1.
Summit
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A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. Mathematically, a summit is a maximum in elevation. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak, and zenith are synonymous, the UIAA definition is that a summit is independent if it has a prominence of 30 metres or more, it is a mountain if it has a prominence of at least 300 metres. This can be summarised as follows, A pyramidal peak is an exaggerated form produced by ice erosion of a mountain top, Summit may also refer to the highest point along a line, trail, or route. In many parts of the western United States, the term refers to the highest point along a road, highway. For example, the highest point along Interstate 80 in California is referred to as Donner Summit while the highest point on Interstate 5 is Siskiyou Mountain Summit, geoid Hill List of highest mountains Maxima and minima Nadir Summit accordance Peak finder
2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
3.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
4.
Lower Silesian Voivodeship
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Lower Silesian Voivodeship, or Lower Silesia Province, in southwestern Poland, is one of the 16 voivodeships into which Poland is divided. Historically the area had ties to both German and Polish culture, with additional Czech influence in the southern mountainous region. Silesia was once divided into many small duchies reigned by dukes and princes of the Piast dynasty, during this time, cultural and ethnic Germanic influence prospered due to immigrants from the German-speaking areas of the mighty Holy Roman Empire. This also impacted on the architecture as well as traditions. Throughout the upcoming centuries, Lower Silesia experienced several key events such as the Protestant Reformation, Lower Silesia is one of the richest provinces in Poland as it has valuable natural resources such as copper, brown coal and rock materials, which are exploited by the biggest enterprises. Its well developed and varied industries attract both domestic and foreign investors and its capital and largest city is Wrocław, situated on the Odra River. Furthermore, the voivodeship is famous for its castles and palaces and is one of Polands most visited regions by tourists. The voivodeship was created on 1 January 1999 out of the former Wrocław, Legnica, Wałbrzych and Jelenia Góra Voivodeships and it covers an area of 19,946 square kilometres, and as of 2013 has a total population of 2914362. Although much of the region is relatively low-lying it also includes Sudeten Foreland, popular ski resorts in Lower Silesian Voivodeship include Karpacz and Szklarska Poręba in the Karkonosze mountains. Other important tourist destinations in the include the chief city, Wrocław, as well as the towns of Jelenia Góra. The town of Boleslawiec is famed for its pottery, an international airport is located in Wrocław–Copernicus Airport. The main railway station is Wrocław Główny, the A4 motorway, A8 motorway and A18 motorway run through the voivodship. Lower Silesian Voivodeship is one of the most visited voivodeships in Poland and it is famous for a large number of castles and palaces, inter alia, Książ Castle, Czocha Castle, Chojnik Castle, Grodziec castle, Gorzanów Castle, Kliczków Castle. There is also a lot in the Jelenia Góra valley, the voivodships most widely visited city is Wrocław with many sights and attractions, inter alia open all year round Aquapark, Wrocław SPA Center and famous Wrocławs dwarfs. The Festival of Good Beer is held every year, on the weekend of June. Śnieżka is one of the first European peaks visited by tourists, it is also the highest peak of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Lower Silesia is one of the richest regions in Poland. GDP per capita in 2007 accounted for 108. 7% of the average for the country, since 2005, the voivodeship recorded the highest in the country economic growth rate. The voivodeship contains 91 cities and towns and these are listed below in descending order of population, Lower Silesian Voivodeship is divided into 30 counties, four of which are city counties
5.
Orogeny
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An Orogeny is an event that leads to a large structural deformation of the Earths lithosphere due to the interaction between tectonic plates. Orogens or orogenic belts develop when a plate is crumpled and is pushed upwards to form mountain ranges. Orogeny is the mechanism by which mountains are built on continents. The word orogeny comes from Ancient Greek, though it was used before him, the term was employed by the American geologist G. K. Gilbert in 1890 to describe the process of mountain building as distinguished from epeirogeny. Formation of an orogen is accomplished in part by the processes of subduction or convergence of two or more continents. Orogeny usually produces long arcuate structures, known as orogenic belts, generally, orogenic belts consist of long parallel strips of rock exhibiting similar characteristics along the length of the belt. Orogenic belts are associated with zones, which consume crust, produce volcanoes. Geologists attribute the arcuate structure to the rigidity of the descending plate and these island arcs may be added to a continent during an orogenic event. The processes of orogeny can take tens of millions of years, frequently, rock formations that undergo orogeny are severely deformed and undergo metamorphism. Orogenic processes may push deeply buried rocks to the surface, sea-bottom and near-shore material may cover some or all of the orogenic area. If the orogeny is due to two continents colliding, very high mountains can result, an orogenic event may be studied, as a tectonic structural event, as a geographical event, and as a chronological event. The foreland basin forms ahead of the orogen due mainly to loading and resulting flexure of the lithosphere by the mountain belt. The basin migrates with the front and early deposited foreland basin sediments become progressively involved in folding and thrusting. Sediments deposited in the basin are mainly derived from the erosion of the actively uplifting rocks of the mountain range. The fill of many such shows an change in time from deepwater marine through shallow water to continental sediments. Although orogeny involves plate tectonics, the tectonic forces result in a variety of associated phenomena, including magmatism, metamorphism, crustal melting, what exactly happens in a specific orogen depends upon the strength and rheology of the continental lithosphere, and how these properties change during orogenesis. In addition to orogeny, the orogen is subject to other processes, for example, the Caledonian Orogeny refers to the Silurian and Devonian events that resulted from the collision of Laurentia with Eastern Avalonia and other former fragments of Gondwana. The Caledonian Orogen resulted from events and various others that are part of its peculiar orogenic cycle
6.
Variscan orogeny
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The Variscan or Hercynian orogeny is a geologic mountain-building event caused by Late Paleozoic continental collision between Euramerica and Gondwana to form the supercontinent of Pangaea. Hercynian, on the hand, derives from the Hercynian Forest. Both words were descriptive terms of strike directions observed by geologists in the field, variscan for southwest to northeast, the variscan direction reflected the direction of ancient fold belts cropping out throughout Germany and adjacent countries and the meaning shifted from direction to the fold belt proper. One of the pioneers in research on the Variscan fold belt was the German geologist Franz Kossmat, the other direction, Hercynian, for the direction of the Harz Mountains in Germany, saw a similar shift in meaning. Today Hercynian is often used as a synonym for Variscan, but is less used than the latter. In the USA it is used for European orogenies, the contemporaneous. The regional term Variscan underwent a further meaning shift since the 1960s, geologists generally began to use it to characterize late Paleozoic fold-belts and orogenic phases having an age of approximately 380 to 280 Ma. The North American and European Variscan Belt includes the mountains of Portugal and Spain, southwestern Ireland, Cornwall, Devon, Pembrokeshire, the Gower Peninsula and the Vale of Glamorgan. Its effects are present in France from Brittany, below the Paris Basin to the Ardennes, the Massif Central, the Variscan Belt reappears in Sardinia in Italy and in Germany where the Rhine Massif, the Black Forest and Harz Mountains remain as testimony. In the Czech Republic and Eastern Poland the Bohemian Massif is the end of the unmodified Variscan belt of crustal deformation in Europe. Further Variscan developments to the southeast are partly hidden and overprinted by the alpine orogeny, in the Alps a Variscan core is built by Mercantour, Pelvoux, Belledonne, Montblanc and Aar Massif. Dinaric, Greek and Turkish mountain chains are the termination of the Variscan proper. The Variscan was contemporaneous with the Acadian and Alleghenian orogeny in the United States and Canada, responsible for forming the Ouachita, North American areas with Variscan foldbelts include New England, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. Variscan mountains in a chronological sense include the Urals, the Pamir. The Variscan orogeny involved a complicated assembly of different microplates and heterochronous collisions. Plate convergence that caused the Caledonian orogeny in the Silurian continued to form the Variscan orogeny in the succeeding Devonian, both orogenies resulted in the assembly of a super-continent, Pangaea, which was essentially complete by the end of the Carboniferous. In the Ordovician Period, a mass, which has been named Gondwana. Off to the west were three other masses, Laurentia, Siberia and Baltica, located as if on the vertices of a triangle, to the south of them was a large archipelago, the terrane Avalonia, rifted off the north Gondwana margin in early Ordovician
7.
Alpine tundra
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Alpine tundra is a type of natural region or biome that does not contain trees because it is at high altitude. The high altitude causes an adverse climate, which is too cold, Alpine tundra transitions to sub-alpine forests below the tree line, stunted forests occurring at the forest-tundra ecotone are known as Krummholz. With increasing elevation it ends at the line where snow. Alpine tundra occurs in mountains worldwide, the flora of the alpine tundra is characterized by dwarf shrubs close to the ground. The cold climate of the tundra is caused by the lack of greenhouse effect at high altitude. Alpine tundra occurs at high altitude at any latitude. Portions of Montane grasslands and shrublands ecoregions worldwide include alpine tundra, Alpine tundra occupies high-mountain summits, slopes, and ridges above timberline. Aspect plays a role as well, the treeline often occurs at higher elevations on warmer equator-facing slopes, with limited access to infrastructure, only a handful of human communities exist in alpine zones. Many are small and have heavily specialized economies, often relying on such as agriculture, mining. An example of such a town is La Rinconada, Peru, a gold-mining town. A counterexample is El Alto, Bolivia, at 4,150 metres, which has a diverse service and manufacturing economy. Alpine climate is the weather for the alpine tundra. The climate becomes colder at high elevations—this characteristic is described by the rate of air, air tends to get colder as it rises. The dry adiabatic lapse rate is 10 °C per km of elevation or altitude, therefore, moving up 100 metres on a mountain is roughly equivalent to moving 80 kilometers towards the pole. This relationship is only approximate, however, since local factors such as proximity to oceans can drastically modify the climate, typical high-elevation growing seasons range from 45 to 90 days, with average summer temperatures near 10 °C. Growing season temperatures frequently fall below freezing, and frost occurs throughout the season in many areas. Precipitation occurs mainly as snow, but soil water availability is highly variable with season, location. For example, snowfields commonly accumulate on the lee sides of ridges while ridgelines may remain nearly snow free due to redistribution by wind, some alpine habitats may be up to 70% snow free in winter
8.
