1.
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
2.
Chess
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Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a chessboard, a checkered gameboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. Chess is played by millions of people worldwide, both amateurs and professionals, each player begins the game with 16 pieces, one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. Each of the six piece types moves differently, with the most powerful being the queen, the objective is to checkmate the opponents king by placing it under an inescapable threat of capture. To this end, a players pieces are used to attack and capture the opponents pieces, in addition to checkmate, the game can be won by voluntary resignation by the opponent, which typically occurs when too much material is lost, or if checkmate appears unavoidable. A game may result in a draw in several ways. Chess is believed to have originated in India, some time before the 7th century, chaturanga is also the likely ancestor of the Eastern strategy games xiangqi, janggi and shogi. The pieces took on their current powers in Spain in the late 15th century, the first generally recognized World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title in 1886. Since 1948, the World Championship has been controlled by FIDE, the international governing body. There is also a Correspondence Chess World Championship and a World Computer Chess Championship, online chess has opened amateur and professional competition to a wide and varied group of players. There are also many variants, with different rules, different pieces. FIDE awards titles to skilled players, the highest of which is grandmaster, many national chess organizations also have a title system. However, these are not recognised by FIDE, the term master may refer to a formal title or may be used more loosely for any skilled player. Until recently, chess was a sport of the International Olympic Committee. Chess was included in the 2006 and 2010 Asian Games, since the 1990s, computer analysis has contributed significantly to chess theory, particularly in the endgame. The computer IBM Deep Blue was the first machine to overcome a reigning World Chess Champion in a match when it defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997, the rise of strong computer programs that can be run on hand-held devices has led to increasing concerns about cheating during tournaments. The official rules of chess are maintained by FIDE, chesss international governing body, along with information on official chess tournaments, the rules are described in the FIDE Handbook, Laws of Chess section. Chess is played on a board of eight rows and eight columns. The colors of the 64 squares alternate and are referred to as light, the chessboard is placed with a light square at the right-hand end of the rank nearest to each player
3.
World Chess Championship
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The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in chess. From 1886 to 1946, the set the terms, requiring any challenger to raise a sizable stake. From 1948 to 1993, the championship was administered by FIDE, in 1993, the reigning champion broke away from FIDE, which led to the creation of the rival PCA championship. The titles were unified at the World Chess Championship 2006, other separate events and titles are the Womens World Chess Championship, the World Junior Chess Championship, and the World Senior Chess Championship. There is also a World Computer Chess Championship, which is the only event computers may participate in, the concept of a world chess champion started to emerge in the first half of the 19th century, and the phrase world champion appeared in 1845. Until 1948 world championship contests were matches arranged privately between the players, as a result, the players also had to arrange the funding, in the form of stakes provided by enthusiasts who wished to bet on one of the players. In the early 20th century this was sometimes a barrier that prevented or delayed challenges for the title, however these attempts were unsuccessful in practice, as the same issues continued to delay or prevent challenges. The first attempt by an organization to manage the world championship was in 1887–89. A system for managing regular contests for the title went into operation in 1948, under the control of FIDE, however, in that year reigning champion Kasparov and challenger Short were so dissatisfied with FIDEs arrangements for their match that they set up a break-away organization. The first match proclaimed by the players as for the championship was the match that Wilhelm Steinitz won against Johannes Zukertort in 1886. However, a line of players regarded as the strongest in the world extends back hundreds of years beyond them, and they include Ruy López de Segura around 1560, Paolo Boi and Leonardo da Cutri around 1575, Alessandro Salvio around 1600, and Gioachino Greco around 1623. At present de La Bourdonnais, like Alexander the Great, is without heir, the earliest recorded use of the term World Champion was in 1845, when Howard Staunton was described as the Chess Champion of England, or. The winner of the battle in Paris should not be proud of his special position. Although Kennedy was a member of the committee for the tournament. The 1851 London tournament was won by the German Adolf Anderssen, Anderssen has been described as the first modern chess master. Anderssen was himself defeated in an 1858 match against the American Paul Morphy. Morphy played matches against several leading players, crushing them all, soon after, Morphy offered pawn and move odds to anyone who played him. Finding no takers, he retired from chess the following year
4.
