Poltava
Poltava is a city located on the Vorskla River in central Ukraine. It is of the surrounding Poltava Raion of the oblast. Poltava is administratively incorporated as a city of oblast significance and does not belong to the raion, it is still unknown when Poltava was founded, although the town was not attested before 1174. However, for reasons unknown, municipal authorities chose to celebrate the city's 1100th anniversary in 1999; the settlement is indeed an old one, as archeologists unearthed a Paleolithic dwelling as well as Scythian remains within the city limits. The present name of the city is traditionally connected to the settlement Ltava, mentioned in the Hypatian Chronicle in 1174. According to the chronicle, on Saint Peter's Day of 1182, Igor Sviatoslavich, chasing hordes of the Cuman khans Konchak and Kobiak, crossed the Vorskla River near Ltava and moved towards Pereyaslav, where Igor's army was victorious over the Cumans. During the Mongol invasion of Rus' in 1238–39 many cities of the middle Dnieper region were destroyed including Ltava.
In the mid 14th century the region was part of the Duchy of Kiev, a vassal of the Algirdas' Grand Duchy of Lithuania. According to the Russian historian Aleksandr Shennikov, the region around modern Poltava was a Cuman Duchy belonging to Mansur, a son of Mamai. Shennikov claims that the Mansur Duchy joined the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as an associated state rather than a vassal state, that the city of Poltava existed at that time. In 1399 the army of Mansur assisted the army of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the battle of the Vorskla River, while a legend says that after the battle, the Cossack Mamay helped Vytautas to escape his death; the city is mentioned for the first time under the name of Poltava no than 1430. In 1430 the Lithuanian duke Vytautas gave the city, along with Glinsk and Glinitsa, to Murza Olexa, who moved to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the Golden Horde. In 1430 Murza Olexa was baptized as Alexander Glinsky, a progenitor of the Glinsky family. According to Shenninkov, Alexander Glinsky must have been baptized in 1390 by Cyprian, Metropolitan of Kiev, who had just regained his title of Metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia and on 6 March 1390 permanently moved to Muscovy.
In 1482 Poltava was razed by the Crimean Khan Mengli I Giray. In 1537 Ografena Vasylivna Glinska passed Poltava to her son-in-law Mykhailo Ivanovych Hrybunov-Baibuza. After the Union of Lublin in 1569, the territory around Poltava became part of the Crown of Poland. In 1630 Poltava was passed to Bartholomew Obalkowski. In 1641 it changed ownership again, to Alexander Koniecpolski. In 1646 Poltava became part of Wiśniowiecki Ordynatsia, governed by the Ruthenian-Polish magnate Jeremi Wiśniowiecki. In 1648 the city became the base of a distinguished regiment of Ukrainian Cossacks, served as a Cossack stronghold during the Khmelnytsky Uprising. In 1650, to commemorate a victory of the Cossack Host over the Polish army at the Poltavka River, the Metropolitan of Kiev, Sylvester Kossov, ordered the establishment of the monastery of the Exaltation of the Cross in Poltava; the project was financed by a number of prominent local residents, including Martyn Pushkar, Ivan Iskra, Ivan Kramar and many others.
During the 1654 Pereyaslav Council, the Poltava city delegates pledged their allegiance to the Czar of Muscovy, after which stolnik Andrei Spasitelev arrived in Poltava and recorded 1,335 residents who had pledged their allegiance. In 1658 Poltava became a center of anti-government revolt led by Martyn Pushkar, who contested the legitimacy of Ivan Vyhovsky's election to the post of Hetman of Zaporizhian Host; the uprising was extinguished with the help of Crimean Tatars. On the issue boyar Vasily Borisovich Sheremetev wrote to Alexei Mikhailovich on 8 June 1658: "... the Cherkas city of Plotava is ravaged and burned to the ground and only if the Great Sovereign orders to rebuilt on the Tatar Sokma of Bakeyev Route and protect many his sovereign cities from Tatar visits. And if the Great Sovereign allows to place a voivode in the city and rebuilt the city until the fall that in Plotava Cherkasy and residents built their houses and stock-piled their food". With the signing of the 1667 truce of Andrusovo, the city was subjected to the Tsardom of Muscovy, while remaining part of the Cossack Hetmanate.
