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+A glacier (US:  /ˈɡleɪʃər/ or UK: /ˈɡlæsiər, ˈɡleɪsiər/) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation (melting and sublimation) over many years, often centuries. Glaciers slowly deform and flow under stresses induced by their weight, creating crevasses, seracs, and other distinguishing features. They also abrade rock and debris from their substrate to create landforms such as cirques and moraines. Glaciers form only on land and are distinct from the much thinner sea ice and lake ice that form on the surface of bodies of water.
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+On Earth, 99% of glacial ice is contained within vast ice sheets (also known as "continental glaciers") in the polar regions, but glaciers may be found in mountain ranges on every continent including Oceania's high-latitude oceanic island countries such as New Zealand. Between latitudes 35°N and 35°S, glaciers occur only in the Himalayas, Andes, and a few high mountains in East Africa, Mexico, New Guinea and on Zard Kuh in Iran.[1] With more than 7,000, Pakistan has more glaciers than anywhere except the polar regions.[2] Glaciers cover about 10% of Earth's land surface. Continental glaciers cover nearly 13 million km2 (5 million sq mi) or about 98% of Antarctica's 13.2 million km2 (5.1 million sq mi), with an average thickness of 2,100 m (7,000 ft). Greenland and Patagonia also have huge expanses of continental glaciers.[3] The volume of glaciers, not including the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, has been estimated at 170,000 km3.[4]
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+Glacial ice is the largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth.[5]  Many glaciers from temperate, alpine and seasonal polar climates store water as ice during the colder seasons and release it later in the form of meltwater as warmer summer temperatures cause the glacier to melt, creating a water source that is especially important for plants, animals and human uses when other sources may be scant. Within high-altitude and Antarctic environments, the seasonal temperature difference is often not sufficient to release meltwater.
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+Since glacial mass is affected by long-term climatic changes, e.g., precipitation, mean temperature, and cloud cover, glacial mass changes are considered among the most sensitive indicators of climate change and are a major source of variations in sea level.
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+A large piece of compressed ice, or a glacier, appears blue, as large quantities of water appear blue. This is because water molecules absorb other colors more efficiently than blue. The other reason for the blue color of glaciers is the lack of air bubbles. Air bubbles, which give a white color to ice, are squeezed out by pressure increasing the density of the created ice.
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+The word glacier is a loanword from French and goes back, via Franco-Provençal, to the Vulgar Latin glaciārium, derived from the Late Latin glacia, and ultimately Latin glaciēs, meaning "ice".[6] The processes and features caused by or related to glaciers are referred to as glacial. The process of glacier establishment, growth and flow is called glaciation. The corresponding area of study is called glaciology. Glaciers are important components of the global cryosphere.
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+Ice calving from the terminus of the Perito Moreno Glacier in western Patagonia, Argentina.
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+The Aletsch Glacier, the largest glacier of the Alps, in Switzerland.
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+The Quelccaya Ice Cap is the second-largest glaciated area in the tropics, in Peru.
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+Glaciers are categorized by their morphology, thermal characteristics, and behavior. Alpine glaciers form on the crests and slopes of mountains. A glacier that fills a valley is called a valley glacier, or alternatively an alpine glacier or mountain glacier.[7] A large body of glacial ice astride a mountain, mountain range, or volcano is termed an ice cap or ice field.[8] Ice caps have an area less than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi) by definition.
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+Glacial bodies larger than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi) are called ice sheets or continental glaciers.[9] Several kilometers deep, they obscure the underlying topography. Only nunataks protrude from their surfaces. The only extant ice sheets are the two that cover most of Antarctica and Greenland.[10] They contain vast quantities of fresh water, enough that if both melted, global sea levels would rise by over 70 m (230 ft).[11] Portions of an ice sheet or cap that extend into water are called ice shelves; they tend to be thin with limited slopes and reduced velocities.[12]  Narrow, fast-moving sections of an ice sheet are called ice streams.[13][14] In Antarctica, many ice streams drain into large ice shelves. Some drain directly into the sea, often with an ice tongue, like Mertz Glacier.
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+Tidewater glaciers are glaciers that terminate in the sea, including most glaciers flowing from Greenland, Antarctica, Baffin and Ellesmere Islands in Canada, Southeast Alaska, and the Northern and Southern Patagonian Ice Fields. As the ice reaches the sea, pieces break off, or calve, forming icebergs. Most tidewater glaciers calve above sea level, which often results in a tremendous impact as the iceberg strikes the water. Tidewater glaciers undergo centuries-long cycles of advance and retreat that are much less affected by climate change than those of other glaciers.[15]
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+Mouth of the Schlatenkees Glacier near Innergschlöß, Austria.
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+The Grotta del Gelo is a cave of Etna volcano, the southernmost glacier in Europe.
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+Sightseeing boat in front of a tidewater glacier, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.
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+Thermally, a temperate glacier is at melting point throughout the year, from its surface to its base. The ice of a polar glacier is always below the freezing point from the surface to its base, although the surface snow pack may experience seasonal melting. A subpolar glacier includes both temperate and polar ice, depending on depth beneath the surface and position along the length of the glacier. In a similar way, the thermal regime of a glacier is often described by its basal temperature. A cold-based glacier is below freezing at the ice-ground interface and is thus frozen to the underlying substrate. A warm-based glacier is above or at freezing at the interface and is able to slide at this contact.[16] This contrast is thought to a large extent to govern the ability of a glacier to effectively erode its bed, as sliding ice promotes plucking at rock from the surface below.[17] Glaciers which are partly cold-based and partly warm-based are known as polythermal.[16]
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+Glaciers form where the accumulation of snow and ice exceeds ablation. A glacier usually originates from a landform called 'cirque' (or corrie or cwm) – a typically armchair-shaped geological feature (such as a depression between mountains enclosed by arêtes) – which collects and compresses through gravity the snow that falls into it. This snow collects and is compacted by the weight of the snow falling above it, forming névé. Further crushing of the individual snowflakes and squeezing the air from the snow turns it into "glacial ice". This glacial ice will fill the cirque until it "overflows" through a geological weakness or vacancy, such as the gap between two mountains. When the mass of snow and ice is sufficiently thick, it begins to move by a combination of surface slope, gravity, and pressure.  On steeper slopes, this can occur with as little as 15 m (50 ft) of snow-ice.
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+In temperate glaciers, snow repeatedly freezes and thaws, changing into granular ice called firn. Under the pressure of the layers of ice and snow above it, this granular ice fuses into denser firn. Over a period of years, layers of firn undergo further compaction and become glacial ice. Glacier ice is slightly more dense than ice formed from frozen water because glacier ice contains fewer trapped air bubbles.
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+Glacial ice has a distinctive blue tint because it absorbs some red light due to an overtone of the infrared OH stretching mode of the water molecule. Liquid water is blue for the same reason. The blue of glacier ice is sometimes misattributed to Rayleigh scattering of bubbles in the ice.[18]
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+Gorner Glacier in Switzerland.
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+A packrafter passes a wall of freshly exposed blue ice on Spencer Glacier, in Alaska. Glacial ice acts like a filter on light, and the more time light can spend traveling through ice, the bluer it becomes.
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+A glacier cave located on the Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina.
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+A glacier originates at a location called its glacier head and terminates at its glacier foot, snout, or terminus.
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+Glaciers are broken into zones based on surface snowpack and melt conditions.[19]  The ablation zone is the region where there is a net loss in glacier mass. The upper part of a glacier, where accumulation exceeds ablation, is called the accumulation zone. The equilibrium line separates the ablation zone and the accumulation zone; it is the contour where the amount of new snow gained by accumulation is equal to the amount of ice lost through ablation. In general, the accumulation zone accounts for 60–70% of the glacier's surface area, more if the glacier calves icebergs. Ice in the accumulation zone is deep enough to exert a downward force that erodes underlying rock.  After a glacier melts, it often leaves behind a bowl- or amphitheater-shaped depression that ranges in size from large basins like the Great Lakes to smaller mountain depressions known as cirques.
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+The accumulation zone can be subdivided based on its melt conditions.
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+The health of a glacier is usually assessed by determining the glacier mass balance or observing terminus behavior. Healthy glaciers have large accumulation zones, more than 60% of their area is snow-covered at the end of the melt season, and they have a terminus with vigorous flow.
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+Following the Little Ice Age's end around 1850, glaciers around the Earth have retreated substantially. A slight cooling led to the advance of many alpine glaciers between 1950 and 1985, but since 1985 glacier retreat and mass loss has become larger and increasingly ubiquitous.[20][21][22]
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+Glaciers move, or flow, downhill by the force of gravity and the internal deformation of ice.[23] Ice behaves like a brittle solid until its thickness exceeds about 50 m (160 ft). The pressure on ice deeper than 50 m causes plastic flow. At the molecular level, ice consists of stacked layers of molecules with relatively weak bonds between layers. When the stress on the layer above exceeds the inter-layer binding strength, it moves faster than the layer below.[24]
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+Glaciers also move through basal sliding. In this process, a glacier slides over the terrain on which it sits, lubricated by the presence of liquid water.  The water is created from ice that melts under high pressure from frictional heating.  Basal sliding is dominant in temperate or warm-based glaciers.
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+Although evidence in favour of glacial flow was known by the early 19th century, other theories of glacial motion were advanced, such as the idea that meltwater, refreezing inside glaciers, caused the glacier to dilate and extend its length. As it became clear that glaciers behaved to some degree as if the ice were a viscous fluid, it was argued that "regelation", or the melting and refreezing of ice at a temperature lowered by the pressure on the ice inside the glacier, was what allowed the ice to deform and flow. James Forbes came up with the essentially correct explanation in the 1840s, although it was several decades before it was fully accepted.[25]
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+The top 50 m (160 ft) of a glacier are rigid because they are under low pressure. This upper section is known as the fracture zone and moves mostly as a single unit over the plastic-flowing lower section. When a glacier moves through irregular terrain, cracks called crevasses develop in the fracture zone.  Crevasses form because of differences in glacier velocity.  If two rigid sections of a glacier move at different speeds or directions, shear forces cause them to break apart, opening a crevasse.  Crevasses are seldom more than 46 m (150 ft) deep but in some cases can be at least 300 m (1,000 ft) deep. Beneath this point, the plasticity of the ice prevents the formation of cracks.  Intersecting crevasses can create isolated peaks in the ice, called seracs.
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+Crevasses can form in several different ways.  Transverse crevasses are transverse to flow and form where steeper slopes cause a glacier to accelerate.  Longitudinal crevasses form semi-parallel to flow where a glacier expands laterally.  Marginal crevasses form near the edge of the glacier, caused by the reduction in speed caused by friction of the valley walls.  Marginal crevasses are largely transverse to flow.  Moving glacier ice can sometimes separate from the stagnant ice above, forming a bergschrund.  Bergschrunds resemble crevasses but are singular features at a glacier's margins. Crevasses make travel over glaciers hazardous, especially when they are hidden by fragile snow bridges.
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+Below the equilibrium line, glacial meltwater is concentrated in stream channels.  Meltwater can pool in proglacial lakes on top of a glacier or descend into the depths of a glacier via moulins. Streams within or beneath a glacier flow in englacial or sub-glacial tunnels.  These tunnels sometimes reemerge at the glacier's surface.[26]
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+Ice cracks in the Titlis Glacier.
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+Crossing a crevasse on the Easton Glacier, Mount Baker, in the North Cascades, United States.
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+An exposed glacier tube that once transported water down the interior of the glacier.
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+The speed of glacial displacement is partly determined by friction. Friction makes the ice at the bottom of the glacier move more slowly than ice at the top. In alpine glaciers, friction is also generated at the valley's side walls, which slows the edges relative to the center.
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+Mean glacial speed varies greatly but is typically around 1 m (3 ft) per day.[27] There may be no motion in stagnant areas; for example, in parts of Alaska, trees can establish themselves on surface sediment deposits. In other cases, glaciers can move as fast as 20–30 m (70–100 ft) per day, such as in Greenland's Jakobshavn Isbræ.  Glacial speed is affected by factors such as slope, ice thickness, snowfall, longitudinal confinement, basal temperature, meltwater production, and bed hardness.
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+A few glaciers have periods of very rapid advancement called surges. These glaciers exhibit normal movement until suddenly they accelerate, then return to their previous movement state.[28] These surges may be caused by failure of the underlying bedrock, the pooling of meltwater at the base of the glacier[29] — perhaps delivered from a supraglacial lake — or the simple accumulation of mass beyond a critical "tipping point".[30] Temporary rates up to 90 m (300 ft) per day have occurred when increased temperature or overlying pressure caused bottom ice to melt and water to accumulate beneath a glacier.
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+In glaciated areas where the glacier moves faster than one km per year, glacial earthquakes occur.  These are large scale earthquakes that have seismic magnitudes as high as 6.1.[31][32]  The number of glacial earthquakes in Greenland peaks every year in July, August and September and increased rapidly in the 1990s and 2000s. In a study using data from January 1993 through October 2005, more events were detected every year since 2002, and twice as many events were recorded in 2005 as there were in any other year.[32]
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+Ogives (or Forbes bands)[33] are alternating wave crests and valleys that appear as dark and light bands of ice on glacier surfaces.  They are linked to seasonal motion of glaciers; the width of one dark and one light band generally equals the annual movement of the glacier.  Ogives are formed when ice from an icefall is severely broken up, increasing ablation surface area during summer.  This creates a swale and space for snow accumulation in the winter, which in turn creates a ridge.[34]  Sometimes ogives consist only of undulations or color bands and are described as wave ogives or band ogives.[35]
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+Glaciers are present on every continent and in approximately fifty countries, excluding those (Australia, South Africa) that have glaciers only on distant subantarctic island territories. Extensive glaciers are found in Antarctica, Argentina, Chile, Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Iceland. Mountain glaciers are widespread, especially in the Andes, the Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains, the Caucasus, Scandinavian mountains, and the Alps. Snezhnika glacier in Pirin Mountain, Bulgaria with a latitude of 41°46′09″ N is the southernmost glacial mass in Europe.[36] Mainland Australia currently contains no glaciers, although a small glacier on Mount Kosciuszko was present in the last glacial period.[37] In New Guinea, small, rapidly diminishing, glaciers are located on Puncak Jaya.[38] Africa has glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, on Mount Kenya, and in the Rwenzori Mountains.  Oceanic islands with glaciers include Iceland, several of the islands off the coast of Norway including Svalbard and Jan Mayen to the far north, New Zealand and the subantarctic islands of Marion, Heard, Grande Terre (Kerguelen) and Bouvet. During glacial periods of the Quaternary, Taiwan, Hawaii on Mauna Kea[39] and Tenerife also had large alpine glaciers, while the Faroe and Crozet Islands[40] were completely glaciated.
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+The permanent snow cover necessary for glacier formation is affected by factors such as the degree of slope on the land, amount of snowfall and the winds. Glaciers can be found in all latitudes except from 20° to 27° north and south of the equator where the presence of the descending limb of the Hadley circulation lowers precipitation so much that with high insolation snow lines reach above 6,500 m (21,330 ft). Between 19˚N and 19˚S, however, precipitation is higher, and the mountains above 5,000 m (16,400 ft) usually have permanent snow.
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+Even at high latitudes, glacier formation is not inevitable.  Areas of the Arctic, such as Banks Island, and the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica are considered polar deserts where glaciers cannot form because they receive little snowfall despite the bitter cold.  Cold air, unlike warm air, is unable to transport much water vapor.  Even during glacial periods of the Quaternary, Manchuria, lowland Siberia,[41] and central and northern Alaska,[42] though extraordinarily cold, had such light snowfall that glaciers could not form.[43][44]
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+In addition to the dry, unglaciated polar regions, some mountains and volcanoes in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina are high (4,500 to 6,900 m or 14,800 to 22,600 ft) and cold, but the relative lack of precipitation prevents snow from accumulating into glaciers. This is because these peaks are located near or in the hyperarid Atacama Desert.
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+Glaciers erode terrain through two principal processes: abrasion and plucking.
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+As glaciers flow over bedrock, they soften and lift blocks of rock into the ice. This process, called plucking, is caused by subglacial water that penetrates fractures in the bedrock and subsequently freezes and expands. This expansion causes the ice to act as a lever that loosens the rock by lifting it. Thus, sediments of all sizes become part of the glacier's load. If a retreating glacier gains enough debris, it may become a rock glacier, like the Timpanogos Glacier in Utah.
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+Abrasion occurs when the ice and its load of rock fragments slide over bedrock and function as sandpaper, smoothing and polishing the bedrock below.  The pulverized rock this process produces is called rock flour and is made up of rock grains between 0.002 and 0.00625 mm in size.  Abrasion leads to steeper valley walls and mountain slopes in alpine settings, which can cause avalanches and rock slides, which add even more material to the glacier. Glacial abrasion is commonly characterized by glacial striations.  Glaciers produce these when they contain large boulders that carve long scratches in the bedrock.  By mapping the direction of the striations, researchers can determine the direction of the glacier's movement.  Similar to striations are chatter marks, lines of crescent-shape depressions in the rock underlying a glacier.  They are formed by abrasion when boulders in the glacier are repeatedly caught and released as they are dragged along the bedrock.
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+The rate of glacier erosion varies. Six factors control erosion rate:
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+When the bedrock has frequent fractures on the surface, glacial erosion rates tend to increase as plucking is the main erosive force on the surface; when the bedrock has wide gaps between sporadic fractures, however, abrasion tends to be the dominant erosive form and glacial erosion rates become slow.[45] Glaciers in lower latitudes tend to be much more erosive than glaciers in higher latitudes, because they have more meltwater reaching the glacial base and facilitate sediment production and transport under the same moving speed and amount of ice.[46]
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+Material that becomes incorporated in a glacier is typically carried as far as the zone of ablation before being deposited. Glacial deposits are of two distinct types:
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+Larger pieces of rock that are encrusted in till or deposited on the surface are called "glacial erratics".  They range in size from pebbles to boulders, but as they are often moved great distances, they may be drastically different from the material upon which they are found.  Patterns of glacial erratics hint at past glacial motions.
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+Glacial moraines are formed by the deposition of material from a glacier and are exposed after the glacier has retreated.  They usually appear as linear mounds of till, a non-sorted mixture of rock, gravel, and boulders within a matrix of fine powdery material. Terminal or end moraines are formed at the foot or terminal end of a glacier. Lateral moraines are formed on the sides of the glacier. Medial moraines are formed when two different glaciers merge and the lateral moraines of each coalesce to form a moraine in the middle of the combined glacier. Less apparent are ground moraines, also called glacial drift, which often blankets the surface underneath the glacier downslope from the equilibrium line. The term moraine is of French origin.  It was coined by peasants to describe alluvial embankments and rims found near the margins of glaciers in the French Alps. In modern geology, the term is used more broadly and is applied to a series of formations, all of which are composed of till. Moraines can also create moraine-dammed lakes.
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+Drumlins are asymmetrical, canoe-shaped hills made mainly of till. Their heights vary from 15 to 50 meters, and they can reach a kilometer in length. The steepest side of the hill faces the direction from which the ice advanced (stoss), while a longer slope is left in the ice's direction of movement (lee). Drumlins are found in groups called drumlin fields or drumlin camps. One of these fields is found east of Rochester, New York; it is estimated to contain about 10,000 drumlins. Although the process that forms drumlins is not fully understood, their shape implies that they are products of the plastic deformation zone of ancient glaciers. It is believed that many drumlins were formed when glaciers advanced over and altered the deposits of earlier glaciers.
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+Before glaciation, mountain valleys have a characteristic "V" shape, produced by eroding water. During glaciation, these valleys are often widened, deepened and smoothed to form a "U"-shaped glacial valley or glacial trough, as it is sometimes called.[47]  The erosion that creates glacial valleys truncates any spurs of rock or earth that may have earlier extended across the valley, creating broadly triangular-shaped cliffs called truncated spurs.  Within glacial valleys, depressions created by plucking and abrasion can be filled by lakes, called paternoster lakes.  If a glacial valley runs into a large body of water, it forms a fjord.
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+Typically glaciers deepen their valleys more than their smaller tributaries. Therefore, when glaciers recede, the valleys of the tributary glaciers remain above the main glacier's depression and are called hanging valleys.
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+At the start of a classic valley glacier is a bowl-shaped cirque, which has escarped walls on three sides but is open on the side that descends into the valley. Cirques are where ice begins to accumulate in a glacier.  Two glacial cirques may form back to back and erode their backwalls until only a narrow ridge, called an arête is left. This structure may result in a mountain pass.  If multiple cirques encircle a single mountain, they create pointed pyramidal peaks; particularly steep examples are called horns.
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+Passage of glacial ice over an area of bedrock may cause the rock to be sculpted into a knoll called a roche moutonnée, or "sheepback" rock. Roches moutonnées may be elongated, rounded and asymmetrical in shape. They range in length from less than a meter to several hundred meters long.[48]  Roches moutonnées have a gentle slope on their up-glacier sides and a steep to vertical face on their down-glacier sides. The glacier abrades the smooth slope on the upstream side as it flows along, but tears rock fragments loose and carries them away from the downstream side via plucking.
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+As the water that rises from the ablation zone moves away from the glacier, it carries fine eroded sediments with it.  As the speed of the water decreases, so does its capacity to carry objects in suspension. The water thus gradually deposits the sediment as it runs, creating an alluvial plain. When this phenomenon occurs in a valley, it is called a valley train. When the deposition is in an estuary, the sediments are known as bay mud. Outwash plains and valley trains are usually accompanied by basins known as "kettles". These are small lakes formed when large ice blocks that are trapped in alluvium melt and produce water-filled depressions. Kettle diameters range from 5 m to 13 km, with depths of up to 45 meters.  Most are circular in shape because the blocks of ice that formed them were rounded as they melted.[49]
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+When a glacier's size shrinks below a critical point, its flow stops and it becomes stationary. Meanwhile, meltwater within and beneath the ice leaves stratified alluvial deposits. These deposits, in the forms of columns, terraces and clusters, remain after the glacier melts and are known as "glacial deposits". Glacial deposits that take the shape of hills or mounds are called kames. Some kames form when meltwater deposits sediments through openings in the interior of the ice. Others are produced by fans or deltas created by meltwater.  When the glacial ice occupies a valley, it can form terraces or kames along the sides of the valley. Long, sinuous glacial deposits are called eskers.  Eskers are composed of sand and gravel that was deposited by meltwater streams that flowed through ice tunnels within or beneath a glacier. They remain after the ice melts, with heights exceeding 100 meters and lengths of as long as 100 km.
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+Very fine glacial sediments or rock flour is often picked up by wind blowing over the bare surface and may be deposited great distances from the original fluvial deposition site. These eolian loess deposits may be very deep, even hundreds of meters, as in areas of China and the Midwestern United States. Katabatic winds can be important in this process.
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+Large masses, such as ice sheets or glaciers, can depress the crust of the Earth into the mantle.[50]  The depression usually totals a third of the ice sheet or glacier's thickness. After the ice sheet or glacier melts, the mantle begins to flow back to its original position, pushing the crust back up. This post-glacial rebound, which proceeds very slowly after the melting of the ice sheet or glacier, is currently occurring in measurable amounts in Scandinavia and the Great Lakes region of North America.
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+A geomorphological feature created by the same process on a smaller scale is known as dilation-faulting. It occurs where previously compressed rock is allowed to return to its original shape more rapidly than can be maintained without faulting.  This leads to an effect similar to what would be seen if the rock were hit by a large hammer. Dilation faulting can be observed in recently de-glaciated parts of Iceland and Cumbria.
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+The polar ice caps of Mars show geologic evidence of glacial deposits. The south polar cap is especially comparable to glaciers on Earth.[51] Topographical features and computer models indicate the existence of more glaciers in Mars' past.[52] At mid-latitudes, between 35° and 65° north or south, Martian glaciers are affected by the thin Martian atmosphere. Because of the low atmospheric pressure, ablation near the surface is solely caused by sublimation, not melting. As on Earth, many glaciers are covered with a layer of rocks which insulates the ice. A radar instrument on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found ice under a thin layer of rocks in formations called lobate debris aprons (LDAs).[53][54][55][56][57]
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+The pictures below illustrate how landscape features on Mars closely resemble those on the Earth.
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+Romer Lake's Elephant Foot Glacier in the Earth's Arctic, as seen by Landsat 8.  This picture shows several glaciers that have the same shape as many features on Mars that are believed to also be glaciers.  The next three images from Mars show shapes similar to the Elephant Foot Glacier.
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+Mesa in Ismenius Lacus quadrangle, as seen by CTX. Mesa has several glaciers eroding it. One of the glaciers is seen in greater detail in the next two images from HiRISE.  Image from Ismenius Lacus quadrangle.
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+Glacier as seen by HiRISE under the HiWish program. Area in the rectangle is enlarged in the next photo. Zone of accumulation of snow at the top. Glacier is moving down valley, then spreading out on plain. Evidence for flow comes from the many lines on surface. Location is in Protonilus Mensae in Ismenius Lacus quadrangle.
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+Enlargement of area in rectangle of the previous image. On Earth, the ridge would be called the terminal moraine of an alpine glacier. Picture taken with HiRISE under the HiWish program.  Image from Ismenius Lacus quadrangle.

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+Alzheimer's disease (AD), also referred to simply as Alzheimer's, is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and gradually worsens over time.[1][2] It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia.[1][2] The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events.[1] As the disease advances, symptoms can include problems with language, disorientation (including easily getting lost), mood swings, loss of motivation, not managing self-care, and behavioural issues.[1][2] As a person's condition declines, they often withdraw from family and society.[1] Gradually, bodily functions are lost, ultimately leading to death.[10] Although the speed of progression can vary, the typical life expectancy following diagnosis is three to nine years.[7][11]
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+The cause of Alzheimer's disease is poorly understood.[1] About 70% of the risk is believed to be inherited from a person's parents, with many genes usually involved.[4] Other risk factors include a history of head injuries, depression, and hypertension.[1] The disease process is associated with plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain.[4] A probable diagnosis is based on the history of the illness and cognitive testing with medical imaging and blood tests to rule out other possible causes.[5] Initial symptoms are often mistaken for normal ageing.[1] Examination of brain tissue is needed for a definite diagnosis.[4] Mental and physical exercise, and avoiding obesity may decrease the risk of AD; however, evidence to support these recommendations is weak.[4][12] There are no medications or supplements that have been shown to decrease risk.[13]
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+No treatments stop or reverse its progression, though some may temporarily improve symptoms.[2] Affected people increasingly rely on others for assistance, often placing a burden on the caregiver.[14] The pressures can include social, psychological, physical, and economic elements.[14] Exercise programs may be beneficial with respect to activities of daily living and can potentially improve outcomes.[15] Behavioural problems or psychosis due to dementia are often treated with antipsychotics, but this is not usually recommended, as there is little benefit and an increased risk of early death.[16][17]
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+In 2015, there were approximately 29.8 million people worldwide with AD.[2][8] It most often begins in people over 65 years of age, although 4–5% of cases are early-onset Alzheimer's.[3] It affects about 6% of people 65 years and older.[1] In 2015, dementia resulted in about 1.9 million deaths.[9] It was first described by, and later named after, German psychiatrist and pathologist Alois Alzheimer in 1906.[18] In developed countries, AD is one of the most financially costly diseases.[19][20]
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+The disease course is divided into four stages, with a progressive pattern of cognitive and functional impairment.
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+The first symptoms are often mistakenly attributed to ageing or stress.[22] Detailed neuropsychological testing can reveal mild cognitive difficulties up to eight years before a person fulfills the clinical criteria for diagnosis of AD.[23] These early symptoms can affect the most complex activities of daily living.[24] The most noticeable deficit is short term memory loss, which shows up as difficulty in remembering recently learned facts and inability to acquire new information.[23][25]
+
+Subtle problems with the executive functions of attentiveness, planning, flexibility, and abstract thinking, or impairments in semantic memory (memory of meanings, and concept relationships) can also be symptomatic of the early stages of AD.[23] Apathy can be observed at this stage, and remains the most persistent neuropsychiatric symptom throughout the course of the disease.[26] Depressive symptoms, irritability and reduced awareness of subtle memory difficulties are also common.[27]
+The preclinical stage of the disease has also been termed mild cognitive impairment (MCI).[25] This is often found to be a transitional stage between normal ageing and dementia. MCI can present with a variety of symptoms, and when memory loss is the predominant symptom, it is termed "amnestic MCI" and is frequently seen as a prodromal stage of Alzheimer's disease.[28]
+
+In people with AD, the increasing impairment of learning and memory eventually leads to a definitive diagnosis. In a small percentage, difficulties with language, executive functions, perception (agnosia), or execution of movements (apraxia) are more prominent than memory problems.[29] AD does not affect all memory capacities equally. Older memories of the person's life (episodic memory), facts learned (semantic memory), and implicit memory (the memory of the body on how to do things, such as using a fork to eat or how to drink from a glass) are affected to a lesser degree than new facts or memories.[30][31]
+
+Language problems are mainly characterised by a shrinking vocabulary and decreased word fluency, leading to a general impoverishment of oral and written language.[29][32] In this stage, the person with Alzheimer's is usually capable of communicating basic ideas adequately.[29][32][33]  While performing fine motor tasks such as writing, drawing, or dressing, certain movement coordination and planning difficulties (apraxia) may be present, but they are commonly unnoticed.[29] As the disease progresses, people with AD can often continue to perform many tasks independently, but may need assistance or supervision with the most cognitively demanding activities.[29]
+
+Progressive deterioration eventually hinders independence, with subjects being unable to perform most common activities of daily living.[29] Speech difficulties become evident due to an inability to recall vocabulary, which leads to frequent incorrect word substitutions (paraphasias). Reading and writing skills are also progressively lost.[29][33] Complex motor sequences become less coordinated as time passes and AD progresses, so the risk of falling increases.[29] During this phase, memory problems worsen, and the person may fail to recognise close relatives.[29] Long-term memory, which was previously intact, becomes impaired.[29]
+
+Behavioural and neuropsychiatric changes become more prevalent. Common manifestations are wandering, irritability and labile affect, leading to crying, outbursts of unpremeditated aggression, or resistance to caregiving.[29] Sundowning can also appear.[34] Approximately 30% of people with AD develop illusionary misidentifications and other delusional symptoms.[29] Subjects also lose insight of their disease process and limitations (anosognosia).[29] Urinary incontinence can develop.[29] These symptoms create stress for relatives and carers, which can be reduced by moving the person from home care to other long-term care facilities.[29][35]
+
+During the final stages, the patient is completely dependent upon caregivers.[29] Language is reduced to simple phrases or even single words, eventually leading to complete loss of speech.[29][33] Despite the loss of verbal language abilities, people can often understand and return emotional signals. Although aggressiveness can still be present, extreme apathy and exhaustion are much more common symptoms. People with Alzheimer's disease will ultimately not be able to perform even the simplest tasks independently; muscle mass and mobility deteriorates to the point where they are bedridden and unable to feed themselves. The cause of death is usually an external factor, such as infection of pressure ulcers or pneumonia, not the disease itself.[29]
+
+The cause for most Alzheimer's cases is still mostly unknown except for 1% to 5% of cases where genetic differences have been identified.[36][37] Several competing hypotheses exist trying to explain the cause of the disease.
+
+The genetic heritability of Alzheimer's disease (and memory components thereof), based on reviews of twin and family studies, ranges from 49% to 79%.[38] Around 0.1% of the cases are familial forms of autosomal (not sex-linked) dominant inheritance, which have an onset before age 65.[39] This form of the disease is known as early onset familial Alzheimer's disease. Most of autosomal dominant familial AD can be attributed to mutations in one of three genes: those encoding amyloid precursor protein (APP) and presenilins 1 and 2.[40] Most mutations in the APP and presenilin genes increase the production of a small protein called Aβ42, which is the main component of senile plaques.[41] Some of the mutations merely alter the ratio between Aβ42 and the other major forms—particularly Aβ40—without increasing Aβ42 levels.[42] Two other genes associated with autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease are ABCA7 and SORL1.[43]
+
+Most cases of Alzheimer's disease do not exhibit autosomal-dominant inheritance and are termed sporadic AD, in which environmental and genetic differences may act as risk factors. The best known genetic risk factor is the inheritance of the ε4 allele of the apolipoprotein E (APOE).[44][45] Between 40 and 80% of people with AD possess at least one APOEε4 allele.[45] The APOEε4 allele increases the risk of the disease by three times in heterozygotes and by 15 times in homozygotes.[39] Like many human diseases, environmental effects and genetic modifiers result in incomplete penetrance. For example, certain Nigerian populations do not show the relationship between dose of APOEε4 and incidence or age-of-onset for Alzheimer's disease seen in other human populations.[46][47] Early attempts to screen up to 400 candidate genes for association with late-onset sporadic AD (LOAD) resulted in a low yield.[39][40] More recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have found 19 areas in genes that appear to affect the risk.[48] These genes include: CASS4, CELF1, FERMT2, HLA-DRB5, INPP5D, MEF2C, NME8, PTK2B, SORL1, ZCWPW1, SLC24A4, CLU, PICALM, CR1, BIN1, MS4A, ABCA7, EPHA1, and CD2AP.[48]
+
+Alleles in the TREM2 gene have been associated with a 3 to 5 times higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.[49][50] A suggested mechanism of action is that in some variants in TREM2, white blood cells in the brain are no longer able to control the amount of beta amyloid present. Many single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are associated with Alzheimer's, with a 2018 study adding 30 SNPs by differentiating AD into 6 categories, including memory, language, visuospatial, and executive functioning.[51]
+
+The oldest hypothesis, on which most currently available drug therapies are based, is the cholinergic hypothesis,[52] which proposes that AD is caused by reduced synthesis of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. The cholinergic hypothesis has not maintained widespread support, largely because medications intended to treat acetylcholine deficiency have not been very effective.[53]
+
+In 1991, the amyloid hypothesis postulated that extracellular amyloid beta (Aβ) deposits are the fundamental cause of the disease.[54][55] Support for this postulate comes from the location of the gene for the amyloid precursor protein (APP) on chromosome 21, together with the fact that people with trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) who have an extra gene copy almost universally exhibit at least the earliest symptoms of AD by 40 years of age.[56][57] Also, a specific isoform of apolipoprotein, APOE4, is a major genetic risk factor for AD. While apolipoproteins enhance the breakdown of beta amyloid, some isoforms are not very effective at this task (such as APOE4), leading to excess amyloid buildup in the brain.[58] Further evidence comes from the finding that transgenic mice that express a mutant form of the human APP gene develop fibrillar amyloid plaques and Alzheimer's-like brain pathology with spatial learning deficits.[59]
+
+An experimental vaccine was found to clear the amyloid plaques in early human trials, but it did not have any significant effect on dementia.[60] Researchers have been led to suspect non-plaque Aβ oligomers (aggregates of many monomers) as the primary pathogenic form of Aβ. These toxic oligomers, also referred to as amyloid-derived diffusible ligands (ADDLs), bind to a surface receptor on neurons and change the structure of the synapse, thereby disrupting neuronal communication.[61] One receptor for Aβ oligomers may be the prion protein, the same protein that has been linked to mad cow disease and the related human condition, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, thus potentially linking the underlying mechanism of these neurodegenerative disorders with that of Alzheimer's disease.[62]
+
+In 2009, this hypothesis was updated, suggesting that a close relative of the beta-amyloid protein, and not necessarily the beta-amyloid itself, may be a major culprit in the disease. The hypothesis holds that an amyloid-related mechanism that prunes neuronal connections in the brain in the fast-growth phase of early life may be triggered by ageing-related processes in later life to cause the neuronal withering of Alzheimer's disease.[63] N-APP, a fragment of APP from the peptide's N-terminus, is adjacent to beta-amyloid and is cleaved from APP by one of the same enzymes. N-APP triggers the self-destruct pathway by binding to a neuronal receptor called death receptor 6 (DR6, also known as TNFRSF21).[63] DR6 is highly expressed in the human brain regions most affected by Alzheimer's, so it is possible that the N-APP/DR6 pathway might be hijacked in the ageing brain to cause damage. In this model, beta-amyloid plays a complementary role, by depressing synaptic function.
+
+A Japanese pedigree of familial Alzheimer's disease was found to be associated with a deletion mutation of codon 693 of APP.[64] This mutation and its association with Alzheimer's disease was first reported in 2008.[65] This mutation is known as the Osaka mutation. Only homozygotes with this mutation develop Alzheimer's disease. This mutation accelerates Aβ oligomerization but the proteins do not form amyloid fibrils suggesting that it is the Aβ oligomerization rather than the fibrils that may be the cause of this disease. Mice expressing this mutation have all usual pathologies of Alzheimer's disease.
+
+The tau hypothesis proposes that tau protein abnormalities initiate the disease cascade.[55] In this model, hyperphosphorylated tau begins to pair with other threads of tau. Eventually, they form neurofibrillary tangles inside nerve cell bodies.[66] When this occurs, the microtubules disintegrate, destroying the structure of the cell's cytoskeleton which collapses the neuron's transport system.[67] This may result first in malfunctions in biochemical communication between neurons and later in the death of the cells.[68]
+
+An inflammatory hypothesis is that AD is caused due to a self-perpetuating progressive inflammation in the brain culminating in neurodegeneration.[69] A possible role of chronic periodontal infection[69] and the gut microbiota has been suggested.[70]
+
+A neurovascular hypothesis has been proposed which states that poor functioning of the blood–brain barrier may be involved.[71] Spirochete infections have also been linked to dementia.[72][73]
+
+The cellular homeostasis of biometals such as ionic copper, iron, and zinc is disrupted in AD, though it remains unclear whether this is produced by or causes the changes in proteins. These ions affect and are affected by tau, APP, and APOE,[74] and their dysregulation may cause  oxidative stress that may contribute to the pathology.[75][76][77][78][79] The quality of some of these studies has been criticised,[80][81] and the link remains controversial.[82] The majority of researchers do not support a causal connection with aluminium.[81]
+
+Smoking is a significant AD risk factor.[83] Systemic markers of the innate immune system are risk factors for late-onset AD.[84]
+
+There is tentative evidence that exposure to air pollution may be a contributing factor to the development of Alzheimer's disease.[85]
+
+One hypothesis posits that dysfunction of oligodendrocytes and their associated myelin during aging contributes to axon damage, which then causes amyloid production and tau hyper-phosphorylation as a side effect.[86][87]
+
+Retrogenesis is a medical hypothesis about the development and progress of Alzheimer's disease proposed by Barry Reisberg in the 1980s.[88] The hypothesis is that just as the fetus goes through a process of neurodevelopment beginning with neurulation and ending with myelination, the brains of people with AD go through a reverse neurodegeneration process starting with demyelination and death of axons (white matter) and ending with the death of grey matter.[89] Likewise the hypothesis is, that as infants go through states of cognitive development, people with AD go through the reverse process of progressive cognitive impairment.[88] Reisberg developed the caregiving assessment tool known as "FAST" (Functional Assessment Staging Tool) which he says allows those caring for people with AD to identify the stages of disease progression and that provides advice about the kind of care needed at each stage.[88][90]
+
+The association with celiac disease is unclear, with a 2019 study finding no increase in dementia overall in those with CD, while a 2018 review found an association with several types of dementia including AD.[91][92]
+
+Alzheimer's disease is characterised by loss of neurons and synapses in the cerebral cortex and certain subcortical regions. This loss results in gross atrophy of the affected regions, including degeneration in the temporal lobe and parietal lobe, and parts of the frontal cortex and cingulate gyrus.[93] Degeneration is also present in brainstem nuclei like the locus coeruleus.[94] Studies using MRI and PET have documented reductions in the size of specific brain regions in people with AD as they progressed from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer's disease, and in comparison with similar images from healthy older adults.[95][96]
+
+Both amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are clearly visible by microscopy in brains of those afflicted by AD.[97] Plaques are dense, mostly insoluble deposits of beta-amyloid peptide and cellular material outside and around neurons. Tangles (neurofibrillary tangles) are aggregates of the microtubule-associated protein tau which has become hyperphosphorylated and accumulate inside the cells themselves. Although many older individuals develop some plaques and tangles as a consequence of ageing, the brains of people with AD have a greater number of them in specific brain regions such as the temporal lobe.[98] Lewy bodies are not rare in the brains of people with AD.[99]
+
+Alzheimer's disease has been identified as a protein misfolding disease (proteopathy), caused by plaque accumulation of abnormally folded amyloid beta protein and tau protein in the brain.[100] Plaques are made up of small peptides, 39–43 amino acids in length, called amyloid beta (Aβ). Aβ is a fragment from the larger amyloid precursor protein (APP). APP is a transmembrane protein that penetrates through the neuron's membrane. APP is critical to neuron growth, survival, and post-injury repair.[101][102] In Alzheimer's disease, gamma secretase and beta secretase act together in a proteolytic process which causes APP to be divided into smaller fragments.[103] One of these fragments gives rise to fibrils of amyloid beta, which then form clumps that deposit outside neurons in dense formations known as senile plaques.[97][104]
+
+AD is also considered a tauopathy due to abnormal aggregation of the tau protein. Every neuron has a cytoskeleton, an internal support structure partly made up of structures called microtubules. These microtubules act like tracks, guiding nutrients and molecules from the body of the cell to the ends of the axon and back. A protein called tau stabilises the microtubules when phosphorylated, and is therefore called a microtubule-associated protein. In AD, tau undergoes chemical changes, becoming hyperphosphorylated; it then begins to pair with other threads, creating neurofibrillary tangles and disintegrating the neuron's transport system.[105] Pathogenic tau can also cause neuronal death through transposable element dysregulation.[106]
+
+Exactly how disturbances of production and aggregation of the beta-amyloid peptide give rise to the pathology of AD is not known.[107][108]
+The amyloid hypothesis traditionally points to the accumulation of beta-amyloid peptides as the central event triggering neuron degeneration. Accumulation of aggregated amyloid fibrils, which are believed to be the toxic form of the protein responsible for disrupting the cell's calcium ion homeostasis,[109] induces programmed cell death (apoptosis).[110] It is also known that Aβ selectively builds up in the mitochondria in the cells of Alzheimer's-affected brains, and it also inhibits certain enzyme functions and the utilisation of glucose by neurons.[111]
+
+Various inflammatory processes and cytokines may also have a role in the pathology of Alzheimer's disease. Inflammation is a general marker of tissue damage in any disease, and may be either secondary to tissue damage in AD or a marker of an immunological response.[112] There is increasing evidence of a strong interaction between the neurons and the immunological mechanisms in the brain. Obesity and systemic inflammation may interfere with immunological processes which promote disease progression.[113]
+
+Alterations in the distribution of different neurotrophic factors and in the expression of their receptors such as the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) have been described in AD.[114][115]
+
+Alzheimer's disease is usually diagnosed based on the person's medical history, history from relatives, and behavioural observations. The presence of characteristic neurological and neuropsychological features and the absence of alternative conditions is supportive.[116][117] Advanced medical imaging with computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and with single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) or positron emission tomography (PET) can be used to help exclude other cerebral pathology or subtypes of dementia.[118] Moreover, it may predict conversion from prodromal stages (mild cognitive impairment) to Alzheimer's disease.[119]
+
+Assessment of intellectual functioning including memory testing can further characterise the state of the disease.[22] Medical organisations have created diagnostic criteria to ease and standardise the diagnostic process for practising physicians. The diagnosis can be confirmed with very high accuracy post-mortem when brain material is available and can be examined histologically.[120]
+
+The National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke (NINCDS) and the Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association (ADRDA, now known as the Alzheimer's Association) established the most commonly used NINCDS-ADRDA Alzheimer's Criteria for diagnosis in 1984,[120] extensively updated in 2007.[121] These criteria require that the presence of cognitive impairment, and a suspected dementia syndrome, be confirmed by neuropsychological testing for a clinical diagnosis of possible or probable AD. A histopathologic confirmation including a microscopic examination of brain tissue is required for a definitive diagnosis. Good statistical reliability and validity have been shown between the diagnostic criteria and definitive histopathological confirmation.[122] Eight intellectual domains are most commonly impaired in AD—memory, language, perceptual skills, attention, motor skills, orientation, problem solving and executive functional abilities. These domains are equivalent to the NINCDS-ADRDA Alzheimer's Criteria as listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) published by the American Psychiatric Association.[123][124]
+
+Neuropsychological tests such as the mini–mental state examination (MMSE) are widely used to evaluate the cognitive impairments needed for diagnosis. More comprehensive test arrays are necessary for high reliability of results, particularly in the earliest stages of the disease.[125][126] Neurological examination in early AD will usually provide normal results, except for obvious cognitive impairment, which may not differ from that resulting from other diseases processes, including other causes of dementia.
+
+Further neurological examinations are crucial in the differential diagnosis of AD and other diseases.[22] Interviews with family members are also utilised in the assessment of the disease. Caregivers can supply important information on the daily living abilities, as well as on the decrease, over time, of the person's mental function.[127] A caregiver's viewpoint is particularly important, since a person with AD is commonly unaware of his own deficits.[128] Many times, families also have difficulties in the detection of initial dementia symptoms and may not communicate accurate information to a physician.[129]
+
+Supplemental testing provides extra information on some features of the disease or is used to rule out other diagnoses. Blood tests can identify other causes for dementia than AD[22]—causes which may, in rare cases, be reversible.[130] It is common to perform thyroid function tests, assess B12, rule out syphilis, rule out metabolic problems (including tests for kidney function, electrolyte levels and for diabetes), assess levels of heavy metals (e.g., lead, mercury) and anaemia. (It is also necessary to rule out delirium).
+
+Psychological tests for depression are employed, since depression can either be concurrent with AD (see Depression of Alzheimer disease), an early sign of cognitive impairment,[131] or even the cause.[132][133]
+
+Due to low accuracy, the C-PIB-PET scan is not recommended to be used as an early diagnostic tool or for predicting the development of Alzheimer's disease when people show signs of mild cognitive impairment (MCI).[134] The use of ¹⁸F-FDG PET scans, as a single test, to identify people who may develop Alzheimer's disease is also not supported by evidence.[135]
+
+There is no definitive evidence to support that any particular measure is effective in preventing AD.[13] Global studies of measures to prevent or delay the onset of AD have often produced inconsistent results.
+Epidemiological studies have proposed relationships between certain modifiable factors, such as diet, cardiovascular risk, pharmaceutical products, or intellectual activities among others, and a population's likelihood of developing AD. Only further research, including clinical trials, will reveal whether these factors can help to prevent AD.[13]
+
+Cardiovascular risk factors, such as hypercholesterolaemia, hypertension, diabetes, and smoking, are associated with a higher risk of onset and worsened course of AD.[136][137] Blood pressure medications may decrease the risk.[138] Statins, which lower cholesterol however, have not been effective in preventing or improving the course of the disease.[139][140][141]
+
+Long-term usage of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) were thought in 2007 to be associated with a reduced likelihood of developing AD.[142] Evidence also suggested the notion that NSAIDs could reduce inflammation related to amyloid plaques, but trials were suspended due to high adverse events.[13] No prevention trial has been completed.[13] They do not appear to be useful as a treatment, but as of 2011[update] were thought to be candidates as presymptomatic preventives.[143] Hormone replacement therapy in menopause, although previously used, may increase the risk of dementia.[144]
+
+People who engage in intellectual activities such as reading, playing board games, completing crossword puzzles, playing musical instruments, or regular social interaction show a reduced risk for Alzheimer's disease.[145] This is compatible with the cognitive reserve theory, which states that some life experiences result in more efficient neural functioning providing the individual a cognitive reserve that delays the onset of dementia manifestations.[145] Education delays the onset of AD syndrome without changing the duration of the disease.[146] Learning a second language even later in life seems to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease.[147]
+Physical activity is also associated with a reduced risk of AD.[146] Physical exercise is associated with decreased rate of dementia.[148] Physical exercise is also effective in reducing symptom severity in those with Alzheimer's disease.[149]
+
+People who maintain a healthy, Japanese, or Mediterranean diet have a reduced risk of AD.[150] A Mediterranean diet may improve outcomes in those with the disease.[151] Those who eat a diet high in saturated fats and simple carbohydrates (mono- and disaccharide) have a higher risk.[152] The Mediterranean diet's beneficial cardiovascular effect has been proposed as the mechanism of action.[153]
+
+Conclusions on dietary components have at times been difficult to ascertain as results have differed between population-based studies and randomised controlled trials.[150] There is limited evidence that light to moderate use of alcohol, particularly red wine, is associated with lower risk of AD.[150] There is tentative evidence that caffeine may be protective.[154] A number of foods high in flavonoids such as cocoa, red wine, and tea may decrease the risk of AD.[155][156]
+
+Reviews on the use of vitamins and minerals have not found enough consistent evidence to recommend them. This includes vitamin A,[157][158] C,[159][160] the alpha-tocopherol form of vitamin E,[161] selenium,[162] zinc,[163][164] and folic acid with or without vitamin B12.[165] Evidence from one randomized controlled trial indicated that the alpha-tocopherol form of vitamin E may slow cognitive decline, this evidence was judged to be "moderate" in quality.[161] Trials examining folic acid (B9) and other B vitamins failed to show any significant association with cognitive decline.[166] Omega-3 fatty acid supplements from plants and fish, and dietary docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), do not appear to benefit people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease.[167][168]
+
+Curcumin as of 2010[update] had not shown benefit in people even though there is tentative evidence in animals.[169] There was inconsistent and unconvincing evidence that ginkgo has any positive effect on cognitive impairment and dementia.[170] As of 2008[update] there was no concrete evidence that cannabinoids are effective in improving the symptoms of AD or dementia;[171] however, some research into endocannabinoids looked promising.[172]
+
+There is no cure for Alzheimer's disease; available treatments offer relatively small symptomatic benefit but remain palliative in nature. Current treatments can be divided into pharmaceutical, psychosocial and caregiving.
+
+Five medications are currently used to treat the cognitive problems of AD: four are acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (tacrine, rivastigmine, galantamine and donepezil) and the other (memantine) is an NMDA receptor antagonist. The benefit from their use is small.[173][174][175] No medication has been clearly shown to delay or halt the progression of the disease.
+
+Reduction in the activity of the cholinergic neurons is a well-known feature of Alzheimer's disease.[176] Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors are employed to reduce the rate at which acetylcholine (ACh) is broken down, thereby increasing the concentration of ACh in the brain and combating the loss of ACh caused by the death of cholinergic neurons.[177] There is evidence for the efficacy of these medications in mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease,[178][174][173] and some evidence for their use in the advanced stage.[173] The use of these drugs in mild cognitive impairment has not shown any effect in a delay of the onset of AD.[179] The most common side effects are nausea and vomiting, both of which are linked to cholinergic excess. These side effects arise in approximately 10–20% of users, are mild to moderate in severity, and can be managed by slowly adjusting medication doses.[180] Less common secondary effects include muscle cramps, decreased heart rate (bradycardia), decreased appetite and weight, and increased gastric acid production.[178]
+
+Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter of the nervous system, although excessive amounts in the brain can lead to cell death through a process called excitotoxicity which consists of the overstimulation of glutamate receptors. Excitotoxicity occurs not only in Alzheimer's disease, but also in other neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis.[181] Memantine is a noncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist first used as an anti-influenza agent. It acts on the glutamatergic system by blocking NMDA receptors and inhibiting their overstimulation by glutamate.[181][182] Memantine has been shown to have a small benefit in the treatment of moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease.[183] Reported adverse events with memantine are infrequent and mild, including hallucinations, confusion, dizziness, headache and fatigue.[184] The combination of memantine and donepezil has been shown to be "of statistically significant but clinically marginal effectiveness".[185]
+
+Atypical antipsychotics are modestly useful in reducing aggression and psychosis in people with Alzheimer's disease, but their advantages are offset by serious adverse effects, such as stroke, movement difficulties or cognitive decline.[186] When used in the long-term, they have been shown to associate with increased mortality.[187] Stopping antipsychotic use in this group of people appears to be safe.[188]
+
+Huperzine A while promising, requires further evidence before its use can be recommended.[189]
+
+Psychosocial interventions are used as an adjunct to pharmaceutical treatment and can be classified within behaviour-, emotion-, cognition- or stimulation-oriented approaches. Research on efficacy is unavailable and rarely specific to AD, focusing instead on dementia in general.[190]
+
+Behavioural interventions attempt to identify and reduce the antecedents and consequences of problem behaviours. This approach has not shown success in improving overall functioning,[191] but can help to reduce some specific problem behaviours, such as incontinence.[192] There is a lack of high quality data on the effectiveness of these techniques in other behaviour problems such as wandering.[193][194] Music therapy is effective in reducing behavioural and psychological symptoms.[195]
+
+Emotion-oriented interventions include reminiscence therapy, validation therapy, supportive psychotherapy, sensory integration, also called snoezelen, and simulated presence therapy. A Cochrane review has found no evidence that this is effective.[196] Supportive psychotherapy has received little or no formal scientific study, but some clinicians find it useful in helping mildly impaired people adjust to their illness.[190] Reminiscence therapy (RT) involves the discussion of past experiences individually or in group, many times with the aid of photographs, household items, music and sound recordings, or other familiar items from the past. A 2018 review of the effectiveness of RT found that effects were inconsistent, small in size and of doubtful clinical significance, and varied by setting.[197] Simulated presence therapy (SPT) is based on attachment theories and involves playing a recording with voices of the closest relatives of the person with Alzheimer's disease. There is partial evidence indicating that SPT may reduce challenging behaviours.[198]
+Finally, validation therapy is based on acceptance of the reality and personal truth of another's experience, while sensory integration is based on exercises aimed to stimulate senses. There is no evidence to support the usefulness of these therapies.[199][200]
+
+The aim of cognition-oriented treatments, which include reality orientation and cognitive retraining, is the reduction of cognitive deficits. Reality orientation consists in the presentation of information about time, place or person to ease the understanding of the person about its surroundings and his or her place in them. On the other hand, cognitive retraining tries to improve impaired capacities by exercitation of mental abilities. Both have shown some efficacy improving cognitive capacities,[201] although in some studies these effects were transient and negative effects, such as frustration, have also been reported.[190]
+
+Stimulation-oriented treatments include art, music and pet therapies, exercise, and any other kind of recreational activities. Stimulation has modest support for improving behaviour, mood, and, to a lesser extent, function. Nevertheless, as important as these effects are, the main support for the use of stimulation therapies is the change in the person's routine.[190]
+
+Since Alzheimer's has no cure and it gradually renders people incapable of tending for their own needs, caregiving is essentially the treatment and must be carefully managed over the course of the disease.
+
+During the early and moderate stages, modifications to the living environment and lifestyle can increase patient safety and reduce caretaker burden.[202][203] Examples of such modifications are the adherence to simplified routines, the placing of safety locks, the labelling of household items to cue the person with the disease or the use of modified daily life objects.[190][204][205] If eating becomes problematic, food will need to be prepared in smaller pieces or even pureed.[206] When swallowing difficulties arise, the use of feeding tubes may be required. In such cases, the medical efficacy and ethics of continuing feeding is an important consideration of the caregivers and family members.[207][208] The use of physical restraints is rarely indicated in any stage of the disease, although there are situations when they are necessary to prevent harm to the person with AD or their caregivers.[190]
+
+As the disease progresses, different medical issues can appear, such as oral and dental disease, pressure ulcers, malnutrition, hygiene problems, or respiratory, skin, or eye infections. Careful management can prevent them, while professional treatment is needed when they do arise.[209][210] During the final stages of the disease, treatment is centred on relieving discomfort until death, often with the help of hospice.[211]
+
+The early stages of Alzheimer's disease are difficult to diagnose. A definitive diagnosis is usually made once cognitive impairment compromises daily living activities, although the person may still be living independently. The symptoms will progress from mild cognitive problems, such as memory loss through increasing stages of cognitive and non-cognitive disturbances, eliminating any possibility of independent living, especially in the late stages of the disease.[29]
+
+Life expectancy of people with AD is reduced.[212] Following diagnosis it typically ranges from three to ten years.[212]
+
+Fewer than 3% of people live more than fourteen years.[213] Disease features significantly associated with reduced survival are an increased severity of cognitive impairment, decreased functional level, history of falls, and disturbances in the neurological examination. Other coincident diseases such as heart problems, diabetes or history of alcohol abuse are also related with shortened survival.[214][215][216] While the earlier the age at onset the higher the total survival years, life expectancy is particularly reduced when compared to the healthy population among those who are younger.[217] Men have a less favourable survival prognosis than women.[213][218]
+
+Pneumonia and dehydration are the most frequent immediate causes of death brought by AD, while cancer is a less frequent cause of death than in the general population.[218]
+
+Two main measures are used in epidemiological studies: incidence and prevalence. Incidence is the number of new cases per unit of person–time at risk (usually number of new cases per thousand person–years); while prevalence is the total number of cases of the disease in the population at any given time.
+
+Regarding incidence, cohort longitudinal studies (studies where a disease-free population is followed over the years) provide rates between 10 and 15 per thousand person–years for all dementias and 5–8 for AD,[219][220] which means that half of new dementia cases each year are AD. Advancing age is a primary risk factor for the disease and incidence rates are not equal for all ages: every five years after the age of 65, the risk of acquiring the disease approximately doubles, increasing from 3 to as much as 69 per thousand person years.[219][220] There are also sex differences in the incidence rates, women having a higher risk of developing AD particularly in the population older than 85.[220][221] In the United States, the risk of dying from Alzheimer's disease is 26% higher among the non-Hispanic white population than among the non-Hispanic black population, whereas the Hispanic population has a 30% lower risk than the non-Hispanic white population.[222]
+
+Prevalence of AD in populations is dependent upon different factors including incidence and survival. Since the incidence of AD increases with age, it is particularly important to include the mean age of the population of interest. In the United States, Alzheimer prevalence was estimated to be 1.6% in 2000 both overall and in the 65–74 age group, with the rate increasing to 19% in the 75–84 group and to 42% in the greater than 84 group.[223] Prevalence rates in less developed regions are lower.[224] The World Health Organization estimated that in 2005, 0.379% of people worldwide had dementia, and that the prevalence would increase to 0.441% in 2015 and to 0.556% in 2030.[225] Other studies have reached similar conclusions.[224] Another study estimated that in 2006, 0.40% of the world population (range 0.17–0.89%; absolute number 26.6 million, range 11.4–59.4 million) were afflicted by AD, and that the prevalence rate would triple and the absolute number would quadruple by 2050.[226]
+
+The ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and physicians associated old age with increasing dementia.[18] It was not until 1901 that German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer identified the first case of what became known as Alzheimer's disease, named after him, in a fifty-year-old woman he called Auguste D. He followed her case until she died in 1906, when he first reported publicly on it.[227] During the next five years, eleven similar cases were reported in the medical literature, some of them already using the term Alzheimer's disease.[18] The disease was first described as a distinctive disease by Emil Kraepelin after suppressing some of the clinical (delusions and hallucinations) and pathological features (arteriosclerotic changes) contained in the original report of Auguste D.[228] He included Alzheimer's disease, also named presenile dementia by Kraepelin, as a subtype of senile dementia in the eighth edition of his Textbook of Psychiatry, published on 15 July, 1910.[229]
+
+For most of the 20th century, the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease was reserved for individuals between the ages of 45 and 65 who developed symptoms of dementia. The terminology changed after 1977 when a conference on AD concluded that the clinical and pathological manifestations of presenile and senile dementia were almost identical, although the authors also added that this did not rule out the possibility that they had different causes.[230] This eventually led to the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease independent of age.[231] The term senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT) was used for a time to describe the condition in those over 65, with classical Alzheimer's disease being used to describe those who were younger. Eventually, the term Alzheimer's disease was formally adopted in medical nomenclature to describe individuals of all ages with a characteristic common symptom pattern, disease course, and neuropathology.[232]
+
+Dementia, and specifically Alzheimer's disease, may be among the most costly diseases for society in Europe and the United States,[19][20] while their costs in other countries such as Argentina,[233] and South Korea,[234] are also high and rising. These costs will probably increase with the ageing of society, becoming an important social problem. AD-associated costs include direct medical costs such as nursing home care, direct nonmedical costs such as in-home day care, and indirect costs such as lost productivity of both patient and caregiver.[20] Numbers vary between studies but dementia costs worldwide have been calculated around $160 billion,[235] while costs of Alzheimer's disease in the United States may be $100 billion each year.[20]
+
+The greatest origin of costs for society is the long-term care by health care professionals and particularly institutionalisation, which corresponds to 2/3 of the total costs for society.[19] The cost of living at home is also very high,[19] especially when informal costs for the family, such as caregiving time and caregiver's lost earnings, are taken into account.[236]
+
+Costs increase with dementia severity and the presence of behavioural disturbances,[237] and are related to the increased caregiving time required for the provision of physical care.[236] Therefore, any treatment that slows cognitive decline, delays institutionalisation or reduces caregivers' hours will have economic benefits. Economic evaluations of current treatments have shown positive results.[20]
+
+The role of the main caregiver is often taken by the spouse or a close relative.[238] Alzheimer's disease is known for placing a great burden on caregivers which includes social, psychological, physical or economic aspects.[14][239][240] Home care is usually preferred by people with AD and their families.[241] This option also delays or eliminates the need for more professional and costly levels of care.[241][242] Nevertheless, two-thirds of nursing home residents have dementias.[190]
+
+Dementia caregivers are subject to high rates of physical and mental disorders.[243] Factors associated with greater psychosocial problems of the primary caregivers include having an affected person at home, the carer being a spouse, demanding behaviours of the cared person such as depression, behavioural disturbances, hallucinations, sleep problems or walking disruptions and social isolation.[244][245] Regarding economic problems, family caregivers often give up time from work to spend 47 hours per week on average with the person with AD, while the costs of caring for them are high. Direct and indirect costs of caring for an Alzheimer's patient average between $18,000 and $77,500 per year in the United States, depending on the study.[236][238]
+
+Cognitive behavioural therapy and the teaching of coping strategies either individually or in group have demonstrated their efficacy in improving caregivers' psychological health.[14][246]
+
+AD has been portrayed in films such as: Iris (2001), based on John Bayley's memoir of his wife Iris Murdoch;[247] The Notebook (2004), based on Nicholas Sparks' 1996 novel of the same name;[248] A Moment to Remember (2004); Thanmathra (2005);[249] Memories of Tomorrow (Ashita no Kioku) (2006), based on Hiroshi Ogiwara's novel of the same name;[250] Away from Her (2006), based on Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Came over the Mountain";[251] Still Alice (2014), about a Columbia University professor who has early onset Alzheimer's disease, based on Lisa Genova's 2007 novel of the same name and featuring Julianne Moore in the title role. Documentaries on Alzheimer's disease include Malcolm and Barbara: A Love Story (1999) and Malcolm and Barbara: Love's Farewell (2007), both featuring Malcolm Pointon.[252][253][254]
+
+In the decade 2002–2012, 244 compounds were assessed in Phase I, Phase II, or Phase III trials, and only one of these (memantine) received FDA approval (though others were still in the pipeline).[255] Solanezumab and aducanumab failed to show effectiveness in people who already had Alzheimer's symptoms.[256]
+
+One area of clinical research is focused on treating the underlying disease pathology. Reduction of beta-amyloid levels is a common target of compounds[257] (such as apomorphine) under investigation. Immunotherapy or vaccination for the amyloid protein is one treatment modality under study.[258] Unlike preventive vaccination, the putative therapy would be used to treat people already diagnosed. It is based upon the concept of training the immune system to recognise, attack, and reverse deposition of amyloid, thereby altering the course of the disease.[259] An example of such a vaccine under investigation was ACC-001,[260][261] although the trials were suspended in 2008.[262] Another similar agent is bapineuzumab, an antibody designed as identical to the naturally induced anti-amyloid antibody.[263] However, immunotherapeutic agents have been found to cause some concerning adverse drug reactions, such as amyloid-related imaging abnormalities.[264] Other approaches are neuroprotective agents, such as AL-108,[265] and metal-protein interaction attenuation agents, such as PBT2.[266] A TNFα receptor-blocking fusion protein, etanercept has showed encouraging results.[267]
+
+In 2008, two separate clinical trials showed positive results in modifying the course of disease in mild to moderate AD with methylthioninium chloride, a drug that inhibits tau aggregation,[268][269] and dimebon, an antihistamine.[270]
+The consecutive phase-III trial of dimebon failed to show positive effects in the primary and secondary endpoints.[271][272][273] Work with methylthioninium chloride showed that bioavailability of methylthioninium from the gut was affected by feeding and by stomach acidity, leading to unexpectedly variable dosing.[274] A new stabilised formulation, as the prodrug LMTX, is in phase-III trials (in 2014).[275]
+
+In early 2017, a trial of verubecestat, which inhibits the beta-secretase protein responsible for creating beta-amyloid protein was discontinued as an independent panel found "virtually no chance of finding a positive clinical effect".[276] In 2018 and 2019, more trials, including aducanumab which reduced amyloid beta concentrations, failed, leading some to question the validity of the amyloid hypothesis.[277][278] However, in October 2019, an analysis of another dataset found that aducanumab may reduce clinical decline in people with early Alzheimer's disease and the Biogen company may seek regulatory approval again.[279]
+
+The senescence accelerated mouse (SAMP8) is an Alzheimer's disease (AD) animal model in which amyloid precursor protein (APP) is overproduced. The mice develops early memory disturbances and alters the blood–brain barrier, which causes a decreased expulsion of amyloid-β protein from the brain. It has a marked increase in oxidative stress in the brain. Medications that reduce oxidative stress have been shown to improve memory. Treatments that reduce amyloid-β (antisense to APP and antibodies to amyloid-β) not only improve memory but also reduce oxidative stress. It has been shown that the initial deviations in lipid peroxidative damage favor mitochondrial dysfunction as being a trigger for amyloid-β overproduction in this AD mouse strain. This process begets increased amyloid-beta, which further damages mitochondria.[280]
+
+Research on the effects of meditation on preserving memory and cognitive functions is at an early stage.[281] A 2015 review suggests that mindfulness-based interventions may prevent or delay the onset of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.[282]
+
+Rare cases of possible transmission between people are being studied,[283] e.g. to growth hormone patients.[284]
+
+The herpes simplex virus HSV-1 has been found in the same areas as amyloid plaques.[285] This suggested the possibility that AD could be treated or prevented with antiviral medication.[285][286] Studies of antivirals in cell cultures have shown promising results.[287]
+
+Fungal infection of AD brain has also been described.[288]
+This hypothesis was proposed by the microbiologist L. Carrasco when his group found statistical correlation between disseminated mycoses and AD.[289]
+Further work revealed that fungal infection is present in different brain regions of AD patients, but not in the control individuals.[290]
+[291]
+A fungal infection explains the symptoms observed in AD patients. The slow progression of AD fits with the chronic nature of some systemic fungal infections, which can be asymptomatic and thus, unnoticed and untreated.[290]
+The fungal hypotheses are also compatible with some other established AD hypotheses, like the amyloid hypothesis, that can be explained as an immune system response to an infection in the CNS,[292][293][294] as found by R. Moir and R. Tanzi in mouse and worm models of AD.
+
+Of the many medical imaging techniques available, single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) appears to be superior in differentiating Alzheimer's disease from other types of dementia, and this has been shown to give a greater level of accuracy compared with mental testing and medical history analysis.[295] Advances have led to the proposal of new diagnostic criteria.[22][121]
+
+PiB PET remains investigational, but a similar PET scanning radiopharmaceutical called florbetapir, containing the longer-lasting radionuclide fluorine-18, is a diagnostic tool in Alzheimer's disease.[296][297]
+
+Amyloid imaging is likely to be used in conjunction with other markers rather than as an alternative.[298] Volumetric MRI can detect changes in the size of brain regions. Measuring those regions that atrophy during the progress of Alzheimer's disease is showing promise as a diagnostic indicator. It may prove less expensive than other imaging methods currently under study.[299]
+
+In 2011, an FDA panel voted unanimously to recommend approval of florbetapir.[300] The imaging agent can help to detect Alzheimer's brain plaques.[301] A negative scan indicates sparse or no plaques, which is not consistent with a diagnosis of AD.[302]
+
+Emphasis in Alzheimer's research has been placed on diagnosing the condition before symptoms begin.[303] A number of biochemical tests have been developed to enable earlier detection. Some such tests involve the analysis of cerebrospinal fluid for beta-amyloid, total tau protein and phosphorylated tau181P protein concentrations.[304] Because drawing CSF can be painful, repeated draws are avoided. A blood test for circulatory miRNA and inflammatory biomarkers is a potential alternative indicator.[304]
+
+A series of studies suggest that ageing-related breakdown of the blood–brain barrier may be causative of AD, and conclude that markers for that damage may be an early predictor of the disease.[305][306][307]

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+In earth science, erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location[1] (not to be confused with weathering which involves no movement). This natural process is caused by the dynamic activity of erosive agents, that is, water, ice (glaciers), snow, air (wind), plants, animals, and humans. In accordance with these agents, erosion is sometimes divided into water erosion, glacial erosion, snow erosion, wind (aeolic) erosion, zoogenic erosion, and anthropogenic erosion.[2] The particulate breakdown of rock or soil into clastic sediment is referred to as physical or mechanical erosion; this contrasts with chemical erosion, where soil or rock material is removed from an area by its dissolving into a solvent (typically water), followed by the flow away of that solution. Eroded sediment or solutes may be transported just a few millimetres, or for thousands of kilometres.
+
+Natural rates of erosion are controlled by the action of geological weathering geomorphic drivers, such as rainfall;[3] bedrock wear in rivers; coastal erosion by the sea and waves; glacial plucking, abrasion, and scour; areal flooding; wind abrasion; groundwater processes; and mass movement processes in steep landscapes like landslides and debris flows. The rates at which such processes act control how fast a surface is eroded. Typically, physical erosion proceeds fastest on steeply sloping surfaces, and rates may also be sensitive to some climatically-controlled properties including amounts of water supplied (e.g., by rain), storminess, wind speed, wave fetch, or atmospheric temperature (especially for some ice-related processes). Feedbacks are also possible between rates of erosion and the amount of eroded material that is already carried by, for example, a river or glacier.[4][5] Processes of erosion that produce sediment or solutes from a place contrast with those of deposition, which control the arrival and emplacement of material at a new location.[1]
+
+While erosion is a natural process, human activities have increased by 10-40 times the rate at which erosion is occurring globally.[6]  At well-known agriculture sites such as the Appalachian Mountains, intensive farming practices have caused erosion up to 100x the speed of the natural rate of erosion in the region.[7]  Excessive (or accelerated) erosion causes both "on-site" and "off-site" problems. On-site impacts include decreases in agricultural productivity and (on natural landscapes) ecological collapse, both because of loss of the nutrient-rich upper soil layers. In some cases, the eventual end result is desertification. Off-site effects include sedimentation of waterways and eutrophication of water bodies, as well as sediment-related damage to roads and houses. Water and wind erosion are the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for about 84% of the global extent of degraded land, making excessive erosion one of the most significant environmental problems worldwide.[8]:2[9]:1
+
+Intensive agriculture, deforestation, roads, anthropogenic climate change and urban sprawl are amongst the most significant human activities in regard to their effect on stimulating erosion.[10] However, there are many prevention and remediation practices that can curtail or limit erosion of vulnerable soils.
+
+Rainfall, and the surface runoff which may result from rainfall, produces four main types of soil erosion: splash erosion, sheet erosion, rill erosion, and gully erosion. Splash erosion is generally seen as the first and least severe stage in the soil erosion process, which is followed by sheet erosion, then rill erosion and finally gully erosion (the most severe of the four).[9]:60–61[11]
+
+In splash erosion, the impact of a falling raindrop creates a small crater in the soil,[12] ejecting soil particles.[3] The distance these soil particles travel can be as much as 0.6 m (two feet) vertically and 1.5 m (five feet) horizontally on level ground.
+
+If the soil is saturated, or if the rainfall rate is greater than the rate at which water can infiltrate into the soil, surface runoff occurs. If the runoff has sufficient flow energy, it will transport loosened soil particles (sediment) down the slope.[13] Sheet erosion is the transport of loosened soil particles by overland flow.[13]
+
+Rill erosion refers to the development of small, ephemeral concentrated flow paths which function as both sediment source and sediment delivery systems for erosion on hillslopes. Generally, where water erosion rates on disturbed upland areas are greatest, rills are active. Flow depths in rills are typically of the order of a few centimetres (about an inch) or less and along-channel slopes may be quite steep. This means that rills exhibit hydraulic physics very different from water flowing through the deeper, wider channels of streams and rivers.[14]
+
+Gully erosion occurs when runoff water accumulates and rapidly flows in narrow channels during or immediately after heavy rains or melting snow, removing soil to a considerable depth.[15][16][17]
+
+Valley or stream erosion occurs with continued water flow along a linear feature. The erosion is both downward, deepening the valley, and headward, extending the valley into the hillside, creating head cuts and steep banks. In the earliest stage of stream erosion, the erosive activity is dominantly vertical, the valleys have a typical V cross-section and the stream gradient is relatively steep. When some base level is reached, the erosive activity switches to lateral erosion, which widens the valley floor and creates a narrow floodplain. The stream gradient becomes nearly flat, and lateral deposition of sediments becomes important as the stream meanders across the valley floor. In all stages of stream erosion, by far the most erosion occurs during times of flood when more and faster-moving water is available to carry a larger sediment load. In such processes, it is not the water alone that erodes: suspended abrasive particles, pebbles, and boulders can also act erosively as they traverse a surface, in a process known as traction.[18]
+
+Bank erosion is the wearing away of the banks of a stream or river. This is distinguished from changes on the bed of the watercourse, which is referred to as scour. Erosion and changes in the form of river banks may be measured by inserting metal rods into the bank and marking the position of the bank surface along the rods at different times.[19]
+
+Thermal erosion is the result of melting and weakening permafrost due to moving water.[20] It can occur both along rivers and at the coast. Rapid river channel migration observed in the Lena River of Siberia is due to thermal erosion, as these portions of the banks are composed of permafrost-cemented non-cohesive materials.[21] Much of this erosion occurs as the weakened banks fail in large slumps. Thermal erosion also affects the Arctic coast, where wave action and near-shore temperatures combine to undercut permafrost bluffs along the shoreline and cause them to fail. Annual erosion rates along a 100-kilometre (62-mile) segment of the Beaufort Sea shoreline averaged 5.6 metres (18 feet) per year from 1955 to 2002.[22]
+
+Most river erosion happens nearer to the mouth of a river. On a river bend, the longest least sharp side has slower moving water. Here deposits build up. On the narrowest sharpest side of the bend, there is faster moving water so this side tends to erode away mostly.
+
+Shoreline erosion, which occurs on both exposed and sheltered coasts, primarily occurs through the action of currents and waves but sea level (tidal) change can also play a role.
+
+Hydraulic action takes place when the air in a joint is suddenly compressed by a wave closing the entrance of the joint. This then cracks it. Wave pounding is when the sheer energy of the wave hitting the cliff or rock breaks pieces off. Abrasion or corrasion is caused by waves launching sea load at the cliff. It is the most effective and rapid form of shoreline erosion (not to be confused with corrosion). Corrosion is the dissolving of rock by carbonic acid in sea water.[23] Limestone cliffs are particularly vulnerable to this kind of erosion. Attrition is where particles/sea load carried by the waves are worn down as they hit each other and the cliffs. This then makes the material easier to wash away. The material ends up as shingle and sand. Another significant source of erosion, particularly on carbonate coastlines, is boring, scraping and grinding of organisms, a process termed bioerosion.[24]
+
+Sediment is transported along the coast in the direction of the prevailing current (longshore drift). When the upcurrent amount of sediment is less than the amount being carried away, erosion occurs. When the upcurrent amount of sediment is greater, sand or gravel banks will tend to form as a result of deposition. These banks may slowly migrate along the coast in the direction of the longshore drift, alternately protecting and exposing parts of the coastline. Where there is a bend in the coastline, quite often a buildup of eroded material occurs forming a long narrow bank (a spit). Armoured beaches and submerged offshore sandbanks may also protect parts of a coastline from erosion. Over the years, as the shoals gradually shift, the erosion may be redirected to attack different parts of the shore.[25]
+
+Chemical erosion is the loss of matter in a landscape in the form of solutes. Chemical erosion is usually calculated from the solutes found in streams. Anders Rapp pioneered the study of chemical erosion in his work about Kärkevagge published in 1960.[26]
+
+Glaciers erode predominantly by three different processes: abrasion/scouring, plucking, and ice thrusting. In an abrasion process, debris in the basal ice scrapes along the bed, polishing and gouging the underlying rocks, similar to sandpaper on wood. Scientists have shown that, in addition to the role of temperature played in valley-deepening, other glaciological processes, such as erosion also control cross-valley variations. In a homogeneous bedrock erosion pattern, curved channel cross-section beneath the ice is created. Though the glacier continues to incise vertically, the shape of the channel beneath the ice eventually remain constant, reaching a U-shaped parabolic steady-state shape as we now see in glaciated valleys. Scientists also provide a numerical estimate of the time required for the ultimate formation of a steady-shaped U-shaped valley—approximately 100,000 years. In a weak bedrock (containing material more erodible than the surrounding rocks) erosion pattern, on the contrary, the amount of over deepening is limited because ice velocities and erosion rates are reduced.[27]
+
+Glaciers can also cause pieces of bedrock to crack off in the process of plucking. In ice thrusting, the glacier freezes to its bed, then as it surges forward, it moves large sheets of frozen sediment at the base along with the glacier. This method produced some of the many thousands of lake basins that dot the edge of the Canadian Shield. Differences in the height of mountain ranges are not only being the result tectonic forces, such as rock uplift, but also local climate variations. Scientists use global analysis of topography to show that glacial erosion controls the maximum height of mountains, as the relief between mountain peaks and the snow line are generally confined to altitudes less than 1500 m.[28]  The erosion caused by glaciers worldwide erodes mountains so effectively that the term glacial buzzsaw has become widely used, which describes the limiting effect of glaciers on the height of mountain ranges.[29] As mountains grow higher, they generally allow for more glacial activity (especially in the accumulation zone above the glacial equilibrium line altitude),[30] which causes increased rates of erosion of the mountain, decreasing mass faster than isostatic rebound can add to the mountain.[31] This provides a good example of a negative feedback loop. Ongoing research is showing that while glaciers tend to decrease mountain size, in some areas, glaciers can actually reduce the rate of erosion, acting as a glacial armor.[29] Ice can not only erode mountains but also protect them from erosion. Depending on glacier regime, even steep alpine lands can be preserved through time with the help of ice. Scientists have proved this theory by sampling eight summits of northwestern Svalbard using Be10 and Al26, showing that northwestern Svalbard transformed from a glacier-erosion state under relatively mild glacial maxima temperature, to a glacier-armor state occupied by cold-based, protective ice during much colder glacial maxima temperatures as the Quaternary ice age progressed.[32]
+
+These processes, combined with erosion and transport by the water network beneath the glacier, leave behind glacial landforms such as moraines, drumlins, ground moraine (till), kames, kame deltas, moulins, and glacial erratics in their wake, typically at the terminus or during glacier retreat.[33]
+
+The best-developed glacial valley morphology appears to be restricted to landscapes with low rock uplift rates (less than or equal to 2 mm per year) and high relief, leading to long-turnover times. Where rock uplift rates exceed 2 mm per year, glacial valley morphology has generally been significantly modified in postglacial time. Interplay of glacial erosion and tectonic forcing governs the morphologic impact of glaciations on active orogens, by both influencing their height, and by altering the patterns of erosion during subsequent glacial periods via a link between rock uplift and valley cross-sectional shape.[34]
+
+At extremely high flows, kolks, or vortices are formed by large volumes of rapidly rushing water. Kolks cause extreme local erosion, plucking bedrock and creating pothole-type geographical features called rock-cut basins. Examples can be seen in the flood regions result from glacial Lake Missoula, which created the channeled scablands in the Columbia Basin region of eastern Washington.[35]
+
+Wind erosion is a major geomorphological force, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. It is also a major source of land degradation, evaporation, desertification, harmful airborne dust, and crop damage—especially after being increased far above natural rates by human activities such as deforestation, urbanization, and agriculture.[36][37]
+
+Wind erosion is of two primary varieties: deflation, where the wind picks up and carries away loose particles; and abrasion, where surfaces are worn down as they are struck by airborne particles carried by wind. Deflation is divided into three categories: (1) surface creep, where larger, heavier particles slide or roll along the ground; (2) saltation, where particles are lifted a short height into the air, and bounce and saltate across the surface of the soil; and (3) suspension, where very small and light particles are lifted into the air by the wind, and are often carried for long distances. Saltation is responsible for the majority (50-70%) of wind erosion, followed by suspension (30-40%), and then surface creep (5-25%).[38]:57[39]
+
+Wind erosion is much more severe in arid areas and during times of drought. For example, in the Great Plains, it is estimated that soil loss due to wind erosion can be as much as 6100 times greater in drought years than in wet years.[40]
+
+Mass movement is the downward and outward movement of rock and sediments on a sloped surface, mainly due to the force of gravity.[41][42]
+
+Mass movement is an important part of the erosional process and is often the first stage in the breakdown and transport of weathered materials in mountainous areas.[43]:93 It moves material from higher elevations to lower elevations where other eroding agents such as streams and glaciers can then pick up the material and move it to even lower elevations. Mass-movement processes are always occurring continuously on all slopes; some mass-movement processes act very slowly; others occur very suddenly, often with disastrous results. Any perceptible down-slope movement of rock or sediment is often referred to in general terms as a landslide. However, landslides can be classified in a much more detailed way that reflects the mechanisms responsible for the movement and the velocity at which the movement occurs. One of the visible topographical manifestations of a very slow form of such activity is a scree slope.[citation needed]
+
+Slumping happens on steep hillsides, occurring along distinct fracture zones, often within materials like clay that, once released, may move quite rapidly downhill. They will often show a spoon-shaped isostatic depression, in which the material has begun to slide downhill. In some cases, the slump is caused by water beneath the slope weakening it. In many cases it is simply the result of poor engineering along highways where it is a regular occurrence.[44]
+
+Surface creep is the slow movement of soil and rock debris by gravity which is usually not perceptible except through extended observation. However, the term can also describe the rolling of dislodged soil particles 0.5 to 1.0 mm (0.02 to 0.04 in) in diameter by wind along the soil surface.[45]
+
+The amount and intensity of precipitation is the main climatic factor governing soil erosion by water. The relationship is particularly strong if heavy rainfall occurs at times when, or in locations where, the soil's surface is not well protected by vegetation. This might be during periods when agricultural activities leave the soil bare, or in semi-arid regions where vegetation is naturally sparse. Wind erosion requires strong winds, particularly during times of drought when vegetation is sparse and soil is dry (and so is more erodible). Other climatic factors such as average temperature and temperature range may also affect erosion, via their effects on vegetation and soil properties. In general, given similar vegetation and ecosystems, areas with more precipitation (especially high-intensity rainfall), more wind, or more storms are expected to have more erosion.
+
+In some areas of the world (e.g. the mid-western USA), rainfall intensity is the primary determinant of erosivity (for a definition of erosivity check,[46]) with higher intensity rainfall generally resulting in more soil erosion by water. The size and velocity of rain drops is also an important factor. Larger and higher-velocity rain drops have greater kinetic energy, and thus their impact will displace soil particles by larger distances than smaller, slower-moving rain drops.[47]
+
+In other regions of the world (e.g. western Europe), runoff and erosion result from relatively low intensities of stratiform rainfall falling onto the previously saturated soil. In such situations, rainfall amount rather than intensity is the main factor determining the severity of soil erosion by water.[15]
+
+In Taiwan, where typhoon frequency increased significantly in the 21st century, a strong link has been drawn between the increase in storm frequency with an increase in sediment load in rivers and reservoirs, highlighting the impacts climate change can have on erosion.[48]
+
+Vegetation acts as an interface between the atmosphere and the soil. It increases the permeability of the soil to rainwater, thus decreasing runoff. It shelters the soil from winds, which results in decreased wind erosion, as well as advantageous changes in microclimate. The roots of the plants bind the soil together, and interweave with other roots, forming a more solid mass that is less susceptible to both water[49] and wind erosion. The removal of vegetation increases the rate of surface erosion.[50]
+
+The topography of the land determines the velocity at which surface runoff will flow, which in turn determines the erosivity of the runoff. Longer, steeper slopes (especially those without adequate vegetative cover) are more susceptible to very high rates of erosion during heavy rains than shorter, less steep slopes. Steeper terrain is also more prone to mudslides, landslides, and other forms of gravitational erosion processes.[47]:28–30[51][52]
+
+Tectonic processes control rates and distributions of erosion at the Earth's surface. If the tectonic action causes part of the Earth's surface (e.g., a mountain range) to be raised or lowered relative to surrounding areas, this must necessarily change the gradient of the land surface. Because erosion rates are almost always sensitive to the local slope (see above), this will change the rates of erosion in the uplifted area. Active tectonics also brings fresh, unweathered rock towards the surface, where it is exposed to the action of erosion.
+
+However, erosion can also affect tectonic processes. The removal by erosion of large amounts of rock from a particular region, and its deposition elsewhere, can result in a lightening of the load on the lower crust and mantle. Because tectonic processes are driven by gradients in the stress field developed in the crust, this unloading can in turn cause tectonic or isostatic uplift in the region.[43]:99[53] In some cases, it has been hypothesised that these twin feedbacks can act to localize and enhance zones of very rapid exhumation of deep crustal rocks beneath places on the Earth's surface with extremely high erosion rates, for example, beneath the extremely steep terrain of Nanga Parbat in the western Himalayas. Such a place has been called a "tectonic aneurysm".[54]
+
+Human land development, in forms including agricultural and urban development, is considered a significant factor in erosion[55] and sediment transport. In Taiwan, increases in sediment load in the northern, central, and southern regions of the island can be tracked with the timeline of development for each region throughout the 20th century.[48]
+
+Mountain ranges are known to take many millions of years to erode to the degree they effectively cease to exist. Scholars Pitman and Golovchenko estimate that it takes probably more than 450 million years to erode a mountain mass similar to the Himalaya into an almost-flat peneplain if there are no major sea-level changes.[56] Erosion of mountains massifs can create a pattern of equally high summits called summit accordance.[57] It has been argued that extension during post-orogenic collapse is a more effective mechanism of lowering the height of orogenic mountains than erosion.[58]
+
+Examples of heavily eroded mountain ranges include the Timanides of Northern Russia. Erosion of this orogen has produced sediments that are now found in the East European Platform, including the Cambrian Sablya Formation near Lake Ladoga. Studies of these sediments indicate that it is likely that the erosion of the orogen began in the Cambrian and then intensified in the Ordovician.[59]
+
+If the rate of erosion is higher than the rate of soil formation the soils are being destroyed by erosion.[60] Where soil is not destroyed by erosion, erosion can in some cases prevent the formation of soil features that form slowly. Inceptisols are common soils that form in areas of fast erosion.[61]
+
+While erosion of soils is a natural process, human activities have increased by 10-40 times the rate at which erosion is occurring globally. Excessive (or accelerated) erosion causes both "on-site" and "off-site" problems. On-site impacts include decreases in agricultural productivity and (on natural landscapes) ecological collapse, both because of loss of the nutrient-rich upper soil layers. In some cases, the eventual end result is desertification. Off-site effects include sedimentation of waterways and eutrophication of water bodies, as well as sediment-related damage to roads and houses. Water and wind erosion are the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for about 84% of the global extent of degraded land, making excessive erosion one of the most significant environmental problems.[9][62]

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+
+
+In earth science, erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location[1] (not to be confused with weathering which involves no movement). This natural process is caused by the dynamic activity of erosive agents, that is, water, ice (glaciers), snow, air (wind), plants, animals, and humans. In accordance with these agents, erosion is sometimes divided into water erosion, glacial erosion, snow erosion, wind (aeolic) erosion, zoogenic erosion, and anthropogenic erosion.[2] The particulate breakdown of rock or soil into clastic sediment is referred to as physical or mechanical erosion; this contrasts with chemical erosion, where soil or rock material is removed from an area by its dissolving into a solvent (typically water), followed by the flow away of that solution. Eroded sediment or solutes may be transported just a few millimetres, or for thousands of kilometres.
+
+Natural rates of erosion are controlled by the action of geological weathering geomorphic drivers, such as rainfall;[3] bedrock wear in rivers; coastal erosion by the sea and waves; glacial plucking, abrasion, and scour; areal flooding; wind abrasion; groundwater processes; and mass movement processes in steep landscapes like landslides and debris flows. The rates at which such processes act control how fast a surface is eroded. Typically, physical erosion proceeds fastest on steeply sloping surfaces, and rates may also be sensitive to some climatically-controlled properties including amounts of water supplied (e.g., by rain), storminess, wind speed, wave fetch, or atmospheric temperature (especially for some ice-related processes). Feedbacks are also possible between rates of erosion and the amount of eroded material that is already carried by, for example, a river or glacier.[4][5] Processes of erosion that produce sediment or solutes from a place contrast with those of deposition, which control the arrival and emplacement of material at a new location.[1]
+
+While erosion is a natural process, human activities have increased by 10-40 times the rate at which erosion is occurring globally.[6]  At well-known agriculture sites such as the Appalachian Mountains, intensive farming practices have caused erosion up to 100x the speed of the natural rate of erosion in the region.[7]  Excessive (or accelerated) erosion causes both "on-site" and "off-site" problems. On-site impacts include decreases in agricultural productivity and (on natural landscapes) ecological collapse, both because of loss of the nutrient-rich upper soil layers. In some cases, the eventual end result is desertification. Off-site effects include sedimentation of waterways and eutrophication of water bodies, as well as sediment-related damage to roads and houses. Water and wind erosion are the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for about 84% of the global extent of degraded land, making excessive erosion one of the most significant environmental problems worldwide.[8]:2[9]:1
+
+Intensive agriculture, deforestation, roads, anthropogenic climate change and urban sprawl are amongst the most significant human activities in regard to their effect on stimulating erosion.[10] However, there are many prevention and remediation practices that can curtail or limit erosion of vulnerable soils.
+
+Rainfall, and the surface runoff which may result from rainfall, produces four main types of soil erosion: splash erosion, sheet erosion, rill erosion, and gully erosion. Splash erosion is generally seen as the first and least severe stage in the soil erosion process, which is followed by sheet erosion, then rill erosion and finally gully erosion (the most severe of the four).[9]:60–61[11]
+
+In splash erosion, the impact of a falling raindrop creates a small crater in the soil,[12] ejecting soil particles.[3] The distance these soil particles travel can be as much as 0.6 m (two feet) vertically and 1.5 m (five feet) horizontally on level ground.
+
+If the soil is saturated, or if the rainfall rate is greater than the rate at which water can infiltrate into the soil, surface runoff occurs. If the runoff has sufficient flow energy, it will transport loosened soil particles (sediment) down the slope.[13] Sheet erosion is the transport of loosened soil particles by overland flow.[13]
+
+Rill erosion refers to the development of small, ephemeral concentrated flow paths which function as both sediment source and sediment delivery systems for erosion on hillslopes. Generally, where water erosion rates on disturbed upland areas are greatest, rills are active. Flow depths in rills are typically of the order of a few centimetres (about an inch) or less and along-channel slopes may be quite steep. This means that rills exhibit hydraulic physics very different from water flowing through the deeper, wider channels of streams and rivers.[14]
+
+Gully erosion occurs when runoff water accumulates and rapidly flows in narrow channels during or immediately after heavy rains or melting snow, removing soil to a considerable depth.[15][16][17]
+
+Valley or stream erosion occurs with continued water flow along a linear feature. The erosion is both downward, deepening the valley, and headward, extending the valley into the hillside, creating head cuts and steep banks. In the earliest stage of stream erosion, the erosive activity is dominantly vertical, the valleys have a typical V cross-section and the stream gradient is relatively steep. When some base level is reached, the erosive activity switches to lateral erosion, which widens the valley floor and creates a narrow floodplain. The stream gradient becomes nearly flat, and lateral deposition of sediments becomes important as the stream meanders across the valley floor. In all stages of stream erosion, by far the most erosion occurs during times of flood when more and faster-moving water is available to carry a larger sediment load. In such processes, it is not the water alone that erodes: suspended abrasive particles, pebbles, and boulders can also act erosively as they traverse a surface, in a process known as traction.[18]
+
+Bank erosion is the wearing away of the banks of a stream or river. This is distinguished from changes on the bed of the watercourse, which is referred to as scour. Erosion and changes in the form of river banks may be measured by inserting metal rods into the bank and marking the position of the bank surface along the rods at different times.[19]
+
+Thermal erosion is the result of melting and weakening permafrost due to moving water.[20] It can occur both along rivers and at the coast. Rapid river channel migration observed in the Lena River of Siberia is due to thermal erosion, as these portions of the banks are composed of permafrost-cemented non-cohesive materials.[21] Much of this erosion occurs as the weakened banks fail in large slumps. Thermal erosion also affects the Arctic coast, where wave action and near-shore temperatures combine to undercut permafrost bluffs along the shoreline and cause them to fail. Annual erosion rates along a 100-kilometre (62-mile) segment of the Beaufort Sea shoreline averaged 5.6 metres (18 feet) per year from 1955 to 2002.[22]
+
+Most river erosion happens nearer to the mouth of a river. On a river bend, the longest least sharp side has slower moving water. Here deposits build up. On the narrowest sharpest side of the bend, there is faster moving water so this side tends to erode away mostly.
+
+Shoreline erosion, which occurs on both exposed and sheltered coasts, primarily occurs through the action of currents and waves but sea level (tidal) change can also play a role.
+
+Hydraulic action takes place when the air in a joint is suddenly compressed by a wave closing the entrance of the joint. This then cracks it. Wave pounding is when the sheer energy of the wave hitting the cliff or rock breaks pieces off. Abrasion or corrasion is caused by waves launching sea load at the cliff. It is the most effective and rapid form of shoreline erosion (not to be confused with corrosion). Corrosion is the dissolving of rock by carbonic acid in sea water.[23] Limestone cliffs are particularly vulnerable to this kind of erosion. Attrition is where particles/sea load carried by the waves are worn down as they hit each other and the cliffs. This then makes the material easier to wash away. The material ends up as shingle and sand. Another significant source of erosion, particularly on carbonate coastlines, is boring, scraping and grinding of organisms, a process termed bioerosion.[24]
+
+Sediment is transported along the coast in the direction of the prevailing current (longshore drift). When the upcurrent amount of sediment is less than the amount being carried away, erosion occurs. When the upcurrent amount of sediment is greater, sand or gravel banks will tend to form as a result of deposition. These banks may slowly migrate along the coast in the direction of the longshore drift, alternately protecting and exposing parts of the coastline. Where there is a bend in the coastline, quite often a buildup of eroded material occurs forming a long narrow bank (a spit). Armoured beaches and submerged offshore sandbanks may also protect parts of a coastline from erosion. Over the years, as the shoals gradually shift, the erosion may be redirected to attack different parts of the shore.[25]
+
+Chemical erosion is the loss of matter in a landscape in the form of solutes. Chemical erosion is usually calculated from the solutes found in streams. Anders Rapp pioneered the study of chemical erosion in his work about Kärkevagge published in 1960.[26]
+
+Glaciers erode predominantly by three different processes: abrasion/scouring, plucking, and ice thrusting. In an abrasion process, debris in the basal ice scrapes along the bed, polishing and gouging the underlying rocks, similar to sandpaper on wood. Scientists have shown that, in addition to the role of temperature played in valley-deepening, other glaciological processes, such as erosion also control cross-valley variations. In a homogeneous bedrock erosion pattern, curved channel cross-section beneath the ice is created. Though the glacier continues to incise vertically, the shape of the channel beneath the ice eventually remain constant, reaching a U-shaped parabolic steady-state shape as we now see in glaciated valleys. Scientists also provide a numerical estimate of the time required for the ultimate formation of a steady-shaped U-shaped valley—approximately 100,000 years. In a weak bedrock (containing material more erodible than the surrounding rocks) erosion pattern, on the contrary, the amount of over deepening is limited because ice velocities and erosion rates are reduced.[27]
+
+Glaciers can also cause pieces of bedrock to crack off in the process of plucking. In ice thrusting, the glacier freezes to its bed, then as it surges forward, it moves large sheets of frozen sediment at the base along with the glacier. This method produced some of the many thousands of lake basins that dot the edge of the Canadian Shield. Differences in the height of mountain ranges are not only being the result tectonic forces, such as rock uplift, but also local climate variations. Scientists use global analysis of topography to show that glacial erosion controls the maximum height of mountains, as the relief between mountain peaks and the snow line are generally confined to altitudes less than 1500 m.[28]  The erosion caused by glaciers worldwide erodes mountains so effectively that the term glacial buzzsaw has become widely used, which describes the limiting effect of glaciers on the height of mountain ranges.[29] As mountains grow higher, they generally allow for more glacial activity (especially in the accumulation zone above the glacial equilibrium line altitude),[30] which causes increased rates of erosion of the mountain, decreasing mass faster than isostatic rebound can add to the mountain.[31] This provides a good example of a negative feedback loop. Ongoing research is showing that while glaciers tend to decrease mountain size, in some areas, glaciers can actually reduce the rate of erosion, acting as a glacial armor.[29] Ice can not only erode mountains but also protect them from erosion. Depending on glacier regime, even steep alpine lands can be preserved through time with the help of ice. Scientists have proved this theory by sampling eight summits of northwestern Svalbard using Be10 and Al26, showing that northwestern Svalbard transformed from a glacier-erosion state under relatively mild glacial maxima temperature, to a glacier-armor state occupied by cold-based, protective ice during much colder glacial maxima temperatures as the Quaternary ice age progressed.[32]
+
+These processes, combined with erosion and transport by the water network beneath the glacier, leave behind glacial landforms such as moraines, drumlins, ground moraine (till), kames, kame deltas, moulins, and glacial erratics in their wake, typically at the terminus or during glacier retreat.[33]
+
+The best-developed glacial valley morphology appears to be restricted to landscapes with low rock uplift rates (less than or equal to 2 mm per year) and high relief, leading to long-turnover times. Where rock uplift rates exceed 2 mm per year, glacial valley morphology has generally been significantly modified in postglacial time. Interplay of glacial erosion and tectonic forcing governs the morphologic impact of glaciations on active orogens, by both influencing their height, and by altering the patterns of erosion during subsequent glacial periods via a link between rock uplift and valley cross-sectional shape.[34]
+
+At extremely high flows, kolks, or vortices are formed by large volumes of rapidly rushing water. Kolks cause extreme local erosion, plucking bedrock and creating pothole-type geographical features called rock-cut basins. Examples can be seen in the flood regions result from glacial Lake Missoula, which created the channeled scablands in the Columbia Basin region of eastern Washington.[35]
+
+Wind erosion is a major geomorphological force, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. It is also a major source of land degradation, evaporation, desertification, harmful airborne dust, and crop damage—especially after being increased far above natural rates by human activities such as deforestation, urbanization, and agriculture.[36][37]
+
+Wind erosion is of two primary varieties: deflation, where the wind picks up and carries away loose particles; and abrasion, where surfaces are worn down as they are struck by airborne particles carried by wind. Deflation is divided into three categories: (1) surface creep, where larger, heavier particles slide or roll along the ground; (2) saltation, where particles are lifted a short height into the air, and bounce and saltate across the surface of the soil; and (3) suspension, where very small and light particles are lifted into the air by the wind, and are often carried for long distances. Saltation is responsible for the majority (50-70%) of wind erosion, followed by suspension (30-40%), and then surface creep (5-25%).[38]:57[39]
+
+Wind erosion is much more severe in arid areas and during times of drought. For example, in the Great Plains, it is estimated that soil loss due to wind erosion can be as much as 6100 times greater in drought years than in wet years.[40]
+
+Mass movement is the downward and outward movement of rock and sediments on a sloped surface, mainly due to the force of gravity.[41][42]
+
+Mass movement is an important part of the erosional process and is often the first stage in the breakdown and transport of weathered materials in mountainous areas.[43]:93 It moves material from higher elevations to lower elevations where other eroding agents such as streams and glaciers can then pick up the material and move it to even lower elevations. Mass-movement processes are always occurring continuously on all slopes; some mass-movement processes act very slowly; others occur very suddenly, often with disastrous results. Any perceptible down-slope movement of rock or sediment is often referred to in general terms as a landslide. However, landslides can be classified in a much more detailed way that reflects the mechanisms responsible for the movement and the velocity at which the movement occurs. One of the visible topographical manifestations of a very slow form of such activity is a scree slope.[citation needed]
+
+Slumping happens on steep hillsides, occurring along distinct fracture zones, often within materials like clay that, once released, may move quite rapidly downhill. They will often show a spoon-shaped isostatic depression, in which the material has begun to slide downhill. In some cases, the slump is caused by water beneath the slope weakening it. In many cases it is simply the result of poor engineering along highways where it is a regular occurrence.[44]
+
+Surface creep is the slow movement of soil and rock debris by gravity which is usually not perceptible except through extended observation. However, the term can also describe the rolling of dislodged soil particles 0.5 to 1.0 mm (0.02 to 0.04 in) in diameter by wind along the soil surface.[45]
+
+The amount and intensity of precipitation is the main climatic factor governing soil erosion by water. The relationship is particularly strong if heavy rainfall occurs at times when, or in locations where, the soil's surface is not well protected by vegetation. This might be during periods when agricultural activities leave the soil bare, or in semi-arid regions where vegetation is naturally sparse. Wind erosion requires strong winds, particularly during times of drought when vegetation is sparse and soil is dry (and so is more erodible). Other climatic factors such as average temperature and temperature range may also affect erosion, via their effects on vegetation and soil properties. In general, given similar vegetation and ecosystems, areas with more precipitation (especially high-intensity rainfall), more wind, or more storms are expected to have more erosion.
+
+In some areas of the world (e.g. the mid-western USA), rainfall intensity is the primary determinant of erosivity (for a definition of erosivity check,[46]) with higher intensity rainfall generally resulting in more soil erosion by water. The size and velocity of rain drops is also an important factor. Larger and higher-velocity rain drops have greater kinetic energy, and thus their impact will displace soil particles by larger distances than smaller, slower-moving rain drops.[47]
+
+In other regions of the world (e.g. western Europe), runoff and erosion result from relatively low intensities of stratiform rainfall falling onto the previously saturated soil. In such situations, rainfall amount rather than intensity is the main factor determining the severity of soil erosion by water.[15]
+
+In Taiwan, where typhoon frequency increased significantly in the 21st century, a strong link has been drawn between the increase in storm frequency with an increase in sediment load in rivers and reservoirs, highlighting the impacts climate change can have on erosion.[48]
+
+Vegetation acts as an interface between the atmosphere and the soil. It increases the permeability of the soil to rainwater, thus decreasing runoff. It shelters the soil from winds, which results in decreased wind erosion, as well as advantageous changes in microclimate. The roots of the plants bind the soil together, and interweave with other roots, forming a more solid mass that is less susceptible to both water[49] and wind erosion. The removal of vegetation increases the rate of surface erosion.[50]
+
+The topography of the land determines the velocity at which surface runoff will flow, which in turn determines the erosivity of the runoff. Longer, steeper slopes (especially those without adequate vegetative cover) are more susceptible to very high rates of erosion during heavy rains than shorter, less steep slopes. Steeper terrain is also more prone to mudslides, landslides, and other forms of gravitational erosion processes.[47]:28–30[51][52]
+
+Tectonic processes control rates and distributions of erosion at the Earth's surface. If the tectonic action causes part of the Earth's surface (e.g., a mountain range) to be raised or lowered relative to surrounding areas, this must necessarily change the gradient of the land surface. Because erosion rates are almost always sensitive to the local slope (see above), this will change the rates of erosion in the uplifted area. Active tectonics also brings fresh, unweathered rock towards the surface, where it is exposed to the action of erosion.
+
+However, erosion can also affect tectonic processes. The removal by erosion of large amounts of rock from a particular region, and its deposition elsewhere, can result in a lightening of the load on the lower crust and mantle. Because tectonic processes are driven by gradients in the stress field developed in the crust, this unloading can in turn cause tectonic or isostatic uplift in the region.[43]:99[53] In some cases, it has been hypothesised that these twin feedbacks can act to localize and enhance zones of very rapid exhumation of deep crustal rocks beneath places on the Earth's surface with extremely high erosion rates, for example, beneath the extremely steep terrain of Nanga Parbat in the western Himalayas. Such a place has been called a "tectonic aneurysm".[54]
+
+Human land development, in forms including agricultural and urban development, is considered a significant factor in erosion[55] and sediment transport. In Taiwan, increases in sediment load in the northern, central, and southern regions of the island can be tracked with the timeline of development for each region throughout the 20th century.[48]
+
+Mountain ranges are known to take many millions of years to erode to the degree they effectively cease to exist. Scholars Pitman and Golovchenko estimate that it takes probably more than 450 million years to erode a mountain mass similar to the Himalaya into an almost-flat peneplain if there are no major sea-level changes.[56] Erosion of mountains massifs can create a pattern of equally high summits called summit accordance.[57] It has been argued that extension during post-orogenic collapse is a more effective mechanism of lowering the height of orogenic mountains than erosion.[58]
+
+Examples of heavily eroded mountain ranges include the Timanides of Northern Russia. Erosion of this orogen has produced sediments that are now found in the East European Platform, including the Cambrian Sablya Formation near Lake Ladoga. Studies of these sediments indicate that it is likely that the erosion of the orogen began in the Cambrian and then intensified in the Ordovician.[59]
+
+If the rate of erosion is higher than the rate of soil formation the soils are being destroyed by erosion.[60] Where soil is not destroyed by erosion, erosion can in some cases prevent the formation of soil features that form slowly. Inceptisols are common soils that form in areas of fast erosion.[61]
+
+While erosion of soils is a natural process, human activities have increased by 10-40 times the rate at which erosion is occurring globally. Excessive (or accelerated) erosion causes both "on-site" and "off-site" problems. On-site impacts include decreases in agricultural productivity and (on natural landscapes) ecological collapse, both because of loss of the nutrient-rich upper soil layers. In some cases, the eventual end result is desertification. Off-site effects include sedimentation of waterways and eutrophication of water bodies, as well as sediment-related damage to roads and houses. Water and wind erosion are the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for about 84% of the global extent of degraded land, making excessive erosion one of the most significant environmental problems.[9][62]

en/1812.html.txt

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+Eroticism (from the Greek  ἔρως, eros—"desire") is a quality that causes sexual feelings,[1] as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, sculpture, photography, drama, film, music, or literature. It may also be found in advertising. The term may also refer to a state of sexual arousal[1] or anticipation of such – an insistent sexual impulse, desire, or pattern of thoughts.
+
+As French novelist Honoré de Balzac stated, eroticism is dependent not just upon an individual's sexual morality, but also the culture and time in which an individual resides.[2][3][4]
+
+Because the nature of what is erotic is fluid,[5] early definitions of the term attempted to conceive eroticism as some form of sensual or romantic love or as the human sex drive (libido); for example, the Encyclopédie of 1755 states that the erotic "is an epithet which is applied to everything with a connection to the love of the sexes; one employs it particularly to characterize...a dissoluteness, an excess".[6]
+
+Because eroticism is wholly dependent on the viewer's culture and personal tastes pertaining to what, exactly, defines the erotic,[7][8] critics have often[how often?] confused eroticism with pornography, with the anti-pornography activist Andrea Dworkin saying, "Erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer."[9] This confusion, as Lynn Hunt writes, "demonstrate the difficulty of drawing… a clear generic demarcation between the erotic and the pornographic": indeed arguably "the history of the separation of pornography from eroticism… remains to be written".[10]
+
+Whereas traditionally eroticism has been dealt with in relation to culture and its pornographic outcomes, current evolutionary psychology shows how eroticism has shaped the evolution of human nature.[11]
+
+Influenced by Sigmund Freud[12], psychotherapists have turned to Greek philosophy for an understanding of eros' heightened aesthetic.[13] For Plato, Eros takes an almost transcendent manifestation when the subject seeks to go beyond itself and form a communion with the object/other: "the true order of going...to the things of love, is to use the beauties of earth as steps...to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty".[14]
+
+Modern French conceptions of eroticism can be traced to Age of Enlightenment,[15] when "in the eighteenth century, dictionaries defined the erotic as that which concerned love...eroticism was the intrusion into the public sphere of something that was at base private".[16] This theme of intrusion or transgression was taken up in the twentieth century by the French philosopher Georges Bataille, who argued that eroticism performs a function of dissolving boundaries between human subjectivity and humanity, a transgression that dissolves the rational world but is always temporary,[17] as well as that, "Desire in eroticism is the desire that triumphs over the taboo. It presupposes man in conflict with himself".[18] For Bataille, as well as many French theorists, "Eroticism, unlike simple sexual activity, is a psychological quest...eroticism is assenting to life even in death".[19]
+
+Queer theory and LGBT studies consider the concept from a non-heterosexual perspective, viewing psychoanalytical and modernist views of eroticism as both archaic[20] and heterosexist,[21] written primarily by and for a "handful of elite, heterosexual, bourgeois men"[22] who "mistook their own repressed sexual proclivities"[23] as the norm.[24]
+
+Theorists like Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,[25] Gayle S. Rubin[26] and Marilyn Frye[27] all write extensively about eroticism from a heterosexual, lesbian and separatist point of view, respectively, seeing eroticism as both a political force[28] and cultural critique[29] for marginalized groups, or as Mario Vargas Llosa summarized: "Eroticism has its own moral justification because it says that pleasure is enough for me; it is a statement of the individual's sovereignty".[30]
+
+Audre Lorde, a Caribbean-American writer and out-spoken feminist talks of the erotic being a type of power being specific to females.  "There are many kinds of power [...] The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feelings".[31] In "The Uses of the Erotic" within Sister Outsider, she discusses how erotic comes from sharing, but if we suppress the erotic rather than recognize its presence, it takes on a different form. Rather than enjoying and sharing with one another, it is objectifying, which she says translates into abuse as we attempt to hide and suppress our experiences.[32]

en/1813.html.txt

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+Eroticism (from the Greek  ἔρως, eros—"desire") is a quality that causes sexual feelings,[1] as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, sculpture, photography, drama, film, music, or literature. It may also be found in advertising. The term may also refer to a state of sexual arousal[1] or anticipation of such – an insistent sexual impulse, desire, or pattern of thoughts.
+
+As French novelist Honoré de Balzac stated, eroticism is dependent not just upon an individual's sexual morality, but also the culture and time in which an individual resides.[2][3][4]
+
+Because the nature of what is erotic is fluid,[5] early definitions of the term attempted to conceive eroticism as some form of sensual or romantic love or as the human sex drive (libido); for example, the Encyclopédie of 1755 states that the erotic "is an epithet which is applied to everything with a connection to the love of the sexes; one employs it particularly to characterize...a dissoluteness, an excess".[6]
+
+Because eroticism is wholly dependent on the viewer's culture and personal tastes pertaining to what, exactly, defines the erotic,[7][8] critics have often[how often?] confused eroticism with pornography, with the anti-pornography activist Andrea Dworkin saying, "Erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer."[9] This confusion, as Lynn Hunt writes, "demonstrate the difficulty of drawing… a clear generic demarcation between the erotic and the pornographic": indeed arguably "the history of the separation of pornography from eroticism… remains to be written".[10]
+
+Whereas traditionally eroticism has been dealt with in relation to culture and its pornographic outcomes, current evolutionary psychology shows how eroticism has shaped the evolution of human nature.[11]
+
+Influenced by Sigmund Freud[12], psychotherapists have turned to Greek philosophy for an understanding of eros' heightened aesthetic.[13] For Plato, Eros takes an almost transcendent manifestation when the subject seeks to go beyond itself and form a communion with the object/other: "the true order of going...to the things of love, is to use the beauties of earth as steps...to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty".[14]
+
+Modern French conceptions of eroticism can be traced to Age of Enlightenment,[15] when "in the eighteenth century, dictionaries defined the erotic as that which concerned love...eroticism was the intrusion into the public sphere of something that was at base private".[16] This theme of intrusion or transgression was taken up in the twentieth century by the French philosopher Georges Bataille, who argued that eroticism performs a function of dissolving boundaries between human subjectivity and humanity, a transgression that dissolves the rational world but is always temporary,[17] as well as that, "Desire in eroticism is the desire that triumphs over the taboo. It presupposes man in conflict with himself".[18] For Bataille, as well as many French theorists, "Eroticism, unlike simple sexual activity, is a psychological quest...eroticism is assenting to life even in death".[19]
+
+Queer theory and LGBT studies consider the concept from a non-heterosexual perspective, viewing psychoanalytical and modernist views of eroticism as both archaic[20] and heterosexist,[21] written primarily by and for a "handful of elite, heterosexual, bourgeois men"[22] who "mistook their own repressed sexual proclivities"[23] as the norm.[24]
+
+Theorists like Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,[25] Gayle S. Rubin[26] and Marilyn Frye[27] all write extensively about eroticism from a heterosexual, lesbian and separatist point of view, respectively, seeing eroticism as both a political force[28] and cultural critique[29] for marginalized groups, or as Mario Vargas Llosa summarized: "Eroticism has its own moral justification because it says that pleasure is enough for me; it is a statement of the individual's sovereignty".[30]
+
+Audre Lorde, a Caribbean-American writer and out-spoken feminist talks of the erotic being a type of power being specific to females.  "There are many kinds of power [...] The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feelings".[31] In "The Uses of the Erotic" within Sister Outsider, she discusses how erotic comes from sharing, but if we suppress the erotic rather than recognize its presence, it takes on a different form. Rather than enjoying and sharing with one another, it is objectifying, which she says translates into abuse as we attempt to hide and suppress our experiences.[32]

en/1814.html.txt

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+Coordinates: 15°N 39°E / 15°N 39°E / 15; 39
+
+دولة ارتريا  (Arabic)
+
+Eritrea (/ˌɛrɪˈtreɪə, ˌɛrɪˈtriːə/[19] (listen)),[20] officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in Eastern Africa, with its capital at Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The northeastern and eastern parts of Eritrea have an extensive coastline along the Red Sea. The nation has a total area of approximately 117,600 km2 (45,406 sq mi), and includes the Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands.
+
+Eritrea is a multi-ethnic country, with nine recognized ethnic groups in its population of around five and a half million. Eritrea has nine national languages which are Tigrinya language, Tigre, Afar, Beja, Bilen, Kunama, Nara, Saho. Tigrinya, Arabic, and English serve as the three working languages.[2] Most residents speak languages from the Afroasiatic family, either of the Ethiopian Semitic languages or Cushitic branches. Among these communities, the Tigrinyas make up about 55% of the population, with the Tigre people constituting around 30% of inhabitants. In addition, there are a number of Nilo-Saharan-speaking Nilotic ethnic groups. Most people in the territory adhere to Christianity or Islam, with a small minority adhering to traditional faiths.[21]
+
+The Kingdom of Aksum, covering much of modern-day Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, was established during the first or second centuries AD.[22][23] It adopted Christianity around the middle of the fourth century.[24] In medieval times much of Eritrea fell under the Medri Bahri kingdom, with a smaller region being part of Hamasien.
+
+The creation of modern-day Eritrea is a result of the incorporation of independent, distinct kingdoms (for example, Medri Bahri and the Sultanate of Aussa) eventually resulting in the formation of Italian Eritrea. After the defeat of the Italian colonial army in 1942, Eritrea was administered by the British Military Administration until 1952. Following the UN General Assembly decision, in 1952, Eritrea would govern itself with a local Eritrean parliament, but for foreign affairs and defense it would enter into a federal status with Ethiopia for a period of 10 years. However, in 1962 the government of Ethiopia annulled the Eritrean parliament and formally annexed Eritrea, but the Eritreans who had argued for complete Eritrean independence since the ouster of the Italians in 1941 anticipated what was coming and, in 1961, organized the Eritrean Liberation Front in opposition. In 1991, after 30 years of continuous armed struggle for independence, the Eritrean liberation fighters entered the capital city, Asmara, in victory.
+
+The sovereign state  is a totalitarian one-party dictatorship in which national legislative and presidential elections have never been held since independence.[25][9] According to Human Rights Watch, the Eritrean government's human rights record is among the worst in the world.[26] The Eritrean government has dismissed these allegations as politically motivated.[27] The compulsory military service requires long, indefinite conscription periods (6.5 years on average), which some Eritreans leave the country to avoid.[28] Because all local media is state-owned, Eritrea was also ranked as having the third-least press freedom in the global Press Freedom Index, behind North Korea and Turkmenistan.
+
+The sovereign state of Eritrea is a member of the African Union, the United Nations, and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, and is an observer state in the Arab League alongside Brazil and Venezuela.[29]
+
+The name Eritrea is derived from the ancient Greek name for the Red Sea (Ἐρυθρὰ Θάλασσα Erythra Thalassa, based on the adjective ἐρυθρός erythros "red"). It was first formally adopted in 1890, with the formation of Italian Eritrea (Colonia Eritrea).[30] The name persisted over the course of subsequent British and Ethiopian occupation, and was reaffirmed by the 1993 independence referendum and 1997 constitution.[31]
+
+Buya in Eritrea, one of the oldest hominids representing a possible link between Homo erectus and an archaic Homo sapiens was found by Italian scientists. Dated to over 1 million years old, it is the oldest skeletal find of its kind and provides a link between hominids and the earliest anatomically modern humans.[32] It is believed that the section of the Danakil Depression in Eritrea was also a major player in terms of human evolution, and may contain other traces of evolution from Homo erectus hominids to anatomically modern humans.[33]
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+During the last interglacial period, the Red Sea coast of Eritrea was occupied by early anatomically modern humans.[34] It is believed that the area was on the route out of Africa that some scholars suggest was used by early humans to colonize the rest of the Old World.[34] In 1999, the Eritrean Research Project Team composed of Eritrean, Canadian, American, Dutch and French scientists discovered a Paleolithic site with stone and obsidian tools dated to over 125,000 years old near the Bay of Zula south of Massawa, along the Red Sea littoral. The tools are believed to have been used by early humans to harvest marine resources such as clams and oysters.[35]
+[36][37][38]
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+Neolithic rock art in a Qohaito canyon cave
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+Pre-Axumite monolithic columns in Qohaito
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+Research shows tools found in the Barka Valley dating from 8000 BC appear to offer the first concrete evidence of human settlement in the area.[39] Research also shows that many of the ethnic groups of Eritrea were the first to inhabit these areas.[40]
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+Excavations in and near Agordat in central Eritrea yielded the remains of an ancient pre-Aksumite civilization known as the Gash Group.[41] Ceramics were discovered that were dating back between 2500–1500 BC.[42] Some sources dating back to 3500 BC.[43]
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+Around 2000 BC, parts of Eritrea were most likely part of the Land of Punt, first mentioned in the 25th century BC.[44][45][46] It was known for producing and exporting gold, aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory and wild animals. The region is known from ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to it.[47][48][49][50]
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+Excavations at Sembel found evidence of an ancient pre-Aksumite civilization in greater Asmara. This Ona urban culture is believed to have been among the earliest pastoral and agricultural communities in the region. Artifacts at the site have been dated to between 800 BC and 400 BC, contemporaneous with other pre-Aksumite settlements in the Eritrean and Ethiopian highlands during the mid-first millennium BC.[51][52][53]
+
+Dʿmt was a kingdom that encompassed most of Eritrea and the northern frontier of Ethiopia. The polity existed during the 10th to 5th centuries BC. Given the presence of a massive temple complex at Yeha, this area was most likely the kingdom's capital. Qohaito, often identified as the town of Koloe in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea,[54] as well as Matara were important ancient Dʿmt kingdom cities in southern Eritrea.
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+The realm developed irrigation schemes, used plows, grew millet, and made iron tools and weapons. After the fall of Dʿmt in the 5th century BC, the plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms. This lasted until the rise of one of these polities during the first century, the Kingdom of Aksum, which was able to reunite the area.[55]
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+The Kingdom of Aksum was a trading empire centered in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia.[56] It existed from approximately 100–940 AD, growing from the proto-Aksumite Iron Age period around the 4th century BC to achieve prominence by the 1st century AD.
+
+According to the medieval Liber Axumae (Book of Aksum), Aksum's first capital, Mazaber, was built by Itiyopis, son of Cush.[57] The capital was later moved to Aksum in northern Ethiopia. The Kingdom used the name "Ethiopia" as early as the 4th century.[22][23]
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+The Aksumites erected a number of large stelae, which served a religious purpose in pre-Christian times. One of these granite columns, the Obelisk of Aksum, is the largest such structure in the world, standing at 90 feet (27 metres).[58] Under Ezana (fl. 320–360), Aksum later adopted Christianity.[59]
+
+Christianity was the first world religion to be adopted in Eritrea and the oldest monastery in the country Debre Sina (monastery) was built during the 4th century. It is one of the oldest monasteries in Africa and the world.[60] Debre Libanos, the second oldest monestary was said to have been founded in the late fifth or early sixth century. Originally located in the village of Ham, it was moved to an inaccessible location on the edge of a cliff below the Ham plateau. Its church contains the Golden Gospel, a metal-covered bible dating to the 13th century during which Debre Libanos was an important seat of religious power.[61]
+
+In the 7th century, early Muslims from Mecca, at least companions of the Islamic Nabī, (Prophet) Muhammad, sought refuge from Qurayshi persecution by travelling to the kingdom, a journey known in Islamic history as the First Hijrah. They reportedly built the first African mosque, that is the Mosque of the Companions, Massawa.[62]
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+The kingdom is mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as an important market place for ivory, which was exported throughout the ancient world. Aksum was at the time ruled by Zoskales, who also governed the port of Adulis.[63] The Aksumite rulers facilitated trade by minting their own Aksumite currency.[64]
+
+After the decline of Aksum, the Eritrean highlands were under the domain of Christian Kingdom of Medri Bahri, ruled by Bahri Negus. The area was then known as Ma'ikele Bahri ("between the seas/rivers", i.e. the land between the Red Sea and the Mereb river).[65] The entire coastal domain of Ma'ikele Bahri was under the Adal Sultanate during the reign of Sultan Badlay.[66][67] The state was later reconquered by Ethiopian Emperors namely Zara Yaqob, and renamed the Medri Bahri ("Sea land" in Tigrinya, although it included some areas like Shire in Ethiopia on the other side of the Mereb, today in Ethiopia).[68] With its capital at Debarwa,[69] the state's main provinces were Hamasien, Serae and Akele Guzai.
+
+The Scottish traveler James Bruce reported in 1771 that Medri Bahri was a distinct political entity from Abyssinia, noting that the two territories were frequently in conflict. The Bahre-Nagassi ("Kings of the Sea") alternately fought with or against the Abyssinians, depending on the geopolitical circumstances. James Bruce in his book published in 1805 reported Hadawi, the seat of Bahri Negash, was part of the Tigré province of Abyssinia which was ruled by Ras Mikael Sehul at the time of his travel.[70][71][72]
+
+In 1734, the Afar leader Kedafu, established the Mudaito Dynasty in Ethiopia, which later also came to inlucude the southern Denkel lowlands of Eritrea, thus incorporating the southern denkel lowlands to the Sultanate of Aussa. 16th century also marked the arrival of the Ottomans, who began making inroads in the Red Sea area.[73][74][75][76][77]
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+The Ottomans had succeeded in conquering the northeastern present-day Eritrea for the next two decades, an area which stretched from Massawa to Swakin in Sudan.[73] The territory became an Ottoman governorate, known as the Habesh Eyalet. Massawa served as the new province's first capital. When the city became of secondary economical importance, the administrative capital was soon moved across the Red Sea to Jeddah.[78] Turks tried to occupy the highland parts of Medri Bahri in 1559 and withdrew after they encountered resistance and were pushed back by the Bahri Negash and highland forces. In 1578 they tried to expand into the highlands with the help of Bahri Negash Yisehaq who had switched alliances due to power struggle, and by 1589 once again they were apparently compelled to withdraw their forces to the coast.
+
+The Ottomans were eventually driven out in the last quarter of the 16th century. However, they retained control over the seaboard until the establishment of Italian Eritrea in the late 1800s.[73][79][80]
+
+The boundaries of the present-day Eritrea nation state were established during the Scramble for Africa. In 1869[81] or 1870, the ruling local chief sold lands surrounding the Bay of Assab to the Rubattino Shipping Company.[82] The area served as a coaling station along the shipping lanes introduced by the recently completed Suez Canal.
+
+In the vacuum that followed the 1889 death of Emperor Yohannes IV, Gen. Oreste Baratieri occupied the highlands along the Eritrean coast and Italy proclaimed the establishment of the new colony of Italian Eritrea, a colony of the Kingdom of Italy. In the Treaty of Wuchale (It. Uccialli) signed the same year, King Menelik of Shewa, a southern Ethiopian kingdom, recognized the Italian occupation of his rivals' lands of Bogos, Hamasien, Akkele Guzay, and Serae in exchange for guarantees of financial assistance and continuing access to European arms and ammunition. His subsequent victory over his rival kings and enthronement as Emperor Menelek II (r. 1889–1913) made the treaty formally binding upon the entire territory.[83]
+
+In 1888, the Italian administration launched its first development projects in the new colony. The Eritrean Railway was completed to Saati in 1888,[84] and reached Asmara in the highlands in 1911.[85] The Asmara–Massawa Cableway was the longest line in the world during its time, but was later dismantled by the British in World War II. Besides major infrastructural projects, the colonial authorities invested significantly in the agricultural sector. It also oversaw the provision of urban amenities in Asmara and Massawa, and employed many Eritreans in public service, particularly in the police and public works departments.[85] Thousands of Eritreans were concurrently enlisted in the army, serving during the Italo-Turkish War in Libya as well as the First and Second Italo-Abyssinian Wars.
+
+Additionally, the Italian Eritrea administration opened a number of new factories, which produced buttons, cooking oil, pasta, construction materials, packing meat, tobacco, hide, and other household commodities. In 1939, there were around 2,198 factories and most of the employees were Eritrean citizens. The establishment of industries also made an increase in the number of both Italians and Eritreans residing in the cities. The number of Italians residing in the territory increased from 4,600 to 75,000 in five years; and with the involvement of Eritreans in the industries, trade and fruit plantation was expanded across the nation, while some of the plantations were owned by Eritreans.[86]
+
+In 1922, Benito Mussolini's rise to power in Italy brought profound changes to the colonial government in Italian Eritrea. After il Duce declared the birth of the Italian Empire in May 1936, Italian Eritrea (enlarged with northern Ethiopia's regions) and Italian Somaliland were merged with the just conquered Ethiopia in the new Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana) administrative territory. This Fascist period was characterized by imperial expansion in the name of a "new Roman Empire". Eritrea was chosen by the Italian government to be the industrial center of Italian East Africa.[87]
+
+Asmara's architecture after 1935 was greatly improved to become a "modernist Art Deco city" (in 2017 has been declared a "UNESCO World City Heritage"[88]), featuring eclectic and rationalist built forms, well-defined open spaces, and public and private buildings, including cinemas, shops, banks, religious structures, public and private offices, industrial facilities, and residences (according to UNESCO's publications). The Italians designed more than 400 buildings in a construction boom that was only halted by Italy's involvement in WW2. These included art deco masterpieces like the worldwide famous Fiat Tagliero Building and the Cinema Impero[89]
+
+Coat of Arms of Italian Eritrea
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+Eritrean children vow allegiance to Mussolini's National Fascist Party.
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+An Asmara station on the Eritrean Railway (1938)
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+Eritrean tallero, coined in 1890 by the Italian government
+
+Through the 1941 Battle of Keren, the British expelled the Italians,[90] and took over the administration of the country.
+
+The British placed Eritrea under British military administration until Allied forces could determine its fate.
+
+In the absence of agreement amongst the Allies concerning the status of Eritrea, British administration continued for the remainder of World War II and until 1950. During the immediate postwar years, the British proposed that Eritrea be divided along religious lines and annexed partly to the British colony of Sudan and partly to Ethiopia.[citation needed] The Soviet Union, anticipating a communist victory in the Italian polls, initially supported returning Eritrea to Italy under trusteeship or as a colony.[citation needed]
+
+In the 1950s, the Ethiopian feudal administration under Emperor Haile Selassie sought to annex Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. He laid claim to both territories in a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Paris Peace Conference and at the First Session of the United Nations.[91] In the United Nations, the debate over the fate of the former Italian colonies continued. The British and Americans preferred to cede all of Eritrea except the Western province to the Ethiopians as a reward for their support during World War II.[92] The Independence Bloc of Eritrean parties consistently requested from the UN General Assembly that a referendum be held immediately to settle the Eritrean question of sovereignty.
+
+Following the adoption of UN Resolution 390A(V) in December 1950, Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia under the prompting of the United States.[93] The resolution called for Eritrea and Ethiopia to be linked through a loose federal structure under the sovereignty of the Emperor. Eritrea was to have its own administrative and judicial structure, its own flag, and control over its domestic affairs, including police, local administration, and taxation.[91] The federal government, which for all practical purposes was the existing imperial government, was to control foreign affairs (including commerce), defense, finance, and transportation. The resolution ignored the wishes of Eritreans for independence, but guaranteed the population democratic rights and a measure of autonomy.
+
+In 1958, a group of Eritreans founded the Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM). The organization mainly consisted of Eritrean students, professionals and intellectuals. It engaged in clandestine political activities intended to cultivate resistance to the centralizing policies of the imperial Ethiopian state.[94] On 1 September 1961, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), under the leadership of Hamid Idris Awate, waged an armed struggle for independence. In 1962, Emperor Haile Selassie unilaterally dissolved the Eritrean parliament and annexed the territory. The ensuing Eritrean War of Independence went on for 30 years against successive Ethiopian governments until 1991, when the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), a successor of the ELF, defeated the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea and helped a coalition of Ethiopian rebel forces take control of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
+
+Following a UN-supervised referendum in Eritrea (dubbed UNOVER) in which the Eritrean people overwhelmingly voted for independence, Eritrea declared its independence and gained international recognition in 1993.[95] The EPLF seized power, established a one-party state along nationalist lines and banned further political activity. There have been no elections since.
+
+Eritrea is located in East Africa. It is bordered to the northeast and east by the Red Sea, Sudan to the west, Ethiopia to the south, and Djibouti to the southeast. Eritrea lies between latitudes 12° and 18°N, and longitudes 36° and 44°E.
+
+The country is virtually bisected by a branch of the East African Rift. Eritrea, at the southern end of the Red Sea, is the home of the fork in the rift. The Dahlak Archipelago and its fishing grounds are situated off the sandy and arid coastline.
+
+Eritrea can be split into three ecoregions. To the east of the highlands are the hot, arid coastal plains stretching down to the southeast of the country. The cooler, more fertile highlands, reaching up to 3000 m, have a different habitat. Habitats here vary from the sub-tropical rainforest at Filfil Solomona to the precipitous cliffs and canyons of the southern highlands.[96]
+The Afar Triangle or Danakil Depression of Eritrea is the probable location of a triple junction where three tectonic plates are pulling away from one another. The highest point of the country, Emba Soira, is located in the center of Eritrea, at 3,018 meters (9,902 ft) above sea level.
+
+The main cities of the country are the capital city of Asmara and the port town of Asseb in the southeast, as well as the towns of Massawa to the east, the northern town of Keren, and the central town Mendefera.
+
+Eritrea is part of a 14-nation constituency within the Global Environment Facility, which partners with international institutions, civil society organizations, and the private sector to address global environmental issues while supporting national sustainable development initiatives.[97] Local variability in rainfall patterns and/or reduced precipitation is known to occur, which may precipitate soil erosion, floods, droughts, land degradation and desertification.[98] In 2006, Eritrea also announced that it would become the first country in the world to turn its entire coast into an environmentally protected zone. The 1,347 km (837 mi) coastline, along with another 1,946 km (1,209 mi) of coast around its more than 350 islands, will come under governmental protection.
+
+Eritrea has several species of mammals and a rich avifauna of 560 species of birds.[99]
+
+Eritrea is home to an abundant amount of big game species. Enforced regulations have helped in steadily increasing their numbers throughout Eritrea.[100] Mammals commonly seen today include the Abyssinian hare, African wild cat, Black-backed jackal, African golden wolf, Genet, Ground squirrel, pale fox, Soemmerring's gazelle, warthog. Dorcas gazelle are common on the coastal plains and in Gash-Barka.
+
+Lions are said to inhabit the mountains of the Gash-Barka Region. There is also a small population of African bush elephants that roam in some parts of the country. Dik-diks can also be found in many areas. The endangered African wild ass can be seen in Denakalia Region. Other local wildlife include bushbuck, duikers, greater kudu, Klipspringer, African leopards, oryx and crocodiles.[101][102] The spotted hyena is widespread and fairly common. Between 1955 and 2001 there were no reported sightings of elephant herds, and they are thought to have fallen victim to the war of independence. In December 2001 a herd of about 30, including 10 juveniles, was observed in the vicinity of the Gash River. The elephants seemed to have formed a symbiotic relationship with olive baboons, with the baboons using the water holes dug by the elephants, while the elephants use the tree-top baboons as an early warning system.
+
+It is estimated that there are around 100 African bush elephant left in Eritrea, the most northerly of East Africa's elephants.[103] The endangered African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) was previously found in Eritrea, but is now deemed extirpated from the entire country.[104] In Gash-Barka, snakes like saw-scaled viper are common. Puff adder and red spitting cobra are widespread and can be found even in the highlands. In the coastal areas marine species that are common include dolphin, dugong, whale shark, turtles, marlin, swordfish, and manta ray.[102]
+
+Based on variations in temperature, Eritrea can be broadly divided into three major climate zones: the temperate zone, subtropical climate zone, and tropical climate zone.[105] The climate of Eritrea is shaped by its diverse topographical features and its location within the tropics. The diversity in landscape and topography in the highlands and lowlands of Eritrea result in the diversity of climate across the country. The highlands have temperate climate throughout the year. The climate of most lowland zones is arid and semiarid. The distribution of rainfall and vegetation types varies markedly throughout the country. Eritrean climate varies on the basis of seasonal and altitudinal differences.
+
+The People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) is the only legal party in Eritrea.[107] Other political groups are not allowed to organize, although the unimplemented Constitution of 1997 provides for the existence of multi-party politics. The National Assembly has 150 seats. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country.[21] President Isaias Afwerki has been in office since independence in 1993. In 1993, 75 representatives were elected to the National Assembly; the rest are appointed. As the report by the UN Human Rights Council explained: "No national elections have taken place since that time, and no presidential elections have ever taken place. Local or regional elections have not been held since 2003–2004." President Isaias Afwerki has regularly expressed his disdain for what he refers to as "western-style" democracy. In a 2008 interview with Al Jazeera, for example, the President stated that "Eritrea will wait three or four decades, maybe more, before it holds elections. Who knows?"[108]
+
+Eritrean National elections were set for 2001 but it was then decided that because 20% of Eritrea's land was under occupation, elections would be postponed until the resolution of the conflict with Ethiopia. However, local elections have continued in Eritrea. The most recent round of local government elections were held in 2010 and 2011. On further elections, the President's Chief of Staff, Yemane Gebremeskel said,[109]
+
+The electoral commission is handling these elections this time round so that may be the new element in this process. The national assembly has also mandated the electoral commission to set the date for national elections, so whenever the electoral commission sets the date there will be national elections. It's not dependent on regional elections.
+
+As yet, no national elections have been held since independence.[21]
+
+The Eritrean Defence Forces are now the official armed forces of the State of Eritrea. Eritrea's military is one of the largest in Africa.
+
+Compulsory military service was instituted in 1995. Officially, conscripts, male and female, must serve for 18 months, which includes six months of military training and 12 months doing the regular school year to complete their last year of high school. Thus around 5% of Eritreans live in barracks in the desert doing projects such as road building as part of their service.
+
+The National Service Proclamation of 1995 does not recognize the right to conscientious objection to military service. According to the 1957 Ethiopian penal code adopted by Eritrea during independence, failure to enlist in the military or refusal to perform military service are punishable with imprisonment terms of six months to five years and up to ten years, respectively.[110] National service enlistment times may be extended during times of "national crisis"; since 1998, everyone under the age of 50 is enlisted in national service for an indefinite period until released, which may depend on the arbitrary decision of a commander. In a study of 200 escaped conscripts, the average service was 6.5 years, and some had served more than 12 years.[28]
+
+According to the NYU School of Law, the Legal Committee of the Ministry of Justice oversees the admission and requirements to practice law in Eritrea. Although the establishment of an independent bar association is not proscribed under Proclamation 88/96, among other domestic laws, there is no bar association. The community electorate in the local jurisdiction of the Community Court chooses the Court's judges. The Community Court's standing on women in the legal profession is unclear, but elected women judges have reserved seat.[111]
+
+Eritrea is a member of the United Nations, the African Union, and is an observing member of the Arab League alongside Brazil, Venezuela and Turkey.[29] The nation holds a seat on the United Nations' Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ). Eritrea also holds memberships in the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Finance Corporation, International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), Non-Aligned Movement, Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Permanent Court of Arbitration, Port Management Association of Eastern and Southern Africa, and the World Customs Organization.
+
+The Eritrean government previously withdrew its representative to the African Union to protest the AU's alleged lack of leadership in facilitating the implementation of a binding border decision demarcating the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The Eritrean government has since January 2011 appointed an envoy, Tesfa-Alem Tekle, to the AU.[112]
+
+Eritrea maintains diplomatic ties with a number of other countries, it has over 31 embasies and consulates abroad, and over 22 consulates and embasies representated in the country,[113]  including China, Denmark, Djibouti, Israel, the United States and Yemen. Its relations with Djibouti and Yemen are tense due to territorial disputes over the Doumeira Islands and Hanish Islands, respectively.
+
+On 28 May 2019, the United States removed Eritrea from the "Counterterror Non-Cooperation List" which also includes: Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela.[114] Moreover, Eritrea was visited two months earlier by a US congressional delegation for the first time in 14 years.[115]
+
+The undemarcated border with Ethiopia is the primary external issue currently facing Eritrea. Eritrea's relations with Ethiopia turned from that of cautious mutual tolerance, following the 30-year war for Eritrean independence, to a deadly rivalry that led to the outbreak of hostilities from May 1998 to June 2000 which claimed approximately 70,000 lives from both sides.[116] The border conflict cost hundreds of millions of dollars.[117]
+
+Disagreements following the war have resulted in stalemate punctuated by periods of elevated tension and renewed threats of war.[118][119][120] The stalemate led the President of Eritrea to urge the UN to take action on Ethiopia with the Eleven Letters penned by the President to the United Nations Security Council. The situation has been further escalated by the continued efforts of the Eritrean and Ethiopian leaders in supporting opposition in one another's countries.[citation needed] In 2011, Ethiopia accused Eritrea of planting bombs at an African Union summit in Addis Ababa, which was later supported by a UN report. Eritrea denied the claims.[121]
+
+A peace treaty between both nations was signed on 8 July 2018.[122] The next day, they signed a joint declaration formally ending the Eritrean–Ethiopian border conflict.[123][124]
+
+Eritrea is divided into six administrative regions. These areas are further divided into 58 districts.
+
+The regions of Eritrea are the primary geographical divisions through which the country is administered. Six in total, they include the Maekel/Central, Anseba, Gash-Barka, Debub/Southern, Northern Red Sea and Southern Red Sea regions. At the time of independence in 1993, Eritrea was arranged into ten provinces. These provinces were similar to the nine provinces operating during the colonial period. In 1996, these were consolidated into six regions (zobas). The boundaries of these new regions are based on catchment basins.
+
+Asmara is the capital city of Eritrea with a population of 898,000 people.
+
+Transport in Eritrea includes highways, airports, railway, and seaports in addition to various forms of public and private vehicular, maritime and aerial transportation.
+
+The Eritrean highway system is named according to the road classification. The three levels of classification are: primary (P), secondary (S), and tertiary (T). The lowest level road is tertiary and serves local interests. Typically they are improved earth roads which are occasionally paved. During the wet seasons these roads typically become impassable.
+
+The next higher level road is a secondary road and typically is a single-layered asphalt road that connects district capitals together and those to the regional capitals. Roads that are considered primary roads are those that are fully asphalted (throughout their entire length) and in general they carry traffic between all the major cities and towns in Eritrea.
+
+As of 1999, there is a total of 317 kilometres of 950 mm (3 ft 1 3⁄8 in) (narrow gauge) rail line in Eritrea. The Eritrean Railway was built between 1887 and 1932.[125][126] Badly damaged during WWII and in later fighting, it was closed section by section, with the final closure coming in 1978.[127] After independence, a rebuilding effort commenced, and the first rebuilt section was reopened in 2003. As of 2009, the section from Massawa to Asmara was fully rebuilt and available for service.
+
+Rehabilitation of the remainder and of the rolling stock has occurred in recent years. Current service is very limited due to the extreme age of most of the railway equipment and its limited availability. Further rebuilding is planned. The railway linking Agordat and Asmara with the port of Massawa; had been inoperative since 1978 except for about a 5 kilometre stretch that was reopened in Massawa in 1994. A railway formerly ran from Massawa to Bishia via Asmara, and is under re-construction.
+
+The economy of Eritrea has experienced considerable growth in recent years (2010–20), indicated by an annual improvement in gross domestic product (GDP) with over 5% in recent years, some years up to 8.7%.[128] A big reason for the recent growth of the Eritrean economy is the commencement of full operations in the gold and silver Bisha mine and the production of cement from the cement factory in Massawa.[129]
+
+The economy of Eritrea has also bounced back after a period of minor or negative growth, indicated by an improvement in the Real Gross Domestic Product (Real GDP) to 12% in 2018 after averaging -2.7% for some time between 2015–18.[130] A major contributor to the recovery is investment in Eritrea's copper, zinc, and Colluli potash mining operations from Australian[131] and Chinese[132] mining companies.
+
+The real GDP (2020 est.): $8.1 billion, and the annual growth rate (2020 est.) about:6%. The GDP PPP (2020 est.): $11.3 billion[133]
+
+Worker remittances from abroad are estimated to account for 32% of gross domestic product.[19] Eritrea has an extensive amount of resources such as copper, gold, granite, marble, and potash. The Eritrean economy has undergone extreme changes due to the War of Independence. In 2011, Eritrea's GDP grew by 8.7% making it one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.[134]
+
+70% of the Eritrean workforce are employed in agriculture,[135] accounting for roughly one-third of the economy.[130] Eritrea's main agricultural products include sorghum, millet, barley, wheat, legumes, vegetables, fruits, sesame, linseed, cattle, sheep, goats and camels.[136]
+
+The Eritrean–Ethiopian War severely hurt Eritrea's economy. GDP growth in 1999 fell to less than 1%, and GDP decreased by 8.2% in 2000. In May 2000, the war resulted in some $600 million in property damage and loss, including losses of $225 million in livestock and 55,000 homes.
+
+Even during the war, Eritrea developed its transportation infrastructure by asphalting new roads, improving its ports, and repairing war-damaged roads and bridges as a part of the Wefri Warsay Yika'alo program. The most significant of these projects was the construction of a coastal highway of more than 500 km connecting Massawa with Asseb, as well as the rehabilitation of the Eritrean Railway. The rail line has been restored between the port of Massawa and the capital Asmara, although services are sporadic. Steam locomotives are sometimes used for groups of enthusiasts.
+
+Eritrea's population increased from 3.2 million to approximately 5,755,124[12][13][14][15][16] between 1990 and 2020.[13] The average number of children born to Eritrean mothers is 4.1.
+
+There are nine recognized ethnic groups according to the government of Eritrea.[21][137] An independent census has yet to be conducted, but the Tigrinya people make up about 55% and Tigre people make up about 30% of the population. A majority of the remaining ethnic groups belong to Afroasiatic-speaking communities of the Cushitic branch, such as the Saho, Hedareb, Afar and Bilen. There are also a number of Nilotic ethnic groups, who are represented in Eritrea by the Kunama and Nara. Each ethnicity speaks a different native tongue but, typically, many of the minorities speak more than one language.
+The Rashaida represent about 2% of Eritrea's population.[5] They reside in the northern coastal lowlands of Eritrea as well as the eastern coasts of Sudan. The Rashaida first came to Eritrea in the 19th century from the Hejaz region.[138]
+
+In addition, there exist Italian Eritrean (concentrated in Asmara) and Ethiopian Tigrayan communities. Neither is generally given citizenship unless through marriage or, more rarely, by having it conferred upon them by the State. Eritrea had about 760,000 inhabitants, including 70,000 Italians, in 1941.[139] Most Italians left after Eritrea became independent from Italy. It is estimated up to 100,000 Eritreans are of Italian descent.[140][141]
+
+Eritrea is a multilingual country. The nation has no official language, as the Constitution establishes the "equality of all Eritrean languages".[142] Eritrea has nine national languages which are Tigrinya language, Tigre, Afar, Beja, Bilen, Kunama, Nara, and Saho. Tigrinya, Arabic, and English serve as de facto working languages, with the latter used in university education and many technical fields. While Italian, the former colonial language, holds no government recognized status in Eritrea, it is spoken by a few monolinguals and Asmara has Scuola Italiana di Asmara, a long running Italian government-operated school.[143] Also, native Eritreans assimilated the language of the Italian Eritreans and spoke a version of Italian mixed with many Tigrinya words: Eritrean Italian.[144] Tigrinya serves as the de facto language of national identity. With 2,540,000 total speakers of a population of 5,254,000 in 2006, it is the most widely spoken language, particularly in the southern and central parts of Eritrea.
+
+Most of the languages spoken in Eritrea belong to the Ethiopian Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic family.[145] Other Afroasiatic languages belonging to the Cushitic branch are also widely spoken in the country.[145] The latter include Afar, Beja, Blin, and Saho. In addition, Nilo-Saharan languages (Kunama and Nara) are spoken as a native language by the Nilotic Kunama and Nara ethnic groups that live in the western and northwestern part of the country.[145]
+
+Smaller groups also speak other Afroasiatic languages, such as the newly recognized Dahlik and Arabic (the Hejazi and Hadhrami dialects spoken by the Rashaida and Hadhrami, respectively).
+
+According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2010[update], 62.9% of the population of Eritrea adheres to Christianity, 36.6% follows Islam, and 0.4% practices folk religion. The remainder observes Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and other faiths (<0.1% each), or are religiously unaffiliated (0.1%).[147] The U.S. Department of State estimates that, as of 2011[update], 50% of the population of Eritrea adheres to Christianity, 48% follows Islam, and 2% observes other religions, including traditional faiths and animism.[146] Christianity is the oldest world religion practiced in the country, and the first Christian monastery Debre Sina (monastery) was built during the 4th century.
+[148]
+
+Since May 2002, the government of Eritrea has officially recognized the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church (Oriental Orthodox), Sunni Islam, the Eritrean Catholic Church (a Metropolitanate sui juris), and the Evangelical Lutheran church. All other faiths and denominations are required to undergo a registration process.[149] Among other things, the government's registration system requires religious groups to submit personal information on their membership to be allowed to worship.[149]
+
+The 15th century Sheikh Hanafi Mosque in Massawa
+
+Church of Our Lady of the Rosary in the capital Asmara
+
+The Eritrean government is against what it deems as "reformed" or "radical" versions of its established religions. Therefore, alleged radical forms of Islam and Christianity, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Bahá'í Faith (though the Bahá'í Faith is neither Islamic nor Christian), the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and numerous other non-Protestant Evangelical denominations are not registered and cannot worship freely. Three named Jehovah's Witnesses are known to have been imprisoned since 1994 along with 51 others.[150][151][152] The government treats Jehovah's Witnesses especially harshly, denying them ration cards and work permits.[153] Jehovah's Witnesses were stripped of their citizenship and basic civil rights by presidential decree in October 1994.[154]
+
+In its 2017 religious freedom report, the U.S. State Department named Eritrea a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).[155]
+
+On 8 July 2017, the entire capital city of Asmara was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the inscription taking place during the 41st World Heritage Committee Session.
+
+The city has thousands of Art Deco, futurist, modernist, and rationalist buildings, constructed during the period of Italian Eritrea.[156][157][158][159][160][161] The city, nicknamed "La piccola Roma" ("Little Rome"),  is located over 2000 meters above sea level, and was an ideal spot for construction due to the relatively cool climate; architects used a combination of both Italian and local materials.
+
+Some notable buildings include the Fiat Tagliero Building, opera houses, hotels, and cinemas, such as the Cinema Impero.
+
+A statement from UNESCO read:
+
+It is an exceptional example of early modernist urbanism at the beginning of the 20th century and its application in an African context.
+
+Teatro d'Opera, the opera house of Asmara
+
+A building at the University of Asmara
+
+Villa Roma, Italian embassy
+
+The Fiat Tagliero Building
+
+Hotel Albergo Italia, built 1889. The hotel is one of the oldest hotels in Asmara
+
+The African pension
+
+The Eritrean national museum in Asmara
+
+The Embasoira built 1919 (Old Imperial hotel)
+
+Eritrea is a one-party state in which national legislative elections have been repeatedly postponed.[25] According to Human Rights Watch, the government's human rights record is considered among the worst in the world.[26] Most Western countries have accused the Eritrean authorities of arbitrary arrest and detentions, and of detaining an unknown number of people without charge for their political activism. However, the Eritrean government has continually dismissed the accusations as politically motivated.[27] Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is illegal in Eritrea.[162]
+
+A prominent group of fifteen Eritreans, called the G-15, including three cabinet members, were arrested in September 2001 after publishing an open letter to the government and President Isaias Afewerki calling for democratic dialogue. This group and thousands of others who were alleged to be affiliated with them are imprisoned without legal charges, hearing, trial and judgment.[163][164]
+
+Since Eritrea's conflict with Ethiopia in 1998–2001, the nation's human rights record has been criticized at the United Nations.[165] Human rights violations are allegedly often committed by the government or on behalf of the government. Freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association are limited. Those who practice "unregistered" religions, try to flee the nation, or escape military duty are arrested and put into prison.[165] During the Eritrean independence struggle and 1998 Eritrean-Ethiopian War, many atrocities were also committed by the Ethiopian authorities against unarmed Eritrean civilians.[166][167]
+
+In June 2016, a 500-page United Nations Human Rights Council report accused Eritrea's government of extrajudicial executions, torture, indefinitely prolonged national service (6.5 years on average) and forced labour, and indicated that sexual harassment, rape and sexual servitude by state officials are also widespread.[7][168] Barbara Lochbihler of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights said the report detailed 'very serious human rights violations', and asserted that EU funding for development would not continue as at present without change in Eritrea.[169] The Eritrean Foreign Ministry responded by describing the commission's report as "wild allegations" which were "totally unfounded and devoid of all merit".[170] Several countries also disputed the report's language and accuracy, including the US and China.[171]
+
+All Eritreans aged between 18 and 40 years must complete a mandatory national service, which includes military service. This requirement was implemented after Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia, as a means to protect Eritrea's sovereignty, to instill national pride, and to create a disciplined populace.[28] Eritrea's national service requires long, indefinite conscription (6.5 years on average), which some Eritreans leave the country in order to avoid.[28][172][173]
+
+In an attempt at reform, Eritrean government officials and NGO representatives in 2006 participated in many public meetings and dialogues. In these sessions they answered questions as fundamental as, "What are human rights?", "Who determines what are human rights?", and "What should take precedence, human or communal rights?"[174] In 2007, the Eritrean government also banned female genital mutilation.[175] In Regional Assemblies and religious circles, Eritreans themselves speak out continuously against the use of female circumcision. They cite health concerns and individual freedom as being of primary concern when they say this. Furthermore, they implore rural peoples to cast away this ancient cultural practice.[176][177] In 2009, a movement called Citizens for Democratic Rights in Eritrea formed to create dialogue between the government and political opposition. The group consists of ordinary citizens and some people close to the government.[178]
+
+In July 2019, UN ambassadors of 37 countries, including Eritrea, have signed a joint letter to the UNHRC defending China's treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang region.[179]
+
+In its 2017 Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranked the media environment in Eritrea at the bottom of a list of 180 countries.[180] According to the BBC, "Eritrea is the only African country to have no privately owned news media",[181] and Reporters Without Borders said of the public media, "[They] do nothing but relay the regime's belligerent and ultra-nationalist discourse. ... Not a single [foreign correspondent] now lives in Asmara."[182] The state-owned news agency censors news about external events.[183] Independent media have been banned since 2001.[183] The Eritrean authorities had reportedly imprisoned the fourth highest number of journalists after Turkey, China and Egypt.[184]
+
+Eritrea has achieved significant improvements in health care and is one of the few countries to be on target to meet its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for health, in particular child health.[185] Life expectancy at birth increased from 39.1 years in 1960 to 66.44 years in 2020;[186] maternal and child mortality rates dropped dramatically and the health infrastructure expanded.[185]
+
+The World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2008 found average life expectancy to be slightly less than 63 years, a number that has increased to 66.44 in 2020.[186]Immunisation and child nutrition have been tackled by working closely with schools in a multi-sectoral approach; the number of children vaccinated against measles almost doubled in seven years, from 40.7% to 78.5% and the prevalence of underweight children decreased by 12% from 1995 to 2002 (severe underweight prevalence by 28%).[185] The National Malaria Protection Unit of the Ministry of Health registered reductions in malarial mortality by as much as 85% and in the number of cases by 92% between 1998 and 2006.[185] The Eritrean government has banned female genital mutilation (FGM), saying the practice was painful and put women at risk of life-threatening health problems.[187]
+
+However, Eritrea still faces many challenges. Although the number of physicians increased from only 0.2 in 1993 to 0.5 in 2004 per 1000 people, this is still very low.[185] Malaria and tuberculosis are common.[188] HIV prevalence for ages 15 to 49 years exceeds 2%.[188] The fertility rate is about 4.1 births per woman.[188] Maternal mortality dropped by more than half from 1995 to 2002, but is still high.[185] Similarly, the number of births attended by skilled health personnel doubled from 1995 to 2002, but still is only 28.3%.[185] A major cause of death in newborns is severe infection.[188] Per-capita expenditure on health is low.[188]
+
+There are five levels of education in Eritrea: pre-primary, primary, middle, secondary, and post-secondary. There are nearly 1,270,000 students in the primary, middle, and secondary levels of education.[189] There are approximately 824 schools,[190] two universities (the University of Asmara and the Eritrea Institute of Technology) and several smaller colleges and technical schools.
+
+Education in Eritrea is officially compulsory for children aged 6 to 13 years.[189]
+
+Statistics vary at the elementary level, suggesting that 70% to 90% of school-aged children attend primary school; Approximately 61% attend secondary school. Student-teacher ratios are high: 45:1 at the elementary level and 54:1 at the secondary level. Class sizes average 63 and 97 students per classroom at the elementary and secondary school levels, respectively. Learning hours at school are often less than six hours per day.
+
+Barriers to education in Eritrea include traditional taboos, school fees (for registration and materials), and the opportunity costs of low-income households.[192]
+
+The Eritrea Institute of Technology "EIT"  is a technological institute located near the town Himbrti, Mai Nefhi outside Asmara. The institute has three colleges: Science, Engineering and Technology, and Education. The institute began with about 5,500 students during the 2003-2004 academic year.
+
+The EIT was opened after the University of Asmara was reorganized. According to the Ministry of Education, the institution was established, as one of many efforts to achieve equal distribution of higher learning in areas outside the capital city, Asmara. Accordingly, several similar colleges are also established in different other parts of the country. The Eritrea Institute of Technology is the main local institute of higher studies in science, engineering and education. The University of Asmara is the oldest University in the country and was opened in 1958.[194]
+
+The overall literacy rate in Eritrea is 84%.[195]  However, the literacy rate is higher for ages 18 to 24 years, it is 92.6% for men and 87.7% for women (2008–2012)[196]
+
+One of the most recognizable parts of Eritrean culture is the coffee ceremony.[197] Coffee (Ge'ez ቡን būn) is offered when visiting friends, during festivities, or as a daily staple of life. During the coffee ceremony, there are traditions that are upheld. The coffee is served in three rounds: the first brew or round is called awel in Tigrinya (meaning "first"), the second round is called kalaay (meaning "second"), and the third round is called bereka (meaning "to be blessed").
+
+Traditional Eritrean attire is quite varied among the ethnic groups of Eritrea. In the larger cities, most people dress in Western casual dress such as jeans and shirts. In offices, both men and women often dress in suits. A common traditional clothing for Christian Tigrayan highlanders consists of bright white gowns called zurias for the women, and a white shirt accompanied by white pants for the men. In Muslim communities in the Eritrean lowland, the women traditionally dress in brightly colored clothes. Besides convergent culinary tastes, Eritreans share an appreciation for similar music and lyrics, jewelry and fragrances, and tapestry and fabrics as many other populations in the region.[198]
+
+A typical traditional Eritrean dish consists of injera accompanied by a spicy stew, which frequently includes beef, chicken, lamb or fish.[199]  Overall, Eritrean cuisine strongly resembles those of neighboring Ethiopia,[199][200] Eritrean cooking tend to feature more seafood than Ethiopian cuisine on account of their coastal location.[199] Eritrean dishes are also frequently "lighter" in texture than Ethiopian meals. They likewise tend to employ less seasoned butter and spices and more tomatoes, as in the tsebhi dorho delicacy.
+
+Additionally, owing to its colonial history, cuisine in Eritrea features more Italian influences than are present in Ethiopian cooking, including more pasta and greater use of curry powders and cumin. The Italian Eritrean cuisine started to be practiced during the colonial times of the Kingdom of Italy, when a large number of Italians moved to Eritrea. They brought the use of pasta to Italian Eritrea, and it is one of the main food eaten in present-day Asmara. An Italian Eritrean cuisine emerged, and common dishes are 'Pasta al Sugo e Berbere', which means "Pasta with tomato sauce and berbere" (spice), but there are many more like lasagna and "cotoletta alla milanese" (milano cutlet).[201]
+
+In addition to coffee, local alcoholic beverages are enjoyed. These include sowa, a bitter drink made from fermented barley, and mies, a fermented honey wine.[202]
+
+Eritrea's ethnic groups each have their own styles of music and accompanying dances. Amongst the Tigrinya, the best known traditional musical genre is the guaila. Traditional instruments of Eritrean folk music include the stringed krar, kebero, begena, masenqo and the wata (a distant/rudimentary cousin of the violin). A popular Eritrean artist is the Tigrinya singer Helen Meles, who is noted for her powerful voice and wide singing range.[203] Other prominent local musicians include the Kunama singer Dehab Faytinga, Ruth Abraha, Bereket Mengisteab, the late Yemane Ghebremichael, and the late Abraham Afewerki.
+
+Football and cycling are the most popular sports in Eritrea. Cycling has a long tradition in Eritrea and was first introduced during the colonial period.[204][205]
+
+The Tour of Eritrea, a multi-stage cycling event, is held annually since 1946 throughout the country.
+
+The national cycling teams of both men and women are ranked first on the African continent, and Eritrea is ranked among one of the best cycling nations in the world.[206]
+
+The Eritrea national cycling team has experienced a lot of success, winning the African continental cycling championship several years in a row. In 2013, the women's team won the gold medal in the African Continental Cycling Championships for the first time, and for the second time in 2015 and third time in 2019. The men's team have won gold 7 times in the last 9 years in the African continental cycling championships, between 2010 and 2019.[207][208][209][210]
+
+More than six Eritrean riders have signed professional contracts to international cycling teams, including Natnael Berhane and Daniel Teklehaimanot. Berhane was named African Sportsman of the Year in 2013, while Teklehaimanot became the first Eritrean to ride the Vuelta a España in 2012.[211] In 2015, Teklehaimanot won the King of the Mountains classification in the Critérium du Dauphiné. Teklehaimanot and fellow Eritrean Merhawi Kudus became the first black cyclists from Africa to compete in the Tour de France, when they were selected by the MTN–Qhubeka team for the 2015 edition of the race.[212] In July of the year, Teklehaimanot also became the first rider from an African team to wear the polka dot jersey at the Tour de France.[213]
+
+Eritrean athletes have also seen increasing success in the international arena in other sports. Zersenay Tadese, an Eritrean athlete, formerly held the world record in the half marathon.[214] Ghirmay Ghebreslassie became the first Eritrean to win a gold medal at a World Championships in Athletics for his country when he took the marathon at the 2015 World Championships.[215] Eritrea made Winter Olympic debut 25 February 2018 when they competed at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea 2018. Eritrea's team was represented by their flagbearer Shannon-Ogbnai Abeda who competed as alpine skier.[216]