Pole of Cold
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The Poles of Cold are the places in the southern and northern hemispheres where the lowest air temperatures have been recorded. In the southern hemisphere, the Pole of Cold is currently located in Antarctica, on July 21,1983, this station recorded a temperature of −89.2 °C. This is the lowest naturally occurring temperature ever recorded on Earth. By comparison, the South Pole, due to its elevation, is, on average,5 to 10 °C warmer than Vostok. It is generally thought that Vostok is not the coldest place in Antarctica, temperatures below −89.2 °C, if they did occur elsewhere, would not have been recorded. The automatic weather station at Dome A was only installed in 2005, in the northern hemisphere, there are two places in the Republic of Sakha, Siberia, Russia that vie for the honour of being considered the Pole of Cold in winter. In December 1868 and then in February 1869 Ivan Khudyakov made the discovery of the Northern Pole of Cold by measuring a temperature of −63.2 °C in Verkhoyansk. Later, on January 15,1885, a temperature of −67.8 °C was registered there by Sergey Kovalik and this became the new world record, and is still the record for the northern hemisphere. This measurement was published in the Annals of the General Physical Observatory in 1892, by mistake it was written as −69.8 °C, one can still find this incorrect value in some literature. In 1924, Russian scientist Sergey Obruchev registered the lowest temperature −71.2 °C, on February 6,1933, a temperature of −67.7 °C was recorded at Oymyakons weather station. The weather station is in a valley between Oymyakon and Tomtor, another possible candidate is Mount Logan in Canada which recorded a temperature of −77.5 °C in May 1991 and average of −27 °C. This is controversial as it is at a high elevation. Similar claims have made for Denali. List of weather records Life in the Freezer Living in Antarctica Ask about life in the Pole of Cold Visit the Pole of Cold
9.
Jizera Mountains
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Jizera Mountains or Izera Mountains are part of the Western Sudetes on the border between the Czech Republic and Poland. The range got its name from the Jizera River, which rises at the base of the Smrk massif. The range stretches from the Lusatian Mountains in the northwest to the Krkonoše in the southeast, the Jizera Mountains comprise the sources of the Jizera river, as well as of the Kwisa and the Lusatian Neisse. The major part in the south is formed from granite, in the part from gneisses and mica schists. The weather conditions are characterized by annual precipitation. On 30 July 1897, the station at Nová Louka recorded a daily precipitation amounting to 345.1 mm. The highest peak is Wysoka Kopa near the town of Szklarska Poręba in Poland, neverteheless, a better-known mountain is Smrk, with a recently rebuilt look-out tower. Other peaks include Jizera and Stóg Izerski, later on, Celts, German tribes resides in the valleys until they left in 5th century. In the 14th century, German-speaking colonists came and started clearing of the primeval forests. In the 16th century, several works were founded. Glassmaking had an effect on the ecosystem. The primeval forest was replaced by fast-growing spruce monoculture. Other important industries included tin-mining, metallurgy and textile, in the second half of the 20th century the character of the Jizera Mountains changed completely. The German population of the area was expelled in 1945 and replaced by Poles on the now Polish, the ecosystem was badly hit by emissions, produced by lignite fired power stations located in the Zittau basin, part of Europes ecological Black Triangle. Weakened spruce forest, less resistant against various types of parasites, were on the verge of extinction, the higher parts of the mountains, once densely wooded, became largely treeless, in part also because of excessive deforestation. New roads cut through the once-secluded landscape, the situation improved only after the fall of communism in 1989. Open-pit coal mines in the former East Germany were closed, as well as several power plants. Emission filters were installed at the immense Turów Power Station in Bogatynia on the Polish side of Lusatian Neisse, at the same time large-scale reforestation projects were started
10.
Mouflon
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The mouflon is a subspecies group of the wild sheep. Populations of O. orientalis can be partitioned into the mouflons, the mouflon is thought to be one of the two ancestors for all modern domestic sheep breeds. The wild sheep of Corsica was locally called mufro and mufra, the naturalist Buffon rendered this in French as moufflon. Mouflon have red-brown, short-haired coats with dark back-stripes and light-colored saddle patches, the males are horned, some females are horned, while others are polled. The horns of mature rams are curved in almost one full revolution, mouflon have shoulder heights of about 0.9 m and body weights of 50 kg and 35 kg. Today, mouflon inhabit the Caucasus, Anatolia, northern and eastern Iraq, the range originally stretched further to the Crimean peninsula and the Balkans, where they had already disappeared 3,000 years ago and came back to Bulgaria. On the island of Cyprus, the mouflon or agrino became a different, the Cyprus mouflon population contains only about 3,000 animals. They are now rare on the islands, but are classified as feral animals by the IUCN, a small colony exists in the remote Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, and on the Veliki Brijun Island in the Brijuni Archipelago of the Istrian Peninsula in Croatia. In South America, mouflon have been introduced into central Chile, mouflon have been introduced as game animals into Spieden Island in Washington state, and into the Hawaiian islands of Lanai and Hawaii where they have become a problematic invasive species. A small population escaped from an animal enclosure owned by Thomas Watson, Jr. on the island of North Haven, Maine in the 1990s and their normal habitats are steep mountainous woods near tree lines. In winter, they migrate to lower altitudes, the scientific classification of the mouflon is disputed. Five subspecies of mouflon are distinguished by MSW3, Armenian mouflon, Ovis orientalis gmelini, northwestern Iran, Armenia and it has been introduced in Texas, US. European mouflon, O. o. musimon was introduced about 7,000 years ago in Corsica and it has since been introduced in many parts of Europe. Cypriot mouflon, O. o. ophion, also called agrino, in 1997, about 1,200 of this subspecies were counted. The television show Born to Explore with Richard Wiese reported 3,000 are now on Cyprus, esfahan mouflon, O. o. isphahanica, is from the Zagros Mountains, Iran. Laristan mouflon, O. o. laristanica, is a small subspecies, the eastern and the European mouflon often appear in scientific literature as separate species, Ovis musimon and Ovis orientalis. The mouflons are also treated as a subspecies of the domestic sheep, Ovis aries, named with the same subspecific epithet as above, O. a. musimon, O. a. ophion. However, a comparison of the mitochondrial DNA control region found that two subspecies of urial, Ovis vignei arkal and O. v. /o. bochariensis, the ancestral sheep is presumed to have had 60 chromosomes, as in goats
11.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
12.
Czech language
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Czech, historically also Bohemian, is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group. It is spoken by over 10 million people and is the language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of being intelligible to a very high degree. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the written standard was codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The main vernacular, known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague, the Moravian dialects spoken in the eastern part of the country are mostly also counted as Czech, although some of their eastern variants are closer to Slovak. The Czech phoneme inventory is moderate in size, comprising five vowels, words may contain uncommon consonant clusters, including one consonant represented by the grapheme ř, or lack vowels altogether. Czech orthography is simple, and has used as a model by phonologists. Czech is classified as a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family and this branch includes Polish, Kashubian, Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak. Slovak is by far the closest genetic neighbor of Czech, the West Slavic languages are spoken in an area classified as part of Central Europe. Around the 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, the West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries, the Bohemian language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the early 14th century, the first complete Bible translation also dates to this period. Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were produced outside the university as well, literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation. There was no standardization distinguishing between Czech and Slovak prior to the 15th century, the publication of the Kralice Bible between 1579 and 1593 became very important for standardization of the Czech language in the following centuries. In 1615, the Bohemian diet tried to declare Czech to be the official language of the kingdom. After the Bohemian Revolt which was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1620 and this emigration together with other consequences of the Thirty Years War had a negative impact on the further use of the Czech language. In 1627, Czech and German became official languages of the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the 18th century German became dominant in Bohemia and Moravia, the modern standard Czech language originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century. Changes include the shift of í to ej and é to í and the merging of í
13.
Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
14.
