Valley
A valley is a low area between hills or mountains with a river running through it. In geology, a valley or dale is a depression, longer than it is wide; the terms U-shaped and V-shaped are descriptive terms of geography to characterize the form of valleys. Most valleys belong to one of these two main types or a mixture of them, at least with respect to the cross section of the slopes or hillsides. A valley in its broadest geographic sense is known as a dale. Other terms used for valleys are: Vale: A valley. Dell: A small and wooded valley. Glen: A long valley bounded by sloped concave sides. Strath: A wide, flat valley through which a river runs. Mountain cove: A small valley, closed at one or both ends, in the central or southern Appalachian Mountains which sometimes results from the erosion of a geologic window. Hollow: A term used sometimes for a small valley surrounded by mountains or ridges. Cwm: A deep, narrow valley. A steephead valley is a deep, flat bottomed valley with an abrupt ending. Erosional valley: A valley formed by erosion.
Structural valley: A valley formed by geologic events such as drop faults or the rise of highlands. Dry valley: A valley not created by sustained surface water flow. Longitudinal valley: An elongated valley found between two parallel mountain chains. Similar geological structures, such as canyons, gorges, gullies and kloofs, are not referred to as valleys. A valley formed by flowing water, called fluvial valley or river valley, is V-shaped; the exact shape will depend on the characteristics of the stream flowing through it. Rivers with steep gradients, as in mountain ranges, produce a bottom. Shallower slopes may produce gentler valleys. However, in the lowest stretch of a river, where it approaches its base level, it begins to deposit sediment and the valley bottom becomes a floodplain; some broad V examples are: North America: Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, others in Grand Canyon NP Europe: Austria: narrow passages of upper Inn valley, affluents of Enns Switzerland: Napf region, Zurich Oberland, Engadin Germany: affluents to the middle reaches of Rhine and MoselSome of the first human complex societies originated in river valleys, such as that of the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Ganges, Yellow River and arguably Amazon.
In prehistory, the rivers were used as a source of fresh water and food, as well as a place to wash and a sewer. The proximity of water moderated temperature extremes and provided a source for irrigation, stimulating the development of agriculture. Most of the first civilizations developed from these river valley communities. In geography, a vale is a wide river valley with a wide flood plain or flat valley bottom. In Southern England, vales occur between the escarpment slopes of pairs of chalk formations, where the chalk dome has been eroded, exposing less resistant underlying rock claystone. Rift valleys, such as the Albertine Rift and Gregory Rift are formed by the expansion of the Earth's crust due to tectonic activity beneath the Earth's surface. There are various forms of valley associated with glaciation that may be referred to as glacial valleys. A valley carved by glaciers is U-shaped and resembles a trough; this trough valley becomes visible upon the recession of the glacier. When the ice recedes or thaws, the valley remains littered with small boulders that were transported within the ice.
Floor gradient does not affect the valley's shape, it is the glacier's size. Continuously flowing glaciers – in the ice age – and large-sized glaciers carve wide, deep incised valleys, sometimes with valley steps that reflect differing erosion rates. Examples of U-shaped valleys are found in every mountainous region that has experienced glaciation during the Pleistocene ice ages. Most present U-shaped valleys started as V-shaped before glaciation; the glaciers carved it out wider and deeper changing the shape. This proceeds through the glacial erosion processes of glaciation and abrasion, which results in large rocky material being carried in the glacier. A material called; as the ice melts and retreats, the valley is left with steep sides and a wide, flat floor. A river or stream may remain in the valley; this replaces the original stream or river and is known as a misfit stream because it is smaller than one would expect given the size of its valley. Other interesting glacially carved valleys include: Yosemite Valley Side valleys of the Austrian river Salzach for their parallel directions and hanging mouths.