Skopje
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Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia. It is the political, cultural, economic, and academic center. It was known in the Roman period under the name Scupi, the territory of Skopje has been inhabited since at least 4000 BC, remains of Neolithic settlements have been found within the old Kale Fortress that overlooks the modern city centre. On the eve of the 1st century AD, the settlement was seized by the Romans, when the Roman Empire was divided into eastern and western halves in 395 AD, Scupi came under Byzantine rule from Constantinople. During much of the medieval period, the town was contested between the Byzantines and the Bulgarian Empire, whose capital it was between 972 and 992. From 1282, the town was part of the Serbian Empire, in 1392, the city was conquered by the Ottoman Turks who called the town Üsküp. The town stayed under Turkish control for over 500 years, serving as the capital of pashasanjak of Üsküb, at that time the city was famous for its oriental architecture. In 1912, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Serbia during the Balkan Wars and after the First World War the city part of the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats. In the Second World War the city was conquered by the Bulgarian Army, in 1944, it became the capital city of Democratic Macedonia, which was a federal state, part of Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. The city developed rapidly after World War II, but this trend was interrupted in 1963 when it was hit by a disastrous earthquake, in 1991, it became the capital city of an independent Macedonia. Skopje is located on the course of the Vardar River. It is a center for metal-processing, chemical, timber, textile, leather, industrial development of the city has been accompanied by development of the trade, logistics, and banking sectors, as well as an emphasis on the fields of transportation, culture and sport. Skopje is located in the north of the Republic of Macedonia, in the center of the Balkan peninsula, the city is built in the Skopje valley, oriented on a west-east axis, along the course of the Vardar river, which flows into the Aegean Sea in Greece. The valley is approximately 20 kilometres wide and it is limited by several mountain ranges to the North and South and these ranges limit the urban expansion of Skopje, which spreads along the Vardar and the Serava, a small river which comes from the North. In its administrative boundaries, the City of Skopje stretches for more than 33 kilometres, Skopje is approximately 245m above sea level and covers 571.46 km2. The urbanised area only covers 337 km2, with a density of 65 inhabitants per hectare, Skopje, in its administrative limits, encompasses many villages and other settlements, including Dračevo, Gorno Nerezi and Bardovci. According to the 2002 census, the City of Skopje comprised 506,926 inhabitants, the City of Skopje reaches the Kosovo border to the North-East. Clockwise, it is bordered by the Macedonian municipalities of Čučer-Sandevo, Lipkovo, Aračinovo, Ilinden, Studeničani, Sopište, Želino
5.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
6.
West Germany
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West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990. During this Cold War era, NATO-aligned West Germany and Warsaw Pact-aligned East Germany were divided by the Inner German border, after 1961 West Berlin was physically separated from East Berlin as well as from East Germany by the Berlin Wall. This situation ended when East Germany was dissolved and its five states joined the ten states of the Federal Republic of Germany along with the reunified city-state of Berlin. With the reunification of West and East Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, enlarged now to sixteen states and this period is referred to as the Bonn Republic by historians, alluding to the interwar Weimar Republic and the post-reunification Berlin Republic. The Federal Republic of Germany was established from eleven states formed in the three Allied Zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, US and British forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Its population grew from roughly 51 million in 1950 to more than 63 million in 1990, the city of Bonn was its de facto capital city. The fourth Allied occupation zone was held by the Soviet Union, as a result, West Germany had a territory about half the size of the interbellum democratic Weimar Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided among the Western and Eastern blocs, Germany was de facto divided into two countries and two special territories, the Saarland and divided Berlin. The Federal Republic of Germany claimed a mandate for all of Germany. It took the line that the GDR was an illegally constituted puppet state, though the GDR did hold regular elections, these were not free and fair. For all practical purposes the GDR was a Soviet puppet state, from the West German perspective the GDR was therefore illegitimate. Three southwestern states of West Germany merged to form Baden-Württemberg in 1952, in addition to the resulting ten states, West Berlin was considered an unofficial de facto 11th state. It recognised the GDR as a de facto government within a single German nation that in turn was represented de jure by the West German state alone. From 1973 onward, East Germany recognised the existence of two German countries de jure, and the West as both de facto and de jure foreign country, the Federal Republic and the GDR agreed that neither of them could speak in the name of the other. The first chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who remained in office until 1963, had worked for an alignment with NATO rather than neutrality. He not only secured a membership in NATO but was also a proponent of agreements that developed into the present-day European Union, when the G6 was established in 1975, there was no question whether the Federal Republic of Germany would be a member as well. With the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, symbolised by the opening of the Berlin Wall, East Germany voted to dissolve itself and accede to the Federal Republic in 1990. Its five post-war states were reconstituted along with the reunited Berlin and they formally joined the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990, raising the number of states from 10 to 16, ending the division of Germany
7.