Mountain range
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A mountain range is a geographic area containing numerous geologically related mountains. A mountain system or system of ranges, sometimes is used to combine several geological features that are geographically related. Mountain ranges are usually segmented by highlands or mountain passes and valleys, individual mountains within the same mountain range do not necessarily have the same geologic structure or petrology. They may be a mix of different orogenic expressions and terranes, for example thrust sheets, uplifted blocks, fold mountains, most geologically young mountain ranges on the Earths land surface are associated with either the Pacific Ring of Fire or the Alpide Belt. The Andes is 7,000 kilometres long and is considered the worlds longest mountain system. The Alpide belt includes Indonesia and southeast Asia, through the Himalaya, the belt also includes other European and Asian mountain ranges. The Himalayas contain the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, mountain ranges outside of these two systems include the Arctic Cordillera, the Urals, the Appalachians, the Scandinavian Mountains, the Altai Mountains and the Hijaz Mountains. If the definition of a range is stretched to include underwater mountains. The mountain systems of the earth are characterized by a tree structure, the sub-range relationship is often expressed as a parent-child relationship. For example, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Blue Ridge Mountains are sub-ranges of the Appalachian Mountains, equivalently, the Appalachians are the parent of the White Mountains and Blue Ridge Mountains, and the White Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains are children of the Appalachians. The position of mountains influences climate, such as rain or snow, when air masses move up and over mountains, the air cools producing orographic precipitation. As the air descends on the side, it warms again and is drier. Often, a shadow will affect the leeward side of a range. Mountain ranges are constantly subjected to forces which work to tear them down. Erosion is at work while the mountains are being uplifted and long after until the mountains are reduced to low hills, rivers are traditionally believed to be the principle erosive factor on mountain ranges, with their ability of bedrock incision and sediment transport. The rugged topography of a range is the product of erosion. The basins adjacent to a mountain range are filled with sediments which are buried and turned into sedimentary rock. The early Cenozoic uplift of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado provides an example and this mass of rock was removed as the range was actively undergoing uplift
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Central Europe
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Central Europe lies between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. The concept of Central Europe is based on a historical, social and cultural identity. Central Europe is going through a phase of strategic awakening, with such as the CEI, Centrope. While the regions economy shows high disparities with regard to income, elements of unity for Western and Central Europe were Roman Catholicism and Latin. According to Hungarian historian Jenő Szűcs, foundations of Central European history at the first millennium were in connection with Western European development. The keyword of Western social development after millennium was the spread of liberties and autonomies in Western Europe and these phenomena appeared in the middle of the 13th century in Central European countries. There were self-governments of towns, counties and parliaments, in 1335 under the rule of the King Charles I of Hungary, the castle of Visegrád, the seat of the Hungarian monarchs was the scene of the royal summit of the Kings of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary. They agreed to cooperate closely in the field of politics and commerce, in the Middle Ages, countries in Central Europe adopted Magdeburg rights. Before 1870, the industrialization that had developed in Western and Central Europe, even in Eastern Europe, industrialization lagged far behind. Russia, for example, remained rural and agricultural. The concept of Central Europe was already known at the beginning of the 19th century, an example of that-time vision of Central Europe may be seen in J. Partsch’s book of 1903. On 21 January 1904, Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftsverein was established in Berlin with economic integration of Germany, another time, the term Central Europe became connected to the German plans of political, economic and cultural domination. The bible of the concept was Friedrich Naumann’s book Mitteleuropa in which he called for a federation to be established after the war. The concept failed after the German defeat in World War I, the revival of the idea may be observed during the Hitler era. According to Emmanuel de Martonne, in 1927 the Central European countries included, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, italy and Yugoslavia are not considered by the author to be Central European because they are located mostly outside Central Europe. The author use both Human and Physical Geographical features to define Central Europe, the interwar period brought new geopolitical system and economic and political problems, and the concept of Central Europe took a different character. The centre of interest was moved to its eastern part – the countries that have appeared on the map of Europe, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, however, the conflict of interests was too big and neither Little Entente nor Intermarium ideas succeeded. The interwar period brought new elements to the concept of Central Europe, after the war, the Eastern part of Central Europe was placed at the centre of the concept
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Saxony
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Its capital is Dresden, and its largest city is Leipzig. Saxony is the tenth largest of Germanys sixteen states, with an area of 18,413 square kilometres, located in the middle of a large, formerly all German-speaking part of Europe, the history of the state of Saxony spans more than a millennium. It has been a medieval duchy, an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire, a kingdom, the area of the modern state of Saxony should not be confused with Old Saxony, the area inhabited by Saxons. Old Saxony corresponds approximately to the modern German states of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony is divided into 10 districts,1. After a reform in 2008, these regions - with some alterations of their respective areas - were called Direktionsbezirke, in 2012, the authorities of these regions were merged into one central authority, the Landesdirektion Sachsen. The Erzgebirgskreis district includes the Ore Mountains, and the Schweiz-Osterzgebirge district includes Saxon Switzerland, the largest cities in Saxony according to the 31 December 2015 estimate. To this can be added that Leipzig forms a metropolitan region with Halle. The latter city is located just across the border to Saxony-Anhalt, Leipzig shares for instance an S-train system and an airport with Halle. Saxony has, after Saxony Anhalt, the most vibrant economy of the states of the former East Germany and its economy grew by 1. 9% in 2010. Nonetheless, unemployment remains above the German average, the eastern part of Germany, excluding Berlin, qualifies as an Objective 1 development-region within the European Union, and is eligible to receive investment subsidies of up to 30% until 2013. FutureSAX, a business competition and entrepreneurial support organisation, has been in operation since 2002. Microchip makers near Dresden have given the region the nickname Silicon Saxony, the publishing and porcelain industries of the region are well known, although their contributions to the regional economy are no longer significant. Today the automobile industry, machinery production and services contribute to the development of the region. Saxony is also one of the most renowned tourist destinations in Germany - especially the cities of Leipzig and Dresden, new tourist destinations are developing, notably in the lake district of Lausitz. Saxony reported an unemployment of 8. 8% in 2014. By comparison the average in the former GDR was 9. 8% and 6. 7% for Germany overall, the unemployment rate reached 8. 2% in May 2015. The Leipzig area, which recently was among the regions with the highest unemployment rate, could benefit greatly from investments by Porsche. With the VW Phaeton factory in Dresden, and many part suppliers, zwickau is another major Volkswagen location
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Dresden
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Dresden is the capital city and, after Leipzig, the second-largest city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the border with the Czech Republic, Dresden has a long history as the capital and royal residence for the Electors and Kings of Saxony, who for centuries furnished the city with cultural and artistic splendour. The city was known as the Jewel Box, because of its baroque, the controversial American and British bombing of Dresden in World War II towards the end of the war killed approximately 25,000, many of whom were civilians, and destroyed the entire city centre. After the war restoration work has helped to reconstruct parts of the inner city, including the Katholische Hofkirche, the Zwinger. Since German reunification in 1990 Dresden is again a cultural, educational and political centre of Germany, the Dresden University of Technology is one of the 10 largest universities in Germany and part of the German Universities Excellence Initiative. The economy of Dresden and its agglomeration is one of the most dynamic in Germany and it is dominated by high-tech branches, often called as “Silicon Saxony”. The city is one of the most visited in Germany with 4,3 million overnight stays per year. The royal buildings are among the most impressive buildings in Europe, main sights are also the nearby National Park of Saxon Switzerland, the Ore Mountains and the countryside around Elbe Valley and Moritzburg Castle. The most prominent building in the city of Dresden is the Frauenkirche, built in the 18th century, the church was destroyed during World War II. The remaining ruins were left for 50 years as a war memorial, the church was rebuilt from 1994 to 2005. Although Dresden is a relatively recent city of Germanic origin followed by settlement of Slavic people, Dresdens founding and early growth is associated with the eastward expansion of Germanic peoples, mining in the nearby Ore Mountains, and the establishment of the Margraviate of Meissen. Its name etymologically derives from Old Sorbian Drežďany, meaning people of the forest, Dresden later evolved into the capital of Saxony. Around the late 12th century, a Slavic settlement called Drežďany had developed on the southern bank, another settlement existed on the northern bank, but its Slavic name is unknown. It was known as Antiqua Dresdin by 1350, and later as Altendresden, dietrich, Margrave of Meissen, chose Dresden as his interim residence in 1206, as documented in a record calling the place Civitas Dresdene. After 1270, Dresden became the capital of the margraviate and it was given to Friedrich Clem after death of Henry the Illustrious in 1288. It was taken by the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1316 and was restored to the Wettin dynasty after the death of Valdemar the Great in 1319, from 1485, it was the seat of the dukes of Saxony, and from 1547 the electors as well. The Elector and ruler of Saxony Frederick Augustus I became King Augustus II the Strong of Poland in personal union and he gathered many of the best musicians, architects and painters from all over Europe to the newly named Royal-Polish Residential City of Dresden. His reign marked the beginning of Dresdens emergence as a leading European city for technology, during the reign of Kings Augustus II the Strong and Augustus III of Poland the Zwinger Royal Palace, the Hofkirche and the Frauenkirche were built
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Moravian Gate
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The Moravian Gate is a geomorphological feature in the Moravian region of the Czech Republic. It is formed by the depression between the Carpathian Mountains in the east and the Sudetes in the west, the drainage divide between the upper Oder river and the Baltic Sea in the north and the Bečva River of the Danube basin runs through it. It stretches from Moravia towards Czech Silesia north-eastward in the length of about 65 km and is bordered by the confluence of the Olza and its crest is located between the villages of Olšovec and Bělotín at 310 m. Because of its low altitude, the Moravian Gate has been a natural pass between the Sudetes and the Carpathians since ancient times, here ran the most important trade routes from southern Europe to the Baltic Sea and also routes from the Czech lands to Upper Silesia and Lesser Poland. Today the D1 highway leads from the Moravian capital Brno to Ostrava, further to the north the road reaches the border with Poland near the town of Racibórz and Wodzisław Śląski. The Austrian Northern Railway built in 1847 from Vienna to Bohumín also traverses the Moravian Gate, vyškov Gate Subcarpathia Moravia Danube–Oder Canal Brama Morawska at PrzyrodaPolska. pl