en/1815.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,287 @@
+Coordinates: 15°N 39°E / 15°N 39°E / 15; 39
+
+دولة ارتريا  (Arabic)
+
+Eritrea (/ˌɛrɪˈtreɪə, ˌɛrɪˈtriːə/[19] (listen)),[20] officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in Eastern Africa, with its capital at Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The northeastern and eastern parts of Eritrea have an extensive coastline along the Red Sea. The nation has a total area of approximately 117,600 km2 (45,406 sq mi), and includes the Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands.
+
+Eritrea is a multi-ethnic country, with nine recognized ethnic groups in its population of around five and a half million. Eritrea has nine national languages which are Tigrinya language, Tigre, Afar, Beja, Bilen, Kunama, Nara, Saho. Tigrinya, Arabic, and English serve as the three working languages.[2] Most residents speak languages from the Afroasiatic family, either of the Ethiopian Semitic languages or Cushitic branches. Among these communities, the Tigrinyas make up about 55% of the population, with the Tigre people constituting around 30% of inhabitants. In addition, there are a number of Nilo-Saharan-speaking Nilotic ethnic groups. Most people in the territory adhere to Christianity or Islam, with a small minority adhering to traditional faiths.[21]
+
+The Kingdom of Aksum, covering much of modern-day Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, was established during the first or second centuries AD.[22][23] It adopted Christianity around the middle of the fourth century.[24] In medieval times much of Eritrea fell under the Medri Bahri kingdom, with a smaller region being part of Hamasien.
+
+The creation of modern-day Eritrea is a result of the incorporation of independent, distinct kingdoms (for example, Medri Bahri and the Sultanate of Aussa) eventually resulting in the formation of Italian Eritrea. After the defeat of the Italian colonial army in 1942, Eritrea was administered by the British Military Administration until 1952. Following the UN General Assembly decision, in 1952, Eritrea would govern itself with a local Eritrean parliament, but for foreign affairs and defense it would enter into a federal status with Ethiopia for a period of 10 years. However, in 1962 the government of Ethiopia annulled the Eritrean parliament and formally annexed Eritrea, but the Eritreans who had argued for complete Eritrean independence since the ouster of the Italians in 1941 anticipated what was coming and, in 1961, organized the Eritrean Liberation Front in opposition. In 1991, after 30 years of continuous armed struggle for independence, the Eritrean liberation fighters entered the capital city, Asmara, in victory.
+
+The sovereign state  is a totalitarian one-party dictatorship in which national legislative and presidential elections have never been held since independence.[25][9] According to Human Rights Watch, the Eritrean government's human rights record is among the worst in the world.[26] The Eritrean government has dismissed these allegations as politically motivated.[27] The compulsory military service requires long, indefinite conscription periods (6.5 years on average), which some Eritreans leave the country to avoid.[28] Because all local media is state-owned, Eritrea was also ranked as having the third-least press freedom in the global Press Freedom Index, behind North Korea and Turkmenistan.
+
+The sovereign state of Eritrea is a member of the African Union, the United Nations, and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, and is an observer state in the Arab League alongside Brazil and Venezuela.[29]
+
+The name Eritrea is derived from the ancient Greek name for the Red Sea (Ἐρυθρὰ Θάλασσα Erythra Thalassa, based on the adjective ἐρυθρός erythros "red"). It was first formally adopted in 1890, with the formation of Italian Eritrea (Colonia Eritrea).[30] The name persisted over the course of subsequent British and Ethiopian occupation, and was reaffirmed by the 1993 independence referendum and 1997 constitution.[31]
+
+Buya in Eritrea, one of the oldest hominids representing a possible link between Homo erectus and an archaic Homo sapiens was found by Italian scientists. Dated to over 1 million years old, it is the oldest skeletal find of its kind and provides a link between hominids and the earliest anatomically modern humans.[32] It is believed that the section of the Danakil Depression in Eritrea was also a major player in terms of human evolution, and may contain other traces of evolution from Homo erectus hominids to anatomically modern humans.[33]
+
+During the last interglacial period, the Red Sea coast of Eritrea was occupied by early anatomically modern humans.[34] It is believed that the area was on the route out of Africa that some scholars suggest was used by early humans to colonize the rest of the Old World.[34] In 1999, the Eritrean Research Project Team composed of Eritrean, Canadian, American, Dutch and French scientists discovered a Paleolithic site with stone and obsidian tools dated to over 125,000 years old near the Bay of Zula south of Massawa, along the Red Sea littoral. The tools are believed to have been used by early humans to harvest marine resources such as clams and oysters.[35]
+[36][37][38]
+
+Neolithic rock art in a Qohaito canyon cave
+
+Pre-Axumite monolithic columns in Qohaito
+
+Research shows tools found in the Barka Valley dating from 8000 BC appear to offer the first concrete evidence of human settlement in the area.[39] Research also shows that many of the ethnic groups of Eritrea were the first to inhabit these areas.[40]
+
+Excavations in and near Agordat in central Eritrea yielded the remains of an ancient pre-Aksumite civilization known as the Gash Group.[41] Ceramics were discovered that were dating back between 2500–1500 BC.[42] Some sources dating back to 3500 BC.[43]
+
+Around 2000 BC, parts of Eritrea were most likely part of the Land of Punt, first mentioned in the 25th century BC.[44][45][46] It was known for producing and exporting gold, aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory and wild animals. The region is known from ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to it.[47][48][49][50]
+
+Excavations at Sembel found evidence of an ancient pre-Aksumite civilization in greater Asmara. This Ona urban culture is believed to have been among the earliest pastoral and agricultural communities in the region. Artifacts at the site have been dated to between 800 BC and 400 BC, contemporaneous with other pre-Aksumite settlements in the Eritrean and Ethiopian highlands during the mid-first millennium BC.[51][52][53]
+
+Dʿmt was a kingdom that encompassed most of Eritrea and the northern frontier of Ethiopia. The polity existed during the 10th to 5th centuries BC. Given the presence of a massive temple complex at Yeha, this area was most likely the kingdom's capital. Qohaito, often identified as the town of Koloe in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea,[54] as well as Matara were important ancient Dʿmt kingdom cities in southern Eritrea.
+
+The realm developed irrigation schemes, used plows, grew millet, and made iron tools and weapons. After the fall of Dʿmt in the 5th century BC, the plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms. This lasted until the rise of one of these polities during the first century, the Kingdom of Aksum, which was able to reunite the area.[55]
+
+The Kingdom of Aksum was a trading empire centered in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia.[56] It existed from approximately 100–940 AD, growing from the proto-Aksumite Iron Age period around the 4th century BC to achieve prominence by the 1st century AD.
+
+According to the medieval Liber Axumae (Book of Aksum), Aksum's first capital, Mazaber, was built by Itiyopis, son of Cush.[57] The capital was later moved to Aksum in northern Ethiopia. The Kingdom used the name "Ethiopia" as early as the 4th century.[22][23]
+
+The Aksumites erected a number of large stelae, which served a religious purpose in pre-Christian times. One of these granite columns, the Obelisk of Aksum, is the largest such structure in the world, standing at 90 feet (27 metres).[58] Under Ezana (fl. 320–360), Aksum later adopted Christianity.[59]
+
+Christianity was the first world religion to be adopted in Eritrea and the oldest monastery in the country Debre Sina (monastery) was built during the 4th century. It is one of the oldest monasteries in Africa and the world.[60] Debre Libanos, the second oldest monestary was said to have been founded in the late fifth or early sixth century. Originally located in the village of Ham, it was moved to an inaccessible location on the edge of a cliff below the Ham plateau. Its church contains the Golden Gospel, a metal-covered bible dating to the 13th century during which Debre Libanos was an important seat of religious power.[61]
+
+In the 7th century, early Muslims from Mecca, at least companions of the Islamic Nabī, (Prophet) Muhammad, sought refuge from Qurayshi persecution by travelling to the kingdom, a journey known in Islamic history as the First Hijrah. They reportedly built the first African mosque, that is the Mosque of the Companions, Massawa.[62]
+
+The kingdom is mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as an important market place for ivory, which was exported throughout the ancient world. Aksum was at the time ruled by Zoskales, who also governed the port of Adulis.[63] The Aksumite rulers facilitated trade by minting their own Aksumite currency.[64]
+
+After the decline of Aksum, the Eritrean highlands were under the domain of Christian Kingdom of Medri Bahri, ruled by Bahri Negus. The area was then known as Ma'ikele Bahri ("between the seas/rivers", i.e. the land between the Red Sea and the Mereb river).[65] The entire coastal domain of Ma'ikele Bahri was under the Adal Sultanate during the reign of Sultan Badlay.[66][67] The state was later reconquered by Ethiopian Emperors namely Zara Yaqob, and renamed the Medri Bahri ("Sea land" in Tigrinya, although it included some areas like Shire in Ethiopia on the other side of the Mereb, today in Ethiopia).[68] With its capital at Debarwa,[69] the state's main provinces were Hamasien, Serae and Akele Guzai.
+
+The Scottish traveler James Bruce reported in 1771 that Medri Bahri was a distinct political entity from Abyssinia, noting that the two territories were frequently in conflict. The Bahre-Nagassi ("Kings of the Sea") alternately fought with or against the Abyssinians, depending on the geopolitical circumstances. James Bruce in his book published in 1805 reported Hadawi, the seat of Bahri Negash, was part of the Tigré province of Abyssinia which was ruled by Ras Mikael Sehul at the time of his travel.[70][71][72]
+
+In 1734, the Afar leader Kedafu, established the Mudaito Dynasty in Ethiopia, which later also came to inlucude the southern Denkel lowlands of Eritrea, thus incorporating the southern denkel lowlands to the Sultanate of Aussa. 16th century also marked the arrival of the Ottomans, who began making inroads in the Red Sea area.[73][74][75][76][77]
+
+The Ottomans had succeeded in conquering the northeastern present-day Eritrea for the next two decades, an area which stretched from Massawa to Swakin in Sudan.[73] The territory became an Ottoman governorate, known as the Habesh Eyalet. Massawa served as the new province's first capital. When the city became of secondary economical importance, the administrative capital was soon moved across the Red Sea to Jeddah.[78] Turks tried to occupy the highland parts of Medri Bahri in 1559 and withdrew after they encountered resistance and were pushed back by the Bahri Negash and highland forces. In 1578 they tried to expand into the highlands with the help of Bahri Negash Yisehaq who had switched alliances due to power struggle, and by 1589 once again they were apparently compelled to withdraw their forces to the coast.
+
+The Ottomans were eventually driven out in the last quarter of the 16th century. However, they retained control over the seaboard until the establishment of Italian Eritrea in the late 1800s.[73][79][80]
+
+The boundaries of the present-day Eritrea nation state were established during the Scramble for Africa. In 1869[81] or 1870, the ruling local chief sold lands surrounding the Bay of Assab to the Rubattino Shipping Company.[82] The area served as a coaling station along the shipping lanes introduced by the recently completed Suez Canal.
+
+In the vacuum that followed the 1889 death of Emperor Yohannes IV, Gen. Oreste Baratieri occupied the highlands along the Eritrean coast and Italy proclaimed the establishment of the new colony of Italian Eritrea, a colony of the Kingdom of Italy. In the Treaty of Wuchale (It. Uccialli) signed the same year, King Menelik of Shewa, a southern Ethiopian kingdom, recognized the Italian occupation of his rivals' lands of Bogos, Hamasien, Akkele Guzay, and Serae in exchange for guarantees of financial assistance and continuing access to European arms and ammunition. His subsequent victory over his rival kings and enthronement as Emperor Menelek II (r. 1889–1913) made the treaty formally binding upon the entire territory.[83]
+
+In 1888, the Italian administration launched its first development projects in the new colony. The Eritrean Railway was completed to Saati in 1888,[84] and reached Asmara in the highlands in 1911.[85] The Asmara–Massawa Cableway was the longest line in the world during its time, but was later dismantled by the British in World War II. Besides major infrastructural projects, the colonial authorities invested significantly in the agricultural sector. It also oversaw the provision of urban amenities in Asmara and Massawa, and employed many Eritreans in public service, particularly in the police and public works departments.[85] Thousands of Eritreans were concurrently enlisted in the army, serving during the Italo-Turkish War in Libya as well as the First and Second Italo-Abyssinian Wars.
+
+Additionally, the Italian Eritrea administration opened a number of new factories, which produced buttons, cooking oil, pasta, construction materials, packing meat, tobacco, hide, and other household commodities. In 1939, there were around 2,198 factories and most of the employees were Eritrean citizens. The establishment of industries also made an increase in the number of both Italians and Eritreans residing in the cities. The number of Italians residing in the territory increased from 4,600 to 75,000 in five years; and with the involvement of Eritreans in the industries, trade and fruit plantation was expanded across the nation, while some of the plantations were owned by Eritreans.[86]
+
+In 1922, Benito Mussolini's rise to power in Italy brought profound changes to the colonial government in Italian Eritrea. After il Duce declared the birth of the Italian Empire in May 1936, Italian Eritrea (enlarged with northern Ethiopia's regions) and Italian Somaliland were merged with the just conquered Ethiopia in the new Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana) administrative territory. This Fascist period was characterized by imperial expansion in the name of a "new Roman Empire". Eritrea was chosen by the Italian government to be the industrial center of Italian East Africa.[87]
+
+Asmara's architecture after 1935 was greatly improved to become a "modernist Art Deco city" (in 2017 has been declared a "UNESCO World City Heritage"[88]), featuring eclectic and rationalist built forms, well-defined open spaces, and public and private buildings, including cinemas, shops, banks, religious structures, public and private offices, industrial facilities, and residences (according to UNESCO's publications). The Italians designed more than 400 buildings in a construction boom that was only halted by Italy's involvement in WW2. These included art deco masterpieces like the worldwide famous Fiat Tagliero Building and the Cinema Impero[89]
+
+Coat of Arms of Italian Eritrea
+
+Eritrean children vow allegiance to Mussolini's National Fascist Party.
+
+An Asmara station on the Eritrean Railway (1938)
+
+Eritrean tallero, coined in 1890 by the Italian government
+
+Through the 1941 Battle of Keren, the British expelled the Italians,[90] and took over the administration of the country.
+
+The British placed Eritrea under British military administration until Allied forces could determine its fate.
+
+In the absence of agreement amongst the Allies concerning the status of Eritrea, British administration continued for the remainder of World War II and until 1950. During the immediate postwar years, the British proposed that Eritrea be divided along religious lines and annexed partly to the British colony of Sudan and partly to Ethiopia.[citation needed] The Soviet Union, anticipating a communist victory in the Italian polls, initially supported returning Eritrea to Italy under trusteeship or as a colony.[citation needed]
+
+In the 1950s, the Ethiopian feudal administration under Emperor Haile Selassie sought to annex Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. He laid claim to both territories in a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Paris Peace Conference and at the First Session of the United Nations.[91] In the United Nations, the debate over the fate of the former Italian colonies continued. The British and Americans preferred to cede all of Eritrea except the Western province to the Ethiopians as a reward for their support during World War II.[92] The Independence Bloc of Eritrean parties consistently requested from the UN General Assembly that a referendum be held immediately to settle the Eritrean question of sovereignty.
+
+Following the adoption of UN Resolution 390A(V) in December 1950, Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia under the prompting of the United States.[93] The resolution called for Eritrea and Ethiopia to be linked through a loose federal structure under the sovereignty of the Emperor. Eritrea was to have its own administrative and judicial structure, its own flag, and control over its domestic affairs, including police, local administration, and taxation.[91] The federal government, which for all practical purposes was the existing imperial government, was to control foreign affairs (including commerce), defense, finance, and transportation. The resolution ignored the wishes of Eritreans for independence, but guaranteed the population democratic rights and a measure of autonomy.
+
+In 1958, a group of Eritreans founded the Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM). The organization mainly consisted of Eritrean students, professionals and intellectuals. It engaged in clandestine political activities intended to cultivate resistance to the centralizing policies of the imperial Ethiopian state.[94] On 1 September 1961, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), under the leadership of Hamid Idris Awate, waged an armed struggle for independence. In 1962, Emperor Haile Selassie unilaterally dissolved the Eritrean parliament and annexed the territory. The ensuing Eritrean War of Independence went on for 30 years against successive Ethiopian governments until 1991, when the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), a successor of the ELF, defeated the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea and helped a coalition of Ethiopian rebel forces take control of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
+
+Following a UN-supervised referendum in Eritrea (dubbed UNOVER) in which the Eritrean people overwhelmingly voted for independence, Eritrea declared its independence and gained international recognition in 1993.[95] The EPLF seized power, established a one-party state along nationalist lines and banned further political activity. There have been no elections since.
+
+Eritrea is located in East Africa. It is bordered to the northeast and east by the Red Sea, Sudan to the west, Ethiopia to the south, and Djibouti to the southeast. Eritrea lies between latitudes 12° and 18°N, and longitudes 36° and 44°E.
+
+The country is virtually bisected by a branch of the East African Rift. Eritrea, at the southern end of the Red Sea, is the home of the fork in the rift. The Dahlak Archipelago and its fishing grounds are situated off the sandy and arid coastline.
+
+Eritrea can be split into three ecoregions. To the east of the highlands are the hot, arid coastal plains stretching down to the southeast of the country. The cooler, more fertile highlands, reaching up to 3000 m, have a different habitat. Habitats here vary from the sub-tropical rainforest at Filfil Solomona to the precipitous cliffs and canyons of the southern highlands.[96]
+The Afar Triangle or Danakil Depression of Eritrea is the probable location of a triple junction where three tectonic plates are pulling away from one another. The highest point of the country, Emba Soira, is located in the center of Eritrea, at 3,018 meters (9,902 ft) above sea level.
+
+The main cities of the country are the capital city of Asmara and the port town of Asseb in the southeast, as well as the towns of Massawa to the east, the northern town of Keren, and the central town Mendefera.
+
+Eritrea is part of a 14-nation constituency within the Global Environment Facility, which partners with international institutions, civil society organizations, and the private sector to address global environmental issues while supporting national sustainable development initiatives.[97] Local variability in rainfall patterns and/or reduced precipitation is known to occur, which may precipitate soil erosion, floods, droughts, land degradation and desertification.[98] In 2006, Eritrea also announced that it would become the first country in the world to turn its entire coast into an environmentally protected zone. The 1,347 km (837 mi) coastline, along with another 1,946 km (1,209 mi) of coast around its more than 350 islands, will come under governmental protection.
+
+Eritrea has several species of mammals and a rich avifauna of 560 species of birds.[99]
+
+Eritrea is home to an abundant amount of big game species. Enforced regulations have helped in steadily increasing their numbers throughout Eritrea.[100] Mammals commonly seen today include the Abyssinian hare, African wild cat, Black-backed jackal, African golden wolf, Genet, Ground squirrel, pale fox, Soemmerring's gazelle, warthog. Dorcas gazelle are common on the coastal plains and in Gash-Barka.
+
+Lions are said to inhabit the mountains of the Gash-Barka Region. There is also a small population of African bush elephants that roam in some parts of the country. Dik-diks can also be found in many areas. The endangered African wild ass can be seen in Denakalia Region. Other local wildlife include bushbuck, duikers, greater kudu, Klipspringer, African leopards, oryx and crocodiles.[101][102] The spotted hyena is widespread and fairly common. Between 1955 and 2001 there were no reported sightings of elephant herds, and they are thought to have fallen victim to the war of independence. In December 2001 a herd of about 30, including 10 juveniles, was observed in the vicinity of the Gash River. The elephants seemed to have formed a symbiotic relationship with olive baboons, with the baboons using the water holes dug by the elephants, while the elephants use the tree-top baboons as an early warning system.
+
+It is estimated that there are around 100 African bush elephant left in Eritrea, the most northerly of East Africa's elephants.[103] The endangered African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) was previously found in Eritrea, but is now deemed extirpated from the entire country.[104] In Gash-Barka, snakes like saw-scaled viper are common. Puff adder and red spitting cobra are widespread and can be found even in the highlands. In the coastal areas marine species that are common include dolphin, dugong, whale shark, turtles, marlin, swordfish, and manta ray.[102]
+
+Based on variations in temperature, Eritrea can be broadly divided into three major climate zones: the temperate zone, subtropical climate zone, and tropical climate zone.[105] The climate of Eritrea is shaped by its diverse topographical features and its location within the tropics. The diversity in landscape and topography in the highlands and lowlands of Eritrea result in the diversity of climate across the country. The highlands have temperate climate throughout the year. The climate of most lowland zones is arid and semiarid. The distribution of rainfall and vegetation types varies markedly throughout the country. Eritrean climate varies on the basis of seasonal and altitudinal differences.
+
+The People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) is the only legal party in Eritrea.[107] Other political groups are not allowed to organize, although the unimplemented Constitution of 1997 provides for the existence of multi-party politics. The National Assembly has 150 seats. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country.[21] President Isaias Afwerki has been in office since independence in 1993. In 1993, 75 representatives were elected to the National Assembly; the rest are appointed. As the report by the UN Human Rights Council explained: "No national elections have taken place since that time, and no presidential elections have ever taken place. Local or regional elections have not been held since 2003–2004." President Isaias Afwerki has regularly expressed his disdain for what he refers to as "western-style" democracy. In a 2008 interview with Al Jazeera, for example, the President stated that "Eritrea will wait three or four decades, maybe more, before it holds elections. Who knows?"[108]
+
+Eritrean National elections were set for 2001 but it was then decided that because 20% of Eritrea's land was under occupation, elections would be postponed until the resolution of the conflict with Ethiopia. However, local elections have continued in Eritrea. The most recent round of local government elections were held in 2010 and 2011. On further elections, the President's Chief of Staff, Yemane Gebremeskel said,[109]
+
+The electoral commission is handling these elections this time round so that may be the new element in this process. The national assembly has also mandated the electoral commission to set the date for national elections, so whenever the electoral commission sets the date there will be national elections. It's not dependent on regional elections.
+
+As yet, no national elections have been held since independence.[21]
+
+The Eritrean Defence Forces are now the official armed forces of the State of Eritrea. Eritrea's military is one of the largest in Africa.
+
+Compulsory military service was instituted in 1995. Officially, conscripts, male and female, must serve for 18 months, which includes six months of military training and 12 months doing the regular school year to complete their last year of high school. Thus around 5% of Eritreans live in barracks in the desert doing projects such as road building as part of their service.
+
+The National Service Proclamation of 1995 does not recognize the right to conscientious objection to military service. According to the 1957 Ethiopian penal code adopted by Eritrea during independence, failure to enlist in the military or refusal to perform military service are punishable with imprisonment terms of six months to five years and up to ten years, respectively.[110] National service enlistment times may be extended during times of "national crisis"; since 1998, everyone under the age of 50 is enlisted in national service for an indefinite period until released, which may depend on the arbitrary decision of a commander. In a study of 200 escaped conscripts, the average service was 6.5 years, and some had served more than 12 years.[28]
+
+According to the NYU School of Law, the Legal Committee of the Ministry of Justice oversees the admission and requirements to practice law in Eritrea. Although the establishment of an independent bar association is not proscribed under Proclamation 88/96, among other domestic laws, there is no bar association. The community electorate in the local jurisdiction of the Community Court chooses the Court's judges. The Community Court's standing on women in the legal profession is unclear, but elected women judges have reserved seat.[111]
+
+Eritrea is a member of the United Nations, the African Union, and is an observing member of the Arab League alongside Brazil, Venezuela and Turkey.[29] The nation holds a seat on the United Nations' Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ). Eritrea also holds memberships in the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Finance Corporation, International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), Non-Aligned Movement, Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Permanent Court of Arbitration, Port Management Association of Eastern and Southern Africa, and the World Customs Organization.
+
+The Eritrean government previously withdrew its representative to the African Union to protest the AU's alleged lack of leadership in facilitating the implementation of a binding border decision demarcating the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The Eritrean government has since January 2011 appointed an envoy, Tesfa-Alem Tekle, to the AU.[112]
+
+Eritrea maintains diplomatic ties with a number of other countries, it has over 31 embasies and consulates abroad, and over 22 consulates and embasies representated in the country,[113]  including China, Denmark, Djibouti, Israel, the United States and Yemen. Its relations with Djibouti and Yemen are tense due to territorial disputes over the Doumeira Islands and Hanish Islands, respectively.
+
+On 28 May 2019, the United States removed Eritrea from the "Counterterror Non-Cooperation List" which also includes: Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela.[114] Moreover, Eritrea was visited two months earlier by a US congressional delegation for the first time in 14 years.[115]
+
+The undemarcated border with Ethiopia is the primary external issue currently facing Eritrea. Eritrea's relations with Ethiopia turned from that of cautious mutual tolerance, following the 30-year war for Eritrean independence, to a deadly rivalry that led to the outbreak of hostilities from May 1998 to June 2000 which claimed approximately 70,000 lives from both sides.[116] The border conflict cost hundreds of millions of dollars.[117]
+
+Disagreements following the war have resulted in stalemate punctuated by periods of elevated tension and renewed threats of war.[118][119][120] The stalemate led the President of Eritrea to urge the UN to take action on Ethiopia with the Eleven Letters penned by the President to the United Nations Security Council. The situation has been further escalated by the continued efforts of the Eritrean and Ethiopian leaders in supporting opposition in one another's countries.[citation needed] In 2011, Ethiopia accused Eritrea of planting bombs at an African Union summit in Addis Ababa, which was later supported by a UN report. Eritrea denied the claims.[121]
+
+A peace treaty between both nations was signed on 8 July 2018.[122] The next day, they signed a joint declaration formally ending the Eritrean–Ethiopian border conflict.[123][124]
+
+Eritrea is divided into six administrative regions. These areas are further divided into 58 districts.
+
+The regions of Eritrea are the primary geographical divisions through which the country is administered. Six in total, they include the Maekel/Central, Anseba, Gash-Barka, Debub/Southern, Northern Red Sea and Southern Red Sea regions. At the time of independence in 1993, Eritrea was arranged into ten provinces. These provinces were similar to the nine provinces operating during the colonial period. In 1996, these were consolidated into six regions (zobas). The boundaries of these new regions are based on catchment basins.
+
+Asmara is the capital city of Eritrea with a population of 898,000 people.
+
+Transport in Eritrea includes highways, airports, railway, and seaports in addition to various forms of public and private vehicular, maritime and aerial transportation.
+
+The Eritrean highway system is named according to the road classification. The three levels of classification are: primary (P), secondary (S), and tertiary (T). The lowest level road is tertiary and serves local interests. Typically they are improved earth roads which are occasionally paved. During the wet seasons these roads typically become impassable.
+
+The next higher level road is a secondary road and typically is a single-layered asphalt road that connects district capitals together and those to the regional capitals. Roads that are considered primary roads are those that are fully asphalted (throughout their entire length) and in general they carry traffic between all the major cities and towns in Eritrea.
+
+As of 1999, there is a total of 317 kilometres of 950 mm (3 ft 1 3⁄8 in) (narrow gauge) rail line in Eritrea. The Eritrean Railway was built between 1887 and 1932.[125][126] Badly damaged during WWII and in later fighting, it was closed section by section, with the final closure coming in 1978.[127] After independence, a rebuilding effort commenced, and the first rebuilt section was reopened in 2003. As of 2009, the section from Massawa to Asmara was fully rebuilt and available for service.
+
+Rehabilitation of the remainder and of the rolling stock has occurred in recent years. Current service is very limited due to the extreme age of most of the railway equipment and its limited availability. Further rebuilding is planned. The railway linking Agordat and Asmara with the port of Massawa; had been inoperative since 1978 except for about a 5 kilometre stretch that was reopened in Massawa in 1994. A railway formerly ran from Massawa to Bishia via Asmara, and is under re-construction.
+
+The economy of Eritrea has experienced considerable growth in recent years (2010–20), indicated by an annual improvement in gross domestic product (GDP) with over 5% in recent years, some years up to 8.7%.[128] A big reason for the recent growth of the Eritrean economy is the commencement of full operations in the gold and silver Bisha mine and the production of cement from the cement factory in Massawa.[129]
+
+The economy of Eritrea has also bounced back after a period of minor or negative growth, indicated by an improvement in the Real Gross Domestic Product (Real GDP) to 12% in 2018 after averaging -2.7% for some time between 2015–18.[130] A major contributor to the recovery is investment in Eritrea's copper, zinc, and Colluli potash mining operations from Australian[131] and Chinese[132] mining companies.
+
+The real GDP (2020 est.): $8.1 billion, and the annual growth rate (2020 est.) about:6%. The GDP PPP (2020 est.): $11.3 billion[133]
+
+Worker remittances from abroad are estimated to account for 32% of gross domestic product.[19] Eritrea has an extensive amount of resources such as copper, gold, granite, marble, and potash. The Eritrean economy has undergone extreme changes due to the War of Independence. In 2011, Eritrea's GDP grew by 8.7% making it one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.[134]
+
+70% of the Eritrean workforce are employed in agriculture,[135] accounting for roughly one-third of the economy.[130] Eritrea's main agricultural products include sorghum, millet, barley, wheat, legumes, vegetables, fruits, sesame, linseed, cattle, sheep, goats and camels.[136]
+
+The Eritrean–Ethiopian War severely hurt Eritrea's economy. GDP growth in 1999 fell to less than 1%, and GDP decreased by 8.2% in 2000. In May 2000, the war resulted in some $600 million in property damage and loss, including losses of $225 million in livestock and 55,000 homes.
+
+Even during the war, Eritrea developed its transportation infrastructure by asphalting new roads, improving its ports, and repairing war-damaged roads and bridges as a part of the Wefri Warsay Yika'alo program. The most significant of these projects was the construction of a coastal highway of more than 500 km connecting Massawa with Asseb, as well as the rehabilitation of the Eritrean Railway. The rail line has been restored between the port of Massawa and the capital Asmara, although services are sporadic. Steam locomotives are sometimes used for groups of enthusiasts.
+
+Eritrea's population increased from 3.2 million to approximately 5,755,124[12][13][14][15][16] between 1990 and 2020.[13] The average number of children born to Eritrean mothers is 4.1.
+
+There are nine recognized ethnic groups according to the government of Eritrea.[21][137] An independent census has yet to be conducted, but the Tigrinya people make up about 55% and Tigre people make up about 30% of the population. A majority of the remaining ethnic groups belong to Afroasiatic-speaking communities of the Cushitic branch, such as the Saho, Hedareb, Afar and Bilen. There are also a number of Nilotic ethnic groups, who are represented in Eritrea by the Kunama and Nara. Each ethnicity speaks a different native tongue but, typically, many of the minorities speak more than one language.
+The Rashaida represent about 2% of Eritrea's population.[5] They reside in the northern coastal lowlands of Eritrea as well as the eastern coasts of Sudan. The Rashaida first came to Eritrea in the 19th century from the Hejaz region.[138]
+
+In addition, there exist Italian Eritrean (concentrated in Asmara) and Ethiopian Tigrayan communities. Neither is generally given citizenship unless through marriage or, more rarely, by having it conferred upon them by the State. Eritrea had about 760,000 inhabitants, including 70,000 Italians, in 1941.[139] Most Italians left after Eritrea became independent from Italy. It is estimated up to 100,000 Eritreans are of Italian descent.[140][141]
+
+Eritrea is a multilingual country. The nation has no official language, as the Constitution establishes the "equality of all Eritrean languages".[142] Eritrea has nine national languages which are Tigrinya language, Tigre, Afar, Beja, Bilen, Kunama, Nara, and Saho. Tigrinya, Arabic, and English serve as de facto working languages, with the latter used in university education and many technical fields. While Italian, the former colonial language, holds no government recognized status in Eritrea, it is spoken by a few monolinguals and Asmara has Scuola Italiana di Asmara, a long running Italian government-operated school.[143] Also, native Eritreans assimilated the language of the Italian Eritreans and spoke a version of Italian mixed with many Tigrinya words: Eritrean Italian.[144] Tigrinya serves as the de facto language of national identity. With 2,540,000 total speakers of a population of 5,254,000 in 2006, it is the most widely spoken language, particularly in the southern and central parts of Eritrea.
+
+Most of the languages spoken in Eritrea belong to the Ethiopian Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic family.[145] Other Afroasiatic languages belonging to the Cushitic branch are also widely spoken in the country.[145] The latter include Afar, Beja, Blin, and Saho. In addition, Nilo-Saharan languages (Kunama and Nara) are spoken as a native language by the Nilotic Kunama and Nara ethnic groups that live in the western and northwestern part of the country.[145]
+
+Smaller groups also speak other Afroasiatic languages, such as the newly recognized Dahlik and Arabic (the Hejazi and Hadhrami dialects spoken by the Rashaida and Hadhrami, respectively).
+
+According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2010[update], 62.9% of the population of Eritrea adheres to Christianity, 36.6% follows Islam, and 0.4% practices folk religion. The remainder observes Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and other faiths (<0.1% each), or are religiously unaffiliated (0.1%).[147] The U.S. Department of State estimates that, as of 2011[update], 50% of the population of Eritrea adheres to Christianity, 48% follows Islam, and 2% observes other religions, including traditional faiths and animism.[146] Christianity is the oldest world religion practiced in the country, and the first Christian monastery Debre Sina (monastery) was built during the 4th century.
+[148]
+
+Since May 2002, the government of Eritrea has officially recognized the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church (Oriental Orthodox), Sunni Islam, the Eritrean Catholic Church (a Metropolitanate sui juris), and the Evangelical Lutheran church. All other faiths and denominations are required to undergo a registration process.[149] Among other things, the government's registration system requires religious groups to submit personal information on their membership to be allowed to worship.[149]
+
+The 15th century Sheikh Hanafi Mosque in Massawa
+
+Church of Our Lady of the Rosary in the capital Asmara
+
+The Eritrean government is against what it deems as "reformed" or "radical" versions of its established religions. Therefore, alleged radical forms of Islam and Christianity, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Bahá'í Faith (though the Bahá'í Faith is neither Islamic nor Christian), the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and numerous other non-Protestant Evangelical denominations are not registered and cannot worship freely. Three named Jehovah's Witnesses are known to have been imprisoned since 1994 along with 51 others.[150][151][152] The government treats Jehovah's Witnesses especially harshly, denying them ration cards and work permits.[153] Jehovah's Witnesses were stripped of their citizenship and basic civil rights by presidential decree in October 1994.[154]
+
+In its 2017 religious freedom report, the U.S. State Department named Eritrea a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).[155]
+
+On 8 July 2017, the entire capital city of Asmara was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the inscription taking place during the 41st World Heritage Committee Session.
+
+The city has thousands of Art Deco, futurist, modernist, and rationalist buildings, constructed during the period of Italian Eritrea.[156][157][158][159][160][161] The city, nicknamed "La piccola Roma" ("Little Rome"),  is located over 2000 meters above sea level, and was an ideal spot for construction due to the relatively cool climate; architects used a combination of both Italian and local materials.
+
+Some notable buildings include the Fiat Tagliero Building, opera houses, hotels, and cinemas, such as the Cinema Impero.
+
+A statement from UNESCO read:
+
+It is an exceptional example of early modernist urbanism at the beginning of the 20th century and its application in an African context.
+
+Teatro d'Opera, the opera house of Asmara
+
+A building at the University of Asmara
+
+Villa Roma, Italian embassy
+
+The Fiat Tagliero Building
+
+Hotel Albergo Italia, built 1889. The hotel is one of the oldest hotels in Asmara
+
+The African pension
+
+The Eritrean national museum in Asmara
+
+The Embasoira built 1919 (Old Imperial hotel)
+
+Eritrea is a one-party state in which national legislative elections have been repeatedly postponed.[25] According to Human Rights Watch, the government's human rights record is considered among the worst in the world.[26] Most Western countries have accused the Eritrean authorities of arbitrary arrest and detentions, and of detaining an unknown number of people without charge for their political activism. However, the Eritrean government has continually dismissed the accusations as politically motivated.[27] Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is illegal in Eritrea.[162]
+
+A prominent group of fifteen Eritreans, called the G-15, including three cabinet members, were arrested in September 2001 after publishing an open letter to the government and President Isaias Afewerki calling for democratic dialogue. This group and thousands of others who were alleged to be affiliated with them are imprisoned without legal charges, hearing, trial and judgment.[163][164]
+
+Since Eritrea's conflict with Ethiopia in 1998–2001, the nation's human rights record has been criticized at the United Nations.[165] Human rights violations are allegedly often committed by the government or on behalf of the government. Freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association are limited. Those who practice "unregistered" religions, try to flee the nation, or escape military duty are arrested and put into prison.[165] During the Eritrean independence struggle and 1998 Eritrean-Ethiopian War, many atrocities were also committed by the Ethiopian authorities against unarmed Eritrean civilians.[166][167]
+
+In June 2016, a 500-page United Nations Human Rights Council report accused Eritrea's government of extrajudicial executions, torture, indefinitely prolonged national service (6.5 years on average) and forced labour, and indicated that sexual harassment, rape and sexual servitude by state officials are also widespread.[7][168] Barbara Lochbihler of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights said the report detailed 'very serious human rights violations', and asserted that EU funding for development would not continue as at present without change in Eritrea.[169] The Eritrean Foreign Ministry responded by describing the commission's report as "wild allegations" which were "totally unfounded and devoid of all merit".[170] Several countries also disputed the report's language and accuracy, including the US and China.[171]
+
+All Eritreans aged between 18 and 40 years must complete a mandatory national service, which includes military service. This requirement was implemented after Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia, as a means to protect Eritrea's sovereignty, to instill national pride, and to create a disciplined populace.[28] Eritrea's national service requires long, indefinite conscription (6.5 years on average), which some Eritreans leave the country in order to avoid.[28][172][173]
+
+In an attempt at reform, Eritrean government officials and NGO representatives in 2006 participated in many public meetings and dialogues. In these sessions they answered questions as fundamental as, "What are human rights?", "Who determines what are human rights?", and "What should take precedence, human or communal rights?"[174] In 2007, the Eritrean government also banned female genital mutilation.[175] In Regional Assemblies and religious circles, Eritreans themselves speak out continuously against the use of female circumcision. They cite health concerns and individual freedom as being of primary concern when they say this. Furthermore, they implore rural peoples to cast away this ancient cultural practice.[176][177] In 2009, a movement called Citizens for Democratic Rights in Eritrea formed to create dialogue between the government and political opposition. The group consists of ordinary citizens and some people close to the government.[178]
+
+In July 2019, UN ambassadors of 37 countries, including Eritrea, have signed a joint letter to the UNHRC defending China's treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang region.[179]
+
+In its 2017 Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranked the media environment in Eritrea at the bottom of a list of 180 countries.[180] According to the BBC, "Eritrea is the only African country to have no privately owned news media",[181] and Reporters Without Borders said of the public media, "[They] do nothing but relay the regime's belligerent and ultra-nationalist discourse. ... Not a single [foreign correspondent] now lives in Asmara."[182] The state-owned news agency censors news about external events.[183] Independent media have been banned since 2001.[183] The Eritrean authorities had reportedly imprisoned the fourth highest number of journalists after Turkey, China and Egypt.[184]
+
+Eritrea has achieved significant improvements in health care and is one of the few countries to be on target to meet its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for health, in particular child health.[185] Life expectancy at birth increased from 39.1 years in 1960 to 66.44 years in 2020;[186] maternal and child mortality rates dropped dramatically and the health infrastructure expanded.[185]
+
+The World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2008 found average life expectancy to be slightly less than 63 years, a number that has increased to 66.44 in 2020.[186]Immunisation and child nutrition have been tackled by working closely with schools in a multi-sectoral approach; the number of children vaccinated against measles almost doubled in seven years, from 40.7% to 78.5% and the prevalence of underweight children decreased by 12% from 1995 to 2002 (severe underweight prevalence by 28%).[185] The National Malaria Protection Unit of the Ministry of Health registered reductions in malarial mortality by as much as 85% and in the number of cases by 92% between 1998 and 2006.[185] The Eritrean government has banned female genital mutilation (FGM), saying the practice was painful and put women at risk of life-threatening health problems.[187]
+
+However, Eritrea still faces many challenges. Although the number of physicians increased from only 0.2 in 1993 to 0.5 in 2004 per 1000 people, this is still very low.[185] Malaria and tuberculosis are common.[188] HIV prevalence for ages 15 to 49 years exceeds 2%.[188] The fertility rate is about 4.1 births per woman.[188] Maternal mortality dropped by more than half from 1995 to 2002, but is still high.[185] Similarly, the number of births attended by skilled health personnel doubled from 1995 to 2002, but still is only 28.3%.[185] A major cause of death in newborns is severe infection.[188] Per-capita expenditure on health is low.[188]
+
+There are five levels of education in Eritrea: pre-primary, primary, middle, secondary, and post-secondary. There are nearly 1,270,000 students in the primary, middle, and secondary levels of education.[189] There are approximately 824 schools,[190] two universities (the University of Asmara and the Eritrea Institute of Technology) and several smaller colleges and technical schools.
+
+Education in Eritrea is officially compulsory for children aged 6 to 13 years.[189]
+
+Statistics vary at the elementary level, suggesting that 70% to 90% of school-aged children attend primary school; Approximately 61% attend secondary school. Student-teacher ratios are high: 45:1 at the elementary level and 54:1 at the secondary level. Class sizes average 63 and 97 students per classroom at the elementary and secondary school levels, respectively. Learning hours at school are often less than six hours per day.
+
+Barriers to education in Eritrea include traditional taboos, school fees (for registration and materials), and the opportunity costs of low-income households.[192]
+
+The Eritrea Institute of Technology "EIT"  is a technological institute located near the town Himbrti, Mai Nefhi outside Asmara. The institute has three colleges: Science, Engineering and Technology, and Education. The institute began with about 5,500 students during the 2003-2004 academic year.
+
+The EIT was opened after the University of Asmara was reorganized. According to the Ministry of Education, the institution was established, as one of many efforts to achieve equal distribution of higher learning in areas outside the capital city, Asmara. Accordingly, several similar colleges are also established in different other parts of the country. The Eritrea Institute of Technology is the main local institute of higher studies in science, engineering and education. The University of Asmara is the oldest University in the country and was opened in 1958.[194]
+
+The overall literacy rate in Eritrea is 84%.[195]  However, the literacy rate is higher for ages 18 to 24 years, it is 92.6% for men and 87.7% for women (2008–2012)[196]
+
+One of the most recognizable parts of Eritrean culture is the coffee ceremony.[197] Coffee (Ge'ez ቡን būn) is offered when visiting friends, during festivities, or as a daily staple of life. During the coffee ceremony, there are traditions that are upheld. The coffee is served in three rounds: the first brew or round is called awel in Tigrinya (meaning "first"), the second round is called kalaay (meaning "second"), and the third round is called bereka (meaning "to be blessed").
+
+Traditional Eritrean attire is quite varied among the ethnic groups of Eritrea. In the larger cities, most people dress in Western casual dress such as jeans and shirts. In offices, both men and women often dress in suits. A common traditional clothing for Christian Tigrayan highlanders consists of bright white gowns called zurias for the women, and a white shirt accompanied by white pants for the men. In Muslim communities in the Eritrean lowland, the women traditionally dress in brightly colored clothes. Besides convergent culinary tastes, Eritreans share an appreciation for similar music and lyrics, jewelry and fragrances, and tapestry and fabrics as many other populations in the region.[198]
+
+A typical traditional Eritrean dish consists of injera accompanied by a spicy stew, which frequently includes beef, chicken, lamb or fish.[199]  Overall, Eritrean cuisine strongly resembles those of neighboring Ethiopia,[199][200] Eritrean cooking tend to feature more seafood than Ethiopian cuisine on account of their coastal location.[199] Eritrean dishes are also frequently "lighter" in texture than Ethiopian meals. They likewise tend to employ less seasoned butter and spices and more tomatoes, as in the tsebhi dorho delicacy.
+
+Additionally, owing to its colonial history, cuisine in Eritrea features more Italian influences than are present in Ethiopian cooking, including more pasta and greater use of curry powders and cumin. The Italian Eritrean cuisine started to be practiced during the colonial times of the Kingdom of Italy, when a large number of Italians moved to Eritrea. They brought the use of pasta to Italian Eritrea, and it is one of the main food eaten in present-day Asmara. An Italian Eritrean cuisine emerged, and common dishes are 'Pasta al Sugo e Berbere', which means "Pasta with tomato sauce and berbere" (spice), but there are many more like lasagna and "cotoletta alla milanese" (milano cutlet).[201]
+
+In addition to coffee, local alcoholic beverages are enjoyed. These include sowa, a bitter drink made from fermented barley, and mies, a fermented honey wine.[202]
+
+Eritrea's ethnic groups each have their own styles of music and accompanying dances. Amongst the Tigrinya, the best known traditional musical genre is the guaila. Traditional instruments of Eritrean folk music include the stringed krar, kebero, begena, masenqo and the wata (a distant/rudimentary cousin of the violin). A popular Eritrean artist is the Tigrinya singer Helen Meles, who is noted for her powerful voice and wide singing range.[203] Other prominent local musicians include the Kunama singer Dehab Faytinga, Ruth Abraha, Bereket Mengisteab, the late Yemane Ghebremichael, and the late Abraham Afewerki.
+
+Football and cycling are the most popular sports in Eritrea. Cycling has a long tradition in Eritrea and was first introduced during the colonial period.[204][205]
+
+The Tour of Eritrea, a multi-stage cycling event, is held annually since 1946 throughout the country.
+
+The national cycling teams of both men and women are ranked first on the African continent, and Eritrea is ranked among one of the best cycling nations in the world.[206]
+
+The Eritrea national cycling team has experienced a lot of success, winning the African continental cycling championship several years in a row. In 2013, the women's team won the gold medal in the African Continental Cycling Championships for the first time, and for the second time in 2015 and third time in 2019. The men's team have won gold 7 times in the last 9 years in the African continental cycling championships, between 2010 and 2019.[207][208][209][210]
+
+More than six Eritrean riders have signed professional contracts to international cycling teams, including Natnael Berhane and Daniel Teklehaimanot. Berhane was named African Sportsman of the Year in 2013, while Teklehaimanot became the first Eritrean to ride the Vuelta a España in 2012.[211] In 2015, Teklehaimanot won the King of the Mountains classification in the Critérium du Dauphiné. Teklehaimanot and fellow Eritrean Merhawi Kudus became the first black cyclists from Africa to compete in the Tour de France, when they were selected by the MTN–Qhubeka team for the 2015 edition of the race.[212] In July of the year, Teklehaimanot also became the first rider from an African team to wear the polka dot jersey at the Tour de France.[213]
+
+Eritrean athletes have also seen increasing success in the international arena in other sports. Zersenay Tadese, an Eritrean athlete, formerly held the world record in the half marathon.[214] Ghirmay Ghebreslassie became the first Eritrean to win a gold medal at a World Championships in Athletics for his country when he took the marathon at the 2015 World Championships.[215] Eritrea made Winter Olympic debut 25 February 2018 when they competed at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea 2018. Eritrea's team was represented by their flagbearer Shannon-Ogbnai Abeda who competed as alpine skier.[216]

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+A stairway, staircase, stairwell, flight of stairs, or simply stairs, is a construction designed to bridge a large vertical distance by dividing it into smaller vertical distances, called steps. Stairs may be straight, round, or may consist of two or more straight pieces connected at angles.
+
+Special types of stairs include escalators and ladders. Some alternatives to stairs are elevators (also called lifts), stairlifts and inclined moving walkways.
+
+A stair, or a stairstep, is one step in a flight of stairs.[1]  In buildings, stairs is a term applied to a complete flight of steps between two floors.  A stair flight is a run of stairs or steps between landings.  A staircase or stairway is one or more flights of stairs leading from one floor to another, and includes landings, newel posts, handrails, balustrades and additional parts. A stairwell is a compartment extending vertically through a building in which stairs are placed.  A stair hall is the stairs, landings, hallways, or other portions of the public hall through which it is necessary to pass when going from the entrance floor to the other floors of a building.  Box stairs are stairs built between walls, usually with no support except the wall strings.[1]
+
+Stairs may be in a straight run, leading from one floor to another without a turn or change in direction. Stairs may change direction, commonly by two straight flights connected at a 90 degree angle landing. Stairs may also return onto themselves with 180 degree angle landings at each end of straight flights forming a vertical stairway commonly used in multistory and highrise buildings. Many variations of geometrical stairs may be formed of circular, elliptical and irregular constructions.[1]
+
+Stairs may be a required component of egress from structures and buildings. Stairs are also provided for convenience to access floors, roofs, levels and walking surfaces not accessible by other means.  Stairs may also be a fanciful physical construct such as the stairs that go nowhere located at the Winchester Mystery House.  Stairs are also a subject used in art to represent real or imaginary places built around impossible objects using geometric distortion, as in the work of artist M. C. Escher.
+
+"Stairway" is also a common metaphor for achievement or loss of a position in the society; or as a metaphor of hierarchy (e.g. Jacob's Ladder, The Battleship Potemkin).
+
+[2] A flat surface, especially one in a series, on which to place one’s foot when moving from one level to another. Each step is composed of tread and riser.
+
+A decorative step at the bottom of the staircase which usually houses the volute and volute newel turning for a continuous handrail. The curtail tread will follow the flow of the volute[4]
+
+The balustrade is the system of railings and balusters that prevents people from falling over the edge.
+
+Handrails may be continuous (sometimes called over-the-post) or post-to-post (or more accurately newel-to-newel). For continuous handrails on long balconies, there may be multiple newels and tandem caps to cover the newels. At corners, there are quarter-turn caps. For post-to-post systems, the newels project above the handrails.
+
+Another, more classical, form of handrailing which is still in use is the tangent method. A variant of the Cylindric method of layout, it allows for continuous climbing and twisting rails and easings. It was defined from principles set down by architect Peter Nicholson in the 18th century.
+
+The earliest spiral staircases appear in Temple A in the Greek colony Selinunte, Sicily, to both sides of the cella. The temple was constructed around 480–470 BC.[6]
+
+The measurements of a stair, in particular the rise height and going of the steps, should remain the same along the stairs.[10]
+
+The following stair measurements are important:
+
+Stairs can take a large number of forms, combining winders and landings.
+
+The simplest form is the straight flight of stairs, with neither winders nor landings. These types of stairs were commonly used in traditional homes as they are relatively easy to build and only need to be connected at the top and bottom; however, many modern properties may not choose straight flights of stairs because:
+
+Another form of straight staircase is the space saver staircase, also known as paddle stairs or alternating tread staircases, that can be used for a steeper rise, but these can only be used in certain circumstances and must comply with regulations.
+
+However, a basic straight flight of stairs is easier to design and construct than one with landings or winders. Although the rhythm of stepping is not interrupted in a straight run, which may offset the increased fall risk by helping to prevent a misstep in the first place, many stairs will require landings or winders to comply with safety standards in the Building Regulations.[11]
+
+Straight stairs can have a mid-landing incorporated, but it's probably more common to see stairs that use a landing or winder to produce a bend in the stairs as a straight flight with a mid-landing will require a lot of linear space and is more commonly found in commercial buildings. "L" shaped stairways have one landing and usually change in direction by 90 degrees. "U" shaped stairs may employ a single wider landing for a change in direction of 180 degrees, or 2 landings for two changes in direction of 90 degrees each. A Z-shaped staircase incorporates two parallel 90° turns, creating a shape similar to that of the letter ‘Z’ if seen from above. Use of landings and a possible change of direction have the following effects:
+
+Other forms include stairs with winders that curve or bend at an acute angle, three flight stairs that join at a landing to form a T-shape, and stairs with balconies and complex designs can be produced to suit individual properties.
+
+A mono string staircase is a term used for a steel spine staircase with treads.
+
+A Double string staircase has two steel beams on either side and treads in the center.
+
+Spiral stairs, sometimes referred to in architectural descriptions as vice, wind around a newel (also the central pole). In Scottish architecture, they are commonly known as a turnpike stair. They typically have a handrail on the outer side only, and on the inner side just the central pole. A squared spiral stair assumes a square stairwell and expands the steps and railing to a square, resulting in unequal steps (larger where they extend into a corner of the square). A pure spiral assumes a circular stairwell and the steps and handrail are equal and positioned screw-symmetrically. A tight spiral stair with a central pole is very space efficient in the use of floor area.
+
+Spiral stairs have the disadvantage of being very steep if they are tight or are otherwise not supported by a centre column, for two reasons:
+
+An example of perimeter support is the Vatican stairwell shown in the next section or the gothic stairwell shown to the left. That stairwell is only tight because of its design in which the diameter must be small. Many spirals, however, have sufficient width for normal size treads (8 inches) by being supported by any combination of a center pole, perimeter supports attaching to or beneath the treads, and a helical handrail.  In this manner, the treads may be wide enough to accommodate low rises. In self-supporting stairs the spiral needs to be steep to allow the weight to distribute safely down the spiral in the most vertical manner possible. Spiral steps with centre columns or perimeter support do not have this limitation. Building codes may limit the use of spiral stairs to small areas or secondary usage if their treads are not sufficiently wide or have risers above nine and a half inches.[12]
+
+The term "spiral" has a more narrow definition in a mathematical context, as a mathematical spiral lies in a single plane and moves towards or away from a central point. The mathematical term for motion where the locus remains at a fixed distance from a fixed line whilst moving in a circular motion about it is "helical". The presence or otherwise of a central pole does not affect the terminology applied to the design of the structure.
+
+When used in Roman architecture spiral stairs were generally restricted to elite structures. They were then adopted into Christian ecclesiastic architecture.[13] There is a common misconception that spiral staircases in castles rose in a clockwise direction to hinder right-handed attackers.[14][15] While clockwise spiral staircases are more common in castles than anti-clockwise, they were even more common in medieval structures without a military role such as religious buildings.[16] Studies of spiral stairs in castle have concluded that "the role and position of spirals in castles ... had a much stronger domestic and status role than a military function"[16] and that "there are sufficient examples of anticlockwise stairs in Britain and France in [the 11th and 12th centuries] to indicate that the choice must have depended both on physical convenience and architectural practicalities and there was no military ideology that demanded clockwise staircases in the cause of fighting efficiency or advantage".[14]
+
+Developments in manufacturing and design have led to the introduction of kit form spiral stairs. Steps and handrails can be bolted together to form a complete unit. These stairs can be made out of steel, timber, concrete or a combination of materials.
+
+Helical or circular stairs do not have a central pole and there is a handrail on both sides. These have the advantage of a more uniform tread width when compared to the spiral staircase. Such stairs may also be built around an elliptical or oval planform.
+
+Both double spiral and double helix staircases are possible, with two independent helical stairs in the same vertical space, allowing one person to ascend and another to descend, without ever meeting if they choose different helices. For examples, the Pozzo di S. Patrizio allows one-way traffic so that laden and unladen mules can ascend and descend without obstruction, while Château de Chambord, Château de Blois, and the Crédit Lyonnais headquarters ensure separation for social purposes. Fire escapes, though built with landings and straight runs of stairs, are often functionally double helices, with two separate stairs intertwined and occupying the same floor space. This is often in support of legal requirements to have two separate fire escapes.
+
+Both spiral and helical stairs can be characterized by the number of turns that are made. A "quarter-turn" stair deposits the person facing 90 degrees from the starting orientation. Likewise, there are half-turn, three-quarters-turn and full-turn stairs. A continuous spiral may make many turns depending on the height. Very tall multi-turn spiral staircases are usually found in old stone towers within fortifications, churches and in lighthouses.
+
+Winders may be used in combination with straight stairs to turn the direction of the stairs. This allows for a large number of permutations.
+
+Where there is insufficient space for the full run length of normal stairs, alternating tread stairs may be used. Alternating tread stairs allow for a safe forward-facing descent of very steep stairs. The treads are designed such that they alternate between treads for each foot: one step is wide on the left side; the next step is wide on the right side. There is insufficient space on the narrow portion of the step for the other foot to stand, hence the person must always use the correct foot on the correct step. The slope of alternating tread stairs can be as high as 65 degrees as opposed to standard stairs, which are almost always less than 45 degrees. The advantage of alternating tread stairs is that people can descend face forward. The only other alternative in such short spaces would be a ladder which requires backward-facing descent. Alternating tread stairs may not be safe for small children, the elderly or the physically challenged. Building codes typically classify them as ladders and will only allow them where ladders are allowed, usually basement or attic utility or storage areas not frequently accessed.
+
+The image on the right illustrates the space efficiency gained by an alternating tread stair. The alternating tread stair appears in the image's center, with green-colored treads. The alternating stair requires one unit of space per step: the same as the half-width step on its left, and half as much as the full-width stair on its right. Thus, the horizontal distance between steps is in this case reduced by a factor of two, reducing the size of each step.
+
+The horizontal distance between steps is reduced by a factor less than two if for construction reasons there are narrow "unused" steps.
+
+There is often (here also) glide plane symmetry: the mirror image with respect to the vertical center plane corresponds to a shift by one step.
+
+Alternating tread stairs have been in use since at least 1888.[17]
+
+Ergonomically and for safety reasons, stairs must have certain measurements so that people can comfortably use them. Building codes typically specify certain measurements so that the stairs are not too steep or narrow.
+
+Nicolas-François Blondel in the last volume of his Cours d'architecture[18] (1675–1683) was the first known person to establish the ergonomic relationship of tread and riser dimensions.[19] He specified that 2 x riser + tread = step length.[20]
+
+It is estimated that a noticeable mis-step occurs once in 7,398 uses and a minor accident on a flight of stairs occurs once in 63,000 uses.[21] Stairs can be a hazardous obstacle for some, so some people choose to live in residences without stairs so that they are protected from injury.[22]
+
+Stairs are not suitable for wheelchairs and other vehicles. A stairlift is a mechanical device for lifting wheelchairs up and down stairs. For sufficiently wide stairs, a rail is mounted to the treads of the stairs, or attached to the wall. A chair is attached to the rail and the person on the chair is lifted as the chair moves along the rail.
+
+(overview of Approved document K – Stairs, Ladders and Ramps)[23]
+
+The 2013 edition approved document K categorises stairs as 'Private', 'Utility' and 'General access'
+
+When considering stairs for private dwellings all the specified measurements are in millimetres
+
+Building regulations are required for stairs used where the difference of level is greater than 600
+
+Steepness of stairs – Rise and Going – 
+Any rise between 150 and 220 used with any going between 220 and 300
+
+Maximum Rise 220 and Minimum Going 220 remembering that the maximum pitch of private stairs is 42°. The normal relationship between dimensions of the rise and going is that twice the rise plus the going (2R + G) should be between 550 and 700
+
+Construction of steps – 
+Steps should have level treads, they may have open risers but if so treads should overlap at least 16mm. Domestic private stairs are likely to be used by children under 5 years old so the handrail ballister spacing should be constructed so that a 100mm diameter sphere cannot pass through the opening in the risers in order to prevent children from sticking their heads through them and potentially getting stuck.
+
+Headroom – 
+A headroom of 2000mm is adequate. Special considerations can be made for loft conversions.
+
+Width of flights – 
+No recommendations are given for stair widths.
+
+Length of flights – 
+The approved document refers to 16 risers (steps) for utility stairs and 12 for general access. There is no requirement for private stairs. In practice there will be fewer than 16 steps as 16 x 220 gives over 3500 total rise (storey height) which is way above that in a domestic situation.
+
+Landings – 
+Level, unobstructed landings should be provided at the top and bottom of every flight. The width and length being at least that of the width of the stairs and can include part of the floor. A door may swing across the landing at the bottom of the flight but must leave a clear space of at least 400 across the whole landing
+
+Tapered steps – 
+There are special rules for stairs with tapered steps as shown in the image Example of Winder Stairs above
+
+Alternate tread stairs can be provide in space saving situations
+
+Guarding – 
+Flights and landings must be guarded at the sides where the drop is more than 600mm. As domestic private stairs are likely to be used by children under 5 the guarding must be constructed so that a 100mm diameter sphere cannot pass through any opening or constructed so that children will not be able to climb the guarding. The height for internal private stairs should be at least 900 mm (35.4 in) and be able to withstand a horizontal force of 0.36|kN/m|.
+
+Industry guidance on designing a staircase to UK Regulation and Standards.
+
+American building codes, while varying from State to State and County to County, generally specify the following parameters:[24][25][26]
+
+There is no newel at Loretto Chapel's spiral staircase (the "Miracle stair") in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States.
+
+A spiral staircase inside Cremona's Torrazzo, Italy.
+
+Upward view of the Tulip Stairs & lantern at the Queen's House, Greenwich, England.
+
+Spiral stairway seen from below; Melk Abbey, Austria.
+
+The wooden spiral stairs of the Tour de Sauvabelin in Lausanne.
+
+Tudor staircase, Madingley Hall, Cambridgeshire, England, from below
+
+As much as stairs are very functional, stairs can be very decorative and an impressive part of a building. Especially at the entrance of a large building stairs play an important role in the first impression of a building. In large buildings such as banks this is very popular. Modern companies and construction utilize the opportunities of functional stairs to actually upgrade buildings. Large utilities such as banks as well as residential buildings such as penthouses (e.g. in St George Wharf Tower) have modern and luxurious installations.
+
+An early kind of burglar alarm - trip stairs. The idea was that the unexpected change in the level of the stairs would foil the would-be robbers by causing them to trip in the darkness and wake someone.
+
+66 steps Queen's Staircase in Nassau, Bahamas
+
+Yerevan Cascade steps (572 steps[37]) in Yerevan, Armenia.
+
+Spiral (double helix) stairs of the Vatican Museums
+
+Ise Jingu in Japan.
+
+Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
+
+Modified stairway for the elderly in Thailand.
+
+The Potemkin Stairs (1834–1841) in Odessa, Ukraine.
+
+Spiral stairs with ornamental balusters.
+
+The Jacob's Ladder, between Jamestown and Half Tree Hollow, in Saint Helena.
+
+Rudkhan Castle, Fouman, Iran.
+
+Stairs of rock placed in a natural passage.
+
+Outdoor stairway on the Alameda Ridge in Portland, Oregon, United States.
+
+Pioneer spiral staircase, Deaf Smith County Historical Museum, Hereford, Texas, United States.
+
+Emperor's Stairs in the Residenz of Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
+
+The 19th century theatre of Weißenhorn, Germany.
+
+Endless stairway at KPMG, Munich, Germany.
+
+Wooden spiral stairs in the tower of Salisbury Cathedral, England.
+
+A stair and a sculpture in the Fontevraud Abbey
+
+Stairs of Death Concentration camp Mauthausen, prisoners in the quarry
+
+Nabataean stairway in Beida ("Little Petra"), Jordan
+
+Foot-worn staircase of the Plovdiv Roman amphitheatre showing multiple repairs.
+
+Square steel staircase in German look-out tower Klausenturm
+
+Multiple stairs inside the Federal Palace of Switzerland.
+
+A wooden staircase in Molières, France
+
+Spiral stairway in the Alabama State Capitol.
+
+Stairs in Ikoma, Japan.
+
+The Rue Foyatier in Montmartre, Paris

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+
+
+A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name snail is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have a coiled shell that is large enough for the animal to retract completely into. When the word "snail" is used in this most general sense, it includes not just land snails but also numerous species of sea snails and freshwater snails. Gastropods that naturally lack a shell, or have only an internal shell, are mostly called slugs, and land snails that have only a very small shell (that they cannot retract into) are often called semi-slugs.
+
+Snails have considerable human relevance, including as food items, as pests, and as vectors of disease, and their shells are used as decorative objects and are incorporated into jewelry.[1] The snail has also had some cultural significance, tending to be associated with patience. The snail has also been used as a metaphor: someone who is not moving fast enough is "slow as a snail." The snail is the same or similar shape as the Cochlea.[2]
+
+Snails that respire using a lung belong to the group Pulmonata. As traditionally defined, the Pulmonata were found to be polyphyletic in a molecular study per Jörger et al., dating from 2010.[3] But snails with gills also form a polyphyletic group; in other words, snails with lungs and snails with gills form a number of taxonomic groups that are not necessarily more closely related to each other than they are related to some other groups.
+
+Both snails that have lungs and snails that have gills have diversified so widely over geological time that a few species with gills can be found on land and numerous species with lungs can be found in freshwater. Even a few marine species have lungs.
+
+Snails can be found in a very wide range of environments, including ditches, deserts, and the abyssal depths of the sea. Although land snails may be more familiar to laymen, marine snails constitute the majority of snail species, and have much greater diversity and a greater biomass. Numerous kinds of snail can also be found in fresh water.
+
+Most snails have thousands of microscopic tooth-like structures located on a banded ribbon-like tongue called a radula. The radula works like a file, ripping food into small pieces. Many snails are herbivorous, eating plants or rasping algae from surfaces with their radulae, though a few land species and many marine species are omnivores or predatory carnivores. Snails cannot absorb colored pigments when eating paper or cardboard so their feces are also colored.[4]
+
+Several species of the genus Achatina and related genera are known as giant African land snails; some grow to 15 in (38 cm) from snout to tail, and weigh 1 kg (2 lb).[5]  The largest living species of sea snail is Syrinx aruanus; its shell can measure up to 90 cm (35 in) in length, and the whole animal with the shell can weigh up to 18 kg (40 lb).  Recently, the smallest land snails, Angustopila dominikae,  have  been discovered in China, and measure 0.86mm long.[6]
+
+The snail Lymnaea makes decisions by using only two types of neurons: one deciding whether the snail is hungry, and the other deciding whether there is food in the vicinity.[1]
+
+The largest known land gastropod is the African giant snail Achatina achatina, the largest recorded specimen of which measured 39.3 centimetres (15.5 in) from snout to tail when fully extended, with a shell length of 27.3 cm (10.7 in) in December 1978. It weighed exactly 900 g (2 lb). Named Gee Geronimo, this snail was owned by Christopher Hudson (1955–79) of Hove, East Sussex, UK, and was collected in Sierra Leone in June 1976.[2]
+
+Gastropods that lack a conspicuous shell are commonly called slugs rather than snails.[3] Some species of slug have a maroon-brown shell, some have only an internal vestige that serves mainly as a calcium lactate repository, and others have some to no shell at all. Other than that there is little morphological difference between slugs and snails. There are however important differences in habitats and behavior.
+
+A shell-less animal is much more maneuverable and compressible, so even quite large land slugs can take advantage of habitats or retreats with very little space, retreats that would be inaccessible to a similar-sized snail. Slugs squeeze themselves into confined spaces such as under loose bark on trees or under stone slabs, logs or wooden boards lying on the ground. In such retreats they are in less danger from either predators or desiccation. Those are often suitable places for laying their eggs.
+
+Slugs as a group are far from monophyletic; scientifically speaking "slug" is a term of convenience with little taxonomic significance. The reduction or loss of the shell has evolved many times independently within several very different lineages of gastropods. The various taxa of land and sea gastropods with slug morphology occur within numerous higher taxonomic groups of shelled species; such independent slug taxa are not in general closely related to one another.
+
+Land snails are known as an agricultural and garden pest but some species are an edible delicacy and occasionally household pets.
+
+There are a variety of snail-control measures that gardeners and farmers use in an attempt to reduce damage to valuable plants. Traditional pesticides are still used, as are many less toxic control options such as concentrated garlic or wormwood solutions. Copper metal is also a snail repellent, and thus a copper band around the trunk of a tree will prevent snails from climbing up and reaching the foliage and fruit. A layer of a dry, finely ground, and scratchy substance such as diatomaceous earth can also deter snails.[4]
+
+The decollate snail (Rumina decollata) will capture and eat garden snails, and because of this it has sometimes been introduced as a biological pest control agent. However, this is not without problems, as the decollate snail is just as likely to attack and devour other gastropods that may represent a valuable part of the native fauna of the region.
+
+In French cuisine, edible snails are served for instance in Escargot à la Bourguignonne. The practice of rearing snails for food is known as heliciculture. For purposes of cultivation, the snails are kept in a dark place in a wired cage with dry straw or dry wood. Coppiced wine-grape vines are often used for this purpose. During the rainy period, the snails come out of hibernation and release most of their mucus onto the dry wood/straw. The snails are then prepared for cooking. Their texture when cooked is slightly chewy and tender.
+
+As well as being relished as gourmet food, several species of land snails provide an easily harvested source of protein to many people in poor communities around the world. Many land snails are valuable because they can feed on a wide range of agricultural wastes, such as shed leaves in banana plantations. In some countries, giant African land snails are produced commercially for food.
+
+Land snails, freshwater snails and sea snails are all eaten in many  countries. In certain parts of the world, snails are fried as for example, in Indonesia, they are fried as satay, a dish known as sate kakul. The eggs of certain snail species are eaten in a fashion similar to the way caviar is eaten.[citation needed]
+
+In Bulgaria, snails are traditionally cooked in an oven with rice or fried in a pan with vegetable oil and red paprika powder. Before they are used for those dishes, however, they are thoroughly boiled in hot water (for up to 90 minutes) and manually extracted from their shells. The two species most commonly used for food in the country are Helix lucorum and Helix pomatia.[citation needed]
+
+Snails and slug species that are not normally eaten in certain areas have occasionally been used as famine food in historical times. A history of Scotland written in the 1800s recounts a description of various snails and their use as food items in times of plague.[5]
+
+Skin creams derived from Cornu aspersum snails are sold for use on wrinkles, scars, dry skin, and acne. A research study suggested that secretions produced under stress by Cornu aspersa might facilitate regeneration of wounded tissue.[6]
+
+Because of its slowness, the snail has traditionally been seen as a symbol of laziness. In Christian culture, it has been used as a symbol of the deadly sin of sloth.[7][8] Psalms 58:8 uses snail slime as a metaphorical punishment. In Mayan mythology, the snail is associated with sexual desire, being personified by the god Uayeb.[9]
+
+Snails were widely noted and used in divination.[7] The Greek poet Hesiod wrote that snails signified the time to harvest by climbing the stalks, while the Aztec moon god Tecciztecatl bore a snail shell on his back. This symbolised rebirth; the snail's penchant for appearing and disappearing was analogised with the moon.[10]
+
+Professor Ronald Chase of McGill University in Montreal has suggested the ancient myth of Cupid's arrows might be based on early observations of the love dart behavior of the land snail species Cornu aspersum.[11]
+
+In contemporary speech, the expression "a snail's pace" is often used to describe a slow, inefficient process. The phrase "snail mail" is used to mean regular postal service delivery of paper messages as opposed to the delivery of email, which can be virtually instantaneous.
+
+Keong Emas (Javanese and Indonesian for Golden Snail) is a popular Javanese folklore about a princess magically transformed and contained in a golden snail shell. The folklore is a part of popular Javanese Panji cycle telling the stories about the prince Panji Asmoro Bangun (also known as Raden Inu Kertapati) and his consort, princess Dewi Sekartaji (also known as Dewi Chandra Kirana).
+
+Certain varieties of snails, notably the family Muricidae, produce a secretion that is a color-fast natural dye. The ancient Tyrian purple was made in this way as were other purple and blue dyes.[12][13][14] The extreme expense of extracting this secretion is sufficient quantities limited its use to the very wealthy. It is such dyes as these that led to certain shades of purple and blue being associated with royalty and wealth.[15]
+
+Throughout history, snails have been kept as pets. There are many famous snails such as Lefty (Born Jeremy) and within fiction, Gary and Brian the snail .[16]

en/1818.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
+
+
+A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name snail is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have a coiled shell that is large enough for the animal to retract completely into. When the word "snail" is used in this most general sense, it includes not just land snails but also numerous species of sea snails and freshwater snails. Gastropods that naturally lack a shell, or have only an internal shell, are mostly called slugs, and land snails that have only a very small shell (that they cannot retract into) are often called semi-slugs.
+
+Snails have considerable human relevance, including as food items, as pests, and as vectors of disease, and their shells are used as decorative objects and are incorporated into jewelry.[1] The snail has also had some cultural significance, tending to be associated with patience. The snail has also been used as a metaphor: someone who is not moving fast enough is "slow as a snail." The snail is the same or similar shape as the Cochlea.[2]
+
+Snails that respire using a lung belong to the group Pulmonata. As traditionally defined, the Pulmonata were found to be polyphyletic in a molecular study per Jörger et al., dating from 2010.[3] But snails with gills also form a polyphyletic group; in other words, snails with lungs and snails with gills form a number of taxonomic groups that are not necessarily more closely related to each other than they are related to some other groups.
+
+Both snails that have lungs and snails that have gills have diversified so widely over geological time that a few species with gills can be found on land and numerous species with lungs can be found in freshwater. Even a few marine species have lungs.
+
+Snails can be found in a very wide range of environments, including ditches, deserts, and the abyssal depths of the sea. Although land snails may be more familiar to laymen, marine snails constitute the majority of snail species, and have much greater diversity and a greater biomass. Numerous kinds of snail can also be found in fresh water.
+
+Most snails have thousands of microscopic tooth-like structures located on a banded ribbon-like tongue called a radula. The radula works like a file, ripping food into small pieces. Many snails are herbivorous, eating plants or rasping algae from surfaces with their radulae, though a few land species and many marine species are omnivores or predatory carnivores. Snails cannot absorb colored pigments when eating paper or cardboard so their feces are also colored.[4]
+
+Several species of the genus Achatina and related genera are known as giant African land snails; some grow to 15 in (38 cm) from snout to tail, and weigh 1 kg (2 lb).[5]  The largest living species of sea snail is Syrinx aruanus; its shell can measure up to 90 cm (35 in) in length, and the whole animal with the shell can weigh up to 18 kg (40 lb).  Recently, the smallest land snails, Angustopila dominikae,  have  been discovered in China, and measure 0.86mm long.[6]
+
+The snail Lymnaea makes decisions by using only two types of neurons: one deciding whether the snail is hungry, and the other deciding whether there is food in the vicinity.[1]
+
+The largest known land gastropod is the African giant snail Achatina achatina, the largest recorded specimen of which measured 39.3 centimetres (15.5 in) from snout to tail when fully extended, with a shell length of 27.3 cm (10.7 in) in December 1978. It weighed exactly 900 g (2 lb). Named Gee Geronimo, this snail was owned by Christopher Hudson (1955–79) of Hove, East Sussex, UK, and was collected in Sierra Leone in June 1976.[2]
+
+Gastropods that lack a conspicuous shell are commonly called slugs rather than snails.[3] Some species of slug have a maroon-brown shell, some have only an internal vestige that serves mainly as a calcium lactate repository, and others have some to no shell at all. Other than that there is little morphological difference between slugs and snails. There are however important differences in habitats and behavior.
+
+A shell-less animal is much more maneuverable and compressible, so even quite large land slugs can take advantage of habitats or retreats with very little space, retreats that would be inaccessible to a similar-sized snail. Slugs squeeze themselves into confined spaces such as under loose bark on trees or under stone slabs, logs or wooden boards lying on the ground. In such retreats they are in less danger from either predators or desiccation. Those are often suitable places for laying their eggs.
+
+Slugs as a group are far from monophyletic; scientifically speaking "slug" is a term of convenience with little taxonomic significance. The reduction or loss of the shell has evolved many times independently within several very different lineages of gastropods. The various taxa of land and sea gastropods with slug morphology occur within numerous higher taxonomic groups of shelled species; such independent slug taxa are not in general closely related to one another.
+
+Land snails are known as an agricultural and garden pest but some species are an edible delicacy and occasionally household pets.
+
+There are a variety of snail-control measures that gardeners and farmers use in an attempt to reduce damage to valuable plants. Traditional pesticides are still used, as are many less toxic control options such as concentrated garlic or wormwood solutions. Copper metal is also a snail repellent, and thus a copper band around the trunk of a tree will prevent snails from climbing up and reaching the foliage and fruit. A layer of a dry, finely ground, and scratchy substance such as diatomaceous earth can also deter snails.[4]
+
+The decollate snail (Rumina decollata) will capture and eat garden snails, and because of this it has sometimes been introduced as a biological pest control agent. However, this is not without problems, as the decollate snail is just as likely to attack and devour other gastropods that may represent a valuable part of the native fauna of the region.
+
+In French cuisine, edible snails are served for instance in Escargot à la Bourguignonne. The practice of rearing snails for food is known as heliciculture. For purposes of cultivation, the snails are kept in a dark place in a wired cage with dry straw or dry wood. Coppiced wine-grape vines are often used for this purpose. During the rainy period, the snails come out of hibernation and release most of their mucus onto the dry wood/straw. The snails are then prepared for cooking. Their texture when cooked is slightly chewy and tender.
+
+As well as being relished as gourmet food, several species of land snails provide an easily harvested source of protein to many people in poor communities around the world. Many land snails are valuable because they can feed on a wide range of agricultural wastes, such as shed leaves in banana plantations. In some countries, giant African land snails are produced commercially for food.
+
+Land snails, freshwater snails and sea snails are all eaten in many  countries. In certain parts of the world, snails are fried as for example, in Indonesia, they are fried as satay, a dish known as sate kakul. The eggs of certain snail species are eaten in a fashion similar to the way caviar is eaten.[citation needed]
+
+In Bulgaria, snails are traditionally cooked in an oven with rice or fried in a pan with vegetable oil and red paprika powder. Before they are used for those dishes, however, they are thoroughly boiled in hot water (for up to 90 minutes) and manually extracted from their shells. The two species most commonly used for food in the country are Helix lucorum and Helix pomatia.[citation needed]
+
+Snails and slug species that are not normally eaten in certain areas have occasionally been used as famine food in historical times. A history of Scotland written in the 1800s recounts a description of various snails and their use as food items in times of plague.[5]
+
+Skin creams derived from Cornu aspersum snails are sold for use on wrinkles, scars, dry skin, and acne. A research study suggested that secretions produced under stress by Cornu aspersa might facilitate regeneration of wounded tissue.[6]
+
+Because of its slowness, the snail has traditionally been seen as a symbol of laziness. In Christian culture, it has been used as a symbol of the deadly sin of sloth.[7][8] Psalms 58:8 uses snail slime as a metaphorical punishment. In Mayan mythology, the snail is associated with sexual desire, being personified by the god Uayeb.[9]
+
+Snails were widely noted and used in divination.[7] The Greek poet Hesiod wrote that snails signified the time to harvest by climbing the stalks, while the Aztec moon god Tecciztecatl bore a snail shell on his back. This symbolised rebirth; the snail's penchant for appearing and disappearing was analogised with the moon.[10]
+
+Professor Ronald Chase of McGill University in Montreal has suggested the ancient myth of Cupid's arrows might be based on early observations of the love dart behavior of the land snail species Cornu aspersum.[11]
+
+In contemporary speech, the expression "a snail's pace" is often used to describe a slow, inefficient process. The phrase "snail mail" is used to mean regular postal service delivery of paper messages as opposed to the delivery of email, which can be virtually instantaneous.
+
+Keong Emas (Javanese and Indonesian for Golden Snail) is a popular Javanese folklore about a princess magically transformed and contained in a golden snail shell. The folklore is a part of popular Javanese Panji cycle telling the stories about the prince Panji Asmoro Bangun (also known as Raden Inu Kertapati) and his consort, princess Dewi Sekartaji (also known as Dewi Chandra Kirana).
+
+Certain varieties of snails, notably the family Muricidae, produce a secretion that is a color-fast natural dye. The ancient Tyrian purple was made in this way as were other purple and blue dyes.[12][13][14] The extreme expense of extracting this secretion is sufficient quantities limited its use to the very wealthy. It is such dyes as these that led to certain shades of purple and blue being associated with royalty and wealth.[15]
+
+Throughout history, snails have been kept as pets. There are many famous snails such as Lefty (Born Jeremy) and within fiction, Gary and Brian the snail .[16]

en/1819.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,357 @@
+
+
+
+
+Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property.[1] An enslaved person is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalized, de jure slavery.
+
+In a broader sense, however, the word "slavery" may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will. To describe such circumstances, scholars may use such alternate terms as unfree labour or forced labour.[2]
+
+Under the broader use of the term slavery, but also in certain cases of actual de jure (chattel) slavery, local laws and/or customs may vest the enslaved with limited rights and protections.
+
+Slavery has existed in many cultures, dating back to early human civilizations.[3] It was legal in most societies at some time in the past but is now outlawed in all recognized countries.[4][5] Nevertheless, as of 2019 there were an estimated 40 million people worldwide subject to some form of slavery, 25% of them children.[6] More than half of modern slaves are used for forced labor, mostly in the private sector.[6] The most common form of modern slave trade is commonly referred to as human trafficking. In some areas of the world, slavery continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most common source of modern slaves;[2] serfdom; domestic servants kept in captivity; certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves; child soldiers; and forced marriage.[7]
+
+The word slave is derived from the ethnonym (ethnic name) Slav.[8][9][10] It arrived in English via the Old French sclave. In Medieval Latin the word was sclavus and in Byzantine Greek σκλάβος.[8] Use of the word arose during the Early Medieval Period, when Slavs from Central and Eastern Europe (Saqaliba) were frequently enslaved by Moors from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.[11][12][13] An older interpretation connected slave to the Greek verb skyleúo 'to strip a slain enemy'.[14]
+
+There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as "unfree labourer" or enslaved person, rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language; by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were". Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with "person" implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow.[15]
+
+Indenture, otherwise known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour under which a person pledges himself or herself against a loan.[16] The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined.[16] Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt.[16] It is the most widespread form of slavery today.[2] Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia.[17]
+
+Chattel slavery, also called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel (personal property) of the owner and are bought and sold as commodities. Typically, under the chattel slave system, children inherited slave status via the mother (partus sequitur ventrem).[18] Although it dominated many different societies throughout human history, this form of slavery has been formally abolished and is very rare today. Even when it can be said to survive, it is not upheld by the legal system of any internationally recognized government.[19]
+
+"Slavery" has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else.[20][21] For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens.[22]
+
+Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to describe an individual who is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment, but the generic term unfree labour is also used to describe chattel slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will, and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person.[2] This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription and penal labour. While some unfree labourers, such as serfs, have substantive, de jure legal or traditional rights, they also have no ability to terminate the arrangements under which they work and are frequently subject to forms of coercion, violence, and restrictions on their activities and movement outside their place of work.
+
+Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children.[2][23][24] Examples of sexual slavery, often in military contexts, include detention in "rape camps" or "comfort stations," "comfort women", forced "marriages" to soldiers and other practices involving the treatment of women or men as chattel and, as such, violations of the peremptory norm prohibiting slavery.[25][26][27][28]
+
+In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts.[29] More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labor, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty[30] such as in restaveks in Haiti.
+
+Forced marriages or early marriages are often considered types of slavery. Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West.[31][32][33][34] Sacred prostitution is where girls and women are pledged to priests or those of higher castes, such as the practice of Devadasi in South Asia or fetish slaves in West Africa.[2] Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a national average of 69% of marriages in Ethiopia being through abduction.[35]
+
+Economists have attempted to model the circumstances under which slavery (and variants such as serfdom) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for landowners where land is abundant but labour is scarce, such that rent is depressed and paid workers can demand high wages. If the opposite holds true, then it becomes more costly for landowners to have guards for the slaves than to employ paid workers who can only demand low wages because of the amount of competition.[36] Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew but were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia as large areas of new land with few people became available.[37]
+
+Slavery is more common when the labor done is relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large-scale growing of a single crop, like sugar and cotton, in which output was based on economies of scale. This enables such systems of labor, such as the gang system in the United States, to become prominent on large plantations where field hands were monitored and worked with factory-like precision. For example, each work gang was based on an internal division of labour that assigned every member of the gang to a precise task and simultaneously made their own performance dependent on the actions of the others. The hoe hands chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excessive sprouts. The plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the rows of cotton plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an assembly line.[38]
+
+Since the 18th century, critics have argued that slavery tends to retard technological advancement because the focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading the efficiency of labour. For example, it is sometime argued that, because of this narrow focus, theoretical knowledge and learning in Greece – and later in Rome – was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing.[39]
+
+Scottish economist Adam Smith states that free labour was economically better than slave labour, and that it is nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic, or republican form of government since many of its legislators or political figures were slave owners, and would not punish themselves.  He further states that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom when there was centralized government, or a central authority like a king or the church.[40][41] Similar arguments appear later in the works of Auguste Comte, especially when it comes to Smith's belief in the separation of powers, or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith states in the Lectures on Jurisprudence, "The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of the king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues..."
+
+Worldwide, slavery is a criminal offense, but slave owners can get very high returns for their risk. According to researcher Siddharth Kara, the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were $91.2 billion. That is second only to drug trafficking, in terms of global criminal enterprises. Currently, the weighted average global sales price of a slave is calculated to be approximately $340, with a high of $1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $40 to $50 for debt bondage slaves in part of Asia and Africa.[42] The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $3,175, with a low of an average $950 for bonded labor and $29,210 for a trafficked sex slave.[42] Approximately 40% of slave profits each year are generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of the world's 29 million slaves.[42]
+
+Throughout history, slaves were clothed in a distinctive fashion, particularly with respect to the frequent lack of footwear, as they were rather commonly forced to go barefoot. This was partly because of economic reasons but also served as a distinguishing feature, especially in South Africa and South America. For example, the Cape Town slave code stated that "Slaves must go barefoot and must carry passes."[43] It also puts slaves at a physical disadvantage because of the lack of protection against environmental adversities and also in situations of possible confrontation, thereby making it more difficult to escape or to rebel against their owners.
+
+This was the case in the majority of states that abolished slavery later in history, as most images from the respective historical period suggest that slaves were barefoot.[44]
+To quote Brother Riemer (1779): "[the slaves] are, even in their most beautiful suit, obliged to go barefoot. Slaves were forbidden to wear shoes. This was a prime mark of distinction between the free and the bonded and no exceptions were permitted."[45]
+
+According to the Bible, shoes have been considered badges of freedom since antiquity: "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put [it] on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on [his] feet" (Luke 15:22). This aspect can be viewed as an informal law in areas where slavery existed as any person sighted barefoot in public would be conclusively regarded as a slave.
+
+In certain societies this rule is valid to this day. As with the Tuareg, where slavery is still unofficially practiced, their slaves are constantly forced to remain barefoot as a recognition mark. Mainly through their bare feet their societal status and rank opposite their owners is displayed to the public in a plainly visible way.[46]
+
+Another widespread practice was branding the slaves either to generally mark them as property or as punishment usually reserved for fugitives.
+
+Some scholars differentiate between ancient forms of slavery and the large-scale, largely race-based slavery which grew to immense proportions starting in the 14th century. The first type of slavery, sometimes called "just title servitude," was suffered by prisoners of war, debtors, and other vulnerable people.[47] The second, race-based type of slavery was argued even by some contemporary writers to be intrinsically immoral.[48][49][50]
+
+Evidence of slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures.[3]  Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Thus, although it has existed among unusually resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as the American Indian peoples of the salmon-rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest Coast, slavery became widespread only with the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago.[51]
+
+In the earliest known records, slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), for example, prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive.[52] The Bible mentions slavery as an established institution.[3] Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization and society.[3] Such institutions included debt bondage, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves.[53]
+
+Slavery existed in Pharaonic Egypt, but studying it is complicated by terminology used by the Egyptians to refer to different classes of servitude over the course of history. Interpretation of the textual evidence of classes of slaves in ancient Egypt has been difficult to differentiate by word usage alone.[54][55] There were three apparent types of enslavement in Ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labor, and forced labor.[56][57][58]
+
+Slavery is known to have existed in ancient China as early as the Shang dynasty.[59] Slavery was largely employed by governments as a means of maintaining a public labor force.[60][61]
+
+Records of slavery in Ancient Greece date as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is certain that Classical Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.[62]  As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Slaves were used for labour, as well as for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War, led by Spartacus, (a Thracian) being the most famous.
+
+By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome, as well as a very significant part of Roman society.[63] It is estimated that 25% or more of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved, although the actual percentage is debated by scholars and varied from region to region.[64][65] Slaves represented 15–25% of Italy's population,[66] mostly captives in war,[66] especially from Gaul[67] and Epirus. Estimates of the number of slaves in the Roman Empire suggest that the majority of slaves were scattered throughout the provinces outside of Italy.[66] Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians,[68] with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) born outside of Italy estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Those from outside of Europe were predominantly of Greek descent, while the Jewish ones never fully assimilated into Roman society, remaining an identifiable minority. These slaves (especially the foreigners) had higher death rates and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions.[69] The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).[70][page needed]
+
+Slavery was widespread in Africa, with both internal and external slave trade.[71] In the Senegambia region, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sahel, including Ghana, Mali, Segou, and Songhai, about a third of the population were enslaved.[72]
+
+The Arab slave trade, across the Sahara desert and across the Indian Ocean, began after Muslim Arab and Swahili traders won control of the Swahili Coast and sea routes during the 9th century (see Sultanate of Zanzibar). These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast.[74][75] There, the slaves gradually assimilated in the rural areas, particularly on the Unguja and Pemba islands.[76]
+
+Slavery in Mexico can be traced back to the Aztecs.[77] Other Amerindians, such as the Inca of the Andes, the Tupinambá of Brazil, the Creek of Georgia, and the Comanche of Texas, also owned slaves.[3]
+
+Many Han Chinese were enslaved in the process of the Mongol invasion of China proper.[78] According to Japanese historians Sugiyama Masaaki (杉山正明) and Funada Yoshiyuki (舩田善之), there were also a certain number of Mongolian slaves owned by Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty. Moreover, there is no evidence that the Han Chinese, who were at the bottom of Yuan society according to some research, suffered particularly cruel abuse.[79][80]
+
+Slavery in Korea existed since before the Three Kingdoms of Korea period, approximately 2,000 years ago.[81] Slavery has been described as "very important in medieval Korea, probably more important than in any other East Asian country, but by the 16th century, population growth was making [it] unnecessary".[82] Slavery went into decline around the 10th century but came back in the late Goryeo period when Korea also experienced a number of slave rebellions.[81]
+
+In the Joseon period of Korea, members of the slave class were known as nobi. The nobi were socially indistinct from freemen (i.e., the middle and common classes) other than the ruling yangban class, and some possessed property rights, legal entities and civil rights. Hence, some scholars argue that it is inappropriate to call them "slaves",[83] while some scholars describe them as serfs.[84][85] The nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.[86] In 1801, the vast majority of government nobi were emancipated,[87] and by 1858 the nobi population stood at about 1.5 percent of the total population of Korea.[88]
+
+Slavery largely disappeared from Western Europe in the Middle Ages but persisted longer in Eastern Europe.[89] Large-scale trading in slaves was mainly confined to the South and East of early medieval Europe: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, while pagan Central and Eastern Europe (along with the Caucasus and Tartary) were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek, and Radhanite Jewish merchants were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.[90][91][92] The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century following the Zanj Rebellion which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab world.[93][94]
+
+Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it, or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands, as for example at the Council of Koblenz (922), the Council of London (1102) (which aimed mainly at the sale of English slaves to Ireland)[95] and the Council of Armagh (1171). Serfdom, on the contrary, was widely accepted. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting the kings of Spain and Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens (Muslims), pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, legitimizing the slave trade as a result of war.[96] The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455.
+
+In Britain, slavery continued to be practiced following the fall of Rome, and sections of Hywel the Good's laws dealt with slaves in medieval Wales. The trade particularly picked up after the Viking invasions, with major markets at Chester[97] and Bristol[98] supplied by Danish, Mercian, and Welsh raiding of one another's borderlands. At the time of the Domesday Book, nearly 10% of the English population were slaves.[99] William the Conqueror introduced a law preventing the sale of slaves overseas.[100] According to historian John Gillingham, by 1200 slavery in the British Isles was non-existent.[101] The slave trade was abolished by the Slave Trade Act 1807, although slavery remained legal in possessions outside Europe until the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[102]
+
+The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of slaves into the Islamic world.[103] To staff its bureaucracy, the Ottoman Empire established a janissary system which seized hundreds of thousands of Christian boys through the devşirme system. They were well cared for but were legally slaves owned by the government and were not allowed to marry. They were never bought or sold. The empire gave them significant administrative and military roles. The system began about 1365; there were 135,000 janissaries in 1826, when the system ended.[104]
+
+After the Battle of Lepanto, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were recaptured and freed from the Ottoman fleet.[105] Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves into jasyr.[106] Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into Poland–Lithuania between 1474 and 1569.[107]
+
+Slavery in Poland was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second serfdom.
+
+Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant Muslim invasion of the predominantly Christian area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal, in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.[108] From the 11th to the 19th century, North African Barbary Pirates engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns, to capture Christian slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria and Morocco.[109][110]
+The maritime town of Lagos was the first slave market created in Portugal (one of the earliest colonizers of the Americas) for the sale of imported African slaves – the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444.[111][112] In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania.[112]
+
+By 1552, black African slaves made up 10% of the population of Lisbon.[113][114] In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade, and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas – especially Brazil.[112] In the 15th century one-third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.[115]
+
+In Kievan Rus and Muscovy, slaves were usually classified as kholops. According to David P. Forsythe, "In 1649 up to three-quarters of Muscovy's peasants, or 13 to 14 million people, were serfs whose material lives were barely distinguishable from slaves. Perhaps another 1.5 million were formally enslaved, with Russian slaves serving Russian masters."[117] Slavery remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679.[118]
+
+In Scandinavia, thralldom was abolished in the mid-14th century.[119]
+
+During the Second World War Nazi Germany effectively enslaved about 12 million people, both those considered undesirable and citizens of conquered countries, with the avowed intention of treating these Untermenschen (sub-humans) as a permanent slave-class of inferior beings who could be worked until they died, and who possessed neither the rights nor the legal status of members of the Aryan race.[120]
+
+The Arab slave trade lasted more than a millennium.[121] As recently as the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 300,000.[122] Along with Yemen, the Saudis abolished slavery in 1962.[123] Historically, slaves in the Arab World came from many different regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly Zanj),[124] the Caucasus (mainly Circassians),[125] Central Asia (mainly Tartars), and Central and Eastern Europe (mainly Saqaliba).[126]
+
+Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900.[127] The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year.[76][128][129] The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, Bantu slaves bought by Arab slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, European colonies in the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands, Ethiopia and Somalia.[130]
+
+According to the Encyclopedia of African History, "It is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labor was extensive, especially in agriculture."[131][132] The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of 8 to 16 million.[133]
+
+Slave labor in East Africa was drawn from the Zanj, Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast.[75][134] The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers in Iraq. The Zanj Rebellion, a series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 near Basra (also known as Basara), situated in present-day Iraq, is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa.[135] It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq".[136]
+The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work.[137] As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, agriculture and other manual labor work was thought to be demeaning. The resulting labor shortage led to an increased slave market.
+
+In Algiers, the capital of Algeria, captured Christians and Europeans were forced into slavery. In about 1650, there were as many as 35,000 Christian slaves in Algiers.[138] By one estimate, raids by Barbary pirates on coastal villages and ships extending from Italy to Iceland, enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.25 million Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries.[139][140][141] However, to this estimate is extrapolated by assuming the number of European, slaves captured by Barbary pirates, was constant for 250 years period:
+
+There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers – about 850,000 captives over the century from 1580 to 1680.  By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000.[142]
+
+Davis' numbers have been refuted by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe.[142] In addition, the number of slaves traded was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia.  Hence, there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given slave imports, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records.  Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation.[143] Such observations, across the late 16th and early 17th century observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers.  However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy.[144] This eventually led to the bombardment of Algiers by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816.[145][146]
+
+Under Omani Arabs, Zanzibar became East Africa's main slave port, with as many as 50,000 enslaved Africans passing through every year during the 19th century.[147][148] Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 AD.[3][149] Eduard Rüppell described the losses of Sudanese slaves being transported on foot to Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5,000 made it to Egypt.."[150] W.A. Veenhoven wrote: "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal, an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on the way ... Keltie (The Partition of Africa, London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone puts the figure as high as ten to one."[151]
+
+Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. The forms of slavery in Africa were closely related to kinship structures. In many African communities, where land could not be owned, enslavement of individuals was used as a means to increase the influence a person had and expand connections.[152] This made slaves a permanent part of a master's lineage and the children of slaves could become closely connected with the larger family ties.[153] Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master's kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances.  However, stigma often remained attached and there could be strict separations between slave members of a kinship group and those related to the master.[152] Slavery was practiced in many different forms: debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa.[154] Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa.
+
+When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique:
+
+The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean.[155]
+
+The trans-Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms, such as the Oyo Empire (Yoruba), the Ashanti Empire,[156] the kingdom of Dahomey,[157] and the Aro Confederacy.[158]  It is estimated that about 15 percent of slaves died during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships.[159][160]
+
+Slavery in America remains a contentious issue and played a major role in the history and evolution of some countries, triggering a revolution, a civil war, and numerous rebellions.
+
+In order to establish itself as an American empire, Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. The Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour. The Spanish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola.[161] Bartolomé de las Casas, a 16th-century Dominican friar and Spanish historian, participated in campaigns in Cuba (at Bayamo and Camagüey) and was present at the massacre of Hatuey; his observation of that massacre led him to fight for a social movement away from the use of natives as slaves. Also, the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population. The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.[162] England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates.
+
+Many Africans who arrived in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came under contract as indentured servants.[163] The transformation from indentured servitude to slavery was a gradual process in Virginia. The earliest legal documentation of such a shift was in 1640 where a negro, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime slavery, forcing him to serve his master, Hugh Gwyn, for the remainder of his life, for attempting to run away. This case was significant because it established the disparity between his sentence as a black man and that of the two white indentured servants who escaped with him (one described as Dutch and one as a Scotchman). It is the first documented case of a black man sentenced to lifetime servitude and is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants.[164][165][166][167][168]
+
+After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts and keep their servants as slaves for life. This was demonstrated by the 1655 case Johnson v. Parker, where the court ruled that a black man, Anthony Johnson of Virginia, was granted ownership of another black man, John Casor, as the result of a civil case.[169]  This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.[170][171][172][173][174][175][176]
+
+In the early 17th century, the majority of the labour in Barbados was provided by European indentured servants, mainly English, Irish and Scottish, with enslaved Africans and enslaved Amerindians providing little of the workforce. The introduction of sugar cane from Dutch Brazil in 1640 completely transformed society and the economy. Barbados eventually had one of the world's largest sugar industries.[177]
+
+As the effects of the new crop increased, so did the shift in the ethnic composition of Barbados and surrounding islands. The workable sugar plantation required a large investment and a great deal of heavy labour. At first, Dutch traders supplied the equipment, financing, and enslaved Africans, in addition to transporting most of the sugar to Europe. In 1644, the population of Barbados was estimated at 30,000, of which about 800 were of African descent, with the remainder mainly of English descent. These English smallholders were eventually bought out, and the island filled up with large sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. By 1660, there was near parity with 27,000 blacks and 26,000 whites. By 1666, at least 12,000 white smallholders had been bought out, died, or left the island. Many of the remaining whites were increasingly poor. By 1680, there were 17 slaves for every indentured servant. By 1700, there were 15,000 free whites and 50,000 enslaved Africans.
+
+Because of the increased implementation of slave codes, which created differential treatment between Africans and the white workers and ruling planter class, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. Black or slave codes were implemented in 1661, 1676, 1682, and 1688. In response to these codes, several slave rebellions were attempted or planned during this time, but none succeeded. Nevertheless, poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so. Planters expanded their importation of enslaved Africans to cultivate sugar cane.
+
+Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement was established in 1532, as members of one tribe would enslave captured members of another.[178]
+
+Later, Portuguese colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions called bandeiras. The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries.
+
+During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any other country. Nearly 5 million slaves were brought from Africa to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866.[179] Until the early 1850s, most enslaved Africans who arrived on Brazilian shores were forced to embark at West Central African ports, especially in Luanda (present-day Angola). Today, with the exception of Nigeria, the largest population of people of African descent is in Brazil.[180]
+
+Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650. Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market. Transportation systems were developed for the mining infrastructure, and population boomed from immigrants seeking to take part in gold and diamond mining. Demand for African slaves did not wane after the decline of the mining industry in the second half of the 18th century. Cattle ranching and foodstuff production proliferated after the population growth, both of which relied heavily on slave labor. 1.7 million slaves were imported to Brazil from Africa from 1700 to 1800, and the rise of coffee in the 1830s further enticed expansion of the slave trade.
+
+Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery. Forty percent of the total number of slaves brought to the Americas were sent to Brazil. For reference, the United States received 10 percent. Despite being abolished, there are still people working in slavery-like conditions in Brazil in the 21st century.
+
+In 1789 the Spanish Crown led an effort to reform slavery, as the demand for slave labor in Cuba was growing. The Crown issued a decree, Código Negro Español (Spanish Black Codex), that specified food and clothing provisions, put limits on the number of work hours, limited punishments, required religious instruction, and protected marriages, forbidding the sale of young children away from their mothers.[181] The British made other changes to the institution of slavery in Cuba.[181] But planters often flouted the laws and protested against them, considering them a threat to their authority[181] and an intrusion into their personal lives.[181]
+
+The slaveowners did not protest against all the measures of the codex, many of which they argued were already common practices. They objected to efforts to set limits on their ability to apply physical punishment. For instance, the Black Codex limited whippings to 25 and required the whippings "not to cause serious bruises or bleeding".[181] The slave-owners thought that the slaves would interpret these limits as weaknesses, ultimately leading to resistance.[181] Another contested issue was the work hours that were restricted "from sunrise to sunset"; plantation owners responded by explaining that cutting and processing of cane needed 20-hour days during the harvest season.[181]
+
+Those slaves who worked on sugar plantations and in sugar mills were often subject to the harshest of conditions. The field work was rigorous manual labor which the slaves began at an early age. The work days lasted close to 20 hours during harvest and processing, including cultivating and cutting the crops, hauling wagons, and processing sugarcane with dangerous machinery. The slaves were forced to reside in barracoons, where they were crammed in and locked in by a padlock at night, getting about three to four hours of sleep.  The conditions of the barracoons were harsh; they were highly unsanitary and extremely hot. Typically there was no ventilation; the only window was a small barred hole in the wall.[182]
+
+Cuba's slavery system was gendered in a way that some duties were performed only by male slaves, some only by female slaves. Female slaves in Havana from the 16th century onwards performed duties such as operating the town taverns, eating houses, and lodges, as well as being laundresses and domestic laborers and servants. Female slaves also served as the town prostitutes.
+
+Some Cuban women could gain freedom by having children with white men. As in other Latin cultures, there were looser borders with the mulatto or mixed-race population. Sometimes men who took slaves as wives or concubines freed both them and their children. As in New Orleans and Saint-Domingue, mulattos began to be classified as a third group between the European colonists and African slaves. Freedmen, generally of mixed race, came to represent 20% of the total Cuban population and 41% of the non-white Cuban population.[183]
+
+Planters encouraged Afro-Cuban slaves to have children in order to reproduce their work force. The masters wanted to pair strong and large-built black men with healthy black women. They were placed in the barracoons and forced to have sex and create offspring of “breed stock” children, who would sell for around 500 pesos. The planters needed children to be born to replace slaves who died under the harsh regime. Sometimes if the overseers did not like the quality of children, they separate the parents and sent the mother back to working in the fields.[184]
+
+Both women and men were subject to the punishments of violence and humiliating abuse. Slaves who misbehaved or disobeyed their masters were often placed in stocks in the depths of the boiler houses where they were abandoned for days at a time, and oftentimes two to three months. These wooden stocks were made in two types: lying-down or stand-up types. women were punished, even when pregnant. They were subjected to whippings: they had to lie "face down over a scooped-out piece of round [earth] to protect their bellies." [185] Some masters reportedly whipped pregnant women in the belly, often causing miscarriages. The wounds were treated with “compresses of tobacco leaves, urine and salt." [186]
+
+Slavery in Haiti started with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island in 1492. The practice was devastating to the native population.[187] Following the indigenous Taíno's near decimation from forced labour, disease and war, the Spanish, under advisement of the Catholic priest Bartolomeu de las Casas, and with the blessing of the Catholic church began engaging in earnest in the kidnapped and forced labour of enslaved Africans. During the French colonial period beginning in 1625, the economy of Haiti (then known as Saint-Domingue) was based on slavery, and the practice there was regarded as the most brutal in the world.
+
+Following the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Hispaniola was divided between France and Spain.  France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue.  To develop it into sugarcane plantations, the French imported thousands of slaves from Africa. Sugar was a lucrative commodity crop throughout the 18th century. By 1789, approximately 40,000 white colonists lived in Saint-Domingue. The whites were vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of African slaves they had imported to work on their plantations, which were primarily devoted to the production of sugarcane. In the north of the island, slaves were able to retain many ties to African cultures, religion and language; these ties were continually being renewed by newly imported Africans. Blacks outnumbered whites by about ten to one.
+
+The French-enacted Code Noir ("Black Code"), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, had established rules on slave treatment and permissible freedoms. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years.[188] Many slaves died from diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever.[189] They had birth rates around 3 percent, and there is evidence that some women aborted fetuses, or committed infanticide, rather allow their children to live within the bonds of slavery.[190][191]
+
+As in its Louisiana colony, the French colonial government allowed some rights to free people of color: the mixed-race descendants of white male colonists and black female slaves (and later, mixed-race women). Over time, many were released from slavery. They established a separate social class. White French Creole fathers frequently sent their mixed-race sons to France for their education. Some men of color were admitted into the military. More of the free people of color lived in the south of the island, near Port-au-Prince, and many intermarried within their community. They frequently worked as artisans and tradesmen, and began to own some property. Some became slave holders. The free people of color petitioned the colonial government to expand their rights.
+
+Slaves that made it to Haiti from the trans-Atlantic journey and slaves born in Haiti were first documented in Haiti's archives and transferred to France's Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As of 2015[update], these records are in The National Archives of France. According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 40,000 whites, 30,000 free coloureds and 450,000 slaves.[192]
+
+The Haitian Revolution of 1804, the only successful slave revolt in human history, precipitated the end of slavery in all French colonies.
+
+Jamaica was colonized by the Taino tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. The Spanish enslaved many of the Taino; some escaped, but most died from European diseases and overwork. The Spaniards also introduced the first African slaves.[193]
+
+The Spanish colonists did not bring women in the first expeditions and took Taíno women for their common-law wives, resulting in mestizo children.[194]  Sexual violence with the Taíno women by the Spanish was also common.[195][196]
+
+Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000.
+
+In 1519, Hernán Cortés brought the first modern slave to the area.[197] In the mid-16th century, the second viceroy to Mexico, Luis de Velasco, prohibited slavery of the Aztecs.  A labor shortage resulted as the Aztecs were either killed or died from disease.  This led to the African slaves being imported, as they were not susceptible to smallpox.  In exchange, many Africans were afforded the opportunity to buy their freedom, while eventually others were granted their freedom by their masters.[197]
+
+When Ponce de León and the Spaniards arrived on the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico), they enslaved Taíno tribes on the island, forcing them to work in the gold mines and in the construction of forts. Many Taíno died, particularly from smallpox, of which they had no immunity. Other Taínos committed suicide or left the island after the failed Taíno revolt of 1511.[198]  The Spanish colonists, fearing the loss of their labor force, complained  the courts that they needed manpower. As an alternative, Las Casas suggested the importation and use of African slaves. In 1517, the Spanish Crown permitted its subjects to import twelve slaves each, thereby beginning the slave trade on the colonies.[199]
+
+African slaves were legally branded with a hot iron on the forehead, prevented their "theft" or lawsuits that challenged their captivity.[200]  The colonists continued this branding practice for more than 250 years.[201]  They were sent to work in the gold mines, or in the island's ginger and sugar fields.  They were allowed to live with their families in a hut on the master's land, and given a patch of land where they could farm, but otherwise were subjected to harsh treatment; including sexual abuse as the majority of colonists had arrived without women; many of them intermarried with the Africans or Taínos. Their mixed-race descendants formed the first generations of the early Puerto Rican population.[200]
+
+The slaves faced heavy discrimination and had no opportunity for advancement, though they were educated by their masters.  The Spaniards considered the Africans superior to the Taíno, since the latter were unwilling to assimilate. The slaves, in contrast, had little choice but to adapt. Many converted to Christianity and were given their masters' surnames.[200]
+
+By 1570, the colonists found that the gold mines were depleted, relegating the island to a garrison for passing ships. The cultivation of crops such as tobacco, cotton, cocoa, and ginger became the cornerstone of the economy.[202]  With rising demand for sugar on the international market, major planters increased their labor-intensive cultivation and processing of sugar cane. Sugar plantations supplanted mining as Puerto Rico's main industry and kept demand high for African slavery.[202]
+
+After 1784, Spain provided five ways by which slaves could obtain freedom.[201]  Five years later, the Spanish Crown issued the "Royal Decree of Graces of 1789", which set new rules related to the slave trade and added restrictions to the granting of freedman status. The decree granted its subjects the right to purchase slaves and to participate in the flourishing slave trade in the Caribbean. Later that year a new slave code, also known as El Código Negro (The Black Code), was introduced.[203]
+
+Under "El Código Negro", a slave could buy his freedom, in the event that his master was willing to sell, by paying the price sought in installments. Slaves were allowed to earn money during their spare time by working as shoemakers, cleaning clothes, or selling the produce they grew on their own plots of land. For the freedom of their newborn child, not yet baptized, they paid at half the going price for a baptized child.[203] Many of these freedmen started settlements in the areas which became known as Cangrejos (Santurce), Carolina, Canóvanas, Loíza, and Luquillo. Some became slave owners themselves.[200] Despite these paths to freedom, from 1790 onwards, the number of slaves more than doubled in Puerto Rico as a result of the dramatic expansion of the sugar industry in the island.[202]
+
+On March 22, 1873, slavery was legally abolished in Puerto Rico. However, slaves were not emancipated but rather had to buy their own freedom, at whatever price was set by their last masters. They were also required to work for another three years for their former masters, for other colonists interested in their services, or for the state in order to pay some compensation.[204] Between 1527 and 1873, slaves in Puerto Rico had carried out more than twenty revolts.[205][206]
+
+The planters of the Dutch colony relied heavily on African slaves to cultivate, harvest and process the commodity crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane and cotton plantations along the rivers. Planters' treatment of the slaves was notoriously bad.[207]  Historian C. R. Boxer wrote that "man's inhumanity to man just about reached its limits in Surinam."[208]
+
+Many slaves escaped the plantations.  With the help of the native South Americans living in the adjoining rain forests, these runaway slaves established a new and unique culture in the interior that was highly successful in its own right. They were known collectively in English as Maroons, in French as Nèg'Marrons (literally meaning "brown negroes", that is "pale-skinned negroes"), and in Dutch as Marrons.  The Maroons gradually developed several independent tribes through a process of ethnogenesis, as they were made up of slaves from different African ethnicities. These tribes include the Saramaka,  Paramaka, Ndyuka or Aukan, Kwinti, Aluku or Boni, and Matawai.
+
+The Maroons often raided plantations to recruit new members from the slaves and capture women, as well as to acquire weapons, food and supplies. They sometimes killed planters and their families in the raids.[209]  The colonists also mounted armed campaigns against the Maroons, who generally escaped through the rain forest, which they knew much better than did the coloniss. To end hostilities, in the 18th century the European colonial authorities signed several peace treaties with different tribes. They granted the Maroons sovereign status and trade rights in their inland territories, giving them autonomy.
+
+In 1861–63, President Abraham Lincoln of the United States and his administration looked abroad for places to relocate freed slaves who wanted to leave the United States. It opened negotiations with the Dutch government regarding African-American emigration to and colonization of the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America. Nothing came of it and after 1864, the proposal was dropped.[210]
+
+The Netherlands abolished slavery in Suriname, in 1863, under a gradual process that required slaves to work on plantations for 10 transition years for minimal pay, which was considered as partial compensation for their masters. After 1873, most freedmen largely abandoned the plantations where they had worked for several generations in favor of the capital city, Paramaribo.
+
+Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries after it gained independence from the British and before the end of the American Civil War. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
+
+By the time of the American Revolution, the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry.[211]  The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, represented by the slave and free states divided by the Mason–Dixon line, which separated free Pennsylvania from slave Maryland and Delaware.
+
+Congress, during the Jefferson administration prohibited the importation of slaves, effective 1808, although smuggling (illegal importing) was not unusual.[212] Domestic slave trading, however, continued at a rapid pace, driven by labor demands from the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation. Such laws proposed to Congress to continue the spread of slavery into newly ratified states include the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
+
+The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, times, and places. The power relationships of slavery corrupted many whites who had authority over slaves, with children showing their own cruelty. Masters and overseers resorted to physical punishments to impose their wills. Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was carried out to re-assert the dominance of the master or overseer of the slave.[213] Treatment was usually harsher on large plantations, which were often managed by overseers and owned by absentee slaveholders.
+
+William Wells Brown, who escaped to freedom, reported that on one plantation, slave men were required to pick 80 pounds of cotton per day, while women were required to pick 70 pounds per day; if any slave failed in his or her quota, they were subject to whip lashes for each pound they were short. The whipping post stood next to the cotton scales.[215] A New York man who attended a slave auction in the mid-19th century reported that at least three-quarters of the male slaves he saw at sale had scars on their backs from whipping.[216] By contrast, small slave-owning families had closer relationships between the owners and slaves; this sometimes resulted in a more humane environment but was not a given.[213]
+
+More than one million slaves were sold from the Upper South, which had a surplus of labor, and taken to the Deep South in a forced migration, splitting up many families.  New communities of African-American culture were developed in the Deep South, and the total slave population in the South eventually reached 4 million before liberation.[217][218] In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". White people of that time feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery.  The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against black people increased as they were granted more rights.  Others, like James Henry Hammond argued that slavery was a "positive good" stating: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement."
+
+The Southern state governments wanted to keep a balance between the number of slave and free states to maintain a political balance of power in Congress. The new territories acquired from Britain, France, and Mexico were the subject of major political compromises. By 1850, the newly rich cotton-growing South was threatening to secede from the Union, and tensions continued to rise.  Many white Southern Christians, including church ministers, attempted to justify their support for slavery as modified by Christian paternalism.[219]  The largest denominations, the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South.
+
+When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, according to the 1860 U.S. census, roughly 400,000 individuals, representing 8% of all U.S. families, owned nearly 4,000,000 slaves.[220] One-third of Southern families owned slaves.[221]  The South was heavily invested in slavery.  As such, upon Lincoln's election, seven states broke away to form the Confederate States of America. The first six states to secede held the greatest number of slaves in the South. Shortly after, over the issue of slavery, the United States erupted into an all out Civil War, with slavery legally ceasing as an institution following the war in December 1865.
+
+In 2018, the Orlando Sentinel reported some private Christian schools in Florida as teaching students a creationist curriculum which includes assertions such as, “most black and white southerners had long lived together in harmony” and that “power-hungry individuals stirred up the people” leading to the Civil Rights Movement.[222]
+
+Slavery has existed all throughout Asia, and forms of slavery still exist today.
+
+Slavery has taken various forms throughout China's history. It was reportedly abolished as a legally recognized institution, including in a 1909 law[223][224] fully enacted in 1910,[225]  although the practice continued until at least 1949.[226]
+
+The Tang dynasty purchased Western slaves from the Radhanite Jews.[227] Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved Koreans, Turks, Persians, Indonesians, and people from Inner Mongolia, central Asia, and northern India.[228][229][230][231] The greatest source of slaves came from southern tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. Malays, Khmers, Indians, and "black skinned" peoples (who were either Austronesian Negritos of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, or Africans, or both) were also purchased as slaves in the Tang dynasty.[232]
+
+In the 17th century Qing Dynasty, there was a hereditarily servile people called Booi Aha (Manchu:booi niyalma; Chinese transliteration: 包衣阿哈), which is a Manchu word literally translated as "household person" and sometimes rendered as "nucai." The Manchu was establishing close personal and paternalist relationship between masters and their slaves, as Nurhachi said, "The Master should love the slaves and eat the same food as him".[233]  However,  booi aha "did not correspond exactly to the Chinese category of "bond-servant slave" (Chinese:奴僕); instead, it was a relationship of personal dependency on a master which in theory guaranteed close personal relationships and equal treatment, even though many western scholars would directly translate "booi" as "bond-servant" (some of the "booi" even had their own servant).[234][235]
+
+Chinese Muslim (Tungans) Sufis who were charged with practicing xiejiao (heterodox religion), were punished by exile to Xinjiang and being sold as a slave to other Muslims, such as the Sufi begs.[236] Han Chinese who committed crimes such as those dealing with opium became slaves to the begs, this practice was administered by Qing law.[237] Most Chinese in Altishahr were exile slaves to Turkestani Begs.[238] While free Chinese merchants generally did not engage in relationships with East Turkestani women, some of the Chinese slaves belonging to begs, along with Green Standard soldiers, Bannermen, and Manchus, engaged in affairs with the East Turkestani women that were serious in nature.[239]
+
+Slavery in India was widespread by the 6th century BC, and perhaps even as far back as the Vedic period.[240] Slavery intensified during the Muslim domination of northern India after the 11th-century.[241] Slavery existed in Portuguese India after the 16th century. The Dutch, too, largely dealt in Abyssian slaves, known in India as Habshis or Sheedes.[242] Arakan/Bengal, Malabar, and Coromandel remained the largest sources of forced labour until the 1660s.
+
+Between 1626 and 1662, the Dutch exported on an average 150–400 slaves annually from the Arakan-Bengal coast. During the first 30 years of Batavia's existence, Indian and Arakanese slaves provided the main labour force of the Dutch East India Company, Asian headquarters. An increase in Coromandel slaves occurred during a famine following the revolt of the Nayaka Indian rulers of South India (Tanjavur, Senji, and Madurai) against Bijapur overlordship (1645) and the subsequent devastation of the Tanjavur countryside by the Bijapur army. Reportedly, more than 150,000 people were taken by the invading Deccani Muslim armies to Bijapur and Golconda. In 1646, 2,118 slaves were exported to Batavia, the overwhelming majority from southern Coromandel. Some slaves were also acquired further south at Tondi, Adirampatnam, and Kayalpatnam. Another increase in slaving took place between 1659 and 1661 from Tanjavur as a result of a series of successive Bijapuri raids. At Nagapatnam, Pulicat, and elsewhere, the company purchased 8,000–10,000 slaves, the bulk of whom were sent to Ceylon, while a small portion were exported to Batavia and Malacca. Finally, following a long drought in Madurai and southern Coromandel, in 1673, which intensified the prolonged Madurai-Maratha struggle over Tanjavur and punitive fiscal practices, thousands of people from Tanjavur, mostly children, were sold into slavery and exported by Asian traders from Nagapattinam to Aceh, Johor, and other slave markets.
+
+In September 1687, 665 slaves were exported by the English from Fort St. George, Madras.  And, in 1694–96, when warfare once more ravaged South India, a total of 3,859 slaves were imported from Coromandel by private individuals into Ceylon.[243][244][245][246]
+The volume of the total Dutch Indian Ocean slave trade has been estimated to be about 15–30% of the Atlantic slave trade, slightly smaller than the trans-Saharan slave trade, and one-and-a-half to three times the size of the Swahili and Red Sea coast and the Dutch West India Company slave trades.[247]
+According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 or 9 million slaves in India in 1841. About 15% of the population of Malabar were slaves. Slavery was legally abolished in the possessions of the East India Company by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[3]
+
+The hill tribe people in Indochina were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese (Thai), the Anamites (Vietnamese), and the Cambodians".[248] A Siamese military campaign in Laos in 1876 was described by a British observer as having been "transformed into slave-hunting raids on a large scale".[249] The census, taken in 1879, showed that 6% of the population in the Malay sultanate of Perak were slaves.[250] Enslaved people made up about two-thirds of the population in part of North Borneo in the 1880s.[250]
+
+After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal, throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.[251][252] Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church[253] in 1555. Japanese slave women were even sold as concubines to Asian lascar and African crew members, along with their European counterparts serving on Portuguese ships trading in Japan, mentioned by Luis Cerqueira, a Portuguese Jesuit, in a 1598 document.[254] Japanese slaves were brought by the Portuguese to Macau, where they were enslaved to Portuguese or became slaves to other slaves.[255][256]
+
+Some Korean slaves were bought by the Portuguese and brought back to Portugal from Japan, where they had been among the tens of thousands of Korean prisoners of war transported to Japan during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98).[257][258] Historians pointed out that at the same time Hideyoshi expressed his indignation and outrage at the Portuguese trade in Japanese slaves, he was engaging in a mass slave trade of Korean prisoners of war in Japan.[259][260]
+Fillippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the large slave community in 1578, although most of the slaves were black.[261][262][263][264][265]
+The Portuguese "highly regarded" Asian slaves from the East much more "than slaves from sub-Saharan Africa".[266] The Portuguese attributed qualities like intelligence and industriousness to Chinese and Japanese slaves.[267][268][269][270]
+
+King Sebastian of Portugal feared rampant slavery was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.[271][272]Hideyoshi was so disgusted that his own Japanese people were being sold en masse into slavery on Kyushu, that he wrote a letter to Jesuit Vice-Provincial Gaspar Coelho on July 24, 1587, to demand the Portuguese, Siamese (Thai), and Cambodians stop purchasing and enslaving Japanese and return Japanese slaves who ended up as far as India.[273][274][275] Hideyoshi blamed the Portuguese and Jesuits for this slave trade and banned Christian proselytizing as a result.[276][self-published source][277] In 1595, a law was passed by Portugal banning the selling and buying of Chinese and Japanese slaves.[278]
+
+During the Joseon period, the nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.[81] The nobi system declined beginning in the 18th century.[279] Since the outset of the Joseon dynasty and especially beginning in the 17th century, there was harsh criticism among prominent thinkers in Korea about the nobi system. Even within the Joseon government, there were indications of a shift in attitude toward the nobi.[280] King Yeongjo implemented a policy of gradual emancipation in 1775,[82] and he and his successor King Jeongjo made many proposals and developments that lessened the burden on nobi, which led to the emancipation of the vast majority of government nobi in 1801.[280] In addition, population growth,[82] numerous escaped slaves,[81] growing commercialization of agriculture, and the rise of the independent small farmer class contributed to the decline in the number of nobi to about 1.5% of the total population by 1858.[281] The hereditary nobi system was officially abolished around 1886–87,[81][281] and the rest of the nobi system was abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894.[81][282] However, slavery did not completely disappear in Korea until 1930, during Imperial Japanese rule.
+
+During the Imperial Japanese occupation of Korea around World War II, some Koreans were used in forced labor by the Imperial Japanese, in conditions which have been compared to slavery.[81][283] These included women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II, known as "comfort women".[81][283]
+
+Slaves (he mōkai) had a recognised social role in traditional  Māori society in New Zealand.[284]
+
+Blackbirding occurred in the  Pacific, especially in the 19th century.
+
+In Constantinople, about one-fifth of the population consisted of slaves.[285] The city was a major centre of the slave trade in the 15th and later centuries.
+Slaves were provided by Tatar raids on Slavic villages[286] but also by conquest and the suppression of rebellions, in the aftermath of which entire populations were sometimes enslaved and sold across the Empire, reducing the risk of future rebellion.  The Ottomans also purchased slaves from traders who brought slaves into the Empire from Europe and Africa. It has been estimated that some 200,000 slaves – mainly Circassians – were imported into the Ottoman Empire between 1800 and 1909.[250] As late as 1908, women slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire.[287]
+
+Until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate (a Muslim Tatar state) maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East.[106] The slaves were captured in southern Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Circassia by Tatar horsemen[288] and sold in the Crimean port of Kaffa.[289] About 2 million mostly Christian slaves were exported over the 16th and 17th centuries[290] until the Crimean Khanate was destroyed by the Russian Empire in 1783.[291]
+
+A slave market for captured Russian and Persian slaves was centred in the Central Asian khanate of Khiva.[292] In the early 1840s, the population of the Uzbek states of Bukhara and Khiva included about 900,000 slaves.[250] Darrel P. Kaiser wrote, "Kazakh-Kirghiz tribesmen kidnapped 1573 settlers from colonies [German settlements in Russia] in 1774 alone and only half were successfully ransomed. The rest were killed or enslaved."[293]
+
+Even though slavery is now outlawed in every country, the number of slaves today is estimated as between 12 million and 29.8 million.[294][295][296] According to a broad definition of slavery, there were 27 million people in slavery in 1999, spread all over the world.[297] In 2005, the International Labour Organization provided an estimate of 12.3 million forced labourers.[298] Siddharth Kara has also provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage (18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million).[42] Kara provides a dynamic model to calculate the number of slaves in the world each year, with an estimated 29.2 million at the end of 2009.
+
+According to a 2003 report by Human Rights Watch, an estimated 15 million children in debt bondage in India work in slavery-like conditions to pay off their family's debts.[300][301]
+
+A report by the Walk Free Foundation in 2013,[302] found India had the highest number of slaves, nearly 14 million, followed by China (2.9 million), Pakistan (2.1 million), Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh; while the countries with the highest proportions of slaves were Mauritania, Haiti, Pakistan, India and Nepal.[303]
+
+In June 2013, U.S. State Department released a report on slavery.  It placed Russia, China, and Uzbekistan in the worst offenders category.  Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe were at the lowest level. The list also included Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait among a total of 21 countries.[304][305]
+
+The Walk Free Foundation reported in 2018 that slavery in wealthy Western societies is much more prevalent than previously known, in particular the United States and Great Britain, which have 403,000 (one in 800) and 136,000 slaves respectively. Andrew Forrest, founder of the organization, said that "The United States is one of the most advanced countries in the world yet has more than 400,000 modern slaves working under forced labor conditions."[306] An estimated 40.3 million are enslaved globally, with North Korea having the most slaves at 2.6 million (one in 10). The foundation defines contemporary slavery as "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power, or deception."[307]
+
+During the Second Libyan Civil War, Libyans started capturing Sub-Saharan African migrants trying to get to Europe through Libya and selling them on slave markets or holding them hostage for ransom[308]  Women are often raped, used as sex slaves, or sold to brothels.[309][310][311] Child migrants suffer from abuse and child rape in Libya.[312][313]
+
+In Mauritania, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981), it is estimated that 20% of its 3 million population, are enslaved as bonded laborers.[314][315][316] Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007.[317] However, although slavery, as a practice, was legally banned in 1981, it was not a crime to own a slave until 2007.[318] Although many slaves have escaped or have been freed since 2007, as of 2012[update], only one slave owner had been sentenced to serve time in prison.[319]
+
+While American slaves in 1809 were sold for around $40,000 (in inflation adjusted dollars), a slave nowadays can be bought for just $90, making replacement more economical than providing long-term care.[320] Slavery is a multibillion-dollar industry with estimates of up to $35 billion generated annually.[321]
+
+Victims of human trafficking are typically recruited through deceit or trickery (such as a false job offer, false migration offer, or false marriage offer), sale by family members, recruitment by former slaves, or outright abduction. Victims are forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs to control their victims.[322] "Annually, according to U.S. government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80% of transnational victims are women and girls, and up to 50% are minors, reports the U.S. State Department in a 2008 study.[323]
+
+While the majority of trafficking victims are women who are forced into prostitution (in which case the practice is called sex trafficking), victims also include men, women and children who are forced into manual labour.[324] Because of the illegal nature of human trafficking, its extent is unknown. A U.S. government report, published in 2005, estimates that about 700,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally.[324] Another research effort revealed that roughly 1.5 million individuals are trafficked either internally or internationally each year, of which about 500,000 are sex trafficking victims.[42]
+
+Slavery has existed, in one form or another, throughout recorded human history – as have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves.
+
+Ashoka, who ruled the Maurya Empire in the Indian subcontinent from 269–232 BCE, abolished the slave trade but not slavery.[326] The Qin dynasty, which ruled China from 221 to 206 BC, abolished slavery and discouraged serfdom. However, many of its laws were overturned when the dynasty was overthrown.[327] Slavery was again abolished by Wang Mang in China in 17 CE but was reinstituted after his assassination.[328]
+
+The Spanish colonization of the Americas sparked a discussion about the right to enslave Native Americans. A prominent critic of slavery in the Spanish New World colonies was Bartolomé de las Casas, who opposed the enslavement of Native Americans, and as well as Africans in America.
+
+One of the first protests against slavery came from German and Dutch Quakers in Pennsylvania in 1688.[329] In 1777, Vermont, at the time an independent nation, became the first portion of what would become the United States to abolish slavery.[329]
+
+In the United States, all of the northern states had abolished slavery by 1804, with New Jersey being the last to act.[330] Abolitionist pressure produced a series of small steps towards emancipation. After the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves went into effect on January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited,[331] but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted; most of those slaves already in the U.S. were legally emancipated only in 1863. Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad. Violent clashes between anti-slavery and pro-slavery Americans included Bleeding Kansas, a series of political and armed disputes in 1854–1861 as to whether Kansas would join the United States as a slave or free state. By 1860, the total number of slaves reached almost four million, and the American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in the United States.[332] In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States; the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution prohibited most forms of slavery throughout the country.
+
+Many of the freed slaves became sharecroppers and indentured servants. In this manner, some became tied to the very parcel of land into which they had been born a slave having little freedom or economic opportunity because of Jim Crow laws which perpetuated discrimination, limited education, promoted persecution without due process and resulted in continued poverty. Fear of reprisals such as unjust incarcerations and lynchings deterred upward mobility further.
+
+France abolished slavery in 1794.[329]
+
+One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England in 1772, with British Judge Lord Mansfield, whose opinion in Somersett's Case was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions could not be enforced in England.[333]
+
+Sons of Africa was a late 18th-century British group that campaigned to end slavery. Its members were Africans in London, freed slaves who included Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community. It was closely connected to the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a non-denominational group founded in 1787, whose members included Thomas Clarkson. British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce led the anti-slavery movement in the United Kingdom, although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Clarkson. Wilberforce was urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, to make the issue his own and was also given support by reformed Evangelical John Newton. The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 25, 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire,[334] Wilberforce also campaigned for abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
+
+After the 1807 act abolishing the slave trade was passed, these campaigners switched to encouraging other countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies. Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.[335] Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.[336]
+
+In 1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization, Anti-Slavery International, was formed in Britain by Joseph Sturge, which campaigned to outlaw slavery in other countries.[337] There were celebrations in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom through the work of the British Anti-Slavery Society.
+
+In the 1860s, David Livingstone's reports of atrocities within the Arab slave trade in Africa stirred up the interest of the British public, reviving the flagging abolitionist movement. The Royal Navy throughout the 1870s attempted to suppress "this abominable Eastern trade", at Zanzibar in particular. In 1905, the French abolished indigenous slavery in most of French West Africa.[338]
+
+On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declared freedom from slavery is an internationally recognized human right. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
+
+No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.[339]
+
+In 2014, for the first time in history, major leaders of many religions, Buddhist, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim met to sign a shared commitment against modern-day slavery; the declaration they signed calls for the elimination of slavery and human trafficking by 2020.[340] The signatories were: Pope Francis, Mātā Amṛtānandamayī, Bhikkhuni Thich Nu Chân Không (representing Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh), Datuk K Sri Dhammaratana, Chief High Priest of Malaysia, Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Rabbi David Rosen, Abbas Abdalla Abbas Soliman, Undersecretary of State of Al Azhar Alsharif (representing Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar), Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi, Sheikh Naziyah Razzaq Jaafar, Special advisor of Grand Ayatollah (representing Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Hussain al Najafi), Sheikh Omar Abboud, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Metropolitan Emmanuel of France (representing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.)[340]
+
+Groups such as the American Anti-Slavery Group, Anti-Slavery International, Free the Slaves, the Anti-Slavery Society, and the Norwegian Anti-Slavery Society continue to campaign to eliminate slavery.
+
+On May 21, 2001, the National Assembly of France passed the Taubira law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. Apologies on behalf of African nations, for their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, remain an open issue since slavery was practiced in Africa even before the first Europeans arrived and the Atlantic slave trade was performed with a high degree of involvement of several African societies. The black slave market was supplied by well-established slave trade networks controlled by local African societies and individuals.[341]
+
+There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Calabar and other southern parts of Nigeria had economies depended solely on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans.[342]
+
+Several historians have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.[343]
+
+In 1999, President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin issued a national apology for the central role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade.[344] Luc Gnacadja, minister of environment and housing for Benin, later said: "The slave trade is a shame, and we do repent for it."[345] Researchers estimate that 3 million slaves were exported out of the Slave Coast bordering the Bight of Benin.[345] President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana also apologized for his country's involvement in the slave trade.[344]
+
+The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery and is still being pursued by entities across the world. For example, the Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action plan. In 2007, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a formal apology for Great Britain's involvement in slavery.[346]
+
+On February 25, 2007, the Commonwealth of Virginia resolved to 'profoundly regret' and apologize for its role in the institution of slavery. Unique and the first of its kind in the U.S., the apology was unanimously passed in both Houses as Virginia approached the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown.[347]
+
+On August 24, 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone of London apologized publicly for Britain's role in colonial slave trade. "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery," he said, pointing towards the financial district. He claimed that London was still tainted by the horrors of slavery. Specifically, London outfitted, financed, and insured many of the ships, which helped fund the building of London's docks.[348] Officials in Liverpool, which was a large slave trading port, apologized in 1999.[349]
+
+On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws.[350] In June 2009, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery".[351] The news was welcomed by President Barack Obama, the nation's first president of African descent.[352] Some of President Obama's ancestors may have been slave owners.[353]
+
+In 2010, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi apologized for Arab involvement in the slave trade, saying: "I regret the behavior of the Arabs… They brought African children to North Africa, they made them slaves, they sold them like animals, and they took them as slaves and traded them in a shameful way."[354]
+
+There have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly held as slaves or for their descendants. Claims for reparations for being held in slavery are handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since former slaves' relatives lack of money means they often have limited access to a potentially expensive and futile legal process. Mandatory systems of fines and reparations paid to an as yet undetermined group of claimants from fines, paid by unspecified parties, and collected by authorities have been proposed by advocates to alleviate this "civil court problem." Since in almost all cases there are no living ex-slaves or living ex-slave owners these movements have gained little traction. In nearly all cases the judicial system has ruled that the statute of limitations on these possible claims has long since expired.
+
+The word slavery is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity in which one is coerced into performing. Some argue that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute "state-operated slavery."[355][356] Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery.[357]
+
+"Slavery" has been used by some anti-psychiatry proponents to define involuntary psychiatric patients, claiming there are no unbiased physical tests for mental illness and yet the psychiatric patient must follow the orders of the psychiatrist. They assert that instead of chains to control the slave, the psychiatrist uses drugs to control the mind.[358] Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis for a slave who did not want to be a slave.[359][360]
+
+Some proponents of animal rights have applied the term slavery to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves.[361]
+
+The labor market, as institutionalized under today's market economic systems, has been criticized by mainstream socialists and by anarcho-syndicalists, who utilise the term wage slavery as a pejorative or dysphemism for wage labour.[362][363][364][365][366][367] Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.[368]
+
+Film has been the most influential medium in the presentation of the history of slavery to the general public around the world.[369] The American film industry has had a complex relationship with slavery and until recent decades often avoided the topic. Films such as Birth of a Nation (1915)[370] and Gone with the Wind (1939) became controversial because they gave a favourable depiction. In 1940 The Santa Fe Trail gave a liberal but ambiguous interpretation of John Brown's attacks on slavery.[371] Song of the South gave a favorable outlook on slavery in the United States in 1946.
+
+The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s made defiant slaves into heroes.[372] The question of slavery in American memory necessarily involves its depictions in feature films.[373]
+
+Most Hollywood films used American settings, although Spartacus (1960), dealt with an actual revolt in the Roman Empire known as the Third Servile War. The revolt failed, and all the rebels were executed, but their spirit lived on according to the film.[374] Spartacus stays surprisingly close to the historical record.[375]
+
+The Last Supper (La última cena in Spanish) was a 1976 film directed by Cuban Tomás Gutiérrez Alea about the teaching of Christianity to slaves in Cuba, and emphasizes the role of ritual and revolt. Burn! takes place on the imaginary Portuguese island of Queimada (where the locals speak Spanish) and it merges historical events that took place in Brazil, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and elsewhere.
+
+Historians agree that films have largely shaped historical memories, but they debate issues of accuracy, plausibility, moralism, sensationalism, how facts are stretched in search of broader truths, and suitability for the classroom.[376][377] Berlin argues that critics complain if the treatment emphasizes historical brutality, or if it glosses over the harshness to highlight the emotional impact of slavery.[378]

