Eudicots
The eudicots, Eudicotidae or eudicotyledons are a clade of flowering plants, called tricolpates or non-magnoliid dicots by previous authors. The botanical terms were introduced in 1991 by evolutionary botanist James A. Doyle and paleobotanist Carol L. Hotton to emphasize the evolutionary divergence of tricolpate dicots from earlier, less specialized, dicots; the close relationships among flowering plants with tricolpate pollen grains was seen in morphological studies of shared derived characters. These plants have a distinct trait in their pollen grains of exhibiting three colpi or grooves paralleling the polar axis. Molecular evidence confirmed the genetic basis for the evolutionary relationships among flowering plants with tricolpate pollen grains and dicotyledonous traits; the term means "true dicotyledons", as it contains the majority of plants that have been considered dicots and have characteristics of the dicots. The term "eudicots" has subsequently been adopted in botany to refer to one of the two largest clades of angiosperms, monocots being the other.
The remaining angiosperms include magnoliids and what are sometimes referred to as basal angiosperms or paleodicots, but these terms have not been or adopted, as they do not refer to a monophyletic group. The other name for the eudicots is tricolpates, a name which refers to the grooved structure of the pollen. Members of the group have tricolpate pollen; these pollens have three or more pores set in furrows called colpi. In contrast, most of the other seed plants produce monosulcate pollen, with a single pore set in a differently oriented groove called the sulcus; the name "tricolpates" is preferred by some botanists to avoid confusion with the dicots, a nonmonophyletic group. Numerous familiar plants are eudicots, including many common food plants and ornamentals; some common and familiar eudicots include members of the sunflower family such as the common dandelion, the forget-me-not and other members of its family, buttercup and macadamia. Most leafy trees of midlatitudes belong to eudicots, with notable exceptions being magnolias and tulip trees which belong to magnoliids, Ginkgo biloba, not an angiosperm.
The name "eudicots" is used in the APG system, of 1998, APG II system, of 2003, for classification of angiosperms. It is applied to a monophyletic group, which includes most of the dicots. "Tricolpate" is a synonym for the "Eudicot" monophyletic group, the "true dicotyledons". The number of pollen grain furrows or pores helps classify the flowering plants, with eudicots having three colpi, other groups having one sulcus. Pollen apertures are any modification of the wall of the pollen grain; these modifications include thinning and pores, they serve as an exit for the pollen contents and allow shrinking and swelling of the grain caused by changes in moisture content. The elongated apertures/ furrows in the pollen grain are called colpi, along with pores, are a chief criterion for identifying the pollen classes; the eudicots can be divided into two groups: the basal eudicots and the core eudicots. Basal eudicot is an informal name for a paraphyletic group; the core eudicots are a monophyletic group.
A 2010 study suggested the core eudicots can be divided into two clades, Gunnerales and a clade called "Pentapetalae", comprising all the remaining core eudicots. The Pentapetalae can be divided into three clades: Dilleniales superrosids consisting of Saxifragales and rosids superasterids consisting of Santalales, Berberidopsidales and asteridsThis division of the eudicots is shown in the following cladogram: The following is a more detailed breakdown according to APG IV, showing within each clade and orders: clade Eudicots order Ranunculales order Proteales order Trochodendrales order Buxales clade Core eudicots order Gunnerales order Dilleniales clade Superrosids order Saxifragales clade Rosids order Vitales clade Fabids order Fabales order Rosales order Fagales order Cucurbitales order Oxalidales order Malpighiales order Celastrales order Zygophyllales clade Malvids order Geraniales order Myrtales order Crossosomatales order Picramniales order Malvales order Brassicales order Huerteales order Sapindales clade Superasterids order Berberidopsidales order Santalales order Caryophyllales clade Asterids order Cornales order Ericales clade Campanulids order Aquifoliales order Asterales order Escalloniales order Bruniales order Apiales order Dipsacales order Paracryphiales clade Lamiids order Solanales order Lamiales order Vahliales order Gentianales order Boraginales order Garryales order Metteniusales order Icacinales Eudicots at the Encyclopedia of Life Eudicots, Tree of Life Web Project Dicots Plant Life Forms
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist and zoologist who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin, his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus. Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland in southern Sweden, he received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and published the first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands, he returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals and minerals, while publishing several volumes, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe at the time of his death. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message: "Tell him I know no greater man on earth."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote: "With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly." Swedish author August Strindberg wrote: "Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist." Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum and "The Pliny of the North". He is considered as one of the founders of modern ecology. In botany and zoology, the abbreviation L. is used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for a species' name. In older publications, the abbreviation "Linn." is found. Linnaeus's remains comprise the type specimen for the species Homo sapiens following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, since the sole specimen that he is known to have examined was himself. Linnaeus was born in the village of Råshult in Småland, Sweden, on 23 May 1707, he was the first child of Christina Brodersonia. His siblings were Anna Maria Linnæa, Sofia Juliana Linnæa, Samuel Linnæus, Emerentia Linnæa, his father taught him Latin as a small child.
