title: Special Group (India)

text: Other options such as negotiations subsequently failed and the law and order situation in Punjab continued to deteriorate.


title: Special Group (India)

text: By the end of 1983, the security situation in Punjab was worsening due to the erupting separatist militancy. "Operation Blue Star" was the code name of the Indian military action carried out between 1 and 8 June 1984 to remove militant religious leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers from the buildings of the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) complex in Amritsar, Punjab. A few days before the operation began, the Special Group arrived in Amritsar. The Special Group was tasked to create an executable plan for this.


title: Special Group (India)

text: A senior officer from the British Special Air Service was secretly recruited to provide advice for this plan to the SG, after being cleared by then British PM Margaret Thatcher. A group of SG personnel clad in black uniforms, armed with AK-47 rifles and Night vision goggles, began the assault on 6 June 1984.


title: Special Group (India)

text: The Special Group was responsible for the eventual death of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and Shabeg Singh during Operation Blue Star, despite the 1 Para (SF) claiming credit for it. This is associated with the fact that they were shot dead using AK-47 rifles. Such rifles, which were purchased secretly from Europe, were present exclusively with the SG at that time.


title: Special Group (India)

text: In the aftermath of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, SG personnel provided security to the Prime Minister of India until the creation of the Special Protection Group in 1985.


title: Special Group (India)

text: The Special Group has undertaken black operations outside India. In the late 1980s, it rescued a political prisoner in Bangladesh after being ordered to do so by the Prime Minister of India. After a civil war started in Sri Lanka in 1983, India used it as an opportunity to curtail foreign influence in the country; India provided training and equipment to the militant groups fighting in the war. The Special Group was involved in providing training assistance to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the most prominent militant group.


title: Special Group (India)

text: During the 1999 Kargil war, the Indian government had planned a raid near the Kahuta nuclear facility in Pakistan and had asked the Special Group to prepare for it. Ultimately, however, the raid was called off.


title: Special Group (India)

text: When the Indian Airlines flight 814 was forced by hijackers to land in Kandahar, Afghanistan, the SG was instructed to be ready for a potential rescue effort. Their mission was to clear a path for the National Security Guard to enable them to reach the aircraft and conduct an anti-hijacking operation. The plan entailed eliminating the members of the Taliban in the vicinity of the aircraft. However, public pressure eventually forced the Indian government to scrap the plan. The government agreed to the demand of the hijackers to swap imprisoned militants in exchange for the civilian passengers.


title: Special Group (India)

text: The Special Group are known to be involved in the ongoing counter-insurgency operations in the Jammu and Kashmir region across the Line of Control.


title: Special Group (India)

text: The Special Group functions under the Directorate General of Security (DG Security) of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), which is India's foreign intelligence agency. The unit serves under the command of the prime minister through the Cabinet Secretariat. Within RAW, the Secretary (Research) is responsible for the Special Group.


title: Special Group (India)

text: The SG is primarily based at Chakrata in the state of Uttarakhand and Sarsawa in Uttar Pradesh, where it is headquartered. Its personnel are volunteers recruited from all the branches of the Indian Armed Forces, primarily from the Special Forces. After serving in the SG on deputation, its personnel return to their original units. SG personnel are distributed in three to four companies. An SG team is kept on high alert for contingencies round the clock. There are a total of 4 SG squadrons, with each squadron consisting of four troops. Each troop has a specialized skill-set. The SG has dedicated branches specialising in intelligence gathering, operational planning, communications and training.


title: Special Group (India)

text: The responsibilities of the Special Group includes clandestine intelligence operations and covert operations, with which the Government of India may not wish to be overtly associated. The SG is also responsible for developing tactics and training procedures for other special forces of India.


title: Special Group (India)

text: The Special Group is considered to be the most capably trained special forces unit of India and is considered to be very well equipped. The SG is reportedly provided with the newest equipment and it uses the transport aircraft of the Aviation Research Centre.


title: Sound City Studios

text: Sound City Studios is a recording studio in Los Angeles, California, known as one of the most successful in popular music. The complex opened in 1969 in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles. The facility had previously been a production factory of the English musical instrument manufacturer Vox. Throughout the late twentieth century, the studio became known for its signature sound, especially in recording drums and live performances of rock bands.


title: Sound City Studios

text: Dozens of rock artists spanning five decades have recorded at Sound City, including Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Bob Dylan, Guns N' Roses, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Slayer, Rage Against the Machine, Death Cab for Cutie, and Fall Out Boy. Over one-hundred albums recorded at Sound City have achieved gold and platinum certifications.


title: Sound City Studios

text: The studio leased time for public use until 2011; in 2011 the owners closed the studio and much of the equipment was sold off. From 2011 to 2016, the studio was leased by Fairfax Recordings, who used it as their own exclusive in-house studio. In 2017 the studio was re-opened for public use and has continued to host artists in the years since. The complex was the focus of the documentary "Sound City" (2013), directed by musician Dave Grohl. Grohl purchased some of the equipment sold in 2011, including the rare Neve Electronics 8028 mixing console that has been credited with creating the "Sound City sound"; it has since been re-installed at Grohl's Studio 606.


title: Sound City Studios

text: The studio was created by Joe Gottfried and Tom Skeeter, who wanted to start a record company and get into artist management. After a rough start, Skeeter and Gottfried purchased a state-of-the-art recording console for $75,175 from the English electronics engineer Rupert Neve: "One of four in the world ... a 28-input, 16-bus, 24-monitor 8028 with 1084 EQs and no automation".


title: Sound City Studios

text: The first song recorded on the console was performed by Buckingham Nicks and led to an invitation to join Fleetwood Mac.


title: Sound City Studios

text: During 1969, Sound City hosted the David Briggs productions "Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus" by Spirit and "After the Gold Rush" by Neil Young. Cult leader Charles Manson recorded in Studio B months before the Manson Family crime spree.


title: Sound City Studios

text: In the 1970s, Neil Young, Dr. John, Spirit, Crazy Horse, and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, along with other bands, recorded music at the studio. Shelter Records founders Leon Russell and Denny Cordell found a home at Sound City as well, recording Leon Russell, Delaney & Bonnie, and Joe Cocker. Thanks to the Shelter founders, Sound City hosted a young band from Florida named Mudcrutch in 1974, providing an introduction to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers that resulted in a relationship spanning over two decades.


title: Sound City Studios

text: In 1976, Fleetwood Mac recorded one track at the studio, "Never Going Back Again", from what would become one of the highest selling and most critically acclaimed albums of all time, "Rumours".


title: Sound City Studios

text: During the 1980s and 1990s, the studio was used to produce works from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Rick Springfield, Ronnie James Dio, Foreigner, The Black Crowes, and Nirvana. Producer Rick Rubin chose Sound City Studios to record artists like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Johnny Cash (1996's "Unchained"). He also recorded Metallica's "Death Magnetic", which entered the "Billboard" Top 200 chart at No. 1, at the studio.


title: Sound City Studios

text: Joe Gottfried died in 1992, at the age of 65. Tom Skeeter died on 12 September 2014, at the age of 82. The studio was closed to the public in 2011 and much of the equipment sold off, including the Neve Electronics 8028 Console from Studio A which was purchased by Dave Grohl, former Nirvana drummer and current frontman of Foo Fighters, who installed it in his Studio 606 in Northridge, California.


title: Sound City Studios

text: In 2011, record label Fairfax Recording leased Studio A for exclusive use of its artists While the studio was left untouched, the control room was refurbished and analog recording equipment even older than the Neve console was added including an ARP 2600 semi-modular analog synthesizer, a Wurlitzer 140B electric piano and EQ modules designed for the Columbia CBS Studios in New York. Artists such as the Cold War Kids, and The Lumineers recorded at the facility during the Fairfax years.


title: Sound City Studios

text: In early 2017 a partnership was formed between Sandy Skeeter, daughter of founder Tom Skeeter, and Olivier Chastan in order to reopen the studio. Sound City is now the home of two of just 11 surviving Helios Type 69 consoles and continues to use classic analog recording techniques in many of its productions. While the control rooms received some upgrades, including Pro Tools, the main studio remains exactly as it was built in 1969.


title: Sound City Studios

text: Sound City Studios prides itself on having a very particular sound when it comes to recording drums. Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro insisted that one only had to set up the drums in order to get a good drum sound. Producer Rick Rubin said that "guitars sound pretty much the same everywhere, but drums change from room to room, and the sound at Sound City was among the best". Producer Greg Fidelman recorded the sound of a bass drum from each of the big recording studios in the Los Angeles area, subsequently playing the sample for Metallica without divulging from which studio the sound had originated. Based upon this sample, the band chose Sound City Studios to record "Death Magnetic". In addition, when asked by Nine Inch Nails to be a guest drummer on some songs, Dave Grohl agreed only if the songs were to be recorded at Sound City Studios. The interior of the main studio has allegedly never been painted over, nor its linoleum tiles changed, due to fear that any such change would directly affect the "legendary sound quality" of the room.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: Mariella Frostrup (born 12 November 1962) is a British journalist and presenter, known in British television and radio mainly for arts programmes.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: Frostrup was born in Oslo, Norway, to Peter and Joan Frostrup, but moved with her family when she was six to Ireland in 1969, living in Kilmacanogue, a small village near the town of Greystones in County Wicklow. Her Norwegian father, who died aged 44 when Frostrup was 15, was a journalist (including Foreign Editor) on "The Irish Times", and her Scottish mother an artist. She has four siblings.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: After the death of her father, in 1977 she moved to London. There she worked as a public relations executive for Phonogram Records between 1980 and 1990; coordinated the publicity for the Live Aid concert at Wembley in 1985; and, after leaving Phonogram, started television work as a presenter and film critic.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: Frostrup presented the Channel 4 music show "Big World Cafe" in 1989 alongside Eagle Eye Cherry and Jazzie B.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: She also presented Thames Television's "Video View" from 1990 and, after Thames lost the London ITV franchise, reprised the role straight afterwards on "The Little Picture Show" for Carlton Television from 1993.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: Frostrup has interviewed many celebrities, writers and artists and has presented a variety of television programmes, including one on travel, and has appeared in other television shows such as the series "Have I Got News for You" and the sitcom "Absolutely Fabulous". She made several guest appearances as herself in the series "Coupling", including an episode where one of the characters fantasizes about her, then meets her in person. She has also appeared in fictionalised form in Michael Paraskos's "In Search of Sixpence".