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+
+The Amazon River (UK: /ˈæməzən/, US: /ˈæməzɒn/; Spanish: Río Amazonas, Portuguese: Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river in the world.[2][6][n 2]
+
+The headwaters of the Apurímac River on Nevado Mismi had been considered for nearly a century as the Amazon's most distant source, until a 2014 study found it to be the headwaters of the Mantaro River on the Cordillera Rumi Cruz in Peru.[12] The Mantaro and Apurímac rivers join, and with other tributaries form the Ucayali River, which in turn meets the Marañón River upstream of Iquitos, Peru, they form what countries other than Brazil consider to be the main stem of the Amazon. Brazilians call this section the Solimões River above its confluence with the Rio Negro[13] forming what Brazilians call the Amazon at the Meeting of Waters (Portuguese: Encontro das Águas) at Manaus, the largest city on the river.
+
+At an average discharge of about 209,000 cubic metres per second (7,400,000 cu ft/s; 209,000,000 L/s; 55,000,000 USgal/s)—approximately 6,591 cubic kilometres per annum (1,581 cu mi/a), greater than the next seven largest independent rivers combined—the Amazon represents 20% of the global riverine discharge to the ocean.[14] The Amazon basin is the largest drainage basin in the world, with an area of approximately 7,050,000 square kilometres (2,720,000 sq mi). The portion of the river's drainage basin in Brazil alone is larger than any other river's basin. The Amazon enters Brazil with only one-fifth of the flow it finally discharges into the Atlantic Ocean, yet already has a greater flow at this point than the discharge of any other river.[15][16]
+
+The Amazon was initially known by Europeans as the Marañón, and the Peruvian part of the river is still known by that name today. It later became known as Rio Amazonas in Spanish and Portuguese, and Amazon River in English.
+
+The name Rio Amazonas was given after native warriors attacked a 16th-century expedition by Francisco de Orellana. The warriors were led by women, reminding de Orellana of the Amazon warriors, a tribe of women warriors related to Iranian Scythians and Sarmatians[17][18] mentioned in Greek mythology.
+
+The word Amazon itself may be derived from the Iranian compound *ha-maz-an- "(one) fighting together"[19] or ethnonym *ha-mazan- "warriors", a word attested indirectly through a derivation, a denominal verb in Hesychius of Alexandria's gloss "ἁμαζακάραν· πολεμεῖν. Πέρσαι" ("hamazakaran: 'to make war' in Persian"), where it appears together with the Indo-Iranian root *kar- "make" (from which Sanskrit karma is also derived).[20]
+
+During what many archaeologists called the formative stage, Amazonian societies were deeply involved in the emergence of South America's highland agrarian systems. The trade with Andean civilizations in the terrains of the headwaters in the Andes formed an essential contribution to the social and religious development of higher-altitude civilizations like the Muisca and Incas. Early human settlements were typically based on low-lying hills or mounds.
+
+Shell mounds were the earliest evidence of habitation; they represent piles of human refuse[clarification needed] and are mainly dated between 7500 and 4000 years BP. They are associated with ceramic age cultures; no preceramic shell mounds have been documented so far by archaeologists.[citation needed] Artificial earth platforms for entire villages are the second type of mounds. They are best represented by the Marajoara culture. Figurative mounds are the most recent types of occupation.
+
+There is ample evidence that the areas surrounding the Amazon River were home to complex and large-scale indigenous societies, mainly chiefdoms who developed towns and cities.[citation needed] Archaeologists estimate that by the time the Spanish conquistador De Orellana traveled across the Amazon in 1541, more than 3 million indigenous people lived around the Amazon.[21] These pre-Columbian settlements created highly developed civilizations. For instance, pre-Columbian indigenous people on the island of Marajó may have developed social stratification and supported a population of 100,000 people. To achieve this level of development, the indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon rainforest altered the forest's ecology by selective cultivation and the use of fire. Scientists argue that by burning areas of the forest repetitiously, the indigenous people caused the soil to become richer in nutrients. This created dark soil areas known as terra preta de índio ("Indian dark earth").[22] Because of the terra preta, indigenous communities were able to make land fertile and thus sustainable for the large-scale agriculture needed to support their large populations and complex social structures. Further research has hypothesized that this practice began around 11,000 years ago. Some say that its effects on forest ecology and regional climate explain the otherwise inexplicable band of lower rainfall through the Amazon basin.[22]
+
+Many indigenous tribes engaged in constant warfare. James Stuart Olson wrote: "The Munduruku expansion dislocated and displaced the Kawahíb, breaking the tribe down into much smaller groups ... [Munduruku] first came to the attention of Europeans in 1770 when they began a series of widespread attacks on Brazilian settlements along the Amazon River."[23]
+
+In March 1500, Spanish conquistador Vicente Yáñez Pinzón was the first documented European to sail up the Amazon River.[24] Pinzón called the stream Río Santa María del Mar Dulce, later shortened to Mar Dulce, literally, sweet sea, because of its freshwater pushing out into the ocean. Another Spanish explorer, Francisco de Orellana, was the first European to travel from the origins of the upstream river basins, situated in the Andes, to the mouth of the river. In this journey, Orellana baptized some of the affluents of the Amazonas like Rio Negro, Napo and  Jurua.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro set off in 1541 to explore east of Quito into the South American interior in search of El Dorado, the "city of gold" and La Canela, the "valley of cinnamon".[25] He was accompanied by his second-in-command Francisco de Orellana. After 170 kilometres (110 mi), the Coca River joined the Napo River (at a point now known as Puerto Francisco de Orellana); the party stopped for a few weeks to build a boat just upriver from this confluence. They continued downriver through an uninhabited area, where they could not find food. Orellana offered and was ordered to follow the Napo River, then known as Río de la Canela ("Cinnamon River") and return with food for the party. Based on intelligence received from a captive native chief named Delicola, they expected to find food within a few days downriver by ascending another river to the north.
+
+De Orellana took about 57 men, the boat, and some canoes and left Pizarro's troops on 26 December 1541. However, De Orellana missed the confluence (probably with the Aguarico) where he was searching supplies for his men. By the time he and his men reached another village, many of them were sick from hunger and eating "noxious plants", and near death. Seven men died in that village. His men threatened to mutiny if the expedition turned back to attempt to rejoin Pizarro, the party being over 100 leagues downstream at this point. He accepted to change the purpose of the expedition to discover new lands in the name of the king of Spain, and the men built a larger boat in which to navigate downstream. After a journey of 600  km down the Napo River they reached a further major confluence, at a point near modern Iquitos, and then followed the upper Amazon, now known as the Solimões, for a further 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) to its confluence with the Rio Negro (near modern Manaus), which they reached on 3 June 1542.
+
+Regarding the initial mission of finding cinnamon, Pizarro reported to the king that they had found cinnamon trees, but that they could not be profitably harvested. True cinnamon (Cinnamomum Verum) is not native to South America. Other related cinnamon-containing plants (of the family Lauraceae) are fairly common in that part of the Amazon and Pizarro probably saw some of these. The expedition reached the mouth of the Amazon on 24 August 1542, demonstrating the practical navigability of the Great River.
+
+In 1560 another Spanish conquistador, Lope de Aguirre, may have made the second descent of the Amazon. Historians are uncertain whether the river he descended was the Amazon or the Orinoco River, which runs more or less parallel to the Amazon further north.
+
+Portuguese explorer Pedro Teixeira was the first European to travel up the entire river. He arrived in Quito in 1637, and returned via the same route.[26]
+
+From 1648 to 1652, Portuguese Brazilian bandeirante António Raposo Tavares led an expedition from São Paulo overland to the mouth of the Amazon, investigating many of its tributaries, including the Rio Negro, and covering a distance of over 10,000 km (6,214 mi).
+
+In what is currently in Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela, several colonial and religious settlements were established along the banks of primary rivers and tributaries for trade, slaving and evangelization among the indigenous peoples of the vast rainforest, such as the Urarina. In the late 1600s Czech Jesuit Father Samuel Fritz, an apostle of the Omagus established some forty mission villages. Fritz proposed that the Marañón River must be the source of the Amazon, noting on his 1707 map that the Marañón "has its source on the southern shore of a lake that is called Lauricocha, near Huánuco." Fritz reasoned that the Marañón is the largest river branch one encounters when journeying upstream, and lies farther to the west than any other tributary of the Amazon. For most of the 18th–19th centuries and into the 20th century, the Marañón was generally considered the source of the Amazon.[27]
+
+Early scientific, zoological and botanical exploration of the Amazon River and basin took place from the 18th century through the first half of the 19th century.
+
+The Cabanagem revolt (1835–1840) was directed against the white ruling class. It is estimated that from 30 to 40% of the population of Grão-Pará, estimated at 100,000 people, died.[29]
+
+The total population of the Brazilian portion of the Amazon basin in 1850 was perhaps 300,000, of whom about two-thirds were Europeans and slaves, the slaves amounting to about 25,000. The Brazilian Amazon's principal commercial city, Pará (now Belém), had from 10,000 to 12,000 inhabitants, including slaves. The town of Manáos, now Manaus, at the mouth of the Rio Negro, had a population between 1,000 and 1,500. All the remaining villages, as far up as Tabatinga, on the Brazilian frontier of Peru, were relatively small.[30]
+
+On 6 September 1850, Emperor Pedro II of Brazil sanctioned a law authorizing steam navigation on the Amazon and gave the Viscount of Mauá (Irineu Evangelista de Sousa) the task of putting it into effect. He organised the "Companhia de Navegação e Comércio do Amazonas" in Rio de Janeiro in 1852; in the following year it commenced operations with four small steamers, the Monarca ('Monarch'), the Cametá, the Marajó and the Rio Negro.[30][31]
+
+At first, navigation was principally confined to the main river; and even in 1857 a modification of the government contract only obliged the company to a monthly service between Pará and Manaus, with steamers of 200 tons cargo capacity, a second line to make six round voyages a year between Manaus and Tabatinga, and a third, two trips a month between Pará and Cametá.[30] This was the first step in opening up the vast interior.
+
+The success of the venture called attention to the opportunities for economic exploitation of the Amazon, and a second company soon opened commerce on the Madeira, Purús, and Negro; a third established a line between Pará and Manaus, and a fourth found it profitable to navigate some of the smaller streams. In that same period, the Amazonas Company was increasing its fleet. Meanwhile, private individuals were building and running small steam craft of their own on the main river as well as on many of its tributaries.[30]
+
+On 31 July 1867, the government of Brazil, constantly pressed by the maritime powers and by the countries encircling the upper Amazon basin, especially Peru, decreed the opening of the Amazon to all countries, but they limited this to certain defined points: Tabatinga – on the Amazon; Cametá – on the Tocantins; Santarém – on the Tapajós; Borba – on the Madeira, and Manaus – on the Rio Negro. The Brazilian decree took effect on 7 September 1867.[30]
+
+Thanks in part to the mercantile development associated with steamboat navigation coupled with the internationally driven demand for natural rubber, the Peruvian city of Iquitos became a thriving, cosmopolitan center of commerce. Foreign companies settled in Iquitos, from whence they controlled the extraction of rubber. In 1851 Iquitos had a population of 200, and by 1900 its population reached 20,000. In the 1860s, approximately 3,000 tons of rubber were being exported annually, and by 1911 annual exports had grown to 44,000 tons, representing 9.3% of Peru's exports.[32] During the rubber boom it is estimated that diseases brought by immigrants, such as typhus and malaria, killed 40,000 native Amazonians.[33]
+
+The first direct foreign trade with Manaus commenced around 1874. Local trade along the river was carried on by the English successors to the Amazonas Company—the Amazon Steam Navigation Company—as well as numerous small steamboats, belonging to companies and firms engaged in the rubber trade, navigating the Negro, Madeira, Purús and many other tributaries,[30] such as the Marañón, to ports as distant as Nauta, Peru.
+
+By the turn of the 20th century, the exports of the Amazon basin were India-rubber, cacao beans, Brazil nuts and a few other products of minor importance, such as pelts and exotic forest produce (resins, barks, woven hammocks, prized bird feathers, live animals) and extracted goods, such as lumber and gold.
+
+Since colonial times, the Portuguese portion of the Amazon basin has remained a land largely undeveloped by agriculture and occupied by indigenous people who survived the arrival of European diseases.
+
+Four centuries after the European discovery of the Amazon river, the total cultivated area in its basin was probably less than 65 square kilometres (25 sq mi), excluding the limited and crudely cultivated areas among the mountains at its extreme headwaters.[34] This situation changed dramatically during the 20th century.
+
+Wary of foreign exploitation of the nation's resources, Brazilian governments in the 1940s set out to develop the interior, away from the seaboard where foreigners owned large tracts of land. The original architect of this expansion was president Getúlio Vargas, with the demand for rubber from the Allied forces in World War II providing funding for the drive.
+
+In the 1960s, economic exploitation of the Amazon basin was seen as a way to fuel the "economic miracle" occurring at the time. This resulted in the development of "Operation Amazon", an economic development project that brought large-scale agriculture and ranching to Amazonia. This was done through a combination of credit and fiscal incentives.[35]
+
+However, in the 1970s the government took a new approach with the National Integration Programme. A large-scale colonization program saw families from northeastern Brazil relocated to the "land without people" in the Amazon Basin. This was done in conjunction with infrastructure projects mainly the Trans-Amazonian Highway (Transamazônica).[35]
+
+The Trans-Amazonian Highway's three pioneering highways were completed within ten years but never fulfilled their promise. Large portions of the Trans-Amazonian and its accessory roads, such as BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho), are derelict and impassable in the rainy season. Small towns and villages are scattered across the forest, and because its vegetation is so dense, some remote areas are still unexplored.
+
+Many settlements grew along the road from Brasília to Belém with the highway and National Integration Programme, however, the program failed as the settlers were unequipped to live in the delicate rainforest ecosystem. This, although the government believed it could sustain millions, instead could sustain very few.[36]
+
+With a population of 1.9 million people in 2014, Manaus is the largest city on the Amazon. Manaus alone makes up approximately 50% of the population of the largest Brazilian state of Amazonas. The racial makeup of the city is 64% pardo (mulatto and mestizo) and 32% white.[37]
+
+Although the Amazon river remains undammed, around 412 dams are in operation in the Amazon's tributary rivers. From these 412 dams, 151 are constructed over six of the main tributary rivers that drain into the Amazon.[38] Since only four percent of the Amazon's hydropower potential has been developed in countries like Brazil,[39] more damming projects are underway and hundreds more are planned.[40] After witnessing the negative effects of environmental degradation, sedimentation, navigation and flood control caused by the Three Gorges Dam in the Yangtze River,[41] scientists are worried that constructing more dams in the Amazon will harm its biodiversity in the same way by "blocking-fish spawning runs, reducing the flows of vital oil nutrients and clearing forests".[40] Damming the Amazon River could potentially bring about the "end of free flowing rivers" and contribute to an "ecosystem collapse" that will cause major social and environmental problems.[38]
+
+The most distant source of the Amazon was thought to be in the Apurímac river drainage for nearly a century. Such studies continued to be published even recently, such as in 1996,[42] 2001,[43] 2007,[8] and 2008,[10] where various authors identified the snowcapped 5,597 m (18,363 ft) Nevado Mismi peak, located roughly 160 km (99 mi) west of Lake Titicaca and 700 km (430 mi) southeast of Lima, as the most distant source of the river. From that point, Quebrada Carhuasanta emerges from Nevado Mismi, joins Quebrada Apacheta and soon forms Río Lloqueta which becomes Río Hornillos and eventually joins the Río Apurímac.
+
+A 2014 study by Americans James Contos and Nicolas Tripcevich in Area, a peer-reviewed journal of the Royal Geographical Society, however, identifies the most distant source of the Amazon as actually being in the Río Mantaro drainage.[12] A variety of methods were used to compare the lengths of the Mantaro river vs. the Apurímac river from their most distant source points to their confluence, showing the longer length of the Mantaro. Then distances from Lago Junín to several potential source points in the uppermost Mantaro river were measured, which enabled them to determine that the Cordillera Rumi Cruz was the most distant source of water in the Mantaro basin (and therefore in the entire Amazon basin). The most accurate measurement method was direct GPS measurement obtained by kayak descent of each of the rivers from their source points to their confluence (performed by Contos). Obtaining these measurements was difficult given the class IV–V nature of each of these rivers, especially in their lower "Abyss" sections. Ultimately, they determined that the most distant point in the Mantaro drainage is nearly 80 km farther upstream compared to Mt. Mismi in the Apurímac drainage, and thus the maximal length of the Amazon river is about 80 km longer than previously thought. Contos continued downstream to the ocean and finished the first complete descent of the Amazon river from its newly identified source (finishing November 2012), a journey repeated by two groups after the news spread.[44]
+
+After about 700 km (430 mi), the Apurímac then joins Río Mantaro to form the Ene, which joins the Perene to form the Tambo, which joins the Urubamba River to form the Ucayali. After the confluence of Apurímac and Ucayali, the river leaves Andean terrain and is surrounded by floodplain. From this point to the confluence of the Ucayali and the Mara��ón, some 1,600 km (990 mi), the forested banks are just above the water and are inundated long before the river attains its maximum flood stage.[30] The low river banks are interrupted by only a few hills, and the river enters the enormous Amazon rainforest.
+
+Although the Ucayali–Marañón confluence is the point at which most geographers place the beginning of the Amazon River proper, in Brazil the river is known at this point as the Solimões das Águas. The river systems and flood plains in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, whose waters drain into the Solimões and its tributaries, are called the "Upper Amazon".
+
+The Amazon proper runs mostly through Brazil and Peru, and is part of the border between Colombia and Perú. It has a series of major tributaries in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, some of which flow into the Marañón and Ucayali, and others directly into the Amazon proper. These include rivers Putumayo, Caquetá, Vaupés, Guainía, Morona, Pastaza, Nucuray, Urituyacu, Chambira, Tigre, Nanay, Napo, and Huallaga.
+
+At some points the river divides into anabranches, or multiple channels, often very long, with inland and lateral channels, all connected by a complicated system of natural canals, cutting the low, flat igapó lands, which are never more than 5 metres (16 ft) above low river, into many islands.[45]
+
+From the town of Canaria at the great bend of the Amazon to the Negro, vast areas of land are submerged at high water, above which only the upper part of the trees of the sombre forests appear. Near the mouth of the Rio Negro to Serpa, nearly opposite the river Madeira, the banks of the Amazon are low, until approaching Manaus, they rise to become rolling hills.[30]
+
+The Lower Amazon begins where the darkly coloured waters of the Rio Negro meet the sandy coloured Rio Solimões (the upper Amazon), and for over 6 km (4 mi) these waters run side by side without mixing. At Óbidos, a bluff 17 m (56 ft) above the river is backed by low hills. The lower Amazon seems to have once been a gulf of the Atlantic Ocean, the waters of which washed the cliffs near Óbidos.
+
+Only about ten percent of the Amazon's water enters downstream of Óbidos, very little of which is from the northern slope of the valley. The drainage area of the Amazon basin above Óbidos city is about 5,000,000 square kilometres (1,900,000 sq mi), and, below, only about 1,000,000 square kilometres (390,000 sq mi) (around 20%), exclusive of the 1,400,000 square kilometres (540,000 sq mi) of the Tocantins basin.[30] The Tocantins River enters the southern portion of the Amazon delta.
+
+In the lower reaches of the river, the north bank consists of a series of steep, table-topped hills extending for about 240 kilometres (150 mi) from opposite the mouth of the Xingu as far as Monte Alegre. These hills are cut down to a kind of terrace which lies between them and the river.[45]
+
+On the south bank, above the Xingu, a line of low bluffs bordering the floodplain extends nearly to Santarém in a series of gentle curves before they bend to the southwest, and, abutting upon the lower Tapajós, merge into the bluffs which form the terrace margin of the Tapajós river valley.[46]
+
+Belém is the major city and port at the mouth of the river at the Atlantic Ocean. The definition of where exactly the mouth of the Amazon is located, and how wide it is, is a matter of dispute, because of the area's peculiar geography. The Pará and the Amazon are connected by a series of river channels called furos near the town of Breves; between them lies Marajó, the world's largest combined river/sea island.
+
+If the Pará river and the Marajó island ocean frontage are included, the Amazon estuary is some 325 kilometres (202 mi) wide.[47] In this case, the width of the mouth of the river is usually measured from Cabo Norte, the cape located straight east of Pracuúba in the Brazilian state of Amapá, to Ponta da Tijoca near the town of Curuçá, in the state of Pará.
+
+A more conservative measurement excluding the Pará river estuary, from the mouth of the Araguari River to Ponta do Navio on the northern coast of Marajó, would still give the mouth of the Amazon a width of over 180 kilometres (110 mi). If only the river's main channel is considered, between the islands of Curuá (state of Amapá) and Jurupari (state of Pará), the width falls to about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi).
+
+The plume generated by the river's discharge covers up to 1.3 million square kilometres and is responsible for muddy bottoms influencing a wide area of the tropical north Atlantic in terms of salinity, pH, light penetration, and sedimentation.[14]
+
+There are no bridges across the entire width of the river.[48] This is not because the river would be too wide to bridge; for most of its length, engineers could build a bridge across the river easily. For most of its course, the river flows through the Amazon Rainforest, where there are very few roads and cities. Most of the time, the crossing can be done by a ferry. The Manaus Iranduba Bridge linking the cities of Manaus and Iranduba spans the Rio Negro, the second-largest tributary of the Amazon, just before their confluence.
+
+While debate as to whether the Amazon or the Nile is the world's longest river has gone on for many years, the historic consensus of geographic authorities has been to regard the Amazon as the second longest river in the world, with the Nile being the longest. However, the Amazon has been reported as being anywhere between 6,275 and 7,025 kilometres (3,899 and 4,365 mi) long.[3] It is often said to be "at least" 6,400 kilometres (4,000 mi) long.[2] The Nile is reported to be anywhere from 5,499 to 7,088 kilometres (3,417 to 4,404 mi).[3] Often it is said to be "about" 6,650 kilometres (4,130 mi) long.[7] There are many factors that can affect these measurements, such as the position of the geographical source and the mouth, the scale of measurement, and the length measuring techniques (for details see also List of rivers by length).[3][4]
+
+A study by Brazilian scientists concluded that the Amazon is actually longer than the Nile. Using Nevado Mismi, which in 2001 was labelled by the National Geographic Society as the Amazon's source, these scientists made new calculations of the Amazon's length. They calculated the Amazon's length as 6,992 kilometres (4,345 mi). Using the same techniques, they calculated the length of the Nile as 6,853 kilometres (4,258 mi), which is longer than previous estimates but still shorter than the Amazon. They made it possible by measuring the Amazon downstream to the beginning of the tidal estuary of Canal do Sul and then, after a sharp turn back, following tidal canals surrounding the isle of Marajó and finally including the marine waters of the Río Pará bay in its entire length.[11][10][49] Guido Gelli, director of science at the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), told the Brazilian TV network Globo in June 2007 that it could be considered as a fact that the Amazon was the longest river in the world. However, other geographers have had access to the same data since 2001, and a consensus has yet to emerge to support the claims of these Brazilian scientists. A peer-reviewed article, published in 2009, concluded that the Nile is longer than the Amazon by stating a length of 7,088 km (4,404 mi) for the Nile and 6,575 km (4,086 mi) for the Amazon, measured by using a combination of satellite image analysis and field investigations to the source regions.[3]
+Therefore, as of 2018 the length of both Amazon and Nile remains open to interpretation and continued debate.[2][11]
+
+The Amazon basin, the largest in the world, covers about 40% of South America, an area of approximately 7,050,000 square kilometres (2,722,020 sq mi). It drains from west to east, from Iquitos in Peru, across Brazil to the Atlantic. It gathers its waters from 5 degrees north latitude to 20 degrees south latitude. Its most remote sources are found on the inter-Andean plateau, just a short distance from the Pacific Ocean.[50]
+
+The Amazon River and its tributaries are characterised by extensive forested areas that become flooded every rainy season. Every year, the river rises more than 9 metres (30 ft), flooding the surrounding forests, known as várzea ("flooded forests"). The Amazon's flooded forests are the most extensive example of this habitat type in the world.[51] In an average dry season, 110,000 square kilometres (42,000 sq mi) of land are water-covered, while in the wet season, the flooded area of the Amazon basin rises to 350,000 square kilometres (140,000 sq mi).[47]
+
+The quantity of water released by the Amazon to the Atlantic Ocean is enormous: up to 300,000 cubic metres per second (11,000,000 cu ft/s) in the rainy season, with an average of 209,000 cubic metres per second (7,400,000 cu ft/s) from 1973 to 1990.[52] The Amazon is responsible for about 20% of the Earth's fresh water entering the ocean.[51] The river pushes a vast plume of fresh water into the ocean. The plume is about 400 kilometres (250 mi) long and between 100 and 200 kilometres (62 and 124 mi) wide. The fresh water, being lighter, flows on top of the seawater, diluting the salinity and altering the colour of the ocean surface over an area up to 2,500,000 km2 (970,000 sq mi) in extent. For centuries ships have reported fresh water near the Amazon's mouth yet well out of sight of land in what otherwise seemed to be the open ocean.[16]
+
+The Atlantic has sufficient wave and tidal energy to carry most of the Amazon's sediments out to sea, thus the Amazon does not form a true delta. The great deltas of the world are all in relatively protected bodies of water, while the Amazon empties directly into the turbulent Atlantic.[13]
+
+There is a natural water union between the Amazon and the Orinoco basins, the so-called Casiquiare canal. The Casiquiare is a river distributary of the upper Orinoco, which flows southward into the Rio Negro, which in turn flows into the Amazon. The Casiquiare is the largest river on earth that links two major river systems, a so-called bifurcation.
+
+Not all of the Amazon's tributaries flood at the same time of the year. Many branches begin flooding in November and might continue to rise until June. The rise of the Rio Negro starts in February or March and begins to recede in June. The Madeira River rises and falls two months earlier than most of the rest of the Amazon river.
+
+The depth of the Amazon between Manacapuru and Óbidos has been calculated as between 20 to 26 metres (66 to 85 ft). At Manacapuru, the Amazon's water level is only about 24 metres (79 ft) above mean sea level. More than half of the water in the Amazon downstream of Manacapuru is below sea level.[53] In its lowermost section, the Amazon's depth averages 20 to 50 metres (66 to 164 ft), in some places as much as 100 metres (330 ft).[54]
+
+The main river is navigable for large ocean steamers to Manaus, 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) upriver from the mouth. Smaller ocean vessels of 3,000 or 9,000 tonnes (3,000 or 8,900 long tons; 3,300 or 9,900 short tons) and 5.5 metres (18 ft) draft can reach as far as Iquitos, Peru, 3,600 kilometres (2,200 mi) from the sea. Smaller riverboats can reach 780 kilometres (480 mi) higher, as far as Achual Point. Beyond that, small boats frequently ascend to the Pongo de Manseriche, just above Achual Point in Peru.[45]
+
+Annual flooding occurs in late northern latitude winter at high tide when the incoming waters of the Atlantic are funnelled into the Amazon delta. The resulting undular tidal bore is called the pororoca, with a leading wave that can be up to 8 m (25 ft) high and travel up to 800 km (500 mi) inland.[55][56]
+
+The Amazon River originated as a transcontinental river in the Miocene epoch between 11.8 million and 11.3 million years ago and took its present shape approximately 2.4 million years ago in the Early Pleistocene.
+
+The proto-Amazon during the Cretaceous flowed west, as part of a proto-Amazon-Congo river system, from the interior of present-day Africa when the continents were connected, forming western Gondwana. 80 million years ago, the two continents split.  Fifteen million years ago, the main tectonic uplift phase of the Andean chain started. This tectonic movement is caused by the subduction of the Nazca Plate underneath the South American Plate. The rise of the Andes and the linkage of the Brazilian and Guyana bedrock shields,[clarification needed] blocked the river and caused the Amazon Basin to become a vast inland sea. Gradually, this inland sea became a massive swampy, freshwater lake and the marine inhabitants adapted to life in freshwater.[57]
+
+Eleven to ten million years ago, waters worked through the sandstone from the west and the Amazon began to flow eastward, leading to the emergence of the Amazon rainforest. During glacial periods, sea levels dropped and the great Amazon lake rapidly drained and became a river, which would eventually become the world's second largest, draining the most extensive area of rainforest on the planet.[58]
+
+Paralleling the Amazon River is a large aquifer, dubbed the Hamza River, the discovery of which was made public in August 2011.[59]
+
+More than one-third of all known species in the world live in the Amazon rainforest,[64] a giant tropical forest and river basin with an area that stretches more than 5,400,000 square kilometres (2,100,000 sq mi). It is the richest tropical forest in the world in terms of biodiversity. There are over 3,000 species of fish currently recognised in the Amazon basin, with more being discovered every year.[65] In addition to the thousands of species of fish, the river supports crabs, algae, and turtles.
+
+Along with the Orinoco, the Amazon is one of the main habitats of the boto, also known as the Amazon river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis). It is the largest species of river dolphin, and it can grow to lengths of up to 2.6 metres (8 ft 6 in). The colour of its skin changes with age; young animals are gray, but become pink and then white as they mature. The dolphins use echolocation to navigate and hunt in the river's tricky depths.[66] The boto is the subject of a legend in Brazil about a dolphin that turns into a man and seduces maidens by the riverside.[67]
+
+The tucuxi (Sotalia fluviatilis), also a dolphin species, is found both in the rivers of the Amazon basin and in the coastal waters of South America. The Amazonian manatee (Trichechus inunguis), also known as "seacow", is found in the northern Amazon River basin and its tributaries. It is a mammal and a herbivore. Its population is limited to freshwater habitats, and, unlike other manatees, it does not venture into salt water. It is classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.[68]
+
+The Amazon and its tributaries are the main habitat of the giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis).[69] Sometimes known as the "river wolf," it is one of South America's top carnivores. Because of habitat destruction and hunting, its population has dramatically decreased. It is now listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which effectively bans international trade.[70]
+
+The anaconda is found in shallow waters in the Amazon basin. One of the world's largest species of snake, the anaconda spends most of its time in the water with just its nostrils above the surface. Species of caimans, that are related to alligators and other crocodilians, also inhabit the Amazon as do varieties of turtles.[71]
+
+The Amazonian fish fauna is the centre of diversity for neotropical fishes. 5,600 species are currently known, and approximately fifty new species are discovered each year.[72][73] The arapaima, known in Brazil as the pirarucu, is a South American tropical freshwater fish, one of the largest freshwater fish in the world, with a length of up to 15 feet (4.6 m).[74] Another Amazonian freshwater fish is the arowana (or aruanã in Portuguese), such as the silver arowana (Osteoglossum bicirrhosum), which is a predator and very similar to the arapaima, but only reaches a length of 120 centimetres (47 in). Also present in large numbers is the notorious piranha, an omnivorous fish that congregates in large schools and may attack livestock and even humans. There are approximately 30 to 60 species of piranha. However, only a few of its species are known to attack humans, most notably Pygocentrus nattereri, the red-bellied piranha. The candirú, native to the Amazon River, is a species of parasitic fresh water catfish in the family Trichomycteridae,[75] just one of more than 1200 species of catfish in the Amazon basin. Other catfish 'walk' overland on their ventral fins,[76] while the kumakuma (Brachyplatystoma filamentosum), aka piraiba or "goliath catfish", can reach 3.6 metres (12 ft) in length and 200 kilograms (440 lb) in weight.[77]
+
+The electric eel (Electrophorus electricus) and more than 100 species of electric fishes (Gymnotiformes) inhabit the Amazon basin. River stingrays (Potamotrygonidae) are also known. The bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) has been reported 4,000 kilometres (2,500 mi) up the Amazon River at Iquitos in Peru.[78]
+
+Freshwater microbes are generally not very well known, even less so for a pristine ecosystem like the Amazon. Recently, metagenomics has provided answers to what kind of microbes inhabit the river.[79] The most important microbes in the Amazon River are Actinobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria and Crenarchaeota.
+
+The Amazon has over 1,100 tributaries, 12 of which are over 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) long.[80] Some of the more notable ones are:

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+Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property.[1] An enslaved person is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalized, de jure slavery.
+
+In a broader sense, however, the word "slavery" may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will. To describe such circumstances, scholars may use such alternate terms as unfree labour or forced labour.[2]
+
+Under the broader use of the term slavery, but also in certain cases of actual de jure (chattel) slavery, local laws and/or customs may vest the enslaved with limited rights and protections.
+
+Slavery has existed in many cultures, dating back to early human civilizations.[3] It was legal in most societies at some time in the past but is now outlawed in all recognized countries.[4][5] Nevertheless, as of 2019 there were an estimated 40 million people worldwide subject to some form of slavery, 25% of them children.[6] More than half of modern slaves are used for forced labor, mostly in the private sector.[6] The most common form of modern slave trade is commonly referred to as human trafficking. In some areas of the world, slavery continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most common source of modern slaves;[2] serfdom; domestic servants kept in captivity; certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves; child soldiers; and forced marriage.[7]
+
+The word slave is derived from the ethnonym (ethnic name) Slav.[8][9][10] It arrived in English via the Old French sclave. In Medieval Latin the word was sclavus and in Byzantine Greek σκλάβος.[8] Use of the word arose during the Early Medieval Period, when Slavs from Central and Eastern Europe (Saqaliba) were frequently enslaved by Moors from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.[11][12][13] An older interpretation connected slave to the Greek verb skyleúo 'to strip a slain enemy'.[14]
+
+There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as "unfree labourer" or enslaved person, rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language; by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were". Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with "person" implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow.[15]
+
+Indenture, otherwise known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour under which a person pledges himself or herself against a loan.[16] The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined.[16] Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt.[16] It is the most widespread form of slavery today.[2] Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia.[17]
+
+Chattel slavery, also called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel (personal property) of the owner and are bought and sold as commodities. Typically, under the chattel slave system, children inherited slave status via the mother (partus sequitur ventrem).[18] Although it dominated many different societies throughout human history, this form of slavery has been formally abolished and is very rare today. Even when it can be said to survive, it is not upheld by the legal system of any internationally recognized government.[19]
+
+"Slavery" has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else.[20][21] For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens.[22]
+
+Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to describe an individual who is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment, but the generic term unfree labour is also used to describe chattel slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will, and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person.[2] This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription and penal labour. While some unfree labourers, such as serfs, have substantive, de jure legal or traditional rights, they also have no ability to terminate the arrangements under which they work and are frequently subject to forms of coercion, violence, and restrictions on their activities and movement outside their place of work.
+
+Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children.[2][23][24] Examples of sexual slavery, often in military contexts, include detention in "rape camps" or "comfort stations," "comfort women", forced "marriages" to soldiers and other practices involving the treatment of women or men as chattel and, as such, violations of the peremptory norm prohibiting slavery.[25][26][27][28]
+
+In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts.[29] More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labor, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty[30] such as in restaveks in Haiti.
+
+Forced marriages or early marriages are often considered types of slavery. Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West.[31][32][33][34] Sacred prostitution is where girls and women are pledged to priests or those of higher castes, such as the practice of Devadasi in South Asia or fetish slaves in West Africa.[2] Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a national average of 69% of marriages in Ethiopia being through abduction.[35]
+
+Economists have attempted to model the circumstances under which slavery (and variants such as serfdom) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for landowners where land is abundant but labour is scarce, such that rent is depressed and paid workers can demand high wages. If the opposite holds true, then it becomes more costly for landowners to have guards for the slaves than to employ paid workers who can only demand low wages because of the amount of competition.[36] Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew but were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia as large areas of new land with few people became available.[37]
+
+Slavery is more common when the labor done is relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large-scale growing of a single crop, like sugar and cotton, in which output was based on economies of scale. This enables such systems of labor, such as the gang system in the United States, to become prominent on large plantations where field hands were monitored and worked with factory-like precision. For example, each work gang was based on an internal division of labour that assigned every member of the gang to a precise task and simultaneously made their own performance dependent on the actions of the others. The hoe hands chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excessive sprouts. The plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the rows of cotton plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an assembly line.[38]
+
+Since the 18th century, critics have argued that slavery tends to retard technological advancement because the focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading the efficiency of labour. For example, it is sometime argued that, because of this narrow focus, theoretical knowledge and learning in Greece – and later in Rome – was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing.[39]
+
+Scottish economist Adam Smith states that free labour was economically better than slave labour, and that it is nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic, or republican form of government since many of its legislators or political figures were slave owners, and would not punish themselves.  He further states that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom when there was centralized government, or a central authority like a king or the church.[40][41] Similar arguments appear later in the works of Auguste Comte, especially when it comes to Smith's belief in the separation of powers, or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith states in the Lectures on Jurisprudence, "The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of the king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues..."
+
+Worldwide, slavery is a criminal offense, but slave owners can get very high returns for their risk. According to researcher Siddharth Kara, the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were $91.2 billion. That is second only to drug trafficking, in terms of global criminal enterprises. Currently, the weighted average global sales price of a slave is calculated to be approximately $340, with a high of $1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $40 to $50 for debt bondage slaves in part of Asia and Africa.[42] The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $3,175, with a low of an average $950 for bonded labor and $29,210 for a trafficked sex slave.[42] Approximately 40% of slave profits each year are generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of the world's 29 million slaves.[42]
+
+Throughout history, slaves were clothed in a distinctive fashion, particularly with respect to the frequent lack of footwear, as they were rather commonly forced to go barefoot. This was partly because of economic reasons but also served as a distinguishing feature, especially in South Africa and South America. For example, the Cape Town slave code stated that "Slaves must go barefoot and must carry passes."[43] It also puts slaves at a physical disadvantage because of the lack of protection against environmental adversities and also in situations of possible confrontation, thereby making it more difficult to escape or to rebel against their owners.
+
+This was the case in the majority of states that abolished slavery later in history, as most images from the respective historical period suggest that slaves were barefoot.[44]
+To quote Brother Riemer (1779): "[the slaves] are, even in their most beautiful suit, obliged to go barefoot. Slaves were forbidden to wear shoes. This was a prime mark of distinction between the free and the bonded and no exceptions were permitted."[45]
+
+According to the Bible, shoes have been considered badges of freedom since antiquity: "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put [it] on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on [his] feet" (Luke 15:22). This aspect can be viewed as an informal law in areas where slavery existed as any person sighted barefoot in public would be conclusively regarded as a slave.
+
+In certain societies this rule is valid to this day. As with the Tuareg, where slavery is still unofficially practiced, their slaves are constantly forced to remain barefoot as a recognition mark. Mainly through their bare feet their societal status and rank opposite their owners is displayed to the public in a plainly visible way.[46]
+
+Another widespread practice was branding the slaves either to generally mark them as property or as punishment usually reserved for fugitives.
+
+Some scholars differentiate between ancient forms of slavery and the large-scale, largely race-based slavery which grew to immense proportions starting in the 14th century. The first type of slavery, sometimes called "just title servitude," was suffered by prisoners of war, debtors, and other vulnerable people.[47] The second, race-based type of slavery was argued even by some contemporary writers to be intrinsically immoral.[48][49][50]
+
+Evidence of slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures.[3]  Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Thus, although it has existed among unusually resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as the American Indian peoples of the salmon-rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest Coast, slavery became widespread only with the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago.[51]
+
+In the earliest known records, slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), for example, prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive.[52] The Bible mentions slavery as an established institution.[3] Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization and society.[3] Such institutions included debt bondage, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves.[53]
+
+Slavery existed in Pharaonic Egypt, but studying it is complicated by terminology used by the Egyptians to refer to different classes of servitude over the course of history. Interpretation of the textual evidence of classes of slaves in ancient Egypt has been difficult to differentiate by word usage alone.[54][55] There were three apparent types of enslavement in Ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labor, and forced labor.[56][57][58]
+
+Slavery is known to have existed in ancient China as early as the Shang dynasty.[59] Slavery was largely employed by governments as a means of maintaining a public labor force.[60][61]
+
+Records of slavery in Ancient Greece date as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is certain that Classical Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.[62]  As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Slaves were used for labour, as well as for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War, led by Spartacus, (a Thracian) being the most famous.
+
+By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome, as well as a very significant part of Roman society.[63] It is estimated that 25% or more of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved, although the actual percentage is debated by scholars and varied from region to region.[64][65] Slaves represented 15–25% of Italy's population,[66] mostly captives in war,[66] especially from Gaul[67] and Epirus. Estimates of the number of slaves in the Roman Empire suggest that the majority of slaves were scattered throughout the provinces outside of Italy.[66] Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians,[68] with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) born outside of Italy estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Those from outside of Europe were predominantly of Greek descent, while the Jewish ones never fully assimilated into Roman society, remaining an identifiable minority. These slaves (especially the foreigners) had higher death rates and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions.[69] The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).[70][page needed]
+
+Slavery was widespread in Africa, with both internal and external slave trade.[71] In the Senegambia region, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sahel, including Ghana, Mali, Segou, and Songhai, about a third of the population were enslaved.[72]
+
+The Arab slave trade, across the Sahara desert and across the Indian Ocean, began after Muslim Arab and Swahili traders won control of the Swahili Coast and sea routes during the 9th century (see Sultanate of Zanzibar). These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast.[74][75] There, the slaves gradually assimilated in the rural areas, particularly on the Unguja and Pemba islands.[76]
+
+Slavery in Mexico can be traced back to the Aztecs.[77] Other Amerindians, such as the Inca of the Andes, the Tupinambá of Brazil, the Creek of Georgia, and the Comanche of Texas, also owned slaves.[3]
+
+Many Han Chinese were enslaved in the process of the Mongol invasion of China proper.[78] According to Japanese historians Sugiyama Masaaki (杉山正明) and Funada Yoshiyuki (舩田善之), there were also a certain number of Mongolian slaves owned by Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty. Moreover, there is no evidence that the Han Chinese, who were at the bottom of Yuan society according to some research, suffered particularly cruel abuse.[79][80]
+
+Slavery in Korea existed since before the Three Kingdoms of Korea period, approximately 2,000 years ago.[81] Slavery has been described as "very important in medieval Korea, probably more important than in any other East Asian country, but by the 16th century, population growth was making [it] unnecessary".[82] Slavery went into decline around the 10th century but came back in the late Goryeo period when Korea also experienced a number of slave rebellions.[81]
+
+In the Joseon period of Korea, members of the slave class were known as nobi. The nobi were socially indistinct from freemen (i.e., the middle and common classes) other than the ruling yangban class, and some possessed property rights, legal entities and civil rights. Hence, some scholars argue that it is inappropriate to call them "slaves",[83] while some scholars describe them as serfs.[84][85] The nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.[86] In 1801, the vast majority of government nobi were emancipated,[87] and by 1858 the nobi population stood at about 1.5 percent of the total population of Korea.[88]
+
+Slavery largely disappeared from Western Europe in the Middle Ages but persisted longer in Eastern Europe.[89] Large-scale trading in slaves was mainly confined to the South and East of early medieval Europe: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, while pagan Central and Eastern Europe (along with the Caucasus and Tartary) were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek, and Radhanite Jewish merchants were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.[90][91][92] The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century following the Zanj Rebellion which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab world.[93][94]
+
+Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it, or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands, as for example at the Council of Koblenz (922), the Council of London (1102) (which aimed mainly at the sale of English slaves to Ireland)[95] and the Council of Armagh (1171). Serfdom, on the contrary, was widely accepted. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting the kings of Spain and Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens (Muslims), pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, legitimizing the slave trade as a result of war.[96] The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455.
+
+In Britain, slavery continued to be practiced following the fall of Rome, and sections of Hywel the Good's laws dealt with slaves in medieval Wales. The trade particularly picked up after the Viking invasions, with major markets at Chester[97] and Bristol[98] supplied by Danish, Mercian, and Welsh raiding of one another's borderlands. At the time of the Domesday Book, nearly 10% of the English population were slaves.[99] William the Conqueror introduced a law preventing the sale of slaves overseas.[100] According to historian John Gillingham, by 1200 slavery in the British Isles was non-existent.[101] The slave trade was abolished by the Slave Trade Act 1807, although slavery remained legal in possessions outside Europe until the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[102]
+
+The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of slaves into the Islamic world.[103] To staff its bureaucracy, the Ottoman Empire established a janissary system which seized hundreds of thousands of Christian boys through the devşirme system. They were well cared for but were legally slaves owned by the government and were not allowed to marry. They were never bought or sold. The empire gave them significant administrative and military roles. The system began about 1365; there were 135,000 janissaries in 1826, when the system ended.[104]
+
+After the Battle of Lepanto, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were recaptured and freed from the Ottoman fleet.[105] Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves into jasyr.[106] Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into Poland–Lithuania between 1474 and 1569.[107]
+
+Slavery in Poland was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second serfdom.
+
+Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant Muslim invasion of the predominantly Christian area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal, in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.[108] From the 11th to the 19th century, North African Barbary Pirates engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns, to capture Christian slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria and Morocco.[109][110]
+The maritime town of Lagos was the first slave market created in Portugal (one of the earliest colonizers of the Americas) for the sale of imported African slaves – the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444.[111][112] In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania.[112]
+
+By 1552, black African slaves made up 10% of the population of Lisbon.[113][114] In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade, and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas – especially Brazil.[112] In the 15th century one-third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.[115]
+
+In Kievan Rus and Muscovy, slaves were usually classified as kholops. According to David P. Forsythe, "In 1649 up to three-quarters of Muscovy's peasants, or 13 to 14 million people, were serfs whose material lives were barely distinguishable from slaves. Perhaps another 1.5 million were formally enslaved, with Russian slaves serving Russian masters."[117] Slavery remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679.[118]
+
+In Scandinavia, thralldom was abolished in the mid-14th century.[119]
+
+During the Second World War Nazi Germany effectively enslaved about 12 million people, both those considered undesirable and citizens of conquered countries, with the avowed intention of treating these Untermenschen (sub-humans) as a permanent slave-class of inferior beings who could be worked until they died, and who possessed neither the rights nor the legal status of members of the Aryan race.[120]
+
+The Arab slave trade lasted more than a millennium.[121] As recently as the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 300,000.[122] Along with Yemen, the Saudis abolished slavery in 1962.[123] Historically, slaves in the Arab World came from many different regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly Zanj),[124] the Caucasus (mainly Circassians),[125] Central Asia (mainly Tartars), and Central and Eastern Europe (mainly Saqaliba).[126]
+
+Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900.[127] The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year.[76][128][129] The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, Bantu slaves bought by Arab slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, European colonies in the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands, Ethiopia and Somalia.[130]
+
+According to the Encyclopedia of African History, "It is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labor was extensive, especially in agriculture."[131][132] The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of 8 to 16 million.[133]
+
+Slave labor in East Africa was drawn from the Zanj, Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast.[75][134] The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers in Iraq. The Zanj Rebellion, a series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 near Basra (also known as Basara), situated in present-day Iraq, is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa.[135] It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq".[136]
+The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work.[137] As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, agriculture and other manual labor work was thought to be demeaning. The resulting labor shortage led to an increased slave market.
+
+In Algiers, the capital of Algeria, captured Christians and Europeans were forced into slavery. In about 1650, there were as many as 35,000 Christian slaves in Algiers.[138] By one estimate, raids by Barbary pirates on coastal villages and ships extending from Italy to Iceland, enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.25 million Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries.[139][140][141] However, to this estimate is extrapolated by assuming the number of European, slaves captured by Barbary pirates, was constant for 250 years period:
+
+There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers – about 850,000 captives over the century from 1580 to 1680.  By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000.[142]
+
+Davis' numbers have been refuted by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe.[142] In addition, the number of slaves traded was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia.  Hence, there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given slave imports, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records.  Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation.[143] Such observations, across the late 16th and early 17th century observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers.  However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy.[144] This eventually led to the bombardment of Algiers by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816.[145][146]
+
+Under Omani Arabs, Zanzibar became East Africa's main slave port, with as many as 50,000 enslaved Africans passing through every year during the 19th century.[147][148] Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 AD.[3][149] Eduard Rüppell described the losses of Sudanese slaves being transported on foot to Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5,000 made it to Egypt.."[150] W.A. Veenhoven wrote: "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal, an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on the way ... Keltie (The Partition of Africa, London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone puts the figure as high as ten to one."[151]
+
+Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. The forms of slavery in Africa were closely related to kinship structures. In many African communities, where land could not be owned, enslavement of individuals was used as a means to increase the influence a person had and expand connections.[152] This made slaves a permanent part of a master's lineage and the children of slaves could become closely connected with the larger family ties.[153] Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master's kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances.  However, stigma often remained attached and there could be strict separations between slave members of a kinship group and those related to the master.[152] Slavery was practiced in many different forms: debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa.[154] Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa.
+
+When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique:
+
+The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean.[155]
+
+The trans-Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms, such as the Oyo Empire (Yoruba), the Ashanti Empire,[156] the kingdom of Dahomey,[157] and the Aro Confederacy.[158]  It is estimated that about 15 percent of slaves died during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships.[159][160]
+
+Slavery in America remains a contentious issue and played a major role in the history and evolution of some countries, triggering a revolution, a civil war, and numerous rebellions.
+
+In order to establish itself as an American empire, Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. The Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour. The Spanish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola.[161] Bartolomé de las Casas, a 16th-century Dominican friar and Spanish historian, participated in campaigns in Cuba (at Bayamo and Camagüey) and was present at the massacre of Hatuey; his observation of that massacre led him to fight for a social movement away from the use of natives as slaves. Also, the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population. The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.[162] England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates.
+
+Many Africans who arrived in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came under contract as indentured servants.[163] The transformation from indentured servitude to slavery was a gradual process in Virginia. The earliest legal documentation of such a shift was in 1640 where a negro, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime slavery, forcing him to serve his master, Hugh Gwyn, for the remainder of his life, for attempting to run away. This case was significant because it established the disparity between his sentence as a black man and that of the two white indentured servants who escaped with him (one described as Dutch and one as a Scotchman). It is the first documented case of a black man sentenced to lifetime servitude and is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants.[164][165][166][167][168]
+
+After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts and keep their servants as slaves for life. This was demonstrated by the 1655 case Johnson v. Parker, where the court ruled that a black man, Anthony Johnson of Virginia, was granted ownership of another black man, John Casor, as the result of a civil case.[169]  This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.[170][171][172][173][174][175][176]
+
+In the early 17th century, the majority of the labour in Barbados was provided by European indentured servants, mainly English, Irish and Scottish, with enslaved Africans and enslaved Amerindians providing little of the workforce. The introduction of sugar cane from Dutch Brazil in 1640 completely transformed society and the economy. Barbados eventually had one of the world's largest sugar industries.[177]
+
+As the effects of the new crop increased, so did the shift in the ethnic composition of Barbados and surrounding islands. The workable sugar plantation required a large investment and a great deal of heavy labour. At first, Dutch traders supplied the equipment, financing, and enslaved Africans, in addition to transporting most of the sugar to Europe. In 1644, the population of Barbados was estimated at 30,000, of which about 800 were of African descent, with the remainder mainly of English descent. These English smallholders were eventually bought out, and the island filled up with large sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. By 1660, there was near parity with 27,000 blacks and 26,000 whites. By 1666, at least 12,000 white smallholders had been bought out, died, or left the island. Many of the remaining whites were increasingly poor. By 1680, there were 17 slaves for every indentured servant. By 1700, there were 15,000 free whites and 50,000 enslaved Africans.
+
+Because of the increased implementation of slave codes, which created differential treatment between Africans and the white workers and ruling planter class, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. Black or slave codes were implemented in 1661, 1676, 1682, and 1688. In response to these codes, several slave rebellions were attempted or planned during this time, but none succeeded. Nevertheless, poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so. Planters expanded their importation of enslaved Africans to cultivate sugar cane.
+
+Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement was established in 1532, as members of one tribe would enslave captured members of another.[178]
+
+Later, Portuguese colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions called bandeiras. The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries.
+
+During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any other country. Nearly 5 million slaves were brought from Africa to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866.[179] Until the early 1850s, most enslaved Africans who arrived on Brazilian shores were forced to embark at West Central African ports, especially in Luanda (present-day Angola). Today, with the exception of Nigeria, the largest population of people of African descent is in Brazil.[180]
+
+Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650. Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market. Transportation systems were developed for the mining infrastructure, and population boomed from immigrants seeking to take part in gold and diamond mining. Demand for African slaves did not wane after the decline of the mining industry in the second half of the 18th century. Cattle ranching and foodstuff production proliferated after the population growth, both of which relied heavily on slave labor. 1.7 million slaves were imported to Brazil from Africa from 1700 to 1800, and the rise of coffee in the 1830s further enticed expansion of the slave trade.
+
+Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery. Forty percent of the total number of slaves brought to the Americas were sent to Brazil. For reference, the United States received 10 percent. Despite being abolished, there are still people working in slavery-like conditions in Brazil in the 21st century.
+
+In 1789 the Spanish Crown led an effort to reform slavery, as the demand for slave labor in Cuba was growing. The Crown issued a decree, Código Negro Español (Spanish Black Codex), that specified food and clothing provisions, put limits on the number of work hours, limited punishments, required religious instruction, and protected marriages, forbidding the sale of young children away from their mothers.[181] The British made other changes to the institution of slavery in Cuba.[181] But planters often flouted the laws and protested against them, considering them a threat to their authority[181] and an intrusion into their personal lives.[181]
+
+The slaveowners did not protest against all the measures of the codex, many of which they argued were already common practices. They objected to efforts to set limits on their ability to apply physical punishment. For instance, the Black Codex limited whippings to 25 and required the whippings "not to cause serious bruises or bleeding".[181] The slave-owners thought that the slaves would interpret these limits as weaknesses, ultimately leading to resistance.[181] Another contested issue was the work hours that were restricted "from sunrise to sunset"; plantation owners responded by explaining that cutting and processing of cane needed 20-hour days during the harvest season.[181]
+
+Those slaves who worked on sugar plantations and in sugar mills were often subject to the harshest of conditions. The field work was rigorous manual labor which the slaves began at an early age. The work days lasted close to 20 hours during harvest and processing, including cultivating and cutting the crops, hauling wagons, and processing sugarcane with dangerous machinery. The slaves were forced to reside in barracoons, where they were crammed in and locked in by a padlock at night, getting about three to four hours of sleep.  The conditions of the barracoons were harsh; they were highly unsanitary and extremely hot. Typically there was no ventilation; the only window was a small barred hole in the wall.[182]
+
+Cuba's slavery system was gendered in a way that some duties were performed only by male slaves, some only by female slaves. Female slaves in Havana from the 16th century onwards performed duties such as operating the town taverns, eating houses, and lodges, as well as being laundresses and domestic laborers and servants. Female slaves also served as the town prostitutes.
+
+Some Cuban women could gain freedom by having children with white men. As in other Latin cultures, there were looser borders with the mulatto or mixed-race population. Sometimes men who took slaves as wives or concubines freed both them and their children. As in New Orleans and Saint-Domingue, mulattos began to be classified as a third group between the European colonists and African slaves. Freedmen, generally of mixed race, came to represent 20% of the total Cuban population and 41% of the non-white Cuban population.[183]
+
+Planters encouraged Afro-Cuban slaves to have children in order to reproduce their work force. The masters wanted to pair strong and large-built black men with healthy black women. They were placed in the barracoons and forced to have sex and create offspring of “breed stock” children, who would sell for around 500 pesos. The planters needed children to be born to replace slaves who died under the harsh regime. Sometimes if the overseers did not like the quality of children, they separate the parents and sent the mother back to working in the fields.[184]
+
+Both women and men were subject to the punishments of violence and humiliating abuse. Slaves who misbehaved or disobeyed their masters were often placed in stocks in the depths of the boiler houses where they were abandoned for days at a time, and oftentimes two to three months. These wooden stocks were made in two types: lying-down or stand-up types. women were punished, even when pregnant. They were subjected to whippings: they had to lie "face down over a scooped-out piece of round [earth] to protect their bellies." [185] Some masters reportedly whipped pregnant women in the belly, often causing miscarriages. The wounds were treated with “compresses of tobacco leaves, urine and salt." [186]
+
+Slavery in Haiti started with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island in 1492. The practice was devastating to the native population.[187] Following the indigenous Taíno's near decimation from forced labour, disease and war, the Spanish, under advisement of the Catholic priest Bartolomeu de las Casas, and with the blessing of the Catholic church began engaging in earnest in the kidnapped and forced labour of enslaved Africans. During the French colonial period beginning in 1625, the economy of Haiti (then known as Saint-Domingue) was based on slavery, and the practice there was regarded as the most brutal in the world.
+
+Following the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Hispaniola was divided between France and Spain.  France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue.  To develop it into sugarcane plantations, the French imported thousands of slaves from Africa. Sugar was a lucrative commodity crop throughout the 18th century. By 1789, approximately 40,000 white colonists lived in Saint-Domingue. The whites were vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of African slaves they had imported to work on their plantations, which were primarily devoted to the production of sugarcane. In the north of the island, slaves were able to retain many ties to African cultures, religion and language; these ties were continually being renewed by newly imported Africans. Blacks outnumbered whites by about ten to one.
+
+The French-enacted Code Noir ("Black Code"), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, had established rules on slave treatment and permissible freedoms. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years.[188] Many slaves died from diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever.[189] They had birth rates around 3 percent, and there is evidence that some women aborted fetuses, or committed infanticide, rather allow their children to live within the bonds of slavery.[190][191]
+
+As in its Louisiana colony, the French colonial government allowed some rights to free people of color: the mixed-race descendants of white male colonists and black female slaves (and later, mixed-race women). Over time, many were released from slavery. They established a separate social class. White French Creole fathers frequently sent their mixed-race sons to France for their education. Some men of color were admitted into the military. More of the free people of color lived in the south of the island, near Port-au-Prince, and many intermarried within their community. They frequently worked as artisans and tradesmen, and began to own some property. Some became slave holders. The free people of color petitioned the colonial government to expand their rights.
+
+Slaves that made it to Haiti from the trans-Atlantic journey and slaves born in Haiti were first documented in Haiti's archives and transferred to France's Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As of 2015[update], these records are in The National Archives of France. According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 40,000 whites, 30,000 free coloureds and 450,000 slaves.[192]
+
+The Haitian Revolution of 1804, the only successful slave revolt in human history, precipitated the end of slavery in all French colonies.
+
+Jamaica was colonized by the Taino tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. The Spanish enslaved many of the Taino; some escaped, but most died from European diseases and overwork. The Spaniards also introduced the first African slaves.[193]
+
+The Spanish colonists did not bring women in the first expeditions and took Taíno women for their common-law wives, resulting in mestizo children.[194]  Sexual violence with the Taíno women by the Spanish was also common.[195][196]
+
+Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000.
+
+In 1519, Hernán Cortés brought the first modern slave to the area.[197] In the mid-16th century, the second viceroy to Mexico, Luis de Velasco, prohibited slavery of the Aztecs.  A labor shortage resulted as the Aztecs were either killed or died from disease.  This led to the African slaves being imported, as they were not susceptible to smallpox.  In exchange, many Africans were afforded the opportunity to buy their freedom, while eventually others were granted their freedom by their masters.[197]
+
+When Ponce de León and the Spaniards arrived on the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico), they enslaved Taíno tribes on the island, forcing them to work in the gold mines and in the construction of forts. Many Taíno died, particularly from smallpox, of which they had no immunity. Other Taínos committed suicide or left the island after the failed Taíno revolt of 1511.[198]  The Spanish colonists, fearing the loss of their labor force, complained  the courts that they needed manpower. As an alternative, Las Casas suggested the importation and use of African slaves. In 1517, the Spanish Crown permitted its subjects to import twelve slaves each, thereby beginning the slave trade on the colonies.[199]
+
+African slaves were legally branded with a hot iron on the forehead, prevented their "theft" or lawsuits that challenged their captivity.[200]  The colonists continued this branding practice for more than 250 years.[201]  They were sent to work in the gold mines, or in the island's ginger and sugar fields.  They were allowed to live with their families in a hut on the master's land, and given a patch of land where they could farm, but otherwise were subjected to harsh treatment; including sexual abuse as the majority of colonists had arrived without women; many of them intermarried with the Africans or Taínos. Their mixed-race descendants formed the first generations of the early Puerto Rican population.[200]
+
+The slaves faced heavy discrimination and had no opportunity for advancement, though they were educated by their masters.  The Spaniards considered the Africans superior to the Taíno, since the latter were unwilling to assimilate. The slaves, in contrast, had little choice but to adapt. Many converted to Christianity and were given their masters' surnames.[200]
+
+By 1570, the colonists found that the gold mines were depleted, relegating the island to a garrison for passing ships. The cultivation of crops such as tobacco, cotton, cocoa, and ginger became the cornerstone of the economy.[202]  With rising demand for sugar on the international market, major planters increased their labor-intensive cultivation and processing of sugar cane. Sugar plantations supplanted mining as Puerto Rico's main industry and kept demand high for African slavery.[202]
+
+After 1784, Spain provided five ways by which slaves could obtain freedom.[201]  Five years later, the Spanish Crown issued the "Royal Decree of Graces of 1789", which set new rules related to the slave trade and added restrictions to the granting of freedman status. The decree granted its subjects the right to purchase slaves and to participate in the flourishing slave trade in the Caribbean. Later that year a new slave code, also known as El Código Negro (The Black Code), was introduced.[203]
+
+Under "El Código Negro", a slave could buy his freedom, in the event that his master was willing to sell, by paying the price sought in installments. Slaves were allowed to earn money during their spare time by working as shoemakers, cleaning clothes, or selling the produce they grew on their own plots of land. For the freedom of their newborn child, not yet baptized, they paid at half the going price for a baptized child.[203] Many of these freedmen started settlements in the areas which became known as Cangrejos (Santurce), Carolina, Canóvanas, Loíza, and Luquillo. Some became slave owners themselves.[200] Despite these paths to freedom, from 1790 onwards, the number of slaves more than doubled in Puerto Rico as a result of the dramatic expansion of the sugar industry in the island.[202]
+
+On March 22, 1873, slavery was legally abolished in Puerto Rico. However, slaves were not emancipated but rather had to buy their own freedom, at whatever price was set by their last masters. They were also required to work for another three years for their former masters, for other colonists interested in their services, or for the state in order to pay some compensation.[204] Between 1527 and 1873, slaves in Puerto Rico had carried out more than twenty revolts.[205][206]
+
+The planters of the Dutch colony relied heavily on African slaves to cultivate, harvest and process the commodity crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane and cotton plantations along the rivers. Planters' treatment of the slaves was notoriously bad.[207]  Historian C. R. Boxer wrote that "man's inhumanity to man just about reached its limits in Surinam."[208]
+
+Many slaves escaped the plantations.  With the help of the native South Americans living in the adjoining rain forests, these runaway slaves established a new and unique culture in the interior that was highly successful in its own right. They were known collectively in English as Maroons, in French as Nèg'Marrons (literally meaning "brown negroes", that is "pale-skinned negroes"), and in Dutch as Marrons.  The Maroons gradually developed several independent tribes through a process of ethnogenesis, as they were made up of slaves from different African ethnicities. These tribes include the Saramaka,  Paramaka, Ndyuka or Aukan, Kwinti, Aluku or Boni, and Matawai.
+
+The Maroons often raided plantations to recruit new members from the slaves and capture women, as well as to acquire weapons, food and supplies. They sometimes killed planters and their families in the raids.[209]  The colonists also mounted armed campaigns against the Maroons, who generally escaped through the rain forest, which they knew much better than did the coloniss. To end hostilities, in the 18th century the European colonial authorities signed several peace treaties with different tribes. They granted the Maroons sovereign status and trade rights in their inland territories, giving them autonomy.
+
+In 1861–63, President Abraham Lincoln of the United States and his administration looked abroad for places to relocate freed slaves who wanted to leave the United States. It opened negotiations with the Dutch government regarding African-American emigration to and colonization of the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America. Nothing came of it and after 1864, the proposal was dropped.[210]
+
+The Netherlands abolished slavery in Suriname, in 1863, under a gradual process that required slaves to work on plantations for 10 transition years for minimal pay, which was considered as partial compensation for their masters. After 1873, most freedmen largely abandoned the plantations where they had worked for several generations in favor of the capital city, Paramaribo.
+
+Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries after it gained independence from the British and before the end of the American Civil War. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
+
+By the time of the American Revolution, the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry.[211]  The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, represented by the slave and free states divided by the Mason–Dixon line, which separated free Pennsylvania from slave Maryland and Delaware.
+
+Congress, during the Jefferson administration prohibited the importation of slaves, effective 1808, although smuggling (illegal importing) was not unusual.[212] Domestic slave trading, however, continued at a rapid pace, driven by labor demands from the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation. Such laws proposed to Congress to continue the spread of slavery into newly ratified states include the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
+
+The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, times, and places. The power relationships of slavery corrupted many whites who had authority over slaves, with children showing their own cruelty. Masters and overseers resorted to physical punishments to impose their wills. Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was carried out to re-assert the dominance of the master or overseer of the slave.[213] Treatment was usually harsher on large plantations, which were often managed by overseers and owned by absentee slaveholders.
+
+William Wells Brown, who escaped to freedom, reported that on one plantation, slave men were required to pick 80 pounds of cotton per day, while women were required to pick 70 pounds per day; if any slave failed in his or her quota, they were subject to whip lashes for each pound they were short. The whipping post stood next to the cotton scales.[215] A New York man who attended a slave auction in the mid-19th century reported that at least three-quarters of the male slaves he saw at sale had scars on their backs from whipping.[216] By contrast, small slave-owning families had closer relationships between the owners and slaves; this sometimes resulted in a more humane environment but was not a given.[213]
+
+More than one million slaves were sold from the Upper South, which had a surplus of labor, and taken to the Deep South in a forced migration, splitting up many families.  New communities of African-American culture were developed in the Deep South, and the total slave population in the South eventually reached 4 million before liberation.[217][218] In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". White people of that time feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery.  The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against black people increased as they were granted more rights.  Others, like James Henry Hammond argued that slavery was a "positive good" stating: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement."
+
+The Southern state governments wanted to keep a balance between the number of slave and free states to maintain a political balance of power in Congress. The new territories acquired from Britain, France, and Mexico were the subject of major political compromises. By 1850, the newly rich cotton-growing South was threatening to secede from the Union, and tensions continued to rise.  Many white Southern Christians, including church ministers, attempted to justify their support for slavery as modified by Christian paternalism.[219]  The largest denominations, the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South.
+
+When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, according to the 1860 U.S. census, roughly 400,000 individuals, representing 8% of all U.S. families, owned nearly 4,000,000 slaves.[220] One-third of Southern families owned slaves.[221]  The South was heavily invested in slavery.  As such, upon Lincoln's election, seven states broke away to form the Confederate States of America. The first six states to secede held the greatest number of slaves in the South. Shortly after, over the issue of slavery, the United States erupted into an all out Civil War, with slavery legally ceasing as an institution following the war in December 1865.
+
+In 2018, the Orlando Sentinel reported some private Christian schools in Florida as teaching students a creationist curriculum which includes assertions such as, “most black and white southerners had long lived together in harmony” and that “power-hungry individuals stirred up the people” leading to the Civil Rights Movement.[222]
+
+Slavery has existed all throughout Asia, and forms of slavery still exist today.
+
+Slavery has taken various forms throughout China's history. It was reportedly abolished as a legally recognized institution, including in a 1909 law[223][224] fully enacted in 1910,[225]  although the practice continued until at least 1949.[226]
+
+The Tang dynasty purchased Western slaves from the Radhanite Jews.[227] Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved Koreans, Turks, Persians, Indonesians, and people from Inner Mongolia, central Asia, and northern India.[228][229][230][231] The greatest source of slaves came from southern tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. Malays, Khmers, Indians, and "black skinned" peoples (who were either Austronesian Negritos of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, or Africans, or both) were also purchased as slaves in the Tang dynasty.[232]
+
+In the 17th century Qing Dynasty, there was a hereditarily servile people called Booi Aha (Manchu:booi niyalma; Chinese transliteration: 包衣阿哈), which is a Manchu word literally translated as "household person" and sometimes rendered as "nucai." The Manchu was establishing close personal and paternalist relationship between masters and their slaves, as Nurhachi said, "The Master should love the slaves and eat the same food as him".[233]  However,  booi aha "did not correspond exactly to the Chinese category of "bond-servant slave" (Chinese:奴僕); instead, it was a relationship of personal dependency on a master which in theory guaranteed close personal relationships and equal treatment, even though many western scholars would directly translate "booi" as "bond-servant" (some of the "booi" even had their own servant).[234][235]
+
+Chinese Muslim (Tungans) Sufis who were charged with practicing xiejiao (heterodox religion), were punished by exile to Xinjiang and being sold as a slave to other Muslims, such as the Sufi begs.[236] Han Chinese who committed crimes such as those dealing with opium became slaves to the begs, this practice was administered by Qing law.[237] Most Chinese in Altishahr were exile slaves to Turkestani Begs.[238] While free Chinese merchants generally did not engage in relationships with East Turkestani women, some of the Chinese slaves belonging to begs, along with Green Standard soldiers, Bannermen, and Manchus, engaged in affairs with the East Turkestani women that were serious in nature.[239]
+
+Slavery in India was widespread by the 6th century BC, and perhaps even as far back as the Vedic period.[240] Slavery intensified during the Muslim domination of northern India after the 11th-century.[241] Slavery existed in Portuguese India after the 16th century. The Dutch, too, largely dealt in Abyssian slaves, known in India as Habshis or Sheedes.[242] Arakan/Bengal, Malabar, and Coromandel remained the largest sources of forced labour until the 1660s.
+
+Between 1626 and 1662, the Dutch exported on an average 150–400 slaves annually from the Arakan-Bengal coast. During the first 30 years of Batavia's existence, Indian and Arakanese slaves provided the main labour force of the Dutch East India Company, Asian headquarters. An increase in Coromandel slaves occurred during a famine following the revolt of the Nayaka Indian rulers of South India (Tanjavur, Senji, and Madurai) against Bijapur overlordship (1645) and the subsequent devastation of the Tanjavur countryside by the Bijapur army. Reportedly, more than 150,000 people were taken by the invading Deccani Muslim armies to Bijapur and Golconda. In 1646, 2,118 slaves were exported to Batavia, the overwhelming majority from southern Coromandel. Some slaves were also acquired further south at Tondi, Adirampatnam, and Kayalpatnam. Another increase in slaving took place between 1659 and 1661 from Tanjavur as a result of a series of successive Bijapuri raids. At Nagapatnam, Pulicat, and elsewhere, the company purchased 8,000–10,000 slaves, the bulk of whom were sent to Ceylon, while a small portion were exported to Batavia and Malacca. Finally, following a long drought in Madurai and southern Coromandel, in 1673, which intensified the prolonged Madurai-Maratha struggle over Tanjavur and punitive fiscal practices, thousands of people from Tanjavur, mostly children, were sold into slavery and exported by Asian traders from Nagapattinam to Aceh, Johor, and other slave markets.
+
+In September 1687, 665 slaves were exported by the English from Fort St. George, Madras.  And, in 1694–96, when warfare once more ravaged South India, a total of 3,859 slaves were imported from Coromandel by private individuals into Ceylon.[243][244][245][246]
+The volume of the total Dutch Indian Ocean slave trade has been estimated to be about 15–30% of the Atlantic slave trade, slightly smaller than the trans-Saharan slave trade, and one-and-a-half to three times the size of the Swahili and Red Sea coast and the Dutch West India Company slave trades.[247]
+According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 or 9 million slaves in India in 1841. About 15% of the population of Malabar were slaves. Slavery was legally abolished in the possessions of the East India Company by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[3]
+
+The hill tribe people in Indochina were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese (Thai), the Anamites (Vietnamese), and the Cambodians".[248] A Siamese military campaign in Laos in 1876 was described by a British observer as having been "transformed into slave-hunting raids on a large scale".[249] The census, taken in 1879, showed that 6% of the population in the Malay sultanate of Perak were slaves.[250] Enslaved people made up about two-thirds of the population in part of North Borneo in the 1880s.[250]
+
+After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal, throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.[251][252] Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church[253] in 1555. Japanese slave women were even sold as concubines to Asian lascar and African crew members, along with their European counterparts serving on Portuguese ships trading in Japan, mentioned by Luis Cerqueira, a Portuguese Jesuit, in a 1598 document.[254] Japanese slaves were brought by the Portuguese to Macau, where they were enslaved to Portuguese or became slaves to other slaves.[255][256]
+
+Some Korean slaves were bought by the Portuguese and brought back to Portugal from Japan, where they had been among the tens of thousands of Korean prisoners of war transported to Japan during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98).[257][258] Historians pointed out that at the same time Hideyoshi expressed his indignation and outrage at the Portuguese trade in Japanese slaves, he was engaging in a mass slave trade of Korean prisoners of war in Japan.[259][260]
+Fillippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the large slave community in 1578, although most of the slaves were black.[261][262][263][264][265]
+The Portuguese "highly regarded" Asian slaves from the East much more "than slaves from sub-Saharan Africa".[266] The Portuguese attributed qualities like intelligence and industriousness to Chinese and Japanese slaves.[267][268][269][270]
+
+King Sebastian of Portugal feared rampant slavery was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.[271][272]Hideyoshi was so disgusted that his own Japanese people were being sold en masse into slavery on Kyushu, that he wrote a letter to Jesuit Vice-Provincial Gaspar Coelho on July 24, 1587, to demand the Portuguese, Siamese (Thai), and Cambodians stop purchasing and enslaving Japanese and return Japanese slaves who ended up as far as India.[273][274][275] Hideyoshi blamed the Portuguese and Jesuits for this slave trade and banned Christian proselytizing as a result.[276][self-published source][277] In 1595, a law was passed by Portugal banning the selling and buying of Chinese and Japanese slaves.[278]
+
+During the Joseon period, the nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.[81] The nobi system declined beginning in the 18th century.[279] Since the outset of the Joseon dynasty and especially beginning in the 17th century, there was harsh criticism among prominent thinkers in Korea about the nobi system. Even within the Joseon government, there were indications of a shift in attitude toward the nobi.[280] King Yeongjo implemented a policy of gradual emancipation in 1775,[82] and he and his successor King Jeongjo made many proposals and developments that lessened the burden on nobi, which led to the emancipation of the vast majority of government nobi in 1801.[280] In addition, population growth,[82] numerous escaped slaves,[81] growing commercialization of agriculture, and the rise of the independent small farmer class contributed to the decline in the number of nobi to about 1.5% of the total population by 1858.[281] The hereditary nobi system was officially abolished around 1886–87,[81][281] and the rest of the nobi system was abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894.[81][282] However, slavery did not completely disappear in Korea until 1930, during Imperial Japanese rule.
+
+During the Imperial Japanese occupation of Korea around World War II, some Koreans were used in forced labor by the Imperial Japanese, in conditions which have been compared to slavery.[81][283] These included women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II, known as "comfort women".[81][283]
+
+Slaves (he mōkai) had a recognised social role in traditional  Māori society in New Zealand.[284]
+
+Blackbirding occurred in the  Pacific, especially in the 19th century.
+
+In Constantinople, about one-fifth of the population consisted of slaves.[285] The city was a major centre of the slave trade in the 15th and later centuries.
+Slaves were provided by Tatar raids on Slavic villages[286] but also by conquest and the suppression of rebellions, in the aftermath of which entire populations were sometimes enslaved and sold across the Empire, reducing the risk of future rebellion.  The Ottomans also purchased slaves from traders who brought slaves into the Empire from Europe and Africa. It has been estimated that some 200,000 slaves – mainly Circassians – were imported into the Ottoman Empire between 1800 and 1909.[250] As late as 1908, women slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire.[287]
+
+Until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate (a Muslim Tatar state) maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East.[106] The slaves were captured in southern Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Circassia by Tatar horsemen[288] and sold in the Crimean port of Kaffa.[289] About 2 million mostly Christian slaves were exported over the 16th and 17th centuries[290] until the Crimean Khanate was destroyed by the Russian Empire in 1783.[291]
+
+A slave market for captured Russian and Persian slaves was centred in the Central Asian khanate of Khiva.[292] In the early 1840s, the population of the Uzbek states of Bukhara and Khiva included about 900,000 slaves.[250] Darrel P. Kaiser wrote, "Kazakh-Kirghiz tribesmen kidnapped 1573 settlers from colonies [German settlements in Russia] in 1774 alone and only half were successfully ransomed. The rest were killed or enslaved."[293]
+
+Even though slavery is now outlawed in every country, the number of slaves today is estimated as between 12 million and 29.8 million.[294][295][296] According to a broad definition of slavery, there were 27 million people in slavery in 1999, spread all over the world.[297] In 2005, the International Labour Organization provided an estimate of 12.3 million forced labourers.[298] Siddharth Kara has also provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage (18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million).[42] Kara provides a dynamic model to calculate the number of slaves in the world each year, with an estimated 29.2 million at the end of 2009.
+
+According to a 2003 report by Human Rights Watch, an estimated 15 million children in debt bondage in India work in slavery-like conditions to pay off their family's debts.[300][301]
+
+A report by the Walk Free Foundation in 2013,[302] found India had the highest number of slaves, nearly 14 million, followed by China (2.9 million), Pakistan (2.1 million), Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh; while the countries with the highest proportions of slaves were Mauritania, Haiti, Pakistan, India and Nepal.[303]
+
+In June 2013, U.S. State Department released a report on slavery.  It placed Russia, China, and Uzbekistan in the worst offenders category.  Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe were at the lowest level. The list also included Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait among a total of 21 countries.[304][305]
+
+The Walk Free Foundation reported in 2018 that slavery in wealthy Western societies is much more prevalent than previously known, in particular the United States and Great Britain, which have 403,000 (one in 800) and 136,000 slaves respectively. Andrew Forrest, founder of the organization, said that "The United States is one of the most advanced countries in the world yet has more than 400,000 modern slaves working under forced labor conditions."[306] An estimated 40.3 million are enslaved globally, with North Korea having the most slaves at 2.6 million (one in 10). The foundation defines contemporary slavery as "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power, or deception."[307]
+
+During the Second Libyan Civil War, Libyans started capturing Sub-Saharan African migrants trying to get to Europe through Libya and selling them on slave markets or holding them hostage for ransom[308]  Women are often raped, used as sex slaves, or sold to brothels.[309][310][311] Child migrants suffer from abuse and child rape in Libya.[312][313]
+
+In Mauritania, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981), it is estimated that 20% of its 3 million population, are enslaved as bonded laborers.[314][315][316] Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007.[317] However, although slavery, as a practice, was legally banned in 1981, it was not a crime to own a slave until 2007.[318] Although many slaves have escaped or have been freed since 2007, as of 2012[update], only one slave owner had been sentenced to serve time in prison.[319]
+
+While American slaves in 1809 were sold for around $40,000 (in inflation adjusted dollars), a slave nowadays can be bought for just $90, making replacement more economical than providing long-term care.[320] Slavery is a multibillion-dollar industry with estimates of up to $35 billion generated annually.[321]
+
+Victims of human trafficking are typically recruited through deceit or trickery (such as a false job offer, false migration offer, or false marriage offer), sale by family members, recruitment by former slaves, or outright abduction. Victims are forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs to control their victims.[322] "Annually, according to U.S. government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80% of transnational victims are women and girls, and up to 50% are minors, reports the U.S. State Department in a 2008 study.[323]
+
+While the majority of trafficking victims are women who are forced into prostitution (in which case the practice is called sex trafficking), victims also include men, women and children who are forced into manual labour.[324] Because of the illegal nature of human trafficking, its extent is unknown. A U.S. government report, published in 2005, estimates that about 700,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally.[324] Another research effort revealed that roughly 1.5 million individuals are trafficked either internally or internationally each year, of which about 500,000 are sex trafficking victims.[42]
+
+Slavery has existed, in one form or another, throughout recorded human history – as have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves.
+
+Ashoka, who ruled the Maurya Empire in the Indian subcontinent from 269–232 BCE, abolished the slave trade but not slavery.[326] The Qin dynasty, which ruled China from 221 to 206 BC, abolished slavery and discouraged serfdom. However, many of its laws were overturned when the dynasty was overthrown.[327] Slavery was again abolished by Wang Mang in China in 17 CE but was reinstituted after his assassination.[328]
+
+The Spanish colonization of the Americas sparked a discussion about the right to enslave Native Americans. A prominent critic of slavery in the Spanish New World colonies was Bartolomé de las Casas, who opposed the enslavement of Native Americans, and as well as Africans in America.
+
+One of the first protests against slavery came from German and Dutch Quakers in Pennsylvania in 1688.[329] In 1777, Vermont, at the time an independent nation, became the first portion of what would become the United States to abolish slavery.[329]
+
+In the United States, all of the northern states had abolished slavery by 1804, with New Jersey being the last to act.[330] Abolitionist pressure produced a series of small steps towards emancipation. After the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves went into effect on January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited,[331] but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted; most of those slaves already in the U.S. were legally emancipated only in 1863. Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad. Violent clashes between anti-slavery and pro-slavery Americans included Bleeding Kansas, a series of political and armed disputes in 1854–1861 as to whether Kansas would join the United States as a slave or free state. By 1860, the total number of slaves reached almost four million, and the American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in the United States.[332] In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States; the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution prohibited most forms of slavery throughout the country.
+
+Many of the freed slaves became sharecroppers and indentured servants. In this manner, some became tied to the very parcel of land into which they had been born a slave having little freedom or economic opportunity because of Jim Crow laws which perpetuated discrimination, limited education, promoted persecution without due process and resulted in continued poverty. Fear of reprisals such as unjust incarcerations and lynchings deterred upward mobility further.
+
+France abolished slavery in 1794.[329]
+
+One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England in 1772, with British Judge Lord Mansfield, whose opinion in Somersett's Case was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions could not be enforced in England.[333]
+
+Sons of Africa was a late 18th-century British group that campaigned to end slavery. Its members were Africans in London, freed slaves who included Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community. It was closely connected to the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a non-denominational group founded in 1787, whose members included Thomas Clarkson. British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce led the anti-slavery movement in the United Kingdom, although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Clarkson. Wilberforce was urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, to make the issue his own and was also given support by reformed Evangelical John Newton. The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 25, 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire,[334] Wilberforce also campaigned for abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
+
+After the 1807 act abolishing the slave trade was passed, these campaigners switched to encouraging other countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies. Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.[335] Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.[336]
+
+In 1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization, Anti-Slavery International, was formed in Britain by Joseph Sturge, which campaigned to outlaw slavery in other countries.[337] There were celebrations in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom through the work of the British Anti-Slavery Society.
+
+In the 1860s, David Livingstone's reports of atrocities within the Arab slave trade in Africa stirred up the interest of the British public, reviving the flagging abolitionist movement. The Royal Navy throughout the 1870s attempted to suppress "this abominable Eastern trade", at Zanzibar in particular. In 1905, the French abolished indigenous slavery in most of French West Africa.[338]
+
+On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declared freedom from slavery is an internationally recognized human right. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
+
+No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.[339]
+
+In 2014, for the first time in history, major leaders of many religions, Buddhist, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim met to sign a shared commitment against modern-day slavery; the declaration they signed calls for the elimination of slavery and human trafficking by 2020.[340] The signatories were: Pope Francis, Mātā Amṛtānandamayī, Bhikkhuni Thich Nu Chân Không (representing Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh), Datuk K Sri Dhammaratana, Chief High Priest of Malaysia, Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Rabbi David Rosen, Abbas Abdalla Abbas Soliman, Undersecretary of State of Al Azhar Alsharif (representing Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar), Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi, Sheikh Naziyah Razzaq Jaafar, Special advisor of Grand Ayatollah (representing Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Hussain al Najafi), Sheikh Omar Abboud, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Metropolitan Emmanuel of France (representing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.)[340]
+
+Groups such as the American Anti-Slavery Group, Anti-Slavery International, Free the Slaves, the Anti-Slavery Society, and the Norwegian Anti-Slavery Society continue to campaign to eliminate slavery.
+
+On May 21, 2001, the National Assembly of France passed the Taubira law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. Apologies on behalf of African nations, for their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, remain an open issue since slavery was practiced in Africa even before the first Europeans arrived and the Atlantic slave trade was performed with a high degree of involvement of several African societies. The black slave market was supplied by well-established slave trade networks controlled by local African societies and individuals.[341]
+
+There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Calabar and other southern parts of Nigeria had economies depended solely on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans.[342]
+
+Several historians have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.[343]
+
+In 1999, President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin issued a national apology for the central role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade.[344] Luc Gnacadja, minister of environment and housing for Benin, later said: "The slave trade is a shame, and we do repent for it."[345] Researchers estimate that 3 million slaves were exported out of the Slave Coast bordering the Bight of Benin.[345] President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana also apologized for his country's involvement in the slave trade.[344]
+
+The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery and is still being pursued by entities across the world. For example, the Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action plan. In 2007, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a formal apology for Great Britain's involvement in slavery.[346]
+
+On February 25, 2007, the Commonwealth of Virginia resolved to 'profoundly regret' and apologize for its role in the institution of slavery. Unique and the first of its kind in the U.S., the apology was unanimously passed in both Houses as Virginia approached the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown.[347]
+
+On August 24, 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone of London apologized publicly for Britain's role in colonial slave trade. "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery," he said, pointing towards the financial district. He claimed that London was still tainted by the horrors of slavery. Specifically, London outfitted, financed, and insured many of the ships, which helped fund the building of London's docks.[348] Officials in Liverpool, which was a large slave trading port, apologized in 1999.[349]
+
+On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws.[350] In June 2009, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery".[351] The news was welcomed by President Barack Obama, the nation's first president of African descent.[352] Some of President Obama's ancestors may have been slave owners.[353]
+
+In 2010, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi apologized for Arab involvement in the slave trade, saying: "I regret the behavior of the Arabs… They brought African children to North Africa, they made them slaves, they sold them like animals, and they took them as slaves and traded them in a shameful way."[354]
+
+There have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly held as slaves or for their descendants. Claims for reparations for being held in slavery are handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since former slaves' relatives lack of money means they often have limited access to a potentially expensive and futile legal process. Mandatory systems of fines and reparations paid to an as yet undetermined group of claimants from fines, paid by unspecified parties, and collected by authorities have been proposed by advocates to alleviate this "civil court problem." Since in almost all cases there are no living ex-slaves or living ex-slave owners these movements have gained little traction. In nearly all cases the judicial system has ruled that the statute of limitations on these possible claims has long since expired.
+
+The word slavery is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity in which one is coerced into performing. Some argue that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute "state-operated slavery."[355][356] Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery.[357]
+
+"Slavery" has been used by some anti-psychiatry proponents to define involuntary psychiatric patients, claiming there are no unbiased physical tests for mental illness and yet the psychiatric patient must follow the orders of the psychiatrist. They assert that instead of chains to control the slave, the psychiatrist uses drugs to control the mind.[358] Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis for a slave who did not want to be a slave.[359][360]
+
+Some proponents of animal rights have applied the term slavery to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves.[361]
+
+The labor market, as institutionalized under today's market economic systems, has been criticized by mainstream socialists and by anarcho-syndicalists, who utilise the term wage slavery as a pejorative or dysphemism for wage labour.[362][363][364][365][366][367] Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.[368]
+
+Film has been the most influential medium in the presentation of the history of slavery to the general public around the world.[369] The American film industry has had a complex relationship with slavery and until recent decades often avoided the topic. Films such as Birth of a Nation (1915)[370] and Gone with the Wind (1939) became controversial because they gave a favourable depiction. In 1940 The Santa Fe Trail gave a liberal but ambiguous interpretation of John Brown's attacks on slavery.[371] Song of the South gave a favorable outlook on slavery in the United States in 1946.
+
+The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s made defiant slaves into heroes.[372] The question of slavery in American memory necessarily involves its depictions in feature films.[373]
+
+Most Hollywood films used American settings, although Spartacus (1960), dealt with an actual revolt in the Roman Empire known as the Third Servile War. The revolt failed, and all the rebels were executed, but their spirit lived on according to the film.[374] Spartacus stays surprisingly close to the historical record.[375]
+
+The Last Supper (La última cena in Spanish) was a 1976 film directed by Cuban Tomás Gutiérrez Alea about the teaching of Christianity to slaves in Cuba, and emphasizes the role of ritual and revolt. Burn! takes place on the imaginary Portuguese island of Queimada (where the locals speak Spanish) and it merges historical events that took place in Brazil, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and elsewhere.
+
+Historians agree that films have largely shaped historical memories, but they debate issues of accuracy, plausibility, moralism, sensationalism, how facts are stretched in search of broader truths, and suitability for the classroom.[376][377] Berlin argues that critics complain if the treatment emphasizes historical brutality, or if it glosses over the harshness to highlight the emotional impact of slavery.[378]

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+Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property.[1] An enslaved person is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalized, de jure slavery.
+
+In a broader sense, however, the word "slavery" may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will. To describe such circumstances, scholars may use such alternate terms as unfree labour or forced labour.[2]
+
+Under the broader use of the term slavery, but also in certain cases of actual de jure (chattel) slavery, local laws and/or customs may vest the enslaved with limited rights and protections.
+
+Slavery has existed in many cultures, dating back to early human civilizations.[3] It was legal in most societies at some time in the past but is now outlawed in all recognized countries.[4][5] Nevertheless, as of 2019 there were an estimated 40 million people worldwide subject to some form of slavery, 25% of them children.[6] More than half of modern slaves are used for forced labor, mostly in the private sector.[6] The most common form of modern slave trade is commonly referred to as human trafficking. In some areas of the world, slavery continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most common source of modern slaves;[2] serfdom; domestic servants kept in captivity; certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves; child soldiers; and forced marriage.[7]
+
+The word slave is derived from the ethnonym (ethnic name) Slav.[8][9][10] It arrived in English via the Old French sclave. In Medieval Latin the word was sclavus and in Byzantine Greek σκλάβος.[8] Use of the word arose during the Early Medieval Period, when Slavs from Central and Eastern Europe (Saqaliba) were frequently enslaved by Moors from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.[11][12][13] An older interpretation connected slave to the Greek verb skyleúo 'to strip a slain enemy'.[14]
+
+There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as "unfree labourer" or enslaved person, rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language; by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were". Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with "person" implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow.[15]
+
+Indenture, otherwise known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour under which a person pledges himself or herself against a loan.[16] The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined.[16] Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt.[16] It is the most widespread form of slavery today.[2] Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia.[17]
+
+Chattel slavery, also called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel (personal property) of the owner and are bought and sold as commodities. Typically, under the chattel slave system, children inherited slave status via the mother (partus sequitur ventrem).[18] Although it dominated many different societies throughout human history, this form of slavery has been formally abolished and is very rare today. Even when it can be said to survive, it is not upheld by the legal system of any internationally recognized government.[19]
+
+"Slavery" has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else.[20][21] For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens.[22]
+
+Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to describe an individual who is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment, but the generic term unfree labour is also used to describe chattel slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will, and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person.[2] This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription and penal labour. While some unfree labourers, such as serfs, have substantive, de jure legal or traditional rights, they also have no ability to terminate the arrangements under which they work and are frequently subject to forms of coercion, violence, and restrictions on their activities and movement outside their place of work.
+
+Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children.[2][23][24] Examples of sexual slavery, often in military contexts, include detention in "rape camps" or "comfort stations," "comfort women", forced "marriages" to soldiers and other practices involving the treatment of women or men as chattel and, as such, violations of the peremptory norm prohibiting slavery.[25][26][27][28]
+
+In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts.[29] More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labor, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty[30] such as in restaveks in Haiti.
+
+Forced marriages or early marriages are often considered types of slavery. Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West.[31][32][33][34] Sacred prostitution is where girls and women are pledged to priests or those of higher castes, such as the practice of Devadasi in South Asia or fetish slaves in West Africa.[2] Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a national average of 69% of marriages in Ethiopia being through abduction.[35]
+
+Economists have attempted to model the circumstances under which slavery (and variants such as serfdom) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for landowners where land is abundant but labour is scarce, such that rent is depressed and paid workers can demand high wages. If the opposite holds true, then it becomes more costly for landowners to have guards for the slaves than to employ paid workers who can only demand low wages because of the amount of competition.[36] Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew but were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia as large areas of new land with few people became available.[37]
+
+Slavery is more common when the labor done is relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large-scale growing of a single crop, like sugar and cotton, in which output was based on economies of scale. This enables such systems of labor, such as the gang system in the United States, to become prominent on large plantations where field hands were monitored and worked with factory-like precision. For example, each work gang was based on an internal division of labour that assigned every member of the gang to a precise task and simultaneously made their own performance dependent on the actions of the others. The hoe hands chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excessive sprouts. The plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the rows of cotton plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an assembly line.[38]
+
+Since the 18th century, critics have argued that slavery tends to retard technological advancement because the focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading the efficiency of labour. For example, it is sometime argued that, because of this narrow focus, theoretical knowledge and learning in Greece – and later in Rome – was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing.[39]
+
+Scottish economist Adam Smith states that free labour was economically better than slave labour, and that it is nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic, or republican form of government since many of its legislators or political figures were slave owners, and would not punish themselves.  He further states that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom when there was centralized government, or a central authority like a king or the church.[40][41] Similar arguments appear later in the works of Auguste Comte, especially when it comes to Smith's belief in the separation of powers, or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith states in the Lectures on Jurisprudence, "The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of the king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues..."
+
+Worldwide, slavery is a criminal offense, but slave owners can get very high returns for their risk. According to researcher Siddharth Kara, the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were $91.2 billion. That is second only to drug trafficking, in terms of global criminal enterprises. Currently, the weighted average global sales price of a slave is calculated to be approximately $340, with a high of $1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $40 to $50 for debt bondage slaves in part of Asia and Africa.[42] The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $3,175, with a low of an average $950 for bonded labor and $29,210 for a trafficked sex slave.[42] Approximately 40% of slave profits each year are generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of the world's 29 million slaves.[42]
+
+Throughout history, slaves were clothed in a distinctive fashion, particularly with respect to the frequent lack of footwear, as they were rather commonly forced to go barefoot. This was partly because of economic reasons but also served as a distinguishing feature, especially in South Africa and South America. For example, the Cape Town slave code stated that "Slaves must go barefoot and must carry passes."[43] It also puts slaves at a physical disadvantage because of the lack of protection against environmental adversities and also in situations of possible confrontation, thereby making it more difficult to escape or to rebel against their owners.
+
+This was the case in the majority of states that abolished slavery later in history, as most images from the respective historical period suggest that slaves were barefoot.[44]
+To quote Brother Riemer (1779): "[the slaves] are, even in their most beautiful suit, obliged to go barefoot. Slaves were forbidden to wear shoes. This was a prime mark of distinction between the free and the bonded and no exceptions were permitted."[45]
+
+According to the Bible, shoes have been considered badges of freedom since antiquity: "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put [it] on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on [his] feet" (Luke 15:22). This aspect can be viewed as an informal law in areas where slavery existed as any person sighted barefoot in public would be conclusively regarded as a slave.
+
+In certain societies this rule is valid to this day. As with the Tuareg, where slavery is still unofficially practiced, their slaves are constantly forced to remain barefoot as a recognition mark. Mainly through their bare feet their societal status and rank opposite their owners is displayed to the public in a plainly visible way.[46]
+
+Another widespread practice was branding the slaves either to generally mark them as property or as punishment usually reserved for fugitives.
+
+Some scholars differentiate between ancient forms of slavery and the large-scale, largely race-based slavery which grew to immense proportions starting in the 14th century. The first type of slavery, sometimes called "just title servitude," was suffered by prisoners of war, debtors, and other vulnerable people.[47] The second, race-based type of slavery was argued even by some contemporary writers to be intrinsically immoral.[48][49][50]
+
+Evidence of slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures.[3]  Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Thus, although it has existed among unusually resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as the American Indian peoples of the salmon-rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest Coast, slavery became widespread only with the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago.[51]
+
+In the earliest known records, slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), for example, prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive.[52] The Bible mentions slavery as an established institution.[3] Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization and society.[3] Such institutions included debt bondage, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves.[53]
+
+Slavery existed in Pharaonic Egypt, but studying it is complicated by terminology used by the Egyptians to refer to different classes of servitude over the course of history. Interpretation of the textual evidence of classes of slaves in ancient Egypt has been difficult to differentiate by word usage alone.[54][55] There were three apparent types of enslavement in Ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labor, and forced labor.[56][57][58]
+
+Slavery is known to have existed in ancient China as early as the Shang dynasty.[59] Slavery was largely employed by governments as a means of maintaining a public labor force.[60][61]
+
+Records of slavery in Ancient Greece date as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is certain that Classical Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.[62]  As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Slaves were used for labour, as well as for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War, led by Spartacus, (a Thracian) being the most famous.
+
+By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome, as well as a very significant part of Roman society.[63] It is estimated that 25% or more of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved, although the actual percentage is debated by scholars and varied from region to region.[64][65] Slaves represented 15–25% of Italy's population,[66] mostly captives in war,[66] especially from Gaul[67] and Epirus. Estimates of the number of slaves in the Roman Empire suggest that the majority of slaves were scattered throughout the provinces outside of Italy.[66] Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians,[68] with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) born outside of Italy estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Those from outside of Europe were predominantly of Greek descent, while the Jewish ones never fully assimilated into Roman society, remaining an identifiable minority. These slaves (especially the foreigners) had higher death rates and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions.[69] The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).[70][page needed]
+
+Slavery was widespread in Africa, with both internal and external slave trade.[71] In the Senegambia region, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sahel, including Ghana, Mali, Segou, and Songhai, about a third of the population were enslaved.[72]
+
+The Arab slave trade, across the Sahara desert and across the Indian Ocean, began after Muslim Arab and Swahili traders won control of the Swahili Coast and sea routes during the 9th century (see Sultanate of Zanzibar). These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast.[74][75] There, the slaves gradually assimilated in the rural areas, particularly on the Unguja and Pemba islands.[76]
+
+Slavery in Mexico can be traced back to the Aztecs.[77] Other Amerindians, such as the Inca of the Andes, the Tupinambá of Brazil, the Creek of Georgia, and the Comanche of Texas, also owned slaves.[3]
+
+Many Han Chinese were enslaved in the process of the Mongol invasion of China proper.[78] According to Japanese historians Sugiyama Masaaki (杉山正明) and Funada Yoshiyuki (舩田善之), there were also a certain number of Mongolian slaves owned by Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty. Moreover, there is no evidence that the Han Chinese, who were at the bottom of Yuan society according to some research, suffered particularly cruel abuse.[79][80]
+
+Slavery in Korea existed since before the Three Kingdoms of Korea period, approximately 2,000 years ago.[81] Slavery has been described as "very important in medieval Korea, probably more important than in any other East Asian country, but by the 16th century, population growth was making [it] unnecessary".[82] Slavery went into decline around the 10th century but came back in the late Goryeo period when Korea also experienced a number of slave rebellions.[81]
+
+In the Joseon period of Korea, members of the slave class were known as nobi. The nobi were socially indistinct from freemen (i.e., the middle and common classes) other than the ruling yangban class, and some possessed property rights, legal entities and civil rights. Hence, some scholars argue that it is inappropriate to call them "slaves",[83] while some scholars describe them as serfs.[84][85] The nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.[86] In 1801, the vast majority of government nobi were emancipated,[87] and by 1858 the nobi population stood at about 1.5 percent of the total population of Korea.[88]
+
+Slavery largely disappeared from Western Europe in the Middle Ages but persisted longer in Eastern Europe.[89] Large-scale trading in slaves was mainly confined to the South and East of early medieval Europe: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, while pagan Central and Eastern Europe (along with the Caucasus and Tartary) were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek, and Radhanite Jewish merchants were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.[90][91][92] The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century following the Zanj Rebellion which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab world.[93][94]
+
+Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it, or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands, as for example at the Council of Koblenz (922), the Council of London (1102) (which aimed mainly at the sale of English slaves to Ireland)[95] and the Council of Armagh (1171). Serfdom, on the contrary, was widely accepted. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting the kings of Spain and Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens (Muslims), pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, legitimizing the slave trade as a result of war.[96] The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455.
+
+In Britain, slavery continued to be practiced following the fall of Rome, and sections of Hywel the Good's laws dealt with slaves in medieval Wales. The trade particularly picked up after the Viking invasions, with major markets at Chester[97] and Bristol[98] supplied by Danish, Mercian, and Welsh raiding of one another's borderlands. At the time of the Domesday Book, nearly 10% of the English population were slaves.[99] William the Conqueror introduced a law preventing the sale of slaves overseas.[100] According to historian John Gillingham, by 1200 slavery in the British Isles was non-existent.[101] The slave trade was abolished by the Slave Trade Act 1807, although slavery remained legal in possessions outside Europe until the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[102]
+
+The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of slaves into the Islamic world.[103] To staff its bureaucracy, the Ottoman Empire established a janissary system which seized hundreds of thousands of Christian boys through the devşirme system. They were well cared for but were legally slaves owned by the government and were not allowed to marry. They were never bought or sold. The empire gave them significant administrative and military roles. The system began about 1365; there were 135,000 janissaries in 1826, when the system ended.[104]
+
+After the Battle of Lepanto, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were recaptured and freed from the Ottoman fleet.[105] Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves into jasyr.[106] Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into Poland–Lithuania between 1474 and 1569.[107]
+
+Slavery in Poland was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second serfdom.
+
+Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant Muslim invasion of the predominantly Christian area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal, in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.[108] From the 11th to the 19th century, North African Barbary Pirates engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns, to capture Christian slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria and Morocco.[109][110]
+The maritime town of Lagos was the first slave market created in Portugal (one of the earliest colonizers of the Americas) for the sale of imported African slaves – the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444.[111][112] In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania.[112]
+
+By 1552, black African slaves made up 10% of the population of Lisbon.[113][114] In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade, and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas – especially Brazil.[112] In the 15th century one-third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.[115]
+
+In Kievan Rus and Muscovy, slaves were usually classified as kholops. According to David P. Forsythe, "In 1649 up to three-quarters of Muscovy's peasants, or 13 to 14 million people, were serfs whose material lives were barely distinguishable from slaves. Perhaps another 1.5 million were formally enslaved, with Russian slaves serving Russian masters."[117] Slavery remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679.[118]
+
+In Scandinavia, thralldom was abolished in the mid-14th century.[119]
+
+During the Second World War Nazi Germany effectively enslaved about 12 million people, both those considered undesirable and citizens of conquered countries, with the avowed intention of treating these Untermenschen (sub-humans) as a permanent slave-class of inferior beings who could be worked until they died, and who possessed neither the rights nor the legal status of members of the Aryan race.[120]
+
+The Arab slave trade lasted more than a millennium.[121] As recently as the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 300,000.[122] Along with Yemen, the Saudis abolished slavery in 1962.[123] Historically, slaves in the Arab World came from many different regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly Zanj),[124] the Caucasus (mainly Circassians),[125] Central Asia (mainly Tartars), and Central and Eastern Europe (mainly Saqaliba).[126]
+
+Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900.[127] The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year.[76][128][129] The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, Bantu slaves bought by Arab slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, European colonies in the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands, Ethiopia and Somalia.[130]
+
+According to the Encyclopedia of African History, "It is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labor was extensive, especially in agriculture."[131][132] The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of 8 to 16 million.[133]
+
+Slave labor in East Africa was drawn from the Zanj, Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast.[75][134] The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers in Iraq. The Zanj Rebellion, a series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 near Basra (also known as Basara), situated in present-day Iraq, is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa.[135] It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq".[136]
+The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work.[137] As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, agriculture and other manual labor work was thought to be demeaning. The resulting labor shortage led to an increased slave market.
+
+In Algiers, the capital of Algeria, captured Christians and Europeans were forced into slavery. In about 1650, there were as many as 35,000 Christian slaves in Algiers.[138] By one estimate, raids by Barbary pirates on coastal villages and ships extending from Italy to Iceland, enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.25 million Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries.[139][140][141] However, to this estimate is extrapolated by assuming the number of European, slaves captured by Barbary pirates, was constant for 250 years period:
+
+There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers – about 850,000 captives over the century from 1580 to 1680.  By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000.[142]
+
+Davis' numbers have been refuted by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe.[142] In addition, the number of slaves traded was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia.  Hence, there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given slave imports, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records.  Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation.[143] Such observations, across the late 16th and early 17th century observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers.  However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy.[144] This eventually led to the bombardment of Algiers by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816.[145][146]
+
+Under Omani Arabs, Zanzibar became East Africa's main slave port, with as many as 50,000 enslaved Africans passing through every year during the 19th century.[147][148] Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 AD.[3][149] Eduard Rüppell described the losses of Sudanese slaves being transported on foot to Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5,000 made it to Egypt.."[150] W.A. Veenhoven wrote: "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal, an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on the way ... Keltie (The Partition of Africa, London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone puts the figure as high as ten to one."[151]
+
+Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. The forms of slavery in Africa were closely related to kinship structures. In many African communities, where land could not be owned, enslavement of individuals was used as a means to increase the influence a person had and expand connections.[152] This made slaves a permanent part of a master's lineage and the children of slaves could become closely connected with the larger family ties.[153] Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master's kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances.  However, stigma often remained attached and there could be strict separations between slave members of a kinship group and those related to the master.[152] Slavery was practiced in many different forms: debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa.[154] Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa.
+
+When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique:
+
+The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean.[155]
+
+The trans-Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms, such as the Oyo Empire (Yoruba), the Ashanti Empire,[156] the kingdom of Dahomey,[157] and the Aro Confederacy.[158]  It is estimated that about 15 percent of slaves died during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships.[159][160]
+
+Slavery in America remains a contentious issue and played a major role in the history and evolution of some countries, triggering a revolution, a civil war, and numerous rebellions.
+
+In order to establish itself as an American empire, Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. The Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour. The Spanish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola.[161] Bartolomé de las Casas, a 16th-century Dominican friar and Spanish historian, participated in campaigns in Cuba (at Bayamo and Camagüey) and was present at the massacre of Hatuey; his observation of that massacre led him to fight for a social movement away from the use of natives as slaves. Also, the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population. The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.[162] England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates.
+
+Many Africans who arrived in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came under contract as indentured servants.[163] The transformation from indentured servitude to slavery was a gradual process in Virginia. The earliest legal documentation of such a shift was in 1640 where a negro, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime slavery, forcing him to serve his master, Hugh Gwyn, for the remainder of his life, for attempting to run away. This case was significant because it established the disparity between his sentence as a black man and that of the two white indentured servants who escaped with him (one described as Dutch and one as a Scotchman). It is the first documented case of a black man sentenced to lifetime servitude and is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants.[164][165][166][167][168]
+
+After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts and keep their servants as slaves for life. This was demonstrated by the 1655 case Johnson v. Parker, where the court ruled that a black man, Anthony Johnson of Virginia, was granted ownership of another black man, John Casor, as the result of a civil case.[169]  This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.[170][171][172][173][174][175][176]
+
+In the early 17th century, the majority of the labour in Barbados was provided by European indentured servants, mainly English, Irish and Scottish, with enslaved Africans and enslaved Amerindians providing little of the workforce. The introduction of sugar cane from Dutch Brazil in 1640 completely transformed society and the economy. Barbados eventually had one of the world's largest sugar industries.[177]
+
+As the effects of the new crop increased, so did the shift in the ethnic composition of Barbados and surrounding islands. The workable sugar plantation required a large investment and a great deal of heavy labour. At first, Dutch traders supplied the equipment, financing, and enslaved Africans, in addition to transporting most of the sugar to Europe. In 1644, the population of Barbados was estimated at 30,000, of which about 800 were of African descent, with the remainder mainly of English descent. These English smallholders were eventually bought out, and the island filled up with large sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. By 1660, there was near parity with 27,000 blacks and 26,000 whites. By 1666, at least 12,000 white smallholders had been bought out, died, or left the island. Many of the remaining whites were increasingly poor. By 1680, there were 17 slaves for every indentured servant. By 1700, there were 15,000 free whites and 50,000 enslaved Africans.
+
+Because of the increased implementation of slave codes, which created differential treatment between Africans and the white workers and ruling planter class, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. Black or slave codes were implemented in 1661, 1676, 1682, and 1688. In response to these codes, several slave rebellions were attempted or planned during this time, but none succeeded. Nevertheless, poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so. Planters expanded their importation of enslaved Africans to cultivate sugar cane.
+
+Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement was established in 1532, as members of one tribe would enslave captured members of another.[178]
+
+Later, Portuguese colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions called bandeiras. The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries.
+
+During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any other country. Nearly 5 million slaves were brought from Africa to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866.[179] Until the early 1850s, most enslaved Africans who arrived on Brazilian shores were forced to embark at West Central African ports, especially in Luanda (present-day Angola). Today, with the exception of Nigeria, the largest population of people of African descent is in Brazil.[180]
+
+Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650. Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market. Transportation systems were developed for the mining infrastructure, and population boomed from immigrants seeking to take part in gold and diamond mining. Demand for African slaves did not wane after the decline of the mining industry in the second half of the 18th century. Cattle ranching and foodstuff production proliferated after the population growth, both of which relied heavily on slave labor. 1.7 million slaves were imported to Brazil from Africa from 1700 to 1800, and the rise of coffee in the 1830s further enticed expansion of the slave trade.
+
+Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery. Forty percent of the total number of slaves brought to the Americas were sent to Brazil. For reference, the United States received 10 percent. Despite being abolished, there are still people working in slavery-like conditions in Brazil in the 21st century.
+
+In 1789 the Spanish Crown led an effort to reform slavery, as the demand for slave labor in Cuba was growing. The Crown issued a decree, Código Negro Español (Spanish Black Codex), that specified food and clothing provisions, put limits on the number of work hours, limited punishments, required religious instruction, and protected marriages, forbidding the sale of young children away from their mothers.[181] The British made other changes to the institution of slavery in Cuba.[181] But planters often flouted the laws and protested against them, considering them a threat to their authority[181] and an intrusion into their personal lives.[181]
+
+The slaveowners did not protest against all the measures of the codex, many of which they argued were already common practices. They objected to efforts to set limits on their ability to apply physical punishment. For instance, the Black Codex limited whippings to 25 and required the whippings "not to cause serious bruises or bleeding".[181] The slave-owners thought that the slaves would interpret these limits as weaknesses, ultimately leading to resistance.[181] Another contested issue was the work hours that were restricted "from sunrise to sunset"; plantation owners responded by explaining that cutting and processing of cane needed 20-hour days during the harvest season.[181]
+
+Those slaves who worked on sugar plantations and in sugar mills were often subject to the harshest of conditions. The field work was rigorous manual labor which the slaves began at an early age. The work days lasted close to 20 hours during harvest and processing, including cultivating and cutting the crops, hauling wagons, and processing sugarcane with dangerous machinery. The slaves were forced to reside in barracoons, where they were crammed in and locked in by a padlock at night, getting about three to four hours of sleep.  The conditions of the barracoons were harsh; they were highly unsanitary and extremely hot. Typically there was no ventilation; the only window was a small barred hole in the wall.[182]
+
+Cuba's slavery system was gendered in a way that some duties were performed only by male slaves, some only by female slaves. Female slaves in Havana from the 16th century onwards performed duties such as operating the town taverns, eating houses, and lodges, as well as being laundresses and domestic laborers and servants. Female slaves also served as the town prostitutes.
+
+Some Cuban women could gain freedom by having children with white men. As in other Latin cultures, there were looser borders with the mulatto or mixed-race population. Sometimes men who took slaves as wives or concubines freed both them and their children. As in New Orleans and Saint-Domingue, mulattos began to be classified as a third group between the European colonists and African slaves. Freedmen, generally of mixed race, came to represent 20% of the total Cuban population and 41% of the non-white Cuban population.[183]
+
+Planters encouraged Afro-Cuban slaves to have children in order to reproduce their work force. The masters wanted to pair strong and large-built black men with healthy black women. They were placed in the barracoons and forced to have sex and create offspring of “breed stock” children, who would sell for around 500 pesos. The planters needed children to be born to replace slaves who died under the harsh regime. Sometimes if the overseers did not like the quality of children, they separate the parents and sent the mother back to working in the fields.[184]
+
+Both women and men were subject to the punishments of violence and humiliating abuse. Slaves who misbehaved or disobeyed their masters were often placed in stocks in the depths of the boiler houses where they were abandoned for days at a time, and oftentimes two to three months. These wooden stocks were made in two types: lying-down or stand-up types. women were punished, even when pregnant. They were subjected to whippings: they had to lie "face down over a scooped-out piece of round [earth] to protect their bellies." [185] Some masters reportedly whipped pregnant women in the belly, often causing miscarriages. The wounds were treated with “compresses of tobacco leaves, urine and salt." [186]
+
+Slavery in Haiti started with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island in 1492. The practice was devastating to the native population.[187] Following the indigenous Taíno's near decimation from forced labour, disease and war, the Spanish, under advisement of the Catholic priest Bartolomeu de las Casas, and with the blessing of the Catholic church began engaging in earnest in the kidnapped and forced labour of enslaved Africans. During the French colonial period beginning in 1625, the economy of Haiti (then known as Saint-Domingue) was based on slavery, and the practice there was regarded as the most brutal in the world.
+
+Following the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Hispaniola was divided between France and Spain.  France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue.  To develop it into sugarcane plantations, the French imported thousands of slaves from Africa. Sugar was a lucrative commodity crop throughout the 18th century. By 1789, approximately 40,000 white colonists lived in Saint-Domingue. The whites were vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of African slaves they had imported to work on their plantations, which were primarily devoted to the production of sugarcane. In the north of the island, slaves were able to retain many ties to African cultures, religion and language; these ties were continually being renewed by newly imported Africans. Blacks outnumbered whites by about ten to one.
+
+The French-enacted Code Noir ("Black Code"), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, had established rules on slave treatment and permissible freedoms. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years.[188] Many slaves died from diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever.[189] They had birth rates around 3 percent, and there is evidence that some women aborted fetuses, or committed infanticide, rather allow their children to live within the bonds of slavery.[190][191]
+
+As in its Louisiana colony, the French colonial government allowed some rights to free people of color: the mixed-race descendants of white male colonists and black female slaves (and later, mixed-race women). Over time, many were released from slavery. They established a separate social class. White French Creole fathers frequently sent their mixed-race sons to France for their education. Some men of color were admitted into the military. More of the free people of color lived in the south of the island, near Port-au-Prince, and many intermarried within their community. They frequently worked as artisans and tradesmen, and began to own some property. Some became slave holders. The free people of color petitioned the colonial government to expand their rights.
+
+Slaves that made it to Haiti from the trans-Atlantic journey and slaves born in Haiti were first documented in Haiti's archives and transferred to France's Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As of 2015[update], these records are in The National Archives of France. According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 40,000 whites, 30,000 free coloureds and 450,000 slaves.[192]
+
+The Haitian Revolution of 1804, the only successful slave revolt in human history, precipitated the end of slavery in all French colonies.
+
+Jamaica was colonized by the Taino tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. The Spanish enslaved many of the Taino; some escaped, but most died from European diseases and overwork. The Spaniards also introduced the first African slaves.[193]
+
+The Spanish colonists did not bring women in the first expeditions and took Taíno women for their common-law wives, resulting in mestizo children.[194]  Sexual violence with the Taíno women by the Spanish was also common.[195][196]
+
+Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000.
+
+In 1519, Hernán Cortés brought the first modern slave to the area.[197] In the mid-16th century, the second viceroy to Mexico, Luis de Velasco, prohibited slavery of the Aztecs.  A labor shortage resulted as the Aztecs were either killed or died from disease.  This led to the African slaves being imported, as they were not susceptible to smallpox.  In exchange, many Africans were afforded the opportunity to buy their freedom, while eventually others were granted their freedom by their masters.[197]
+
+When Ponce de León and the Spaniards arrived on the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico), they enslaved Taíno tribes on the island, forcing them to work in the gold mines and in the construction of forts. Many Taíno died, particularly from smallpox, of which they had no immunity. Other Taínos committed suicide or left the island after the failed Taíno revolt of 1511.[198]  The Spanish colonists, fearing the loss of their labor force, complained  the courts that they needed manpower. As an alternative, Las Casas suggested the importation and use of African slaves. In 1517, the Spanish Crown permitted its subjects to import twelve slaves each, thereby beginning the slave trade on the colonies.[199]
+
+African slaves were legally branded with a hot iron on the forehead, prevented their "theft" or lawsuits that challenged their captivity.[200]  The colonists continued this branding practice for more than 250 years.[201]  They were sent to work in the gold mines, or in the island's ginger and sugar fields.  They were allowed to live with their families in a hut on the master's land, and given a patch of land where they could farm, but otherwise were subjected to harsh treatment; including sexual abuse as the majority of colonists had arrived without women; many of them intermarried with the Africans or Taínos. Their mixed-race descendants formed the first generations of the early Puerto Rican population.[200]
+
+The slaves faced heavy discrimination and had no opportunity for advancement, though they were educated by their masters.  The Spaniards considered the Africans superior to the Taíno, since the latter were unwilling to assimilate. The slaves, in contrast, had little choice but to adapt. Many converted to Christianity and were given their masters' surnames.[200]
+
+By 1570, the colonists found that the gold mines were depleted, relegating the island to a garrison for passing ships. The cultivation of crops such as tobacco, cotton, cocoa, and ginger became the cornerstone of the economy.[202]  With rising demand for sugar on the international market, major planters increased their labor-intensive cultivation and processing of sugar cane. Sugar plantations supplanted mining as Puerto Rico's main industry and kept demand high for African slavery.[202]
+
+After 1784, Spain provided five ways by which slaves could obtain freedom.[201]  Five years later, the Spanish Crown issued the "Royal Decree of Graces of 1789", which set new rules related to the slave trade and added restrictions to the granting of freedman status. The decree granted its subjects the right to purchase slaves and to participate in the flourishing slave trade in the Caribbean. Later that year a new slave code, also known as El Código Negro (The Black Code), was introduced.[203]
+
+Under "El Código Negro", a slave could buy his freedom, in the event that his master was willing to sell, by paying the price sought in installments. Slaves were allowed to earn money during their spare time by working as shoemakers, cleaning clothes, or selling the produce they grew on their own plots of land. For the freedom of their newborn child, not yet baptized, they paid at half the going price for a baptized child.[203] Many of these freedmen started settlements in the areas which became known as Cangrejos (Santurce), Carolina, Canóvanas, Loíza, and Luquillo. Some became slave owners themselves.[200] Despite these paths to freedom, from 1790 onwards, the number of slaves more than doubled in Puerto Rico as a result of the dramatic expansion of the sugar industry in the island.[202]
+
+On March 22, 1873, slavery was legally abolished in Puerto Rico. However, slaves were not emancipated but rather had to buy their own freedom, at whatever price was set by their last masters. They were also required to work for another three years for their former masters, for other colonists interested in their services, or for the state in order to pay some compensation.[204] Between 1527 and 1873, slaves in Puerto Rico had carried out more than twenty revolts.[205][206]
+
+The planters of the Dutch colony relied heavily on African slaves to cultivate, harvest and process the commodity crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane and cotton plantations along the rivers. Planters' treatment of the slaves was notoriously bad.[207]  Historian C. R. Boxer wrote that "man's inhumanity to man just about reached its limits in Surinam."[208]
+
+Many slaves escaped the plantations.  With the help of the native South Americans living in the adjoining rain forests, these runaway slaves established a new and unique culture in the interior that was highly successful in its own right. They were known collectively in English as Maroons, in French as Nèg'Marrons (literally meaning "brown negroes", that is "pale-skinned negroes"), and in Dutch as Marrons.  The Maroons gradually developed several independent tribes through a process of ethnogenesis, as they were made up of slaves from different African ethnicities. These tribes include the Saramaka,  Paramaka, Ndyuka or Aukan, Kwinti, Aluku or Boni, and Matawai.
+
+The Maroons often raided plantations to recruit new members from the slaves and capture women, as well as to acquire weapons, food and supplies. They sometimes killed planters and their families in the raids.[209]  The colonists also mounted armed campaigns against the Maroons, who generally escaped through the rain forest, which they knew much better than did the coloniss. To end hostilities, in the 18th century the European colonial authorities signed several peace treaties with different tribes. They granted the Maroons sovereign status and trade rights in their inland territories, giving them autonomy.
+
+In 1861–63, President Abraham Lincoln of the United States and his administration looked abroad for places to relocate freed slaves who wanted to leave the United States. It opened negotiations with the Dutch government regarding African-American emigration to and colonization of the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America. Nothing came of it and after 1864, the proposal was dropped.[210]
+
+The Netherlands abolished slavery in Suriname, in 1863, under a gradual process that required slaves to work on plantations for 10 transition years for minimal pay, which was considered as partial compensation for their masters. After 1873, most freedmen largely abandoned the plantations where they had worked for several generations in favor of the capital city, Paramaribo.
+
+Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries after it gained independence from the British and before the end of the American Civil War. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
+
+By the time of the American Revolution, the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry.[211]  The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, represented by the slave and free states divided by the Mason–Dixon line, which separated free Pennsylvania from slave Maryland and Delaware.
+
+Congress, during the Jefferson administration prohibited the importation of slaves, effective 1808, although smuggling (illegal importing) was not unusual.[212] Domestic slave trading, however, continued at a rapid pace, driven by labor demands from the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation. Such laws proposed to Congress to continue the spread of slavery into newly ratified states include the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
+
+The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, times, and places. The power relationships of slavery corrupted many whites who had authority over slaves, with children showing their own cruelty. Masters and overseers resorted to physical punishments to impose their wills. Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was carried out to re-assert the dominance of the master or overseer of the slave.[213] Treatment was usually harsher on large plantations, which were often managed by overseers and owned by absentee slaveholders.
+
+William Wells Brown, who escaped to freedom, reported that on one plantation, slave men were required to pick 80 pounds of cotton per day, while women were required to pick 70 pounds per day; if any slave failed in his or her quota, they were subject to whip lashes for each pound they were short. The whipping post stood next to the cotton scales.[215] A New York man who attended a slave auction in the mid-19th century reported that at least three-quarters of the male slaves he saw at sale had scars on their backs from whipping.[216] By contrast, small slave-owning families had closer relationships between the owners and slaves; this sometimes resulted in a more humane environment but was not a given.[213]
+
+More than one million slaves were sold from the Upper South, which had a surplus of labor, and taken to the Deep South in a forced migration, splitting up many families.  New communities of African-American culture were developed in the Deep South, and the total slave population in the South eventually reached 4 million before liberation.[217][218] In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". White people of that time feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery.  The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against black people increased as they were granted more rights.  Others, like James Henry Hammond argued that slavery was a "positive good" stating: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement."
+
+The Southern state governments wanted to keep a balance between the number of slave and free states to maintain a political balance of power in Congress. The new territories acquired from Britain, France, and Mexico were the subject of major political compromises. By 1850, the newly rich cotton-growing South was threatening to secede from the Union, and tensions continued to rise.  Many white Southern Christians, including church ministers, attempted to justify their support for slavery as modified by Christian paternalism.[219]  The largest denominations, the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South.
+
+When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, according to the 1860 U.S. census, roughly 400,000 individuals, representing 8% of all U.S. families, owned nearly 4,000,000 slaves.[220] One-third of Southern families owned slaves.[221]  The South was heavily invested in slavery.  As such, upon Lincoln's election, seven states broke away to form the Confederate States of America. The first six states to secede held the greatest number of slaves in the South. Shortly after, over the issue of slavery, the United States erupted into an all out Civil War, with slavery legally ceasing as an institution following the war in December 1865.
+
+In 2018, the Orlando Sentinel reported some private Christian schools in Florida as teaching students a creationist curriculum which includes assertions such as, “most black and white southerners had long lived together in harmony” and that “power-hungry individuals stirred up the people” leading to the Civil Rights Movement.[222]
+
+Slavery has existed all throughout Asia, and forms of slavery still exist today.
+
+Slavery has taken various forms throughout China's history. It was reportedly abolished as a legally recognized institution, including in a 1909 law[223][224] fully enacted in 1910,[225]  although the practice continued until at least 1949.[226]
+
+The Tang dynasty purchased Western slaves from the Radhanite Jews.[227] Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved Koreans, Turks, Persians, Indonesians, and people from Inner Mongolia, central Asia, and northern India.[228][229][230][231] The greatest source of slaves came from southern tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. Malays, Khmers, Indians, and "black skinned" peoples (who were either Austronesian Negritos of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, or Africans, or both) were also purchased as slaves in the Tang dynasty.[232]
+
+In the 17th century Qing Dynasty, there was a hereditarily servile people called Booi Aha (Manchu:booi niyalma; Chinese transliteration: 包衣阿哈), which is a Manchu word literally translated as "household person" and sometimes rendered as "nucai." The Manchu was establishing close personal and paternalist relationship between masters and their slaves, as Nurhachi said, "The Master should love the slaves and eat the same food as him".[233]  However,  booi aha "did not correspond exactly to the Chinese category of "bond-servant slave" (Chinese:奴僕); instead, it was a relationship of personal dependency on a master which in theory guaranteed close personal relationships and equal treatment, even though many western scholars would directly translate "booi" as "bond-servant" (some of the "booi" even had their own servant).[234][235]
+
+Chinese Muslim (Tungans) Sufis who were charged with practicing xiejiao (heterodox religion), were punished by exile to Xinjiang and being sold as a slave to other Muslims, such as the Sufi begs.[236] Han Chinese who committed crimes such as those dealing with opium became slaves to the begs, this practice was administered by Qing law.[237] Most Chinese in Altishahr were exile slaves to Turkestani Begs.[238] While free Chinese merchants generally did not engage in relationships with East Turkestani women, some of the Chinese slaves belonging to begs, along with Green Standard soldiers, Bannermen, and Manchus, engaged in affairs with the East Turkestani women that were serious in nature.[239]
+
+Slavery in India was widespread by the 6th century BC, and perhaps even as far back as the Vedic period.[240] Slavery intensified during the Muslim domination of northern India after the 11th-century.[241] Slavery existed in Portuguese India after the 16th century. The Dutch, too, largely dealt in Abyssian slaves, known in India as Habshis or Sheedes.[242] Arakan/Bengal, Malabar, and Coromandel remained the largest sources of forced labour until the 1660s.
+
+Between 1626 and 1662, the Dutch exported on an average 150–400 slaves annually from the Arakan-Bengal coast. During the first 30 years of Batavia's existence, Indian and Arakanese slaves provided the main labour force of the Dutch East India Company, Asian headquarters. An increase in Coromandel slaves occurred during a famine following the revolt of the Nayaka Indian rulers of South India (Tanjavur, Senji, and Madurai) against Bijapur overlordship (1645) and the subsequent devastation of the Tanjavur countryside by the Bijapur army. Reportedly, more than 150,000 people were taken by the invading Deccani Muslim armies to Bijapur and Golconda. In 1646, 2,118 slaves were exported to Batavia, the overwhelming majority from southern Coromandel. Some slaves were also acquired further south at Tondi, Adirampatnam, and Kayalpatnam. Another increase in slaving took place between 1659 and 1661 from Tanjavur as a result of a series of successive Bijapuri raids. At Nagapatnam, Pulicat, and elsewhere, the company purchased 8,000–10,000 slaves, the bulk of whom were sent to Ceylon, while a small portion were exported to Batavia and Malacca. Finally, following a long drought in Madurai and southern Coromandel, in 1673, which intensified the prolonged Madurai-Maratha struggle over Tanjavur and punitive fiscal practices, thousands of people from Tanjavur, mostly children, were sold into slavery and exported by Asian traders from Nagapattinam to Aceh, Johor, and other slave markets.
+
+In September 1687, 665 slaves were exported by the English from Fort St. George, Madras.  And, in 1694–96, when warfare once more ravaged South India, a total of 3,859 slaves were imported from Coromandel by private individuals into Ceylon.[243][244][245][246]
+The volume of the total Dutch Indian Ocean slave trade has been estimated to be about 15–30% of the Atlantic slave trade, slightly smaller than the trans-Saharan slave trade, and one-and-a-half to three times the size of the Swahili and Red Sea coast and the Dutch West India Company slave trades.[247]
+According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 or 9 million slaves in India in 1841. About 15% of the population of Malabar were slaves. Slavery was legally abolished in the possessions of the East India Company by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[3]
+
+The hill tribe people in Indochina were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese (Thai), the Anamites (Vietnamese), and the Cambodians".[248] A Siamese military campaign in Laos in 1876 was described by a British observer as having been "transformed into slave-hunting raids on a large scale".[249] The census, taken in 1879, showed that 6% of the population in the Malay sultanate of Perak were slaves.[250] Enslaved people made up about two-thirds of the population in part of North Borneo in the 1880s.[250]
+
+After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal, throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.[251][252] Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church[253] in 1555. Japanese slave women were even sold as concubines to Asian lascar and African crew members, along with their European counterparts serving on Portuguese ships trading in Japan, mentioned by Luis Cerqueira, a Portuguese Jesuit, in a 1598 document.[254] Japanese slaves were brought by the Portuguese to Macau, where they were enslaved to Portuguese or became slaves to other slaves.[255][256]
+
+Some Korean slaves were bought by the Portuguese and brought back to Portugal from Japan, where they had been among the tens of thousands of Korean prisoners of war transported to Japan during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98).[257][258] Historians pointed out that at the same time Hideyoshi expressed his indignation and outrage at the Portuguese trade in Japanese slaves, he was engaging in a mass slave trade of Korean prisoners of war in Japan.[259][260]
+Fillippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the large slave community in 1578, although most of the slaves were black.[261][262][263][264][265]
+The Portuguese "highly regarded" Asian slaves from the East much more "than slaves from sub-Saharan Africa".[266] The Portuguese attributed qualities like intelligence and industriousness to Chinese and Japanese slaves.[267][268][269][270]
+
+King Sebastian of Portugal feared rampant slavery was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.[271][272]Hideyoshi was so disgusted that his own Japanese people were being sold en masse into slavery on Kyushu, that he wrote a letter to Jesuit Vice-Provincial Gaspar Coelho on July 24, 1587, to demand the Portuguese, Siamese (Thai), and Cambodians stop purchasing and enslaving Japanese and return Japanese slaves who ended up as far as India.[273][274][275] Hideyoshi blamed the Portuguese and Jesuits for this slave trade and banned Christian proselytizing as a result.[276][self-published source][277] In 1595, a law was passed by Portugal banning the selling and buying of Chinese and Japanese slaves.[278]
+
+During the Joseon period, the nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.[81] The nobi system declined beginning in the 18th century.[279] Since the outset of the Joseon dynasty and especially beginning in the 17th century, there was harsh criticism among prominent thinkers in Korea about the nobi system. Even within the Joseon government, there were indications of a shift in attitude toward the nobi.[280] King Yeongjo implemented a policy of gradual emancipation in 1775,[82] and he and his successor King Jeongjo made many proposals and developments that lessened the burden on nobi, which led to the emancipation of the vast majority of government nobi in 1801.[280] In addition, population growth,[82] numerous escaped slaves,[81] growing commercialization of agriculture, and the rise of the independent small farmer class contributed to the decline in the number of nobi to about 1.5% of the total population by 1858.[281] The hereditary nobi system was officially abolished around 1886–87,[81][281] and the rest of the nobi system was abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894.[81][282] However, slavery did not completely disappear in Korea until 1930, during Imperial Japanese rule.
+
+During the Imperial Japanese occupation of Korea around World War II, some Koreans were used in forced labor by the Imperial Japanese, in conditions which have been compared to slavery.[81][283] These included women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II, known as "comfort women".[81][283]
+
+Slaves (he mōkai) had a recognised social role in traditional  Māori society in New Zealand.[284]
+
+Blackbirding occurred in the  Pacific, especially in the 19th century.
+
+In Constantinople, about one-fifth of the population consisted of slaves.[285] The city was a major centre of the slave trade in the 15th and later centuries.
+Slaves were provided by Tatar raids on Slavic villages[286] but also by conquest and the suppression of rebellions, in the aftermath of which entire populations were sometimes enslaved and sold across the Empire, reducing the risk of future rebellion.  The Ottomans also purchased slaves from traders who brought slaves into the Empire from Europe and Africa. It has been estimated that some 200,000 slaves – mainly Circassians – were imported into the Ottoman Empire between 1800 and 1909.[250] As late as 1908, women slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire.[287]
+
+Until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate (a Muslim Tatar state) maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East.[106] The slaves were captured in southern Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Circassia by Tatar horsemen[288] and sold in the Crimean port of Kaffa.[289] About 2 million mostly Christian slaves were exported over the 16th and 17th centuries[290] until the Crimean Khanate was destroyed by the Russian Empire in 1783.[291]
+
+A slave market for captured Russian and Persian slaves was centred in the Central Asian khanate of Khiva.[292] In the early 1840s, the population of the Uzbek states of Bukhara and Khiva included about 900,000 slaves.[250] Darrel P. Kaiser wrote, "Kazakh-Kirghiz tribesmen kidnapped 1573 settlers from colonies [German settlements in Russia] in 1774 alone and only half were successfully ransomed. The rest were killed or enslaved."[293]
+
+Even though slavery is now outlawed in every country, the number of slaves today is estimated as between 12 million and 29.8 million.[294][295][296] According to a broad definition of slavery, there were 27 million people in slavery in 1999, spread all over the world.[297] In 2005, the International Labour Organization provided an estimate of 12.3 million forced labourers.[298] Siddharth Kara has also provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage (18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million).[42] Kara provides a dynamic model to calculate the number of slaves in the world each year, with an estimated 29.2 million at the end of 2009.
+
+According to a 2003 report by Human Rights Watch, an estimated 15 million children in debt bondage in India work in slavery-like conditions to pay off their family's debts.[300][301]
+
+A report by the Walk Free Foundation in 2013,[302] found India had the highest number of slaves, nearly 14 million, followed by China (2.9 million), Pakistan (2.1 million), Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh; while the countries with the highest proportions of slaves were Mauritania, Haiti, Pakistan, India and Nepal.[303]
+
+In June 2013, U.S. State Department released a report on slavery.  It placed Russia, China, and Uzbekistan in the worst offenders category.  Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe were at the lowest level. The list also included Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait among a total of 21 countries.[304][305]
+
+The Walk Free Foundation reported in 2018 that slavery in wealthy Western societies is much more prevalent than previously known, in particular the United States and Great Britain, which have 403,000 (one in 800) and 136,000 slaves respectively. Andrew Forrest, founder of the organization, said that "The United States is one of the most advanced countries in the world yet has more than 400,000 modern slaves working under forced labor conditions."[306] An estimated 40.3 million are enslaved globally, with North Korea having the most slaves at 2.6 million (one in 10). The foundation defines contemporary slavery as "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power, or deception."[307]
+
+During the Second Libyan Civil War, Libyans started capturing Sub-Saharan African migrants trying to get to Europe through Libya and selling them on slave markets or holding them hostage for ransom[308]  Women are often raped, used as sex slaves, or sold to brothels.[309][310][311] Child migrants suffer from abuse and child rape in Libya.[312][313]
+
+In Mauritania, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981), it is estimated that 20% of its 3 million population, are enslaved as bonded laborers.[314][315][316] Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007.[317] However, although slavery, as a practice, was legally banned in 1981, it was not a crime to own a slave until 2007.[318] Although many slaves have escaped or have been freed since 2007, as of 2012[update], only one slave owner had been sentenced to serve time in prison.[319]
+
+While American slaves in 1809 were sold for around $40,000 (in inflation adjusted dollars), a slave nowadays can be bought for just $90, making replacement more economical than providing long-term care.[320] Slavery is a multibillion-dollar industry with estimates of up to $35 billion generated annually.[321]
+
+Victims of human trafficking are typically recruited through deceit or trickery (such as a false job offer, false migration offer, or false marriage offer), sale by family members, recruitment by former slaves, or outright abduction. Victims are forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs to control their victims.[322] "Annually, according to U.S. government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80% of transnational victims are women and girls, and up to 50% are minors, reports the U.S. State Department in a 2008 study.[323]
+
+While the majority of trafficking victims are women who are forced into prostitution (in which case the practice is called sex trafficking), victims also include men, women and children who are forced into manual labour.[324] Because of the illegal nature of human trafficking, its extent is unknown. A U.S. government report, published in 2005, estimates that about 700,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally.[324] Another research effort revealed that roughly 1.5 million individuals are trafficked either internally or internationally each year, of which about 500,000 are sex trafficking victims.[42]
+
+Slavery has existed, in one form or another, throughout recorded human history – as have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves.
+
+Ashoka, who ruled the Maurya Empire in the Indian subcontinent from 269–232 BCE, abolished the slave trade but not slavery.[326] The Qin dynasty, which ruled China from 221 to 206 BC, abolished slavery and discouraged serfdom. However, many of its laws were overturned when the dynasty was overthrown.[327] Slavery was again abolished by Wang Mang in China in 17 CE but was reinstituted after his assassination.[328]
+
+The Spanish colonization of the Americas sparked a discussion about the right to enslave Native Americans. A prominent critic of slavery in the Spanish New World colonies was Bartolomé de las Casas, who opposed the enslavement of Native Americans, and as well as Africans in America.
+
+One of the first protests against slavery came from German and Dutch Quakers in Pennsylvania in 1688.[329] In 1777, Vermont, at the time an independent nation, became the first portion of what would become the United States to abolish slavery.[329]
+
+In the United States, all of the northern states had abolished slavery by 1804, with New Jersey being the last to act.[330] Abolitionist pressure produced a series of small steps towards emancipation. After the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves went into effect on January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited,[331] but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted; most of those slaves already in the U.S. were legally emancipated only in 1863. Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad. Violent clashes between anti-slavery and pro-slavery Americans included Bleeding Kansas, a series of political and armed disputes in 1854–1861 as to whether Kansas would join the United States as a slave or free state. By 1860, the total number of slaves reached almost four million, and the American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in the United States.[332] In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States; the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution prohibited most forms of slavery throughout the country.
+
+Many of the freed slaves became sharecroppers and indentured servants. In this manner, some became tied to the very parcel of land into which they had been born a slave having little freedom or economic opportunity because of Jim Crow laws which perpetuated discrimination, limited education, promoted persecution without due process and resulted in continued poverty. Fear of reprisals such as unjust incarcerations and lynchings deterred upward mobility further.
+
+France abolished slavery in 1794.[329]
+
+One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England in 1772, with British Judge Lord Mansfield, whose opinion in Somersett's Case was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions could not be enforced in England.[333]
+
+Sons of Africa was a late 18th-century British group that campaigned to end slavery. Its members were Africans in London, freed slaves who included Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community. It was closely connected to the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a non-denominational group founded in 1787, whose members included Thomas Clarkson. British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce led the anti-slavery movement in the United Kingdom, although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Clarkson. Wilberforce was urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, to make the issue his own and was also given support by reformed Evangelical John Newton. The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 25, 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire,[334] Wilberforce also campaigned for abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
+
+After the 1807 act abolishing the slave trade was passed, these campaigners switched to encouraging other countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies. Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.[335] Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.[336]
+
+In 1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization, Anti-Slavery International, was formed in Britain by Joseph Sturge, which campaigned to outlaw slavery in other countries.[337] There were celebrations in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom through the work of the British Anti-Slavery Society.
+
+In the 1860s, David Livingstone's reports of atrocities within the Arab slave trade in Africa stirred up the interest of the British public, reviving the flagging abolitionist movement. The Royal Navy throughout the 1870s attempted to suppress "this abominable Eastern trade", at Zanzibar in particular. In 1905, the French abolished indigenous slavery in most of French West Africa.[338]
+
+On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declared freedom from slavery is an internationally recognized human right. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
+
+No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.[339]
+
+In 2014, for the first time in history, major leaders of many religions, Buddhist, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim met to sign a shared commitment against modern-day slavery; the declaration they signed calls for the elimination of slavery and human trafficking by 2020.[340] The signatories were: Pope Francis, Mātā Amṛtānandamayī, Bhikkhuni Thich Nu Chân Không (representing Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh), Datuk K Sri Dhammaratana, Chief High Priest of Malaysia, Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Rabbi David Rosen, Abbas Abdalla Abbas Soliman, Undersecretary of State of Al Azhar Alsharif (representing Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar), Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi, Sheikh Naziyah Razzaq Jaafar, Special advisor of Grand Ayatollah (representing Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Hussain al Najafi), Sheikh Omar Abboud, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Metropolitan Emmanuel of France (representing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.)[340]
+
+Groups such as the American Anti-Slavery Group, Anti-Slavery International, Free the Slaves, the Anti-Slavery Society, and the Norwegian Anti-Slavery Society continue to campaign to eliminate slavery.
+
+On May 21, 2001, the National Assembly of France passed the Taubira law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. Apologies on behalf of African nations, for their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, remain an open issue since slavery was practiced in Africa even before the first Europeans arrived and the Atlantic slave trade was performed with a high degree of involvement of several African societies. The black slave market was supplied by well-established slave trade networks controlled by local African societies and individuals.[341]
+
+There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Calabar and other southern parts of Nigeria had economies depended solely on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans.[342]
+
+Several historians have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.[343]
+
+In 1999, President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin issued a national apology for the central role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade.[344] Luc Gnacadja, minister of environment and housing for Benin, later said: "The slave trade is a shame, and we do repent for it."[345] Researchers estimate that 3 million slaves were exported out of the Slave Coast bordering the Bight of Benin.[345] President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana also apologized for his country's involvement in the slave trade.[344]
+
+The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery and is still being pursued by entities across the world. For example, the Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action plan. In 2007, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a formal apology for Great Britain's involvement in slavery.[346]
+
+On February 25, 2007, the Commonwealth of Virginia resolved to 'profoundly regret' and apologize for its role in the institution of slavery. Unique and the first of its kind in the U.S., the apology was unanimously passed in both Houses as Virginia approached the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown.[347]
+
+On August 24, 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone of London apologized publicly for Britain's role in colonial slave trade. "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery," he said, pointing towards the financial district. He claimed that London was still tainted by the horrors of slavery. Specifically, London outfitted, financed, and insured many of the ships, which helped fund the building of London's docks.[348] Officials in Liverpool, which was a large slave trading port, apologized in 1999.[349]
+
+On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws.[350] In June 2009, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery".[351] The news was welcomed by President Barack Obama, the nation's first president of African descent.[352] Some of President Obama's ancestors may have been slave owners.[353]
+
+In 2010, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi apologized for Arab involvement in the slave trade, saying: "I regret the behavior of the Arabs… They brought African children to North Africa, they made them slaves, they sold them like animals, and they took them as slaves and traded them in a shameful way."[354]
+
+There have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly held as slaves or for their descendants. Claims for reparations for being held in slavery are handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since former slaves' relatives lack of money means they often have limited access to a potentially expensive and futile legal process. Mandatory systems of fines and reparations paid to an as yet undetermined group of claimants from fines, paid by unspecified parties, and collected by authorities have been proposed by advocates to alleviate this "civil court problem." Since in almost all cases there are no living ex-slaves or living ex-slave owners these movements have gained little traction. In nearly all cases the judicial system has ruled that the statute of limitations on these possible claims has long since expired.
+
+The word slavery is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity in which one is coerced into performing. Some argue that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute "state-operated slavery."[355][356] Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery.[357]
+
+"Slavery" has been used by some anti-psychiatry proponents to define involuntary psychiatric patients, claiming there are no unbiased physical tests for mental illness and yet the psychiatric patient must follow the orders of the psychiatrist. They assert that instead of chains to control the slave, the psychiatrist uses drugs to control the mind.[358] Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis for a slave who did not want to be a slave.[359][360]
+
+Some proponents of animal rights have applied the term slavery to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves.[361]
+
+The labor market, as institutionalized under today's market economic systems, has been criticized by mainstream socialists and by anarcho-syndicalists, who utilise the term wage slavery as a pejorative or dysphemism for wage labour.[362][363][364][365][366][367] Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.[368]
+
+Film has been the most influential medium in the presentation of the history of slavery to the general public around the world.[369] The American film industry has had a complex relationship with slavery and until recent decades often avoided the topic. Films such as Birth of a Nation (1915)[370] and Gone with the Wind (1939) became controversial because they gave a favourable depiction. In 1940 The Santa Fe Trail gave a liberal but ambiguous interpretation of John Brown's attacks on slavery.[371] Song of the South gave a favorable outlook on slavery in the United States in 1946.
+
+The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s made defiant slaves into heroes.[372] The question of slavery in American memory necessarily involves its depictions in feature films.[373]
+
+Most Hollywood films used American settings, although Spartacus (1960), dealt with an actual revolt in the Roman Empire known as the Third Servile War. The revolt failed, and all the rebels were executed, but their spirit lived on according to the film.[374] Spartacus stays surprisingly close to the historical record.[375]
+
+The Last Supper (La última cena in Spanish) was a 1976 film directed by Cuban Tomás Gutiérrez Alea about the teaching of Christianity to slaves in Cuba, and emphasizes the role of ritual and revolt. Burn! takes place on the imaginary Portuguese island of Queimada (where the locals speak Spanish) and it merges historical events that took place in Brazil, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and elsewhere.
+
+Historians agree that films have largely shaped historical memories, but they debate issues of accuracy, plausibility, moralism, sensationalism, how facts are stretched in search of broader truths, and suitability for the classroom.[376][377] Berlin argues that critics complain if the treatment emphasizes historical brutality, or if it glosses over the harshness to highlight the emotional impact of slavery.[378]

