Château de Biron
The Château de Biron is a castle in the valley of the Lède in the commune of Biron in the Dordogne département of France. It was the castle from which the Gontaut-Biron took their seat from the twelfth century. Biron was retaken by Simon IV de Montfort the following year; the Plantagenets held it at times during the 15th centuries. Biron was erected as a duché-pairie in 1598, for Charles de Gontaut, created duc de Biron; the present château bears additions over the centuries that make a picturesque ensemble: a twelfth-century keep, sixteenth-century living quarters, a chapel and vaulted kitchens. The commune purchased the Château de Biron in 1978, with a view to restoring the structure as a tourist draw. Since 1928, the Château de Biron has been listed as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. List of castles in France Château de Biron: site culturel broken link Château de Biron broken link Ministry of Culture: Database entry for Château de Biron Ministry of Culture photos
Renaissance
The Renaissance is a period in European history, covering the span between the 14th and 17th centuries and marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. The traditional view focuses more on the early modern aspects of the Renaissance and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an extension of the middle ages; the intellectual basis of the Renaissance was its version of humanism, derived from the concept of Roman Humanitas and the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, such as that of Protagoras, who said that "Man is the measure of all things." This new thinking became manifest in art, politics and literature. Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the 15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe: the first traces appear in Italy as early as the late 13th century, in particular with the writings of Dante and the paintings of Giotto.
As a cultural movement, the Renaissance encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, in science to an increased reliance on observation and inductive reasoning. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man"; the Renaissance began in the 14th century in Italy. Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at the time: its political structure, the patronage of its dominant family, the Medici, the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks.
Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Milan and Rome during the Renaissance Papacy. The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and, in line with general scepticism of discrete periodizations, there has been much debate among historians reacting to the 19th-century glorification of the "Renaissance" and individual culture heroes as "Renaissance men", questioning the usefulness of Renaissance as a term and as a historical delineation; the art historian Erwin Panofsky observed of this resistance to the concept of "Renaissance": It is no accident that the factuality of the Italian Renaissance has been most vigorously questioned by those who are not obliged to take a professional interest in the aesthetic aspects of civilization – historians of economic and social developments and religious situations, most natural science – but only exceptionally by students of literature and hardly by historians of Art. Some observers have called into question whether the Renaissance was a cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a period of pessimism and nostalgia for classical antiquity, while social and economic historians of the longue durée, have instead focused on the continuity between the two eras, which are linked, as Panofsky observed, "by a thousand ties".
The word Renaissance meaning "Rebirth", first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word occurs in Jules Michelet's 1855 work, Histoire de France; the word Renaissance has been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in Italy, spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in literature, art, politics, science and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, searched for realism and human emotion in art. Renaissance humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini sought out in Europe's monastic libraries the Latin literary and oratorical texts of Antiquity, while the Fall of Constantinople generated a wave of émigré Greek scholars bringing precious manuscripts in ancient Greek, many of which had fallen into obscurity in the West.
It is in their new focus on literary and historical texts that Renaissance scholars differed so markedly from the medieval scholars of the Renaissance of the 12th century, who had focused on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural sciences and mathematics, rather than on such cultural texts. In the revival of neo-Platonism Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity. However, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion, reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were brought back from Byzantium to Western Europe and engaged Western scholars for the first time since late antiquity; this new engagement with Greek Christian works, the return to the original Greek of the Ne
Cuisine
A cuisine is a style of cooking characterized by distinctive ingredients and dishes, associated with a specific culture or geographic region. A cuisine is influenced by the ingredients that are available locally or through trade. Religious food laws, such as Hindu and Jewish dietary laws, can exercise a strong influence on cuisine. Regional food preparation traditions and ingredients combine to create dishes unique to a particular region; some factors that have an influence on a region's cuisine include the area's climate, the trade among different countries, religiousness or sumptuary laws and culinary culture exchange. For example, a Tropical diet may be based more on fruits and vegetables, while a polar diet might rely more on meat and fish; the area's climate, in large measure, determines the native foods. In addition, climate influences food preservation. For example, foods preserved for winter consumption by smoking and pickling have remained significant in world cuisines for their altered gustatory properties.
The trade among different countries largely affects a region's cuisine. Dating back to the ancient spice trade, seasonings such as cinnamon, cardamom and turmeric were important items of commerce in the earliest evolution of trade. Cinnamon and cassia found their way to the Middle East at least 4,000 years ago. Certain foods and food preparations are required or proscribed by the religiousness or sumptuary laws, such as Islamic dietary laws and Jewish dietary laws. Culinary culture exchange is an important factor for cuisine in many regions: Japan’s first substantial and direct exposure to the West came with the arrival of European missionaries in the second half of the 16th century. At that time, the combination of Spanish and Portuguese game frying techniques with a Chinese method for cooking vegetables in oil led to the development of tempura, the popular Japanese dish in which seafood and many different types of vegetables are coated with batter and deep fried. Cuisine dates back to the Antiquity.