One of a long line of peasants and priests, Nils was an amateur botanist, a Lutheran minister, the curate of the small village of Stenbrohult in Småland. Christina was the daughter of the rector of Samuel Brodersonius. A year after Linnaeus's birth, his grandfather Samuel Brodersonius died, his father Nils became the rector of Stenbrohult; the family moved into the rectory from the curate's house. In his early years, Linnaeus seemed to have a liking for plants, flowers in particular. Whenever he was upset, he was given a flower, which calmed him. Nils spent much time in his garden and showed flowers to Linnaeus and told him their names. Soon Linnaeus was given his own patch of earth. Carl's father was the first in his ancestry to adopt a permanent surname. Before that, ancestors had used the patronymic naming system of Scandinavian countries: his father was named Ingemarsson after his father Ingemar Bengtsson; when Nils was admitted to the University of Lund, he had to take on a family name. He adopted the Latinate name Linnæus after a giant linden tree, lind in Swedish, that grew on the family homestead.
This name was spelled with the æ ligature. When Carl was born, he was named Carl Linnæus, with his father's family name; the son always spelled it with the æ ligature, both in handwritten documents and in publications. Carl's patronymic would have been Nilsson, as in Carl Nilsson Linnæus. Linnaeus's father began teaching him basic Latin and geography at an early age; when Linnaeus was seven, Nils decided to hire a tutor for him. The parents picked a son of a local yeoman. Linnaeus did not like him, writing in his autobiography that Telander "was better calculated to extinguish a child's talents than develop them". Two years after his tutoring had begun, he was sent to the Lower Grammar School at Växjö in 1717. Linnaeus studied going to the countryside to look for plants, he reached the last year of the Lower School when he was fifteen, taught by the headmaster, Daniel Lannerus, interested in botany. Lannerus gave him the run of his garden, he introduced him to Johan Rothman, the state doctor of Småland and a teacher at Katedralskolan in Växjö.
A botanist, Rothman broadened Linnaeus's interest in botany and helped him develop an interest in medicine. By the age of 17, Linnaeus had become well acquainted with the existing botanical literature, he remarks in his journal that he "read day and night, knowing like the back of my hand, Arvidh Månsson's Rydaholm Book of Herbs, Tillandz's Flora Åboensis, Palmberg's Serta Florea Suecana, Bromelii Chloros Gothica and Rudbeckii Hortus Upsaliensis...."Linnaeus entered the Växjö Katedralskola in 1724, where he studied Greek, Hebrew and mathematics, a curriculum designed for boys preparing for the priesthood. In the last year at the gymnasium, Linnaeus's father visited to ask the professors how his son's studies were progressing. Rothman believed otherwise; the doctor offered to have Linnaeus live with his family in Växjö and to teach him physiology and botany. Nils accepted this offer. Rothman showed Linnaeus that botany was a serious sub
Linear B
Linear B is a syllabic script, used for writing Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of Greek. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries; the oldest Mycenaean writing dates to about 1450 BC. It is descended from the older Linear A, an undeciphered earlier script used for writing the Minoan language, as is the Cypriot syllabary, which recorded Greek. Linear B, found in the palace archives at Knossos, Pylos and Mycenae, disappeared with the fall of Mycenaean civilization during the Late Bronze Age collapse; the succeeding period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, provides no evidence of the use of writing. It is the only one of the Bronze Age Aegean scripts to have been deciphered, by English architect and self-taught linguist Michael Ventris. Linear B consists of over 100 ideographic signs; these ideograms or "signifying" signs symbolize commodities. They are never used as word signs in writing a sentence; the application of Linear B appears to have been confined to administrative contexts.