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+Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property.[1] An enslaved person is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalized, de jure slavery.
+
+In a broader sense, however, the word "slavery" may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will. To describe such circumstances, scholars may use such alternate terms as unfree labour or forced labour.[2]
+
+Under the broader use of the term slavery, but also in certain cases of actual de jure (chattel) slavery, local laws and/or customs may vest the enslaved with limited rights and protections.
+
+Slavery has existed in many cultures, dating back to early human civilizations.[3] It was legal in most societies at some time in the past but is now outlawed in all recognized countries.[4][5] Nevertheless, as of 2019 there were an estimated 40 million people worldwide subject to some form of slavery, 25% of them children.[6] More than half of modern slaves are used for forced labor, mostly in the private sector.[6] The most common form of modern slave trade is commonly referred to as human trafficking. In some areas of the world, slavery continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most common source of modern slaves;[2] serfdom; domestic servants kept in captivity; certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves; child soldiers; and forced marriage.[7]
+
+The word slave is derived from the ethnonym (ethnic name) Slav.[8][9][10] It arrived in English via the Old French sclave. In Medieval Latin the word was sclavus and in Byzantine Greek σκλάβος.[8] Use of the word arose during the Early Medieval Period, when Slavs from Central and Eastern Europe (Saqaliba) were frequently enslaved by Moors from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.[11][12][13] An older interpretation connected slave to the Greek verb skyleúo 'to strip a slain enemy'.[14]
+
+There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as "unfree labourer" or enslaved person, rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language; by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were". Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with "person" implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow.[15]
+
+Indenture, otherwise known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour under which a person pledges himself or herself against a loan.[16] The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined.[16] Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt.[16] It is the most widespread form of slavery today.[2] Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia.[17]
+
+Chattel slavery, also called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel (personal property) of the owner and are bought and sold as commodities. Typically, under the chattel slave system, children inherited slave status via the mother (partus sequitur ventrem).[18] Although it dominated many different societies throughout human history, this form of slavery has been formally abolished and is very rare today. Even when it can be said to survive, it is not upheld by the legal system of any internationally recognized government.[19]
+
+"Slavery" has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else.[20][21] For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens.[22]
+
+Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to describe an individual who is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment, but the generic term unfree labour is also used to describe chattel slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will, and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person.[2] This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription and penal labour. While some unfree labourers, such as serfs, have substantive, de jure legal or traditional rights, they also have no ability to terminate the arrangements under which they work and are frequently subject to forms of coercion, violence, and restrictions on their activities and movement outside their place of work.
+
+Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children.[2][23][24] Examples of sexual slavery, often in military contexts, include detention in "rape camps" or "comfort stations," "comfort women", forced "marriages" to soldiers and other practices involving the treatment of women or men as chattel and, as such, violations of the peremptory norm prohibiting slavery.[25][26][27][28]
+
+In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts.[29] More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labor, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty[30] such as in restaveks in Haiti.
+
+Forced marriages or early marriages are often considered types of slavery. Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West.[31][32][33][34] Sacred prostitution is where girls and women are pledged to priests or those of higher castes, such as the practice of Devadasi in South Asia or fetish slaves in West Africa.[2] Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a national average of 69% of marriages in Ethiopia being through abduction.[35]
+
+Economists have attempted to model the circumstances under which slavery (and variants such as serfdom) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for landowners where land is abundant but labour is scarce, such that rent is depressed and paid workers can demand high wages. If the opposite holds true, then it becomes more costly for landowners to have guards for the slaves than to employ paid workers who can only demand low wages because of the amount of competition.[36] Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew but were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia as large areas of new land with few people became available.[37]
+
+Slavery is more common when the labor done is relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large-scale growing of a single crop, like sugar and cotton, in which output was based on economies of scale. This enables such systems of labor, such as the gang system in the United States, to become prominent on large plantations where field hands were monitored and worked with factory-like precision. For example, each work gang was based on an internal division of labour that assigned every member of the gang to a precise task and simultaneously made their own performance dependent on the actions of the others. The hoe hands chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excessive sprouts. The plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the rows of cotton plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an assembly line.[38]
+
+Since the 18th century, critics have argued that slavery tends to retard technological advancement because the focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading the efficiency of labour. For example, it is sometime argued that, because of this narrow focus, theoretical knowledge and learning in Greece – and later in Rome – was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing.[39]
+
+Scottish economist Adam Smith states that free labour was economically better than slave labour, and that it is nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic, or republican form of government since many of its legislators or political figures were slave owners, and would not punish themselves.  He further states that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom when there was centralized government, or a central authority like a king or the church.[40][41] Similar arguments appear later in the works of Auguste Comte, especially when it comes to Smith's belief in the separation of powers, or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith states in the Lectures on Jurisprudence, "The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of the king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues..."
+
+Worldwide, slavery is a criminal offense, but slave owners can get very high returns for their risk. According to researcher Siddharth Kara, the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were $91.2 billion. That is second only to drug trafficking, in terms of global criminal enterprises. Currently, the weighted average global sales price of a slave is calculated to be approximately $340, with a high of $1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $40 to $50 for debt bondage slaves in part of Asia and Africa.[42] The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $3,175, with a low of an average $950 for bonded labor and $29,210 for a trafficked sex slave.[42] Approximately 40% of slave profits each year are generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of the world's 29 million slaves.[42]
+
+Throughout history, slaves were clothed in a distinctive fashion, particularly with respect to the frequent lack of footwear, as they were rather commonly forced to go barefoot. This was partly because of economic reasons but also served as a distinguishing feature, especially in South Africa and South America. For example, the Cape Town slave code stated that "Slaves must go barefoot and must carry passes."[43] It also puts slaves at a physical disadvantage because of the lack of protection against environmental adversities and also in situations of possible confrontation, thereby making it more difficult to escape or to rebel against their owners.
+
+This was the case in the majority of states that abolished slavery later in history, as most images from the respective historical period suggest that slaves were barefoot.[44]
+To quote Brother Riemer (1779): "[the slaves] are, even in their most beautiful suit, obliged to go barefoot. Slaves were forbidden to wear shoes. This was a prime mark of distinction between the free and the bonded and no exceptions were permitted."[45]
+
+According to the Bible, shoes have been considered badges of freedom since antiquity: "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put [it] on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on [his] feet" (Luke 15:22). This aspect can be viewed as an informal law in areas where slavery existed as any person sighted barefoot in public would be conclusively regarded as a slave.
+
+In certain societies this rule is valid to this day. As with the Tuareg, where slavery is still unofficially practiced, their slaves are constantly forced to remain barefoot as a recognition mark. Mainly through their bare feet their societal status and rank opposite their owners is displayed to the public in a plainly visible way.[46]
+
+Another widespread practice was branding the slaves either to generally mark them as property or as punishment usually reserved for fugitives.
+
+Some scholars differentiate between ancient forms of slavery and the large-scale, largely race-based slavery which grew to immense proportions starting in the 14th century. The first type of slavery, sometimes called "just title servitude," was suffered by prisoners of war, debtors, and other vulnerable people.[47] The second, race-based type of slavery was argued even by some contemporary writers to be intrinsically immoral.[48][49][50]
+
+Evidence of slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures.[3]  Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Thus, although it has existed among unusually resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as the American Indian peoples of the salmon-rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest Coast, slavery became widespread only with the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago.[51]
+
+In the earliest known records, slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), for example, prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive.[52] The Bible mentions slavery as an established institution.[3] Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization and society.[3] Such institutions included debt bondage, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves.[53]
+
+Slavery existed in Pharaonic Egypt, but studying it is complicated by terminology used by the Egyptians to refer to different classes of servitude over the course of history. Interpretation of the textual evidence of classes of slaves in ancient Egypt has been difficult to differentiate by word usage alone.[54][55] There were three apparent types of enslavement in Ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labor, and forced labor.[56][57][58]
+
+Slavery is known to have existed in ancient China as early as the Shang dynasty.[59] Slavery was largely employed by governments as a means of maintaining a public labor force.[60][61]
+
+Records of slavery in Ancient Greece date as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is certain that Classical Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.[62]  As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Slaves were used for labour, as well as for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War, led by Spartacus, (a Thracian) being the most famous.
+
+By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome, as well as a very significant part of Roman society.[63] It is estimated that 25% or more of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved, although the actual percentage is debated by scholars and varied from region to region.[64][65] Slaves represented 15–25% of Italy's population,[66] mostly captives in war,[66] especially from Gaul[67] and Epirus. Estimates of the number of slaves in the Roman Empire suggest that the majority of slaves were scattered throughout the provinces outside of Italy.[66] Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians,[68] with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) born outside of Italy estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Those from outside of Europe were predominantly of Greek descent, while the Jewish ones never fully assimilated into Roman society, remaining an identifiable minority. These slaves (especially the foreigners) had higher death rates and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions.[69] The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).[70][page needed]
+
+Slavery was widespread in Africa, with both internal and external slave trade.[71] In the Senegambia region, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sahel, including Ghana, Mali, Segou, and Songhai, about a third of the population were enslaved.[72]
+
+The Arab slave trade, across the Sahara desert and across the Indian Ocean, began after Muslim Arab and Swahili traders won control of the Swahili Coast and sea routes during the 9th century (see Sultanate of Zanzibar). These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast.[74][75] There, the slaves gradually assimilated in the rural areas, particularly on the Unguja and Pemba islands.[76]
+
+Slavery in Mexico can be traced back to the Aztecs.[77] Other Amerindians, such as the Inca of the Andes, the Tupinambá of Brazil, the Creek of Georgia, and the Comanche of Texas, also owned slaves.[3]
+
+Many Han Chinese were enslaved in the process of the Mongol invasion of China proper.[78] According to Japanese historians Sugiyama Masaaki (杉山正明) and Funada Yoshiyuki (舩田善之), there were also a certain number of Mongolian slaves owned by Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty. Moreover, there is no evidence that the Han Chinese, who were at the bottom of Yuan society according to some research, suffered particularly cruel abuse.[79][80]
+
+Slavery in Korea existed since before the Three Kingdoms of Korea period, approximately 2,000 years ago.[81] Slavery has been described as "very important in medieval Korea, probably more important than in any other East Asian country, but by the 16th century, population growth was making [it] unnecessary".[82] Slavery went into decline around the 10th century but came back in the late Goryeo period when Korea also experienced a number of slave rebellions.[81]
+
+In the Joseon period of Korea, members of the slave class were known as nobi. The nobi were socially indistinct from freemen (i.e., the middle and common classes) other than the ruling yangban class, and some possessed property rights, legal entities and civil rights. Hence, some scholars argue that it is inappropriate to call them "slaves",[83] while some scholars describe them as serfs.[84][85] The nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.[86] In 1801, the vast majority of government nobi were emancipated,[87] and by 1858 the nobi population stood at about 1.5 percent of the total population of Korea.[88]
+
+Slavery largely disappeared from Western Europe in the Middle Ages but persisted longer in Eastern Europe.[89] Large-scale trading in slaves was mainly confined to the South and East of early medieval Europe: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, while pagan Central and Eastern Europe (along with the Caucasus and Tartary) were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek, and Radhanite Jewish merchants were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.[90][91][92] The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century following the Zanj Rebellion which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab world.[93][94]
+
+Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it, or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands, as for example at the Council of Koblenz (922), the Council of London (1102) (which aimed mainly at the sale of English slaves to Ireland)[95] and the Council of Armagh (1171). Serfdom, on the contrary, was widely accepted. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting the kings of Spain and Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens (Muslims), pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, legitimizing the slave trade as a result of war.[96] The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455.
+
+In Britain, slavery continued to be practiced following the fall of Rome, and sections of Hywel the Good's laws dealt with slaves in medieval Wales. The trade particularly picked up after the Viking invasions, with major markets at Chester[97] and Bristol[98] supplied by Danish, Mercian, and Welsh raiding of one another's borderlands. At the time of the Domesday Book, nearly 10% of the English population were slaves.[99] William the Conqueror introduced a law preventing the sale of slaves overseas.[100] According to historian John Gillingham, by 1200 slavery in the British Isles was non-existent.[101] The slave trade was abolished by the Slave Trade Act 1807, although slavery remained legal in possessions outside Europe until the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[102]
+
+The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of slaves into the Islamic world.[103] To staff its bureaucracy, the Ottoman Empire established a janissary system which seized hundreds of thousands of Christian boys through the devşirme system. They were well cared for but were legally slaves owned by the government and were not allowed to marry. They were never bought or sold. The empire gave them significant administrative and military roles. The system began about 1365; there were 135,000 janissaries in 1826, when the system ended.[104]
+
+After the Battle of Lepanto, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were recaptured and freed from the Ottoman fleet.[105] Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves into jasyr.[106] Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into Poland–Lithuania between 1474 and 1569.[107]
+
+Slavery in Poland was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second serfdom.
+
+Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant Muslim invasion of the predominantly Christian area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal, in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.[108] From the 11th to the 19th century, North African Barbary Pirates engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns, to capture Christian slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria and Morocco.[109][110]
+The maritime town of Lagos was the first slave market created in Portugal (one of the earliest colonizers of the Americas) for the sale of imported African slaves – the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444.[111][112] In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania.[112]
+
+By 1552, black African slaves made up 10% of the population of Lisbon.[113][114] In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade, and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas – especially Brazil.[112] In the 15th century one-third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.[115]
+
+In Kievan Rus and Muscovy, slaves were usually classified as kholops. According to David P. Forsythe, "In 1649 up to three-quarters of Muscovy's peasants, or 13 to 14 million people, were serfs whose material lives were barely distinguishable from slaves. Perhaps another 1.5 million were formally enslaved, with Russian slaves serving Russian masters."[117] Slavery remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679.[118]
+
+In Scandinavia, thralldom was abolished in the mid-14th century.[119]
+
+During the Second World War Nazi Germany effectively enslaved about 12 million people, both those considered undesirable and citizens of conquered countries, with the avowed intention of treating these Untermenschen (sub-humans) as a permanent slave-class of inferior beings who could be worked until they died, and who possessed neither the rights nor the legal status of members of the Aryan race.[120]
+
+The Arab slave trade lasted more than a millennium.[121] As recently as the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 300,000.[122] Along with Yemen, the Saudis abolished slavery in 1962.[123] Historically, slaves in the Arab World came from many different regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly Zanj),[124] the Caucasus (mainly Circassians),[125] Central Asia (mainly Tartars), and Central and Eastern Europe (mainly Saqaliba).[126]
+
+Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900.[127] The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year.[76][128][129] The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, Bantu slaves bought by Arab slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, European colonies in the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands, Ethiopia and Somalia.[130]
+
+According to the Encyclopedia of African History, "It is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labor was extensive, especially in agriculture."[131][132] The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of 8 to 16 million.[133]
+
+Slave labor in East Africa was drawn from the Zanj, Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast.[75][134] The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers in Iraq. The Zanj Rebellion, a series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 near Basra (also known as Basara), situated in present-day Iraq, is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa.[135] It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq".[136]
+The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work.[137] As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, agriculture and other manual labor work was thought to be demeaning. The resulting labor shortage led to an increased slave market.
+
+In Algiers, the capital of Algeria, captured Christians and Europeans were forced into slavery. In about 1650, there were as many as 35,000 Christian slaves in Algiers.[138] By one estimate, raids by Barbary pirates on coastal villages and ships extending from Italy to Iceland, enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.25 million Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries.[139][140][141] However, to this estimate is extrapolated by assuming the number of European, slaves captured by Barbary pirates, was constant for 250 years period:
+
+There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers – about 850,000 captives over the century from 1580 to 1680.  By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000.[142]
+
+Davis' numbers have been refuted by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe.[142] In addition, the number of slaves traded was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia.  Hence, there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given slave imports, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records.  Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation.[143] Such observations, across the late 16th and early 17th century observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers.  However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy.[144] This eventually led to the bombardment of Algiers by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816.[145][146]
+
+Under Omani Arabs, Zanzibar became East Africa's main slave port, with as many as 50,000 enslaved Africans passing through every year during the 19th century.[147][148] Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 AD.[3][149] Eduard Rüppell described the losses of Sudanese slaves being transported on foot to Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5,000 made it to Egypt.."[150] W.A. Veenhoven wrote: "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal, an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on the way ... Keltie (The Partition of Africa, London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone puts the figure as high as ten to one."[151]
+
+Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. The forms of slavery in Africa were closely related to kinship structures. In many African communities, where land could not be owned, enslavement of individuals was used as a means to increase the influence a person had and expand connections.[152] This made slaves a permanent part of a master's lineage and the children of slaves could become closely connected with the larger family ties.[153] Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master's kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances.  However, stigma often remained attached and there could be strict separations between slave members of a kinship group and those related to the master.[152] Slavery was practiced in many different forms: debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa.[154] Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa.
+
+When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique:
+
+The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean.[155]
+
+The trans-Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms, such as the Oyo Empire (Yoruba), the Ashanti Empire,[156] the kingdom of Dahomey,[157] and the Aro Confederacy.[158]  It is estimated that about 15 percent of slaves died during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships.[159][160]
+
+Slavery in America remains a contentious issue and played a major role in the history and evolution of some countries, triggering a revolution, a civil war, and numerous rebellions.
+
+In order to establish itself as an American empire, Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. The Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour. The Spanish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola.[161] Bartolomé de las Casas, a 16th-century Dominican friar and Spanish historian, participated in campaigns in Cuba (at Bayamo and Camagüey) and was present at the massacre of Hatuey; his observation of that massacre led him to fight for a social movement away from the use of natives as slaves. Also, the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population. The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.[162] England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates.
+
+Many Africans who arrived in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came under contract as indentured servants.[163] The transformation from indentured servitude to slavery was a gradual process in Virginia. The earliest legal documentation of such a shift was in 1640 where a negro, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime slavery, forcing him to serve his master, Hugh Gwyn, for the remainder of his life, for attempting to run away. This case was significant because it established the disparity between his sentence as a black man and that of the two white indentured servants who escaped with him (one described as Dutch and one as a Scotchman). It is the first documented case of a black man sentenced to lifetime servitude and is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants.[164][165][166][167][168]
+
+After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts and keep their servants as slaves for life. This was demonstrated by the 1655 case Johnson v. Parker, where the court ruled that a black man, Anthony Johnson of Virginia, was granted ownership of another black man, John Casor, as the result of a civil case.[169]  This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.[170][171][172][173][174][175][176]
+
+In the early 17th century, the majority of the labour in Barbados was provided by European indentured servants, mainly English, Irish and Scottish, with enslaved Africans and enslaved Amerindians providing little of the workforce. The introduction of sugar cane from Dutch Brazil in 1640 completely transformed society and the economy. Barbados eventually had one of the world's largest sugar industries.[177]
+
+As the effects of the new crop increased, so did the shift in the ethnic composition of Barbados and surrounding islands. The workable sugar plantation required a large investment and a great deal of heavy labour. At first, Dutch traders supplied the equipment, financing, and enslaved Africans, in addition to transporting most of the sugar to Europe. In 1644, the population of Barbados was estimated at 30,000, of which about 800 were of African descent, with the remainder mainly of English descent. These English smallholders were eventually bought out, and the island filled up with large sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. By 1660, there was near parity with 27,000 blacks and 26,000 whites. By 1666, at least 12,000 white smallholders had been bought out, died, or left the island. Many of the remaining whites were increasingly poor. By 1680, there were 17 slaves for every indentured servant. By 1700, there were 15,000 free whites and 50,000 enslaved Africans.
+
+Because of the increased implementation of slave codes, which created differential treatment between Africans and the white workers and ruling planter class, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. Black or slave codes were implemented in 1661, 1676, 1682, and 1688. In response to these codes, several slave rebellions were attempted or planned during this time, but none succeeded. Nevertheless, poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so. Planters expanded their importation of enslaved Africans to cultivate sugar cane.
+
+Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement was established in 1532, as members of one tribe would enslave captured members of another.[178]
+
+Later, Portuguese colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions called bandeiras. The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries.
+
+During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any other country. Nearly 5 million slaves were brought from Africa to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866.[179] Until the early 1850s, most enslaved Africans who arrived on Brazilian shores were forced to embark at West Central African ports, especially in Luanda (present-day Angola). Today, with the exception of Nigeria, the largest population of people of African descent is in Brazil.[180]
+
+Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650. Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market. Transportation systems were developed for the mining infrastructure, and population boomed from immigrants seeking to take part in gold and diamond mining. Demand for African slaves did not wane after the decline of the mining industry in the second half of the 18th century. Cattle ranching and foodstuff production proliferated after the population growth, both of which relied heavily on slave labor. 1.7 million slaves were imported to Brazil from Africa from 1700 to 1800, and the rise of coffee in the 1830s further enticed expansion of the slave trade.
+
+Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery. Forty percent of the total number of slaves brought to the Americas were sent to Brazil. For reference, the United States received 10 percent. Despite being abolished, there are still people working in slavery-like conditions in Brazil in the 21st century.
+
+In 1789 the Spanish Crown led an effort to reform slavery, as the demand for slave labor in Cuba was growing. The Crown issued a decree, Código Negro Español (Spanish Black Codex), that specified food and clothing provisions, put limits on the number of work hours, limited punishments, required religious instruction, and protected marriages, forbidding the sale of young children away from their mothers.[181] The British made other changes to the institution of slavery in Cuba.[181] But planters often flouted the laws and protested against them, considering them a threat to their authority[181] and an intrusion into their personal lives.[181]
+
+The slaveowners did not protest against all the measures of the codex, many of which they argued were already common practices. They objected to efforts to set limits on their ability to apply physical punishment. For instance, the Black Codex limited whippings to 25 and required the whippings "not to cause serious bruises or bleeding".[181] The slave-owners thought that the slaves would interpret these limits as weaknesses, ultimately leading to resistance.[181] Another contested issue was the work hours that were restricted "from sunrise to sunset"; plantation owners responded by explaining that cutting and processing of cane needed 20-hour days during the harvest season.[181]
+
+Those slaves who worked on sugar plantations and in sugar mills were often subject to the harshest of conditions. The field work was rigorous manual labor which the slaves began at an early age. The work days lasted close to 20 hours during harvest and processing, including cultivating and cutting the crops, hauling wagons, and processing sugarcane with dangerous machinery. The slaves were forced to reside in barracoons, where they were crammed in and locked in by a padlock at night, getting about three to four hours of sleep.  The conditions of the barracoons were harsh; they were highly unsanitary and extremely hot. Typically there was no ventilation; the only window was a small barred hole in the wall.[182]
+
+Cuba's slavery system was gendered in a way that some duties were performed only by male slaves, some only by female slaves. Female slaves in Havana from the 16th century onwards performed duties such as operating the town taverns, eating houses, and lodges, as well as being laundresses and domestic laborers and servants. Female slaves also served as the town prostitutes.
+
+Some Cuban women could gain freedom by having children with white men. As in other Latin cultures, there were looser borders with the mulatto or mixed-race population. Sometimes men who took slaves as wives or concubines freed both them and their children. As in New Orleans and Saint-Domingue, mulattos began to be classified as a third group between the European colonists and African slaves. Freedmen, generally of mixed race, came to represent 20% of the total Cuban population and 41% of the non-white Cuban population.[183]
+
+Planters encouraged Afro-Cuban slaves to have children in order to reproduce their work force. The masters wanted to pair strong and large-built black men with healthy black women. They were placed in the barracoons and forced to have sex and create offspring of “breed stock” children, who would sell for around 500 pesos. The planters needed children to be born to replace slaves who died under the harsh regime. Sometimes if the overseers did not like the quality of children, they separate the parents and sent the mother back to working in the fields.[184]
+
+Both women and men were subject to the punishments of violence and humiliating abuse. Slaves who misbehaved or disobeyed their masters were often placed in stocks in the depths of the boiler houses where they were abandoned for days at a time, and oftentimes two to three months. These wooden stocks were made in two types: lying-down or stand-up types. women were punished, even when pregnant. They were subjected to whippings: they had to lie "face down over a scooped-out piece of round [earth] to protect their bellies." [185] Some masters reportedly whipped pregnant women in the belly, often causing miscarriages. The wounds were treated with “compresses of tobacco leaves, urine and salt." [186]
+
+Slavery in Haiti started with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island in 1492. The practice was devastating to the native population.[187] Following the indigenous Taíno's near decimation from forced labour, disease and war, the Spanish, under advisement of the Catholic priest Bartolomeu de las Casas, and with the blessing of the Catholic church began engaging in earnest in the kidnapped and forced labour of enslaved Africans. During the French colonial period beginning in 1625, the economy of Haiti (then known as Saint-Domingue) was based on slavery, and the practice there was regarded as the most brutal in the world.
+
+Following the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Hispaniola was divided between France and Spain.  France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue.  To develop it into sugarcane plantations, the French imported thousands of slaves from Africa. Sugar was a lucrative commodity crop throughout the 18th century. By 1789, approximately 40,000 white colonists lived in Saint-Domingue. The whites were vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of African slaves they had imported to work on their plantations, which were primarily devoted to the production of sugarcane. In the north of the island, slaves were able to retain many ties to African cultures, religion and language; these ties were continually being renewed by newly imported Africans. Blacks outnumbered whites by about ten to one.
+
+The French-enacted Code Noir ("Black Code"), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, had established rules on slave treatment and permissible freedoms. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years.[188] Many slaves died from diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever.[189] They had birth rates around 3 percent, and there is evidence that some women aborted fetuses, or committed infanticide, rather allow their children to live within the bonds of slavery.[190][191]
+
+As in its Louisiana colony, the French colonial government allowed some rights to free people of color: the mixed-race descendants of white male colonists and black female slaves (and later, mixed-race women). Over time, many were released from slavery. They established a separate social class. White French Creole fathers frequently sent their mixed-race sons to France for their education. Some men of color were admitted into the military. More of the free people of color lived in the south of the island, near Port-au-Prince, and many intermarried within their community. They frequently worked as artisans and tradesmen, and began to own some property. Some became slave holders. The free people of color petitioned the colonial government to expand their rights.
+
+Slaves that made it to Haiti from the trans-Atlantic journey and slaves born in Haiti were first documented in Haiti's archives and transferred to France's Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As of 2015[update], these records are in The National Archives of France. According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 40,000 whites, 30,000 free coloureds and 450,000 slaves.[192]
+
+The Haitian Revolution of 1804, the only successful slave revolt in human history, precipitated the end of slavery in all French colonies.
+
+Jamaica was colonized by the Taino tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. The Spanish enslaved many of the Taino; some escaped, but most died from European diseases and overwork. The Spaniards also introduced the first African slaves.[193]
+
+The Spanish colonists did not bring women in the first expeditions and took Taíno women for their common-law wives, resulting in mestizo children.[194]  Sexual violence with the Taíno women by the Spanish was also common.[195][196]
+
+Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000.
+
+In 1519, Hernán Cortés brought the first modern slave to the area.[197] In the mid-16th century, the second viceroy to Mexico, Luis de Velasco, prohibited slavery of the Aztecs.  A labor shortage resulted as the Aztecs were either killed or died from disease.  This led to the African slaves being imported, as they were not susceptible to smallpox.  In exchange, many Africans were afforded the opportunity to buy their freedom, while eventually others were granted their freedom by their masters.[197]
+
+When Ponce de León and the Spaniards arrived on the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico), they enslaved Taíno tribes on the island, forcing them to work in the gold mines and in the construction of forts. Many Taíno died, particularly from smallpox, of which they had no immunity. Other Taínos committed suicide or left the island after the failed Taíno revolt of 1511.[198]  The Spanish colonists, fearing the loss of their labor force, complained  the courts that they needed manpower. As an alternative, Las Casas suggested the importation and use of African slaves. In 1517, the Spanish Crown permitted its subjects to import twelve slaves each, thereby beginning the slave trade on the colonies.[199]
+
+African slaves were legally branded with a hot iron on the forehead, prevented their "theft" or lawsuits that challenged their captivity.[200]  The colonists continued this branding practice for more than 250 years.[201]  They were sent to work in the gold mines, or in the island's ginger and sugar fields.  They were allowed to live with their families in a hut on the master's land, and given a patch of land where they could farm, but otherwise were subjected to harsh treatment; including sexual abuse as the majority of colonists had arrived without women; many of them intermarried with the Africans or Taínos. Their mixed-race descendants formed the first generations of the early Puerto Rican population.[200]
+
+The slaves faced heavy discrimination and had no opportunity for advancement, though they were educated by their masters.  The Spaniards considered the Africans superior to the Taíno, since the latter were unwilling to assimilate. The slaves, in contrast, had little choice but to adapt. Many converted to Christianity and were given their masters' surnames.[200]
+
+By 1570, the colonists found that the gold mines were depleted, relegating the island to a garrison for passing ships. The cultivation of crops such as tobacco, cotton, cocoa, and ginger became the cornerstone of the economy.[202]  With rising demand for sugar on the international market, major planters increased their labor-intensive cultivation and processing of sugar cane. Sugar plantations supplanted mining as Puerto Rico's main industry and kept demand high for African slavery.[202]
+
+After 1784, Spain provided five ways by which slaves could obtain freedom.[201]  Five years later, the Spanish Crown issued the "Royal Decree of Graces of 1789", which set new rules related to the slave trade and added restrictions to the granting of freedman status. The decree granted its subjects the right to purchase slaves and to participate in the flourishing slave trade in the Caribbean. Later that year a new slave code, also known as El Código Negro (The Black Code), was introduced.[203]
+
+Under "El Código Negro", a slave could buy his freedom, in the event that his master was willing to sell, by paying the price sought in installments. Slaves were allowed to earn money during their spare time by working as shoemakers, cleaning clothes, or selling the produce they grew on their own plots of land. For the freedom of their newborn child, not yet baptized, they paid at half the going price for a baptized child.[203] Many of these freedmen started settlements in the areas which became known as Cangrejos (Santurce), Carolina, Canóvanas, Loíza, and Luquillo. Some became slave owners themselves.[200] Despite these paths to freedom, from 1790 onwards, the number of slaves more than doubled in Puerto Rico as a result of the dramatic expansion of the sugar industry in the island.[202]
+
+On March 22, 1873, slavery was legally abolished in Puerto Rico. However, slaves were not emancipated but rather had to buy their own freedom, at whatever price was set by their last masters. They were also required to work for another three years for their former masters, for other colonists interested in their services, or for the state in order to pay some compensation.[204] Between 1527 and 1873, slaves in Puerto Rico had carried out more than twenty revolts.[205][206]
+
+The planters of the Dutch colony relied heavily on African slaves to cultivate, harvest and process the commodity crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane and cotton plantations along the rivers. Planters' treatment of the slaves was notoriously bad.[207]  Historian C. R. Boxer wrote that "man's inhumanity to man just about reached its limits in Surinam."[208]
+
+Many slaves escaped the plantations.  With the help of the native South Americans living in the adjoining rain forests, these runaway slaves established a new and unique culture in the interior that was highly successful in its own right. They were known collectively in English as Maroons, in French as Nèg'Marrons (literally meaning "brown negroes", that is "pale-skinned negroes"), and in Dutch as Marrons.  The Maroons gradually developed several independent tribes through a process of ethnogenesis, as they were made up of slaves from different African ethnicities. These tribes include the Saramaka,  Paramaka, Ndyuka or Aukan, Kwinti, Aluku or Boni, and Matawai.
+
+The Maroons often raided plantations to recruit new members from the slaves and capture women, as well as to acquire weapons, food and supplies. They sometimes killed planters and their families in the raids.[209]  The colonists also mounted armed campaigns against the Maroons, who generally escaped through the rain forest, which they knew much better than did the coloniss. To end hostilities, in the 18th century the European colonial authorities signed several peace treaties with different tribes. They granted the Maroons sovereign status and trade rights in their inland territories, giving them autonomy.
+
+In 1861–63, President Abraham Lincoln of the United States and his administration looked abroad for places to relocate freed slaves who wanted to leave the United States. It opened negotiations with the Dutch government regarding African-American emigration to and colonization of the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America. Nothing came of it and after 1864, the proposal was dropped.[210]
+
+The Netherlands abolished slavery in Suriname, in 1863, under a gradual process that required slaves to work on plantations for 10 transition years for minimal pay, which was considered as partial compensation for their masters. After 1873, most freedmen largely abandoned the plantations where they had worked for several generations in favor of the capital city, Paramaribo.
+
+Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries after it gained independence from the British and before the end of the American Civil War. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
+
+By the time of the American Revolution, the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry.[211]  The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, represented by the slave and free states divided by the Mason–Dixon line, which separated free Pennsylvania from slave Maryland and Delaware.
+
+Congress, during the Jefferson administration prohibited the importation of slaves, effective 1808, although smuggling (illegal importing) was not unusual.[212] Domestic slave trading, however, continued at a rapid pace, driven by labor demands from the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation. Such laws proposed to Congress to continue the spread of slavery into newly ratified states include the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
+
+The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, times, and places. The power relationships of slavery corrupted many whites who had authority over slaves, with children showing their own cruelty. Masters and overseers resorted to physical punishments to impose their wills. Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was carried out to re-assert the dominance of the master or overseer of the slave.[213] Treatment was usually harsher on large plantations, which were often managed by overseers and owned by absentee slaveholders.
+
+William Wells Brown, who escaped to freedom, reported that on one plantation, slave men were required to pick 80 pounds of cotton per day, while women were required to pick 70 pounds per day; if any slave failed in his or her quota, they were subject to whip lashes for each pound they were short. The whipping post stood next to the cotton scales.[215] A New York man who attended a slave auction in the mid-19th century reported that at least three-quarters of the male slaves he saw at sale had scars on their backs from whipping.[216] By contrast, small slave-owning families had closer relationships between the owners and slaves; this sometimes resulted in a more humane environment but was not a given.[213]
+
+More than one million slaves were sold from the Upper South, which had a surplus of labor, and taken to the Deep South in a forced migration, splitting up many families.  New communities of African-American culture were developed in the Deep South, and the total slave population in the South eventually reached 4 million before liberation.[217][218] In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". White people of that time feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery.  The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against black people increased as they were granted more rights.  Others, like James Henry Hammond argued that slavery was a "positive good" stating: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement."
+
+The Southern state governments wanted to keep a balance between the number of slave and free states to maintain a political balance of power in Congress. The new territories acquired from Britain, France, and Mexico were the subject of major political compromises. By 1850, the newly rich cotton-growing South was threatening to secede from the Union, and tensions continued to rise.  Many white Southern Christians, including church ministers, attempted to justify their support for slavery as modified by Christian paternalism.[219]  The largest denominations, the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South.
+
+When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, according to the 1860 U.S. census, roughly 400,000 individuals, representing 8% of all U.S. families, owned nearly 4,000,000 slaves.[220] One-third of Southern families owned slaves.[221]  The South was heavily invested in slavery.  As such, upon Lincoln's election, seven states broke away to form the Confederate States of America. The first six states to secede held the greatest number of slaves in the South. Shortly after, over the issue of slavery, the United States erupted into an all out Civil War, with slavery legally ceasing as an institution following the war in December 1865.
+
+In 2018, the Orlando Sentinel reported some private Christian schools in Florida as teaching students a creationist curriculum which includes assertions such as, “most black and white southerners had long lived together in harmony” and that “power-hungry individuals stirred up the people” leading to the Civil Rights Movement.[222]
+
+Slavery has existed all throughout Asia, and forms of slavery still exist today.
+
+Slavery has taken various forms throughout China's history. It was reportedly abolished as a legally recognized institution, including in a 1909 law[223][224] fully enacted in 1910,[225]  although the practice continued until at least 1949.[226]
+
+The Tang dynasty purchased Western slaves from the Radhanite Jews.[227] Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved Koreans, Turks, Persians, Indonesians, and people from Inner Mongolia, central Asia, and northern India.[228][229][230][231] The greatest source of slaves came from southern tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. Malays, Khmers, Indians, and "black skinned" peoples (who were either Austronesian Negritos of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, or Africans, or both) were also purchased as slaves in the Tang dynasty.[232]
+
+In the 17th century Qing Dynasty, there was a hereditarily servile people called Booi Aha (Manchu:booi niyalma; Chinese transliteration: 包衣阿哈), which is a Manchu word literally translated as "household person" and sometimes rendered as "nucai." The Manchu was establishing close personal and paternalist relationship between masters and their slaves, as Nurhachi said, "The Master should love the slaves and eat the same food as him".[233]  However,  booi aha "did not correspond exactly to the Chinese category of "bond-servant slave" (Chinese:奴僕); instead, it was a relationship of personal dependency on a master which in theory guaranteed close personal relationships and equal treatment, even though many western scholars would directly translate "booi" as "bond-servant" (some of the "booi" even had their own servant).[234][235]
+
+Chinese Muslim (Tungans) Sufis who were charged with practicing xiejiao (heterodox religion), were punished by exile to Xinjiang and being sold as a slave to other Muslims, such as the Sufi begs.[236] Han Chinese who committed crimes such as those dealing with opium became slaves to the begs, this practice was administered by Qing law.[237] Most Chinese in Altishahr were exile slaves to Turkestani Begs.[238] While free Chinese merchants generally did not engage in relationships with East Turkestani women, some of the Chinese slaves belonging to begs, along with Green Standard soldiers, Bannermen, and Manchus, engaged in affairs with the East Turkestani women that were serious in nature.[239]
+
+Slavery in India was widespread by the 6th century BC, and perhaps even as far back as the Vedic period.[240] Slavery intensified during the Muslim domination of northern India after the 11th-century.[241] Slavery existed in Portuguese India after the 16th century. The Dutch, too, largely dealt in Abyssian slaves, known in India as Habshis or Sheedes.[242] Arakan/Bengal, Malabar, and Coromandel remained the largest sources of forced labour until the 1660s.
+
+Between 1626 and 1662, the Dutch exported on an average 150–400 slaves annually from the Arakan-Bengal coast. During the first 30 years of Batavia's existence, Indian and Arakanese slaves provided the main labour force of the Dutch East India Company, Asian headquarters. An increase in Coromandel slaves occurred during a famine following the revolt of the Nayaka Indian rulers of South India (Tanjavur, Senji, and Madurai) against Bijapur overlordship (1645) and the subsequent devastation of the Tanjavur countryside by the Bijapur army. Reportedly, more than 150,000 people were taken by the invading Deccani Muslim armies to Bijapur and Golconda. In 1646, 2,118 slaves were exported to Batavia, the overwhelming majority from southern Coromandel. Some slaves were also acquired further south at Tondi, Adirampatnam, and Kayalpatnam. Another increase in slaving took place between 1659 and 1661 from Tanjavur as a result of a series of successive Bijapuri raids. At Nagapatnam, Pulicat, and elsewhere, the company purchased 8,000–10,000 slaves, the bulk of whom were sent to Ceylon, while a small portion were exported to Batavia and Malacca. Finally, following a long drought in Madurai and southern Coromandel, in 1673, which intensified the prolonged Madurai-Maratha struggle over Tanjavur and punitive fiscal practices, thousands of people from Tanjavur, mostly children, were sold into slavery and exported by Asian traders from Nagapattinam to Aceh, Johor, and other slave markets.
+
+In September 1687, 665 slaves were exported by the English from Fort St. George, Madras.  And, in 1694–96, when warfare once more ravaged South India, a total of 3,859 slaves were imported from Coromandel by private individuals into Ceylon.[243][244][245][246]
+The volume of the total Dutch Indian Ocean slave trade has been estimated to be about 15–30% of the Atlantic slave trade, slightly smaller than the trans-Saharan slave trade, and one-and-a-half to three times the size of the Swahili and Red Sea coast and the Dutch West India Company slave trades.[247]
+According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 or 9 million slaves in India in 1841. About 15% of the population of Malabar were slaves. Slavery was legally abolished in the possessions of the East India Company by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[3]
+
+The hill tribe people in Indochina were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese (Thai), the Anamites (Vietnamese), and the Cambodians".[248] A Siamese military campaign in Laos in 1876 was described by a British observer as having been "transformed into slave-hunting raids on a large scale".[249] The census, taken in 1879, showed that 6% of the population in the Malay sultanate of Perak were slaves.[250] Enslaved people made up about two-thirds of the population in part of North Borneo in the 1880s.[250]
+
+After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal, throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.[251][252] Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church[253] in 1555. Japanese slave women were even sold as concubines to Asian lascar and African crew members, along with their European counterparts serving on Portuguese ships trading in Japan, mentioned by Luis Cerqueira, a Portuguese Jesuit, in a 1598 document.[254] Japanese slaves were brought by the Portuguese to Macau, where they were enslaved to Portuguese or became slaves to other slaves.[255][256]
+
+Some Korean slaves were bought by the Portuguese and brought back to Portugal from Japan, where they had been among the tens of thousands of Korean prisoners of war transported to Japan during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98).[257][258] Historians pointed out that at the same time Hideyoshi expressed his indignation and outrage at the Portuguese trade in Japanese slaves, he was engaging in a mass slave trade of Korean prisoners of war in Japan.[259][260]
+Fillippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the large slave community in 1578, although most of the slaves were black.[261][262][263][264][265]
+The Portuguese "highly regarded" Asian slaves from the East much more "than slaves from sub-Saharan Africa".[266] The Portuguese attributed qualities like intelligence and industriousness to Chinese and Japanese slaves.[267][268][269][270]
+
+King Sebastian of Portugal feared rampant slavery was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.[271][272]Hideyoshi was so disgusted that his own Japanese people were being sold en masse into slavery on Kyushu, that he wrote a letter to Jesuit Vice-Provincial Gaspar Coelho on July 24, 1587, to demand the Portuguese, Siamese (Thai), and Cambodians stop purchasing and enslaving Japanese and return Japanese slaves who ended up as far as India.[273][274][275] Hideyoshi blamed the Portuguese and Jesuits for this slave trade and banned Christian proselytizing as a result.[276][self-published source][277] In 1595, a law was passed by Portugal banning the selling and buying of Chinese and Japanese slaves.[278]
+
+During the Joseon period, the nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.[81] The nobi system declined beginning in the 18th century.[279] Since the outset of the Joseon dynasty and especially beginning in the 17th century, there was harsh criticism among prominent thinkers in Korea about the nobi system. Even within the Joseon government, there were indications of a shift in attitude toward the nobi.[280] King Yeongjo implemented a policy of gradual emancipation in 1775,[82] and he and his successor King Jeongjo made many proposals and developments that lessened the burden on nobi, which led to the emancipation of the vast majority of government nobi in 1801.[280] In addition, population growth,[82] numerous escaped slaves,[81] growing commercialization of agriculture, and the rise of the independent small farmer class contributed to the decline in the number of nobi to about 1.5% of the total population by 1858.[281] The hereditary nobi system was officially abolished around 1886–87,[81][281] and the rest of the nobi system was abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894.[81][282] However, slavery did not completely disappear in Korea until 1930, during Imperial Japanese rule.
+
+During the Imperial Japanese occupation of Korea around World War II, some Koreans were used in forced labor by the Imperial Japanese, in conditions which have been compared to slavery.[81][283] These included women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II, known as "comfort women".[81][283]
+
+Slaves (he mōkai) had a recognised social role in traditional  Māori society in New Zealand.[284]
+
+Blackbirding occurred in the  Pacific, especially in the 19th century.
+
+In Constantinople, about one-fifth of the population consisted of slaves.[285] The city was a major centre of the slave trade in the 15th and later centuries.
+Slaves were provided by Tatar raids on Slavic villages[286] but also by conquest and the suppression of rebellions, in the aftermath of which entire populations were sometimes enslaved and sold across the Empire, reducing the risk of future rebellion.  The Ottomans also purchased slaves from traders who brought slaves into the Empire from Europe and Africa. It has been estimated that some 200,000 slaves – mainly Circassians – were imported into the Ottoman Empire between 1800 and 1909.[250] As late as 1908, women slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire.[287]
+
+Until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate (a Muslim Tatar state) maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East.[106] The slaves were captured in southern Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Circassia by Tatar horsemen[288] and sold in the Crimean port of Kaffa.[289] About 2 million mostly Christian slaves were exported over the 16th and 17th centuries[290] until the Crimean Khanate was destroyed by the Russian Empire in 1783.[291]
+
+A slave market for captured Russian and Persian slaves was centred in the Central Asian khanate of Khiva.[292] In the early 1840s, the population of the Uzbek states of Bukhara and Khiva included about 900,000 slaves.[250] Darrel P. Kaiser wrote, "Kazakh-Kirghiz tribesmen kidnapped 1573 settlers from colonies [German settlements in Russia] in 1774 alone and only half were successfully ransomed. The rest were killed or enslaved."[293]
+
+Even though slavery is now outlawed in every country, the number of slaves today is estimated as between 12 million and 29.8 million.[294][295][296] According to a broad definition of slavery, there were 27 million people in slavery in 1999, spread all over the world.[297] In 2005, the International Labour Organization provided an estimate of 12.3 million forced labourers.[298] Siddharth Kara has also provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage (18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million).[42] Kara provides a dynamic model to calculate the number of slaves in the world each year, with an estimated 29.2 million at the end of 2009.
+
+According to a 2003 report by Human Rights Watch, an estimated 15 million children in debt bondage in India work in slavery-like conditions to pay off their family's debts.[300][301]
+
+A report by the Walk Free Foundation in 2013,[302] found India had the highest number of slaves, nearly 14 million, followed by China (2.9 million), Pakistan (2.1 million), Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh; while the countries with the highest proportions of slaves were Mauritania, Haiti, Pakistan, India and Nepal.[303]
+
+In June 2013, U.S. State Department released a report on slavery.  It placed Russia, China, and Uzbekistan in the worst offenders category.  Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe were at the lowest level. The list also included Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait among a total of 21 countries.[304][305]
+
+The Walk Free Foundation reported in 2018 that slavery in wealthy Western societies is much more prevalent than previously known, in particular the United States and Great Britain, which have 403,000 (one in 800) and 136,000 slaves respectively. Andrew Forrest, founder of the organization, said that "The United States is one of the most advanced countries in the world yet has more than 400,000 modern slaves working under forced labor conditions."[306] An estimated 40.3 million are enslaved globally, with North Korea having the most slaves at 2.6 million (one in 10). The foundation defines contemporary slavery as "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power, or deception."[307]
+
+During the Second Libyan Civil War, Libyans started capturing Sub-Saharan African migrants trying to get to Europe through Libya and selling them on slave markets or holding them hostage for ransom[308]  Women are often raped, used as sex slaves, or sold to brothels.[309][310][311] Child migrants suffer from abuse and child rape in Libya.[312][313]
+
+In Mauritania, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981), it is estimated that 20% of its 3 million population, are enslaved as bonded laborers.[314][315][316] Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007.[317] However, although slavery, as a practice, was legally banned in 1981, it was not a crime to own a slave until 2007.[318] Although many slaves have escaped or have been freed since 2007, as of 2012[update], only one slave owner had been sentenced to serve time in prison.[319]
+
+While American slaves in 1809 were sold for around $40,000 (in inflation adjusted dollars), a slave nowadays can be bought for just $90, making replacement more economical than providing long-term care.[320] Slavery is a multibillion-dollar industry with estimates of up to $35 billion generated annually.[321]
+
+Victims of human trafficking are typically recruited through deceit or trickery (such as a false job offer, false migration offer, or false marriage offer), sale by family members, recruitment by former slaves, or outright abduction. Victims are forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs to control their victims.[322] "Annually, according to U.S. government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80% of transnational victims are women and girls, and up to 50% are minors, reports the U.S. State Department in a 2008 study.[323]
+
+While the majority of trafficking victims are women who are forced into prostitution (in which case the practice is called sex trafficking), victims also include men, women and children who are forced into manual labour.[324] Because of the illegal nature of human trafficking, its extent is unknown. A U.S. government report, published in 2005, estimates that about 700,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally.[324] Another research effort revealed that roughly 1.5 million individuals are trafficked either internally or internationally each year, of which about 500,000 are sex trafficking victims.[42]
+
+Slavery has existed, in one form or another, throughout recorded human history – as have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves.
+
+Ashoka, who ruled the Maurya Empire in the Indian subcontinent from 269–232 BCE, abolished the slave trade but not slavery.[326] The Qin dynasty, which ruled China from 221 to 206 BC, abolished slavery and discouraged serfdom. However, many of its laws were overturned when the dynasty was overthrown.[327] Slavery was again abolished by Wang Mang in China in 17 CE but was reinstituted after his assassination.[328]
+
+The Spanish colonization of the Americas sparked a discussion about the right to enslave Native Americans. A prominent critic of slavery in the Spanish New World colonies was Bartolomé de las Casas, who opposed the enslavement of Native Americans, and as well as Africans in America.
+
+One of the first protests against slavery came from German and Dutch Quakers in Pennsylvania in 1688.[329] In 1777, Vermont, at the time an independent nation, became the first portion of what would become the United States to abolish slavery.[329]
+
+In the United States, all of the northern states had abolished slavery by 1804, with New Jersey being the last to act.[330] Abolitionist pressure produced a series of small steps towards emancipation. After the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves went into effect on January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited,[331] but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted; most of those slaves already in the U.S. were legally emancipated only in 1863. Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad. Violent clashes between anti-slavery and pro-slavery Americans included Bleeding Kansas, a series of political and armed disputes in 1854–1861 as to whether Kansas would join the United States as a slave or free state. By 1860, the total number of slaves reached almost four million, and the American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in the United States.[332] In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States; the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution prohibited most forms of slavery throughout the country.
+
+Many of the freed slaves became sharecroppers and indentured servants. In this manner, some became tied to the very parcel of land into which they had been born a slave having little freedom or economic opportunity because of Jim Crow laws which perpetuated discrimination, limited education, promoted persecution without due process and resulted in continued poverty. Fear of reprisals such as unjust incarcerations and lynchings deterred upward mobility further.
+
+France abolished slavery in 1794.[329]
+
+One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England in 1772, with British Judge Lord Mansfield, whose opinion in Somersett's Case was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions could not be enforced in England.[333]
+
+Sons of Africa was a late 18th-century British group that campaigned to end slavery. Its members were Africans in London, freed slaves who included Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community. It was closely connected to the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a non-denominational group founded in 1787, whose members included Thomas Clarkson. British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce led the anti-slavery movement in the United Kingdom, although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Clarkson. Wilberforce was urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, to make the issue his own and was also given support by reformed Evangelical John Newton. The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 25, 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire,[334] Wilberforce also campaigned for abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
+
+After the 1807 act abolishing the slave trade was passed, these campaigners switched to encouraging other countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies. Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.[335] Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.[336]
+
+In 1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization, Anti-Slavery International, was formed in Britain by Joseph Sturge, which campaigned to outlaw slavery in other countries.[337] There were celebrations in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom through the work of the British Anti-Slavery Society.
+
+In the 1860s, David Livingstone's reports of atrocities within the Arab slave trade in Africa stirred up the interest of the British public, reviving the flagging abolitionist movement. The Royal Navy throughout the 1870s attempted to suppress "this abominable Eastern trade", at Zanzibar in particular. In 1905, the French abolished indigenous slavery in most of French West Africa.[338]
+
+On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declared freedom from slavery is an internationally recognized human right. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
+
+No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.[339]
+
+In 2014, for the first time in history, major leaders of many religions, Buddhist, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim met to sign a shared commitment against modern-day slavery; the declaration they signed calls for the elimination of slavery and human trafficking by 2020.[340] The signatories were: Pope Francis, Mātā Amṛtānandamayī, Bhikkhuni Thich Nu Chân Không (representing Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh), Datuk K Sri Dhammaratana, Chief High Priest of Malaysia, Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Rabbi David Rosen, Abbas Abdalla Abbas Soliman, Undersecretary of State of Al Azhar Alsharif (representing Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar), Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi, Sheikh Naziyah Razzaq Jaafar, Special advisor of Grand Ayatollah (representing Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Hussain al Najafi), Sheikh Omar Abboud, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Metropolitan Emmanuel of France (representing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.)[340]
+
+Groups such as the American Anti-Slavery Group, Anti-Slavery International, Free the Slaves, the Anti-Slavery Society, and the Norwegian Anti-Slavery Society continue to campaign to eliminate slavery.
+
+On May 21, 2001, the National Assembly of France passed the Taubira law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. Apologies on behalf of African nations, for their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, remain an open issue since slavery was practiced in Africa even before the first Europeans arrived and the Atlantic slave trade was performed with a high degree of involvement of several African societies. The black slave market was supplied by well-established slave trade networks controlled by local African societies and individuals.[341]
+
+There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Calabar and other southern parts of Nigeria had economies depended solely on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans.[342]
+
+Several historians have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.[343]
+
+In 1999, President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin issued a national apology for the central role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade.[344] Luc Gnacadja, minister of environment and housing for Benin, later said: "The slave trade is a shame, and we do repent for it."[345] Researchers estimate that 3 million slaves were exported out of the Slave Coast bordering the Bight of Benin.[345] President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana also apologized for his country's involvement in the slave trade.[344]
+
+The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery and is still being pursued by entities across the world. For example, the Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action plan. In 2007, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a formal apology for Great Britain's involvement in slavery.[346]
+
+On February 25, 2007, the Commonwealth of Virginia resolved to 'profoundly regret' and apologize for its role in the institution of slavery. Unique and the first of its kind in the U.S., the apology was unanimously passed in both Houses as Virginia approached the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown.[347]
+
+On August 24, 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone of London apologized publicly for Britain's role in colonial slave trade. "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery," he said, pointing towards the financial district. He claimed that London was still tainted by the horrors of slavery. Specifically, London outfitted, financed, and insured many of the ships, which helped fund the building of London's docks.[348] Officials in Liverpool, which was a large slave trading port, apologized in 1999.[349]
+
+On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws.[350] In June 2009, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery".[351] The news was welcomed by President Barack Obama, the nation's first president of African descent.[352] Some of President Obama's ancestors may have been slave owners.[353]
+
+In 2010, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi apologized for Arab involvement in the slave trade, saying: "I regret the behavior of the Arabs… They brought African children to North Africa, they made them slaves, they sold them like animals, and they took them as slaves and traded them in a shameful way."[354]
+
+There have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly held as slaves or for their descendants. Claims for reparations for being held in slavery are handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since former slaves' relatives lack of money means they often have limited access to a potentially expensive and futile legal process. Mandatory systems of fines and reparations paid to an as yet undetermined group of claimants from fines, paid by unspecified parties, and collected by authorities have been proposed by advocates to alleviate this "civil court problem." Since in almost all cases there are no living ex-slaves or living ex-slave owners these movements have gained little traction. In nearly all cases the judicial system has ruled that the statute of limitations on these possible claims has long since expired.
+
+The word slavery is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity in which one is coerced into performing. Some argue that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute "state-operated slavery."[355][356] Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery.[357]
+
+"Slavery" has been used by some anti-psychiatry proponents to define involuntary psychiatric patients, claiming there are no unbiased physical tests for mental illness and yet the psychiatric patient must follow the orders of the psychiatrist. They assert that instead of chains to control the slave, the psychiatrist uses drugs to control the mind.[358] Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis for a slave who did not want to be a slave.[359][360]
+
+Some proponents of animal rights have applied the term slavery to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves.[361]
+
+The labor market, as institutionalized under today's market economic systems, has been criticized by mainstream socialists and by anarcho-syndicalists, who utilise the term wage slavery as a pejorative or dysphemism for wage labour.[362][363][364][365][366][367] Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.[368]
+
+Film has been the most influential medium in the presentation of the history of slavery to the general public around the world.[369] The American film industry has had a complex relationship with slavery and until recent decades often avoided the topic. Films such as Birth of a Nation (1915)[370] and Gone with the Wind (1939) became controversial because they gave a favourable depiction. In 1940 The Santa Fe Trail gave a liberal but ambiguous interpretation of John Brown's attacks on slavery.[371] Song of the South gave a favorable outlook on slavery in the United States in 1946.
+
+The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s made defiant slaves into heroes.[372] The question of slavery in American memory necessarily involves its depictions in feature films.[373]
+
+Most Hollywood films used American settings, although Spartacus (1960), dealt with an actual revolt in the Roman Empire known as the Third Servile War. The revolt failed, and all the rebels were executed, but their spirit lived on according to the film.[374] Spartacus stays surprisingly close to the historical record.[375]
+
+The Last Supper (La última cena in Spanish) was a 1976 film directed by Cuban Tomás Gutiérrez Alea about the teaching of Christianity to slaves in Cuba, and emphasizes the role of ritual and revolt. Burn! takes place on the imaginary Portuguese island of Queimada (where the locals speak Spanish) and it merges historical events that took place in Brazil, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and elsewhere.
+
+Historians agree that films have largely shaped historical memories, but they debate issues of accuracy, plausibility, moralism, sensationalism, how facts are stretched in search of broader truths, and suitability for the classroom.[376][377] Berlin argues that critics complain if the treatment emphasizes historical brutality, or if it glosses over the harshness to highlight the emotional impact of slavery.[378]

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+Fencing[1] is a group of three related combat sports. The three disciplines in modern fencing are the  foil, the épée, and the sabre (also saber); winning points are made through the weapon's contact with an opponent. A fourth discipline, singlestick, appeared in the 1904 Olympics but was dropped after that, and is not a part of modern fencing. Fencing was one of the first sports to be played in the Olympics. Based on the traditional skills of swordsmanship, the modern sport arose at the end of the 19th century, with the Italian school having modified the historical European martial art of classical fencing, and the French school later refining the Italian system. There are three forms of modern fencing, each of which uses a different kind of weapon and has different rules; thus the sport itself is divided into three competitive scenes: foil, épée, and sabre. Most competitive fencers choose to specialize in one weapon only.
+
+Competitive fencing is one of the five activities which have been featured in every modern Olympic Games, the other four being athletics, cycling, swimming, and gymnastics.
+
+Fencing is governed by Fédération Internationale d'Escrime (FIE). Today, its head office is in Lausanne, Switzerland. The FIE is composed of 145 national federations, each of which is recognised by its state Olympic Committee as the sole representative of Olympic-style fencing in that country.[2]
+
+The FIE maintains the current rules[3] used by FIE sanctioned international events, including world cups, world championships and the Olympic Games. The FIE handles proposals to change the rules the first year after an Olympic year in the annual congress. The US Fencing Association has slightly different rules, but usually adheres to FIE standards.
+
+Fencing traces its roots to the development of swordsmanship for duels and self defense. Fencing is believed to have originated in Spain; some of the most significant books on fencing were written by Spanish fencers. Treatise on Arms[4] was written by Diego de Valera between 1458 and 1471 and is one of the oldest surviving manuals on western fencing (in spite of the title, the book of Diego Valera was on heraldry, not about fencing)[5] shortly before dueling came under official ban by the Catholic Monarchs. In conquest, the Spanish forces carried fencing around the world, particularly to southern Italy, one of the major areas of strife between both nations.[6][7] Fencing was mentioned in the play The Merry Wives of Windsor written sometime prior to 1602.[8][9]
+
+The mechanics of modern fencing originated in the 18th century in an Italian school of fencing of the Renaissance, and under their influence, were improved by the French school of fencing.[10][11] The Spanish school of fencing stagnated and was replaced by the Italian and French schools.
+
+The shift towards fencing as a sport rather than as military training happened from the mid-18th century, and was led by Domenico Angelo, who established a fencing academy, Angelo's School of Arms, in Carlisle House, Soho, London in 1763.[12] There, he taught the aristocracy the fashionable art of swordsmanship. His school was run by three generations of his family and dominated the art of European fencing for almost a century.
+[13]
+
+He established the essential rules of posture and footwork that still govern modern sport fencing, although his attacking and parrying methods were still much different from current practice. Although he intended to prepare his students for real combat, he was the first fencing master to emphasize the health and sporting benefits of fencing more than its use as a killing art, particularly in his influential book L'École des armes (The School of Fencing), published in 1763.[13]
+
+Basic conventions were collated and set down during the 1880s by the French fencing master Camille Prévost. It was during this time that many officially recognised fencing associations began to appear in different parts of the world, such as the Amateur Fencers League of America was founded in 1891, the Amateur Fencing Association of Great Britain in 1902, and the Fédération Nationale des Sociétés d’Escrime et Salles d’Armes de France in 1906.[14]
+
+The first regularized fencing competition was held at the inaugural Grand Military Tournament and Assault at Arms in 1880, held at the Royal Agricultural Hall, in Islington in June.  The Tournament featured a series of competitions between army officers and soldiers. Each bout was fought for five hits and the foils were pointed with black to aid the judges.[15] The Amateur Gymnastic & Fencing Association drew up an official set of fencing regulations in 1896.
+
+Fencing was part of the Olympic Games in the summer of 1896. Sabre events have been held at every Summer Olympics; foil events have been held at every Summer Olympics except 1908; épée events have been held at every Summer Olympics except in the summer of 1896 because of unknown reasons.
+
+Starting with épée in 1933, side judges were replaced by the Laurent-Pagan electrical scoring apparatus,[16] with an audible tone and a red or green light indicating when a touch landed. Foil was automated in 1956, sabre in 1988. The scoring box reduced the bias in judging, and permitted more accurate scoring of faster actions, lighter touches, and more touches to the back and flank than before.[17]
+
+There are three weapons in modern fencing: foil, épée, and sabre.  Each weapon has its own rules and strategies. Equipment needed includes at least 2 swords, a lamé (not for épée), a white jacket, underarm protector, two body and mask cords, knee high socks, glove and knickers.
+
+The foil is a light thrusting weapon with a maximum weight of 500 grams.  The foil targets the torso, but not the arms or legs.  The foil has a small circular hand guard that serves to protect the hand from direct stabs.  As the hand is not a valid target in foil, this is primarily for safety. Touches are scored only with the tip; hits with the side of the blade do not register on the electronic scoring apparatus (and do not halt the action). Touches that land outside the target area (called an off-target touch and signaled by a distinct color on the scoring apparatus) stop the action, but are not scored. Only a single touch can be awarded to either fencer at the end of a phrase. If both fencers land touches within a close enough interval of milliseconds to register two lights on the machine, the referee uses the rules of "right of way" to determine which fencer is awarded the touch, or if an off-target hit has priority over a valid hit, in which case no touch is awarded.  If the referee is unable to determine which fencer has right of way, no touch is awarded.
+
+The épée is a thrusting weapon like the foil, but heavier, with a maximum total weight of 775 grams.  In épée, the entire body is a valid target.  The hand guard on the épée is a large circle that extends towards the pommel, effectively covering the hand, which is a valid target in épée.  Like foil, all hits must be with the tip and not the sides of the blade.  Hits with the side of the blade do not register on the electronic scoring apparatus (and do not halt the action).  As the entire body is legal target, there is no concept of an off-target touch, except if the fencer accidentally strikes the floor, setting off the light and tone on the scoring apparatus.  Unlike foil and sabre, épée does not use "right of way", and awards simultaneous touches to both fencers. However, if the score is tied in a match at the last point and a double touch is scored, the point is null and void.
+
+The sabre is a light cutting and thrusting weapon that targets the entire body above the waist, except the weapon hand. Sabre is the newest weapon to be used.  Like the foil, the maximum legal weight of a sabre is 500 grams.   The hand guard on the sabre extends from hilt to the point at which the blade connects to the pommel. This guard is generally turned outwards during sport to protect the sword arm from touches. Hits with the entire blade or point are valid. As in foil, touches that land outside the target area are not scored. However, unlike foil, these off-target touches do not stop the action, and the fencing continues. In the case of both fencers landing a scoring touch, the referee determines which fencer receives the point for the action, again through the use of "right of way".
+
+
+
+Most personal protective equipment for fencing is made of tough cotton or nylon. Kevlar was added to top level uniform pieces (jacket, breeches, underarm protector, lamé, and the bib of the mask) following the death of Vladimir Smirnov at the 1982 World Championships in Rome. However, Kevlar is degraded by both ultraviolet light and chlorine, which can complicate cleaning.
+
+Other ballistic fabrics, such as Dyneema, have been developed that resist puncture, and which do not degrade the way that Kevlar does. FIE rules state that tournament wear must be made of fabric that resists a force of 800 newtons (180 lbf), and that the mask bib must resist twice that amount.
+
+The complete fencing kit includes:
+
+Jacket
+
+Glove
+
+Sous-Plastron
+
+Breeches/Knickers
+
+Mask
+
+Chest protector for women
+
+Traditionally, the fencer's uniform is white, and an instructor's uniform is black. This may be due to the occasional pre-electric practice of covering the point of the weapon in dye, soot, or colored chalk in order to make it easier for the referee to determine the placing of the touches.  As this is no longer a factor in the electric era, the FIE rules have been relaxed to allow colored uniforms (save black). The guidelines also limit the permitted size and positioning of sponsorship logos.
+
+Some pistol grips used by foil and épée fencers
+
+Visconti grip
+
+Belgian grip
+
+Russian grip
+
+Hungarian grip
+
+A set of electric fencing equipment is required to participate in electric fencing. Electric equipment in fencing varies depending on the weapon with which it is used in accordance. The main component of a set of electric equipment is the body cord. The body cord serves as the connection between a fencer and a reel of wire that is part of a system for electrically detecting that the weapon has touched the opponent. There are two types: one for épée, and one for foil and sabre.
+
+Épée body cords consist of two sets of three prongs each connected by a wire. One set plugs into the fencer's weapon, with the other connecting to the reel. Foil and sabre body cords have only two prongs (or a twist-lock bayonet connector) on the weapon side, with the third wire connecting instead to the fencer's lamé. The need in foil and sabre to distinguish between on and off-target touches requires a wired connection to the valid target area.
+
+A body cord consists of three wires known as the A, B, and C lines. At the reel connector (and both connectors for Épée cords) The B pin is in the middle, the A pin is 1.5 cm to one side of B, and the C pin is 2 cm to the other side of B. This asymmetrical arrangement ensures that the cord cannot be plugged in the wrong way around.
+
+In foil, the A line is connected to the lamé and the B line runs up a wire to the tip of the weapon. The B line is normally connected to the C line through the tip. When the tip is depressed, the circuit is broken and one of three things can happen:
+
+In Épée, the A and B lines run up separate wires to the tip (there is no lamé). When the tip is depressed, it connects the A and B lines, resulting in a valid touch. However, if the tip is touching the opponents weapon (their C line) or the grounded strip, nothing happens when it is depressed, as the current is redirected to the C line. Grounded strips are particularly important in Épée, as without one, a touch to the floor registers as a valid touch (rather than off-target as in Foil).
+
+In Sabre, similarly to Foil, the A line is connected to the lamé, but both the B and C lines are connected to the body of the weapon. Any contact between the one's B/C line (doesn't matter which, as they are always connected) and the opponent's A line (their lamé) results in a valid touch. There is no need for grounded strips in Sabre, as hitting something other than the opponent's lame does nothing.
+
+In a professional fencing competition, a complete set of electric equipment is needed.
+
+A complete set of foil electric equipment includes:
+
+The electric equipment of sabre is very similar to that of foil. In addition, equipment used in sabre includes:
+
+Épée fencers lack a lamé, conductive bib, and head cord due to their target area. Also, their body cords are constructed differently as described above. However, they possess all of the other components of a foil fencer's equipment.
+
+Techniques or movements in fencing can be divided into two categories: offensive and defensive. Some techniques can fall into both categories (e.g. the beat). Certain techniques are used offensively, with the purpose of landing a hit on your opponent while holding the right of way (foil and sabre). Others are used defensively, to protect against a hit or obtain the right of way.[18]
+
+The attacks and defences may be performed in countless combinations of feet and hand actions. For example, fencer A attacks the arm of fencer B, drawing a high outside parry; fencer B then follows the parry with a high line riposte. Fencer A, expecting that, then makes his own parry by pivoting his blade under fencer B's weapon (from straight out to more or less straight down), putting fencer B's tip off target and fencer A now scoring against the low line by angulating the hand upwards.
+
+Whenever a point is scored, the fencers will go back to their starting mark. The fight will start again after the following commands have been given by the referee (in French in international settings): "En garde" (On guard), "Êtes-vous prêts ?" (Are you ready?), "Allez" (Fence!).
+
+University students compete internationally at the World University Games. The United States holds two national level university tournaments including the NCAA championship and the USACFC National Championships[19] tournaments in the US and the BUCS fencing championships in the United Kingdom.
+
+National fencing organisations have set up programmes to encourage more students to fence. Examples include the Regional Youth Circuit program[20] in the US and the Leon Paul Youth Development series in the UK.
+
+In recent years, attempts have been made to introduce fencing to a wider and younger audience, by using foam and plastic swords, which require much less protective equipment. This makes it much less expensive to provide classes, and thus easier to take fencing to a wider range of schools than traditionally has been the case. There is even a competition series in Scotland – the Plastic-and-Foam Fencing FunLeague[21] – specifically for Primary and early Secondary school-age children using this equipment.
+
+The UK hosts two national competitions in which schools compete against each other directly: the Public Schools Fencing Championship, a competition only open to Independent Schools,[22] and the Scottish Secondary Schools Championships, open to all secondary schools in Scotland. It contains both teams and individual events and is highly anticipated. Schools organise matches directly against one another and school age pupils can compete individually in the British Youth Championships.
+
+Many universities in Ontario, Canada have fencing teams that participate in an annual inter-university competition called the OUA Finals.
+
+Other variants include wheelchair fencing for those with disabilities, chair fencing, one-hit épée (one of the five events which constitute modern pentathlon) and the various types of non-Olympic competitive fencing.[23]  Chair fencing is similar to wheelchair fencing, but for the able bodied.  The opponents set up opposing chairs and fence while seated; all the usual rules of fencing are applied.  An example of the latter is the American Fencing League (distinct from the United States Fencing Association): the format of competitions is different and the right of way rules are interpreted in a different way. In a number of countries, school and university matches deviate slightly from the FIE format. A variant of the sport using toy lightsabers earned national attention when ESPN2 acquired the rights to a selection of matches and included it as part of its "ESPN8: The Ocho" programming block in August 2018.[24]

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+Aesop (/ˈiːsɒp/ EE-sop or /ˈeɪsɒp/ AY-sop; Greek: Αἴσωπος, Aísopos; c. 620–564 BCE) was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and inanimate objects that speak, solve problems, and generally have human characteristics.
+
+Scattered details of Aesop's life can be found in ancient sources, including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch. An ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him as a strikingly ugly slave (δοῦλος) who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and city-states. Older spellings of his name have included Esop(e) and Isope. Depictions of Aesop in popular culture over the last 2500 years have included many works of art and his appearance as a character in numerous books, films, plays, and television programs.
+
+The name of Aesop is as widely known as any that has come down from Graeco-Roman antiquity [yet] it is far from certain whether a historical Aesop ever existed ... in the latter part of the fifth century something like a coherent Aesop legend appears, and Samos seems to be its home.
+
+The earliest Greek sources, including Aristotle, indicate that Aesop was born around 620 BCE in Thrace at a site on the Black Sea coast which would later become the city Mesembria. A number of later writers from the Roman imperial period (including Phaedrus, who adapted the fables into Latin) say that he was born in Phrygia.[2] The 3rd-century poet Callimachus called him "Aesop of Sardis,"[3] and the later writer Maximus of Tyre called him "the sage of Lydia."[4]
+
+From Aristotle[5] and Herodotus[6] we learn that Aesop was a slave in Samos and that his masters were first a man named Xanthus and then a man named Iadmon; that he must eventually have been freed, because he argued as an advocate for a wealthy Samian; and that he met his end in the city of Delphi. Plutarch[7] tells us that Aesop had come to Delphi on a diplomatic mission from King Croesus of Lydia, that he insulted the Delphians, was sentenced to death on a trumped-up charge of temple theft, and was thrown from a cliff (after which the Delphians suffered pestilence and famine). Before this fatal episode, Aesop met with Periander of Corinth, where Plutarch has him dining with the Seven Sages of Greece, sitting beside his friend Solon, whom he had met in Sardis. (Leslie Kurke suggests that Aesop himself "was a popular contender for inclusion" in the list of Seven Sages.)[8]
+
+Problems of chronological reconciliation dating the death of Aesop and the reign of Croesus led the Aesop scholar (and compiler of the Perry Index) Ben Edwin Perry in 1965 to conclude that "everything in the ancient testimony about Aesop that pertains to his associations with either Croesus or with any of the so-called Seven Wise Men of Greece must be reckoned as literary fiction," and Perry likewise dismissed Aesop's death in Delphi as legendary;[9] but subsequent research has established that a possible diplomatic mission for Croesus and a visit to Periander "are consistent with the year of Aesop's death."[10] Still problematic is the story by Phaedrus which has Aesop in Athens, telling the fable of the frogs who asked for a king, during the reign of Peisistratos, which occurred decades after the presumed date of Aesop's death.[11]
+
+Along with the scattered references in the ancient sources regarding the life and death of Aesop, there is a highly fictional biography now commonly called The Aesop Romance (also known as the Vita or The Life of Aesop or The Book of Xanthus the Philosopher and Aesop His Slave), "an anonymous work of Greek popular literature composed around the second century of our era ... Like The Alexander Romance, The Aesop Romance became a folkbook, a work that belonged to no one, and the occasional writer felt free to modify as it might suit him."[12] Multiple, sometimes contradictory, versions of this work exist. The earliest known version was probably composed in the 1st century CE, but the story may have circulated in different versions for centuries before it was committed to writing,[13] and certain elements can be shown to originate in the 4th century BCE.[14] Scholars long dismissed any historical or biographical validity in The Aesop Romance; widespread study of the work began only toward the end of the 20th century.
+
+In The Aesop Romance, Aesop is a slave of Phrygian origin on the island of Samos, and extremely ugly. At first he lacks the power of speech, but after showing kindness to a priestess of Isis, is granted by the goddess not only speech but a gift for clever storytelling, which he uses alternately to assist and confound his master, Xanthus, embarrassing the philosopher in front of his students and even sleeping with his wife. After interpreting a portent for the people of Samos, Aesop is given his freedom and acts as an emissary between the Samians and King Croesus. Later he travels to the courts of Lycurgus of Babylon and Nectanabo of Egypt – both imaginary rulers – in a section that appears to borrow heavily from the romance of Ahiqar.[15] The story ends with Aesop's journey to Delphi, where he angers the citizens by telling insulting fables, is sentenced to death and, after cursing the people of Delphi, is forced to jump to his death.
+
+Aesop may not have written his fables. The Aesop Romance claims that he wrote them down and deposited them in the library of Croesus; Herodotus calls Aesop a "writer of fables" and Aristophanes speaks of "reading" Aesop,[16] but that might simply have been a compilation of fables ascribed to him.[17] Various Classical authors name Aesop as the originator  of fables. Sophocles, in a poem addressed to Euripides, made reference to the North Wind and the Sun.[18] Socrates while in prison turned some of the fables into verse,[19] of which Diogenes Laërtius records a small fragment.[20] The early Roman playwright and poet Ennius also rendered at least one of Aesop's fables in Latin verse, of which the last two lines still exist.[21]
+
+Collections of what are claimed to be Aesop's Fables were transmitted by a series of authors writing in both Greek and Latin. Demetrius of Phalerum made what may have been the earliest, probably in prose (Αισοπείων α), contained in ten books for the use of orators, although that has since been lost.[22] Next appeared an edition in elegiac verse, cited by the Suda, but the author's name is unknown. Phaedrus, a freedman of Augustus, rendered the fables into Latin in the 1st century CE. At about the same time Babrius turned the fables into Greek choliambics. A 3rd-century author, Titianus, is said to have rendered the fables into prose in a work now lost.[23] Avianus (of uncertain date, perhaps the 4th century) translated 42 of the fables into Latin elegiacs. The 4th-century grammarian Dositheus Magister also made a collection of Aesop's Fables, now lost.
+
+Aesop's Fables continued to be revised and translated through the ensuing centuries, with the addition of material from other cultures, so that the body of fables known today bears little relation to those Aesop originally told. With a surge in scholarly interest beginning toward the end of the 20th century, some attempt has been made to determine the nature and content of the very earliest fables which may be most closely linked to the historic Aesop.[24]
+
+The anonymously authored Aesop Romance begins with a vivid description of Aesop's appearance, saying he was "of loathsome aspect... potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped—a portentous monstrosity,"[25] or as another translation has it, "a faulty creation of Prometheus when half-asleep."[26] The earliest text by a known author that refers to Aesop's appearance is Himerius in the 4th century, who says that Aesop "was laughed at and made fun of, not because of some of his tales but on account of his looks and the sound of his voice."[27] The evidence from both of these sources is dubious, since Himerius lived some 800 years after Aesop and his image of Aesop may have come from The Aesop Romance, which is essentially fiction; but whether based on fact or not, at some point the idea of an ugly, even deformed Aesop took hold in popular imagination. Scholars have begun to examine why and how this "physiognomic tradition" developed.[28]
+
+A much later tradition depicts Aesop as a black African from Ethiopia. The first known promulgator of the idea was Planudes, a Byzantine scholar of the 13th century who wrote a biography of Aesop based on The Aesop Romance and conjectured that Aesop might have been Ethiopian, given his name.[29] An English translation of Planudes' biography from 1687 says that "his Complexion [was] black, from which dark Tincture he contracted his Name (Aesopus being the same with Aethiops)". When asked his origin by a prospective new master, Aesop replies, "I am a Negro"; numerous illustrations by Francis Barlow accompany this text and depict Aesop accordingly.[30] But according to Gert-Jan van Dijk, "Planudes' derivation of 'Aesop' from 'Aethiopian' is... etymologically incorrect,"[31] and Frank Snowden says that Planudes' account is "worthless as to the reliability of Aesop as 'Ethiopian.'"[32]
+
+The tradition of Aesop's African origin was continued in Britain, as attested by the lively figurine of a negro from the Chelsea porcelain factory which appeared in its Aesop series in the mid-18th century.[33] It then carried forward into the 19th century. The frontispiece of William Godwin's Fables Ancient and Modern (1805) has a copperplate illustration of Aesop relating his stories to little children that gives his features a distinctly African appearance.[34] The collection includes the fable of "Washing the Blackamoor White", although updating it and making the Ethiopian 'a black footman'. In 1856 William Martin Leake repeated the false etymological linkage of "Aesop" with "Aethiop" when he suggested that the "head of a negro" found on several coins from ancient Delphi (with specimens dated as early as 520 BCE)[35] might depict Aesop, presumably to commemorate (and atone for) his execution at Delphi,[36] but Theodor Panofka supposed the head to be a portrait of Delphos, founder of Delphi,[37] a view more widely repeated by later historians.[38]
+
+The idea that Aesop was Ethiopian seems supported by the presence of camels, elephants and apes in the fables, even though these African elements are more likely to have come from Egypt and Libya than from Ethiopia, and the fables featuring African animals may have entered the body of Aesopic fables long after Aesop actually lived.[39] Nevertheless, in 1932 the anthropologist J. H. Driberg, repeating the Aesop/Aethiop linkage, asserted that, while "some say he [Aesop] was a Phrygian... the more general view... is that he was an African", and "if Aesop was not an African, he ought to have been;"[40] and in 2002 Richard A. Lobban cited the number of African animals and "artifacts" in the Aesopic fables as "circumstantial evidence" that Aesop may have been a Nubian folkteller.[41]
+
+Popular perception of Aesop as black was to be encouraged by comparison between his fables and the stories of the trickster Br'er Rabbit told by African-American slaves. In Ian Colvin's introduction to Aesop in Politics (1914), for example, the fabulist is bracketed with Uncle Remus, "For both were slaves, and both were black".[42] The traditional role of the slave Aesop as "a kind of culture hero of the oppressed" is further promoted by the fictional Life, emerging "as a how-to handbook for the successful manipulation of superiors".[43] Such a perception was reinforced at the popular level by the 1971 TV production Aesop's Fables in which Bill Cosby played Aesop. In that mixture of live action and animation, Aesop tells fables that differentiate between realistic and unrealistic ambition and his version there of "The Tortoise and the Hare" illustrates how to take advantage of an opponent's over-confidence.[44]
+
+On other continents Aesop has occasionally undergone a degree of acculturation. This is evident in Isango Portobello's 2010 production of the play Aesop's Fables at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa. Based on a script by British playwright Peter Terson (1983),[45] it was radically adapted by the director Mark Dornford-May as a musical using native African instrumentation, dance and stage conventions.[46] Although Aesop is portrayed as Greek, and dressed in the short Greek tunic, the all-black production contextualises the story in the recent history of South Africa. The former slave, we are told "learns that liberty comes with responsibility as he journeys to his own freedom, joined by the animal characters of his parable-like fables."[47] One might compare with this Brian Seward's Aesop's Fabulous Fables (2009),[48] which first played in Singapore with a cast of mixed ethnicities. In it Chinese theatrical routines are merged with those of a standard musical.[49]
+
+There had already been an example of Asian acculturation in 17th-century Japan. There Portuguese missionaries had introduced a translation of the fables (Esopo no Fabulas, 1593) that included the biography of Aesop. This was then taken up by Japanese printers and taken through several editions under the title Isopo Monogatari. Even when Europeans were expelled from Japan and Christianity proscribed, this text survived, in part because the figure of Aesop had been assimilated into the culture and depicted in woodcuts as dressed in Japanese costume.[50][51]
+
+Ancient sources mention two statues of Aesop, one by Aristodemus and another by Lysippus,[52] and Philostratus describes a painting of Aesop surrounded by the animals of his fables.[53] None of these images have survived. According to Philostratus,
+
+The Fables are gathering about Aesop, being fond of him because he devotes himself to them. For... he checks greed and rebukes insolence and deceit, and in all this some animal is his mouthpiece — a lion or a fox or a horse... and not even the tortoise is dumb — that through them children may learn the business of life. So the Fables, honoured because of Aesop, gather at the doors of the wise man to bind fillets about his head and to crown him with a victor's crown of wild olive. And Aesop, methinks, is weaving some fable; at any rate his smile and his eyes fixed on the ground indicate this. The painter knows that for the composition of fables relaxation of the spirit is needed. And the painting is clever in representing the persons of the Fables. For it combines animals with men to make a chorus about Aesop, composed of the actors in his fables; and the fox is painted as leader of the chorus.[54]
+
+With the advent of printing in Europe, various illustrators tried to recreate this scene. One of the earliest was in Spain's La vida del Ysopet con sus fabulas historiadas (1489, see above). In France there was I. Baudoin's Fables d'Ésope Phrygien (1631) and Matthieu Guillemot's Les images ou tableaux de platte peinture des deux Philostrates (1637).[55] In England there was Francis Cleyn's frontispiece to John Ogilby's The Fables of Aesop[56] and the much later frontispiece to Godwin's Fables Ancient and Modern mentioned above in which the swarthy fabulist points out three of his characters to the children seated about him.
+
+Early on, the representation of Aesop as an ugly slave emerged. The later tradition which makes Aesop a black African resulted in depictions ranging from 17th-century engravings to a television portrayal by a black comedian. In general, beginning in the 20th century, plays have shown Aesop as a slave, but not ugly, while movies and television shows (such as The Bullwinkle Show[57]) have depicted him as neither ugly nor a slave.
+
+In 1843, the archaeologist Otto Jahn suggested that Aesop was the person depicted on a Greek red-figure cup,[58] c. 450 BCE, in the Vatican Museums.[59] Paul Zanker describes the figure as a man with "emaciated body and oversized head... furrowed brow and open mouth", who "listens carefully to the teachings of the fox sitting before him. He has pulled his mantle tightly around his meager body, as if he were shivering... he is ugly, with long hair, bald head, and unkempt, scraggly beard, and is clearly uncaring of his appearance."[60] Some archaeologists have suggested that the Hellenistic statue of a bearded hunchback with an intellectual appearance, discovered in the 18th century and pictured at the head of this article, also depicts Aesop, although alternative identifications have since been put forward.[61]
+
+Aesop began to appear equally early in literary works. The 4th century BCE Athenian playwright Alexis put Aesop on the stage in his comedy "Aesop", of which a few lines survive (Athenaeus 10.432);[62] conversing with Solon, Aesop praises the Athenian practice of adding water to wine.[63] Leslie Kurke suggests that Aesop may have been "a staple of the comic stage" of this era.[64]
+
+The 3rd-century-BCE poet Poseidippus of Pella wrote a narrative poem entitled "Aesopia" (now lost), in which Aesop's fellow slave Rhodopis (under her original name Doricha) was frequently mentioned, according to Athenaeus 13.596.[65] Pliny would later identify Rhodopis as Aesop's lover,[66] a romantic motif that would be repeated in subsequent popular depictions of Aesop.
+
+Aesop plays a fairly prominent part in Plutarch's conversation piece "The Banquet of the Seven Sages" in the 1st century CE.[67] The fabulist then makes a cameo appearance in the novel A True Story by the 2nd-century satirist Lucian; when the narrator arrives at the Island of the Blessed, he finds that "Aesop the Phrygian was there, too; he acts as their jester."[68]
+
+Beginning with the Heinrich Steinhowel edition of 1476, many translations of the fables into European languages, which also incorporated Planudes' Life of Aesop, featured illustrations depicting him as a hunchback. The 1687 edition of Aesop's Fables with His Life: in English, French and Latin[69] included 28 engravings by Francis Barlow that show him as a dwarfish hunchback (see in the section above), and his facial features appear to accord with his statement in the text (p. 7), "I am a Negro".
+
+The Spaniard Diego Velázquez painted a portrait of Aesop, dated 1639–40 and now in the collection of the Museo del Prado. The presentation is anachronistic and Aesop, while arguably not handsome, displays no physical deformities. It was partnered by another portrait of Menippus, a satirical philosopher equally of slave-origin. A similar philosophers series was painted by fellow Spaniard Jusepe de Ribera,[70] who is credited with two portraits of Aesop. "Aesop, poet of the fables" is in the El Escorial gallery and pictures him as an author leaning on a staff by a table which holds copies of his work, one of them a book with the name Hissopo on the cover.[71] The other is in the Museo de Prado, dated 1640–50 and titled "Aesop in beggar's rags". There he is also shown at a table, holding a sheet of paper in his left hand and writing with the other.[72] While the former hints at his lameness and deformed back, the latter only emphasises his poverty.
+
+In 1690, French playwright Edmé Boursault's Les fables d'Esope (later known as Esope à la ville) premiered in Paris. A sequel, Esope à la cour[73] (Aesop at Court), was first performed in 1701; drawing on a mention in Herodotus 2.134-5[74] that Aesop had once been owned by the same master as Rhodopis, and the statement in Pliny 36.17[75] that she was Aesop's concubine as well, the play introduced Rodope as Aesop's mistress, a romantic motif that would be repeated in later popular depictions of Aesop.
+
+Sir John Vanbrugh's comedy "Aesop"[76] was premièred at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, London, in 1697 and was frequently performed there for the next twenty years. A translation and adaptation of Boursault's Les fables d'Esope, Vanbrugh's play depicted a physically ugly Aesop acting as adviser to Learchus, governor of Cyzicus under King Croesus, and using his fables to solve romantic problems and quiet political unrest.[77]
+
+In 1780, the anonymously authored novelette The History and Amours of Rhodope was published in London. The story casts the two slaves Rhodope and Aesop as unlikely lovers, one ugly and the other beautiful; ultimately Rhodope is parted from Aesop and marries the Pharaoh of Egypt. Some editions of the volume were illustrated with an engraving by Francesco Bartolozzi of a work by the painter Angelica Kauffman. Titled "The beautiful Rhodope in love with Aesop", it pictures Rhodope leaning on an urn; she holds out her hand to Aesop, who is seated under a tree and turns his head to look at her. His right arm rests on a cage of doves, towards which he gestures. There is some ambiguity here, for while the cage suggests the captive state of both of them, a raven perched outside the cage may allude to his supposed colour.[78] In fact, the whole picture is planned to suggest how different the couple are. Rhodope and Aesop lean on opposite elbows, gesture with opposite hands, and while Rhodope's hand is held palm upwards, Aesop's is held palm downwards. She stands while he sits; he is dressed in dark clothes, she in white. The theme of their relationship was taken up again in 1844 by Walter Savage Landor (author of Imaginary Conversations), who published two fictional dialogues between Aesop and Rhodope.[79]
+
+Later in the 19th century the subject of Aesop telling his tales was made popular by the painting of him  entertaining the maids of Xanthus by Roberto Fontana (1844–1907).[80] A depiction of the fabulist surrounded by laughing young women, it went on to win a prize at the Milanese Brera Academy in 1876 and was then shown at the 1878 International Exhibition and the 11th exhibition of the Società di Belle Arti di Trieste in 1879. A later painting by Julian Russell Story widens Aesop's audience by showing people of both sexes and all ages enjoying his narration.[81] Although Aesop is pictured as ugly in both, his winning personality is suggested by his smiling face and lively gestures.
+
+The 20th century saw the publication of three novels about Aesop. A.D. Wintle's Aesop (London, 1943) was a plodding fictional biography described in a review of the time as so boring that it makes the fables embedded in it seem 'complacent and exasperating'.[82] The two others, preferring the fictional 'life' to any approach to veracity, are genre works. The most recent is John Vornholt's The Fabulist (1993) in which 'an ugly, mute slave is delivered from wretchedness by the gods and blessed with a wondrous voice. [It is] the tale of a most unlikely adventurer, dispatched to far and perilous realms to battle impossible beasts and terrible magicks.'[83]
+
+The other novel was George S. Hellman's Peacock's Feather (published in California in 1931). Its unlikely plot made it the perfect vehicle for the 1946 Hollywood spectacular, Night in Paradise. The perennial image of Aesop as an ugly slave is kept up in the movie, with a heavily disguised Turhan Bey cast in the role. In a plot containing 'some of the most nonsensical screen doings of the year', he becomes entangled  with the intended bride of King Croesus, a Persian princess played by Merle Oberon, and makes such a hash of it that he has to be rescued by the gods.[84] The 1953 teleplay Aesop and Rhodope takes up another theme of his fictional history.[85] Written by Helene Hanff, it was broadcast on Hallmark Hall of Fame with Lamont Johnson playing Aesop.
+
+The three-act A raposa e as uvas ("The Fox and the Grapes" 1953), marked Aesop's entry into Brazilian theatre. The three-act play was by Guilherme Figueiredo and has been performed in many countries, including a videotaped production in China in 2000 under the title Hu li yu pu tao or 狐狸与葡萄.[86] The play is described as an allegory about freedom with Aesop as the main character.[87]
+
+Occasions on which Aesop was played as black include Richard Durham's[88] Destination Freedom radio show broadcast (1949), where the drama "The Death of Aesop"[89] portrayed him as an Ethiopian. In 1971, Bill Cosby starred as Aesop in the TV production Aesop's Fables - The Tortoise and the Hare.[90][91] He was also played by Mhlekahi Mosiea in the 2010 South Africa adaptation of British playwright Peter Terson's musical Aesop's Fables.[92]

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+Aesop (/ˈiːsɒp/ EE-sop or /ˈeɪsɒp/ AY-sop; Greek: Αἴσωπος, Aísopos; c. 620–564 BCE) was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and inanimate objects that speak, solve problems, and generally have human characteristics.
+
+Scattered details of Aesop's life can be found in ancient sources, including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch. An ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him as a strikingly ugly slave (δοῦλος) who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and city-states. Older spellings of his name have included Esop(e) and Isope. Depictions of Aesop in popular culture over the last 2500 years have included many works of art and his appearance as a character in numerous books, films, plays, and television programs.
+
+The name of Aesop is as widely known as any that has come down from Graeco-Roman antiquity [yet] it is far from certain whether a historical Aesop ever existed ... in the latter part of the fifth century something like a coherent Aesop legend appears, and Samos seems to be its home.
+
+The earliest Greek sources, including Aristotle, indicate that Aesop was born around 620 BCE in Thrace at a site on the Black Sea coast which would later become the city Mesembria. A number of later writers from the Roman imperial period (including Phaedrus, who adapted the fables into Latin) say that he was born in Phrygia.[2] The 3rd-century poet Callimachus called him "Aesop of Sardis,"[3] and the later writer Maximus of Tyre called him "the sage of Lydia."[4]
+
+From Aristotle[5] and Herodotus[6] we learn that Aesop was a slave in Samos and that his masters were first a man named Xanthus and then a man named Iadmon; that he must eventually have been freed, because he argued as an advocate for a wealthy Samian; and that he met his end in the city of Delphi. Plutarch[7] tells us that Aesop had come to Delphi on a diplomatic mission from King Croesus of Lydia, that he insulted the Delphians, was sentenced to death on a trumped-up charge of temple theft, and was thrown from a cliff (after which the Delphians suffered pestilence and famine). Before this fatal episode, Aesop met with Periander of Corinth, where Plutarch has him dining with the Seven Sages of Greece, sitting beside his friend Solon, whom he had met in Sardis. (Leslie Kurke suggests that Aesop himself "was a popular contender for inclusion" in the list of Seven Sages.)[8]
+
+Problems of chronological reconciliation dating the death of Aesop and the reign of Croesus led the Aesop scholar (and compiler of the Perry Index) Ben Edwin Perry in 1965 to conclude that "everything in the ancient testimony about Aesop that pertains to his associations with either Croesus or with any of the so-called Seven Wise Men of Greece must be reckoned as literary fiction," and Perry likewise dismissed Aesop's death in Delphi as legendary;[9] but subsequent research has established that a possible diplomatic mission for Croesus and a visit to Periander "are consistent with the year of Aesop's death."[10] Still problematic is the story by Phaedrus which has Aesop in Athens, telling the fable of the frogs who asked for a king, during the reign of Peisistratos, which occurred decades after the presumed date of Aesop's death.[11]
+
+Along with the scattered references in the ancient sources regarding the life and death of Aesop, there is a highly fictional biography now commonly called The Aesop Romance (also known as the Vita or The Life of Aesop or The Book of Xanthus the Philosopher and Aesop His Slave), "an anonymous work of Greek popular literature composed around the second century of our era ... Like The Alexander Romance, The Aesop Romance became a folkbook, a work that belonged to no one, and the occasional writer felt free to modify as it might suit him."[12] Multiple, sometimes contradictory, versions of this work exist. The earliest known version was probably composed in the 1st century CE, but the story may have circulated in different versions for centuries before it was committed to writing,[13] and certain elements can be shown to originate in the 4th century BCE.[14] Scholars long dismissed any historical or biographical validity in The Aesop Romance; widespread study of the work began only toward the end of the 20th century.
+
+In The Aesop Romance, Aesop is a slave of Phrygian origin on the island of Samos, and extremely ugly. At first he lacks the power of speech, but after showing kindness to a priestess of Isis, is granted by the goddess not only speech but a gift for clever storytelling, which he uses alternately to assist and confound his master, Xanthus, embarrassing the philosopher in front of his students and even sleeping with his wife. After interpreting a portent for the people of Samos, Aesop is given his freedom and acts as an emissary between the Samians and King Croesus. Later he travels to the courts of Lycurgus of Babylon and Nectanabo of Egypt – both imaginary rulers – in a section that appears to borrow heavily from the romance of Ahiqar.[15] The story ends with Aesop's journey to Delphi, where he angers the citizens by telling insulting fables, is sentenced to death and, after cursing the people of Delphi, is forced to jump to his death.
+
+Aesop may not have written his fables. The Aesop Romance claims that he wrote them down and deposited them in the library of Croesus; Herodotus calls Aesop a "writer of fables" and Aristophanes speaks of "reading" Aesop,[16] but that might simply have been a compilation of fables ascribed to him.[17] Various Classical authors name Aesop as the originator  of fables. Sophocles, in a poem addressed to Euripides, made reference to the North Wind and the Sun.[18] Socrates while in prison turned some of the fables into verse,[19] of which Diogenes Laërtius records a small fragment.[20] The early Roman playwright and poet Ennius also rendered at least one of Aesop's fables in Latin verse, of which the last two lines still exist.[21]
+
+Collections of what are claimed to be Aesop's Fables were transmitted by a series of authors writing in both Greek and Latin. Demetrius of Phalerum made what may have been the earliest, probably in prose (Αισοπείων α), contained in ten books for the use of orators, although that has since been lost.[22] Next appeared an edition in elegiac verse, cited by the Suda, but the author's name is unknown. Phaedrus, a freedman of Augustus, rendered the fables into Latin in the 1st century CE. At about the same time Babrius turned the fables into Greek choliambics. A 3rd-century author, Titianus, is said to have rendered the fables into prose in a work now lost.[23] Avianus (of uncertain date, perhaps the 4th century) translated 42 of the fables into Latin elegiacs. The 4th-century grammarian Dositheus Magister also made a collection of Aesop's Fables, now lost.
+
+Aesop's Fables continued to be revised and translated through the ensuing centuries, with the addition of material from other cultures, so that the body of fables known today bears little relation to those Aesop originally told. With a surge in scholarly interest beginning toward the end of the 20th century, some attempt has been made to determine the nature and content of the very earliest fables which may be most closely linked to the historic Aesop.[24]
+
+The anonymously authored Aesop Romance begins with a vivid description of Aesop's appearance, saying he was "of loathsome aspect... potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped—a portentous monstrosity,"[25] or as another translation has it, "a faulty creation of Prometheus when half-asleep."[26] The earliest text by a known author that refers to Aesop's appearance is Himerius in the 4th century, who says that Aesop "was laughed at and made fun of, not because of some of his tales but on account of his looks and the sound of his voice."[27] The evidence from both of these sources is dubious, since Himerius lived some 800 years after Aesop and his image of Aesop may have come from The Aesop Romance, which is essentially fiction; but whether based on fact or not, at some point the idea of an ugly, even deformed Aesop took hold in popular imagination. Scholars have begun to examine why and how this "physiognomic tradition" developed.[28]
+
+A much later tradition depicts Aesop as a black African from Ethiopia. The first known promulgator of the idea was Planudes, a Byzantine scholar of the 13th century who wrote a biography of Aesop based on The Aesop Romance and conjectured that Aesop might have been Ethiopian, given his name.[29] An English translation of Planudes' biography from 1687 says that "his Complexion [was] black, from which dark Tincture he contracted his Name (Aesopus being the same with Aethiops)". When asked his origin by a prospective new master, Aesop replies, "I am a Negro"; numerous illustrations by Francis Barlow accompany this text and depict Aesop accordingly.[30] But according to Gert-Jan van Dijk, "Planudes' derivation of 'Aesop' from 'Aethiopian' is... etymologically incorrect,"[31] and Frank Snowden says that Planudes' account is "worthless as to the reliability of Aesop as 'Ethiopian.'"[32]
+
+The tradition of Aesop's African origin was continued in Britain, as attested by the lively figurine of a negro from the Chelsea porcelain factory which appeared in its Aesop series in the mid-18th century.[33] It then carried forward into the 19th century. The frontispiece of William Godwin's Fables Ancient and Modern (1805) has a copperplate illustration of Aesop relating his stories to little children that gives his features a distinctly African appearance.[34] The collection includes the fable of "Washing the Blackamoor White", although updating it and making the Ethiopian 'a black footman'. In 1856 William Martin Leake repeated the false etymological linkage of "Aesop" with "Aethiop" when he suggested that the "head of a negro" found on several coins from ancient Delphi (with specimens dated as early as 520 BCE)[35] might depict Aesop, presumably to commemorate (and atone for) his execution at Delphi,[36] but Theodor Panofka supposed the head to be a portrait of Delphos, founder of Delphi,[37] a view more widely repeated by later historians.[38]
+
+The idea that Aesop was Ethiopian seems supported by the presence of camels, elephants and apes in the fables, even though these African elements are more likely to have come from Egypt and Libya than from Ethiopia, and the fables featuring African animals may have entered the body of Aesopic fables long after Aesop actually lived.[39] Nevertheless, in 1932 the anthropologist J. H. Driberg, repeating the Aesop/Aethiop linkage, asserted that, while "some say he [Aesop] was a Phrygian... the more general view... is that he was an African", and "if Aesop was not an African, he ought to have been;"[40] and in 2002 Richard A. Lobban cited the number of African animals and "artifacts" in the Aesopic fables as "circumstantial evidence" that Aesop may have been a Nubian folkteller.[41]
+
+Popular perception of Aesop as black was to be encouraged by comparison between his fables and the stories of the trickster Br'er Rabbit told by African-American slaves. In Ian Colvin's introduction to Aesop in Politics (1914), for example, the fabulist is bracketed with Uncle Remus, "For both were slaves, and both were black".[42] The traditional role of the slave Aesop as "a kind of culture hero of the oppressed" is further promoted by the fictional Life, emerging "as a how-to handbook for the successful manipulation of superiors".[43] Such a perception was reinforced at the popular level by the 1971 TV production Aesop's Fables in which Bill Cosby played Aesop. In that mixture of live action and animation, Aesop tells fables that differentiate between realistic and unrealistic ambition and his version there of "The Tortoise and the Hare" illustrates how to take advantage of an opponent's over-confidence.[44]
+
+On other continents Aesop has occasionally undergone a degree of acculturation. This is evident in Isango Portobello's 2010 production of the play Aesop's Fables at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa. Based on a script by British playwright Peter Terson (1983),[45] it was radically adapted by the director Mark Dornford-May as a musical using native African instrumentation, dance and stage conventions.[46] Although Aesop is portrayed as Greek, and dressed in the short Greek tunic, the all-black production contextualises the story in the recent history of South Africa. The former slave, we are told "learns that liberty comes with responsibility as he journeys to his own freedom, joined by the animal characters of his parable-like fables."[47] One might compare with this Brian Seward's Aesop's Fabulous Fables (2009),[48] which first played in Singapore with a cast of mixed ethnicities. In it Chinese theatrical routines are merged with those of a standard musical.[49]
+
+There had already been an example of Asian acculturation in 17th-century Japan. There Portuguese missionaries had introduced a translation of the fables (Esopo no Fabulas, 1593) that included the biography of Aesop. This was then taken up by Japanese printers and taken through several editions under the title Isopo Monogatari. Even when Europeans were expelled from Japan and Christianity proscribed, this text survived, in part because the figure of Aesop had been assimilated into the culture and depicted in woodcuts as dressed in Japanese costume.[50][51]
+
+Ancient sources mention two statues of Aesop, one by Aristodemus and another by Lysippus,[52] and Philostratus describes a painting of Aesop surrounded by the animals of his fables.[53] None of these images have survived. According to Philostratus,
+
+The Fables are gathering about Aesop, being fond of him because he devotes himself to them. For... he checks greed and rebukes insolence and deceit, and in all this some animal is his mouthpiece — a lion or a fox or a horse... and not even the tortoise is dumb — that through them children may learn the business of life. So the Fables, honoured because of Aesop, gather at the doors of the wise man to bind fillets about his head and to crown him with a victor's crown of wild olive. And Aesop, methinks, is weaving some fable; at any rate his smile and his eyes fixed on the ground indicate this. The painter knows that for the composition of fables relaxation of the spirit is needed. And the painting is clever in representing the persons of the Fables. For it combines animals with men to make a chorus about Aesop, composed of the actors in his fables; and the fox is painted as leader of the chorus.[54]
+
+With the advent of printing in Europe, various illustrators tried to recreate this scene. One of the earliest was in Spain's La vida del Ysopet con sus fabulas historiadas (1489, see above). In France there was I. Baudoin's Fables d'Ésope Phrygien (1631) and Matthieu Guillemot's Les images ou tableaux de platte peinture des deux Philostrates (1637).[55] In England there was Francis Cleyn's frontispiece to John Ogilby's The Fables of Aesop[56] and the much later frontispiece to Godwin's Fables Ancient and Modern mentioned above in which the swarthy fabulist points out three of his characters to the children seated about him.
+
+Early on, the representation of Aesop as an ugly slave emerged. The later tradition which makes Aesop a black African resulted in depictions ranging from 17th-century engravings to a television portrayal by a black comedian. In general, beginning in the 20th century, plays have shown Aesop as a slave, but not ugly, while movies and television shows (such as The Bullwinkle Show[57]) have depicted him as neither ugly nor a slave.
+
+In 1843, the archaeologist Otto Jahn suggested that Aesop was the person depicted on a Greek red-figure cup,[58] c. 450 BCE, in the Vatican Museums.[59] Paul Zanker describes the figure as a man with "emaciated body and oversized head... furrowed brow and open mouth", who "listens carefully to the teachings of the fox sitting before him. He has pulled his mantle tightly around his meager body, as if he were shivering... he is ugly, with long hair, bald head, and unkempt, scraggly beard, and is clearly uncaring of his appearance."[60] Some archaeologists have suggested that the Hellenistic statue of a bearded hunchback with an intellectual appearance, discovered in the 18th century and pictured at the head of this article, also depicts Aesop, although alternative identifications have since been put forward.[61]
+
+Aesop began to appear equally early in literary works. The 4th century BCE Athenian playwright Alexis put Aesop on the stage in his comedy "Aesop", of which a few lines survive (Athenaeus 10.432);[62] conversing with Solon, Aesop praises the Athenian practice of adding water to wine.[63] Leslie Kurke suggests that Aesop may have been "a staple of the comic stage" of this era.[64]
+
+The 3rd-century-BCE poet Poseidippus of Pella wrote a narrative poem entitled "Aesopia" (now lost), in which Aesop's fellow slave Rhodopis (under her original name Doricha) was frequently mentioned, according to Athenaeus 13.596.[65] Pliny would later identify Rhodopis as Aesop's lover,[66] a romantic motif that would be repeated in subsequent popular depictions of Aesop.
+
+Aesop plays a fairly prominent part in Plutarch's conversation piece "The Banquet of the Seven Sages" in the 1st century CE.[67] The fabulist then makes a cameo appearance in the novel A True Story by the 2nd-century satirist Lucian; when the narrator arrives at the Island of the Blessed, he finds that "Aesop the Phrygian was there, too; he acts as their jester."[68]
+
+Beginning with the Heinrich Steinhowel edition of 1476, many translations of the fables into European languages, which also incorporated Planudes' Life of Aesop, featured illustrations depicting him as a hunchback. The 1687 edition of Aesop's Fables with His Life: in English, French and Latin[69] included 28 engravings by Francis Barlow that show him as a dwarfish hunchback (see in the section above), and his facial features appear to accord with his statement in the text (p. 7), "I am a Negro".
+
+The Spaniard Diego Velázquez painted a portrait of Aesop, dated 1639–40 and now in the collection of the Museo del Prado. The presentation is anachronistic and Aesop, while arguably not handsome, displays no physical deformities. It was partnered by another portrait of Menippus, a satirical philosopher equally of slave-origin. A similar philosophers series was painted by fellow Spaniard Jusepe de Ribera,[70] who is credited with two portraits of Aesop. "Aesop, poet of the fables" is in the El Escorial gallery and pictures him as an author leaning on a staff by a table which holds copies of his work, one of them a book with the name Hissopo on the cover.[71] The other is in the Museo de Prado, dated 1640–50 and titled "Aesop in beggar's rags". There he is also shown at a table, holding a sheet of paper in his left hand and writing with the other.[72] While the former hints at his lameness and deformed back, the latter only emphasises his poverty.
+
+In 1690, French playwright Edmé Boursault's Les fables d'Esope (later known as Esope à la ville) premiered in Paris. A sequel, Esope à la cour[73] (Aesop at Court), was first performed in 1701; drawing on a mention in Herodotus 2.134-5[74] that Aesop had once been owned by the same master as Rhodopis, and the statement in Pliny 36.17[75] that she was Aesop's concubine as well, the play introduced Rodope as Aesop's mistress, a romantic motif that would be repeated in later popular depictions of Aesop.
+
+Sir John Vanbrugh's comedy "Aesop"[76] was premièred at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, London, in 1697 and was frequently performed there for the next twenty years. A translation and adaptation of Boursault's Les fables d'Esope, Vanbrugh's play depicted a physically ugly Aesop acting as adviser to Learchus, governor of Cyzicus under King Croesus, and using his fables to solve romantic problems and quiet political unrest.[77]
+
+In 1780, the anonymously authored novelette The History and Amours of Rhodope was published in London. The story casts the two slaves Rhodope and Aesop as unlikely lovers, one ugly and the other beautiful; ultimately Rhodope is parted from Aesop and marries the Pharaoh of Egypt. Some editions of the volume were illustrated with an engraving by Francesco Bartolozzi of a work by the painter Angelica Kauffman. Titled "The beautiful Rhodope in love with Aesop", it pictures Rhodope leaning on an urn; she holds out her hand to Aesop, who is seated under a tree and turns his head to look at her. His right arm rests on a cage of doves, towards which he gestures. There is some ambiguity here, for while the cage suggests the captive state of both of them, a raven perched outside the cage may allude to his supposed colour.[78] In fact, the whole picture is planned to suggest how different the couple are. Rhodope and Aesop lean on opposite elbows, gesture with opposite hands, and while Rhodope's hand is held palm upwards, Aesop's is held palm downwards. She stands while he sits; he is dressed in dark clothes, she in white. The theme of their relationship was taken up again in 1844 by Walter Savage Landor (author of Imaginary Conversations), who published two fictional dialogues between Aesop and Rhodope.[79]
+
+Later in the 19th century the subject of Aesop telling his tales was made popular by the painting of him  entertaining the maids of Xanthus by Roberto Fontana (1844–1907).[80] A depiction of the fabulist surrounded by laughing young women, it went on to win a prize at the Milanese Brera Academy in 1876 and was then shown at the 1878 International Exhibition and the 11th exhibition of the Società di Belle Arti di Trieste in 1879. A later painting by Julian Russell Story widens Aesop's audience by showing people of both sexes and all ages enjoying his narration.[81] Although Aesop is pictured as ugly in both, his winning personality is suggested by his smiling face and lively gestures.
+
+The 20th century saw the publication of three novels about Aesop. A.D. Wintle's Aesop (London, 1943) was a plodding fictional biography described in a review of the time as so boring that it makes the fables embedded in it seem 'complacent and exasperating'.[82] The two others, preferring the fictional 'life' to any approach to veracity, are genre works. The most recent is John Vornholt's The Fabulist (1993) in which 'an ugly, mute slave is delivered from wretchedness by the gods and blessed with a wondrous voice. [It is] the tale of a most unlikely adventurer, dispatched to far and perilous realms to battle impossible beasts and terrible magicks.'[83]
+
+The other novel was George S. Hellman's Peacock's Feather (published in California in 1931). Its unlikely plot made it the perfect vehicle for the 1946 Hollywood spectacular, Night in Paradise. The perennial image of Aesop as an ugly slave is kept up in the movie, with a heavily disguised Turhan Bey cast in the role. In a plot containing 'some of the most nonsensical screen doings of the year', he becomes entangled  with the intended bride of King Croesus, a Persian princess played by Merle Oberon, and makes such a hash of it that he has to be rescued by the gods.[84] The 1953 teleplay Aesop and Rhodope takes up another theme of his fictional history.[85] Written by Helene Hanff, it was broadcast on Hallmark Hall of Fame with Lamont Johnson playing Aesop.
+
+The three-act A raposa e as uvas ("The Fox and the Grapes" 1953), marked Aesop's entry into Brazilian theatre. The three-act play was by Guilherme Figueiredo and has been performed in many countries, including a videotaped production in China in 2000 under the title Hu li yu pu tao or 狐狸与葡萄.[86] The play is described as an allegory about freedom with Aesop as the main character.[87]
+
+Occasions on which Aesop was played as black include Richard Durham's[88] Destination Freedom radio show broadcast (1949), where the drama "The Death of Aesop"[89] portrayed him as an Ethiopian. In 1971, Bill Cosby starred as Aesop in the TV production Aesop's Fables - The Tortoise and the Hare.[90][91] He was also played by Mhlekahi Mosiea in the 2010 South Africa adaptation of British playwright Peter Terson's musical Aesop's Fables.[92]

