former East Germany. Governed by the Hohenzollern dynasty from 1415, it contained the future German capital Berlin, after 1618 the Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia were combined to form Brandenburg-Prussia, which was ruled by the same branch of the House of Hohenzollern. In 1701 the state was elevated as the Kingdom of Prussia, Brandenburg is situated in territory known in antiquity as Magna Germania, which reached to the Vistula river. By the 7th century, Slavic peoples are believed to have settled in the Brandenburg area, the Slavs expanded from the east, possibly driven from their homelands in present-day Ukraine and perhaps Belarus by the invasions of the Huns and Avars. They relied heavily on river transport, the two principal Slavic groups in the present-day area of Brandenburg were the Hevelli in the west and the Sprevane in the east. Beginning in the early 10th century, Henry the Fowler and his successors conquered territory up to the Oder River, Slavic settlements such as Brenna, Budusin, and Chośebuz came under imperial control through the installation of margraves. Their main function was to defend and protect the eastern marches, in 948 Emperor Otto I established margraves to exert imperial control over the pagan Slavs west of the Oder River. Otto founded the Bishoprics of Brandenburg and Havelberg, the Northern March was founded as a northeastern border territory of the Holy Roman Empire. However, an uprising of Wends drove imperial forces from the territory of present-day Brandenburg in 983. The region returned to the control of Slavic leaders, the Roman Catholic Church brought bishoprics which, with their walled towns, afforded protection from attacks for the townspeople. With the monks and bishops, the history of the town of Brandenburg an der Havel, in 1134, in the wake of a German crusade against the Wends, the German magnate, Albert the Bear, was granted the Northern March by the Emperor Lothar III. He formally inherited the town of Brandenburg and the lands of the Hevelli from their last Wendish ruler, Pribislav, after crushing a force of Sprevane who occupied the town of Brandenburg in the 1150s, Albert proclaimed himself ruler of the new Margraviate of Brandenburg. Albert, and his descendants the Ascanians, then made progress in conquering, colonizing, Christianizing. Within this region, Slavic and German residents intermarried, during the 13th century, the Ascanians began acquiring territory east of the Oder, later known as the Neumark. In 1320, the Brandenburg Ascanian line came to an end, under the Luxembourgs, the Margrave of Brandenburg gained the status of a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire
32.
Saxony
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Its capital is Dresden, and its largest city is Leipzig. Saxony is the tenth largest of Germanys sixteen states, with an area of 18,413 square kilometres, located in the middle of a large, formerly all German-speaking part of Europe, the history of the state of Saxony spans more than a millennium. It has been a medieval duchy, an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire, a kingdom, the area of the modern state of Saxony should not be confused with Old Saxony, the area inhabited by Saxons. Old Saxony corresponds approximately to the modern German states of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony is divided into 10 districts,1. After a reform in 2008, these regions - with some alterations of their respective areas - were called Direktionsbezirke, in 2012, the authorities of these regions were merged into one central authority, the Landesdirektion Sachsen. The Erzgebirgskreis district includes the Ore Mountains, and the Schweiz-Osterzgebirge district includes Saxon Switzerland, the largest cities in Saxony according to the 31 December 2015 estimate. To this can be added that Leipzig forms a metropolitan region with Halle. The latter city is located just across the border to Saxony-Anhalt, Leipzig shares for instance an S-train system and an airport with Halle. Saxony has, after Saxony Anhalt, the most vibrant economy of the states of the former East Germany and its economy grew by 1. 9% in 2010. Nonetheless, unemployment remains above the German average, the eastern part of Germany, excluding Berlin, qualifies as an Objective 1 development-region within the European Union, and is eligible to receive investment subsidies of up to 30% until 2013. FutureSAX, a business competition and entrepreneurial support organisation, has been in operation since 2002. Microchip makers near Dresden have given the region the nickname Silicon Saxony, the publishing and porcelain industries of the region are well known, although their contributions to the regional economy are no longer significant. Today the automobile industry, machinery production and services contribute to the development of the region. Saxony is also one of the most renowned tourist destinations in Germany - especially the cities of Leipzig and Dresden, new tourist destinations are developing, notably in the lake district of Lausitz. Saxony reported an unemployment of 8. 8% in 2014. By comparison the average in the former GDR was 9. 8% and 6. 7% for Germany overall, the unemployment rate reached 8. 2% in May 2015. The Leipzig area, which recently was among the regions with the highest unemployment rate, could benefit greatly from investments by Porsche. With the VW Phaeton factory in Dresden, and many part suppliers, zwickau is another major Volkswagen location
33.