Boris Spassky
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Boris Vasilievich Spassky is a Russian chess grandmaster. He was the tenth World Chess Champion, holding the title from 1969 to 1972, Spassky played three world championship matches, he lost to Tigran Petrosian in 1966, defeated Petrosian in 1969 to become world champion, then lost to Bobby Fischer in a famous match in 1972. Spassky won the Soviet Chess Championship twice outright, and twice lost in playoffs and he was a World Chess Championship candidate on seven occasions. In addition to his candidates wins in 1965 and 1968, he reached the stage in 1974 and 1977. Spassky emigrated to France in 1976, becoming a French citizen in 1978 and he continued to compete in tournaments but was no longer a major contender for the world title. In 2012 he left France and returned to Russia and he is the oldest living former world champion. Spassky was born in Leningrad to Russian parents and his father Vasili Vladimirovich Spassky served in military. Boris mother Ekaterina Petrovna Spasskaya was a school teacher, after some time Daria Ivanovna fled to Petersburg, leaving her daughter with Petr Vasiliev, a relative of hers, who raised Ekaterina under the surname of Petrova. She joined her later on. Spassky learned to play chess at the age of 5 on a train evacuating from Leningrad during World War II and he first drew wide attention in 1947 at age 10, when he defeated Soviet champion Mikhail Botvinnik in a simultaneous exhibition in Leningrad. Spasskys early coach was Vladimir Zak, a master and trainer. During his youth, from the age of 10, Spassky often worked on chess for several hours a day with master-level coaches and he set records as the youngest Soviet player to achieve first category rank, candidate master rank, and Soviet Master rank. In 1952, at 15, Spassky scored 50 percent in the Soviet Championship semifinal at Riga, as a statistic encompassing all of the games of his career, Spasskys most-played openings with both the White and Black pieces were the Sicilian Defence and the Ruy Lopez. Spassky has beaten six undisputed World Champions, Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, Tigran Petrosian, Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, and Garry Kasparov. Spassky made his debut in 1953, aged 16, in Bucharest, Romania, finishing tied for fourth place with Laszlo Szabo on 12/19. At Bucharest he defeated Vasily Smyslov, who challenged for the World Championship the following year and he was awarded the title of International Master by FIDE. The same year, he won the World Junior Chess Championship held at Antwerp, Belgium, scoring 6/7 to qualify for the final, Spassky competed for the Lokomotiv Voluntary Sports Society. At Amsterdam, he tied for place with four others in the ten-player field
8.
