AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
If a man has a sexually transmitted infection or STI (an infection that is passed from one person to another by sex), the germs that cause the disease can appear in his semen. If the person that the man has sex with touches the semen, he or she can become infected by the germs and pick up the disease. AIDS, gonorrhea, hepatitis B, herpes and syphillis are examples of STIs. One of the ways for a man to lower the chance of passing on an STI to his sexual partner is to wear a condom on his penis when having sex.
When a man has sexual intercourse with a woman, he places his penis within her vagina and moves his penis back and forth, typically in a thrusting motion, while the woman moves her hips. The vagina is warm and somewhat moist, and it places pressure on the man's penis. These sensations, combined with the friction caused by the in-and-out movements, stimulates the penis, which causes the man to have an orgasm and to ejaculate. If the woman is using birth control this will usually not cause her to become pregnant. Otherwise, the sperm in the semen can travel into the woman's uterus and Fallopian tubes. If there happens to be an ovum or egg cell in a Fallopian tube, a sperm may fuse with the ovum. This is called fertilization, and makes the woman pregnant.
However, before a man ejaculates, a clear, colourless, sticky fluid called pre-ejaculate (also known as pre-ejaculate fluid or informally as pre-cum) can come out of his penis. Pre-ejaculate is produced by the bulbourethral or Cowper's glands. Some tests have shown that pre-ejaculate does not contain any sperm. However, some sperm may have been left behind in the urethra from an earlier ejaculation and the pre-ejaculate may carry this sperm out of the penis. That is why a woman can become pregnant even if the man pulls his penis out of her vagina before he ejaculates. Also, if a man ejaculates near the woman's vagina and semen falls on her body, sperm can accidentally enter the vagina and cause a pregnancy. To avoid the woman becoming pregnant when she does not want to, the man and the woman can use methods of contraception or birth control. For example, the man can wear a condom on his penis, or the woman can take birth control pills.
Young boys cannot ejaculate. A boy's first ejaculation usually happens about one year after he begins puberty, which is when his body starts changing into a man's body. Most boys go through puberty in their teens. The first time a boy ejaculates usually happens when he is asleep. This is called a nocturnal emission (which means "an emission happening at night") or a wet dream. It happens without the boy's control, often when he is having a dream about sex. Scientists believe that wet dreams are the body's way of removing too much semen. When a boy begins masturbating, wet dreams usually stop happening.
A team is a group of people who have a certain task to complete. In order to meet their target, the members of the group must work well with each other.
Successful team - a group of people who tend to meet their target despite barriers. The group members cooperate with each other and take other members' ideas into consideration.
Unsuccessful team - a group of people who have a very difficult time when attempting to complete a certain task. This may be because the members of the group think of only themselves and create an uncomfortable environment for other members of the team.
Hirohito
The name "Shōwa" was given to Hirohito after he died. Emperors of Japan are normally renamed in this way; and people started using the new name in 1990. During his long reign, many people outside Japan call him Emperor Hirohito, or just Hirohito.
Prince Hirohito was named regent for his father in 1921. he became emperor after his father's death.
Hirohito was the emperor of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War which became World War 2 (1931 to 1945). Though he was supposed to be an absolute monarch (an emperor who can make all the laws and rules), most of the power in the Japanese Government during this time was held by Japan's Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō and the military. His role in WW2 is controversial.
After Japan's defeat in the war, the role of emperor changed. The emperor became a symbol of the state.
Hirohito was the first emperor to travel outside Japan. He visited Europe in 1971 and he traveled to the United States in 1975.
Emperor Showa died of small intestine cancer and was succeeded by his son, Prince Akihito.
The state funeral for the late emperor was an international event. World leaders attending the funeral included U.S. President George H. W. Bush, French President François Mitterrand, and the Duke of Edinburgh.
Emperor Shōwa is buried in the Imperial Mausoleum in Hachiōji, along with Emperor Taishō.
In an overview of writings by and about Hirohito, OCLC/WorldCat includes roughly 900+ works in 1,500 publications in 15 languages and 31,000 library holdings .
Human evolution is about the origin of human beings. All humans belong to the same species, which has spread from its birthplace in Africa to almost all parts of the world. Its origin in Africa is proved by the fossils which have been found there.
The term 'human' in this context means the genus "Homo". However, studies of human evolution usually include other hominids, such as the Australopithecines, from which the genus "Homo" had diverged (split) by about 2.3 to 2.4 million years ago in Africa. The first "Homo sapiens", the ancestors of today's humans, evolved around 200,000 years ago.
It was known for centuries that man and the apes were related. At heart, their anatomy is similar, despite many superficial differences. This was the reason why Buffon and Linnaeus, in the 18th century, put them together in one family. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution says that such basic structural similarity comes from the common origin of the group. The apes and man are close relatives, and are primates: the order of mammals which includes monkeys, apes, lemurs and tarsiers.
