1.
Olympus Mons
–
Olympus Mons is a very large shield volcano on the planet Mars. It is the youngest of the volcanoes on Mars, having formed during Marss Hesperian Period. It is currently the largest volcano discovered in the Solar System and had known to astronomers since the late 19th century as the albedo feature Nix Olympica. Its mountainous nature was suspected well before space probes confirmed its identity as a mountain, the volcano is located in Marss western hemisphere at approximately 18. 65°N226. 2°E /18.65,226.2, just off the northwestern edge of the Tharsis bulge. The western portion of the lies in the Amazonis quadrangle. Two impact craters on Olympus Mons have been assigned names by the International Astronomical Union. They are the 15.6 km -diameter Karzok crater and the 10.4 km -diameter Pangboche crater, the craters are notable for being two of several suspected source areas for shergottites, the most abundant class of Martian meteorites. As a shield volcano, Olympus Mons resembles the shape of the large volcanoes making up the Hawaiian Islands, the edifice is about 600 km wide. Because the mountain is so large, with structure at its edges. It stands 21 km above the Mars global datum, and its local relief, the total elevation change from the plains of Amazonis Planitia, over 1,000 km to the northwest, to the summit approaches 26 km. The summit of the mountain has six nested calderas forming an irregular depression 60 km ×80 km across, the volcanos outer edge consists of an escarpment, or cliff, up to 8 km tall, a feature unique among the shield volcanoes of Mars. Olympus Mons covers an area approximately the size of Italy, or about 300,000 km2, being a shield volcano, Olympus Mons has a very gently sloping profile. The average slope on the flanks is only 5°. Slopes are highest near the part of the flanks and grow shallower toward the base. The shape of Olympus Mons is distinctly asymmetrical and its flanks are shallower and extend farther from the summit in the northwestern direction than they do to the southeast. The volcanos shape and profile have been likened to a circus tent held up by a pole that is shifted off center. Because of the size of Olympus Mons and its shallow slopes, the curvature of the planet and the volcano itself would obscure such a synoptic view. Similarly, an observer near the summit would be unaware of standing on a high mountain, as the slope of the volcano would extend far beyond the horizon
Olympus Mons
–
Viking 1 orbiter view of Olympus Mons with its summit
caldera,
escarpment and aureole
Olympus Mons
–
Mars Global Surveyor image showing lava flows of different ages at the base of Olympus Mons. The flat plain is the younger flow. The older flow has lava channels with
levees along the edges. Levees are quite common on many lava flows on Mars.
Olympus Mons
–
Calderas on the summit of Olympus Mons. The youngest calderas form circular collapse craters. Older calderas appear as semicircular segments because they are transected by the younger calderas.
Olympus Mons
–
Oblique view of Olympus Mons, from a
Viking image mosaic overlain on
MOLA altimetry data, showing the volcano's asymmetry. The view is from the
NNE; vertical exaggeration is 10x. The wider, gently sloping northern flank is to the right. The more narrow and steeply sloping southern flank (left) has low, rounded terraces, features interpreted as
thrust faults. The volcano's basal escarpment is prominent.
2.
Summit
–
A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. Mathematically, a summit is a maximum in elevation. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak, and zenith are synonymous, the UIAA definition is that a summit is independent if it has a prominence of 30 metres or more, it is a mountain if it has a prominence of at least 300 metres. This can be summarised as follows, A pyramidal peak is an exaggerated form produced by ice erosion of a mountain top, Summit may also refer to the highest point along a line, trail, or route. In many parts of the western United States, the term refers to the highest point along a road, highway. For example, the highest point along Interstate 80 in California is referred to as Donner Summit while the highest point on Interstate 5 is Siskiyou Mountain Summit, geoid Hill List of highest mountains Maxima and minima Nadir Summit accordance Peak finder
Summit
–
The highest elevation summit, Mount Everest, shown with a climber at the summit wearing an oxygen mask. The summit is 8850 m (29,035 ft) elevation. (While the cruising altitude of jetliners is roughly 10,000 m (32,808 feet), they are pressurized.)
Summit
–
View from the summit of Switzerland's highest,
Monte Rosa
Summit
–
The summit of
Mount Damavand,
Iran, in winter
Summit
–
Jeff Davis Peak, one of the highest peaks entirely within
Nevada
3.
Topographic prominence
–
It is a measure of the independence of a summit. A peaks key col is a point on this contour line. By convention, the prominence of Mount Everest, the Earths highest mountain, is taken to equal the elevation of its summit above sea level, if the peaks prominence is P metres, to get from the summit to any higher terrain one must descend at least P metres. Together with the convention for Mount Everest, this implies that the prominence of any island or continental highpoint is equal to its elevation above sea level, for every ridge connecting the peak to higher terrain, find the lowest point on the ridge. The key col is defined as the highest of these cols, the prominence is the difference between the elevation of the peak and the elevation of the key col. The following mental exercise may illustrate the meaning of topographic prominence, imagine you are standing at the top of a peak and imagine that an imaginary sea level rises to your feet. Now slowly lower the sea level and an imaginary island appears beneath your feet. Your island will grow and will merge with other islands that emerge, the parent peak may be either close or far from the subject peak. The summit of Mount Everest is the parent peak of Aconcagua at a distance of 17,755 km, the key col may also be close or far from the subject peak. The key col for Aconcagua is the Bering Strait at a distance of 13,655 km, the key col for the South Summit of Mount Everest is about 100 m distant. Prominence is interesting to many mountaineers because it is a measurement that is strongly correlated with the subjective significance of a summit. Peaks with low prominences are either subsidiary tops of some higher summit or relatively insignificant independent summits, peaks with high prominences tend to be the highest points around and are likely to have extraordinary views. Only summits with a sufficient degree of prominence are regarded as independent mountains, for example, the worlds second-highest mountain is K2. While Mount Everests South Summit is taller than K2, it is not considered an independent mountain because it is a subsummit of the main summit, many lists of mountains take topographic prominence as a criterion for inclusion, or cutoff. John and Anne Nuttalls The Mountains of England and Wales uses a cutoff of 15 m, in the contiguous United States, the famous list of fourteeners uses a cutoff of 300 ft /91 m. Also in the U. S.2000 feet of prominence has become a threshold that signifies that a peak has major stature. This generates lists of peaks ranked by prominence, which are different from lists ranked by elevation. Such lists tend to emphasize isolated high peaks, such as range or island high points, one advantage of a prominence-ranked list is that it needs no cutoff, since a peak with high prominence is automatically an independent peak
Topographic prominence
–
Figure 3. Diagram of a mountain range showing peaks and cols, from which mountain parentage and prominences can be determined.
Topographic prominence
–
Topographic prominence of three peaks near Great Pond Mountain, Maine, USA. Red triangles mark the peaks, the lowest contour line encircling each peak are shown in black and the green dots mark the key cols. The prominences are Atkins Hill: 430 – 310 = 120 ft, Cave Hill: 570 - 530 = 40 ft, Mead Mountain: 671 - 530 = 141 ft. The parent peak of each peak is Great Pond Mountain.
4.
Topographic isolation
–
The topographic isolation of a summit is the minimum great-circle distance to a point of equal elevation, representing a radius of dominance in which the peak is the highest point. It can be calculated for small hills and islands as well as for major mountain peaks, the following sortable table lists the Earths 40 most topographically isolated summits. The nearest peak to Germanys highest mountain, the 2, 962-metre-high Zugspitze, the distance between the Zugspitze and this contour is 25.8 km, the Zugspitze is thus the highest peak for a radius of 25.8 km around. Its isolation is thus 25.8 km, because there are no higher mountains than Mount Everest, it has no definitive isolation. Many sources list its isolation as the circumference of the earth over the poles or – questionably, after Mount Everest the Aconcagua, highest mountain of the American continents, has the greatest isolation of all mountains. There is no land for 16,534 kilometres when its height is first exceeded by Tirich Mir in the Hindu Kush. Mont Blanc is the highest mountain of the Alps, the geographically nearest higher mountains are all in the Caucasus. The Kukurtlu, which rises near the Elbrus, is the peak for Mont Blanc. com Canadian Mountain Encyclopedia peakbagger. com peaklist. org peakware. com World Mountain Encyclopedia summitpost. org
Topographic isolation
–
Topographic isolation and prominence
Topographic isolation
–
1.
Mount Everest is the highest mountain peak on Earth.
Topographic isolation
–
2.
Aconcagua is the highest peak in the
Western Hemisphere.
Topographic isolation
–
3.
Mount McKinley, or
Denali, is the highest peak of
North America.
5.
List of countries by highest point
–
The following sortable table lists land surface elevation extremes by country. Topographic elevation is the distance above the reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earths sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface. Of all countries, Lesotho has the worlds highest low point at 1,400 m, other countries with high low points include Rwanda and Andorra. The Maldives have the worlds lowest high point at 2.4 m, other countries with very low high points include Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands. These island countries also have the smallest range between their lowest and highest points, and are sensitive to rise in sea level. The highest and lowest points in China constitute the greatest elevation range within any country at 9,002 m. The elevation ranges are also great in Nepal, Pakistan, monacos elevation range is among the greatest relative to surface area. Within its 2.02 km² territory, there is a difference of 140 m between its highest and lowest points, equivalent to a gradient of 69 m for every km². Central Intelligence Agency The World Factbook U. S. Department of State Background Notes
List of countries by highest point
–
The summit of
Mount Everest is the highest point on
Earth.
List of countries by highest point
–
Map of countries coloured according to their highest point
List of countries by highest point
–
The summit of
K2 is the highest point of
Pakistan.
List of countries by highest point
–
The summit of
Kangchenjunga is the highest point of
India.
6.
Ultra prominent peak
–
An ultra-prominent peak, or Ultra for short, is defined as a mountain summit with a topographic prominence of 1,500 metres or more. There are approximately 1,524 such peaks on Earth, some peaks, such as the Matterhorn and Eiger, are not Ultras because they are connected to higher mountains by high cols and therefore do not achieve enough topographic prominence. The term Ultra is due to earth scientist Stephen Fry, from his studies of the prominence of peaks in Washington in the 1980s and his original term was ultra major mountain, referring to peaks with at least 5,000 ft of prominence. Currently,1,515 Ultras have been identified worldwide,637 in Asia,355 in North America,209 in South America,119 in Europe,84 in Africa,69 in Australasia and 39 in Antarctica. Many of the worlds largest mountains are Ultras, including Mount Everest, K2, Kilimanjaro, Mont Blanc, on the other hand, others such as the Eiger and the Matterhorn are not Ultras because they do not have sufficient prominence. In British Columbia, some of the mountains listed do not even have generally recognized names, a number of Ultras have yet to be climbed, with Sauyr Zhotasy, Mount Siple, and Gangkar Puensum being the most likely candidates for the most prominent unclimbed mountain in the world. All of the Seven Summits are Ultras by virtue of the fact that they are the points of large landmasses. Each has its key col at or near sea level, resulting in a value almost equal to its elevation. List of peaks by prominence gives the 125 most prominent peaks worldwide
Ultra prominent peak
–
The summit of
Mount Logan in the
Yukon, the highest point in
Canada, is ranked sixth in the world by topographic prominence.
Ultra prominent peak
–
Map of Ultras worldwide
7.
Geographic coordinate system
–
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
Geographic coordinate system
–
Longitude lines are perpendicular and latitude lines are parallel to the equator.
8.
Greece
–
Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, historically also known as Hellas, is a country in southeastern Europe, with a population of approximately 11 million as of 2015. Athens is the capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki. Greece is strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, situated on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. Greece consists of nine regions, Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, the Aegean Islands, Thrace, Crete. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km in length, featuring a vast number of islands, eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at 2,918 metres. From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as polis, which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming a part of the Roman Empire and its successor. The Greek Orthodox Church also shaped modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World, falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, the modern nation state of Greece emerged in 1830 following a war of independence. Greeces rich historical legacy is reflected by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, among the most in Europe, Greece is a democratic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy, a high quality of life, and a very high standard of living. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the member to join the European Communities and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001. Greeces unique cultural heritage, large industry, prominent shipping sector. It is the largest economy in the Balkans, where it is an important regional investor, the names for the nation of Greece and the Greek people differ from the names used in other languages, locations and cultures. The earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, all three stages of the stone age are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries and these civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Mycenaeans in Linear B, an early form of Greek. The Mycenaeans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC and this ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent. The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, in 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the worlds first democratic system of government in Athens
Greece
–
Fresco displaying the Minoan ritual of "bull leaping", found in
Knossos,
Crete.
