Tiber
The Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing 406 kilometres through Tuscany and Lazio, where it is joined by the river Aniene, to the Tyrrhenian Sea, between Ostia and Fiumicino. It drains a basin estimated at 17,375 square kilometres; the river has achieved lasting fame as the main watercourse of the city of Rome, founded on its eastern banks. The river rises at Mount Fumaiolo in central Italy and flows in a southerly direction past Perugia and Rome to meet the sea at Ostia. Popularly called flavus, in reference to the yellowish colour of its water, the Tiber has advanced at the mouth by about 3 kilometres since Roman times, leaving the ancient port of Ostia Antica 6 kilometres inland. However, it does not form a proportional delta, owing to a strong north-flowing sea current close to the shore, to the steep shelving of the coast, to slow tectonic subsidence; the source of the Tiber consists of two springs 10 metres away from each other on Mount Fumaiolo.
These springs are called "Le Vene". The springs are in a beech forest 1,268 metres above sea level. During the 1930s, Benito Mussolini placed an antique marble Roman column at the point where the river arises, inscribed QUI NASCE IL FIUME SACRO AI DESTINI DI ROMA. There is an eagle on the top of this column; the first miles of the Tiber run through Valtiberina before entering Umbria. It is probable that the genesis of the name Tiber was pre-Latin, like the Roman name of Tibur, may be Italic in origin; the same root is found in the Latin praenomen Tiberius. There are Etruscan variants of this praenomen in Thefarie and Teperie; the legendary king Tiberinus, ninth in the king-list of Alba Longa, was said to have drowned in the river Albula, afterward called Tiberis. The myth may have explained a memory of an earlier pre-Indo-European name for the river, "white" with sediment, or "from the mountains" from pre-Indo-European word "alba, albion" mount, elevated area. Tiberis/Tifernus may be a pre-Indo-European substrate word related to Aegean tifos "still water", Greek phytonym τύφη a kind of swamp and river bank weed, Iberian hydronyms Tibilis and Numidian Aquae Tibilitanae.
Yet another etymology is from *dubri-, considered by Alessio as Sicel, whence the form Θύβρις Tiberis. This root * dubri - is widespread in Portus Dubris. According to the legend, Jupiter made him a guardian spirit of the river; this gave rise to the standard Roman depiction of the river as a powerfully built reclining god named Tiberinus, with streams of water flowing from his hair and beard. The Tiber was believed to be the river into which Romulus and Remus were thrown as infants. According to legend, the city of Rome was founded in 753 BC on the banks of the Tiber about 25 kilometres from the sea at Ostia; the island Isola Tiberina in the centre of Rome, between Trastevere and the ancient center, was the site of an important ancient ford and was bridged. Legend says Rome's founders, the twin brothers Romulus and Remus, were abandoned on its waters, where they were rescued by the she-wolf, Lupa; the river marked the boundary between the lands of the Etruscans to the west, the Sabines to the east and the Latins to the south.
Benito Mussolini, born in Romagna, adjusted the boundary between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, so that the springs of the Tiber would lie in Romagna. The Tiber was critically important to Roman trade and commerce, as ships could reach as far as 100 kilometres upriver, it was used to ship stone and foodstuffs to Rome. During the Punic Wars of the 3rd century BC, the harbour at Ostia became a key naval base, it became Rome's most important port, where wheat, olive oil, wine were imported from Rome's colonies around the Mediterranean. Wharves were built along the riverside in Rome itself, lining the riverbanks around the Campus Martius area; the Romans connected the river with a sewer system and with an underground network of tunnels and other channels, to bring its water into the middle of the city. Wealthy Romans had garden-parks or "horti" on the banks of the river in Rome up through the first century BC; these may have been developed about a century later. The heavy sedimentation of the river made it difficult to maintain Ostia, prompting the emperors Claudius and Trajan to establish a new port on the Fiumicino in the 1st century AD.