In all the thousands of clay tablets, a small number of different "hands" have been detected: 45 in Pylos and 66 in Knossos. It is possible that the script was used only by a guild of professional scribes who served the central palaces. Once the palaces were destroyed, the script disappeared. Linear B has 200 signs, divided into syllabic signs with phonetic values and ideograms with semantic values; the representations and naming of these signs have been standardized by a series of international colloquia starting with the first in Paris in 1956. After the third meeting in 1961 at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin, a standard proposed by Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. became known as the Wingspread Convention, adopted by a new organization, the Comité International Permanent des Études Mycéniennes, affiliated in 1970 by the fifth colloquium with UNESCO. Colloquia continue: the 13th occurred in 2010 in Paris. Many of the signs are identical or similar to those in Linear A; the grid developed during decipherment by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick of phonetic values for syllabic signs is shown below.
Initial consonants are in the leftmost column. The transcription of the syllable is listed next to the sign along with Bennett's identifying number for the sign preceded by an asterisk. In cases where the transcription of the sign remains in doubt, Bennett's number serves to identify the sign; the signs on the tablets and sealings show considerable variation from each other and from the representations below. Discovery of the reasons for the variation and possible semantic differences is a topic of ongoing debate in Mycenaean studies. In addition to the grid, the first edition of Documents in Mycenaean Greek contained a number of other signs termed "homophones" because they appeared at that time to resemble the sounds of other syllables and were transcribed accordingly: pa2 and pa3 were presumed homophonous to pa. Many of these are shown in the "special values" below; the second edition relates: "It may be taken as axiomatic that there are no true homophones." The unconfirmed identifications of *34 and *35 as ai2 and ai3 were removed.
Pa2 became qa. Other values remain unknown because of scarcity of evidence concerning them. Note that *34 and *35 are mirror images of each other but whether this graphic relationship indicates a phonetic one remains unconfirmed. In recent times, CIPEM inherited the former authority of Bennett and the Wingspread Convention in deciding what signs are "confirmed" and how to represent the various sign categories. In editions of Mycenaean texts, the signs whose values have not been confirmed by CIPEM are always transcribed as numbers preceded by an asterisk. CIPEM allocates the numerical identifiers, until such allocation, new signs are transcribed as a bullet-point enclosed in square brackets:; the signs are approximations―each may be used to represent a variety of about 70 distinct combinations of sounds, within rules and conventions. The grid presents a system of monosyllabic signs of the type V/CV. Clarification of the 14 or so special values tested the limits of the grid model, but Chadwick in the end concluded that with the ramifications, the syllabic signs can unexceptionally be considered monosyllabic.