Greece
–
Flag
Greece
–
The
Lion Gate,
Mycenae
Greece
–
The
Parthenon on the
Acropolis of Athens is one of the best known symbols of
classical Greece.
9.
Mountain range
–
A mountain range is a geographic area containing numerous geologically related mountains. A mountain system or system of ranges, sometimes is used to combine several geological features that are geographically related. Mountain ranges are usually segmented by highlands or mountain passes and valleys, individual mountains within the same mountain range do not necessarily have the same geologic structure or petrology. They may be a mix of different orogenic expressions and terranes, for example thrust sheets, uplifted blocks, fold mountains, most geologically young mountain ranges on the Earths land surface are associated with either the Pacific Ring of Fire or the Alpide Belt. The Andes is 7,000 kilometres long and is considered the worlds longest mountain system. The Alpide belt includes Indonesia and southeast Asia, through the Himalaya, the belt also includes other European and Asian mountain ranges. The Himalayas contain the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, mountain ranges outside of these two systems include the Arctic Cordillera, the Urals, the Appalachians, the Scandinavian Mountains, the Altai Mountains and the Hijaz Mountains. If the definition of a range is stretched to include underwater mountains. The mountain systems of the earth are characterized by a tree structure, the sub-range relationship is often expressed as a parent-child relationship. For example, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Blue Ridge Mountains are sub-ranges of the Appalachian Mountains, equivalently, the Appalachians are the parent of the White Mountains and Blue Ridge Mountains, and the White Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains are children of the Appalachians. The position of mountains influences climate, such as rain or snow, when air masses move up and over mountains, the air cools producing orographic precipitation. As the air descends on the side, it warms again and is drier. Often, a shadow will affect the leeward side of a range. Mountain ranges are constantly subjected to forces which work to tear them down. Erosion is at work while the mountains are being uplifted and long after until the mountains are reduced to low hills, rivers are traditionally believed to be the principle erosive factor on mountain ranges, with their ability of bedrock incision and sediment transport. The rugged topography of a range is the product of erosion. The basins adjacent to a mountain range are filled with sediments which are buried and turned into sedimentary rock. The early Cenozoic uplift of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado provides an example and this mass of rock was removed as the range was actively undergoing uplift
Mountain range
–
The
Himalayas, the highest mountain range on Earth, seen from space
Mountain range
–
Mountain range of
High Tatras in
Slovakia in 1865
Mountain range
–
The
Andes, the world's longest mountain range on the surface of a continent, seen from the air
Mountain range
–
Hillary and Norgay Montes on Pluto (14 July 2015)
10.
First ascent
–
In climbing, a first ascent is the first successful, documented attainment of the top of a mountain, or the first to follow a particular climbing route. First ascents are notable because they entail genuine exploration, with risks, challenges. The person who performs the first ascent is called the first ascensionist, the details of the first ascents of even many prominent mountains are scanty or unknown, sometimes the only evidence of prior summiting is a cairn, artifacts, or inscriptions at the top. Today, first ascents are generally recorded and usually mentioned in guidebooks. Overwhelmingly, the idea of a first ascent is a one, especially in places such as Africa. There may be little or no evidence or documentation about the climbing activities of indigenous peoples living near the mountain. The term is used when referring to ascents made using a specific technique or taking a specific route, such as via the North Face. In rock climbing, some of the earlier first ascents, particularly for difficult routes, involved a mix of free, as a result, purist free climbers have developed the designation first free ascent to acknowledge ascents intentionally made more challenging by using equipment for protection only. Some other first ascents could be recorded for particular mountains or routes, one is the First Winter Ascent, which is, as the name easily suggests, the first ascent made during winter season. This is most important where the climate of winter is a factor in increasing the difficulty grade of the route, in the Northern Hemisphere conventional winter ascents are made between December 21 and March 21 and are not related to the conditions. Also in the Himalayan area, although Nepal and Chinas winter season permits start on December 1, another is the First Solo Ascent, which is the first ascent made by a single climber. This is most important on high-level rock climbing, when the climber has to provide his own security or even when climbing without any protection at all, another type of ascent, also known as FFA is the first female ascent. The term last ascent has been used to refer to an ascent of a mountain or face that has changed to such an extent – often because of rockfall – that the route no longer exists. It can also be used facetiously to refer to a climb that is so unpleasant or unaesthetic that no one would willingly repeat the first ascent partys ordeal. List of first ascents List of first ascents in the Alps List of first ascents in the Himalaya Glossary of climbing terms Alpinist Magazine – Peter Mortimers First Ascent, Issue 17
First ascent
–
Henry Barber on first ascent of Savage Journey at Lost World,
Mt. Wellington,
Tasmania, 1975
11.
Greek language
–
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
Greek language
–
Idealized portrayal of
Homer
Greek language
–
regions where Greek is the official language
Greek language
–
Greek language road sign, A27 Motorway, Greece
12.
Mountain
–
A mountain is a large landform that stretches above the surrounding land in a limited area, usually in the form of a peak. A mountain is steeper than a hill. Mountains are formed through tectonic forces or volcanism and these forces can locally raise the surface of the earth. Mountains erode slowly through the action of rivers, weather conditions, a few mountains are isolated summits, but most occur in huge mountain ranges. High elevations on mountains produce colder climates than at sea level and these colder climates strongly affect the ecosystems of mountains, different elevations have different plants and animals. Because of the less hospitable terrain and climate, mountains tend to be used less for agriculture and more for resource extraction and recreation, the highest mountain on Earth is Mount Everest in the Himalayas of Asia, whose summit is 8,850 m above mean sea level. The highest known mountain on any planet in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars at 21,171 m, there is no universally accepted definition of a mountain. Elevation, volume, relief, steepness, spacing and continuity have been used as criteria for defining a mountain, whether a landform is called a mountain may depend on local usage. The highest point in San Francisco, California, is called Mount Davidson, notwithstanding its height of 300 m, similarly, Mount Scott outside Lawton, Oklahoma is only 251 m from its base to its highest point. Whittows Dictionary of Physical Geography states Some authorities regard eminences above 600 metres as mountains, in addition, some definitions also include a topographical prominence requirement, typically 100 or 500 feet. For a while, the US defined a mountain as being 1,000 feet or taller, any similar landform lower than this height was considered a hill. However, today, the United States Geological Survey concludes that these terms do not have technical definitions in the US, using these definitions, mountains cover 33% of Eurasia, 19% of South America, 24% of North America, and 14% of Africa. As a whole, 24% of the Earths land mass is mountainous, there are three main types of mountains, volcanic, fold, and block. All three types are formed from plate tectonics, when portions of the Earths crust move, crumple, compressional forces, isostatic uplift and intrusion of igneous matter forces surface rock upward, creating a landform higher than the surrounding features. The height of the feature makes it either a hill or, if higher and steeper, major mountains tend to occur in long linear arcs, indicating tectonic plate boundaries and activity. Volcanoes are formed when a plate is pushed below another plate, at a depth of around 100 km, melting occurs in rock above the slab, and forms magma that reaches the surface. When the magma reaches the surface, it builds a volcanic mountain. Examples of volcanoes include Mount Fuji in Japan and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, the magma does not have to reach the surface in order to create a mountain, magma that solidifies below ground can still form dome mountains, such as Navajo Mountain in the US
Mountain
–
Mount Everest, the highest peak on Earth
Mountain
–
Chimborazo,
Ecuador. The point on Earth's surface farthest from its center.
Mountain
–
Aiguille du Dru in the
French Alps
Mountain
–
The
Matterhorn,
Swiss Alps
13.
Thessaly
–
Thessaly is a traditional geographic and modern administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, Thessaly became part of the modern Greek state in 1881, after four and a half centuries of Ottoman rule. Since 1987 it has formed one of the countrys 13 regions and is further sub-divided into 5 regional units and 25 municipalities, the capital of the region is Larissa. Thessaly lies in central Greece and borders the regions of Macedonia on the north, Epirus on the west, Central Greece on the south, the Thessaly region also includes the Sporades islands. In Homers epic, the Odyssey, the hero Odysseus visited the kingdom of Aeolus, the Plain of Thessaly, which lies between Mount Oeta/Othrys and Mount Olympus, was the site of the battle between the Titans and the Olympians. According to legend, Jason and the Argonauts launched their search for the Golden Fleece from the Magnesia Peninsula, Thessaly was home to extensive Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures around 6000–2500 BC. Mycenaean settlements have also discovered, for example at the sites of Iolcos, Dimini. In Archaic and Classical times, the lowlands of Thessaly became the home of baronial families, in the summer of 480 BC, the Persians invaded Thessaly. The Greek army that guarded the Vale of Tempe evacuated the road before the enemy arrived, not much later, Thessaly surrendered to the Persians. The Thessalian family of Aleuadae joined the Persians subsequently, in the 4th century BC, after the Greco-Persian Wars had long ended, Jason of Pherae transformed the region into a significant military power, recalling the glory of Early Archaic times. Shortly after, Philip II of Macedon was appointed Archon of Thessaly, the Avars had arrived in Europe in the late 550s. They asserted their authority over many Slavs, who were divided into numerous petty tribes, many Slavs were galvanized into an effective infantry force, by the Avars. In the 7th century the Avar-Slav alliance began to raid the Byzantine Empire, laying siege to Thessalonica, relations between the Slavs and Greeks were probably peaceful apart from the initial settlement and intermittent uprisings. Being agriculturalists, the Slavs probably traded with the Greeks inside towns and it is likely that the re-Hellenization had already begun by way of this contact. This process would be completed by a newly reinvigorated Byzantine Empire, with the abatement of Arab-Byzantine Wars, the Byzantine Empire began to consolidate its power in those areas of mainland Greece occupied by Proto-Slavic tribes. Following the campaigns of the Byzantine general Staurakios in 782–783, the Byzantine Empire recovered Thessaly, apart from military expeditions against Slavs, the re-Hellenization process begun under Nicephorus I involved transfer of peoples. Many Slavs were moved to other parts of the such as Anatolia. In return, many Greeks from Sicily and Asia Minor were brought to the interior of Greece, to increase the number of defenders at the Emperors disposal, even non-Greeks such as Armenians were transferred to the Balkans
Thessaly
–
First Ancient Theatre, Larissa.
Thessaly
–
Pineios river with the church of
St. Achilles, patron saint of
Larissa, in the background.
Thessaly
–
"The Hyperian Fountain at
Pherae ",
Edward Dodwell.
14.
Macedonia (Greece)
–
Macedonia is a geographic and historical region of Greece in the southern Balkans. Macedonia is the largest and second most populous Greek region, dominated by mountains in the interior, Macedonia is part of Northern Greece, together with Thrace and sometimes Thessaly and Epirus. It incorporates most of the territories of ancient Macedon, a kingdom ruled by the Argeads whose most celebrated members were Alexander the Great, the name Macedonia was later applied to identify various administrative areas in the Roman/Byzantine Empire with widely differing borders. Even before the establishment of the modern Greek state in 1830, it was identified as a Greek province, by the mid 19th century, the name was becoming consolidated informally, defining more of a distinct geographical, rather than political, region in the southern Balkans. At the end of the Ottoman Empire most of the known as Rumelia was divided by the Treaty of Bucharest of 1913. Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria each took control of portions of the Macedonian region, with Greece obtaining the largest portion, Central Macedonia is the most popular tourist destination in Greece with more than 3.6 million tourists in 2009. Macedonia lies at the crossroads of human development between the Aegean and the Balkans, the earliest signs of human habitation date back to the palaeolithic period, notably with the Petralona cave in which was found the oldest European humanoid, Archanthropus europaeus petraloniensis. In the Late Neolithic period, trade took place from quite distant regions, one of the most important changes was the start of copper working. According to Herodotus, the history of Macedonia began with the Makednoi tribe, among the first to use the name, there they lived near Thracian tribes such as the Bryges who would later leave Macedonia for Asia Minor and become known as Phrygians. Macedonia was named after the Makednoi, accounts of other toponyms such as Emathia are attested to have been in use before that. Herodotus claims that a branch of the Macedonians invaded Southern Greece towards the end of the second millennium B. C, upon reaching the Peloponnese the invaders were renamed Dorians, triggering the accounts of the Dorian invasion. For centuries the Macedonian tribes were organized in independent kingdoms, in what is now Central Macedonia, the Macedonians claimed to be Dorian Greeks and there were many Ionians in the coastal regions. During the late 6th and early 5th century BC, the region came under Persian rule until the destruction of Xerxes at Plataea, many Macedonian cities were allied to the Spartans, but Athens maintained the colony of Amphipolis under her control for many years. The kingdom of Macedon, was reorganised by Philip II and achieved the union of Greek states by forming the League of Corinth. After his assassination, his son Alexander succeeded to the throne of Macedon, for a brief period a Macedonian republic called the Koinon of the Macedonians was established. It was divided into four administrative districts and that period ended in 148 BC, when Macedonia was fully annexed by the Romans. The northern boundary at that time ended at Lake Ohrid and Bylazora, strabo, writing in the first century AD places the border of Macedonia on that part at Lychnidos, Byzantine Achris and presently Ochrid. Therefore ancient Macedonia did not significantly extend beyond its current borders, the Acts of the Apostles records a vision in which the apostle Paul is said to have seen a man of Macedonia pleading with him, saying, Come over to Macedonia and help us
Macedonia (Greece)
–
Archaeological site of
Pella, capital of
ancient Macedonia
Macedonia (Greece)
–
Flag
Macedonia (Greece)
–
Facade of the "Tomb of the Palmettes" (3rd BC),
Mieza
Macedonia (Greece)
–
Lion of Amphipolis
15.