The great apes live in tropical rainforests. It is thought that human evolution started when a group of apes (now called the australopithecines) began to live more in the savannah. A savannah is more open, with trees, shrubs and grass. This group started walking on two legs. They began to use their hands to carry things. Life in the open was different, and there was a big advantage in having better brains. Their brains grew larger, and they began to make simple tools. This process began at least 5 million years ago. We have fossils of two or three different groups of walking apes, and one was the ancestor of humans.
The biological name for "human" or "man" is "Homo". The modern human species is called "Homo sapiens". "Sapiens" means "thought". "Homo sapiens" means "the thinking man".
Paleoanthropology looks at ancient human fossils, tools, and other signs of early human life. It began in the 19th century with the discovery of a skull of "Neanderthal man" in 1856.
By 1859, zoologists had known for a long time that humans are, in their anatomy, similar to the great apes. There are also differences: humans can speak, for example. But the similarities are more basic than the differences. Humans also have features with a much older history, from early in the life of vertebrates.
The idea that species are caused by evolution had been proposed before Darwin, but his book gave much evidence, and many were persuaded by it. The book was "On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection", published in November 1859. In this book, Darwin wrote about the idea of evolution in general, rather than the evolution of humans. "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history", was all Darwin wrote on the subject. Nevertheless, the implication of the theory was clear to readers at the time.
Several people discussed the evolution of humans. Among them were Thomas Huxley and Charles Lyell. Huxley convincingly showed many of the similarities and differences between humans and apes in his 1863 book "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature". When Darwin published his own book on the subject, "The Descent of Man, and selection in relation to sex", the idea of human evolution was already well-known. The theory was controversial. Even some of Darwin's supporters (such as Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Lyell) did not like the idea that human beings have evolved their impressive mental capacities and moral sensibilities through natural selection.
Since the 18th century, scientists thought the great apes to be closely related to human beings. In the 19th century, they speculated that the closest living relatives of humans were either chimpanzees or gorillas. Both live in central Africa in tropical rainforests. In fact, chimpanzees are closest to us. Biologists believed that humans share a "common ancestor" with other African great apes and that fossils of these ancestors would be found in Africa, which they have been. It is now accepted by virtually all biologists that humans are not only similar to the great apes, but actually are great apes.
The issue was confirmed by late 20th century studies on the sequences of proteins and genes in apes and man. These studies showed that man shares about 95 to 98% of these structures with chimpanzees. This is a much closer relationship than with any other type of animal, and fully supports the ideas put forward in the 19th century by Darwin and Huxley.
Primates have diversified in habitats such as trees and bushes. They have many features which are adaptations to their environment. Here are some of those traits:
Not all primates have these anatomical traits, nor is every trait unique to primates. Primates are frequently highly social, live in groups with 'flexible dominance hierarchies'.
Closely related animals almost always have closely related parasites. This usually comes about because parasites evolve with their hosts, and when host populations split, their parasites split also. It is also possible for parasites to get from one species to another. Two of the most serious parasitic infections of humans in Africa have originated in apes. Each may have been transferred to humans by a single cross-species event.
There are several species of mosquito, and several species of the malarial parasite "Plasmodium". The most serious type, "P. falciparum", which kills many millions of people each year, originated in gorillas. It is now virtually certain that chimpanzees are the source of HIV-1, the major cause of AIDS. This information is got by the sequence analysis of ape and human viruses.
The relevance of this to evolution is that our physiology is so close to the apes that their parasites were able to transfer to humans with great success. Humans have much less resistance to these parasites, which are ancient in origin, but comparatively new to our species.
It was not until the 1920s that hominid fossils were discovered in Africa. In 1924, Raymond Dart described "Australopithecus africanus". The specimen was called the Taung Child, an australopithecine infant discovered in a cave deposit being mined for concrete at Taung, South Africa. The remains were a remarkably well-preserved tiny skull and a cast of the inside of the individual's skull. Although the brain was small (410 cm³), its shape was rounded, unlike that of chimpanzees and gorillas, and more like a modern human brain. Also, the specimen had short canine teeth, and the position of the foramen magnum was evidence of bipedal locomotion. All of these traits convinced Dart that the Taung baby was a bipedal human ancestor, a transitional form between apes and humans.
It took another 20 years before Dart's claims were taken seriously. This was after other similar skeletons had been found. The most common view of the time was that a large brain evolved "before" bipedality, the ability to walk on two feet more or less upright. It was thought that intelligence similar to that of modern humans was necessary for bipedalism. This turned out to be wrong: bipedality came first.
The australopithecines are now thought to be immediate ancestors of the genus "Homo", the group to which modern humans belong. Both australopithecines and "Homo sapiens" are part of the tribe Hominini, but recent data has brought into doubt the position of "A. africanus" as a direct ancestor of modern humans; it may well have been a cousin. The australopithecines were originally classified as either gracile or robust. The robust variety of "Australopithecus" has since been reclassified as "Paranthropus", although it is still regarded as a subgenus of "Australopithecus" by some authors.