They built a new road, the via Portuensis, to connect Rome with Fiumicino, leaving the city by Porta Portese. Both ports were abandoned due to silting. Several popes attempted to improve navigation on the Tiber in the 17th and 18th century, with extensive dredging continuing into the 19th century. Trade was boosted for a while but by the 20th century silting had resulted in the river only being navigable as far as Rome itself; the Tiber was once known for its floods — the Campus Martius is a flood plain and would flood to a depth of 2 metres. The river is now confined between high stone embankments which were begun in 1876. Within the city, the riverbanks are lined by boulevards known as lungoteveri, streets "along the Tiber"; because the river is identified with Rome, the terms "swimming the Ti
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and largest city of the Grand Est region of France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located at the border with Germany in the historic region of Alsace, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin department. In 2016, the city proper had 279,284 inhabitants and both the Eurométropole de Strasbourg and the Arrondissement of Strasbourg had 491,409 inhabitants. Strasbourg's metropolitan area had a population of 785,839 in 2015, making it the ninth largest metro area in France and home to 13% of the Grand Est region's inhabitants; the transnational Eurodistrict Strasbourg-Ortenau had a population of 915,000 inhabitants in 2014. Strasbourg is one of the de facto capitals of the European Union, as it is the seat of several European institutions, such as the Council of Europe and the Eurocorps, as well as the European Parliament and the European Ombudsman of the European Union; the city is the seat of the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine and the International Institute of Human Rights.
Strasbourg's historic city centre, the Grande Île, was classified a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988, the first time such an honour was placed on an entire city centre. Strasbourg is immersed in Franco-German culture and although violently disputed throughout history, has been a cultural bridge between France and Germany for centuries through the University of Strasbourg the second largest in France, the coexistence of Catholic and Protestant culture, it is home to the largest Islamic place of worship in France, the Strasbourg Grand Mosque. Economically, Strasbourg is an important centre of manufacturing and engineering, as well as a hub of road and river transportation; the port of Strasbourg is the second largest on the Rhine after Germany. Before the 5th century, the city was known as Argantorati, a Celtic Gaulish name Latinized first as Argentorate, as Argentoratum; that Gaulish name is a compound of -rati, the Gaulish word for fortified enclosures, cognate to the Old Irish ráth, arganto-, the Gaulish word for silver, but any precious metal gold, suggesting either a fortified enclosure located by a river gold mining site, or hoarding gold mined in the nearby rivers.
After the 5th century, the city became known by a different name Gallicized as Strasbourg. That name is of Germanic origin and means "Town of roads"; the modern Stras- is cognate to the German Straße and English street, all of which are derived from Latin strata, while -bourg is cognate to the German Burg and English borough, all of which are derived from Proto-Germanic *burgz. Gregory of Tours was the first to mention the name change: in the tenth book of his History of the Franks written shortly after 590 he said that Egidius, Bishop of Reims, accused of plotting against King Childebert II of Austrasia in favor of his uncle King Chilperic I of Neustria, was tried by a synod of Austrasian bishops in Metz in November 590, found guilty and removed from the priesthood taken "ad Argentoratensem urbem, quam nunc Strateburgum vocant", where he was exiled. Strasbourg is situated at the eastern border of France with Germany; this border is formed by the Rhine, which forms the eastern border of the modern city, facing across the river to the German town Kehl.
The historic core of Strasbourg however lies on the Grande Île in the river Ill, which here flows parallel to, 4 kilometres from, the Rhine. The natural courses of the two rivers join some distance downstream of Strasbourg, although several artificial waterways now connect them within the city; the city lies in the Upper Rhine Plain, at between 132 metres and 151 metres above sea level, with the upland areas of the Vosges Mountains some 20 km to the west and the Black Forest 25 km to the east. This section of the Rhine valley is a major axis of north–south travel, with river traffic on the Rhine itself, major roads and railways paralleling it on both banks; the city is some 397 kilometres east of Paris. The mouth of the Rhine lies 450 kilometres to the north, or 650 kilometres as the river flows, whilst the head of navigation in Basel is some 100 kilometres to the south, or 150 kilometres by river. In spite of its position far inland, Strasbourg's climate is classified as oceanic, but a "semicontinental" climate with some degree of maritime influence in relation to the mild patterns of Western and Southern France.