Poles
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The Poles are a nation and West Slavic ethnic group native to Poland who share a common ancestry, culture, history and are native speakers of the Polish language. The population of Poles in Poland is estimated at 37,394,000 out of a population of 38,538,000. Polands population inhabits several historic regions, including Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Mazovia, Silesia, Pomerania, Kuyavia, Warmia, Masuria, a wide-ranging Polish diaspora exists throughout Europe, the Americas and in Australasia. Today the largest urban concentration of Poles is the Katowice urban agglomeration of 2.7 million inhabitants, Poland was also for centuries a refuge for many Jews from all over Europe, a large number emigrated in the twentieth century to Israel. Several prominent Israeli statesmen were born in Poland, including Israels founder David Ben-Gurion, former President of Israel Shimon Peres, the Slavic people have been in the territory of modern Poland for over 1500 years. In the 9th and 10th centuries the tribes gave rise to developed regions along the upper Vistula, the last tribal undertaking resulted in the 10th century in a lasting political structure and state, Poland, one of the West Slavic nations. After 1945 the so-called autochthonous or aboriginal school of Polish prehistory received official backing in Poland, Polish people are the sixth largest national group in the European Union. Estimates vary depending on source, though available data suggest a number of around 60 million people worldwide. There are almost 38 million Poles in Poland alone, there are also Polish minorities in the surrounding countries including Germany, and indigenous minorities in the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus. There are some smaller indigenous minorities in nearby countries such as Moldova, the term Polonia is usually used in Poland to refer to people of Polish origin who live outside Polish borders, officially estimated at around 10 to 20 million. There is a notable Polish diaspora in the United States, Brazil, France has a historic relationship with Poland and has a relatively large Polish-descendant population. Poles have lived in France since the 18th century, in the early 20th century, over a million Polish people settled in France, mostly during world wars, among them Polish émigrés fleeing either Nazi occupation or later Soviet rule. In the United States, a significant number of Polish immigrants settled in Chicago, Ohio, Detroit, New York City, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, the highest concentration of Polish Americans in a single New England municipality is in New Britain, Connecticut. The majority of Polish Canadians have arrived in Canada since World War II, the number of Polish immigrants increased between 1945 and 1970, and again after the end of Communism in Poland in 1989. In Brazil the majority of Polish immigrants settled in Paraná State, smaller, but significant numbers settled in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Espírito Santo and São Paulo. The city of Curitiba has the second largest Polish diaspora in the world and Polish music, dishes and it is estimated that over half a million Polish people have come to work in the United Kingdom from Poland. Since 2011, Poles have been able to work throughout the EU and not just in the United Kingdom, Ireland. The Polish community in Norway has increased substantially and has grown to a number of 120,000
34.
Early Slavs
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The first written use of the name Slavs dates to the sixth century, when the Slavic tribes inhabited a large portion of Central and Eastern Europe. By that century, native Iranian ethnic groups had been absorbed by the regions Slavic population, over the next two centuries, the Slavs expanded southwest toward the Balkans and the Alps and northeast towards the Volga River. Beginning in the century, the Slavs gradually converted to Christianity. The meaning of Slav depends on the context in which it is used, the word can refer to a culture living north of the River Danube, east of the River Elbe, and west of the River Vistula during the 530s CE. Slav is also an identifier for the group shared by these cultures. When discussing evidence used to construct a history of the Slavs, archaeologically, early Slavic physical evidence ranges from hill forts, ceramic pots and fragments to abodes. However, archaeologists face difficulties distinguishing Slavic and non-Slavic findings, many of these findings are inaccurately radiocarbon-dated or so isolated that they do not reflect organized Slavic settlement. Although a number of sources describe the Slavs, there are problems with using the texts to build upon available knowledge of the early Slavs. Useful historical information about the Slavs from them is cryptic or does not identify their source, the works tend to discuss the Slavs only in terms of their effects on surrounding empires, particularly the Byzantines and the Franks. The variety of