In the 1930s, when the robust specimens were first described, the "Paranthropus" genus was used. During the 1960s, the robust variety was moved into "Australopithecus". The recent trend has been back to the original classification as a separate genus.
It was Carolus Linnaeus who chose the name "Homo". Today, there is only one species in the genus: "Homo sapiens". There were other species, but they became extinct.
The figure shows where some of them lived and at what time. Some of the other species might have been ancestors of "H. sapiens". Many were likely our "cousins", they developed away from our ancestral line.
Anthropologists are still investigating the exact line of descent. A consensus on which should count as separate species and which as subspecies has not been reached yet. In some cases this is because there are very few fossils, in other cases it is due to the slight differences used to classify species in the "Homo" genus.
The evolution of the genus "Homo" took place mostly in the Pleistocene. The whole genus is characterised by its use of stone tools, initially crude, and becoming ever more sophisticated. So much so that in archaeology and anthropology the Pleistocene is usually referred to as the Palaeolithic, or the Stone Age.
"Homo habilils" was likely the first species of Homo. It developed from the Australopithecus, about 2.5 million years ago. It lived until about 1.4 million years ago. It had smaller molars (back teeth) and larger brains than the Australopithecines.
There are two proposed species that lived from 1.9 to 1.6 million years ago. Their relation has not been clarified. One of them is called "Homo rudolfensis". It is known from a single incomplete skull from Kenya. Scientists have suggested that this was just another habilis, but this has not been confirmed. The other is currently called "Homo georgicus". It is from Georgia and may be an intermediate form between "H. habilis" and "H. erectus", or a sub-species of "H. erectus".
"Homo erectus" was first discovered on the island of Java in Indonesia, in 1891. The discoverer, Eugene Dubois originally called it "Pithecanthropus erectus" based on its morphology that he considered to be intermediate between that of humans and apes. Homo erectus lived from about 1.8 million to 70,000 years ago. The earlier specimens (from 1.8 to 1.2 million years ago) are sometimes seen as a different species, or a subspecies. called "Homo ergaster", or "Homo erectus ergaster'.
In the early Pleistocene, 1.5–1 mya, in Africa, Asia, and Europe, presumably, some populations of "Homo habilis" evolved larger brains and made more elaborate stone tools; these differences and others are sufficient for anthropologists to classify them as a new species, "H. erectus". In addition "H. erectus" was the first human ancestor to walk truly upright. This was made possible by the evolution of locking knees and a different location of the foramen magnum (the hole in the skull where the spine enters). They may have used fire to cook their meat.
A famous example of "Homo erectus" is Peking Man; others were found in Asia (notably in Indonesia), Africa, and Europe. Many paleoanthropologists are now using the term "Homo ergaster" for the non-Asian forms of this group. They reserve "H. erectus" only for those fossils found in the Asian region that meet certain requirements (as to skeleton and skull) which differ slightly from ergaster.
"Homo neaderthalensis" (usually called Neanderthal man) lived from about 250,000 to about 30,000 years ago. Also, less usual, as "Homo sapiens neanderthalensis": there is still some discussion if it was a separate species "Homo neanderthalensis", or a subspecies of "H. sapiens". While the debate remains unsettled, evidence from mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomal DNA sequencing indicates that little or no gene flow occurred between "H. neanderthalensis" and "H. sapiens", and, therefore, the two were separate species. In 1997, Dr. Mark Stoneking, then an associate professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University, stated:
More investigation of a second source of Neanderthal DNA supported these findings.
A genetic analysis of a piece of finger bone found in Siberia has produced a surprise result. It dates to about 40,000 years ago, at a time when Neanderthals and modern man were living in the area. German researchers found its mitochondrial DNA did not match either that of our species or that of Neanderthals. If this result is correct, the bone belongs to a previously unknown species. The degree of difference in the DNA suggests this species split off from our family tree about a million years ago, well before the split between our species and Neanderthals.
"Homo floresiensis", which lived about 100,000–12,000 years ago has been nicknamed "hobbit" for its small size. Its size may be a result of island dwarfism, the tendency for large mammals to evolve smaller forms on islands. "H. floresiensis" is intriguing both for its size and its age. It is a concrete example of a recent species of the genus "Homo" that shows derived traits not shared with modern humans. In other words, "H. floresiensis" share a common ancestor with modern humans, but split from the modern human lineage and followed a different evolutionary path. The main find was a skeleton believed to be a woman of about 30 years of age. Found in 2003 it has been dated to approximately 18,000 years old. The living woman was estimated to be one meter in height, with a brain volume of just 380 cm This is small for a chimpanzee and less than a third of the "H. sapiens" average of 1400 cm.