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: She has written for "The Daily Telegraph" as a travel writer, "The Guardian", "The Observer", "The Mail on Sunday", "Harpers & Queen" and the "New Statesman". For almost 20 years until 2021 she was "The Observer"'s agony aunt on its relationships page. She is also an art critic and has been on the judging panels for the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Evening Standard British Film Awards.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: In September 2007 she chaired a question-and-answer session with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, at the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth, Dorset.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: In 2008, Frostrup received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Nottingham Trent University in recognition of her contribution and commitment to journalism and broadcasting.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: She presented the BBC Radio 2 show "The Green Room" and was from 2002 to 2020 the regular presenter of BBC Radio 4 programme "Open Book", interviewing authors and publishers and reviewing new fiction and non-fiction books. As the presenter of "The Book Show" on Sky Arts 1, she interviewed an extensive list of guests on their recent works and their "favourite heroes and heroines from fiction". The show was cancelled in 2013.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: In December 2012, she appeared on the BBC Two series "World's Most Dangerous Roads", in which she and Angus Deayton were filmed driving along the east coast of Madagascar.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: She is the voice in lifts on the London Overground. Her 'gravelly' voice is often used on television commercials and in 2005 was voted the sexiest female voice on television.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: In 2018, Frostrup presented a documentary for BBC One called "The Truth About The Menopause". She later published a book on the subject and has spoken of her own experience of menopause.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: In June 2020 she joined Times Radio to present a programme in the early afternoon from Monday to Thursday. It features celebrity interviews, alongside arts, culture and social issues coverage.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: In 2022, Frostrup is the presenter of the documentary series "Britain's Novel Landscapes with Mariella Frostrup"; which investigates how British landscapes have influenced some of the UK's best loved authors.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: Frostrup's political views have been described as "a bit left-of-centre". She has been active in the charity sector for two decades, having worked on Bank Aid and Comic Relief along with various fundraising initiatives for Oxfam, The Children's Society and Save the Children. Campaigning for women's rights and gender equality has become her main focus; she has recently made several trips to Africa to meet women and young girls in their communities, and experience first hand the realities and inequalities of the lives that they lead.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: In 2010 she created, along with three other trustees, the Gender Rights and Equality Action Trust. This foundation aims at fostering gender equality and raising awareness and funds, to support grass roots gender equality projects in Africa and beyond. The GREAT Initiative works in partnership with Femmes Africa Solidarité, an African charity.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: In 2015 she signed an open letter which the ONE Campaign had been collecting signatures for; the letter was addressed to Angela Merkel and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, urging them to focus on women as they serve as the head of the G7 in Germany and the African Union in South Africa respectively, which will start to set the priorities in development funding before a main UN summit in September 2015 that will establish new development goals for the generation.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: In 2022 she founded Menopause Mandate with Davina McCall, Penny Lancaster and others, to campaign for greater awareness of the impact of the menopause.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: Frostrup was first married (1979–1984) to Richard Jobson, lead singer with the punk rock group Skids. On a charity trek in Nepal, aged 39, Frostrup met human rights lawyer Jason McCue. They were married two years later. They live near Bruton, Somerset (with a flat in London), and have two children.


title: Mariella Frostrup

text: She is a close friend of Penny Smith (a television presenter) and of Gina Bellman, an actress who was one of the stars of "Coupling", in which she had a cameo role alongside Angus Deayton.


title: AfreecaTV

text: AfreecaTV (, short for "Any FREE broadCAsting") () is a P2P technology-based video streaming service. It is now owned and operated by AfreecaTV Co., Ltd. in South Korea after Nowcom's AfreecaTV Co., Ltd and ZettaMedia split in 2011. As of July, 2019 AfreecaTV was listed 4th in the "Asia's 200 Best Under A Billion" list by Forbes.


title: AfreecaTV

text: AfreecaTV initially started as a W beta service on May 11, 2005, and was officially named "AFREECA” on March 9, 2006. The site mainly re-transmits TV channels but also allows users to upload their own videos and shows. Functions such as broadcasting, viewing, channel listing, live chatting, and discussion boards are provided. Users are required to install 'Afreeca Player' for grid delivery. Independent broadcasters called broadcasting jockeys (BJs) deliver live broadcasts to viewers, who can add them to their list of favorite channels using an Afreeca Player tool. Some channels have tens of thousands of viewers at any given time. Paid services such as quick views or channel relays allow BJs additional sources of revenue.


title: AfreecaTV

text: The platform ranges anywhere from TV broadcasts, live video game broadcasts, taxi driver monitoring, artist performances, and personal daily-life video blogs and shows for actresses and professional broadcasters.


title: AfreecaTV

text: The head of AfreecaTV's parent company Nowcom, Mun Yong-sik, was arrested in 2008 for illegally distributing copyrighted films. Some alleged the arrest was politically motivated due to Afreeca being used by protesters to coordinate.


title: AfreecaTV

text: One example of expansion of Afreeca's role is the hosting of a live talk session with Mayor Park of Seoul, broadcast live online and via mobile on AfreecaTV. He used the platform as a way to conduct a community scanning forum to collect public opinions and allow bloggers with various areas of expertise to participate in the dialogue. The bloggers were able to address the problems facing Seoul and propose solutions in their areas of expertise, while also exchanging ideas with Mayor Park in an in-depth discussion on the administration of the Seoul Metropolitan Government. Depending on rising of power of AfreecaTV, many Idol Groups participate in AfreecaTV for their fans, for example, Nine Muses.


title: AfreecaTV

text: There have been many social problems with Afreeca TV such as offers for sexual favors and abasement of disabled individuals. Many broadcasters were involved in these incidents, and they were punished by managers of Afreeca TV by suspension of their IDs. Due to such problems, mass media in South Korea have shown concern about the effects of personal broadcasting platforms.


title: AfreecaTV

text: A claim was made that audience overloading has caused overpayment of fees for Internet broadcasting. In light of this, Korea's Clean Internet Broadcasting Council came to an agreement with Afreeca TV to reduce the payment maximum to less than 1 million won (a little less than US$900) per day by June 2008.


title: AfreecaTV

text: Afreeca picked up the SBENU StarCraft II team on January 23, 2016 and participated in Proleague. On November 21, 2016, it was announced that the team was disbanding its StarCraft II division, though it kept involvement in Starcraft up. They currently sponsor a professional League of Legends team, Afreeca Freecs. The Starcraft 2 team was reformed at the start of 2020.