Some Scottish glens full with flowers. That of the St. Mary River in Glacier National Park in Montana, USA. A tunnel valley is a large, long, U-shaped valley cut under the glacial ice near the margin of continental ice sheets such as that now covering Antarctica and covering portions of all continents during past glacial ages. A tunnel valley can be up to 100 km, 4 km wide, 400 m deep. Tunnel valleys were formed by subglacial erosion by water, they served as subglacial drainage pathways carrying large volumes of melt water. Their cross-sections exhibit steep-sided flanks similar to fjord walls, their flat bottoms are typical of subglacial glacial erosion. In northern Central Europe, the Scandinavian ice sheet during the various ice ages advanced uphill against the lie of the land; as a result, its meltwaters flowed parallel to the ice margin to reach the North Sea basin, formin
Kist people
The Kists are a Nakh ethnic group in Georgia. They live in the Pankisi Gorge, in the eastern Georgian region of Kakheti, where there are 9,000 Kist people; the Kist people's origins can be traced back to their ancestral land in lower Chechnya. In the 1830s and 1870s they migrated to the eastern Georgian Pankisi Gorge and some adjoining lands of the provinces of Tusheti and Kakheti. Named "Kists" in Georgian, they are related culturally and ethnically to other Nakh-speaking peoples such as Ingushes and Chechens, but their customs and traditions share many similarities with the eastern Georgian mountaineers. Around the same region of Georgia, there is a related but still different community of Nakh origin called Bats. In 1886, a total of 2,314 Kists were recorded as living in Georgia. In the Russian Imperial Census of 1897, there were 2,502 Chechens living in Georgia, of which 2,397 lived in the Tionetskiy District. In the Soviet Census of 1939, the number of Chechens living in Georgia was recorded at 2,533 people.
There are six Kist villages in Pankisi: Duisi, Jokolo, Shua Khalatsani and Birkiani. The Kist community remains quite small and are scattered across northeast Georgia, but in the past decade the number of residents in the Pankisi area has at least doubled due to an influx of refugees from the neighboring Chechnya. In 1989, it was calculated that Pankisi was about 43% Kist, 29% Georgian and 28% Ossetian, but many of the Ossetians fled as a result of the more hostile situation due to the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. Relationships between the local Ossetians and Georgians and between the Kists and Ossetians have become tense, but remains peaceful as of today; the Ossetian inhabitants are sympathetic to the Chechen refugees, whom they see as protecting them against oppression by the Kists. The Ossetians feel pressured by the Kists and have been leaving their villages in the Pankisi Gorge to resettle in Northern Ossetia; because they cannot sell their properties, they leave behind cultivated lands and houses built over many generations.
Kists and Chechen refugees have settled in these abandoned houses. In this manner, the Ossetian villages of Dumasturi, Kvemo Khalatsani, Tsinubani were vacated from 1998 to 2002; the early history of the Kist people is not well known and there are few sources mentioning their traditions and history. The only historical sources available about the ethnic Kists in the area of Pankisi are found in the Georgian press, dated in the 1880s by E. Gugushvili, Zakaria Gulisashvili, Ivane Bukurauli, Mate Albutashvili. One of the greatest Georgian poets Vazha-Pshavela dedicated his epic Aluda Ketelauri and The Host and the Guest to the story of Kist-Khevsur conflict which occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries. Based on religious and cultural difference, both Caucasian peoples were engaged in fierce fighting. Vazha-Pshavela celebrates heroism of both peoples and underlines the senselessness of their conflict. During the Second World War, the Kists were the only Chechens in the Soviet Union who were not deported by Stalin in 1944.
During the Second Chechen War, the Kists gave shelter to about 7,000 refugees from Chechnya. The majority of Kists adhere to religion made up of syncretized Sunni Muslim beliefs with animistic folk religion religion. Small pockets of Christian Kists still remain in Pankisi and Kakheti. To this day, the Kists worship the Khevsur sacred places and make sacrifices to the Anatori jvari near the Khevsureti village of Shatili, located at the Georgian-Chechen border; the Anatori jvari was considered sacred by Chechens in Maisti and Melkhisti. Highlanders from both the northern Caucasus and Georgia participated together in religious celebrations until the borders were closed. Although today the Kists pray in the mosque in the village of Duisi, they pray at the sites of old, now-ruined Christian sanctuaries; the Christians among them and some Folk followers pray in Saint George church in the village of Joqolo and attend the religious celebration Alaverdoba in the Alaverdi Monastery of Kakheti. Additionally, Kists celebrate a local variation of St George's Day.
When the Kists first arrived in the valley in the early 19th century from Chechnya and Ingushetia, their religious practices included both Islam and their original Nakh religion, with some overlap with the indigenous beliefs of their highland Georgian neighbors. There were Christian influences. In the latter half of the 19th century, the Russian government pressured the Kists to convert to Orthodox Christianity, there were various episodes of mass baptisms and church construction. In 1902, Kists who had remained Muslim constructed a mosque in Duisi, but the Russian government refused to recognize it; the Duisi mosque was forcefully closed, along with other religious structures after the Bolshevik revolution, not reopened until 1960. Sanikidze notes that many Kists, regardless of their designation, have a mix of Muslim and indigenous religious practices; the position of Islam strengthened among the Kists in the Soviet period, in part because "wandering" mullahs continued to proselytize and managed to persuade many to convert to Islam, a process that continued into the 1970s.