As food began to require more planning, there was an emergence of meals that situated around culture. Cuisines evolve continually, new cuisines are created by innovation and cultural interaction. One recent example is fusion cuisine, which combines elements of various culinary traditions while not being categorized per any one cuisine style, refers to the innovations in many contemporary restaurant cuisines since the 1970s. Nouvelle cuisine is an approach to cooking and food presentation in French cuisine, popularized in the 1960s by the food critics Henri Gault, who invented the phrase, his colleagues André Gayot and Christian Millau in a new restaurant guide, the Gault-Millau, or Le Nouveau Guide. Molecular cuisine, is a modern style of cooking which takes advantage of many technical innovations from the scientific disciplines; the term was coined in 1999 by the French INRA chemist Hervé This because he wanted to distinguish it from the name Molecular cuisine, introduced by him and the late Oxford physicist Nicholas Kurti.
It is named as multi sensory cooking, modernist cuisine, culinary physics, experimental cuisine by some chefs. Besides, international trade brings new foodstuffs including ingredients to existing cuisines and leads to changes; the introduction of hot pepper to China from South America around the end of the 17th century influencing Sichuan cuisine, which combines the original taste with the taste of introduced hot pepper and creates a unique flavor of both spicy and pungent. A global cuisine is a cuisine, practiced around the world, can be categorized according to the common use of major foodstuffs, including grains and cooking fats. Regional cuisines can vary based on availability and usage of specific ingredients, local cooking traditions and practices, as well as overall cultural differences; such factors can be more-or-less uniform across wide swaths of territory, or vary intensely within individual regions. For example, in Central and South America, both fresh and dried, is a staple food, is used in many different ways.
In northern Europe, wheat and fats of animal origin predominate, while in southern Europe olive oil is ubiquitous and rice is more prevalent. In Italy, the cuisine of the north, featuring butter and rice, stands in contrast to that of the south, with its wheat pasta and olive oil. In some parts of China, rice is the staple, while in others this role is filled by noodles and bread. Throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean, common ingredients include lamb, olive oil, lemons and rice; the vegetarianism practiced in much of India has made pulses such as chickpeas and lentils as important as wheat or rice. From India to Indonesia, the extenive use of spices is characteristic. African cuisines use a combination of locally available fruits, cereal grains and vegetables, as well as milk and meat products. In some parts of the continent, the traditional diet features a preponderance of milk and whey products. In much of tropical Africa, cow's milk is rare and cannot be produced locally; the continent's diverse demographic makeup is reflected in the many different eating and drinking habits and preparation techniques of its manifold populations.
Asian cuisines are many and varied. Ingredients common to many cultures in the east and Southeast regions of the continent include rice, garlic, sesame seeds, dried onions and tofu. Stir frying, steaming
France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Prehistory of France
Prehistoric France is the period in the human occupation of the geographical area covered by present-day France which extended through prehistory and ended in the Iron Age with the Celtic "La Tène culture". Stone tools indicate. Stone tools discovered at Lézignan-la-Cèbe in 2009 indicate that early humans were present in France at least 1.57 million years ago. France includes Olduwan and Acheulean sites from early or non-modern Hominini species, most notably Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis. Tooth Arago 149 - 560,000 years. Tautavel Man, is a proposed subspecies of the hominid Homo erectus, the 450,000-year-old fossil remains of whom were discovered in the Arago cave in Tautavel; the Grotte du Vallonnet near Menton contained simple stone tools dating to 1 million to 1.05 million years BC. Cave sites were exploited for habitation, but the hunter-gatherers of the Palaeolithic era possibly built shelters such as those identified in connection with Acheulean tools at Grotte du Lazaret and Terra Amata near Nice in France.
Excavations at Terra Amata found traces of the earliest known domestication of fire in Europe, from 400,000 BC. The Neanderthals are thought to have arrived there around 300,000 BC, but seem to have died out by about by 30,000 BC unable to compete with modern humans during a period of cold weather. Numerous Neanderthal, or "Mousterian", artifacts have been found from this period, some using the "Levallois technique", a distinctive type of flint knapping developed by hominids during the Lower Palaeolithic but most associated with the Neanderthal industries of the Middle Palaeolithic. Recent findings suggest that Neandertals and modern humans may have interbred. Evidence of cannibalism among Neanderthals found in Neanderthal settlements Moula-Guercy and Les Pradelles; the earliest modern humans – Cro-Magnons – were present in Europe by 43,000 years ago during a long interglacial period of mild climate, when Europe was warm, food was plentiful. When they arrived in Europe, they brought with them sculpture, painting, body ornamentation and the painstaking decoration of utilitarian objects.