title: AfreecaTV

text: Afreeca also announced on January 23, 2016 that they would be sponsoring two seasons of Brood War tournaments. The tournament has proved popular and is now in its 14th season as of August 2022.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: The cocktail party effect is the phenomenon of the brain's ability to focus one's auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, such as when a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room. Listeners have the ability to both segregate different stimuli into different streams, and subsequently decide which streams are most pertinent to them.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: It has been proposed that one's sensory memory subconsciously parses all stimuli and identifies discrete pieces of information by classifying them by salience. This effect is what allows most people to "tune into" a single voice and "tune out" all others. This phenomenon is often described in terms of "selective attention" or "selective hearing". It may also describe a similar phenomenon that occurs when one may immediately detect words of importance originating from unattended stimuli, for instance hearing one's name among a wide range of auditory input.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: An inability to segregate stimuli in this way is sometimes referred to as the cocktail party problem or cocktail party deafness.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Auditory attention in regards to the cocktail party effect primarily occurs in the left hemisphere of the superior temporal gyrus, a non-primary region of auditory cortex; a fronto-parietal network involving the inferior frontal gyrus, superior parietal sulcus, and intraparietal sulcus also accounts for the acts of attention-shifting, speech processing, and attention control. Both the target stream (the more important information being attended to) and competing/interfering streams are processed in the same pathway within the left hemisphere, but fMRI scans show that target streams are treated with more attention than competing streams.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Furthermore, we see that activity in the superior temporal gyrus (STG) toward the target stream is decreased/interfered with when competing stimuli streams (that typically hold significant value) arise. The "cocktail party effect" - the ability to detect significant stimuli in multitalker situations - has also been labeled the "cocktail party problem" because our ability to selectively attend simultaneously interferes with the effectiveness of attention at a neurological level.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: The cocktail party effect works best as a effect, which requires hearing with both ears. People with only one functioning ear seem much more distracted by interfering noise than people with two typical ears. The benefit of using two ears may be partially related to the localization of sound sources. The auditory system is able to localize at least two sound sources and assign the correct characteristics to these sources simultaneously. As soon as the auditory system has localized a sound source, it can extract the signals of this sound source out of a mixture of interfering sound sources. However, much of this binaural benefit can be attributed to two other processes, better-ear listening and binaural unmasking. Better-ear listening is the process of exploiting the better of the two signal-to-noise ratios available at the ears. Binaural unmasking is a process that involves a combination of information from the two ears in order to extract signals from noise.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: In the early 1950s much of the early attention research can be traced to problems faced by air traffic controllers. At that time, controllers received messages from pilots over loudspeakers in the control tower. Hearing the intermixed voices of many pilots over a single loudspeaker made the controller's task very difficult. The effect was first defined and named "the cocktail party problem" by Colin Cherry in 1953.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Cherry conducted attention experiments in which participants listened to two different messages from a single loudspeaker at the same time and tried to separate them; this was later termed a dichotic listening task. His work reveals that the ability to separate sounds from background noise is affected by many variables, such as the sex of the speaker, the direction from which the sound is coming, the pitch, and the rate of speech.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Cherry developed the shadowing task in order to further study how people selectively attend to one message amid other voices and noises. In a shadowing task participants wear a special headset that presents a different message to each ear. The participant is asked to repeat aloud the message (called shadowing) that is heard in a specified ear (called a channel). Cherry found that participants were able to detect their name from the unattended channel, the channel they were not shadowing. Later research using Cherry's shadowing task was done by Neville Moray in 1959. He was able to conclude that almost none of the rejected message is able to penetrate the block set up, except subjectively "important" messages.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Selective attention shows up across all ages. Starting with infancy, babies begin to turn their heads toward a sound that is familiar to them, such as their parents' voices. This shows that infants selectively attend to specific stimuli in their environment. Furthermore, reviews of selective attention indicate that infants favor "baby" talk over speech with an adult tone. This preference indicates that infants can recognize physical changes in the tone of speech. However, the accuracy in noticing these physical differences, like tone, amid background noise improves over time. Infants may simply ignore stimuli because something like their name, while familiar, holds no higher meaning to them at such a young age. However, research suggests that the more likely scenario is that infants do not understand that the noise being presented to them amidst distracting noise is their own name, and thus do not respond. The ability to filter out unattended stimuli reaches its prime in young adulthood. In reference to the cocktail party phenomenon, older adults have a harder time than younger adults focusing in on one conversation if competing stimuli, like "subjectively" important messages, make up the background noise.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Some examples of messages that catch people's attention include personal names and taboo words. The ability to selectively attend to one's own name has been found in infants as young as 5 months of age and appears to be fully developed by 13 months. Along with multiple experts in the field, Anne Treisman states that people are permanently primed to detect personally significant words, like names, and theorizes that they may require less perceptual information than other words to trigger identification. Another stimulus that reaches some level of semantic processing while in the unattended channel is taboo words. These words often contain sexually explicit material that cause an alert system in people that leads to decreased performance in shadowing tasks. Taboo words do not affect children in selective attention until they develop a strong vocabulary with an understanding of language.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Selective attention begins to waver as we get older. Older adults have longer latency periods in discriminating between conversation streams. This is typically attributed to the fact that general cognitive ability begins to decay with old age (as exemplified with memory, visual perception, higher order functioning, etc.).


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Even more recently, modern neuroscience techniques are being applied to study the cocktail party problem. Some notable examples of researchers doing such work include Edward Chang, Nima Mesgarani, and Charles Schroeder using electrocorticography; Jonathan Simon, Mounya Elhilali, Adrian KC Lee, Shihab Shamma, Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, Daniel Baldauf, and Jyrki Ahveninen using magnetoencephalography; Jyrki Ahveninen, Edmund Lalor, and Barbara Shinn-Cunningham using electroencephalography; and Jyrki Ahveninen and Lee M. Miller using functional magnetic resonance imaging.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Not all the information presented to us can be processed. In theory, the selection of what to pay attention to can be random or nonrandom. For example, when driving, drivers are able to focus on the traffic lights rather than on other stimuli present in the scene. In such cases it is mandatory to select which portion of presented stimuli is important. A basic question in psychology is when this selection occurs. This issue has developed into the early versus late selection controversy. The basis for this controversy can be found in the Cherry dichotic listening experiments. Participants were able to notice physical changes, like pitch or change in gender of the speaker, and stimuli, like their own name, in the unattended channel. This brought about the question of whether the meaning, semantics, of the unattended message was processed before selection. In an early selection attention model very little information is processed before selection occurs. In late selection attention models more information, like semantics, is processed before selection occurs.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: The earliest work in exploring mechanisms of early selective attention was performed by Donald Broadbent, who proposed a theory that came to be known as the "filter model". This model was established using the dichotic listening task. His research showed that most participants were accurate in recalling information that they actively attended to, but were far less accurate in recalling information that they had not attended to. This led Broadbent to the conclusion that there must be a "filter" mechanism in the brain that could block out information that was not selectively attended to. The filter model was hypothesized to work in the following way: as information enters the brain through sensory organs (in this case, the ears) it is stored in sensory memory, a buffer memory system that hosts an incoming stream of information long enough for us to pay attention to it. Before information is processed further, the filter mechanism allows only attended information to pass through. The selected attention is then passed into working memory, the set of mechanisms that underlies short-term memory and communicates with long-term memory. In this model, auditory information can be selectively attended to on the basis of its physical characteristics, such as location and volume. Others suggest that information can be attended to on the basis of Gestalt features, including continuity and closure. For Broadbent, this explained the mechanism by which people can choose to attend to only one source of information at a time while excluding others. However, Broadbent's model failed to account for the observation that words of semantic importance, for example the individual's own name, can be instantly attended to despite having been in an unattended channel.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Shortly after Broadbent's experiments, Oxford undergraduates Gray and Wedderburn repeated his dichotic listening tasks, altered with monosyllabic words that could form meaningful phrases, except that the words were divided across ears. For example, the words, "Dear, one, Jane," were sometimes presented in sequence to the right ear, while the words, "three, Aunt, six," were presented in a simultaneous, competing sequence to the left ear. Participants were more likely to remember, "Dear Aunt Jane," than to remember the numbers; they were also more likely to remember the words in the phrase order than to remember the numbers in the order they were presented. This finding goes against Broadbent's theory of complete filtration because the filter mechanism would not have time to switch between channels. This suggests that meaning may be processed first.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: In a later addition to this existing theory of selective attention, Anne Treisman developed the "attenuation model". In this model, information, when processed through a filter mechanism, is not completely blocked out as Broadbent might suggest. Instead, the information is weakened (attenuated), allowing it to pass through all stages of processing at an unconscious level. Treisman also suggested a threshold mechanism whereby some words, on the basis of semantic importance, may grab one's attention from the unattended stream. One's own name, according to Treisman, has a low threshold value (i.e. it has a high level of meaning) and thus is recognized more easily. The same principle applies to words like "fire", directing our attention to situations that may immediately require it. The only way this can happen, Treisman argued, is if information was being processed continuously in the unattended stream.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Diana Deutsch, best known for her work in music perception and auditory illusions, has also made important contributions to models of attention. In order to explain in more detail how words can be attended to on the basis of semantic importance, Deutsch & Deutsch and Norman proposed a model of attention which includes a second selection mechanism based on meaning. In what came to be known as the Deutsch-Norman model, information in the unattended stream is not processed all the way into working memory, as Treisman's model would imply. Instead, information on the unattended stream is passed through a secondary filter after pattern recognition. If the unattended information is recognized and deemed unimportant by the secondary filter, it is prevented from entering working memory. In this way, only immediately important information from the unattended channel can come to awareness.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Daniel Kahneman also proposed a model of attention, but it differs from previous models in that he describes attention not in terms of selection, but in terms of capacity. For Kahneman, attention is a resource to be distributed among various stimuli, a proposition which has received some support. This model describes not "when" attention is focused, but "how" it is focused. According to Kahneman, attention is generally determined by arousal; a general state of physiological activity. The Yerkes-Dodson law predicts that arousal will be optimal at moderate levels - performance will be poor when one is over- or under-aroused. Of particular relevance, Narayan et al. discovered a sharp decline in the ability to discriminate between auditory stimuli when background noises were too numerous and complex - this is evidence of the negative effect of overarousal on attention. Thus, arousal determines our available capacity for attention. Then, an "allocation policy" acts to distribute our available attention among a variety of possible activities. Those deemed most important by the allocation policy will have the most attention given to them. The allocation policy is affected by "enduring dispositions" (automatic influences on attention) and "momentary intentions" (a conscious decision to attend to something). "Momentary intentions" requiring a focused direction of attention rely on substantially more attention resources than "enduring dispositions". Additionally, there is an ongoing evaluation of the particular demands of certain activities on attention capacity. That is to say, activities that are particularly taxing on attention resources will lower attention capacity and will influence the allocation policy - in this case, if an activity is too draining on capacity, the allocation policy will likely cease directing resources to it and instead focus on less taxing tasks. Kahneman's model explains the cocktail party phenomenon in that "momentary intentions" might allow one to expressly focus on a particular auditory stimulus, but that "enduring dispositions" (which can include new events, and perhaps words of particular semantic importance) can capture our attention. It is important to note that Kahneman's model doesn't necessarily contradict selection models, and thus can be used to supplement them.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Some research has demonstrated that the cocktail party effect may not be simply an auditory phenomenon, and that relevant effects can be obtained when testing visual information as well. For example, Shapiro et al. were able to demonstrate an "own name effect" with visual tasks, where subjects were able to easily recognize their own names when presented as unattended stimuli. They adopted a position in line with late selection models of attention such as the Treisman or Deutsch-Norman models, suggesting that early selection would not account for such a phenomenon. The mechanisms by which this effect might occur were left unexplained.