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+
+
+
+
+Spanish (español (help·info)) or Castilian[b] (/kæˈstɪliən/ (listen), castellano (help·info)) is a Romance language that originated in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe and today is a global language with more than 483 million native speakers, mainly in Spain and the Americas. It is the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese,[4][5] and the world's fourth-most spoken language, after English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi.
+
+Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century,[6] and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century. Beginning in 1492, the Spanish language was taken to the viceroyalties of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania and the Philippines.[7]
+
+A 1949 study by Italian-American linguist Mario Pei, analyzing the degree of difference from a language's parent (Latin, in the case of Romance languages) by comparing phonology, inflection, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation, indicated the following percentages (the higher the percentage, the greater the distance from Latin): In the case of Spanish, it is one of the closest Romance languages to Latin (20% distance), only behind Sardinian (8% distance) and Italian (12% distance).[8] Around 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary is derived from Latin, including Latin borrowings from Ancient Greek.[9][10]
+Spanish vocabulary has been in contact with Arabic from an early date, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian Peninsula and around 8% of its vocabulary has an Arabic lexical root.[11][12][13][14][11] It has also had small influences from Basque, Iberian, Celtiberian, Visigothic, and other neighboring Ibero-Romance languages.[15][11] Additionally, it has absorbed vocabulary from other languages, particularly other Romance languages—French, Italian, Andalusi Romance, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Occitan, and Sardinian—as well as from Quechua, Nahuatl, and other indigenous languages of the Americas.[16]
+
+Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. It is also used as an official language by the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the African Union and many other international organizations.[17]
+
+Despite its large number of speakers, the Spanish language does not feature prominently in scientific writing, though it is better represented in the humanities.[18] 75% of scientific production in Spanish is divided into three thematic areas: social sciences, medical sciences and arts/humanities. Spanish is the third most used language on the internet after English and Chinese.[19]
+
+It is estimated that there are more than 437 million people who speak Spanish as a native language, which qualifies it as second on the lists of languages by number of native speakers.[4] Instituto Cervantes claims that there are an estimated 477 million Spanish speakers with native competence and 572 million Spanish speakers as a first or second language—including speakers with limited competence—and more than 21 million students of Spanish as a foreign language.[20]
+
+Spanish is the official or national language in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, and 18 countries and one territory in the Americas. Speakers in the Americas total some 418 million. It is also an optional language in the Philippines as it was a Spanish colony from 1569 to 1899. In the European Union, Spanish is the mother tongue of 8% of the population, with an additional 7% speaking it as a second language.[21] The country with the largest number of native speakers is Mexico.[22] Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the United States.[23] In 2011 it was estimated by the American Community Survey that of the 55 million Hispanic United States residents who are five years of age and over, 38 million speak Spanish at home.[24]
+
+According to a 2011 paper by U.S. Census Bureau Demographers Jennifer Ortman and Hyon B. Shin,[25] the number of Spanish speakers is projected to rise through 2020 to anywhere between 39 million and 43 million, depending on the assumptions one makes about immigration. Most of these Spanish speakers will be Hispanic, with Ortman and Shin projecting between 37.5 million and 41 million Hispanic Spanish speakers by 2020.
+
+In Spain and in some other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called not only español (Spanish) but also castellano (Castilian), the language from the kingdom of Castile, contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, Asturian, Catalan, Aragonese and Occitan.
+
+The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the official language of the whole Spanish State in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. "the other Spanish languages"). Article III reads as follows:
+
+El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. ... Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas...
+Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. ... The other Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities...
+
+The Spanish Royal Academy, on the other hand, currently uses the term español in its publications, but from 1713 to 1923 called the language castellano.
+
+The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (a language guide published by the Spanish Royal Academy) states that, although the Royal Spanish Academy prefers to use the term español in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms—español and castellano—are regarded as synonymous and equally valid.[26]
+
+The term castellano comes from the Latin word castellanus, which means "of or pertaining to a fort or castle".[27]
+
+Different etymologies have been suggested for the term español (Spanish). According to the Royal Spanish Academy, español derives from the Provençal word espaignol and that, in turn, derives from the Vulgar Latin *hispaniolus. It comes from the Latin name of the province of Hispania that included the current territory of the Iberian Peninsula.[28]
+
+There are other hypotheses apart from the one suggested by the Royal Spanish Academy. Spanish philologist Menéndez Pidal suggested that the classic hispanus or hispanicus took the suffix -one from Vulgar Latin, as it happened with other words such as bretón (Breton) or sajón (Saxon). The word *hispanione evolved into the Old Spanish españón, which eventually, became español.[citation needed]
+
+The Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War, beginning in 210 BC. Previously, several pre-Roman languages (also called Paleohispanic languages)—some related to Latin via Indo-European, and some that are not related at all—were spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Basque (still spoken today), Iberian, Celtiberian and Gallaecian.
+
+The first documents to show traces of what is today regarded as the precursor of modern Spanish are from the 9th century. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era, the most important influences on the Spanish lexicon came from neighboring Romance languages—Mozarabic (Andalusi Romance), Navarro-Aragonese, Leonese, Catalan, Portuguese, Galician, Occitan, and later, French and Italian. Spanish also borrowed a considerable number of words from Arabic, as well as a minor influence from the Germanic Gothic language through the migration of tribes and a period of Visigoth rule in Iberia. In addition, many more words were borrowed from Latin through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. The loanwords were taken from both Classical Latin and Renaissance Latin, the form of Latin in use at that time.
+
+According to the theories of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, local sociolects of Vulgar Latin evolved into Spanish, in the north of Iberia, in an area centered in the city of Burgos, and this dialect was later brought to the city of Toledo, where the written standard of Spanish was first developed, in the 13th century.[30] In this formative stage, Spanish developed a strongly differing variant from its close cousin, Leonese, and, according to some authors, was distinguished by a heavy Basque influence (see Iberian Romance languages). This distinctive dialect spread to southern Spain with the advance of the Reconquista, and meanwhile gathered a sizable lexical influence from the Arabic of Al-Andalus, much of it indirectly, through the Romance Mozarabic dialects (some 4,000 Arabic-derived words, make up around 8% of the language today).[31] The written standard for this new language was developed in the cities of Toledo, in the 13th to 16th centuries, and Madrid, from the 1570s.[30]
+
+The development of the Spanish sound system from that of Vulgar Latin exhibits most of the changes that are typical of Western Romance languages, including lenition of intervocalic consonants (thus Latin vīta > Spanish vida). The diphthongization of Latin stressed short e and o—which occurred in open syllables in French and Italian, but not at all in Catalan or Portuguese—is found in both open and closed syllables in Spanish, as shown in the following table:
+
+Spanish is marked by the palatalization of the Latin double consonants nn and ll (thus Latin
+annum > Spanish año, and Latin anellum > Spanish
+anillo).
+
+The consonant written u or v in Latin and pronounced [w] in Classical Latin had probably "fortified" to a bilabial fricative /β/ in Vulgar Latin. In early Spanish (but not in Catalan or Portuguese) it merged with the consonant written b (a bilabial with plosive and fricative allophones). In modern Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic b and v, with some exceptions in Caribbean Spanish.[citation needed]
+
+Peculiar to Spanish (as well as to the neighboring Gascon dialect of Occitan, and attributed to a Basque substratum) was the mutation of Latin initial f into h- whenever it was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize. The h-, still preserved in spelling, is now silent in most varieties of the language, although in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects it is still aspirated in some words. Because of borrowings from Latin and from neighboring Romance languages, there are many f-/h-doublets in modern Spanish: Fernando and Hernando (both Spanish for "Ferdinand"), ferrero and herrero (both Spanish for "smith"), fierro and hierro (both Spanish for "iron"), and fondo and hondo (both Spanish for "deep", but fondo means "bottom" while hondo means "deep"); hacer (Spanish for "to make") is cognate to the root word of satisfacer (Spanish for "to satisfy"), and hecho ("made") is similarly cognate to the root word of satisfecho (Spanish for "satisfied").
+
+Compare the examples in the following table:
+
+Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, as shown in the examples in the following table:
+
+beaucoup
+
+In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish underwent a dramatic change in the pronunciation of its sibilant consonants, known in Spanish as the reajuste de las sibilantes, which resulted in the distinctive velar [x] pronunciation of the letter ⟨j⟩ and—in a large part of Spain—the characteristic interdental [θ] ("th-sound") for the letter ⟨z⟩ (and for ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩). See History of Spanish (Modern development of the Old Spanish sibilants) for details.
+
+The Gramática de la lengua castellana, written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija, was the first grammar written for a modern European language.[33] According to a popular anecdote, when Nebrija presented it to Queen Isabella I, she asked him what was the use of such a work, and he answered that language is the instrument of empire.[34] In his introduction to the grammar, dated 18 August 1492, Nebrija wrote that "... language was always the companion of empire."[35]
+
+From the sixteenth century onwards, the language was taken to the Spanish-discovered America and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization of America. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is such a well-known reference in the world that Spanish is often called la lengua de Cervantes ("the language of Cervantes").[36]
+
+In the twentieth century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, and to areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City. For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.
+
+Most of the grammatical and typological features of Spanish are shared with the other Romance languages. Spanish is a fusional language. The noun and adjective systems exhibit two genders and two numbers. In addition, articles and some pronouns and determiners have a neuter gender in their singular form. There are about fifty conjugated forms per verb, with 3 tenses: past, present, future; 2 aspects for past: perfective, imperfective; 4 moods: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative; 3 persons: first, second, third; 2 numbers: singular, plural; 3 verboid forms: infinitive, gerund, and past participle. Verbs express T-V distinction by using different persons for formal and informal addresses. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see Spanish verbs and Spanish irregular verbs.)
+
+Spanish syntax is considered right-branching, meaning that subordinate or modifying constituents tend to be placed after their head words. The language uses prepositions (rather than postpositions or inflection of nouns for case), and usually—though not always—places adjectives after nouns, as do most other Romance languages.
+
+The language is classified as a subject–verb–object language; however, as in most Romance languages, constituent order is highly variable and governed mainly by topicalization and focus rather than by syntax. It is a "pro-drop", or "null-subject" language—that is, it allows the deletion of subject pronouns when they are pragmatically unnecessary. Spanish is described as a "verb-framed" language, meaning that the direction of motion is expressed in the verb while the mode of locomotion is expressed adverbially (e.g. subir corriendo or salir volando; the respective English equivalents of these examples—'to run up' and 'to fly out'—show that English is, by contrast, "satellite-framed", with mode of locomotion expressed in the verb and direction in an adverbial modifier).
+
+Subject/verb inversion is not required in questions, and thus the recognition of declarative or interrogative may depend entirely on intonation.
+
+The Spanish phonemic system is originally descended from that of Vulgar Latin. Its development exhibits some traits in common with the neighboring dialects—especially Leonese and Aragonese—as well as other traits unique to Castilian. Castilian is unique among its neighbors in the aspiration and eventual loss of the Latin initial /f/ sound (e.g. Cast. harina vs. Leon. and Arag. farina).[37] The Latin initial consonant sequences pl-, cl-, and fl- in Spanish typically become ll- (originally pronounced [ʎ]), while in Aragonese they are preserved, and in Leonese they present a variety of outcomes, including [tʃ], [ʃ], and [ʎ]. Where Latin had -li- before a vowel (e.g. filius) or the ending -iculus, -icula (e.g. auricula), Old Spanish produced [ʒ], that in Modern Spanish became the velar fricative [x] (hijo, oreja, where neighboring languages have the palatal lateral [ʎ] (e.g. Portuguese filho, orelha; Catalan fill, orella).
+
+The Spanish phonemic inventory consists of five vowel phonemes (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/) and 17 to 19 consonant phonemes (the exact number depending on the dialect[38]). The main allophonic variation among vowels is the reduction of the high vowels /i/ and /u/ to glides—[j] and [w] respectively—when unstressed and adjacent to another vowel. Some instances of the mid vowels /e/ and /o/, determined lexically, alternate with the diphthongs /je/ and /we/ respectively when stressed, in a process that is better described as morphophonemic rather than phonological, as it is not predictable from phonology alone.
+
+The Spanish consonant system is characterized by (1) three nasal phonemes, and one or two (depending on the dialect) lateral phoneme(s), which in syllable-final position lose their contrast and are subject to assimilation to a following consonant; (2) three voiceless stops and the affricate /tʃ/; (3) three or four (depending on the dialect) voiceless fricatives; (4) a set of voiced obstruents—/b/, /d/, /ɡ/, and sometimes /ʝ/—which alternate between approximant and plosive allophones depending on the environment; and (5) a phonemic distinction between the "tapped" and "trilled" r-sounds (single ⟨r⟩ and double ⟨rr⟩ in orthography).
+
+In the following table of consonant phonemes, /ʎ/ is marked with an asterisk (*) to indicate that it is preserved only in some dialects. In most dialects it has been merged with /ʝ/ in the merger called yeísmo. Similarly, /θ/ is also marked with an asterisk to indicate that most dialects do not distinguish it from /s/ (see seseo), although this is not a true merger but an outcome of different evolution of sibilants in Southern Spain.
+
+The phoneme /ʃ/ is in parentheses () to indicate that it appears only in loanwords. Each of the voiced obstruent phonemes /b/, /d/, /ʝ/, and /ɡ/ appears to the right of a pair of voiceless phonemes, to indicate that, while the voiceless phonemes maintain a phonemic contrast between plosive (or affricate) and fricative, the voiced ones alternate allophonically (i.e. without phonemic contrast) between plosive and approximant pronunciations.
+
+Spanish is classified by its rhythm as a syllable-timed language: each syllable has approximately the same duration regardless of stress.[40][41]
+
+Spanish intonation varies significantly according to dialect but generally conforms to a pattern of falling tone for declarative sentences and wh-questions (who, what, why, etc.) and rising tone for yes/no questions.[42][43] There are no syntactic markers to distinguish between questions and statements and thus, the recognition of declarative or interrogative depends entirely on intonation.
+
+Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word, with some rare exceptions at the fourth-last or earlier syllables. The tendencies of stress assignment are as follows:[44]
+
+In addition to the many exceptions to these tendencies, there are numerous minimal pairs that contrast solely on stress such as sábana ('sheet') and sabana ('savannah'); límite ('boundary'), limite ('[that] he/she limits') and limité ('I limited'); líquido ('liquid'), liquido ('I sell off') and liquidó ('he/she sold off').
+
+The orthographic system unambiguously reflects where the stress occurs: in the absence of an accent mark, the stress falls on the last syllable unless the last letter is ⟨n⟩, ⟨s⟩, or a vowel, in which cases the stress falls on the next-to-last (penultimate) syllable. Exceptions to those rules are indicated by an acute accent mark over the vowel of the stressed syllable. (See Spanish orthography.)
+
+Spanish is the primary language of 20 countries worldwide. It is estimated that the combined total number of Spanish speakers is between 470 and 500 million, making it the second most widely spoken language in terms of native speakers.[46][47]
+
+Spanish is the third most spoken language by total number of speakers (after Mandarin and English). Internet usage statistics for 2007 also show Spanish as the third most commonly used language on the Internet, after English and Mandarin.[48]
+
+In Europe, Spanish is an official language of Spain, the country after which it is named and from which it originated. It is widely spoken in Gibraltar, and also commonly spoken in Andorra, although Catalan is the official language there.[49]
+
+Spanish is also spoken by small communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany.[50] Spanish is an official language of the European Union. In Switzerland, which had a massive influx of Spanish migrants in the 20th century, Spanish is the native language of 2.2% of the population.[51]
+
+Most Spanish speakers are in Hispanic America; of all countries with a majority of Spanish speakers, only Spain and Equatorial Guinea are outside the Americas. Nationally, Spanish is the official language—either de facto or de jure—of Argentina, Bolivia (co-official with Quechua, Aymara, Guarani, and 34 other languages), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico (co-official with 63 indigenous languages), Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay (co-official with Guaraní),[52] Peru (co-official with Quechua, Aymara, and "the other indigenous languages"[53]), Puerto Rico (co-official with English),[54] Uruguay, and Venezuela.
+Spanish has no official recognition in the former British colony of Belize; however, per the 2000 census, it is spoken by 43% of the population.[55][56] Mainly, it is spoken by the descendants of Hispanics who have been in the region since the seventeenth century; however, English is the official language.[57]
+
+Due to their proximity to Spanish-speaking countries, Trinidad and Tobago and Brazil have implemented Spanish language teaching into their education systems. The Trinidad government launched the Spanish as a First Foreign Language (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005.[58] In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President, making it mandatory for schools to offer Spanish as an alternative foreign language course in both public and private secondary schools in Brazil.[59] In September 2016 this law was revoked by Michel Temer after impeachment of Dilma Rousseff.[60] In many border towns and villages along Paraguay and Uruguay, a mixed language known as Portuñol is spoken.[61]
+
+According to 2006 census data, 44.3 million people of the U.S. population were Hispanic or Hispanic American by origin;[62] 38.3 million people, 13 percent of the population over five years old speak Spanish at home.[63] The Spanish language has a long history of presence in the United States due to early Spanish and, later, Mexican administration over territories now forming the southwestern states, also Louisiana ruled by Spain from 1762 to 1802, as well as Florida, which was Spanish territory until 1821.
+
+Spanish is by far the most common second language in the US, with over 50 million total speakers if non-native or second-language speakers are included.[64] While English is the de facto national language of the country, Spanish is often used in public services and notices at the federal and state levels. Spanish is also used in administration in the state of New Mexico.[65] The language also has a strong influence in major metropolitan areas such as those of Los Angeles, Miami, San Antonio, New York, San Francisco, Dallas, and Phoenix; as well as more recently, Chicago, Las Vegas, Boston, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Nashville, Orlando, Tampa, Raleigh and Baltimore-Washington, D.C. due to 20th- and 21st-century immigration.
+
+In Africa, Spanish is official (along with Portuguese and French) in Equatorial Guinea, as well as an official language of the African Union. In Equatorial Guinea, Spanish is the predominant language when native and non-native speakers (around 500,000 people) are counted, while Fang is the most spoken language by number of native speakers.[66][67]
+
+Spanish is also spoken in the integral territories of Spain in North Africa, which include the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, the Plazas de soberanía, and the Canary Islands archipelago (population 2,000,000), located some 100 km (62 mi) off the northwest coast of mainland Africa. In northern Morocco, a former Spanish protectorate that is also geographically close to Spain, approximately 20,000 people speak Spanish as a second language, while Arabic is the de jure official language. A small number of Moroccan Jews also speak the Sephardic Spanish dialect Haketia (related to the Ladino dialect spoken in Israel). Spanish is spoken by some small communities in Angola because of the Cuban influence from the Cold War and in South Sudan among South Sudanese natives that relocated to Cuba during the Sudanese wars and returned in time for their country's independence.[68]
+
+In Western Sahara, formerly Spanish Sahara, Spanish was officially spoken during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today, Spanish in this disputed territory is maintained by populations of Sahrawi nomads numbering about 500,000 people, and is de facto official alongside Arabic in the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, although this entity receives limited international recognition.[69][70]
+
+Spanish and Philippine Spanish was an official language of the Philippines from the beginning of Spanish administration in 1565 to a constitutional change in 1973. During Spanish colonization (1565–1898), it was the language of government, trade and education, and spoken as a first language by Spaniards and educated Filipinos. In the mid-nineteenth century, the colonial government set up a free public education system with Spanish as the medium of instruction. This increased use of Spanish throughout the islands led to the formation of a class of Spanish-speaking intellectuals called the Ilustrados. By the time of Philippine independence in 1898, around 70% of the population had knowledge of Spanish, with 10% speaking it as their first and only language and about 60% of the population spoke it as their second or third language.[71]
+
+Despite American administration after the defeat of Spain in the Spanish–American War in 1898, the usage of Spanish continued in Philippine literature and press during the early years of American administration. Gradually, however, the American government began increasingly promoting the use of English, and it characterized Spanish as a negative influence of the past. Eventually, by the 1920s, English became the primary language of administration and education.[72] But despite a significant decrease in influence and speakers, Spanish remained an official language of the Philippines when it became independent in 1946, alongside English and Filipino, a standardized version of Tagalog.
+
+Spanish was removed from official status in 1973 under the administration of Ferdinand Marcos, but regained its status as an official language two months later under Presidential Decree No. 155, dated 15 March 1973.[73] It remained an official language until 1987, with the ratification of the present constitution, in which it was re-designated as a voluntary and optional auxiliary language.[74] In 2010, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo encouraged the reintroduction of Spanish-language teaching in the Philippine education system.[75] But by 2012, the number of secondary schools at which the language was either a compulsory subject or an elective had become very limited.[76] Today, despite government promotions of Spanish, less than 0.5% of the population report being able to speak the language proficiently.[77] Aside from standard Spanish, a Spanish-based creole language—Chavacano—developed in the southern Philippines. The number of Chavacano-speakers was estimated at 1.2 million in 1996. However, it is not mutually intelligible with Spanish.[78] Speakers of the Zamboangueño variety of Chavacano were numbered about 360,000 in the 2000 census.[79] The local languages of the Philippines also retain Spanish influence, with many words being derived from Mexican Spanish, owing to the administration of the islands by Spain through New Spain until 1821, and then directly from Madrid until 1898.[80][81]
+
+Philippine Spanish is a dialect of the Spanish language in the Philippines. The variant is very similar to Mexican Spanish, because of Mexican and Latin American emigration to the Spanish East Indies over the years. 
+From 1565 to 1821, the Philippines, which were a part of the Spanish East Indies, were governed by the Captaincy General of the Philippines as a territory of the Viceroyalty of New Spain centered in Mexico. It was only administered directly from Spain in 1821 after Mexico gained its independence that same year. Since the Philippines was a former territory of the Viceroyalty of New Spain for most of the Spanish colonial period, Spanish as was spoken in the Philippines had a greater affinity to American Spanish rather than to Peninsular Spanish.
+
+Chavacano or Chabacano [tʃaβaˈkano] is a group of Spanish-based creole language varieties spoken in the Philippines. The variety spoken in Zamboanga City, located in the southern Philippine island group of Mindanao, has the highest concentration of speakers. Other currently existing varieties are found in Cavite City and Ternate, located in the Cavite province on the island of Luzon.[4] Chavacano is the only Spanish-based creole in Asia.
+
+Spanish is also the official language and the most spoken on Easter Island which is geographically part of Polynesia in Oceania and politically part of Chile. Easter Island's traditional language is Rapa Nui, an Eastern Polynesian language.
+
+Spanish loan words are present in the local languages of Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia, all of which formerly comprised the Spanish East Indies.[82][83]
+
+The following table shows the number of Spanish speakers in some 79 countries.
+
+There are important variations (phonological, grammatical, and lexical) in the spoken Spanish of the various regions of Spain and throughout the Spanish-speaking areas of the Americas.
+
+The variety with the most speakers is Mexican Spanish. It is spoken by more than twenty percent of the world's Spanish speakers (more than 112 million of the total of more than 500 million, according to the table above). One of its main features is the reduction or loss of unstressed vowels, mainly when they are in contact with the sound /s/.[220][221]
+
+In Spain, northern dialects are popularly thought of as closer to the standard, although positive attitudes toward southern dialects have increased significantly in the last 50 years. Even so, the speech of Madrid, which has typically southern features such as yeísmo and s-aspiration, is the standard variety for use on radio and television.[222][223][224][225] However, the variety used in the media is that of Madrid's educated classes, where southern traits are less evident, in contrast with the variety spoken by working-class Madrid, where those traits are pervasive. The educated variety of Madrid is indicated by many as the one that has most influenced the written standard for Spanish.[226]
+
+The four main phonological divisions are based respectively on (1) the phoneme /θ/ ("theta"), (2) the debuccalization of syllable-final /s/, (3) the sound of the spelled ⟨s⟩, (4) and the phoneme /ʎ/ ("turned y"),[227]
+
+The main morphological variations between dialects of Spanish involve differing uses of pronouns, especially those of the second person and, to a lesser extent, the object pronouns of the third person.
+
+Virtually all dialects of Spanish make the distinction between a formal and a familiar register in the second-person singular and thus have two different pronouns meaning "you": usted in the formal and either tú or vos in the familiar (and each of these three pronouns has its associated verb forms), with the choice of tú or vos varying from one dialect to another. The use of vos (and/or its verb forms) is called voseo. In a few dialects, all three pronouns are used, with usted, tú, and vos denoting respectively formality, familiarity, and intimacy.[229]
+
+In voseo, vos is the subject form (vos decís, "you say") and the form for the object of a preposition (voy con vos, "I am going with you"), while the direct and indirect object forms, and the possessives, are the same as those associated with tú: Vos sabés que tus amigos te respetan ("You know your friends respect you").
+
+The verb forms of general voseo are the same as those used with tú except in the present tense (indicative and imperative) verbs. The forms for vos generally can be derived from those of vosotros (the traditional second-person familiar plural) by deleting the glide [i̯], or /d/, where it appears in the ending: vosotros pensáis > vos pensás; vosotros volvéis > vos volvés, pensad! (vosotros) > pensá! (vos), volved! (vosotros) > volvé! (vos) .
+
+In Chilean voseo on the other hand, almost all verb forms are distinct from their standard tú-forms.
+
+The use of the pronoun vos with the verb forms of tú (vos piensas) is called "pronominal voseo". Conversely, the use of the verb forms of vos with the pronoun tú (tú pensás or tú pensái) is called "verbal voseo". 
+In Chile, for example, verbal voseo is much more common than the actual use of the pronoun vos, which is usually reserved for highly informal situations.
+
+And in Central American voseo, one can see even further distinction.
+
+Although vos is not used in Spain, it occurs in many Spanish-speaking regions of the Americas as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular familiar pronoun, with wide differences in social consideration. Generally, it can be said that there are zones of exclusive use of tuteo (the use of tú) in the following areas: almost all of Mexico, the West Indies, Panama, most of Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and coastal Ecuador.
+
+Tuteo as a cultured form alternates with voseo as a popular or rural form in Bolivia, in the north and south of Peru, in Andean Ecuador, in small zones of the Venezuelan Andes (and most notably in the Venezuelan state of Zulia), and in a large part of Colombia. Some researchers maintain that voseo can be heard in some parts of eastern Cuba, and others assert that it is absent from the island.[230]
+
+Tuteo exists as the second-person usage with an intermediate degree of formality alongside the more familiar voseo in Chile, in the Venezuelan state of Zulia, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, in the Azuero Peninsula in Panama, in the Mexican state of Chiapas, and in parts of Guatemala.
+
+Areas of generalized voseo include Argentina, Nicaragua, eastern Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Uruguay and the Colombian departments of Antioquia, Caldas, Risaralda, Quindio and Valle del Cauca.[229]
+
+Ustedes functions as formal and informal second person plural in over 90% of the Spanish-speaking world, including all of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and some regions of Andalusia. In Seville, Huelva, Cadiz, and other parts of western Andalusia, the familiar form is constructed as ustedes vais, using the traditional second-person plural form of the verb. Most of Spain maintains the formal/familiar distinction with ustedes and vosotros respectively.
+
+Usted is the usual second-person singular pronoun in a formal context, but it is used jointly with the third-person singular voice of the verb. It is used to convey respect toward someone who is a generation older or is of higher authority ("you, sir"/"you, ma'am"). It is also used in a familiar context by many speakers in Colombia and Costa Rica and in parts of Ecuador and Panama, to the exclusion of tú or vos. This usage is sometimes called ustedeo in Spanish.
+
+In Central America, especially in Honduras, usted is often used as a formal pronoun to convey respect between the members of a romantic couple. Usted is also used that way between parents and children in the Andean regions of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.
+
+Most speakers use (and the Real Academia Española prefers) the pronouns lo and la for direct objects (masculine and feminine respectively, regardless of animacy, meaning "him", "her", or "it"), and le for indirect objects (regardless of gender or animacy, meaning "to him", "to her", or "to it"). The usage is sometimes called "etymological", as these direct and indirect object pronouns are a continuation, respectively, of the accusative and dative pronouns of Latin, the ancestor language of Spanish.
+
+Deviations from this norm (more common in Spain than in the Americas) are called "leísmo", "loísmo", or "laísmo", according to which respective pronoun, le, lo, or la, has expanded beyond the etymological usage (le as a direct object, or lo or la as an indirect object).
+
+Some words can be significantly different in different Hispanophone countries. Most Spanish speakers can recognize other Spanish forms even in places where they are not commonly used, but Spaniards generally do not recognize specifically American usages. For example, Spanish mantequilla, aguacate and albaricoque (respectively, 'butter', 'avocado', 'apricot') correspond to manteca (word used for lard in Peninsular Spanish), palta, and damasco, respectively, in Argentina, Chile (except manteca), Paraguay, Peru (except manteca and damasco), and Uruguay.
+
+Spanish is closely related to the other West Iberian Romance languages, including Asturian, Aragonese, Galician, Ladino, Leonese, Mirandese and Portuguese.
+
+It is generally acknowledged that Portuguese and Spanish speakers can communicate in written form, with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.[231][232][233][234]
+Mutual intelligibility of the written Spanish and Portuguese languages is remarkably high, and the difficulties of the spoken forms are based more on phonology than on grammatical and lexical dissimilarities. Ethnologue gives estimates of the lexical similarity between related languages in terms of precise percentages. For Spanish and Portuguese, that figure is 89%. Italian, on the other hand its phonology similar to Spanish, but has a lower lexical similarity of 82%. Mutual intelligibility between Spanish and French or between Spanish and Romanian is lower still, given lexical similarity ratings of 75% and 71% respectively.[235][236] And comprehension of Spanish by French speakers who have not studied the language is much lower, at an estimated 45%. In general, thanks to the common features of the writing systems of the Romance languages, interlingual comprehension of the written word is greater than that of oral communication.
+
+The following table compares the forms of some common words in several Romance languages:
+
+1. Also nós outros in early modern Portuguese (e.g. The Lusiads), and nosoutros in Galician.
+2. Alternatively nous autres in French.
+3. Also noialtri in Southern Italian dialects and languages.
+4. Medieval Catalan (e.g. Llibre dels fets).
+5. Depending on the written norm used (see Reintegrationism).
+6. From Basque esku, "hand" + erdi, "half, incomplete". Notice that this negative meaning also applies for Latin sinistra(m) ("dark, unfortunate").
+7. Romanian caș (from Latin cāsevs) means a type of cheese. The universal term for cheese in Romanian is brânză (from unknown etymology).[237]
+
+Judaeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino,[238] is a variety of Spanish which preserves many features of medieval Spanish and Portuguese and is spoken by descendants of the Sephardi Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century.[238] Conversely, in Portugal the vast majority of the Portuguese Jews converted and became 'New Christians'. Therefore, its relationship to Spanish is comparable with that of the Yiddish language to German. Ladino speakers today are almost exclusively Sephardi Jews, with family roots in Turkey, Greece, or the Balkans, and living mostly in Israel, Turkey, and the United States, with a few communities in Hispanic America.[238] Judaeo-Spanish lacks the Native American vocabulary which was acquired by standard Spanish during the Spanish colonial period, and it retains many archaic features which have since been lost in standard Spanish. It contains, however, other vocabulary which is not found in standard Spanish, including vocabulary from Hebrew, French, Greek and Turkish, and other languages spoken where the Sephardim settled.
+
+Judaeo-Spanish is in serious danger of extinction because many native speakers today are elderly as well as elderly olim (immigrants to Israel) who have not transmitted the language to their children or grandchildren. However, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardi communities, especially in music. In the case of the Latin American communities, the danger of extinction is also due to the risk of assimilation by modern Castilian.
+
+A related dialect is Haketia, the Judaeo-Spanish of northern Morocco. This too tended to assimilate with modern Spanish, during the Spanish occupation of the region.
+
+Spanish is written in the Latin script, with the addition of the character ⟨ñ⟩ (eñe, representing the phoneme /ɲ/, a letter distinct from ⟨n⟩, although typographically composed of an ⟨n⟩ with a tilde). Formerly the digraphs ⟨ch⟩ (che, representing the phoneme /t͡ʃ/) and ⟨ll⟩ (elle, representing the phoneme /ʎ/), were also considered single letters. However, the digraph ⟨rr⟩ (erre fuerte, 'strong r', erre doble, 'double r', or simply erre), which also represents a distinct phoneme /r/, was not similarly regarded as a single letter. Since 1994 ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨ll⟩ have been treated as letter pairs for collation purposes, though they remained a part of the alphabet until 2010. Words with ⟨ch⟩ are now alphabetically sorted between those with ⟨cg⟩ and ⟨ci⟩, instead of following ⟨cz⟩ as they used to. The situation is similar for ⟨ll⟩.[239][240]
+
+Thus, the Spanish alphabet has the following 27 letters:
+
+Since 2010, none of the digraphs (ch, ll, rr, gu, qu) is considered a letter by the Spanish Royal Academy.[241]
+
+The letters k and w are used only in words and names coming from foreign languages (kilo, folklore, whisky, kiwi, etc.).
+
+With the exclusion of a very small number of regional terms such as México (see Toponymy of Mexico), pronunciation can be entirely determined from spelling. Under the orthographic conventions, a typical Spanish word is stressed on the syllable before the last if it ends with a vowel (not including ⟨y⟩) or with a vowel followed by ⟨n⟩ or an ⟨s⟩; it is stressed on the last syllable otherwise. Exceptions to this rule are indicated by placing an acute accent on the stressed vowel.
+
+The acute accent is used, in addition, to distinguish between certain homophones, especially when one of them is a stressed word and the other one is a clitic: compare el ('the', masculine singular definite article) with él ('he' or 'it'), or te ('you', object pronoun) with té ('tea'), de (preposition 'of') versus dé ('give' [formal imperative/third-person present subjunctive]), and se (reflexive pronoun) versus sé ('I know' or imperative 'be').
+
+The interrogative pronouns (qué, cuál, dónde, quién, etc.) also receive accents in direct or indirect questions, and some demonstratives (ése, éste, aquél, etc.) can be accented when used as pronouns. Accent marks used to be omitted on capital letters (a widespread practice in the days of typewriters and the early days of computers when only lowercase vowels were available with accents), although the Real Academia Española advises against this and the orthographic conventions taught at schools enforce the use of the accent.
+
+When u is written between g and a front vowel e or i, it indicates a "hard g" pronunciation. A diaeresis ü indicates that it is not silent as it normally would be (e.g., cigüeña, 'stork', is pronounced [θiˈɣweɲa]; if it were written *cigueña, it would be pronounced *[θiˈɣeɲa]).
+
+Interrogative and exclamatory clauses are introduced with inverted question and exclamation marks (¿ and ¡, respectively).
+
+The Royal Spanish Academy (Spanish: Real Academia Española), founded in 1713,[242] together with the 21 other national ones (see Association of Spanish Language Academies), exercises a standardizing influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar and style guides.[243]
+Because of influence and for other sociohistorical reasons, a standardized form of the language (Standard Spanish) is widely acknowledged for use in literature, academic contexts and the media.
+
+The Association of Spanish Language Academies (Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, or ASALE) is the entity which regulates the Spanish language. It was created in Mexico in 1951 and represents the union of all the separate academies in the Spanish-speaking world. It comprises the academies of 23 countries, ordered by date of Academy foundation: Spain (1713),[245] Colombia (1871),[246] Ecuador (1874),[247] Mexico (1875),[248] El Salvador (1876),[249] Venezuela (1883),[250] Chile (1885),[251] Peru (1887),[252] Guatemala (1887),[253] Costa Rica (1923),[254] Philippines (1924),[255] Panama (1926),[256] Cuba (1926),[257]
+Paraguay (1927),[258] Dominican Republic (1927),[259] Bolivia (1927),[260] Nicaragua (1928),[261] Argentina (1931),[262] Uruguay (1943),[263] Honduras (1949),[264] Puerto Rico (1955),[265] United States (1973)[266] and Equatorial Guinea (2016).[267]
+
+The Instituto Cervantes (Cervantes Institute) is a worldwide nonprofit organization created by the Spanish government in 1991. This organization has branched out in over 20 different countries, with 75 centers devoted to the Spanish and Hispanic American cultures and Spanish language. The ultimate goals of the Institute are to promote universally the education, the study, and the use of Spanish as a second language, to support methods and activities that help the process of Spanish-language education, and to contribute to the advancement of the Spanish and Hispanic American cultures in non-Spanish-speaking countries. The institute's 2015 report "El español, una lengua viva" (Spanish, a living language) estimated that there were 559 million Spanish speakers worldwide. Its latest annual report "El español en el mundo 2018" (Spanish in the world 2018) counts 577 million Spanish speakers worldwide. Among the sources cited in the report is the U.S. Census Bureau, which estimates that the U.S. will have 138 million Spanish speakers by 2050, making it the biggest Spanish-speaking nation on earth, with Spanish the mother tongue of almost a third of its citizens.[268]
+
+Spanish is one of the official languages of the United Nations, the European Union, the World Trade Organization, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the African Union, the Union of South American Nations, the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, the Latin Union, the Caricom, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Inter-American Development Bank, and numerous other international organizations.
+
+
+
+
+

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+
+
+
+
+Spanish (español (help·info)) or Castilian[b] (/kæˈstɪliən/ (listen), castellano (help·info)) is a Romance language that originated in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe and today is a global language with more than 483 million native speakers, mainly in Spain and the Americas. It is the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese,[4][5] and the world's fourth-most spoken language, after English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi.
+
+Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century,[6] and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century. Beginning in 1492, the Spanish language was taken to the viceroyalties of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania and the Philippines.[7]
+
+A 1949 study by Italian-American linguist Mario Pei, analyzing the degree of difference from a language's parent (Latin, in the case of Romance languages) by comparing phonology, inflection, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation, indicated the following percentages (the higher the percentage, the greater the distance from Latin): In the case of Spanish, it is one of the closest Romance languages to Latin (20% distance), only behind Sardinian (8% distance) and Italian (12% distance).[8] Around 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary is derived from Latin, including Latin borrowings from Ancient Greek.[9][10]
+Spanish vocabulary has been in contact with Arabic from an early date, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian Peninsula and around 8% of its vocabulary has an Arabic lexical root.[11][12][13][14][11] It has also had small influences from Basque, Iberian, Celtiberian, Visigothic, and other neighboring Ibero-Romance languages.[15][11] Additionally, it has absorbed vocabulary from other languages, particularly other Romance languages—French, Italian, Andalusi Romance, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Occitan, and Sardinian—as well as from Quechua, Nahuatl, and other indigenous languages of the Americas.[16]
+
+Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. It is also used as an official language by the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the African Union and many other international organizations.[17]
+
+Despite its large number of speakers, the Spanish language does not feature prominently in scientific writing, though it is better represented in the humanities.[18] 75% of scientific production in Spanish is divided into three thematic areas: social sciences, medical sciences and arts/humanities. Spanish is the third most used language on the internet after English and Chinese.[19]
+
+It is estimated that there are more than 437 million people who speak Spanish as a native language, which qualifies it as second on the lists of languages by number of native speakers.[4] Instituto Cervantes claims that there are an estimated 477 million Spanish speakers with native competence and 572 million Spanish speakers as a first or second language—including speakers with limited competence—and more than 21 million students of Spanish as a foreign language.[20]
+
+Spanish is the official or national language in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, and 18 countries and one territory in the Americas. Speakers in the Americas total some 418 million. It is also an optional language in the Philippines as it was a Spanish colony from 1569 to 1899. In the European Union, Spanish is the mother tongue of 8% of the population, with an additional 7% speaking it as a second language.[21] The country with the largest number of native speakers is Mexico.[22] Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the United States.[23] In 2011 it was estimated by the American Community Survey that of the 55 million Hispanic United States residents who are five years of age and over, 38 million speak Spanish at home.[24]
+
+According to a 2011 paper by U.S. Census Bureau Demographers Jennifer Ortman and Hyon B. Shin,[25] the number of Spanish speakers is projected to rise through 2020 to anywhere between 39 million and 43 million, depending on the assumptions one makes about immigration. Most of these Spanish speakers will be Hispanic, with Ortman and Shin projecting between 37.5 million and 41 million Hispanic Spanish speakers by 2020.
+
+In Spain and in some other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called not only español (Spanish) but also castellano (Castilian), the language from the kingdom of Castile, contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, Asturian, Catalan, Aragonese and Occitan.
+
+The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the official language of the whole Spanish State in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. "the other Spanish languages"). Article III reads as follows:
+
+El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. ... Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas...
+Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. ... The other Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities...
+
+The Spanish Royal Academy, on the other hand, currently uses the term español in its publications, but from 1713 to 1923 called the language castellano.
+
+The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (a language guide published by the Spanish Royal Academy) states that, although the Royal Spanish Academy prefers to use the term español in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms—español and castellano—are regarded as synonymous and equally valid.[26]
+
+The term castellano comes from the Latin word castellanus, which means "of or pertaining to a fort or castle".[27]
+
+Different etymologies have been suggested for the term español (Spanish). According to the Royal Spanish Academy, español derives from the Provençal word espaignol and that, in turn, derives from the Vulgar Latin *hispaniolus. It comes from the Latin name of the province of Hispania that included the current territory of the Iberian Peninsula.[28]
+
+There are other hypotheses apart from the one suggested by the Royal Spanish Academy. Spanish philologist Menéndez Pidal suggested that the classic hispanus or hispanicus took the suffix -one from Vulgar Latin, as it happened with other words such as bretón (Breton) or sajón (Saxon). The word *hispanione evolved into the Old Spanish españón, which eventually, became español.[citation needed]
+
+The Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War, beginning in 210 BC. Previously, several pre-Roman languages (also called Paleohispanic languages)—some related to Latin via Indo-European, and some that are not related at all—were spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Basque (still spoken today), Iberian, Celtiberian and Gallaecian.
+
+The first documents to show traces of what is today regarded as the precursor of modern Spanish are from the 9th century. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era, the most important influences on the Spanish lexicon came from neighboring Romance languages—Mozarabic (Andalusi Romance), Navarro-Aragonese, Leonese, Catalan, Portuguese, Galician, Occitan, and later, French and Italian. Spanish also borrowed a considerable number of words from Arabic, as well as a minor influence from the Germanic Gothic language through the migration of tribes and a period of Visigoth rule in Iberia. In addition, many more words were borrowed from Latin through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. The loanwords were taken from both Classical Latin and Renaissance Latin, the form of Latin in use at that time.
+
+According to the theories of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, local sociolects of Vulgar Latin evolved into Spanish, in the north of Iberia, in an area centered in the city of Burgos, and this dialect was later brought to the city of Toledo, where the written standard of Spanish was first developed, in the 13th century.[30] In this formative stage, Spanish developed a strongly differing variant from its close cousin, Leonese, and, according to some authors, was distinguished by a heavy Basque influence (see Iberian Romance languages). This distinctive dialect spread to southern Spain with the advance of the Reconquista, and meanwhile gathered a sizable lexical influence from the Arabic of Al-Andalus, much of it indirectly, through the Romance Mozarabic dialects (some 4,000 Arabic-derived words, make up around 8% of the language today).[31] The written standard for this new language was developed in the cities of Toledo, in the 13th to 16th centuries, and Madrid, from the 1570s.[30]
+
+The development of the Spanish sound system from that of Vulgar Latin exhibits most of the changes that are typical of Western Romance languages, including lenition of intervocalic consonants (thus Latin vīta > Spanish vida). The diphthongization of Latin stressed short e and o—which occurred in open syllables in French and Italian, but not at all in Catalan or Portuguese—is found in both open and closed syllables in Spanish, as shown in the following table:
+
+Spanish is marked by the palatalization of the Latin double consonants nn and ll (thus Latin
+annum > Spanish año, and Latin anellum > Spanish
+anillo).
+
+The consonant written u or v in Latin and pronounced [w] in Classical Latin had probably "fortified" to a bilabial fricative /β/ in Vulgar Latin. In early Spanish (but not in Catalan or Portuguese) it merged with the consonant written b (a bilabial with plosive and fricative allophones). In modern Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic b and v, with some exceptions in Caribbean Spanish.[citation needed]
+
+Peculiar to Spanish (as well as to the neighboring Gascon dialect of Occitan, and attributed to a Basque substratum) was the mutation of Latin initial f into h- whenever it was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize. The h-, still preserved in spelling, is now silent in most varieties of the language, although in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects it is still aspirated in some words. Because of borrowings from Latin and from neighboring Romance languages, there are many f-/h-doublets in modern Spanish: Fernando and Hernando (both Spanish for "Ferdinand"), ferrero and herrero (both Spanish for "smith"), fierro and hierro (both Spanish for "iron"), and fondo and hondo (both Spanish for "deep", but fondo means "bottom" while hondo means "deep"); hacer (Spanish for "to make") is cognate to the root word of satisfacer (Spanish for "to satisfy"), and hecho ("made") is similarly cognate to the root word of satisfecho (Spanish for "satisfied").
+
+Compare the examples in the following table:
+
+Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, as shown in the examples in the following table:
+
+beaucoup
+
+In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish underwent a dramatic change in the pronunciation of its sibilant consonants, known in Spanish as the reajuste de las sibilantes, which resulted in the distinctive velar [x] pronunciation of the letter ⟨j⟩ and—in a large part of Spain—the characteristic interdental [θ] ("th-sound") for the letter ⟨z⟩ (and for ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩). See History of Spanish (Modern development of the Old Spanish sibilants) for details.
+
+The Gramática de la lengua castellana, written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija, was the first grammar written for a modern European language.[33] According to a popular anecdote, when Nebrija presented it to Queen Isabella I, she asked him what was the use of such a work, and he answered that language is the instrument of empire.[34] In his introduction to the grammar, dated 18 August 1492, Nebrija wrote that "... language was always the companion of empire."[35]
+
+From the sixteenth century onwards, the language was taken to the Spanish-discovered America and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization of America. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is such a well-known reference in the world that Spanish is often called la lengua de Cervantes ("the language of Cervantes").[36]
+
+In the twentieth century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, and to areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City. For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.
+
+Most of the grammatical and typological features of Spanish are shared with the other Romance languages. Spanish is a fusional language. The noun and adjective systems exhibit two genders and two numbers. In addition, articles and some pronouns and determiners have a neuter gender in their singular form. There are about fifty conjugated forms per verb, with 3 tenses: past, present, future; 2 aspects for past: perfective, imperfective; 4 moods: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative; 3 persons: first, second, third; 2 numbers: singular, plural; 3 verboid forms: infinitive, gerund, and past participle. Verbs express T-V distinction by using different persons for formal and informal addresses. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see Spanish verbs and Spanish irregular verbs.)
+
+Spanish syntax is considered right-branching, meaning that subordinate or modifying constituents tend to be placed after their head words. The language uses prepositions (rather than postpositions or inflection of nouns for case), and usually—though not always—places adjectives after nouns, as do most other Romance languages.
+
+The language is classified as a subject–verb–object language; however, as in most Romance languages, constituent order is highly variable and governed mainly by topicalization and focus rather than by syntax. It is a "pro-drop", or "null-subject" language—that is, it allows the deletion of subject pronouns when they are pragmatically unnecessary. Spanish is described as a "verb-framed" language, meaning that the direction of motion is expressed in the verb while the mode of locomotion is expressed adverbially (e.g. subir corriendo or salir volando; the respective English equivalents of these examples—'to run up' and 'to fly out'—show that English is, by contrast, "satellite-framed", with mode of locomotion expressed in the verb and direction in an adverbial modifier).
+
+Subject/verb inversion is not required in questions, and thus the recognition of declarative or interrogative may depend entirely on intonation.
+
+The Spanish phonemic system is originally descended from that of Vulgar Latin. Its development exhibits some traits in common with the neighboring dialects—especially Leonese and Aragonese—as well as other traits unique to Castilian. Castilian is unique among its neighbors in the aspiration and eventual loss of the Latin initial /f/ sound (e.g. Cast. harina vs. Leon. and Arag. farina).[37] The Latin initial consonant sequences pl-, cl-, and fl- in Spanish typically become ll- (originally pronounced [ʎ]), while in Aragonese they are preserved, and in Leonese they present a variety of outcomes, including [tʃ], [ʃ], and [ʎ]. Where Latin had -li- before a vowel (e.g. filius) or the ending -iculus, -icula (e.g. auricula), Old Spanish produced [ʒ], that in Modern Spanish became the velar fricative [x] (hijo, oreja, where neighboring languages have the palatal lateral [ʎ] (e.g. Portuguese filho, orelha; Catalan fill, orella).
+
+The Spanish phonemic inventory consists of five vowel phonemes (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/) and 17 to 19 consonant phonemes (the exact number depending on the dialect[38]). The main allophonic variation among vowels is the reduction of the high vowels /i/ and /u/ to glides—[j] and [w] respectively—when unstressed and adjacent to another vowel. Some instances of the mid vowels /e/ and /o/, determined lexically, alternate with the diphthongs /je/ and /we/ respectively when stressed, in a process that is better described as morphophonemic rather than phonological, as it is not predictable from phonology alone.
+
+The Spanish consonant system is characterized by (1) three nasal phonemes, and one or two (depending on the dialect) lateral phoneme(s), which in syllable-final position lose their contrast and are subject to assimilation to a following consonant; (2) three voiceless stops and the affricate /tʃ/; (3) three or four (depending on the dialect) voiceless fricatives; (4) a set of voiced obstruents—/b/, /d/, /ɡ/, and sometimes /ʝ/—which alternate between approximant and plosive allophones depending on the environment; and (5) a phonemic distinction between the "tapped" and "trilled" r-sounds (single ⟨r⟩ and double ⟨rr⟩ in orthography).
+
+In the following table of consonant phonemes, /ʎ/ is marked with an asterisk (*) to indicate that it is preserved only in some dialects. In most dialects it has been merged with /ʝ/ in the merger called yeísmo. Similarly, /θ/ is also marked with an asterisk to indicate that most dialects do not distinguish it from /s/ (see seseo), although this is not a true merger but an outcome of different evolution of sibilants in Southern Spain.
+
+The phoneme /ʃ/ is in parentheses () to indicate that it appears only in loanwords. Each of the voiced obstruent phonemes /b/, /d/, /ʝ/, and /ɡ/ appears to the right of a pair of voiceless phonemes, to indicate that, while the voiceless phonemes maintain a phonemic contrast between plosive (or affricate) and fricative, the voiced ones alternate allophonically (i.e. without phonemic contrast) between plosive and approximant pronunciations.
+
+Spanish is classified by its rhythm as a syllable-timed language: each syllable has approximately the same duration regardless of stress.[40][41]
+
+Spanish intonation varies significantly according to dialect but generally conforms to a pattern of falling tone for declarative sentences and wh-questions (who, what, why, etc.) and rising tone for yes/no questions.[42][43] There are no syntactic markers to distinguish between questions and statements and thus, the recognition of declarative or interrogative depends entirely on intonation.
+
+Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word, with some rare exceptions at the fourth-last or earlier syllables. The tendencies of stress assignment are as follows:[44]
+
+In addition to the many exceptions to these tendencies, there are numerous minimal pairs that contrast solely on stress such as sábana ('sheet') and sabana ('savannah'); límite ('boundary'), limite ('[that] he/she limits') and limité ('I limited'); líquido ('liquid'), liquido ('I sell off') and liquidó ('he/she sold off').
+
+The orthographic system unambiguously reflects where the stress occurs: in the absence of an accent mark, the stress falls on the last syllable unless the last letter is ⟨n⟩, ⟨s⟩, or a vowel, in which cases the stress falls on the next-to-last (penultimate) syllable. Exceptions to those rules are indicated by an acute accent mark over the vowel of the stressed syllable. (See Spanish orthography.)
+
+Spanish is the primary language of 20 countries worldwide. It is estimated that the combined total number of Spanish speakers is between 470 and 500 million, making it the second most widely spoken language in terms of native speakers.[46][47]
+
+Spanish is the third most spoken language by total number of speakers (after Mandarin and English). Internet usage statistics for 2007 also show Spanish as the third most commonly used language on the Internet, after English and Mandarin.[48]
+
+In Europe, Spanish is an official language of Spain, the country after which it is named and from which it originated. It is widely spoken in Gibraltar, and also commonly spoken in Andorra, although Catalan is the official language there.[49]
+
+Spanish is also spoken by small communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany.[50] Spanish is an official language of the European Union. In Switzerland, which had a massive influx of Spanish migrants in the 20th century, Spanish is the native language of 2.2% of the population.[51]
+
+Most Spanish speakers are in Hispanic America; of all countries with a majority of Spanish speakers, only Spain and Equatorial Guinea are outside the Americas. Nationally, Spanish is the official language—either de facto or de jure—of Argentina, Bolivia (co-official with Quechua, Aymara, Guarani, and 34 other languages), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico (co-official with 63 indigenous languages), Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay (co-official with Guaraní),[52] Peru (co-official with Quechua, Aymara, and "the other indigenous languages"[53]), Puerto Rico (co-official with English),[54] Uruguay, and Venezuela.
+Spanish has no official recognition in the former British colony of Belize; however, per the 2000 census, it is spoken by 43% of the population.[55][56] Mainly, it is spoken by the descendants of Hispanics who have been in the region since the seventeenth century; however, English is the official language.[57]
+
+Due to their proximity to Spanish-speaking countries, Trinidad and Tobago and Brazil have implemented Spanish language teaching into their education systems. The Trinidad government launched the Spanish as a First Foreign Language (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005.[58] In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President, making it mandatory for schools to offer Spanish as an alternative foreign language course in both public and private secondary schools in Brazil.[59] In September 2016 this law was revoked by Michel Temer after impeachment of Dilma Rousseff.[60] In many border towns and villages along Paraguay and Uruguay, a mixed language known as Portuñol is spoken.[61]
+
+According to 2006 census data, 44.3 million people of the U.S. population were Hispanic or Hispanic American by origin;[62] 38.3 million people, 13 percent of the population over five years old speak Spanish at home.[63] The Spanish language has a long history of presence in the United States due to early Spanish and, later, Mexican administration over territories now forming the southwestern states, also Louisiana ruled by Spain from 1762 to 1802, as well as Florida, which was Spanish territory until 1821.
+
+Spanish is by far the most common second language in the US, with over 50 million total speakers if non-native or second-language speakers are included.[64] While English is the de facto national language of the country, Spanish is often used in public services and notices at the federal and state levels. Spanish is also used in administration in the state of New Mexico.[65] The language also has a strong influence in major metropolitan areas such as those of Los Angeles, Miami, San Antonio, New York, San Francisco, Dallas, and Phoenix; as well as more recently, Chicago, Las Vegas, Boston, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Nashville, Orlando, Tampa, Raleigh and Baltimore-Washington, D.C. due to 20th- and 21st-century immigration.
+
+In Africa, Spanish is official (along with Portuguese and French) in Equatorial Guinea, as well as an official language of the African Union. In Equatorial Guinea, Spanish is the predominant language when native and non-native speakers (around 500,000 people) are counted, while Fang is the most spoken language by number of native speakers.[66][67]
+
+Spanish is also spoken in the integral territories of Spain in North Africa, which include the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, the Plazas de soberanía, and the Canary Islands archipelago (population 2,000,000), located some 100 km (62 mi) off the northwest coast of mainland Africa. In northern Morocco, a former Spanish protectorate that is also geographically close to Spain, approximately 20,000 people speak Spanish as a second language, while Arabic is the de jure official language. A small number of Moroccan Jews also speak the Sephardic Spanish dialect Haketia (related to the Ladino dialect spoken in Israel). Spanish is spoken by some small communities in Angola because of the Cuban influence from the Cold War and in South Sudan among South Sudanese natives that relocated to Cuba during the Sudanese wars and returned in time for their country's independence.[68]
+
+In Western Sahara, formerly Spanish Sahara, Spanish was officially spoken during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today, Spanish in this disputed territory is maintained by populations of Sahrawi nomads numbering about 500,000 people, and is de facto official alongside Arabic in the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, although this entity receives limited international recognition.[69][70]
+
+Spanish and Philippine Spanish was an official language of the Philippines from the beginning of Spanish administration in 1565 to a constitutional change in 1973. During Spanish colonization (1565–1898), it was the language of government, trade and education, and spoken as a first language by Spaniards and educated Filipinos. In the mid-nineteenth century, the colonial government set up a free public education system with Spanish as the medium of instruction. This increased use of Spanish throughout the islands led to the formation of a class of Spanish-speaking intellectuals called the Ilustrados. By the time of Philippine independence in 1898, around 70% of the population had knowledge of Spanish, with 10% speaking it as their first and only language and about 60% of the population spoke it as their second or third language.[71]
+
+Despite American administration after the defeat of Spain in the Spanish–American War in 1898, the usage of Spanish continued in Philippine literature and press during the early years of American administration. Gradually, however, the American government began increasingly promoting the use of English, and it characterized Spanish as a negative influence of the past. Eventually, by the 1920s, English became the primary language of administration and education.[72] But despite a significant decrease in influence and speakers, Spanish remained an official language of the Philippines when it became independent in 1946, alongside English and Filipino, a standardized version of Tagalog.
+
+Spanish was removed from official status in 1973 under the administration of Ferdinand Marcos, but regained its status as an official language two months later under Presidential Decree No. 155, dated 15 March 1973.[73] It remained an official language until 1987, with the ratification of the present constitution, in which it was re-designated as a voluntary and optional auxiliary language.[74] In 2010, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo encouraged the reintroduction of Spanish-language teaching in the Philippine education system.[75] But by 2012, the number of secondary schools at which the language was either a compulsory subject or an elective had become very limited.[76] Today, despite government promotions of Spanish, less than 0.5% of the population report being able to speak the language proficiently.[77] Aside from standard Spanish, a Spanish-based creole language—Chavacano—developed in the southern Philippines. The number of Chavacano-speakers was estimated at 1.2 million in 1996. However, it is not mutually intelligible with Spanish.[78] Speakers of the Zamboangueño variety of Chavacano were numbered about 360,000 in the 2000 census.[79] The local languages of the Philippines also retain Spanish influence, with many words being derived from Mexican Spanish, owing to the administration of the islands by Spain through New Spain until 1821, and then directly from Madrid until 1898.[80][81]
+
+Philippine Spanish is a dialect of the Spanish language in the Philippines. The variant is very similar to Mexican Spanish, because of Mexican and Latin American emigration to the Spanish East Indies over the years. 
+From 1565 to 1821, the Philippines, which were a part of the Spanish East Indies, were governed by the Captaincy General of the Philippines as a territory of the Viceroyalty of New Spain centered in Mexico. It was only administered directly from Spain in 1821 after Mexico gained its independence that same year. Since the Philippines was a former territory of the Viceroyalty of New Spain for most of the Spanish colonial period, Spanish as was spoken in the Philippines had a greater affinity to American Spanish rather than to Peninsular Spanish.
+
+Chavacano or Chabacano [tʃaβaˈkano] is a group of Spanish-based creole language varieties spoken in the Philippines. The variety spoken in Zamboanga City, located in the southern Philippine island group of Mindanao, has the highest concentration of speakers. Other currently existing varieties are found in Cavite City and Ternate, located in the Cavite province on the island of Luzon.[4] Chavacano is the only Spanish-based creole in Asia.
+
+Spanish is also the official language and the most spoken on Easter Island which is geographically part of Polynesia in Oceania and politically part of Chile. Easter Island's traditional language is Rapa Nui, an Eastern Polynesian language.
+
+Spanish loan words are present in the local languages of Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia, all of which formerly comprised the Spanish East Indies.[82][83]
+
+The following table shows the number of Spanish speakers in some 79 countries.
+
+There are important variations (phonological, grammatical, and lexical) in the spoken Spanish of the various regions of Spain and throughout the Spanish-speaking areas of the Americas.
+
+The variety with the most speakers is Mexican Spanish. It is spoken by more than twenty percent of the world's Spanish speakers (more than 112 million of the total of more than 500 million, according to the table above). One of its main features is the reduction or loss of unstressed vowels, mainly when they are in contact with the sound /s/.[220][221]
+
+In Spain, northern dialects are popularly thought of as closer to the standard, although positive attitudes toward southern dialects have increased significantly in the last 50 years. Even so, the speech of Madrid, which has typically southern features such as yeísmo and s-aspiration, is the standard variety for use on radio and television.[222][223][224][225] However, the variety used in the media is that of Madrid's educated classes, where southern traits are less evident, in contrast with the variety spoken by working-class Madrid, where those traits are pervasive. The educated variety of Madrid is indicated by many as the one that has most influenced the written standard for Spanish.[226]
+
+The four main phonological divisions are based respectively on (1) the phoneme /θ/ ("theta"), (2) the debuccalization of syllable-final /s/, (3) the sound of the spelled ⟨s⟩, (4) and the phoneme /ʎ/ ("turned y"),[227]
+
+The main morphological variations between dialects of Spanish involve differing uses of pronouns, especially those of the second person and, to a lesser extent, the object pronouns of the third person.
+
+Virtually all dialects of Spanish make the distinction between a formal and a familiar register in the second-person singular and thus have two different pronouns meaning "you": usted in the formal and either tú or vos in the familiar (and each of these three pronouns has its associated verb forms), with the choice of tú or vos varying from one dialect to another. The use of vos (and/or its verb forms) is called voseo. In a few dialects, all three pronouns are used, with usted, tú, and vos denoting respectively formality, familiarity, and intimacy.[229]
+
+In voseo, vos is the subject form (vos decís, "you say") and the form for the object of a preposition (voy con vos, "I am going with you"), while the direct and indirect object forms, and the possessives, are the same as those associated with tú: Vos sabés que tus amigos te respetan ("You know your friends respect you").
+
+The verb forms of general voseo are the same as those used with tú except in the present tense (indicative and imperative) verbs. The forms for vos generally can be derived from those of vosotros (the traditional second-person familiar plural) by deleting the glide [i̯], or /d/, where it appears in the ending: vosotros pensáis > vos pensás; vosotros volvéis > vos volvés, pensad! (vosotros) > pensá! (vos), volved! (vosotros) > volvé! (vos) .
+
+In Chilean voseo on the other hand, almost all verb forms are distinct from their standard tú-forms.
+
+The use of the pronoun vos with the verb forms of tú (vos piensas) is called "pronominal voseo". Conversely, the use of the verb forms of vos with the pronoun tú (tú pensás or tú pensái) is called "verbal voseo". 
+In Chile, for example, verbal voseo is much more common than the actual use of the pronoun vos, which is usually reserved for highly informal situations.
+
+And in Central American voseo, one can see even further distinction.
+
+Although vos is not used in Spain, it occurs in many Spanish-speaking regions of the Americas as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular familiar pronoun, with wide differences in social consideration. Generally, it can be said that there are zones of exclusive use of tuteo (the use of tú) in the following areas: almost all of Mexico, the West Indies, Panama, most of Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and coastal Ecuador.
+
+Tuteo as a cultured form alternates with voseo as a popular or rural form in Bolivia, in the north and south of Peru, in Andean Ecuador, in small zones of the Venezuelan Andes (and most notably in the Venezuelan state of Zulia), and in a large part of Colombia. Some researchers maintain that voseo can be heard in some parts of eastern Cuba, and others assert that it is absent from the island.[230]
+
+Tuteo exists as the second-person usage with an intermediate degree of formality alongside the more familiar voseo in Chile, in the Venezuelan state of Zulia, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, in the Azuero Peninsula in Panama, in the Mexican state of Chiapas, and in parts of Guatemala.
+
+Areas of generalized voseo include Argentina, Nicaragua, eastern Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Uruguay and the Colombian departments of Antioquia, Caldas, Risaralda, Quindio and Valle del Cauca.[229]
+
+Ustedes functions as formal and informal second person plural in over 90% of the Spanish-speaking world, including all of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and some regions of Andalusia. In Seville, Huelva, Cadiz, and other parts of western Andalusia, the familiar form is constructed as ustedes vais, using the traditional second-person plural form of the verb. Most of Spain maintains the formal/familiar distinction with ustedes and vosotros respectively.
+
+Usted is the usual second-person singular pronoun in a formal context, but it is used jointly with the third-person singular voice of the verb. It is used to convey respect toward someone who is a generation older or is of higher authority ("you, sir"/"you, ma'am"). It is also used in a familiar context by many speakers in Colombia and Costa Rica and in parts of Ecuador and Panama, to the exclusion of tú or vos. This usage is sometimes called ustedeo in Spanish.
+
+In Central America, especially in Honduras, usted is often used as a formal pronoun to convey respect between the members of a romantic couple. Usted is also used that way between parents and children in the Andean regions of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.
+
+Most speakers use (and the Real Academia Española prefers) the pronouns lo and la for direct objects (masculine and feminine respectively, regardless of animacy, meaning "him", "her", or "it"), and le for indirect objects (regardless of gender or animacy, meaning "to him", "to her", or "to it"). The usage is sometimes called "etymological", as these direct and indirect object pronouns are a continuation, respectively, of the accusative and dative pronouns of Latin, the ancestor language of Spanish.
+
+Deviations from this norm (more common in Spain than in the Americas) are called "leísmo", "loísmo", or "laísmo", according to which respective pronoun, le, lo, or la, has expanded beyond the etymological usage (le as a direct object, or lo or la as an indirect object).
+
+Some words can be significantly different in different Hispanophone countries. Most Spanish speakers can recognize other Spanish forms even in places where they are not commonly used, but Spaniards generally do not recognize specifically American usages. For example, Spanish mantequilla, aguacate and albaricoque (respectively, 'butter', 'avocado', 'apricot') correspond to manteca (word used for lard in Peninsular Spanish), palta, and damasco, respectively, in Argentina, Chile (except manteca), Paraguay, Peru (except manteca and damasco), and Uruguay.
+
+Spanish is closely related to the other West Iberian Romance languages, including Asturian, Aragonese, Galician, Ladino, Leonese, Mirandese and Portuguese.
+
+It is generally acknowledged that Portuguese and Spanish speakers can communicate in written form, with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.[231][232][233][234]
+Mutual intelligibility of the written Spanish and Portuguese languages is remarkably high, and the difficulties of the spoken forms are based more on phonology than on grammatical and lexical dissimilarities. Ethnologue gives estimates of the lexical similarity between related languages in terms of precise percentages. For Spanish and Portuguese, that figure is 89%. Italian, on the other hand its phonology similar to Spanish, but has a lower lexical similarity of 82%. Mutual intelligibility between Spanish and French or between Spanish and Romanian is lower still, given lexical similarity ratings of 75% and 71% respectively.[235][236] And comprehension of Spanish by French speakers who have not studied the language is much lower, at an estimated 45%. In general, thanks to the common features of the writing systems of the Romance languages, interlingual comprehension of the written word is greater than that of oral communication.
+
+The following table compares the forms of some common words in several Romance languages:
+
+1. Also nós outros in early modern Portuguese (e.g. The Lusiads), and nosoutros in Galician.
+2. Alternatively nous autres in French.
+3. Also noialtri in Southern Italian dialects and languages.
+4. Medieval Catalan (e.g. Llibre dels fets).
+5. Depending on the written norm used (see Reintegrationism).
+6. From Basque esku, "hand" + erdi, "half, incomplete". Notice that this negative meaning also applies for Latin sinistra(m) ("dark, unfortunate").
+7. Romanian caș (from Latin cāsevs) means a type of cheese. The universal term for cheese in Romanian is brânză (from unknown etymology).[237]
+
+Judaeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino,[238] is a variety of Spanish which preserves many features of medieval Spanish and Portuguese and is spoken by descendants of the Sephardi Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century.[238] Conversely, in Portugal the vast majority of the Portuguese Jews converted and became 'New Christians'. Therefore, its relationship to Spanish is comparable with that of the Yiddish language to German. Ladino speakers today are almost exclusively Sephardi Jews, with family roots in Turkey, Greece, or the Balkans, and living mostly in Israel, Turkey, and the United States, with a few communities in Hispanic America.[238] Judaeo-Spanish lacks the Native American vocabulary which was acquired by standard Spanish during the Spanish colonial period, and it retains many archaic features which have since been lost in standard Spanish. It contains, however, other vocabulary which is not found in standard Spanish, including vocabulary from Hebrew, French, Greek and Turkish, and other languages spoken where the Sephardim settled.
+
+Judaeo-Spanish is in serious danger of extinction because many native speakers today are elderly as well as elderly olim (immigrants to Israel) who have not transmitted the language to their children or grandchildren. However, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardi communities, especially in music. In the case of the Latin American communities, the danger of extinction is also due to the risk of assimilation by modern Castilian.
+
+A related dialect is Haketia, the Judaeo-Spanish of northern Morocco. This too tended to assimilate with modern Spanish, during the Spanish occupation of the region.
+
+Spanish is written in the Latin script, with the addition of the character ⟨ñ⟩ (eñe, representing the phoneme /ɲ/, a letter distinct from ⟨n⟩, although typographically composed of an ⟨n⟩ with a tilde). Formerly the digraphs ⟨ch⟩ (che, representing the phoneme /t͡ʃ/) and ⟨ll⟩ (elle, representing the phoneme /ʎ/), were also considered single letters. However, the digraph ⟨rr⟩ (erre fuerte, 'strong r', erre doble, 'double r', or simply erre), which also represents a distinct phoneme /r/, was not similarly regarded as a single letter. Since 1994 ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨ll⟩ have been treated as letter pairs for collation purposes, though they remained a part of the alphabet until 2010. Words with ⟨ch⟩ are now alphabetically sorted between those with ⟨cg⟩ and ⟨ci⟩, instead of following ⟨cz⟩ as they used to. The situation is similar for ⟨ll⟩.[239][240]
+
+Thus, the Spanish alphabet has the following 27 letters:
+
+Since 2010, none of the digraphs (ch, ll, rr, gu, qu) is considered a letter by the Spanish Royal Academy.[241]
+
+The letters k and w are used only in words and names coming from foreign languages (kilo, folklore, whisky, kiwi, etc.).
+
+With the exclusion of a very small number of regional terms such as México (see Toponymy of Mexico), pronunciation can be entirely determined from spelling. Under the orthographic conventions, a typical Spanish word is stressed on the syllable before the last if it ends with a vowel (not including ⟨y⟩) or with a vowel followed by ⟨n⟩ or an ⟨s⟩; it is stressed on the last syllable otherwise. Exceptions to this rule are indicated by placing an acute accent on the stressed vowel.
+
+The acute accent is used, in addition, to distinguish between certain homophones, especially when one of them is a stressed word and the other one is a clitic: compare el ('the', masculine singular definite article) with él ('he' or 'it'), or te ('you', object pronoun) with té ('tea'), de (preposition 'of') versus dé ('give' [formal imperative/third-person present subjunctive]), and se (reflexive pronoun) versus sé ('I know' or imperative 'be').
+
+The interrogative pronouns (qué, cuál, dónde, quién, etc.) also receive accents in direct or indirect questions, and some demonstratives (ése, éste, aquél, etc.) can be accented when used as pronouns. Accent marks used to be omitted on capital letters (a widespread practice in the days of typewriters and the early days of computers when only lowercase vowels were available with accents), although the Real Academia Española advises against this and the orthographic conventions taught at schools enforce the use of the accent.
+
+When u is written between g and a front vowel e or i, it indicates a "hard g" pronunciation. A diaeresis ü indicates that it is not silent as it normally would be (e.g., cigüeña, 'stork', is pronounced [θiˈɣweɲa]; if it were written *cigueña, it would be pronounced *[θiˈɣeɲa]).
+
+Interrogative and exclamatory clauses are introduced with inverted question and exclamation marks (¿ and ¡, respectively).
+
+The Royal Spanish Academy (Spanish: Real Academia Española), founded in 1713,[242] together with the 21 other national ones (see Association of Spanish Language Academies), exercises a standardizing influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar and style guides.[243]
+Because of influence and for other sociohistorical reasons, a standardized form of the language (Standard Spanish) is widely acknowledged for use in literature, academic contexts and the media.
+
+The Association of Spanish Language Academies (Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, or ASALE) is the entity which regulates the Spanish language. It was created in Mexico in 1951 and represents the union of all the separate academies in the Spanish-speaking world. It comprises the academies of 23 countries, ordered by date of Academy foundation: Spain (1713),[245] Colombia (1871),[246] Ecuador (1874),[247] Mexico (1875),[248] El Salvador (1876),[249] Venezuela (1883),[250] Chile (1885),[251] Peru (1887),[252] Guatemala (1887),[253] Costa Rica (1923),[254] Philippines (1924),[255] Panama (1926),[256] Cuba (1926),[257]
+Paraguay (1927),[258] Dominican Republic (1927),[259] Bolivia (1927),[260] Nicaragua (1928),[261] Argentina (1931),[262] Uruguay (1943),[263] Honduras (1949),[264] Puerto Rico (1955),[265] United States (1973)[266] and Equatorial Guinea (2016).[267]
+
+The Instituto Cervantes (Cervantes Institute) is a worldwide nonprofit organization created by the Spanish government in 1991. This organization has branched out in over 20 different countries, with 75 centers devoted to the Spanish and Hispanic American cultures and Spanish language. The ultimate goals of the Institute are to promote universally the education, the study, and the use of Spanish as a second language, to support methods and activities that help the process of Spanish-language education, and to contribute to the advancement of the Spanish and Hispanic American cultures in non-Spanish-speaking countries. The institute's 2015 report "El español, una lengua viva" (Spanish, a living language) estimated that there were 559 million Spanish speakers worldwide. Its latest annual report "El español en el mundo 2018" (Spanish in the world 2018) counts 577 million Spanish speakers worldwide. Among the sources cited in the report is the U.S. Census Bureau, which estimates that the U.S. will have 138 million Spanish speakers by 2050, making it the biggest Spanish-speaking nation on earth, with Spanish the mother tongue of almost a third of its citizens.[268]
+
+Spanish is one of the official languages of the United Nations, the European Union, the World Trade Organization, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the African Union, the Union of South American Nations, the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, the Latin Union, the Caricom, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Inter-American Development Bank, and numerous other international organizations.
+
+
+
+
+

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+Amazon usually refers to:
+
+Amazon or Amazone may also refer to:
+

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+
+
+In biology, a species (/ˈspiːʃiːz/ (listen)) is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined.
+
+The total number of species is estimated to be between 8 and 8.7 million.[1][2] However the vast majority of them are not studied or documented and it may take over 1000 years to fully catalogue them all.[3]
+
+All species (except viruses) are given a two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet (in botanical nomenclature, also sometimes in zoological nomenclature). For example, Boa constrictor is one of four species of the genus Boa, with constrictor being the species’ epithet.
+
+While the definitions given above may seem adequate, when looked at more closely they represent problematic species concepts. For example, the boundaries between closely related species become unclear with hybridisation, in a species complex of hundreds of similar microspecies, and in a ring species. Also, among organisms that reproduce only asexually, the concept of a reproductive species breaks down, and each clone is potentially a microspecies. Though none of these are entirely satisfactory definitions, scientists and conservationists need a species definition which allows them to work, regardless of the theoretical difficulties. If species were fixed and clearly distinct from one another, there would be no problem, but evolutionary processes cause species to change continually, and to grade into one another.
+
+Species were seen from the time of Aristotle until the 18th century as fixed categories that could be arranged in a hierarchy, the great chain of being. In the 19th century, biologists grasped that species could evolve given sufficient time. Charles Darwin's 1859 book The Origin of Species explained how species could arise by natural selection. That understanding was greatly extended in the 20th century through genetics and population ecology. Genetic variability arises from mutations and recombination, while organisms themselves are mobile, leading to geographical isolation and genetic drift with varying selection pressures. Genes can sometimes be exchanged between species by horizontal gene transfer; new species can arise rapidly through hybridisation and polyploidy; and species may become extinct for a variety of reasons. Viruses are a special case, driven by a balance of mutation and selection, and can be treated as quasispecies.
+
+Biologists and taxonomists have made many attempts to define species, beginning from morphology and moving towards genetics. Early taxonomists such as Linnaeus had no option but to describe what they saw: this was later formalised as the typological or morphological species concept. Ernst Mayr emphasised reproductive isolation, but this, like other species concepts, is hard or even impossible to test.[4][5] Later biologists have tried to refine Mayr's definition with the recognition and cohesion concepts, among others.[6] Many of the concepts are quite similar or overlap, so they are not easy to count: the biologist R. L. Mayden recorded about 24 concepts,[7] and the philosopher of science John Wilkins counted 26.[4] Wilkins further grouped the species concepts into seven basic kinds of concepts: (1) agamospecies for asexual organisms (2) biospecies for reproductively isolated sexual organisms (3) ecospecies based on ecological niches (4) evolutionary species based on lineage (5) genetic species based on gene pool (6) morphospecies based on form or phenotype and (7) taxonomic species, a species as determined by a taxonomist.[8]
+
+
+
+A typological species is a group of organisms in which individuals conform to certain fixed properties (a type), so that even pre-literate people often recognise the same taxon as do modern taxonomists.[10][11] The clusters of variations or phenotypes within specimens (such as longer or shorter tails) would differentiate the species. This method was used as a "classical" method of determining species, such as with Linnaeus early in evolutionary theory. However, different phenotypes are not necessarily different species (e.g. a four-winged Drosophila born to a two-winged mother is not a different species). Species named in this manner are called morphospecies.[12][13]
+
+In the 1970s, Robert R. Sokal, Theodore J. Crovello and Peter Sneath proposed a variation on this, a phenetic species, defined as a set of organisms with a similar phenotype to each other, but a different phenotype from other sets of organisms.[14] It differs from the morphological species concept in including a numerical measure of distance or similarity to cluster entities based on multivariate comparisons of a reasonably large number of phenotypic traits.[15]
+
+
+
+A mate-recognition species is a group of sexually reproducing organisms that recognize one another as potential mates.[16][17] Expanding on this to allow for post-mating isolation, a cohesion species is the most inclusive population of individuals having the potential for phenotypic cohesion through intrinsic cohesion mechanisms; no matter whether populations can hybridize successfully, they are still distinct cohesion species if the amount of hybridization is insufficient to completely mix their respective gene pools.[18] A further development of the recognition concept is provided by the biosemiotic concept of species.[19]
+
+
+
+In microbiology, genes can move freely even between distantly related bacteria, possibly extending to the whole bacterial domain. As a rule of thumb, microbiologists have assumed that kinds of Bacteria or Archaea with 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences more similar than 97% to each other need to be checked by DNA-DNA hybridisation to decide if they belong to the same species or not.[20] This concept was narrowed in 2006 to a similarity of 98.7%.[21]
+
+DNA-DNA hybridisation is outdated, and results have sometimes led to misleading conclusions about species, as with the pomarine and great skua.[22][23] Modern approaches compare sequence similarity using computational methods.[24]
+
+DNA barcoding has been proposed as a way to distinguish species suitable even for non-specialists to use.[25] The so-called barcode is a region of mitochondrial DNA within the gene for cytochrome c oxidase. A database, Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) contains DNA barcode sequences from over 190,000 species.[26][27] However, scientists such as Rob DeSalle have expressed concern that classical taxonomy and DNA barcoding, which they consider a misnomer, need to be reconciled, as they delimit species differently.[28] Genetic introgression mediated by endosymbionts and other vectors can further make barcodes ineffective in the identification of species.[29]
+
+
+
+A phylogenetic or cladistic species is an evolutionarily divergent lineage, one that has maintained its hereditary integrity through time and space.[30][31][32] A cladistic species is the smallest group of populations that can be distinguished by a unique set of morphological or genetic traits. Molecular markers may be used to determine genetic similarities in the nuclear or mitochondrial DNA of various species.[31][33][34] For example, in a study done on fungi, studying the nucleotide characters using cladistic species produced the most accurate results in recognising the numerous fungi species of all the concepts studied.[34][35] Versions of the phylogenetic species concept may emphasize monophyly or diagnosability.[36] The concept may lead to splitting of existing species, for example in Bovidae, by recognising old subspecies as species, despite the fact that there are no reproductive barriers, and populations may inter-grade morphologically.[37] Others have called this approach taxonomic inflation, diluting the species concept and making taxonomy unstable.[38] Yet others defend this approach, considering "taxonomic inflation" pejorative and labelling the opposing view as "taxonomic conservatism"; claiming it is politically expedient to split species and recognise smaller populations at the species level, because this means they can more easily be included as endangered in the IUCN red list and can attract conservation legislation and funding.[39]
+
+Unlike the biological species concept, a cladistic species does not rely on reproductive isolation, so it is independent of processes that are integral in other concepts.[33] It works for asexual lineages.[31][34] However, it does not work in every situation, and may require more than one polymorphic locus to give an accurate result.[34]
+
+An evolutionary species, suggested by George Gaylord Simpson in 1951, is "an entity composed of organisms which maintains its identity from other such entities through time and over space, and which has its own independent evolutionary fate and historical tendencies".[7][40] This differs from the biological species concept in embodying persistence over time. Wiley and Mayden state that they see the evolutionary species concept as "identical" to Willi Hennig's species-as-lineages concept, and assert that the biological species concept, "the several versions" of the phylogenetic species concept, and the idea that species are of the same kind as higher taxa are not suitable for biodiversity studies (with the intention of estimating the number of species accurately). They further suggest that the concept works for both asexual and sexually-reproducing species.[41]
+
+An ecological species is a set of organisms adapted to a particular set of resources, called a niche, in the environment. According to this concept, populations form the discrete phenetic clusters that we recognise as species because the ecological and evolutionary processes controlling how resources are divided up tend to produce those clusters.[42]
+
+A genetic species as defined by Robert Baker and Robert Bradley is a set of genetically isolated interbreeding populations. This is similar to Mayr's Biological Species Concept, but stresses genetic rather than reproductive isolation.[43] In the 21st century, a genetic species can be established by comparing DNA sequences, but other methods were available earlier, such as comparing karyotypes (sets of chromosomes) and allozymes (enzyme variants).[44]
+
+An evolutionarily significant unit (ESU) or "wildlife species"[45] is a population of organisms considered distinct for purposes of conservation.[46]
+
+In palaeontology, with only comparative anatomy (morphology) from fossils as evidence, the concept of a chronospecies can be applied. During anagenesis (evolution, not necessarily involving branching), palaeontologists seek to identify a sequence of species, each one derived from the phyletically extinct one before through continuous, slow and more or less uniform change. In such a time sequence, palaeontologists assess how much change is required for a morphologically distinct form to be considered a different species from its ancestors.[47][48][49][50]
+
+Viruses have enormous populations, are doubtfully living since they consist of little more than a string of DNA or RNA in a protein coat, and mutate rapidly. All of these factors make conventional species concepts largely inapplicable.[51] A viral quasispecies is a group of genotypes related by similar mutations, competing within a highly mutagenic environment, and hence governed by a mutation–selection balance. It is predicted that a viral quasispecies at a low but evolutionarily neutral and highly connected (that is, flat) region in the fitness landscape will outcompete a quasispecies located at a higher but narrower fitness peak in which the surrounding mutants are unfit, "the quasispecies effect" or the "survival of the flattest". There is no suggestion that a viral quasispecies resembles a traditional biological species.[52][53][54]
+
+The commonly used names for kinds of organisms are often ambiguous: "cat" could mean the domestic cat, Felis catus, or the cat family, Felidae. Another problem with common names is that they often vary from place to place, so that puma, cougar, catamount, panther, painter and mountain lion all mean Puma concolor in various parts of America, while "panther" may also mean the jaguar (Panthera onca) of Latin America or the leopard (Panthera pardus) of Africa and Asia. In contrast, the scientific names of species are chosen to be unique and universal; they are in two parts used together: the genus as in Puma, and the specific epithet as in concolor.[55][56]
+
+A species is given a taxonomic name when a type specimen is described formally, in a publication that assigns it a unique scientific name. The description typically provides means for identifying the new species, differentiating it from other previously described and related or confusable species and provides a validly published name (in botany) or an available name (in zoology) when the paper is accepted for publication. The type material is usually held in a permanent repository, often the research collection of a major museum or university, that allows independent verification and the means to compare specimens.[57][58][59] Describers of new species are asked to choose names that, in the words of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, are "appropriate, compact, euphonious, memorable, and do not cause offence".[60]
+
+Books and articles sometimes intentionally do not identify species fully and use the abbreviation "sp." in the singular or "spp." (standing for species pluralis, the Latin for multiple species) in the plural in place of the specific name or epithet (e.g. Canis sp.). This commonly occurs when authors are confident that some individuals belong to a particular genus but are not sure to which exact species they belong, as is common in paleontology.[61]
+
+Authors may also use "spp." as a short way of saying that something applies to many species within a genus, but not to all. If scientists mean that something applies to all species within a genus, they use the genus name without the specific name or epithet. The names of genera and species are usually printed in italics. However, abbreviations such as "sp." should not be italicised.[61]
+
+When a species' identity is not clear, a specialist may use "cf." before the epithet to indicate that confirmation is required. The abbreviations "nr." (near) or "aff." (affine) may be used when the identity is unclear but when the species appears to be similar to the species mentioned after.[61]
+
+With the rise of online databases, codes have been devised to provide identifiers for species that are already defined, including:
+
+The naming of a particular species, including which genus (and higher taxa) it is placed in, is a hypothesis about the evolutionary relationships and distinguishability of that group of organisms. As further information comes to hand, the hypothesis may be confirmed or refuted. Sometimes, especially in the past when communication was more difficult, taxonomists working in isolation have given two distinct names to individual organisms later identified as the same species. When two named species are discovered to be of the same species, the older species name is given priority and usually retained, and the newer name considered as a junior synonym, a process called synonymisation. Dividing a taxon into multiple, often new, taxa is called splitting. Taxonomists are often referred to as "lumpers" or "splitters" by their colleagues, depending on their personal approach to recognising differences or commonalities between organisms.[66][67][61]
+
+The nomenclatural codes that guide the naming of species, including the ICZN for animals and the ICN for plants, do not make rules for defining the boundaries of the species. Research can change the boundaries, also known as circumscription, based on new evidence. Species may then need to be distinguished by the boundary definitions used, and in such cases the names may be qualified with sensu stricto ("in the narrow sense") to denote usage in the exact meaning given by an author such as the person who named the species, while the antonym sensu lato ("in the broad sense") denotes a wider usage, for instance including other subspecies. Other abbreviations such as "auct." ("author"), and qualifiers such as "non" ("not") may be used to further clarify the sense in which the specified authors delineated or described the species.[61][68][69]
+
+
+
+Most modern textbooks make use of Ernst Mayr's 1942 definition,[70][71] known as the Biological Species Concept as a basis for further discussion on the definition of species. It is also called a reproductive or isolation concept. This defines a species as[72]
+
+groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.[72]
+
+It has been argued that this definition is a natural consequence of the effect of sexual reproduction on the dynamics of natural selection.[73][74][75][76] Mayr's use of the adjective "potentially" has been a point of debate; some interpretations exclude unusual or artificial matings that occur only in captivity, or that involve animals capable of mating but that do not normally do so in the wild.[72]
+
+It is difficult to define a species in a way that applies to all organisms.[77] The debate about species delimitation is called the species problem.[72][78][79][80] The problem was recognized even in 1859, when Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species:
+
+No one definition has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes the unknown element of a distinct act of creation.[81]
+
+A simple textbook definition, following Mayr's concept, works well for most multi-celled organisms, but breaks down in several situations:
+
+Species identification is made difficult by discordance between molecular and morphological investigations; these can be categorized as two types: (i) one morphology, multiple lineages (e.g. morphological convergence, cryptic species) and (ii) one lineage, multiple morphologies (e.g. phenotypic plasticity, multiple life-cycle stages).[91] In addition, horizontal gene transfer (HGT) makes it difficult to define a species.[92] All species definitions assume that an organism acquires its genes from one or two parents very like the "daughter" organism, but that is not what happens in HGT.[93] There is strong evidence of HGT between very dissimilar groups of prokaryotes, and at least occasionally between dissimilar groups of eukaryotes,[92] including some crustaceans and echinoderms.[94]
+
+The evolutionary biologist James Mallet concludes that
+
+there is no easy way to tell whether related geographic or temporal forms belong to the same or different species. Species gaps can be verified only locally and at a point of time. One is forced to admit that Darwin's insight is correct: any local reality or integrity of species is greatly reduced over large geographic ranges and time periods.[18]
+
+The species concept is further weakened by the existence of microspecies, groups of organisms, including many plants, with very little genetic variability, usually forming species aggregates.[95] For example, the dandelion Taraxacum officinale and the blackberry Rubus fruticosus are aggregates with many microspecies—perhaps 400 in the case of the blackberry and over 200 in the dandelion,[96] complicated by hybridisation, apomixis and polyploidy, making gene flow between populations difficult to determine, and their taxonomy debatable.[97][98][99] Species complexes occur in insects such as Heliconius butterflies,[100] vertebrates such as Hypsiboas treefrogs,[101] and fungi such as the fly agaric.[102]
+
+Blackberries belong to any of hundreds of microspecies of the Rubus fruticosus species aggregate.
+
+The butterfly genus Heliconius contains many similar species.
+
+The Hypsiboas calcaratus–fasciatus species complex contains at least six species of treefrog.
+
+Natural hybridisation presents a challenge to the concept of a reproductively isolated species, as fertile hybrids permit gene flow between two populations. For example, the carrion crow Corvus corone and the hooded crow Corvus cornix appear and are classified as separate species, yet they hybridise freely where their geographical ranges overlap.[103]
+
+Carrion crow
+
+Hybrid with dark belly, dark gray nape
+
+Hybrid with dark belly
+
+Hooded crow
+
+A ring species is a connected series of neighbouring populations, each of which can sexually interbreed with adjacent related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series, which are too distantly related to interbreed, though there is a potential gene flow between each "linked" population.[104] Such non-breeding, though genetically connected, "end" populations may co-exist in the same region thus closing the ring. Ring species thus present a difficulty for any species concept that relies on reproductive isolation.[105] However, ring species are at best rare. Proposed examples include the herring gull-lesser black-backed gull complex around the North pole, the Ensatina eschscholtzii group of 19 populations of salamanders in America,[106] and the greenish warbler in Asia,[107] but many so-called ring species have turned out to be the result of misclassification leading to questions on whether there really are any ring species.[108][109][110][111]
+
+Seven "species" of Larus gulls interbreed in a ring around the Arctic.
+
+Opposite ends of the ring: a herring gull (Larus argentatus) (front) and a lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus) in Norway
+
+A greenish warbler, Phylloscopus trochiloides
+
+Presumed evolution of five "species"  of greenish warblers around Himalayas
+
+Species are subject to change, whether by evolving into new species,[112] exchanging genes with other species,[113] merging with other species or by becoming extinct.[114]
+
+The evolutionary process by which biological populations evolve to become distinct or reproductively isolated as species is called speciation.[115][116] Charles Darwin was the first to describe the role of natural selection in speciation in his 1859 book The Origin of Species.[117] Speciation depends on a measure of reproductive isolation, a reduced gene flow. This occurs most easily in allopatric speciation, where populations are separated geographically and can diverge gradually as mutations accumulate. Reproductive isolation is threatened by hybridisation, but this can be selected against once a pair of populations have incompatible alleles of the same gene, as described in the Bateson–Dobzhansky–Muller model.[112] A different mechanism, phyletic speciation, involves one lineage gradually changing over time into a new and distinct form, without increasing the number of resultant species.[118]
+
+Horizontal gene transfer between organisms of different species, either through hybridisation, antigenic shift, or reassortment, is sometimes an important source of genetic variation. Viruses can transfer genes between species. Bacteria can exchange plasmids with bacteria of other species, including some apparently distantly related ones in different phylogenetic domains, making analysis of their relationships difficult, and weakening the concept of a bacterial species.[119][92][120][113]
+
+Louis-Marie Bobay and Howard Ochman suggest, based on analysis of the genomes of many types of bacteria, that they can often be grouped "into communities that regularly swap genes", in much the same way that plants and animals can be grouped into reproductively isolated breeding populations. Bacteria may thus form species, analogous to Mayr's biological species concept, consisting of asexually reproducing populations that exchange genes by homologous recombination.[121][122]
+
+A species is extinct when the last individual of that species dies, but it may be functionally extinct well before that moment. It is estimated that over 99 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth, some five billion species, are now extinct. Some of these were in mass extinctions such as those at the ends of the Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous periods. Mass extinctions had a variety of causes including volcanic activity, climate change, and changes in oceanic and atmospheric chemistry, and they in turn had major effects on Earth's ecology, atmosphere, land surface and waters.[123][124] Another form of extinction is through the assimilation of one species by another through hybridization. The resulting single species has been termed as a "compilospecies".[125]
+
+Biologists and conservationists need to categorise and identify organisms in the course of their work. Difficulty assigning organisms reliably to a species constitutes a threat to the validity of research results, for example making measurements of how abundant a species is in an ecosystem moot. Surveys using a phylogenetic species concept reported 48% more species and accordingly smaller populations and ranges than those using nonphylogenetic concepts; this was termed "taxonomic inflation",[126] which could cause a false appearance of change to the number of endangered species and consequent political and practical difficulties.[127][128] Some observers claim that there is an inherent conflict between the desire to understand the processes of speciation and the need to identify and to categorise.[128]
+
+Conservation laws in many countries make special provisions to prevent species from going extinct. Hybridization zones between two species, one that is protected and one that is not, have sometimes led to conflicts between lawmakers, land owners and conservationists. One of the classic cases in North America is that of the protected northern spotted owl which hybridizes with the unprotected California spotted owl and the barred owl; this has led to legal debates.[129] It has been argued that the species problem is created by the varied uses of the concept of species, and that the solution is to abandon it and all other taxonomic ranks, and use unranked monophyletic groups instead. It has been argued, too, that since species are not comparable, counting them is not a valid measure of biodiversity; alternative measures of phylogenetic biodiversity have been proposed.[130][131]
+
+In his biology, Aristotle used the term γένος (génos) to mean a kind, such as a bird or fish, and εἶδος (eidos) to mean a specific form within a kind, such as (within the birds) the crane, eagle, crow, or sparrow. These terms were translated into Latin as "genus" and "species", though they do not correspond to the Linnean terms thus named; today the birds are a class, the cranes are a family, and the crows a genus. A kind was distinguished by its attributes; for instance, a bird has feathers, a beak, wings, a hard-shelled egg, and warm blood.  A form was distinguished by being shared by all its members, the young inheriting any variations they might have from their parents. Aristotle believed all kinds and forms to be distinct and unchanging. His approach remained influential until the Renaissance.[132]
+
+When observers in the Early Modern period began to develop systems of organization for living things, they placed each kind of animal or plant into a context. Many of these early delineation schemes would now be considered whimsical: schemes included consanguinity based on colour (all plants with yellow flowers) or behaviour (snakes, scorpions and certain biting ants). John Ray, an English naturalist, was the first to attempt a biological definition of species in 1686, as follows:
+
+No surer criterion for determining species has occurred to me than the distinguishing features that perpetuate themselves in propagation from seed. Thus, no matter what variations occur in the individuals or the species, if they spring from the seed of one and the same plant, they are accidental variations and not such as to distinguish a species ... Animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently; one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa.[133]
+
+In the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus classified organisms according to shared physical characteristics, and not simply based upon differences.[134] He established the idea of a taxonomic hierarchy of classification based upon observable characteristics and intended to reflect natural relationships.[135][136] At the time, however, it was still widely believed that there was no organic connection between species, no matter how similar they appeared. This view was influenced by European scholarly and religious education, which held that the categories of life are dictated by God, forming an Aristotelian hierarchy, the scala naturae or great chain of being. However, whether or not it was supposed to be fixed, the scala (a ladder) inherently implied the possibility of climbing.[137]
+
+In viewing evidence of hybridisation, Linnaeus recognised that species were not fixed and could change; he did not consider that new species could emerge and maintained a view of divinely fixed species that may alter through processes of hybridisation or acclimatisation.[138] By the 19th century, naturalists understood that species could change form over time, and that the history of the planet provided enough time for major changes. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his 1809 Zoological Philosophy, described the transmutation of species, proposing that a species could change over time, in a radical departure from Aristotelian thinking.[139]
+
+In 1859, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace provided a compelling account of evolution and the formation of new species. Darwin argued that it was populations that evolved, not individuals, by natural selection from naturally occurring variation among individuals.[140] This required a new definition of species. Darwin concluded that species are what they appear to be: ideas, provisionally useful for naming groups of interacting individuals, writing:
+
+I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other ... It does not essentially differ from the word variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for convenience sake.[141]

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+
+
+In biology, a species (/ˈspiːʃiːz/ (listen)) is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined.
+
+The total number of species is estimated to be between 8 and 8.7 million.[1][2] However the vast majority of them are not studied or documented and it may take over 1000 years to fully catalogue them all.[3]
+
+All species (except viruses) are given a two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet (in botanical nomenclature, also sometimes in zoological nomenclature). For example, Boa constrictor is one of four species of the genus Boa, with constrictor being the species’ epithet.
+
+While the definitions given above may seem adequate, when looked at more closely they represent problematic species concepts. For example, the boundaries between closely related species become unclear with hybridisation, in a species complex of hundreds of similar microspecies, and in a ring species. Also, among organisms that reproduce only asexually, the concept of a reproductive species breaks down, and each clone is potentially a microspecies. Though none of these are entirely satisfactory definitions, scientists and conservationists need a species definition which allows them to work, regardless of the theoretical difficulties. If species were fixed and clearly distinct from one another, there would be no problem, but evolutionary processes cause species to change continually, and to grade into one another.
+
+Species were seen from the time of Aristotle until the 18th century as fixed categories that could be arranged in a hierarchy, the great chain of being. In the 19th century, biologists grasped that species could evolve given sufficient time. Charles Darwin's 1859 book The Origin of Species explained how species could arise by natural selection. That understanding was greatly extended in the 20th century through genetics and population ecology. Genetic variability arises from mutations and recombination, while organisms themselves are mobile, leading to geographical isolation and genetic drift with varying selection pressures. Genes can sometimes be exchanged between species by horizontal gene transfer; new species can arise rapidly through hybridisation and polyploidy; and species may become extinct for a variety of reasons. Viruses are a special case, driven by a balance of mutation and selection, and can be treated as quasispecies.
+
+Biologists and taxonomists have made many attempts to define species, beginning from morphology and moving towards genetics. Early taxonomists such as Linnaeus had no option but to describe what they saw: this was later formalised as the typological or morphological species concept. Ernst Mayr emphasised reproductive isolation, but this, like other species concepts, is hard or even impossible to test.[4][5] Later biologists have tried to refine Mayr's definition with the recognition and cohesion concepts, among others.[6] Many of the concepts are quite similar or overlap, so they are not easy to count: the biologist R. L. Mayden recorded about 24 concepts,[7] and the philosopher of science John Wilkins counted 26.[4] Wilkins further grouped the species concepts into seven basic kinds of concepts: (1) agamospecies for asexual organisms (2) biospecies for reproductively isolated sexual organisms (3) ecospecies based on ecological niches (4) evolutionary species based on lineage (5) genetic species based on gene pool (6) morphospecies based on form or phenotype and (7) taxonomic species, a species as determined by a taxonomist.[8]
+
+
+
+A typological species is a group of organisms in which individuals conform to certain fixed properties (a type), so that even pre-literate people often recognise the same taxon as do modern taxonomists.[10][11] The clusters of variations or phenotypes within specimens (such as longer or shorter tails) would differentiate the species. This method was used as a "classical" method of determining species, such as with Linnaeus early in evolutionary theory. However, different phenotypes are not necessarily different species (e.g. a four-winged Drosophila born to a two-winged mother is not a different species). Species named in this manner are called morphospecies.[12][13]
+
+In the 1970s, Robert R. Sokal, Theodore J. Crovello and Peter Sneath proposed a variation on this, a phenetic species, defined as a set of organisms with a similar phenotype to each other, but a different phenotype from other sets of organisms.[14] It differs from the morphological species concept in including a numerical measure of distance or similarity to cluster entities based on multivariate comparisons of a reasonably large number of phenotypic traits.[15]
+
+
+
+A mate-recognition species is a group of sexually reproducing organisms that recognize one another as potential mates.[16][17] Expanding on this to allow for post-mating isolation, a cohesion species is the most inclusive population of individuals having the potential for phenotypic cohesion through intrinsic cohesion mechanisms; no matter whether populations can hybridize successfully, they are still distinct cohesion species if the amount of hybridization is insufficient to completely mix their respective gene pools.[18] A further development of the recognition concept is provided by the biosemiotic concept of species.[19]
+
+
+
+In microbiology, genes can move freely even between distantly related bacteria, possibly extending to the whole bacterial domain. As a rule of thumb, microbiologists have assumed that kinds of Bacteria or Archaea with 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences more similar than 97% to each other need to be checked by DNA-DNA hybridisation to decide if they belong to the same species or not.[20] This concept was narrowed in 2006 to a similarity of 98.7%.[21]
+
+DNA-DNA hybridisation is outdated, and results have sometimes led to misleading conclusions about species, as with the pomarine and great skua.[22][23] Modern approaches compare sequence similarity using computational methods.[24]
+
+DNA barcoding has been proposed as a way to distinguish species suitable even for non-specialists to use.[25] The so-called barcode is a region of mitochondrial DNA within the gene for cytochrome c oxidase. A database, Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) contains DNA barcode sequences from over 190,000 species.[26][27] However, scientists such as Rob DeSalle have expressed concern that classical taxonomy and DNA barcoding, which they consider a misnomer, need to be reconciled, as they delimit species differently.[28] Genetic introgression mediated by endosymbionts and other vectors can further make barcodes ineffective in the identification of species.[29]
+
+
+
+A phylogenetic or cladistic species is an evolutionarily divergent lineage, one that has maintained its hereditary integrity through time and space.[30][31][32] A cladistic species is the smallest group of populations that can be distinguished by a unique set of morphological or genetic traits. Molecular markers may be used to determine genetic similarities in the nuclear or mitochondrial DNA of various species.[31][33][34] For example, in a study done on fungi, studying the nucleotide characters using cladistic species produced the most accurate results in recognising the numerous fungi species of all the concepts studied.[34][35] Versions of the phylogenetic species concept may emphasize monophyly or diagnosability.[36] The concept may lead to splitting of existing species, for example in Bovidae, by recognising old subspecies as species, despite the fact that there are no reproductive barriers, and populations may inter-grade morphologically.[37] Others have called this approach taxonomic inflation, diluting the species concept and making taxonomy unstable.[38] Yet others defend this approach, considering "taxonomic inflation" pejorative and labelling the opposing view as "taxonomic conservatism"; claiming it is politically expedient to split species and recognise smaller populations at the species level, because this means they can more easily be included as endangered in the IUCN red list and can attract conservation legislation and funding.[39]
+
+Unlike the biological species concept, a cladistic species does not rely on reproductive isolation, so it is independent of processes that are integral in other concepts.[33] It works for asexual lineages.[31][34] However, it does not work in every situation, and may require more than one polymorphic locus to give an accurate result.[34]
+
+An evolutionary species, suggested by George Gaylord Simpson in 1951, is "an entity composed of organisms which maintains its identity from other such entities through time and over space, and which has its own independent evolutionary fate and historical tendencies".[7][40] This differs from the biological species concept in embodying persistence over time. Wiley and Mayden state that they see the evolutionary species concept as "identical" to Willi Hennig's species-as-lineages concept, and assert that the biological species concept, "the several versions" of the phylogenetic species concept, and the idea that species are of the same kind as higher taxa are not suitable for biodiversity studies (with the intention of estimating the number of species accurately). They further suggest that the concept works for both asexual and sexually-reproducing species.[41]
+
+An ecological species is a set of organisms adapted to a particular set of resources, called a niche, in the environment. According to this concept, populations form the discrete phenetic clusters that we recognise as species because the ecological and evolutionary processes controlling how resources are divided up tend to produce those clusters.[42]
+
+A genetic species as defined by Robert Baker and Robert Bradley is a set of genetically isolated interbreeding populations. This is similar to Mayr's Biological Species Concept, but stresses genetic rather than reproductive isolation.[43] In the 21st century, a genetic species can be established by comparing DNA sequences, but other methods were available earlier, such as comparing karyotypes (sets of chromosomes) and allozymes (enzyme variants).[44]
+
+An evolutionarily significant unit (ESU) or "wildlife species"[45] is a population of organisms considered distinct for purposes of conservation.[46]
+
+In palaeontology, with only comparative anatomy (morphology) from fossils as evidence, the concept of a chronospecies can be applied. During anagenesis (evolution, not necessarily involving branching), palaeontologists seek to identify a sequence of species, each one derived from the phyletically extinct one before through continuous, slow and more or less uniform change. In such a time sequence, palaeontologists assess how much change is required for a morphologically distinct form to be considered a different species from its ancestors.[47][48][49][50]
+
+Viruses have enormous populations, are doubtfully living since they consist of little more than a string of DNA or RNA in a protein coat, and mutate rapidly. All of these factors make conventional species concepts largely inapplicable.[51] A viral quasispecies is a group of genotypes related by similar mutations, competing within a highly mutagenic environment, and hence governed by a mutation–selection balance. It is predicted that a viral quasispecies at a low but evolutionarily neutral and highly connected (that is, flat) region in the fitness landscape will outcompete a quasispecies located at a higher but narrower fitness peak in which the surrounding mutants are unfit, "the quasispecies effect" or the "survival of the flattest". There is no suggestion that a viral quasispecies resembles a traditional biological species.[52][53][54]
+
+The commonly used names for kinds of organisms are often ambiguous: "cat" could mean the domestic cat, Felis catus, or the cat family, Felidae. Another problem with common names is that they often vary from place to place, so that puma, cougar, catamount, panther, painter and mountain lion all mean Puma concolor in various parts of America, while "panther" may also mean the jaguar (Panthera onca) of Latin America or the leopard (Panthera pardus) of Africa and Asia. In contrast, the scientific names of species are chosen to be unique and universal; they are in two parts used together: the genus as in Puma, and the specific epithet as in concolor.[55][56]
+
+A species is given a taxonomic name when a type specimen is described formally, in a publication that assigns it a unique scientific name. The description typically provides means for identifying the new species, differentiating it from other previously described and related or confusable species and provides a validly published name (in botany) or an available name (in zoology) when the paper is accepted for publication. The type material is usually held in a permanent repository, often the research collection of a major museum or university, that allows independent verification and the means to compare specimens.[57][58][59] Describers of new species are asked to choose names that, in the words of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, are "appropriate, compact, euphonious, memorable, and do not cause offence".[60]
+
+Books and articles sometimes intentionally do not identify species fully and use the abbreviation "sp." in the singular or "spp." (standing for species pluralis, the Latin for multiple species) in the plural in place of the specific name or epithet (e.g. Canis sp.). This commonly occurs when authors are confident that some individuals belong to a particular genus but are not sure to which exact species they belong, as is common in paleontology.[61]
+
+Authors may also use "spp." as a short way of saying that something applies to many species within a genus, but not to all. If scientists mean that something applies to all species within a genus, they use the genus name without the specific name or epithet. The names of genera and species are usually printed in italics. However, abbreviations such as "sp." should not be italicised.[61]
+
+When a species' identity is not clear, a specialist may use "cf." before the epithet to indicate that confirmation is required. The abbreviations "nr." (near) or "aff." (affine) may be used when the identity is unclear but when the species appears to be similar to the species mentioned after.[61]
+
+With the rise of online databases, codes have been devised to provide identifiers for species that are already defined, including:
+
+The naming of a particular species, including which genus (and higher taxa) it is placed in, is a hypothesis about the evolutionary relationships and distinguishability of that group of organisms. As further information comes to hand, the hypothesis may be confirmed or refuted. Sometimes, especially in the past when communication was more difficult, taxonomists working in isolation have given two distinct names to individual organisms later identified as the same species. When two named species are discovered to be of the same species, the older species name is given priority and usually retained, and the newer name considered as a junior synonym, a process called synonymisation. Dividing a taxon into multiple, often new, taxa is called splitting. Taxonomists are often referred to as "lumpers" or "splitters" by their colleagues, depending on their personal approach to recognising differences or commonalities between organisms.[66][67][61]
+
+The nomenclatural codes that guide the naming of species, including the ICZN for animals and the ICN for plants, do not make rules for defining the boundaries of the species. Research can change the boundaries, also known as circumscription, based on new evidence. Species may then need to be distinguished by the boundary definitions used, and in such cases the names may be qualified with sensu stricto ("in the narrow sense") to denote usage in the exact meaning given by an author such as the person who named the species, while the antonym sensu lato ("in the broad sense") denotes a wider usage, for instance including other subspecies. Other abbreviations such as "auct." ("author"), and qualifiers such as "non" ("not") may be used to further clarify the sense in which the specified authors delineated or described the species.[61][68][69]
+
+
+
+Most modern textbooks make use of Ernst Mayr's 1942 definition,[70][71] known as the Biological Species Concept as a basis for further discussion on the definition of species. It is also called a reproductive or isolation concept. This defines a species as[72]
+
+groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.[72]
+
+It has been argued that this definition is a natural consequence of the effect of sexual reproduction on the dynamics of natural selection.[73][74][75][76] Mayr's use of the adjective "potentially" has been a point of debate; some interpretations exclude unusual or artificial matings that occur only in captivity, or that involve animals capable of mating but that do not normally do so in the wild.[72]
+
+It is difficult to define a species in a way that applies to all organisms.[77] The debate about species delimitation is called the species problem.[72][78][79][80] The problem was recognized even in 1859, when Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species:
+
+No one definition has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes the unknown element of a distinct act of creation.[81]
+
+A simple textbook definition, following Mayr's concept, works well for most multi-celled organisms, but breaks down in several situations:
+
+Species identification is made difficult by discordance between molecular and morphological investigations; these can be categorized as two types: (i) one morphology, multiple lineages (e.g. morphological convergence, cryptic species) and (ii) one lineage, multiple morphologies (e.g. phenotypic plasticity, multiple life-cycle stages).[91] In addition, horizontal gene transfer (HGT) makes it difficult to define a species.[92] All species definitions assume that an organism acquires its genes from one or two parents very like the "daughter" organism, but that is not what happens in HGT.[93] There is strong evidence of HGT between very dissimilar groups of prokaryotes, and at least occasionally between dissimilar groups of eukaryotes,[92] including some crustaceans and echinoderms.[94]
+
+The evolutionary biologist James Mallet concludes that
+
+there is no easy way to tell whether related geographic or temporal forms belong to the same or different species. Species gaps can be verified only locally and at a point of time. One is forced to admit that Darwin's insight is correct: any local reality or integrity of species is greatly reduced over large geographic ranges and time periods.[18]
+
+The species concept is further weakened by the existence of microspecies, groups of organisms, including many plants, with very little genetic variability, usually forming species aggregates.[95] For example, the dandelion Taraxacum officinale and the blackberry Rubus fruticosus are aggregates with many microspecies—perhaps 400 in the case of the blackberry and over 200 in the dandelion,[96] complicated by hybridisation, apomixis and polyploidy, making gene flow between populations difficult to determine, and their taxonomy debatable.[97][98][99] Species complexes occur in insects such as Heliconius butterflies,[100] vertebrates such as Hypsiboas treefrogs,[101] and fungi such as the fly agaric.[102]
+
+Blackberries belong to any of hundreds of microspecies of the Rubus fruticosus species aggregate.
+
+The butterfly genus Heliconius contains many similar species.
+
+The Hypsiboas calcaratus–fasciatus species complex contains at least six species of treefrog.
+
+Natural hybridisation presents a challenge to the concept of a reproductively isolated species, as fertile hybrids permit gene flow between two populations. For example, the carrion crow Corvus corone and the hooded crow Corvus cornix appear and are classified as separate species, yet they hybridise freely where their geographical ranges overlap.[103]
+
+Carrion crow
+
+Hybrid with dark belly, dark gray nape
+
+Hybrid with dark belly
+
+Hooded crow
+
+A ring species is a connected series of neighbouring populations, each of which can sexually interbreed with adjacent related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series, which are too distantly related to interbreed, though there is a potential gene flow between each "linked" population.[104] Such non-breeding, though genetically connected, "end" populations may co-exist in the same region thus closing the ring. Ring species thus present a difficulty for any species concept that relies on reproductive isolation.[105] However, ring species are at best rare. Proposed examples include the herring gull-lesser black-backed gull complex around the North pole, the Ensatina eschscholtzii group of 19 populations of salamanders in America,[106] and the greenish warbler in Asia,[107] but many so-called ring species have turned out to be the result of misclassification leading to questions on whether there really are any ring species.[108][109][110][111]
+
+Seven "species" of Larus gulls interbreed in a ring around the Arctic.
+
+Opposite ends of the ring: a herring gull (Larus argentatus) (front) and a lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus) in Norway
+
+A greenish warbler, Phylloscopus trochiloides
+
+Presumed evolution of five "species"  of greenish warblers around Himalayas
+
+Species are subject to change, whether by evolving into new species,[112] exchanging genes with other species,[113] merging with other species or by becoming extinct.[114]
+
+The evolutionary process by which biological populations evolve to become distinct or reproductively isolated as species is called speciation.[115][116] Charles Darwin was the first to describe the role of natural selection in speciation in his 1859 book The Origin of Species.[117] Speciation depends on a measure of reproductive isolation, a reduced gene flow. This occurs most easily in allopatric speciation, where populations are separated geographically and can diverge gradually as mutations accumulate. Reproductive isolation is threatened by hybridisation, but this can be selected against once a pair of populations have incompatible alleles of the same gene, as described in the Bateson–Dobzhansky–Muller model.[112] A different mechanism, phyletic speciation, involves one lineage gradually changing over time into a new and distinct form, without increasing the number of resultant species.[118]
+
+Horizontal gene transfer between organisms of different species, either through hybridisation, antigenic shift, or reassortment, is sometimes an important source of genetic variation. Viruses can transfer genes between species. Bacteria can exchange plasmids with bacteria of other species, including some apparently distantly related ones in different phylogenetic domains, making analysis of their relationships difficult, and weakening the concept of a bacterial species.[119][92][120][113]
+
+Louis-Marie Bobay and Howard Ochman suggest, based on analysis of the genomes of many types of bacteria, that they can often be grouped "into communities that regularly swap genes", in much the same way that plants and animals can be grouped into reproductively isolated breeding populations. Bacteria may thus form species, analogous to Mayr's biological species concept, consisting of asexually reproducing populations that exchange genes by homologous recombination.[121][122]
+
+A species is extinct when the last individual of that species dies, but it may be functionally extinct well before that moment. It is estimated that over 99 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth, some five billion species, are now extinct. Some of these were in mass extinctions such as those at the ends of the Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous periods. Mass extinctions had a variety of causes including volcanic activity, climate change, and changes in oceanic and atmospheric chemistry, and they in turn had major effects on Earth's ecology, atmosphere, land surface and waters.[123][124] Another form of extinction is through the assimilation of one species by another through hybridization. The resulting single species has been termed as a "compilospecies".[125]
+
+Biologists and conservationists need to categorise and identify organisms in the course of their work. Difficulty assigning organisms reliably to a species constitutes a threat to the validity of research results, for example making measurements of how abundant a species is in an ecosystem moot. Surveys using a phylogenetic species concept reported 48% more species and accordingly smaller populations and ranges than those using nonphylogenetic concepts; this was termed "taxonomic inflation",[126] which could cause a false appearance of change to the number of endangered species and consequent political and practical difficulties.[127][128] Some observers claim that there is an inherent conflict between the desire to understand the processes of speciation and the need to identify and to categorise.[128]
+
+Conservation laws in many countries make special provisions to prevent species from going extinct. Hybridization zones between two species, one that is protected and one that is not, have sometimes led to conflicts between lawmakers, land owners and conservationists. One of the classic cases in North America is that of the protected northern spotted owl which hybridizes with the unprotected California spotted owl and the barred owl; this has led to legal debates.[129] It has been argued that the species problem is created by the varied uses of the concept of species, and that the solution is to abandon it and all other taxonomic ranks, and use unranked monophyletic groups instead. It has been argued, too, that since species are not comparable, counting them is not a valid measure of biodiversity; alternative measures of phylogenetic biodiversity have been proposed.[130][131]
+
+In his biology, Aristotle used the term γένος (génos) to mean a kind, such as a bird or fish, and εἶδος (eidos) to mean a specific form within a kind, such as (within the birds) the crane, eagle, crow, or sparrow. These terms were translated into Latin as "genus" and "species", though they do not correspond to the Linnean terms thus named; today the birds are a class, the cranes are a family, and the crows a genus. A kind was distinguished by its attributes; for instance, a bird has feathers, a beak, wings, a hard-shelled egg, and warm blood.  A form was distinguished by being shared by all its members, the young inheriting any variations they might have from their parents. Aristotle believed all kinds and forms to be distinct and unchanging. His approach remained influential until the Renaissance.[132]
+
+When observers in the Early Modern period began to develop systems of organization for living things, they placed each kind of animal or plant into a context. Many of these early delineation schemes would now be considered whimsical: schemes included consanguinity based on colour (all plants with yellow flowers) or behaviour (snakes, scorpions and certain biting ants). John Ray, an English naturalist, was the first to attempt a biological definition of species in 1686, as follows:
+
+No surer criterion for determining species has occurred to me than the distinguishing features that perpetuate themselves in propagation from seed. Thus, no matter what variations occur in the individuals or the species, if they spring from the seed of one and the same plant, they are accidental variations and not such as to distinguish a species ... Animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently; one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa.[133]
+
+In the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus classified organisms according to shared physical characteristics, and not simply based upon differences.[134] He established the idea of a taxonomic hierarchy of classification based upon observable characteristics and intended to reflect natural relationships.[135][136] At the time, however, it was still widely believed that there was no organic connection between species, no matter how similar they appeared. This view was influenced by European scholarly and religious education, which held that the categories of life are dictated by God, forming an Aristotelian hierarchy, the scala naturae or great chain of being. However, whether or not it was supposed to be fixed, the scala (a ladder) inherently implied the possibility of climbing.[137]
+
+In viewing evidence of hybridisation, Linnaeus recognised that species were not fixed and could change; he did not consider that new species could emerge and maintained a view of divinely fixed species that may alter through processes of hybridisation or acclimatisation.[138] By the 19th century, naturalists understood that species could change form over time, and that the history of the planet provided enough time for major changes. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his 1809 Zoological Philosophy, described the transmutation of species, proposing that a species could change over time, in a radical departure from Aristotelian thinking.[139]
+
+In 1859, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace provided a compelling account of evolution and the formation of new species. Darwin argued that it was populations that evolved, not individuals, by natural selection from naturally occurring variation among individuals.[140] This required a new definition of species. Darwin concluded that species are what they appear to be: ideas, provisionally useful for naming groups of interacting individuals, writing:
+
+I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other ... It does not essentially differ from the word variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for convenience sake.[141]

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@@ -0,0 +1,141 @@
+
+
+In biology, a species (/ˈspiːʃiːz/ (listen)) is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined.
+
+The total number of species is estimated to be between 8 and 8.7 million.[1][2] However the vast majority of them are not studied or documented and it may take over 1000 years to fully catalogue them all.[3]
+
+All species (except viruses) are given a two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet (in botanical nomenclature, also sometimes in zoological nomenclature). For example, Boa constrictor is one of four species of the genus Boa, with constrictor being the species’ epithet.
+
+While the definitions given above may seem adequate, when looked at more closely they represent problematic species concepts. For example, the boundaries between closely related species become unclear with hybridisation, in a species complex of hundreds of similar microspecies, and in a ring species. Also, among organisms that reproduce only asexually, the concept of a reproductive species breaks down, and each clone is potentially a microspecies. Though none of these are entirely satisfactory definitions, scientists and conservationists need a species definition which allows them to work, regardless of the theoretical difficulties. If species were fixed and clearly distinct from one another, there would be no problem, but evolutionary processes cause species to change continually, and to grade into one another.
+
+Species were seen from the time of Aristotle until the 18th century as fixed categories that could be arranged in a hierarchy, the great chain of being. In the 19th century, biologists grasped that species could evolve given sufficient time. Charles Darwin's 1859 book The Origin of Species explained how species could arise by natural selection. That understanding was greatly extended in the 20th century through genetics and population ecology. Genetic variability arises from mutations and recombination, while organisms themselves are mobile, leading to geographical isolation and genetic drift with varying selection pressures. Genes can sometimes be exchanged between species by horizontal gene transfer; new species can arise rapidly through hybridisation and polyploidy; and species may become extinct for a variety of reasons. Viruses are a special case, driven by a balance of mutation and selection, and can be treated as quasispecies.
+
+Biologists and taxonomists have made many attempts to define species, beginning from morphology and moving towards genetics. Early taxonomists such as Linnaeus had no option but to describe what they saw: this was later formalised as the typological or morphological species concept. Ernst Mayr emphasised reproductive isolation, but this, like other species concepts, is hard or even impossible to test.[4][5] Later biologists have tried to refine Mayr's definition with the recognition and cohesion concepts, among others.[6] Many of the concepts are quite similar or overlap, so they are not easy to count: the biologist R. L. Mayden recorded about 24 concepts,[7] and the philosopher of science John Wilkins counted 26.[4] Wilkins further grouped the species concepts into seven basic kinds of concepts: (1) agamospecies for asexual organisms (2) biospecies for reproductively isolated sexual organisms (3) ecospecies based on ecological niches (4) evolutionary species based on lineage (5) genetic species based on gene pool (6) morphospecies based on form or phenotype and (7) taxonomic species, a species as determined by a taxonomist.[8]
+
+
+
+A typological species is a group of organisms in which individuals conform to certain fixed properties (a type), so that even pre-literate people often recognise the same taxon as do modern taxonomists.[10][11] The clusters of variations or phenotypes within specimens (such as longer or shorter tails) would differentiate the species. This method was used as a "classical" method of determining species, such as with Linnaeus early in evolutionary theory. However, different phenotypes are not necessarily different species (e.g. a four-winged Drosophila born to a two-winged mother is not a different species). Species named in this manner are called morphospecies.[12][13]
+
+In the 1970s, Robert R. Sokal, Theodore J. Crovello and Peter Sneath proposed a variation on this, a phenetic species, defined as a set of organisms with a similar phenotype to each other, but a different phenotype from other sets of organisms.[14] It differs from the morphological species concept in including a numerical measure of distance or similarity to cluster entities based on multivariate comparisons of a reasonably large number of phenotypic traits.[15]
+
+
+
+A mate-recognition species is a group of sexually reproducing organisms that recognize one another as potential mates.[16][17] Expanding on this to allow for post-mating isolation, a cohesion species is the most inclusive population of individuals having the potential for phenotypic cohesion through intrinsic cohesion mechanisms; no matter whether populations can hybridize successfully, they are still distinct cohesion species if the amount of hybridization is insufficient to completely mix their respective gene pools.[18] A further development of the recognition concept is provided by the biosemiotic concept of species.[19]
+
+
+
+In microbiology, genes can move freely even between distantly related bacteria, possibly extending to the whole bacterial domain. As a rule of thumb, microbiologists have assumed that kinds of Bacteria or Archaea with 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences more similar than 97% to each other need to be checked by DNA-DNA hybridisation to decide if they belong to the same species or not.[20] This concept was narrowed in 2006 to a similarity of 98.7%.[21]
+
+DNA-DNA hybridisation is outdated, and results have sometimes led to misleading conclusions about species, as with the pomarine and great skua.[22][23] Modern approaches compare sequence similarity using computational methods.[24]
+
+DNA barcoding has been proposed as a way to distinguish species suitable even for non-specialists to use.[25] The so-called barcode is a region of mitochondrial DNA within the gene for cytochrome c oxidase. A database, Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) contains DNA barcode sequences from over 190,000 species.[26][27] However, scientists such as Rob DeSalle have expressed concern that classical taxonomy and DNA barcoding, which they consider a misnomer, need to be reconciled, as they delimit species differently.[28] Genetic introgression mediated by endosymbionts and other vectors can further make barcodes ineffective in the identification of species.[29]
+
+
+
+A phylogenetic or cladistic species is an evolutionarily divergent lineage, one that has maintained its hereditary integrity through time and space.[30][31][32] A cladistic species is the smallest group of populations that can be distinguished by a unique set of morphological or genetic traits. Molecular markers may be used to determine genetic similarities in the nuclear or mitochondrial DNA of various species.[31][33][34] For example, in a study done on fungi, studying the nucleotide characters using cladistic species produced the most accurate results in recognising the numerous fungi species of all the concepts studied.[34][35] Versions of the phylogenetic species concept may emphasize monophyly or diagnosability.[36] The concept may lead to splitting of existing species, for example in Bovidae, by recognising old subspecies as species, despite the fact that there are no reproductive barriers, and populations may inter-grade morphologically.[37] Others have called this approach taxonomic inflation, diluting the species concept and making taxonomy unstable.[38] Yet others defend this approach, considering "taxonomic inflation" pejorative and labelling the opposing view as "taxonomic conservatism"; claiming it is politically expedient to split species and recognise smaller populations at the species level, because this means they can more easily be included as endangered in the IUCN red list and can attract conservation legislation and funding.[39]
+
+Unlike the biological species concept, a cladistic species does not rely on reproductive isolation, so it is independent of processes that are integral in other concepts.[33] It works for asexual lineages.[31][34] However, it does not work in every situation, and may require more than one polymorphic locus to give an accurate result.[34]
+
+An evolutionary species, suggested by George Gaylord Simpson in 1951, is "an entity composed of organisms which maintains its identity from other such entities through time and over space, and which has its own independent evolutionary fate and historical tendencies".[7][40] This differs from the biological species concept in embodying persistence over time. Wiley and Mayden state that they see the evolutionary species concept as "identical" to Willi Hennig's species-as-lineages concept, and assert that the biological species concept, "the several versions" of the phylogenetic species concept, and the idea that species are of the same kind as higher taxa are not suitable for biodiversity studies (with the intention of estimating the number of species accurately). They further suggest that the concept works for both asexual and sexually-reproducing species.[41]
+
+An ecological species is a set of organisms adapted to a particular set of resources, called a niche, in the environment. According to this concept, populations form the discrete phenetic clusters that we recognise as species because the ecological and evolutionary processes controlling how resources are divided up tend to produce those clusters.[42]
+
+A genetic species as defined by Robert Baker and Robert Bradley is a set of genetically isolated interbreeding populations. This is similar to Mayr's Biological Species Concept, but stresses genetic rather than reproductive isolation.[43] In the 21st century, a genetic species can be established by comparing DNA sequences, but other methods were available earlier, such as comparing karyotypes (sets of chromosomes) and allozymes (enzyme variants).[44]
+
+An evolutionarily significant unit (ESU) or "wildlife species"[45] is a population of organisms considered distinct for purposes of conservation.[46]
+
+In palaeontology, with only comparative anatomy (morphology) from fossils as evidence, the concept of a chronospecies can be applied. During anagenesis (evolution, not necessarily involving branching), palaeontologists seek to identify a sequence of species, each one derived from the phyletically extinct one before through continuous, slow and more or less uniform change. In such a time sequence, palaeontologists assess how much change is required for a morphologically distinct form to be considered a different species from its ancestors.[47][48][49][50]
+
+Viruses have enormous populations, are doubtfully living since they consist of little more than a string of DNA or RNA in a protein coat, and mutate rapidly. All of these factors make conventional species concepts largely inapplicable.[51] A viral quasispecies is a group of genotypes related by similar mutations, competing within a highly mutagenic environment, and hence governed by a mutation–selection balance. It is predicted that a viral quasispecies at a low but evolutionarily neutral and highly connected (that is, flat) region in the fitness landscape will outcompete a quasispecies located at a higher but narrower fitness peak in which the surrounding mutants are unfit, "the quasispecies effect" or the "survival of the flattest". There is no suggestion that a viral quasispecies resembles a traditional biological species.[52][53][54]
+
+The commonly used names for kinds of organisms are often ambiguous: "cat" could mean the domestic cat, Felis catus, or the cat family, Felidae. Another problem with common names is that they often vary from place to place, so that puma, cougar, catamount, panther, painter and mountain lion all mean Puma concolor in various parts of America, while "panther" may also mean the jaguar (Panthera onca) of Latin America or the leopard (Panthera pardus) of Africa and Asia. In contrast, the scientific names of species are chosen to be unique and universal; they are in two parts used together: the genus as in Puma, and the specific epithet as in concolor.[55][56]
+
+A species is given a taxonomic name when a type specimen is described formally, in a publication that assigns it a unique scientific name. The description typically provides means for identifying the new species, differentiating it from other previously described and related or confusable species and provides a validly published name (in botany) or an available name (in zoology) when the paper is accepted for publication. The type material is usually held in a permanent repository, often the research collection of a major museum or university, that allows independent verification and the means to compare specimens.[57][58][59] Describers of new species are asked to choose names that, in the words of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, are "appropriate, compact, euphonious, memorable, and do not cause offence".[60]
+
+Books and articles sometimes intentionally do not identify species fully and use the abbreviation "sp." in the singular or "spp." (standing for species pluralis, the Latin for multiple species) in the plural in place of the specific name or epithet (e.g. Canis sp.). This commonly occurs when authors are confident that some individuals belong to a particular genus but are not sure to which exact species they belong, as is common in paleontology.[61]
+
+Authors may also use "spp." as a short way of saying that something applies to many species within a genus, but not to all. If scientists mean that something applies to all species within a genus, they use the genus name without the specific name or epithet. The names of genera and species are usually printed in italics. However, abbreviations such as "sp." should not be italicised.[61]
+
+When a species' identity is not clear, a specialist may use "cf." before the epithet to indicate that confirmation is required. The abbreviations "nr." (near) or "aff." (affine) may be used when the identity is unclear but when the species appears to be similar to the species mentioned after.[61]
+
+With the rise of online databases, codes have been devised to provide identifiers for species that are already defined, including:
+
+The naming of a particular species, including which genus (and higher taxa) it is placed in, is a hypothesis about the evolutionary relationships and distinguishability of that group of organisms. As further information comes to hand, the hypothesis may be confirmed or refuted. Sometimes, especially in the past when communication was more difficult, taxonomists working in isolation have given two distinct names to individual organisms later identified as the same species. When two named species are discovered to be of the same species, the older species name is given priority and usually retained, and the newer name considered as a junior synonym, a process called synonymisation. Dividing a taxon into multiple, often new, taxa is called splitting. Taxonomists are often referred to as "lumpers" or "splitters" by their colleagues, depending on their personal approach to recognising differences or commonalities between organisms.[66][67][61]
+
+The nomenclatural codes that guide the naming of species, including the ICZN for animals and the ICN for plants, do not make rules for defining the boundaries of the species. Research can change the boundaries, also known as circumscription, based on new evidence. Species may then need to be distinguished by the boundary definitions used, and in such cases the names may be qualified with sensu stricto ("in the narrow sense") to denote usage in the exact meaning given by an author such as the person who named the species, while the antonym sensu lato ("in the broad sense") denotes a wider usage, for instance including other subspecies. Other abbreviations such as "auct." ("author"), and qualifiers such as "non" ("not") may be used to further clarify the sense in which the specified authors delineated or described the species.[61][68][69]
+
+
+
+Most modern textbooks make use of Ernst Mayr's 1942 definition,[70][71] known as the Biological Species Concept as a basis for further discussion on the definition of species. It is also called a reproductive or isolation concept. This defines a species as[72]
+
+groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.[72]
+
+It has been argued that this definition is a natural consequence of the effect of sexual reproduction on the dynamics of natural selection.[73][74][75][76] Mayr's use of the adjective "potentially" has been a point of debate; some interpretations exclude unusual or artificial matings that occur only in captivity, or that involve animals capable of mating but that do not normally do so in the wild.[72]
+
+It is difficult to define a species in a way that applies to all organisms.[77] The debate about species delimitation is called the species problem.[72][78][79][80] The problem was recognized even in 1859, when Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species:
+
+No one definition has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes the unknown element of a distinct act of creation.[81]
+
+A simple textbook definition, following Mayr's concept, works well for most multi-celled organisms, but breaks down in several situations:
+
+Species identification is made difficult by discordance between molecular and morphological investigations; these can be categorized as two types: (i) one morphology, multiple lineages (e.g. morphological convergence, cryptic species) and (ii) one lineage, multiple morphologies (e.g. phenotypic plasticity, multiple life-cycle stages).[91] In addition, horizontal gene transfer (HGT) makes it difficult to define a species.[92] All species definitions assume that an organism acquires its genes from one or two parents very like the "daughter" organism, but that is not what happens in HGT.[93] There is strong evidence of HGT between very dissimilar groups of prokaryotes, and at least occasionally between dissimilar groups of eukaryotes,[92] including some crustaceans and echinoderms.[94]
+
+The evolutionary biologist James Mallet concludes that
+
+there is no easy way to tell whether related geographic or temporal forms belong to the same or different species. Species gaps can be verified only locally and at a point of time. One is forced to admit that Darwin's insight is correct: any local reality or integrity of species is greatly reduced over large geographic ranges and time periods.[18]
+
+The species concept is further weakened by the existence of microspecies, groups of organisms, including many plants, with very little genetic variability, usually forming species aggregates.[95] For example, the dandelion Taraxacum officinale and the blackberry Rubus fruticosus are aggregates with many microspecies—perhaps 400 in the case of the blackberry and over 200 in the dandelion,[96] complicated by hybridisation, apomixis and polyploidy, making gene flow between populations difficult to determine, and their taxonomy debatable.[97][98][99] Species complexes occur in insects such as Heliconius butterflies,[100] vertebrates such as Hypsiboas treefrogs,[101] and fungi such as the fly agaric.[102]
+
+Blackberries belong to any of hundreds of microspecies of the Rubus fruticosus species aggregate.
+
+The butterfly genus Heliconius contains many similar species.
+
+The Hypsiboas calcaratus–fasciatus species complex contains at least six species of treefrog.
+
+Natural hybridisation presents a challenge to the concept of a reproductively isolated species, as fertile hybrids permit gene flow between two populations. For example, the carrion crow Corvus corone and the hooded crow Corvus cornix appear and are classified as separate species, yet they hybridise freely where their geographical ranges overlap.[103]
+
+Carrion crow
+
+Hybrid with dark belly, dark gray nape
+
+Hybrid with dark belly
+
+Hooded crow
+
+A ring species is a connected series of neighbouring populations, each of which can sexually interbreed with adjacent related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series, which are too distantly related to interbreed, though there is a potential gene flow between each "linked" population.[104] Such non-breeding, though genetically connected, "end" populations may co-exist in the same region thus closing the ring. Ring species thus present a difficulty for any species concept that relies on reproductive isolation.[105] However, ring species are at best rare. Proposed examples include the herring gull-lesser black-backed gull complex around the North pole, the Ensatina eschscholtzii group of 19 populations of salamanders in America,[106] and the greenish warbler in Asia,[107] but many so-called ring species have turned out to be the result of misclassification leading to questions on whether there really are any ring species.[108][109][110][111]
+
+Seven "species" of Larus gulls interbreed in a ring around the Arctic.
+
+Opposite ends of the ring: a herring gull (Larus argentatus) (front) and a lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus) in Norway
+
+A greenish warbler, Phylloscopus trochiloides
+
+Presumed evolution of five "species"  of greenish warblers around Himalayas
+
+Species are subject to change, whether by evolving into new species,[112] exchanging genes with other species,[113] merging with other species or by becoming extinct.[114]
+
+The evolutionary process by which biological populations evolve to become distinct or reproductively isolated as species is called speciation.[115][116] Charles Darwin was the first to describe the role of natural selection in speciation in his 1859 book The Origin of Species.[117] Speciation depends on a measure of reproductive isolation, a reduced gene flow. This occurs most easily in allopatric speciation, where populations are separated geographically and can diverge gradually as mutations accumulate. Reproductive isolation is threatened by hybridisation, but this can be selected against once a pair of populations have incompatible alleles of the same gene, as described in the Bateson–Dobzhansky–Muller model.[112] A different mechanism, phyletic speciation, involves one lineage gradually changing over time into a new and distinct form, without increasing the number of resultant species.[118]
+
+Horizontal gene transfer between organisms of different species, either through hybridisation, antigenic shift, or reassortment, is sometimes an important source of genetic variation. Viruses can transfer genes between species. Bacteria can exchange plasmids with bacteria of other species, including some apparently distantly related ones in different phylogenetic domains, making analysis of their relationships difficult, and weakening the concept of a bacterial species.[119][92][120][113]
+
+Louis-Marie Bobay and Howard Ochman suggest, based on analysis of the genomes of many types of bacteria, that they can often be grouped "into communities that regularly swap genes", in much the same way that plants and animals can be grouped into reproductively isolated breeding populations. Bacteria may thus form species, analogous to Mayr's biological species concept, consisting of asexually reproducing populations that exchange genes by homologous recombination.[121][122]
+
+A species is extinct when the last individual of that species dies, but it may be functionally extinct well before that moment. It is estimated that over 99 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth, some five billion species, are now extinct. Some of these were in mass extinctions such as those at the ends of the Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous periods. Mass extinctions had a variety of causes including volcanic activity, climate change, and changes in oceanic and atmospheric chemistry, and they in turn had major effects on Earth's ecology, atmosphere, land surface and waters.[123][124] Another form of extinction is through the assimilation of one species by another through hybridization. The resulting single species has been termed as a "compilospecies".[125]
+
+Biologists and conservationists need to categorise and identify organisms in the course of their work. Difficulty assigning organisms reliably to a species constitutes a threat to the validity of research results, for example making measurements of how abundant a species is in an ecosystem moot. Surveys using a phylogenetic species concept reported 48% more species and accordingly smaller populations and ranges than those using nonphylogenetic concepts; this was termed "taxonomic inflation",[126] which could cause a false appearance of change to the number of endangered species and consequent political and practical difficulties.[127][128] Some observers claim that there is an inherent conflict between the desire to understand the processes of speciation and the need to identify and to categorise.[128]
+
+Conservation laws in many countries make special provisions to prevent species from going extinct. Hybridization zones between two species, one that is protected and one that is not, have sometimes led to conflicts between lawmakers, land owners and conservationists. One of the classic cases in North America is that of the protected northern spotted owl which hybridizes with the unprotected California spotted owl and the barred owl; this has led to legal debates.[129] It has been argued that the species problem is created by the varied uses of the concept of species, and that the solution is to abandon it and all other taxonomic ranks, and use unranked monophyletic groups instead. It has been argued, too, that since species are not comparable, counting them is not a valid measure of biodiversity; alternative measures of phylogenetic biodiversity have been proposed.[130][131]
+
+In his biology, Aristotle used the term γένος (génos) to mean a kind, such as a bird or fish, and εἶδος (eidos) to mean a specific form within a kind, such as (within the birds) the crane, eagle, crow, or sparrow. These terms were translated into Latin as "genus" and "species", though they do not correspond to the Linnean terms thus named; today the birds are a class, the cranes are a family, and the crows a genus. A kind was distinguished by its attributes; for instance, a bird has feathers, a beak, wings, a hard-shelled egg, and warm blood.  A form was distinguished by being shared by all its members, the young inheriting any variations they might have from their parents. Aristotle believed all kinds and forms to be distinct and unchanging. His approach remained influential until the Renaissance.[132]
+
+When observers in the Early Modern period began to develop systems of organization for living things, they placed each kind of animal or plant into a context. Many of these early delineation schemes would now be considered whimsical: schemes included consanguinity based on colour (all plants with yellow flowers) or behaviour (snakes, scorpions and certain biting ants). John Ray, an English naturalist, was the first to attempt a biological definition of species in 1686, as follows:
+
+No surer criterion for determining species has occurred to me than the distinguishing features that perpetuate themselves in propagation from seed. Thus, no matter what variations occur in the individuals or the species, if they spring from the seed of one and the same plant, they are accidental variations and not such as to distinguish a species ... Animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently; one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa.[133]
+
+In the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus classified organisms according to shared physical characteristics, and not simply based upon differences.[134] He established the idea of a taxonomic hierarchy of classification based upon observable characteristics and intended to reflect natural relationships.[135][136] At the time, however, it was still widely believed that there was no organic connection between species, no matter how similar they appeared. This view was influenced by European scholarly and religious education, which held that the categories of life are dictated by God, forming an Aristotelian hierarchy, the scala naturae or great chain of being. However, whether or not it was supposed to be fixed, the scala (a ladder) inherently implied the possibility of climbing.[137]
+
+In viewing evidence of hybridisation, Linnaeus recognised that species were not fixed and could change; he did not consider that new species could emerge and maintained a view of divinely fixed species that may alter through processes of hybridisation or acclimatisation.[138] By the 19th century, naturalists understood that species could change form over time, and that the history of the planet provided enough time for major changes. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his 1809 Zoological Philosophy, described the transmutation of species, proposing that a species could change over time, in a radical departure from Aristotelian thinking.[139]
+
+In 1859, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace provided a compelling account of evolution and the formation of new species. Darwin argued that it was populations that evolved, not individuals, by natural selection from naturally occurring variation among individuals.[140] This required a new definition of species. Darwin concluded that species are what they appear to be: ideas, provisionally useful for naming groups of interacting individuals, writing:
+
+I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other ... It does not essentially differ from the word variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for convenience sake.[141]

en/1835.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,141 @@
+
+
+In biology, a species (/ˈspiːʃiːz/ (listen)) is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined.
+
+The total number of species is estimated to be between 8 and 8.7 million.[1][2] However the vast majority of them are not studied or documented and it may take over 1000 years to fully catalogue them all.[3]
+
+All species (except viruses) are given a two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet (in botanical nomenclature, also sometimes in zoological nomenclature). For example, Boa constrictor is one of four species of the genus Boa, with constrictor being the species’ epithet.
+
+While the definitions given above may seem adequate, when looked at more closely they represent problematic species concepts. For example, the boundaries between closely related species become unclear with hybridisation, in a species complex of hundreds of similar microspecies, and in a ring species. Also, among organisms that reproduce only asexually, the concept of a reproductive species breaks down, and each clone is potentially a microspecies. Though none of these are entirely satisfactory definitions, scientists and conservationists need a species definition which allows them to work, regardless of the theoretical difficulties. If species were fixed and clearly distinct from one another, there would be no problem, but evolutionary processes cause species to change continually, and to grade into one another.
+
+Species were seen from the time of Aristotle until the 18th century as fixed categories that could be arranged in a hierarchy, the great chain of being. In the 19th century, biologists grasped that species could evolve given sufficient time. Charles Darwin's 1859 book The Origin of Species explained how species could arise by natural selection. That understanding was greatly extended in the 20th century through genetics and population ecology. Genetic variability arises from mutations and recombination, while organisms themselves are mobile, leading to geographical isolation and genetic drift with varying selection pressures. Genes can sometimes be exchanged between species by horizontal gene transfer; new species can arise rapidly through hybridisation and polyploidy; and species may become extinct for a variety of reasons. Viruses are a special case, driven by a balance of mutation and selection, and can be treated as quasispecies.
+
+Biologists and taxonomists have made many attempts to define species, beginning from morphology and moving towards genetics. Early taxonomists such as Linnaeus had no option but to describe what they saw: this was later formalised as the typological or morphological species concept. Ernst Mayr emphasised reproductive isolation, but this, like other species concepts, is hard or even impossible to test.[4][5] Later biologists have tried to refine Mayr's definition with the recognition and cohesion concepts, among others.[6] Many of the concepts are quite similar or overlap, so they are not easy to count: the biologist R. L. Mayden recorded about 24 concepts,[7] and the philosopher of science John Wilkins counted 26.[4] Wilkins further grouped the species concepts into seven basic kinds of concepts: (1) agamospecies for asexual organisms (2) biospecies for reproductively isolated sexual organisms (3) ecospecies based on ecological niches (4) evolutionary species based on lineage (5) genetic species based on gene pool (6) morphospecies based on form or phenotype and (7) taxonomic species, a species as determined by a taxonomist.[8]
+
+
+
+A typological species is a group of organisms in which individuals conform to certain fixed properties (a type), so that even pre-literate people often recognise the same taxon as do modern taxonomists.[10][11] The clusters of variations or phenotypes within specimens (such as longer or shorter tails) would differentiate the species. This method was used as a "classical" method of determining species, such as with Linnaeus early in evolutionary theory. However, different phenotypes are not necessarily different species (e.g. a four-winged Drosophila born to a two-winged mother is not a different species). Species named in this manner are called morphospecies.[12][13]
+
+In the 1970s, Robert R. Sokal, Theodore J. Crovello and Peter Sneath proposed a variation on this, a phenetic species, defined as a set of organisms with a similar phenotype to each other, but a different phenotype from other sets of organisms.[14] It differs from the morphological species concept in including a numerical measure of distance or similarity to cluster entities based on multivariate comparisons of a reasonably large number of phenotypic traits.[15]
+
+
+
+A mate-recognition species is a group of sexually reproducing organisms that recognize one another as potential mates.[16][17] Expanding on this to allow for post-mating isolation, a cohesion species is the most inclusive population of individuals having the potential for phenotypic cohesion through intrinsic cohesion mechanisms; no matter whether populations can hybridize successfully, they are still distinct cohesion species if the amount of hybridization is insufficient to completely mix their respective gene pools.[18] A further development of the recognition concept is provided by the biosemiotic concept of species.[19]
+
+
+
+In microbiology, genes can move freely even between distantly related bacteria, possibly extending to the whole bacterial domain. As a rule of thumb, microbiologists have assumed that kinds of Bacteria or Archaea with 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences more similar than 97% to each other need to be checked by DNA-DNA hybridisation to decide if they belong to the same species or not.[20] This concept was narrowed in 2006 to a similarity of 98.7%.[21]
+
+DNA-DNA hybridisation is outdated, and results have sometimes led to misleading conclusions about species, as with the pomarine and great skua.[22][23] Modern approaches compare sequence similarity using computational methods.[24]
+
+DNA barcoding has been proposed as a way to distinguish species suitable even for non-specialists to use.[25] The so-called barcode is a region of mitochondrial DNA within the gene for cytochrome c oxidase. A database, Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) contains DNA barcode sequences from over 190,000 species.[26][27] However, scientists such as Rob DeSalle have expressed concern that classical taxonomy and DNA barcoding, which they consider a misnomer, need to be reconciled, as they delimit species differently.[28] Genetic introgression mediated by endosymbionts and other vectors can further make barcodes ineffective in the identification of species.[29]
+
+
+
+A phylogenetic or cladistic species is an evolutionarily divergent lineage, one that has maintained its hereditary integrity through time and space.[30][31][32] A cladistic species is the smallest group of populations that can be distinguished by a unique set of morphological or genetic traits. Molecular markers may be used to determine genetic similarities in the nuclear or mitochondrial DNA of various species.[31][33][34] For example, in a study done on fungi, studying the nucleotide characters using cladistic species produced the most accurate results in recognising the numerous fungi species of all the concepts studied.[34][35] Versions of the phylogenetic species concept may emphasize monophyly or diagnosability.[36] The concept may lead to splitting of existing species, for example in Bovidae, by recognising old subspecies as species, despite the fact that there are no reproductive barriers, and populations may inter-grade morphologically.[37] Others have called this approach taxonomic inflation, diluting the species concept and making taxonomy unstable.[38] Yet others defend this approach, considering "taxonomic inflation" pejorative and labelling the opposing view as "taxonomic conservatism"; claiming it is politically expedient to split species and recognise smaller populations at the species level, because this means they can more easily be included as endangered in the IUCN red list and can attract conservation legislation and funding.[39]
+
+Unlike the biological species concept, a cladistic species does not rely on reproductive isolation, so it is independent of processes that are integral in other concepts.[33] It works for asexual lineages.[31][34] However, it does not work in every situation, and may require more than one polymorphic locus to give an accurate result.[34]
+
+An evolutionary species, suggested by George Gaylord Simpson in 1951, is "an entity composed of organisms which maintains its identity from other such entities through time and over space, and which has its own independent evolutionary fate and historical tendencies".[7][40] This differs from the biological species concept in embodying persistence over time. Wiley and Mayden state that they see the evolutionary species concept as "identical" to Willi Hennig's species-as-lineages concept, and assert that the biological species concept, "the several versions" of the phylogenetic species concept, and the idea that species are of the same kind as higher taxa are not suitable for biodiversity studies (with the intention of estimating the number of species accurately). They further suggest that the concept works for both asexual and sexually-reproducing species.[41]
+
+An ecological species is a set of organisms adapted to a particular set of resources, called a niche, in the environment. According to this concept, populations form the discrete phenetic clusters that we recognise as species because the ecological and evolutionary processes controlling how resources are divided up tend to produce those clusters.[42]
+
+A genetic species as defined by Robert Baker and Robert Bradley is a set of genetically isolated interbreeding populations. This is similar to Mayr's Biological Species Concept, but stresses genetic rather than reproductive isolation.[43] In the 21st century, a genetic species can be established by comparing DNA sequences, but other methods were available earlier, such as comparing karyotypes (sets of chromosomes) and allozymes (enzyme variants).[44]
+
+An evolutionarily significant unit (ESU) or "wildlife species"[45] is a population of organisms considered distinct for purposes of conservation.[46]
+
+In palaeontology, with only comparative anatomy (morphology) from fossils as evidence, the concept of a chronospecies can be applied. During anagenesis (evolution, not necessarily involving branching), palaeontologists seek to identify a sequence of species, each one derived from the phyletically extinct one before through continuous, slow and more or less uniform change. In such a time sequence, palaeontologists assess how much change is required for a morphologically distinct form to be considered a different species from its ancestors.[47][48][49][50]
+
+Viruses have enormous populations, are doubtfully living since they consist of little more than a string of DNA or RNA in a protein coat, and mutate rapidly. All of these factors make conventional species concepts largely inapplicable.[51] A viral quasispecies is a group of genotypes related by similar mutations, competing within a highly mutagenic environment, and hence governed by a mutation–selection balance. It is predicted that a viral quasispecies at a low but evolutionarily neutral and highly connected (that is, flat) region in the fitness landscape will outcompete a quasispecies located at a higher but narrower fitness peak in which the surrounding mutants are unfit, "the quasispecies effect" or the "survival of the flattest". There is no suggestion that a viral quasispecies resembles a traditional biological species.[52][53][54]
+
+The commonly used names for kinds of organisms are often ambiguous: "cat" could mean the domestic cat, Felis catus, or the cat family, Felidae. Another problem with common names is that they often vary from place to place, so that puma, cougar, catamount, panther, painter and mountain lion all mean Puma concolor in various parts of America, while "panther" may also mean the jaguar (Panthera onca) of Latin America or the leopard (Panthera pardus) of Africa and Asia. In contrast, the scientific names of species are chosen to be unique and universal; they are in two parts used together: the genus as in Puma, and the specific epithet as in concolor.[55][56]
+
+A species is given a taxonomic name when a type specimen is described formally, in a publication that assigns it a unique scientific name. The description typically provides means for identifying the new species, differentiating it from other previously described and related or confusable species and provides a validly published name (in botany) or an available name (in zoology) when the paper is accepted for publication. The type material is usually held in a permanent repository, often the research collection of a major museum or university, that allows independent verification and the means to compare specimens.[57][58][59] Describers of new species are asked to choose names that, in the words of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, are "appropriate, compact, euphonious, memorable, and do not cause offence".[60]
+
+Books and articles sometimes intentionally do not identify species fully and use the abbreviation "sp." in the singular or "spp." (standing for species pluralis, the Latin for multiple species) in the plural in place of the specific name or epithet (e.g. Canis sp.). This commonly occurs when authors are confident that some individuals belong to a particular genus but are not sure to which exact species they belong, as is common in paleontology.[61]
+
+Authors may also use "spp." as a short way of saying that something applies to many species within a genus, but not to all. If scientists mean that something applies to all species within a genus, they use the genus name without the specific name or epithet. The names of genera and species are usually printed in italics. However, abbreviations such as "sp." should not be italicised.[61]
+
+When a species' identity is not clear, a specialist may use "cf." before the epithet to indicate that confirmation is required. The abbreviations "nr." (near) or "aff." (affine) may be used when the identity is unclear but when the species appears to be similar to the species mentioned after.[61]
+
+With the rise of online databases, codes have been devised to provide identifiers for species that are already defined, including:
+
+The naming of a particular species, including which genus (and higher taxa) it is placed in, is a hypothesis about the evolutionary relationships and distinguishability of that group of organisms. As further information comes to hand, the hypothesis may be confirmed or refuted. Sometimes, especially in the past when communication was more difficult, taxonomists working in isolation have given two distinct names to individual organisms later identified as the same species. When two named species are discovered to be of the same species, the older species name is given priority and usually retained, and the newer name considered as a junior synonym, a process called synonymisation. Dividing a taxon into multiple, often new, taxa is called splitting. Taxonomists are often referred to as "lumpers" or "splitters" by their colleagues, depending on their personal approach to recognising differences or commonalities between organisms.[66][67][61]
+
+The nomenclatural codes that guide the naming of species, including the ICZN for animals and the ICN for plants, do not make rules for defining the boundaries of the species. Research can change the boundaries, also known as circumscription, based on new evidence. Species may then need to be distinguished by the boundary definitions used, and in such cases the names may be qualified with sensu stricto ("in the narrow sense") to denote usage in the exact meaning given by an author such as the person who named the species, while the antonym sensu lato ("in the broad sense") denotes a wider usage, for instance including other subspecies. Other abbreviations such as "auct." ("author"), and qualifiers such as "non" ("not") may be used to further clarify the sense in which the specified authors delineated or described the species.[61][68][69]
+
+
+
+Most modern textbooks make use of Ernst Mayr's 1942 definition,[70][71] known as the Biological Species Concept as a basis for further discussion on the definition of species. It is also called a reproductive or isolation concept. This defines a species as[72]
+
+groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.[72]
+
+It has been argued that this definition is a natural consequence of the effect of sexual reproduction on the dynamics of natural selection.[73][74][75][76] Mayr's use of the adjective "potentially" has been a point of debate; some interpretations exclude unusual or artificial matings that occur only in captivity, or that involve animals capable of mating but that do not normally do so in the wild.[72]
+
+It is difficult to define a species in a way that applies to all organisms.[77] The debate about species delimitation is called the species problem.[72][78][79][80] The problem was recognized even in 1859, when Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species:
+
+No one definition has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes the unknown element of a distinct act of creation.[81]
+
+A simple textbook definition, following Mayr's concept, works well for most multi-celled organisms, but breaks down in several situations:
+
+Species identification is made difficult by discordance between molecular and morphological investigations; these can be categorized as two types: (i) one morphology, multiple lineages (e.g. morphological convergence, cryptic species) and (ii) one lineage, multiple morphologies (e.g. phenotypic plasticity, multiple life-cycle stages).[91] In addition, horizontal gene transfer (HGT) makes it difficult to define a species.[92] All species definitions assume that an organism acquires its genes from one or two parents very like the "daughter" organism, but that is not what happens in HGT.[93] There is strong evidence of HGT between very dissimilar groups of prokaryotes, and at least occasionally between dissimilar groups of eukaryotes,[92] including some crustaceans and echinoderms.[94]
+
+The evolutionary biologist James Mallet concludes that
+
+there is no easy way to tell whether related geographic or temporal forms belong to the same or different species. Species gaps can be verified only locally and at a point of time. One is forced to admit that Darwin's insight is correct: any local reality or integrity of species is greatly reduced over large geographic ranges and time periods.[18]
+
+The species concept is further weakened by the existence of microspecies, groups of organisms, including many plants, with very little genetic variability, usually forming species aggregates.[95] For example, the dandelion Taraxacum officinale and the blackberry Rubus fruticosus are aggregates with many microspecies—perhaps 400 in the case of the blackberry and over 200 in the dandelion,[96] complicated by hybridisation, apomixis and polyploidy, making gene flow between populations difficult to determine, and their taxonomy debatable.[97][98][99] Species complexes occur in insects such as Heliconius butterflies,[100] vertebrates such as Hypsiboas treefrogs,[101] and fungi such as the fly agaric.[102]
+
+Blackberries belong to any of hundreds of microspecies of the Rubus fruticosus species aggregate.
+
+The butterfly genus Heliconius contains many similar species.
+
+The Hypsiboas calcaratus–fasciatus species complex contains at least six species of treefrog.
+
+Natural hybridisation presents a challenge to the concept of a reproductively isolated species, as fertile hybrids permit gene flow between two populations. For example, the carrion crow Corvus corone and the hooded crow Corvus cornix appear and are classified as separate species, yet they hybridise freely where their geographical ranges overlap.[103]
+
+Carrion crow
+
+Hybrid with dark belly, dark gray nape
+
+Hybrid with dark belly
+
+Hooded crow
+
+A ring species is a connected series of neighbouring populations, each of which can sexually interbreed with adjacent related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series, which are too distantly related to interbreed, though there is a potential gene flow between each "linked" population.[104] Such non-breeding, though genetically connected, "end" populations may co-exist in the same region thus closing the ring. Ring species thus present a difficulty for any species concept that relies on reproductive isolation.[105] However, ring species are at best rare. Proposed examples include the herring gull-lesser black-backed gull complex around the North pole, the Ensatina eschscholtzii group of 19 populations of salamanders in America,[106] and the greenish warbler in Asia,[107] but many so-called ring species have turned out to be the result of misclassification leading to questions on whether there really are any ring species.[108][109][110][111]
+
+Seven "species" of Larus gulls interbreed in a ring around the Arctic.
+
+Opposite ends of the ring: a herring gull (Larus argentatus) (front) and a lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus) in Norway
+
+A greenish warbler, Phylloscopus trochiloides
+
+Presumed evolution of five "species"  of greenish warblers around Himalayas
+
+Species are subject to change, whether by evolving into new species,[112] exchanging genes with other species,[113] merging with other species or by becoming extinct.[114]
+
+The evolutionary process by which biological populations evolve to become distinct or reproductively isolated as species is called speciation.[115][116] Charles Darwin was the first to describe the role of natural selection in speciation in his 1859 book The Origin of Species.[117] Speciation depends on a measure of reproductive isolation, a reduced gene flow. This occurs most easily in allopatric speciation, where populations are separated geographically and can diverge gradually as mutations accumulate. Reproductive isolation is threatened by hybridisation, but this can be selected against once a pair of populations have incompatible alleles of the same gene, as described in the Bateson–Dobzhansky–Muller model.[112] A different mechanism, phyletic speciation, involves one lineage gradually changing over time into a new and distinct form, without increasing the number of resultant species.[118]
+
+Horizontal gene transfer between organisms of different species, either through hybridisation, antigenic shift, or reassortment, is sometimes an important source of genetic variation. Viruses can transfer genes between species. Bacteria can exchange plasmids with bacteria of other species, including some apparently distantly related ones in different phylogenetic domains, making analysis of their relationships difficult, and weakening the concept of a bacterial species.[119][92][120][113]
+
+Louis-Marie Bobay and Howard Ochman suggest, based on analysis of the genomes of many types of bacteria, that they can often be grouped "into communities that regularly swap genes", in much the same way that plants and animals can be grouped into reproductively isolated breeding populations. Bacteria may thus form species, analogous to Mayr's biological species concept, consisting of asexually reproducing populations that exchange genes by homologous recombination.[121][122]
+
+A species is extinct when the last individual of that species dies, but it may be functionally extinct well before that moment. It is estimated that over 99 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth, some five billion species, are now extinct. Some of these were in mass extinctions such as those at the ends of the Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous periods. Mass extinctions had a variety of causes including volcanic activity, climate change, and changes in oceanic and atmospheric chemistry, and they in turn had major effects on Earth's ecology, atmosphere, land surface and waters.[123][124] Another form of extinction is through the assimilation of one species by another through hybridization. The resulting single species has been termed as a "compilospecies".[125]
+
+Biologists and conservationists need to categorise and identify organisms in the course of their work. Difficulty assigning organisms reliably to a species constitutes a threat to the validity of research results, for example making measurements of how abundant a species is in an ecosystem moot. Surveys using a phylogenetic species concept reported 48% more species and accordingly smaller populations and ranges than those using nonphylogenetic concepts; this was termed "taxonomic inflation",[126] which could cause a false appearance of change to the number of endangered species and consequent political and practical difficulties.[127][128] Some observers claim that there is an inherent conflict between the desire to understand the processes of speciation and the need to identify and to categorise.[128]
+
+Conservation laws in many countries make special provisions to prevent species from going extinct. Hybridization zones between two species, one that is protected and one that is not, have sometimes led to conflicts between lawmakers, land owners and conservationists. One of the classic cases in North America is that of the protected northern spotted owl which hybridizes with the unprotected California spotted owl and the barred owl; this has led to legal debates.[129] It has been argued that the species problem is created by the varied uses of the concept of species, and that the solution is to abandon it and all other taxonomic ranks, and use unranked monophyletic groups instead. It has been argued, too, that since species are not comparable, counting them is not a valid measure of biodiversity; alternative measures of phylogenetic biodiversity have been proposed.[130][131]
+
+In his biology, Aristotle used the term γένος (génos) to mean a kind, such as a bird or fish, and εἶδος (eidos) to mean a specific form within a kind, such as (within the birds) the crane, eagle, crow, or sparrow. These terms were translated into Latin as "genus" and "species", though they do not correspond to the Linnean terms thus named; today the birds are a class, the cranes are a family, and the crows a genus. A kind was distinguished by its attributes; for instance, a bird has feathers, a beak, wings, a hard-shelled egg, and warm blood.  A form was distinguished by being shared by all its members, the young inheriting any variations they might have from their parents. Aristotle believed all kinds and forms to be distinct and unchanging. His approach remained influential until the Renaissance.[132]
+
+When observers in the Early Modern period began to develop systems of organization for living things, they placed each kind of animal or plant into a context. Many of these early delineation schemes would now be considered whimsical: schemes included consanguinity based on colour (all plants with yellow flowers) or behaviour (snakes, scorpions and certain biting ants). John Ray, an English naturalist, was the first to attempt a biological definition of species in 1686, as follows:
+
+No surer criterion for determining species has occurred to me than the distinguishing features that perpetuate themselves in propagation from seed. Thus, no matter what variations occur in the individuals or the species, if they spring from the seed of one and the same plant, they are accidental variations and not such as to distinguish a species ... Animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently; one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa.[133]
+
+In the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus classified organisms according to shared physical characteristics, and not simply based upon differences.[134] He established the idea of a taxonomic hierarchy of classification based upon observable characteristics and intended to reflect natural relationships.[135][136] At the time, however, it was still widely believed that there was no organic connection between species, no matter how similar they appeared. This view was influenced by European scholarly and religious education, which held that the categories of life are dictated by God, forming an Aristotelian hierarchy, the scala naturae or great chain of being. However, whether or not it was supposed to be fixed, the scala (a ladder) inherently implied the possibility of climbing.[137]
+
+In viewing evidence of hybridisation, Linnaeus recognised that species were not fixed and could change; he did not consider that new species could emerge and maintained a view of divinely fixed species that may alter through processes of hybridisation or acclimatisation.[138] By the 19th century, naturalists understood that species could change form over time, and that the history of the planet provided enough time for major changes. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his 1809 Zoological Philosophy, described the transmutation of species, proposing that a species could change over time, in a radical departure from Aristotelian thinking.[139]
+
+In 1859, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace provided a compelling account of evolution and the formation of new species. Darwin argued that it was populations that evolved, not individuals, by natural selection from naturally occurring variation among individuals.[140] This required a new definition of species. Darwin concluded that species are what they appear to be: ideas, provisionally useful for naming groups of interacting individuals, writing:
+
+I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other ... It does not essentially differ from the word variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for convenience sake.[141]