Some of the oldest works of art in the world, such as the cave paintings at Lascaux in southern France, are datable to shortly after this migration. European Palaeolithic cultures are divided into several chronological subgroups: Aurignacian – responsible for Venus figurines, cave paintings at the Chauvet Cave. Périgordian – use of this term is debated. Châtelperronian – culture derived from the earlier, Mousterian industry as it made use of Levallois cores and represents the period when Neanderthals and modern humans occupied Europe together. Gravettian – responsible for Venus figurines, cave paintings at the Cosquer Cave. Solutrean Magdalenian – thought to be responsible for the cave paintings at Pech Merle, the Trois-Frères cave and the Rouffignac Cave known as The Cave of the hundred mammoths, it possesses the most extensive cave system of the Périgord in France with more than 8 kilometers of underground passageways. Experts sometimes refer to the "Franco-Cantabrian region" to describe this densely populated region of southern France and northern Spain in the late Palaeolithic.
From the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic, the Magdalenian culture evolved. In South-West France and Spain, one finds the Azilian culture of the Late Glacial Maximum which co-existed with similar early Mesolithic European cultures such as the Tjongerian of North-Western, the Ahrensburgian of Northern and the Swiderian of North-Eastern Europe, all succeeding the Federmesser complex; the Azilian culture was followed by the Sauveterrian in Southern France and Switzerland, the Tardenoisian in Northern France, the Maglemosian in Northern Europe. Archeologists are unsure. If Gravettian or Epipaleolithic immigrants to Europe were indeed Indo-European populations speaking non-Indo-European languages are obvious candidates for previous Paleolithic remnants; the Vascons of the Pyrenees present the strongest case, since their language is related to none other in the world, the Basque population has a unique genetic profile. The disappearance of the Doggerland affected the surrounding territories; the Doggerland population had to go as far as northern France and eastern Ireland to escape from the floods.
The Neolithic period lasted in northern Europe for 3,000 years. It is characterised by the so-called Neolithic Revolution, a transitional period that included the adoption of agriculture, the development of tools and pottery, the growth of larger, more complex settlements. There was an expansion of peoples from southwest Asia into Europe; some archaeologists believe that this expansion, marking the eclipse of Mesolithic culture, coincided with the introduction of Indo-European speakers, wherea
Vézère
The Vézère is a 211-km-long river in southwestern France. It is an important tributary to the Dordogne River, its source is in the northwestern part of the elevated plateau known as the Massif Central. It flows into the Dordogne near Le Bugue. A tributary of the Vézère is the Corrèze River; the Vézère Valley is famed for its prehistoric cave systems, containing numerous cave paintings and hominid remains. UNESCO collectively designated these a World Heritage site in 1979. Among the sites with remarkable caves is Lascaux; the Vézère takes its source in the bog of Longéroux, on the plateau of Millevaches, in the Massif Central in Corrèze, at 887 meters above sea level, in the commune of Meymac, west of the Puy Pendu in the forest of Longéroux, at the place called sources de la Vézère. It flows at an altitude of 50 metres, its main tributary is the Corrèze, their confluence is located in the western suburbs of Brive-la-Gaillarde. The length of its waterway is 211.2 km. It flows southwest through the following départements and cities: Corrèze: Pérols-sur-Vézère, Uzerche, Brive-la-Gaillarde Dordogne: Montignac, Terrasson-Lavilledieu, Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, Le Bugue The Vézère to Uzerche.
In its upstream part, the Vézère has three major dams: the dam of Monceaux la Virolle, the barrage at Treignac, located between 500 and 650 meters above sea level, the dam at Saillant, a little lower. The river Visera is attested in Carolingian monastic medieval manuscripts in 889, it should not be confused in the Dordogne with the Upper Vézère, or Auvézère, a tributary of the L'Isle, 10 kilometers east of Périgueux. The name Vézère comes, according to some scholars, from the ancient hydronym Vizara or Izara, formed by two contiguous Ligurian roots; the first, viz or iz, the second ara. Viz or Iz means a "hollow Valley", ara means a "watercourse", the word Vézère means "streams in the hollow valley", it could be a Celtic word Isara, meaning a "fast and impetuous flow" to indicate to the travellers the dangers of a river during periods of intense rains or snow melt. The simple Latin variation is visara in the Gallo-Roman world which explains the logical phonetic evolution into Old French and Occitan.