names referring to the Slavs, such as Antes, Sclaveni, and Venethi, place names have changed, or no longer survive, and most texts are second-hand accounts or describe an encounter with the Slavs years, decades, or centuries after it occurred. Earlier texts contextualize the Slavs early history and development, but those written long after an event are less reliable, the Slavs were described by their neighbors as Antes, Sclaveni, and Venethi in texts written during and after the 500s. The concept of ethnicity during this period was fluid, more than one ethnicity would be ascribed to a group and this map of Slavic settlement during the 6th century relative to their neighbors drawn from written fragments, omits source information which contradicted Parczewskis conclusions. The association by archaeologists of pot and burial styles with ethnonyms, Ethnic identification can be subjective, especially in a region where many tribal groups identified themselves as distinct from one another. The history of the early Slavs is inseparable from political agendas underlying much 19th- and 20th-century archaeological, linguistic, according to Florin Curta, the creation of such a history was a function of both ethnic formation and ethnic identification. The Slavic languages, with about 300 million speakers in 2006, are a branch of the Indo-European language family. All known Slavic languages share a number of features, which suggests that they evolved from mutually intelligible dialects spoken in a relatively restricted core area, although the former common language is not attested in written sources, it can be reconstructed by studying its daughter languages. The similarities among the daughter languages indicate that Common Slavic was spoken during recorded history, theories attempting to place Slavic origin in the Near East have been discarded. None of the proposed homelands reaches the Volga River in the east, over the Dinaric Alps in the southwest or the Balkan Mountains in the south, southern Ukraine is known to have been inhabited by Scythian and Sarmatian tribes before the Goths
35.
Pomerania
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Pomerania is a region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Germany and Poland. The name derives from the Slavic po more, meaning by the sea, Pomerania stretches roughly from the Recknitz river in the west to the Vistula river in the east. The largest Pomeranian islands are Rügen, Usedom/Uznam and Wolin, the largest Pomeranian city is Gdańsk, or, when using a narrower definition of the region, Szczecin. Outside its urban areas, Pomerania is characterized by farmland, dotted with lakes, forests. The region was affected by post–World War I and II border and population shifts. Pomerania is the area along the Bay of Pomerania of the Baltic Sea between the rivers Recknitz in the west and Vistula in the east and it formerly reached perhaps as far south as the Noteć river, but since the 13th century its southern boundary has been placed further north. Most of the region is coastal lowland, being part of the North European Plain, but its southern, hilly parts belong to the Baltic Ridge, within this ridge, a chain of moraine-dammed lakes constitutes the Pomeranian Lake District. The soil is rather poor, sometimes sandy or marshy. The western coastline is jagged, with many peninsulas and islands enclosing numerous bays, Łebsko and several other lakes were formerly bays, but have been cut off from the sea. The easternmost coastline along the Gdańsk Bay and Vistula Lagoon, has the Hel peninsula, the Pomeranian region has the following administrative divisions, Hither Pomerania in northeastern Germany, stretching from the Recknitz river to the Oder–Neisse line. This region is part of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The southernmost part of historical Vorpommern is now in Brandenburg, while its eastern parts are now in Poland. Vorpommern comprises the regions inhabited by Slavic tribes Rugians and Volinians, otherwise the Principality of Rügen. The West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland, stretching from the Oder–Neisse line to the Wieprza river, the Pomeranian Voivodeship, with similar borders to Pomerelia, stretching from the Wieprza river to the Vistula delta in the vicinity of Gdańsk. The northern half of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, comprising most of Chełmno Land, the bulk of Farther Pomerania is included within the modern West Pomeranian Voivodeship, but its easternmost parts now constitute the northwest of Pomeranian Voivodeship. Parts of Pomerania and surrounding regions have constituted a euroregion since 1995, the Pomerania euroregion comprises Hither Pomerania and Uckermark in Germany, West Pomerania in Poland, and Scania in Sweden. Pomerania was first mentioned in a document of 1046, referring to a Zemuzil dux Bomeranorum. Pomerania is mentioned repeatedly in the chronicles of Adam of Bremen, the term West Pomerania is ambiguous, since it may refer to either Hither Pomerania or to the West Pomeranian Voivodeship
36.