There is an ongoing debate over whether "H. floresiensis" is indeed a separate species. Some scientists believe that "H. floresiensis" was a modern "H. sapiens" suffering from pathological dwarfism. Modern humans who live on Flores, the island where the skeleton was found, are pygmies. This fact is consistent with either theory. One line of attack on "H. floresiensis" is that it was found with tools only associated with "H. sapiens".
Stone artifacts have been found on Flores which can be dated to a million years ago. These artifacts are "proxies"; which means there were no skeletons of humans, but only a species of "Homo" could have made them. The artifacts are flakes and other implements, 48 in all, some of which show signs of being worked to produce a cutting edge. This means that humans were present on Flores by that date, but it does not tell us which species that was.
"Homo sapiens" has lived from about 250,000 years ago to the present. Between 400,000 years ago and the second warm period in the Middle Pleistocene, around 250,000 years ago, its skull grew and more sophisticated technologies based on stone tools developed. One possibility is that a transition between "H. erectus" to "H. sapiens" occurred. The evidence of Java Man suggests there was an initial migration of "H. erectus" out of Africa. Then, much later, a further development of "H. sapiens" from "H. erectus" in Africa. Then a subsequent migration within and out of Africa eventually replaced the earlier "H. erectus".
Studies of the human genome, especially the Y-chromosome DNA and mitochondrial DNA, have supported a recent African origin. Evidence from autosomal DNA also supports the recent African origin. The details of this great saga are not fully established yet, but by about 90,000 years ago they had moved into Eurasia and the Middle East. This was the area where Neanderthals, "Homo neanderthalensis", had been living for a long time (at least 500,000 years in western Europe).
By about 42 to 44,000 years ago "Homo sapiens" had reached western Europe, including Britain. In Europe and western Asia, "Homo sapiens" replaced the Neanderthals by about 35,000 years ago. The details of how this happened are not known.
At roughly the same time "Homo sapiens" arrived in Australia (However a recent archaeological dig in Kakadu, Northern Territory, may suggest "Homo sapiens" arrived in Australia 65,000 years ago). Their arrival in the Americas was much later, about 15,000 years ago. All these earlier groups of modern man were hunter-gatherers.
Current research has established that human beings are genetically rather homogenous (similar). The DNA of individuals is more alike than usual for most species. This may have resulted from their relatively recent evolution or from the Toba catastrophe. Distinctive genetic have arisen as a result of small groups of people moving into new environmental circumstances. These adapted traits are a very small component of the "Homo sapiens" genome and include such outward 'racial' characteristics as skin color and nose shape, and internal characteristics such as the ability to breathe more efficiently at high altitudes.
"H. sapiens idaltu", from Ethiopia, about 160,000 years ago, is a proposed subspecies. It is the oldest known anatomically modern human.
This list is in chronological order by genus.
Ancient Rome was a civilization that started in the city of Rome and the land of Latium on the Italian Peninsula. Roman civilization was the most important civilization in the Mediterranean region, Europe, and the Near East from the late 3rd century BC. Roman civilization was in existence all through Classical Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and the Middle Ages, but "ancient Rome" means the ancient history of Roman civilization before the Middle Ages. Traditionally, the fall of the western Roman Empire during the 5th century AD is named the start of the Middle Ages in western Europe.
In Classical Antiquity, the Roman Empire controlled a very large area of land, which stretched from Great Britain to the Arabian Peninsula. Ancient Rome has been very important to the history of Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, where the Romans controlled many lands. Ancient Rome's culture took many ideas from other civilizations, especially Ancient Greece and the Greek kingdoms of the Hellenistic period. Ancient Romans' ideas have been very influential for later civilizations. The Romans' Latin language became the most common language in the western Mediterranean and western Europe, and is the ancestor of Romance languages. The Roman emperors were responsible for making Christianity the Romans' state religion, and the Romans spread Christianity across the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. Roman Christianity replaced Roman religion and other traditional religions. The Romans made many improvements to engineering, architecture, irrigation, and transport.
Rome began as a small farming community in the 8th century BC. The city of Rome was founded, according to legend, on 21 April 753 BC. It became a city and a state and had the , which Roman mythology said came from their first king, Romulus. Rome was first a kingdom, but its last king, Tarquinius Superbus, was sent away in a revolution started by Lucius Junius Brutus. The Roman state became a republic. The city-state grew to control the Italian Peninsula during the Hellenistic period, and fought the Punic Wars with the Carthaginian Republic. After overcoming the Carthaginians, the Roman Republic became the most powerful state in the western Mediterranean.