title: Cocktail party effect

text: Animals that communicate in choruses such as frogs, insects, songbirds and other animals that communicate acoustically can experience the cocktail party effect as multiple signals or calls occur concurrently. Similar to their human counterparts, acoustic mediation allows animals to listen for what they need to within their environments. For Bank swallows, cliff swallows, and king penguins, acoustic mediation allows for parent/offspring recognition in noisy environments. Amphibians also demonstrate this effect as evidenced in frogs; female frogs can listen for and differentiate male mating calls, while males can mediate other males' aggression calls. There are two leading theories as to why acoustic signaling evolved among different species. Receiver psychology holds that the development of acoustic signaling can be traced back to the nervous system and the processing strategies the nervous system uses. Specifically, how the physiology of auditory scene analysis affects how a species interprets and gains meaning from sound. Communication Network Theory states that animals can gain information by eavesdropping on other signals between others of their species. This is true especially among songbirds.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Prehistoric Europe is Europe with human presence but before the start of recorded history, beginning in the Lower Paleolithic. As history progresses, considerable regional irregularities of cultural development emerge and increase. The region of the eastern Mediterranean is, due to its geographic proximity, greatly influenced and inspired by the classical Middle Eastern civilizations, and adopts and develops the earliest systems of communal organization and writing. The Histories of Herodotus (from around 440 BC) is the oldest known European text that seeks to systematically record traditions, public affairs and notable events.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Widely dispersed, isolated finds of individual fossils of bone fragments (Atapuerca, Mauer mandible), stone artifacts or assemblages that suggest that during Lower Paleolithic, spanning from 3 million until 300,000 years ago, palaeo-human presence are rare and typically separated by thousands of years. The karstic region of the Atapuerca Mountains in Spain represents the currently earliest known and reliably dated location of residence for more than a single generation and a group of individuals. Prolonged presence has been attested for "Homo antecessor" (or "Homo erectus antecessor", "Homo heidelbergensis," and Neanderthals).


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: "Homo neanderthalensis" emerged in Eurasia between 350,000 and 600,000 years ago as the earliest body of European people that left behind a substantial tradition, a set of evaluable historic data through rich fossil record in Europe's limestone caves and a patchwork of occupation sites over large areas, including Mousterian cultural assemblages. Modern humans arrived in Mediterranean Europe during the Upper Paleolithic between 45,000 and 43,000 years ago, and both species occupied a common habitat for several thousand years. Research has so far produced no universally accepted conclusive explanation as to what caused the Neanderthal's extinction between 40,000 and 28,000 years ago.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Homo sapiens subsequently proceeded to populate the entire continent during the Mesolithic and advanced north, following the retreating ice sheets of the last glacial maximum that spanned between 26,500 and 19,000 years ago. A 2015 publication on ancient European DNA collected from Spain to Russia concluded that the original hunter-gatherer population had assimilated a wave of "farmers" who had arrived from the Near East during the Neolithic about 8,000 years ago.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The Mesolithic era site Lepenski Vir in modern-day Serbia, the earliest documented sedentary community of Europe with permanent buildings, as well as monumental art, precedes sites previously considered to be the oldest known by many centuries. The community's year-round access to a food surplus prior to the introduction of agriculture was the basis for the sedentary lifestyle However, the earliest record for the adoption of elements of farming can be found in Starčevo, a community with close cultural ties.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Belovode and Pločnik, also in Serbia, is currently the oldest reliably dated copper smelting site in Europe (around 7,000 years ago). Attributed to the Vinča culture, which on the contrary provides no links to the initiation of or a transition to the Chalcolithic or Copper Age.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The process of smelting bronze is an imported technology with debated origins and history of geographic cultural profusion. It established in Europe about 3200 BC in the Aegean and production was centered around Cyprus, the primary source of copper for the Mediterranean for many centuries.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The introduction of metallurgy, which initiated unprecedented technological progress, has also been linked with the establishment of social stratification, the distinction between rich and poor, and use of precious metals as the means to fundamentally control the dynamics of culture and society.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The European Iron Age culture also originates in the East through the absorption of the technological principles obtained from the Hittites about 1200 BC, finally arriving in Northern Europe by 500 BC.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: During the Iron Age, Central, Western and most of Eastern Europe gradually entered the historical period. Greek maritime colonization and Roman terrestrial conquest form the basis for the diffusion of literacy in large areas to this day. This tradition continued in an altered form and context for the most remote regions (Greenland and Old Prussians, 13th century) via the universal body of Christian texts, including the incorporation of East Slavic peoples and Russia into the Orthodox cultural sphere. Latin and ancient Greek language continued to be the primary and best way to communicate and express ideas in Liberal arts education and the sciences all over Europe until the early modern period.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The climatic record of the Paleolithic is characterised by the Pleistocene pattern of cyclic warmer and colder periods, including eight major cycles and numerous shorter episodes. The northern maximum of human occupation fluctuated in response to the changing conditions, and successful settlement required constant adaption capabilities and problem solving. Most of Scandinavia, the North European Plain and Russia remained off limits for occupation during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Associated evidence, such as stone tools, artifacts and settlement localities, is more numerous than fossilised remains of the hominin occupants themselves. The simplest pebble tools with a few flakes struck off to create an edge were found in Dmanisi, Georgia, and in Spain at sites in the Guadix-Baza basin and near Atapuerca. The Oldowan tool discoveries, called "Mode 1-type assemblages" are gradually replaced by a more complex tradition that included a range of hand axes and flake tools, the Acheulean, "Mode 2-type assemblages". Both types of tool sets are attributed to "Homo erectus", the earliest and for a very long time the only human in Europe and more likely to be found in the southern part of the continent. However, the Acheulean fossil record also links to the emergence of "Homo heidelbergensis", particularly its specific lithic tools and handaxes. The presence of "Homo heidelbergensis" is documented since 600,000 BC in numerous sites in Germany, Great Britain and northern France.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Although palaeoanthropologists generally agree that "Homo erectus" and "Homo heidelbergensis" immigrated to Europe, debates remain about migration routes and the chronology.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The fact that "Homo neanderthalensis" is found only in a contiguous range in Eurasia and the general acceptance of the Out of Africa hypothesis both suggest that the species has evolved locally. Again, consensus prevails on the matter, but widely debated are origin and evolution patterns.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The Neanderthal fossil record ranges from Western Europe to the Altai Mountains in Central Asia and the Ural Mountains in the North to the Levant in the South. Unlike its predecessors, they were biologically and culturally adapted to survival in cold environments and successfully extended their range to the glacial environments of Central Europe and the Russian plains. The great number and, in some cases, exceptional state of preservation of Neanderthal fossils and cultural assemblages enables researchers to provide a detailed and accurate data on behaviour and culture. Neanderthals are associated with the Mousterian culture ("Mode 3"), stone tools that first appeared approximately 160,000 years ago.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: "Homo sapiens" arrived in Europe around 45,000 and 43,000 years ago via the Levant and entered the continent through the Danubian corridor, as the fossils at Peștera cu Oase suggest. The fossils' genetic structure indicates a recent Neanderthal ancestry and the discovery of a fragment of a skull in Israel in 2008 support the notion that humans interbred with Neanderthals in the Levant.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: After the slow processes of the previous hundreds of thousands of years, a turbulent period of Neanderthal–"Homo sapiens" coexistence demonstrated that cultural evolution had replaced biological evolution as the primary force of adaptation and change in human societies.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Generally small and widely dispersed fossil sites suggest that Neanderthals lived in less numerous and more socially isolated groups than "Homo sapiens". Tools and Levallois points are remarkably sophisticated from the outset, but they have a slow rate of variability, and general technological inertia is noticeable during the entire fossil period. Artifacts are of utilitarian nature, and symbolic behavioral traits are undocumented before the arrival of modern humans. The Aurignacian culture, introduced by modern humans, is characterized by cut bone or antler points, fine flint blades and bladelets struck from prepared cores, rather than using crude flakes. The oldest examples and subsequent widespread tradition of prehistoric art originate from the Aurignacian.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: After more than 100,000 years of uniformity, around 45,000 years ago, the Neanderthal fossil record changed abruptly. The Mousterian had quickly become more versatile and was named the Chatelperronian culture, which signifies the diffusion of Aurignacian elements into Neanderthal culture. Although debated, the fact proved that Neanderthals had, to some extent, adopted the culture of modern "Homo sapiens". However, the Neanderthal fossil record completely vanished after 40,000 years BC. Whether Neanderthals were also successful in diffusing their genetic heritage into Europe's future population or they simply went extinct and, if so, what caused the extinction cannot conclusively be answered.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Around 32,000 years ago, the Gravettian culture appeared in the Crimean Mountains (southern Ukraine). By 24,000 BC, the Solutrean and Gravettian cultures were present in Southwestern Europe. Gravettian technology and culture have been theorised to have come with migrations of people from the Middle East, Anatolia and the Balkans, and might be linked with the transitional cultures mentioned earlier since their techniques have some similarities and are both very different from Aurignacian ones, but this issue is very obscure. The Gravettian also appeared in the Caucasus and Zagros Mountains but soon disappeared from southwestern Europe, with the notable exception of the Mediterranean coasts of Iberia.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The Solutrean culture, extended from northern Spain to southeastern France, includes not only a beautiful stone technology but also the first significant development of cave painting and the use of the needle and possibly that of the bow and arrow. The more widespread Gravettian culture is no less advanced, at least in artistic terms: sculpture (mainly "venuses") is the most outstanding form of creative expression of such peoples.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Around 19,000 BC, Europe witnesses the appearance of a new culture, known as Magdalenian, possibly rooted in the old Aurignacian one, which soon superseded the Solutrean area and also the Gravettian of Central Europe. However, in Mediterranean Iberia, Italy, the Balkans and Anatolia, epi-Gravettian cultures continued to evolve locally.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: With the Magdalenian culture, the Paleolithic development in Europe reaches its peak and this is reflected in art, owing to previous traditions of paintings and sculpture.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Around 12,500 BC, the Würm Glacial Age ended. Slowly, through the following millennia, temperatures and sea levels rose, changing the environment of prehistoric people. Ireland and Great Britain become islands, and Scandinavia became separated from the main part of the European Peninsula. (They had all once been connected by a now-submerged region of the continental shelf known as Doggerland.) Nevertheless, the Magdalenian culture persisted until 10,000 BC, when it quickly evolved into two "microlith" cultures: Azilian, in Spain and southern France, and Sauveterrian, in northern France and Central Europe. Despite some differences, both cultures shared several traits: the creation of very small stone tools called microliths and the scarcity of figurative art, which seems to have vanished almost completely, which was replaced by abstract decoration of tools.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: In the late phase of the epi-Paleolithic period, the Sauveterrean culture evolved into the so-called Tardenoisian and strongly influenced its southern neighbour, clearly replacing it in Mediterranean Spain and Portugal. The recession of the glaciers allowed human colonisation in Northern Europe for the first time. The Maglemosian culture, derived from the Sauveterre-Tardenois culture but with a strong personality, colonised Denmark and the nearby regions, including parts of Britain.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: A transition period in the development of human technology between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, the Balkan Mesolithic began around 15,000 years ago. In Western Europe, the Early Mesolithic, or Azilian, began about 14,000 years ago, in the Franco-Cantabrian region of northern Spain and southern France. In other parts of Europe, the Mesolithic began by 11,500 years ago (the beginning Holocene) and ended with the introduction of farming, which, depending on the region, occurred 8,500 to 5,500 years ago.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: In areas with limited glacial impact, the term "Epipaleolithic" is sometimes preferred for the period. Regions that experienced greater environmental effects as the Last Glacial Period ended had a much more apparent Mesolithic era that lasted millennia. In Northern Europe, societies were able to live well on rich food supplies from the marshlands, which had been created by the warmer climate. Such conditions produced distinctive human behaviours that are preserved in the material record, such as the Maglemosian and Azilian cultures. Such conditions delayed the coming of the Neolithic to as late as 5,500 years ago in Northern Europe.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: As what Vere Gordon Childe termed the "Neolithic Package" (including agriculture, herding, polished stone axes, timber longhouses and pottery) spread into Europe, the Mesolithic way of life was marginalised and eventually disappeared. Controversy over the means of that dispersal is discussed below in the "Neolithic" section. A "Ceramic Mesolithic" can be distinguished between 7,200 and 5,850 years ago and ranged from Southern to Northern Europe.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The European Neolithic is assumed to have arrived from the Near East via Asia Minor, the Mediterranean and the Caucasus. There has been a long discussion between "migrationists", who claim that the Near Eastern farmers almost totally displaced the European native hunter-gatherers, and "diffusionists", who claim that the process was slow enough to have occurred mostly through cultural transmission. A relationship has been suggested between the spread of agriculture and the diffusion of Indo-European languages, with several models of migrations trying to establish a relationship, like the Anatolian hypothesis, which sets the origin of Indo-European agricultural terminology in Anatolia.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Apparently related with the Anatolian culture of Hacilar, the Greek region of Thessaly was the first place in Europe known to have acquired agriculture, cattle-herding and pottery. The early stages are known as pre-Sesklo culture. The Thessalian Neolithic culture soon evolved into the more coherent Sesklo culture (6000 BC), which was the origin of the main branches of Neolithic expansion in Europe. Practically all of the Balkan Peninsula was colonized in the 6th millennium from there. The expansion, reaching the easternmost Tardenoisian outposts of the upper Tisza, gave birth to the Proto-Linear Pottery culture, a significant modification of the Balkan Neolithic that was the origin of one of the most important branches of European Neolithic: the Danubian group of cultures. In parallel, the coasts of the Adriatic and of southern Italy witnessed the expansion of another Neolithic current with less clear origins. Settling initially in Dalmatia, the bearers of the Cardium pottery culture may have come from Thessaly (some of the pre-Sesklo settlements show related traits) or even from Lebanon (Byblos). They were sailors, fishermen and sheep and goat herders, and the archaeological findings show that they mixed with natives in most places. Other early Neolithic cultures can be found in Ukraine and Southern Russia, where the epi-Gravettian locals assimilated cultural influxes from beyond the Caucasus (e.g. the Dniepr-Donets culture and related cultures) and in Andalusia (Spain), where the rare Neolithic of La Almagra Pottery appeared without known origins very early (c. 7800 BC).