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Czech Republic
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The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, is a nation state in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast. The Czech Republic covers an area of 78,866 square kilometres with mostly temperate continental climate and it is a unitary parliamentary republic, has 10.5 million inhabitants and the capital and largest city is Prague, with over 1.2 million residents. The Czech Republic includes the territories of Bohemia, Moravia. The Czech state was formed in the late 9th century as the Duchy of Bohemia under the Great Moravian Empire, after the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power transferred from Moravia to Bohemia under the Přemyslid dynasty. In 1002, the duchy was formally recognized as part of the Holy Roman Empire, becoming the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1198 and reaching its greatest territorial extent in the 14th century. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the whole Crown of Bohemia was gradually integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy alongside the Archduchy of Austria, the Protestant Bohemian Revolt against the Catholic Habsburgs led to the Thirty Years War. After the Battle of the White Mountain, the Habsburgs consolidated their rule, reimposed Roman Catholicism, the Czech part of Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany in World War II, and was liberated in 1945 by the armies of the Soviet Union and the United States. The Czech country lost the majority of its German-speaking inhabitants after they were expelled following the war, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia won the 1946 elections. Following the 1948 coup détat, Czechoslovakia became a one-party communist state under Soviet influence, in 1968, increasing dissatisfaction with the regime culminated in a reform movement known as the Prague Spring, which ended in a Soviet-led invasion. Czechoslovakia remained occupied until the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when the communist regime collapsed, on 6 March 1990, the Czech Socialistic Republic was renamed to the Czech Republic. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved, with its constituent states becoming the independent states of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, it is a member of the United Nations, the OECD, the OSCE, and it is a developed country with an advanced, high income economy and high living standards. The UNDP ranks the country 14th in inequality-adjusted human development, the Czech Republic also ranks as the 6th most peaceful country, while achieving strong performance in democratic governance. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the European Union, the traditional English name Bohemia derives from Latin Boiohaemum, which means home of the Boii. The current name comes from the endonym Čech, spelled Cžech until the reform in 1842. The name comes from the Slavic tribe and, according to legend, their leader Čech, the etymology of the word Čech can be traced back to the Proto-Slavic root *čel-, meaning member of the people, kinsman, thus making it cognate to the Czech word člověk. The country has traditionally divided into three lands, namely Bohemia in the west, Moravia in the southeast, and Czech Silesia in the northeast. Following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1992, the Czech part of the former nation found itself without a common single-word geographical name in English, the name Czechia /ˈtʃɛkiə/ was recommended by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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Saxon Switzerland
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Saxon Switzerland is a hilly climbing area and national park around the Elbe valley south-east of Dresden in Saxony, Germany. Together with the Bohemian Switzerland in the Czech Republic it forms the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, Saxon Switzerland alone has some 1,000 climbing peaks, as well as several hollows. The area is popular with Dresden locals and international climbers, the administrative district for the area is Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge. The fortress of Königstein is a well-known landmark, the German name for Saxon Switzerland, Sächsische Schweiz, appeared in the 18th century. Two Swiss artists, Adrian Zingg and Anton Graff, were appointed in 1766 to the Dresden Academy of Art, from their new, adopted home they look eastwards and saw, about a days walk away, a hill range. Previously, the Saxon part of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains had merely been referred to as the Meissen Highlands, the description became popular through the publication of the name by Wilhelm Lebrecht Götzinger. In his books he described the area as Saxon Switzerland and made the term known to a wide audience, in English the usual translation is Saxon Switzerland. However other sources call it Saxony Switzerland or even Swiss Saxony, to the east, Saxon Switzerland transitions into the Lusatian Highlands and, to the west, into the Ore Mountains. The adjacent Czech part of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains is known as the Bohemian Switzerland, the highest elevation in Saxon Switzerland is the Großer Zschirnstein at 562 m above sea level. See Elbe Sandstone Mountains As a rule, two types of hill may be distinguished, numerous rock formations in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, in both Saxon Switzerland and Bohemian Switzerland, are known locally in this region as Steine. Prominent examples are the Königstein, the Lilienstein, the Gohrisch and this description does not, however, include the dome-shaped Kuppen such as the Waitzdorfer Höhe or the Großer Winterberg, whose bedrock is made of volcanic basalt or granitic material. The Cretaceous sandstone formations soar above the levels of their surrounding area, the former level of the River Elbe. Morphologically harder sections of strata, that resisted karstification longer and more successfully, generally form the uppermost layers, the collapse of rock structures is usually therefore a result of erosion from below or from the flanks. During the Dark Ages, the region was settled by Slavs and was part of the Kingdom of Bohemia during the Middle Ages, about 1000 years ago Bohemian-Saxon Switzerland was the borderland of three Slavic tribes. The Nisane tribe, the Milzane tribe and in the south the Dacine tribe shaped the political, the development of the area for tourism began in earnest in the 19th century. In the Nazi era the description of German territories as Schweiz was officially banned, when Germans began to settle in the 13th century, there was a systematic banishment of Bohemian influence and numerous local military conflicts erupted around strategically important fortifications. These fortifications primarily serve to protect the border and trading routes, due to a lack of central power this protective function was left to local knights. The progressive division of the due to the hereditary distribution of estates upset the economic balance of the region
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Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. 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, 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 German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. 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 G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest 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. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, 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 mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
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Bohemia
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Bohemia is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech lands in the present-day Czech Republic. Bohemia was a duchy of Great Moravia, later an independent principality, a kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire, and subsequently a part of the Habsburg Monarchy, after World War I and the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak state, Bohemia became a part of Czechoslovakia. Between 1938 and 1945, border regions with sizeable German-speaking minorities of all three Czech lands were joined to Nazi Germany as the Sudetenland, in 1990, the name was changed to the Czech Republic, which become a separate state in 1993 with the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Until 1948, Bohemia was a unit of Czechoslovakia as one of its lands. Bohemia was bordered in the south by Upper and Lower Austria, in the west by Bavaria and in the north by Saxony and Lusatia, in the northeast by Silesia, and in the east by Moravia. In the 2nd century BC, the Romans were competing for dominance in northern Italy, the Romans defeated the Boii at the Battle of Placentia and the Battle of Mutina. After this, many of the Boii retreated north across the Alps, much later Roman authors refer to the area they had once occupied as Boiohaemum. The earliest mention was by Tacitus Germania 28, and later mentions of the name are in Strabo. The name appears to include the tribal name Boi- plus the Germanic element *haimaz home and this Boiohaemum was apparently isolated to the area where King Marobods kingdom was centred, within the Hercynian forest. The Czech name Čechy is derived from the name of the Slavic ethnic group, the Czechs, Bohemia, like neighbouring Bavaria, is named after the Boii, who were a large Celtic nation known to the Romans for their migrations and settlement in northern Italy and other places. Another part of the nation moved west with the Helvetii into southern France, to the south, over the Danube, the Romans extended their empire, and to the southeast in Hungaria, were Sarmatian peoples. In the area of modern Bohemia the Marcomanni and other Suebic groups were led by their king Marobodus and he took advantage of the natural defenses provided by its mountains and forests. In late classical times and the early Middle Ages, two new Suebic groupings appeared to the west of Bohemia in southern Germany, the Alemanni, many Suebic tribes from the Bohemian region took part in such movements westwards, even settling as far away as Spain and Portugal. With them were also tribes who had pushed from the east, such as the Vandals, other groups pushed southwards towards Pannonia. These are precursors of todays Czechs, though the amount of Slavic immigration is a subject of debate. The Slavic influx was divided into two or three waves, the first wave came from the southeast and east, when the Germanic Lombards left Bohemia. Soon after, from the 630s to 660s, the territory was taken by Samos tribal confederation and his death marked the end of the old Slavonic confederation, the second attempt to establish such a Slavonic union after Carantania in Carinthia. Other sources divide the population of Bohemia at this time into the Merehani, Marharaii, Beheimare, Christianity first appeared in the early 9th century, but only became dominant much later, in the 10th or 11th century
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Lusatia