Possible exceptions, Chadwick goes on to explain, include the two diphthongs, and, as in, ai-ku-pi-ti-jo, for Aiguptios and, au-ke-wa, for Augewās. However, a diphthong is by definition two vowels united into a single sound and therefore might be typed as just V. Thus, as in, e-rai-wo, for elaiwon, is of the type CV. Diphthongs are otherwise treated as two monosyllables:, a-ro-u-ra, for arourans, of the types CV and V. Lengths of vowels and accents are not marked, and the more doubtful and may be regarded as beginning with labialized consonants, rather than two consonants though they may alternate with a two-sign form: o-da-twe-ta and o-da-tu-we-ta for Odatwenta. And begin with palatalized consonants rather than two consonants: -ti-ri-ja for -trja (-τρι
American cuisine
American cuisine reflects the history of the United States, blending the culinary contributions of various groups of people from around the world, including indigenous American Indians, African Americans, Europeans, Pacific Islanders, South Americans. Early Native Americans utilized a number of cooking methods in early American cuisine that have been blended with early European cooking methods to form the basis of what is now American cuisine; the European settlement of the Americas introduced a number of ingredients, spices and cooking styles to the continent. The various styles of cuisine continued expanding well into the 19th and 20th centuries, proportional to the influx of immigrants from many different nations; when the colonists came to the colonies, they farmed animals for clothing and meat in a similar fashion to what they had done in Europe. They had cuisine similar to their previous Dutch, Swedish and British cuisines; the American colonial diet varied depending on the region settled.
Hunted game included deer, bear and wild turkey. A number of fats and oils made from animals served to cook much of the colonial foods. Prior to the Revolution, New Englanders consumed large quantities of rum and beer, as maritime trade provided them easy access to the goods needed to produce these items: rum was the distilled spirit of choice, as the main ingredient, was available from trade with the West Indies. In comparison to the northern colonies, the southern colonies were quite diverse in their agricultural diet. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Americans developed many new foods. During the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, circa 1890s–1920s, food production and presentation became more industrialized. One characteristic of American cooking is the fusion of multiple ethnic or regional approaches into new cooking styles. A wave of celebrity chefs began with Julia Child and Graham Kerr in the 1970s, with many more following after the rise of cable channels such as the Food Network and Cooking Channel in the late 20th century.
Seafood in the United States originated with the American Indians in the United States, who ate cod, lemon sole, herring, sturgeon, drum on the East Coast, olachen and salmon on the West Coast. Whale was hunted by American Indians off the Northwest coast by the Makah, used for their meat and oil. Seal and walrus were eaten, in addition to eel from New York's Finger Lakes region. Catfish was popular among native people, including the Modocs. Crustaceans included shrimp, lobster and dungeness crabs in the Northwest and blue crabs in the East. Other shellfish include abalone and geoduck on the West Coast, while on the East Coast the surf clam and the soft-shell clam. Oysters were eaten on both shores, as were periwinkles. Early American Indians used a number of cooking methods in early American Cuisine that have been blended with early European cooking methods to form the basis of American Cuisine. Grilling meats was common. Spit roasting over a pit fire was common as well. Vegetables root vegetables were cooked directly in the ashes of the fire.
As early Native Americans lacked pottery that could be used directly over a fire, they developed a technique which has caused many anthropologists to call them "Stone Boilers". They would heat rocks directly in a fire and add the rocks to a pot filled with water until it came to a boil so that it would cook the meat or vegetables in the boiling water. In what is now the Southwestern United States, they created adobe ovens, dubbed hornos by the Spanish, to bake products such as cornmeal bread. Other parts of America dug pit ovens; when the colonists came to Virginia, Massachusetts, or any of the other English colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America, their initial attempts at survival included planting crops familiar to them from back home in England. In the same way, they farmed animals for meat in a similar fashion. Through hardships and eventual establishment of trade with Britain, the West Indies and other regions, the colonists were able to establish themselves in the American colonies with a cuisine similar to their previous British cuisine.
There were some exceptions to the diet, such as local vegetation and animals, but the colonists attempted to use these items in the same fashion as they had their equivalents or ignore them if they could. The manner of cooking for the American colonists followed along the line of British cookery up until the Revolution; the British sentiment followed in the cookbooks brought to the New World as well. In 1796, the first American cookbook was published, others followed. There was a general disdain for French cookery with the French Huguenots in South Carolina and French-Canadians. One of the cookbooks that proliferated in the colonies was The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse, who referred to "the blind folly of this age that would rather be imposed on by a French booby, than give encouragement to a good English cook!" Of the French recipes given in the text, she speaks out flagrantly against the dishes as she "… think it an odd jumble of trash." Reinforcing the anti-French sentiment was the French and Indian War from 1754 to 1764.