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: This phase, starting 7000 years ago was marked by the consolidation of the Neolithic expansion towards western and northern Europe but also by the rise of new cultures in the Balkans, notably the Dimini (Thessaly) and related Vinca (Serbia and Romania) and Karanovo cultures (Bulgaria and nearby areas). Meanwhile, the Proto-Linear Pottery culture gave birth to two very dynamic branches: the Western and Eastern Linear Pottery Cultures. The western branch expanded quickly, assimilating Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and even large parts of western Ukraine, historical Moldavia, the lowlands of Romania, and regions of France, Belgium and the Netherlands, all in less than 1000 years. With this expansion came diversification and a number of local Danubian cultures started forming at the end of the 5th millennium. In the Mediterranean, the Cardium pottery fishermen showed no less dynamism and colonised or assimilated all of Italy and the Mediterranean regions of France and Spain. Even in the Atlantic, some groups among the native hunter-gatherers started the slow incorporation of the new technologies. Among them, the most noticeable regions seem to be southwestern Iberia, which was influenced by the Mediterranean but especially by the Andalusian Neolithic, which soon developed the first Megalithic burials (dolmens), and the area around Denmark (Ertebölle culture), influenced by the Danubian complex.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: This period occupied the first half of the 6th millennium BC. The tendencies of the previous period consolidated and so there was a fully-formed Neolithic Europe, with five main cultural regions:


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Also known as "Copper Age", the European Chalcolithic was a time of significant changes, the first of which was the invention of copper metallurgy. This is first attested in the Vinca culture in the 6th millennium BC. The Balkans became a major centre for copper extraction and metallurgical production in the 5th millennium BC. Copper artefacts were traded across the region, eventually reaching eastwards across the steppes of eastern Europe as far as the Khavalynsk culture. The 5th millennium BC also saw the appearance of economic stratification and the rise of ruling elites in the Balkan region, most notably in the Varna culture (c. 4500 BC) in Bulgaria, which developed the first known gold metallurgy in the world.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The economy of the Chalcolithic was no longer that of peasant communities and tribes, since some materials began to produced in specific locations and distributed to wide regions. Mining of metal and stone was particularly developed in some areas, along with the processing of those materials into valuable goods.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: From 5500 BC onwards, Eastern Europe was apparently infiltrated by people originating from beyond the Volga, creating a plural complex known as Sredny Stog culture, which substituted the previous Dnieper-Donets culture in Ukraine, pushing the natives to migrate northwest to the Baltic and to Denmark, where they mixed with the natives (TRBK A and C). The emergence of the Sredny Stog culture may be correlated with the expansion of Indo-European languages, according to the Kurgan hypothesis. Near the end of the period, around 4000 BC, another westward migration of supposed Indo-European speakers left many traces in the lower Danube area (culture of Cernavodă I) in what seems to have been an invasion.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Meanwhile, the Danubian Lengyel culture absorbed its northern neighbours in the Czech Republic and Poland for some centuries, only to recede in the second half of the period. The hierarchical model of the Varna culture seems to have been replicated later in the Tiszan region with the Bodrogkeresztur culture. Labour specialisation, economic stratification and possibly the risk of invasion may have been the reasons behind this development.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: In the western Danubian region (the Rhine and Seine basins), the Michelsberg culture displaced its predecessor, the Rössen culture. Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean basin, several cultures (most notably the Chasséen culture in southeastern France and the in northern Italy) converged into a functional union of which the most significant characteristic was the distribution network of honey-coloured silex. Despite the unity, the signs of conflicts are clear, as many skeletons show violent injuries. This was the time and area of Ötzi, the famous man found in the Alps.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: This period extends through the first half of the 4th millennium BC. During this period the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture in Ukraine experienced a massive expansion, building the largest settlements in the world at the time, described as the first cities in the world by some scholars. The earliest known evidence for wheeled vehicles, in the form of wheeled models, also comes from Cucuteni-Trypillia sites, dated to c. 3900 BC.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: In the Danubian region the powerful Baden culture emerged circa 3500 BC, extending more or less across the region of Austria-Hungary. The rest of the Balkans was profoundly restructured after the invasions of the previous period, with the Coțofeni culture in the central Balkans showing pronounced eastern (or presumably Indo-European) traits. The new Ezero culture in Bulgaria (3300 BC), shows the first evidence of pseudo-bronze (or arsenical bronze), as does the Baden culture and the Cycladic culture (in the Aegean) after 2800 BC.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: In Eastern Europe, the Yamnaya culture took over southern Russia and Ukraine. In western Europe, the only sign of unity came from the Megalithic super-culture, which extended from southern Sweden to southern Spain, including large parts of southern Germany as well. However, the Mediterranean and Danubian groupings of the previous period appear to have fragmented into many smaller pieces, some of them apparently backward in technological matters. From 2800 BC, the Danubian Seine-Oise-Marne culture pushed directly or indirectly southwards and destroyed most of the rich Megalithic culture of western France. After 2600 BC, several phenomena prefigured the changes of the upcoming period:


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Large towns with stone walls appeared in two different areas of the Iberian Peninsula: one in the Portuguese region of Estremadura (culture of Vila Nova de Sao Pedro), strongly embedded in the Atlantic Megalithic culture; the other near Almería (southeastern Spain), centred around the large town of Los Millares, of Mediterranean character, probably affected by eastern cultural influxes ("tholoi"). Despite the many differences, both civilisations seem have had friendly contact and to productive exchanges. In the area of Dordogne (Aquitaine, France), a new unexpected culture of bowmen appears: the Artenac culture soon takes control of western and even northern France and Belgium. In Poland and nearby regions, the putative Indo-Europeans reorganised and reconsolidated with the culture of the Globular Amphoras. Nevertheless, the influence of many centuries in direct contact with the still-powerful Danubian peoples had greatly modified their culture.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Use of Bronze begins in the Aegean around 3200 BC. From 2500 BC the new Catacomb culture, whose origins were obscure but were also Indo-Europeans, displaced the Yamna peoples in the regions north and east of the Black Sea, confining them to their original area east of the Volga. Around 2400 BC, the Corded Ware culture replaced their predecessors and expanded to Danubian and Nordic areas of western Germany. One related branch invaded Denmark and southern Sweden (Scandinavian Single Grave culture), and the mid-Danubian basin, though showing more continuity, had clear traits of new Indo-European elites (Vučedol culture). Simultaneously, in the West, the Artenac peoples reached Belgium. With the partial exception of Vučedol, the Danubian cultures, which had been so buoyant just a few centuries ago, were wiped off the map of Europe. The rest of the period was the story of a mysterious phenomenon: the Beaker people, which seemed to be of a mercantile character and to have preferred being buried according to a very specific, almost invariable, ritual. Nevertheless, out of their original area of western Central Europe, they appeared only within local cultures and so they never invaded and assimilated but went to live among those peoples and kept their way of life, which is why they are believed to be merchants.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The rest of Europe remained mostly unchanged and apparently peaceful. In 2300 BC, the first Beaker Pottery appeared in Bohemia and expanded in many directions but particularly westward, along the Rhone and the seas, reaching the culture of Vila Nova (Portugal) and Catalonia (Spain) as their limits. Simultaneously but unrelatedly, in 2200 BC in the Aegean region, the Cycladic culture decayed and was substituted by the new palatine phase of the Minoan culture of Crete.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The second phase of Beaker Pottery, from 2100 BC onwards, is marked by the displacement of the centre of the phenomenon to Portugal, within the culture of Vila Nova. The new centre's influence reached to all of southern and western France but was absent in southern and western Iberia, with the notable exception of Los Millares. After 1900 BC, the centre of the Beaker Pottery returned to Bohemia, and in Iberia, a decentralisation of the phenomenon occurred, with centres in Portugal but also in Los Millares and Ciempozuelos.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Though the use of bronze started much earlier in the Aegean area (c. 3.200 BC), c. 2300 BC can be considered typical for the start of the Bronze Age in Europe in general.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Derivations of the sudden expansion were the Sea Peoples, who attacked Egypt unsuccessfully for some time, including the Philistines (Pelasgians?) and the Dorians, most likely Hellenised members of the group that ended invading Greek itself and destroying the might of Mycene and later Troy.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Simultaneously, around then, the culture of Vila Nova de Sao Pedro, which lasted 1300 years in its urban form, vanishes into a less spectacular one but finally with bronze. The centre of gravity of the Atlantic cultures (the Atlantic Bronze complex) was now displaced towards Great Britain. Also about then, the culture of Villanova, the possible precursor of the Etruscan civilisation, appeared in central Italy, possibly with an Aegean origin.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Though the use of iron was known to the Aegean peoples about 1100 BC, it failed to reached Central Europe before 800 BC, when it gave way to the Hallstatt culture, an Iron Age evolution of the Urnfield culture.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Around then, the Phoenicians, benefitting from the disappearance of the Greek maritime power (Greek Dark Ages) founded their first colony at the entrance of the Atlantic Ocean, in Gadir (modern Cádiz), most likely as a merchant outpost to convey the many mineral resources of Iberia and the British Isles.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Nevertheless, from the 7th century BC onwards, the Greeks recovered their power and started their own colonial expansion, founding Massalia (modern Marseilles) and the Iberian outpost of Emporion (modern Empúries). That occurred only after the Iberians could reconquer Catalonia and the Ebro valley from the Celts, separating physically the Iberian Celts from their continental neighbours.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The second phase of the European Iron Age was defined particularly by the Celtic La Tène culture, which started aroumd 400 BC, followed by a large expansion of them into the Balkans, the British Isles, where they assimilated druidism, and other regions of France and Italy.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The decline of Celtic power under the expansive pressure of Germanic tribes (originally from Scandinavia and Lower Germany) and the forming of the Roman Empire during the 1st century BC was also that of the end of prehistory, properly speaking; though many regions of Europe remained illiterate and therefore outside written history for many centuries, the boundary must be placed somewhere, and that date, near the start of the calendar, seems to be quite convenient. The remaining is regional prehistory, or, in most cases, protohistory, but no longer European prehistory, as a whole.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The genetic history of Europe has been inferred by observing the patterns of genetic diversity across the continent and in the surrounding areas. Use has been made of both classical genetics and molecular genetics. Analysis of the DNA of the modern population of Europe has mainly been used but use has also been made of ancient DNA.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: This analysis has shown that modern man entered Europe from the Near East before the Last Glacial Maximum but retreated to refuges in southern Europe in this cold period. Subsequently, people spread out over the whole continent, with subsequent limited migration from the Near East and Asia.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: According to a study in 2017, the early farmers belonged predominantly to the paternal Haplogroup G-M201. The maternal haplogroup N1a was also frequent in the farmers.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Evidence from genome analysis of ancient human remains suggests that the modern native populations of Europe largely descend from three distinct lineages: Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, derivative of the Cro-Magnon population of Europe, Early European Farmers (EEF) introduced to Europe during the Neolithic Revolution, and Ancient North Eurasians which expanded to Europe in the context of the Indo-European expansion. The Early European Farmers migrated from Anatolia to the Balkans in large numbers during the 7th millennium BC.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: During the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age, the EEF-derived cultures of Europe were overwhelmed by successive invasions of Western Steppe Herders (WSHs) from the Pontic–Caspian steppe, who carried about 60% Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) and 40% Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) admixture. These invasions led to EEF paternal DNA lineages in Europe being almost entirely replaced with EHG/WSH paternal DNA (mainly R1b and R1a). EEF maternal DNA (mainly haplogroup N) also declined, being supplanted by steppe lineages, suggesting the migrations involved both males and females from the steppe. EEF mtDNA however remained frequent, suggesting admixture between WSH males and EEF females.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: The written linguistic record in Europe first begins with the Mycenaean record of early Greek in the Late Bronze Age.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Unattested languages spoken in Europe in the Bronze and Iron Ages are the object of reconstruction in historical linguistics, in the case of Europe predominantly Indo-European linguistics.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Indo-European is assumed to have spread from the Pontic steppe at the very beginning of the Bronze Age, reaching Western Europe contemporary with the Beaker culture, after about 5,000 years ago.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Various pre-Indo-European substrates have been postulated, but remain speculative; the "Pelasgian" and "Tyrsenian" substrates of the Mediterranean world, an "Old European" (which may itself have been an early form of Indo-European), a "Vasconic" substrate ancestral to the modern Basque language, or a more widespread presence of early Finno-Ugric languages in northern Europe.


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: An early presence of Indo-European throughout Europe has also been suggested ("Paleolithic Continuity Theory").


title: Prehistoric Europe

text: Donald Ringe emphasizes the "great linguistic diversity" which would generally have been predominant in any area inhabited by small-scale, tribal pre-state societies.


title: Sukumari

text: Sukumari Amma (6 October 1940 – 26 March 2013) was an Indian actress best known for her works in Malayalam and Tamil films. In a career spanning more than five decades, She has appeared in more than 2500 films predominantly in Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, along with few Hindi and one each in Sinhala, French, Bengali, Tulu, English and Kannada films. Sukumari began acting at the age of 10. In 2003, she was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India for her contributions toward the arts. She won the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the Tamil film "Namma Gramam" (2010). Sukumari died on 26 March 2013 in Chennai, following a heart attack.


title: Sukumari

text: Sukumari was born on 6 October 1940 in Nagercoil, Travancore (Currently in Tamil Nadu), to Malayali parents Madhavan Nair (a bank manager) and Sathyabhama Amma of Tharishuthala Valia Veedu in Kalkulam (in present-day Kanyakumari District). Sathyabhama Amma was the niece of Narayani Pillai Kunjamma, a famous beauty who spurned the king in favour of marrying the aristocratic landowner Kesava Pillai of Kandamath Through her cousin, Ambika Sukumaran, she is related to the Travancore Royal Family.


title: Sukumari

text: She studied at Poojappura LP School until second grade; she then moved to Madras, where she studied until fourth forum. She had four sisters (Rajakumari, Sreekumari, Jayasree and Girija) and one brother, Shankar. Lalitha, Padmini, Ragini (Travancore Sisters) were her cousins.