Pieria (regional unit)
–
Pieria is one of the regional units of Greece located in the southern part of the Region of Central Macedonia, within the historical province of Macedonia. Its capital is the town of Katerini, Pieria is the smallest regional unit within Macedonia. The name Pieria originates from the ancient Pieres tribe, in Pieria, there are many sites of archeological interest, such as Dion, Pydna and Platamonas. Pieria is also home to Mt. Pierus where Hermes launches himself from to visit Calypso, home to Orpheus, Mt. Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece and throne of the ancient Greek gods, is located in the southern part of Pieria. Other ancient cities included Leibethra and Pimpleia, the Pieria regional unit is bordered by Larissa to the south and west, Kozani to the west and Imathia to the north. The Pierian Mountains lie to the west, the Thermaic Gulf lies to the east. It also has a valley by the GR-13, most of the population live within the Olympian Riviera. The lowest point is the Thermian Gulf and the highest point is Mount Olympus and it combines extensive plains, high mountains and sandy beaches. The regions beauty gives it a potential for further tourist development. Its climate is mainly of Mediterranean type with hot summers and cool winters, severe winter weather is common in the central and western parts of Pieria, especially in the Pierian Mountains and on Mount Olympus. On June 8,2007, a low pressure system from Southern and Central Europe resulted in heavy rainfall that ravaged the prefecture and caused great damage in fruit. The worst hit area was Korinos, the regional unit Pieria is subdivided into 3 municipalities. These are, Dio-Olympos Katerini Pydna-Kolindros As a part of the 2011 Kallikratis government reform, the prefecture had the same territory as the present regional unit. At the same time, the municipalities were reorganised, according to the table below, the name Pieria has been connected to Homeric πῖαρ fat, πίειραν ἄρουραν fertile land in a metaphorical sense. It became part of the Roman Republic after the Fourth Macedonian War, and remained part of the Roman Empire and its successor and it was later invaded and became a part of the Ottoman Empire. During the Greek War of Independence in 1821, Pieria took up arms along with the rest of Greece, until 1947, Pieria was part of the Thessaloniki Prefecture, as a province. Pieria saw a boom in agriculture and business. The village of Elafos in the municipal unit Elafina, formerly a community in the Imathia prefecture, was united with Pieria in 1974 and his original name was Georgios Zorbas
Pieria (regional unit)
–
Municipalities of Pieria
16.
Larissa (regional unit)
–
Larissa is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Thessaly and its capital is the city of Larissa. Larissa is the second largest regional unit in Greece, exceeded only by Aetolia-Acarnania and it covers about one-third of Thessaly. The tallest mountain in Greece, Mount Olympus is situated in the part of the regional unit. Mount Ossa is situated in the east, at the Aegean coast, the lower stretch of the river Pineios flows through the Vale of Tempe, between Olympus and Ossa. The northern part is covered forests, but most of the regional unit is fertile land. Larissa has a mainly Mediterranean climate with hot summers and mild winters, winter is harsher in the mountains areas, notably the north and Mount Olympus. Larissa is often the warmest area in Greece in summer and the coldest in winter, the highest temperature ever recorded was 45.4 °C and the coldest was -21.6 °C. Τhe city experiences very often temperatures over 40 °C, the regional unit Larissa is subdivided into 7 municipalities. These are, Agia Elassona Farsala Kileler Larissa Tempi Tyrnavos Larissa was created as a prefecture in 1882, as a part of the 2011 Kallikratis government reform, the regional unit Larissa was created out of the former prefecture Larissa. The prefecture had the territory as the present regional unit. At the same time, the municipalities were reorganised, according to the table below, Province of Larissa Province of Tyrnavos Province of Agia Province of Elassona Province of Farsala Note, Provinces no longer hold any legal status in Greece, they were abolished in 2006. The area of Larissa was home to the Pelasgians until they merged into the broeader Greek culture, the area was invaded and was ruled by the Kingdom of Macedonia a few centuries later, and was conquered by the Roman Republic after the Third Macedonian War. The Roman imperial period was followed by Byzantine rule, which was in turn succeeded by the Ottoman Empire, parts of Thessaly revolted during the Greek War of Independence, but Thessaly remained under Ottoman Turkish rule. During the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, the area was invaded by the Ottomans. The northern portions of the prefecture, the Tempe Valley and Mount Olympus, were taken by Greece during the First Balkan War in 1912-1913, the economy increased since the annexation in 1881 and later after 1913 for the north. After the Greco-Turkish War in Asia Minor of 1920-1922, refugees were relocated to the Prefecture, several villages were created for them across the prefecture. During World War II, the area was a scene of partisan activity
Larissa (regional unit)
–
Municipalities of Larissa
17.
Thessaloniki
–
Its nickname is η Συμπρωτεύουσα, literally the co-capital, a reference to its historical status as the Συμβασιλεύουσα or co-reigning city of the Eastern Roman Empire, alongside Constantinople. The city is renowned for its festivals, events and vibrant cultural life in general, Thessaloniki was the 2014 European Youth Capital. The city of Thessaloniki was founded in 315 BC by Cassander of Macedon, an important metropolis by the Roman period, Thessaloniki was the second largest and wealthiest city of the Byzantine Empire. It was conquered by the Ottomans in 1430, and passed from the Ottoman Empire to modern Greece on November 8,1912, the citys main university, Aristotle University, is the largest in Greece and the Balkans. Thessaloniki is a popular tourist destination in Greece, among street photographers, the center of Thessaloniki is also considered the most popular destination for street photography in Greece. All variations of the name derive from the original appellation in Ancient Greek, i. e. Θεσσαλονίκη. The alternative name Salonica derives from the variant form Σαλονίκη in colloquial Greek speech, in local speech, the citys name is typically pronounced with a dark and deep L characteristic of Macedonian Greek accent. The name often appears in writing in the abbreviated form Θεσ/νίκη, the city was founded around 315 BC by the King Cassander of Macedon, on or near the site of the ancient town of Therma and 26 other local villages. He named it after his wife Thessalonike, a half-sister of Alexander the Great, under the kingdom of Macedon the city retained its own autonomy and parliament and evolved to become the most important city in Macedon. After the fall of the kingdom of Macedon in 168 BC, the city later became the capital of one of the four Roman districts of Macedonia. Later it became the capital of all the Greek provinces of the Roman Empire because of the importance in the Balkan peninsula. At the time of the Roman Empire, about 50 A. D. Later, Paul wrote two letters to the new church at Thessaloniki, preserved in the Biblical canon as First and Second Thessalonians. Some scholars hold that the First Epistle to the Thessalonians is the first written book of the New Testament, in 306 AD, Thessaloniki acquired a patron saint, St. Demetrius, a native of Thessalonica whom Galerius put to death. A basilical church was first built in the 5th century AD dedicated to St. Demetrius, in 379, when the Roman Prefecture of Illyricum was divided between the East and West Roman Empires, Thessaloniki became the capital of the new Prefecture of Illyricum. In 390, Gothic troops under the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, led a massacre against the inhabitants of Thessalonica, by the time of the Fall of Rome in 476, Thessaloniki was the second-largest city of the Eastern Roman Empire. From the first years of the Byzantine Empire, Thessaloniki was considered the city in the Empire after Constantinople. With a population of 150,000 in the mid-12th century, the city held this status until its transfer to Venetian control in 1423. In the 14th century, the population exceeded 100,000 to 150,000
Thessaloniki
–
The 4th-century AD
Rotunda of Galerius, one of several Roman monuments in the city and a
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Thessaloniki
–
The
White Tower of Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki
–
Hagia Sophia church was erected in the 8th century AD based on the
Hagia Sophia in
Constantinople. Hagia Sophia is one of 15
UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the city.
Thessaloniki
–
Section of the
Walls of Thessaloniki
18.
Europe
–
Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
Europe
–
Reconstruction of
Herodotus ' world map
Europe
Europe
–
A medieval
T and O map from 1472 showing the three continents as domains of the sons of
Noah — Asia to Sem (
Shem), Europe to Iafeth (
Japheth), and Africa to Cham (
Ham)
Europe
–
Early modern depiction of
Europa regina ('Queen Europe') and the mythical
Europa of the 8th century BC.
19.
Greek mythology
–
It was a part of the religion in ancient Greece. Greek mythology is explicitly embodied in a collection of narratives. Greek myth attempts to explain the origins of the world, and details the lives and adventures of a variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines. These accounts initially were disseminated in a tradition, today the Greek myths are known primarily from ancient Greek literature. The oldest known Greek literary sources, Homers epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, focus on the Trojan War, archaeological findings provide a principal source of detail about Greek mythology, with gods and heroes featured prominently in the decoration of many artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles, in the succeeding Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has had an influence on the culture, arts. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes, Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period from c. Mythical narration plays an important role in every genre of Greek literature. Nevertheless, the only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus and this work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. Apollodorus of Athens lived from c, 180–125 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed the basis for the collection, however the Library discusses events that occurred long after his death, among the earliest literary sources are Homers two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the cycle, but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric Hymns have no connection with Homer. They are choral hymns from the part of the so-called Lyric age. Hesiods Works and Days, a poem about farming life, also includes the myths of Prometheus, Pandora. The poet gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar, Bacchylides and Simonides, and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion, additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama
Greek mythology
–
Bust of
Zeus,
Otricoli (Sala Rotonda,
Museo Pio-Clementino,
Vatican).
Greek mythology
–
Greek Mythology
Greek mythology
–
Prometheus (1868 by
Gustave Moreau). The myth of Prometheus first was attested by
Hesiod and then constituted the basis for a tragic trilogy of plays, possibly by Aeschylus, consisting of
Prometheus Bound,
Prometheus Unbound, and
Prometheus Pyrphoros.
Greek mythology
–
The Roman poet
Virgil, here depicted in the fifth-century manuscript, the
Vergilius Romanus, preserved details of Greek mythology in many of his writings.
20.
List of Greek mythological figures
–
The following is a list of gods, goddesses and many other divine and semi-divine figures from Ancient Greek mythology and Ancient Greek religion. The Greeks created images of their deities for many purposes, a temple would house the statue of a god or goddess, or multiple deities, and might be decorated with relief scenes depicting myths. Divine images were common on coins, drinking cups and other vessels were painted with scenes from Greek myths. The Titans and Titanesses are depicted in Greek art less commonly than the Olympians
List of Greek mythological figures
List of Greek mythological figures
List of Greek mythological figures
List of Greek mythological figures
21.