This created a large anxiety against th
Latinisation of names
Latinisation of names known as onomastic Latinisation, is the practice of rendering a non-Latin name in a Latin style. It is found with historical proper names, including personal names, toponyms, in the standard binomial nomenclature of the life sciences, it goes further than romanisation, the transliteration of a word to the Latin alphabet from another script. This was done in the classical to emulate Latin authors, or to present a more impressive image. In a scientific context, the main purpose of Latinisation may be to produce a name, internationally consistent. Latinisation may be carried out by: transforming the name into Latin sounds, or adding Latinate suffixes to the end of a name, or translating a name with a specific meaning into Latin, or choosing a new name based on some attribute of the person. Humanist names, assumed by Renaissance humanists, were Latinised names, though in some cases they invoked Ancient Greek. Latinisation in humanist names may consist of translation from vernacular European languages, sometimes involving a playful element of punning.
Such names could be a cover for humble social origins. The title of the "Wilhelmus", national anthem of the Netherlands, preserves a Latinised form of the name of William the Silent. In English, place names appear in Latinised form; this is a result of many early text books mentioning the places being written in Latin. Because of this, the English language uses Latinised forms of foreign place names instead of anglicised forms or the original names. Examples of Latinised names for countries or regions are: Estonia Ingria Livonia Eboracum was the Latinised name for the modern English city, York, it is a Latinised form of the Brythonic name *Eburākon which means'place of yew trees'. The Brythonic language was evolved into modern Welsh. Latinisation is a common practice for scientific names. For example, the name of a genus of palm trees, is a Latinisation of Livingstone. During the age of the Roman Empire, translation of names into Latin or Greek was common. Additionally, Latinised versions of Greek substantives proper nouns, could be declined by Latin speakers with minimal modification of the original word.
During the medieval period, after the Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the main bastion of scholarship was the Roman Catholic Church, for which Latin was the primary written language. In the early medieval period, most European scholars were priests and most educated people spoke Latin, as a result, Latin became established as the scholarly language for the West. During modern times Europe has abandoned Latin as a scholarly language, but a variety of fields still use Latin terminology as the norm. By tradition, it is still common in some fields to name new discoveries in Latin, and because Western science became dominant during the 18th and 19th centuries, the use of Latin names in many scholarly fields has gained worldwide acceptance, at least when European languages are being used for communication. Nicolson, Dan H.. "Orthography of Names and Epithets: Latinization of Personal Names". Taxon. International Association for Plant Taxonomy. 23: 549–561. Doi:10.2307/1218779
Parsnip
The parsnip is a root vegetable related to carrot and parsley. It is a biennial plant grown as an annual, its long, tuberous root has cream-colored skin and flesh, left in the ground to mature, it becomes sweeter in flavor after winter frosts. In its first growing season, the plant has a rosette of mid-green leaves. If unharvested, in its second growing season it produces a flowering stem topped by an umbel of small yellow flowers producing pale brown, winged seeds. By this time, the stem has become woody and the tuberous root inedible; the parsnip is native to Eurasia. It was used as a sweetener before the arrival in Europe of cane sugar; the parsnip is cooked, but it can be eaten raw. It is high in vitamins and minerals potassium, it contains antioxidants and both soluble and insoluble dietary fiber. It should be cultivated in stone-free soil, it is attacked by the carrot fly and other insect pests, as well as viruses and fungal diseases, of which canker is the most serious. Handling the stems and foliage can cause a skin rash if the skin is exposed to sunlight after handling.