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+
+
+In biology, a species (/ˈspiːʃiːz/ (listen)) is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined.
+
+The total number of species is estimated to be between 8 and 8.7 million.[1][2] However the vast majority of them are not studied or documented and it may take over 1000 years to fully catalogue them all.[3]
+
+All species (except viruses) are given a two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet (in botanical nomenclature, also sometimes in zoological nomenclature). For example, Boa constrictor is one of four species of the genus Boa, with constrictor being the species’ epithet.
+
+While the definitions given above may seem adequate, when looked at more closely they represent problematic species concepts. For example, the boundaries between closely related species become unclear with hybridisation, in a species complex of hundreds of similar microspecies, and in a ring species. Also, among organisms that reproduce only asexually, the concept of a reproductive species breaks down, and each clone is potentially a microspecies. Though none of these are entirely satisfactory definitions, scientists and conservationists need a species definition which allows them to work, regardless of the theoretical difficulties. If species were fixed and clearly distinct from one another, there would be no problem, but evolutionary processes cause species to change continually, and to grade into one another.
+
+Species were seen from the time of Aristotle until the 18th century as fixed categories that could be arranged in a hierarchy, the great chain of being. In the 19th century, biologists grasped that species could evolve given sufficient time. Charles Darwin's 1859 book The Origin of Species explained how species could arise by natural selection. That understanding was greatly extended in the 20th century through genetics and population ecology. Genetic variability arises from mutations and recombination, while organisms themselves are mobile, leading to geographical isolation and genetic drift with varying selection pressures. Genes can sometimes be exchanged between species by horizontal gene transfer; new species can arise rapidly through hybridisation and polyploidy; and species may become extinct for a variety of reasons. Viruses are a special case, driven by a balance of mutation and selection, and can be treated as quasispecies.
+
+Biologists and taxonomists have made many attempts to define species, beginning from morphology and moving towards genetics. Early taxonomists such as Linnaeus had no option but to describe what they saw: this was later formalised as the typological or morphological species concept. Ernst Mayr emphasised reproductive isolation, but this, like other species concepts, is hard or even impossible to test.[4][5] Later biologists have tried to refine Mayr's definition with the recognition and cohesion concepts, among others.[6] Many of the concepts are quite similar or overlap, so they are not easy to count: the biologist R. L. Mayden recorded about 24 concepts,[7] and the philosopher of science John Wilkins counted 26.[4] Wilkins further grouped the species concepts into seven basic kinds of concepts: (1) agamospecies for asexual organisms (2) biospecies for reproductively isolated sexual organisms (3) ecospecies based on ecological niches (4) evolutionary species based on lineage (5) genetic species based on gene pool (6) morphospecies based on form or phenotype and (7) taxonomic species, a species as determined by a taxonomist.[8]
+
+
+
+A typological species is a group of organisms in which individuals conform to certain fixed properties (a type), so that even pre-literate people often recognise the same taxon as do modern taxonomists.[10][11] The clusters of variations or phenotypes within specimens (such as longer or shorter tails) would differentiate the species. This method was used as a "classical" method of determining species, such as with Linnaeus early in evolutionary theory. However, different phenotypes are not necessarily different species (e.g. a four-winged Drosophila born to a two-winged mother is not a different species). Species named in this manner are called morphospecies.[12][13]
+
+In the 1970s, Robert R. Sokal, Theodore J. Crovello and Peter Sneath proposed a variation on this, a phenetic species, defined as a set of organisms with a similar phenotype to each other, but a different phenotype from other sets of organisms.[14] It differs from the morphological species concept in including a numerical measure of distance or similarity to cluster entities based on multivariate comparisons of a reasonably large number of phenotypic traits.[15]
+
+
+
+A mate-recognition species is a group of sexually reproducing organisms that recognize one another as potential mates.[16][17] Expanding on this to allow for post-mating isolation, a cohesion species is the most inclusive population of individuals having the potential for phenotypic cohesion through intrinsic cohesion mechanisms; no matter whether populations can hybridize successfully, they are still distinct cohesion species if the amount of hybridization is insufficient to completely mix their respective gene pools.[18] A further development of the recognition concept is provided by the biosemiotic concept of species.[19]
+
+
+
+In microbiology, genes can move freely even between distantly related bacteria, possibly extending to the whole bacterial domain. As a rule of thumb, microbiologists have assumed that kinds of Bacteria or Archaea with 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences more similar than 97% to each other need to be checked by DNA-DNA hybridisation to decide if they belong to the same species or not.[20] This concept was narrowed in 2006 to a similarity of 98.7%.[21]
+
+DNA-DNA hybridisation is outdated, and results have sometimes led to misleading conclusions about species, as with the pomarine and great skua.[22][23] Modern approaches compare sequence similarity using computational methods.[24]
+
+DNA barcoding has been proposed as a way to distinguish species suitable even for non-specialists to use.[25] The so-called barcode is a region of mitochondrial DNA within the gene for cytochrome c oxidase. A database, Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) contains DNA barcode sequences from over 190,000 species.[26][27] However, scientists such as Rob DeSalle have expressed concern that classical taxonomy and DNA barcoding, which they consider a misnomer, need to be reconciled, as they delimit species differently.[28] Genetic introgression mediated by endosymbionts and other vectors can further make barcodes ineffective in the identification of species.[29]
+
+
+
+A phylogenetic or cladistic species is an evolutionarily divergent lineage, one that has maintained its hereditary integrity through time and space.[30][31][32] A cladistic species is the smallest group of populations that can be distinguished by a unique set of morphological or genetic traits. Molecular markers may be used to determine genetic similarities in the nuclear or mitochondrial DNA of various species.[31][33][34] For example, in a study done on fungi, studying the nucleotide characters using cladistic species produced the most accurate results in recognising the numerous fungi species of all the concepts studied.[34][35] Versions of the phylogenetic species concept may emphasize monophyly or diagnosability.[36] The concept may lead to splitting of existing species, for example in Bovidae, by recognising old subspecies as species, despite the fact that there are no reproductive barriers, and populations may inter-grade morphologically.[37] Others have called this approach taxonomic inflation, diluting the species concept and making taxonomy unstable.[38] Yet others defend this approach, considering "taxonomic inflation" pejorative and labelling the opposing view as "taxonomic conservatism"; claiming it is politically expedient to split species and recognise smaller populations at the species level, because this means they can more easily be included as endangered in the IUCN red list and can attract conservation legislation and funding.[39]
+
+Unlike the biological species concept, a cladistic species does not rely on reproductive isolation, so it is independent of processes that are integral in other concepts.[33] It works for asexual lineages.[31][34] However, it does not work in every situation, and may require more than one polymorphic locus to give an accurate result.[34]
+
+An evolutionary species, suggested by George Gaylord Simpson in 1951, is "an entity composed of organisms which maintains its identity from other such entities through time and over space, and which has its own independent evolutionary fate and historical tendencies".[7][40] This differs from the biological species concept in embodying persistence over time. Wiley and Mayden state that they see the evolutionary species concept as "identical" to Willi Hennig's species-as-lineages concept, and assert that the biological species concept, "the several versions" of the phylogenetic species concept, and the idea that species are of the same kind as higher taxa are not suitable for biodiversity studies (with the intention of estimating the number of species accurately). They further suggest that the concept works for both asexual and sexually-reproducing species.[41]
+
+An ecological species is a set of organisms adapted to a particular set of resources, called a niche, in the environment. According to this concept, populations form the discrete phenetic clusters that we recognise as species because the ecological and evolutionary processes controlling how resources are divided up tend to produce those clusters.[42]
+
+A genetic species as defined by Robert Baker and Robert Bradley is a set of genetically isolated interbreeding populations. This is similar to Mayr's Biological Species Concept, but stresses genetic rather than reproductive isolation.[43] In the 21st century, a genetic species can be established by comparing DNA sequences, but other methods were available earlier, such as comparing karyotypes (sets of chromosomes) and allozymes (enzyme variants).[44]
+
+An evolutionarily significant unit (ESU) or "wildlife species"[45] is a population of organisms considered distinct for purposes of conservation.[46]
+
+In palaeontology, with only comparative anatomy (morphology) from fossils as evidence, the concept of a chronospecies can be applied. During anagenesis (evolution, not necessarily involving branching), palaeontologists seek to identify a sequence of species, each one derived from the phyletically extinct one before through continuous, slow and more or less uniform change. In such a time sequence, palaeontologists assess how much change is required for a morphologically distinct form to be considered a different species from its ancestors.[47][48][49][50]
+
+Viruses have enormous populations, are doubtfully living since they consist of little more than a string of DNA or RNA in a protein coat, and mutate rapidly. All of these factors make conventional species concepts largely inapplicable.[51] A viral quasispecies is a group of genotypes related by similar mutations, competing within a highly mutagenic environment, and hence governed by a mutation–selection balance. It is predicted that a viral quasispecies at a low but evolutionarily neutral and highly connected (that is, flat) region in the fitness landscape will outcompete a quasispecies located at a higher but narrower fitness peak in which the surrounding mutants are unfit, "the quasispecies effect" or the "survival of the flattest". There is no suggestion that a viral quasispecies resembles a traditional biological species.[52][53][54]
+
+The commonly used names for kinds of organisms are often ambiguous: "cat" could mean the domestic cat, Felis catus, or the cat family, Felidae. Another problem with common names is that they often vary from place to place, so that puma, cougar, catamount, panther, painter and mountain lion all mean Puma concolor in various parts of America, while "panther" may also mean the jaguar (Panthera onca) of Latin America or the leopard (Panthera pardus) of Africa and Asia. In contrast, the scientific names of species are chosen to be unique and universal; they are in two parts used together: the genus as in Puma, and the specific epithet as in concolor.[55][56]
+
+A species is given a taxonomic name when a type specimen is described formally, in a publication that assigns it a unique scientific name. The description typically provides means for identifying the new species, differentiating it from other previously described and related or confusable species and provides a validly published name (in botany) or an available name (in zoology) when the paper is accepted for publication. The type material is usually held in a permanent repository, often the research collection of a major museum or university, that allows independent verification and the means to compare specimens.[57][58][59] Describers of new species are asked to choose names that, in the words of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, are "appropriate, compact, euphonious, memorable, and do not cause offence".[60]
+
+Books and articles sometimes intentionally do not identify species fully and use the abbreviation "sp." in the singular or "spp." (standing for species pluralis, the Latin for multiple species) in the plural in place of the specific name or epithet (e.g. Canis sp.). This commonly occurs when authors are confident that some individuals belong to a particular genus but are not sure to which exact species they belong, as is common in paleontology.[61]
+
+Authors may also use "spp." as a short way of saying that something applies to many species within a genus, but not to all. If scientists mean that something applies to all species within a genus, they use the genus name without the specific name or epithet. The names of genera and species are usually printed in italics. However, abbreviations such as "sp." should not be italicised.[61]
+
+When a species' identity is not clear, a specialist may use "cf." before the epithet to indicate that confirmation is required. The abbreviations "nr." (near) or "aff." (affine) may be used when the identity is unclear but when the species appears to be similar to the species mentioned after.[61]
+
+With the rise of online databases, codes have been devised to provide identifiers for species that are already defined, including:
+
+The naming of a particular species, including which genus (and higher taxa) it is placed in, is a hypothesis about the evolutionary relationships and distinguishability of that group of organisms. As further information comes to hand, the hypothesis may be confirmed or refuted. Sometimes, especially in the past when communication was more difficult, taxonomists working in isolation have given two distinct names to individual organisms later identified as the same species. When two named species are discovered to be of the same species, the older species name is given priority and usually retained, and the newer name considered as a junior synonym, a process called synonymisation. Dividing a taxon into multiple, often new, taxa is called splitting. Taxonomists are often referred to as "lumpers" or "splitters" by their colleagues, depending on their personal approach to recognising differences or commonalities between organisms.[66][67][61]
+
+The nomenclatural codes that guide the naming of species, including the ICZN for animals and the ICN for plants, do not make rules for defining the boundaries of the species. Research can change the boundaries, also known as circumscription, based on new evidence. Species may then need to be distinguished by the boundary definitions used, and in such cases the names may be qualified with sensu stricto ("in the narrow sense") to denote usage in the exact meaning given by an author such as the person who named the species, while the antonym sensu lato ("in the broad sense") denotes a wider usage, for instance including other subspecies. Other abbreviations such as "auct." ("author"), and qualifiers such as "non" ("not") may be used to further clarify the sense in which the specified authors delineated or described the species.[61][68][69]
+
+
+
+Most modern textbooks make use of Ernst Mayr's 1942 definition,[70][71] known as the Biological Species Concept as a basis for further discussion on the definition of species. It is also called a reproductive or isolation concept. This defines a species as[72]
+
+groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.[72]
+
+It has been argued that this definition is a natural consequence of the effect of sexual reproduction on the dynamics of natural selection.[73][74][75][76] Mayr's use of the adjective "potentially" has been a point of debate; some interpretations exclude unusual or artificial matings that occur only in captivity, or that involve animals capable of mating but that do not normally do so in the wild.[72]
+
+It is difficult to define a species in a way that applies to all organisms.[77] The debate about species delimitation is called the species problem.[72][78][79][80] The problem was recognized even in 1859, when Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species:
+
+No one definition has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes the unknown element of a distinct act of creation.[81]
+
+A simple textbook definition, following Mayr's concept, works well for most multi-celled organisms, but breaks down in several situations:
+
+Species identification is made difficult by discordance between molecular and morphological investigations; these can be categorized as two types: (i) one morphology, multiple lineages (e.g. morphological convergence, cryptic species) and (ii) one lineage, multiple morphologies (e.g. phenotypic plasticity, multiple life-cycle stages).[91] In addition, horizontal gene transfer (HGT) makes it difficult to define a species.[92] All species definitions assume that an organism acquires its genes from one or two parents very like the "daughter" organism, but that is not what happens in HGT.[93] There is strong evidence of HGT between very dissimilar groups of prokaryotes, and at least occasionally between dissimilar groups of eukaryotes,[92] including some crustaceans and echinoderms.[94]
+
+The evolutionary biologist James Mallet concludes that
+
+there is no easy way to tell whether related geographic or temporal forms belong to the same or different species. Species gaps can be verified only locally and at a point of time. One is forced to admit that Darwin's insight is correct: any local reality or integrity of species is greatly reduced over large geographic ranges and time periods.[18]
+
+The species concept is further weakened by the existence of microspecies, groups of organisms, including many plants, with very little genetic variability, usually forming species aggregates.[95] For example, the dandelion Taraxacum officinale and the blackberry Rubus fruticosus are aggregates with many microspecies—perhaps 400 in the case of the blackberry and over 200 in the dandelion,[96] complicated by hybridisation, apomixis and polyploidy, making gene flow between populations difficult to determine, and their taxonomy debatable.[97][98][99] Species complexes occur in insects such as Heliconius butterflies,[100] vertebrates such as Hypsiboas treefrogs,[101] and fungi such as the fly agaric.[102]
+
+Blackberries belong to any of hundreds of microspecies of the Rubus fruticosus species aggregate.
+
+The butterfly genus Heliconius contains many similar species.
+
+The Hypsiboas calcaratus–fasciatus species complex contains at least six species of treefrog.
+
+Natural hybridisation presents a challenge to the concept of a reproductively isolated species, as fertile hybrids permit gene flow between two populations. For example, the carrion crow Corvus corone and the hooded crow Corvus cornix appear and are classified as separate species, yet they hybridise freely where their geographical ranges overlap.[103]
+
+Carrion crow
+
+Hybrid with dark belly, dark gray nape
+
+Hybrid with dark belly
+
+Hooded crow
+
+A ring species is a connected series of neighbouring populations, each of which can sexually interbreed with adjacent related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series, which are too distantly related to interbreed, though there is a potential gene flow between each "linked" population.[104] Such non-breeding, though genetically connected, "end" populations may co-exist in the same region thus closing the ring. Ring species thus present a difficulty for any species concept that relies on reproductive isolation.[105] However, ring species are at best rare. Proposed examples include the herring gull-lesser black-backed gull complex around the North pole, the Ensatina eschscholtzii group of 19 populations of salamanders in America,[106] and the greenish warbler in Asia,[107] but many so-called ring species have turned out to be the result of misclassification leading to questions on whether there really are any ring species.[108][109][110][111]
+
+Seven "species" of Larus gulls interbreed in a ring around the Arctic.
+
+Opposite ends of the ring: a herring gull (Larus argentatus) (front) and a lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus) in Norway
+
+A greenish warbler, Phylloscopus trochiloides
+
+Presumed evolution of five "species"  of greenish warblers around Himalayas
+
+Species are subject to change, whether by evolving into new species,[112] exchanging genes with other species,[113] merging with other species or by becoming extinct.[114]
+
+The evolutionary process by which biological populations evolve to become distinct or reproductively isolated as species is called speciation.[115][116] Charles Darwin was the first to describe the role of natural selection in speciation in his 1859 book The Origin of Species.[117] Speciation depends on a measure of reproductive isolation, a reduced gene flow. This occurs most easily in allopatric speciation, where populations are separated geographically and can diverge gradually as mutations accumulate. Reproductive isolation is threatened by hybridisation, but this can be selected against once a pair of populations have incompatible alleles of the same gene, as described in the Bateson–Dobzhansky–Muller model.[112] A different mechanism, phyletic speciation, involves one lineage gradually changing over time into a new and distinct form, without increasing the number of resultant species.[118]
+
+Horizontal gene transfer between organisms of different species, either through hybridisation, antigenic shift, or reassortment, is sometimes an important source of genetic variation. Viruses can transfer genes between species. Bacteria can exchange plasmids with bacteria of other species, including some apparently distantly related ones in different phylogenetic domains, making analysis of their relationships difficult, and weakening the concept of a bacterial species.[119][92][120][113]
+
+Louis-Marie Bobay and Howard Ochman suggest, based on analysis of the genomes of many types of bacteria, that they can often be grouped "into communities that regularly swap genes", in much the same way that plants and animals can be grouped into reproductively isolated breeding populations. Bacteria may thus form species, analogous to Mayr's biological species concept, consisting of asexually reproducing populations that exchange genes by homologous recombination.[121][122]
+
+A species is extinct when the last individual of that species dies, but it may be functionally extinct well before that moment. It is estimated that over 99 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth, some five billion species, are now extinct. Some of these were in mass extinctions such as those at the ends of the Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous periods. Mass extinctions had a variety of causes including volcanic activity, climate change, and changes in oceanic and atmospheric chemistry, and they in turn had major effects on Earth's ecology, atmosphere, land surface and waters.[123][124] Another form of extinction is through the assimilation of one species by another through hybridization. The resulting single species has been termed as a "compilospecies".[125]
+
+Biologists and conservationists need to categorise and identify organisms in the course of their work. Difficulty assigning organisms reliably to a species constitutes a threat to the validity of research results, for example making measurements of how abundant a species is in an ecosystem moot. Surveys using a phylogenetic species concept reported 48% more species and accordingly smaller populations and ranges than those using nonphylogenetic concepts; this was termed "taxonomic inflation",[126] which could cause a false appearance of change to the number of endangered species and consequent political and practical difficulties.[127][128] Some observers claim that there is an inherent conflict between the desire to understand the processes of speciation and the need to identify and to categorise.[128]
+
+Conservation laws in many countries make special provisions to prevent species from going extinct. Hybridization zones between two species, one that is protected and one that is not, have sometimes led to conflicts between lawmakers, land owners and conservationists. One of the classic cases in North America is that of the protected northern spotted owl which hybridizes with the unprotected California spotted owl and the barred owl; this has led to legal debates.[129] It has been argued that the species problem is created by the varied uses of the concept of species, and that the solution is to abandon it and all other taxonomic ranks, and use unranked monophyletic groups instead. It has been argued, too, that since species are not comparable, counting them is not a valid measure of biodiversity; alternative measures of phylogenetic biodiversity have been proposed.[130][131]
+
+In his biology, Aristotle used the term γένος (génos) to mean a kind, such as a bird or fish, and εἶδος (eidos) to mean a specific form within a kind, such as (within the birds) the crane, eagle, crow, or sparrow. These terms were translated into Latin as "genus" and "species", though they do not correspond to the Linnean terms thus named; today the birds are a class, the cranes are a family, and the crows a genus. A kind was distinguished by its attributes; for instance, a bird has feathers, a beak, wings, a hard-shelled egg, and warm blood.  A form was distinguished by being shared by all its members, the young inheriting any variations they might have from their parents. Aristotle believed all kinds and forms to be distinct and unchanging. His approach remained influential until the Renaissance.[132]
+
+When observers in the Early Modern period began to develop systems of organization for living things, they placed each kind of animal or plant into a context. Many of these early delineation schemes would now be considered whimsical: schemes included consanguinity based on colour (all plants with yellow flowers) or behaviour (snakes, scorpions and certain biting ants). John Ray, an English naturalist, was the first to attempt a biological definition of species in 1686, as follows:
+
+No surer criterion for determining species has occurred to me than the distinguishing features that perpetuate themselves in propagation from seed. Thus, no matter what variations occur in the individuals or the species, if they spring from the seed of one and the same plant, they are accidental variations and not such as to distinguish a species ... Animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently; one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa.[133]
+
+In the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus classified organisms according to shared physical characteristics, and not simply based upon differences.[134] He established the idea of a taxonomic hierarchy of classification based upon observable characteristics and intended to reflect natural relationships.[135][136] At the time, however, it was still widely believed that there was no organic connection between species, no matter how similar they appeared. This view was influenced by European scholarly and religious education, which held that the categories of life are dictated by God, forming an Aristotelian hierarchy, the scala naturae or great chain of being. However, whether or not it was supposed to be fixed, the scala (a ladder) inherently implied the possibility of climbing.[137]
+
+In viewing evidence of hybridisation, Linnaeus recognised that species were not fixed and could change; he did not consider that new species could emerge and maintained a view of divinely fixed species that may alter through processes of hybridisation or acclimatisation.[138] By the 19th century, naturalists understood that species could change form over time, and that the history of the planet provided enough time for major changes. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his 1809 Zoological Philosophy, described the transmutation of species, proposing that a species could change over time, in a radical departure from Aristotelian thinking.[139]
+
+In 1859, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace provided a compelling account of evolution and the formation of new species. Darwin argued that it was populations that evolved, not individuals, by natural selection from naturally occurring variation among individuals.[140] This required a new definition of species. Darwin concluded that species are what they appear to be: ideas, provisionally useful for naming groups of interacting individuals, writing:
+
+I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other ... It does not essentially differ from the word variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for convenience sake.[141]

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+
+Esperanto (/ˌɛspəˈrɑːntoʊ, -ˈræn-/)[8][9] is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. It was created by Polish ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887. Zamenhof first described the language in The International Language, which he published in five languages under the pseudonym "Doktoro Esperanto". (This book is often nicknamed in Esperanto as la Unua Libro i.e. The First Book.) The word esperanto translates into English as "one who hopes".[10]
+
+Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language to foster world peace and international understanding, and to build a "community of speakers", as he believed that one could not have a language without such a community.[citation needed]
+
+His original title for the language was simply "the international language" (la lingvo internacia), but early speakers grew fond of the name Esperanto and began to use it as the name for the language just two years after its creation.  The name quickly gained prominence and has been used as an official name ever since.[11]
+
+In 1905, Zamenhof published Fundamento de Esperanto ("Foundation[Note 1] of Esperanto") as a definitive guide to the language. Later that year, French Esperantists organized with his participation the first World Esperanto Congress, an ongoing annual conference, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. The first congress ratified the Declaration of Boulogne, which established several foundational premises for the Esperanto movement; one of its pronouncements is that Fundamento de Esperanto is the only obligatory authority over the language; another is that the Esperanto movement is exclusively a linguistic movement and that no further meaning can ever be ascribed to it. Zamenhof also proposed to the first congress that an independent body of linguistic scholars should steward the future evolution of Esperanto, foreshadowing the founding of the Akademio de Esperanto (in part modeled after the Académie française), which was established soon thereafter. Since 1905, the congress has been held in a different country every year, with the exceptions of the years during the World Wars. In 1908, a group of young Esperanto speakers led by the Swiss Hector Hodler established the Universal Esperanto Association in order to provide a central organization for the global Esperanto community.
+
+Esperanto grew throughout the 20th century, both as a language and as a linguistic community. Despite speakers facing persecution in regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin,[12] Esperanto speakers continued to establish organizations and publish periodicals tailored to specific regions and interests. In 1954, the United Nations granted official support to Esperanto as an international auxiliary language in the Montevideo Resolution.[13] Several writers have contributed to the growing body of Esperanto literature, including William Auld, who received the first nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature for a literary work in Esperanto in 1999, followed by two more in 2004 and 2006. Those writing in Esperanto are also officially represented in PEN International, the worldwide writers association, through Esperanto PEN Centro.[14]
+
+The development of Esperanto has continued unabated into the 21st century. The advent of the Internet has had a significant impact on the language, as learning it has become increasingly accessible on platforms such as Duolingo, and as speakers have increasingly networked on platforms such as Amikumu.[15] With up to two million speakers, a small portion of whom are native speakers,[5] it is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world.[16] Although no country has adopted Esperanto officially,[Note 2] Esperantujo ("Esperanto-land") is the name given to the collection of places where it is spoken, and the language is widely employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television, and radio.[17] Some people have chosen to learn Esperanto for its purported help in third language acquisition, like Latin.
+
+While many of its advocates continue to hope for the day that Esperanto becomes officially recognized as the international auxiliary language, some (including raŭmistoj) have stopped focusing on this goal and instead view the Esperanto community as a "stateless diasporic linguistic group" ("senŝtata diaspora lingva kolektivo") based on freedom of association, with a culture worthy of preservation, based solely on its own merit.[17]
+
+Zamenhof had three goals, as he wrote in Unua Libro:
+
+According to the database Ethnologue (published by the Summer Institute of Linguistics), up to two million people worldwide, to varying degrees, speak Esperanto,[5][20] including about 1,000 to 2,000 native speakers who learned Esperanto from birth.[21] The Universal Esperanto Association has more than 5500 members in 120[22] countries. Its usage is highest in Europe, East Asia, and South America.[23]
+
+Lernu! is one of the most popular online learning platforms for Esperanto. Already in 2013, the "lernu.net" site reported 150,000 registered users and had between 150,000 and 200,000 visitors each month.[24] Lernu currently has nearly 300,000 registered users, who are able to view the site's interface in their choice of 24 languages – Catalan, Chinese (both simplified and traditional characters) Danish, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Kirundi, Kiswahili, Norwegian (Bokmål), Persian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish and Ukrainian; a further five languages — Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Indonesian and Spanish – have at least 70 percent of the interface localized; nine additional languages – Dutch, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese – are in varying stages of completing the interface translation. About 50,000 lernu.net users possess at least a basic understanding of Esperanto.
+
+With over 283,000 articles, Esperanto Wikipedia (Vikipedio) is the 32nd-largest Wikipedia, as measured by the number of articles,[25] and is the largest Wikipedia in a constructed language.[26] About 150,000 users consult the Vikipedio regularly, as attested by Wikipedia's automatically aggregated log-in data, which showed that in October 2019 the website has 117,366 unique individual visitors per month, plus 33,572 who view the site on a mobile device instead.[27]
+
+On February 22, 2012, Google Translate added Esperanto as its 64th language.[28] On July 25, 2016, Yandex Translate added Esperanto as a language.[29]
+
+On May 28, 2015, the language learning platform Duolingo launched a free Esperanto course for English speakers.[30] On March 25, 2016, when the first Duolingo Esperanto course completed its beta-testing phase, that course had 350,000 people registered to learn Esperanto through the medium of English. As of 27 May 2017[update], over one million users had begun learning Esperanto on Duolingo;[31] by July 2018 the number of learners had risen to 1.36 million. On July 20, 2018, Duolingo changed from recording users cumulatively; it now reports only the number of "active learners" (i.e., those who are currently studying, but not those who have completed the course),[32] which as of October 2019 stands at 294,000 learners.[33] On October 26, 2016, a second Duolingo Esperanto course, for which the language of instruction is Spanish, appeared on the same platform[34] and which as of October 2019 has a further 277,000 students.[35] A third Esperanto course, taught in Brazilian Portuguese, began its beta-testing phase on May 14, 2018, and as of October 2019, 232,000 people [36] are using this course. Esperanto is now one of 32 courses that Duolingo teaches through English, one of ten courses taught through Spanish and one of six courses taught through Portuguese.
+
+Esperanto was created in the late 1870s and early 1880s by L. L. Zamenhof, a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist from Białystok, then part of the Russian Empire but now part of Poland. According to Zamenhof, he created the language to reduce the "time and labour we spend in learning foreign tongues" and to foster harmony between people from different countries: "Were there but an international language, all translations would be made into it alone ... and all nations would be united in a common brotherhood."[19] His feelings and the situation in Białystok may be gleaned from an extract from his letter to Nikolai Borovko:[37]
+
+"The place where I was born and spent my childhood gave direction to all my future struggles. In Białystok the inhabitants were divided into four distinct elements: Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews; each of these spoke their own language and looked on all the others as enemies. In such a town a sensitive nature feels more acutely than elsewhere the misery caused by language division and sees at every step that the diversity of languages is the first, or at least the most influential, basis for the separation of the human family into groups of enemies. I was brought up as an idealist; I was taught that all people were brothers, while outside in the street at every step I felt that there were no people, only Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews and so on. This was always a great torment to my infant mind, although many people may smile at such an 'anguish for the world' in a child. Since at that time I thought that 'grown-ups' were omnipotent, so I often said to myself that when I grew up I would certainly destroy this evil."
+
+"It was invented in 1887 and designed that anyone could learn it in a few short months. Dr. Zamenhof lived on Dzika Street, No.9, which was just around the corner from the street on which we lived. Brother Afrum was so impressed with that idea that he learned Esperanto in a very short time at home from a little book. He then bought many dozens of them and gave them out to relatives, friends, just anyone he could, to support that magnificent idea for he felt that this would be a common bond to promote relationships with fellow men in the world. A group of people had organized and sent letters to the government asking to change the name of the street where Dr. Zamenhof lived for many years when he invented Esperanto, from Dzika to Zamenhofa. They were told that a petition with a large amount of signatures would be needed. That took time so they organized demonstrations carrying large posters encouraging people to learn the universal language and to sign the petitions... About the same time, in the middle of the block was marching a huge demonstration of people holding posters reading "Learn Esperanto", "Support the Universal language", "Esperanto the language of hope and expectation", "Esperanto the bond for international communication" and so on, and many "Sign the petitions". I will never forget that rich-poor, sad-glad parade and among all these people stood two fiery red tramway cars waiting on their opposite lanes and also a few doroszkas with their horses squeezed in between. Such a sight it was. Later a few blocks were changed from Dzika Street to Dr. Zamenhofa Street and a nice monument was erected there with his name and his invention inscribed on it, to honor his memory.
+
+About his goals Zamenhof wrote that he wants mankind to "learn and use", "en masse", "the proposed language as a living one".[19] The goal for Esperanto to become a general world language was not the only goal of Zamenhof; he also wanted to "enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not; in other words, the language is to be directly a means of international communication."[19]
+
+After some ten years of development, which Zamenhof spent translating literature into Esperanto as well as writing original prose and verse, the first book of Esperanto grammar was published in Warsaw on July 26, 1887. The number of speakers grew rapidly over the next few decades, at first primarily in the Russian Empire and Central Europe, then in other parts of Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years, speakers of Esperanto kept in contact primarily through correspondence and periodicals, but in 1905 the first World Congress of Esperanto speakers was held in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. Since then world congresses have been held in different countries every year, except during the two World Wars. Since the Second World War, they have been attended by an average of more than 2,000 people and up to 6,000 people.
+
+Zamenhof's name for the language was simply Internacia Lingvo ("International Language").[38]
+
+The autonomous territory of Neutral Moresnet, between what is today Belgium and Germany, had a sizable proportion of Esperanto-speakers among its small and multi-ethnic population. There was a proposal to make Esperanto its official language.
+
+However, neither Belgium nor Prussia (now within Germany) had ever surrendered its original claim to it. Around 1900, Germany in particular was taking a more aggressive stance towards the territory and was accused of sabotage and of obstructing the administrative process in order to force the issue. It was the First World War, however, that was the catalyst that brought about the end of neutrality. On August 4, 1914, Germany invaded Belgium, leaving Moresnet at first "an oasis in a desert of destruction".[39] In 1915, the territory was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia, without international recognition.
+
+After the Great War, a great opportunity seemed to arise for Esperanto when the Iranian delegation to the League of Nations proposed that it be adopted for use in international relations, following a report by Nitobe Inazō, an official delegate of the League of Nations during the 13th World Congress of Esperanto in Prague.[40] Ten delegates accepted the proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux. Hanotaux opposed all recognition of Esperanto at the League, from the first resolution on December 18, 1920 and subsequently through all efforts during the next three years.[41] Hanotaux did not like how the French language was losing its position as the international language and saw Esperanto as a threat, effectively wielding his veto power to block the decision. However, two years later, the League recommended that its member states include Esperanto in their educational curricula. The French government retaliated by banning all instruction in Esperanto in France's schools and universities .[42][43] The French Ministry Of Instruction said that "French and English would perish and the literary standard of the world would be debased".[43] Nonetheless, many people see the 1920s as the heyday of the Esperanto movement. Anarchism as a political movement was very supportive during this time of anationalism as well as of the Esperanto language.[44]
+
+Esperanto attracted the suspicion of many states. The situation was especially pronounced in Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain up until the 1950s, and in the Soviet Union under Stalin, from 1937 to 1956.
+
+In Nazi Germany, there was a motivation to forbid Esperanto because Zamenhof was Jewish, and due to the internationalist nature of Esperanto, which was perceived as "Bolshevist". In his work, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler specifically mentioned Esperanto as an example of a language that could be used by an international Jewish conspiracy once they achieved world domination.[12] Esperantists were killed during the Holocaust, with Zamenhof's family in particular singled out to be killed.[45] The efforts of a minority of German Esperantists to expel their Jewish colleagues and overtly align themselves with the Reich were futile, and Esperanto was legally forbidden in 1935. Esperantists in German concentration camps did, however, teach Esperanto to fellow prisoners, telling guards they were teaching Italian, the language of one of Germany's Axis allies.[46]
+
+In Imperial Japan, the left wing of the Japanese Esperanto movement was forbidden, but its leaders were careful enough not to give the impression to the government that the Esperantists were socialist revolutionaries, which proved a successful strategy.[47]
+
+After the October Revolution of 1917, Esperanto was given a measure of government support by the new workers' states in the former Russian Empire and later by the Soviet Union government, with the Soviet Esperanto Association being established as an officially recognized organization.[48] In his biography on Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky mentions that Stalin had studied Esperanto.[49] However, in 1937, at the height of the Great Purge, Stalin completely reversed the Soviet government's policies on Esperanto; many Esperanto speakers were executed, exiled or held in captivity in the Gulag labour camps. Quite often the accusation was: "You are an active member of an international spy organisation which hides itself under the name of 'Association of Soviet Esperantists' on the territory of the Soviet Union." Until the end of the Stalin era, it was dangerous to use Esperanto in the Soviet Union, despite the fact that it was never officially forbidden to speak Esperanto.[50]
+
+Fascist Italy allowed the use of Esperanto, finding its phonology similar to that of Italian and publishing some tourist material in the language.
+
+During and after the Spanish Civil War, Francoist Spain suppressed anarchists, socialists and Catalan nationalists for many years, among whom the use of Esperanto was extensive,[51] but in the 1950s the Esperanto movement was again tolerated.[52]
+
+Esperanto has not been a secondary official language of any recognized country, but it entered the education system of several countries such as Hungary[53] and China.[54]
+
+There were plans at the beginning of the 20th century to establish Neutral Moresnet, in central-western Europe, as the world's first Esperanto state. In addition, the self-proclaimed artificial island micronation of Rose Island, near Italy in the Adriatic Sea, used Esperanto as its official language in 1968, and another micronation, the extant Republic of Molossia, near Dayton, Nevada, uses Esperanto as an official language alongside English.[55]
+
+The Chinese government has used Esperanto since 2001 for daily news on china.org.cn. China also uses Esperanto in China Radio International and for the internet magazine El Popola Ĉinio.[56]
+
+The Vatican Radio has an Esperanto version of its website.[57]
+
+The US Army has published military phrase books in Esperanto,[58] to be used from the 1950s until the 1970s in war games by mock enemy forces. A field reference manual, FM 30-101-1 Feb. 1962, contained the grammar, English-Esperanto-English dictionary, and common phrases.
+
+Esperanto is the working language of several non-profit international organizations such as the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, a left-wing cultural association which had 724 members in over 85 countries in 2006.[59] There is also Education@Internet, which has developed from an Esperanto organization; most others are specifically Esperanto organizations. The largest of these, the Universal Esperanto Association, has an official consultative relationship with the United Nations and UNESCO, which recognized Esperanto as a medium for international understanding in 1954.[60][61] The World Esperanto Association collaborated in 2017 with UNESCO to deliver an Esperanto translation[62] of its magazine UNESCO Courier (Unesko Kuriero en Esperanto).
+
+Esperanto is also the first language of teaching and administration of the International Academy of Sciences San Marino.[63]
+
+The League of Nations made attempts to promote teaching Esperanto in member countries, but the resolutions were defeated mainly by French delegates who did not feel there was a need for it.[64]
+
+In the summer of 1924, the American Radio Relay League adopted Esperanto as its official international auxiliary language[65], and hoped that the language would be used by radio amateurs in international communications, but its actual use for radio communications was negligible.[citation needed]
+
+All the personal documents sold by the World Service Authority, including the World Passport, are written in Esperanto, together with English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese.[66]
+
+Zamenhof had the goal to "enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not",[19] as he wrote in 1887. The language is currently spoken by people living in more than 100 countries; there are about two thousand Esperanto native speakers and probably some hundred thousand people use the language regularly.
+
+On the other hand, one common criticism made is that Esperanto has failed to live up to the hopes of its creator, who dreamed of it becoming a universal second language.[67][68] In this regard it has to be noted that Zamenhof was well aware that it might take much time, maybe even many centuries, to get this hope into reality. In his speech at the World Esperanto Congress in Cambridge in 1907 he said, "we hope that earlier or later, maybe after many centuries, on a neutral language foundation, understanding one each other, the nations will build ... a big family circle."[69]
+
+Esperanto's phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and semantics are based on the Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. The sound inventory is essentially Slavic, as is much of the semantics, whereas the vocabulary derives primarily from the Romance languages, with a lesser contribution from Germanic languages and minor contributions from Slavic languages and Greek. Pragmatics and other aspects of the language not specified by Zamenhof's original documents were influenced by the native languages of early authors, primarily Russian, Polish, German, and French. Paul Wexler proposes that Esperanto is relexified Yiddish, which he claims is in turn a relexified Slavic language,[70] though this model is not accepted by mainstream academics.[71]
+
+Esperanto has been described as "a language lexically predominantly Romanic, morphologically intensively agglutinative, and to a certain degree isolating in character".[72] Typologically, Esperanto has prepositions and a pragmatic word order that by default is subject–verb–object. Adjectives can be freely placed before or after the nouns they modify, though placing them before the noun is more common. New words are formed through extensive prefixing and suffixing.
+
+Esperanto typically has 22 to 24 consonants, depending on the phonemic analysis and individual speaker, five vowels, and two semivowels that combine with the vowels to form six diphthongs. (The consonant /j/ and semivowel /i̯/ are both written j, and the uncommon consonant /dz/ is written with the digraph dz,[73] which is the only consonant that doesn't have its own letter.) Tone is not used to distinguish meanings of words. Stress is always on the second-last vowel in fully Esperanto words unless a final vowel o is elided, which occurs mostly in poetry. For example, familio "family" is [fa.mi.ˈli.o], with the stress on the second i, but when the word is used without the final o (famili’), the stress remains on the second i: [fa.mi.ˈli].
+
+The 23 consonants are:
+
+The sound /r/ is usually an alveolar trill [r], but can also be a uvular trill [ʀ],[74] a uvular fricative [ʁ],[75] and an alveolar approximant [ɹ].[76] Many other forms such as an alveolar tap [ɾ] are done and accepted in practice. The /v/ is normally pronounced like English v, but may be pronounced [ʋ] (between English v and w) or [w], depending on the language background of the speaker. A semivowel /u̯/ normally occurs only in diphthongs after the vowels /a/ and /e/, not as a consonant /w/. Common, if debated, assimilation includes the pronunciation of nk as [ŋk] and kz as [ɡz].
+
+A large number of consonant clusters can occur, up to three in initial position (as in stranga, "strange") and five in medial position (as in ekssklavo, "former slave"). Final clusters are uncommon except in unassimilated names, poetic elision of final o, and a very few basic words such as cent "hundred" and post "after".
+
+Esperanto has the five vowels found in such languages as Spanish, Swahili, Modern Hebrew, and Modern Greek.
+
+There are also two semivowels, /i̯/ and /u̯/, which combine with the monophthongs to form six falling diphthongs: aj, ej, oj, uj, aŭ, and eŭ.
+
+Since there are only five vowels, a good deal of variation in pronunciation is tolerated. For instance, e commonly ranges from [e] (French é) to [ɛ] (French è). These details often depend on the speaker's native language. A glottal stop may occur between adjacent vowels in some people's speech, especially when the two vowels are the same, as in heroo "hero" ([he.ˈro.o] or [he.ˈro.ʔo]) and praavo "great-grandfather" ([pra.ˈa.vo] or [pra.ˈʔa.vo]).
+
+The Esperanto alphabet is based on the Latin script, using a one-sound-one-letter principle, except for [d͡z]. It includes six letters with diacritics: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ (with circumflex), and ŭ (with breve). The alphabet does not include the letters q, w, x, or y, which are only used when writing unassimilated terms or proper names.
+
+The 28-letter alphabet is:
+
+All unaccented letters are pronounced approximately as in the IPA, with the exception of c.
+
+Esperanto j and c are used in a way familiar to speakers of German and many Slavic languages, but unfamiliar to most English speakers: j has a y sound [j~i̯], as in yellow and boy, and c has a ts sound [t͡s], as in hits or the zz in pizza.  In addition, Esperanto g is always hard, as in give, and Esperanto vowels are pronounced as in Spanish.
+
+The accented letters are:
+
+Even with the widespread adoption of Unicode, the letters with diacritics (found in the "Latin-Extended A" section of the Unicode Standard) can cause problems with printing and computing, because they are not found on most physical keyboards and are left out of certain fonts.
+
+There are two principal workarounds to this problem, which substitute digraphs for the accented letters. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, created an "h-convention", which replaces ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ with ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, and u, respectively.[77] If used in a database, a program in principle could not determine whether to render, for example, ch as c followed by h or as ĉ, and would fail to render, for example, the word senchava properly, unless its component parts were intentionally separated, as in e.g. senc·hava. A more recent "x-convention" has gained ground since the advent of computing. This system replaces each diacritic with an x (not part of the Esperanto alphabet) after the letter, producing the six digraphs cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, and ux.
+
+There are computer keyboard layouts that support the Esperanto alphabet, and some systems use software that automatically replaces x- or h-convention digraphs with the corresponding diacritic letters (for example, Amiketo[78] for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, Esperanta Klavaro for Windows Phone,[79] and Gboard and AnySoftKeyboard for Android).
+
+Criticisms are made of the letters with circumflex diacritics, which some find odd or cumbersome, along with their being invented specifically for Esperanto rather than borrowed from existing languages; as well as being arguably unnecessary, as for example with the use of ĥ instead of x and ŭ instead of w.[80] However Zamenhof did not choose those letters arbitrarily: in fact they were inspired by Czech letters with caron diacritic, but replacing the caron by a circumflex for the ease of those who had (or could avail themselves of) a French typewriter (with dead-key circumflex); the Czech ž was replaced by ĵ by analogy with the French j. The letter ŭ on the other hand comes from the u-breve as used in Latin prosody and (as ў) in Belorussian cyrillic, and French typewriters can render it approximately as the French letter ù.
+
+Esperanto words are mostly derived by stringing together roots, grammatical endings, and at times prefixes and suffixes. This process is regular, so that people can create new words as they speak and be understood. Compound words are formed with a modifier-first, head-final order, as in English (compare "birdsong" and "songbird," and likewise, birdokanto and kantobirdo). Speakers may optionally insert an o between the words in a compound noun if placing them together directly without the o would make the resulting word hard to say or understand.
+
+The different parts of speech are marked by their own suffixes: all common nouns end in -o, all adjectives in -a, all derived adverbs in -e, and all verbs except the jussive (or imperative) end in -s, specifically in one of six tense and mood suffixes, such as the present tense -as; the jussive mood, which is tenseless, ends in -u. Nouns and adjectives have two cases: nominative for grammatical subjects and in general, and accusative for direct objects and (after a preposition) to indicate direction of movement.
+
+Singular nouns used as grammatical subjects end in -o, plural subject nouns in -oj (pronounced [oi̯] like English "oy"). Singular direct object forms end in -on, and plural direct objects with the combination -ojn ([oi̯n]; rhymes with "coin"): -o indicates that the word is a noun, -j indicates the plural, and -n indicates the accusative (direct object) case. Adjectives agree with their nouns; their endings are singular subject -a ([a]; rhymes with "ha!"), plural subject -aj ([ai̯], pronounced "eye"), singular object -an, and plural object -ajn ([ai̯n]; rhymes with "fine").
+
+The suffix -n, besides indicating the direct object, is used to indicate movement and a few other things as well.
+
+The six verb inflections consist of three tenses and three moods. They are present tense -as, future tense -os, past tense -is, infinitive mood -i, conditional mood -us and jussive mood -u (used for wishes and commands). Verbs are not marked for person or number. Thus, kanti means "to sing", mi kantas means "I sing", vi kantas means "you sing", and ili kantas means "they sing".
+
+Word order is comparatively free. Adjectives may precede or follow nouns; subjects, verbs and objects may occur in any order. However, the article la "the", demonstratives such as tiu "that" and prepositions (such as ĉe "at") must come before their related nouns. Similarly, the negative ne "not" and conjunctions such as kaj "and" and ke "that" must precede the phrase or clause that they introduce. In copular (A = B) clauses, word order is just as important as in English: "people are animals" is distinguished from "animals are people".
+
+The core vocabulary of Esperanto was defined by Lingvo internacia, published by Zamenhof in 1887. This book listed 900 roots; these could be expanded into tens of thousands of words using prefixes, suffixes, and compounding. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto dictionary, Universala Vortaro, which had a larger set of roots. The rules of the language allowed speakers to borrow new roots as needed; it was recommended, however, that speakers use most international forms and then derive related meanings from these.
+
+Since then, many words have been borrowed, primarily (but not solely) from the European languages. Not all proposed borrowings become widespread, but many do, especially technical and scientific terms. Terms for everyday use, on the other hand, are more likely to be derived from existing roots; komputilo "computer", for instance, is formed from the verb komputi "compute" and the suffix -ilo "tool". Words are also calqued; that is, words acquire new meanings based on usage in other languages. For example, the word muso "mouse" has acquired the meaning of a computer mouse from its usage in many languages (English mouse, French souris, Dutch muis, Spanish ratón, etc.). Esperanto speakers often debate about whether a particular borrowing is justified or whether meaning can be expressed by deriving from or extending the meaning of existing words.
+
+Some compounds and formed words in Esperanto are not entirely straightforward; for example, eldoni, literally "give out", means "publish", paralleling the usage of certain European languages (such as German ausgeben, Dutch uitgeven, Russian издать izdat'‌). In addition, the suffix -um- has no defined meaning; words using the suffix must be learned separately (such as dekstren "to the right" and dekstrumen "clockwise").
+
+There are not many idiomatic or slang words in Esperanto, as these forms of speech tend to make international communication difficult—working against Esperanto's main goal.
+
+Instead of derivations of Esperanto roots, new roots are taken from European languages in the endeavor to create an international language.[81]
+
+The following short extract gives an idea of the character of Esperanto.[82] (Pronunciation is covered above; the Esperanto letter j is pronounced like English y.)
+
+Below are listed some useful Esperanto words and phrases along with IPA transcriptions:
+
+The vocabulary, orthography, phonology, and semantics are all thoroughly European. The vocabulary, for example, draws about three-quarters from Romance languages, with the rest split between Greek, English and German. The syntax has Germanic and Slavic tendencies, with internal tensions when these disagree; the semantics and phonology have been said to be Slavic.[83] The grammar is arguably more European than not, but Claude Piron argues that the word-formation is closer to Chinese.[84][85][86]
+
+Esperanto is frequently accused of being inherently sexist, because the default form of some nouns is masculine while a derived form is used for the feminine, which is said to retain traces of the male-dominated society of late 19th-century Europe of which Esperanto is a product.[87][88] These nouns are primarily titles and kin terms, such as sinjoro "Mr, sir" vs. sinjorino "Ms, lady" and patro "father" vs. patrino "mother". In addition, nouns that denote persons and whose definitions are not explicitly male are often assumed to be male unless explicitly made female, such as doktoro, a PhD doctor (male or unspecified) versus doktorino, a female PhD. This is analogous to the situation with the English suffix -ess, as in the words baron/baroness, waiter/waitress, etc. Esperanto pronouns are similar.  The pronoun li "he" may be used generically, whereas ŝi "she" is always female.[89]
+
+Esperanto speakers learn the language through self-directed study, online tutorials, and correspondence courses taught by volunteers. More recently, free teaching websites, like lernu! and Duolingo, are available.
+
+Esperanto instruction is rarely available at schools, including four primary schools in a pilot project under the supervision of the University of Manchester, and by one count at a few universities.[90] However, outside China and Hungary, these mostly involve informal arrangements rather than dedicated departments or state sponsorship. Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest had a department of Interlinguistics and Esperanto from 1966 to 2004, after which time instruction moved to vocational colleges; there are state examinations for Esperanto instructors.[91][92] Additionally, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland offers a diploma in Interlinguistics.[93] The Senate of Brazil passed a bill in 2009 that would make Esperanto an optional part of the curriculum in public schools, although mandatory if there is demand for it. As of 2015[update] the bill is still under consideration by the Chamber of Deputies.[94][95][96]
+
+In the United States, Esperanto is notably offered as a weekly evening course at Stanford University's Bechtel International Center. Conversational Esperanto, The International Language, is a free drop-in class that is open to Stanford students and the general public on campus during the academic year.[97] With administrative permission, Stanford Students can take the class for two credits a quarter through the Linguistics Department. "Even four lessons are enough to get more than just the basics," the Esperanto at Stanford website reads.
+
+After taking the Esperanto course at their university and becoming fascinated with the language, two Stanford students embarked on a research project travelling around Europe to document the history and usage of Esperanto. They visited formal institutions devoted to Esperanto, including the Esperanto Museum in Vienna, and participated in tours conducted in the language and distributed a survey to major Esperanto organizations. Their research focused on the community of Esperanto speakers with the hope of engaging the Esperanto community and the public at large.[98]
+
+Various educators have estimated that Esperanto can be learned in anywhere from one quarter to one twentieth the amount of time required for other languages.[99] Claude Piron, an Esperanto-Activist and Chinese–English–Russian–Spanish translator for the United Nations, argued that Esperanto is far more intuitive than many ethnic languages: "Esperanto relies entirely on innate reflexes [and] differs from all other languages in that you can always trust your natural tendency to generalize patterns. ... The same neuropsychological law [—called by] Jean Piaget generalizing assimilation—applies to word formation as well as to grammar."[100]
+
+Four primary schools in Britain, with 230 pupils, are currently following a course in "propaedeutic Esperanto"—that is, instruction in Esperanto to raise language awareness and accelerate subsequent learning of foreign languages—under the supervision of the University of Manchester. As they put it,
+
+Studies have been conducted in New Zealand,[102] United States,[103][104][105] Germany,[106] Italy[107] and Australia.[108] The results of these studies were favorable and demonstrated that studying Esperanto before another foreign language expedites the acquisition of the other, natural language. This appears to be because learning subsequent foreign languages is easier than learning one's first foreign language, whereas the use of a grammatically simple and culturally flexible auxiliary language like Esperanto lessens the first-language learning hurdle. In one study,[109] a group of European secondary school students studied Esperanto for one year, then French for three years, and ended up with a significantly better command of French than a control group, who studied French for all four years.
+
+Esperanto is by far the most widely spoken constructed language in the world.[110] Speakers are most numerous in Europe and East Asia, especially in urban areas, where they often form Esperanto clubs.[111] Esperanto is particularly prevalent in the northern and central countries of Europe; in China, Korea, Japan, and Iran within Asia;[47] in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico in the Americas;[5] and in Togo in Africa.[112]
+
+Countering a common criticism against Esperanto, the statistician Svend Nielsen has found there to be no significant correlation between the number of Esperanto speakers and similarity of a given national mother language to Esperanto. He concludes that Esperanto tends to be more popular in countries that are rich, with widespread Internet access and that tend to contribute more to science and culture. Linguistic diversity within a country was found to have a slight inverse correlation with Esperanto popularity.[113]
+
+An estimate of the number of Esperanto speakers was made by Sidney S. Culbert, a retired psychology professor at the University of Washington and a longtime Esperantist, who tracked down and tested Esperanto speakers in sample areas in dozens of countries over a period of twenty years. Culbert concluded that between one and two million people speak Esperanto at Foreign Service Level 3, "professionally proficient" (able to communicate moderately complex ideas without hesitation, and to follow speeches, radio broadcasts, etc.).[114] Culbert's estimate was not made for Esperanto alone, but formed part of his listing of estimates for all languages of more than one million speakers, published annually in the World Almanac and Book of Facts. Culbert's most detailed account of his methodology is found in a 1989 letter to David Wolff.[115] Since Culbert never published detailed intermediate results for particular countries and regions, it is difficult to independently gauge the accuracy of his results.
+
+In the Almanac, his estimates for numbers of language speakers were rounded to the nearest million, thus the number for Esperanto speakers is shown as two million. This latter figure appears in Ethnologue. Assuming that this figure is accurate, that means that about 0.03% of the world's population speak the language. Although it is not Zamenhof's goal of a universal language, it still represents a level of popularity unmatched by any other constructed language.
+
+Marcus Sikosek (now Ziko van Dijk) has challenged this figure of 1.6 million as exaggerated. He estimated that even if Esperanto speakers were evenly distributed, assuming one million Esperanto speakers worldwide would lead one to expect about 180 in the city of Cologne. Van Dijk finds only 30 fluent speakers in that city, and similarly smaller-than-expected figures in several other places thought to have a larger-than-average concentration of Esperanto speakers. He also notes that there are a total of about 20,000 members of the various Esperanto organizations (other estimates are higher). Though there are undoubtedly many Esperanto speakers who are not members of any Esperanto organization, he thinks it unlikely that there are fifty times more speakers than organization members.[111]
+
+Finnish linguist Jouko Lindstedt, an expert on native-born Esperanto speakers, presented the following scheme[116] to show the overall proportions of language capabilities within the Esperanto community:
+
+In 2017, doctoral student Svend Nielsen estimated around 63,000 Esperanto speakers worldwide, taking into account association memberships, user-generated data from Esperanto websites and census statistics. This number, however, was disputed by statistician Sten Johansson, who questioned the reliability of the source data and highlighted a wide margin of error, the latter point with which Nielsen agrees. Both have stated, however, that this new number is likely more realistic than some earlier projections.[4]
+
+In the absence of Dr. Culbert's detailed sampling data, or any other census data, it is impossible to state the number of speakers with certainty. According to the website of the World Esperanto Association:
+
+Native Esperanto speakers, denaskuloj, have learned the language from birth from Esperanto-speaking parents.[117] This usually happens when Esperanto is the chief or only common language in an international family, but sometimes occurs in a family of Esperanto speakers who often use the language.[118] The 15th edition of Ethnologue cited estimates that there were 200 to 2000 native speakers in 1996,[119] but these figures were removed from the 16th and 17th editions.[120] The current online version of Ethnologue gives "L1 users: 1,000 (Corsetti et al 2004)".[121]
+As of 1996, there were approximately 350 attested cases of families with native Esperanto speakers (which means there were around 700 Esperanto speaking natives in these families, not calculating older native speakers).[122]
+
+Esperantists can access an international culture, including a large body of original as well as translated literature. There are more than 25,000 Esperanto books, both originals and translations, as well as several regularly distributed Esperanto magazines. In 2013 a museum about Esperanto opened in China.[123] Esperantists use the language for free accommodations with Esperantists in 92 countries using the Pasporta Servo or to develop pen pals through Esperanto Koresponda Servo [eo].[124]
+
+Every year, Esperantists meet for the World Congress of Esperanto (Universala Kongreso de Esperanto).[125][126]
+
+Historically, much Esperanto music, such as Kaj Tiel Plu, has been in various folk traditions.[127] There is also a variety of classical and semi-classical choral music, both original and translated, as well as large ensemble music that includes voices singing Esperanto texts. Lou Harrison, who incorporated styles and instruments from many world cultures in his music, used Esperanto titles and/or texts in several of his works, most notably La Koro-Sutro (1973). David Gaines used Esperanto poems as well as an excerpt from a speech by Dr. Zamenhof for his Symphony No. One (Esperanto) for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (1994–98). He wrote original Esperanto text for his Povas plori mi ne plu (I Can Cry No Longer) for unaccompanied SATB choir (1994).
+
+There are also shared traditions, such as Zamenhof Day, and shared behaviour patterns. Esperantists speak primarily in Esperanto at international Esperanto meetings.
+
+Detractors of Esperanto occasionally criticize it as "having no culture". Proponents, such as Prof. Humphrey Tonkin of the University of Hartford, observe that Esperanto is "culturally neutral by design, as it was intended to be a facilitator between cultures, not to be the carrier of any one national culture". The late Scottish Esperanto author William Auld wrote extensively on the subject, arguing that Esperanto is "the expression of a common human culture, unencumbered by national frontiers. Thus it is considered a culture on its own."[128]
+
+A number of Esperanto associations also advance education in and about Esperanto and aim to preserve and promote the culture and heritage of Esperanto.[129] Poland added Esperanto to its list of Intangible heritage in 2014.[130]
+
+Some authors of works in Esperanto are:
+
+A reference to Esperanto appears in the book War with the Newts by Karel Čapek, published in 1936. As part of a passage on what language the salamander-looking creatures with human cognitive ability should learn, it is noted that "...in the Reform schools, Esperanto was taught as the medium of communication." (P. 206).
+[131]
+
+Esperanto has been used in a number of films and novels. Typically, this is done either to add the exotic flavour of a foreign language without representing any particular ethnicity, or to avoid going to the trouble of inventing a new language. The Charlie Chaplin film The Great Dictator (1940) showed Jewish ghetto shop signs in Esperanto. Two full-length feature films have been produced with dialogue entirely in Esperanto: Angoroj, in 1964, and Incubus, a 1965 B-movie horror film which is also notable for starring William Shatner shortly before he began working on Star Trek. In Captain Fantastic (2016) there is a dialogue in Esperanto. Finally, Mexican film director Alfonso Cuarón has publicly shown his fascination for Esperanto[132], going as far as naming his film production company Esperanto Filmoj ("Esperanto Films").
+
+A language school teaching "Entrenationo" (representing a satire on Esperanto) is featured in Graham Greene's novel The Confidential Agent, which was made into a film starring Charles Boyer and Lauren Bacall (1945). Other amateur productions have been made, such as a dramatization of the novel Gerda Malaperis (Gerda Has Disappeared). In Stamboul Train, Greene used Esperanto as the language on signs at the main train station in Budapest. A number of mainstream films in national languages have used Esperanto in some way.
+
+Esperanto is used as the universal language in the far future of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat and Deathworld stories. Poul Anderson's story "High Treason" takes place in a future where Earth became united politically but was still divided into many languages and cultures, and Esperanto became the language of its space armed forces, fighting wars with various extraterrestrial races. Esperanto is said to be the official language of all the peoples of Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series.
+
+The opening song to the popular video game Final Fantasy XI, "Memoro de la Ŝtono", was written in Esperanto. It was the first game in the series that was played online, and would have players from both Japan and North America (official European support was added after the North American launch) playing together on the same servers, using an auto-translate tool to communicate. The composer, Nobuo Uematsu, felt that Esperanto was a good language to symbolize worldwide unity.
+
+In the geek fiction novel Off to Be the Wizard, Esperanto is programmed as the language that triggers all of the wizard's spells. A teacher explains that this is because "no one really speaks Esperanto and it's easy to learn".
+
+Esperanto is found in the Image Comics series Saga as the language Blue, spoken by the horned inhabitants of Wreath. It is rendered in blue-colored text. Blue is generally only spoken by inhabitants of Wreath, while most other cultures use a universal language that appears to be simply named "Language." Some Wreath inhabitants use translator rings to communicate with those who don't speak Blue. Magic seems to be activated via the linguistic medium of Blue.
+
+In the television show Red Dwarf, which begins in the late 22nd century, crewman Arnold Rimmer constantly spends his time trying to learn Esperanto and failing, even compared to his bunkmate Dave Lister who only maintains a casual interest. Additionally many of the signs around the ship Red Dwarf are written in both English and Esperanto. The novel Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers states that, although not required, it is widely expected that officers in the Space Corps be fluent in the language, hence Rimmer's interest.
+
+Esperanto is available in the language selection in the video game Minecraft.[133]
+
+In Season 1, episode 15 of Nickelodeon's Danny Phantom the Werewolf-type creature, Wulf, speaks in Esperanto.
+
+In the 2010 animated film Superman/Batman: Apocalypse Supergirl is heard speaking Esperanto. It is never referred to as Esperanto, and serves as a proxy for the language of Krypton.
+
+In 1921 the French Academy of Sciences recommended using Esperanto for international scientific communication.[134] A few scientists and mathematicians, such as Maurice Fréchet (mathematics), John C. Wells (linguistics), Helmar Frank (pedagogy and cybernetics), and Nobel laureate Reinhard Selten (economics) have published part of their work in Esperanto. Frank and Selten were among the founders of the International Academy of Sciences in San Marino, sometimes called the "Esperanto University", where Esperanto is the primary language of teaching and administration.[135][136]
+
+A message in Esperanto was recorded and included in Voyager 1's Golden Record.
+
+Esperanto business groups have been active for many years. The French Chamber of Commerce did research in the 1920s and reported in The New York Times in 1921 that Esperanto seemed to be the best business language.[137]
+
+Zamenhof had three goals, as he wrote already in 1887: to create an easy language, to create a language ready to use "whether the language be universally accepted or not" and to find some means to get many people to learn the language.[19] So Zamenhof's intention was not only to create an easy-to-learn language to foster peace and international understanding as a general language, but also to create a language for immediate use by a (small) language community. Esperanto was to serve as an international auxiliary language, that is, as a universal second language, not to replace ethnic languages. This goal was shared by Zamenhof among Esperanto speakers at the beginning of the movement.[138] Later, Esperanto speakers began to see the language and the culture that had grown up around it as ends in themselves, even if Esperanto is never adopted by the United Nations or other international organizations.[134]
+
+Esperanto speakers who want to see Esperanto adopted officially or on a large scale worldwide are commonly called finvenkistoj, from fina venko, meaning "final victory".[139] It has to be noted that there are two kinds of "finvenkismo"–"desubismo" and "desuprismo"; the first aims to spread Esperanto between ordinary people ("desube", from below) aiming to form a steadily growing community of Esperanto speakers. The second aims to act from above ("desupre"), beginning with politicians. Zamenhof considered the first way to have a better perspective, as "for such affairs as ours, governments come with their approval and help usually only, when everything is already completely finished".[140]
+
+Those who focus on the intrinsic value of the language are commonly called raŭmistoj, from Rauma, Finland, where a declaration on the short-term improbability of the fina venko and the value of Esperanto culture was made at the International Youth Congress in 1980.[141] However the "Manifesto de Raŭmo" clearly mentions the intention to further spread the language: "We want to spread Esperanto to put into effect its positive values more and more, step by step".[142]
+
+In 1996 the Prague Manifesto was adopted at the annual congress of the World Esperanto Association (UEA); it was subscribed by individual participants and later by other Esperanto speakers. More recently, language-learning apps like Duolingo and Amikumu have helped to increase the amount of fluent speakers of Esperanto, and find others in their area to speak the language with.
+
+The earliest flag, and the one most commonly used today, features a green five-pointed star against a white canton, upon a field of green. It was proposed to Zamenhof by Richard Geoghegan, author of the first Esperanto textbook for English speakers, in 1887. The flag was approved in 1905 by delegates to the first conference of Esperantists at Boulogne-sur-Mer. A version with an "E" superimposed over the green star is sometimes seen. Other variants include that for Christian Esperantists, with a white Christian cross superimposed upon the green star, and that for Leftists, with the color of the field changed from green to red.[143]
+
+In 1987, a second flag design was chosen in a contest organized by the UEA celebrating the first centennial of the language. It featured a white background with two stylised curved "E"s facing each other. Dubbed the "jubilea simbolo" (jubilee symbol),[144] it attracted criticism from some Esperantists, who dubbed it the "melono" (melon) because of the design's elliptical shape. It is still in use, though to a lesser degree than the traditional symbol, known as the "verda stelo" (green star).[145]
+
+Esperanto has been placed in many proposed political situations. The most popular of these is the Europe–Democracy–Esperanto, which aims to establish Esperanto as the official language of the European Union. Grin's Report, published in 2005 by François Grin, found that the use of English as the lingua franca within the European Union costs billions annually and significantly benefits English-speaking countries financially.[146] The report considered a scenario where Esperanto would be the lingua franca, and found that it would have many advantages, particularly economically speaking, as well as ideologically.
+
+Russian Esperanto writer Nikolai Nekrasov was arrested during the Stalinist repressions of the late 1930s, accused of being "an organizer and leader of a fascist, espionage, terrorist organization of Esperantists", and executed on October 4, 1938. Another Esperanto writer Vladimir Varankin was executed on October 3, 1938.
+
+Esperanto has served an important role in several religions, such as Oomoto from Japan and the Bahá'í Faith from Iran, and has been encouraged by others, like some Spiritist movements.
+
+The Oomoto religion encourages the use of Esperanto among its followers and includes Zamenhof as one of its deified spirits.[147]
+
+The Bahá'í Faith encourages the use of an auxiliary international language. `Abdu'l-Bahá praised the ideal of Esperanto, and there was an affinity between Esperantists and Bahá'ís during the late 19th century and early 20th century.[148][149]
+
+On February 12, 1913, `Abdu'l-Bahá gave a talk to the Paris Esperanto Society,
+
+Now, praise be to God that Dr. Zamenhof has invented the Esperanto language. It has all the potential qualities of becoming the international means of communication. All of us must be grateful and thankful to him for this noble effort; for in this way he has served his fellowmen well. With untiring effort and self-sacrifice on the part of its devotees Esperanto will become universal. Therefore every one of us must study this language and spread it as far as possible so that day by day it may receive a broader recognition, be accepted by all nations and governments of the world, and become a part of the curriculum in all the public schools. I hope that Esperanto will be adopted as the language of all the future international conferences and congresses, so that all people need acquire only two languages—one their own tongue and the other the international language. Then perfect union will be established between all the people of the world. Consider how difficult it is today to communicate with various nations. If one studies fifty languages one may yet travel through a country and not know the language. Therefore I hope that you will make the utmost effort, so that this language of Esperanto may be widely spread[150]
+
+Lidia Zamenhof, daughter of L. L. Zamenhof, became a Bahá'í around 1925.[149] James Ferdinand Morton, Jr., an early member of the Bahá'í Faith in Greater Boston, was vice-president of the Esperanto League for North America.[151] Ehsan Yarshater, the founding editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, notes how as a child in Iran he learned Esperanto and that when his mother was visiting Haifa on a Bahá'í pilgrimage he wrote her a letter in Persian as well as Esperanto.[152] At the request of 'Abdu’l-Baha, Agnes Baldwin Alexander became an early advocate of Esperanto and used it to spread the Bahá’í teachings at meetings and conferences in Japan.
+
+Today there exists an active sub-community of Bahá'í Esperantists and various volumes of Bahá'í literature have been translated into Esperanto. In 1973, the Bahá'í Esperanto-League for active Bahá'í supporters of Esperanto was founded.[149]
+
+In 1908, spiritist Camilo Chaigneau wrote an article named "Spiritism and Esperanto" in the periodic La Vie d'Outre-Tombe recommending the use of Esperanto in a "central magazine" for all spiritists and esperantists. Esperanto then became actively promoted by spiritists, at least in Brazil, initially by Ismael Gomes Braga and František Lorenz; the latter is known in Brazil as Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz, and was a pioneer of both spiritist and Esperantist movements in this country.[153]
+
+The Brazilian Spiritist Federation publishes Esperanto coursebooks, translations of Spiritism's basic books, and encourages Spiritists to become Esperantists.[154]
+
+The first translation of the Bible into Esperanto was a translation of the Tanakh or Old Testament done by L. L. Zamenhof. The translation was reviewed and compared with other languages' translations by a group of British clergy and scholars before its publication at the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1910. In 1926 this was published along with a New Testament translation, in an edition commonly called the "Londona Biblio". In the 1960s, the Internacia Asocio de Bibliistoj kaj Orientalistoj tried to organize a new, ecumenical Esperanto Bible version.[155] Since then, the Dutch Remonstrant pastor Gerrit Berveling has translated the Deuterocanonical or apocryphal books in addition to new translations of the Gospels, some of the New Testament epistles, and some books of the Tanakh or Old Testament. These have been published in various separate booklets, or serialized in Dia Regno, but the Deuterocanonical books have appeared in recent editions of the Londona Biblio.
+
+Christian Esperanto organizations include two that were formed early in the history of Esperanto:
+
+Individual churches using Esperanto include:
+
+Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran called on Muslims to learn Esperanto and praised its use as a medium for better understanding among peoples of different religious backgrounds. After he suggested that Esperanto replace English as an international lingua franca, it began to be used in the seminaries of Qom. An Esperanto translation of the Qur'an was published by the state shortly thereafter.[166][167]
+
+Though Esperanto itself has changed little since the publication of Fundamento de Esperanto (Foundation of Esperanto), a number of reform projects have been proposed over the years, starting with Zamenhof's proposals in 1894 and Ido in 1907. Several later constructed languages, such as Universal, were based on Esperanto.
+
+In modern times, attempts have been made to eliminate perceived sexism in the language, such as Riism.
+
+There have been numerous objections to Esperanto over the years. For example, there have been criticism that Esperanto is not neutral enough, but also that it should convey a specific culture, which would make it less neutral; that Esperanto does not draw on a wide enough selection of the world's languages, but also that it should be more narrowly European.[168][169]
+
+Esperantists often argue for Esperanto as a culturally neutral means of communication. However, it is often accused of being Eurocentric.[168]  This is most often noted in regard to the vocabulary, but applies equally to the orthography, phonology, and semantics, all of which are thoroughly European.  The vocabulary, for example, draws about three-quarters from Romance languages, and the remainder primarily from Greek, English and German.  The syntax is Romance, and the phonology and semantics are Slavic. The grammar is arguably more European than not. Critics argue that a truly neutral language would draw its vocabulary from a much wider variety of languages, so as not to give unfair advantage to speakers of any of them. Although a truly representative sampling of the world's thousands of languages would be unworkable, a derivation from, say, the Romance, Semitic, Indic, Bantu, and Sino-Tibetan language families would strike many as being fairer than Esperanto-like solutions, as these families cover about 60% of the world's population, compared to a quarter for Romance and Germanic.[citation needed]
+
+Esperanto is frequently accused of being inherently sexist, because the default form of some nouns is masculine while a derived form is used for the feminine, which is said to retain traces of the male-dominated society of late 19th-century Europe of which Esperanto is a product.[87][170] There are a couple dozen masculine nouns, primarily titles and kin terms, such as sinjoro "Mr, sir" vs. sinjorino "Mrs, ma'am" and patro "father" vs. patrino "mother". In addition, gender-neutral nouns are often assumed to be male unless explicitly made female, such as doktoro, a PhD doctor (male or unspecified) versus doktorino, a female PhD. This is analogous to the situation with the English suffix -ess, as in baron/baroness, waiter/waitress etc. Esperanto pronouns are similar. As in English, li "he" may be used generically, whereas ŝi "she" is always female.[171]
+
+Speakers of languages without grammatical case or adjectival agreement frequently complain about these aspects of Esperanto. In addition, in the past some people found the Classical Greek forms of the plural (nouns in -oj, adjectives in -aj) to be awkward, proposing instead that Italian -i be used for nouns, and that no plural be used for adjectives. These suggestions were adopted by the Ido reform.[168][169]
+
+One common criticism made is that Esperanto has failed to live up to the hopes of its creator, who dreamed of it becoming a universal second language.[67][68] Because people were reluctant to learn a new language which hardly anyone spoke, Zamenhof asked people to sign a promise to start learning Esperanto once ten million people made the same promise, but he "was disappointed to receive only a thousand responses."[172] and exceeding even two million has been challenging.[5]
+
+There are some geographical and astronomical features named after Esperanto, or after its creator L. L. Zamenhof. These include Esperanto Island in Antarctica,[173] and the asteroids 1421 Esperanto and 1462 Zamenhof discovered by Finnish astronomer and Esperantist Yrjö Väisälä.

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+Esperanto (/ˌɛspəˈrɑːntoʊ, -ˈræn-/)[8][9] is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. It was created by Polish ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887. Zamenhof first described the language in The International Language, which he published in five languages under the pseudonym "Doktoro Esperanto". (This book is often nicknamed in Esperanto as la Unua Libro i.e. The First Book.) The word esperanto translates into English as "one who hopes".[10]
+
+Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language to foster world peace and international understanding, and to build a "community of speakers", as he believed that one could not have a language without such a community.[citation needed]
+
+His original title for the language was simply "the international language" (la lingvo internacia), but early speakers grew fond of the name Esperanto and began to use it as the name for the language just two years after its creation.  The name quickly gained prominence and has been used as an official name ever since.[11]
+
+In 1905, Zamenhof published Fundamento de Esperanto ("Foundation[Note 1] of Esperanto") as a definitive guide to the language. Later that year, French Esperantists organized with his participation the first World Esperanto Congress, an ongoing annual conference, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. The first congress ratified the Declaration of Boulogne, which established several foundational premises for the Esperanto movement; one of its pronouncements is that Fundamento de Esperanto is the only obligatory authority over the language; another is that the Esperanto movement is exclusively a linguistic movement and that no further meaning can ever be ascribed to it. Zamenhof also proposed to the first congress that an independent body of linguistic scholars should steward the future evolution of Esperanto, foreshadowing the founding of the Akademio de Esperanto (in part modeled after the Académie française), which was established soon thereafter. Since 1905, the congress has been held in a different country every year, with the exceptions of the years during the World Wars. In 1908, a group of young Esperanto speakers led by the Swiss Hector Hodler established the Universal Esperanto Association in order to provide a central organization for the global Esperanto community.
+
+Esperanto grew throughout the 20th century, both as a language and as a linguistic community. Despite speakers facing persecution in regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin,[12] Esperanto speakers continued to establish organizations and publish periodicals tailored to specific regions and interests. In 1954, the United Nations granted official support to Esperanto as an international auxiliary language in the Montevideo Resolution.[13] Several writers have contributed to the growing body of Esperanto literature, including William Auld, who received the first nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature for a literary work in Esperanto in 1999, followed by two more in 2004 and 2006. Those writing in Esperanto are also officially represented in PEN International, the worldwide writers association, through Esperanto PEN Centro.[14]
+
+The development of Esperanto has continued unabated into the 21st century. The advent of the Internet has had a significant impact on the language, as learning it has become increasingly accessible on platforms such as Duolingo, and as speakers have increasingly networked on platforms such as Amikumu.[15] With up to two million speakers, a small portion of whom are native speakers,[5] it is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world.[16] Although no country has adopted Esperanto officially,[Note 2] Esperantujo ("Esperanto-land") is the name given to the collection of places where it is spoken, and the language is widely employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television, and radio.[17] Some people have chosen to learn Esperanto for its purported help in third language acquisition, like Latin.
+
+While many of its advocates continue to hope for the day that Esperanto becomes officially recognized as the international auxiliary language, some (including raŭmistoj) have stopped focusing on this goal and instead view the Esperanto community as a "stateless diasporic linguistic group" ("senŝtata diaspora lingva kolektivo") based on freedom of association, with a culture worthy of preservation, based solely on its own merit.[17]
+
+Zamenhof had three goals, as he wrote in Unua Libro:
+
+According to the database Ethnologue (published by the Summer Institute of Linguistics), up to two million people worldwide, to varying degrees, speak Esperanto,[5][20] including about 1,000 to 2,000 native speakers who learned Esperanto from birth.[21] The Universal Esperanto Association has more than 5500 members in 120[22] countries. Its usage is highest in Europe, East Asia, and South America.[23]
+
+Lernu! is one of the most popular online learning platforms for Esperanto. Already in 2013, the "lernu.net" site reported 150,000 registered users and had between 150,000 and 200,000 visitors each month.[24] Lernu currently has nearly 300,000 registered users, who are able to view the site's interface in their choice of 24 languages – Catalan, Chinese (both simplified and traditional characters) Danish, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Kirundi, Kiswahili, Norwegian (Bokmål), Persian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish and Ukrainian; a further five languages — Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Indonesian and Spanish – have at least 70 percent of the interface localized; nine additional languages – Dutch, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese – are in varying stages of completing the interface translation. About 50,000 lernu.net users possess at least a basic understanding of Esperanto.
+
+With over 283,000 articles, Esperanto Wikipedia (Vikipedio) is the 32nd-largest Wikipedia, as measured by the number of articles,[25] and is the largest Wikipedia in a constructed language.[26] About 150,000 users consult the Vikipedio regularly, as attested by Wikipedia's automatically aggregated log-in data, which showed that in October 2019 the website has 117,366 unique individual visitors per month, plus 33,572 who view the site on a mobile device instead.[27]
+
+On February 22, 2012, Google Translate added Esperanto as its 64th language.[28] On July 25, 2016, Yandex Translate added Esperanto as a language.[29]
+
+On May 28, 2015, the language learning platform Duolingo launched a free Esperanto course for English speakers.[30] On March 25, 2016, when the first Duolingo Esperanto course completed its beta-testing phase, that course had 350,000 people registered to learn Esperanto through the medium of English. As of 27 May 2017[update], over one million users had begun learning Esperanto on Duolingo;[31] by July 2018 the number of learners had risen to 1.36 million. On July 20, 2018, Duolingo changed from recording users cumulatively; it now reports only the number of "active learners" (i.e., those who are currently studying, but not those who have completed the course),[32] which as of October 2019 stands at 294,000 learners.[33] On October 26, 2016, a second Duolingo Esperanto course, for which the language of instruction is Spanish, appeared on the same platform[34] and which as of October 2019 has a further 277,000 students.[35] A third Esperanto course, taught in Brazilian Portuguese, began its beta-testing phase on May 14, 2018, and as of October 2019, 232,000 people [36] are using this course. Esperanto is now one of 32 courses that Duolingo teaches through English, one of ten courses taught through Spanish and one of six courses taught through Portuguese.
+
+Esperanto was created in the late 1870s and early 1880s by L. L. Zamenhof, a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist from Białystok, then part of the Russian Empire but now part of Poland. According to Zamenhof, he created the language to reduce the "time and labour we spend in learning foreign tongues" and to foster harmony between people from different countries: "Were there but an international language, all translations would be made into it alone ... and all nations would be united in a common brotherhood."[19] His feelings and the situation in Białystok may be gleaned from an extract from his letter to Nikolai Borovko:[37]
+
+"The place where I was born and spent my childhood gave direction to all my future struggles. In Białystok the inhabitants were divided into four distinct elements: Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews; each of these spoke their own language and looked on all the others as enemies. In such a town a sensitive nature feels more acutely than elsewhere the misery caused by language division and sees at every step that the diversity of languages is the first, or at least the most influential, basis for the separation of the human family into groups of enemies. I was brought up as an idealist; I was taught that all people were brothers, while outside in the street at every step I felt that there were no people, only Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews and so on. This was always a great torment to my infant mind, although many people may smile at such an 'anguish for the world' in a child. Since at that time I thought that 'grown-ups' were omnipotent, so I often said to myself that when I grew up I would certainly destroy this evil."
+
+"It was invented in 1887 and designed that anyone could learn it in a few short months. Dr. Zamenhof lived on Dzika Street, No.9, which was just around the corner from the street on which we lived. Brother Afrum was so impressed with that idea that he learned Esperanto in a very short time at home from a little book. He then bought many dozens of them and gave them out to relatives, friends, just anyone he could, to support that magnificent idea for he felt that this would be a common bond to promote relationships with fellow men in the world. A group of people had organized and sent letters to the government asking to change the name of the street where Dr. Zamenhof lived for many years when he invented Esperanto, from Dzika to Zamenhofa. They were told that a petition with a large amount of signatures would be needed. That took time so they organized demonstrations carrying large posters encouraging people to learn the universal language and to sign the petitions... About the same time, in the middle of the block was marching a huge demonstration of people holding posters reading "Learn Esperanto", "Support the Universal language", "Esperanto the language of hope and expectation", "Esperanto the bond for international communication" and so on, and many "Sign the petitions". I will never forget that rich-poor, sad-glad parade and among all these people stood two fiery red tramway cars waiting on their opposite lanes and also a few doroszkas with their horses squeezed in between. Such a sight it was. Later a few blocks were changed from Dzika Street to Dr. Zamenhofa Street and a nice monument was erected there with his name and his invention inscribed on it, to honor his memory.
+
+About his goals Zamenhof wrote that he wants mankind to "learn and use", "en masse", "the proposed language as a living one".[19] The goal for Esperanto to become a general world language was not the only goal of Zamenhof; he also wanted to "enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not; in other words, the language is to be directly a means of international communication."[19]
+
+After some ten years of development, which Zamenhof spent translating literature into Esperanto as well as writing original prose and verse, the first book of Esperanto grammar was published in Warsaw on July 26, 1887. The number of speakers grew rapidly over the next few decades, at first primarily in the Russian Empire and Central Europe, then in other parts of Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years, speakers of Esperanto kept in contact primarily through correspondence and periodicals, but in 1905 the first World Congress of Esperanto speakers was held in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. Since then world congresses have been held in different countries every year, except during the two World Wars. Since the Second World War, they have been attended by an average of more than 2,000 people and up to 6,000 people.
+
+Zamenhof's name for the language was simply Internacia Lingvo ("International Language").[38]
+
+The autonomous territory of Neutral Moresnet, between what is today Belgium and Germany, had a sizable proportion of Esperanto-speakers among its small and multi-ethnic population. There was a proposal to make Esperanto its official language.
+
+However, neither Belgium nor Prussia (now within Germany) had ever surrendered its original claim to it. Around 1900, Germany in particular was taking a more aggressive stance towards the territory and was accused of sabotage and of obstructing the administrative process in order to force the issue. It was the First World War, however, that was the catalyst that brought about the end of neutrality. On August 4, 1914, Germany invaded Belgium, leaving Moresnet at first "an oasis in a desert of destruction".[39] In 1915, the territory was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia, without international recognition.
+
+After the Great War, a great opportunity seemed to arise for Esperanto when the Iranian delegation to the League of Nations proposed that it be adopted for use in international relations, following a report by Nitobe Inazō, an official delegate of the League of Nations during the 13th World Congress of Esperanto in Prague.[40] Ten delegates accepted the proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux. Hanotaux opposed all recognition of Esperanto at the League, from the first resolution on December 18, 1920 and subsequently through all efforts during the next three years.[41] Hanotaux did not like how the French language was losing its position as the international language and saw Esperanto as a threat, effectively wielding his veto power to block the decision. However, two years later, the League recommended that its member states include Esperanto in their educational curricula. The French government retaliated by banning all instruction in Esperanto in France's schools and universities .[42][43] The French Ministry Of Instruction said that "French and English would perish and the literary standard of the world would be debased".[43] Nonetheless, many people see the 1920s as the heyday of the Esperanto movement. Anarchism as a political movement was very supportive during this time of anationalism as well as of the Esperanto language.[44]
+
+Esperanto attracted the suspicion of many states. The situation was especially pronounced in Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain up until the 1950s, and in the Soviet Union under Stalin, from 1937 to 1956.
+
+In Nazi Germany, there was a motivation to forbid Esperanto because Zamenhof was Jewish, and due to the internationalist nature of Esperanto, which was perceived as "Bolshevist". In his work, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler specifically mentioned Esperanto as an example of a language that could be used by an international Jewish conspiracy once they achieved world domination.[12] Esperantists were killed during the Holocaust, with Zamenhof's family in particular singled out to be killed.[45] The efforts of a minority of German Esperantists to expel their Jewish colleagues and overtly align themselves with the Reich were futile, and Esperanto was legally forbidden in 1935. Esperantists in German concentration camps did, however, teach Esperanto to fellow prisoners, telling guards they were teaching Italian, the language of one of Germany's Axis allies.[46]
+
+In Imperial Japan, the left wing of the Japanese Esperanto movement was forbidden, but its leaders were careful enough not to give the impression to the government that the Esperantists were socialist revolutionaries, which proved a successful strategy.[47]
+
+After the October Revolution of 1917, Esperanto was given a measure of government support by the new workers' states in the former Russian Empire and later by the Soviet Union government, with the Soviet Esperanto Association being established as an officially recognized organization.[48] In his biography on Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky mentions that Stalin had studied Esperanto.[49] However, in 1937, at the height of the Great Purge, Stalin completely reversed the Soviet government's policies on Esperanto; many Esperanto speakers were executed, exiled or held in captivity in the Gulag labour camps. Quite often the accusation was: "You are an active member of an international spy organisation which hides itself under the name of 'Association of Soviet Esperantists' on the territory of the Soviet Union." Until the end of the Stalin era, it was dangerous to use Esperanto in the Soviet Union, despite the fact that it was never officially forbidden to speak Esperanto.[50]
+
+Fascist Italy allowed the use of Esperanto, finding its phonology similar to that of Italian and publishing some tourist material in the language.
+
+During and after the Spanish Civil War, Francoist Spain suppressed anarchists, socialists and Catalan nationalists for many years, among whom the use of Esperanto was extensive,[51] but in the 1950s the Esperanto movement was again tolerated.[52]
+
+Esperanto has not been a secondary official language of any recognized country, but it entered the education system of several countries such as Hungary[53] and China.[54]
+
+There were plans at the beginning of the 20th century to establish Neutral Moresnet, in central-western Europe, as the world's first Esperanto state. In addition, the self-proclaimed artificial island micronation of Rose Island, near Italy in the Adriatic Sea, used Esperanto as its official language in 1968, and another micronation, the extant Republic of Molossia, near Dayton, Nevada, uses Esperanto as an official language alongside English.[55]
+
+The Chinese government has used Esperanto since 2001 for daily news on china.org.cn. China also uses Esperanto in China Radio International and for the internet magazine El Popola Ĉinio.[56]
+
+The Vatican Radio has an Esperanto version of its website.[57]
+
+The US Army has published military phrase books in Esperanto,[58] to be used from the 1950s until the 1970s in war games by mock enemy forces. A field reference manual, FM 30-101-1 Feb. 1962, contained the grammar, English-Esperanto-English dictionary, and common phrases.
+
+Esperanto is the working language of several non-profit international organizations such as the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, a left-wing cultural association which had 724 members in over 85 countries in 2006.[59] There is also Education@Internet, which has developed from an Esperanto organization; most others are specifically Esperanto organizations. The largest of these, the Universal Esperanto Association, has an official consultative relationship with the United Nations and UNESCO, which recognized Esperanto as a medium for international understanding in 1954.[60][61] The World Esperanto Association collaborated in 2017 with UNESCO to deliver an Esperanto translation[62] of its magazine UNESCO Courier (Unesko Kuriero en Esperanto).
+
+Esperanto is also the first language of teaching and administration of the International Academy of Sciences San Marino.[63]
+
+The League of Nations made attempts to promote teaching Esperanto in member countries, but the resolutions were defeated mainly by French delegates who did not feel there was a need for it.[64]
+
+In the summer of 1924, the American Radio Relay League adopted Esperanto as its official international auxiliary language[65], and hoped that the language would be used by radio amateurs in international communications, but its actual use for radio communications was negligible.[citation needed]
+
+All the personal documents sold by the World Service Authority, including the World Passport, are written in Esperanto, together with English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese.[66]
+
+Zamenhof had the goal to "enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not",[19] as he wrote in 1887. The language is currently spoken by people living in more than 100 countries; there are about two thousand Esperanto native speakers and probably some hundred thousand people use the language regularly.
+
+On the other hand, one common criticism made is that Esperanto has failed to live up to the hopes of its creator, who dreamed of it becoming a universal second language.[67][68] In this regard it has to be noted that Zamenhof was well aware that it might take much time, maybe even many centuries, to get this hope into reality. In his speech at the World Esperanto Congress in Cambridge in 1907 he said, "we hope that earlier or later, maybe after many centuries, on a neutral language foundation, understanding one each other, the nations will build ... a big family circle."[69]
+
+Esperanto's phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and semantics are based on the Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. The sound inventory is essentially Slavic, as is much of the semantics, whereas the vocabulary derives primarily from the Romance languages, with a lesser contribution from Germanic languages and minor contributions from Slavic languages and Greek. Pragmatics and other aspects of the language not specified by Zamenhof's original documents were influenced by the native languages of early authors, primarily Russian, Polish, German, and French. Paul Wexler proposes that Esperanto is relexified Yiddish, which he claims is in turn a relexified Slavic language,[70] though this model is not accepted by mainstream academics.[71]
+
+Esperanto has been described as "a language lexically predominantly Romanic, morphologically intensively agglutinative, and to a certain degree isolating in character".[72] Typologically, Esperanto has prepositions and a pragmatic word order that by default is subject–verb–object. Adjectives can be freely placed before or after the nouns they modify, though placing them before the noun is more common. New words are formed through extensive prefixing and suffixing.
+
+Esperanto typically has 22 to 24 consonants, depending on the phonemic analysis and individual speaker, five vowels, and two semivowels that combine with the vowels to form six diphthongs. (The consonant /j/ and semivowel /i̯/ are both written j, and the uncommon consonant /dz/ is written with the digraph dz,[73] which is the only consonant that doesn't have its own letter.) Tone is not used to distinguish meanings of words. Stress is always on the second-last vowel in fully Esperanto words unless a final vowel o is elided, which occurs mostly in poetry. For example, familio "family" is [fa.mi.ˈli.o], with the stress on the second i, but when the word is used without the final o (famili’), the stress remains on the second i: [fa.mi.ˈli].
+
+The 23 consonants are:
+
+The sound /r/ is usually an alveolar trill [r], but can also be a uvular trill [ʀ],[74] a uvular fricative [ʁ],[75] and an alveolar approximant [ɹ].[76] Many other forms such as an alveolar tap [ɾ] are done and accepted in practice. The /v/ is normally pronounced like English v, but may be pronounced [ʋ] (between English v and w) or [w], depending on the language background of the speaker. A semivowel /u̯/ normally occurs only in diphthongs after the vowels /a/ and /e/, not as a consonant /w/. Common, if debated, assimilation includes the pronunciation of nk as [ŋk] and kz as [ɡz].
+
+A large number of consonant clusters can occur, up to three in initial position (as in stranga, "strange") and five in medial position (as in ekssklavo, "former slave"). Final clusters are uncommon except in unassimilated names, poetic elision of final o, and a very few basic words such as cent "hundred" and post "after".
+
+Esperanto has the five vowels found in such languages as Spanish, Swahili, Modern Hebrew, and Modern Greek.
+
+There are also two semivowels, /i̯/ and /u̯/, which combine with the monophthongs to form six falling diphthongs: aj, ej, oj, uj, aŭ, and eŭ.
+
+Since there are only five vowels, a good deal of variation in pronunciation is tolerated. For instance, e commonly ranges from [e] (French é) to [ɛ] (French è). These details often depend on the speaker's native language. A glottal stop may occur between adjacent vowels in some people's speech, especially when the two vowels are the same, as in heroo "hero" ([he.ˈro.o] or [he.ˈro.ʔo]) and praavo "great-grandfather" ([pra.ˈa.vo] or [pra.ˈʔa.vo]).
+
+The Esperanto alphabet is based on the Latin script, using a one-sound-one-letter principle, except for [d͡z]. It includes six letters with diacritics: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ (with circumflex), and ŭ (with breve). The alphabet does not include the letters q, w, x, or y, which are only used when writing unassimilated terms or proper names.
+
+The 28-letter alphabet is:
+
+All unaccented letters are pronounced approximately as in the IPA, with the exception of c.
+
+Esperanto j and c are used in a way familiar to speakers of German and many Slavic languages, but unfamiliar to most English speakers: j has a y sound [j~i̯], as in yellow and boy, and c has a ts sound [t͡s], as in hits or the zz in pizza.  In addition, Esperanto g is always hard, as in give, and Esperanto vowels are pronounced as in Spanish.
+
+The accented letters are:
+
+Even with the widespread adoption of Unicode, the letters with diacritics (found in the "Latin-Extended A" section of the Unicode Standard) can cause problems with printing and computing, because they are not found on most physical keyboards and are left out of certain fonts.
+
+There are two principal workarounds to this problem, which substitute digraphs for the accented letters. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, created an "h-convention", which replaces ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ with ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, and u, respectively.[77] If used in a database, a program in principle could not determine whether to render, for example, ch as c followed by h or as ĉ, and would fail to render, for example, the word senchava properly, unless its component parts were intentionally separated, as in e.g. senc·hava. A more recent "x-convention" has gained ground since the advent of computing. This system replaces each diacritic with an x (not part of the Esperanto alphabet) after the letter, producing the six digraphs cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, and ux.
+
+There are computer keyboard layouts that support the Esperanto alphabet, and some systems use software that automatically replaces x- or h-convention digraphs with the corresponding diacritic letters (for example, Amiketo[78] for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, Esperanta Klavaro for Windows Phone,[79] and Gboard and AnySoftKeyboard for Android).
+
+Criticisms are made of the letters with circumflex diacritics, which some find odd or cumbersome, along with their being invented specifically for Esperanto rather than borrowed from existing languages; as well as being arguably unnecessary, as for example with the use of ĥ instead of x and ŭ instead of w.[80] However Zamenhof did not choose those letters arbitrarily: in fact they were inspired by Czech letters with caron diacritic, but replacing the caron by a circumflex for the ease of those who had (or could avail themselves of) a French typewriter (with dead-key circumflex); the Czech ž was replaced by ĵ by analogy with the French j. The letter ŭ on the other hand comes from the u-breve as used in Latin prosody and (as ў) in Belorussian cyrillic, and French typewriters can render it approximately as the French letter ù.
+
+Esperanto words are mostly derived by stringing together roots, grammatical endings, and at times prefixes and suffixes. This process is regular, so that people can create new words as they speak and be understood. Compound words are formed with a modifier-first, head-final order, as in English (compare "birdsong" and "songbird," and likewise, birdokanto and kantobirdo). Speakers may optionally insert an o between the words in a compound noun if placing them together directly without the o would make the resulting word hard to say or understand.
+
+The different parts of speech are marked by their own suffixes: all common nouns end in -o, all adjectives in -a, all derived adverbs in -e, and all verbs except the jussive (or imperative) end in -s, specifically in one of six tense and mood suffixes, such as the present tense -as; the jussive mood, which is tenseless, ends in -u. Nouns and adjectives have two cases: nominative for grammatical subjects and in general, and accusative for direct objects and (after a preposition) to indicate direction of movement.
+
+Singular nouns used as grammatical subjects end in -o, plural subject nouns in -oj (pronounced [oi̯] like English "oy"). Singular direct object forms end in -on, and plural direct objects with the combination -ojn ([oi̯n]; rhymes with "coin"): -o indicates that the word is a noun, -j indicates the plural, and -n indicates the accusative (direct object) case. Adjectives agree with their nouns; their endings are singular subject -a ([a]; rhymes with "ha!"), plural subject -aj ([ai̯], pronounced "eye"), singular object -an, and plural object -ajn ([ai̯n]; rhymes with "fine").
+
+The suffix -n, besides indicating the direct object, is used to indicate movement and a few other things as well.
+
+The six verb inflections consist of three tenses and three moods. They are present tense -as, future tense -os, past tense -is, infinitive mood -i, conditional mood -us and jussive mood -u (used for wishes and commands). Verbs are not marked for person or number. Thus, kanti means "to sing", mi kantas means "I sing", vi kantas means "you sing", and ili kantas means "they sing".
+
+Word order is comparatively free. Adjectives may precede or follow nouns; subjects, verbs and objects may occur in any order. However, the article la "the", demonstratives such as tiu "that" and prepositions (such as ĉe "at") must come before their related nouns. Similarly, the negative ne "not" and conjunctions such as kaj "and" and ke "that" must precede the phrase or clause that they introduce. In copular (A = B) clauses, word order is just as important as in English: "people are animals" is distinguished from "animals are people".
+
+The core vocabulary of Esperanto was defined by Lingvo internacia, published by Zamenhof in 1887. This book listed 900 roots; these could be expanded into tens of thousands of words using prefixes, suffixes, and compounding. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto dictionary, Universala Vortaro, which had a larger set of roots. The rules of the language allowed speakers to borrow new roots as needed; it was recommended, however, that speakers use most international forms and then derive related meanings from these.
+
+Since then, many words have been borrowed, primarily (but not solely) from the European languages. Not all proposed borrowings become widespread, but many do, especially technical and scientific terms. Terms for everyday use, on the other hand, are more likely to be derived from existing roots; komputilo "computer", for instance, is formed from the verb komputi "compute" and the suffix -ilo "tool". Words are also calqued; that is, words acquire new meanings based on usage in other languages. For example, the word muso "mouse" has acquired the meaning of a computer mouse from its usage in many languages (English mouse, French souris, Dutch muis, Spanish ratón, etc.). Esperanto speakers often debate about whether a particular borrowing is justified or whether meaning can be expressed by deriving from or extending the meaning of existing words.
+
+Some compounds and formed words in Esperanto are not entirely straightforward; for example, eldoni, literally "give out", means "publish", paralleling the usage of certain European languages (such as German ausgeben, Dutch uitgeven, Russian издать izdat'‌). In addition, the suffix -um- has no defined meaning; words using the suffix must be learned separately (such as dekstren "to the right" and dekstrumen "clockwise").
+
+There are not many idiomatic or slang words in Esperanto, as these forms of speech tend to make international communication difficult—working against Esperanto's main goal.
+
+Instead of derivations of Esperanto roots, new roots are taken from European languages in the endeavor to create an international language.[81]
+
+The following short extract gives an idea of the character of Esperanto.[82] (Pronunciation is covered above; the Esperanto letter j is pronounced like English y.)
+
+Below are listed some useful Esperanto words and phrases along with IPA transcriptions:
+
+The vocabulary, orthography, phonology, and semantics are all thoroughly European. The vocabulary, for example, draws about three-quarters from Romance languages, with the rest split between Greek, English and German. The syntax has Germanic and Slavic tendencies, with internal tensions when these disagree; the semantics and phonology have been said to be Slavic.[83] The grammar is arguably more European than not, but Claude Piron argues that the word-formation is closer to Chinese.[84][85][86]
+
+Esperanto is frequently accused of being inherently sexist, because the default form of some nouns is masculine while a derived form is used for the feminine, which is said to retain traces of the male-dominated society of late 19th-century Europe of which Esperanto is a product.[87][88] These nouns are primarily titles and kin terms, such as sinjoro "Mr, sir" vs. sinjorino "Ms, lady" and patro "father" vs. patrino "mother". In addition, nouns that denote persons and whose definitions are not explicitly male are often assumed to be male unless explicitly made female, such as doktoro, a PhD doctor (male or unspecified) versus doktorino, a female PhD. This is analogous to the situation with the English suffix -ess, as in the words baron/baroness, waiter/waitress, etc. Esperanto pronouns are similar.  The pronoun li "he" may be used generically, whereas ŝi "she" is always female.[89]
+
+Esperanto speakers learn the language through self-directed study, online tutorials, and correspondence courses taught by volunteers. More recently, free teaching websites, like lernu! and Duolingo, are available.
+
+Esperanto instruction is rarely available at schools, including four primary schools in a pilot project under the supervision of the University of Manchester, and by one count at a few universities.[90] However, outside China and Hungary, these mostly involve informal arrangements rather than dedicated departments or state sponsorship. Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest had a department of Interlinguistics and Esperanto from 1966 to 2004, after which time instruction moved to vocational colleges; there are state examinations for Esperanto instructors.[91][92] Additionally, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland offers a diploma in Interlinguistics.[93] The Senate of Brazil passed a bill in 2009 that would make Esperanto an optional part of the curriculum in public schools, although mandatory if there is demand for it. As of 2015[update] the bill is still under consideration by the Chamber of Deputies.[94][95][96]
+
+In the United States, Esperanto is notably offered as a weekly evening course at Stanford University's Bechtel International Center. Conversational Esperanto, The International Language, is a free drop-in class that is open to Stanford students and the general public on campus during the academic year.[97] With administrative permission, Stanford Students can take the class for two credits a quarter through the Linguistics Department. "Even four lessons are enough to get more than just the basics," the Esperanto at Stanford website reads.
+
+After taking the Esperanto course at their university and becoming fascinated with the language, two Stanford students embarked on a research project travelling around Europe to document the history and usage of Esperanto. They visited formal institutions devoted to Esperanto, including the Esperanto Museum in Vienna, and participated in tours conducted in the language and distributed a survey to major Esperanto organizations. Their research focused on the community of Esperanto speakers with the hope of engaging the Esperanto community and the public at large.[98]
+
+Various educators have estimated that Esperanto can be learned in anywhere from one quarter to one twentieth the amount of time required for other languages.[99] Claude Piron, an Esperanto-Activist and Chinese–English–Russian–Spanish translator for the United Nations, argued that Esperanto is far more intuitive than many ethnic languages: "Esperanto relies entirely on innate reflexes [and] differs from all other languages in that you can always trust your natural tendency to generalize patterns. ... The same neuropsychological law [—called by] Jean Piaget generalizing assimilation—applies to word formation as well as to grammar."[100]
+
+Four primary schools in Britain, with 230 pupils, are currently following a course in "propaedeutic Esperanto"—that is, instruction in Esperanto to raise language awareness and accelerate subsequent learning of foreign languages—under the supervision of the University of Manchester. As they put it,
+
+Studies have been conducted in New Zealand,[102] United States,[103][104][105] Germany,[106] Italy[107] and Australia.[108] The results of these studies were favorable and demonstrated that studying Esperanto before another foreign language expedites the acquisition of the other, natural language. This appears to be because learning subsequent foreign languages is easier than learning one's first foreign language, whereas the use of a grammatically simple and culturally flexible auxiliary language like Esperanto lessens the first-language learning hurdle. In one study,[109] a group of European secondary school students studied Esperanto for one year, then French for three years, and ended up with a significantly better command of French than a control group, who studied French for all four years.
+
+Esperanto is by far the most widely spoken constructed language in the world.[110] Speakers are most numerous in Europe and East Asia, especially in urban areas, where they often form Esperanto clubs.[111] Esperanto is particularly prevalent in the northern and central countries of Europe; in China, Korea, Japan, and Iran within Asia;[47] in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico in the Americas;[5] and in Togo in Africa.[112]
+
+Countering a common criticism against Esperanto, the statistician Svend Nielsen has found there to be no significant correlation between the number of Esperanto speakers and similarity of a given national mother language to Esperanto. He concludes that Esperanto tends to be more popular in countries that are rich, with widespread Internet access and that tend to contribute more to science and culture. Linguistic diversity within a country was found to have a slight inverse correlation with Esperanto popularity.[113]
+
+An estimate of the number of Esperanto speakers was made by Sidney S. Culbert, a retired psychology professor at the University of Washington and a longtime Esperantist, who tracked down and tested Esperanto speakers in sample areas in dozens of countries over a period of twenty years. Culbert concluded that between one and two million people speak Esperanto at Foreign Service Level 3, "professionally proficient" (able to communicate moderately complex ideas without hesitation, and to follow speeches, radio broadcasts, etc.).[114] Culbert's estimate was not made for Esperanto alone, but formed part of his listing of estimates for all languages of more than one million speakers, published annually in the World Almanac and Book of Facts. Culbert's most detailed account of his methodology is found in a 1989 letter to David Wolff.[115] Since Culbert never published detailed intermediate results for particular countries and regions, it is difficult to independently gauge the accuracy of his results.
+
+In the Almanac, his estimates for numbers of language speakers were rounded to the nearest million, thus the number for Esperanto speakers is shown as two million. This latter figure appears in Ethnologue. Assuming that this figure is accurate, that means that about 0.03% of the world's population speak the language. Although it is not Zamenhof's goal of a universal language, it still represents a level of popularity unmatched by any other constructed language.
+
+Marcus Sikosek (now Ziko van Dijk) has challenged this figure of 1.6 million as exaggerated. He estimated that even if Esperanto speakers were evenly distributed, assuming one million Esperanto speakers worldwide would lead one to expect about 180 in the city of Cologne. Van Dijk finds only 30 fluent speakers in that city, and similarly smaller-than-expected figures in several other places thought to have a larger-than-average concentration of Esperanto speakers. He also notes that there are a total of about 20,000 members of the various Esperanto organizations (other estimates are higher). Though there are undoubtedly many Esperanto speakers who are not members of any Esperanto organization, he thinks it unlikely that there are fifty times more speakers than organization members.[111]
+
+Finnish linguist Jouko Lindstedt, an expert on native-born Esperanto speakers, presented the following scheme[116] to show the overall proportions of language capabilities within the Esperanto community:
+
+In 2017, doctoral student Svend Nielsen estimated around 63,000 Esperanto speakers worldwide, taking into account association memberships, user-generated data from Esperanto websites and census statistics. This number, however, was disputed by statistician Sten Johansson, who questioned the reliability of the source data and highlighted a wide margin of error, the latter point with which Nielsen agrees. Both have stated, however, that this new number is likely more realistic than some earlier projections.[4]
+
+In the absence of Dr. Culbert's detailed sampling data, or any other census data, it is impossible to state the number of speakers with certainty. According to the website of the World Esperanto Association:
+
+Native Esperanto speakers, denaskuloj, have learned the language from birth from Esperanto-speaking parents.[117] This usually happens when Esperanto is the chief or only common language in an international family, but sometimes occurs in a family of Esperanto speakers who often use the language.[118] The 15th edition of Ethnologue cited estimates that there were 200 to 2000 native speakers in 1996,[119] but these figures were removed from the 16th and 17th editions.[120] The current online version of Ethnologue gives "L1 users: 1,000 (Corsetti et al 2004)".[121]
+As of 1996, there were approximately 350 attested cases of families with native Esperanto speakers (which means there were around 700 Esperanto speaking natives in these families, not calculating older native speakers).[122]
+
+Esperantists can access an international culture, including a large body of original as well as translated literature. There are more than 25,000 Esperanto books, both originals and translations, as well as several regularly distributed Esperanto magazines. In 2013 a museum about Esperanto opened in China.[123] Esperantists use the language for free accommodations with Esperantists in 92 countries using the Pasporta Servo or to develop pen pals through Esperanto Koresponda Servo [eo].[124]
+
+Every year, Esperantists meet for the World Congress of Esperanto (Universala Kongreso de Esperanto).[125][126]
+
+Historically, much Esperanto music, such as Kaj Tiel Plu, has been in various folk traditions.[127] There is also a variety of classical and semi-classical choral music, both original and translated, as well as large ensemble music that includes voices singing Esperanto texts. Lou Harrison, who incorporated styles and instruments from many world cultures in his music, used Esperanto titles and/or texts in several of his works, most notably La Koro-Sutro (1973). David Gaines used Esperanto poems as well as an excerpt from a speech by Dr. Zamenhof for his Symphony No. One (Esperanto) for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (1994–98). He wrote original Esperanto text for his Povas plori mi ne plu (I Can Cry No Longer) for unaccompanied SATB choir (1994).
+
+There are also shared traditions, such as Zamenhof Day, and shared behaviour patterns. Esperantists speak primarily in Esperanto at international Esperanto meetings.
+
+Detractors of Esperanto occasionally criticize it as "having no culture". Proponents, such as Prof. Humphrey Tonkin of the University of Hartford, observe that Esperanto is "culturally neutral by design, as it was intended to be a facilitator between cultures, not to be the carrier of any one national culture". The late Scottish Esperanto author William Auld wrote extensively on the subject, arguing that Esperanto is "the expression of a common human culture, unencumbered by national frontiers. Thus it is considered a culture on its own."[128]
+
+A number of Esperanto associations also advance education in and about Esperanto and aim to preserve and promote the culture and heritage of Esperanto.[129] Poland added Esperanto to its list of Intangible heritage in 2014.[130]
+
+Some authors of works in Esperanto are:
+
+A reference to Esperanto appears in the book War with the Newts by Karel Čapek, published in 1936. As part of a passage on what language the salamander-looking creatures with human cognitive ability should learn, it is noted that "...in the Reform schools, Esperanto was taught as the medium of communication." (P. 206).
+[131]
+
+Esperanto has been used in a number of films and novels. Typically, this is done either to add the exotic flavour of a foreign language without representing any particular ethnicity, or to avoid going to the trouble of inventing a new language. The Charlie Chaplin film The Great Dictator (1940) showed Jewish ghetto shop signs in Esperanto. Two full-length feature films have been produced with dialogue entirely in Esperanto: Angoroj, in 1964, and Incubus, a 1965 B-movie horror film which is also notable for starring William Shatner shortly before he began working on Star Trek. In Captain Fantastic (2016) there is a dialogue in Esperanto. Finally, Mexican film director Alfonso Cuarón has publicly shown his fascination for Esperanto[132], going as far as naming his film production company Esperanto Filmoj ("Esperanto Films").
+
+A language school teaching "Entrenationo" (representing a satire on Esperanto) is featured in Graham Greene's novel The Confidential Agent, which was made into a film starring Charles Boyer and Lauren Bacall (1945). Other amateur productions have been made, such as a dramatization of the novel Gerda Malaperis (Gerda Has Disappeared). In Stamboul Train, Greene used Esperanto as the language on signs at the main train station in Budapest. A number of mainstream films in national languages have used Esperanto in some way.
+
+Esperanto is used as the universal language in the far future of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat and Deathworld stories. Poul Anderson's story "High Treason" takes place in a future where Earth became united politically but was still divided into many languages and cultures, and Esperanto became the language of its space armed forces, fighting wars with various extraterrestrial races. Esperanto is said to be the official language of all the peoples of Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series.
+
+The opening song to the popular video game Final Fantasy XI, "Memoro de la Ŝtono", was written in Esperanto. It was the first game in the series that was played online, and would have players from both Japan and North America (official European support was added after the North American launch) playing together on the same servers, using an auto-translate tool to communicate. The composer, Nobuo Uematsu, felt that Esperanto was a good language to symbolize worldwide unity.
+
+In the geek fiction novel Off to Be the Wizard, Esperanto is programmed as the language that triggers all of the wizard's spells. A teacher explains that this is because "no one really speaks Esperanto and it's easy to learn".
+
+Esperanto is found in the Image Comics series Saga as the language Blue, spoken by the horned inhabitants of Wreath. It is rendered in blue-colored text. Blue is generally only spoken by inhabitants of Wreath, while most other cultures use a universal language that appears to be simply named "Language." Some Wreath inhabitants use translator rings to communicate with those who don't speak Blue. Magic seems to be activated via the linguistic medium of Blue.
+
+In the television show Red Dwarf, which begins in the late 22nd century, crewman Arnold Rimmer constantly spends his time trying to learn Esperanto and failing, even compared to his bunkmate Dave Lister who only maintains a casual interest. Additionally many of the signs around the ship Red Dwarf are written in both English and Esperanto. The novel Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers states that, although not required, it is widely expected that officers in the Space Corps be fluent in the language, hence Rimmer's interest.
+
+Esperanto is available in the language selection in the video game Minecraft.[133]
+
+In Season 1, episode 15 of Nickelodeon's Danny Phantom the Werewolf-type creature, Wulf, speaks in Esperanto.
+
+In the 2010 animated film Superman/Batman: Apocalypse Supergirl is heard speaking Esperanto. It is never referred to as Esperanto, and serves as a proxy for the language of Krypton.
+
+In 1921 the French Academy of Sciences recommended using Esperanto for international scientific communication.[134] A few scientists and mathematicians, such as Maurice Fréchet (mathematics), John C. Wells (linguistics), Helmar Frank (pedagogy and cybernetics), and Nobel laureate Reinhard Selten (economics) have published part of their work in Esperanto. Frank and Selten were among the founders of the International Academy of Sciences in San Marino, sometimes called the "Esperanto University", where Esperanto is the primary language of teaching and administration.[135][136]
+
+A message in Esperanto was recorded and included in Voyager 1's Golden Record.
+
+Esperanto business groups have been active for many years. The French Chamber of Commerce did research in the 1920s and reported in The New York Times in 1921 that Esperanto seemed to be the best business language.[137]
+
+Zamenhof had three goals, as he wrote already in 1887: to create an easy language, to create a language ready to use "whether the language be universally accepted or not" and to find some means to get many people to learn the language.[19] So Zamenhof's intention was not only to create an easy-to-learn language to foster peace and international understanding as a general language, but also to create a language for immediate use by a (small) language community. Esperanto was to serve as an international auxiliary language, that is, as a universal second language, not to replace ethnic languages. This goal was shared by Zamenhof among Esperanto speakers at the beginning of the movement.[138] Later, Esperanto speakers began to see the language and the culture that had grown up around it as ends in themselves, even if Esperanto is never adopted by the United Nations or other international organizations.[134]
+
+Esperanto speakers who want to see Esperanto adopted officially or on a large scale worldwide are commonly called finvenkistoj, from fina venko, meaning "final victory".[139] It has to be noted that there are two kinds of "finvenkismo"–"desubismo" and "desuprismo"; the first aims to spread Esperanto between ordinary people ("desube", from below) aiming to form a steadily growing community of Esperanto speakers. The second aims to act from above ("desupre"), beginning with politicians. Zamenhof considered the first way to have a better perspective, as "for such affairs as ours, governments come with their approval and help usually only, when everything is already completely finished".[140]
+
+Those who focus on the intrinsic value of the language are commonly called raŭmistoj, from Rauma, Finland, where a declaration on the short-term improbability of the fina venko and the value of Esperanto culture was made at the International Youth Congress in 1980.[141] However the "Manifesto de Raŭmo" clearly mentions the intention to further spread the language: "We want to spread Esperanto to put into effect its positive values more and more, step by step".[142]
+
+In 1996 the Prague Manifesto was adopted at the annual congress of the World Esperanto Association (UEA); it was subscribed by individual participants and later by other Esperanto speakers. More recently, language-learning apps like Duolingo and Amikumu have helped to increase the amount of fluent speakers of Esperanto, and find others in their area to speak the language with.
+
+The earliest flag, and the one most commonly used today, features a green five-pointed star against a white canton, upon a field of green. It was proposed to Zamenhof by Richard Geoghegan, author of the first Esperanto textbook for English speakers, in 1887. The flag was approved in 1905 by delegates to the first conference of Esperantists at Boulogne-sur-Mer. A version with an "E" superimposed over the green star is sometimes seen. Other variants include that for Christian Esperantists, with a white Christian cross superimposed upon the green star, and that for Leftists, with the color of the field changed from green to red.[143]
+
+In 1987, a second flag design was chosen in a contest organized by the UEA celebrating the first centennial of the language. It featured a white background with two stylised curved "E"s facing each other. Dubbed the "jubilea simbolo" (jubilee symbol),[144] it attracted criticism from some Esperantists, who dubbed it the "melono" (melon) because of the design's elliptical shape. It is still in use, though to a lesser degree than the traditional symbol, known as the "verda stelo" (green star).[145]
+
+Esperanto has been placed in many proposed political situations. The most popular of these is the Europe–Democracy–Esperanto, which aims to establish Esperanto as the official language of the European Union. Grin's Report, published in 2005 by François Grin, found that the use of English as the lingua franca within the European Union costs billions annually and significantly benefits English-speaking countries financially.[146] The report considered a scenario where Esperanto would be the lingua franca, and found that it would have many advantages, particularly economically speaking, as well as ideologically.
+
+Russian Esperanto writer Nikolai Nekrasov was arrested during the Stalinist repressions of the late 1930s, accused of being "an organizer and leader of a fascist, espionage, terrorist organization of Esperantists", and executed on October 4, 1938. Another Esperanto writer Vladimir Varankin was executed on October 3, 1938.
+
+Esperanto has served an important role in several religions, such as Oomoto from Japan and the Bahá'í Faith from Iran, and has been encouraged by others, like some Spiritist movements.
+
+The Oomoto religion encourages the use of Esperanto among its followers and includes Zamenhof as one of its deified spirits.[147]
+
+The Bahá'í Faith encourages the use of an auxiliary international language. `Abdu'l-Bahá praised the ideal of Esperanto, and there was an affinity between Esperantists and Bahá'ís during the late 19th century and early 20th century.[148][149]
+
+On February 12, 1913, `Abdu'l-Bahá gave a talk to the Paris Esperanto Society,
+
+Now, praise be to God that Dr. Zamenhof has invented the Esperanto language. It has all the potential qualities of becoming the international means of communication. All of us must be grateful and thankful to him for this noble effort; for in this way he has served his fellowmen well. With untiring effort and self-sacrifice on the part of its devotees Esperanto will become universal. Therefore every one of us must study this language and spread it as far as possible so that day by day it may receive a broader recognition, be accepted by all nations and governments of the world, and become a part of the curriculum in all the public schools. I hope that Esperanto will be adopted as the language of all the future international conferences and congresses, so that all people need acquire only two languages—one their own tongue and the other the international language. Then perfect union will be established between all the people of the world. Consider how difficult it is today to communicate with various nations. If one studies fifty languages one may yet travel through a country and not know the language. Therefore I hope that you will make the utmost effort, so that this language of Esperanto may be widely spread[150]
+
+Lidia Zamenhof, daughter of L. L. Zamenhof, became a Bahá'í around 1925.[149] James Ferdinand Morton, Jr., an early member of the Bahá'í Faith in Greater Boston, was vice-president of the Esperanto League for North America.[151] Ehsan Yarshater, the founding editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, notes how as a child in Iran he learned Esperanto and that when his mother was visiting Haifa on a Bahá'í pilgrimage he wrote her a letter in Persian as well as Esperanto.[152] At the request of 'Abdu’l-Baha, Agnes Baldwin Alexander became an early advocate of Esperanto and used it to spread the Bahá’í teachings at meetings and conferences in Japan.
+
+Today there exists an active sub-community of Bahá'í Esperantists and various volumes of Bahá'í literature have been translated into Esperanto. In 1973, the Bahá'í Esperanto-League for active Bahá'í supporters of Esperanto was founded.[149]
+
+In 1908, spiritist Camilo Chaigneau wrote an article named "Spiritism and Esperanto" in the periodic La Vie d'Outre-Tombe recommending the use of Esperanto in a "central magazine" for all spiritists and esperantists. Esperanto then became actively promoted by spiritists, at least in Brazil, initially by Ismael Gomes Braga and František Lorenz; the latter is known in Brazil as Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz, and was a pioneer of both spiritist and Esperantist movements in this country.[153]
+
+The Brazilian Spiritist Federation publishes Esperanto coursebooks, translations of Spiritism's basic books, and encourages Spiritists to become Esperantists.[154]
+
+The first translation of the Bible into Esperanto was a translation of the Tanakh or Old Testament done by L. L. Zamenhof. The translation was reviewed and compared with other languages' translations by a group of British clergy and scholars before its publication at the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1910. In 1926 this was published along with a New Testament translation, in an edition commonly called the "Londona Biblio". In the 1960s, the Internacia Asocio de Bibliistoj kaj Orientalistoj tried to organize a new, ecumenical Esperanto Bible version.[155] Since then, the Dutch Remonstrant pastor Gerrit Berveling has translated the Deuterocanonical or apocryphal books in addition to new translations of the Gospels, some of the New Testament epistles, and some books of the Tanakh or Old Testament. These have been published in various separate booklets, or serialized in Dia Regno, but the Deuterocanonical books have appeared in recent editions of the Londona Biblio.
+
+Christian Esperanto organizations include two that were formed early in the history of Esperanto:
+
+Individual churches using Esperanto include:
+
+Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran called on Muslims to learn Esperanto and praised its use as a medium for better understanding among peoples of different religious backgrounds. After he suggested that Esperanto replace English as an international lingua franca, it began to be used in the seminaries of Qom. An Esperanto translation of the Qur'an was published by the state shortly thereafter.[166][167]
+
+Though Esperanto itself has changed little since the publication of Fundamento de Esperanto (Foundation of Esperanto), a number of reform projects have been proposed over the years, starting with Zamenhof's proposals in 1894 and Ido in 1907. Several later constructed languages, such as Universal, were based on Esperanto.
+
+In modern times, attempts have been made to eliminate perceived sexism in the language, such as Riism.
+
+There have been numerous objections to Esperanto over the years. For example, there have been criticism that Esperanto is not neutral enough, but also that it should convey a specific culture, which would make it less neutral; that Esperanto does not draw on a wide enough selection of the world's languages, but also that it should be more narrowly European.[168][169]
+
+Esperantists often argue for Esperanto as a culturally neutral means of communication. However, it is often accused of being Eurocentric.[168]  This is most often noted in regard to the vocabulary, but applies equally to the orthography, phonology, and semantics, all of which are thoroughly European.  The vocabulary, for example, draws about three-quarters from Romance languages, and the remainder primarily from Greek, English and German.  The syntax is Romance, and the phonology and semantics are Slavic. The grammar is arguably more European than not. Critics argue that a truly neutral language would draw its vocabulary from a much wider variety of languages, so as not to give unfair advantage to speakers of any of them. Although a truly representative sampling of the world's thousands of languages would be unworkable, a derivation from, say, the Romance, Semitic, Indic, Bantu, and Sino-Tibetan language families would strike many as being fairer than Esperanto-like solutions, as these families cover about 60% of the world's population, compared to a quarter for Romance and Germanic.[citation needed]
+
+Esperanto is frequently accused of being inherently sexist, because the default form of some nouns is masculine while a derived form is used for the feminine, which is said to retain traces of the male-dominated society of late 19th-century Europe of which Esperanto is a product.[87][170] There are a couple dozen masculine nouns, primarily titles and kin terms, such as sinjoro "Mr, sir" vs. sinjorino "Mrs, ma'am" and patro "father" vs. patrino "mother". In addition, gender-neutral nouns are often assumed to be male unless explicitly made female, such as doktoro, a PhD doctor (male or unspecified) versus doktorino, a female PhD. This is analogous to the situation with the English suffix -ess, as in baron/baroness, waiter/waitress etc. Esperanto pronouns are similar. As in English, li "he" may be used generically, whereas ŝi "she" is always female.[171]
+
+Speakers of languages without grammatical case or adjectival agreement frequently complain about these aspects of Esperanto. In addition, in the past some people found the Classical Greek forms of the plural (nouns in -oj, adjectives in -aj) to be awkward, proposing instead that Italian -i be used for nouns, and that no plural be used for adjectives. These suggestions were adopted by the Ido reform.[168][169]
+
+One common criticism made is that Esperanto has failed to live up to the hopes of its creator, who dreamed of it becoming a universal second language.[67][68] Because people were reluctant to learn a new language which hardly anyone spoke, Zamenhof asked people to sign a promise to start learning Esperanto once ten million people made the same promise, but he "was disappointed to receive only a thousand responses."[172] and exceeding even two million has been challenging.[5]
+
+There are some geographical and astronomical features named after Esperanto, or after its creator L. L. Zamenhof. These include Esperanto Island in Antarctica,[173] and the asteroids 1421 Esperanto and 1462 Zamenhof discovered by Finnish astronomer and Esperantist Yrjö Väisälä.