Flora (plants)
–
Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animal life is fauna, Flora, fauna and other forms of life such as fungi are collectively referred to as biota. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the gut flora or skin flora. The word flora comes from the Latin name of Flora, the goddess of plants, flowers, the distinction between vegetation and flora was first made by Jules Thurmann. Prior to this, the two terms were used indiscriminately, plants are grouped into floras based on region, period, special environment, or climate. Regions can be geographically distinct habitats like mountain vs. flatland, floras can mean plant life of a historic era as in fossil flora. Lastly, floras may be subdivided by special environments, Native flora, the native and indigenous flora of an area. The plants that are grown by humans. Traditionally this classification was applied to plants regarded as undesirable, many native plants previously considered weeds have been shown to be beneficial or even necessary to various ecosystems. The flora of an area or time period can be documented in a publication also known as a flora. Floras may require specialist botanical knowledge to use with any effectiveness, traditionally they are books, but some are now published on CD-ROM or websites. It is said that the Flora Sinensis by the Polish Jesuit Michał Boym was the first book that used the name Flora in this meaning, however, despite its title it covered not only plants, but also some animals of the region. A published flora often contains diagnostic keys, often these are dichotomous keys, which require the user to repeatedly examine a plant, and decide which one of two alternatives given best applies to the plant
Flora (plants)
–
Plant species diversity
22.
National Park
–
A national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns, although individual nations designate their own national parks differently, there is a common idea, the conservation of wild nature for posterity and as a symbol of national pride. An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, although Yellowstone was not officially termed a national park in its establishing law, it was always termed such in practice and is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world. The first area to use national park in its legislation was the USs Mackinac Island. Australias Royal National Park, established in 1879, was the third official national park. In 1895 ownership of Mackinac Island was transferred to the State of Michigan as a state park, as a result, Australias Royal National Park is by some considerations the second oldest national park now in existence. The largest national park in the meeting the IUCN definition is the Northeast Greenland National Park. According to the IUCN,6,555 national parks worldwide met its criteria in 2006, IUCN is still discussing the parameters of defining a national park. National parks are almost always open to visitors, in 1971, these criteria were further expanded upon leading to more clear and defined benchmarks to evaluate a national park. In 1810, the English poet William Wordsworth described the Lake District as a sort of property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive. It was known as Hot Springs Reservation, but no authority was established. Federal control of the area was not clearly established until 1877, John Muir is today referred to as the Father of the National Parks due to his work in Yosemite. He published two articles in The Century Magazine, which formed the base for the subsequent legislation. President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress on July 1,1864, ceding the Yosemite Valley, according to this bill, private ownership of the land in this area was no longer possible. The state of California was designated to manage the park for use, resort. Leases were permitted for up to ten years and the proceeds were to be used for conservation, a public discussion followed this first legislation of its kind and there was a heated debate over whether the government had the right to create parks. The perceived mismanagement of Yosemite by the Californian state was the reason why Yellowstone at its establishment six years later was put under national control, in 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established as the United States first national park, being also the worlds first national park. In some European countries, however, national protection and nature reserves already existed, such as Drachenfels, Yellowstone was part of a federally governed territory
National Park
–
An elephant safari through the
Jaldapara National Park in
West Bengal,
India
National Park
–
The
Teide National Park in
Tenerife,
Spain
National Park
–
Manuel Antonio National Park in
Costa Rica was listed by
Forbes as one of the world's 12 most beautiful national parks.
National Park
–
A
salt marsh in
Schiermonnikoog National Park,
Netherlands
23.
Man and the Biosphere Programme
–
As of March 2016,669 biosphere reserves in 120 countries, including 16 transboundary sites, have been included in the World Network of Biosphere Reserves. Biosphere reserves are areas comprising terrestrial, marine and coastal ecosystems, each reserve promotes solutions reconciling the conservation of biodiversity with its sustainable use. Biosphere reserves are nominated by governments and remain under the sovereign jurisdiction of the states where they are located. Their status is internationally recognized. The buffer zone surrounds or adjoins the core areas, and is used for activities compatible with sound ecological practices that can reinforce scientific research, monitoring, training and education. The transition area is the part of the reserve where the greatest activity is allowed, fostering economic, participating countries establish MAB National Committees that ensure maximum national participation in the international programme, defining and implementing each country’s activities. MAB currently operates through 158 National Committees established among the 195 Members States, the agenda of the MAB Programme is defined by its main governing body, the International Coordinating Council. The MAB Council consists of 34 member states elected by UNESCO’s General Conference, the council elects a chair and five vice-chairpersons from each of UNESCO’s geopolitical regions, one of which functions as a rapporteur. Its staff members draw on expertise in many and varied disciplines, the programme can grant seed funding to assist countries in developing projects and/or to secure appropriate partnership contributions. The latest World Congress of Biosphere Reserves took place in Lima, Peru and this will be the 4th World Congress of Biosphere Reserves and it shall develop a new vision for the decade 2016–2025. The World Network of Biosphere Reserves is supported by different regional, sub-regional or thematic networks and these are as follows, The African Biosphere Reserves Network was created in 1996 and comprises 33 African countries. The ArabMAB Network was officially launched in 1997 and represents 18 Arab countries, the East Asian Biosphere Reserve Network was launched in 1994. Today, it consists of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, the Republic of Korea, euroMAB is the network of biosphere reserves in Europe and North America. Created in 1987, it is the largest MAB Regional Network with 53 countries, the Ibero-American MAB Network was created in 1992. It comprises 22 countries from Latin American and the Caribbean, Spain, the Pacific Man and the Biosphere Network was created in 2006 and comprises the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga. The South and Central Asia MAB Network was created in 2002 and comprises Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, the Southeast Asian Biosphere Reserve Network was created in 1998. Today, it comprises Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, the East Atlantic Biosphere Reserve Network was created in 1994. It comprises the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Madeira and Azores, Mauritania, Morocco, Sao Tomé and Principe, the World Network of Island and Coastal Biosphere Reserves was established in 2012 and comprises 22 countries. Agenda 21 Searchable list of UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves Frequently Asked Questions on Biosphere Reserve A-Z of Areas of Biodiverity Importance, Biosphere Reserves
Man and the Biosphere Programme
–
Logo of MAB
24.
Vlachs
–
Vlachs were initially identified and described during the 11th century by George Kedrenos. According to one theory, the Vlachs originated from Latinized Dacians. Nearly all Central and Southeastern European countries have sizable native Vlach minorities, as it is currently the case in Hungary, in Ukraine, in Serbia, in Croatia, in other countries, the Vlachs have assimilated in the local Slavic population. The term Vlach was also used for shepherds, like in mountains of Herzegovina region of Bosnia. Nowadays, Eastern Romance-speaking communities number around 24.19 million people, the word Vlach is of Germanic origin, an early loanword into Proto-Slavic from Germanic *Walhaz and used by ancient Germanic peoples for their Romance-speaking and Celtic neighbours. *Walhaz was evidently borrowed from the name of a Celtic tribe, known to the Romans as Volcae in the writings of Julius Caesar and to the Greeks as Ouólkai in texts by Strabo, Vlach is thus of the same origin as European ethnic names including the Welsh and Walloons. The word passed to the Slavs and from them to other peoples, such as the Hungarians and Byzantines, the Polish word for Italian has the same origin, as does the Slovenian, vaguely-derogatory lah. The Italian-speaking region south of the South Tyrol, now Trentino in Italy, was known as Welschtirol in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a 586 Byzantine chronicle of an incursion against the Avars in the eastern Balkans may have one of the earliest references to Vlachs. In the account, when carried by a mule slipped the muleteer shouted, Torna, torna. Byzantine historians used the Germanic Vlachs for Latin speakers, particularly Romanians, traveller Benjamin of Tudela of the Kingdom of Navarre was one of the first writers to use the word Vlachs for a Romance-speaking population. According to 10th century Arab chronicler Mutahhar al-Maqdisi, They say that in the Turkic neighbourhood there are the Khazars, Russians, Slavs, Waladj, Alans, Greeks, Byzantine writer Kekaumenos, author of the Strategikon, described a 1066 Roman revolt in northern Greece. Between the 12th and 14th centuries they were ruled by the Kingdom of Hungary, the Byzantine Empire, Byzantine historian John Kinnamos described Leon Vatatzes military expedition along the northern Danube, where Vatatzes mentioned the participation of Vlachs in battles with the Magyars in 1166. In the 13th century, the Asen royal family were the founders and rulers of the Vlach-Bulgarian kingdom, in 1213 an army of Romans, Transylvanian Saxons, and Pechenegs, led by Ioachim of Sibiu, attacked the Bulgars and Cumans from Vidin. After this, all Hungarian battles in the Carpathian region were supported by Romance-speaking soldiers from Transylvania, at the end of the 13th century, during the reign of Ladislaus the Cuman, Simon de Kéza wrote about the Blacki people and placed them in Pannonia with the Huns. Archaeological discoveries indicate that Transylvania was gradually settled by the Magyars, shortly after the fall of the Olt region, a church was built at the Cârța Monastery and Catholic German-speaking settlers from Rhineland and Mosel Valley began to settle in the Orthodox region. In the Diploma Andreanum issued by King Andrew II of Hungary in 1224, the Orthodox Vlachs spread further northward along the Carpathians to Poland, Slovakia, and Moravia and were granted autonomy under Ius Vlachonicum. In 1285 Ladislaus the Cuman fought the Tatars and Cumans, arriving with his troops at the Moldova River, a town, Baia, was documented in 1300 as settled by the Transylvanian Saxons. The Eastern Romance peoples refers to the Eastern Romance-speaking peoples, primarily the nations of Romanians and Moldovans and these two peoples had before Soviet rule been regarded part of one and the same, Romanian people
Vlachs
–
Writ issued on 14 October 1465 by Wallachian voivode
Radu cel Frumos from his residence in
Bucharest
Vlachs
–
Map of the Balkans, with significant populations of Vlachs (or Romanians) highlighted
Vlachs
–
The
Jireček Line between Latin- and Greek-language Roman inscriptions
Vlachs
–
Vlach (Romanian) branches and their territories
25.
Dion, Pieria
–
Dion or Dio is a village and a former municipality in the Pieria regional unit, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform, it is part of the municipality Dio-Olympos and it is located at the foot of Mount Olympus. It is best known for its great ancient Macedonian sanctuary of Zeus and city, much of which is visible in the archaeological park, for this reason Dion was the sacred place of the Ancient Macedonians. It was the place where the kings made splendid sacrifices to celebrate the new year of the Macedonian calendar at the end of September, in the Spring, purification rites of the army and victory feasts were held. Philip II and Alexander the Great celebrated victories here, and Alexander assembled his armies, Dion and its sanctuary was destroyed in 219BC by Aetolian invaders but was immediately rebuilt by Philip V. Many of the dedications from the sanctuary that had destroyed were buried in pits, including royal inscriptions and treaties. It fell to the Romans in 169BC and the city was given a new lease of life in 32/31BC when Octavian founded the Colony of COLONIA JULIA AUGUSTA DIENSIS here. It experienced its heyday during the reigns of 2nd- and 3rd-century AD Roman emperors who were fond of Alexander the Great. Dions final important period was in the 4th and 5th centuries AD when it became the seat of a bishopric and it was abandoned following major earthquakes and floods. The modern village at the site was called Malathria until 1961, the site of ancient Dion was first identified by the English traveler William Martin Leake on December 2,1806, in the ruins adjoining the village of Malathria. He published his discovery in the volume of his Travels in Northern Greece in 1835. Léon Heuzey visited the site during his famous Macedonian archaeological mission of 1855, later, the epigraphist G. Oikonomos published the first series of inscriptions. Nevertheless, systematic archaeological exploration did not begin until 1928, from then until 1931, G. Sotiriadis carried out a series of surveys, uncovering a 4th-century BC Macedonian tomb and an early Christian basilica. Excavations were not resumed until 1960 under the direction of G. Bakalakis in the area of the theatre, since 1973, Professor D. Pandermalis of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki has conducted archaeological research in the city. Dion is the site of a temple dedicated to Zeus, as well as a series of temples to Demeter. Excavation of the magnificent House of Dionysos revealed a mosaic of exceptionally fine quality, a rare and unusual find in the museum is a bronze hydraulis or hydraulic musical pipe organ found in a former workshop. In 2006, a statue of Hera was found built into the walls of the city, the statue,2200 years old, had been used by the early Christians of Dion as filling for the citys defensive wall. In October 1992, the municipality Dio was formed, at the 1997 Kapodistrias reform, it was expanded with the former communities Agios Spyridonas, Karitsa, Kondariotissa, Nea Efesos and Vrontou
Dion, Pieria
–
Plan of Dion. The sanctuaries and the city (Archive of the excavation of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki/Drawing of Orkopoulos – Palli 1995) [Pandermalis (1997), p. 14-15].
Dion, Pieria
Dion, Pieria
–
hypocaust of ancient public baths
Dion, Pieria
–
View of Mount Olympus
26.