The city suffered from the Great Turkish War when in 1695 Petro Ivanenko led an anti-Muscovite uprising with the help of Crimean Tatars, who ravaged the local monastery. The same year the Poltava Regiment participated in the Azov campaigns which resulted in the taking of the Turkish fortress of Kyzy-Kermen. On 8 July or 27 June 1709 the battle of Poltava took place near the city during the Great Northern War between the Muscovite and Swedish armies; this battle had great historical importance for the Russians. In 1710 there was a plague in its surrounding area. In the mid-18th century the Kolomak Woods near Poltava became a base of haidamaks. By 1770 Poltava had several brick factories, a regimental doctor, a pharmacy. In 1775 it became a city of Novorossiysk Governorate, guarded by the 8th Company of the Dnieper Pike Regiment headquartered in Kobeliaky. In 1775 Poltava's Mona
Pontic–Caspian steppe
The Pontic–Caspian steppe, or Pontic steppe is the vast steppeland stretching from the northern shores of the Black Sea as far east as the Caspian Sea, from Moldova and eastern Ukraine across the North Caucasus Federal District, Southern Federal District and the Volga Federal District of Russia to western Kazakhstan, forming part of the larger Eurasian steppe, adjacent to the Kazakh steppe to the east. It is a part of the Palearctic temperate grasslands and shrublands ecoregion of the temperate grasslands and shrublands biome; the area corresponds to Cimmeria and Sarmatia of classical antiquity. Across several millennia the steppe was used by numerous tribes of nomadic horsemen, many of which went on to conquer lands in the settled regions of Europe and in western and southern Asia; the term Ponto-Caspian region is used in biogeography for plants and animals of these steppes, animals from the Black and Azov seas. Genetic research has identified this region as the most probable place where horses were first domesticated.
According to a theory, called Kurgan hypothesis in Indo-European studies, the Pontic–Caspian steppe was the homeland of the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language, these same speakers were the original domesticators of the horse. The Pontic steppe covers an area of 994,000 square kilometres of Europe, extending from Dobrudja in the northeastern corner of Bulgaria and southeastern Romania, across southern Moldova, through Russia to northwestern Kazakhstan to the Ural Mountains; the Pontic steppe is bounded by the East European forest-steppe to the north, a transitional zone of mixed grasslands and temperate broadleaf and mixed forests. To the south, the Pontic steppe extends to the Black Sea, except the Crimean and western Caucasus mountains' border with the sea, where the Crimean Submediterranean forest complex defines the southern edge of the steppes; the steppe extends to the western shore of the Caspian Sea in the Dagestan region of Russia, but the drier Caspian lowland desert lies between the Pontic steppe and the northwestern and northern shores of the Caspian.
The Kazakh Steppe bounds the Pontic steppe on the southeast. The Ponto-Caspian seas are the remains of the Turgai Sea, an extension of the Paratethys which extended south and east of the Urals and covering much of today's West Siberian Plain in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Linear Pottery culture 5500–4500 BC Cucuteni-Trypillian culture 5300–2600 BC Khvalynsk culture 5000-3500 BC Sredny Stog culture 4500–3500 BC Yamna/Kurgan culture 3500–2300 BC Catacomb culture 3000–2200 BC Srubna culture 1600–1200 BC Novocherkassk culture 900–650 BC Cimmerians 12th–7th centuries BC Dacians 11th century BC – 3rd century AD Scythians 8th–4th centuries BC Sarmatians 5th century BC – 5th century AD Ostrogoths 3rd–6th centuries Huns and Avars 4th–8th centuries Bulgars 4th–7th century Alans 5th–11th centuries Eurasian Avars 6th–8th centuries Göktürks 6th–8th centuries Sabirs 6th–8th centuries Khazars 6th–11th centuries Pechenegs 8th–11th centuries Kipchaks and Cumans 11th–13th centuries Mongol Golden Horde 13th–15th centuries Cossacks, Crimean Khanate, Volga Tatars and other Turkic states and tribes 15th–18th centuries Pontic Greeks and Caucasus Greeks 15th–19th centuries Russian Empire 18th–20th centuries Soviet Union 20th century Moldova, Russian Federation, Ukraine 20th–21st centuries "Pontic steppe".
