1.
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
2.
Bronze Age
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The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
3.
Tell (archaeology)
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In archaeology, a tell or tel is an artificial mound formed from the accumulated remains of people living on the same site for hundreds or thousands of years. A classic tell looks like a low, truncated cone with a top and sloping sides. Tells are most commonly associated with the archaeology of the ancient Near East, within the Near East, they are concentrated in less arid regions, including Upper Mesopotamia, the Southern Levant, Anatolia and Iran. A tell is a hill created by many generations of people living and rebuilding on the same spot. Over time, the level rises, forming a mound, the single biggest contributor to the mass of a tell are mud bricks, which disintegrate rapidly. Excavating a tell can reveal buried structures such as government or military buildings, religious shrines and homes and they often overlap horizontally, vertically, or both. Archaeologists excavate tell sites to interpret architecture, purpose, and date of occupation, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press – via Internet Archive
4.
Beit Netofa Valley
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The Beit Netofa Valley is a valley in the Lower Galilee region of Israel, midway between Tiberias and Haifa. Covering 46 km2, it is the largest valley in the part of the Galilee. The valleys Arabic name is Sahl ˀal-Baṭūf and as such appears as Vallée Battof in crusader documents, the valley is 16 km long and on average 3 km wide, a graben formed by two parallel east-west trending faults running to its north and south. It lies between two forming the Yodfat range to the north and the Turan range to the south. Limestone hills to the east indicate the valley was shaped by karstic processes. On February 7,1950, a station in the valley recorded the lowest temperature ever recorded in Israel. These are, from west to east, Kibbutz Hanaton, Kafr Manda, Rumana, Uzeir, Bueine Nujeidat, the Jewish religious communal settlement of Mitzpe Netofa is overlooking the valley from Mount Turan, which separates the Beit Netofa and Turan valleys. The fertile valley land is used for agriculture and is owned and cultivated by the inhabitants of settlements either from the valley itself. The latter category includes inhabitants of the Arab settlements of Sakhnin, Arraba and Biina, the Beit Netofa Canal, a part of Israels National Water Carrier, runs through the valley. The 17-kilometer-long open canal was built with a base due to the clay soil. The width of the canal is 19.4 meters, the bottom is 12 meters wide, at the southwestern edge of the Beit Netofa Valley it reaches the two Eshkol reservoirs, where the water is cleaned and tested before flowing south towards the Negev. Several archaeological sites litter the valley, the earliest, Netofa I and II, date from the Chalcolithic period and are found on its hilly western flank near Kafr Manda. The assemblages found at the sites are rich in flint artifacts and tools and include bifacial tools, scrapers, sickle blades, finds also include an arrow head and pottery. The sites are farming villages of a size and richness previously unknown in the Chalcolithic Galilee, two tells stand on the valley floor. The first is Tel Hanaton, which occupies roughly 5 hectares and dominates the end of the valley. Hanaton has been identified as the Hinnatuni of the Amarna letters, and according to the Bible, it, the second tell, Tell el-Wayiwat, is 0.4 hectares in size and rises 3.5 meters above the valley floor at its eastern edge. These have revealed five major strata, dating from the Middle Bronze Age through to the 11th century BCE, at the valleys northeastern edge stands the site of ancient Beth Netofa, its name preserved in the Arab place name, Khirbet Natif. It shows signs of habitation from the Iron Age through the Persian and Roman periods, nearby, next to Highway 65 that runs along the eastern edge of the valley, lies Hurvat Amudim, another Roman-era Jewish settlement
5.
Lower Galilee
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The Lower Galilee, is a region within the Northern District of Israel. The Lower Galilee is the part of the Galilee. Its called Lower since it is less mountainous than the Upper Galilee, the peaks of the Lower Galilee rise to 500 meters above sea level. The tallest peaks are Mount Kamon at the part of the Lower Galilee. Although the landscape of the Lower Galilee is less dramatic than that of the Upper Galilee, it is greener, more peaceful, the Lower Galilee is more accessible to the majority of Israelis. Much of the farms of Israel originates in the Lower Galilee, especially in the Jezreel Valley. Brown Terra Rossa - the Lower Galilee region also have areas which consists of this type of soil which has high amounts of minerals. The Terra Rossa is the basis for the development of forests in the Galilee because it has an amount of mineral needed for the trees to grow. The basalt areas also comprise very fertile soil, in 1932 the first Well drilling was done in the Yavneel Valley which supplied irrigation water to Yavneel. After several local Well drilling attempts made during those years failed water pipelines were laid from the Sea of Galilee to all villages in the Lower Galilee, Galilee Northern District Lower Galilee Regional Council Upper Galilee
6.