title: Sukumari

text: Sukumari was noticed by a director when she visited the sets of a film with Padmini, and she made her film debut in the lead role in the Tamil film "Or Iravu". She acted in various Malayalam and Tamil Films of the black and white era, such as "Udhyogastha", by P. Venu, "Chettathi", "Kusruthikkuttan", "Kunjali Marakkar", "Thacholi Othenan", "Yakshi" and "Karinizhal". She later became popular after starring in various films of Priyadarshan such as "Poochakkoru Mookkuthi", "Oodarathuammava Aalariyam", "Boeing Boeing" and "Vandanam". She also appeared in various films directed by Balachandra Menon such as "Manicheppu Thurannappol" and "Karyam Nissaram". In later years, she played a major role in "Nizhalkuthu" (2002), directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan. She played many notable mother roles.


title: Sukumari

text: She mastered dance forms like Kathakali, Bharathanatyam, Kerala Natanam and many musical instruments. From the age of seven, she performed all over India and different parts of the world including USA, Singapore, Malaysia, Ceylon, Australia and so on. Sukumari is also known for her stage career in her early days, most prominently as a member of Cho Ramaswamy's theatre group; Viveka Fine Arts (more than 5000 stage shows). She was a member of Y. G. Parthasarathy's and Pattu's drama troupe; United Amateur Artists (more than 1000 stage shows), Rajasulochana's dance troupe; Pushpanjali (more than 5000 stage shows), Travancore Sisters' Dancers of India troupe (many stage shows), T. D. Kusalakumari's troupe; (more than 1000 stage shows) and Padmini's independent dance drama troupe;Premanand Pictures (many stage shows) etc. for many decades. Awards in the name of Sukumari have been instituted for the memory like "Vanita Ratnam Award" : in the field of acting. "Mikacha Nadi Sukumari Puraskaram" by ACTA annakkara, "Sukumari Smaraka Foundation Award" by True Indian Information and Guidance Society and "Famea Sukumari Puraskaram".


title: Sukumari

text: Her memoirs in the film industry have been compiled in a book called "Ormakalude Vellithira" by M.S Dileep. "Sukumari Sradhanjali Parambara" is another book on her.


title: Sukumari

text: Sukumari married director A. Bhimsingh in 1959. He died in 1978, when she was 38. The couple had a son, Suresh, who has acted in films such as "Amme Narayana", "Yuvajanotsavam" and "Cheppu", and is a professional doctor. Suresh married Uma, a costume designer. Suresh and Uma have a son named Vignesh.


title: Sukumari

text: On 26 March 2013, Sukumari died from a cardiac arrest at a hospital in Chennai, where she was receiving treatments for burns she had sustained while lighting a traditional lamp at her residence in February 2013.


title: Sukumari

text: Following her death, several South Indian personalities offered their condolences. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, who had co-starred with Sukumari, said in a condolence message that Sukumari had left a unique imprint on South Indian cinema and theatre with her talents. Kerala's Chief Minister, Oommen Chandy called Sukumari a "phenomenon in Malayalam cinema". Actor and Minister for Cinema K. B. Ganesh Kumar said actors in the Malayalam film industry had lost "the loving presence of a mother in the sets". Leader of the Opposition V. S. Achuthanandan called Sukumari's death a "huge loss for Indian cinema". Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president Ramesh Chennithala said Sukumari would be remembered for "the diversity of characters that she gave life to". Communist Party of India State Secretary Pannian Ravindran said Sukumari was "an unforgettable acting genius". Union Minister of State for Food and Consumer Affairs K. V. Thomas described Sukumari as an actor who conquered the film scene with her unique acting style. South Indian Film Artistes Association president R. Sarathkumar remembered the actress as being an inspiration to others. Actor and renowned television producer Raadhika recalled Sukumari's many dance performances. Actor and president of Association of Malayalam Movie Artists Innocent said at a condolence meeting at Kochi that her death was an irreparable loss to Malayalam film industry. South Indian film star Mohanlal likened her death to the loss of "a mother, sister and a good friend". Speaker G. Karthikeyan also expressed grief at her death. Director Shaji Kailas deemed her loss an "irreparable one for the film industry".


title: Sukumari

text: Sukumari got appeared in various print features, audio-visual endorsements,online promotions, commercial public campaigns etc.


title: Humanists UK

text: Humanists UK, known from 1967 until May 2017 as the British Humanist Association (BHA), is a charitable organisation which promotes secular humanism and aims to represent "people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs" in the United Kingdom by campaigning on issues relating to humanism, secularism, and human rights. It seeks to act as a representative body for non-religious people in the UK.


title: Humanists UK

text: The charity also supports humanist and non-religious ceremonies in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Crown dependencies and maintains a national network of accredited celebrants for humanist funeral ceremonies, weddings, and baby namings, in addition to a network of volunteers who provide like-minded support and comfort to non-religious people in hospitals and prisons. Its other charitable activities include providing free educational resources to teachers, parents, and institutions; a peer-to-peer support service for people who face difficulties leaving coercive religions and cults; work to promote tolerance and understanding between religious communities and the non-religious; and work to promote understanding of humanism. The current President of Humanists UK is Adam Rutherford and the Chief Executive is Andrew Copson. The association currently has 70 affiliated regional and special interest groups and claims a total of approximately 100,000 members and supporters.


title: Humanists UK

text: Humanists UK also has sections which run as staffed national humanist organisations in both Wales and Northern Ireland. Wales Humanists and Northern Ireland Humanists each have an advisory committee drawn from the membership and a development officer. Wales Humanists and Northern Ireland Humanists campaign on devolved issues in Cardiff and Belfast and work to expand the provision of humanist ceremonies, pastoral care, and support for teachers in those countries.


title: Humanists UK

text: The organisation also wishes to build itself as a sustainable and nationally-recognised organisation as a voice for non-religious people.


title: Humanists UK

text: The organisation was founded in 1896 by American Stanton Coit as the Union of Ethical Societies, which brought together existing ethical societies in Britain. Other important founding figures included Elizabeth Schwann (who presided over the inaugural conference), and the feminist writer Zona Vallance (its first Secretary). The writer and critic Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf, was also a founding figure; he had been President of one of the societies which federated as the Union of Ethical Societies. It changed its name to the Ethical Union in 1920 and was incorporated in 1928. In 1963 H. J. Blackham became the first Executive Director, and the society became the British Humanist Association in 1967, during the Presidency of philosopher A. J. Ayer.


title: Humanists UK

text: This transition followed a decade of discussions which nearly prompted a merger of the Ethical Union with the Rationalist Press Association and the South Place Ethical Society. In 1963 the first two went as far as creating an umbrella Humanist Association of which Harold Blackham (later to become a President of Humanists UK) was the Executive Director. However, Humanists UK, the Rationalist Association and the South Place Ethical Society (now Conway Hall Ethical Society) remain separate entities today and in 1967 the Union of Ethical Societies alone became the British Humanist Association.


title: Humanists UK

text: In the 1960s, the organisation campaigned for reform of the 1944 Education Act's clauses on religion in schools and it was active in the campaign to legalise abortion and homosexuality. It supported repeal of Sunday Observance laws and the end of theatre censorship, the provision of family planning on the NHS and other reforms. More generally Humanists UK aimed to defend freedom of speech, support the elimination of world poverty and remove the privileges given to religious groups. It was claimed in 1977 that Humanists UK aimed "to make humanism available and meaningful to the millions who have no alternative belief."


title: Humanists UK

text: The local ethical societies united in 1896 had (mainly during the 1950s) renamed themselves as humanist groups and their number grew over time, becoming today Humanists UK's network of affiliated local humanist groups. A network of celebrants able to conduct non-religious funerals, weddings, naming ceremonies and same sex affirmations (before the law allowing gay civil partnerships) was also developed and continues today as Humanist Ceremonies.


title: Humanists UK

text: Social concerns persisted in Humanists UK's programme. Humanists UK was a co-founder in 1969 of the Social Morality Council (later transmuted into the Norham Foundation), which brought together believers and unbelievers concerned with moral education and with finding agreed solutions to moral problems in society. Humanists UK was active in arguing for voluntary euthanasia and the right to obtain an abortion. It has always sought an "open society". It is credited with substantially popularising the salience and use of the concept in Britain. In 1969 it filled Royal Festival Hall for an influential conference on "Towards an Open Society".


title: Humanists UK

text: Humanists UK claimed that the rules on religious programming within the BBC constitute a "religious privilege" and reserve particular criticism for the Thought for the Day slot on Radio 4's "Today programme". In April 2009 a "breakthrough" in Humanists UK's campaign saw Andrew Copson invited to participate as a humanist representative in the BBC's short-lived Standing Conference on Religion and Belief when it replaced the Central Religious Advisory Committee.


title: Humanists UK

text: In May 2017, the organisation changed its operating name from the British Humanist Association to Humanists UK. Its chief executive, Andrew Copson, said that the change followed "a long, evidence-driven process with focus groups of non-religious people across the UK and research involving over 4,000 of our supporters... Humanists UK represents not just a new logo, but a totally new, friendly look that captures the essence of humanism: open, inclusive, energetic, and modern, with people and their stories placed first and foremost...".


title: Humanists UK

text: In 2021, Humanists UK celebrated its 125th anniversary. It launched a new Humanist Heritage website, cataloguing much of its 125-year history and the wider history of humanism in the UK, and received cross-party video messages of congratulations from the Leader of the Opposition and Labour, Sir Keir Starmer; the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, Nicola Sturgeon; from the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Edward Davey; the co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Siân Berry; and a warm letter of thanks from the Conservative UK Government.