Tuyere
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A tuyere or tuyère is a tube, nozzle or pipe through which air is blown into a furnace or hearth. Air or oxygen is injected into a hearth under pressure from bellows or an engine or other devices. This causes the fire to be hotter in front of the blast than it would otherwise have been and this applies to any process where a blast is delivered under pressure to make a fire hotter. The term was introduced to England from French with the new technology of the blast furnace and finery forge in around 1500, following the introduction of hot blast, tuyeres are often water-cooled. A bloomery normally had one tuyere, early blast furnaces also had one tuyere, but were fed from bellows perhaps 12 feet long operated by a waterwheel. During the Industrial Revolution, the blast began to be provided using steam engines, improvements in foundry practice enabled gas-tight cast iron pipes to be produced, enabling one engine to deliver blast to several sides of a furnace, through multiple tuyeres. A finery forge contained finery and chafery hearths, usually one of the latter, each hearth was equipped with its own set of bellows, blowing into it through a tuyere. The blacksmiths hearth at their forge has a tuyere, often blown by foot-operated bellows, tuyeres were also used in smelting lead and copper in smeltmills. Modern blast furnaces may have up to 42 tuyeres, through which the hot blast is injected in the furnace and they are usually made from copper and cooled with a water jacket to withstand the extreme temperatures
37.
Tumulus
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A tumulus is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or kurgans, a cairn, which is a mound of stones built for various purposes, may also originally have been a tumulus. Tumuli are often categorised according to their external apparent shape, in this respect, a long barrow is a long tumulus, usually constructed on top of several burials, such as passage graves. A round barrow is a tumulus, also commonly constructed on top of burials. The internal structure and architecture of both long and round barrows has a range, the categorization only refers to the external apparent shape. The method of inhumation may involve a dolmen, a cist, a mortuary enclosure, examples of barrows include Duggleby Howe and Maeshowe. The funeral of Patroclus is described in book 23 of the Iliad, Patroclus is burned on a pyre, and his bones are collected into a golden urn in two layers of fat. The barrow is built on the location of the pyre, achilles then sponsors funeral games, consisting of a chariot race, boxing, wrestling, running, a duel between two champions to the first blood, discus throwing, archery and spear throwing. Beowulfs body is taken to Hronesness, where it is burned on a funeral pyre, during cremation, the Geats lament the death of their lord, a widows lament being mentioned in particular, singing dirges as they circumambulate the barrow. Afterwards, a mound is built on top of a hill, overlooking the sea, a band of twelve of the best warriors ride around the barrow, singing dirges in praise of their lord. Parallels have also drawn to the account of Attilas burial in Jordanes Getica. Jordanes tells that as Attilas body was lying in state, the best horsemen of the Huns circled it, as in circus games. An Old Irish Life of Columcille reports that every funeral procession halted at a mound called Eala, whereupon the corpse was laid, archaeologists often classify tumuli according to their location, form, and date of construction. Some British types are listed below, Bank barrow Bell barrow Bowl barrow D-shaped barrow - round barrow with a flat edge at one side often defined by stone slabs. Disc barrow Fancy barrow - generic term for any Bronze Age barrows more elaborate than a hemispherical shape. Long barrow Oval barrow - a Neolithic long barrow consisting of an elliptical, platform barrow - The least common of the recognised types of round barrow, consisting of a flat, wide circular mound that may be surrounded by a ditch. They occur widely across southern England with a concentration in East and West Sussex. Pond barrow - a barrow consisting of a circular depression, surrounded by a bank running around the rim of the depression
38.
Berlin
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Berlin is the capital and the largest city of Germany as well as one of its constituent 16 states. With a population of approximately 3.5 million, Berlin is the second most populous city proper, due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one-third of the area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers. Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world, following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all-Germany. Berlin is a city of culture, politics, media. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations. Berlin serves as a hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination, significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics. Modern Berlin is home to world renowned universities, orchestras, museums and its urban setting has made it a sought-after location for international film productions. The city is known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts. Since 2000 Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene, the name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of todays Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl-. All German place names ending on -ow, -itz and -in, since the Ber- at the beginning sounds like the German word Bär, a bear appears in the coat of arms of the city. It is therefore a canting arm, the first written records of towns in the area of present-day Berlin date from the late 12th century. Spandau is first mentioned in 1197 and Köpenick in 1209, although these areas did not join Berlin until 1920, the central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document,1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, and profited from the right on the two important trade routes Via Imperii and from Bruges to Novgorod. In 1307, they formed an alliance with a common external policy, in 1415 Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. In 1443 Frederick II Irontooth started the construction of a new palace in the twin city Berlin-Cölln
39.