Chaparral
–
Chaparral is a shrubland or heathland plant community found primarily in the U. S. state of California and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico. Chaparral covers 5 percent of the state of California, and associated Mediterranean shrubland an additional 3.5 percent, the name comes from the Spanish word for scrub oak, chaparro. In its natural state, chaparral is characterized by infrequent fires, mature chaparral is characterized by nearly impenetrable, dense thickets. They grow as woody shrubs with hard and small leaves, are non-leaf-dropping, after the first rains following a fire, the landscape is dominated by soft-leaved non-woody annual plants, known as fire followers, which die back with the summer dry period. According to the California Academy of Sciences, Mediterranean shrubland contains more than 20 percent of the plant diversity. The word chaparral is a word from Spanish chaparro, meaning both small and dwarf evergreen oak, which itself comes from the Basque word txapar, with exactly the same meaning. In Central and Southern California chaparral forms a dominant habitat, the following is a short list of birds which are an integral part of the cismontane chaparral ecosystems. Transmontane chaparral features xeric desert climate, not Mediterranean climate habitats, Desert chaparral is a regional ecosystem subset of the deserts and xeric shrublands biome, with some plant species from the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion. Unlike cismontane chaparral, which forms dense, impenetrable stands of plants, desert chaparral is open, individual shrubs can reach up to 10 feet in height. Transmontane chaparral or desert chaparral is found on the slopes of major mountain range systems on the western sides of the deserts of California. It is distinguished from the cismontane chaparral found on the side of the mountains. Naturally, desert chaparral experiences less rainfall than cismontane chaparral. Plants in this community are characterized by small, hard evergreen leaves, Desert chaparral grows above Californias desert cactus scrub plant community and below the pinyon-juniper woodland. It is further distinguished from the deciduous sub-alpine scrub above the pinyon-juniper woodlands on the side of the Peninsular ranges. Transmontane chaparral typically grows on the northern slopes of the southern Transverse Ranges. It can also be found in higher-elevation sky islands in the interior of the deserts, there is overlap of animals with those of the adjacent desert and pinyon-juniper communities. Canis latrans, coyotes Lynx rufus, bobcats Neotoma sp, the Chaparral area receives about 38–100 cm of precipitation a year. This makes the chaparral most vulnerable to fire in the late summer, the chaparral ecosystem as a whole is adapted to be able to recover from infrequent wildfires, indeed, chaparral regions are known culturally and historically for their impressive fires
Chaparral
–
Chaparral, Santa Ynez Mountains, near Santa Barbara, California
Chaparral
–
Southern coastal scrub in the
Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area
Chaparral
–
View from the
Laguna Mountains, chaparral in the foreground
27.
Sedimentary rock
–
Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the deposition and subsequent cementation of that material at the Earths surface and within bodies of water. Sedimentation is the name for processes that cause mineral and/or organic particles to settle in place. The particles that form a rock by accumulating are called sediment. Sedimentation may also occur as minerals precipitate from solution or shells of aquatic creatures settle out of suspension. The sedimentary rock cover of the continents of the Earths crust is extensive, sedimentary rocks are only a thin veneer over a crust consisting mainly of igneous and metamorphic rocks. Sedimentary rocks are deposited in layers as strata, forming a structure called bedding, sedimentary rocks are also important sources of natural resources like coal, fossil fuels, drinking water or ores. The study of the sequence of rock strata is the main source for an understanding of the Earths history, including palaeogeography, paleoclimatology. The scientific discipline that studies the properties and origin of rocks is called sedimentology. Sedimentology is part of both geology and physical geography and overlaps partly with other disciplines in the Earth sciences, such as pedology, geomorphology, geochemistry, sedimentary rocks have also been found on Mars. Clastic sedimentary rocks are composed of rock fragments that were cemented by silicate minerals. Clastic rocks are composed largely of quartz, feldspar, rock fragments, clay minerals, and mica, any type of mineral may be present, clastic sedimentary rocks, are subdivided according to the dominant particle size. Most geologists use the Udden-Wentworth grain size scale and divide unconsolidated sediment into three fractions, gravel, sand, and mud and this tripartite subdivision is mirrored by the broad categories of rudites, arenites, and lutites, respectively, in older literature. The subdivision of these three categories is based on differences in clast shape, conglomerates and breccias), composition. Conglomerates are dominantly composed of rounded gravel, while breccias are composed of dominantly angular gravel, composition of framework grains The relative abundance of sand-sized framework grains determines the first word in a sandstone name. Naming depends on the dominance of the three most abundant components quartz, feldspar, or the lithic fragments that originated from other rocks, all other minerals are considered accessories and not used in the naming of the rock, regardless of abundance. Clean sandstones with open space are called arenites. Muddy sandstones with abundant muddy matrix are called wackes, six sandstone names are possible using the descriptors for grain composition and the amount of matrix. Mudrocks are sedimentary rocks composed of at least 50% silt- and clay-sized particles and these relatively fine-grained particles are commonly transported by turbulent flow in water or air, and deposited as the flow calms and the particles settle out of suspension
Sedimentary rock
–
Middle
Triassic marginal marine sequence of siltstones (reddish layers at the cliff base) and limestones (brown rocks above),
Virgin Formation, southwestern
Utah, USA
Sedimentary rock
–
Sedimentary rocks on Mars, investigated by NASA's
Curiosity Mars rover
Sedimentary rock
–
Steeply dipping sedimentary rock strata along the
Chalous Road in northern
Iran
Sedimentary rock
–
Claystone deposited in
Glacial Lake Missoula,
Montana,
United States. Note the very fine and flat bedding, common for distal
lacustrine deposition.
28.
Shallow sea
–
An inland sea is a shallow sea that covers central areas of continents during periods of high sea level that result in marine transgressions. In modern times, continents stand high, eustatic sea levels are low, modern examples might also include the recently reflooded Persian Gulf, and the South China Sea that presently covers the Sunda Shelf. At various times in the geologic past, inland seas have been greater in extent, a vast inland sea, the Western Interior Seaway, extended from the Gulf of Mexico deep into present-day Canada during the Cretaceous. At the same time, much of the low plains of modern-day northern France and northern Germany were inundated by an inland sea, where the chalk was deposited that gave the Cretaceous Period its name. The Amazon, originally emptying into the Pacific, as South America rifted from Africa, a great inland sea developed, at times draining north through what is now Venezuela before finding its present eastward outlet into the South Atlantic. Gradually this inland sea became a vast freshwater lake and wetlands where sediment flattened its profiles and the marine inhabitants adapted to life in freshwater. Over 20 species of stingray, most closely related to those found in the Pacific Ocean, can be today in the freshwaters of the Amazon. In 2005 fossilized remains of a giant crocodilian, estimated to have been 46 ft in length, were discovered in the northern rainforest of Amazonian Peru. In Australia the promise of a sea is often said to have been one of the prime motives of inland exploration during the 1820s and 1830s. Also in Australia, the Eromanga Sea existed during the Cretaceous Period and it covered large swaths of the eastern half of the continent. The Baltic Sea is an inland sea, arguably the largest body of brackish water in the world. It occupies a basin formed by glacial erosion, hudson Bay, including James Bay at its southern end, reach within the North American continent from Baffin Island in the north to Quebec and Ontario in the south. Endorheic basin Mediterranean sea Marginal sea Geology Project - Inland Sea Movement Through Time
Shallow sea
–
This 1830 map of Australia depicts a 'Great River' and a 'Supposed Sea' that both proved nonexistent.
29.
Geological
–
Geology is an earth science concerned with the solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Geology can also refer generally to the study of the features of any terrestrial planet. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth by providing the evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life. Geology also plays a role in engineering and is a major academic discipline. The majority of data comes from research on solid Earth materials. These typically fall into one of two categories, rock and unconsolidated material, the majority of research in geology is associated with the study of rock, as rock provides the primary record of the majority of the geologic history of the Earth. There are three types of rock, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. The rock cycle is an important concept in geology which illustrates the relationships between three types of rock, and magma. When a rock crystallizes from melt, it is an igneous rock, the sedimentary rock can then be subsequently turned into a metamorphic rock due to heat and pressure and is then weathered, eroded, deposited, and lithified, ultimately becoming a sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock may also be re-eroded and redeposited, and metamorphic rock may also undergo additional metamorphism, all three types of rocks may be re-melted, when this happens, a new magma is formed, from which an igneous rock may once again crystallize. Geologists also study unlithified material which typically comes from more recent deposits and these materials are superficial deposits which lie above the bedrock. Because of this, the study of material is often known as Quaternary geology. This includes the study of sediment and soils, including studies in geomorphology, sedimentology and this theory is supported by several types of observations, including seafloor spreading, and the global distribution of mountain terrain and seismicity. This coupling between rigid plates moving on the surface of the Earth and the mantle is called plate tectonics. The development of plate tectonics provided a basis for many observations of the solid Earth. Long linear regions of geologic features could be explained as plate boundaries, mid-ocean ridges, high regions on the seafloor where hydrothermal vents and volcanoes exist, were explained as divergent boundaries, where two plates move apart. Arcs of volcanoes and earthquakes were explained as convergent boundaries, where one plate subducts under another, transform boundaries, such as the San Andreas Fault system, resulted in widespread powerful earthquakes. Plate tectonics also provided a mechanism for Alfred Wegeners theory of continental drift and they also provided a driving force for crustal deformation, and a new setting for the observations of structural geology
Geological
–
On this diagram, subducting
slabs are in blue, and continental margins and a few plate boundaries are in red. The blue blob in the cutaway section is the seismically imaged
Farallon Plate, which is subducting beneath North America. The remnants of this plate on the Surface of the Earth are the
Juan de Fuca Plate and Explorer plate in the Northwestern USA / Southwestern Canada, and the
Cocos Plate on the west coast of Mexico.
Geological
–
This schematic diagram of the rock cycle shows the relationship between magma and sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rock
Geological
Geological
–
Geologic cross-section of
Kittatinny Mountain. This cross-section shows metamorphic rocks, overlain by younger sediments deposited after the metamorphic event. These rock units were later folded and faulted during the uplift of the mountain.
30.
Alluvial fan
–
An alluvial fan is a fan- or cone-shaped deposit of sediment crossed and built up by streams. If a fan is built up by debris flows it is called a debris cone or colluvial fan. These flows come from a point source at the apex of the fan. Fans are typically found where a canyon draining from mountainous terrain emerges out onto a flatter plain, a convergence of neighboring alluvial fans into a single apron of deposits against a slope is called a bajada, or compound alluvial fan. As a streams gradient decreases, it drops coarse-grained material and this reduces the capacity of the channel and forces it to change direction and gradually build up a slightly mounded or shallow conical fan shape. The deposits are poorly sorted. There will be iso-transport energy lines forming concentric arcs about the point at the apex of the fan. Thus the material will tend to be deposited equally about these lines, Alluvial fans are often found in desert areas subject to periodic flash floods from nearby thunderstorms in local hills. The typical watercourse in an arid climate has a large, funnel-shaped basin at the top, leading to a narrow defile, multiple braided streams are usually present and active during water flows. Phreatophytes are plants that are concentrated at the base of alluvial fans. They have long tap roots 30 to 50 feet to water that has seeped through the fan and hit an impermeable layer, sometimes collecting in springs. These stands of shrubs cling to the soil at their bases, Alluvial fans also develop in wetter climates. Along the upper Koshi tributaries, tectonic forces elevate the Himalayas several millimeters annually, uplift is approximately in equilibrium with erosion, so the river annually carries some 100 million cubic meters of sediment as it exits the mountains. Deposition of this magnitude over millions of years is more than sufficient to account for the megafan, despite overpopulation on the plains, this bhabar zone is highly malarial and has remained largely uninhabited. In North America, streams flowing into Californias Central Valley have deposited smaller, such as that of the Kings River flowing out of the Sierra Nevada creates a low divide, turning the south end of the San Joaquin Valley into an endorheic basin without a connection to the ocean. Alluvial fans are subject to flooding and can be more dangerous than the upstream canyons that feed them. Their slightly convex perpendicular surfaces cause water to spread widely until there is no zone of refuge, if the gradient is steep, active transport of materials down the fan creates a moving substrate that is inhospitable to travel on foot or wheels. But as the gradient diminishes downslope, water comes down from above faster than it can flow away downstream, in the case of the Koshi River, the huge sediment load and megafans slightly convex transverse surface conspire against engineering efforts to contain peak flows inside manmade embankments
Alluvial fan
–
A vast (60 km long) alluvial fan blossoms across the desolate
landscape between the
Kunlun and
Altun mountain ranges that form the southern border of the
Taklamakan Desert in
Xinjiang. The left side is the active part of the fan, and appears blue from
water flowing in the many small
streams
Alluvial fan
–
Alluvial fan in
Death Valley
Alluvial fan
–
Alluvial fan above
Lake Louise,
Alberta, Canada.