In sum, over the years considerable numbers of Kists became Christian, but most of those who did reconverted to Islam. So, until around 1970, a considerable part of the villagers of Jokolo and Birkiani were Christian, a Christian chapel was built in Omalo in the 1960s. In the 1970s, many Christians in Jokolo and Omalo returned to the Is
Alazani
The Alazani is a river that flows through the Caucasus. It is the main tributary of the Kura in eastern Georgia, flows for 351 kilometres. Part of its path forms the border between Georgia and Azerbaijan, before it meets the Kura at the Mingəçevir Reservoir; the river is the same as that referred to by classical authors Strabo and Pliny as "Alazonius" or "Alazon", may be the Abas River mentioned by Plutarch and Dio Cassius as the location of the Battle of the Abas. The Alazani originates in the Greater Caucasus, south of the main ridge, in the northwestern part of the Akhmeta District, it flows to the south towards the town Akhmeta through the fruitful Alazani Valley of Kakheti towards the southeast. The Alazani is the center of the Georgian wine industry. For centuries, it was a main gateway for Persian invaders; the Alazani dries up during the winter, but in the late spring, snow melt from the mountains swells the river enormously. The river is used for irrigation and for drinking water. In the 1990s, Chinese investors built many small hydroelectric power plants, which use the Alazani's strong current.
The river is popular with tourists for rafting trips. A light pollution of the river with biological substances comes from untreated sewage from the cities and other communities, as well as from the agricultural areas. In the districts of Kvareli and Lagodekhi, water quality is said to be quite bad. Alazani serves as the name of different Georgian wines, among them the semi-dry brands of Marani Alazani Valley and Old Tbilisi Alazani. Alazani Floodplain Forests Natural Monument Alazani at GEOnet Names Server
Tusheti
Tusheti is an historic region in northeast Georgia. Located on the northern slopes of the Greater Caucasus Mountains, Tusheti is bordered by the Russian republics of Chechnya and Dagestan to the north and east, respectively; the population of the area is ethnic Georgians called Tushs or Tushetians. Tusheti comprised four mountain communities: the Tsova, the Gometsari, the Pirikiti and the Chaghma, living close to the confluence of the two rivers). Administratively speaking, Tusheti is now part of the raioni of Akhmeta, itself part of Georgia's eastern region of Kakheti; the largest village in Tusheti is Omalo. The area is thought to have long been inhabited by the Tush, a subgroup of Georgians, which themselves divide into two groups- the Chaghma-Tush and Tsova-Tush, it is uncertain whether Bats were. There are two major theories on the origins of the Bats. One is. Jaimoukha speculates that they may be descended from the Kakh, a historical people living in Kakheti and Tusheti. However, the belief that the Kakh were Nakh is not held.
The Georgian name for the Bats, the Tsova-Tush, may be linked to the Tsov, a historical Nakh people claimed by the Georgian historian Melikishvilli to have ruled over the Kingdom of Sophene in Urartu who were forcefully moved to the region around Erebuni, a region linked to Nakh peoples by place names and various historiography. However, theories linking the Bats to Transcaucasian peoples are not universally accepted; the second theory has it that the Batsbi crossed the Greater Caucasus range from Ingusheti in the seventeenth century and settled in Tusheti, that they are therefore a tribe of Ingush origin, Christianized and "Georgianized" over the centuries. King Levan of Kakheti granted the Bats official ownership of the lands in the Alvani Valley in exchange for their military service. Bats-speaking inhabitants of Tusheti are known to the local Georgians as the Tsova-Tushs, they have a high degree of assimilation and are bilingual using both Georgian and their own Bats languages. Nowadays, Bats is spoken only in a village Zemo Alvani.
Anthropological studies on the Tsova-Tush found them to be somewhere in between the Chechen-origin Kists and the Chaghma-Tush of the region, but closer to the Chaghma-Tush. The Bats have considered themselves Georgian by nation for a long period of time, have been speaking Georgian for a while as well; the process of assimilation of the Bats continues, but many Bats have held on to their language and spoken Georgian as well, accounting for the massive Georgian influence on their language. They are Georgian Orthodox Christians. Pagan Georgians from Pkhovi took refuge in the uninhabited mountains during their rebellion against Christianization implemented by the Iberian king Mirian III in the 330s. Subsequently, they were forcibly subdued by the Georgian kings. Regarding the relationship between the Nakh and Georgian Tushians, the "Red Book", states the following: For centuries there have been two communities next to each other in Tusheti, one speaking the Nakh language, the other Old Georgian.