The city has warm sunny summers and cool, overcast winters. Precipitation is elevated from mid-spring to the end of summer, but remains constant throughout the year, totaling 631.4 mm annually. On average, snow falls 30 days per year; the highest temperature recorded was 38.5 °C in August 2003, during the 2003 European heat wave. The lowest temperature eve
Watermill
A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling, rolling, or hammering; such processes are needed in the production of many material goods, including flour, paper and many metal products. These watermills may comprise gristmills, paper mills, textile mills, trip hammering mills, rolling mills, wire drawing mills. One major way to classify watermills is by wheel orientation, one powered by a vertical waterwheel through a gear mechanism, the other equipped with a horizontal waterwheel without such a mechanism; the former type can be further divided, depending on where the water hits the wheel paddles, into undershot, overshot and pitchback waterwheel mills. Another way to classify water mills is by an essential trait about their location: tide mills use the movement of the tide. According to Terry S. Reynolds and R. J. Forbes, the water wheel may have originated from the ancient Near East in the 3rd century BC for use in moving millstones and small-scale grain grinding.
Reynolds suggests that the first water wheels were norias and, by the 2nd century BC, evolved into the vertical watermill in Syria and Asia Minor, from where it spread to ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. S. Avitsur supports a Near-Eastern origin for the watermill. Engineers in the Hellenistic world used the two main components of watermills, the waterwheel and toothed gearing, along with the Roman Empire, operated undershot and breastshot waterwheel mills. Early evidence of a water-driven wheel is the Perachora wheel, in Greece. An early written reference is in the technical treatises Pneumatica and Parasceuastica of the Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium; the British historian of technology M. J. T. Lewis has shown that those portions of Philo of Byzantium's mechanical treatise which describe water wheels and which have been regarded as Arabic interpolations date back to the Greek 3rd-century BC original; the sakia gear is fully developed, attested in a 2nd-century BC Hellenistic wall painting in Ptolemaic Egypt.
Lewis assigns the date of the invention of the horizontal-wheeled mill to the Greek colony of Byzantium in the first half of the 3rd century BC, that of the vertical-wheeled mill to Ptolemaic Alexandria around 240 BC. The Greek geographer Strabon reports in his Geography a water-powered grain-mill to have existed near the palace of king Mithradates VI Eupator at Cabira, Asia Minor, before 71 BC; the Roman engineer Vitruvius has the first technical description of a watermill, dated to 40/10 BC. He seems to indicate the existence of water-powered kneading machines; the Greek epigrammatist Antipater of Thessalonica tells of an advanced overshot wheel mill around 20 BC/10 AD. He praised for its use in grinding grain and the reduction of human labour: Hold back your hand from the mill, you grinding girls. For Demeter has imposed the labours of your hands on the nymphs, who leaping down upon the topmost part of the wheel, rotate its axle. If we learn to feast toil-free on the fruits of the earth, we taste again the golden age.
The Roman encyclopedist Pliny mentions in his Naturalis Historia of around 70 AD water-powered trip hammers operating in the greater part of Italy. There is evidence of a fulling mill in 73/4 AD in Roman Syria. Another Roman author Ausonius mentions a lot of watermills in the walley of Rhine and its tributaries in the 4th century, it is that a water-powered stamp mill was used at Dolaucothi to crush gold-bearing quartz, with a possible date of the late 1st century to the early 2nd century. The stamps were operated as a batch of four working against a large conglomerate block, now known as Carreg Pumpsaint. Similar anvil stones have been found at other Roman mines across Europe in Spain and Portugal; the 1st-century AD multiple mill complex of Barbegal in southern France has been described as "the greatest known concentration of mechanical power in the ancient world". It featured 16 overshot waterwheels to power an equal number of flour mills; the capacity of the mills has been estimated at 4.5 tons of flour per day, sufficient to supply enough bread for the 12,500 inhabitants occupying the town of Arelate at that time.