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Lusatia is a region in Central Europe. The region is the home of the group of Lusatian Sorbs. Historically, Lusatia belonged to different countries. Being part of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown for three hundred years, alongside them it passed to the Habsburg Monarchy and from it to the Electorate of Saxony, the greater part passed to the Kingdom of Prussia in 1815 and the whole region merged into Germany in 1871. In the Polish part today Polish is spoken, and in the German part German, Upper-, the biggest Lusatian town is Cottbus. The name derives from the Sorbian word łužicy meaning swamps or water-hole, Lusatia is the Latinised form which spread in the English and Romance languages area. Lusatia comprises two both scenically and historically different parts, a hilly southern section and a lower region. Neighbouring regions were Silesia in the east, Bohemia in the south, the Margraviate of Meissen and the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg in the west as well as the Margraviate of Brandenburg in the north. Upper Lusatia is today part of the German state of Saxony, except for a part east of the Neisse River around Lubań. Among those villages are Niedercunnersdorf, Obercunnersdorf, Wehrsdorf, Jonsdorf, Sohland an der Spree with Taubenheim, Oppach, most of the area belonging to the German state of Brandenburg today is called Lower Lusatia and is characterised by forests and meadows. In the course of much of the 19th and the entire 20th century, it was shaped by the lignite industry, important towns include Cottbus, Eisenhüttenstadt, Lübben, Lübbenau, Spremberg, Finsterwalde, Senftenberg, and Żary, which is now considered the capital of Polish Lusatia. Between Upper and Lower Lusatia is a called the Grenzwall, literally meaning border dyke. In the Middle Ages this area had forests, so it represented a major obstacle to civilian. Some of the villages were damaged or destroyed by the open-pit lignite mining industry during the DDR era. The Lusatian Lake District will become Europes largest artificial lake district, some of the biggest lakes are Lake Senftenberg and Bluno Southern Lake. The Upper Lusatian Heath and Pond Landscape is the region richest in ponds in Germany, as Lusatia is not, and never has been, a single administrative unit, Upper and Lower Lusatia have different, but in some aspects similar, histories. The city of Cottbus is the largest in the region, and though it is recognized as the capital of Lower Lusatia. Historically, the centres of Lower Lusatia were at Luckau and Lübben
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Silesia
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Silesia is a region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is about 40,000 km2, and its population about 8,000,000, Silesia is located along the Oder River. It consists of Lower Silesia and Upper Silesia, the region is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesias largest city and historical capital is Wrocław, the biggest metropolitan area is the Upper Silesian metropolitan area, the centre of which is Katowice. Parts of the Czech city of Ostrava fall within the borders of Silesia, Silesias borders and national affiliation have changed over time, both when it was a hereditary possession of noble houses and after the rise of modern nation-states. The first known states to hold there were probably those of Greater Moravia at the end of the 9th century. In the 10th century, Silesia was incorporated into the early Polish state, in the 14th century, it became a constituent part of the Bohemian Crown Lands under the Holy Roman Empire, which passed to the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy in 1526. Most of Silesia was conquered by Prussia in 1742, later becoming part of the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the varied history with changing aristocratic possessions resulted in an abundance of castles in Silesia, especially in the Jelenia Góra valley. The remaining former Austrian parts of Silesia were partitioned to Czechoslovakia, in 1945, after World War II, the bulk of Silesia was transferred to Polish jurisdiction by the Potsdam Agreement of the victorious Allied Powers and became part of Poland. The small Lusatian strip west of the Oder-Neisse line, which had belonged to Silesia since 1815 and its centres are Görlitz and Bautzen. Most inhabitants of Silesia today speak the languages of their respective countries. The population of Upper Silesia is native, while Lower Silesia was settled by a German-speaking population before 1945, an ongoing debate exists whether Silesian speech should be considered a dialect of Polish or a separate language. Also, a Lower Silesian German dialect is used, although today it is almost extinct and it is used by expellees within Germany, as well as Germans who were left behind. The names all relate to the name of a river and mountain in mid-southern Silesia, the mountain served as a cultic place. Ślęża is listed as one of the numerous Pre-Indo-European topographic names in the region, according to some Polish Slavists, the name Ślęża or Ślęż is directly related to the Old Slavic words ślęg or śląg, which means dampness, moisture, or humidity. They disagree with the hypothesis of an origin for the name Śląsk from the name of the Silings tribe, in the fourth century BC, Celts entered Silesia, settling around Mount Ślęża near modern Wrocław, Oława, and Strzelin. Germanic Lugii tribes were first recorded within Silesia in the 1st century, Slavic peoples arrived in the region around the 7th century, and by the early ninth century, their settlements had stabilized. Local Slavs started to erect boundary structures like the Silesian Przesieka, the eastern border of Silesian settlement was situated to the west of the Bytom, and east from Racibórz and Cieszyn
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Dresden Heath
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The Dresden Heath is a large forest in the city of Dresden. The heath is the most important recreation area in the city and is also actively forested, approximately 6,133 hectares of the Dresden Heath are designated as a nature preserve, making it one of the largest municipal forests in Germany by area. Though mainly agricultural areas border the forest in the east, in all other directions the Dresden Heath is bordered by districts of the city and reaches nearly to the city centre in the southwest. The forest exhibits a transition, both in its geology and in its plant and animal life, between the North German Plain and the Central Uplands. Except for small areas, the Dresden Heath is considered part of the western Lusatian Highlands and, the proximity of the Dresden Heath to the centre of Dresden led to its use as a princely hunting ground, as well as its cultivation and cultural development. Located in the northeast of the Saxon capital, the part of the heath stretches from the city centre to the border of Dresden. The forest is mainly outside the area of Dresden and is largely in the administrative region of Loschwitz. In contrast to the parts of this administrative area, the 4,836 hectare region is not considered an urban district. Smaller regions on the edge of the heath belong to the districts of Neustadt and Klotzsche. In the south, the part of the heath stretches between Loschwitz and the Waldschlösschen district, to the slopes of the Elbe and to Radeberger Vorstadt. The southernmost offshoots even border on the heavily populated Äussere Neustadt, in the west, the forest meets Albertstadt and Klotzsche. In the north, it is bordered by the Weixdorf districts of Lausa and Friedersdorf as well as by Langebrück, in the east the forest is bordered by the town of Radeberg and its districts of Großerkmannsdorf and Ullersdorf. The Junge Heide, the part, is to the west of the main part of the heath in the northwest of Dresden. It is bordered in the north by the districts of Wilschdorf and Hellerau, in the east by the Heller and in the south by Trachenberge, in the west the Junge Heide meets the Radebeuler districts of Oberlößnitz and Alt-Radebeul, in the northwest, Boxdorf. The part of the Junge Heide in the districts of Hellerberge, the western part of the Junge Heide, on the other hand, is assigned to Trachau. Together with an area on the edge of the heath in the south that belongs to Trachenberge. Further areas in the west of the Junge Heide are administered from Moritzburg or Radebeul, surrounding landscapes include Lößnitz in the West, the Friedewald and the Moritzburg pond region in the northwest. In the north, the Königsbrück-Ruhland Heaths and the Seifersdorf valley border the forest in the northeast, the landscape to the southeast is the Schönfeld Upland
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West Lusatian Hill Country and Uplands
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The West Lusatian Hill Country and Uplands, sometimes just the West Lusatian Hills, is a natural region in Saxony. It is divided into the West Lusatian Foothills in the east, the West Lusatian Foothills form the northwestern declivity of the Lusatian Highlands. Immediately to the west and also south of the Königsbrück-Ruhland Heath they are adjoined by the Lusatian Plateau, to the north they are bounded by the Großenhainer Pflege, to the south and southwest by the Dresden Basin and just touch Saxon Switzerland in the extreme southeast. From the viewpoint of natural regional mapping the town borough is part of the West Lusatian Hill Country, the Dresden Elbe Slopes mark the sharp transition to the Dresden Basin south of the hill country and uplands. At this point the West Lusatian Hill Country and Uplands form the shoulder of a fault-block trough. The Upper Lusatian Highlands to the east give way to various hills, ridges between 350 and 450 metres in height dominate the landscape in only a few places. These ridges are mostly isolated, occasionally linked with one another within hilly areas with altitudes between 250 and 300 metres and also embedded within plains, in the central and eastern part of the area granodiorite is the dominant bedrock, which was quarried as Lusatian granite in many places. In the north, greywacke prevails but, in the west, in the east, loess derivatives and sandy loess dominate whilst, to the west, sands and quicksands are to the fore. Precipitation varies between 650 millimetres on the edge of the area up to 900 millimetres in the hill country. The mean annual temperatures fall from the West Lusatian Plateau around Moritzburg to below 7.5 °C on the ridge to the east. The potential natural vegetation is mainly the high colline and submontane Wood-rush-Oak-Beech wood
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Carpathian Mountains
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The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a mountain range system forming an arc roughly 1,500 km long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe. The Carpathians and their foothills also have many thermal and mineral waters, the Carpathians consist of a chain of mountain ranges that stretch in an arc from the Czech Republic in the northwest through Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Ukraine to Romania and Serbia. The highest range within the Carpathians is the Tatras, on the border of Slovakia and Poland, the second-highest range is the Southern Carpathians in Romania, where the highest peaks exceed 2,500 m. The divisions of the Carpathians are usually in three sections, Western Carpathians — Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia. Eastern Carpathians — southeastern Poland, eastern Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, the term Outer Carpathians is frequently used to describe the northern rim of the Western and Eastern Carpathians. The most important cities in or near the Carpathians are, Bratislava and Košice in Slovakia, Kraków in Poland, Cluj-Napoca, Sibiu and Braşov in Romania, and Uzhhorod in Ukraine. In modern times, the range is called Karpaty in Czech, Polish, Slovak and Карпати in Ukrainian, Carpați in Romanian, Karpaten in German, Kárpátok in Hungarian and Karpati or Карпати in Serbian. Although the toponym was recorded already by Ptolemy in the 2nd century CE, for instance, Havasok was its medieval Hungarian name, Rus and Romanian chronicles referred to it as Hungarian Mountains. The archaic Polish word karpa meant rugged irregularities, underwater obstacles/rocks, the more common word skarpa means a sharp cliff or other vertical terrain. In late Roman documents, the Eastern Carpathian Mountains were referred to as Montes Sarmatici, the Western Carpathians were called Carpates, a name that is first recorded in Ptolemys Geographia. In the Scandinavian Hervarar saga, which relates ancient Germanic legends about battles between Goths and Huns, the name Karpates appears in the predictable Germanic form as Harvaða fjöllum, inter Alpes Huniae et Oceanum est Polonia by Gervase of Tilbury, has described in his Otia Imperialia in 1211. Thirteenth- to fifteenth-century Hungarian documents named the mountains Thorchal, Tarczal or less frequently Montes Nivium, the northwestern Carpathians begin in Slovakia and southern Poland. They surround Transcarpathia and Transylvania in a semicircle, sweeping towards the southeast. The total length of the Carpathians is over 1,500 km, the highest altitudes of the Carpathians occur where they are widest. The Carpathians cover an area of 190,000 km2 and, after the Alps, although commonly referred to as a mountain chain, the Carpathians do not actually form an uninterrupted chain of mountains. Rather, they consist of several orographically and geologically distinctive groups, the Carpathians at their highest altitude are only as high as the middle region of the Alps, with which they share a common appearance, climate, and flora. The Carpathians are separated from the Alps by the Danube, the two ranges meet at only one point, the Leitha Mountains at Bratislava. The river also separates them from the Balkan Mountains at Orşova in Romania, the valley of the March and Oder separates the Carpathians from the Silesian and Moravian chains, which belong to the middle wing of the great Central Mountain System of Europe
28.