The Romans became the most powerful state in the eastern Mediterranean after wars with Macedonia, and the Mithridatic Wars with Kingdom of Pontus. The Hellenistic period and the Roman Republic ended when, after Julius Caesar was assassinated, the Romans fought a long civil war. At the end of these wars, Augustus overcame his Roman enemies and the Ptolemaic dynasty, who controlled the kingdom of Egypt. Augustus became the first Roman emperor and Roman civilization controlled all the lands around the Mediterranean Sea.
In 293 AD, Diocletian split the government of the empire into two parts, east and west. From Diocletian's time there was usually more than one emperor at a time, each controlling a part of the empire. In the 5th century AD, the lands of the western Roman Empire split up into different kingdoms. After Romulus Augustulus there were no more emperors in the western empire, and the government of the western Roman Empire ended in 476 AD. In Western Europe, this is the end of Antiquity and the start of the Early Middle Ages. The Romans lost control of Rome and most of the Italian Peninsula. After that, the Roman Empire in the Middle Ages is sometimes named the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire. Historians use this name because the Romans' capital city was Constantinople (also called Byzantium), and its emperors controlled the eastern half of the Mediterranean Basin. The Roman Empire was in existence until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, when it was defeated by the Ottoman Empire.
Roman culture spread to Western Europe and the area around the Mediterranean Sea. Its history still has a big influence on the world today. For example, Roman ideas about laws, government, art, literature, and language are important to European culture. The Roman language, Latin, slowly evolved, becoming modern French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and many other languages. Latin also indirectly influenced many other languages such as English.
The most common religion of ancient Rome in its first centuries was Graeco-Roman polytheism. The traditional religion of the city of Rome was polytheist (with many gods). The most important gods were the Capitoline triad: three gods worshipped on the Capitoline Hill. The three were Jupiter (the father and king of the gods), Juno (the queen of the gods), and Minerva (the goddess of wisdom). The goddess Minerva was born without a mother from the body of Jupiter. Roman mythology said that among the Romans' ancestors were Venus (goddess of love) and Mars (a god of war and the son of Jupiter and Juno). The gods Apollo and Bacchus were taken by the Romans from Greek mythology, and many of the Romans' religious practices were the same as those of the ancient Greeks. The Romans also worshipped the goddesses Cybele and Isis, whose cults they took from Hellenistic Anatolia and Egypt.
Roman worship often took the form of sacrifices. Romans tried to please the gods by giving food or other gifts to the gods and to other deities, including the souls of dead people. With sacrifices like this, the Romans hoped to avoid bad luck and bring good luck, such as fertility and a successful harvest, or victory in war. The Romans built temples to house the images of their gods. These images were usually statues, and the Romans would offer sacrifices by burning food or frankincense. Precious objects would be given to the gods in rituals and stored in the temples. The Romans believed this pleased the gods. The Romans also did ritual purification, to avoid bad luck and to avoid offending the gods and spirits.
Judaism was common in the ancient Roman world, and there was a Jewish diaspora in many cities, like Rome, from the Hellenistic period. Christianity started in the eastern Roman Empire, in Hellenistic Judaea. In Classical Antiquity, the Roman government did not like Christianity. Sometimes, Roman governors or emperors ordered the persecution of Christians. Under the emperor Diocletian, the persecution of Christians became the strongest. Christianity became an officially supported religion in the Roman Empire under Constantine I. With the signing of the Edict of Milan by Licinius and Constantine in 313, it became the most powerful religion, and the Christian Church began the persecution of Christians with whom the official ("orthodox" and "catholic") disagreed. Then, in 391 AD, an edict of Theodosius I made Christianity Rome's official religion. The state church of the Roman Empire became the state religion in the empire. (The state church later split into the modern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.)
People practising traditional, non-Christian religions were common in Late Antiquity. The Christians called these people "pagans". There was persecution of Graeco-Roman polytheism by the Roman emperors. Starting in the 5th century, non-Christian religions' property was taken away, and many Roman temples were made into churches.
The Byzantines were threatened by the rise of Islam, whose followers took over the territories of Syria, Armenia and Egypt and soon threatened to take over Constantinople. In the next century, the Arabs also captured southern Italy and Sicily.
The Byzantines survived during the 8th century and, beginning in the 9th century, took back parts of the conquered lands. In 1000 AD, the Eastern Empire was at its largest point, and culture and trade flourished. However, the expansion was suddenly stopped in 1071 at the Battle of Manzikert. This finally made the empire start becoming weaker. After centuries of fighting and Turkic invasions, Emperor Alexius I Comnenus called for help from the West in 1095.
The West responded with the Crusades, eventually resulting in the Fourth Crusade which conquered Constantinople in 1204. Several Roman states took pieces of the now smaller empire. After the recapture of Constantinople by the Romans, the empire was little more than a Greek-speaking state confined to the coast of the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara. The empire came to an end when Mehmed II conquered Constantinople on 29 May 1453.
Remains of Roman work and architecture have been found in the furthest corners of the late Empire.