Israel
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Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. The country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israels economy and technology center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, in 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, next year, the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and it extended its laws to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israels occupation of the Palestinian territories is the worlds longest military occupation in modern times, efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in peace. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have successfully been signed, the population of Israel, as defined by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, was estimated in 2017 to be 8,671,100 people. It is the worlds only Jewish-majority state, with 74. 8% being designated as Jewish, the countrys second largest group of citizens are Arabs, at 20. 8%. The great majority of Israeli Arabs are Sunni Muslims, including significant numbers of semi-settled Negev Bedouins, other minorities include Arameans, Armenians, Assyrians, Black Hebrew Israelites, Circassians, Maronites and Samaritans. Israel also hosts a significant population of foreign workers and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia, including illegal migrants from Sudan, Eritrea. In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish, Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. The prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature, Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, with the 35th-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2016. The country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. The country has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and the third highest in Asia, in the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel. The name Israel in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, jacobs twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. The earliest known artifact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam
7.
Kafr Manda
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Kafr Manda or Kfar Menda is an Arab town in the Lower Galilee on the slopes of Mount Atzmon in Israels Northern District. Kafr Manda is 16 kilometres northwest of the city of Nazareth, in 2015 its population was 18,509. The inhabitants are predominantly Arab Muslims, the village is located on an ancient site on a low hill. Ancient relics have been found, including architectural fragments, two columns and capitals. Some remains from the Roman and Byzantine era have been found, according to the 13th century Muslim scholar Yaqut al-Hamawi, Kafr Manda lies between Acre and Tiberias and also goes by the name Midian. The tomb of the wife of Moses is seen here, also, the pit covered by the rock which Moses raised up in order give himself and his wife water to drink. At Kafr Mandah may also be seen the tombs of two of Jacobs sons Asher and Naphthali as is reported, in 1962, “hundreds of clay jars, some of which were intact” dating to the 14th–15th centuries were found. Other remains from the Mamluk era have also been excavated, incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, Kafr Manda appeared in the 1596 tax registers as being in the nahiya of Tabariyya under the Liwa of Safad. It had an entirely Muslim population consisting of 93 households and 11 bachelors, taxes were paid on wheat, barley, olive trees, cotton, soghum, goats and/or beehives, and a press for olives or grapes, a total of 13,028 akçe. In the early 18th century the village was walled, and defended by small forts. A map from Napoleons invasion of 1799 by Pierre Jacotin showed the place, edward Robinson noted the village on his travels in the region in 1838, while Victor Guérin in 1875 found the village to have about 400 inhabitants, all Muslim. In 1881, the Palestine Exploration Funds Survey of Western Palestine described Kefr Menda as a village at the foot of Jebel ed Deibebeh. The population is given as 200 souls, and the tillage is twenty feddans, in the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Kufr Manda had a total population of 428, all Muslim. In the 1931 census the population of Kafr Manda, together with Arab el Hujeirat, was a total of 975, all Muslim, in 187 inhabited houses. In 1945 the population of Kafr Manda was 1,260 Muslims,795 dunams were plantations and irrigable land,7,960 for cereals, while 47 dunams were built-up land. On the crossroads between Acre and Nazareth, Kafr Manda surrendered to the advancing Israeli army during Operation Hiram, many of the villagers fled north but some stayed and were not expelled by the Israeli soldiers. The town remained under Martial Law until 1966 and it achieved local council status in 1973. Since then, roads have been paved, schools have been built and infrastructures such as sewage, electricity and irrigation systems have been introduced
8.
Hanaton
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Hanaton is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located twelve kilometers north of Nazareth near the Arab town of Shefaram, in 2015 it had a population of 794. The biblical name Hanaton appears in the Book of Joshua, where it is listed as in the area of the tribe of Zevulun, tel Hanaton, an archaeological site associated with the biblical location lies to the east of the kibbutz. The tel is in the end of the Beit Netofa Valley. It was occupied from the Bronze Age through the Ottoman Empire, Kibbutz Hanaton overlooks Lake Eshkol, an important component of the National Water Carrier. To the north of the kibbutz is the Arab village of Kafr Manda, southwest of the kibbutz, across highway 79, lies Alon HaGalil. Garin Nitzan recruited members from across the United States and joined forces with the Israeli branch, in Israel, they hired rabbi Ehud Bandel to organize high school seniors interested in joining a Nahal garin. On 1 September 1983, Garin Noam moved to Kfar HaHoresh for training and they were joined by Garin Nitzan. In September 1984, the moved into the new kibbutz. The founders were joined by immigrants from South Africa, South America, the Netherlands. In 1997 the United Kibbutz Movement began to send HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed groups to the kibbutz, in 2006, in the wake of financial difficulties, attorney Sagi Mirom was appointed as a dissolution trustee. Under his stewardship the annual deficit of 80,000 NIS was reversed, in 2008, it was decided to recharter Hanaton as a renewed kibbutz. Since March 2011, the kibbutz has been accepting new members, in its early years, the kibbutz engaged in agriculture. A small crafts business, Hadran, manufactures rug kits, the kibbutz operates a dairy in partnership with Kibbutz Gat and a state-of-the-art chicken coop where chicken and turkey hatchlings are raised in a controlled, computerized environment. It grows greenhouse tomatoes, table grapes and grapefruits, a primary source of income is the Education & Lodging Center that provides lodging and workshops for Conservative Jewish youth groups from North America
9.