Terrestrial Ecoregions. World Wildlife Fund. Google maps: Pontic-Caspian steppe
First Bulgarian Empire
The First Bulgarian Empire was a medieval Bulgarian state that existed in Southeastern Europe between the 7th and 11th centuries AD. It was founded in 681. There they secured Byzantine recognition of their right to settle south of the Danube by defeating – with the help of local South Slavic tribes – the Byzantine army led by Constantine IV. At the height of its power, Bulgaria spread from the Danube Bend to the Black Sea and from the Dnieper River to the Adriatic Sea; as the state solidified its position in the Balkans, it entered into a centuries-long interaction, sometimes friendly and sometimes hostile, with the Byzantine Empire. Bulgaria emerged as Byzantium's chief antagonist to its north; the two powers enjoyed periods of peace and alliance, most notably during the Second Arab siege of Constantinople, where the Bulgarian army broke the siege and destroyed the Arab army, thus preventing an Arab invasion of Southeastern Europe. Byzantium had a strong cultural influence on Bulgaria, which led to the eventual adoption of Christianity in 864.
After the disintegration of the Avar Khaganate, the country expanded its territory northwest to the Pannonian Plain. The Bulgarians confronted the advance of the Pechenegs and Cumans, achieved a decisive victory over the Magyars, forcing them to establish themselves permanently in Pannonia. During the late 9th and early 10th centuries, Simeon I achieved a string of victories over the Byzantines. Thereafter, he was recognized with the title of Emperor, proceeded to expand the state to its greatest extent. After the annihilation of the Byzantine army in the battle of Anchialus in 917, the Bulgarians laid siege to Constantinople in 923 and 924; the Byzantines, however recovered, in 1014, under Basil II, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Bulgarians at the Battle of Kleidion. By 1018, the last Bulgarian strongholds had surrendered to the Byzantine Empire, the First Bulgarian Empire had ceased to exist, it was succeeded by the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1185. After the adoption of Christianity, Bulgaria became the cultural center of Slavic Europe.
Its leading cultural position was further consolidated with the invention of the Glagolitic and Early Cyrillic alphabets shortly after in the capital Preslav, literature produced in Old Bulgarian soon began spreading north. Old Bulgarian became the lingua franca of much of Eastern Europe and it came to be known as Old Church Slavonic. In 927, the independent Bulgarian Patriarchate was recognized; the ruling Bulgars and other non-Slavic tribes in the empire mixed and adopted the prevailing Slavic language, thus forming the Bulgarian nation from the 7th century to the 9th century. Since the late 9th century, the names Bulgarians and Bulgarian gained prevalence and became permanent designations for the local population, both in literature and in common parlance; the development of Old Church Slavonic literacy had the effect of preventing the assimilation of the South Slavs into neighbouring cultures, while stimulating the formation of a distinct Bulgarian identity. The First Bulgarian Empire became known as Bulgaria since its recognition by the Byzantine Empire in 681.