Moravia
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Moravia is a historical country in the Czech Republic and one of the historical Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. Moravia has an area of over 22,348.87 km2 and about 3 million inhabitants, the statistics from 1921 states, that the whole area of Moravia including the enclaves in Silesia covers 22,623.41 km2. The people are historically named Moravians, a subgroup of Czechs, the land takes its name from the Morava river, which rises in the northern tip of the region and flows southward to the opposite end, being its major stream. Moravias largest city and historical capital is Brno, however before being sacked by the Swedish army during the Thirty Years War, though officially abolished by an administrative reform in 1949, Moravia is still commonly acknowledged as a specific land in the Czech Republic. Moravian people are aware of their Moravian identity and there is some rivalry between them and the Czechs from Bohemia. Moravia occupies most of the part of the Czech Republic. Moravian territory is naturally strongly determined, in fact, as the Morava river basin, with effect of mountains in the west and partly in the east. Moravia occupies a position in Central Europe. All the highlands in the west and east of part of Europe run west-east. Moravia borders Bohemia in the west, Lower Austria in the south, Slovakia in the southeast, Poland very shortly in the north and its natural boundary is formed by the Sudetes mountains in the north, the Carpathians in the east and the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands in the west. The Thaya river meanders along the border with Austria and the tripoint of Moravia, Austria and Slovakia is at the confluence of the Thaya, the northeast border with Silesia runs partly along the Moravice, Oder and Ostravice rivers. Between 1782–1850, Moravia also included a portion of the former province of Silesia – the Austrian Silesia. Geologically, Moravia covers an area between the Bohemian Massif and the Carpathians, and between the Danube basin and the North European Plain. Its core geomorphological features are three wide vales, namely the Dyje-Svratka Vale, the Upper Morava Vale and the Lower Morava Vale, the former two form the westernmost part of the Subcarpathia, the latter one is the northernmost part of the Vienna Basin. The vales surround the low range of Central Moravian Carpathians, the highest mountains of Moravia are situated on its northern border in Hrubý Jeseník, the highest peak is Praděd. Second highest are the Moravian-Silesian Beskids at the very east, with Smrk, the White Carpathians along the southeastern border rise up to 970 m at Velká Javořina. The spacious, but moderate Bohemian-Moravian Highlands on the west reach 837 m at Devět skal. The fluvial system of Moravia is very cohesive, as the border is similar to the watershed of the Morava river
29.
Smrk (Jizera Mountains)
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Smrk is the highest mountain in the Czech part of the Jizera Mountains. Rising 1,124 m, it is known as The King of the Jizera mountains The mountain lies south of Nové Město pod Smrkem in the Liberec Region of northern Bohemia. On the eastern rim of the plateau is the boundary with Poland, the tree was uprooted, in 1790, by a storm. Bohemia, Silesia and Lusatia had all been Lands of the Bohemian Crown since the 14th century, according to the 1815 Congress of Vienna, Prussia also annexed the Upper Lusatian lands in the northwest, which were incorporated into the Province of Silesia. On 21 August 1892, a observation tower, which was 20 m high, was built atop Tafelfichte. The mountain hut used to house the workers was converted, after the towers construction. Until 1935, up to 18,000 people per year visited the mountain summit, in 1909, a memorial stone honoring the German poet Theodor Körner was erected at the summit to commemorate his stay a hundred years before. After World War II the local German population was expelled and the cottage was deserted and looted, the abandoned premises fell into disrepair and the tower collapsed in the 1950s. Over the following decades forest dieback, from parasites or acid rain, has cleared the peak of the mountain to the point where it is largely bare, after the 1989 Velvet Revolution, plans were made to build a new tower. In 2002, construction began and on September 18,2003 a second 20-metre-high tower, in June 2009, a replica of the 19th-century wooden tower was erected at the Prague Zoo. A good starting point is the Czech town of Lázně Libverda from where a trail leads to the Smrk summit. A likewise steep route from the Polish side starts at Świeradów-Zdrój via the Stóg Izerski subpeak to the summit, another convenient route is from the Czech Smědava inn for 7 km along red markers. Only the last section, called Jacobs Ladder is steeply uphill
30.
Elbe
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The Elbe is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Krkonoše Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia, then Germany and its total length is 1,094 kilometres. The Elbes major tributaries include the rivers Vltava, Saale, Havel, Mulde, Schwarze Elster, the Elbe river basin, comprising the Elbe and its tributaries, has a catchment area of 148,268 square kilometres, the fourth largest in Europe. The basin spans four countries, with its largest parts in Germany, much smaller parts lie in Austria and Poland. The basin is inhabited by 24.5 million people, the Elbe rises at an elevation of about 1,400 metres in the Krkonoše on the northwest borders of the Czech Republic near Labská bouda. Of the numerous small streams whose waters compose the infant river, here the Elbe enters the vast vale named Polabí, and continues on southwards through Hradec Králové and then to Pardubice, where it turns sharply to the west. At Kolín some 43 kilometres further on, it bends gradually towards the north-west, at the village of Káraný, a little above Brandýs nad Labem, it picks up the Jizera. At Mělník its stream is more than doubled in volume by the Vltava, or Moldau, upstream from the confluence the Vltava is in fact much longer, and has a greater discharge and a larger drainage basin. Some distance lower down, at Litoměřice, the waters of the Elbe are tinted by the reddish Ohře, in its northern section both banks of the Elbe are characterised by flat, very fertile marshlands, former flood plains of the Elbe now diked. At Magdeburg there is a viaduct, the Magdeburg Water Bridge, from the sluice of Geesthacht on downstream the Elbe is subject to the tides, the tidal Elbe section is called the Low Elbe. Within the city-state the Unterelbe has a number of streams, such as Dove Elbe, Gose Elbe, Köhlbrand, Northern Elbe, Reiherstieg. Some of which have been disconnected for vessels from the stream by dikes. In 1390 the Gose Elbe was separated from the stream by a dike connecting the two then-islands of Kirchwerder and Neuengamme. The Dove Elbe was diked off in 1437/38 at Gammer Ort and these hydraulic engineering works were carried out to protect marshlands from inundation, and to improve the water supply of the Port of Hamburg. The Northern Elbe passes the Elbe Philharmonic Hall and is then crossed under by the old Elbe Tunnel, a bit more downstream the Low Elbes two main anabranches Northern Elbe and the Köhlbrand reunite south of Altona-Altstadt, a locality of Hamburg. Right after both anabranches reunited the Low Elbe is passed under by the New Elbe Tunnel, the last structural road link crossing the river before the North Sea. At the bay Mühlenberger Loch in Hamburg at kilometre 634, the Northern Elbe and the Southern Elbe used to reunite, leaving the city-state the Lower Elbe then passes between Holstein and the Elbe-Weser Triangle with Stade until it flows into the North Sea at Cuxhaven. Near its mouth it passes the entrance to the Kiel Canal at Brunsbüttel before it debouches into the North Sea, the Elbe has been navigable by commercial vessels since 1842, and provides important trade links as far inland as Prague
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Upper Sorbian language
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Upper Sorbian is a minority language spoken by Sorbs in Germany in the historical province of Upper Lusatia, which is today part of Saxony. It is grouped in the West Slavic language branch, together with Lower Sorbian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, the history of the Upper Sorbian language in Germany began with the Slavic migrations during the 6th century AD. Beginning in the 12th century, there was an influx of rural Germanic settlers from Flanders, Saxony. The succeeding devastation of the country by military actions began the slow decrease of the Upper Sorbian language, in addition, in the Saxony region, the Sorbian language was legally subordinated to the German language. Further, there was the condition in many guilds of the cities of the area to only members of German-language origin. However, the areas of the Milzener and Lusitzer, in the area of the todays Lausitz, were relatively unaffected by the new German language settlements. By the 17th century, the number of Upper Sorbian speakers in that area grew to over 300,000, the oldest evidence of written Upper Sorbian is the Burger Eydt Wendisch monument, which was discovered in the city of Bautzen and dated to the year 1532. There are estimated to be 40,000 speakers of Upper Sorbian, the vowel inventory of Upper Sorbian is exactly the same as that of Lower Sorbian. It is also similar to the vowel inventory of Slovene. /i/ is mid-centralized to after hard consonants, /e, o/ are diphthongized to in slow speech. The /e–ɛ/ and /o–ɔ/ distinctions are weakened or lost in unstressed syllables, /v, d͡z, t͡sʲ, zʲ/ are very rare. /β/ is a somewhat velarized bilabial approximant, whereas /ɥ/ is a strongly palatalized bilabial approximant, in most dialects, /t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ, ʃ, ʒ/ are palato-alveolar. This is unlike Lower Sorbian, where these consonants are laminal retroflex, laminal retroflex realizations of /ʃ, ʒ/ also occur in Upper Sorbian dialects spoken in some villages north of Hoyerswerda. An aspirated is an allophone of /x/ in some cases. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Upper Sorbian, Wšitcy čłowjekojo su wot naroda swobodni a su jenacy po dostojnosći a prawach. Woni su z rozumom a swědomjom wobdarjeni a maja mjezsobu w duchu bratrowstwa wobchadźeć. de at slovnik. vancl. eu at sibz. whyi. org at Boehmak. de at Boehmak. de at sibz. whyi. org
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Lusatian Mountains
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The Lusatian Mountains are a mountain range of the Western Sudetes on the southeastern border of Germany with the Czech Republic. They are a continuation of the Ore Mountains range west of the Elbe valley, the mountains of the northern, German, part are called the Zittau Mountains. The northwestern foothills of the Lusatian Mountains are called the Lusatian Highlands, the range is largely made up of sandstone sedimentary rocks leaning on a Precambrian crystalline basement. The northern ridge is marked by the Lusatian Fault, a geological disturbance zone separating the Bohemian sandstones from the Lusatian granodiorite, during the Tertiary volcanic magma streams broke through the sandstone layer and solidified into basalt and phonolite. Several sandstone contact areas were also hardened to columns and distinct rock formations, both the German and the Czech parts nowadays are protected areas according to IUCN guidelines. The highest peak is the Lausche, other notable peaks include the Pěnkavčí vrch, Jedlová, Klíč, Hochwald and Studenec