Sousse
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Sousse or Soussa is a city in Tunisia, capital of the Sousse Governorate. Located 140 kilometres south of the capital Tunis, the city has 271,428 inhabitants, Sousse is in the central-east of the country, on the Gulf of Hammamet, which is a part of the Mediterranean Sea. The name may be of Berber origin, similar names are found in Libya and its economy is based on transport equipment, processed food, olive oil, textiles and tourism. It is home to the Université de Sousse, the Phoenicians founded Hadrumetum in the 11th century BC. The city allied itself with Rome during the Punic Wars, thereby escaping damage or ruin, livy wrote that Hadrumetum was the landing place of the Roman army under Scipio Africanus in the second Punic War. Roman usurper Clodius Albinus was born in Hadrumetum, as part of Bonifaciuss revolt against Constantinople, the Vandals were invited in and they took Hadrumetum in 434 AD and renamed the town Hunerikopolis. During the Vandalic War Justinian retook the town in 534 and restored its Roman name, in the 7th century AD Arab-Islamic armies conquered what is now Tunisia and rapidly spread Arab culture across what had been a thoroughly Romanized and Christianized landscape. The Arabs seized the city, which in the aftermath of Romes fall was and they renamed the city Sûsa and within a few decades elevated it to the status of the main seaport of the Aghlabid Dynasty. When the Aghlabids invaded Sicily in 827, Sûsa was their main staging ground, after the Byzantine city of Melite was captured by the Aghlabids in 870, marble from its churches was used to build the castle of Sousse. The French called the city Sousse, despite the turmoil around it, Sousses character had retained the solidly Arabian look and feel it had assumed in the centuries after Islams wars of conquest. Today it is considered one of the best examples of seaward-facing fortifications built by the Arabs and its ribat, a soaring structure that combined the purposes of a minaret and a watch tower, is in outstanding condition and draws visitors from around the world. Sousse was the site of Chess interzonal in 1967 which was made famous when American Grandmaster Bobby Fischer withdrew from the tournament even though he was in first place at the time. These days, Sousse, with a population of about 200,000, retains a medieval heart of narrow, twisted streets, surrounding it is a modern city of long, straight roads and more widely spaced buildings. Through history Sousse has come under the rule of 5 major cultures, each of those cultures gave a new or modified name to the town. Each of those names may appear in various forms, the report states that no monument from this period subsists in situ. The official Tunisian body for matters of heritage and archaeology is the Institut National du Patrimoine Tunisie / National Heritage Institute and that body maintains a project known as the Carte Nationale des Sites Archéologiques et des Monuments Historiques. Although it is to be expected that a city as important as Sousse would be covered by such a project, the project divides the country up into rectangles according to the 1,50000 mapping sheets. On that basis the town of Sousse falls on the 1,50000 sheet, Sousse 57 and, as such, should be covered in the project by a similarly numbered web page and PDF document
9.
Bobby Fischer
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Robert James Bobby Fischer was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. Many consider him to be the greatest chess player of all time, in 1975, Fischer refused to defend his title when an agreement could not be reached with FIDE, the games international governing body, over one of the conditions for the match. This allowed Soviet GM Anatoly Karpov, who had won the qualifying Candidates cycle, Fischer showed skill at an early age. At age 13, he won a brilliancy that became known as The Game of the Century, starting at age 14, Fischer played in eight United States Championships, winning each by at least a one-point margin. At age 15, Fischer became both the youngest grandmaster up to time and the youngest candidate for the World Championship. At age 20, Fischer won the 1963–64 U. S, Championship with 11/11, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. His book My 60 Memorable Games is regarded as a work of chess literature. Fischer won the 1970 Interzonal Tournament by a record 3½-point margin and won 20 consecutive games, in July 1971, he became the first official FIDE number-one-rated player. After losing his title as World Chess Champion, Fischer became reclusive and sometimes erratic, in 1992 he reemerged to win an unofficial rematch against Spassky. It was held in Yugoslavia, which was under a United Nations embargo at the time and his participation led to a conflict with the U. S. government, which sought income tax on Fischers match winnings, and ultimately issued a warrant for his arrest. After that, he lived his life as an émigré, in 2004 he was arrested in Japan and held for several months for using a passport that had been revoked by the U. S. government. Eventually, he was granted an Icelandic passport and citizenship by an act of the Icelandic Althing, allowing him to live in Iceland until his death in 2008. In the 1990s, Fischer patented a modified chess timing system and he also invented a new variant of chess named Fischerandom. Fischer made numerous contributions to chess. Bobby Fischer was born at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, Illinois and his birth certificate listed his father as Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, also known as Gerardo Liebscher, a German biophysicist. His mother, Regina Wender Fischer, was a US citizen, Regina was born in Switzerland, raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Regina became a teacher, registered nurse, and later a physician. After graduating from college in her teens, Regina traveled to Germany to visit her brother and it was there she met geneticist and future Nobel Prize winner Hermann Joseph Muller, who persuaded her to move to Moscow to study medicine. She enrolled at I. M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, where she met Hans-Gerhardt, in 1938, Hans and Regina had a daughter, Joan Fischer
10.
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