Some historians use the terms First Bulgarian State, or First Bulgarian Tsardom. Between 681 and 864 the country was known as the Bulgarian Khanate, Danube Bulgarian Khanate, or Danube Bulgar Khanate in order to differentiate it from Volga Bulgaria, which emerged from another Bulgar group. During its early existence, the country was called the Bulgar state or Bulgar Khaghanate. Between 864 and 917/927, the country was known as the Principality of Bulgaria or Knyazhestvo Bulgaria. In English language sources, the country is known as the Bulgarian Empire. Parts of the eastern Balkan Peninsula were in antiquity inhabited by the Thracians who were a group of Indo-European tribes; the whole region as far north as the Danube River was incorporated into the Roman Empire by the 1st century AD. The decline of the Roman Empire after the 3rd century AD and the continuous invasions of Goths and Huns left much of the region devastated, depopulated and in economic decline by the 5th century; the surviving eastern half of the Roman Empire, called by historians the Byzantine Empire, could not exercise effective control in these territories other than in the coastal areas and certain cities in the interior.
Nonetheless, it never relinquished the claim to the whole region up to the Danube. A series of administrative, legislative and economic reforms somewhat improved the situation but despite these reforms disorder continued in much of the Balkans; the reign of Emperor Justinian I saw temporary recovery of control and reconstruction of a number of fortresses but after his death the empire was unable to face the threat of the Slavs due to the significant reduction of revenue and manpower. The Slavs, of Indo-European origin, were first mentioned in written sources to inhabit the territories to the north of the Danube in the 5th century AD but most historians agree that they had arrived earlier; the group of Slavs that came to be known as the South Slavs was divided into Antes and Sclaveni who spoke the same language. The Slavic incursions in the Balkans increased during the second half of Justinian I's reign and while these were pillaging raids, large-scale settlement began in the 570s and 580s; this migration is associated with the arrival of the Avars who settled in the plains of Pannonia between the rivers Danube and Tisza in the 560s subjugating various Bulgar and Slavic tribes in the process.
Consumed in bitter wars with th
Western Turkic Khaganate
The Western Turkic Khaganate or Onoq Khaganate was a Turkic khaganate formed as a result of the wars in the beginning of the 7th century after the split of the Göktürk Khaganate into the Western khaganate and the Eastern Turkic Khaganate. The Western Turkic Khaganate was subjugated by the Tang Empire in 657 At its height, the Western Turkic Khaganate included what is now Kazakhstan and parts of Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Russia; the ruling elite or the whole confederation was called Onoq or "ten arrows" from oğuz, a subdivision of the Turkic tribes. A connection to the earlier Onogurs, which means'ten tribes', is questionable; the khaganate's capitals were Navekat and Suyab, both situated in the Chui River valley of Kyrgyzstan, to the east from Bishkek. Tong Yabgu's summer capital was near his winter capital Suyab. Turkic rule in Mongolia was restored as Second Turkic Khaganate in 682. Summary: The first Turkic Khaganate was founded by Bumin in 552 in Mongolia and spread west toward the Caspian.
Within 35 years the western half and the Eastern Turkic Khaganate were independent. The Western Khaganate reached its peak under Tong Yabghu Qaghan. After Tong's murder there were conflicts between the Dulu and Nushibi factions, many short-lived Khagans and some territory was lost. From 642 the expanding Tang dynasty Chinese began interfering; the Tang destroyed the Khaganate in 657–659. 552-575: Western expansion: The Gokturks and Mongols were the only two empires to rule both the eastern and central steppe. The Gokturks were the first steppe empire to be in contact with three great agrarian civilizations: Byzantium and China, their expansion west from Mongolia is poorly documented. Gumilyov gives the following. Bumin gave the west to his younger brother Istami. 1. The campaign began in the spring of 554 and met little resistance, they took Semirechye and by 555 had reached the Aral Sea on a line from the lower Oxus, across the Jaxartes, north of Tashkent to the western tip of the Tian Shan. They drove before them various peoples: Xionites, Uar and others.