Alluvial fan
–
Ground-level view of a large alluvial fan in
Death Valley
31.
Alpine tundra
–
Alpine tundra is a type of natural region or biome that does not contain trees because it is at high altitude. The high altitude causes an adverse climate, which is too cold, Alpine tundra transitions to sub-alpine forests below the tree line, stunted forests occurring at the forest-tundra ecotone are known as Krummholz. With increasing elevation it ends at the line where snow. Alpine tundra occurs in mountains worldwide, the flora of the alpine tundra is characterized by dwarf shrubs close to the ground. The cold climate of the tundra is caused by the lack of greenhouse effect at high altitude. Alpine tundra occurs at high altitude at any latitude. Portions of Montane grasslands and shrublands ecoregions worldwide include alpine tundra, Alpine tundra occupies high-mountain summits, slopes, and ridges above timberline. Aspect plays a role as well, the treeline often occurs at higher elevations on warmer equator-facing slopes, with limited access to infrastructure, only a handful of human communities exist in alpine zones. Many are small and have heavily specialized economies, often relying on such as agriculture, mining. An example of such a town is La Rinconada, Peru, a gold-mining town. A counterexample is El Alto, Bolivia, at 4,150 metres, which has a diverse service and manufacturing economy. Alpine climate is the weather for the alpine tundra. The climate becomes colder at high elevations—this characteristic is described by the rate of air, air tends to get colder as it rises. The dry adiabatic lapse rate is 10 °C per km of elevation or altitude, therefore, moving up 100 metres on a mountain is roughly equivalent to moving 80 kilometers towards the pole. This relationship is only approximate, however, since local factors such as proximity to oceans can drastically modify the climate, typical high-elevation growing seasons range from 45 to 90 days, with average summer temperatures near 10 °C. Growing season temperatures frequently fall below freezing, and frost occurs throughout the season in many areas. Precipitation occurs mainly as snow, but soil water availability is highly variable with season, location. For example, snowfields commonly accumulate on the lee sides of ridges while ridgelines may remain nearly snow free due to redistribution by wind, some alpine habitats may be up to 70% snow free in winter
Alpine tundra
–
Hikers traversing the
Franconia Ridge in the
White Mountains, much of which is in the alpine zone.
Alpine tundra
–
Alpine tundra in North-Western Transbaikalia
Alpine tundra
–
Summer in Northern Sweden's
Tarfala Valley with its alpine climate
Alpine tundra
–
This alpine valley is entirely above the
tree line
32.
Aegean Sea
–
The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the Greek and Anatolian peninsulas, i. e. between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles, the Aegean Islands are within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes. The sea was known as Archipelago, but in English this words meaning has changed to refer to the Aegean Islands and, generally. In ancient times, there were various explanations for the name Aegean, a possible etymology is a derivation from the Greek word αἶγες – aiges = waves, hence wavy sea, cf. also αἰγιαλός, hence meaning sea-shore. The Venetians, who ruled many Greek islands in the High and Late Middle Ages, popularized the name Archipelago, in some South Slavic languages the Aegean is often called White Sea. The Aegean Sea covers about 214,000 square kilometres in area, the seas maximum depth is 3,543 metres, east of Crete. The Aegean Islands are found within its waters, with the following islands delimiting the sea on the south, Kythera, Antikythera, Crete, Kasos, Karpathos, many of the Aegean Islands, or chains of islands, are actually extensions of the mountains on the mainland. One chain extends across the sea to Chios, another extends across Euboea to Samos, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Aegean Sea as follows, On the South. In the Dardanelles. A line joining Kum Kale and Cape Helles, the dense Mediterranean water sinks below the Black Sea inflow to a depth of 23–30 metres, then flows through the Dardanelles Strait and into the Sea of Marmara at velocities of 5–15 cm/s. The Black Sea outflow moves westward along the northern Aegean Sea, Aegean Sea Intermediate Water – Aegean Sea Intermediate Water extends from 40–50 m to 200–300 metres with temperatures ranging from 11–18 °C. Aegean Sea Bottom Water – occurring at depths below 500–1000 m with a uniform temperature. The current coastline dates back to about 4000 BC, before that time, at the peak of the last ice age sea levels everywhere were 130 metres lower, and there were large well-watered coastal plains instead of much of the northern Aegean. When they were first occupied, the islands including Milos with its important obsidian production were probably still connected to the mainland. The present coastal arrangement appeared c.7000 BC, with post-ice age sea levels continuing to rise for another 3,000 years after that, the subsequent Bronze Age civilizations of Greece and the Aegean Sea have given rise to the general term Aegean civilization. In ancient times, the sea was the birthplace of two ancient civilizations – the Minoans of Crete and the Mycenean Civilization of the Peloponnese, later arose the city-states of Athens and Sparta among many others that constituted the Athenian Empire and Hellenic Civilization. Plato described the Greeks living round the Aegean like frogs around a pond, the Aegean Sea was later invaded by the Persians and the Romans, and inhabited by the Byzantine Empire, the Bulgarians, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Seljuq Turks, and the Ottoman Empire. The Aegean was the site of the democracies, and its seaways were the means of contact among several diverse civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean. Many of the islands in the Aegean have safe harbours and bays, in ancient times, navigation through the sea was easier than travelling across the rough terrain of the Greek mainland
Aegean Sea
–
Map of the Aegean Sea
Aegean Sea
–
Topographical and
bathymetric map
Aegean Sea
–
Panoramic view of the
Santorini caldera, taken from Oia.
33.
Ancient Greek religion
–
Ancient Greek religion encompasses the collection of beliefs, rituals, and mythology originating in ancient Greece in the form of both popular public religion and cult practices. These groups varied enough for it to be possible to speak of Greek religions or cults in the plural, many ancient Greeks recognized the twelve major gods and goddesses, although philosophies such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to assume a single transcendent deity. Different cities often worshiped the deities, sometimes with epithets that distinguished them. Greek religion was tempered by Etruscan cult and belief to form much of the later ancient Roman religion, while there were few concepts universal to all the Greek peoples, there were common beliefs shared by many. Ancient Greek theology was polytheistic, based on the assumption there were many gods. There was a hierarchy of deities, with Zeus, the king of the gods, having a level of control all the others. Some deities had dominion over aspects of nature. Other deities ruled over abstract concepts, for instance Aphrodite controlled love, while being immortal, the gods were certainly not all-good or even all-powerful. They had to obey fate, known to Greek mythology as the Moirai, which overrode any of their divine powers or wills. For instance, in mythology, it was Odysseus fate to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, and the gods could only lengthen his journey and make it harder for him, the gods acted like humans, and had human vices. They would interact with humans, sometimes even spawning children with them, at times certain gods would be opposed to others, and they would try to outdo each other. In the Iliad, Aphrodite, Ares and Apollo support the Trojan side in the Trojan War, while Hera, Athena, some gods were specifically associated with a certain city. Athena was associated with the city of Athens, Apollo with Delphi and Delos, Zeus with Olympia, other deities were associated with nations outside of Greece, Poseidon was associated with Ethiopia and Troy, and Ares with Thrace. The Greeks believed in an underworld where the spirits of the dead went after death, one of the most widespread areas of this underworld was ruled over by Hades, a brother of Zeus, and was known as Hades. Other well known realms are Tartarus, a place of torment for the damned, and Elysium, in the early Mycenean religion all the dead went to Hades, but the rise of mystery cults in the Archaic age led to the development of places such as Tartarus and Elysium. Such beliefs are found in the most ancient of Greek sources, such as Homer and this belief remained strong even into the Christian era. For most people at the moment of death there was, however, no hope of anything, some Greeks, such as the philosophers Pythagoras and Plato, also embraced the idea of reincarnation, though this was only accepted by a few. Epicurus taught that the soul was simply atoms which dissolved at death, Greek religion had an extensive mythology
Ancient Greek religion
–
Zeus, the king of the gods, and controller of thunder and the sky.
Ancient Greek religion
–
Aphrodite riding a swan: Attic white-ground red-figured
kylix, ca. 460, found at Kameiros (Rhodes)
Ancient Greek religion
–
Poseidon, the god of the sea, as depicted on a statue in
Copenhagen,
Denmark.
Ancient Greek religion
–
A mosaic depicting the hero
Herakles with
Cerberus, a three-headed dog, who, according to mythology, guarded
Hades.
34.
Twelve Olympians
–
Hades and Persephone were sometimes included as part of the twelve Olympians, although in general Hades was excluded, because he resided permanently in the underworld and never visited Olympus. The Twelve Olympians, also known as the Dodekatheon, were the deities of the Greek pantheon. The Olympians gained their supremacy in a war of gods in which Zeus led his siblings to victory over their predecessor gods. The concept of the Twelve Gods is older than any extant Greek or Roman source, the gods meet in council in the Homeric epics, but the first ancient reference to religious ceremonies for the Olympians collectively is found in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. The Greek cult of the Twelve Olympians can be traced to 6th-century BC Athens, the Altar of the Twelve Gods at Athens is usually dated to the archonship of the younger Pesistratos, in 522/521 BC. In ancient Greek religion, the Olympian Gods and the Cults of Twelve Gods were often relatively distinct concepts, while the number was fixed at twelve, there was considerable variation as to which deities were included. However, the twelve as most commonly portrayed in art and poetry were Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes and either Hestia, or Dionysus. Hades, known in the Eleusinian tradition as Pluto, was not usually included among the Olympians because his realm was the underworld. Plato connected the Twelve Olympians with the months, and implies that he considered Pluto one of the twelve in proposing that the final month be devoted to him. In Phaedrus, Plato seems to exclude Hestia from the rank of the great gods. At Olympia there were six altars dedicated to six pairs of gods, Zeus and Poseidon, Hera and Athena, Hermes and Apollo, the Charites and Dionysus, Artemis and Alpheus, the historian Herodotus states that Heracles was included as one of the Twelve by some. At Kos, Heracles and Dionysus are added to the Twelve, for Pindar, the Bibliotheca, and Herodorus of Heraclea, Heracles is not one of the Twelve Gods, but the one who established their cult. Lucian includes Heracles and Asclepius as members of the Twelve, without explaining which two had to give way for them, hebe, Helios, Selene, Eos, Eros and Persephone are other important gods and goddesses who are sometimes included in a group of twelve. Eros is often depicted alongside the twelve, especially his mother Aphrodite. Notes ^ Romans also associated Phoebus with Helios and the sun itself, however, ^ According to an alternate version of her birth, Aphrodite was born of Uranus, Zeus grandfather, after Cronus threw his castrated genitals into the sea. This supports the etymology of her name, foam-born, as such, Aphrodite would belong to the same generation as Cronus, Zeus father, and would be Zeus aunt. See the birth of Aphrodite The following gods and goddess are sometimes included as one of the twelve Olympians, the following gods and goddesses were not usually counted as Olympians, although they had close ties to them. Aeolus – King of the winds, keeper of the Anemoi, Alpheus – God of the River Alpheus
Twelve Olympians
Twelve Olympians
–
Zeus
Twelve Olympians
–
Hera
Twelve Olympians
–
Poseidon
35.
Zeus
–
Zeus /ˈzjuːs/ is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, who ruled as king of the gods of Mount Olympus. His name is cognate with the first element of his Roman equivalent Jupiter and his mythologies and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of the Indo-European deities such as Indra, Jupiter, Perun, Thor, and Odin. Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, the youngest of his siblings to be born, in most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe, and Hephaestus. At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione, Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses. He was equated with many foreign weather gods, permitting Pausanias to observe That Zeus is king in heaven is a common to all men. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak, in addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical cloud-gatherer also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses, standing, striding forward with a thunderbolt leveled in his right hand. The gods name in the nominative is Ζεύς Zeús and it is inflected as follows, vocative, Ζεῦ Zeû, accusative, Δία Día, genitive, Διός Diós, dative, Διί Dií. Diogenes Laertius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling the name, Ζάς, Zeus is the Greek continuation of *Di̯ēus, the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called *Dyeus ph2tēr. The god is known under this name in the Rigveda, Latin, Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology. The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek
Zeus
–
The Jupiter de Smyrne, discovered in
Smyrna in 1680
Zeus
–
The Chariot of Zeus, from an 1879 Stories from the Greek Tragedians by Alfred Church.