A similar mill complex existed on the Janiculum hill, whose supply of flour for Rome's population was judged by emperor Aurelian important enough to be included in the Aurelian walls in the late 3rd century. A breastshot wheel mill dating to the late 2nd century AD was excavated at Les Martres-de-Veyre, France; the 3rd-century AD Hierapolis water-powered stone sawmill is the earliest known machine to incorporate a crank and connecting rod mechanism. Further sawmills powered by crank and connecting rod mechanisms, are archaeologically attested for the 6th-century water-powered stone sawmills at Gerasa and Ephesus. Literary references to water-powered marble saws in what is now Germany can be found in Ausonius 4th-century poem Mosella, they seem to be indicated about the same time by the Christian saint Gregory of Nyssa from Anatolia, demonstrating a diversified use of water-power in many parts of the Roman Empire. The earliest turbine mill was
Garonne
The Garonne is a river in southwest France and northern Spain, with a length of 602 kilometres. It flows into the Atlantic Ocean at Bordeaux; the name derives from Garumna, a Latinized version of the Aquitanian name meaning "stony river". The Garonne's headwaters are to be found in the Aran Valley in the Spanish Pyrenees, though three different locations have been proposed as the true source: the Uelh deth Garona at Plan de Beret, the Ratera-Saboredo cirque 42°36′26″N 0°57′56″E), or the slopes of Pic Aneto; the Uelh deth Garona at 1,862 metres above sea level has been traditionally considered as the source of the Garonne. From this point a brook runs for 2.5 kilometres until the bed of the main upper Garonne valley. The river runs for another 38 kilometres until the French border at Pont de Rei, 40.5 kilometres in total. The Ratera-Saboredo cirque is the head of the upper Garonne valley, its upper lake at 2,600 metres above sea level is the origin of the Ruda-Garona river, running for 16 kilometres until the confluence with the Beret-Garona brook, another 38 kilometres until the French border at Pont del Rei, 54 kilometres in total.
At the confluence, the Ruda-Garona carries 2.6 cubic metres per second of water. The Ratera-Saboredo cirque has been pointed by many researchers as the origin of the Garonne; the third thesis holds that the river rises on the slopes of Pic Aneto at 2,300 metres above sea level and flows by way of a sinkhole known as the Forau de Aigualluts through the limestone of the Tuca Blanca de Pomèro and a resurgence in the Val dera Artiga above the Aran Valley in the Spanish Pyrenees. This underground route was suggested by the geologist Ramond de Carbonnières in 1787, but there was no confirmation until 1931, when caver Norbert Casteret poured fluorescein dye into the flow and noted its emergence a few hours 4 kilometres away at Uelhs deth Joèu in the Artiga de Lin on the other side of the mountain. From Aigualluts to the confluence with the main river at the bed of the upper Garonne valley at 800 metres above sea level, the Joèu has run for 12.4 kilometres, carrying 2.16 cubic metres per second of water, while the main river is carrying 17.7 cubic metres per second.
Despite the lack of universal agreement upon definition for determining a stream's source, the United States Geological Survey, the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution agree that a stream's source should be considered as the most distant point in the drainage basin from which water runs. The Ratera-Saboredo cirque is the "most distant point in the drainage basin from which water runs", the source of the Garonne, according to the United States Geological Survey, the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution convention upon determining a stream's source; the Garonne follows the Aran Valley northwards into France, flowing via Toulouse and Agen towards Bordeaux, where it meets the Gironde estuary. The Gironde flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Along its course, the Garonne is joined by three other major rivers: the Ariège, the Tarn, the Lot. Just after Bordeaux, the Garonne meets the Dordogne at the Bec d'Ambès, forming the Gironde estuary, which after 100 kilometres empties into the Atlantic Ocean.
Other tributaries include the Gers. The Garonne is one of the few rivers in the world. Surfers and jet skiers could ride the tidal bore at least as far as the village of Cambes, 120 kilometres or 75 miles from the Atlantic, further upstream to Cadillac, although the tidal bore appears and disappears in response to changes in the channel bathymetry. In 2010 and 2012, some detailed field studies were conducted in the Garonne's Arcins channel between Arcins Island and the right bank close to Lastrene township. A striking feature of the field data sets was the large and rapid fluctuations in turbulent velocities and turbulent stresses during the tidal bore and flood flow; the European sea sturgeon known as the Atlantic sturgeon or common sturgeon, is now a Critically Endangered species status. This species of sturgeon that can reach a length of 6 m and weigh 400 kg and can reach an age of 100 year Previously found on most coasts of Europe, it has now become so rare that they ONLY breed in the Garonne river basin in France.