These seem to have merged into the Avars whom the Gokturks drove across the Volga in 558. 2. The Turks turned southeast. At this time the Ephthalites held the Tarim Basin, Sogd and Merv, with the Persians at their present border. Khosrow I turned on the Ephthalites. Fighting started in 560 after the Ephthalites murdered a Turk ambassador to the Shah; the Persians won. In 565 the Ephthalites were defeated at Qarshi and withdrew to Bactria where fragments remained until the Arab conquest; the Turks demanded the tribute paid to the Ephthalites and when this was refused, crossed the Oxus, but thought better of it and withdrew. In 571 a border was drawn along the Oxus, the Persians expanding east to Afghanistan, while the Turks gained the Sogdian merchant cities and their control of the silk road. 3. Around 567-576 the Turks took the area between the Black Seas. 4. In 568 they took part of Bactria. 575-630: Ishtami was followed by his son Tardush. About 581 he intervened in the eastern Gokturk civil war. In 588/89 Turks were defeated by Persians near Herat.
In 599-603 he gained the eastern half of the Khaganate, but after his death the two halves were split. Heshana Khagan was driven out of Dzungaria and defeated by Sheguy, Tardush's grandson, who conquered the Altai, reconquered Tashkent and raided Ishfahan, his brother Tong Yabghu Qaghan was the greatest Khaghan. He ruled from the Tarim basin to the Caspian, met Xuanzang, sent men to fight the Persians south of the Caucasus and sent his son Tardush Shad to fight in Afghanistan. In the year of his death the Chinese overthrew the Eastern Khaganate in Mongolia, he was murdered by his uncle Külüg Sibir with Dulo support. The Nushibi put Tong's son Irbis Bolun Cabgu on the throne; the Nushibi rebelled and enthroned Dulu Khan, followed by his brother Ishbara Tolis. There was a Dulu-Nushibi conflict and Yukuk Shad, son of the final eastern Khagan, was brought in; the factions quarreled and the Nushibi and Emperor Taizong of Tang enthroned Irbis Seguy. The Chinese demanded part of the Tarim Basin and seized part of it until the war was stopped by Taizong's death.
Irbis was overthrown by Ishbara Qaghan who, after about six years of war, was captured by the Chinese. See Conquest of the Western Turks. After this there were several puppet Khagans. In 679-719 the old Gokturk capital of Suyab was one of the Four Garrisons of Anxi; the Chinese remained in the area until the time of An Lushan's rebellion. During the late 6th century, the Turks consolidated their geopolitical position in Central Asia, as the lynchpin in trade between East Asia and Western Asia – in which Persia and Byzyantium were the dominant powers. For much of this period, Istämi ruled the Khaganate from a winter camp near Karashar. A timeline of the westward expansion of the Turks under Istämi might be reconstructed as follows: 552 Mongolia.
The Wombles
The Wombles are fictional pointy-nosed, furry creatures created by Elisabeth Beresford and appearing in a series of children's novels from 1968. They live in burrows, where they aim to help the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in creative ways. Although Wombles live in every country in the world, Beresford's stories are concerned with the lives of the inhabitants of the burrow on Wimbledon Common in London, England; the characters gained a higher national profile in the UK in the mid-1970s as a result of a BBC-commissioned children's television show which used stop-motion animation. A number of spin-off novelty songs became hits in the British music charts; the Wombles pop group was the idea of composer Mike Batt. The Womble motto is "Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish"; this environmentally-friendly message was a reflection of the growing environmental movement of the 1970s. Elisabeth Beresford took her young children for a Boxing Day walk on Wimbledon Common, where her daughter Kate mispronounced it as "Wombledon Common", sparking the idea of the Wombles in her mother's mind.