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Karkonosze National Park
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The Karkonosze National Park is a National Park in the Karkonosze Mountains in southwestern Poland, along the border with the Czech Republic. The park is located in Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in the highest part of the Sudetes and it was created in 1959 to cover an area of 55.10 km². Today it is larger at 55.76 km2, of which 17.18 km² is strictly protected. The majority of the area, around 33.80 km². In 1992 Karkonosze National Park, together with the neighbouring Czech National Park, became part of the Krkonose / Karkonosze biosphere reserve under UNESCO’s Man, also,40 hectares of peat bogs were designated a Ramsar international wetland site. Its highest peak is Śnieżka at 1,602 metres above sea level, forming a triangle with Śnieżnik,1,424 metres, as well as Ślęża peak and they are connected by a red hiking trail only for qualified tourists. Śnieżka is unique in its rounded, treeless cap, which stands in sharp contrast to other, lower peaks, many of the Karkonosze’s streams come down the hills, creating waterfalls, the largest of which in the Polish part of the mountains is created by the Łomniczka stream. There are about 100 various birds living in the park, the most numerous of animal species living there. In the higher parts of the mountains there are species of them, in the lower levels there are 100 varieties. The park has four species of fish, six species of amphibians, the parks attraction are mouflons, brought here at the beginning of the 20th century. Karkonosze National Park is visited by more than 1.5 million tourists yearly and they can use 112 kilometres of walking paths,10 ski lifts and 12 guest houses. The Park has its headquarters in the town of Jelenia Góra, karkonoski National Park official website The Board of Polish National Parks Opera Corcontica - Scientific Journal from the Krkonoše National Park
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Alps
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The mountains were formed over tens of millions of years as the African and Eurasian tectonic plates collided. Extreme shortening caused by the event resulted in marine sedimentary rocks rising by thrusting and folding into high mountain peaks such as Mont Blanc, Mont Blanc spans the French–Italian border, and at 4,810 m is the highest mountain in the Alps. The Alpine region area contains about a hundred peaks higher than 4000 metres, the altitude and size of the range affects the climate in Europe, in the mountains precipitation levels vary greatly and climatic conditions consist of distinct zones. Wildlife such as live in the higher peaks to elevations of 3,400 m. Evidence of human habitation in the Alps goes back to the Palaeolithic era, a mummified man, determined to be 5,000 years old, was discovered on a glacier at the Austrian–Italian border in 1991. By the 6th century BC, the Celtic La Tène culture was well established, Hannibal famously crossed the Alps with a herd of elephants, and the Romans had settlements in the region. In 1800 Napoleon crossed one of the passes with an army of 40,000. The 18th and 19th centuries saw an influx of naturalists, writers, in World War II, Adolf Hitler kept a base of operation in the Bavarian Alps throughout the war. The Alpine region has a cultural identity. The Winter Olympic Games have been hosted in the Swiss, French, at present, the region is home to 14 million people and has 120 million annual visitors. The English word Alps derives from the Latin Alpes, maurus Servius Honoratus, an ancient commentator of Virgil, says in his commentary that all high mountains are called Alpes by Celts. The term may be common to Italo-Celtic, because the Celtic languages have terms for high mountains derived from alp and this may be consistent with the theory that in Greek Alpes is a name of non-Indo-European origin. According to the Old English Dictionary, the Latin Alpes might possibly derive from a pre-Indo-European word *alb hill, Albania, a name not native to the region known as the country of Albania, has been used as a name for a number of mountainous areas across Europe. In Roman times, Albania was a name for the eastern Caucasus, in modern languages the term alp, alm, albe or alpe refers to a grazing pastures in the alpine regions below the glaciers, not the peaks. An alp refers to a mountain pasture where cows are taken to be grazed during the summer months and where hay barns can be found. The Alps are a crescent shaped geographic feature of central Europe that ranges in a 800 km arc from east to west and is 200 km in width, the mean height of the mountain peaks is 2.5 km. The range stretches from the Mediterranean Sea north above the Po basin, extending through France from Grenoble, the range continues onward toward Vienna, Austria, and east to the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia. To the south it dips into northern Italy and to the north extends to the border of Bavaria in Germany
35.
Sudeten Germans
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German Bohemians, later known as the Sudeten Germans, were ethnic Germans living in the lands of the Bohemian Crown, which later became an integral part of the state of Czechoslovakia. Ethnic Germans migrated into Bohemia, a part of the Holy Roman Empire, since the 11th century, mostly in the regions of the Sudetenland. They became known as the Sudeten Germans after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, after 1945, most ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia to Germany and Austria. The area that became known as the Sudetenland possessed chemical works and lignite mines, as well as textile, china, the Bohemian border with Bavaria was inhabited primarily by Germans. The Upper Palatine Forest, which extends along the Bavarian frontier, Moravia contained patches of locked German territory to the north and south. More characteristic were the German language islands, towns inhabited by German minorities and this form of separation continued until the end of the Second World War, when the Germans were expelled. In the English language, ethnic Germans that originated in the Kingdom of Bohemia were traditionally referred to as ″German Bohemians″ and this appellation utilizes the broad definition of Bohemia, which includes all of the three Bohemian crown lands, Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia. In the German language, it is common to distinguish between the three lands, hence the prominent terms Deutschböhmen, Deutschmährer and Deutschschlesier. Even in German, however, the use of ″Bohemian″ is also found. The term ″Sudeten Germans″ came about during rising ethnic nationalism in the early 20th century and it coincided with the rise of another new term, ″the Sudetenland″, which referred only to the parts of the former Kingdom of Bohemia that were inhabited predominantly by ethnic Germans. These names were derived from the Sudeten Mountains, which form the border of the Czech lands. As these terms were used by the Nazi German regime to push forward the creation of a Greater Germanic Reich. There have been ethnic Germans living in the Bohemian crown lands since the Middle Ages, Czechs made up about 20 percent of the student body at the time of its founding, while the rest was primarily German. For centuries, German Bohemians played important roles in the economy, for example, forest glass production was a common industry among German Bohemians. Though they were living beyond the medieval Kingdom of Germany, an independent German Bohemian awareness, however, was not widespread, individuals were usually seen as Bohemians, Moravians, Silesians. With the rise of the Habsburgs in Bohemia after the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, increasingly, the Bohemian crown lands were ruled from the Austrian capital Vienna, which favored the dominance of both the German language and German culture. As the 19th century arrived, resistance to the German domination began to develop among the Czech population, each ethnicity, in regions in which they were the majority, tried to retain sovereignty over their own affairs. Czechs and Germans generally maintained separate schools, churches, and public institutions, nevertheless, despite this separation, it was not uncommon for Germans to understand some Czech, or for Czechs to speak some German
36.
Czechoslovakia
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From 1939 to 1945, following its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, the state did not de facto exist but its government-in-exile continued to operate. From 1948 to 1990, Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc with a command economy and its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949, and its defense status in the Warsaw Pact of May 1955. A period of liberalization in 1968, known as the Prague Spring, was forcibly ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by several other Warsaw Pact countries. In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the two states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Form of state 1918–1938, A democratic republic, 1938–1939, After annexation of Sudetenland by Nazi Germany in 1938, the region gradually turned into a state with loosened connections among the Czech, Slovak, and Ruthenian parts. A large strip of southern Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine was annexed by Hungary, 1939–1945, The region was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic. A government-in-exile continued to exist in London, supported by the United Kingdom, United States and its Allies, after the German invasion of Russia, Czechoslovakia adhered to the Declaration by United Nations and was a founding member of the United Nations. 1946–1948, The country was governed by a government with communist ministers, including the prime minister. Carpathian Ruthenia was ceded to the Soviet Union, 1948–1989, The country became a socialist state under Soviet domination with a centrally planned economy. In 1960, the country became a socialist republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It was a state of the Soviet Union. 1989–1990, The federal republic consisted of the Czech Socialist Republic, 1990–1992, Following the Velvet Revolution, the state was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, consisting of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Neighbours Austria 1918–1938, 1945–1992 Germany Hungary Poland Romania 1918–1938 Soviet Union 1945–1991 Ukraine 1991–1992 Topography The country was of irregular terrain. The western area was part of the north-central European uplands, the eastern region was composed of the northern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains and lands of the Danube River basin. Climate The weather is mild winters and mild summers, influenced by the Atlantic Ocean from the west, Baltic Sea from the north, and Mediterranean Sea from the south. The area was long a part of the Austro Hungarian Empire until the Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the new state was founded by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who served as its first president from 14 November 1918 to 14 December 1935. He was succeeded by his ally, Edvard Beneš. The roots of Czech nationalism go back to the 19th century, nationalism became a mass movement in the last half of the 19th century
37.