Conservation projects are under way to save this fish from extinction with species reintroduction from aquaculture with the first releases being made in 1995. Aran Valley: Vielha, Bossòst Haute-Garonne: Saint-Gaudens, Toulouse Tarn-et-Garonne: Castelsarrasin Lot-et-Garonne: Agen, Aiguillon Gironde: Langon, Bordeaux Following the flow of the river: The Garonne plays an important role in inland shipping; the river not only allows seagoing vessels to reach the port of Bordeaux but forms part of the Canal des Deux Mers, linking the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. From the ocean, ships pass through the Gironde estuary up to the mouth of the Garonne. Ships continue on the tidal river Garonne up to the Pont de Pierre in Bordeaux. Inland vessels continue upstream to Castets-en-Dor
Seine
The Seine is a 777-kilometre-long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Source-Seine, 30 kilometres northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre, it is navigable by ocean-going vessels as far as Rouen, 120 kilometres from the sea. Over 60 percent of its length, as far as Burgundy, is negotiable by commercial riverboats, nearly its whole length is available for recreational boating. There are 37 bridges within dozens more spanning the river outside the city. Examples in Paris include the Pont Alexandre III and Pont Neuf, the latter of which dates back to 1607. Outside the city, examples include the Pont de Normandie, one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world, which links Le Havre to Honfleur; the Seine rises in the commune of Source-Seine, about 30 kilometres northwest of Dijon. The source has been owned by the city of Paris since 1864. A number of associated small ditches or depressions provide the source waters, with an artificial grotto laid out to highlight and contain a deemed main source.
The grotto includes a statue of a nymph, a dog, a dragon. On the same site are the buried remains of a Gallo-Roman temple. Small statues of the dea Sequana "Seine goddess" and other ex voti found at the same place are now exhibited in the Dijon archaeological museum; the Seine can artificially be divided into five parts: the Petite Seine "Small Seine" from the sources to Montereau-Fault-Yonne the Haute Seine "Upper Seine" from Montereau-Fault-Yonne to Paris the Traversée de Paris "the Paris waterway" the Basse Seine "Lower Seine" from Paris to Rouen the Seine maritime "Maritime Seine" from Rouen to the English channel. The Seine is dredged and ocean-going vessels can dock at Rouen, 120 kilometres from the sea. Commercial craft can use the river from 516 kilometres to its mouth. At Paris, there are 37 bridges; the river is only 24 metres above sea level 446 kilometres from its mouth, making it slow flowing and thus navigable. The Seine Maritime, 123 kilometres from the English Channel at Le Havre to Rouen, is the only portion of the Seine used by ocean-going craft.
The tidal section of the Seine Maritime is followed by a canalized section with four large multiple locks until the mouth of the Oise at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. Smaller locks at Bougival and at Suresnes lift the vessels to the level of the river in Paris, where the junction with the Canal Saint-Martin is located; the distance from the mouth of the Oise is 72 km. The Haute Seine, from Paris to Montereau-Fault-Yonne, has 8 locks. At Charenton-le-Pont is the mouth of the Marne. Upstream from Paris seven locks ensure navigation to Saint Mammès, where the Loing mouth is situated. Through an eighth lock the river Yonne is reached at Montereau-Fault-Yonne. From the mouth of the Yonne, larger ships can continue upstream to Nogent-sur-Seine. From there on, the river is navigable only by small craft to Marcilly-sur-Seine. At Marcilly-sur-Seine the ancient Canal de la Haute-Seine used to allow vessels to continue all the way to Troyes; this canal has been abandoned since 1957. The average depth of the Seine today at Paris is about 9.5 metres.