The general name for them is tush, according to their language either Tsova- or Chagma-Tushian. They formed intellectual unit with Old Georgian elements prevailing; the descendants of the Old Georgian pagan tribes, whose ancestors had fled from Christianity to Tusheti, are regarded as Tushians. In the mountains some of the fugitives splintered off from other Old Georgian tribes, they were in close contact with the Nakh tribes. After the collapse of the unified Georgian monarchy, Tusheti came under the rule of Kakhetian kings in the fifteenth century. Many Tush families began to move southwards from Tusheti during the first half of the nineteenth century and settled in the low-lying fields of Alvan at the western end of Kakheti; the first to move were the Bats people following the destruction of one of their most important villages by a landslide in c.1830 and an outbreak of the plague. The Tush of the Chaghma and Gometsari communities followed later. Many of these families practiced a semi-nomadic way of life, the men spending the summer with the flocks of sheep high up in the mountains between April and October, wintering their flocks in Kakheti.
During the German invasion of Soviet Union, a minor anti-Soviet revolt took place in the area in 1942-1943 linked to the similar but more large-scale events in the neighbouri
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, to the southeast by Azerbaijan; the capital and largest city is Tbilisi. Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres, its 2017 population is about 3.718 million. Georgia is a unitary semi-presidential republic, with the government elected through a representative democracy. During the classical era, several independent kingdoms became established in what is now Georgia, such as Colchis and Iberia; the Georgians adopted Christianity in the early 4th century. The common belief had an enormous importance for spiritual and political unification of early Georgian states. A unified Kingdom of Georgia reached its Golden Age during the reign of King David IV and Queen Tamar in the 12th and early 13th centuries. Thereafter, the kingdom declined and disintegrated under hegemony of various regional powers, including the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire, successive dynasties of Iran.
In the late 18th century, the eastern Georgian Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti forged an alliance with the Russian Empire, which directly annexed the kingdom in 1801 and conquered the western Kingdom of Imereti in 1810. Russian rule over Georgia was acknowledged in various peace treaties with Iran and the Ottomans and the remaining Georgian territories were absorbed by the Russian Empire in a piecemeal fashion in the course of the 19th century. During the Civil War following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Georgia became part of the Transcaucasian Federation and emerged as an independent republic before the Red Army invasion in 1921 which established a government of workers' and peasants' soviets. Soviet Georgia would be incorporated into a new Transcaucasian Federation which in 1922 would be a founding republic of the Soviet Union. In 1936, the Transcaucasian Federation was dissolved and Georgia emerged as a Union Republic. During the Great Patriotic War 700,000 Georgians fought in the Red Army against the German invaders.
After Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a native Georgian, died in 1953, a wave of protest spread against Nikita Khrushchev and his de-Stalinization reforms, leading to the death of nearly one hundred students in 1956. From that time on, Georgia would become marred with blatant corruption and increased alienation of the government from the people. By the 1980s, Georgians were ready to abandon the existing system altogether. A pro-independence movement led to the secession from the Soviet Union in April 1991. For most of the following decade, post-Soviet Georgia suffered from civil conflicts, secessionist wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, economic crisis. Following the bloodless Rose Revolution in 2003, Georgia pursued a pro-Western foreign policy; this strengthened state institutions. The country's Western orientation soon led to the worsening of relations with Russia, culminating in the brief Russo-Georgian War in August 2008 and Georgia's current territorial dispute with Russia. Georgia is a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development.
It contains two de facto independent regions and South Ossetia, which gained limited international recognition after the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Georgia and most of the world's countries consider the regions to be Georgian territory under Russian occupation. "Georgia" stems from the Persian designation of the Georgians – gurğān, in the 11th and 12th centuries adapted via Syriac gurz-ān/gurz-iyān and Arabic ĵurĵan/ĵurzan. Lore-based theories were given by the traveller Jacques de Vitry, who explained the name's origin by the popularity of St. George amongst Georgians, while traveller Jean Chardin thought that "Georgia" came from Greek γεωργός; as Prof. Alexander Mikaberidze adds, these century-old explanations for the word Georgia/Georgians are rejected by the scholarly community, who point to the Persian word gurğ/gurğān as the root of the word. Starting with the Persian word gurğ/gurğān, the word was adopted in numerous other languages, including Slavic and West European languages; this term itself might have been established through the ancient Iranian appellation of the near-Caspian region, referred to as Gorgan.