The parsnip is a biennial plant with a rosette of hairy leaves that have a pungent odor when crushed. Parsnips are grown for their fleshy, cream-colored taproots; the roots are smooth, although lateral roots sometimes form. Most are cylindrical, but some cultivars have a more bulbous shape, which tends to be favored by food processors as it is more resistant to breakage; the plant's apical meristem produces a rosette of pinnate leaves, each with several pairs of leaflets with toothed margins. The lower leaves have short stems, the upper ones are stemless, the terminal leaves have three lobes; the leaves are once- or twice-pinnate with broad, sometimes lobed leaflets with toothed margins. The petioles have sheathed bases; the floral stem can grow to more than 150 cm tall. It is hairy, grooved and sparsely branched, it has a few stalkless, single-lobed leaves measuring 5 to 10 cm long that are arranged in opposite pairs. The yellow flowers are in a compound umbel measuring 10 to 20 cm in diameter. Six to 25 straight pedicels are present.
The umbels and umbellets have no upper or lower bracts. The flowers have tiny sepals or lack them and measure about 3.5 mm. They consist of five yellow petals that are curled inward, five stamens, one pistil; the fruits, or schizocarps, are flat, with narrow wings and short, spreading styles. They are colored straw to light brown, measure 4 to 8 mm long. Despite the slight morphological differences between the two, wild parsnip is the same taxon as the cultivated version, the two cross-pollinate. Parsnip has a chromosome number of 2n=22. Like carrots, parsnips have been eaten there since ancient times. Zohary and Hopf note that the archaeological evidence for the cultivation of the parsnip is "still rather limited", that Greek and Roman literary sources are a major source about its early use, they warn that "there are some difficulties in distinguishing between parsnip and carrot in classical writings since both vegetables seem to have been sometimes called pastinaca, yet each vegetable appears to be well under cultivation in Roman times".
The parsnip was much esteemed, the Emperor Tiberius accepted part of the tribute payable to Rome by Germany in the form of parsnips. In Europe, the vegetable was used as a source of sugar before beet sugars were available; as pastinache comuni, the "common" pastinaca figures in the long list of comestibles enjoyed by the Milanese given by Bonvesin da la Riva in his "Marvels of Milan". This plant was introduced to North America by the French colonists in Canada and the British in the Thirteen Colonies for use as a root vegetable, but in the mid-19th century, it was replaced as the main source of starch by the potato and was less cultivated. In 1859, a new cultivar called'Student' was developed by James Buckman at the Royal Agricultural College in England, he back-crossed cultivated plants to wild stock, aiming to demonstrate how native plants could be improved by selective breeding. This experiment was so successful,'Student' became the major variety in cultivation in the late 19th century. Pastinaca sativa was first described by Carolus Linnaeus in his 1753 work Species Plantarum.
It has acquired several synonyms in its taxonomic history: Pastinaca fleischmannii Hladnik, ex D. Dietr. Pastinaca opaca Bernh. Ex Hornem. Pastinaca pratensis H. Mart. Pastinaca sylvestris Mill. Pastinaca teretiuscula Boiss. Pastinaca umbrosa Steven, ex DC. Pastinaca urens Req. ex Godr. Several species from other genera are synonymous with the name Pastinaca sativa. Like most plants of agricultural importance, several subspecies and varieties of P. sativa have been described, but these are no longer recognized as independent taxa, but rather, morphological variations of the same taxon. P. s. subsp. Divaricata Rouy & Camus P. s. subsp. Pratensis Čelak. P. s. subsp. Sylvestris Rouy & Camus P. s. subsp. Umbrosa Bondar. Ex O. N. Korovina P. s. subsp. Urens Čelak. P
Malta
Malta known as the Republic of Malta, is a Southern European island country consisting of an archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea. It lies 80 km south of Italy, 284 km east of Tunisia, 333 km north of Libya. With a population of about 475,000 over an area of 316 km2, Malta is the world's tenth smallest and fifth most densely populated country, its capital is Valletta, the smallest national capital in the European Union by area at 0.8 km.2 The official languages are Maltese and English, with Maltese recognised as the national language and the only Semitic language in the European Union. Malta has been inhabited since 5900 BC, its location in the centre of the Mediterranean has given it great strategic importance as a naval base, with a succession of powers having contested and ruled the islands, including the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, Greeks, Normans, Knights of St. John and British. Most of these foreign influences have left some sort of mark on the country's ancient culture. Malta became a British colony in 1815, serving as a way station for ships and the headquarters for the British Mediterranean Fleet.