History of ancient Israel and Judah
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Israel and Judah were related Iron Age kingdoms of the ancient Levant. The Kingdom of Israel emerged as an important local power by the 10th century BCE before falling to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE and this, the last nominally independent Judean kingdom, came to an end in 63 BCE with its conquest by Pompey of Rome. East of the plain and the Shephelah is a ridge, the hill country of Judah in the south, the hill country of Ephraim north of that, then Galilee. To the east again lie the valley occupied by the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and the wadi of the Arabah. Beyond the plateau is the Syrian desert, separating the Levant from Mesopotamia, to the southwest is Egypt, to the northeast Mesopotamia. The location and geographical characteristics of the narrow Levant made the area a battleground among the entities that surrounded it. Politically and culturally it was dominated by Egypt, each city under its own ruler, constantly at odds with its neighbours, and appealing to the Egyptians to adjudicate their differences. The Canaanite city-state system broke down at the end of the Late Bronze period, the name Israel first appears in the stele of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah c.1209 BCE, Israel is laid waste and his seed is no more. In the Late Bronze Age there were no more than about 25 villages in the highlands, the villages were more numerous and larger in the north, and probably shared the highlands with pastoral nomads, who left no remains. Other Aramaean sites also demonstrate a contemporary absence of pig remains at that time, unlike earlier Canaanite, in The Bible Unearthed, Finkelstein and Silberman summarised recent studies. They described how, up until 1967, the Israelite heartland in the highlands of western Palestine was virtually an archaeological terra incognita, since then, intensive surveys have examined the traditional territories of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh. These surveys have revealed the emergence of a new culture contrasting with the Philistine. This new culture is characterised by a lack of remains, by an abandonment of the Philistine/Canaanite custom of having highly decorated pottery. The Israelite ethnic identity had originated, not from the Exodus and a subsequent conquest and these surveys revolutionized the study of early Israel. There was no sign of violent invasion or even the infiltration of a clearly defined ethnic group, instead, it seemed to be a revolution in lifestyle. From then on, over a period of hundreds of years until after the return of the exiles from Babylon, after the period of Ezra there is no more biblical record of them. The Hebrew language, a dialect of Canaanite, became the language of the hill country, modern scholars therefore see Israel arising peacefully and internally from existing people in the highlands of Canaan. Unusually favourable climatic conditions in the first two centuries of Iron Age II brought about an expansion of population, settlements and trade throughout the region
10.
Vassal
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A vassal or feudatory is a person regarded as having a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch, in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. The obligations often included military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain privileges, the term is applied to similar arrangements in other feudal societies. It is like a land lord some one who own and lets you live on it, in contrast, a fidelity, or fidelitas, was a sworn, unconditional loyalty to a monarch. Such refinements were not included from the outset when it was time of crisis, war, hunger, under feudalism, those who were weakest needed the protection of the knights who owned the weapons and knew how to fight. Feudal society was based on the concept of lordship, which was one of the distinguishing features of the Early Middle Ages and had evolved from times of Late Antiquity. In the time of Charlemagne, the connection slowly developed between vassalage and the grant of land, the form of wealth at that time. Contemporaneous social developments included agricultural manorialism and the social and legal structures labelled — and these developments proceeded at different rates in various regions. In Merovingian times, monarchs would reward only the greatest and most trusted vassals with lands, even at the most extreme devolution of any remnants of central power, in 10th-century France, the majority of vassals still had no fixed estates. The stratification of a band of vassals into distinct groups might roughly correlate with the new term fief that had started to supersede benefice in the 9th century. An upper group comprised great territorial magnates, who were strong enough to ensure the inheritance of their benefice to the heirs of their family, a lower group consisted of landless knights attached to a count or duke. This social settling process also received impetus in fundamental changes in the conduct of warfare, as co-ordinated cavalry superseded disorganized infantry, armies became more expensive to maintain. A vassal needed economic resources to equip the cavalry he was bound to contribute to his lord to fight his frequent wars. Such resources, in the absence of an economy, came only from land and its associated assets. Many empires have set up states, based on tribes, kingdoms, or city-states. In these cases a state has retained internal autonomy, but has lost independence in foreign policy, while and, in many instances. In this framework, a colony or junior ally might also be regarded as a vassal state in terms of international relations. The concept of a state uses the concept of personal vassalry to theorize formally hegemonic relationships between states – even those using non-personal forms of rule. Imperial states to which this terminology has been applied include, for instance, Ancient Rome, the Mongol Empire, and the British Empire