Sudetenland
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The Sudeten crisis of 1938 was provoked by the demands of Nazi Germany that the Sudetenland be annexed to Germany, which in fact took place after the later infamous Munich Agreement. Part of the borderland was invaded and annexed by Poland, when Czechoslovakia was reconstituted after the Second World War, the Sudeten Germans were largely expelled, and the region today is inhabited almost exclusively by Czech speakers. Parts of the current Czech regions of Karlovy Vary, Liberec, Olomouc, Moravia-Silesia, the Celtic and Boii tribes settled there and the region was first mentioned on the map of Ptolemaios in the 2nd century AD. The Germanic tribe of the Marcomanni dominated the core of the region in later centuries. Those tribes already built cities like Brno, but moved west during the Migration Period, in the 7th century AD Slavic people moved in and were united under Samos realm. Later in the High Middle Ages Germans settled into the less populated border region, in the Middle Ages the regions situated on the mountainous border of the Duchy and the Kingdom of Bohemia had since the Migration Period been settled mainly by western Slavic Czechs. In the course of the Ostsiedlung German settlement from the 13th century onwards continued to move into the Upper Lusatia region, after the extinction of the Přemyslid dynasty in 1306, the Bohemian nobility backed John of Luxembourg as king against his rival Duke Henry of Carinthia. His son, Bohemian King Charles IV, was elected King of the Romans in 1346 and he added the Lusatias to the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, which then comprised large territories with a significant German population. In the hilly border regions German settlers established major manufactures of forest glass, the situation of the German population was aggravated by the Hussite Wars, though there were also some Germans among the Hussite insurgents. The city of Prague had a German-speaking majority from the last third of the 17th century until 1860, from the Luxembourgs, the rule over Bohemia passed through George of Podiebrad to the Jagiellon dynasty and finally to the House of Habsburg in 1526. Both Czech and German Bohemians suffered heavily in the Thirty Years War, Bohemia lost 70% of its population. From the defeat of the Bohemian Revolt that collapsed at the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, during the subsequent Counter-Reformation, less populated areas were resettled with Catholic Germans from the Austrian lands. Also in 1749 Austrian Empire enforced German as the language again. Emperor Joseph II in 1780 renounced the coronation ceremony as Bohemian king, nevertheless, German cultural influence grew stronger during the Age of Enlightenment and Weimar Classicism. The Bohemian Kingdom remained a part of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary until its dismemberment after the First World War, in the wake of growing nationalism, the name Sudetendeutsche emerged by the early 20th century. Of these three terms, only the term Sudetendeutsche survived, because of the ethnic and cultural conflicts within Bohemia, thirty-four of each 1,000 inhabitants were killed. Austria-Hungary broke apart at the end of World War I, late in October 1918, an independent Czechoslovak state, consisting of the lands of the Bohemian kingdom and areas belonging to the Kingdom of Hungary, was proclaimed. The German deputies of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia in the Imperial Council referred to the Fourteen Points of U. S, on 20 September 1918, the Prague government asked the United Statess opinion for the Sudetenland
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Czech Silesia
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Czech Silesia is the name given to the part of the historical region of Silesia presently located in the Czech Republic. While not today an administrative entity in itself, Czech Silesia is, together with Bohemia and Moravia, in this context, it is often mentioned as Silesia even though it is only around one tenth of the area of the historic land of Silesia. It lies in the north-east of the Czech Republic, predominantly in the Moravian-Silesian Region, Czech Silesia borders Moravia in the south, Poland in the north and Slovakia in the southeast. After Ostrava, the most important cities are Opava and Český Těšín, historically Český Těšín is the western part of the city of Cieszyn which nowadays lies in Poland. Situated in the Sudetes, it is cornered by the Carpathians in the east and its major rivers are the Oder, Opava and Olše. The first Germanic settlements were built in the second century, later the Germanic tribes moved west and Slavs came into the country. It was re-organised as the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia, in 1900, the Duchy occupied an area of 5,140 km² and had a population of 670,000. Hlučín Region, formerly part of Prussian Silesia, also part of Czechoslovakia under the Treaty of Versailles in 1920. Following the Munich Agreement of 1938, most of Czech Silesia became part of the Reichsgau Sudetenland and Poland occupied the Zaolzie area on the west bank of the Olza. With the exception of the areas around Cieszyn, Ostrava and Hlučín, following the Second World War, Czech Silesia and Hlučínsko were returned to Czechoslovakia and the ethnic Germans were expelled. The border with Poland was once again set along the Olza, the population mainly speaks Czech with altered vowels. Some of the native Slavic population speak Lach, which is classed by Ethnologue as a dialect of Czech, in Cieszyn Silesia a unique dialect is also spoken, mostly by members of the Polish minority there
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Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
40.
Geography (Ptolemy)
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Its translation into Arabic in the 9th century and Latin in 1406 was highly influential on the geographical knowledge and cartographic traditions of the medieval Caliphate and Renaissance Europe. Versions of Ptolemys work in antiquity were probably proper atlases with attached maps, no Greek manuscript of the Geography survives from earlier than the 13th century. In Europe, maps were sometimes made using the coordinates provided by the text. Later scribes and publishers could then copy these new maps, as Athanasius did for the emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus, the three earliest surviving texts with maps are those from Constantinople based on Planudess work. The first Latin translation of texts was made in 1406 or 1407 by Jacobus Angelus in Florence, Italy. It is not thought that his edition had maps, although Manuel Chrysoloras had given Palla Strozzi a Greek copy of Planudess maps in Florence in 1397, the Geography consists of three sections, divided among 8 books. Book I is a treatise on cartography, describing the methods used to assemble, from Book II through the beginning of Book VII, a gazetteer provides longitude and latitude values for the world known to the ancient Romans. The rest of Book VII provides details on three projections to be used for the construction of a map of the world, varying in complexity and fidelity, Book VIII constitutes an atlas of regional maps. The maps include a recapitulation of some of the values given earlier in the work, Maps based on scientific principles had been made in Europe since the time of Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC. Ptolemy improved the treatment of map projections and he provided instructions on how to create his maps in the first section of the work. The gazetteer section of Ptolemys work provided latitude and longitude coördinates for all the places and his Prime Meridian ran through the Fortunate Isles, the westernmost land recorded, at around the position of El Hierro in the Canary Islands. The maps spanned 180 degrees of longitude from the Fortunate Isles in the Atlantic to China, Ptolemy was aware that Europe knew only about a quarter of the globe. Ptolemys work included a large and less detailed world map and then separate. As early as the 1420s, these maps were complemented by extra-Ptolemaic regional maps depicting. The original treatise by Marinus of Tyre that formed the basis of Ptolemys Geography has been completely lost, a world map based on Ptolemy was displayed in Augustodunum in late Roman times. Pappus, writing at Alexandria in the 4th century, produced a commentary on Ptolemys Geography, for instance, Grant Parker argues that it would be highly implausible for them to have constructed the Bay of Bengal as precisely as they did without the accounts of sailors. Muslim cartographers were using copies of Ptolemys Almagest and Geography by the 9th century, a 1037 copy of these are the earliest extant maps from Islamic lands. Nallino suggests that the work was not based on Ptolemy but on a world map
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Ptolemy
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Claudius Ptolemy was a Greek writer, known as a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in the city of Alexandria in the Roman province of Egypt, wrote in Koine Greek, beyond that, few reliable details of his life are known. His birthplace has been given as Ptolemais Hermiou in the Thebaid in a statement by the 14th-century astronomer Theodore Meliteniotes. This is a very late attestation, however, and there is no reason to suppose that he ever lived elsewhere than Alexandria. Ptolemy wrote several treatises, three of which were of importance to later Byzantine, Islamic and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest, although it was entitled the Mathematical Treatise. The second is the Geography, which is a discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. This is sometimes known as the Apotelesmatika but more known as the Tetrabiblos from the Greek meaning Four Books or by the Latin Quadripartitum. The name Claudius is a Roman nomen, the fact that Ptolemy bore it indicates he lived under the Roman rule of Egypt with the privileges and political rights of Roman citizenship. It would have suited custom if the first of Ptolemys family to become a citizen took the nomen from a Roman called Claudius who was responsible for granting citizenship, if, as was common, this was the emperor, citizenship would have been granted between AD41 and 68. The astronomer would also have had a praenomen, which remains unknown and it occurs once in Greek mythology, and is of Homeric form. All the kings after him, until Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BC, were also Ptolemies, abu Mashar recorded a belief that a different member of this royal line composed the book on astrology and attributed it to Ptolemy. The correct answer is not known”, Ptolemy wrote in Greek and can be shown to have utilized Babylonian astronomical data. He was a Roman citizen, but most scholars conclude that Ptolemy was ethnically Greek and he was often known in later Arabic sources as the Upper Egyptian, suggesting he may have had origins in southern Egypt. Later Arabic astronomers, geographers and physicists referred to him by his name in Arabic, Ptolemys Almagest is the only surviving comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy. Ptolemy presented his models in convenient tables, which could be used to compute the future or past position of the planets. The Almagest also contains a catalogue, which is a version of a catalogue created by Hipparchus
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