It played an important role in the Allied war effort during the Second World War, was subsequently awarded the George Cross for its bravery in the face of an Axis siege, the George Cross appears on Malta's national flag. The British Parliament passed the Malta Independence Act in 1964, giving Malta independence from the United Kingdom as the State of Malta, with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state and queen; the country became a republic in 1974. It has been a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations since independence, joined the European Union in 2004. Malta has a long Christian legacy and its Archdiocese is claimed to be an apostolic see because Paul the Apostle was shipwrecked on "Melita", according to Acts of the Apostles, now taken to be Malta. While Catholicism is the official religion in Malta, Article 40 of the Constitution states that "all persons in Malta shall have full freedom of conscience and enjoy the free exercise of their respective mode of religious worship."Malta is a popular tourist destination with its warm climate, numerous recreational areas, architectural and historical monuments, including three UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni and seven megalithic temples which are some of the oldest free-standing structures in the world.
The origin of the name Malta is uncertain, the modern-day variation is derived from the Maltese language. The most common etymology is that the word Malta is derived from the Greek word μέλι, meli, "honey"; the ancient Greeks called the island Μελίτη meaning "honey-sweet" for Malta's unique production of honey. The Romans called the island Melita, which can be considered either a latinisation of the Greek Μελίτη or the adaptation of the Doric Greek pronunciation of the same word Μελίτα; this spelling is found in the New Testament. Another conjecture suggests that the word Malta comes from the Phoenician word Maleth, "a haven", or'port' in reference to Malta's many bays and coves. Few other etymological mentions appear in classical literature, with the term Malta appearing in its present form in the Antonine Itinerary. Malta has been inhabited from around 5900 BC, since the arrival of settlers from the island of Sicily. A significant prehistoric Neolithic culture marked by Megalithic structures, which date back to c. 3600 BC, existed on the islands, as evidenced by the temples of Mnajdra and others.
The Phoenicians colonised Malta between 800 -- 700 BC, bringing their Semitic culture. They used the islands as an outpost from which they expanded sea explorations and trade in the Mediterranean until their successors, the Carthaginians, were ousted by the Romans in 216 BC with the help of the Maltese inhabitants, under whom Malta became a municipium. After a period of Byzantine rule and a probable sack by the Vandals, the islands were invaded by the Aghlabids in AD 870; the fate of the population after the Arab invasion is unclear but it seems the islands may have been depopulated and were to have been repopulated in the beginning of the second millennium by settlers from Arab-ruled Sicily who spoke Siculo-Arabic. The Muslim rule was ended by the Normans who conquered the island in 1091; the islands were re-Christianised by 1249. The islands were part of the Kingdom of Sicily until 1530, were controlled by the Capetian House of Anjou. In 1530 Charles I of Spain gave the Maltese islands to the Order of Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in perpetual lease.
The French under Napoleon took hold of the Maltese islands in 1798, although with the aid of the British the Maltese were able to oust French control two years later. The inhabitants subsequently asked Britain to assume sovereignty over the islands under the conditions laid out in a Declaration of Rights, stating that "his Majesty has no right to cede these Islands to any power...if he chooses to withdraw his protection, abandon his sovereignty, the right of electing another sovereign, or of the governing of these Islands, belongs to us, the inhabitants and aborigines alone, without control." As part of the Treaty of Paris in 1814, Malta became a British colony rejecting an attempted integration with the United Kingdom in 1956. Malta became independent on 21 September 1964. Under its 1964 constitution
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Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). 
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