Zeus
–
Zeus, at the Getty Villa, A.D. 1 - 100 by unknown.
Zeus
–
"
Cave of Zeus ",
Mount Ida (Crete).
36.
Titan (mythology)
–
In Greek mythology, the Titans and Titanesses were members of the second generation of divine beings, descending from the primordial deities and preceding the Olympian deities. Based on Mount Othrys, the Titans most famously included the first twelve children of the primordial Gaia and they were giant deities of incredible strength, who ruled during the legendary Golden Age, and also comprised the first pantheon of Greek deities. The first twelve Titans comprised the females Mnemosyne, Tethys, Theia, Phoebe, Rhea, and Themis and the males Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, Cronus, Crius, like Cronus overthrowing his father Uranus, the Titans were overthrown by Cronus children, in the Titanomachy. The Greeks may have borrowed this mytheme from the Ancient Near East, Greeks of the classical age knew of several poems about the war between the Olympians and Titans. The dominant one, and the one that has survived, was in the Theogony attributed to Hesiod. A lost epic, Titanomachia was mentioned in passing in an essay On Music that was attributed to Plutarch. The Titans also played a prominent role in the poems attributed to Orpheus, although only scraps of the Orphic narratives survive, they show interesting differences with the Hesiodic tradition. Sometimes the elders are supplanted, and sometimes the rebels lose and are either cast out of power entirely or incorporated into the pantheon, the Titanomachy lasted for ten years. The Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus after the war had ended, Tartarus is the deepest spot known in the Underworld, where the most evil beings would be cast into to be tortured for all eternity. Hesiod does not have the last word on the Titans, surviving fragments of poetry ascribed to Orpheus preserve some variations on the myth. In such text, Zeus does not simply set upon his father violently, instead, Rhea spreads out a banquet for Cronus so that he becomes drunk upon fermented honey. Rather than being consigned to Tartarus, Cronus is dragged—still drunk—to the cave of Nyx, another myth concerning the Titans that is not in Hesiod revolves around Dionysus. At some point in his reign, Zeus decides to give up the throne in favor of the infant Dionysus, who like the infant Zeus, is guarded by the Kouretes. The Titans decide to slay the child and claim the throne for themselves, they paint their faces white with gypsum, distract Dionysus with toys, then him and boil. Zeus, enraged, slays the Titans with his thunderbolt, Athena preserves the heart in a gypsum doll and this story is told by the poets Callimachus and Nonnus, who call this Dionysus Zagreus, and in a number of Orphic texts, which do not. Pindar, Plato, and Oppian refer offhandedly to the Titanic nature of humans, according to them, the body is the titanic part, while soul is the divine part of humans. Other early writers imply that humanity was born out of the malevolent blood shed by the Titans in their war against Zeus, Martin Litchfield West also asserts this in relation to shamanistic initiatory rites of early Greek religious practices. Beekes connects the word with τιτώ, burket, Walter, The Orientalizing Revolution, Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, Harvard University Press,1995
Titan (mythology)
–
Rhea, a Titan daughter of the earth goddess
Gaia, was both sister and wife to
Cronus.
37.
Mnemosyne
–
Mnemosyne, source of the word mnemonic, was the personification of memory in Greek mythology. A Titanide, or Titaness, she was the daughter of the Titans Uranus, zeus and Mnemosyne slept together for nine consecutive nights, thus birthing the nine Muses. Mnemosyne also presided over a pool in Hades, counterpart to the river Lethe, dead souls drank from Lethe so they would not remember their past lives when reincarnated. In Orphism, the initiated were taught to instead drink from the Mnemosyne, the river of memory, for more about the incriptions connection with Orphic poetry, see Zuntz,1971. Although she was categorized as one of the Titans in the Theogony, Titans were hardly worshiped in Ancient Greece, and were thought of as so archaic as to belong to the ancient past. They resembled historical figures more than anything else, later, once written literature overtook the oral recitation of epics, Plato made reference in his Euthydemus to the older tradition of invoking Mnemosyne. The character Socrates prepares to recount a story and says “ὥστ᾽ ἔγωγε, καθάπερ οἱ ποιηταί, δέομαι ἀρχόμενος τῆς διηγήσεως Μούσας τε καὶ Μνημοσύνην ἐπικαλεῖσθαι. ”Which translates to “Consequently, like the poets, I must needs begin my narrative with an invocation of the Muses and Memory”. Aristophanes also harked back to the tradition in his play Lysistrata when a drunken Spartan ambassador invokes her name while prancing around pretending to be a bard from times of yore. Mnemosyne was one of the deities worshiped in the cult of Asclepius that formed in Ancient Greece around the 5th century BC. Asclepius, a Greek hero and god of medicine, was said to have been able to cure maladies, the exact order of the offerings and prayers varied by location, and the supplicant often made an offering to Mnemosyne. After making an offering to Asclepius himself, in some locations, the hope was that a prayer to Mnemosyne would help the supplicant remember any visions had while sleeping there. Titans in popular culture, Mnemosyne Mnemonic Meme Moneta Aeschylus, Persians, edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press,2009, online version at Harvard University Press. Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, London, William Heinemann Ltd.1921. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library, caldwell, Richard, Hesiods Theogony, Focus Publishing/R. Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, London, William Heinemann Ltd.1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library, hymn to Hermes, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press, London, William Heinemann Ltd.1914, online version at the Perseus Digital Library
Mnemosyne
–
Mnemosyne (1881), a
Pre-Raphaelite interpretation of the goddess by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
38.
Ottoman Empire
–
After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
Ottoman Empire
–
Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. Painting from 1523.
Ottoman Empire
–
Flag (1844–1923)
Ottoman Empire
–
Battle of Mohács in 1526
Ottoman Empire
–
Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha defeats the
Holy League of
Charles V under the command of
Andrea Doria at the
Battle of Preveza in 1538.
39.
Klepht
–
Klephts were highwaymen turned self-appointed armatoloi, anti-Ottoman insurgents, and warlike mountain-folk who lived in the countryside when Greece was a part of the Ottoman Empire. They were the descendants of Greeks who retreated into the mountains during the 15th century in order to avoid Ottoman rule and they carried on a continuous war against Ottoman rule and remained active as brigands until the 19th century. The terms kleptomania and kleptocracy are derived from the same Greek root, κλέπτειν, after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 and then the fall of Mistra in the Despotate of the Morea, most of the plains of present-day Greece fell entirely into the hands of the Ottoman Empire. The only territories that did not fall under Ottoman rule were the mountain ranges, as well as a handful of islands and coastal possessions under the control of Venice. This situation lasted until at least 1821, although there were parts of Greece, such as Macedonia and Epirus. This period of time in Greece is known as the Τουρκοκρατία or Turkocracy, Ottoman lands were divided up into pashaliks, also called eyalets, in the case of the lands that form present-day Greece, these were Morea and Roumelia. Pashaliks were further sub-divided into sanjaks which were divided into feudal chifliks. Many Greeks wishing to preserve their Greek identity, Orthodox Christian religion and these bandit groups soon found their ranks swelled with impoverished and/or adventurous peasants, societal outcasts, and escaped criminals. Klephts under Ottoman rule were generally men who were fleeing vendettas or taxes, debts and they raided travelers and isolated settlements and lived in the rugged mountains and back country. Most klephtic bands participated in some form in the Greek War of Independence, during the Greek War of Independence, the klephts, along with the armatoloi, formed the nucleus of the Greek fighting forces, and played a prominent part throughout its duration. Yannis Makriyannis referred to the klephtes and armatoloi as the yeast of liberty, klephtic songs, or ballads, were developed in mainland Greece. Klephtic songs are popular in Epirus and the Peloponnese. The most famous klephtic and modern Greek folk song is The Battle of Mount Olympus and Mount Kisavos, concordance between klepht songs and Homers Iliad was explored by Michael M. Nikoletseas in The Male Totem in Klepht Poetry, Parallels with the Iliad. The famous Greek dish klephtiko, a dish entailing slow-cooked lamb, the klephts, not having flocks of their own, would steal lambs or goats and cook the meat in a sealed pit to avoid the smoke being seen
Klepht
–
Dimitrios Makris a
Greek klepht chief of the 19th century.
40.
Armatoloi
–
Armatoloi were Christian Greek irregular soldiers, or militia, commissioned by the Ottomans to enforce the Sultans authority within an administrative district called an Armatoliki. During the Greek War of Independence, the armatoloi, along with the klephts, formed the nucleus of the Greek fighting forces, yannis Makriyannis referred to the armatoloi and klephts as the yeast of liberty. The word armatolos first appeared in the 15th century during Venetian times and it is derived from a medieval loan from Latin arma, probably via Greek αρματολόγος → αρματολόος → αρματολός. Owing to the parallelism with αμαρτωλός, the word was sometimes spelled as αρματωλός. The military/police organization of the armatoloi, known as armatolismos, has its origins in the Byzantine period of Greek history, armatolismos was a type of feudalism where police and military functions were provided in exchange for titles of land. As an institution, the armatoloi first appear in Agrafa, Thessaly during the reign of Sultan Murad II, from there, they spread to other parts of Greece except the Peloponnese. An armatoliki was commanded by a kapetanios, often a former captain who had been hired by the governing Ottoman pasha to combat, or at least contain. In most cases, the captain would have gained a level of notoriety as a klepht to force the Ottomans to give him amnesty, many captains ran their armatolikia like their personal fiefdoms, exacting a heavy toll of extortion and violence on the local peasantry. As mentioned earlier, the armatoloi were organized based on a system under which they maintained their military/police duties in exchange for titles of land. When the Ottomans conquered Greece in the 15th century, they established treaties with the armatoloi in order for them to maintain their military/police functions, the armatoloi were mostly concentrated in Macedonia, Thessaly, Epirus, Acarnania, and Aetolia. In the Peloponnesus, armatolismos did not develop in the manner as it did in Roumeli. In the Peloponnesus, the kapoi and the meintanides were similar to the armatoloi, if in certain regions, the institution of armatolismos was not implemented, the territories were divided into armatolikia or protakta. These territories extended from the Axios River to the Ambracian Gulf, the kapetanioi would often have authority over these territories via inheritance/succession. A single kapetanio was at first forced to submit his authority to the pasha who controlled the periphery, later, all kapetanioi were forced to submit to Dervedji pasha. During the 18th century, there were around seventeen armatolikia, ten of them were located in Thessaly and the eastern regions of Central Greece, four of them in Epirus, Acarnania, and Aetolia, and three in Macedonia. Every kapetanio had his rank-and-file soldiers known as palikaria and section leaders among these palikaria were known as protopalikara, the palikaria would train with their weapons on a daily basis. The main weapon the palikaria utilized was the kariofili, marksmanship was the proverbial hallmark that defined the palikaria. They were also capable in the art of ambushing and mobility, the palikaria were resilient toward thirst, hunger and even the painful difficulties in their encounters with the klephts
Armatoloi
–
Water-colour painting of an armatolos by
Carl Haag (1820–1915).
Armatoloi
–
Dimitrios Makris (c. 1772–1841) an armatole of the 19th century.
41.
Milia, Pieria
–
Milia is a community of the Katerini municipality in Greece. Before the 2011 local government reform it was part of the municipality of Petra, the 2011 census recorded 1430 inhabitants in the community. The community of Milia consists of five settlements, Ano Milia Karyes Kato Milia Mesaia Milia Fteri The aforementioned populations are as of 2011. The seat of the municipality of Petra was in Kato Milia. List of settlements in the Pieria regional unit
Milia, Pieria
–
The
Mountain hut of Ano Milia.
Milia, Pieria
–
The former town hall of the
Petra municipality in
Kato Milia.
42.