Gord (archaeology)
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A gord is a medieval Slavonic fortified wooden settlement, sometimes known as a burgwall after the German term for such sites. Gords were built during the late Bronze and early Iron Ages by the Lusatian culture (c, 1300–500 BCE, and later in the 8th–7th centuries BCE, in what are now Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, eastern Germany, and India. These settlements were founded on strategic sites such as hills, riverbanks, lake islands. A typical gord was a group of houses built either in rows or in circles, surrounded by one or more rings of walls made of earth and wood. Some gords were ring-shaped, with a round, oval, or occasionally polygonal fence or wall surrounding a hollow, others, built on a natural hill or a man-made mound, were cone-shaped. Those with a defense on one side, such as a river or lake, were usually horseshoe-shaped. Most gords were built in densely populated areas on sites that offered particular natural advantages, as Slavic tribes united to form states, gords were also built for defensive purposes in less-populated border areas. Gords in which rulers resided or that lay on trade routes quickly expanded, near the gord, or below it in elevation, there formed small communities of servants, merchants, artisans, and others who served the higher-ranked inhabitants of the gord. Each such community was known as a suburbium and its residents could shelter within the walls of the gord in the event of danger. Eventually the suburbium acquired its own fence or wall, in the High Middle Ages, the gord usual evolved into a castle or citadel and the suburbium into a town. Some gords did not stand the test of time and were abandoned or destroyed, notable archeological sites include Biskupin, Poland, and Bilsk, Ukraine. The term ultimately descends from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root ǵʰortós, enclosure, from this same root come the Germanic word elements *gard and *gart, and likely also the names of Graz, Austria and Gartz, Germany. Cognate to these are English words such as yard, garth, girdle, also cognate but less closely related are Latin hortus, a garden, and its English descendants horticulture and orchard. Further afield, in ancient Iran, a fortified settlement was called a gerd. Burugerd or Borujerd is a city in the West of Iran, the Indian suffix -garh, meaning a fort in Hindi, Sanskrit, and other Indo-Iranian languages, appears in many Indian place names. The Proto-Slavic word gordъ later differentiated into grad and gorod, etc and it is the root of various words in modern Slavic languages pertaining to fences and fenced areas. Some of them are in countries which once were but no longer are mainly inhabited by Slavic-speaking peoples, the word survives in the names of several villages and town districts, as well as in the names of the German municipalities Puttgarden, Wagria and Putgarten, Rügen. Garðaríki - Varangian name for Kievan Rus, interpreted as cities Biskupin, fortified settlements in other cultures, Kraal, Motte-and-bailey
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Storage pit (archaeology)
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Storage pits were underground cists used by many people in the past to protect the seeds for the following years crops and surplus food from being eaten by insects and rodents. The underground pits were lined and covered, for example with slabs of stone and bark. Large storage pits were built underground to conceal their presence, a method used by mobile populations in many parts of the world. Worlebury Camp storage pits are 93 storage pits found at the Iron Age hill fort that stood north of the town of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England. The pits were cut into bedrock for keeps, one is a ditch for protection), the inhabitants used them to store grain, as is evidenced by the kernels of barley and wheat and the shards of pots that were found in the pits. Also found were remains of burned woven baskets and, dated to the 2nd or 1st century BC, sling stones and spindle whorls. remains of human skeletons were found in 18 of the pits,10 of which show evidence of a violent death. Māori storage pit sites remain clearly visible in many place in New Zealand, pits were dug into soft rock faces as well as into earth, especially in Maori Pa. Maori storage pits can be confused with fighting pits and also pits which were excavated to extract drainage material, the pumice was mixed with heavier soil to promote drainage for growing kumara, the principal vegetable crop of the Maori after about 1500. The Maori name for a pit is rua. An excavation found such storage pits on the banks of the Waikato River below the Waikato Museum in early 2012
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Emmer