On getting home, Beresford started developing the characters and storylines. She developed most of her Womble characters around members of her family, named them after places the family had associations with. Wombles are burrowing animals. Beresford's original book describes them as "a bit like teddy bears to look at but they have real claws and live beneath Wimbledon Common"; as they live in long-established burrows, they use their claws for digging. Their size and physical appearance has changed somewhat over the years: in the original editions of the books, Wombles are pictured as bear-like and between 3 and 5 feet in height, making them only smaller than adult humans; this changed with the TV series, in which they were portrayed as being about knee-high to humans, with pointy snouts like those of raccoons. In the book and movie Wombling Free they are described as "short and furry" between three or four feet in height. Wombles are herbivores and are fond of mushrooms, they eat a variety of plants and tree products that human beings cannot eat, so daisy buns, acorn juice, fir-cone soufflé, elm bark casserole and grassbread sandwiches are part of the Womble menu – augmented by any food left behind on the Common by human beings.
All Wombles are strong swimmers and can survive for long periods in ice-cold water. Several sub-species of Womble are revealed throughout the books: the Loch Ness Monster is part of a clan of water Wombles and the yeti of the Himalayas are giant snow-white Wombles. Wombles have a sixth sense which allows them to sense green spaces and wildlife: this is first mentioned in the Wandering Wombles but developed to a keen long-range telepathic sense by Dalai Gartok Womble in The Wombles Go Round The World. Wombles are long-lived. In The Wombles, Great Uncle Bulgaria recalls being "a young Womble" at the time of Queen Victoria's coronation in 1837. In the feature-length special World Wide Womble Day Great Uncle Bulgaria's 300th birthday is celebrated. Though it is stated that Wombles live all around the world, Beresford's collection of stories, as well as the television series and the music, focus on a group living in Wimbledon Common in London, with the sole exception of The Wombles Go Round The World.
Wombles educate their young at a communal level. As with human children, immature Wombles are taught reading and athletic skills, which they learn by playing a game called "Wombles and Ladders". Below a certain age all Wombles are nameless. Some, Bungo for example, "merely shut their eyes tight and point and hope for the best." They leave Miss Adelaide's "Womblegarten" and join in the communal work of the burrow, clearing up and recycling human refuse. Wombles are careful to keep their existence secret from human beings – at least in the books and TV series – fearing that discovery of their existence will lead to the Great Womble Hunt. For the most part, adult Human Beings take notice of them, or fail to distinguish them from humans. In the movie Wombling Free this is reversed as the Wombles seek to get humans to listen to their "make good use of bad rubbish" pleas. Wombles have a low opinion of other animal species, though they are never unkind to them, they have a poor opinion of humans in general, though there are exceptions, such as royalty the Queen.
They have a respect for human literature. There were five novels and a short story collection: The Wombles The Wandering Wombles The Wombles at Work The Invisible Womble and Other Stories The Wombles to the Rescue The Wombles Go Round the World All of these were out of print for many years, until they were republished from 2010 to 2011, along with the 1973 short-story collection The Invisible Womble, by Bloomsbury, with all-new illustrations by Nick Price; the last two books are less well-known than the original four because they appeared after the successful television series began. In The Wandering Wombles, the setting moved from Wimbledon Common to Hyde Park in central London; the Wombles to the Rescue, saw them return to Wimbledon Common. Four of the books were illustrated by Marg
Phanagoria
Phanagoria was the largest ancient Greek city on the Taman peninsula, spread over two plateaus along the eastern shore of the Cimmerian Bosporus. The city was a large emporium for all the traffic between the coast of the Maeotian marshes and the countries on the southern side of the Caucasus, it was the eastern capital of the Bosporan Kingdom, with Panticapaeum being the western capital. Strabo described it as a noteworthy city, renowned for its trade. Shortly a Catholic Metropolitan Archdiocese while a medieval Genoese colony under the name Matrega, it remains a Latin Catholic titular see. Today the site is located at a short distance to the west of Sennoy in Russia. Another ancient Greek city, lies 25 kilometres to the west, on the shoreline of modern Taman. Phanagoria was founded ca. 543 BC by the Teian colonists who had to flee Asia Minor in consequence of their conflict with Cyrus the Great. The city took its name after one of Phanagoras. "The unusual nature of the Taman peninsula near Phanagoria, with its ravines, crevices and low cones of active volcanoes, must have impressed the ancient colonists more than it impresses us today", Yulia Ustinova has observed.