Globalization is the connection of different parts of the world resulting in the expansion of international cultural, economic, and political activities. It is the movement and integration of goods and people among different countries. There are advantages and disadvantages to globalization, all of which have economic, social, political, and cultural impacts. Globalization describes mainly trade practices, extending also to the communication patterns and cultural system that underlie these practices.
It is a term which may be used broadly to mean doing things as distant people do them, or more narrowly to mean complying to global standards in economy, politics, culture, education, environment or other matters. It describes the way countries and people of the world interact and integrate. Many things have become globalized as people come into contact.
Economic globalization is how countries are coming together as one big global economy, This is all making international trade easier. In the late 20th century, many people agreed to lower tariffs, or taxes on goods that are imported from other countries. Telegraphy and bull other communication technologies have helped people to buy and sell products from around the world, thus bringing globalization. Herman E. Daly has said that there is an important difference between internationalization and globalization. Internationalization is about nations working together for the same goals. These are things like treaties, alliances, and other international agreements. Globalization is about international trade that are
being less blocked by national borders.
Political globalization is how institutions and countries can influence the whole world. The United Nations are an example of globalization because most countries of the world are members of its General Assembly. This international organization can make countries follow rules and apply economic sanctions to a country that doesn't. This means the countries in the U.N will punish them by not talking or trading with them, so they don't benefit from globalization.
Cultural globalization is how culture is becoming homogeneous, which means that people from all over the world act in similar way. For example, many people around the world write with the Latin alphabet, wear T-shirts and jeans and watch Hollywood movies and other media.
Some people, like Noam Chomsky, do not like globalization because they feel it only helps rich people get richer by making poor people poorer. Offshore outsourcing, such as a company hiring workers in a developing country, is often a part of globalization. This sometimes means that some people in a developed country lose their jobs. Joseph Stiglitz said that international groups like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have made it harder for poorer nations to get richer. Globalization also means that problems from other countries will affect your country. For example, the Great Depression of the 1930s started in the United States but affected the entire world.
Many countries also dislike it when international organizations such as the United Nations tell them what to do. However they obey to avoid sanctions. Many people also criticize the fact that globalization means that fewer people are deciding what brands, like Coca-Cola and McDonald's, taking over smaller, local shops and businesses. They criticize the fact that powerful countries have bigger influence on world culture than others. For example, the United States is the biggest cultural exporter, which means that countries around the world are becoming like the United States. However, this hurts local cultures. Jean Baudrillard believes that globalization hurts local cultures and is the cause of most terrorism. He also believes that most supporters of globalization just want to stay in power.
Gregory Meyjes interprets globalization as a largely hegemonic, unequal process of socio-cultural imposition. Questioning the various processes (economic, political, cultural) by which globalization or globalisation has favored rapid Anglo-cultural dominance over a more gradual, egalitarian evolution towards an inclusive world civilization, Meyjes argues for cultural policies that support "ecological" relations between local ethnocultural traditions, by protecting cultural specificity in the short term and allow as many cultural groups as possible to organically contribute to the whole. At the global level, Meyjes therefore proposes the term universalization or universalisation to denote a process of (largely) non-imposed socio-cultural exchange between state-level and sub-state-level groups and "nations" – i.e. a transnational process that informs the gradual emergence of a universal civilization.
Others, like Thomas Friedman, believe that globalization can bring people together and make everyone richer without getting rid of local cultures. People who support globalization also believe that it makes war less likely because it is bad for business. Francis Fukuyama also argued that globalization would eventually lead to a system of world governance which would cause wars to end.
Many believe that globalization helps out poorer nations by bringing them business. A report by the World Bank said that poverty in India and Indonesia was cut in half because of globalization. The report also said that people in poorer nations are living longer and better because they were making more money.
North Holland
North Holland is a province (area with a local government) of the Netherlands. It is in the northwest. The capital is called Haarlem. Other cities in the province are Amsterdam, Hilversum, Alkmaar, Zaandam, and Hoorn.
Folk music is music that is played or sung by ordinary people (not professional musicians). It is traditional music that people learn by listening to other people playing it and then copying them. We say that the tradition is “orally transmitted” or “handed down orally”, meaning that the music is not written down but taught by speaking (“oral” means “belonging to the mouth”). Every country has its own traditional music. Folk song is part of folk music. A folksinger is a person who sings folk songs.
In the 1960s a new type of music was started by Bob Dylan who mixed traditional folk song with rock and roll. This music is sometimes called “folk rock” .
Folk music is music for everybody to play and listen to. In this way it is different from classical music which is mainly developed by professional musicians for a smaller group of people. Folk music is part of a popular culture, although the term “popular music” or “pop music” today refers to a kind of music which people can hear through television, radio and other means of recording.