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Emmer wheat, also known as farro especially in Italy, or hulled wheat, is a type of awned wheat. The domesticated species are Triticum turgidum subsp, dicoccum and Triticum turgidum conv. durum. The wild species is called Triticum turgidum subsp, along with einkorn wheat, emmer was one of the first crops domesticated in the Near East. It was widely cultivated in the ancient world, but is now a relict crop in regions of Europe. Strong similarities in morphology and genetics show that wild emmer is the wild ancestor, because wild and domesticated emmer are interfertile with other tetraploid wheats, some taxonomists consider all tetraploid wheats to belong to one species, T. turgidum. Under this scheme, the two forms are recognized at subspecies level, thus T. turgidum subsp, either naming system is equally valid, the latter lays more emphasis on genetic similarities. For a wider discussion, see Wheat#Genetics & Breeding and Wheat taxonomy Wild emmer grows wild in the Near East, like einkorn and spelt wheats, emmer is a hulled wheat. In other words, it has strong glumes that enclose the grains, on threshing, a hulled wheat spike breaks up into spikelets. These require milling or pounding to release the grains from the glumes, Wild emmer wheat spikelets effectively self-cultivate by propelling themselves mechanically into soils with their awns. During a period of increased humidity during the night, the awns of the spikelet become erect and draw together, and in the process push the grain into the soil. During the daytime, the humidity drops and the awns slacken back again, however, fine hairs on the awns act as hooks in the soil. During the course of alternating stages of daytime and nighttime humidity, the awns pumping movements, Wild emmer is native to the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, growing in the grass and woodland of hill country from modern-day Israel to Iran. The origin of wild emmer has been suggested, without universal agreement among scholars, in 1906, Aaron Aaronsohns discovery of wild emmer wheat growing in Rosh Pinna created a stir in the botanical world. Emmer wheat has been found in excavations and ancient tombs. Emmer was collected from the wild and eaten by hunter gatherers for thousands of years before its domestication. Grains of wild emmer discovered at Ohalo II had a radiocarbon dating of 17,000 BC and at the Pre Pottery Neolithic A site of Netiv Hagdud are 10, the location of the earliest site of emmer domestication is still unclear and under debate. Emmer is found in a number of Neolithic sites scattered around the fertile crescent. From its earliest days of cultivation, emmer was a more prominent crop than its contemporaries and competitors, einkorn wheat
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Barley
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Barley, a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago, Barley has been used as animal fodder, as a source of fermentable material for beer and certain distilled beverages, and as a component of various health foods. It is used in soups and stews, and in barley bread of various cultures, Barley grains are commonly made into malt in a traditional and ancient method of preparation. In 2014, barley was ranked fourth among grains in quantity produced behind corn, rice, the Old English word for barley was bære, which traces back to Proto-Indo-European and is cognate to the Latin word farina flour. The direct ancestor of modern English barley in Old English was the derived adjective bærlic, the first citation of the form bærlic in the Oxford English Dictionary dates to around 966 CE, in the compound word bærlic-croft. The underived word bære survives in the north of Scotland as bere, the word barn, which originally meant barley-house, is also rooted in these words. Barley is a member of the grass family and it is a self-pollinating, diploid species with 14 chromosomes. The wild ancestor of domesticated barley, Hordeum vulgare subsp, spontaneum, is abundant in grasslands and woodlands throughout the Fertile Crescent area of Western Asia and northeast Africa, and is abundant in disturbed habitats, roadsides and orchards. Outside this region, the barley is less common and is usually found in disturbed habitats. However, in a study of genome-wide diversity markers, Tibet was found to be a center of domestication of cultivated barley. Wild barley has a spike, upon maturity, the spikelets separate. Domesticated barley has nonshattering spikes, making it easier to harvest the mature ears. The nonshattering condition is caused by a mutation in one of two linked genes known as Bt1 and Bt2, many cultivars possess both mutations. The nonshattering condition is recessive, so varieties of barley that exhibit this condition are homozygous for the mutant allele, spikelets are arranged in triplets which alternate along the rachis. In wild barley, only the central spikelet is fertile, while the two are reduced. This condition is retained in certain cultivars known as two-row barleys, a pair of mutations result in fertile lateral spikelets to produce six-row barleys. Recent genetic studies have revealed that a mutation in one gene, two-row barley has a lower protein content than six-row barley, thus a more fermentable sugar content. High-protein barley is best suited for animal feed, Malting barley is usually lower protein which shows more uniform germination, needs shorter steeping, and has less protein in the extract that can make beer cloudy
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