In the 5th century BC, the town thrived on the trade with the Sindi. Located on an island in the ancient archipelago of Corocondamitis, between the Black Sea and the Palus Maeotis, Phanagoria covered an area of 75 hectares of which one third has been submerged by the sea. In the early 4th century BC the burgeoning Bosporan Kingdom subjugated much of Sindica, including the independent polis of Phanagoria; the town's importance increased with the decline of the old capital, situated on the opposite shore of the Bosporus. By the first centuries AD, Phanagoria had emerged as the main centre of the kingdom. During the Mithridatic Wars, the town allied with the Roman Republic and withstood a siege by the army of Pharnaces II of Pontus, it was at Phanagoria that the insurrection broke out against Mithridates VI of Pontus, shortly before his death. An inscription found during excavations testifies that Queen Dynamis honored Augustus as "the emperor, son of a god, the god Augustus, the overseer of every land and sea".
The loyalty to Rome allowed Phanagoria to maintain a dominant position in the region until the 4th century, when it was sacked and destroyed by the invading Huns. By the 7th century, the town had recovered from a century of barbarian invasions, it served as the capital of Old Great Bulgaria between 665 under Kubrat. Afterwards Phanagoria became a Byzantine dependency. A Khazar tudun was nonetheless present in the town and de facto control rested in Khazar hands until the defeat of Georgius Tzul in 1016. In 704, the deposed Byzantine emperor Justinian II settled in Phanagoria with his wife Theodora, a sister of the Khazar Khagan Busir Glavan, before returning to Constantinople by way of Bulgaria. In the 10th century, the town seems to have faced an invasion by the Rus. After that, Phanagoria could not compete in significance with neighboring Tmutarakan. In the late Middle Ages the town of Matrega was built on its ruins. During the 15th century, it was the center of de Ghisolfi dominions. Henceforth there has been no permanent settlement on the site.
The Genoese colony was canonically established on 1349.02.21 as Metropolitan Archdiocese of Matriga. It was suppressed around 1400 AD. Recorded incumbent: Giovanni di Zechia, Friars Minor The diocese was nominally restored as a Latin Catholic titular bishopric in 1928 under the name Matriga, changed in 1929 to Matrega, it is vacant, having had the following incumbents, all of the lowest rank: Titular Bishop Teofilius Matulionis, as Auxiliary Bishop of Mohilev. The location of Phanagoria was determined in the 18th century, when marble statue bases with dedications to Aphrodite were discovered there. Hecataeus and Strabo mention a local sanctuary of Aphrodite as the largest in the Pontic region. Archaeological exploration of the site started in 1822, when "soldiers dug into a large barrow, making rich discoveries of gold and silver objects, many unique, which they divided up between themselves". Apart from the ancient city itself, archaeologists have been interested in a vast necropolis, which spreads on three sides around Phanagoria.
There are thousands of burials, many with cypress or marble sarcophagi — an indication of the well-being of the ancient Phanagorians. Excavations conducted in the 19th century were for the most part amateurish; some of the most intriguing finds were unearthed in the 1860s at the Bolshaya Bliznitsa tumulus, classed by Michael Rostovtzeff as a feminine necropolis with three vaults. One of the royal kurgans near Phanagoria "has a stone stairway leading down to a rectangular passageway, the entrance to the burial chamber; these two areas are covered by an arch showing remains of painted decoration. The wall frescos imitate encrusted marble. On eit
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the southeast, Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, it has a predominantly temperate-continental climate. With a total area of 238,397 square kilometres, Romania is the 12th largest country and the 7th most populous member state of the European Union, having 20 million inhabitants, its capital and largest city is Bucharest, other major urban areas include Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Iași, Constanța, Brașov. The River Danube, Europe's second-longest river, rises in Germany's Black Forest and flows in a general southeast direction for 2,857 km, coursing through ten countries before emptying into Romania's Danube Delta; the Carpathian Mountains, which cross Romania from the north to the southwest, include Moldoveanu Peak, at an altitude of 2,544 m. Modern Romania was formed in 1859 through a personal union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia.