Until locks were installed to raise the level in the 1800s, the river was much shallower within the city most of the time, consisted of a small channel of continuous flow bordered by sandy banks. Today the depth is controlled and the entire width of the river between the built-up banks on either side is filled with water; the average flow of the river is low, only a few cubic metres per second, but much higher flows are possible during periods of heavy runoff. Special reservoirs upstream help to maintain a constant level for the river through the city, but during periods of extreme runoff significant increases in river level may occur. A severe period of high water in January 1910 resulted in extensive flooding throughout the city; the Seine again rose to threatening levels in 1924, 1955, 1982, 1999–2000, June 2016, January 2018. After a first-level flood alert in 2003, about 100,000 works of art were moved out of Paris, the largest relocation of art since World War II. Much of the art in Paris is kept in underground storage rooms.
A 2002 report by the French government stated the worst-case Seine flood scenario would cost 10 billion euros and cut telephone service for a million Parisians, leaving 200,000 without electricity and 100,000 without gas. In January 2018 the Seine again flooded. An official warning was issued on January 24 that heavy rainfall was to cause the river to flood. By January 27, the river was rising; the Deputy Mayor of Paris, Colombe Brossel, warned that the heavy rain was caused by climate change, that "We have to understand that climatic change is not a word, it's a reality." The basin area is 78,910 square kilometres, 2 percent of, forest and 78 percent cultivated land. In addition to Paris, three other cities with a population over 100,000 are in the Seine watershed: Le Havre at the estuary, Rouen in the Seine valley and Reims at the northern limit—with an annual urban growth rate of 0.2 percent. The population density is 201 per square kilometer. Periodically
Germany
Germany the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north and the Czech Republic to the east and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to the west. Germany includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,386 square kilometres, has a temperate seasonal climate. With 83 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous state of Europe after Russia, the most populous state lying in Europe, as well as the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is a decentralized country, its capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while Frankfurt serves as its financial capital and has the country's busiest airport. Germany's largest urban area is the Ruhr, with its main centres of Essen; the country's other major cities are Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Bremen and Nuremberg. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity.
A region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation. After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation was formed in 1815; the German revolutions of 1848–49 resulted in the Frankfurt Parliament establishing major democratic rights. In 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the revolution of 1918–19, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic; the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to the establishment of a dictatorship, the annexation of Austria, World War II, the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, Austria was re-established as an independent country and two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American and French occupation zones, East Germany, formed from the Soviet occupation zone.
Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990. Today, the sovereign state of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic led by a chancellor, it is a great power with a strong economy. As a global leader in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the world's third-largest exporter and importer of goods; as a developed country with a high standard of living, it upholds a social security and universal health care system, environmental protection, a tuition-free university education. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the European Union in 1993, it is part of the Schengen Area and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G7, the G20, the OECD. Known for its rich cultural history, Germany has been continuously the home of influential and successful artists, musicians, film people, entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors.
Germany has a large number of World Heritage sites and is among the top tourism destinations in the world. The English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine; the German term Deutschland diutisciu land is derived from deutsch, descended from Old High German diutisc "popular" used to distinguish the language of the common people from Latin and its Romance descendants. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz "popular", derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- "people", from which the word Teutons originates; the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a coal mine in Schöningen between 1994 and 1998 where eight 380,000-year-old wooden javelins of 1.82 to 2.25 m length were unearthed. The Neander Valley was the location where the first non-modern human fossil was discovered.
The Neanderthal 1 fossils are known to be 40,000 years old. Evidence of modern humans dated, has been found in caves in the Swabian Jura near Ulm; the finds included 42,000-year-old bird bone and mammoth ivory flutes which are the oldest musical instruments found, the 40,000-year-old Ice Age Lion Man, the oldest uncontested figurative art discovered, the 35,000-year-old Venus of Hohle Fels, the oldest uncontested human figurative art discovered. The Nebra sky disk is a bronze artefact created during the European Bronze Age attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, it is part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme. The Germanic tribes are thought to date from the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From southern Scandinavia and north Germany, they expanded south and west from the 1st century BC, coming into contact with the Celtic tribes of Gaul as well
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