Giorgakis Olympios
–
Giorgakis Olympios was a Greek armatolos and military commander during the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. Noted for his activities with the Filiki Eteria in the Danubian Principalities and he was born in the village of Livadi, near Larissa, on Mount Olympus, in Ottoman-ruled Greece. Olympios became a supporter of the ideas diffused by Rigas Feraios for a common Balkan revolution against the Ottoman rule, there, with the help of Constantine Ypsilantis, he composed a military force of Greeks to fight alongside the Russian Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1806. After the Battle of Ostrova, he was named a Polkovnik in the Russian Army, emperor Alexander I included him in the Russian military escort during the Congress of Vienna, where Olympios met with Alexander Ypsilantis, a Filiki Eteria leader. Olympios entered Filiki Eteria in 1817, taking the rank of Shepherd. He initiated many others in the Eteria, and established contacts with the Wallachian Pandur Tudor Vladimirescu, Olympios married Čučuk Stana, the widow of Hajduk Veljko, who had arrived from Serbia to participate in the Greek War of Independence as a fighter, alongside his own men. They had three children, sons Milan, Aleksandar, and daughter Jevrosima, at the beginning of the Greek Revolution, when the Eteria began its expedition in Moldavia and Wallachia, Olympios was appointed leader of the Greek forces in Bucharest by Alexander Ypsilantis. When Vladimirescu distanced himself from the Fililiki Eteria, Olympios was responsible for his arrest on June 1 in Goleşti. He took part in the Battle of Sculeni on June 29,1821, where Ottoman forces chased him to the Secu Monastery in the Neamț County, Olympios died during the Ottoman attack on the monastery. His widow and children fled to Khotyn, then part of the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire, after the liberation of Greece, Stana and her children moved to Athens. The Greeks, Their Struggle For Independence
Giorgakis Olympios
–
Giorgakis Olympios
43.
New Zealand
–
New Zealand /njuːˈziːlənd/ is an island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses—the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu—and around 600 smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long period of isolation, New Zealand developed a distinct biodiversity of animal, fungal, the countrys varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealands capital city is Wellington, while its most populous city is Auckland, sometime between 1250 and 1300 CE, Polynesians settled in the islands that later were named New Zealand and developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand, in 1840, representatives of Britain and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which declared British sovereignty over the islands. In 1841, New Zealand became a colony within the British Empire, today, the majority of New Zealands population of 4.7 million is of European descent, the indigenous Māori are the largest minority, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Reflecting this, New Zealands culture is derived from Māori and early British settlers. The official languages are English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, New Zealand is a developed country and ranks highly in international comparisons of national performance, such as health, education, economic freedom and quality of life. Since the 1980s, New Zealand has transformed from an agrarian, Queen Elizabeth II is the countrys head of state and is represented by a governor-general. In addition, New Zealand is organised into 11 regional councils and 67 territorial authorities for local government purposes, the Realm of New Zealand also includes Tokelau, the Cook Islands and Niue, and the Ross Dependency, which is New Zealands territorial claim in Antarctica. New Zealand is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Pacific Islands Forum, and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642 and called it Staten Landt, in 1645, Dutch cartographers renamed the land Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand, Aotearoa is the current Māori name for New Zealand. It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the country before the arrival of Europeans. Māori had several names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui for the North Island and Te Waipounamu or Te Waka o Aoraki for the South Island. Early European maps labelled the islands North, Middle and South, in 1830, maps began to use North and South to distinguish the two largest islands and by 1907, this was the accepted norm. The New Zealand Geographic Board discovered in 2009 that the names of the North Island and South Island had never been formalised and this set the names as North Island or Te Ika-a-Māui, and South Island or Te Waipounamu
New Zealand
–
The Waitangi sheet from the
Treaty of Waitangi
New Zealand
–
Flag
New Zealand
–
Painting of
Mount Earnslaw by John Turnbull Thomson, oil on canvas, 1888
New Zealand
–
John Key,
Prime Minister of New Zealand since 2008
44.
Australia
–
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
Australia
–
Aboriginal rock art in the
Kimberley region of Western Australia
Australia
Australia
–
Portrait of Captain
James Cook, the first European to map the eastern coastline of Australia in 1770
Australia
–
Tasmania's
Port Arthur penal settlement is one of eleven UNESCO World Heritage-listed
Australian Convict Sites.
45.
Greek Resistance
–
The rise of resistance movements in Greece was precipitated by the invasion and occupation of Greece by Nazi Germany from 1941–44. Italy led the way with its invasion from Albania in 1940. Despite that some in the left-wing resistance claimed the government to be illegitimate, the Germans set up a Greek collaborationist government, headed by General Georgios Tsolakoglou, before entering Athens. Some high-profile officers of the pre-war Greek regime served the Germans in various posts, the first wider resistance movements occurred in northern Greece, where the Bulgarians annexed Greek territories. The first mass uprising occurred around the town of Drama in eastern Macedonia, the Bulgarian authorities had initiated large-scale Bulgarization policies, causing the Greek populations reaction. During the night of 28–29 September 1941 the people of Drama and this badly-organized revolt was suppressed by the Bulgarian Army, which retaliated executing over three thousand people in Drama alone. An estimated fifteen thousand Greeks were killed by the Bulgarian occupational army during the few weeks. The town of Doxato and the village of Choristi are officially considered today Martyr Cities, however, these harsh actions, together with the plundering of Greeces natural resources by the Germans, turned Greeks more against the occupiers. The lack of a government and the inactivity of the established political class created a power vacuum. Most officers and citizens who wanted to continue the fight fled to the British-controlled Middle East, and this situation resulted in the creation of several new groupings, where the pre-war establishment was largely absent, which assumed the role of resisting the occupation powers. The first major group to be founded was the National Liberation Front. By 1944 EAM became a movement with more than 1,800,000 members, EAM was organized by the Communist Party of Greece and other smaller parties, but all major political parties refused to participate either in EAM or in any other resistance movement. On February 16,1942, EAM gave permission to a communist veteran, although its foundation was announced in late 1941, there were no military acts until 1942, when the Greek Peoples Liberation Army, the armed forces of EAM, was born. Greece is a country, with a long tradition in andartiko, dating back to the days of the klephts of the Ottoman period. In the 1940s, the countryside was poor, the network not very well developed. National and Social Liberation also formed a corps, named after the famous 5/42 Evzone Regiment, under Col. Dimitrios Psarros. Until the summer of 1942, the authorities had been little troubled by the armed Resistance. The Italians in particular, in control of most of the countryside, from that point, however, the Resistance gained pace, with EAM/ELAS in particular expanding rapidly
Greek Resistance
–
German soldiers raising the
German War Flag over the
Acropolis of
Athens. The symbol of the country's occupation, it would be taken down in one of the first acts of the Greek Resistance.
Greek Resistance
–
Triple Occupation of Greece by the Axis (1941–44)
Greek Resistance
–
Guerillas of
ELAS
Greek Resistance
–
Napoleon Zervas, leader of the military wing of the
EDES, with fellow officers
46.
Greek Civil War
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The Greek Civil War was fought in Greece from 1946 to 1949 between the Greek government army, and the Democratic Army of Greece. The fighting resulted in the defeat of the Communist insurgents by the government forces, the civil war resulted from a highly polarized struggle between left and right ideologies that started in 1943. From 1944 each side targeted the power vacuum that the end of German-Italian occupation during World War II left, the struggle became one of the first conflicts of the Cold War and represents the first example of Cold War power postwar involvement in the internal politics of a foreign country. The first signs of the war occurred in 1942 to 1944. The immediate prelude of the war took place in Athens, on December 3,1944. A bloody battle erupted after Greek government gendarmes, with British forces standing in the background, opened fire on a massive unarmed pro-EAM rally, killing 28 demonstrators and injuring dozens. The rally had been organised against the impunity of the collaborators and the general disarmament ultimatum, signed by Ronald Scobie, the battle lasted 33 days and resulted in the defeat of the EAM after the heavily reinforced British forces sided with the Greek government. All the while, White Terror was unleashed against the supporters of the left, the war erupted in 1946, when forces of former ELAS partisans who found shelter in their hideouts and were controlled by the KKE organized the DSE and its High Command headquarters. The Communists formed a government in December 1947 and used the DSE as the military branch of this government. The neighboring communist states of Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria offered logistical support to this provisional government, the final victory of the western-allied government forces led to Greeces membership in NATO and helped to define the ideological balance of power in the Aegean Sea for the entire Cold War. Western leaders encouraged and even coerced King George II of Greece to appoint a moderate cabinet, nevertheless, the exiled governments inability to influence affairs inside Greece rendered it irrelevant in the minds of most Greek people. At the same time, the Germans set up a collaborationist government in Athens, the puppet regime was further undermined when economic mismanagement in wartime conditions created runaway inflation, acute food shortages and famine among the civilian population. The power vacuum that the occupation created was filled by several resistance movements that ranged from royalist to communist ideologies, resistance was born first in eastern Macedonia and Thrace, where Bulgarian troops occupied Greek territory. Soon large demonstrations were organized in cities by the Defenders of Northern Greece. However, the largest group to emerge was the National Liberation Front, proclaiming that it followed the Soviet policy of creating a broad united front against fascism, EAM won the support of many noncommunist patriots. These resistance groups launched attacks against the powers and set up large espionage networks. When liberation came in October 1944, Greece was in a state of crisis, although controlled by the KKE, the organization had democratic republican rhetoric. Its military wing, the Greek Peoples Liberation Army was founded in February 1942, Aris Velouchiotis, a member of KKEs Central Committee, was nominated Chief of the ELAS High Command
Greek Civil War
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Greek Civil War
Greek Civil War
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A member of the
Security Battalions with a man executed for aiding the
Resistance.
Greek Civil War
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Guerillas of
ELAS
47.
Leon Heuzey
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Léon Heuzey was a noted French archaeologist and historian. In 1855 Heuzey went to Greece as a member of the École française dAthènes, the record he kept of his journey, Le Mont Olympe et lAcarnanie, was published in Paris in 1860. On this expedition he realised the importance of the site of present-day Vergina and he began excavations there in 1861, later extending his archaeological ventures to Philippi, western Macedonia, Illyria and Thessaly. He discovered many sites of considerable importance, in 1855 and 1861 he explored Dion, located at the foot of Mount Olympus. In Thessaly, he found the stele of Pharsalos, in 1893 he discovered the site of Delphi, which led to its excavation and appreciation of its significance. He was also an expert on historic costumes of the Ancient Greek, Byzantine, Egyptian and Roman eras, another one of his books is Mythes chaldéens. Works by Léon Heuzey at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Léon Heuzey at Internet Archive
Leon Heuzey
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Heuzey c. 1883
48.
Heinrich Barth
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Heinrich Barth was a German explorer of Africa and scholar. He was among the first to comprehend the uses of history of peoples. He established friendships with African rulers and scholars during his five years of travel, after the deaths of two European companions, he completed his travels with the aid of Africans. Afterwards, he wrote and published an account of his travels in both English and German. It has been invaluable for scholars of his time and since, Heinrich Barth was born in Hamburg on 16 February 1821. He was the child of Johann Christoph Heinrich Barth and his wife Charlotte Karoline née Zadow. Johann had come from a poor background but had built up a successful trading business. Both parents were orthodox Lutherans and they expected their children to conform to their ideas on morality. From the age of eleven Barth attended the high school. He was very studious but not popular with his classmates and he excelled at languages and taught himself some Arabic. After his first year he interrupted his studies and went on a tour of Italy visiting Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples and Sicily, in the vacation of the following year he visited the Rhineland and Switzerland. He defended his thesis on the trade relations of ancient Corinth in July 1844. Barth formed a plan to undertake a tour of north Africa. While in London he met the Prussian ambassador to Britain, Christian von Bunsen and he left London and travelled across France and Spain. On 7 August he caught a ferry from Gibraltar to Tangiers for his first visit to Africa, from Tangier, he made his way overland across North Africa. He also travelled through Egypt, ascending the Nile to Wadi Halfa, while in Egypt, he was attacked and wounded by robbers. Crossing the Sinai peninsula, he traversed Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Turkey and Greece and he returned to his parents home in Hamburg on 27 December 1847 after a trip of almost three years. For a time he was engaged there as Privatdozent and he described some of his travels in the first volume of his book, Wanderungen durch die Küstenländer des Mittelmeeres, which was published in 1849
Heinrich Barth
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Heinrich Barth
Heinrich Barth
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Route of Barth's journey through Africa between 1850 and 1855
Heinrich Barth
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Heinrich Barth approaching
Timbuktu on September 7th 1853 as depicted by
Martin Bernatz.
Heinrich Barth
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Heinrich Barth's house in Timbuktu (in 1908 before its collapse)
Media related to Mount Olympus at Wikimedia Commons
"Olympus". Encyclopædia Britannica. 20 (11th ed.). 1911.
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