In many parts of the world nearly all music is folk music. The term “folk music” is usually used for European and American music which is part of an oral tradition. Folk music as an oral tradition, is much less important than before, in part because of new technology (radio, television etc, and recordings of music ). Folk tunes are now often written down, and they have influenced other kinds of music, so that the differences between various types of music are harder to see.
In older times folk music was part of “communal recreation”. This means that small communities such as villages or families would relax by playing and singing music together. People would often make up a new song or new piece of music, or make changes to music that they already knew. In this way music was always changing. People would get musical ideas from other groups nearby. This is why folk music from neighbouring countries often sound similar.
Ballads were a popular kind of folk music. These were folk songs which told a story (they were “narrative”). Sometimes they had a refrain after each verse so that everybody could join in. Ballads told stories of love, myths or folklore. This is how stories were handed down from one generation to another.
Instrumental folk music was used for dancing. Some of the instruments may have been very simple, such as a pair of sticks, rattle or a simple drum. Other instruments may include fiddle (the folk word for “violin”), bagpipes, harp, zither, or various wind instruments, depending on the time of history and the country.
Some singing was polyphonic, i.e. there were two or more parts (voices). Very often two voices would sing in parallel (going up and down together). In countries such as Russia persons sings in three or four parts, e.g. in the tradition of “podgolosnaya” (“underneath the voice”). In countries such as Britain this polyphonic tradition did not exist. Folk songs there were sung by one singer, unaccompanied.
Folk music used different scales. These are called modes. The Ionian mode (like our major scale) was the most common in Western Europe. In some parts of Eastern Europe modes with several semitones were used, but for the most part, half steps were avoided. This results is the tunes being described as tetratonic (four notes per octave) or pentatonic (five notes per octave).
Folk music also includes simple children’s songs and lullabies.
Folk music was sung by people as they worked. In the early days of European immigration in America the pioneers sang as they travelled, cowboys sang as they worked, slaves sang in the cottonfields.
In the 18th century folk music started to have an influence on classical music (or “art music”). People from the higher classes started to be interested in folk music because they were conscious of being part of a tradition. Composers such as Mozart and Schubert wrote folk dances for orchestras or small groups of instruments.
Folk music was used by many composers in the Romantic period. Gustav Mahler used folk song in a lot of his music. In the early twentieth century some composers travelled around collecting folk music which was being played or sung by people in the country. They often used some of these ideas in their music. Bartok did this in Hungary as well as in Bulgaria and in the United States, and people such as Cecil Sharp and the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams collected folk music in England. In the United States the influence of jazz on classical music is all part of the story of folk music.
Abraham (originally Abram) is a man in the Book of Genesis and the Qur'an. There, he is said to be the father of all Jews. This is because he is their ancestor. Abraham is part of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. Abraham is considered the father of these three religions, which are called Abrahamic religions.
Abraham is the father of Isaac with his wife Sarah. He also has Ishmael with Hagar, Sarah's handmaid, and he has other children with Keturah, whom he marries after Sarah's death. He is the grandfather of Jacob and Esau. Abraham is believed to be the founding patriarch of the Israelites, Ishmaelites and Edomites. Abraham was the third son of Terah and the grandson of Nahor. Abraham's older brothers were named Nahor and Haran.
Tao Te Ching ( <nowiki>[</nowiki><nowiki>]</nowiki>) is the Chinese name of a book by a man named Laozi (or Lao Tzu, which literally means "old master"). Laozi was a sage (a wise man) and he was a record-keeper. The title can mean "The Book of the Way and its Virtue." People believe the book was written around 600 BC.
It is an important text to Chinese culture. It is very important in Chinese philosophy (way of thinking) and religion. It is the main book for Taoism, which is both a philosophy and part of Chinese folk religion. It also influenced other philosophies in and around China.
There are many ways to translate the book's title, because each Chinese word has a few meanings:
The three words together gives the meaning "Virtue Way Rules".
The book is constructed of a series of poems, each containing a rule, way or belief to becoming successful.
The Tao Te Ching is a short book of about 5,000 Chinese characters. It has 81 short chapters. It has two parts: Part One is the Tao Ching (道經) "Way Rules", which is chapters 1–37; Part Two is the Te Ching (德經) "Virtue Rules", which is chapters 38–81.
The Tao Te Ching is one of the most translated books in history, alongside the Bible and the Quran. Why are there thousands of translations? The text is short, the meaning is difficult. There are many interpretations, or ways to understand what the book says.
Bacon is a type of meat that comes from pigs. It is taken from the sides, back, or belly of the pig. It is often cut in thin slices, unlike other cured or smoked pork products. It is usually fried or grilled. It can also be microwaved.
In the USA, back bacon and smoked ham is sometimes called Canadian bacon.
Bacon has lots of fat. Because bacon comes from pigs, people of some religions will not eat it. In some cultures and religions (such as Islam and Judaism), eating pork may be considered "unclean." Because of this, other varieties of bacon are also made out of turkey or chicken instead. Turkey bacon and chicken bacon usually contain half of the fat of pork-based bacon.