The Vézère valley was dubbed the "Valley of Mankind" from the end of the nineteenth century following the numerous discoveries of exceptional prehistoric sites, including the Abri de Crô-Magnon, a rock shelter, the cave of Font-de-Gaume and the Combarelles caves in Les Eyzies. It the location of the Lascaux cave in Montignac; the prehistoric and ornate caves of the Vézère Valley are classified as UNESCO World Heritage sites. Http://www.geoportail.fr The Vézère at the Sandre database Media related to Vézère at Wikimedia Commons World Heritage profile
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations based in Paris. Its declared purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through educational and cultural reforms in order to increase universal respect for justice, the rule of law, human rights along with fundamental freedom proclaimed in the United Nations Charter, it is the successor of the League of Nations' International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. UNESCO has 11 associate members. Most of its field offices are "cluster" offices covering three or more countries. UNESCO pursues its objectives through five major programs: education, natural sciences, social/human sciences and communication/information. Projects sponsored by UNESCO include literacy and teacher-training programs, international science programs, the promotion of independent media and freedom of the press and cultural history projects, the promotion of cultural diversity, translations of world literature, international cooperation agreements to secure the world's cultural and natural heritage and to preserve human rights, attempts to bridge the worldwide digital divide.
It is a member of the United Nations Development Group. UNESCO's aim is "to contribute to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture and information". Other priorities of the organization include attaining quality Education For All and lifelong learning, addressing emerging social and ethical challenges, fostering cultural diversity, a culture of peace and building inclusive knowledge societies through information and communication; the broad goals and objectives of the international community—as set out in the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals —underpin all UNESCO strategies and activities. UNESCO and its mandate for international cooperation can be traced back to a League of Nations resolution on 21 September 1921, to elect a Commission to study feasibility; this new body, the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation was indeed created in 1922.
On 18 December 1925, the International Bureau of Education began work as a non-governmental organization in the service of international educational development. However, the onset of World War II interrupted the work of these predecessor organizations. After the signing of the Atlantic Charter and the Declaration of the United Nations, the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education began meetings in London which continued from 16 November 1942 to 5 December 1945. On 30 October 1943, the necessity for an international organization was expressed in the Moscow Declaration, agreed upon by China, the United Kingdom, the United States and the USSR; this was followed by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference proposals of 9 October 1944. Upon the proposal of CAME and in accordance with the recommendations of the United Nations Conference on International Organization, held in San Francisco in April–June 1945, a United Nations Conference for the establishment of an educational and cultural organization was convened in London 1–16 November 1945 with 44 governments represented.
The idea of UNESCO was developed by Rab Butler, the Minister of Education for the United Kingdom, who had a great deal of influence in its development. At the ECO/CONF, the Constitution of UNESCO was introduced and signed by 37 countries, a Preparatory Commission was established; the Preparatory Commission operated between 16 November 1945, 4 November 1946—the date when UNESCO's Constitution came into force with the deposit of the twentieth ratification by a member state. The first General Conference took place from 19 November to 10 December 1946, elected Dr. Julian Huxley to Director-General; the Constitution was amended in November 1954 when the General Conference resolved that members of the Executive Board would be representatives of the governments of the States of which they are nationals and would not, as before, act in their personal capacity. This change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the ICIC, in how member states would work together in the organization's fields of competence.
As member states worked together over time to realize UNESCO's mandate and historical factors have shaped the organization's operations in particular during the Cold War, the decolonization process, the dissolution of the USSR. Among the major achievements of the organization is its work against racism, for example through influential statements on race starting with a declaration of anthropologists and other scientists in 1950 and concluding with the 1978 Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice. In 1956, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO saying that some of the organization's publications amounted to "interference" in the country's "racial problems." South Africa rejoined the organization in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela. UNESCO's early work in the field of education included the pilot project on fundamental education in the Marbial Valley, started in 1947; this project was followed by expert missions to other countries, for example, a mission to Afghanistan in 1949.
In 1948, UNESCO recommended that Member States should make free primary education compulsory and universal. In 1990, the World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien, launched a global movement to provide basic education for a
listen); Occitan: Peiregòrd [pejɾeˈɣɔɾ(t)] / Perigòrd [peɾiˈɣɔɾ(t)]) is a natural region and former province of France, which corresponds roughly to the current Dordogne département, now forming the northern part of the Aquitaine région. It is divided into four areas called the Périgord Noir (Black), the Périgord Blanc (White), the Périgord Vert (Green) and the Périgord Pourpre (Purple); the geography and natural resources of Périgord make it a beautiful, unspoiled region rich in history and wildlife,[3] and the newly created Parc Naturel Régional Périgord-Limousin aims to conserve it as such.[4]