The new state named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. Following World War I, when Romania fought on the side of the Allied powers, Bessarabia, Transylvania as well as parts of Banat, Crișana, Maramureș became part of the sovereign Kingdom of Romania. In June–August 1940, as a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Second Vienna Award, Romania was compelled to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union, Northern Transylvania to Hungary. In November 1940, Romania signed the Tripartite Pact and in June 1941 entered World War II on the Axis side, fighting against the Soviet Union until August 1944, when it joined the Allies and recovered Northern Transylvania. Following the war, under the occupation of the Red Army's forces, Romania became a socialist republic and member of the Warsaw Pact. After the 1989 Revolution, Romania began a transition back towards a market economy; the sovereign state of Romania is a developing country and ranks 52nd in the Human Development Index.
It has the world's 47th largest economy by nominal GDP and an annual economic growth rate of 7%, the highest in the EU at the time. Following rapid economic growth in the early 2000s, Romania has an economy predominantly based on services, is a producer and net exporter of machines and electric energy, featuring companies like Automobile Dacia and OMV Petrom, it has been a member of the United Nations since 1955, part of NATO since 2004, part of the European Union since 2007. An overwhelming majority of the population identifies themselves as Eastern Orthodox Christians and are native speakers of Romanian, a Romance language. Romania derives from the Latin romanus, meaning "citizen of Rome"; the first known use of the appellation was attested to in the 16th century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania and Wallachia. The oldest known surviving document written in Romanian, a 1521 letter known as the "Letter of Neacșu from Câmpulung", is notable for including the first documented occurrence of the country's name: Wallachia is mentioned as Țeara Rumânească.
Two spelling forms: român and rumân were used interchangeably until sociolinguistic developments in the late 17th century led to semantic differentiation of the two forms: rumân came to mean "bondsman", while român retained the original ethnolinguistic meaning. After the abolition of serfdom in 1746, the word rumân fell out of use and the spelling stabilised to the form român. Tudor Vladimirescu, a revolutionary leader of the early 19th century, used the term Rumânia to refer to the principality of Wallachia."The use of the name Romania to refer to the common homeland of all Romanians—its modern-day meaning—was first documented in the early 19th century. The name has been in use since 11 December 1861. In English, the name of the country was spelt Rumania or Roumania. Romania became the predominant spelling around 1975. Romania is the official English-language spelling used by the Romanian government. A handful of other languages have switched to "o" like English, but most languages continue to prefer forms with u, e.g. French Roumanie and Swedish Rumänien, Spanish Rumania, Polish Rumunia, Russian Румыния, Japanese ルーマニア.
1859–1862: United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia 1862–1866: Romanian United Principalities or Romania 1866–1881: Romania or Principality of Romania 1881–1947: Kingdom of Romania or Romania 1947–1965: Romanian People's Republic or Romania 1965–December, 1989: Socialist Republic of Romania or Romania December, 1989–present: Romania Human remains found in Peștera cu Oase, radiocarbon dated as being from circa 40,000 years ago, represent the oldest known Homo sapiens in Europe. Neolithic techniques and agriculture spread after the arrival of a mixed group of people from Thessaly in the 6th millenium BC. Excavations near a salt spring at Lunca yielded the earliest evidence for salt exploitation in Europe; the first permanent settlements appeared in the Neolithic. Some of them developed into "proto-cities"; the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture—the best known archaeological culture of Old Europe—flourished in Muntenia, southeastern Transylvania and northeastern Moldavia in the 3rd m
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