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+
+
+Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper as prints or illustrations; these images are also called "engravings". Engraving is one of the oldest and most important techniques in printmaking. Wood engraving is a form of relief printing and is not covered in this article.
+
+Engraving was a historically important method of producing images on paper in artistic printmaking, in mapmaking, and also for commercial reproductions and illustrations for books and magazines. It has long been replaced by various photographic processes in its commercial applications and, partly because of the difficulty of learning the technique, is much less common in printmaking, where it has been largely replaced by etching and other techniques.
+
+"Engraving" is also loosely but incorrectly used for any old black and white print; it requires a degree of expertise to distinguish engravings from prints using other techniques such as etching in particular, but also mezzotint and other techniques. Many old master prints also combine techniques on the same plate, further confusing matters.  Line engraving and steel engraving cover use for reproductive prints, illustrations in books and magazines, and similar uses, mostly in the 19th century, and often not actually using engraving.
+Traditional engraving, by burin or with the use of machines, continues to be practised by goldsmiths, glass engravers, gunsmiths and others, while modern industrial techniques such as photoengraving and laser engraving have many important applications. Engraved gems were an important art in the ancient world, revived at the Renaissance, although the term traditionally covers relief as well as intaglio carvings, and is essentially a branch of sculpture rather than engraving, as drills were the usual tools.
+
+Other terms often used for printed engravings are copper engraving, copper-plate engraving or line engraving. Steel engraving is the same technique, on steel or steel-faced plates, and was mostly used for banknotes, illustrations for books, magazines and reproductive prints, letterheads and similar uses from about 1790 to the early 20th century, when the technique became less popular, except for banknotes and other forms of security printing. Especially in the past, "engraving" was often used very loosely to cover several printmaking techniques, so that many so-called engravings were in fact produced by totally different techniques, such as etching or mezzotint. "Hand engraving" is a term sometimes used for engraving objects other than printing plates, to inscribe or decorate jewellery, firearms, trophies, knives and other fine metal goods. Traditional engravings in printmaking are also "hand engraved", using just the same techniques to make the lines in the plate.
+
+Each graver is different and has its own use. Engravers use a hardened steel tool called a burin, or graver, to cut the design into the surface, most traditionally a copper plate.[1] However, modern hand engraving artists use burins or gravers to cut a variety of metals such as silver, nickel, steel, brass, gold, titanium, and more, in applications from weaponry to jewellery to motorcycles to found objects. Modern professional engravers can engrave with a resolution of up to 40 lines per mm in high grade work creating game scenes and scrollwork. Dies used in mass production of molded parts are sometimes hand engraved to add special touches or certain information such as part numbers.
+
+In addition to hand engraving, there are engraving machines that require less human finesse and are not directly controlled by hand. They are usually used for lettering, using a pantographic system. There are versions for the insides of rings and also the outsides of larger pieces. Such machines are commonly used for inscriptions on rings, lockets and presentation pieces.
+
+Gravers come in a variety of shapes and sizes that yield different line types. The burin produces a unique and recognizable quality of line that is characterized by its steady, deliberate appearance and clean edges. The angle tint tool has a slightly curved tip that is commonly used in printmaking. Florentine liners are flat-bottomed tools with multiple lines incised into them, used to do fill work on larger areas or to create uniform shade lines that are fast to execute. Ring gravers are made with particular shapes that are used by jewelry engravers in order to cut inscriptions inside rings. Flat gravers are used for fill work on letters, as well as "wriggle" cuts on most musical instrument engraving work, remove background, or create bright cuts. Knife gravers are for line engraving and very deep cuts. Round gravers, and flat gravers with a radius, are commonly used on silver to create bright cuts (also called bright-cut engraving), as well as other hard-to-cut metals such as nickel and steel. Square or V-point gravers are typically square or elongated diamond-shaped and used for cutting straight lines. V-point can be anywhere from 60 to 130 degrees, depending on purpose and effect. These gravers have very small cutting points. Other tools such as mezzotint rockers, roulets and burnishers are used for texturing effects. Burnishing tools can also be used for certain stone setting techniques.
+
+Musical instrument engraving on American-made brass instruments flourished in the 1920s and utilizes a specialized engraving technique where a flat graver is "walked" across the surface of the instrument to make zig-zag lines and patterns. The method for "walking" the graver may also be referred to as "wriggle" or "wiggle" cuts. This technique is necessary due to the thinness of metal used to make musical instruments versus firearms or jewelry. Wriggle cuts are commonly found on silver Western jewelry and other Western metal work.
+
+Tool geometry is extremely important for accuracy in hand engraving. When sharpened for most applications, a graver has a "face", which is the top of the graver, and a "heel", which is the bottom of the graver; not all tools or application require a heel. These two surfaces meet to form a point that cuts the metal. The geometry and length of the heel helps to guide the graver smoothly as it cuts the surface of the metal. When the tool's point breaks or chips, even on a microscopic level, the graver can become hard to control and produces unexpected results. Modern innovations have brought about new types of carbide that resist chipping and breakage, which hold a very sharp point longer between resharpening than traditional metal tools.
+
+Sharpening a graver or burin requires either a sharpening stone or wheel. Harder carbide and steel gravers require diamond-grade sharpening wheels; these gravers can be polished to a mirror finish using a ceramic or cast iron lap, which is essential in creating bright cuts. Several low-speed, reversible sharpening system made specifically for hand engravers are available that reduce sharpening time. Fixtures that secure the tool in place at certain angles and geometries are also available to take the guesswork from sharpening to produce accurate points. Very few master engravers exist today who rely solely on "feel" and muscle memory to sharpen tools. These master engravers typically worked for many years as an apprentice, most often learning techniques decades before modern machinery was available for hand engravers. These engravers typically trained in such countries as Italy and Belgium, where hand engraving has a rich and long heritage of masters.
+
+Design or artwork is generally prepared in advance, although some professional and highly experienced hand engravers are able to draw out minimal outlines either on paper or directly on the metal surface just prior to engraving. The work to be engraved may be lightly scribed on the surface with a sharp point, laser marked, drawn with a fine permanent marker (removable with acetone) or pencil, transferred using various chemicals in conjunction with inkjet or laser printouts, or stippled. Engraving artists may rely on hand drawing skills, copyright-free designs and images, computer-generated artwork, or common design elements when creating artwork.
+
+Originally, handpieces varied little in design as the common use was to push with the handle placed firmly in the center of the palm. With modern pneumatic engraving systems, handpieces are designed and created in a variety of shapes and power ranges. Handpieces are made using various methods and materials. Knobs may be handmade from wood, molded and engineered from plastic, or machine-made from brass, steel, or other metals. The most widely known hand engraving tool maker, GRS Tools in Kansas is an American-owned and operated company that manufacture handpieces as well as many other tools for various applications in metal engraving.
+
+The actual engraving is traditionally done by a combination of pressure and manipulating the work-piece. The traditional "hand push" process is still practiced today, but modern technology has brought various mechanically assisted engraving systems. Most pneumatic engraving systems require an air source that drives air through a hose into a handpiece, which resembles a traditional engraving handle in many cases, that powers a mechanism (usually a piston). The air is actuated by either a foot control (like a gas pedal or sewing machine) or newer palm / hand control. This mechanism replaces either the "hand push" effort or the effects of a hammer. The internal mechanisms move at speeds up to 15,000 strokes per minute, thereby greatly reducing the effort needed in traditional hand engraving. These types of pneumatic systems are used for power assistance only and do not guide or control the engraving artist. One of the major benefits of using a pneumatic system for hand engraving is the reduction of fatigue and decrease in time spent working.
+
+Hand engraving artists today employ a combination of hand push, pneumatic, rotary, or hammer and chisel methods. Hand push is still commonly used by modern hand engraving artists who create "bulino" style work, which is highly detailed and delicate, fine work; a great majority, if not all, traditional printmakers today rely solely upon hand push methods. Pneumatic systems greatly reduce the effort required for removing large amounts of metal, such as in deep relief engraving or Western bright cut techniques.
+
+Finishing the work is often necessary when working in metal that may rust or where a colored finish is desirable, such as a firearm. A variety of spray lacquers and finishing techniques exist to seal and protect the work from exposure to the elements and time. Finishing also may include lightly sanding the surface to remove small chips of metal called "burrs" that are very sharp and unsightly. Some engravers prefer high contrast to the work or design, using black paints or inks to darken removed (and lower) areas of exposed metal. The excess paint or ink is wiped away and allowed to dry before lacquering or sealing, which may or may not be desired by the artist.
+
+Because of the high level of microscopic detail that can be achieved by a master engraver, counterfeiting of engraved designs is well-nigh impossible, and modern banknotes are almost always engraved, as are plates for printing money, checks, bonds and other security-sensitive papers. The engraving is so fine that a normal printer cannot recreate the detail of hand engraved images, nor can it be scanned. In the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, more than one hand engraver will work on the same plate, making it nearly impossible for one person to duplicate all the engraving on a particular banknote or document.
+
+The modern discipline of hand engraving, as it is called in a metalworking context, survives largely in a few specialized fields. The highest levels of the art are found on firearms and other metal weaponry, jewellery, and musical instruments.
+
+In most commercial markets today, hand engraving has been replaced with milling using CNC engraving or milling machines. Still, there are certain applications where use of hand engraving tools cannot be replaced.
+
+In some instances, images or designs can be transferred to metal surfaces via mechanical process. One such process is roll stamping or roller-die engraving. In this process, a hardened image die is pressed against the destination surface using extreme pressure to impart the image. In the 1800s pistol cylinders were often decorated via this process to impart a continuous scene around its surface.
+
+Engraving machines such as the K500 (packaging) or K6 (publication) by Hell Gravure Systems use a diamond stylus to cut cells. Each cell creates one printing dot later in the process. A K6 can have up to 18 engraving heads each cutting 8.000 cells per second to an accuracy of .1 µm and below. They are fully computer-controlled and the whole process of cylinder-making is fully automated.
+
+It is now common place for retail stores (mostly jewellery, silverware or award stores) to have a small computer controlled engrave on site. This enables them to personalise the products they sell. Retail engraving machines tend to be focused around ease of use for the operator and the ability to do a wide variety of items including flat metal plates, jewelry of different shapes and sizes, as well as cylindrical items such as mugs and tankards. They will typically be equipped with a computer dedicated to graphic design that will enable the operator to easily design a text or picture graphic which the software will translate into digital signals telling the engraver machine what to do. Unlike industrial engravers, retail machines are smaller and only use one diamond head. This is interchangeable so the operator can use differently shaped diamonds for different finishing effects. They will typically be able to do a variety of metals and plastics. Glass and crystal engraving is possible, but the brittle nature of the material makes the process more time consuming.
+
+Retail engravers mainly use two different processes. The first and most common 'Diamond Drag' pushes the diamond cutter through the surface of the material and then pulls to create scratches. These direction and depth are controlled by the computer input. The second is 'Spindle Cutter'. This is similar to Diamond Drag, but the engraving head is shaped in a flat V shape, with a small diamond and the base. The machine uses an electronic spindle to quickly rotate the head as it pushes it into the material, then pulls it along whilst it continues to spin. This creates a much bolder impression than diamond drag. It is used mainly for brass plaques and pet tags.
+
+With state-of-the-art machinery it is easy to have a simple, single item complete in under ten minutes.
+The engraving process with diamonds is state-of-the-art since the 1960s.
+
+Today laser engraving machines are in development but still mechanical cutting has proven its strength in economical terms and quality. More than 4,000 engravers make approx. 8 Mio printing cylinders worldwide per year.
+
+For the printing process, see intaglio (printmaking). For the Western art history of engraved prints, see old master print and line engraving
+
+The first evidence for humans engraving patterns is a chiselled shell, dating back between 540,000 and 430,000 years, from Trinil, in Java, Indonesia, where the first Homo erectus was discovered.[3] Hatched banding upon ostrich eggshells used as water containers found in South Africa in the Diepkloof Rock Shelter and dated to the Middle Stone Age around 60,000 BC are the next documented case of human engraving.[4] Engraving on bone and ivory is an important technique for the Art of the Upper Paleolithic, and larger engraved petroglyphs on rocks are found from many prehistoric periods and cultures around the world.
+
+In antiquity, the only engraving on metal that could be carried out is the shallow grooves found in some jewellery after the beginning of the 1st Millennium B.C. The majority of so-called engraved designs on ancient gold rings or other items were produced by chasing or sometimes a combination of lost-wax casting and chasing. Engraved gem is a term for any carved or engraved semi-precious stone; this was an important small-scale art form in the ancient world, and remained popular until the 19th century.
+
+However the use of glass engraving, usually using a wheel, to cut decorative scenes or figures into glass vessels, in imitation of hardstone carvings, appears as early as the first century AD,[5] continuing into the fourth century CE at urban centers such as Cologne and Rome,[6] and appears to have ceased sometime in the fifth century. Decoration was first based on Greek mythology, before hunting and circus scenes became popular, as well as imagery drawn from the Old and New Testament.[6] It appears to have been used to mimic the appearance of precious metal wares during the same period, including the application of gold leaf, and could be cut free-hand or with lathes. As many as twenty separate stylistic workshops have been identified, and it seems likely that the engraver and vessel producer were separate craftsmen.[5]
+
+In the European Middle Ages goldsmiths used engraving to decorate and inscribe metalwork. It is thought that they began to print impressions of their designs to record them. From this grew the engraving of copper printing plates to produce artistic images on paper, known as old master prints, in Germany in the 1430s. Italy soon followed. Many early engravers came from a goldsmithing background. The first and greatest period of the engraving was from about 1470 to 1530, with such masters as Martin Schongauer,[7] Albrecht Dürer, and Lucas van Leiden.
+
+Thereafter engraving tended to lose ground to etching, which was a much easier technique for the artist to learn. But many prints combined the two techniques: although Rembrandt's prints are generally all called etchings for convenience, many of them have some burin or drypoint work, and some have nothing else. By the nineteenth century, most engraving was for commercial illustration.
+
+Before the advent of photography, engraving was used to reproduce other forms of art, for example paintings. Engravings continued to be common in newspapers and many books into the early 20th century, as they were cheaper to use in printing than photographic images.
+
+Many classic postage stamps were engraved, although the practice is now mostly confined to particular countries, or used when a more "elegant" design is desired and a limited color range is acceptable.
+
+Modifying the relief designs on coins is a craft dating back to the 18th century and today modified coins are known colloquially as hobo nickels. In the United States, especially during the Great Depression, coin engraving on the large-faced Indian Head nickel became a way to help make ends meet. The craft continues today, and with modern equipment often produces stunning miniature sculptural artworks and floral scrollwork.[8]
+
+During the mid-20th century, a renaissance in hand-engraving began to take place. With the inventions of pneumatic hand-engraving systems that aided hand-engravers, the art and techniques of hand-engraving became more accessible.
+
+The first music printed from engraved plates dates from 1446 and most printed music was produced through engraving from roughly 1700–1860. From 1860–1990 most printed music was produced through a combination of engraved master plates reproduced through offset lithography.
+
+The first comprehensive account is given by Mme Delusse in her article "Gravure en lettres, en géographie et en musique" in Diderot's Encyclopedia. The technique involved a five-pointed raster to score staff lines, various punches in the shapes of notes and standard musical symbols, and various burins and scorers for lines and slurs. For correction, the plate was held on a bench by callipers, hit with a dot punch on the opposite side, and burnished to remove any signs of the defective work. The process involved intensive pre-planning of the layout, and many manuscript scores with engraver's planning marks survive from the 18th and 19th centuries.[9]
+
+By 1837 pewter had replaced copper as a medium, and Berthiaud gives an account with an entire chapter devoted to music (Novel manuel complet de l'imprimeur en taille douce, 1837). Printing from such plates required a separate inking to be carried out cold, and the printing press used less pressure. Generally, four pages of music were engraved on a single plate. Because music engraving houses trained engravers through years of apprenticeship, very little is known about the practice. Fewer than one dozen sets of tools survive in libraries and museums.[10] By 1900 music engravers were established in several hundred cities in the world, but the art of storing plates was usually concentrated with publishers. Extensive bombing of Leipzig in 1944, the home of most German engraving and printing firms, destroyed roughly half the world's engraved music plates.
+
+Examples of contemporary uses for engraving include creating text on jewellery, such as pendants or on the inside of engagement- and wedding rings to include text such as the name of the partner, or adding a winner's name to a sports trophy.  Another application of modern engraving is found in the printing industry. There, every day thousands of pages are mechanically engraved onto rotogravure cylinders, typically a steel base with a copper layer of about 0.1 mm in which the image is transferred. After engraving the image is protected with an approximately 6 µm chrome layer. Using this process the image will survive for over a million copies in high speed printing presses.  
+Some schools throughout the world are renowned for their teaching of engraving, like the École Estienne in Paris.
+
+In traditional engraving, which is a purely linear medium, the impression of half-tones was created by making many very thin parallel lines, a technique called hatching. When two sets of parallel-line hatchings intersected each other for higher density, the resulting pattern was known as cross-hatching. Patterns of dots were also used in a technique called stippling, first used around 1505 by Giulio Campagnola. Claude Mellan was one of many 17th-century engravers with a very well-developed technique of using parallel lines of varying thickness (known as the "swelling line") to give subtle effects of tone (as was Goltzius) – see picture below. One famous example is his Sudarium of Saint Veronica (1649), an engraving of the face of Jesus made from a single spiraling line that starts at the tip of Jesus's nose.
+
+The earliest allusion to engraving in the Bible may be the reference to Judah's seal ring (Ge 38:18), followed by (Ex 39.30). Engraving was commonly done with pointed tools of iron or even with diamond points. (Jer 17:1).
+
+Each of the two onyx stones on the shoulder-pieces of the high priest’s ephod was engraved with the names of six different tribes of Israel, and each of the 12 precious stones that adorned his breastpiece was engraved with the name of one of the tribes. The holy sign of dedication, the shining gold plate on the high priest's turban, was engraved with the words: "Holiness belongs to Adonai." Bezalel, along with Oholiab, was qualified to do this specialized engraving work as well as to train others.—Ex 35:30–35; 28:9–12; 39:6–14, 30.
+
+Prints:
+
+Of gems:
+
+Of guns:
+
+Of coins:
+
+Of postage stamps:
+
+Of pins:

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+Amazon usually refers to:
+
+Amazon or Amazone may also refer to:
+

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+
+
+The stomach is a muscular, hollow organ in the gastrointestinal tract of humans and many other animals, including several invertebrates. The stomach has a dilated structure and functions as a vital digestive organ.  In the digestive system the stomach is involved in the second phase of digestion, following chewing. It performs a chemical breakdown due to enzymes and hydrochloric acid.
+
+In humans and many other animals, the stomach is located between the oesophagus and the small intestine. It secretes digestive enzymes and gastric acid to aid in food digestion. The pyloric sphincter controls the passage of partially digested food (chyme) from the stomach into the duodenum where peristalsis takes over to move this through the rest of the intestines.
+
+In humans, the stomach lies between the oesophagus and the duodenum (the first part of the small intestine). It is in the left upper part of the abdominal cavity. The top of the stomach lies against the diaphragm. Lying behind the stomach is the pancreas. A large double fold of visceral peritoneum called the greater omentum hangs down from the greater curvature of the stomach. Two sphincters keep the contents of the stomach contained; the lower oesophageal sphincter  (found in the cardiac region), at the junction of the oesophagus and stomach, and the pyloric sphincter at the junction of the stomach with the duodenum.
+
+The stomach is surrounded by parasympathetic (stimulant) and sympathetic (inhibitor) plexuses (networks of blood vessels and nerves in the anterior gastric, posterior, superior and inferior, celiac and myenteric), which regulate both the secretory activity of the stomach and the motor (motion) activity of its muscles.
+
+Because it is a distensible organ, it normally expands to hold about one litre of food.[3] The stomach of a newborn human baby will only be able to retain about 30 millilitres. The maximum stomach volume in adults is between 2 and 4 litres.[4][5]
+
+In classical anatomy the human stomach is divided into four sections, beginning at the cardia.[7]
+
+The cardia is defined as the region following the "z-line" of the gastroesophageal junction, the point at which the epithelium changes from stratified squamous to columnar. Near the cardia is the lower oesophageal sphincter.[8] Recent research has shown that the cardia is not an anatomically distinct region of the stomach but a region of the oesophageal lining damaged by reflux.[9]
+
+The stomach bed refers to the structures upon which the  stomach rests in mammals.[10][11] These include the pancreas, spleen, left kidney, left suprarenal gland, transverse colon and its mesocolon, and the diaphragm. The term was introduced around 1896 by Philip Polson of the Catholic University School of Medicine, Dublin. However this was brought into disrepute by surgeon anatomist J Massey.[12][13][14]
+
+The lesser curvature of the human stomach is supplied by the right gastric artery inferiorly and the left gastric artery superiorly, which also supplies the cardiac region. The greater curvature is supplied by the right gastroepiploic artery inferiorly and the left gastroepiploic artery superiorly. The fundus of the stomach, and also the upper portion of the greater curvature, is supplied by the short gastric arteries, which arise from the splenic artery.
+
+Like the other parts of the gastrointestinal tract, the human stomach walls consist of a mucosa, submucosa, muscularis externa, subserosa and serosa.[16]
+
+The inner part of the lining of the stomach, the gastric mucosa, consists of an outer layer of column-shaped cells, a lamina propria, and a thin layer of smooth muscle called the muscularis mucosa. Beneath the mucosa lies the submucosa, consisting of fibrous connective tissue.[citation needed] Meissner's plexus is in this layer.[17]
+
+Outside of the submucosa lies another muscular layer, the muscularis externa. It consists of three layers of muscular fibres, with fibres lying at angles to each other.[citation needed] These are the inner oblique, inner circular, and outer longitudinal layers. The presence of the inner oblique layer is distinct from other parts of the gastrointestinal tract, which do not possess this layer.[citation needed]
+
+The outer longitudinal layer is responsible for moving the bolus towards the pylorus of the stomach through muscular shortening.
+
+To the outside of the muscularis externa lies a serosa, consisting of layers of connective tissue continuous with the peritoneum.
+
+The mucosa lining the stomach is lined with a number of these pits, which receive gastric juice, secreted by between 2 and 7 gastric glands.[citation needed] Gastric juice is an acidic fluid containing hydrochloric acid and the digestive enzyme pepsin.[citation needed] The glands contains a number of cells, with the function of the glands changing depending on their position within the stomach.[citation needed]
+
+Within the body and fundus of the stomach lie the fundic glands. In general, these glands are lined by column-shaped cells that secrete a protective layer of mucus and bicarbonate. Additional cells present include parietal cells that secrete hydrochloric acid and intrinsic factor, chief cells that secrete pepsin, and neuroendocrine cells that secrete serotonin.[18][citation needed]
+
+Glands differ where the stomach meets the oesophagus, and near the pylorus.[citation needed] Near the junction between the stomach and the oesophagus lie cardiac glands, which primarily secrete mucus. [18] They are fewer in number than the other gastric glands and are more shallowly positioned in the mucosa. There are two kinds - either simple tubular with short ducts  or  compound racemose resembling the duodenal Brunner's glands.[citation needed] Near the pylorus lie pyloric glands and are located in the antrum of the pylorus. They secrete mucus, as well as gastrin produced by their G cells.[19][citation needed]
+
+About 20,000 protein coding genes are expressed in human cells and nearly 70% of these genes are expressed in the normal stomach.[20][21] Just over 150 of these genes are more specifically expressed in the stomach compared to other organs, with only some 20 genes being highly specific. The corresponding specific proteins expressed in stomach are mainly involved in creating a suitable environment for handling the digestion of food for uptake of nutrients. Highly stomach-specific proteins include GKN1, expressed in the mucosa; pepsinogen PGC and the lipase LIPF, expressed in chief cells; and gastric ATPase ATP4A and gastric intrinsic factor GIF, expressed in parietal cells.[22]
+
+In early human embryogenesis, the ventral part of the embryo abuts the yolk sac. During the third week of development, as the embryo grows, it begins to surround parts of the sac. The enveloped portions form the basis for the adult gastrointestinal tract.[23] The sac is surrounded by a network of vitelline arteries and veins. Over time, these arteries consolidate into the three main arteries that supply the developing gastrointestinal tract: the celiac artery, superior mesenteric artery, and inferior mesenteric artery. The areas supplied by these arteries are used to define the foregut, midgut, and hindgut.[23] The surrounded sac becomes the primitive gut. Sections of this gut begin to differentiate into the organs of the gastrointestinal tract, and the esophagus, and stomach form from the foregut.[23]
+
+In the human digestive system, a bolus (a small rounded mass of chewed up food) enters the stomach through the esophagus via the lower esophageal sphincter. The stomach releases proteases (protein-digesting enzymes such as pepsin) and hydrochloric acid, which kills or inhibits bacteria and provides the acidic pH of 2 for the proteases to work. Food is churned by the stomach through muscular contractions of the wall called peristalsis – reducing the volume of the bolus, before looping around the fundus[24] and the body of stomach as the boluses are converted into chyme (partially digested food). Chyme slowly passes through the pyloric sphincter and into the duodenum of the small intestine, where the extraction of nutrients begins.
+
+Gastric juice in the stomach also contains pepsinogen. Hydrochloric acid activates this inactive form of enzyme into the active form, pepsin. Pepsin breaks down proteins into polypeptides.
+
+Although the absorption in the human digestive system is mainly a function of the small intestine, some absorption of certain small molecules nevertheless does occur in the stomach through its lining. This includes:
+
+The parietal cells of the human stomach are responsible for producing intrinsic factor, which is necessary for the absorption of vitamin B12. B12 is used in cellular metabolism and is necessary for the production of red blood cells, and the functioning of the nervous system.
+
+The movement and the flow of chemicals into the stomach are controlled by both the autonomic nervous system and by the various digestive hormones of the digestive system:
+
+Other than gastrin, these hormones all act to turn off the stomach action. This is in response to food products in the liver and gall bladder, which have not yet been absorbed. The stomach needs to push food into the small intestine only when the intestine is not busy. While the intestine is full and still digesting food, the stomach acts as storage for food.
+
+Epidermal growth factor (EGF) results in cellular proliferation, differentiation, and survival.[29]  EGF is a low-molecular-weight polypeptide first purified from the mouse submandibular gland, but since then found in many human tissues including the submandibular gland, and the parotid gland. Salivary EGF, which also seems to be regulated by dietary inorganic iodine, also plays an important physiological role in the maintenance of oro-oesophageal and gastric tissue integrity. The biological effects of salivary EGF include healing of oral and gastroesophageal ulcers, inhibition of gastric acid secretion, stimulation of DNA synthesis, and mucosal protection from intraluminal injurious factors such as gastric acid, bile acids, pepsin, and trypsin and from physical, chemical, and bacterial agents.[30]
+
+The human stomach can "taste" sodium glutamate using glutamate receptors[31] and this information is passed to the lateral hypothalamus and limbic system in the brain as a palatability signal through the vagus nerve.[32] The stomach can also sense, independently of tongue and oral taste receptors, glucose,[33] carbohydrates,[34] proteins,[34] and fats.[35] This allows the brain to link nutritional value of foods to their tastes.[33]
+
+This syndrome defines the association between thyroid disease and chronic gastritis which was first described in the 1960s.[36] This term was coined also to indicate the presence of thyroid autoantibodies or autoimmune thyroid disease in patients with pernicious anemia, a late clinical stage of atrofic gastritis.[37] In 1993, has been published a more complete investigation on the stomach and thyroid [38] , reporting that the thyroid is, embryogenetically and  phylogenetically, derived from primitive stomach, and that the thyroid cells, such as primitive gastroenteric cells, during vertebrate evolution, migrated and specialized in uptake of iodide and in storage and elaboration of iodine compounds. In fact, stomach and thyroid share iodine-concentranting ability and many morphological and functional similarities,  such as cell polarity and apical microvilli, similar organ-specific antigens and also associated autoimmune diseases, secretion of glycoproteins (thyroglobulin and mucin) and peptide hormones, the digesting and readsorbing ability and, lastly, similar ability to form iodotyrosines by peroxidase activity, where iodide acts as electron donor in the presence of H2O2. In the following years,  many researchers published reviews about this syndrome.[39]
+
+A series of radiographs can be used to examine the stomach for various disorders. This will often include the use of a barium swallow. Another method of examination of the stomach, is the use of an endoscope. A gastric emptying scan is considered the gold standard to assess gastric emptying rate.[40]
+
+A large number of studies have indicated that most cases of peptic ulcers, and gastritis, in humans are caused by Helicobacter pylori infection, and an association has been seen with the development of stomach cancer.[41]
+
+A stomach rumble is actually noise from the intestines.
+
+In humans, many bariatric surgery procedures involve the stomach, in order to lose weight. A gastric band may be placed around the cardia area, which can adjust to limit intake. The anatomy of the stomach may be modified, or the stomach may be bypassed entirely.
+
+Surgical removal of the stomach is called a gastrectomy, and removal of the cardia area is a called a cardiectomy.  "Cardiectomy" is a term that is also used to describe the removal of the heart.[42][43][44] A gastrectomy may be carried out because of gastric cancer or severe perforation of the stomach wall.
+
+Fundoplication is stomach surgery in which the fundus is wrapped around the lower esophagus and stitched into place.  It is used to treat gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).[45]
+
+There were previously conflicting statements in the academic anatomy community[46][47][48] over whether the cardia is part of the stomach, part of the oesophagus or a distinct entity. Modern surgical and medical textbooks have agreed that "the gastric cardia is now clearly considered to be part of the stomach."[49][50]
+
+The word stomach is derived from the Latin stomachus which has roots from the Greek word stomachos (στόμαχος), ultimately from stoma (στόμα), "mouth".[51] Gastro- and gastric (meaning "related to the stomach") are both derived from the Greek word gaster (γαστήρ, meaning "belly"[52][53]).[54]
+
+Although the precise shape and size of the stomach varies widely among different vertebrates, the relative positions of the oesophageal and duodenal openings remain relatively constant. As a result, the organ always curves somewhat to the left before curving back to meet the pyloric sphincter. However, lampreys, hagfishes, chimaeras, lungfishes, and some teleost fish have no stomach at all, with the oesophagus opening directly into the anus. These animals all consume diets that require little storage of food, no predigestion with gastric juices, or both.[59]
+
+The gastric lining is usually divided into two regions, an anterior portion lined by fundic glands and a posterior portion lined with pyloric glands. Cardiac glands are unique to mammals, and even then are absent in a number of species. The distributions of these glands vary between species, and do not always correspond with the same regions as in humans. Furthermore, in many non-human mammals, a portion of the stomach anterior to the cardiac glands is lined with epithelium essentially identical to that of the oesophagus. Ruminants, in particular, have a complex stomach, the first three chambers of which are all lined with oesophageal mucosa.[59]
+
+In birds and crocodilians, the stomach is divided into two regions. Anteriorly is a narrow tubular region, the proventriculus, lined by fundic glands, and connecting the true stomach to the crop. Beyond lies the powerful muscular gizzard, lined by pyloric glands, and, in some species, containing stones that the animal swallows to help grind up food.[59]
+
+In insects there is also a crop. The insect stomach is called the midgut.
+
+Information about the stomach in echinoderms or molluscs can be found under the respective articles.
+
+Greater omentum and stomach of humans
+
+A more realistic image, showing the celiac artery and its branches in humans; the liver has been raised, and the lesser omentum and anterior layer of the greater omentum removed.
+
+An autopsy of a human stomach, showing the many folds (rugae) of the stomach. 2012 Instituto Nacional de Cardiología
+
+Human stomach
+
+Endoscopic image of human fundic gland polyposis.
+
+High-quality image of the stomach

en/1841.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,334 @@
+
+
+– in Europe (green & grey)– in the European Union (green)  –  [Legend]
+
+Estonia (Estonian: Eesti [ˈeːsʲti] (listen)), officially the Republic of Estonia (Estonian: Eesti Vabariik), is a country on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia (343 km), and to the east by Lake Peipus and Russia (338.6 km).[11] The territory of Estonia consists of the mainland and of 2,222 islands in the Baltic Sea,[12] covering a total area of 45,227 km2 (17,462 sq mi), water 2,839 km2 (1,096 sq mi), land area 42,388 km2 (16,366 sq mi), and is influenced by a humid continental climate. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, and Tartu are largest cities and urban areas in the whole country; other notable cities are Narva, Pärnu, Kohtla-Järve and Viljandi. The official language of the country, Estonian, is the second-most-spoken Finnic language.
+
+The territory of Estonia has been inhabited since at least 9,000 BC. Ancient Estonians became some of the last European pagans to adopt Christianity following the Livonian Crusade in the 13th century.[13] After centuries of successive rule by Germans, Danes, Swedes, Poles and Russians, a distinct Estonian national identity began to emerge in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This culminated in independence from Russia in 1920 after a brief War of Independence at the end of World War I. Initially democratic prior to the Great Depression, Estonia experienced authoritarian rule from 1934 during the Era of Silence. During World War II (1939–1945), Estonia was repeatedly contested and occupied by the Soviet Union and Germany, ultimately being incorporated into the former. After the loss of its de facto independence, Estonia's de jure state continuity was preserved by diplomatic representatives and the government-in-exile. In 1987 the peaceful Singing Revolution began against Soviet rule, resulting in the restoration of de facto independence on 20 August 1991.
+
+The sovereign state of Estonia is a democratic unitary parliamentary republic divided into fifteen counties. With a population of 1.3 million Estonia is one of the least populous members of the European Union, the Eurozone, the OECD, the Schengen Area, NATO, and from 2020, the United Nations Security Council.[14]
+
+Estonia is a developed country with an advanced, high-income economy that was among the fastest-growing in the EU since its entry in 2004[15] The country ranks very high in the Human Development Index,[7] and compares well in measures of economic freedom, civil liberties, education,[16] and press freedom.[17] Estonian citizens receive universal health care,[18] free education,[19] and the longest paid maternity leave in the OECD.[20] One of the world's most digitally-advanced societies,[21]
+in 2005 Estonia became the first state to hold elections over the Internet, and in 2014, the first state to provide e-residency.
+
+The name Estonia has been connected to Aesti, first mentioned by Roman historian Tacitus around 98 AD. Some historians believe he was directly referring to Balts (i.e. not Finnic-speaking Estonians), while others have proposed that the name applied to the whole Eastern Baltic region.[22] The Scandinavian sagas referring to Eistland were the earliest sources to use the name in its modern meaning.[23] The toponym Estland/Eistland has been linked to Old Scandinavian eist, austr meaning "the east".[24]
+
+Human settlement in Estonia became possible 13,000 to 11,000 years ago, when the ice from the last glacial era melted. The oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, which was on the banks of the river Pärnu, near the town of Sindi, in south-western Estonia. According to radiocarbon dating it was settled around 11,000 years ago.[25]
+
+The earliest human habitation during the Mesolithic period is connected to the Kunda culture, named after the town of Kunda in northern Estonia. At that time the country was covered with forests, and people lived in semi-nomadic communities near bodies of water. Subsistence activities consisted of hunting, gathering and fishing.[26] Around 4900 BC ceramics appear of the neolithic period, known as Narva culture.[27] Starting from around 3200 BC the Corded Ware culture appeared; this included new activities like primitive agriculture and animal husbandry.[28]
+
+The Bronze Age started around 1800 BC, and saw the establishment of the first hill fort settlements.[30] A transition from hunting-fishing-gathering subsistence to single-farm-based settlement started around 1000 BC, and was complete by the beginning of the Iron Age around 500 BC.[25][31] The large amount of bronze objects indicate the existence of active communication with Scandinavian and Germanic tribes.[32]
+
+The middle Iron Age produced threats appearing from different directions. Several Scandinavian sagas referred to major confrontations with Estonians, notably when "Estonian Vikings" defeated and killed the Swedish king Ingvar.[33][34] Similar threats appeared in the east, where Russian principalities were expanding westward. In 1030 Yaroslav the Wise defeated Estonians and established a fort in modern-day Tartu; this foothold lasted until an Estonian tribe, the Sosols, destroyed it in 1061, followed by their raid on Pskov.[35][36][37][38] Around the 11th century, the Scandinavian Viking era around the Baltic Sea was succeeded by the Baltic Viking era, with seaborne raids by Curonians and by Estonians from the island of Saaremaa, known as Oeselians. In 1187 Estonians (Oeselians), Curonians or/and Karelians sacked Sigtuna, which was a major city of Sweden at the time.[39][40]
+
+Estonia could be divided into two main cultural areas, the coastal areas of Northern and Western Estonia had close overseas contacts with Scandinavia and Finland, while inland Southern Estonia had more contacts with Balts and Pskov.[41] The landscape of Ancient Estonia featured numerous hillforts.[42] Prehistoric or medieval harbour sites have been found on the coast of Saaremaa.[42] Estonia also has a number of graves from the Viking Age, both individual and collective, with weapons and jewellery including types found commonly throughout Northern Europe and Scandinavia.[42][43]
+
+In the early centuries AD, political and administrative subdivisions began to emerge in Estonia. Two larger subdivisions appeared: the parish (Estonian: kihelkond) and the county (Estonian: maakond), which consisted of multiple parishes. A parish was led by elders and centred around a hill fort; in some rare cases a parish had multiple forts. By the 13th century Estonia consisted of eight major counties: Harjumaa, Järvamaa, Läänemaa, Revala, Saaremaa, Sakala, Ugandi, and Virumaa; and six minor, single-parish counties: Alempois, Jogentagana, Mõhu, Nurmekund, Soopoolitse, and Vaiga. Counties were independent entities and engaged only in a loose co-operation against foreign threats.[44][45]
+
+There is little known of early Estonian pagan religious practices. The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia mentions Tharapita as the superior god of the Oeselians. Spiritual practices were guided by shamans, with sacred groves, especially oak groves, serving as places of worship.[46][47]
+
+In 1199 Pope Innocent III declared a crusade to "defend the Christians of  Livonia".[48] Fighting reached Estonia in 1206, when Danish king Valdemar II unsuccessfully invaded Saaremaa. The German Livonian Brothers of the Sword, who had previously subjugated Livonians, Latgalians, and Selonians, started campaigning against the Estonians in 1208, and over next few years both sides made numerous raids and counter-raids. A major leader of the Estonian resistance was Lembitu, an elder of Sakala County, but in 1217 the Estonians suffered a significant defeat in the Battle of St. Matthew's Day, where Lembitu was killed. In 1219, Valdemar II landed at Lindanise, defeated the Estonians in battle, and started conquering Northern Estonia.[49][50] The next year, Sweden invaded Western Estonia, but were repelled by the Oeselians. In 1223, a major revolt ejected the Germans and Danes from the whole of Estonia, except Reval, but the crusaders soon resumed their offensive, and in 1227, Saaremaa was the last county to surrender.[51][52]
+
+After the crusade, the territory of present-day Southern Estonia and Latvia was named Terra Mariana, but later it became known simply as Livonia.[53] Northern-Estonia became the Danish Duchy of Estonia, while the rest was divided between the Sword Brothers and prince-bishoprics of Dorpat and Ösel–Wiek. In 1236, after suffering a major defeat, the Sword Brothers merged into the Teutonic Order becoming the Livonian Order.[54] In the next decades there were several uprisings against foreign rulers on Saaremaa. In 1343, a major rebellion started, known as the St. George's Night Uprising, encompassing the whole area of Northern-Estonia and Saaremaa. The Teutonic Order finished suppressing the rebellion in 1345, and the next year the Danish king sold his possessions in Estonia to the Order.[55][56] The unsuccessful rebellion led to a consolidation of power for the Baltic German minority.[57] For the subsequent centuries they remained the ruling elite in both cities and the countryside.[58]
+
+During the crusade, Reval (Tallinn) was founded, as the capital of Danish Estonia, on the site of Lindanise. In 1248 Reval received full town rights and adopted the Lübeck law.[59] The Hanseatic League controlled trade on the Baltic Sea, and overall the four largest towns in Estonia became members: Reval, Dorpat (Tartu), Pernau (Pärnu), and Fellin (Viljandi). Reval acted as a trade intermediary between Novgorod and Western Hanseatic cities, while Dorpat filled the same role with Pskov. Many guilds were formed during that period, but only a very few allowed the participation of native Estonians.[60] Protected by their stone walls and alliance with the Hansa, prosperous cities like Reval and Dorpat repeatedly defied other rulers of Livonia.[61] After the decline of the Teutonic Order after its defeat in the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, and the defeat of the Livonian Order in the Battle of Swienta on 1 September 1435, the Livonian Confederation Agreement was signed on 4 December 1435.[62]
+
+The Reformation in Europe began in 1517, and soon spread to Livonia despite opposition by the Livonian Order.[63] Towns were the first to embrace Protestantism in the 1520s, and by the 1530s the majority of the gentry had adopted Lutheranism for themselves and their peasant serfs.[64][65] Church services were now conducted in vernacular language, which initially meant German, but in the 1530s the first religious services in Estonian also took place.[64][66]
+
+During the 16th century, the expansionist monarchies of Muscowy, Sweden, and Poland–Lithuania consolidated power, posing a growing threat to decentralised Livonia weakened by disputes between cities, nobility, bishops, and the Order.[64][67]
+
+In 1558, Tsar Ivan the Terrible of Russia invaded Livonia, starting the Livonian War. The Livonian Order was decisively defeated in 1560, prompting Livonian factions to seek foreign protection. The majority of Livonia accepted Polish rule, while Reval and the nobles of Northern Estonia swore loyalty to the Swedish king, and the Bishop of Ösel-Wiek sold his lands to the Danish king. Russian forces gradually conquered the majority of Livonia, but in the late 1570s the Polish-Lithuanian and Swedish armies started their own offensives and the bloody war finally ended in 1583 with Russian defeat.[67][68] As result of the war, Northern Estonia became Swedish Duchy of Estonia, Southern Estonia became Polish Duchy of Livonia, and Saaremaa remained under Danish control.[69]
+
+In 1600, the Polish-Swedish War broke out, causing further devastation. The protracted war ended in 1629 with Sweden gaining Livonia, including the regions of Southern Estonia and Northern Latvia.[70] Danish Saaremaa was transferred to Sweden in 1645.[71] The wars had halved the Estonian population from about 250–270,000 people in the mid 16th century to 115–120,000 in the 1630s.[72]
+
+While serfdom was retained under Swedish rule, legal reforms took place which strengthened peasants' land usage and inheritance rights, resulting this period's reputation of the "Good Old Swedish Time" in people's historical memory.[73] Swedish king Gustaf II Adolf established gymnasiums in Reval and Dorpat; the latter was upgraded to Tartu University in 1632. Printing presses were also established in both towns. In the 1680s the beginnings of Estonian elementary education appeared, largely due to efforts of Bengt Gottfried Forselius, who also introduced orthographical reforms to written Estonian.[74] The population of Estonia grew rapidly for a 60–70-year period, until the Great Famine of 1695–97 in which some 70,000–75,000 people perished – about 20% of the population.[75]
+
+In 1700, the Great Northern War started, and by 1710 the whole of Estonia was conquered by the Russian Empire.[76] The war again devastated the population of Estonia, with the 1712 population estimated at only 150,000–170,000.[77] Russian administration restored all the political and landholding rights of Baltic Germans.[78] The rights of Estonian peasants reached their lowest point, as serfdom completely dominated agricultural relations during the 18th century.[79] Serfdom was formally abolished in 1816–1819, but this initially had very little practical effect; major improvements in rights of the peasantry started with reforms in the mid-19th century.[80]
+
+The Estonian national awakening began in the 1850s as the leading figures started promoting an Estonian national identity among the general populace. Its economic basis was formed by widespread farm buyouts by peasants, forming a class of Estonian landowners. In 1857 Johann Voldemar Jannsen started publishing the first Estonian language newspaper and began popularising the denomination of oneself as eestlane (Estonian).[81] Schoolmaster Carl Robert Jakobson and clergyman Jakob Hurt became leading figures in a national movement, encouraging Estonian peasants to take pride in themselves and in their ethnic identity.[82] The first nationwide movements formed, such as a campaign to establish the Estonian language Alexander School, the founding of the Society of Estonian Literati and the Estonian Students' Society, and the first national song festival, held in 1869 in Tartu.[83][84][85] Linguistic reforms helped to develop the Estonian language.[86] The national epic Kalevipoeg was published in 1862, and 1870 saw the first performances of Estonian theatre.[87][88] In 1878 a major split happened in the national movement. The moderate wing led by Hurt focused on development of culture and Estonian education, while the radical wing led by Jacobson started demanding increased political and economical rights.[84]
+
+In the late 19th century the Russification period started, as the central government initiated various administrative and cultural measures to tie Baltic governorates more closely to the empire.[83] The Russian language was used throughout the education system and many Estonian social and cultural activities were suppressed.[88] Still, some administrative changes aimed at reducing power of Baltic German institutions did prove useful to Estonians.[83] In the late 1890s there was a new surge of nationalism with the rise of prominent figures like Jaan Tõnisson and Konstantin Päts. In the early 20th century Estonians started taking over control of local governments in towns from Germans.[89]
+
+During the 1905 Revolution the first legal Estonian political parties were founded. An Estonian national congress was convened and demanded the unification of Estonian areas into a single autonomous territory and an end to Russification. During the unrest peasants and workers attacked manor houses. The Tsarist government responded with a brutal crackdown; some 500 people were executed and hundreds more were jailed or deported to Siberia.[90][91]
+
+In 1917, after the February Revolution, the governorate of Estonia was expanded to include Estonian speaking areas of Livonia and was granted autonomy, enabling formation of the Estonian Provincial Assembly.[92] Bolsheviks seized power during the October Revolution, and disbanded the Provincial Assembly. However the Provincial Assembly established the Salvation Committee, and during the short interlude between Russian retreat and German arrival, the committee declared the independence of Estonia on 24 February 1918, and formed the Estonian Provisional Government. German occupation immediately followed, but after their defeat in World War I the Germans were forced to hand over power to the Provisional Government on 19 November.[93][94]
+
+On 28 November 1918 Soviet Russia invaded, starting the Estonian War of Independence.[95] The Red Army came within 30 km from Tallinn, but in January 1919, the Estonian Army, led by Johan Laidoner, went on a counter-offensive, ejecting Bolshevik forces from Estonia within a few months. Renewed Soviet attacks failed, and in spring, the Estonian army, in co-operation with White Russian forces, advanced into Russia and Latvia.[96][97] In June 1919, Estonia defeated the German Landeswehr which had attempted to dominate Latvia, restoring power to the government of Kārlis Ulmanis there. After the collapse of the White Russian forces, the Red Army launched a major offensive against Narva in late 1919, but failed to achieve a breakthrough. On 2 February 1920, the Tartu Peace Treaty was signed between Estonia and Soviet Russia, with the latter pledging to permanently give up all sovereign claims to Estonia.[96][98]
+
+In April 1919, the Estonian Constituent Assembly was elected. The Constituent Assembly passed a sweeping land reform expropriating large estates, and adopted a new highly liberal constitution establishing Estonia as a parliamentary democracy.[99][100] In 1924, the Soviet Union organised a communist coup attempt, which quickly failed.[101] Estonia's cultural autonomy law for ethnic minorities, adopted in 1925, is widely recognised as one of the most liberal in the world at that time.[102] The Great Depression put heavy pressure on Estonia's political system, and in 1933, the right-wing Vaps movement spearheaded a constitutional reform establishing a strong presidency.[103][104] On 12 March 1934 the acting head of state, Konstantin Päts, declared a state of emergency, falsely claiming that the Vaps movement had been planning a coup. Päts, together with general Johan Laidoner and Kaarel Eenpalu, established an authoritarian regime well known as the "Era of Silence", where the parliament was dissolved and the newly established Patriotic League became the only legal political party.[105] To legitimise the regime, a new constitution was adopted and elections were held in 1938. Opposition candidates were allowed to participate, but only as independents, while opposition parties remained banned.[106] The Päts regime was relatively benign compared to other authoritarian regimes in interwar Europe, and there was no systematic terror against political opponents.[107]
+
+Estonia joined the League of Nations in 1921.[108] Attempts to establish a larger alliance together with Finland, Poland, and Latvia failed, with only a mutual defence pact being signed with Latvia in 1923, and later was followed up with the Baltic Entente of 1934.[109][110] In the 1930s, Estonia also engaged in secret military co-operation with Finland.[111] Non-aggression pacts were signed with the Soviet Union in 1932, and with Germany in 1939.[108][112] In 1938, Estonia declared neutrality, but this proved futile in World War II.[113]
+
+On 23 August 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The pact's secret protocol divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, with Estonia belonging to the Soviet sphere.[114] On 24 September, the Soviet Union presented an ultimatum, demanding that Estonia sign a treaty of mutual assistance which would allow Soviet military bases into the country. The Estonian government felt that it had no choice but to comply, and the treaty was signed on 28 September.[115] In May 1940, Red Army forces in bases were set in combat readiness and, on 14 June, the Soviet Union instituted a full naval and air blockade on Estonia. On the same day, the airliner Kaleva was shot down by the Soviet Air Force. On 16 June, Soviets presented an ultimatum demanding completely free passage of the Red Army into Estonia and the establishment of a pro-Soviet government. Feeling that resistance was hopeless, the Estonian government complied and, on the next day, the whole country was occupied.[116][117] On 6 August 1940, Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union as the Estonian SSR.[118]
+
+The Soviets established a regime of oppression; most of the high-ranking civil and military officials, intelligentsia and industrialists were arrested, and usually executed soon afterwards. Soviet repressions culminated on 14 June 1941 with mass deportation of around 11,000 people to Siberia, among whom more than half perished in inhumane conditions.[119][120] When the German Operation Barbarossa started against the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, around 34,000 young Estonian men were forcibly drafted into the Red Army, fewer than 30% of whom survived the war. Soviet destruction battalions initiated a scorched earth policy. Political prisoners who could not be evacuated were executed by the NKVD.[121][122] Many Estonians went into the forest, starting an anti-Soviet guerrilla campaign. In July, German Wehrmacht reached south Estonia. Soviets evacuated Tallinn in late August with massive losses, and capture of the Estonian islands was completed by German forces in October.[123]
+
+Initially many Estonians were hopeful that Germany would help to restore Estonia's independence, but this soon proved to be in vain. Only a puppet collaborationist administration was established, and occupied Estonia was merged into Reichskommissariat Ostland, with its economy being fully subjugated to German military needs.[124] About a thousand Estonian Jews who had not managed to leave were almost all quickly killed in 1941. Numerous forced labour camps were established where thousands of Estonians, foreign Jews, Romani, and Soviet prisoners of war perished.[125] German occupation authorities started recruiting men into small volunteer units but, as these efforts provided meagre results and military situation worsened, a forced conscription was instituted in 1943, eventually leading to formation of the Estonian Waffen-SS division.[126] Thousands of Estonians who did not want to fight in German military secretly escaped to Finland, where many volunteered to fight together with Finns against Soviets.[127]
+
+The Red Army reached the Estonian borders again in early 1944, but its advance into Estonia was stopped in heavy fighting near Narva for six months by German forces, including numerous Estonian units.[128] In March, the Soviet Air Force carried out heavy bombing raids against Tallinn and other Estonian towns.[129] In July, the Soviets started a major offensive from the south, forcing the Germans to abandon mainland Estonia in September, with the Estonian islands being abandoned in November.[128] As German forces were retreating from Tallinn, the last pre-war prime minister Jüri Uluots appointed a government headed by Otto Tief in an unsuccessful attempt restore Estonia's independence.[130] Tens of thousands of people, including most of the Estonian Swedes, fled westwards to avoid the new Soviet occupation.[131]
+
+Overall, Estonia lost about 25% of its population through deaths, deportations and evacuations in World War II.[132] Estonia also suffered some irrevocable territorial losses, as Soviet Union transferred border areas comprising about 5% of Estonian pre-war territory from the Estonian SSR to the Russian SFSR.[133]
+
+Thousands of Estonians opposing the second Soviet occupation joined a guerrilla movement known as Forest Brothers. The armed resistance was heaviest in the first few years after the war, but Soviet authorities gradually wore it down through attrition, and resistance effectively ceased to exist in the mid 1950s.[134] The Soviets initiated a policy of collectivisation, but as peasants remained opposed to it a campaign of terror was unleashed. In March 1949 about 20,000 Estonians were deported to Siberia. Collectivization was fully completed soon afterwards.[119][135]
+
+The Soviet Union began Russification, with hundreds of thousands of Russians and people of other Soviet nationalities being induced to settle in Estonia, which eventually threatened to turn Estonians into a minority in their own land.[136] In 1945 Estonians formed 97% of the population, but by 1989 their share of the population had fallen to 62%.[137] Economically, heavy industry was strongly prioritised, but this did not improve the well-being of the local population, and caused massive environmental damage through pollution.[138] Living standards under the Soviet occupation kept falling further behind nearby independent Finland.[136] The country was heavily militarised, with closed military areas covering 2% of territory.[139] Islands and most of the coastal areas were turned into a restricted border zone which required a special permit for entry.[140]
+
+The United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the majority of other Western countries considered the annexation of Estonia by the Soviet Union illegal.[141] Legal continuity of the Estonian state was preserved through the government-in-exile and the Estonian diplomatic representatives which Western governments continued to recognise.[142][143]
+
+The introduction of Perestroika in 1987 made political activity possible again, starting an independence restoration process known as the Singing Revolution.[144] The environmental Phosphorite War campaign became the first major protest movement against the central government.[145] In 1988 new political movements appeared, such as the Popular Front of Estonia which came to represent the moderate wing in the independence movement, and the more radical Estonian National Independence Party, which was the first non-communist party in the Soviet Union and demanded full restoration of independence.[146] Reformist Vaino Väljas became the first secretary of Estonian Communist Party, and under his leadership on 16 November 1988 Estonian Supreme Soviet issued Sovereignty Declaration asserting the primacy of Estonian laws over Union laws. Over the next two years almost all other Soviet Republics followed the Estonian lead issuing similar declarations.[147][148] On 23 August 1989 about 2 million Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians participated in a mass demonstration forming a Baltic Way human chain across the three republics.[149] In 1990 the Congress of Estonia was formed as representative body of Estonian citizens.[150] In March 1991 a referendum was held where 77.7% of voters supported independence, and during the coup attempt in Moscow Estonia declared restoration of independence on 20 August,[151] which is now the Day of Restoration of Independence, a national holiday.[152]
+
+Soviet authorities recognised Estonian independence on 6 September, and on 17 September Estonia was admitted into the United Nations.[153] The last units of the Russian army left Estonia in 1994.[154]
+
+In 1992 radical economic reforms were launched for switching over to a market economy, including privatisation and currency reform.[155] Estonian foreign policy since independence has been oriented toward the West, and in 2004 Estonia joined both the European Union and NATO.[156]
+
+Estonia lies on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea immediately across the Gulf of Finland, on the level northwestern part of the rising East European platform between 57.3° and 59.5° N and 21.5° and 28.1° E. Average elevation reaches only 50 metres (164 ft) and the country's highest point is the Suur Munamägi in the southeast at 318 metres (1,043 ft). There is 3,794 kilometres (2,357 mi) of coastline marked by numerous bays, straits, and inlets. The number of islands and islets is estimated at some 2,355 (including those in lakes). Two of them are large enough to constitute separate counties: Saaremaa and Hiiumaa.[157][158] A small, recent cluster of meteorite craters, the largest of which is called Kaali is found on Saaremaa, Estonia.
+
+Estonia has over 1,400 lakes. Most are very small, with the largest, Lake Peipus, being 3,555 km2 (1,373 sq mi). There are many rivers in the country. The longest of them are Võhandu (162 km or 101 mi), Pärnu (144 km or 89 mi), and Põltsamaa (135 km or 84 mi).[157] Estonia has numerous fens and bogs. Forest land covers 50% of Estonia.[159] The most common tree species are pine, spruce and birch.[160]
+
+Phytogeographically, Estonia is shared between the Central European and Eastern European provinces of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. According to the WWF, the territory of Estonia belongs to the ecoregion of Sarmatic mixed forests.
+
+Estonia is situated in the northern part of the temperate climate zone and in the transition zone between maritime and continental climate.
+Estonia has four seasons of near-equal length. Average temperatures range from 16.3 °C (61.3 °F) on the islands to 18.1 °C (64.6 °F) inland in July, the warmest month, and from −3.5 °C (25.7 °F) on the islands to −7.6 °C (18.3 °F) inland in February, the coldest month. The average annual temperature in Estonia is 5.2 °C (41.4 °F).[161] The average precipitation in 1961–1990 ranged from 535 to 727 mm (21.1 to 28.6 in) per year.[162]
+
+Snow cover, which is deepest in the south-eastern part of Estonia, usually lasts from mid-December to late March.
+
+Many species extinct in most of the European countries can be still found in Estonia. Mammals present in Estonia include the grey wolf, lynx, brown bear, red fox, badger, wild boar, moose, red deer, roe deer, beaver, otter, grey seal, and ringed seal. Critically endangered European mink has been successfully reintroduced to the island of Hiiumaa, and the rare Siberian flying squirrel is present in east Estonia.[163][164] Introduced species, such as the sika deer, raccoon dog and muskrat, can now be found throughout the country.[165] Over 300 bird species have been found in Estonia, including the white-tailed eagle, lesser spotted eagle, golden eagle, western capercaillie, black and white stork, numerous species of owls, waders, geese and many others.[166] The barn swallow is the national bird of Estonia.[167]
+
+Protected areas cover 18% of Estonian land and 26% of its sea territory. There are 6 national parks, 159 nature reserves, and many other protection areas.[168]
+
+Estonia is a unitary parliamentary republic. The unicameral parliament Riigikogu serves as the legislative and the government as the executive.[169]
+
+Estonian parliament Riigikogu is elected by citizens over 18 years of age for a four-year term by proportional representation, and has 101 members. Riigikogu's responsibilities include approval and preservation of the national government, passing legal acts, passing the state budget, and conducting parliamentary supervision. On proposal of the president Riigikogu appoints the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Chairman of the Board of the Bank of Estonia, the Auditor General, the Legal Chancellor, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces.[170][171]
+
+The Government of Estonia is formed by the Prime Minister of Estonia at recommendation of the President, and approved by the Riigikogu. The government, headed by the Prime Minister, represent the political leadership of the country and carry out domestic and foreign policy. Ministers head ministries and represent its interests in the government. Sometimes ministers with no associated ministry are appointed, known as ministers without portfolio.[172] Estonia has been ruled by coalition governments because no party has been able to obtain an absolute majority in the parliament.[169]
+
+The head of the state is the President who has primarily representative and ceremonial role. The president is elected by the Riigikogu, or by a special electoral college. The President proclaims the laws passed in the Riigikogu, and has right to refuse proclamation and return law in question for a new debate and decision. If Riigikogu passes the law unamended, then the President has right to propose to the Supreme Court to declare the law unconstitutional. The President also represents the country in international relations.[169][173]
+
+The Constitution of Estonia also provides possibility for direct democracy through referendum, although since adoption of the constitution in 1992 the only referendum has been the referendum on European Union membership in 2003.[174]
+
+Estonia has pursued the development of the e-government, with 99 percent of the public services being available on the web 24 hours a day.[175] In 2005 Estonia became the first country in the world to introduce nationwide binding Internet voting in local elections of 2005.[176] In 2019 parliamentary elections 44% of the total votes were cast over the internet.[177]
+
+In the most recent parliamentary elections of 2019, five parties gained seats at Riigikogu. The head of the Centre Party, Jüri Ratas, formed the government together with Conservative People's Party and Isamaa, while Reform Party and Social Democratic Party became the opposition.[178]
+
+The Constitution of Estonia is the fundamental law, establishing the constitutional order based on five principles: human dignity, democracy, rule of law, social state, and the Estonian identity.[179] Estonia has a civil law legal system based on the Germanic legal model.[180] The court system has three-level structure. The first instance are county courts which handle all criminal and civil cases, and administrative courts which hear complaints about government and local officials, and other public disputes. The second instance are district courts which handle appeals about the first instance decisions.[181] The Supreme Court is the court of cassation, and also conducts constitutional review, it has 19 members.[182] The judiciary is independent, judges are appointed for life, and can be removed from office only then convicted by court for a criminal deed.[183] The Estonian justice system has been rated among the most efficient in the European Union by the EU Justice Scoreboard.[184]
+
+Estonia is a unitary country with a single-tier local government system. Local affairs are managed autonomously by local governments. Since administrative reform in 2017, there are in total 79 local governments, including 15 towns and 64 rural municipalities. All municipalities have equal legal status and form part of a county, which is a state administrative unit.[185] Representative body of local authorities is municipal council, elected at general direct elections for a four-year term. The council appoints local government, headed by a mayor. For additional decentralization the local authorities may form municipal districts with limited authority, currently those have been formed in Tallinn and Hiiumaa.[186]
+
+Separately from administrative units there are also settlement units: village, small borough, borough, and town. Generally, villages have less than 300, small boroughs have between 300–1000, boroughs and towns have over 1000 inhabitants.[186]
+
+Estonia was a member of the League of Nations from 22 September 1921, and became a member of the United Nations on 17 September 1991.[187][188] Since restoration of independence Estonia has pursued close relations with the Western countries, and has been member of NATO since 29 March 2004, as well as the European Union since 1 May 2004.[188] In 2007, Estonia joined the Schengen Area, and in 2011 the Eurozone.[188] The European Union Agency for large-scale IT systems is based in Tallinn, which started operations at the end of 2012.[189] Estonia held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2017.[190]
+
+Since the early 1990s, Estonia has been involved in active trilateral Baltic states co-operation with Latvia and Lithuania, and Nordic-Baltic co-operation with the Nordic countries. The Baltic Council is the joint forum of the interparliamentary Baltic Assembly and the intergovernmental Baltic Council of Ministers.[191] Estonia has built close relationship with the Nordic countries, especially Finland and Sweden, and is a member of Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB-8) uniting Nordic and Baltic countries.[188][192] Joint Nordic-Baltic projects include the education programme Nordplus[193] and mobility programmes for business and industry[194] and for public administration.[195] The Nordic Council of Ministers has an office in Tallinn with a subsidiaries in Tartu and Narva.[196][197] The Baltic states are members of Nordic Investment Bank, European Union's Nordic Battle Group, and in 2011 were invited to co-operate with NORDEFCO in selected activities.[198][199][200][201]
+
+The beginning of the attempt to redefine Estonia as "Nordic" was seen in December 1999, when then Estonian foreign minister (and President of Estonia from 2006 until 2016) Toomas Hendrik Ilves delivered a speech entitled "Estonia as a Nordic Country" to the Swedish Institute for International Affairs,[202] with potential political calculation behind it being wish to distinguish Estonia from more slowly progressing southern neighbours, which could have postponed early participation in European Union enlargement for Estonia too.[203] Andres Kasekamp argued in 2005, that relevance of identity discussions in Baltic states decreased with their entrance into EU and NATO together, but predicted, that in the future, attractiveness of Nordic identity in Baltic states will grow and eventually, five Nordic states plus three Baltic states will become a single unit.[203]
+
+Other Estonian international organisation memberships include OECD, OSCE, WTO, IMF, the Council of the Baltic Sea States,[188][204][205] and on 7 June 2019, was elected a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for a term that begins on 1 January 2020.[14]
+
+Relations with Russia remain generally cold, though there is some practical co-operation.[206]
+
+The Estonian Defence Forces consist of land forces, navy, and air force. The current national military service is compulsory for healthy men between ages of 18 and 28, with conscripts serving 8 or 11-month tours of duty, depending on their education and position provided by the Defence Forces.[207] The peacetime size of the Estonian Defence Forces is about 6,000 persons, with half of those being conscripts. The planned wartime size of the Defence Forces is 60,000 personnel, including 21,000 personnel in high readiness reserve.[208] Since 2015 the Estonian defence budget has been over 2% of GDP, fulfilling its NATO defence spending obligation.[209]
+
+The Estonian Defence League is a voluntary national defence organisation under management of Ministry of Defence. It is organized based on military principles, has its own military equipment, and provides various different military training for its members, including in guerilla tactics. The Defence League has 16,000 members, with additional 10,000 volunteers in its affiliated organisations.[210][211]
+
+Estonia co-operates with Latvia and Lithuania in several trilateral Baltic defence co-operation initiatives. As part of Baltic Air Surveillance Network (BALTNET) the three countries manage Baltic airspace control center, Baltic Battalion (BALTBAT) has participated in the NATO Response Force, and a joint military educational institution Baltic Defence College is located in Tartu.[212]
+
+Estonia joined NATO in 2004. NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence was established in Tallinn in 2008.[213] In response to Russian military operations in Ukraine, since 2017 NATO Enhanced Forward Presence battalion battle group has been based in Tapa Army Base.[214] Also part of NATO Baltic Air Policing deployment has been based in Ämari Air Base since 2014.[215] In European Union Estonia participates in Nordic Battlegroup and Permanent Structured Cooperation.[216][217]
+
+Since 1995 Estonia has participated in numerous international security and peacekeeping missions, including: Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Kosovo, and Mali.[218] The peak strength of Estonian deployment in Afghanistan was 289 soldiers in 2009.[219] 11 Estonian soldiers have been killed in missions of Afghanistan and Iraq.[220]
+
+As a member of the European Union, Estonia is considered a high-income economy by the World Bank. The GDP (PPP) per capita of the country was $29,312 in 2016 according to the International Monetary Fund.[5] Because of its rapid growth, Estonia has often been described as a Baltic Tiger beside Lithuania and Latvia. Beginning 1 January 2011, Estonia adopted the euro and became the 17th eurozone member state.[221]
+
+According to Eurostat, Estonia had the lowest ratio of government debt to GDP among EU countries at 6.7% at the end of 2010.[222]
+A balanced budget, almost non-existent public debt, flat-rate income tax, free trade regime, competitive commercial banking sector, innovative e-Services and even mobile-based services are all hallmarks of Estonia's market economy.
+
+Estonia produces about 75% of its consumed electricity.[223] In 2011, about 85% of it was generated with locally mined oil shale.[224] Alternative energy sources such as wood, peat, and biomass make up approximately 9% of primary energy production. Renewable wind energy was about 6% of total consumption in 2009.[225] Estonia imports petroleum products from western Europe and Russia. Estonia imports 100% of its natural gas from Russia.[226] Oil shale energy, telecommunications, textiles, chemical products, banking, services, food and fishing, timber, shipbuilding, electronics, and transportation are key sectors of the economy.[227] The ice-free port of Muuga, near Tallinn, is a modern facility featuring good transshipment capability, a high-capacity grain elevator, chill/frozen storage, and new oil tanker off-loading capabilities.[citation needed] The railroad serves as a conduit between the West, Russia, and other points.[citation needed]
+
+Because of the global economic recession that began in 2007, the GDP of Estonia decreased by 1.4% in the 2nd quarter of 2008, over 3% in the 3rd quarter of 2008, and over 9% in the 4th quarter of 2008. The Estonian government made a supplementary negative budget, which was passed by Riigikogu. The revenue of the budget was decreased for 2008 by EEK 6.1 billion and the expenditure by EEK 3.2 billion.[228] In 2010, the economic situation stabilised and started a growth based on strong exports. In the fourth quarter of 2010, Estonian industrial output increased by 23% compared to the year before. The country has been experiencing economic growth ever since.[229]
+
+According to Eurostat data, Estonian PPS GDP per capita stood at 67% of the EU average in 2008.[230] In 2017, the average monthly gross salary in Estonia was €1221.[231]
+
+However, there are vast disparities in GDP between different areas of Estonia; currently, over half of the country's GDP is created in Tallinn.[232] In 2008, the GDP per capita of Tallinn stood at 172% of the Estonian average,[233] which makes the per capita GDP of Tallinn as high as 115% of the European Union average, exceeding the average levels of other counties.
+
+The unemployment rate in March 2016 was 6.4%, which is below the EU average,[231] while real GDP growth in 2011 was 8.0%,[234] five times the euro-zone average. In 2012, Estonia remained the only euro member with a budget surplus, and with a national debt of only 6%, it is one of the least indebted countries in Europe.[235]
+
+Estonia's economy continues to benefit from a transparent government and policies that sustain a high level of economic freedom, ranking 6th globally and 2nd in Europe.[236][237] The rule of law remains strongly buttressed and enforced by an independent and efficient judicial system. A simplified tax system with flat rates and low indirect taxation, openness to foreign investment, and a liberal trade regime have supported the resilient and well-functioning economy.[238] As of May 2018[update], the Ease of Doing Business Index by the World Bank Group places the country 16th in the world.[239] The strong focus on the IT sector has led to much faster, simpler and efficient public services where for example filing a tax return takes less than five minutes and 98% of banking transactions are conducted through the internet.[240][241] Estonia has the third lowest business bribery risk in the world, according to TRACE Matrix.[242]
+
+Lower score = Less risk. Source: TRACE Matrix[242]
+
+In 1928, a stable currency, the kroon, was established. It is issued by the Bank of Estonia, the country's central bank. The word kroon (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈkroːn], "crown") is related to that of the other Nordic currencies (such as the Swedish krona and the Danish and Norwegian krone). The kroon succeeded the mark in 1928 and was used until 1940. After Estonia regained its independence, the kroon was reintroduced in 1992.
+
+Since re-establishing independence, Estonia has styled itself as the gateway between East and West and aggressively pursued economic reform and integration with the West. Estonia's market reforms put it among the economic leaders in the former COMECON area.[citation needed] In 1994, based on the economic theories of Milton Friedman, Estonia became one of the first countries to adopt a flat tax, with a uniform rate of 26% regardless of personal income. This rate has since been reduced three times, to 24% in January 2005, 23% in January 2006, and finally to 21% by January 2008.[243] The Government of Estonia finalised the design of Estonian euro coins in late 2004, and adopted the euro as the country's currency on 1 January 2011, later than planned due to continued high inflation.[221][244] A Land Value Tax is levied which is used to fund local municipalities. It is a state level tax, however 100% of the revenue is used to fund Local Councils. The rate is set by the Local Council within the limits of 0.1–2.5%. It is one of the most important sources of funding for municipalities.[245] The Land Value Tax is levied on the value of the land only with improvements and buildings not considered. Very few exemptions are considered on the land value tax and even public institutions are subject to the tax.[245] The tax has contributed to a high rate (~90%)[245] of owner-occupied residences within Estonia, compared to a rate of 67.4% in the United States.[246]
+
+In 1999, Estonia experienced its worst year economically since it regained independence in 1991, largely because of the impact of the 1998 Russian financial crisis.[citation needed] Estonia joined the WTO in November 1999. With assistance from the European Union, the World Bank and the Nordic Investment Bank, Estonia completed most of its preparations for European Union membership by the end of 2002 and now has one of the strongest economies of the new member states of the European Union.[citation needed] Estonia joined the OECD in 2010.[247]
+
+Although Estonia is in general resource-poor, the land still offers a large variety of smaller resources. The country has large oil shale and limestone deposits, along with forests that cover 48% of the land.[251] In addition to oil shale and limestone, Estonia also has large reserves of phosphorite, pitchblende, and granite that currently are not mined, or not mined extensively.[252]
+
+Significant quantities of rare-earth oxides are found in tailings accumulated from 50 years of uranium ore, shale and loparite mining at Sillamäe.[253] Because of the rising prices of rare earths, extraction of these oxides has become economically viable. The country currently exports around 3000 tonnes per annum, representing around 2% of world production.[254]
+
+Since 2008, public debate has discussed whether Estonia should build a nuclear power plant to secure energy production after closure of old units in the Narva Power Plants, if they are not reconstructed by the year 2016.[255][256]
+
+Food, construction, and electronic industries are currently among the most important branches of Estonia's industry.[citation needed] In 2007, the construction industry employed more than 80,000 people, around 12% of the entire country's workforce.[257] Another important industrial sector is the machinery and chemical industry, which is mainly located in Ida-Viru County and around Tallinn.
+
+The oil shale-based mining industry, which is also concentrated in East-Estonia, produces around 90% of the entire country's electricity.[citation needed] Although the amount of pollutants emitted to the air have been falling since the 1980s,[258] the air is still polluted with sulphur dioxide from the mining industry that the Soviet Union rapidly developed in the early 1950s. In some areas the coastal seawater is polluted, mainly around the Sillamäe industrial complex.[259]
+
+Estonia is a dependent country in the terms of energy and energy production. In recent years many local and foreign companies have been investing in renewable energy sources.[citation needed] The importance of wind power has been increasing steadily in Estonia and currently the total amount of energy production from wind is nearly 60 MW while at the same time roughly 399 MW worth of projects are currently being developed and more than 2800 MW worth of projects are being proposed in the Lake Peipus area and the coastal areas of Hiiumaa.[260][261][262]
+
+Currently[when?], there are plans to renovate some older units of the Narva Power Plants, establish new power stations, and provide higher efficiency in oil shale-based energy production.[263] Estonia liberalised 35% of its electricity market in April 2010. The electricity market as whole will be liberalised by 2013.
+[264]
+
+Together with Lithuania, Poland, and Latvia, the country considered participating in constructing the Visaginas nuclear power plant in Lithuania to replace the Ignalina.[265][266] However, due to the slow pace of the project and problems with the sector (like Fukushima disaster and bad example of Olkiluoto plant), Eesti Energia has shifted its main focus to shale oil production that is seen as much more profitable business.[267]
+
+Estonia has a strong information technology sector, partly owing to the Tiigrihüpe project undertaken in the mid-1990s, and has been mentioned as the most "wired" and advanced country in Europe in the terms of e-Government of Estonia.[268] A new direction is to offer those services present in Estonia to the non-residents via e-residency program.
+
+Skype was written by Estonia-based developers Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn, who had also originally developed Kazaa.[269] Other notable tech startups include GrabCAD, Fortumo and TransferWise. It is even claimed that Estonia has the most startups per person in world.[270]
+
+The Estonian electricity network forms a part of the Nord Pool Spot network.[271]
+
+Estonia has had a market economy since the end of the 1990s and one of the highest per capita income levels in Eastern Europe.[272] Proximity to the Scandinavian and Finnish markets, its location between the East and West, competitive cost structure and a highly skilled labour force have been the major Estonian comparative advantages in the beginning of the 2000s (decade). As the largest city, Tallinn has emerged as a financial centre and the Tallinn Stock Exchange joined recently with the OMX system. Several cryptocurrency trading platforms are officially recognised by the government, such as CoinMetro.[273] The current government has pursued tight fiscal policies, resulting in balanced budgets and low public debt.
+
+In 2007, however, a large current account deficit and rising inflation put pressure on Estonia's currency, which was pegged to the Euro, highlighting the need for growth in export-generating industries.
+Estonia exports mainly machinery and equipment, wood and paper, textiles, food products, furniture, and metals and chemical products.[274] Estonia also exports 1.562 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually.[274] At the same time Estonia imports machinery and equipment, chemical products, textiles, food products and transportation equipment.[274] Estonia imports 200 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually.[274]
+
+Between 2007 and 2013, Estonia received 53.3 billion kroons (3.4 billion euros) from various European Union Structural Funds as direct supports, creating the largest foreign investments into Estonia.[275] Majority of the European Union financial aid will be invested into the following fields: energy economies, entrepreneurship, administrative capability, education, information society, environment protection, regional and local development, research and development activities, healthcare and welfare, transportation and labour market.[276] Main sources of foreign direct investments to Estonia are Sweden and Finland (As of 31 December 2016[update] 48.3%).[277]
+
+-
+
+Before World War II, ethnic Estonians constituted 88% of the population, with national minorities constituting the remaining 12%.[279] The largest minority groups in 1934 were Russians, Germans, Swedes, Latvians, Jews, Poles, Finns and Ingrians.
+
+The share of Baltic Germans in Estonia had fallen from 5.3% (~46,700) in 1881 to 1.3% (16,346) by the year 1934,[279][280] which was mainly due to emigration to Germany in the light of general Russification in the end of the 19th century[citation needed] and the independence of Estonia in the 20th century.
+
+Between 1945 and 1989, the share of ethnic Estonians in the population resident within the currently defined boundaries of Estonia dropped to 61%, caused primarily by the Soviet programme promoting mass immigration of urban industrial workers from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, as well as by wartime emigration and Joseph Stalin's mass deportations and executions.[citation needed] By 1989, minorities constituted more than one-third of the population, as the number of non-Estonians had grown almost fivefold.
+
+At the end of the 1980s, Estonians[who?] perceived their demographic change as a national catastrophe. This was a result of the migration policies essential to the Soviet Nationalisation Programme aiming to russify Estonia – administrative and military immigration of non-Estonians from the USSR coupled with the deportation of Estonians to the USSR.[citation needed] In the decade after the reconstitution of independence, large-scale emigration by ethnic Russians and the removal of the Russian military bases in 1994 caused[citation needed] the proportion of ethnic Estonians in Estonia to increase from 61% to 69% in 2006.
+
+Modern Estonia is a fairly ethnically heterogeneous country, but this heterogeneity is not a feature of much of the country as the non-Estonian population is concentrated in two of Estonia's counties. Thirteen of Estonia's 15 counties are over 80% ethnic Estonian, the most homogeneous being Hiiumaa, where Estonians account for 98.4% of the population. In the counties of Harju (including the capital city, Tallinn) and Ida-Viru, however, ethnic Estonians make up 60% and 20% of the population, respectively. Russians make up 25.6% of the total population but account for 36% of the population in Harju county and 70% of the population in Ida-Viru county.
+
+The Estonian Cultural Autonomy law that was passed in 1925 was unique in Europe at that time.[281] Cultural autonomies could be granted to minorities numbering more than 3,000 people with longstanding ties to the Republic of Estonia. Before the Soviet occupation, the Germans and Jewish minorities managed to elect a cultural council. The Law on Cultural Autonomy for National Minorities was reinstated in 1993. Historically, large parts of Estonia's northwestern coast and islands have been populated by indigenous ethnically Rannarootslased (Coastal Swedes).
+
+In recent years the numbers of Coastal Swedes has risen again, numbering in 2008 almost 500 people, owing to the property reforms in the beginning of the 1990s. In 2004, the Ingrian Finnish minority in Estonia elected a cultural council and was granted cultural autonomy. The Estonian Swedish minority similarly received cultural autonomy in 2007.
+
+Estonian society has undergone considerable changes over the last twenty years, one of the most notable being the increasing level of stratification, and the distribution of family income. The Gini coefficient has been steadily higher than the European Union average (31 in 2009),[282] although it has clearly dropped. The registered unemployment rate in January 2012 was 7.7%.[283]
+
+Modern Estonia is a multinational country in which 109 languages are spoken, according to a 2000 census. 67.3% of Estonian citizens speak Estonian as their native language, 29.7% Russian, and 3% speak other languages.[284] As of 2 July 2010[update], 84.1% of Estonian residents are Estonian citizens, 8.6% are citizens of other countries and 7.3% are "citizens with undetermined citizenship".[285] Since 1992 roughly 140,000 people have acquired Estonian citizenship by passing naturalisation exams.[286] Estonia has also accepted quota refugees under the migrant plan agreed upon by EU member states in 2015.[287]
+
+The ethnic distribution in Estonia is very homogeneous, where in most counties over 90% of the people are ethnic Estonians. This is in contrast to large urban centres like Tallinn, where Estonians account for 60% of the population, and the remainder is composed mostly of Russian and other Slavic inhabitants, who arrived in Estonia during the Soviet period.[citation needed]
+
+The 2008 United Nations Human Rights Council report called "extremely credible" the description of the citizenship policy of Estonia as "discriminatory".[288] According to surveys, only 5% of the Russian community have considered returning to Russia in the near future. Estonian Russians have developed their own identity – more than half of the respondents recognised that Estonian Russians differ noticeably from the Russians in Russia. When comparing the result with a survey from 2000, then Russians' attitude toward the future is much more positive.[289]
+
+Estonia has been the first post-Soviet republic that has legalised civil unions of same-sex couples. The law was approved in October 2014 and came into effect 1 January 2016.[290]
+
+53.3% of ethnically Estonian youth consider belonging in the Nordic identity group as important or very important for them. 52.2% have the same attitude towards the "Baltic" identity group, according to a research study from 2013:[291]
+
+The image that Estonian youths have of their identity is rather similar to that of the Finns as far as the identities of being a citizen of one’s own country, a Fenno-Ugric person, or a Nordic person are concerned, while our identity as a citizen of Europe is common ground between us and Latvians – being stronger here than it is among the young people of Finland and Sweden.[291]
+
+Tallinn is the capital and the largest city of Estonia, and lies on the northern coast of Estonia, along the Gulf of Finland. There are 33 cities and several town-parish towns in the country. In total, there are 47 linna, with "linn" in English meaning both "cities" and "towns". More than 70% of the population lives in towns.
+
+1Population, persons aged 15 and older.
+
+Estonia has a rich and diverse religious history, but in recent years it has become increasingly secular, with either a plurality or a majority of the population declaring themselves nonreligious in recent censuses, followed by those who identify as religiously "undeclared". The largest minority groups are the various Christian denominations, principally Lutheran and Orthodox Christians, with very small numbers of adherents in non-Christian faiths, namely Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. Other polls suggest the country is broadly split between Christians and the non-religious / religiously undeclared.
+
+In ancient Estonia, prior to Christianization and according to Livonian Chronicle of Henry, Tharapita was the predominant deity for the Oeselians.[294]
+
+Estonia was Christianised by the Catholic Teutonic Knights in the 13th century. The Protestant Reformation led to the establishment of the Lutheran church in 1686. Before the Second World War, Estonia was approximately 80% Protestant, overwhelmingly Lutheran,[295][296][297] followed by Calvinism and other Protestant branches. Many Estonians profess not to be particularly religious, because religion through the 19th century was associated with German feudal rule.[298] There has historically been a small but noticeable minority of Russian Old-believers near the Lake Peipus area in Tartu County.
+
+Today, Estonia's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and individual rights to privacy of belief and religion.[299] According to the Dentsu Communication Institute Inc, Estonia is one of the least religious countries in the world, with 75.7% of the population claiming to be irreligious. The Eurobarometer Poll 2005 found that only 16% of Estonians profess a belief in a god, the lowest belief of all countries studied.[300] According to the Lutheran World Federation, the historic Lutheran denomination has a large presence with 180,000 registered members.[301]
+
+New polls about religiosity in the European Union in 2012 by Eurobarometer found that Christianity is the largest religion in Estonia accounting for 45% of Estonians.[302] Eastern Orthodox are the largest Christian group in Estonia, accounting for 17% of Estonia citizens,[302] while Protestants make up 6%, and Other Christian make up 22%. Non believer/Agnostic account 22%, Atheist accounts for 15%, and undeclared accounts for 15%.[302]
+
+The most recent Pew Research Center, found that in 2015, 51% of the population of Estonia declared itself Christian, 45% religiously unaffiliated—a category which includes atheists, agnostics and those who describe their religion as "Nothing in Particular", while 2% belonged to other faiths.[303] The Christians divided between 25% Eastern Orthodox, 20% Lutherans, 5% other Christians and 1% Roman Catholic.[304] While the religiously unaffiliated divided between 9% as atheists, 1% as agnostics and 35% as Nothing in Particular.[305]
+
+Traditionally, the largest religious denomination in the country was Lutheranism, which was adhered to by 160,000 Estonians (or 13% of the population) according from 2000 census, principally ethnic Estonians. Other organisations, such as the World Council of Churches, report that there are as many as 265,700 Estonian Lutherans.[306] Additionally, there are between 8,000–9,000 members abroad. 
+However, the 2011 census indicated that Eastern Orthodoxy had surpassed Lutheranism, accounting for 16.5% of the population (176,773 people).
+
+Eastern Orthodoxy is practised chiefly by the Russian minority. The Estonian Orthodox Church, affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, is the primary Orthodox denomination. The Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church, under the Greek-Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate, claims another 20,000 members.[citation needed]
+
+Roman Catholics are a small minority in Estonia. They are organised under the Latin Apostolic Administration of Estonia.
+
+According to the census of 2000 (data in table to the right), there were about 1,000 adherents of the Taara faith[307][308][309] or Maausk in Estonia (see Maavalla Koda). The Jewish community has an estimated population of about 1,900 (see History of the Jews in Estonia), and the Muslim community numbers just over 1,400. Around 68,000 people consider themselves atheists.[310]
+
+The official language, Estonian, belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. Estonian is closely related to Finnish, spoken in Finland, across the other side of the Gulf of Finland, and is one of the few languages of Europe that is not of an Indo-European origin. Despite some overlaps in the vocabulary due to borrowings, in terms of its origin, Estonian and Finnish are not related to their nearest geographical neighbours, Swedish, Latvian, and Russian, which are all Indo-European languages.
+
+Although the Estonian and Germanic languages are of very different origins, one can identify many similar words in Estonian and German. This is primarily because the Estonian language has borrowed nearly one third of its vocabulary from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon (Middle Low German) during the period of German rule, and High German (including standard German). The percentage of Low Saxon and High German loanwords can be estimated at 22–25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent.
+
+South Estonian languages are spoken by 100,000 people and include the dialects of Võro and Seto. The languages are spoken in South-Eastern Estonia, are genealogically distinct from northern Estonian: but are traditionally and officially considered as dialects and "regional forms of the Estonian language", not separate language(s).[311]
+
+Russian is by far the most spoken minority language in the country. There are towns in Estonia with large concentrations of Russian speakers and there are towns where Estonian speakers are in the minority (especially in the northeast, e.g. Narva). Russian is spoken as a secondary language by forty- to seventy-year-old ethnic Estonians, because Russian was the unofficial language of the Estonian SSR from 1944 to 1991 and taught as a compulsory second language during the Soviet era. In 1998, most first- and second-generation industrial immigrants from the former Soviet Union (mainly the Russian SFSR) did not speak Estonian.[312] However, by 2010, 64.1% of non-ethnic Estonians spoke Estonian.[313] The latter, mostly Russian-speaking ethnic minorities, reside predominantly in the capital city of Tallinn and the industrial urban areas in Ida-Virumaa.
+
+From the 13th to the 20th century, there were Swedish-speaking communities in Estonia, particularly in the coastal areas and on the islands (e.g., Hiiumaa, Vormsi, Ruhnu; in Swedish, known as Dagö, Ormsö, Runö, respectively) along the Baltic sea, communities which today have almost disappeared. The Swedish-speaking minority was represented in parliament, and entitled to use their native language in parliamentary debates.
+
+From 1918 to 1940, when Estonia was independent, the small Swedish community was well treated. Municipalities with a Swedish majority, mainly found along the coast, used Swedish as the administrative language and Swedish-Estonian culture saw an upswing. However, most Swedish-speaking people fled to Sweden before the end of World War II, before the invasion of Estonia by the Soviet army in 1944. Only a handful of older speakers remain. 
+Apart from many other areas the influence of Swedish is especially distinct in the Noarootsi Parish of Lääne County where there are many villages with bilingual Estonian and/or Swedish names and street signs.[314][315]
+
+The most common foreign languages learned by Estonian students are English, Russian, German, and French. Other popular languages include Finnish, Spanish, and Swedish.[316]
+
+The history of formal education in Estonia dates back to the 13th and 14th centuries when the first monastic and cathedral schools were founded.[318] The first primer in the Estonian language was published in 1575. The oldest university is the University of Tartu, established by the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf in 1632. In 1919, university courses were first taught in the Estonian language.
+
+Today's education in Estonia is divided into general, vocational, and hobby. The education system is based on four levels: pre-school, basic, secondary, and higher education.[319] A wide network of schools and supporting educational institutions have been established. The Estonian education system consists of state, municipal, public, and private institutions. There are currently 589 schools in Estonia.[320]
+
+According to the Programme for International Student Assessment, the performance levels of gymnasium-age pupils in Estonia is among the highest in the world: in 2010, the country was ranked 13th for the quality of its education system, well above the OECD average.[321] Additionally, around 89% of Estonian adults aged 25–64 have earned the equivalent of a high-school degree, one of the highest rates in the industrialised world.[322]
+
+Academic higher education in Estonia is divided into three levels: bachelor's, master's, and doctoral studies. In some specialties (basic medical studies, veterinary, pharmacy, dentistry, architect-engineer, and a classroom teacher programme) the bachelor's and master's levels are integrated into one unit.[324] Estonian public universities have significantly more autonomy than applied higher education institutions. In addition to organising the academic life of the university, universities can create new curricula, establish admission terms and conditions, approve the budget, approve the development plan, elect the rector, and make restricted decisions in matters concerning assets.[325] Estonia has a moderate number of public and private universities. The largest public universities are the University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn University, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonian Academy of Arts; the largest private university is Estonian Business School.
+
+The Estonian Academy of Sciences is the national academy of science. The strongest public non-profit research institute that carries out fundamental and applied research is the National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics (NICPB; Estonian KBFI). The first computer centres were established in the late 1950s in Tartu and Tallinn. Estonian specialists contributed in the development of software engineering standards for ministries of the Soviet Union during the 1980s.[326][327] As of 2015[update], Estonia spends around 1.5% of its GDP on Research and Development, compared to an EU average of around 2.0%.[328]
+
+Some of the best-known scientists related to Estonia include astronomers Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, Ernst Öpik and Jaan Einasto, biologist Karl Ernst von Baer, Jakob von Uexküll, chemists Wilhelm Ostwald and Carl Schmidt, economist Ragnar Nurkse, mathematician Edgar Krahn, medical researchers Ludvig Puusepp and Nikolay Pirogov, physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck, political scientist Rein Taagepera, psychologist Endel Tulving and Risto Näätänen, semiotician Yuri Lotman.
+
+According to New Scientist, Estonia will be the first nation to provide personal genetic information service sponsored by the state. They aim to minimise and prevent future ailments for those whose genes make them extra prone to conditions like adult-onset diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. The government plans to provide lifestyle advice based on the DNA for 100,000 of its 1.3 million citizens.[329]
+
+The culture of Estonia incorporates indigenous heritage, as represented by the Estonian language and the sauna, with mainstream Nordic and European cultural aspects. Because of its history and geography, Estonia's culture has been influenced by the traditions of the adjacent area's various Finnic, Baltic, Slavic and Germanic peoples as well as the cultural developments in the former dominant powers Sweden and Russia.
+
+Today, Estonian society encourages liberty and liberalism, with popular commitment to the ideals of the limited government, discouraging centralised power and corruption. The Protestant work ethic remains a significant cultural staple, and free education is a highly prized institution. Like the mainstream culture in the other Nordic countries, Estonian culture can be seen to build upon the ascetic environmental realities and traditional livelihoods, a heritage of comparatively widespread egalitarianism out of practical reasons (see: Everyman's right and universal suffrage), and the ideals of closeness to nature and self-sufficiency (see: summer cottage).
+
+The Estonian Academy of Arts (Estonian: Eesti Kunstiakadeemia, EKA) is providing higher education in art, design, architecture, media, art history and conservation while Viljandi Culture Academy of University of Tartu has an approach to popularise native culture through such curricula as native construction, native blacksmithing, native textile design, traditional handicraft and traditional music, but also jazz and church music. In 2010, there were 245 museums in Estonia whose combined collections contain more than 10 million objects.[330]
+
+The earliest mention of Estonian singing dates back to Saxo Grammaticus Gesta Danorum (ca. 1179).[331] Saxo speaks of Estonian warriors who sang at night while waiting for a battle. The older folksongs are also referred to as regilaulud, songs in the poetic metre regivärss the tradition shared by all Baltic Finns. Runic singing was widespread among Estonians until the 18th century, when rhythmic folk songs began to replace them.[citation needed]
+
+Traditional wind instruments derived from those used by shepherds were once widespread, but are now becoming again more commonly played. Other instruments, including the fiddle, zither, concertina, and accordion are used to play polka or other dance music. The kannel is a native instrument that is now again becoming more popular in Estonia. A Native Music Preserving Centre was opened in 2008 in Viljandi.[332]
+
+The tradition of Estonian Song Festivals (Laulupidu) started at the height of the Estonian national awakening in 1869. Today, it is one of the largest amateur choral events in the world. In 2004, about 100,000 people participated in the Song Festival. Since 1928, the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds (Lauluväljak) have hosted the event every five years in July. The last festival took place in July 2019. In addition, Youth Song Festivals are also held every four or five years, the last of them in 2017.[333]
+
+Professional Estonian musicians and composers such as Rudolf Tobias, Miina Härma, Mart Saar, Artur Kapp, Juhan Aavik, Aleksander Kunileid, Artur Lemba and Heino Eller emerged in the late 19th century. At the time of this writing, the most known Estonian composers are Arvo Pärt, Eduard Tubin, and Veljo Tormis.[citation needed] In 2014, Arvo Pärt was the world's most performed living composer for the fourth year in a row.[334]
+
+In the 1950s, Estonian baritone Georg Ots rose to worldwide prominence as an opera singer.
+
+In popular music, Estonian artist Kerli Kõiv has become popular in Europe, as well as gaining moderate popularity in North America. She has provided music for the 2010 Disney film Alice in Wonderland and the television series Smallville in the United States of America.
+
+Estonia won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2001 with the song "Everybody" performed by Tanel Padar and Dave Benton. In 2002, Estonia hosted the event. Maarja-Liis Ilus has competed for Estonia on two occasions (1996 and 1997), while Eda-Ines Etti, Koit Toome and Evelin Samuel owe their popularity partly to the Eurovision Song Contest. Lenna Kuurmaa is a very popular singer in Europe,[citation needed] with her band Vanilla Ninja. "Rändajad" by Urban Symphony, was the first song in Estonian to chart in the UK, Belgium and Switzerland.
+
+The Estonian literature refers to literature written in the Estonian language (ca. 1 million speakers).[335] The domination of Estonia after the Northern Crusades, from the 13th century to 1918 by Germany, Sweden, and Russia resulted in few early written literary works in the Estonian language. The oldest records of written Estonian date from the 13th century. Originates Livoniae in Chronicle of Henry of Livonia contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences. The Liber Census Daniae (1241) contains Estonian place and family names.[336] Many folk tales are told to this day and some have been written down and translated to make them accessible to an international readership.[337]
+
+The cultural stratum of Estonian was originally characterised by a largely lyrical form of folk poetry based on syllabic quantity. Apart from a few albeit remarkable exceptions, this archaic form has not been much employed in later times. One of the most outstanding achievements in this field is the national epic Kalevipoeg. At a professional level, traditional folk song reached its new heyday during the last quarter of the 20th century, primarily thanks to the work of composer Veljo Tormis.
+
+Oskar Luts was the most prominent prose writer of the early Estonian literature, who is still widely read today, especially his lyrical school novel Kevade (Spring).[338] Anton Hansen Tammsaare's social epic and psychological realist pentalogy Truth and Justice captured the evolution of Estonian society from a peasant community to an independent nation.[339][340] In modern times, Jaan Kross and Jaan Kaplinski are Estonia's best known and most translated writers.[341] Among the most popular writers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries are Tõnu Õnnepalu and Andrus Kivirähk, who uses elements of Estonian folklore and mythology, deforming them into absurd and grotesque.[342]
+
+The cinema of Estonia started in 1908 with the production of a newsreel about Swedish King Gustav V's visit to Tallinn.[343] The first public TV broadcast in Estonia was in July 1955. Regular, live radio broadcasts began in December 1926. Deregulation in the field of electronic media has brought radical changes compared to the beginning of the 1990s. The first licences for private TV broadcasters were issued in 1992. The first private radio station went on the air in 1990.
+
+Today the media is a vibrant and competitive sector. There is a plethora of weekly newspapers and magazines, and Estonians have a choice of 9 domestic TV channels and a host of radio stations. The Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, and Estonia has been internationally recognised for its high rate of press freedom, having been ranked 3rd in the 2012 Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders.[344]
+
+Estonia has two news agencies. The Baltic News Service (BNS), founded in 1990, is a private regional news agency covering Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The ETV24 is an agency owned by Eesti Rahvusringhääling who is a publicly funded radio and television organisation created on 30 June 2007 to take over the functions of the formerly separate Eesti Raadio and Eesti Televisioon under the terms of the Estonian National Broadcasting Act.[345][346]
+
+The architectural history of Estonia mainly reflects its contemporary development in northern Europe. Worth mentioning is especially the architectural ensemble that makes out the medieval old town of Tallinn, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In addition, the country has several unique, more or less preserved hill forts dating from pre-Christian times, a large number of still intact medieval castles and churches, while the countryside is still shaped by the presence of a vast number of manor houses from earlier centuries.
+
+The Estonian National Day is the Independence Day celebrated on 24 February, the day the Estonian Declaration of Independence was issued. As of 2013[update], there are 12 public holidays (which come with a day off) and 12 national holidays celebrated annually.[347][348]
+
+Historically, the cuisine of Estonia has been heavily dependent on seasons and simple peasant food. Today, it includes many typical international foods. The most typical foods in Estonia are black bread, pork, potatoes, and dairy products.[350] Traditionally in summer and spring, Estonians like to eat everything fresh – berries, herbs, vegetables, and everything else that comes straight from the garden. Hunting and fishing have also been very common, although currently hunting and fishing are enjoyed mostly as hobbies. Today, it is also very popular to grill outside in summer.
+
+Traditionally in winter, jams, preserves, and pickles are brought to the table. Gathering and preserving fruits, mushrooms, and vegetables for winter has always been popular, but today gathering and preserving is becoming less common because everything can be bought from stores. However, preparing food for winter is still very popular in the countryside.
+
+Sport plays an important role in Estonian culture. After declaring independence from Russia in 1918, Estonia first competed as a nation at the 1920 Summer Olympics, although the National Olympic Committee was established in 1923. Estonian athletes took part of the Olympic Games until the country was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. The 1980 Summer Olympics Sailing regatta was held in the capital city Tallinn. After regaining independence in 1991, Estonia has participated in all Olympics. Estonia has won most of its medals in athletics, weightlifting, wrestling and cross-country skiing. Estonia has had very good success at the Olympic games given the country's small population. Estonia's best results were being ranked 13th in the medal table at the 1936 Summer Olympics, and 12th at the 2006 Winter Olympics.
+
+The list of notable Estonian athletes include wrestlers Kristjan Palusalu, Johannes Kotkas, Voldemar Väli, and Georg Lurich, skiers Andrus Veerpalu and Kristina Šmigun-Vähi, weightlifters Alfred Neuland and  Jaan Talts, fencer Nikolai Novosjolov, decathlete Erki Nool, tennis players Kaia Kanepi and Anett Kontaveit, cyclists Jaan Kirsipuu and Erika Salumäe and discus throwers Gerd Kanter and Aleksander Tammert.
+
+Paul Keres, Estonian and Soviet chess grandmaster, was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s. He narrowly missed a chance at a World Chess Championship match on five occasions.
+
+Kiiking, a relatively new sport, was invented in 1993 by Ado Kosk in Estonia. Kiiking involves a modified swing in which the rider of the swing tries to go around 360 degrees.
+
+Basketball is also a notable sport in Estonia. The domestic top-tier basketball championship is called the Korvpalli Meistriliiga. BC Kalev/Cramo are the most recent champions, having won the league in the 2016–17 season. University of Tartu team has won the league a record 26 times. Estonian clubs also participate in European and regional competitions. Estonia national basketball team previously participated in 1936 Summer Olympics, appeared in EuroBasket four times. Estonian national team also competed at the EuroBasket 2015.
+
+Kelly Sildaru, an Estonian freestyle skier, won the gold medal in the slopestyle event in the 2016 Winter X Games. At age 13, she became the youngest gold medalist to date at a Winter X Games event, and the first person to win a Winter X Games medal for Estonia. She has also won the women's slopestyle at 2015 and 2016 Winter Dew Tour.
+
+In modern-era motorsports, World Rally Championship has seen two very successful Estonian drivers, with Ott Tänak winning the drivers' world title in the 2019 World Rally Championship and Markko Märtin achieving 5 rally victories and finishing 3rd overall in the 2004 World Rally Championship. In circuit racing, Marko Asmer was the first Estonian driver to test a Formula One car in 2003 with Williams Grand Prix Engineering, in other series Sten Pentus and Kevin Korjus (active driver) have enjoyed success on a global scale.
+
+The following are links to international rankings of Estonia.
+
+Coordinates: 59°N 26°E / 59°N 26°E / 59; 26

en/1842.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,197 @@
+
+
+– in Africa (light blue)– in the African Union (light blue)
+
+Eswatini (/ˌɛswɑːˈtiːni/ ESS-wah-TEE-nee; Swazi: eSwatini [ɛswáˈtʼiːni]), officially the Kingdom of Eswatini (Swazi: Umbuso weSwatini) and also known as Swaziland (/ˈswɑːzilænd/ SWAH-zee-land; officially renamed in 2018),[10][11] is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its north, west, and south. At no more than 200 kilometres (120 mi) north to south and 130 kilometres (81 mi) east to west, Eswatini is one of the smallest countries in Africa; despite this, its climate and topography are diverse, ranging from a cool and mountainous highveld to a hot and dry lowveld.
+
+The population is composed primarily of ethnic Swazis. The language is Swazi (siSwati in native form). The Swazis established their kingdom in the mid-18th century under the leadership of Ngwane III.[12] The country and the Swazi take their names from Mswati II, the 19th-century king under whose rule Swazi territory was expanded and unified; the present boundaries were drawn up in 1881 in the midst of the Scramble for Africa.[13] After the Second Boer War, the kingdom, under the name of Swaziland, was a British protectorate from 1903 until it regained its independence on 6 September 1968.[14] In April 2018, the official name was changed from Kingdom of Swaziland to Kingdom of Eswatini, mirroring the name commonly used in Swazi.[15][16][11]
+
+The government is an absolute monarchy, ruled by King Mswati III since 1986.[17][18] Elections are held every five years to determine the House of Assembly and the Senate majority. The current constitution was adopted in 2005. Umhlanga, the reed dance held in August/September,[19] and incwala, the kingship dance held in December/January, are the nation's most important events.[20]
+
+Eswatini is a developing country with a small economy. With a GDP per capita of $4,145.97, it is classified as a country with a lower-middle income.[21] As a member of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), its main local trading partner is South Africa; in order to ensure economic stability, Eswatini's currency, the lilangeni, is pegged to the South African rand.  Eswatini's major overseas trading partners are the United States[22] and the European Union.[23] The majority of the country's employment is provided by its agricultural and manufacturing sectors.  Eswatini is a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the United Nations.
+
+The Swazi population faces major health issues: HIV/AIDS and (to a lesser extent) tuberculosis are widespread.[24][25] It is estimated that 26% of the adult population is HIV-positive. As of 2018, Eswatini has the 12th-lowest life expectancy in the world, at 58 years.[26] The population of Eswatini is young, with a median age of 20.5 years and people aged 14 years or younger constituting 37.5% of the country's total population.[27] The present population growth rate is 1.2%.
+
+Artifacts indicating human activity dating back to the early Stone Age, around 200,000 years ago, have been found in Eswatini. Prehistoric rock art paintings dating from as far back as c. 27,000 years ago, to as recent as the 19th century, can be found in various places around the country.[28]
+
+The earliest known inhabitants of the region were Khoisan hunter-gatherers. They were largely replaced by the Nguni during the great Bantu migrations. These peoples originated from the Great Lakes regions of eastern and central Africa. Evidence of agriculture and iron use dates from about the 4th century. People speaking languages ancestral to the current Sotho and Nguni languages began settling no later than the 11th century.[29]
+
+The Swazi settlers, then known as the Ngwane (or bakaNgwane) before entering Eswatini, had been settled on the banks of the Pongola River. Before that, they were settled in the area of the Tembe River near present-day Maputo, Mozambique. Continuing conflict with the Ndwandwe people pushed them further north, with Ngwane III establishing his capital at Shiselweni at the foot of the Mhlosheni hills.[29]
+
+Under Sobhuza I, the Ngwane people eventually established their capital at Zombodze in the heartland of present-day Eswatini. In this process, they conquered and incorporated the long-established clans of the country known to the Swazi as Emakhandzambili.[29]
+
+Eswatini derives its name from a later king named Mswati II. KaNgwane, named for Ngwane III, is an alternative name for Eswatini, the surname of whose royal house remains Nkhosi Dlamini. Nkhosi literally means "king". Mswati II was the greatest of the fighting kings of Eswatini, and he greatly extended the area of the country to twice its current size. The Emakhandzambili clans were initially incorporated into the kingdom with wide autonomy, often including grants of special ritual and political status. The extent of their autonomy, however, was drastically curtailed by Mswati, who attacked and subdued some of them in the 1850s.[29]
+
+With his power, Mswati greatly reduced the influence of the Emakhandzambili while incorporating more people into his kingdom either through conquest or by giving them refuge. These later arrivals became known to the Swazis as Emafikamuva. The clans who accompanied the Dlamini kings were known as the Bemdzabuko or true Swazi.[citation needed]
+
+The autonomy of the Swazi nation was influenced by British and Dutch rule of southern Africa in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1881, the British government signed a convention recognising Swazi independence despite the Scramble for Africa that was taking place at the time. This independence was also recognised in the London Convention of 1884.[30]
+
+Because of controversial land/mineral rights and other concessions, Swaziland had a triumviral administration in 1890 following the death of King Mbandzeni in 1889. This government represented the British, the Dutch republics, and the Swazi people. In 1894, a convention placed Swaziland under the South African Republic as a protectorate. This continued under the rule of Ngwane V until the outbreak of the Second Boer War in October 1899.[citation needed]
+
+King Ngwane V died in December 1899, during incwala, after the outbreak of the Second Boer War. His successor, Sobhuza II, was four months old. Swaziland was indirectly involved in the war with various skirmishes between the British and the Boers occurring in the country until 1902.[citation needed]
+
+In 1903, after the British victory in the Second Boer War, Swaziland became a British protectorate. Much of its early administration (for example, postal services) was carried out from South Africa until 1906 when the Transvaal Colony was granted self-government. Following this, Swaziland was partitioned into European and non-European (or native reserves) areas with the former being two-thirds of the total land. Sobhuza's official coronation was in December 1921 after the regency of Labotsibeni, after which he led an unsuccessful deputation to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in London in 1922 regarding the issue of the land.[31]
+
+In the period between 1923 and 1963, Sobhuza II established the Swazi Commercial Amadoda which was to grant licences to small businesses on the Swazi reserves and also established the Swazi National School to counter the dominance of the missions in education. His stature grew with time and the Swazi royal leadership was successful in resisting the weakening power of the British administration and the incorporation of Swaziland into the Union of South Africa.[31]
+
+The constitution for independent Swaziland was promulgated by Britain in November 1963 under the terms of which legislative and executive councils were established. This development was opposed by the Swazi National Council (liqoqo). Despite such opposition, elections took place and the first Legislative Council of Swaziland was constituted on 9 September 1964. Changes to the original constitution proposed by the Legislative Council were accepted by Britain and a new constitution providing for a House of Assembly and Senate was drawn up. Elections under this constitution were held in 1967.[citation needed]
+
+Following the 1967 elections, Swaziland was a protected state until independence was regained in 1968.[32]
+
+Following the elections of 1973, the constitution of Swaziland was suspended by King Sobhuza II who thereafter ruled the country by decree until his death in 1982. At this point, Sobhuza II had ruled Swaziland for almost 83 years, making him the longest-reigning monarch in history.[33] A regency followed his death, with Queen Regent Dzeliwe Shongwe being head of state until 1984 when she was removed by the Liqoqo and replaced by Queen Mother Ntfombi Tfwala.[33] Mswati III, the son of Ntfombi, was crowned king on 25 April 1986 as King and Ingwenyama of Swaziland.[34]
+
+The 1990s saw a rise in student and labour protests pressuring the king to introduce reforms.[35] Thus, progress toward constitutional reforms began, culminating with the introduction of the current Swazi constitution in 2005. This happened despite objections by political activists. The current constitution does not clearly deal with the status of political parties.[36]
+
+The first election under the new constitution took place in 2008. Members of parliament were elected from 55 constituencies (also known as tinkhundla). These MPs served five-year terms which ended in 2013.[36]
+
+In 2011, Swaziland suffered an economic crisis, due to reduced SACU receipts. This caused the government to request a loan from neighbouring South Africa. However, they did not agree with the conditions of the loan, which included political reforms.[37]
+
+During this period, there was increased pressure on the Swazi government to carry out more reforms. Public protests by civic organisations and trade unions became more common. Starting in 2012, improvements in SACU receipts have eased the fiscal pressure on the Swazi government. A new parliament, the second since promulgation of the constitution, was elected on 20 September 2013. At this time the king reappointed Sibusiso Dlamini as prime minister for the third time.[38]
+
+On 19 April 2018, King Mswati III announced that the Kingdom of Swaziland had renamed itself the Kingdom of Eswatini, reflecting the extant Swazi name for the state eSwatini, to mark the 50th anniversary of Swazi independence. The new name, Eswatini, means "land of the Swazis" in the Swazi language and was partially intended to prevent confusion with the similarly named Switzerland.[10][11]
+
+Eswatini workers began anti-government protests against low salaries on 19 September 2018. They went on a three-day strike organised by the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) that resulted in widespread disruption.[39]
+
+Eswatini is an absolute monarchy with constitutional provision and Swazi law and customs.[40] The head of state is the king or Ngwenyama (lit. Lion), currently King Mswati III, who ascended to the throne in 1986 after the death of his father King Sobhuza II in 1982 and a period of regency. According to the country's constitution, the Ingwenyama is a symbol of unity and the eternity of the Swazi nation.[41]
+
+By tradition, the king reigns along with his mother (or a ritual substitute), the Ndlovukati (lit. She-Elephant). The former was viewed as the administrative head of state and the latter as a spiritual and national head of state, with real power counterbalancing that of the king, but, during the long reign of Sobhuza II, the role of the Ndlovukati became more symbolic.[citation needed]
+
+The king appoints the prime minister from the legislature and also appoints a minority of legislators to both chambers of the Libandla (parliament) with help from an advisory council. The king is allowed by the constitution to appoint some members to parliament to represent special interests. These special interests are citizens who might have been electoral candidates who were not elected, or might not have stood as candidates. This is done to balance views in parliament. Special interests could be people of particular gender or race, people of disability, the business community, civic society, scholars, and chiefs.[citation needed]
+
+The Swazi bicameral Parliament, or Libandla, consists of the Senate (30 seats; 10 members appointed by the House of Assembly and 20 appointed by the monarch; to serve five-year terms) and the House of Assembly (65 seats; 10 members appointed by the monarch and 55 elected by popular vote; to serve five-year terms). The elections are held every five years after dissolution of parliament by the king. The last elections were held on 18 August and 21 September 2018.[42][43] The balloting is done in a non-partisan manner. All election procedures are overseen by the Elections and Boundaries Commission.[44]
+
+At Swaziland's independence on 6 September 1968, Swaziland adopted a Westminster-style constitution. On 12 April 1973, King Sobhuza II annulled it by decree, assuming supreme powers in all executive, judicial, and legislative matters.[45] The first non-party elections for the House of Assembly were held in 1978, and they were conducted under the tinkhundla as electoral constituencies determined by the King, and established an Electoral Committee appointed by the King to supervise elections.[45]
+
+Until the 1993 election, the ballot was not secret, voters were not registered, and they did not elect representatives directly. Instead, voters elected an electoral college by passing through a gate designated for the candidate of choice while officials counted them.[45] Later on, a constitutional review commission was appointed by King Mswati III in July 1996, comprising chiefs, political activists, and unionists to consider public submissions and draft proposals for a new constitution.[46]
+
+Drafts were released for comment in May 1999 and November 2000. These were strongly criticised by civil society organisations in Swaziland and human rights organisations elsewhere. A 15-member team was announced in December 2001 to draft a new constitution; several members of this team were reported to be close to the royal family.[47]
+
+In 2005, the constitution was put into effect. There is still much debate in the country about the constitutional reforms. From the early seventies, there was active resistance to the royal hegemony.[citation needed]
+
+Nominations take place at the chiefdoms. On the day of nomination, the name of the nominee is raised by a show of hand and the nominee is given an opportunity to indicate whether he or she accepts the nomination. If he or she accepts it, he or she must be supported by at least ten members of that chiefdom. The nominations are for the position of Member of Parliament, Constituency Headman (Indvuna), and the Constituency Executive Committee (Bucopho). The minimum number of nominees is four and the maximum is ten.[48]
+
+Primary elections also take place at the chiefdom level. It is by secret ballot. During the Primary Elections, the voters are given an opportunity to elect the member of the executive committee (Bucopho) for that particular chiefdom. Aspiring members of parliament and the constituency Headman are also elected from each chiefdom. The secondary and final elections takes place at the various constituencies called Tinkhundla.[48]
+
+Candidates who won primary elections in the chiefdoms are considered nominees for the secondary elections at inkhundla or constituency level. The nominees with majority votes become the winners and they become members of parliament or constituency headman.[49][50]
+
+Eswatini is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the African Union, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, and the Southern African Development Community.[51][52][53][54][55]
+
+The judicial system in Eswatini is a dual system. The 2006 constitution established a court system based on the Western model consisting of four regional Magistrates Courts, a High Court, and a Court of Appeal (the Supreme Court), which are independent of crown control. In addition, traditional courts (Swazi Courts or Customary Courts) deal with minor offenses and violations of traditional Swazi law and custom.[56]
+
+Judges are appointed by the King and are usually expatriates from South Africa.[57] The Supreme Court, which replaced the previous Court of Appeal, consists of the Chief Justice and at least four other Supreme Court judges. The High Court consists of the Chief Justice and at least four High Court judges.[58]
+
+The military of Eswatini (Umbutfo Eswatini Defence Force) is used primarily during domestic protests, with some border and customs duties. The military has never been involved in a foreign conflict.[62] The king is the Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Force and the substantive Minister of the Ministry of Defence.[63]
+
+There are approximately 3,000 personnel in the defence force, with the army being the largest component.[64] There is a small air force, which is mainly used for transporting the king as well as cargo and personnel, surveying land with search and rescue functions, and mobilising in case of a national emergency.[65]
+
+Eswatini is divided into four regions: Hhohho, Lubombo, Manzini, and Shiselweni. In each of the four regions, there are several tinkhundla (singular inkhundla). The regions are managed by a regional administrator, who is aided by elected members in each inkhundla.[66]
+
+The local government is divided into differently structured rural and urban councils depending on the level of development in the area. Although there are different political structures to the local authorities, effectively the urban councils are municipalities and the rural councils are the tinkhundla. There are twelve municipalities and 55 tinkhundla.[citation needed]
+
+There are three tiers of government in the urban areas and these are city councils, town councils and town boards. This variation considers the size of the town or city. Equally, there are three tiers in the rural areas which are the regional administration at the regional level, tinkhundla and chiefdoms. Decisions are made by full council based on recommendations made by the various sub-committees. The town clerk is the chief advisor in each local council council or town board.[citation needed]
+
+There are twelve declared urban areas, comprising two city councils, three town councils and seven town boards. The main cities and towns in Eswatini are Manzini, Mbabane, Nhlangano and Siteki which are also regional capitals. The first two have city councils and the latter two have town councils. Other small towns or urban area with substantial population are Ezulwini, Matsapha, Hlatikhulu, Pigg's Peak, Simunye, and Big Bend.[citation needed]
+
+As noted above, there are 55 tinkhundla in Eswatini and each elects one representative to the House of Assembly of Eswatini. Each inkhundla has a development committee (bucopho) elected from the various constituency chiefdoms in its area for a five-year term. Bucopho bring to the inkhundla all matters of interest and concern to their various chiefdoms, and take back to the chiefdoms the decisions of the inkhundla. The chairman of the bucopho is elected at the inkhundla and is called indvuna ye nkhundla.[citation needed]
+
+Eswatini lies across a fault which runs from the Drakensberg Mountains of Lesotho, north through the Eastern highlands of Zimbabwe, and forms the Great Rift Valley of Kenya.[citation needed]
+
+A small, landlocked kingdom, Eswatini is bordered in the North, West and South by the Republic of South Africa and by Mozambique in the East. Eswatini has a land area of 17,364 km2 (6,704 sq mi). Eswatini has four separate geographical regions. These run from North to South and are determined by altitude. Eswatini is at approximately 26°30'S, 31°30'E.[67] Eswatini has a wide variety of landscapes, from the mountains along the Mozambican border to savannas in the east and rain forest in the northwest. Several rivers flow through the country, such as the Great Usutu River.[68][citation needed]
+
+Along the eastern border with Mozambique is the Lubombo, a mountain ridge, at an altitude of around 600 metres (2,000 ft). The mountains are broken by the canyons of three rivers, the Ngwavuma, the Usutu and the Mbuluzi River. This is cattle ranching country. The western border of Eswatini, with an average altitude of 1,200 metres (3,900 ft), lies on the edge of an escarpment. Between the mountains rivers rush through deep gorges. Mbabane, the capital, is on the Highveld.[citation needed]
+
+The Middleveld, lying at an average 700 metres (2,300 ft) above sea level is the most densely populated region of Eswatini with a lower rainfall than the mountains. Manzini, the principal commercial and industrial city, is situated in the Middleveld.[citation needed]
+
+The Lowveld of Eswatini, at around 250 metres (820 ft), is less populated than other areas and presents a typical African bush country of thorn trees and grasslands. Development of the region was inhibited, in early days, by the scourge of malaria.[citation needed]
+
+Eswatini is divided into four climatic regions: the Highveld, Middleveld, Lowveld and Lubombo plateau. The seasons are the reverse of those in the Northern Hemisphere with December being mid-summer and June mid-winter. Generally speaking, rain falls mostly during the summer months, often in the form of thunderstorms.[citation needed]
+
+Winter is the dry season. Annual rainfall is highest on the Highveld in the west, between 1,000 and 2,000 mm (39.4 and 78.7 in) depending on the year. The further east, the less rain, with the Lowveld recording 500 to 900 mm (19.7 to 35.4 in) per annum.[citation needed]
+
+Variations in temperature are also related to the altitude of the different regions. The Highveld temperature is temperate and seldom uncomfortably hot, while the Lowveld may record temperatures around 40 °C (104 °F) in summer.[citation needed]
+
+The average temperatures at Mbabane, according to season:
+
+Climate change in Eswatini is mainly evident in changing precipitation - including variability, persistent drought and heightened storm intensity. In turn, this leads to desertification, increased food insecurity and reduced river flows. Despite being responsible for a negligible portion of total global greenhouse gas emissions Eswatini is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The government of Eswatini has expressed concern that climate change is exacerbating existing social challenges such as poverty, a high HIV prevalence and food insecurity and will drastically restrict the country's ability to develop, as per Vision 2022.[69] Economically, climate change has already adversely impacted Eswatini. For instance, the 2015-2016 drought decreased sugar and soft drink concentrate production export (Eswatini's largest economic export). Many of Eswatini's major exports are raw, agricultural products and are therefore vulnerable to a changing climate.[70]
+
+There are known to be 507 bird species in Eswatini, including 11 globally threatened species and four introduced species, and 107 mammal species native to Eswatini, including the critically endangered South-central black rhinoceros and seven other endangered or vulnerable species.[citation needed]
+
+Protected areas of Eswatini include seven nature reserves, four frontier conservation areas and three wildlife or game reserves. Hlane Royal National Park, the largest park in Eswatini, is rich in bird life, including white-backed vultures, white-headed, lappet-faced and Cape vultures, raptors such as martial eagles, bateleurs, and long-crested eagles, and the southernmost nesting site of the marabou stork.[71]
+
+Eswatini's economy is diverse, with agriculture, forestry and mining accounting for about 13% of GDP, manufacturing (textiles and sugar-related processing) representing 37% of GDP and services – with government services in the lead – constituting 50% of GDP. Title Deed Lands (TDLs), where the bulk of high value crops are grown (sugar, forestry, and citrus) are characterised by high levels of investment and irrigation, and high productivity.[citation needed]
+
+About 75% of the population is employed in subsistence agriculture upon Swazi Nation Land (SNL). In contrast with the commercial farms, Swazi Nation Land suffers from low productivity and investment. This dual nature of the Swazi economy, with high productivity in textile manufacturing and in the industrialised agricultural TDLs on the one hand, and declining productivity subsistence agriculture (on SNL) on the other, may well explain the country's overall low growth, high inequality and unemployment.[citation needed]
+
+Economic growth in Eswatini has lagged behind that of its neighbours. Real GDP growth since 2001 has averaged 2.8%, nearly 2 percentage points lower than growth in other Southern African Customs Union (SACU) member countries. Low agricultural productivity in the SNLs, repeated droughts, the devastating effect of HIV/AIDS and an overly large and inefficient government sector are likely contributing factors. Eswatini's public finances deteriorated in the late 1990s following sizeable surpluses a decade earlier. A combination of declining revenues and increased spending led to significant budget deficits.[citation needed]
+
+The considerable spending did not lead to more growth and did not benefit the poor.  Much of the increased spending has gone to current expenditures related to wages, transfers, and subsidies.  The wage bill today constitutes over 15% of GDP and 55% of total public spending; these are some of the highest levels on the African continent.  The recent rapid growth in SACU revenues has, however, reversed the fiscal situation, and a sizeable surplus was recorded since 2006. SACU revenues today account for over 60% of total government revenues.  On the positive side, the external debt burden has declined markedly over the last 20 years, and domestic debt is almost negligible; external debt as a percent of GDP was less than 20% in 2006.[citation needed]
+
+Eswatini's economy is very closely linked to the economy of South Africa, from which it receives over 90% of its imports and to which it sends about 70% of its exports. Eswatini's other key trading partners are the United States and the EU, from whom the country has received trade preferences for apparel exports (under the African Growth and Opportunity Act – AGOA – to the US) and for sugar (to the EU).  Under these agreements, both apparel and sugar exports did well, with rapid growth and a strong inflow of foreign direct investment.  Textile exports grew by over 200% between 2000 and 2005 and sugar exports increasing by more than 50% over the same period.[citation needed]
+
+The continued vibrancy of the export sector is threatened by the removal of trade preferences for textiles, the accession to similar preferences for East Asian countries, and the phasing out of preferential prices for sugar to the EU market. Eswatini will thus have to face the challenge of remaining competitive in a changing global environment. A crucial factor in addressing this challenge is the investment climate.[citation needed]
+
+The recently concluded Investment Climate Assessment provides some positive findings in this regard, namely that Eswatini firms are among the most productive in Sub-Saharan Africa, although they are less productive than firms in the most productive middle-income countries in other regions. They compare more favourably with firms from lower middle income countries, but are hampered by inadequate governance arrangements and infrastructure.[citation needed]
+
+Eswatini's currency, the lilangeni, is pegged to the South African rand, subsuming Eswatini's monetary policy to South Africa. Customs duties from the Southern African Customs Union, which may equal as much as 70% of government revenue this year, and worker remittances from South Africa substantially supplement domestically earned income. Eswatini is not poor enough to merit an IMF programme; however, the country is struggling to reduce the size of the civil service and control costs at public enterprises. The government is trying to improve the atmosphere for foreign direct investment.[citation needed]
+
+The majority of Eswatini's population is ethnically Swazi, mixed with a small number of Zulu and White Africans, mostly people of British and Afrikaner descent. Traditionally Swazi have been subsistence farmers and herders, but most now mix such activities with work in the growing urban formal economy and in government. Some Swazi work in the mines in South Africa.[citation needed]
+
+Eswatini also received Portuguese settlers and African refugees from Mozambique. Christianity in Eswatini is sometimes mixed with traditional beliefs and practices. Many traditionalists believe that most Swazi ascribe a special spiritual role to the monarch.[citation needed]
+
+This is a list of major cities and towns in Eswatini. The table below also includes the population and region.
+
+SiSwati[72] (also known as Swati, Swazi or Siswati) is a Bantu language of the Nguni Group, spoken in Eswatini and South Africa. It has 2.5 million speakers and is taught in schools. It is an official language of Eswatini, along with English,[73] and one of the official languages of South Africa. English is the medium of communication in schools and in conducting business including the press.[citation needed]
+
+About 76,000 people in the country speak Zulu.[74] Tsonga, which is spoken by many people throughout the region is spoken by about 19,000 people in Eswatini. Afrikaans is also spoken by some residents of Afrikaner descent. Portuguese has been introduced as a third language in the schools, due to the large community of Portuguese speakers from Mozambique[citation needed] or Northern and Central Portugal.[75]
+
+Eighty-three percent  of the total population adheres to Christianity in Eswatini. Anglican, Protestant and indigenous African churches, including African Zionist, constitute the majority of Christians (40%), followed by Roman Catholicism at 6% of the population. On 18 July 2012, Ellinah Wamukoya, was elected Anglican Bishop of Swaziland, becoming the first woman to be a bishop in Africa. Fifteen percent of the population follows traditional religions; other non-Christian religions practised in the country include Islam (2%[76]), the Bahá'í Faith (0.5%), and Hinduism (0.2%).[77] There were 14 Jewish families in 2013.[78]
+
+The Kingdom of Eswatini does not recognise non-civil marriages such as Islamic-rite marriage contracts.[79]
+
+As of 2016, Eswatini has the highest prevalence of HIV among adults aged 15 to 49 in the world (27.2%).[80][81]
+
+Education in Eswatini begins with pre-school education for infants, primary, secondary and high school education for general education and training (GET), and universities and colleges at the tertiary level. Pre-school education is usually for children 5-year or younger; after that the students can enroll in a primary school anywhere in the country. In Eswatini early childhood care and education (ECCE) centres are in the form of preschools or neighbourhood care points (NCPs). In the country 21.6% of preschool age children have access to early childhood education.[82]
+
+Primary education in Eswatini begins at the age of six. It is a seven-year programme that culminates with an end of Primary school Examination [SPC] in grade 7 which is a locally based assessment administered by the Examinations Council through schools. Primary Education is from grade 1 to grade 7.[83]
+
+The secondary and high school education system in Eswatini is a five-year programme divided into three years junior secondary and two years senior secondary. There is an external public examination (Junior Certificate) at the end of the junior secondary that learners have to pass to progress to the senior secondary level. The Examinations Council of Swaziland (ECESWA) administers this examination. At the end of the senior secondary level, learners sit for a public examination, the Swaziland General Certificate of Secondary Education (SGCSE) and International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) which is accredited by the Cambridge International Examination (CIE). A few schools offer the Advanced Studies (AS) programme in their curriculum.[84]
+
+There are 830 public schools in Eswatini including primary, secondary and high schools.[85] There are also 34 recognised private schools with an additional 14 unrecognised. The biggest number of schools is in the Hhohho region.[85] Education in Eswatini as of 2009 is free at primary level, mainly first through the fourth grade and also free for orphaned and vulnerable children, but not compulsory.[86]
+
+In 1996, the net primary school enrollment rate was 90.8%, with gender parity at the primary level.[86] In 1998, 80.5% of children reached grade five.[86] Eswatini is home to a United World College. In 1963, Waterford School, later named Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa, was founded as southern Africa's first multiracial school. In 1981, Waterford Kamhlaba joined the United World Colleges movement as the first United World College on the African continent, and the only African UWC until 2019 when UWC East Africa was established [87].
+
+Adult and non-formal education centres are Sebenta National Institute for adult basic literacy and Emlalatini Development Centre, which provides alternative educational opportunities for school children and young adults who have not been able to complete their schooling.[citation needed]
+
+The University of Eswatini, Southern African Nazarene University and Swaziland Christian University (SCU) are the institutions that offer university education in the country. A campus of Limkokwing University of Creative Technology can be found at Sidvwashini (Sidwashini), a suburb of the capital Mbabane. Ngwane Teacher's College and William Pitcher College are the country's teaching colleges. The Good Shepherd Hospital in Siteki is home to the College for Nursing Assistants.[88][89]
+
+The University of Eswatini is the national university, established in 1982 by act of parliament, and is headquartered at Kwaluseni with additional campuses in Mbabane and Luyengo.[90] The Southern African Nazarene University (SANU) was established in 2010 as a merger of the Nazarene College of Nursing, College of Theology and the Nazarene Teachers College; it is in Manzini next to the Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital. It is the university that produce the most nurses in the country.As a University it encampasses three faculties of which one is at Siteki which is the faculty of Theology and the other Two are found in Manzini which are the faculties of Education and the faculty of health Sciences [91][92]
+
+The SCU, focusing on medical education, was established in 2012 and is Eswatini's newest university.[93] It is in Mbabane.[94] The campus of Limkokwing University was opened at Sidvwashini in Mbabane in 2012.[95]
+
+The main centre for technical training in Eswatini is the Swaziland College of Technology (SCOT) which is slated to become a full university.[96] It aims to provide high quality training in technology and business studies in collaboration with the commercial, industrial and public sectors.[97] Other technical and vocational institutions include the Gwamile Vocational and Commercial Training Institute in Matsapha, the Manzini Industrial and Training Centre (MITC) in Manzini, Nhlangano Agricultural Skills Training Centre, and Siteki Industrial Training Centre.
+
+In addition to these institutions, the kingdom also has the Swaziland Institute of Management and Public Administration (SIMPA) and Institute of Development Management (IDM). SIMPA is a government-owned management and development institute and IDM is a regional organisation in Botswana, Lesotho, and Eswatini, providing training, consultancy, and research in management. North Carolina State University's Poole College of Management is a sister school of SIMPA.[98] The Mananga Management Centre was established at Ezulwini as Mananga Agricultural Management Centre in 1972 as an international management development centre offering training of middle and senior managers.[99]
+
+The principal Swazi social unit is the homestead, a traditional beehive hut thatched with dry grass. In a polygamous homestead, each wife has her own hut and yard surrounded by reed fences. There are three structures for sleeping, cooking, and storage (brewing beer). In larger homesteads there are also structures used as bachelors' quarters and guest accommodation.
+
+Central to the traditional homestead is the cattle byre, a circular area enclosed by large logs, interspaced with branches. The cattle byre has ritual as well as practical significance as a store of wealth and symbol of prestige. It contains sealed grain pits. Facing the cattle byre is the great hut which is occupied by the mother of the headman.
+
+The headman is central to all homestead affairs and he is often polygamous. He leads through example and advises his wives on all social affairs of the home as well as seeing to the larger survival of the family. He also spends time socialising with the young boys, who are often his sons or close relatives, advising them on the expectations of growing up and manhood.
+
+The Sangoma is a traditional diviner chosen by the ancestors of that particular family. The training of the Sangoma is called "kwetfwasa". At the end of the training, a graduation ceremony takes place where all the local sangoma come together for feasting and dancing. The diviner is consulted for various purposes, such as determining the cause of sickness or even death. His diagnosis is based on "kubhula", a process of communication, through trance, with the natural superpowers. The Inyanga (a medical and pharmaceutical specialist in western terms) possesses the bone throwing skill ("kushaya ematsambo") used to determine the cause of the sickness.
+
+The most important cultural event in Eswatini is the Incwala ceremony. It is held on the fourth day after the full moon nearest the longest day, 21 December. Incwala is often translated in English as "first fruits ceremony", but the King's tasting of the new harvest is only one aspect among many in this long pageant. Incwala is best translated as "Kingship Ceremony": when there is no king, there is no Incwala. It is high treason for any other person to hold an Incwala.
+
+Every Swazi may take part in the public parts of the Incwala. The climax of the event is the fourth day of the Big Incwala. The key figures are the King, Queen Mother, royal wives and children, the royal governors (indunas), the chiefs, the regiments, and the "bemanti" or "water people".
+
+Eswatini's most well-known cultural event is the annual Umhlanga Reed Dance. In the eight-day ceremony, girls cut reeds and present them to the queen mother and then dance. (There is no formal competition.) It is done in late August or early September. Only childless, unmarried girls can take part. The aims of the ceremony are to preserve girls' chastity, provide tribute labour for the Queen mother, and to encourage solidarity by working together. The royal family appoints a commoner maiden to be "induna" (captain) of the girls and she announces the dates of the annual ceremony over the radio. The chosen induna is expected to be an expert dancer and knowledgeable on royal protocol. One of the King's daughters acts as her counterpart during the ceremony.
+
+The Reed Dance today is not an ancient ceremony but a development of the old "umchwasho" custom. In "umchwasho", all young girls were placed in a female age-regiment. If any girl became pregnant outside of marriage, her family paid a fine of one cow to the local chief. After a number of years, when the girls had reached a marriageable age, they would perform labour service for the Queen Mother, ending with dancing and feasting. The country was under the chastity rite of "umchwasho" until 19 August 2005.
+
+Eswatini is also known for a strong presence in the handcrafts industry. The formalised handcraft businesses of Eswatini employ over 2,500 people, many of whom are women (per TechnoServe Swaziland Handcrafts Impact Study, February 2011). The products are unique and reflect the culture of Eswatini, ranging from housewares, to artistic decorations, to complex glass, stone, or wood artwork.
+
+Princess Sikhanyiso Dlamini at the reed dance (umhlanga) festival
+
+A traditional Swazi homestead
+
+Swazi warriors at the incwala ceremony