title: Humanists UK

text: The organisation opposes faith schools because "The majority of the evidence [...] points towards their being an unfair and unpopular part of our state education system which the majority of people in Britain want them phased out." In addition, they argue that faith schools are "exclusive, divisive and counter intuitive to social cohesion" and blame religious admissions procedures for "creating school populations that are far from representative of their local populations in religious or socio-economic terms."


title: Humanists UK

text: While the organisation is opposed to faith schools receiving any state funding whatsoever, it supports the Fair Admissions Campaign which has a more limited scope because "it furthers our aims of ending religious discrimination and segregation in state schools; and secondly because we know how important this particular topic is." The organisation campaigns for reform of Religious Education in the UK including a reformed subject covered by the national curriculum which is inclusive of non-religious viewpoints, such as "Belief and Values Education". They believe that "all pupils in all types of school should have the opportunity to consider philosophical and fundamental questions, and that in a pluralist society we should learn about each other's beliefs, including humanist ones".


title: Humanists UK

text: They also support humanist volunteers on the local Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education which currently determine the Religious Education syllabus for each local authority. Educational issues have always featured prominently in Humanists UK campaigns activities, including efforts to abolish compulsory daily collective worship in schools and to reform Religious Education so that it is "Objective, Fair and Balanced" (the title of an influential 1975 booklet) and includes learning about humanism as an alternative life stance.


title: Humanists UK

text: The organisation opposes the teaching of creationism in schools. In September 2011, Humanists UK launched their "Teach evolution, not creationism" campaign, which aimed to establish statutory opposition to creationism in the UK education system. The Department for Education amended the funding agreement for free schools to allow the withdrawal of funding if they teach creationism as established scientific fact. In 2019, Humanists UK's Wales Humanists branch revived the campaign in partnership with David Attenborough after the Welsh Department of Education omitted to include similar safeguards against teaching creationism in schools.


title: Humanists UK

text: Humanists UK has long campaigned in opposition to collective worship laws in the UK which require all schools to hold school assemblies "of a broadly Christian character". In 2019, the charity backed two parents to take a human rights challenge to those laws, arguing that the state had a duty to treat non-religious pupils equally and by effectively isolating those who withdraw from compulsory worship, discrimination occurs. Later that year, Humanists UK launched a new website, Assemblies for All, which compiles school assembly resources from NGOs, charities, government sources, the BBC, and businesses to make it possible for teachers and school leaders to put on "inclusive assemblies" on diverse topics – including the environment, mental health, and public holidays – as opposed to the collective worship required by law.


title: Humanists UK

text: Through its education website Understanding Humanism, the charity also provides resources to teachers who want to include humanist perspectives and information about humanism in lessons.


title: Humanists UK

text: The organisation campaigns for a secular state, which it defines as "a state where public institutions are separate from religious institutions and treat all citizens impartially regardless of their religious or non-religious beliefs." It points to issues such as the joint role of the British monarch (both Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Head of State), the reserved places for bishops in the House of Lords, the status of the Church of England (the officially established church), and other "discriminations based on religion or belief within the system" such as those in education and Public Services.


title: Humanists UK

text: Humanists UK has supported the rights for those who need assistance in ending their own lives, and lobbied parliament for a change in the law, on behalf of Tony Nicklinson and Paul Lamb, in their 'Right to Die' legal cases. In 2014, it intervened in a Supreme Court case in which the court stated it would rule again on a potential declaration of incompatibility between restrictions on the right to die and the Human Rights Act should Parliament fail to legislate decisively. In February 2019 they helped form the Assisted Dying Coalition, a group of like-minded campaign groups seeking to legalise assisted dying for the terminally ill or incurably suffering.


title: Humanists UK

text: Persistent campaigns include defending legal abortion in Great Britain and securing its decriminalisation and its legalisation in Northern Ireland, defending embryonic stem cell research for medical purposes, challenging the state funding of homeopathy through the National Health Service, and calling for consistent and humane law on the slaughter of animals. It has also campaigned for 'opt-out' organ donor registers to improve the availability of life-saving organs in the UK; Wales became the first part of the UK to adopt such a register in 2015. Jersey followed in 2019, to be followed by England in 2020.


title: Humanists UK

text: The organisation also campaigns on marriage laws, demanding full equality for same-sex and humanist marriage ceremonies throughout the UK. Humanists UK had been providing same-sex wedding ceremonies for decades, and had strongly supported legalising same-sex marriage years in advance of eventual UK and Scottish legislation. In 2013, it secured an amendment to the same sex-marriage bill to require UK Government to consult on letting humanist celebrants conduct legal marriages. Though the consultation result strongly indicated that legalisation should go ahead, ministers have so far declined to use the order-making powers to effect the change. It also campaigns for same-sex and humanist marriages in Northern Ireland. In 2017, it supported a humanist couple to challenge Northern Ireland's refusal to give legal recognition to humanist marriages through the High Court in Belfast, which resulted in legalisation of humanist marriages in Northern Ireland in June 2017. After campaigning to legalise same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland, it celebrated its success with a promotional billboards across Belfast emblazoned, 'Love wins for everybody', advertising humanist ceremonies.


title: Humanists UK

text: The charity has been consistently supportive of LGBT rights across its history. It was also among the first organisations to protest Section 28 in the late 1980s, and was one of the most vocal and longstanding advocates of a ban on gay conversion therapy, which it denounces as "religious pseudoscience" with harmful consequences. This eventually led to a 2018 commitment from the UK Government to ban the practice. Its humanist celebrants conducted non-legal partnership/wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples for many decades prior to the law changing.


title: Humanists UK

text: Many of its campaigns are based on free speech and human rights legislation and it has based much of its campaigning on the Human Rights Act 1998. In 2008, the blasphemy law was repealed, an issue over which Humanists UK had long campaigned. It sought unification of existing anti-discrimination legislation and contributed to the Discrimination Law Review which developed the Equality Act 2006 and then the Equality Act 2010.


title: Humanists UK

text: In the 2020s, Humanists UK was one of the charities at the forefront of campaigns to defend the Human Rights Act and the freedom to instigate judicial review from threats of being watered down or repealed. It assembled a large civil society coalition of charities, trade unions, and human rights organisations speaking in defence of the present settlement.


title: Humanists UK

text: On 21 October 2008, Humanists UK lent its official support to "Guardian" journalist Ariane Sherine as she launched a fundraising drive to raise money for the UK's first atheist advertising campaign, the Atheist Bus Campaign. The campaign aimed to raise funds to place the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" on the sides of 30 London buses for four weeks in January 2009. Expecting to raise £5,500 over six months, the atheist author Richard Dawkins agreed to match donations up to £5,500 to make £11,000 total. The campaign raised over £153,000, enabling a nationwide advertising campaign to be launched on 6 January 2009.


title: Humanists UK

text: On 8 January 2009 Christian Voice announced they had made an official complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority asserting that the Atheist Bus slogan broke rules on "substantiation and truthfulness". In total the ASA received 326 complaints about the campaign, with many claiming that the wording was offensive to the religious, however Humanists UK contested the complaint and commented on the plausibility of the ASA making a claim as to the "probability of God's existence". Robert Winston criticised the campaign as "arrogant". The ASA ruled that the slogan was not in breach of advertising code.


title: Humanists UK

text: In 2011, Humanists UK campaigned to get atheists, agnostics and other non-believers to tick the "no religion" box in response to the optional religion question in the 2011 census (as opposed to writing in either a joke religion like "Jedi" or ticking the religion one grew up in). Humanists UK believed the question was worded in such a way as to increase the number of currently non-religious or nominally religious people who list the religion they grew up in rather than their current religious views, and thus the results would have been skewed to make the country seem more religious than it actually is. Humanists UK believes that this supposed overstatement of religious belief creates a situation where "public policy in matters of religion and belief will unduly favour religious lobbies and discriminate against people who do not live their lives under religion".


title: Humanists UK

text: Posters for the campaign which used the slogan "If you're not religious, for God's sake say so" were refused by companies owning advertising hoardings in railway stations following advice from the Advertising Standards Authority who believe the adverts had "the potential to cause widespread and serious offence".


title: Humanists UK

text: The Census results for England and Wales showed that 14.1 million people, about a quarter of the entire population (25%), stated they had no religion at all, a rise of 6.4 million since the 2001 census. Humanists UK said the fall in the number of Christians from 72% to below 60% was "astounding", and calculated that they could be in a minority by 2018.


title: Humanists UK

text: Set up in 2010, the Resolution Revolution campaign aims to "[recast] the tired old New Year resolution – so often about breaking a negative habit – as a pledge to do something positive for others". Participation is open to all and not restricted to humanists or the non-religious.


title: Humanists UK

text: In 2014, Humanists UK launched two public awareness campaigns. The first, called "That's Humanism!", was an Internet-based campaign revolving around four videos on humanist responses to ethics, happiness, death, and the scientific method, as narrated by its distinguished supporter, Stephen Fry. The videos, which were widely shared on social media, were intended to introduce non-religious people who were humanist in their outlook to the existence of a community of like-minded people living their lives on the basis of reason and empathy. The second campaign, called "Thought for the Commute", was a London Underground campaign featuring posters depicting humanist responses from Virginia Woolf, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell and A.C. Grayling to the question "What's it all for?" The campaign intended to be a positive introduction to Humanism for commuters, as well as to highlight the exclusion of humanist voices from BBC slots such as "Thought for the Day". After announcing that it intended to replicate it in other UK cities, the campaign moved to bus posters in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool for four weeks in November and December 2014, this time depicting humanist responses from Jim Al-Khalili, Jawaharlal Nehru, Natalie Haynes and Russell once again.