The native name is Sakartvelo, derived from the core central Georgian region of Kartli, recorded from the 9th century, in extended usage referring to the entire medieval Kingdom of Georgia by the 13th century. The self-designation used by ethnic Georgians is Kartvelebi; the medieval Georgian Chronicles present an eponymous ancestor of the Kartvelians, Kartlos, a great-grandson of Japheth. However, scholars agree that the word is derived from the Karts, the latter being one of the proto-Georgian tribes that emerged as a dominant group in ancient times; the name Sakartvelo consists of two parts. Its root, kartvel-i, specifies an inhabitant of the core central-eastern Georgian region of Kartli, or Iberia as it is known in sources of the Eastern Roman Empire. Ancient Greeks and Romans referred to early western Georgians as Colchians and eastern Georgians as Iberians; the Georgian circumfix sa-X-o is a standard geographic construction designating "the area where X dwell", where X is an ethnonym. To
Akhmeta Municipality
Akhmeta is a Municipality of Georgia, in the region of Kakheti. Its main town is Akhmeta. Borders Dusheti Municipality and Tianeti Municipality in the west, Chechen Republic in the north, Telavi Municipality and Dagestan in the east, Sagarejo Municipality in the south. Akhmeta Municipality includes historic region of Tusheti; the population of Akhmeta District is 41,641. 75.02 % of them are 16.64 % Kists, 2,71 % Ossetians, 0,4 % Azerbaijani. Area: 2,208 km² Bakhtrioni Fortress Kvetera Church Alaverdi Monastery Matani Tskhrakara Tskhrakara Complex Districts of Georgia Districts of Georgia, Statoids.com
Kakheti
Kakheti is a region formed in the 1990s in eastern Georgia from the historical province of Kakheti and the small, mountainous province of Tusheti. Telavi is its capital; the region comprises eight administrative districts: Telavi, Qvareli, Dedoplistsqaro, Signagi and Akhmeta. Kakheti is bordered by the Russian Federation to the Northeast, Azerbaijan to the Southeast, Mtskheta-Mtianeti and Kvemo Kartli to the west. Kakheti has a strong linguistic and cultural identity, since its ethnographic subgroup of Kakhetians speak Kakhetian dialect; the Georgian David Gareja monastery complex is located in this province and is subject to a border dispute between Georgian and Azerbaijani authorities. Kakheti is a popular destination in Georgia, the main tourist spots are Tusheti, Signagi, Bodbe, Lagodekhi Protected Areas and Alaverdi Monastery; the region produces wines in micro-regions of Kvareli. Beyond the modern-day administrative subdivision into the districts, Kakheti has traditionally been subdivided into four parts: Inner Kakheti to the east of Tsiv-Gombori mountain range, along the right bank of the Alazani River.
It includes the medieval region of Hereti whose name has fallen into gradual oblivion since the 15th century. The Kakheti region is divided into eight municipalities: Kakheti was an independent principality from the end of the eighth century, it was incorporated into the united Georgian Kingdom at the beginning of the eleventh century, but for less than a decade. Only in the beginning of the twelfth century did Georgian King David the Builder incorporate Kakheti into his Kingdom successfully. After the disintegration of the Georgian Kingdom, Kakheti became an independent Kingdom in the 1460s. From the early 16th century till the early 19th century and its neighboring Kartli came under intermittent Iranian rule. In 1616, Shah Abbas deported hundreds of thousands of the ethnic Kakheti Georgian population to Iran and destroyed the region during his punitive campaign against Teimuraz I, his most loyal subject. During all these centuries the region was an integral part of Iran and it supplied many notable generals, administrators and many hundred of thousands of peasants for the Iranian overlords.
In 1762, the Kakhetian Kingdom was united with the neighboring Georgian Kingdom of Kartli into the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti under King Heraclius II. Following the Treaty of Georgievsk and the sack of Tblisi by Agha Mohammad Khan, in 1801 the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti was annexed to the Russian Empire. Russian suzerainty over Kakheti and the rest of Georgia was recognized by Qajar Iran in the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan. In 1918–1921 Kakheti was part of the independent Democratic Republic of Georgia, in 1922–1936 part of the Transcaucasian SFSR and in 1936–1991 part of the Georgian SSR. Since the Georgian independence in 1991, Kakheti has been a region of the republic of Georgia. Telavi is still its capital; the travel infrastructure in Kakheti is fast developing, since it is the most visited region of Georgia. One can choose to stay in a guest house, in a small and comfortable hotel, or a beautiful boutique-style hotel while traveling in this region. Telavi and Signagi are the most visited towns.
Signagi was renovated three years ago. Until there were only some family hotels, but now Signagi features several hotels. Kakhetian pig List of sovereigns of Kakheti www.kakheti.net - information Kakheti region website Kakheti regional administration website Kakheti travel guide from Wikivoyage
Georgia