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, otherwise known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact, was signed by Vyacheslav Molotov (Stalin's Soviet foreign minister) and Joachim von Ribbentrop (Hitler's German foreign minister) on 23 August 1939. The agreement promised that neither the Soviet Union nor Nazi Germany would attack each other.
A secret part established spheres of interest in Eastern Europe, and a border between both countries existed after they had invaded and divided Poland.
Only nine days latee, 1 September 1939, the German invasion of Poland began. On 17 September, the Soviet invasion of Poland began.
About 250,000 to 454,700 Polish soldiers and policemen were captured and interned by the Soviet authorities. About 125,000 were imprisoned in camps run by the NKVD, and 43,000 soldiers born in western Poland, then under German control, were transferred to the Germans. In turn, the Soviets received 13,575 Polish prisoners from the Germans, which showed how close the co-operation was between the Germans and the Soviets.
On 3 September, France and the United Kingdom declared war soon because both had promised to defend Poland if it was attacked. Since neither of them was ready for war, they did nothing to help Poland for some time, but the Second World War clearly started on that day.
Later, Hitler broke the pact in June 1941 by invading the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. The war would end by the Soviet victory in 1945.
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (; in Kukarka – November 8, 1986 in Moscow) was a Soviet politician and diplomat. He was a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he came to power. He was a protégé of Joseph Stalin until the 1950s, when Nikita Khrushchev dismissed him from office.
Molotov was the main Soviet signatory of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. The pact was signed between Germany and the Soviet Union, and both countries promised not to attack each other. The pact lasted about two years until Germany started the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.
The Molotov Cocktail, which was invented by Finns fighting in the Winter War against the Soviet invasion of Finland, is named after him.
Babylonia
Babylonia was a city state in Mesopotamia in the 2nd millennium BC, over 3000 years ago. Its capital city was Babylon, which meant "The Gate of the Gods". They built an empire out of the lands of the former Akkadian empire.
Mesopotamia is the region of the two rivers, Euphrates and Tigris. At that time the region also included the city states of Assyria to the north, and Elam to the south-east. It is part of the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. It was there people first lived together in a civilization, with farming, cities and writing.
The Babylonians had a written language that they used for trade and communication. They got it from the Sumerians, who invented it. The Babylonians used the same cuneiform system of pressing triangular shapes into soft clay. They wrote in two different languages: Sumerian for religious purposes and Akkadian language for official purposes.
Hammurabi was a king of Babylon who fought wars and made Babylonia into an empire by putting Assyria under a vassal (puppet) king. He created the earliest written set of laws, called the "Code of Hammurabi". It has 280 judgments and can be seen today in the Louvre, a museum in Paris. Whereas the earlier Sumerian punishments had not been harsh, Babylonian law was quite severe. The death penalty was given for theft, murder, and other crimes.
The houses in Babylon had open roofs, so that on hot nights, the family could sleep there. The living rooms, dining rooms, and the kitchens were, of course, downstairs. Lamps burned with olive oil, and every house had a chapel for burial and worship ceremonies. Since Mesopotamia had only clay for use in building, the strong wooden supports for the houses were imported from Lebanon. Eventually, people began baking their bricks and improved the strength of their buildings.
Later, Babylon was sacked by the Hittite king Musilis I, which led to the so-called 'Dark Ages' of the Bronze Age, where there is little evidence in writing. The date of the sacking of Babylon is debated by archaeologists, who have proposed no fewer than four chronologies. Possible dates for the sack of Babylon are:
The difficulty is to line up the Mesopotamian dates with the Ancient Egyptian dates.
After the Hittite destruction, Babylon was ruled by Kassites for 576 years. Next it was ruled by Elam, and then regained its independence for about three centuries. They were then conquered by the Neo-Assyrians. A century later they again became free, to form the Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean Empire. This constant conquest and re-conquest is partly due to geography. There are no natural boundaries except the rivers, and it is easy to get at the cities from north or south.
The king Nebuchadnezzar II reigned for 43 years. He conquered Phoenicia in 585 BC.
The Babylonian empire was finally brought to an end by Cyrus the Great of Persia.
It was in 549 BC that Cyrus put an end to the empire of the Medes. Three years later Cyrus had become king of the Achaemenid Empire (Persia), and was engaged in a campaign in northern Mesopotamia.
In 539 BC Cyrus invaded Babylonia. A battle was fought at Opis in the month of June, where the Babylonians were defeated; and immediately afterwards Sippara surrendered to the invader. Two days after the capture of Sippara, "the soldiers of Cyrus entered Babylon without fighting". Cyrus did not arrive until the 3rd of "Marchesvan" (October), Gobryas having acted for him in his absence. Gobryas was now made governor of the province of Babylon.