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+Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from Latin: stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery metal that characteristically has a faint yellow hue. Tin, like indium, is soft enough to be cut without much force.[7] When a bar of tin is bent, the so-called “tin cry” can be heard as a result of sliding tin crystals reforming; this trait is shared by indium, cadmium, and frozen mercury. Pure tin after solidifying keeps a mirror-like appearance similar to most metals. However, in most tin alloys (such as pewter), the metal solidifies with a dull gray color. Tin is a post-transition metal in group 14 of the periodic table of elements. It is obtained chiefly from the mineral cassiterite, which contains stannic oxide, SnO2. Tin shows a chemical similarity to both of its neighbors in group 14, germanium and lead, and has two main oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4. Tin is the 49th most abundant element on Earth and has, with 10 stable isotopes, the largest number of stable isotopes in the periodic table, thanks to its magic number of protons. It has two main allotropes: at room temperature, the stable allotrope is β-tin, a silvery-white, malleable metal, but at low temperatures, it transforms into the less dense grey α-tin, which has the diamond cubic structure. Metallic tin does not easily oxidize in air.
+
+The first tin alloy used on a large scale was bronze, made of ​1⁄8 tin and ​7⁄8 copper, from as early as 3000 BC. After 600 BC, pure metallic tin was produced. Pewter, which is an alloy of 85–90% tin with the remainder commonly consisting of copper, antimony, and lead, was used for flatware from the Bronze Age until the 20th century. In modern times, tin is used in many alloys, most notably tin / lead soft solders, which are typically 60% or more tin, and in the manufacture of transparent, electrically conducting films of indium tin oxide in optoelectronic applications. Another large application for tin is corrosion-resistant tin plating of steel. Because of the low toxicity of inorganic tin, tin-plated steel is widely used for food packaging as tin cans. However, some organotin compounds can be almost as toxic as cyanide.
+
+Tin is a soft, malleable, ductile and highly crystalline silvery-white metal. When a bar of tin is bent, a crackling sound known as the "tin cry" can be heard from the twinning of the crystals.[8] Tin melts at low temperatures of about 232 °C (450 °F), the lowest in group 14. The melting point is further lowered to 177.3 °C (351.1 °F) for 11 nm particles.[9][10]
+
+β-tin (the metallic form, or white tin, BCT structure), which is stable at and above room temperature, is malleable. In contrast, α-tin (nonmetallic form, or gray tin), which is stable below 13.2 °C (55.8 °F), is brittle. α-tin has a diamond cubic crystal structure, similar to diamond, silicon or germanium. α-tin has no metallic properties at all because its atoms form a covalent structure in which electrons cannot move freely. It is a dull-gray powdery material with no common uses other than a few specialized semiconductor applications.[8] These two allotropes, α-tin and β-tin, are more commonly known as gray tin and white tin, respectively. Two more allotropes, γ and σ, exist at temperatures above 161 °C (322 °F)  and pressures above several GPa.[11] In cold conditions, β-tin tends to transform spontaneously into α-tin, a phenomenon known as "tin pest" or "tin disease". Some unverifiable sources also say that, during Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812, the temperatures became so cold that the tin buttons on the soldiers' uniforms disintegrated over time, contributing to the defeat of the Grande Armée,[12] a persistent legend that probably has no background in real events.[13][14][15]
+
+Although the α-β transformation temperature is nominally 13.2 °C (55.8 °F), impurities (e.g. Al, Zn, etc.) lower the transition temperature well below 0 °C (32 °F) and, on the addition of antimony or bismuth, the transformation might not occur at all, increasing the durability of the tin.[16]
+
+Commercial grades of tin (99.8%) resist transformation because of the inhibiting effect of the small amounts of bismuth, antimony, lead, and silver present as impurities. Alloying elements such as copper, antimony, bismuth, cadmium, and silver increase its hardness. Tin tends rather easily to form hard, brittle intermetallic phases, which are often undesirable. It does not form wide solid solution ranges in other metals in general, and few elements have appreciable solid solubility in tin. Simple eutectic systems, however, occur with bismuth, gallium, lead, thallium and zinc.[16]
+
+Tin becomes a superconductor below 3.72 K[17] and was one of the first superconductors to be studied; the Meissner effect, one of the characteristic features of superconductors, was first discovered in superconducting tin crystals.[18]
+
+Tin resists corrosion from water, but can be attacked by acids and alkalis. Tin can be highly polished and is used as a protective coat for other metals.[8] A protective oxide (passivation) layer prevents further oxidation, the same that forms on pewter and other tin alloys.[19] Tin acts as a catalyst when oxygen is in solution and helps to accelerate the chemical reaction.[clarification needed][8]
+
+Tin has ten stable isotopes, with atomic masses of 112, 114 through 120, 122, and 124, the greatest number of any element. Of these, the most abundant are 120Sn (almost a third of all tin), 118Sn, and 116Sn, while the least abundant is 115Sn. The isotopes with even mass numbers have no nuclear spin, while those with odd have a spin of +1/2. Tin, with its three common isotopes 116Sn, 118Sn, and 120Sn, is among the easiest elements to detect and analyze by NMR spectroscopy, and its chemical shifts are referenced against SnMe4.[note 1][20]
+
+This large number of stable isotopes is thought to be a direct result of the atomic number 50, a "magic number" in nuclear physics. Tin also occurs in 31 unstable isotopes, encompassing all the remaining atomic masses from 99 to 139. Apart from 126Sn, with a half-life of 230,000 years, all the radioisotopes have a half-life of less than a year. The radioactive 100Sn, discovered in 1994, and 132Sn are two of the few nuclides with a "doubly magic" nucleus: despite being unstable, having very lopsided proton–neutron ratios, they represent endpoints beyond which stability drops off rapidly.[21] Another 30 metastable isomers have been characterized for isotopes between 111 and 131, the most stable being 121mSn with a half-life of 43.9 years.[22]
+
+The relative differences in the abundances of tin's stable isotopes can be explained by their different modes of formation in stellar nucleosynthesis. 116Sn through 120Sn inclusive are formed in the s-process (slow neutron capture) in most stars and hence they are the most common isotopes, while 122Sn and 124Sn are only formed in the r-process (rapid neutron capture) in supernovae and are less common. (The isotopes 117Sn through 120Sn also receive contributions from the r-process.) Finally, the rarest proton-rich isotopes, 112Sn, 114Sn, and 115Sn, cannot be made in significant amounts in the s- or r-processes and are considered among the p-nuclei, whose origins are not well understood yet. Some speculated mechanisms for their formation include proton capture as well as photodisintegration, although 115Sn might also be partially produced in the s-process, both directly, and as the daughter of long-lived 115In.[23]
+
+The word tin is shared among Germanic languages and can be traced back to reconstructed Proto-Germanic *tin-om; cognates include German Zinn, Swedish tenn and Dutch tin. It is not found in other branches of Indo-European, except by borrowing from Germanic (e.g., Irish tinne from English).[24][25]
+
+The Latin name stannum originally meant an alloy of silver and lead, and came to mean 'tin' in the 4th century[26]—the earlier Latin word for it was plumbum candidum, or "white lead". Stannum apparently came from an earlier stāgnum (meaning the same substance),[24] the origin of the Romance and Celtic terms for tin.[24][27] The origin of stannum/stāgnum is unknown; it may be pre-Indo-European.[28]
+
+The Meyers Konversations-Lexikon speculates on the contrary that stannum is derived from (the ancestor of) Cornish stean, and is proof that Cornwall in the first centuries AD was the main source of tin.
+
+Tin extraction and use can be dated to the beginnings of the Bronze Age around 3000 BC, when it was observed that copper objects formed of polymetallic ores with different metal contents had different physical properties.[29] The earliest bronze objects had a tin or arsenic content of less than 2% and are therefore believed to be the result of unintentional alloying due to trace metal content in the copper ore.[30] The addition of a second metal to copper increases its hardness, lowers the melting temperature, and improves the casting process by producing a more fluid melt that cools to a denser, less spongy metal.[30] This was an important innovation that allowed for the much more complex shapes cast in closed molds of the Bronze Age. Arsenical bronze objects appear first in the Near East where arsenic is commonly found in association with copper ore, but the health risks were quickly realized and the quest for sources of the much less hazardous tin ores began early in the Bronze Age.[31] This created the demand for rare tin metal and formed a trade network that linked the distant sources of tin to the markets of Bronze Age cultures.[citation needed]
+
+Cassiterite (SnO2), the tin oxide form of tin, was most likely the original source of tin in ancient times. Other forms of tin ores are less abundant sulfides such as stannite that require a more involved smelting process. Cassiterite often accumulates in alluvial channels as placer deposits because it is harder, heavier, and more chemically resistant than the accompanying granite.[30] Cassiterite is usually black or generally dark in color, and these deposits can be easily seen in river banks. Alluvial (placer) deposits may incidentally have been collected and separated by methods similar to gold panning.[32]
+
+In the great majority of its compounds, tin has the oxidation state II or IV.
+
+Halide compounds are known for both oxidation states. For Sn(IV), all four halides are well known: SnF4, SnCl4, SnBr4, and SnI4. The three heavier members are volatile molecular compounds, whereas the tetrafluoride is polymeric. All four halides are known for Sn(II) also: SnF2, SnCl2, SnBr2, and SnI2. All are polymeric solids. Of these eight compounds, only the iodides are colored.[33]
+
+Tin(II) chloride (also known as stannous chloride) is the most important tin halide in a commercial sense. Illustrating the routes to such compounds, chlorine reacts with tin metal to give SnCl4 whereas the reaction of hydrochloric acid and tin produces SnCl2 and hydrogen gas. Alternatively SnCl4 and Sn combine to stannous chloride by a process called comproportionation:[34]
+
+Tin can form many oxides, sulfides, and other chalcogenide derivatives. The dioxide SnO2 (cassiterite) forms when tin is heated in the presence of air.[33] SnO2 is amphoteric, which means that it dissolves in both acidic and basic solutions.[35] Stannates with the structure [Sn(OH)6]2−, like K2[Sn(OH)6], are also known, though the free stannic acid H2[Sn(OH)6] is unknown.
+
+Sulfides of tin exist in both the +2 and +4 oxidation states: tin(II) sulfide and tin(IV) sulfide (mosaic gold).
+
+Stannane (SnH4), with tin in the +4 oxidation state, is unstable. Organotin hydrides are however well known, e.g. tributyltin hydride (Sn(C4H9)3H).[8] These compound release transient tributyl tin radicals, which are rare examples of compounds of tin(III).[37]
+
+Organotin compounds, sometimes called stannanes, are chemical compounds with tin–carbon bonds.[38] Of the compounds of tin, the organic derivatives are the most useful commercially.[39] Some organotin compounds are highly toxic and have been used as biocides. The first organotin compound to be reported was diethyltin diiodide ((C2H5)2SnI2), reported by Edward Frankland in 1849.[40]
+
+Most organotin compounds are colorless liquids or solids that are stable to air and water. They adopt tetrahedral geometry. Tetraalkyl- and tetraaryltin compounds can be prepared using Grignard reagents:[39]
+
+The mixed halide-alkyls, which are more common and more important commercially than the tetraorgano derivatives, are prepared by redistribution reactions:
+
+Divalent organotin compounds are uncommon, although more common than related divalent organogermanium and organosilicon compounds. The greater stabilization enjoyed by Sn(II) is attributed to the "inert pair effect". Organotin(II) compounds include both stannylenes (formula: R2Sn, as seen for singlet carbenes) and distannylenes (R4Sn2), which are roughly equivalent to alkenes. Both classes exhibit unusual reactions.[41]
+
+Tin is generated via the long s-process in low-to-medium mass stars (with masses of 0.6 to 10 times that of the Sun), and finally by beta decay of the heavy isotopes of indium.[42]
+
+Tin is the 49th most abundant element in Earth's crust, representing 2 ppm compared with 75 ppm for zinc, 50 ppm for copper, and 14 ppm for lead.[43]
+
+Tin does not occur as the native element but must be extracted from various ores. Cassiterite (SnO2) is the only commercially important source of tin, although small quantities of tin are recovered from complex sulfides such as stannite, cylindrite, franckeite, canfieldite, and teallite. Minerals with tin are almost always associated with granite rock, usually at a level of 1% tin oxide content.[44]
+
+Because of the higher specific gravity of tin dioxide, about 80% of mined tin is from secondary deposits found downstream from the primary lodes. Tin is often recovered from granules washed downstream in the past and deposited in valleys or the sea. The most economical ways of mining tin are by dredging, hydraulicking, or open pits. Most of the world's tin is produced from placer deposits, which can contain as little as 0.015% tin.[45]
+
+About 253,000 tonnes of tin have been mined in 2011, mostly in China (110,000 t), Indonesia (51,000 t), Peru (34,600 t), Bolivia (20,700 t) and Brazil (12,000 t).[46] Estimates of tin production have historically varied with the dynamics of economic feasibility and the development of mining technologies, but it is estimated that, at current consumption rates and technologies, the Earth will run out of mine-able tin in 40 years.[47] Lester Brown has suggested tin could run out within 20 years based on an extremely conservative extrapolation of 2% growth per year.[48]
+
+Secondary, or scrap, tin is also an important source of the metal. Recovery of tin through secondary production, or recycling of scrap tin, is increasing rapidly. Whereas the United States has neither mined since 1993 nor smelted tin since 1989, it was the largest secondary producer, recycling nearly 14,000 tonnes in 2006.[46]
+
+New deposits are reported in Mongolia,[49] and in 2009, new deposits of tin were discovered in Colombia by the Seminole Group Colombia CI, SAS.[50]
+
+Tin is produced by carbothermic reduction of the oxide ore with carbon or coke. Both reverberatory furnace and electric furnace can be used.[51][52][53]
+
+The ten largest companies produced most of the world's tin in 2007.
+
+Most of the world's tin is traded on the London Metal Exchange (LME), from 8 countries, under 17 brands.[54]
+
+An International Tin Council was established in 1947 to control the price of tin, until it collapsed in 1985. In 1984, an Association of Tin Producing Countries was created, with Australia, Bolivia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, and Zaire as members.[57]
+
+Tin is unique among other mineral commodities because of the complex agreements between producer countries and consumer countries dating back to 1921. The earlier agreements tended to be somewhat informal and sporadic and led to the "First International Tin Agreement" in 1956, the first of a continuously numbered series that effectively collapsed in 1985. Through this series of agreements, the International Tin Council (ITC) had a considerable effect on tin prices. The ITC supported the price of tin during periods of low prices by buying tin for its buffer stockpile and was able to restrain the price during periods of high prices by selling tin from the stockpile. This was an anti-free-market approach, designed to assure a sufficient flow of tin to consumer countries and a profit for producer countries. However, the buffer stockpile was not sufficiently large, and during most of those 29 years tin prices rose, sometimes sharply, especially from 1973 through 1980 when rampant inflation plagued many world economies.[58]
+
+During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. Government tin stockpile was in an aggressive selling mode, partly to take advantage of the historically high tin prices. The sharp recession of 1981–82 proved to be quite harsh on the tin industry. Tin consumption declined dramatically. The ITC was able to avoid truly steep declines through accelerated buying for its buffer stockpile; this activity required the ITC to borrow extensively from banks and metal trading firms to augment its resources. The ITC continued to borrow until late 1985 when it reached its credit limit. Immediately, a major "tin crisis" followed — tin was delisted from trading on the London Metal Exchange for about three years, the ITC dissolved soon afterward, and the price of tin, now in a free-market environment, plummeted sharply to $4 per pound and remained at that level through the 1990s.[58] The price increased again by 2010 with a rebound in consumption following the 2008–09 world economic crisis, accompanying restocking and continued growth in consumption by the world's developing economies.[46]
+
+London Metal Exchange (LME) is the principal trading site for tin.[46] Other tin contract markets are Kuala Lumpur Tin Market (KLTM) and Indonesia Tin Exchange (INATIN).[59]
+
+The price per kg over years:
+
+In 2018, just under half of all tin produced was used in solder. The rest was divided between tin plating, tin chemicals, brass and bronze alloys, and niche uses.[61]
+
+Tin has long been used in alloys with lead as solder, in amounts 5 to 70% w/w. Tin with lead forms a eutectic mixture at the weight proportion of 61.9% tin and 38.1% lead (the atomic proportion: 73.9% tin and 26.1% lead), with melting temperature of 183 °C (361.4 °F) . Such solders are primarily used for joining pipes or electric circuits. Since the European Union Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE Directive) and Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive came into effect on 1 July 2006, the lead content in such alloys has decreased. Replacing lead has many problems, including a higher melting point, and the formation of tin whiskers causing electrical problems. Tin pest can occur in lead-free solders, leading to loss of the soldered joint. Replacement alloys are rapidly being found, although problems of joint integrity remain.[62]
+
+Tin bonds readily to iron and is used for coating lead, zinc and steel to prevent corrosion. Tin-plated steel containers are widely used for food preservation, and this forms a large part of the market for metallic tin. A tinplate canister for preserving food was first manufactured in London in 1812.[63] Speakers of British English call them "tins", while speakers of American English call them "cans" or "tin cans". One derivation of such use is the slang term "tinnie" or "tinny", meaning "can of beer" in Australia. The tin whistle is so called because it was first mass-produced in tin-plated steel.[64][65] Copper cooking vessels such as saucepans and frying pans are frequently lined with a thin plating of tin, since the combination of acid foods with copper can be toxic.
+
+Tin in combination with other elements forms a wide variety of useful alloys. Tin is most commonly alloyed with copper. Pewter is 85–99% tin;[66] bearing metal has a high percentage of tin as well.[67][68] Bronze is mostly copper (12% tin), while addition of phosphorus gives phosphor bronze. Bell metal is also a copper–tin alloy, containing 22% tin. Tin has sometimes been used in coinage; for example, it once formed a single-digit percentage (usually five percent or less) of American[69] and Canadian[70] pennies. Because copper is often the major metal in such coins, sometimes including zinc, these could be called bronze and/or brass alloys.
+
+The niobium–tin compound Nb3Sn is commercially used in coils of superconducting magnets for its high critical temperature (18 K) and critical magnetic field (25 T). A superconducting magnet weighing as little as two kilograms is capable of the magnetic field of a conventional electromagnet weighing tons.[71]
+
+A small percentage of tin is added to zirconium alloys for the cladding of nuclear fuel.[72]
+
+Most metal pipes in a pipe organ are of a tin/lead alloy, with 50/50 being the most common composition. The proportion of tin in the pipe defines the pipe's tone, since tin has a desirable tonal resonance. When a tin/lead alloy cools, the lead phase solidifies first, then when the eutectic temperature is reached the remaining liquid forms the layered tin/lead eutectic structure, which is shiny and the contrast with the lead phase produces a mottled or spotted effect. This metal alloy is referred to as spotted metal. Major advantages of using tin for pipes include its appearance, its workability, and resistance to corrosion.[73][74]
+
+The oxides of indium and tin are electrically conductive and transparent, and are used to make transparent electrically conducting films with applications in Optoelectronics devices such as liquid crystal displays.[75]
+
+Punched tin-plated steel, also called pierced tin, is an artisan technique originating in central Europe for creating housewares that are both functional and decorative. Decorative piercing designs exist in a wide variety, based on local tradition and the artisan's personal creations. Punched tin lanterns are the most common application of this artisan technique. The light of a candle shining through the pierced design creates a decorative light pattern in the room where it sits. Lanterns and other punched tin articles were created in the New World from the earliest European settlement. A well-known example is the Revere lantern, named after Paul Revere.[76]
+
+Before the modern era, in some areas of the Alps, a goat or sheep's horn would be sharpened and a tin panel would be punched out using the alphabet and numbers from one to nine. This learning tool was known appropriately as "the horn". Modern reproductions are decorated with such motifs as hearts and tulips.
+
+In America, pie safes and food safes were in use in the days before refrigeration. These were wooden cupboards of various styles and sizes – either floor standing or hanging cupboards meant to discourage vermin and insects and to keep dust from perishable foodstuffs. These cabinets had tinplate inserts in the doors and sometimes in the sides, punched out by the homeowner, cabinetmaker or a tinsmith in varying designs to allow for air circulation while excluding flies. Modern reproductions of these articles remain popular in North America.[77]
+
+Window glass is most often made by floating molten glass on molten tin (float glass), resulting in a flat and flawless surface. This is also called the "Pilkington process".[78]
+
+Tin is also used as a negative electrode in advanced Li-ion batteries. Its application is somewhat limited by the fact that some tin surfaces[which?] catalyze decomposition of carbonate-based electrolytes used in Li-ion batteries.[79]
+
+Tin(II) fluoride is added to some dental care products[80] as stannous fluoride (SnF2). Tin(II) fluoride can be mixed with calcium abrasives while the more common sodium fluoride gradually becomes biologically inactive in the presence of calcium compounds.[81] It has also been shown to be more effective than sodium fluoride in controlling gingivitis.[82]
+
+Tin is also used as a target to create laser induced plasma's which act as the light source for Extreme ultraviolet lithography.
+
+Of all the chemical compounds of tin, the organotin compounds are most heavily used. Worldwide industrial production probably exceeds 50,000 tonnes.[83]
+
+The major commercial application of organotin compounds is in the stabilization of PVC plastics. In the absence of such stabilizers, PVC would otherwise rapidly degrade under heat, light, and atmospheric oxygen, resulting in discolored, brittle products. Tin scavenges labile chloride ions (Cl−), which would otherwise initiate loss of HCl from the plastic material.[84] Typical tin compounds are carboxylic acid derivatives of dibutyltin dichloride, such as the dilaurate.[85]
+
+Some organotin compounds are relatively toxic, with both advantages and problems. They are used for biocidal properties as fungicides, pesticides, algaecides, wood preservatives, and antifouling agents.[84] Tributyltin oxide is used as a wood preservative.[86] Tributyltin was used as additive for ship paint to prevent growth of marine organisms on ships, with use declining after organotin compounds were recognized as persistent organic pollutants with an extremely high toxicity for some marine organisms (the dog whelk, for example).[87] The EU banned the use of organotin compounds in 2003,[88] while concerns over the toxicity of these compounds to marine life and damage to the reproduction and growth of some marine species[84] (some reports describe biological effects to marine life at a concentration of 1 nanogram per liter) have led to a worldwide ban by the International Maritime Organization.[89] Many nations now restrict the use of organotin compounds to vessels greater than 25 m (82 ft) long.[84]
+
+Some tin reagents are useful in organic chemistry. In the largest application, stannous chloride is a common reducing agent for the conversion of nitro and oxime groups to amines. The Stille reaction couples organotin compounds with organic halides or pseudohalides.[90]
+
+Tin forms several inter-metallic phases with lithium metal, making it a potentially attractive material for battery applications. Large volumetric expansion of tin upon alloying with lithium and instability of the tin-organic electrolyte interface at low electrochemical potentials are the greatest challenges to employment in commercial cells. The problem was partially solved by Sony.[citation needed] Tin inter-metallic compound with cobalt and carbon has been implemented by Sony in its Nexelion cells released in the late 2000s. The composition of the active material is approximately Sn0.3Co0.4C0.3. Recent research showed that only some crystalline facets of tetragonal (beta) Sn are responsible for undesirable electrochemical activity.[91]
+
+Cases of poisoning from tin metal, its oxides, and its salts are almost unknown. On the other hand, certain organotin compounds are almost as toxic as cyanide.[39]
+
+Exposure to tin in the workplace can occur by inhalation, skin contact, and eye contact. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set the legal limit (permissible exposure limit) for tin exposure in the workplace as 2 mg/m3 over an 8-hour workday. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has determined a recommended exposure limit (REL) of 2 mg/m3 over an 8-hour workday. At levels of 100 mg/m3, tin is immediately dangerous to life and health.[92]

en/1844.html.txt

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+
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+Coordinates: 40°N 100°W / 40°N 100°W / 40; -100
+
+The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country mostly located in central North America, between Canada and Mexico. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions.[i] At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million km2), it is the world's third- or fourth-largest country by total area.[e] With a 2019 estimated population of over 328 million,[7] the U.S. is the third most populous country in the world. The Americans are a racially and ethnically diverse population that has been shaped through centuries of immigration. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City.
+
+Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago,[19] and European colonization began in the 16th century. The United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies led to the American Revolutionary War lasting between 1775 and 1783, leading to independence.[20] Beginning in the late 18th century, the United States vigorously expanded across North America, gradually acquiring new territories,[21] killing and displacing Native Americans, and admitting new states. By 1848, the United States spanned the continent.[21]
+Slavery was legal in much of the United States until the second half of the 19th century, when the American Civil War led to its abolition.[22][23]
+
+The Spanish–American War and World War I entrenched the U.S. as a world power, a status confirmed by the outcome of World War II. It was the first country to develop nuclear weapons and is the only country to have used them in warfare. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. The end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower.[24]
+
+The United States is a federal republic and a representative democracy. It is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States (OAS), NATO, and other international organizations. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
+
+A highly developed country, the United States is the world's largest economy and accounts for approximately a quarter of global gross domestic product (GDP).[25] The United States is the world's largest importer and the second-largest exporter of goods, by value.[26][27] Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total,[28] it holds 29.4% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share held by any country.[29] Despite income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, median income, median wealth, human development, per capita GDP, and worker productivity.[30][31] It is the foremost military power in the world, making up more than a third of global military spending,[32] and is a leading political, cultural, and scientific force internationally.[33]
+
+The first known use of the name "America" dates back to 1507, when it appeared on a world map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller. On this map, the name applied to South America in honor of the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.[34] After returning from his expeditions, Vespucci first postulated that the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern limit, as initially thought by Christopher Columbus, but instead were part of an entirely separate landmass thus far unknown to the Europeans.[35] In 1538, the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator used the name "America" on his own world map, applying it to the entire Western Hemisphere.[36]
+
+The first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" dates from a January 2, 1776 letter written by Stephen Moylan, Esq., to Lt. Col. Joseph Reed, George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort.[37][38][39] The first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776.[40]
+
+The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed no later than June 17, 1776, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the 'United States of America'".[41] The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'".[42] In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence.[41] This draft of the document did not surface until June 21, 1776, and it is unclear whether it was written before or after Dickinson used the term in his June 17 draft of the Articles of Confederation.[41]
+
+The short form "United States" is also standard. Other common forms are the "U.S.," the "USA," and "America." Colloquial names are the "U.S. of A." and, internationally, the "States." "Columbia," a name popular in poetry and songs of the late 18th century, derives its origin from Christopher Columbus; it appears in the name "District of Columbia." Many landmarks and institutions in the Western Hemisphere bear his name, including the country of Colombia.[43]
+
+The phrase "United States" was originally plural, a description of a collection of independent states—e.g., "the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865.[44] The singular form—e.g., "the United States is"—became popular after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now standard; the plural form is retained in the idiom "these United States." The difference is more significant than usage; it is a difference between a collection of states and a unit.[45]
+
+A citizen of the United States is an "American." "United States," "American" and "U.S." refer to the country adjectivally ("American values," "U.S. forces"). In English, the word "American" rarely refers to topics or subjects not directly connected with the United States.[46]
+
+It has been generally accepted that the first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 12,000 years ago; however, increasing evidence suggests an even earlier arrival.[19][47][48] After crossing the land bridge, the Paleo-Indians moved southward along the Pacific coast[49] and through an interior ice-free corridor.[50] The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BC, was initially believed to represent the first wave of human settlement of the Americas.[51][52] It is likely these represent the first of three major waves of migration into North America.[53]
+
+Over time, indigenous cultures in North America grew increasingly complex, and some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture in the southeast, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies.[54] The Mississippian culture flourished in the south from 800 to 1600 AD, extending from the Mexican border down through Florida.[55] Its city state Cahokia is the largest, most complex pre-Columbian archaeological site in the modern-day United States.[56] In the Four Corners region, Ancestral Puebloan culture developed from centuries of agricultural experimentation.[57]
+
+Three UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the United States are credited to the Pueblos: Mesa Verde National Park, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, and Taos Pueblo.[58][59] The earthworks constructed by Native Americans of the Poverty Point culture have also been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. In the southern Great Lakes region, the Iroquois Confederacy was established at some point between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.[60] Most prominent along the Atlantic coast were the Algonquian tribes, who practiced hunting and trapping, along with limited cultivation.
+
+With the progress of European colonization in the territories of the contemporary United States, the Native Americans were often conquered and displaced.[61] The native population of America declined after European arrival for various reasons,[62][63] primarily diseases such as smallpox and measles.[64][65]
+
+Estimating the native population of North America at the time of European contact is difficult.[66][67] Douglas H. Ubelaker of the Smithsonian Institution estimated that there was a population of 92,916 in the south Atlantic states and a population of 473,616 in the Gulf states,[68] but most academics regard this figure as too low.[66] Anthropologist Henry F. Dobyns believed the populations were much higher, suggesting 1,100,000 along the shores of the gulf of Mexico, 2,211,000 people living between Florida and Massachusetts, 5,250,000 in the Mississippi Valley and tributaries and 697,000 people in the Florida peninsula.[66][67]
+
+In the early days of colonization, many European settlers were subject to food shortages, disease, and attacks from Native Americans. Native Americans were also often at war with neighboring tribes and allied with Europeans in their colonial wars. In many cases, however, natives and settlers came to depend on each other. Settlers traded for food and animal pelts; natives for guns, ammunition and other European goods.[69] Natives taught many settlers to cultivate corn, beans, and squash. European missionaries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Native Americans and urged them to adopt European agricultural techniques and lifestyles.[70][71]
+
+With the advancement of European colonization in North America, the Native Americans were often conquered and displaced.[72] The first Europeans to arrive in the contiguous United States were Spanish conquistadors such as Juan Ponce de León, who made his first visit to Florida in 1513. Even earlier, Christopher Columbus landed in Puerto Rico on his 1493 voyage. The Spanish set up the first settlements in Florida and New Mexico such as Saint Augustine[73] and Santa Fe. The French established their own as well along the Mississippi River. Successful English settlement on the eastern coast of North America began with the Virginia Colony in 1607 at Jamestown and with the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. Many settlers were dissenting Christian groups who came seeking religious freedom. The continent's first elected legislative assembly, Virginia's House of Burgesses, was created in 1619. The Mayflower Compact, signed by the Pilgrims before disembarking, and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, established precedents for the pattern of representative self-government and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies.[74][75]
+
+Most settlers in every colony were small farmers, though other industries were formed. Cash crops included tobacco, rice, and wheat. Extraction industries grew up in furs, fishing and lumber. Manufacturers produced rum and ships, and by the late colonial period, Americans were producing one-seventh of the world's iron supply.[76] Cities eventually dotted the coast to support local economies and serve as trade hubs. English colonists were supplemented by waves of Scotch-Irish immigrants and other groups. As coastal land grew more expensive, freed indentured servants claimed lands further west.[77]
+
+A large-scale slave trade with English privateers began.[78] Because of less disease and better food and treatment, the life expectancy of slaves was much higher in North America than further south, leading to a rapid increase in the numbers of slaves.[79][80] Colonial society was largely divided over the religious and moral implications of slavery, and colonies passed acts for and against the practice.[81][82] But by the turn of the 18th century, African slaves were replacing indentured servants for cash crop labor, especially in the South.[83]
+
+With the establishment of the Province of Georgia in 1732, the 13 colonies that would become the United States of America were administered by the British as overseas dependencies.[84] All nonetheless had local governments with elections open to most free men.[85] With extremely high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grew rapidly. Relatively small Native American populations were eclipsed.[86] The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest both in religion and in religious liberty.[87]
+
+During the Seven Years' War (known in the United States as the French and Indian War), British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. Excluding the Native Americans, who were being conquered and displaced, the 13 British colonies had a population of over 2.1 million in 1770, about a third that of Britain. Despite continuing, new arrivals, the rate of natural increase was such that by the 1770s only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas.[88] The colonies' distance from Britain had allowed the development of self-government, but their unprecedented success motivated monarchs to periodically seek to reassert royal authority.[89]
+
+In 1774, the Spanish Navy ship Santiago, under Juan Pérez, entered and anchored in an inlet of Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island, in present-day British Columbia. Although the Spanish did not land, natives paddled to the ship to trade furs for abalone shells from California.[90] At the time, the Spanish were able to monopolize the trade between Asia and North America, granting limited licenses to the Portuguese. When the Russians began establishing a growing fur trading system in Alaska, the Spanish began to challenge the Russians, with Pérez's voyage being the first of many to the Pacific Northwest.[91][j]
+
+During his third and final voyage, Captain James Cook became the first European to begin formal contact with Hawaii.[93] Captain Cook's last voyage included sailing along the coast of North America and Alaska searching for a Northwest Passage for approximately nine months.[94]
+
+The American Revolutionary War was the first successful colonial war of independence against a European power. Americans had developed an ideology of "republicanism" asserting that government rested on the will of the people as expressed in their local legislatures. They demanded their rights as Englishmen and "no taxation without representation". The British insisted on administering the empire through Parliament, and the conflict escalated into war.[95]
+
+The Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, which asserted that Great Britain was not protecting Americans' unalienable rights. July 4 is celebrated annually as Independence Day.[96] In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a decentralized government that operated until 1789.[96]
+
+Following the decisive Franco-American victory at Yorktown in 1781,[97] Britain signed the peace treaty of 1783, and American sovereignty was internationally recognized and the country was granted all lands east of the Mississippi River. Nationalists led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in writing the United States Constitution, ratified in state conventions in 1788. The federal government was reorganized into three branches, on the principle of creating salutary checks and balances, in 1789. George Washington, who had led the Continental Army to victory, was the first president elected under the new constitution. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.[98]
+
+Although the federal government criminalized the international slave trade in 1808, after 1820, cultivation of the highly profitable cotton crop exploded in the Deep South, and along with it, the slave population.[99][100][101] The Second Great Awakening, especially 1800–1840, converted millions to evangelical Protestantism. In the North, it energized multiple social reform movements, including abolitionism;[102] in the South, Methodists and Baptists proselytized among slave populations.[103]
+
+Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of American Indian Wars.[104] The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory in 1803 almost doubled the nation's area.[105] The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism.[106] A series of military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819.[107] The expansion was aided by steam power, when steamboats began traveling along America's large water systems, many of which were connected by new canals, such as the Erie and the I&M; then, even faster railroads began their stretch across the nation's land.[108]
+
+From 1820 to 1850, Jacksonian democracy began a set of reforms which included wider white male suffrage; it led to the rise of the Second Party System of Democrats and Whigs as the dominant parties from 1828 to 1854. The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that forcibly resettled Indians into the west on Indian reservations. The U.S. annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845 during a period of expansionist Manifest destiny.[109] The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.[110] Victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest.[111]
+The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 spurred migration to the Pacific coast, which led to the California Genocide[112][113][114][115] and the creation of additional western states.[116] After the Civil War, new transcontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade and increased conflicts with Native Americans.[117] In 1869, a new Peace Policy nominally promised to protect Native Americans from abuses, avoid further war, and secure their eventual U.S. citizenship. Nonetheless, large-scale conflicts continued throughout the West into the 1900s.
+
+Irreconcilable sectional conflict regarding the slavery of Africans and African Americans ultimately led to the American Civil War.[118] Initially, states entering the Union had alternated between slave and free states, keeping a sectional balance in the Senate, while free states outstripped slave states in population and in the House of Representatives. But with additional western territory and more free-soil states, tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments over federalism and disposition of the territories, as well as whether to expand or restrict slavery.[119]
+
+With the 1860 election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, conventions in thirteen slave states ultimately declared secession and formed the Confederate States of America (the "South" or the "Confederacy"), while the federal government (the "Union") maintained that secession was illegal.[119] In order to bring about this secession, military action was initiated by the secessionists, and the Union responded in kind. The ensuing war would become the deadliest military conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of approximately 618,000 soldiers as well as many civilians.[120] The Union initially simply fought to keep the country united. Nevertheless, as casualties mounted after 1863 and Lincoln delivered his Emancipation Proclamation, the main purpose of the war from the Union's viewpoint became the abolition of slavery. Indeed, when the Union ultimately won the war in April 1865, each of the states in the defeated South was required to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibited slavery.
+
+The government enacted three constitutional amendments in the years after the war: the aforementioned Thirteenth as well as the Fourteenth Amendment providing citizenship to the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,[121] and the Fifteenth Amendment ensuring in theory that African Americans had the right to vote. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power[122] aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the South while guaranteeing the rights of the newly freed slaves.
+
+Reconstruction began in earnest following the war. While President Lincoln attempted to foster friendship and forgiveness between the Union and the former Confederacy, his assassination on April 14, 1865, drove a wedge between North and South again. Republicans in the federal government made it their goal to oversee the rebuilding of the South and to ensure the rights of African Americans. They persisted until the Compromise of 1877 when the Republicans agreed to cease protecting the rights of African Americans in the South in order for Democrats to concede the presidential election of 1876.
+
+Southern white Democrats, calling themselves "Redeemers," took control of the South after the end of Reconstruction. From 1890 to 1910 the Redeemers established so-called Jim Crow laws, disenfranchising most blacks and some poor whites throughout the region. Blacks faced racial segregation, especially in the South.[123] They also occasionally experienced vigilante violence, including lynching.[124]
+
+In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labor for the country's industrialization and transformed its culture.[126] National infrastructure including telegraph and transcontinental railroads spurred economic growth and greater settlement and development of the American Old West. The later invention of electric light and the telephone would also affect communication and urban life.[127]
+
+The United States fought Indian Wars west of the Mississippi River from 1810 to at least 1890.[128] Most of these conflicts ended with the cession of Native American territory and their confinement to Indian reservations. This further expanded acreage under mechanical cultivation, increasing surpluses for international markets.[129] Mainland expansion also included the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.[130] In 1893, pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the monarchy and formed the Republic of Hawaii, which the U.S. annexed in 1898. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year, following the Spanish–American War.[131] American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the end of the Second Samoan Civil War.[132] The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917.[133]
+
+Rapid economic development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries fostered the rise of many prominent industrialists. Tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie led the nation's progress in railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. Banking became a major part of the economy, with J. P. Morgan playing a notable role. The American economy boomed, becoming the world's largest, and the United States achieved great power status.[134] These dramatic changes were accompanied by social unrest and the rise of populist, socialist, and anarchist movements.[135] This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms including women's suffrage, alcohol prohibition, regulation of consumer goods, greater antitrust measures to ensure competition and attention to worker conditions.[136][137][138]
+
+The United States remained neutral from the outbreak of World War I in 1914 until 1917, when it joined the war as an "associated power," alongside the formal Allies of World War I, helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson took a leading diplomatic role at the Paris Peace Conference and advocated strongly for the U.S. to join the League of Nations. However, the Senate refused to approve this and did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles that established the League of Nations.[139]
+
+In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage.[140] The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of radio for mass communication and the invention of early television.[141] The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal.[142] The Great Migration of millions of African Americans out of the American South began before World War I and extended through the 1960s;[143] whereas the Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.[144]
+
+At first effectively neutral during World War II, the United States began supplying materiel to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to join the Allies against the Axis powers.[145] Although Japan attacked the United States first, the U.S. nonetheless pursued a "Europe first" defense policy.[146] The United States thus left its vast Asian colony, the Philippines, isolated and fighting a losing struggle against Japanese invasion and occupation, as military resources were devoted to the European theater. During the war, the United States was referred to as one of the "Four Policemen"[147] of Allies power who met to plan the postwar world, along with Britain, the Soviet Union and China.[148][149] Although the nation lost around 400,000 military personnel,[150] it emerged relatively undamaged from the war with even greater economic and military influence.[151]
+
+The United States played a leading role in the Bretton Woods and Yalta conferences with the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and other Allies, which signed agreements on new international financial institutions and Europe's postwar reorganization. As an Allied victory was won in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.[152] The United States and Japan then fought each other in the largest naval battle in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf.[153][154] The United States eventually developed the first nuclear weapons and used them on Japan in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Japanese surrendered on September 2, ending World War II.[155][156]
+
+After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union competed for power, influence, and prestige during what became known as the Cold War, driven by an ideological divide between capitalism and communism.[157] They dominated the military affairs of Europe, with the U.S. and its NATO allies on one side and the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies on the other. The U.S. developed a policy of containment towards the expansion of communist influence. While the U.S. and Soviet Union engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear arsenals, the two countries avoided direct military conflict.[citation needed]
+
+The United States often opposed Third World movements that it viewed as Soviet-sponsored, and occasionally pursued direct action for regime change against left-wing governments, even supporting right-wing authoritarian governments at times.[158] American troops fought communist Chinese and North Korean forces in the Korean War of 1950–53.[159] The Soviet Union's 1957 launch of the first artificial satellite and its 1961 launch of the first manned spaceflight initiated a "Space Race" in which the United States became the first nation to land a man on the moon in 1969.[159] A proxy war in Southeast Asia eventually evolved into full American participation, as the Vietnam War.[citation needed]
+
+At home, the U.S. experienced sustained economic expansion and a rapid growth of its population and middle class. Construction of an Interstate Highway System transformed the nation's infrastructure over the following decades. Millions moved from farms and inner cities to large suburban housing developments.[160][161] In 1959 Hawaii became the 50th and last U.S. state added to the country.[162] The growing Civil Rights Movement used nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader and figurehead. A combination of court decisions and legislation, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1968, sought to end racial discrimination.[163][164][165] Meanwhile, a counterculture movement grew which was fueled by opposition to the Vietnam war, black nationalism, and the sexual revolution.
+
+The launch of a "War on Poverty" expanded entitlements and welfare spending, including the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, two programs that provide health coverage to the elderly and poor, respectively, and the means-tested Food Stamp Program and Aid to Families with Dependent Children.[166]
+
+The 1970s and early 1980s saw the onset of stagflation. After his election in 1980, President Ronald Reagan responded to economic stagnation with free-market oriented reforms. Following the collapse of détente, he abandoned "containment" and initiated the more aggressive "rollback" strategy towards the USSR.[167][168][169][170][171] After a surge in female labor participation over the previous decade, by 1985 the majority of women aged 16 and over were employed.[172]
+
+The late 1980s brought a "thaw" in relations with the USSR, and its collapse in 1991 finally ended the Cold War.[173][174][175][176] This brought about unipolarity[177] with the U.S. unchallenged as the world's dominant superpower. The concept of Pax Americana, which had appeared in the post-World War II period, gained wide popularity as a term for the post-Cold War new world order.[citation needed]
+
+After the Cold War, the conflict in the Middle East triggered a crisis in 1990, when Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded and attempted to annex Kuwait, an ally of the United States. Fearing the instability would spread to other regions, President George H. W. Bush launched Operation Desert Shield, a defensive force buildup in Saudi Arabia, and Operation Desert Storm, in a staging titled the Gulf War; waged by coalition forces from 34 nations, led by the United States against Iraq ending in the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait and restoration of the monarchy.[178]
+
+Originating within U.S. military defense networks, the Internet spread to international academic platforms and then to the public in the 1990s, greatly affecting the global economy, society, and culture.[179] Due to the dot-com boom, stable monetary policy, and reduced social welfare spending, the 1990s saw the longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history.[180] Beginning in 1994, the U.S. entered into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), prompting trade among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to soar.[181]
+
+On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3,000 people.[182] In response, the United States launched the War on Terror, which included a war in Afghanistan and the 2003–11 Iraq War.[183][184]
+
+Government policy designed to promote affordable housing,[185] widespread failures in corporate and regulatory governance,[186] and historically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve[187] led to the mid-2000s housing bubble, which culminated with the 2008 financial crisis, the nation's largest economic contraction since the Great Depression.[188] Barack Obama, the first African-American[189] and multiracial[190] president, was elected in 2008 amid the crisis,[191] and subsequently passed stimulus measures and the Dodd–Frank Act in an attempt to mitigate its negative effects and ensure there would not be a repeat of the crisis. In 2010, the Obama administration passed the Affordable Care Act, which made the most sweeping reforms to the nation's healthcare system in nearly five decades, including mandates, subsidies and insurance exchanges.[citation needed]
+
+American forces in Iraq were withdrawn in large numbers in 2009 and 2010, and the war in the region was declared formally over in December 2011.[192] But months earlier, Operation Neptune Spear led to the death of the leader of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan.[193] In the presidential election of 2016, Republican Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president of the United States. On January 20, 2020, the first case of COVID-19 in the United States was confirmed.[194] As of July 2020, the United States has over 4 million COVID-19 cases and over 145,000 deaths.[195] The United States is, by far, the country with the most cases of COVID-19 since April 11, 2020.[196]
+
+The 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia occupy a combined area of 3,119,884.69 square miles (8,080,464.3 km2). Of this area, 2,959,064.44 square miles (7,663,941.7 km2) is contiguous land, composing 83.65% of total U.S. land area.[197][198] Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America, is 10,931 square miles (28,311 km2) in area. The populated territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and U.S. Virgin Islands together cover 9,185 square miles (23,789 km2).[199] Measured by only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.[200]
+
+The United States is the world's third- or fourth-largest nation by total area (land and water), ranking behind Russia and Canada and nearly equal to China. The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted, and how the total size of the United States is measured.[e][201][202]
+
+The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont.[203] The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest.[204] The Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast.[204]
+
+The Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, peaking around 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado.[205] Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua and Mojave.[206] The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast, both ranges reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m). The lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States are in the state of California,[207] and only about 84 miles (135 km) apart.[208] At an elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190.5 m), Alaska's Denali is the highest peak in the country and in North America.[209] Active volcanoes are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands, and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.[210]
+
+The United States, with its large size and geographic variety, includes most climate types. To the east of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south.[211] The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid. Much of the Western mountains have an alpine climate. The climate is arid in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon and Washington and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Hawaii and the southern tip of Florida are tropical, as well as its territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific.[212] States bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur in the country, mainly in Tornado Alley areas in the Midwest and South.[213] Overall, the United States has the world's most violent weather, receiving more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any other country in the world.[214]
+
+The U.S. ecology is megadiverse: about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and more than 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland.[216] The United States is home to 428 mammal species, 784 bird species, 311 reptile species, and 295 amphibian species,[217] as well as about 91,000 insect species.[218]
+
+There are 62 national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas.[219] Altogether, the government owns about 28% of the country's land area,[220] mostly in the western states.[221] Most of this land is protected, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching, and about .86% is used for military purposes.[222][223]
+
+Environmental issues include debates on oil and nuclear energy, dealing with air and water pollution, the economic costs of protecting wildlife, logging and deforestation,[224][225] and international responses to global warming.[226][227] The most prominent environmental agency is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), created by presidential order in 1970.[228] The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the Wilderness Act.[229] The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is intended to protect threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.[230]
+
+The U.S. Census Bureau officially estimated the country's population to be 328,239,523 as of July 1, 2019.[231] In addition, the Census Bureau provides a continuously updated U.S. Population Clock that approximates the latest population of the 50 states and District of Columbia based on the Bureau's most recent demographic trends.[234] According to the clock, on May 23, 2020, the U.S. population exceeded 329 million residents, with a net gain of one person every 19 seconds, or about 4,547 people per day. The United States is the third most populous nation in the world, after China and India. In 2018 the median age of the United States population was 38.1 years.[235]
+
+In 2018, there were almost 90 million immigrants and U.S.-born children of immigrants (second-generation Americans) in the United States, accounting for 28% of the overall U.S. population.[236] The United States has a very diverse population; 37 ancestry groups have more than one million members.[237] German Americans are the largest ethnic group (more than 50 million)—followed by Irish Americans (circa 37 million), Mexican Americans (circa 31 million) and English Americans (circa 28 million).[238][239]
+
+White Americans (mostly European ancestry) are the largest racial group at 73.1% of the population; African Americans are the nation's largest racial minority and third-largest ancestry group.[237] Asian Americans are the country's second-largest racial minority; the three largest Asian American ethnic groups are Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, and Indian Americans.[237] The largest American community with European ancestry is German Americans, which consists of more than 14% of the total population.[240] In 2010, the U.S. population included an estimated 5.2 million people with some American Indian or Alaska Native ancestry (2.9 million exclusively of such ancestry) and 1.2 million with some native Hawaiian or Pacific island ancestry (0.5 million exclusively).[241] The census counted more than 19 million people of "Some Other Race" who were "unable to identify with any" of its five official race categories in 2010, more than 18.5 million (97%) of whom are of Hispanic ethnicity.[241]
+
+In 2017, out of the U.S. foreign-born population, some 45% (20.7 million) were naturalized citizens, 27% (12.3 million) were lawful permanent residents (including many eligible to become citizens), 6% (2.2 million) were temporary lawful residents, and 23% (10.5 million) were unauthorized immigrants.[242] Among current living immigrants to the U.S., the top five countries of birth are Mexico, China, India, the Philippines and El Salvador. Until 2017 and 2018, the United States led the world in refugee resettlement for decades, admitted more refugees than the rest of the world combined.[243] From fiscal year 1980 until 2017, 55% of refugees came from Asia, 27% from Europe, 13% from Africa, and 4% from Latin America.[243]
+
+A 2017 United Nations report projected that the U.S. would be one of nine countries in which world population growth through 2050 would be concentrated.[244] A 2020 U.S. Census Bureau report projected the population of the country could be anywhere between 320 million and 447 million by 2060, depending on the rate of in-migration; in all projected scenarios, a lower fertility rate and increases in life expectancy would result in an aging population.[245] The United States has an annual birth rate of 13 per 1,000, which is five births per 1,000 below the world average.[246] Its population growth rate is positive at 0.7%, higher than that of many developed nations.[247]
+
+About 82% of Americans live in urban areas (including suburbs);[202] about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000.[248] In 2008, 273 incorporated municipalities had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than one million residents, and four cities had over two million (namely New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston).[249] Estimates for the year 2018 show that 53 metropolitan areas have populations greater than one million. Many metros in the South, Southwest and West grew significantly between 2010 and 2018. The Dallas and Houston metros increased by more than a million people, while the Washington, D.C., Miami, Atlanta, and Phoenix metros all grew by more than 500,000 people.
+
+English (specifically, American English) is the de facto national language of the United States. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English. In 2010, about 230 million, or 80% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. 12% of the population speaks Spanish at home, making it the second most common language. Spanish is also the most widely taught second language.[250][251]
+
+Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii.[252] In addition to English, Alaska recognizes twenty official Native languages,[253][k] and South Dakota recognizes Sioux.[254] While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French.[255] Other states, such as California, mandate the publication of Spanish versions of certain government documents including court forms.[256]
+
+Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan[257] is officially recognized by American Samoa and Chamorro[258] is an official language of Guam. Both Carolinian and Chamorro have official recognition in the Northern Mariana Islands.[259]
+Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico and is more widely spoken than English there.[260]
+
+The most widely taught foreign languages in the United States, in terms of enrollment numbers from kindergarten through university undergraduate education, are Spanish (around 7.2 million students), French (1.5 million), and German (500,000). Other commonly taught languages include Latin, Japanese, ASL, Italian, and Chinese.[261][262] 18% of all Americans claim to speak both English and another language.[263]
+
+Religion in the United States (2017)[266]
+
+The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion and forbids Congress from passing laws respecting its establishment.
+
+In a 2013 survey, 56% of Americans said religion played a "very important role in their lives," a far higher figure than that of any other Western nation.[267] In a 2009 Gallup poll, 42% of Americans said they attended church weekly or almost weekly; the figures ranged from a low of 23% in Vermont to a high of 63% in Mississippi.[268]
+
+In a 2014 survey, 70.6% of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christians;[269] Protestants accounted for 46.5%, while Roman Catholics, at 20.8%, formed the largest single Christian group.[270] In 2014, 5.9% of the U.S. adult population claimed a non-Christian religion.[271] These include Judaism (1.9%), Islam (0.9%), Hinduism (0.7%), and Buddhism (0.7%).[271] The survey also reported that 22.8% of Americans described themselves as agnostic, atheist or simply having no religion—up from 8.2% in 1990.[270][272][273] There are also Unitarian Universalist, Scientologist, Baha'i, Sikh, Jain, Shinto, Zoroastrian, Confucian, Satanist, Taoist, Druid, Native American, Afro-American, traditional African, Wiccan, Gnostic, humanist and deist communities.[274][275]
+
+Protestantism is the largest Christian religious grouping in the United States, accounting for almost half of all Americans. Baptists collectively form the largest branch of Protestantism at 15.4%,[276] and the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest individual Protestant denomination at 5.3% of the U.S. population.[276] Apart from Baptists, other Protestant categories include nondenominational Protestants, Methodists, Pentecostals, unspecified Protestants, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, other Reformed, Episcopalians/Anglicans, Quakers, Adventists, Holiness, Christian fundamentalists, Anabaptists, Pietists, and multiple others.[276]
+
+As with other Western countries, the U.S. is becoming less religious. Irreligion is growing rapidly among Americans under 30.[277] Polls show that overall American confidence in organized religion has been declining since the mid to late 1980s,[278] and that younger Americans, in particular, are becoming increasingly irreligious.[271][279] In a 2012 study, the Protestant share of the U.S. population had dropped to 48%, thus ending its status as religious category of the majority for the first time.[280][281] Americans with no religion have 1.7 children compared to 2.2 among Christians. The unaffiliated are less likely to marry with 37% marrying compared to 52% of Christians.[282]
+
+The Bible Belt is an informal term for a region in the Southern United States in which socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a significant part of the culture and Christian church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average. By contrast, religion plays the least important role in New England and in the Western United States.[268]
+
+As of 2018[update], 52% of Americans age 15 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 32% had never been married.[283] Women now work mostly outside the home and receive the majority of bachelor's degrees.[284]
+
+The U.S. teenage pregnancy rate is 26.5 per 1,000 women. The rate has declined by 57% since 1991.[285] Abortion is legal throughout the country. Abortion rates, currently 241 per 1,000 live births and 15 per 1,000 women aged 15–44, are falling but remain higher than most Western nations.[286] In 2013, the average age at first birth was 26 and 41% of births were to unmarried women.[287]
+
+The total fertility rate in 2016 was 1820.5 births per 1000 women.[288] Adoption in the United States is common and relatively easy from a legal point of view (compared to other Western countries).[289] As of 2001[update], with more than 127,000 adoptions, the U.S. accounted for nearly half of the total number of adoptions worldwide.[needs update][290] Same-sex marriage is legal nationwide, and it is legal for same-sex couples to adopt. Polygamy is illegal throughout the U.S.[291]
+
+In 2019, the U.S. had the world's highest rate of children living in single-parent households.[292]
+
+The United States had a life expectancy of 78.6 years at birth in 2017, which was the third year of declines in life expectancy following decades of continuous increase. The recent decline, primarily among the age group 25 to 64, is largely due to sharp increases in the drug overdose and suicide rates; the country has one of the highest suicide rates among wealthy countries.[293][294] Life expectancy was highest among Asians and Hispanics and lowest among blacks.[295][296] According to CDC and Census Bureau data, deaths from suicide, alcohol and drug overdoses hit record highs in 2017.[297]
+
+Increasing obesity in the United States and health improvements elsewhere contributed to lowering the country's rank in life expectancy from 11th in the world in 1987, to 42nd in 2007, and as of 2017 the country had the lowest life expectancy among Japan, Canada, Australia, the UK, and seven countries of western Europe.[298][299] Obesity rates have more than doubled in the last 30 years and are the highest in the industrialized world.[300][301] Approximately one-third of the adult population is obese and an additional third is overweight.[302] Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is considered epidemic by health care professionals.[303]
+
+In 2010, coronary artery disease, lung cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and traffic accidents caused the most years of life lost in the U.S. Low back pain, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, neck pain, and anxiety caused the most years lost to disability. The most harmful risk factors were poor diet, tobacco smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, physical inactivity, and alcohol use. Alzheimer's disease, drug abuse, kidney disease, cancer, and falls caused the most additional years of life lost over their age-adjusted 1990 per-capita rates.[304] U.S. teenage pregnancy and abortion rates are substantially higher than in other Western nations, especially among blacks and Hispanics.[305]
+
+Health-care coverage in the United States is a combination of public and private efforts and is not universal. In 2017, 12.2% of the population did not carry health insurance.[306] The subject of uninsured and underinsured Americans is a major political issue.[307][308] Federal legislation, passed in early 2010, roughly halved the uninsured share of the population, though the bill and its ultimate effect are issues of controversy.[309][310] The U.S. health-care system far outspends any other nation, measured both in per capita spending and as percentage of GDP.[311] At the same time, the U.S. is a global leader in medical innovation.[312]
+
+American public education is operated by state and local governments, regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. In most states, children are required to attend school from the age of six or seven (generally, kindergarten or first grade) until they turn 18 (generally bringing them through twelfth grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at 16 or 17.[313]
+
+About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools. Just over 2% of children are homeschooled.[314] The U.S. spends more on education per student than any nation in the world, spending more than $11,000 per elementary student in 2010 and more than $12,000 per high school student.[315][needs update] Some 80% of U.S. college students attend public universities.[316]
+
+Of Americans 25 and older, 84.6% graduated from high school, 52.6% attended some college, 27.2% earned a bachelor's degree, and 9.6% earned graduate degrees.[317] The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%.[202][318] The United Nations assigns the United States an Education Index of 0.97, tying it for 12th in the world.[319]
+
+The United States has many private and public institutions of higher education. The majority of the world's top universities, as listed by various ranking organizations, are in the U.S.[320][321][322] There are also local community colleges with generally more open admission policies, shorter academic programs, and lower tuition.
+
+In 2018, U21, a network of research-intensive universities, ranked the United States first in the world for breadth and quality of higher education, and 15th when GDP was a factor.[323] As for public expenditures on higher education, the U.S. trails some other OECD nations but spends more per student than the OECD average, and more than all nations in combined public and private spending.[315][324] As of 2018[update], student loan debt exceeded 1.5 trillion dollars.[325][326]
+
+The United States is a federal republic of 50 states, a federal district, five territories and several uninhabited island possessions.[327][328][329] It is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a federal republic and a representative democracy, "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law."[330] For 2018, the U.S. ranked 25th on the Democracy Index.[331] On Transparency International's 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index its public sector position deteriorated from a score of 76 in 2015 to 69 in 2019.[332]
+
+In the American federalist system, citizens are usually subject to three levels of government: federal, state, and local. The local government's duties are commonly split between county and municipal governments. In almost all cases, executive and legislative officials are elected by a plurality vote of citizens by district.
+
+The government is regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the U.S. Constitution, which serves as the country's supreme legal document.[333] The original text of the Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government and its relationship with the individual states. Article One protects the right to the "great writ" of habeas corpus. The Constitution has been amended 27 times;[334] the first ten amendments, which make up the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of Americans' individual rights. All laws and governmental procedures are subject to judicial review and any law ruled by the courts to be in violation of the Constitution is voided. The principle of judicial review, not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was established by the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803)[335] in a decision handed down by Chief Justice John Marshall.[336]
+
+The federal government comprises three branches:
+
+The House of Representatives has 435 voting members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population. Each state then draws single-member districts to conform with the census apportionment. The District of Columbia and the five major U.S. territories each have one member of Congress—these members are not allowed to vote.[341]
+
+The Senate has 100 members with each state having two senators, elected at-large to six-year terms; one-third of Senate seats are up for election every two years. The District of Columbia and the five major U.S. territories do not have senators.[341] The president serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The president is not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned to the states and the District of Columbia.[342] The Supreme Court, led by the chief justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.[343]
+
+The state governments are structured in a roughly similar fashion, though Nebraska has a unicameral legislature.[344] The governor (chief executive) of each state is directly elected. Some state judges and cabinet officers are appointed by the governors of the respective states, while others are elected by popular vote.
+
+The 50 states are the principal administrative divisions in the country. These are subdivided into counties or county equivalents and further divided into municipalities. The District of Columbia is a federal district that contains the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C.[345] The states and the District of Columbia choose the president of the United States. Each state has presidential electors equal to the number of their representatives and senators in Congress; the District of Columbia has three (because of the 23rd Amendment).[346] Territories of the United States such as Puerto Rico do not have presidential electors, and so people in those territories cannot vote for the president.[341]
+
+The United States also observes tribal sovereignty of the American Indian nations to a limited degree, as it does with the states' sovereignty. American Indians are U.S. citizens and tribal lands are subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress and the federal courts. Like the states they have a great deal of autonomy, but also like the states, tribes are not allowed to make war, engage in their own foreign relations, or print and issue currency.[347]
+
+Citizenship is granted at birth in all states, the District of Columbia, and all major U.S. territories except American Samoa.[348][349][m]
+
+The United States has operated under a two-party system for most of its history.[352] For elective offices at most levels, state-administered primary elections choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections. Since the general election of 1856, the major parties have been the Democratic Party, founded in 1824, and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. Since the Civil War, only one third-party presidential candidate—former president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive in 1912—has won as much as 20% of the popular vote. The president and vice president are elected by the Electoral College.[353]
+
+In American political culture, the center-right Republican Party is considered "conservative" and the center-left Democratic Party is considered "liberal."[354][355] The states of the Northeast and West Coast and some of the Great Lakes states, known as "blue states," are relatively liberal. The "red states" of the South and parts of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains are relatively conservative.
+
+Republican Donald Trump, the winner of the 2016 presidential election, is serving as the 45th president of the United States.[356] Leadership in the Senate includes Republican vice president Mike Pence, Republican president pro tempore Chuck Grassley, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.[357] Leadership in the House includes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.[358]
+
+In the 116th United States Congress, the House of Representatives is controlled by the Democratic Party and the Senate is controlled by the Republican Party, giving the U.S. a split Congress. The Senate consists of 53 Republicans and 45 Democrats with two Independents who caucus with the Democrats; the House consists of 233 Democrats, 196 Republicans, and 1 Libertarian.[359] Of state governors, there are 26 Republicans and 24 Democrats. Among the D.C. mayor and the five territorial governors, there are two Republicans, one Democrat, one New Progressive, and two Independents.[360]
+
+The United States has an established structure of foreign relations. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. New York City is home to the United Nations Headquarters. Almost all countries have embassies in Washington, D.C., and many have consulates around the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host American diplomatic missions. However, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States (although the U.S. still maintains unofficial relations with Bhutan and Taiwan).[361] It is a member of the G7,[362] G20, and OECD.
+
+The United States has a "Special Relationship" with the United Kingdom[363] and strong ties with India, Canada,[364] Australia,[365] New Zealand,[366] the Philippines,[367] Japan,[368] South Korea,[369] Israel,[370] and several European Union countries, including France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Poland.[371] It works closely with fellow NATO members on military and security issues and with its neighbors through the Organization of American States and free trade agreements such as the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. Colombia is traditionally considered by the United States as its most loyal ally in South America.[372][373]
+
+The U.S. exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau through the Compact of Free Association.[374]
+
+Taxation in the United States is levied at the federal, state, and local government levels. This includes taxes on income, payroll, property, sales, imports, estates, and gifts, as well as various fees. Taxation in the United States is based on citizenship, not residency.[375] Both non-resident citizens and Green Card holders living abroad are taxed on their income irrespective of where they live or where their income is earned. The United States is one of the only countries in the world to do so.[376]
+
+In 2010 taxes collected by federal, state and municipal governments amounted to 24.8% of GDP.[377] Based on CBO estimates,[378] under 2013 tax law the top 1% will be paying the highest average tax rates since 1979, while other income groups will remain at historic lows.[379] For 2018, the effective tax rate for the wealthiest 400 households was 23%, compared to 24.2% for the bottom half of U.S. households.[380]
+
+
+
+During fiscal year 2012, the federal government spent $3.54 trillion on a budget or cash basis, down $60 billion or 1.7% vs. fiscal year 2011 spending of $3.60 trillion. Major categories of fiscal year 2012 spending included: Medicare & Medicaid (23%), Social Security (22%), Defense Department (19%), non-defense discretionary (17%), other mandatory (13%) and interest (6%).[382]
+
+The total national debt of the United States in the United States was $18.527 trillion (106% of the GDP) in 2014.[383][n] The United States has the largest external debt in the world[387] and the 34th largest government debt as a % of GDP in the world.[388]
+
+The president is the commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces and appoints its leaders, the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The United States Department of Defense administers the armed forces, including the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force. The Coast Guard is run by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and by the Department of the Navy during times of war. In 2008, the armed forces had 1.4 million personnel on active duty. The Reserves and National Guard brought the total number of troops to 2.3 million. The Department of Defense also employed about 700,000 civilians, not including contractors.[389]
+
+Military service is voluntary, though conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System.[390] American forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force's large fleet of transport aircraft, the Navy's 11 active aircraft carriers, and Marine expeditionary units at sea with the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific fleets. The military operates 865 bases and facilities abroad,[391] and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries.[392]
+
+The military budget of the United States in 2011 was more than $700 billion, 41% of global military spending. At 4.7% of GDP, the rate was the second-highest among the top 15 military spenders, after Saudi Arabia.[393]  Defense spending plays a major role in science and technology investment, with roughly half of U.S. federal research and development funded by the Department of Defense.[394] Defense's share of the overall U.S. economy has generally declined in recent decades, from Cold War peaks of 14.2% of GDP in 1953 and 69.5% of federal outlays in 1954 to 4.7% of GDP and 18.8% of federal outlays in 2011.[395]
+
+The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the second largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world.[396] More than 90% of the world's 14,000 nuclear weapons are owned by Russia and the United States.[397]
+
+Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police departments and sheriff's offices, with state police providing broader services. Federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have specialized duties, including protecting civil rights, national security and enforcing U.S. federal courts' rulings and federal laws.[398] State courts conduct most criminal trials while federal courts handle certain designated crimes as well as certain appeals from the state criminal courts.
+
+A cross-sectional analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database from 2010 showed that United States "homicide rates were 7.0 times higher than in other high-income countries, driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25.2 times higher."[399] In 2016, the US murder rate was 5.4 per 100,000.[400] Gun ownership rights, guaranteed by the Second Amendment, continue to be the subject of contention.
+
+The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate and largest prison population in the world.[401] As of 2020, the Prison Policy Initiative reported that there were some 2.3 million people incarcerated.[402]  The imprisonment rate for all prisoners sentenced to more than a year in state or federal facilities is 478 per 100,000 in 2013.[403] According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the majority of inmates held in federal prisons are convicted of drug offenses.[404] About 9% of prisoners are held in privatized prisons.[402] The practice of privately operated prisons began in the 1980s and has been a subject of contention.[405]
+
+Capital punishment is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes, and at the state level in 30 states.[406][407] No executions took place from 1967 to 1977, owing in part to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down arbitrary imposition of the death penalty. Since the decision there have been more than 1,300 executions, a majority of these taking place in three states: Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma.[408] Meanwhile, several states have either abolished or struck down death penalty laws. In 2019, the country had the sixth-highest number of executions in the world, following China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt.[409]
+
+According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. GDP of $16.8 trillion constitutes 24% of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 19% of the gross world product at purchasing power parity (PPP).[417] The United States is the largest importer of goods and second-largest exporter, though exports per capita are relatively low. In 2010, the total U.S. trade deficit was $635 billion.[418] Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany are its top trading partners.[419]
+
+From 1983 to 2008, U.S. real compounded annual GDP growth was 3.3%, compared to a 2.3% weighted average for the rest of the G7.[420] The country ranks ninth in the world in nominal GDP per capita[421] and sixth in GDP per capita at PPP.[417] The U.S. dollar is the world's primary reserve currency.[422]
+
+In 2009, the private sector was estimated to constitute 86.4% of the economy.[425] While its economy has reached a postindustrial level of development, the United States remains an industrial power.[426] Consumer spending comprised 68% of the U.S. economy in 2015.[427] In August 2010, the American labor force consisted of 154.1 million people (50%). With 21.2 million people, government is the leading field of employment. The largest private employment sector is health care and social assistance, with 16.4 million people. It has a smaller welfare state and redistributes less income through government action than most European nations.[428]
+
+The United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation[429] and is one of a few countries in the world without paid family leave as a legal right.[430] While federal law does not require sick leave, it is a common benefit for government workers and full-time employees at corporations.[431] 74% of full-time American workers get paid sick leave, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, although only 24% of part-time workers get the same benefits.[431] In 2009, the United States had the third-highest workforce productivity per person in the world, behind Luxembourg and Norway. It was fourth in productivity per hour, behind those two countries and the Netherlands.[432]
+
+
+
+The United States has been a leader in technological innovation since the late 19th century and scientific research since the mid-20th century. Methods for producing interchangeable parts were developed by the U.S. War Department by the Federal Armories during the first half of the 19th century. This technology, along with the establishment of a machine tool industry, enabled the U.S. to have large-scale manufacturing of sewing machines, bicycles, and other items in the late 19th century and became known as the American system of manufacturing. Factory electrification in the early 20th century and introduction of the assembly line and other labor-saving techniques created the system of mass production.[433] In the 21st century, approximately two-thirds of research and development funding comes from the private sector.[434] The United States leads the world in scientific research papers and impact factor.[435][436]
+
+In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone. Thomas Edison's research laboratory, one of the first of its kind, developed the phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera.[437] The latter led to emergence of the worldwide entertainment industry. In the early 20th century, the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford popularized the assembly line. The Wright brothers, in 1903, made the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight.[438]
+
+The rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1920s and 30s led many European scientists, including Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and John von Neumann, to immigrate to the United States.[439] During World War II, the Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age, while the Space Race produced rapid advances in rocketry, materials science, and aeronautics.[440][441]
+
+The invention of the transistor in the 1950s, a key active component in practically all modern electronics, led to many technological developments and a significant expansion of the U.S. technology industry.[442] This, in turn, led to the establishment of many new technology companies and regions around the country such as Silicon Valley in California. Advancements by American microprocessor companies such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Intel along with both computer software and hardware companies that include Adobe Systems, Apple Inc., IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems created and popularized the personal computer. The ARPANET was developed in the 1960s to meet Defense Department requirements, and became the first of a series of networks which evolved into the Internet.[443]
+
+Accounting for 4.24% of the global population, Americans collectively possess 29.4% of the world's total wealth, and Americans make up roughly half of the world's population of millionaires.[444] The Global Food Security Index ranked the U.S. number one for food affordability and overall food security in March 2013.[445] Americans on average have more than twice as much living space per dwelling and per person as European Union residents, and more than every EU nation.[446] For 2017 the United Nations Development Programme ranked the United States 13th among 189 countries in its Human Development Index and 25th among 151 countries in its inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI).[447]
+
+Wealth, like income and taxes, is highly concentrated; the richest 10% of the adult population possess 72% of the country's household wealth, while the bottom half claim only 2%.[448] According to a September 2017 report by the Federal Reserve, the top 1% controlled 38.6% of the country's wealth in 2016.[449] According to a 2018 study by the OECD, the United States has a larger percentage of low-income workers than almost any other developed nation. This is largely because at-risk workers get almost no government support and are further set back by a very weak collective bargaining system.[450] The top one percent of income-earners accounted for 52 percent of the income gains from 2009 to 2015, where income is defined as market income excluding government transfers.[451] In 2018, U.S. income inequality reached the highest level ever recorded by the Census Bureau.[452]
+
+After years of stagnation, median household income reached a record high in 2016 following two consecutive years of record growth. Income inequality remains at record highs however, with the top fifth of earners taking home more than half of all overall income.[454] The rise in the share of total annual income received by the top one percent, which has more than doubled from nine percent in 1976 to 20 percent in 2011, has significantly affected income inequality,[455] leaving the United States with one of the widest income distributions among OECD nations.[456]  The extent and relevance of income inequality is a matter of debate.[457][458][459]
+
+Between June 2007 and November 2008, the global recession led to falling asset prices around the world. Assets owned by Americans lost about a quarter of their value.[460] Since peaking in the second quarter of 2007, household wealth was down $14 trillion, but has since increased $14 trillion over 2006 levels.[461] At the end of 2014, household debt amounted to $11.8 trillion,[462] down from $13.8 trillion at the end of 2008.[463]
+
+There were about 578,424 sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons in the US in January 2014, with almost two-thirds staying in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program.[464] In 2011, 16.7 million children lived in food-insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels, though only 1.1% of U.S. children, or 845,000, saw reduced food intake or disrupted eating patterns at some point during the year, and most cases were not chronic.[465] As of June 2018[update], 40 million people, roughly 12.7% of the U.S. population, were living in poverty, with 18.5 million of those living in deep poverty (a family income below one-half of the poverty threshold) and over five million live "in 'Third World' conditions." In 2016, 13.3 million children were living in poverty, which made up 32.6% of the impoverished population.[466] In 2017, the U.S. state or territory with the lowest poverty rate was New Hampshire (7.6%), and the one with the highest was American Samoa (65%).[467][468][469]
+
+Personal transportation is dominated by automobiles, which operate on a network of 4 million miles (6.4 million kilometers) of public roads.[471] The United States has the world's second-largest automobile market,[472] and has the highest rate of per-capita vehicle ownership in the world, with 765 vehicles per 1,000 Americans (1996).[473][needs update] In 2017, there were 255,009,283 non-two wheel motor vehicles, or about 910 vehicles per 1,000 people.[474]
+
+The civil airline industry is entirely privately owned and has been largely deregulated since 1978, while most major airports are publicly owned.[475] The three largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are US-based; American Airlines is number one after its 2013 acquisition by US Airways.[476] Of the world's 50 busiest passenger airports, 16 are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.[477]
+
+The United States energy market is about 29,000 terawatt hours per year.[478] In 2005, 40% of this energy came from petroleum, 23% from coal, and 22% from natural gas. The remainder was supplied by nuclear and renewable energy sources.[479]
+
+Since 2007, the total greenhouse gas emissions by the United States are the second highest by country, exceeded only by China.[480] The United States has historically been the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, and greenhouse gas emissions per capita remain high.[481]
+
+The United States is home to many cultures and a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values.[483][484] Aside from the Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Native Alaskan populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors settled or immigrated within the past five centuries.[485] Mainstream American culture is a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources, such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa.[483][486] More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as both a homogenizing melting pot, and a heterogeneous salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.[483]
+
+Americans have traditionally been characterized by a strong work ethic, competitiveness, and individualism,[487] as well as a unifying belief in an "American creed" emphasizing liberty, equality, private property, democracy, rule of law, and a preference for limited government.[488] Americans are extremely charitable by global standards. According to a 2006 British study, Americans gave 1.67% of GDP to charity, more than any other nation studied.[489][490][491]
+
+The American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants.[492] Whether this perception is accurate has been a topic of debate.[493][494][495][496][420][497] While mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society,[498] scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values.[499] While Americans tend  to greatly value socioeconomic achievement, being ordinary or average is also generally seen as a positive attribute.[500]
+
+In the 18th and early 19th centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the 19th century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, is now recognized as an essential American poet.[501] A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character—such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel."[502]
+
+Twelve U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Bob Dylan in 2016. William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck are often named among the most influential writers of the 20th century.[503] Popular literary genres such as the Western and hardboiled crime fiction developed in the United States. The Beat Generation writers opened up new literary approaches, as have postmodernist authors such as John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo.[504]
+
+The transcendentalists, led by Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, established the first major American philosophical movement. After the Civil War, Charles Sanders Peirce and then William James and John Dewey were leaders in the development of pragmatism. In the 20th century, the work of W. V. O. Quine and Richard Rorty, and later Noam Chomsky, brought analytic philosophy to the fore of American philosophical academia. John Rawls and Robert Nozick also led a revival of political philosophy.
+
+In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century movement in the tradition of European naturalism. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene.[505] Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new, individualistic styles. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein developed largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has brought fame to American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry.[506] Americans have long been important in the modern artistic medium of photography, with major photographers including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams.[507]
+
+Mainstream American cuisine is similar to that in other Western countries. Wheat is the primary cereal grain with about three-quarters of grain products made of wheat flour[508] and many dishes use indigenous ingredients, such as turkey, venison, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup which were consumed by Native Americans and early European settlers.[509] These homegrown foods are part of a shared national menu on one of America's most popular holidays, Thanksgiving, when some Americans make traditional foods to celebrate the occasion.[510]
+
+The American fast food industry, the world's largest,[511] pioneered the drive-through format in the 1940s.[512] Characteristic dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs derive from the recipes of various immigrants. French fries, Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos, and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are widely consumed.[513] Americans drink three times as much coffee as tea.[514] Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk ubiquitous breakfast beverages.[515][516]
+
+Although little known at the time, Charles Ives's work of the 1910s established him as the first major U.S. composer in the classical tradition, while experimentalists such as Henry Cowell and John Cage created a distinctive American approach to classical composition. Aaron Copland and George Gershwin developed a new synthesis of popular and classical music.
+
+The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African-American music have deeply influenced American music at large, distinguishing it from European and African traditions. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and what is now known as old-time music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences. Jazz was developed by innovators such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington early in the 20th century. Country music developed in the 1920s, and rhythm and blues in the 1940s.[517]
+
+Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry were among the mid-1950s pioneers of rock and roll. Rock bands such as Metallica, the Eagles, and Aerosmith are among the highest grossing in worldwide sales.[518][519][520] In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of America's most celebrated songwriters and James Brown led the development of funk.
+
+More recent American creations include hip hop and house music. American pop stars such as Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna have become global celebrities,[517] as have contemporary musical artists such as Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Eminem, Kanye West, and Ariana Grande.[521]
+
+Hollywood, a northern district of Los Angeles, California, is one of the leaders in motion picture production.[522] The world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City in 1894, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope.[523] Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, although in the 21st century an increasing number of films are not made there, and film companies have been subject to the forces of globalization.[524]
+
+Director D. W. Griffith, the top American filmmaker during the silent film period, was central to the development of film grammar, and producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising.[525] Directors such as John Ford redefined the image of the American Old West, and, like others such as John Huston, broadened the possibilities of cinema with location shooting. The industry enjoyed its golden years, in what is commonly referred to as the "Golden Age of Hollywood," from the early sound period until the early 1960s,[526] with screen actors such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe becoming iconic figures.[527][528] In the 1970s, "New Hollywood" or the "Hollywood Renaissance"[529] was defined by grittier films influenced by French and Italian realist pictures of the post-war period.[530] In more recent times, directors such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and James Cameron have gained renown for their blockbuster films, often characterized by high production costs and earnings.
+
+Notable films topping the American Film Institute's AFI 100 list include Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941), which is frequently cited as the greatest film of all time,[531][532] Casablanca (1942), The Godfather (1972), Gone with the Wind (1939), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Graduate (1967), On the Waterfront (1954), Schindler's List (1993), Singin' in the Rain (1952), It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Sunset Boulevard (1950).[533] The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, have been held annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1929,[534] and the Golden Globe Awards have been held annually since January 1944.[535]
+
+American football is by several measures the most popular spectator sport;[537] the National Football League (NFL) has the highest average attendance of any sports league in the world, and the Super Bowl is watched by tens of millions globally. Baseball has been regarded as the U.S. national sport since the late 19th century, with Major League Baseball (MLB) being the top league. Basketball and ice hockey are the country's next two leading professional team sports, with the top leagues being the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL). College football and basketball attract large audiences.[538] In soccer, the country hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup, the men's national soccer team qualified for ten World Cups and the women's team has won the FIFA Women's World Cup four times; Major League Soccer is the sport's highest league in the United States (featuring 23 American and three Canadian teams). The market for professional sports in the United States is roughly $69 billion, roughly 50% larger than that of all of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa combined.[539]
+
+Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States. The 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri were the first ever Olympic Games held outside of Europe.[540] As of 2017[update], the United States has won 2,522 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country, and 305 in the Winter Olympic Games, the second most behind Norway.[541]
+While most major U.S. sports such as baseball and American football have evolved out of European practices, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, and snowboarding are American inventions, some of which have become popular worldwide. Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate Western contact.[542] The most watched individual sports are golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR.[543][544]
+
+The four major broadcasters in the U.S. are the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), American Broadcasting Company (ABC), and Fox Broadcasting Company (FOX). The four major broadcast television networks are all commercial entities. Cable television offers hundreds of channels catering to a variety of niches.[545] Americans listen to radio programming, also largely commercial, on average just over two-and-a-half hours a day.[546]
+
+In 1998, the number of U.S. commercial radio stations had grown to 4,793 AM stations and 5,662 FM stations. In addition, there are 1,460 public radio stations. Most of these stations are run by universities and public authorities for educational purposes and are financed by public or private funds, subscriptions, and corporate underwriting. Much public-radio broadcasting is supplied by NPR. NPR was incorporated in February 1970 under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967; its television counterpart, PBS, was created by the same legislation. As of September 30, 2014[update], there are 15,433 licensed full-power radio stations in the U.S. according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).[547]
+
+Well-known newspapers include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today.[548] Although the cost of publishing has increased over the years, the price of newspapers has generally remained low, forcing newspapers to rely more on advertising revenue and on articles provided by a major wire service, such as the Associated Press or Reuters, for their national and world coverage. With very few exceptions, all the newspapers in the U.S. are privately owned, either by large chains such as Gannett or McClatchy, which own dozens or even hundreds of newspapers; by small chains that own a handful of papers; or in a situation that is increasingly rare, by individuals or families. Major cities often have "alternative weeklies" to complement the mainstream daily papers, such as New York City's The Village Voice or Los Angeles' LA Weekly. Major cities may also support a local business journal, trade papers relating to local industries, and papers for local ethnic and social groups. Aside from web portals and search engines, the most popular websites are Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, and Twitter.[549]
+
+More than 800 publications are produced in Spanish, the second most commonly used language in the United States behind English.[550][551]
+
+Internet sources
+

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+
+
+
+
+The United States of America is a federal republic[1] consisting of 50 states, a federal district (Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States), five major territories, and various minor islands.[2][3] The 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., are in North America between Canada and Mexico, while Alaska is in the far northwestern part of North America and Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. Territories of the United States are scattered throughout the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
+
+States possess a number of powers and rights under the United States Constitution, such as regulating intrastate commerce, running elections, creating local governments, and ratifying constitutional amendments. Each state has its own constitution, grounded in republican principles, and government, consisting of three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial.[4] All states and their residents are represented in the federal Congress, a bicameral legislature consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each state is represented by two senators, while representatives are distributed among the states in proportion to the most recent constitutionally mandated decennial census.[5] Additionally, each state is entitled to select a number of electors to vote in the Electoral College, the body that elects the president of the United States, equal to the total of representatives and senators in Congress from that state.[6] Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 of the Constitution grants to Congress the authority to admit new states into the Union. Since the establishment of the United States in 1776, the number of states has expanded from the original 13 to the current total of 50, and each new state is admitted on an equal footing with the existing states.[7]
+
+As provided by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress exercises "exclusive jurisdiction" over the federal district, which is not part of any state. Prior to passage of the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which devolved certain Congressional powers to an elected mayor and council, the district did not have an elected local government. Even so, Congress retains the right to review and overturn laws created by the council and intervene in local affairs.[8] As it is not a state, the district does not have representation in the Senate. However, since 1971, its residents have been represented in the House of Representatives by a non-voting delegate.[9] Additionally, since 1961, following ratification of the 23rd Amendment, the district has been entitled to select three electors to vote in the Electoral College.
+
+In addition to the 50 states and federal district, the United States has sovereignty over 14 territories. Five of them (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) have a permanent, nonmilitary population, while nine of them do not. With the exception of Navassa Island, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which are located in the Caribbean, all territories are located in the Pacific Ocean. One territory, Palmyra Atoll, is considered to be incorporated, meaning the full body of the Constitution has been applied to it; the other territories are unincorporated, meaning the Constitution does not fully apply to them. Ten territories (the Minor Outlying Islands and American Samoa) are considered to be unorganized, meaning they have not had an Organic Act enacted by Congress; the four other territories are organized, meaning they have had an Organic Act that has been enacted by Congress. The five inhabited territories each have limited autonomy and a non-voting delegate in Congress, in addition to having territorial legislatures and governors, but residents cannot vote in federal elections.
+
+California is the most populous state, with 38,332,521 residents (2013 estimate); Wyoming is the least populous, with an estimated 582,658 residents. The District of Columbia, with an estimated 646,449 residents as of 2012, has a higher population than the two least populous states (Wyoming and Vermont). The largest state by area is Alaska, encompassing 665,384 square miles (1,723,340 km2), while the smallest is Rhode Island, encompassing 1,545 square miles (4,000 km2). The first state to ratify the current Constitution was Delaware, which it did on December 7, 1787, while the newest state is Hawaii, which was admitted to the Union on August 21, 1959. The largest territory in terms of both population and size is Puerto Rico, with 3,725,789 residents as of the 2010 Census and a total area of 5,325 square miles (13,790 km2).
+
+The table below lists the 50 states, with their current capital, largest city,[A] the date they ratified the U.S. Constitution or were admitted to the Union, population and area data, and number of representative(s) in the U.S. House of Representatives.[B]

en/1846.html.txt

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+
+
+Coordinates: 21°18′41″N 157°47′47″W / 21.31139°N 157.79639°W / 21.31139; -157.79639
+
+Hawaii (/həˈwaɪi/ (listen) hə-WY-ee; Hawaiian: Hawaiʻi [həˈvɐjʔi]) is a state of the United States of America located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the only U.S. state located outside North America and the only island state.
+
+The state encompasses nearly the entire Hawaiian archipelago, 137 islands spread over 1,500 miles (2,400 km). The volcanic archipelago is physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania.[11] At the southeastern end of the archipelago, the eight main islands are, in order from northwest to southeast: Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui, and the largest, Hawaiʻi, which the state is named after. It is often called the "Big Island" or "Hawaii Island" to avoid confusion with the state or archipelago.
+
+Hawaii is the 8th-smallest geographically and the 11th-least populous, but the 13th-most densely populated of the 50 states. It is the only state with an Asian American plurality. Hawaii has more than 1.4 million permanent residents, along with many visitors and U.S. military personnel. The state capital and largest city is Honolulu on the island of Oʻahu. The state's ocean coastline is about 750 miles (1,210 km) long, the fourth longest in the U.S., after the coastlines of Alaska, Florida, and California. Hawaii is the most recent state to join the union, on August 21, 1959.[12] It was an independent nation until 1898.
+
+Hawaii's diverse natural scenery, warm tropical climate, abundance of public beaches, oceanic surroundings, and active volcanoes make it a popular destination for tourists, surfers, biologists, and volcanologists. Because of its central location in the Pacific and 19th-century labor migration, Hawaii's culture is strongly influenced by North American and East Asian cultures, in addition to its indigenous Hawaiian culture.
+
+The state of Hawaii derives its name from the name of its largest island, Hawaiʻi. A common Hawaiian explanation of the name of Hawaiʻi is that it was named for Hawaiʻiloa, a legendary figure from Hawaiian myth. He is said to have discovered the islands when they were first settled.[13][14]
+
+The Hawaiian language word Hawaiʻi is very similar to Proto-Polynesian Sawaiki, with the reconstructed meaning "homeland".[b] Cognates of Hawaiʻi are found in other Polynesian languages, including Māori (Hawaiki), Rarotongan (ʻAvaiki) and Samoan (Savaiʻi). According to linguists Pukui and Elbert,[16] "elsewhere in Polynesia, Hawaiʻi or a cognate is the name of the underworld or of the ancestral home, but in Hawaii, the name has no meaning".[17]
+
+A somewhat divisive political issue arose in 1978 when the Constitution of the State of Hawaii added Hawaiian as a second official state language.[18] The title of the state constitution is The Constitution of the State of Hawaii. Article XV, Section 1 of the Constitution uses The State of Hawaii.[19] Diacritics were not used because the document, drafted in 1949,[20] predates the use of the ʻokina ⟨ʻ⟩ and the kahakō in modern Hawaiian orthography. The exact spelling of the state's name in the Hawaiian language is Hawaiʻi.[c] In the Hawaii Admission Act that granted Hawaiian statehood, the federal government recognized Hawaii as the official state name. Official government publications, department and office titles, and the Seal of Hawaii use the traditional spelling with no symbols for glottal stops or vowel length.[21] In contrast, the National and State Park Services, the University of Hawaii and some private enterprises implement these symbols. No precedent for changes to U.S. state names exists since the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1789. However, the Constitution of Massachusetts formally changed the Province of Massachusetts Bay to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1780, and in 1819, the Territory of Arkansaw was created but was later admitted to statehood as the State of Arkansas.
+
+
+
+There are eight main Hawaiian islands, seven of which are permanently inhabited. The island of Niʻihau is privately managed by brothers Bruce and Keith Robinson; access is restricted to those who have permission from the island's owners. Access to uninhabited Kahoʻolawe island is also restricted.
+
+The Hawaiian archipelago is located 2,000 mi (3,200 km) southwest of the contiguous United States.[31] Hawaii is the southernmost U.S. state and the second westernmost after Alaska. Hawaii, like Alaska, does not border any other U.S. state. It is the only U.S. state that is not geographically located in North America, the only state completely surrounded by water and that is entirely an archipelago, and the only state in which coffee is commercially cultivable.
+
+In addition to the eight main islands, the state has many smaller islands and islets. Kaʻula is a small island near Niʻihau. The Northwest Hawaiian Islands is a group of nine small, older islands to the northwest of Kauaʻi that extend from Nihoa to Kure Atoll; these are remnants of once much larger volcanic mountains. Across the archipelago are around 130 small rocks and islets, such as Molokini, which are either volcanic, marine sedimentary or erosional in origin.[32]
+
+Hawaiʻi's tallest mountain Mauna Kea is 13,796 ft (4,205 m) above mean sea level;[33] it is taller than Mount Everest if measured from the base of the mountain, which lies on the floor of the Pacific Ocean and rises about 33,500 feet (10,200 m).[34]
+
+The Hawaiian islands were formed by volcanic activity initiated at an undersea magma source called the Hawaiʻi hotspot. The process is continuing to build islands; the tectonic plate beneath much of the Pacific Ocean continually moves northwest and the hot spot remains stationary, slowly creating new volcanoes. Because of the hotspot's location, all currently active land volcanoes are located on the southern half of Hawaiʻi Island. The newest volcano, Lōʻihi Seamount, is located south of the coast of Hawaiʻi Island.
+
+The last volcanic eruption outside Hawaiʻi Island occurred at Haleakalā on Maui before the late 18th century, possibly hundreds of years earlier.[35] In 1790, Kīlauea exploded; it was the deadliest eruption known to have occurred in the modern era in what is now the United States.[36] Up to 5,405 warriors and their families marching on Kīlauea were killed by the eruption.[37] Volcanic activity and subsequent erosion have created impressive geological features. Hawaii Island has the second-highest point among the world's islands.[38]
+
+On the flanks of the volcanoes, slope instability has generated damaging earthquakes and related tsunamis, particularly in 1868 and 1975.[39] Steep cliffs have been created by catastrophic debris avalanches on the submerged flanks of ocean island volcanoes.[40][41]
+
+The Kīlauea erupted in May 2018, opening 22 fissure vents on its East Rift Zone. The Leilani Estates and Lanipuna Gardens are situated within this territory. The destruction affected at least 36 buildings and this coupled with the lava flows and the sulfur dioxide fumes, necessitated the evacuation of more than 2,000 local inhabitants from the neighborhoods.[42]
+
+Because the islands of Hawaiʻi are distant from other land habitats, life is thought to have arrived there by wind, waves (i.e. by ocean currents) and wings (i.e. birds, insects, and any seeds they may have carried on their feathers). This isolation, in combination with the diverse environment (including extreme altitudes, tropical climates, and arid shorelines), allowed for the evolution of new endemic flora and fauna. Hawaiʻi has more endangered species and has lost a higher percentage of its endemic species than any other U.S. state.[43] One endemic plant, Brighamia, now requires hand-pollination because its natural pollinator is presumed to be extinct.[44] The two species of Brighamia—B. rockii and B. insignis—are represented in the wild by around 120 individual plants. To ensure these plants set seed, biologists rappel down 3,000-foot (910 m) cliffs to brush pollen onto their stigmas.[45]
+
+The extant main islands of the archipelago have been above the surface of the ocean for fewer than 10 million years; a fraction of the time biological colonization and evolution have occurred there. The islands are well known for the environmental diversity that occurs on high mountains within a trade winds field. On a single island, the climate around the coasts can range from dry tropical (less than 20 inches or 510 millimeters annual rainfall) to wet tropical; on the slopes, environments range from tropical rainforest (more than 200 inches or 5,100 millimeters per year), through a temperate climate, to alpine conditions with a cold, dry climate. The rainy climate impacts soil development, which largely determines ground permeability, affecting the distribution of streams and wetlands.[citation needed]
+
+Several areas in Hawaiʻi are under the protection of the National Park Service.[46] Hawaii has two national parks: Haleakalā National Park located near Kula on the island of Maui, which features the dormant volcano Haleakalā that formed east Maui, and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in the southeast region of the Hawaiʻi Island, which includes the active volcano Kīlauea and its rift zones.
+
+There are three national historical parks; Kalaupapa National Historical Park in Kalaupapa, Molokaʻi, the site of a former leper colony; Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park in Kailua-Kona on Hawaiʻi Island; and Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park, an ancient place of refuge on Hawaiʻi Island's west coast. Other areas under the control of the National Park Service include Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail on Hawaiʻi Island and the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor on Oʻahu.
+
+The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument was proclaimed by President George W. Bush on June 15, 2006. The monument covers roughly 140,000 square miles (360,000 km2) of reefs, atolls, and shallow and deep sea out to 50 miles (80 km) offshore in the Pacific Ocean—an area larger than all the national parks in the U.S. combined.[47]
+
+Hawaiʻi's climate is typical for the tropics, although temperatures and humidity tend to be less extreme because of near-constant trade winds from the east. Summer highs usually reach around 88 °F (31 °C) during the day, with the temperature reaching a low of 75 °F (24 °C) at night. Winter day temperatures are usually around 83 °F (28 °C); at low elevation they seldom dip below 65 °F (18 °C) at night. Snow, not usually associated with the tropics, falls at 13,800 feet (4,200 m) on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on Hawaii Island in some winter months. Snow rarely falls on Haleakalā. Mount Waiʻaleʻale on Kauaʻi has the second-highest average annual rainfall on Earth, about 460 inches (12,000 mm) per year. Most of Hawaii experiences only two seasons; the dry season runs from May to October and the wet season is from October to April.[49]
+
+The warmest temperature recorded in the state, in Pahala on April 27, 1931, is 100 °F (38 °C), making it tied with Alaska as the lowest record high temperature observed in a U.S. state.[50] Hawaiʻi's record low temperature is 12 °F (−11 °C) observed in May 1979, on the summit of Mauna Kea. Hawaiʻi is the only state to have never recorded sub-zero Fahrenheit temperatures.[50]
+
+Climates vary considerably on each island; they can be divided into windward and leeward (koʻolau and kona, respectively) areas based upon location relative to the higher mountains. Windward sides face cloud cover.[citation needed]
+
+Hawaiʻi is one of two states that were widely recognized independent nations prior to joining the United States.  The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was sovereign from 1810 until 1893 when the monarchy was overthrown by resident American and European capitalists and landholders. Hawaiʻi was an independent republic from 1894 until August 12, 1898, when it officially became a territory of the United States. Hawaiʻi was admitted as a U.S. state on August 21, 1959.[51]
+
+Based on archaeological evidence, the earliest habitation of the Hawaiian Islands dates to around 300 CE, probably by Polynesian settlers from the Marquesas Islands.[dubious  – discuss] A second wave of migration from Raiatea and Bora Bora took place in the 11th century. The date of the human discovery and habitation of the Hawaiian Islands is the subject of academic debate.[52] Some archaeologists and historians think it was a later wave of immigrants from Tahiti around 1000 CE who introduced a new line of high chiefs, the kapu system, the practice of human sacrifice, and the building of heiau.[citation needed] This later immigration is detailed in Hawaiian mythology (moʻolelo) about Paʻao. Other authors say there is no archaeological or linguistic evidence for a later influx of Tahitian settlers and that Paʻao must be regarded as a myth.[citation needed]
+
+The history of the islands is marked by a slow, steady growth in population and the size of the chiefdoms, which grew to encompass whole islands. Local chiefs, called aliʻi, ruled their settlements, and launched wars to extend their influence and defend their communities from predatory rivals. Ancient Hawaiʻi was a caste-based society, much like that of Hindus in India.[53]
+
+The 1778 arrival of British explorer Captain James Cook marked the first documented contact by a European explorer with Hawaiʻi. Cook named the archipelago "the Sandwich Islands" in honor of his sponsor John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, publishing the islands' location and rendering the native name as Owyhee. The form 'Owyhee' or 'Owhyhee' is preserved in the names of certain locations in the American part of the Pacific Northwest, among them Owyhee County and Owyhee Mountains in Idaho, named after three native Hawaiian members of a trapping party who went missing in the area.[54]
+
+It is very possible that Spanish explorers arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in the 16th century, two hundred years before Cook's first documented visit in 1778. Ruy López de Villalobos commanded a fleet of six ships that left Acapulco in 1542 bound for the Philippines, with a Spanish sailor named Juan Gaetano aboard as pilot. Depending on the interpretation, Gaetano's reports describe an encounter with either Hawaiʻi or the Marshall Islands.[55][56][better source needed] If de Villalobos' crew spotted Hawaiʻi, Gaetano would thus be considered the first European to see the islands. Some scholars have dismissed these claims due to a lack of credibility.[57][58]
+
+Nonetheless, Spanish archives contain a chart that depicts islands at the same latitude as Hawaiʻi, but with a longitude ten degrees east of the islands. In this manuscript, the island of Maui is named La Desgraciada (The Unfortunate Island), and what appears to be Hawaiʻi Island is named La Mesa (The Table). Islands resembling Kahoʻolawe', Lānaʻi, and Molokaʻi are named Los Monjes (The Monks).[59] For two-and-a-half centuries, Spanish galleons crossed the Pacific from Mexico along a route that passed south of Hawaiʻi on their way to Manila. The exact route was kept secret to protect the Spanish trade monopoly against competing powers. Hawaiʻi thus maintained independence, despite being situated on a sea route East-West between nations that were subjects of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, an empire that exercised jurisdiction over many subject civilizations and kingdoms on both sides of the Pacific.[60]
+
+Despite such contested claims, Cook is generally credited as being the first European to land at Hawaiʻi, having visited the Hawaiian Islands twice. As he prepared for departure after his second visit in 1779, a quarrel ensued as Cook took temple idols and fencing as "firewood",[61] and a minor chief and his men stole a boat from his ship. Cook abducted the King of Hawaiʻi Island, Kalaniʻōpuʻu, and held him for ransom aboard his ship in order to gain return of Cook's boat, as this tactic had previously worked in Tahiti and other islands.[62] Instead, the supporters of Kalaniʻōpuʻu attacked, killing Cook and four sailors as Cook's party retreated along the beach to their ship. The ship departed without retrieving the stolen boat.
+
+After Cook's visit and the publication of several books relating his voyages, the Hawaiian Islands attracted many European visitors: explorers, traders, and eventually whalers, who found the islands to be a convenient harbor and source of supplies. Early British influence can be seen in the design of the flag of Hawaiʻi, which bears the Union Jack in the top-left corner. These visitors introduced diseases to the once-isolated islands, causing the Hawaiian population to drop precipitously.[63] Native Hawaiians had no resistance to Eurasian diseases, such as influenza, smallpox and measles. By 1820, disease, famine and wars between the chiefs killed more than half of the Native Hawaiian population.[64] During the 1850s, measles killed a fifth of Hawaiʻi's people.[65]
+
+Historical records indicated the earliest Chinese immigrants to Hawaiʻi originated from Guangdong Province; a few sailors had arrived in 1778 with Captain Cook's journey, and more arrived in 1789 with an American trader who settled in Hawaiʻi in the late 18th century. It is said that leprosy was introduced by Chinese workers by 1830, and as with the other new infectious diseases, it proved damaging to the Hawaiians.[66]
+
+During the 1780s, and 1790s, chiefs often fought for power. After a series of battles that ended in 1795, all inhabited islands were subjugated under a single ruler, who became known as King Kamehameha the Great. He established the House of Kamehameha, a dynasty that ruled the kingdom until 1872.[67]
+
+After Kamehameha II inherited the throne in 1819, American Protestant missionaries to Hawaiʻi converted many Hawaiians to Christianity. They used their influence to end many traditional practices of the people.[68][69] During the reign of King Kamehameha III, Hawaiʻi turned into a Christian monarchy with the signing of the 1840 Constitution.[70] Hiram Bingham I, a prominent Protestant missionary, was a trusted adviser to the monarchy during this period. Other missionaries and their descendants became active in commercial and political affairs, leading to conflicts between the monarchy and its restive American subjects.[71] Catholic and Mormon missionaries were also active in the kingdom, but they converted a minority of the Native Hawaiian population.[72][73][74] Missionaries from each major group administered to the leper colony at Kalaupapa on Molokaʻi, which was established in 1866 and operated well into the 20th century. The best known were Father Damien and Mother Marianne Cope, both of whom were canonized in the early 21st century as Roman Catholic saints.
+
+The death of the bachelor King Kamehameha V—who did not name an heir—resulted in the popular election of Lunalilo over Kalākaua. Lunalilo died the next year, also without naming an heir. In 1874, the election was contested within the legislature between Kalākaua and Emma, Queen Consort of Kamehameha IV. After riots broke out, the United States and Britain landed troops on the islands to restore order. King Kalākaua was chosen as monarch by the Legislative Assembly by a vote of 39 to 6 on February 12, 1874.[75]
+
+In 1887, Kalākaua was forced to sign the 1887 Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. Drafted by white businessmen and lawyers, the document stripped the king of much of his authority. It established a property qualification for voting that effectively disenfranchised most Hawaiians and immigrant laborers and favored the wealthier, white elite. Resident whites were allowed to vote but resident Asians were not. As the 1887 Constitution was signed under threat of violence, it is known as the Bayonet Constitution. King Kalākaua, reduced to a figurehead, reigned until his death in 1891. His sister, Queen Liliʻuokalani, succeeded him; she was the last monarch of Hawaiʻi.[76]
+
+In 1893, Queen Liliʻuokalani announced plans for a new constitution to proclaim herself an absolute monarch. On January 14, 1893, a group of mostly Euro-American business leaders and residents formed the Committee of Safety to stage a coup d'état against the kingdom and seek annexation by the United States. United States Government Minister John L. Stevens, responding to a request from the Committee of Safety, summoned a company of U.S. Marines. The Queen's soldiers did not resist. According to historian William Russ, the monarchy was unable to protect itself.[77]
+
+On January 17, 1893, Queen Liliʻuokalani was overthrown and replaced by a provisional government composed of members of the Committee of Safety. The United States Minister to the Kingdom of Hawaii (John L. Stevens) conspired with U.S. citizens to overthrow the monarchy.[78] After the overthrow, Lawyer Sanford B. Dole, a citizen of Hawaii, became President of the Republic when the Provisional Government of Hawaiʻi ended on July 4, 1894. Controversy ensued in the following years as the Queen tried to regain her throne. The administration of President Grover Cleveland commissioned the Blount Report, which concluded that the removal of Liliʻuokalani had been illegal. The U.S. government first demanded that Queen Liliʻuokalani be reinstated, but the Provisional Government refused.
+
+Congress conducted an independent investigation, and on February 26, 1894, submitted the Morgan Report, which found all parties, including Minister Stevens—with the exception of the Queen—"not guilty" and not responsible for the coup.[79] Partisans on both sides of the debate questioned the accuracy and impartiality of both the Blount and Morgan reports over the events of 1893.[77][80][81][82]
+
+In 1993, the US Congress passed a joint Apology Resolution regarding the overthrow; it was signed by President Bill Clinton. The resolution apologized and said that the overthrow was illegal in the following phrase: "The Congress—on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the illegal overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi on January 17, 1893, acknowledges the historical significance of this event which resulted in the suppression of the inherent sovereignty of the Native Hawaiian people."[78] The Apology Resolution also "acknowledges that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States and further acknowledges that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi or through a plebiscite or referendum".[82][78]
+
+After William McKinley won the 1896 U.S. presidential election, advocates pressed to annex the Republic of Hawaiʻi. The previous president, Grover Cleveland, was a friend of Queen Liliʻuokalani. McKinley was open to persuasion by U.S. expansionists and by annexationists from Hawaiʻi. He met with three non-native annexationists: Lorrin A. Thurston, Francis March Hatch and William Ansel Kinney. After negotiations in June 1897, Secretary of State John Sherman agreed to a treaty of annexation with these representatives of the Republic of Hawaiʻi.[83] The U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty. Despite the opposition of most native Hawaiians,[84] the Newlands Resolution was used to annex the Republic to the U.S.; it became the Territory of Hawaiʻi. The Newlands Resolution was passed by the House on June 15, 1898, by 209 votes in favor to 91 against, and by the Senate on July 6, 1898, by a vote of 42 to 21.[85][86][87]
+
+In 1900, Hawaiʻi was granted self-governance and retained ʻIolani Palace as the territorial capitol building. Despite several attempts to become a state, Hawaii remained a territory for 60 years. Plantation owners and capitalists, who maintained control through financial institutions such as the Big Five, found territorial status convenient because they remained able to import cheap, foreign labor. Such immigration and labor practices were prohibited in many states.[88]
+
+Puerto Rican immigration to Hawaiʻi began in 1899, when Puerto Rico's sugar industry was devastated by a hurricane, causing a worldwide shortage of sugar and a huge demand for sugar from Hawaiʻi. Hawaiian sugarcane plantation owners began to recruit experienced, unemployed laborers in Puerto Rico. Two waves of Korean immigration to Hawaiʻi occurred in the 20th century. The first wave arrived between 1903 and 1924; the second wave began in 1965 after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which removed racial and national barriers and resulted in significantly altering the demographic mix in the U.S.[89]
+
+Oʻahu was the target of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japan on December 7, 1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor and other military and naval installations, carried out by aircraft and by midget submarines, brought the United States into World War II.
+
+In the 1950s, the power of the plantation owners was broken by the descendants of immigrant laborers, who were born in Hawaiʻi and were U.S. citizens. They voted against the Hawaiʻi Republican Party, strongly supported by plantation owners. The new majority voted for the Democratic Party of Hawaiʻi, which dominated territorial and state politics for more than 40 years. Eager to gain full representation in Congress and the Electoral College, residents actively campaigned for statehood. In Washington there was talk that Hawaiʻi would be a Republican Party stronghold so it was matched with the admission of Alaska, seen as a Democratic Party stronghold. These predictions turned out to be inaccurate; today, Hawaiʻi votes Democratic predominantly, while Alaska votes Republican.[90][91][92][93]
+
+In March 1959, Congress passed the Hawaiʻi Admissions Act, which U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law.[94] The act excluded Palmyra Atoll from statehood; it had been part of the Kingdom and Territory of Hawaiʻi. On June 27, 1959, a referendum asked residents of Hawaiʻi to vote on the statehood bill; 94.3% voted in favor of statehood and 5.7% opposed it.[95] The referendum asked voters to choose between accepting the Act and remaining a U.S. territory. The United Nations' Special Committee on Decolonization later removed Hawaiʻi from its list of non-self-governing territories.
+
+After attaining statehood, Hawaiʻi quickly modernized through construction and a rapidly growing tourism economy. Later, state programs promoted Hawaiian culture.[which?] The Hawaiʻi State Constitutional Convention of 1978 created institutions such as the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to promote indigenous language and culture.[96]
+
+Coincidentally, the Wiki knowledge revolution that transformed the Internet took its name from a Hawaiian word.[97][98][99]
+
+After Europeans and mainland Americans first arrived during the Kingdom of Hawaii period, the overall population of Hawaii, until that time composed solely of indigenous Hawaiians, fell dramatically. The indigenous Hawaiian population succumbed to foreign diseases, declining from 300,000 in the 1770s, to 60,000 in the 1850s, to 24,000 in 1920. In that year 43% of the population was of Japanese descent.[citation needed] The population of Hawaii began to finally increase after an influx of primarily Asian settlers that arrived as migrant laborers at the end of the 19th century.[102]
+
+The unmixed indigenous Hawaiian population has still not restored itself to its 300,000 pre-contact level. As of 2010[update], only 156,000 persons declared themselves to be of Native Hawaiian-only ancestry, just over half the pre-contact level Native Hawaiian population, although an additional 371,000 persons declared themselves to possess Native Hawaiian ancestry in combination with one or more other races (including other Polynesian groups, but mostly Asian and/or Caucasian).
+
+The United States Census Bureau estimates the population of Hawaii was 1,420,491 on July 1, 2018; an increase of 4.42% since the 2010 United States Census.[103]
+
+As of 2018[update], Hawaii had an estimated population of 1,420,491; a decrease of 7,047 from the previous year and an increase of 60,190 (4.42%) since 2010. This includes a natural increase of 48,111 (96,028 births minus 47,917 deaths) and an increase due to net migration of 16,956 people into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 30,068; migration within the country produced a net loss of 13,112 people.
+
+The center of population of Hawaii is located on the island of O'ahu. Large numbers of Native Hawaiians have moved to Las Vegas, which has been called the "ninth island" of Hawaii.[104][105]
+
+Hawaii has a de facto population of over 1.4 million, due in part to a large number of military personnel and tourist residents. O'ahu is the most populous island; it has the highest population density with a resident population of just under one million in 597 square miles (1,546 km2), approximately 1,650 people per square mile.[d][citation needed] Hawaii's 1.4 million residents, spread across 6,000 square miles (15,500 km2) of land, result in an average population density of 188.6 persons per square mile.[106] The state has a lower population density than Ohio and Illinois.[107]
+
+The average projected lifespan of people born in Hawaii in 2000 is 79.8 years; 77.1 years if male, 82.5 if female—longer than the average lifespan of any other U.S. state.[108] As of 2011[update] the U.S. military reported it had 42,371 personnel on the islands.[109]
+
+According to the 2010 United States Census, Hawaii had a population of 1,360,301. The state's population identified as 38.6% Asian; 24.7% White (22.7% Non-Hispanic White Alone); 23.6% from two or more races; 10.0% Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders; 8.9% Hispanics and Latinos of any race; 1.6% Black or African American; 1.2% from some other race; and 0.3% Native American and Alaska Native.[110]
+
+Hawaii has the highest percentage of Asian Americans and multiracial Americans and the lowest percentage of White Americans of any state. It is the only state where people who identify as Asian Americans are the largest ethnic group. In 2012, 14.5% of the resident population under age 1 was non-Hispanic white.[115] Hawaii's Asian population consists mainly of 198,000 (14.6%) Filipino Americans, 185,000 (13.6%) Japanese Americans, roughly 55,000 (4.0%) Chinese Americans, and 24,000 (1.8%) Korean Americans.[116] There are more than 80,000 Indigenous Hawaiians—5.9% of the population.[116] Including those with partial ancestry, Samoan Americans constitute 2.8% of Hawaii's population, and Tongan Americans constitute 0.6%.[117]
+
+Over 120,000 (8.8%) Hispanic and Latino Americans live in Hawaii. Mexican Americans number over 35,000 (2.6%); Puerto Ricans exceed 44,000 (3.2%). Multiracial Americans constitute almost 25% of Hawaii's population, exceeding 320,000 people. Eurasian Americans are a prominent mixed-race group, numbering about 66,000 (4.9%). The Non-Hispanic White population numbers around 310,000—just over 20% of the population. The multi-racial population outnumbers the non-Hispanic white population by about 10,000 people.[116] In 1970, the Census Bureau reported Hawaii's population was 38.8% white and 57.7% Asian and Pacific Islander.[118]
+
+The five largest European ancestries in Hawaii are German (7.4%), Irish (5.2%), English (4.6%), Portuguese (4.3%) and Italian (2.7%). About 82.2% of the state's residents were born in the United States. Roughly 75% of foreign-born residents originate in Asia. Hawaii is a majority-minority state. It was expected to be one of three states that will not have a non-Hispanic white plurality in 2014; the other two are California and New Mexico.[119]
+
+The third group of foreigners to arrive in Hawaii were from China. Chinese workers on Western trading ships settled in Hawaii starting in 1789. In 1820, the first American missionaries arrived to preach Christianity and teach the Hawaiians Western ways.[121] As of 2015[update], a large proportion of Hawaii's population have Asian ancestry—especially Filipino, Japanese and Chinese. Many are descendants of immigrants brought to work on the sugarcane plantations in the mid-to-late 19th century. The first 153 Japanese immigrants arrived in Hawaii on June 19, 1868. They were not approved by the then-current Japanese government because the contract was between a broker and the Tokugawa shogunate—by then replaced by the Meiji Restoration. The first Japanese current-government-approved immigrants arrived on February 9, 1885, after Kalākaua's petition to Emperor Meiji when Kalākaua visited Japan in 1881.[122][123]
+
+Almost 13,000 Portuguese migrants had arrived by 1899; they also worked on the sugarcane plantations.[124] By 1901, more than 5,000 Puerto Ricans were living in Hawaii.[125]
+
+English and Hawaiian are listed as Hawaii's official languages in the state's 1978 constitution, in Article XV, Section 4.[126] However, the use of Hawaiian is limited because the constitution specifies that "Hawaiian shall be required for public acts and transactions only as provided by law". Hawaiʻi Creole English, locally referred to as "Pidgin", is the native language of many native residents and is a second language for many others.[citation needed]
+
+As of the 2000 Census, 73.4% of Hawaii residents age 5 and older exclusively speak English at home.[127] According to the 2008 American Community Survey, 74.6% of Hawaii's residents older than 5 speak only English at home.[120] In their homes, 21.0% of state residents speak an additional Asian language, 2.6% speak Spanish, 1.6% speak other Indo-European languages and 0.2% speak another language.[120]
+
+After English, other languages popularly spoken in the state are Tagalog, Japanese and Ilocano. Significant numbers of European immigrants and their descendants also speak their native languages; the most numerous are German, Portuguese, Italian and French.[citation needed] 5.4% of residents speak Tagalog—which includes non-native speakers of Filipino language, the national, co-official, Tagalog-based language; 5.0% speak Japanese and 4.0% speak Ilocano; 1.2% speak Chinese, 1.7% speak Hawaiian; 1.7% speak Spanish; 1.6% speak Korean; and 1.0% speak Samoan.[127]
+
+The Hawaiian language has about 2,000 native speakers, about 0.15% of the total population.[128] According to the United States Census, there were more than 24,000 total speakers of the language in Hawaii in 2006–2008.[129] Hawaiian is a Polynesian member of the Austronesian language family.[128] It is closely related to other Polynesian languages, such as Marquesan, Tahitian, Māori, Rapa Nui (the language of Easter Island), and less closely to Samoan and Tongan.[130]
+
+According to Schütz, the Marquesans colonized the archipelago in roughly 300 CE[131] and were later followed by waves of seafarers from the Society Islands, Samoa and Tonga.[citation needed] These Polynesians remained in the islands; they eventually became the Hawaiian people and their languages evolved into the Hawaiian language.[132] Kimura and Wilson say, "[l]inguists agree that Hawaiian is closely related to Eastern Polynesian, with a particularly strong link in the Southern Marquesas, and a secondary link in Tahiti, which may be explained by voyaging between the Hawaiian and Society Islands".[133]
+
+Before the arrival of Captain James Cook, the Hawaiian language had no written form. That form was developed mainly by American Protestant missionaries between 1820 and 1826 who assigned to the Hawaiian phonemes letters from the Latin alphabet. Interest in Hawaiian increased significantly in the late 20th century. With the help of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, specially designated immersion schools in which all subjects would be taught in Hawaiian were established. The University of Hawaii developed a Hawaiian language graduate studies program. Municipal codes were altered to favor Hawaiian place and street names for new civic developments.[citation needed]
+
+Hawaiian distinguishes between long and short vowel sounds. In modern practice, vowel length is indicated with a macron (kahakō). Hawaiian-language newspapers (nūpepa) published from 1834 to 1948 and traditional native speakers of Hawaiian generally omit the marks in their own writing. The ʻokina and kahakō are intended to help non-native speakers.[citation needed] The Hawaiian language uses the glottal stop (ʻokina) as a consonant. It is written as a symbol similar to the apostrophe or left-hanging (opening) single quotation mark.[citation needed]
+
+The keyboard layout used for Hawaiian is QWERTY.[134]
+
+Some residents of Hawaii speak Hawaiʻi Creole English (HCE), endonymically called pidgin or pidgin English. The lexicon of HCE derives mainly from English but also uses words that have derived from Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Ilocano and Tagalog. During the 19th century, the increase in immigration—mainly from China, Japan, Portugal—especially from the Azores and Madeira, and Spain—catalyzed the development of a hybrid variant of English known to its speakers as pidgin. By the early 20th century, pidgin speakers had children who acquired it as their first language. HCE speakers use some Hawaiian words without those words being considered archaic.[clarification needed] Most place names are retained from Hawaiian, as are some names for plants and animals. For example, tuna fish is often called by its Hawaiian name, ahi.[citation needed]
+
+HCE speakers have modified the meanings of some English words. For example, "aunty" and "uncle" may either refer to any adult who is a friend or be used to show respect to an elder. Syntax and grammar follow distinctive rules different from those of General American English. For example, instead of "it is hot today, isn't it?", an HCE speaker would say simply "stay hot, eh?"[e] The term da kine is used as a filler; a substitute for virtually any word or phrase. During the surfing boom in Hawaii, HCE was influenced by surfer slang. Some HCE expressions, such as brah and da kine, have found their ways elsewhere through surfing communities.[citation needed]
+
+Hawaiʻi Sign Language, a sign language for the deaf based on the Hawaiian language, has been in use in the islands since the early 1800s. It is dwindling in numbers due to American Sign Language supplanting HSL through schooling and various other domains.[citation needed]
+
+Religion in Hawaii (2014)[135]
+
+Christianity is the most widespread religion in Hawaii, mainly represented by various Protestants, Roman Catholics and Mormons. The second-most popular religion is Buddhism, especially among the archipelago's Japanese community. Unaffiliated account for one-quarter of the population.
+
+The Cathedral Church of Saint Andrew in Honolulu was formally the seat of the Hawaiian Reformed Catholic Church. When the Hawaiian Reformed Catholic Church, a province of the Anglican Communion, was merged into the Episcopal Church in the 1890s following the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, it became the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Hawaii. The Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace and the Co-Cathedral of Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus serve as seats of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu. The Eastern Orthodox community is centered around the Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Pacific.
+
+The largest denominations by number of adherents were the Roman Catholic Church with 249,619 adherents in 2010,[136] the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with 68,128 adherents in 2009,[137] the United Church of Christ with 115 congregations and 20,000 members, and the Southern Baptist Convention with 108 congregations and 18,000 members.[138] All non-denominational churches have 128 congregations and 32,000 members.
+
+According to data provided by religious establishments, religion in Hawaii in 2000 was distributed as follows:[139][140]
+
+A Pew poll found that the religious composition was as follows:
+
+Note: Births in this table do not add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.
+
+Hawaii has had a long history of LGBT identities. Māhū ("in the middle") were a precolonization third gender with traditional spiritual and social roles; māhū were a respected group of people widely regarded as healers. The concept of aikāne referred to homosexual relationships, widely accepted as a normal part of ancient Hawaiian society.[148][149][150] Among men, aikāne relationships often began as teens and continued throughout their adult lives, even if they also maintained heterosexual partners.[151] While aikāne usually refers to male homosexuality, some stories also refer to women, implying that women may have been involved in aikāne relationships as well.[152] Journals written by Captain Cook's crew record that many aliʻi (hereditary nobles) also engaged in aikāne relationships, and Kamehameha the Great, the founder and first ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaii, was also known to participate. Cook's second lieutenant and co-astronomer James King observed that "all the chiefs had them", and recounts that Cook was actually asked by one chief to leave King behind, considering the role a great honor.
+
+According to Hawaiian scholar Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa, "If you didn't sleep with a man, how could you trust him when you went into battle? How would you know if he was going to be the warrior that would protect you at all costs, if he wasn't your lover?"[153]
+
+During the late 19th and early 20th century, the word aikāne was expurgated of its original sexual meaning by colonialism, and in print simply meant "friend". Nonetheless, in Hawaiian language publications its metaphorical meaning can still mean either "friend" or "lover" without stigmatization.[154]
+
+A 2012 poll by Gallup found that Hawaii had the largest proportion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) adults in the U.S., at 5.1%, comprising an estimated adult LGBT population of 53,966 individuals. The number of same-sex couple households in 2010 was 3,239; a 35.5% increase of figures from a decade earlier.[155][156] In 2013, Hawaii became the fifteenth U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage; a University of Hawaii researcher reported at the time that the law may have been able to boost tourism by $217 million.[157]
+
+The history of Hawaii's economy can be traced through a succession of dominant industries: sandalwood,[158] whaling,[159] sugarcane, pineapple, the military, tourism and education. Since statehood in 1959, tourism has been the largest industry, contributing 24.3% of the gross state product (GSP) in 1997, despite efforts to diversify. The state's gross output for 2003 was US$47 billion; per capita income for Hawaii residents in 2014 was US$54,516.[160] Hawaiian exports include food and clothing. These industries play a small role in the Hawaiian economy, due to the shipping distance to viable markets, such as the West Coast of the contiguous U.S. The state's food exports include coffee, macadamia nuts, pineapple, livestock, sugarcane and honey.[161]
+
+By weight, honey bees may be the state's most valuable export.[162] According to the Hawaii Agricultural Statistics Service, agricultural sales were US$370.9 million from diversified agriculture, US$100.6 million from pineapple, and US$64.3 million from sugarcane. Hawaii's relatively consistent climate has attracted the seed industry, which is able to test three generations of crops per year on the islands, compared with one or two on the mainland.[163] Seeds yielded US$264 million in 2012, supporting 1,400 workers.[164]
+
+As of December 2015[update], the state's unemployment rate was 3.2%.[165] In 2009, the United States military spent US$12.2 billion in Hawaii, accounting for 18% of spending in the state for that year. 75,000 United States Department of Defense personnel live in Hawaii.[166] According to a 2013 study by Phoenix Marketing International, Hawaii had the fourth-largest number of millionaires per capita in the United States, with a ratio of 7.2%.[167]
+
+Tax is collected by the Hawaii Department of Taxation.[168]
+
+Hawaii residents pay the most per person in state taxes in the United States.[169] Millions of tourists pay general excise tax and hotel room tax.[169]
+
+The Hawaii Tax Foundation considers the state's tax burden too high, which it says contributes to higher prices and the perception of an unfriendly business climate.[169]
+
+State Senator Sam Slom says state taxes are comparatively higher than other states because the state government handles education, health care, and social services that are usually handled at a county or municipal level in most other states.[169]
+
+The cost of living in Hawaii, specifically Honolulu, is high compared to that of most major U.S. cities, although it is 6.7% lower than in New York City and 3.6% lower than in San Francisco.[170] These numbers may not take into account some costs, such as increased travel costs for flights, additional shipping fees, and the loss of promotional participation opportunities for customers outside the contiguous U.S. While some online stores offer free shipping on orders to Hawaii, many merchants exclude Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and certain other U.S. territories.[171][172]
+
+Hawaiian Electric Industries, a privately owned company, provides 95% of the state's population with electricity, mostly from fossil-fuel power stations. Average electricity prices in October 2014 (36.41 cents per kilowatt-hour) were nearly three times the national average (12.58 cents per kilowatt-hour) and 80% higher than the second-highest state, Connecticut.[173]
+
+The median home value in Hawaii in the 2000 U.S. Census was US$272,700, while the national median home value was US$119,600. Hawaii home values were the highest of all states, including California with a median home value of US$211,500.[174] Research from the National Association of Realtors places the 2010 median sale price of a single family home in Honolulu, Hawaii, at US$607,600 and the U.S. median sales price at US$173,200. The sale price of single family homes in Hawaii was the highest of any U.S. city in 2010, just above that of the Silicon Valley area of California (US$602,000).[175]
+
+Hawaii's very high cost of living is the result of several interwoven factors of the global economy in addition to domestic U.S. government trade policy. Like other regions with desirable weather throughout the year, such as areas of California, Arizona and Florida, Hawaii's residents can be considered to be subject to a "Sunshine tax". This situation is further exacerbated by the natural factors of geography and world distribution that lead to higher prices for goods due to increased shipping costs, a problem which many island states and territories suffer from as well.
+
+The higher costs to ship goods across an ocean may be further increased by the requirements of the Jones Act, which generally requires that goods be transported between places within the U.S., including between the mainland U.S. west coast and Hawaii, using only U.S.-owned, built, and crewed ships. Jones Act-compliant vessels are often more expensive to build and operate than foreign equivalents, which can drive up shipping costs. While the Jones Act does not affect transportation of goods to Hawaii directly from Asia, this type of trade is nonetheless not common; this is a result of other primarily economic reasons including additional costs associated with stopping over in Hawaii (e.g. pilot and port fees), the market size of Hawaii, and the economics of using ever-larger ships that cannot be handled in Hawaii for transoceanic voyages. Therefore, Hawaii relies on receiving most inbound goods on Jones Act-qualified vessels originating from the U.S. west coast, which may contribute to the increased cost of some consumer goods and therefore the overall cost of living.[176][177]
+
+Hawaiian consumers ultimately bear the expense of transporting goods imposed by the Jones Act. This law makes Hawaii less competitive than West Coast ports as a shopping destination for tourists from countries with much higher taxes like Japan, even though prices for Asian-manufactured goods should be cheaper because Hawaii is much closer than mainland states to Asia.[178][179]
+
+The aboriginal culture of Hawaii is Polynesian. Hawaii represents the northernmost extension of the vast Polynesian Triangle of the south and central Pacific Ocean. While traditional Hawaiian culture remains as vestiges in modern Hawaiian society, there are re-enactments of the ceremonies and traditions throughout the islands. Some of these cultural influences, including the popularity (in greatly modified form) of lūʻau and hula, are strong enough to affect the wider United States.
+
+The cuisine of Hawaii is a fusion of many foods brought by immigrants to the Hawaiian Islands, including the earliest Polynesians and Native Hawaiian cuisine, and American, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Polynesian, Puerto Rican, and Portuguese origins. Plant and animal food sources are imported from around the world for agricultural use in Hawaii. Poi, a starch made by pounding taro, is one of the traditional foods of the islands. Many local restaurants serve the ubiquitous plate lunch, which features two scoops of rice, a simplified version of American macaroni salad and a variety of toppings including hamburger patties, a fried egg, and gravy of a loco moco, Japanese style tonkatsu or the traditional lūʻau favorites, including kālua pork and laulau. Spam musubi is an example of the fusion of ethnic cuisine that developed on the islands among the mix of immigrant groups and military personnel. In the 1990s, a group of chefs developed Hawaii regional cuisine as a contemporary fusion cuisine.
+
+Some key customs and etiquette in Hawaii are as follows: when visiting a home, it is considered good manners to bring a small gift for one's host (for example, a dessert). Thus, parties are usually in the form of potlucks. Most locals take their shoes off before entering a home. It is customary for Hawaiian families, regardless of ethnicity, to hold a luau to celebrate a child's first birthday. It is also customary at Hawaiian weddings, especially at Filipino weddings, for the bride and groom to do a money dance (also called the pandanggo). Print media and local residents recommend that one refer to non-Hawaiians as "locals of Hawaii" or "people of Hawaii".
+
+Hawaiian mythology comprises the legends, historical tales, and sayings of the ancient Hawaiian people. It is considered a variant of a more general Polynesian mythology that developed a unique character for several centuries before circa 1800. It is associated with the Hawaiian religion, which was officially suppressed in the 19th century but was kept alive by some practitioners to the modern day.[citation needed] Prominent figures and terms include Aumakua, the spirit of an ancestor or family god and Kāne, the highest of the four major Hawaiian deities.[citation needed]
+
+Polynesian mythology is the oral traditions of the people of Polynesia, a grouping of Central and South Pacific Ocean island archipelagos in the Polynesian triangle together with the scattered cultures known as the Polynesian outliers. Polynesians speak languages that descend from a language reconstructed as Proto-Polynesian that was probably spoken in the area around Tonga and Samoa in around 1000 BCE.[180]
+
+Prior to the 15th century, Polynesian people migrated east to the Cook Islands, and from there to other island groups such as Tahiti and the Marquesas. Their descendants later discovered the islands Tahiti, Rapa Nui and later the Hawaiian Islands and New Zealand.[citation needed]
+
+The Polynesian languages are part of the Austronesian language family. Many are close enough in terms of vocabulary and grammar to be mutually intelligible. There are also substantial cultural similarities between the various groups, especially in terms of social organization, childrearing, horticulture, building and textile technologies. Their mythologies in particular demonstrate local reworkings of commonly shared tales. The Polynesian cultures each have distinct but related oral traditions; legends or myths are traditionally considered to recount ancient history (the time of "pō") and the adventures of gods ("atua") and deified ancestors.[citation needed]
+
+There are many Hawaiian state parks.
+
+The literature of Hawaii is diverse and includes authors Kiana Davenport, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, and Kaui Hart Hemmings. Hawaiian magazines include Hana Hou!, Hawaii Business Magazine and Honolulu, among others.
+
+The music of Hawaii includes traditional and popular styles, ranging from native Hawaiian folk music to modern rock and hip hop. Hawaii's musical contributions to the music of the United States are out of proportion to the state's small size.
+
+Styles such as slack-key guitar are well known worldwide, while Hawaiian-tinged music is a frequent part of Hollywood soundtracks. Hawaii also made a major contribution to country music with the introduction of the steel guitar.[181]
+
+Traditional Hawaiian folk music is a major part of the state's musical heritage. The Hawaiian people have inhabited the islands for centuries and have retained much of their traditional musical knowledge. Their music is largely religious in nature, and includes chanting and dance music.
+
+Hawaiian music has had an enormous impact on the music of other Polynesian islands; according to Peter Manuel, the influence of Hawaiian music a "unifying factor in the development of modern Pacific musics".[182] Native Hawaiian musician and Hawaiian sovereignty activist Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, famous for his medley of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World", was named "The Voice of Hawaii" by NPR in 2010 in its 50 great voices series.[183]
+
+Surfing has been a central part of Polynesian culture for centuries. Since the late 19th century, Hawaii has become a major site for surfists from around the world. Notable competitions include the Triple Crown of Surfing and The Eddie.
+
+The only NCAA Division I team in Hawaii is the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors and Rainbow Wahine, which competes at the Big West Conference (major sports), Mountain West Conference (football) and Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (minor sports). There are three teams in NCAA Division II: Chaminade Silverswords, Hawaii Pacific Sharks and Hawaii-Hilo Vulcans, all of which compete at the Pacific West Conference.
+
+Notable college sports events in Hawaii include the Maui Invitational Tournament, Diamond Head Classic (basketball) and Hawaii Bowl (football).
+
+Notable professional teams include The Hawaiians, which played at the World Football League in 1974 and 1975; the Hawaii Islanders, a Triple-A minor league baseball team that played at the Pacific Coast League from 1961 to 1987; and Team Hawaii, a North American Soccer League team that played in 1977.
+
+Hawaii has hosted the Sony Open in Hawaii golf tournament since 1965, the Tournament of Champions golf tournament since 1999, the Lotte Championship golf tournament since 2012, the Honolulu Marathon since 1973, the Ironman World Championship triathlon race since 1978, the Ultraman triathlon since 1983, the National Football League's Pro Bowl from 1980 to 2016, the 2000 FINA World Open Water Swimming Championships, and the 2008 Pan-Pacific Championship and 2012 Hawaiian Islands Invitational soccer tournaments.
+
+Tourism is an important part of the Hawaiian economy. In 2003, according to state government data, there were more than 6.4 million visitors, with expenditures of over $10 billion, to the Hawaiian Islands.[184] Due to the mild year-round weather, tourist travel is popular throughout the year. The major holidays are the most popular times for outsiders to visit, especially in the winter months. Substantial numbers of Japanese tourists still visit the islands but have now been surpassed by Chinese and Koreans due to the collapse of the value of the Yen and the weak Japanese economy. The average Japanese stays only five days, while other Asians stay over 9.5 days and spend 25% more.[185]
+
+Hawaii hosts numerous cultural events. The annual Merrie Monarch Festival is an international Hula competition.[186] The Hawaii International Film Festival is the premier film festival for Pacific rim cinema.[187] Honolulu hosts the state's long-running LGBT film festival, the Rainbow Film Festival.[188][189]
+
+As of 2009[update], Hawaii's health care system insures 92% of residents. Under the state's plan, businesses are required to provide insurance to employees who work more than twenty hours per week. Heavy regulation of insurance companies helps reduce the cost to employers. Due in part to heavy emphasis on preventive care, Hawaiians require hospital treatment less frequently than the rest of the United States, while total health care expenses measured as a percentage of state GDP are substantially lower.[citation needed] Proponents of universal health care elsewhere in the U.S. sometimes use Hawaii as a model for proposed federal and state health care plans.[citation needed]
+
+Hawaii has the only school system within the U.S. that is unified statewide. Policy decisions are made by the fourteen-member state Board of Education, which sets policy and hires the superintendent of schools, who oversees the state Department of Education. The Department of Education is divided into seven districts; four on Oʻahu and one for each of the other three counties. The main rationale for centralization is to combat inequalities between highly populated Oʻahu and the more rural Neighbor Islands, and between lower-income and more affluent areas.[citation needed]
+
+Public elementary, middle and high school test scores in Hawaii are below national averages on tests mandated under the No Child Left Behind Act. The Hawaii Board of Education requires all eligible students to take these tests and report all student test scores. This may have unbalanced the results that reported in August 2005 that of 282 schools across the state, 185 failed to reach federal minimum performance standards in mathematics and reading.[190] The ACT college placement tests show that in 2005, seniors scored slightly above the national average (21.9 compared with 20.9),[191] but in the widely accepted SAT examinations, Hawaii's college-bound seniors tend to score below the national average in all categories except mathematics.
+
+Hawaii has the highest rates of private school attendance in the nation. During the 2011–2012 school year, Hawaii public and charter schools had an enrollment of 181,213,[192] while private schools had 37,695.[193] Private schools educated over 17% of students in Hawaii that school year, nearly three times the approximate national average of 6%.[194] It has four of the largest independent schools; ʻIolani School, Kamehameha Schools, Mid-Pacific Institute and Punahou School. Pacific Buddhist Academy, the second Buddhist high school in the U.S. and first such school in Hawaii, was founded in 2003. The first native controlled public charter school was the Kanu O Ka Aina New Century Charter School.[195]
+
+Independent and charter schools can select their students, while the public schools are open to all students in their district. The Kamehameha Schools are the only schools in the U.S. that openly grant admission to students based on ancestry; collectively, they are one of the wealthiest schools in the United States, if not the world, having over eleven billion US dollars in estate assets.[196] In 2005, Kamehameha enrolled 5,398 students, 8.4% of the Native Hawaiian children in the state.[197]
+
+The largest institution of higher learning in Hawaii is the University of Hawaii System, which consists of the research university at Mānoa, two comprehensive campuses at Hilo and West Oʻahu, and seven community colleges. Private universities include Brigham Young University–Hawaii, Chaminade University of Honolulu, Hawaii Pacific University, and Wayland Baptist University. Saint Stephen Diocesan Center is a seminary of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu. Kona hosts the University of the Nations, which is not an accredited university.
+
+A system of state highways encircles each main island. Only Oʻahu has federal highways, and is the only area outside the contiguous 48 states to have signed Interstate highways. Narrow, winding roads and congestion in populated places can slow traffic. Each major island has a public bus system.
+
+Honolulu International Airport (IATA: HNL), which shares runways with the adjacent Hickam Field (IATA: HIK), is the major commercial aviation hub of Hawaii. The commercial aviation airport offers intercontinental service to North America, Asia, Australia and Oceania. Hawaiian Airlines, Mokulele Airlines and go! use jets to provide services between the large airports in Honolulu, Līhuʻe, Kahului, Kona and Hilo. Island Air and Pacific Wings serve smaller airports. These airlines also provide air freight services between the islands. On May 30, 2017, the airport was officially renamed as the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), after U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye.[198]
+
+Until air passenger services began in the 1920s,[199] private boats were the sole means of traveling between the islands. Seaflite operated hydrofoils between the major islands in the mid-1970s.[200]
+
+The Hawaii Superferry operated between Oʻahu and Maui between December 2007 and March 2009, with additional routes planned for other islands. Protests and legal problems over environmental impact statements ended the service, though the company operating Superferry has expressed a wish to recommence ferry services in the future.[201] Currently there is a passenger ferry service in Maui County between Lanaʻi and Maui,[202] which does not take vehicles; a passenger ferry to Molokai ended in 2016.[203] Currently Norwegian Cruise Lines and Princess Cruises provide passenger cruise ship services between the larger islands.[204][205]
+
+At one time Hawaii had a network of railroads on each of the larger islands that transported farm commodities and passengers. Most were 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge systems but there were some 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) gauge on some of the smaller islands. The standard gauge in the U.S. is 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm). By far the largest railroad was the Oahu Railway and Land Company (OR&L) that ran lines from Honolulu across the western and northern part of Oahu.[206]
+
+The OR&L was important for moving troops and goods during World War II. Traffic on this line was busy enough for signals to be used to facilitate movement of trains and to require wigwag signals at some railroad crossings for the protection of motorists. The main line was officially abandoned in 1947, although part of it was bought by the U.S. Navy and operated until 1970. Thirteen miles (21 km) of track remain; preservationists occasionally run trains over a portion of this line.[206] The Honolulu High-Capacity Transit Corridor Project aims to add elevated passenger rail on Oahu to relieve highway congestion.[citation needed]
+
+The movement of the Hawaiian royal family from Hawaiʻi Island to Maui, and subsequently to Oʻahu, explains the modern-day distribution of population centers. Kamehameha III chose the largest city, Honolulu, as his capital because of its natural harbor—the present-day Honolulu Harbor. Now the state capital, Honolulu is located along the southeast coast of Oʻahu. The previous capital was Lahaina, Maui, and before that Kailua-Kona, Hawaiʻi. Some major towns are Hilo; Kāneʻohe; Kailua; Pearl City; Waipahu; Kahului; Kailua-Kona. Kīhei; and Līhuʻe.
+
+Hawaii comprises five counties: the City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii County, Maui County, Kauai County, and Kalawao County.
+
+Hawaii has the fewest local governments among U.S. states.[207][208] Unique to this state is the lack of municipal governments. All local governments are generally administered at the county level. The only incorporated area in the state is Honolulu County, a consolidated city–county that governs the entire island of Oahu. County executives are referred to as mayors; these are the Mayor of Hawaii County, Mayor of Honolulu, Mayor of Kauaʻi, and the Mayor of Maui. The mayors are all elected in nonpartisan elections. Kalawao County has no elected government,[209] and as mentioned above there are no local school districts and instead all local public education is administered at the state level by the Hawaii Department of Education. The remaining local governments are special districts.[207][208]
+
+The state government of Hawaii is modeled after the federal government with adaptations originating from the kingdom era of Hawaiian history. As codified in the Constitution of Hawaii, there are three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial. The executive branch is led by the Governor of Hawaii, who is assisted by the Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii, both of whom are elected on the same ticket. The governor is the only state public official elected statewide; all others are appointed by the governor. The lieutenant governor acts as the Secretary of State. The governor and lieutenant governor oversee twenty agencies and departments from offices in the State Capitol. The official residence of the governor is Washington Place.
+
+The legislative branch consists of the bicameral Hawaii State Legislature, which is composed of the 51-member Hawaii House of Representatives led by the Speaker of the House, and the 25-member Hawaii Senate led by the President of the Senate. The Legislature meets at the State Capitol. The unified judicial branch of Hawaii is the Hawaii State Judiciary. The state's highest court is the Supreme Court of Hawaii, which uses Aliʻiōlani Hale as its chambers.
+
+Senator Brian Schatz
+
+Senator Mazie Hirono
+
+Representative Ed Case (HI-1)
+
+Representative Tulsi Gabbard (HI-2)
+
+Hawaii is represented in the United States Congress by two senators and two representatives. As of 2019[update], all four seats are held by Democrats. Former representative Ed Case was elected in 2018 to the 1st congressional district. Tulsi Gabbard represents the 2nd congressional district, representing the rest of the state, which is largely rural and semi-rural.[210]
+
+Brian Schatz is the senior United States Senator from Hawaii. He was appointed to the office on December 26, 2012, by Governor Neil Abercrombie, following the death of former senator Daniel Inouye. The state's junior senator is Mazie Hirono, the former representative from the second congressional district. Hirono is the first female Asian American senator and the first Buddhist senator. Hawaii incurred the biggest seniority shift between the 112th and 113th Congresses. The state went from a delegation consisting of senators who were first and twenty-first in seniority[f] to their respective replacements, relative newcomers Schatz and Hirono.[211]
+
+Federal officials in Hawaii are based at the Prince Kūhiō Federal Building near the Aloha Tower and Honolulu Harbor. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service and the Secret Service maintain their offices there; the building is also the site of the federal District Court for the District of Hawaii and the United States Attorney for the District of Hawaii.
+
+Since gaining statehood and participating in its first election in 1960, Hawaii has supported Democrats in all but two presidential elections; 1972 and 1984, both of which were landslide reelection victories for Republicans Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan respectively. In Hawaii's statehood tenure, only Minnesota has supported Republican candidates fewer times in presidential elections. The 2016 Cook Partisan Voting Index ranks Hawaii as the most heavily Democratic state in the nation.[212]
+
+Hawaii has not elected a Republican to represent the state in the U.S. Senate since Hiram Fong in 1970; since 1977, both of the state's U.S. Senators have been Democrats.[213][214]
+
+In 2004, John Kerry won the state's four electoral votes by a margin of nine percentage points with 54% of the vote. Every county supported the Democratic candidate. In 1964, favorite son candidate senator Hiram Fong of Hawaii sought the Republican presidential nomination, while Patsy Mink ran in the Oregon primary in 1972.
+
+Honolulu-born Barack Obama, then serving as United States Senator from Illinois, was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008 and was re-elected for a second term on November 6, 2012. Obama had won the Hawaii Democratic caucus on February 19, 2008, with 76% of the vote. He was the third Hawaii-born candidate to seek the nomination of a major party and the first presidential nominee from Hawaii.[215][216]
+
+Hawaii is the only state in the United States that does not maintain a separate, state-wide police force. Instead, state law enforcement responsibilities are taken on by the municipal police agencies of the four main islands. Forensic services for all agencies in the state are provided by the Honolulu Police Department.[217]
+
+While Hawaii is internationally recognized as a state of the United States while also being broadly accepted as such in mainstream understanding, the legality of this status has been questioned in U.S. District Court,[218] the U.N., and other international forums.[219] Domestically, the debate is a topic covered in the Kamehameha Schools curriculum,[220] and in classes at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.[221]
+
+Political organizations seeking some form of sovereignty for Hawaii have been active since the late 19th century. Generally, their focus is on self-determination and self-governance, either for Hawaii as an independent nation (in many proposals, for "Hawaiian nationals" descended from subjects of the Hawaiian Kingdom or declaring themselves as such by choice), or for people of whole or part native Hawaiian ancestry in an indigenous "nation to nation" relationship akin to tribal sovereignty with US federal recognition of Native Hawaiians. The pro-federal recognition Akaka Bill drew substantial opposition among Hawaiian residents in the 2000s.[222][223] Opponents to the tribal approach argue it is not a legitimate path to Hawaiian nationhood; they also argue that the U.S. government should not be involved in re-establishing Hawaiian sovereignty.[224][225]
+
+The Hawaiian sovereignty movement views the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893 as illegal, and views the subsequent annexation of Hawaii by the United States as illegal; the movement seeks some form of greater autonomy for Hawaii, such as free association or independence from the United States.[223][226][227][228][229]
+
+Some groups also advocate some form of redress from the United States for the 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani, and for what is described as a prolonged military occupation beginning with the 1898 annexation. The Apology Resolution passed by US Congress in 1993 is cited as a major impetus by the movement for Hawaiian sovereignty.[226] The sovereignty movement considers Hawaii to be an illegally occupied nation.[227][230][231][225]
+
+Informational notes
+
+Citations
+
+Bibliography

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@@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
+
+
+In physics, a state of matter is one of the distinct forms in which matter can exist. Four states of matter are observable in everyday life: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Many intermediate states are known to exist, such as liquid crystal, and some states only exist under extreme conditions, such as Bose–Einstein condensates, neutron-degenerate matter, and quark–gluon plasma, which only occur, respectively, in situations of extreme cold, extreme density, and extremely high energy. For a complete list of all exotic states of matter, see the list of states of matter.
+
+Historically, the distinction is made based on qualitative differences in properties. Matter in the solid state maintains a fixed volume and shape, with component particles (atoms, molecules or ions) close together and fixed into place. Matter in the liquid state maintains a fixed volume, but has a variable shape that adapts to fit its container. Its particles are still close together but move freely. Matter in the gaseous state has both variable volume and shape, adapting both to fit its container. Its particles are neither close together nor fixed in place. Matter in the plasma state has variable volume and shape, and contains neutral atoms as well as a significant number of ions and electrons, both of which can move around freely.
+
+The term phase is sometimes used as a synonym for state of matter, but a system can contain several immiscible phases of the same state of matter.
+
+In a solid, constituent particles (ions, atoms, or molecules) are closely packed together. The forces between particles are so strong that the particles cannot move freely but can only vibrate. As a result, a solid has a stable, definite shape, and a definite volume. Solids can only change their shape by an outside force, as when broken or cut.
+
+In crystalline solids, the particles (atoms, molecules, or ions) are packed in a regularly ordered, repeating pattern. There are various different crystal structures, and the same substance can have more than one structure (or solid phase). For example, iron has a body-centred cubic structure at temperatures below 912 °C (1,674 °F), and a face-centred cubic structure between 912 and 1,394 °C (2,541 °F). Ice has fifteen known crystal structures, or fifteen solid phases, which exist at various temperatures and pressures.[1]
+
+Glasses and other non-crystalline, amorphous solids without long-range order are not thermal equilibrium ground states; therefore they are described below as nonclassical states of matter.
+
+Solids can be transformed into liquids by melting, and liquids can be transformed into solids by freezing. Solids can also change directly into gases through the process of sublimation, and gases can likewise change directly into solids through deposition.
+
+A liquid is a nearly incompressible fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but retains a (nearly) constant volume independent of pressure. The volume is definite if the temperature and pressure are constant. When a solid is heated above its melting point, it becomes liquid, given that the pressure is higher than the triple point of the substance. Intermolecular (or interatomic or interionic) forces are still important, but the molecules have enough energy to move relative to each other and the structure is mobile. This means that the shape of a liquid is not definite but is determined by its container. The volume is usually greater than that of the corresponding solid, the best known exception being water, H2O. The highest temperature at which a given liquid can exist is its critical temperature.[2]
+
+A gas is a compressible fluid. Not only will a gas conform to the shape of its container but it will also expand to fill the container.
+
+In a gas, the molecules have enough kinetic energy so that the effect of intermolecular forces is small (or zero for an ideal gas), and the typical distance between neighboring molecules is much greater than the molecular size. A gas has no definite shape or volume, but occupies the entire container in which it is confined. A liquid may be converted to a gas by heating at constant pressure to the boiling point, or else by reducing the pressure at constant temperature.
+
+At temperatures below its critical temperature, a gas is also called a vapor, and can be liquefied by compression alone without cooling. A vapor can exist in equilibrium with a liquid (or solid), in which case the gas pressure equals the vapor pressure of the liquid (or solid).
+
+A supercritical fluid (SCF) is a gas whose temperature and pressure are above the critical temperature and critical pressure respectively. In this state, the distinction between liquid and gas disappears. A supercritical fluid has the physical properties of a gas, but its high density confers solvent properties in some cases, which leads to useful applications. For example, supercritical carbon dioxide is used to extract caffeine in the manufacture of decaffeinated coffee.[3]
+
+Like a gas, plasma does not have definite shape or volume. Unlike gases, plasmas are electrically conductive, produce magnetic fields and electric currents, and respond strongly to electromagnetic forces. Positively charged nuclei swim in a "sea" of freely-moving disassociated electrons, similar to the way such charges exist in conductive metal, where this electron "sea"  allows matter in the plasma state to conduct electricity.
+
+A gas is usually converted to a plasma in one of two ways, e.g., either from a huge voltage difference between two points, or by exposing it to extremely high temperatures. Heating matter to high temperatures causes electrons to leave the atoms, resulting in the presence of free electrons. This creates a so-called partially ionised plasma. At very high temperatures, such as those present in stars, it is assumed that essentially all electrons are "free", and that a very high-energy plasma is essentially bare nuclei swimming in a sea of electrons. This forms the so-called fully ionised plasma.
+
+The plasma state is often misunderstood, and although not freely existing under normal conditions on Earth, it is quite commonly generated by either lightning, electric sparks, fluorescent lights, neon lights or in plasma televisions. The Sun's corona, some types of flame, and stars are all examples of illuminated matter in the plasma state.
+
+A state of matter is also characterized by phase transitions. A phase transition indicates a change in structure and can be recognized by an abrupt change in properties. A distinct state of matter can be defined as any set of states distinguished from any other set of states by a phase transition. Water can be said to have several distinct solid states.[4] The appearance of superconductivity is associated with a phase transition, so there are superconductive states. Likewise, ferromagnetic states are demarcated by phase transitions and have distinctive properties.
+When the change of state occurs in stages the intermediate steps are called mesophases. Such phases have been exploited by the introduction of liquid crystal technology.[5][6]
+
+The state or phase of a given set of matter can change depending on pressure and temperature conditions, transitioning to other phases as these conditions change to favor their existence; for example, solid transitions to liquid with an increase in temperature. Near absolute zero, a substance exists as a solid. As heat is added to this substance it melts into a liquid at its melting point, boils into a gas at its boiling point, and if heated high enough would enter a plasma state in which the electrons are so energized that they leave their parent atoms.
+
+Forms of matter that are not composed of molecules and are organized by different forces can also be considered different states of matter. Superfluids (like Fermionic condensate) and the quark–gluon plasma are examples.
+
+In a chemical equation, the state of matter of the chemicals may be shown as (s) for solid, (l) for liquid, and (g) for gas. An aqueous solution is denoted (aq). Matter in the plasma state is seldom used (if at all) in chemical equations, so there is no standard symbol to denote it. In the rare equations that plasma is used it is symbolized as (p).
+
+Glass is a non-crystalline or amorphous solid material that exhibits a glass transition when heated towards the liquid state. Glasses can be made of quite different classes of materials: inorganic networks (such as window glass, made of silicate plus additives), metallic alloys, ionic melts, aqueous solutions, molecular liquids, and polymers.
+Thermodynamically, a glass is in a metastable state with respect to its crystalline counterpart. The conversion rate, however, is practically zero.
+
+A plastic crystal is a molecular solid with long-range positional order but with constituent molecules retaining rotational freedom; in an orientational glass this degree of freedom is frozen in a quenched disordered state.
+
+Similarly, in a spin glass magnetic disorder is frozen.
+
+Liquid crystal states have properties intermediate between mobile liquids and ordered solids. Generally, they are able to flow like a liquid, but exhibiting long-range order. For example, the nematic phase consists of long rod-like molecules such as para-azoxyanisole, which is nematic in the temperature range 118–136 °C (244–277 °F).[7] In this state the molecules flow as in a liquid, but they all point in the same direction (within each domain) and cannot rotate freely. Like a crystalline solid, but unlike a liquid, liquid crystals react to polarized light.
+
+Other types of liquid crystals are described in the main article on these states. Several types have technological importance, for example, in liquid crystal displays.
+
+Transition metal atoms often have magnetic moments due to the net spin of electrons that remain unpaired and do not form chemical bonds. In some solids the magnetic moments on different atoms are ordered and can form a ferromagnet, an antiferromagnet or a ferrimagnet.
+
+In a ferromagnet—for instance, solid iron—the magnetic moment on each atom is aligned in the same direction (within a magnetic domain). If the domains are also aligned, the solid is a permanent magnet, which is magnetic even in the absence of an external magnetic field. The magnetization disappears when the magnet is heated to the Curie point, which for iron is 768 °C (1,414 °F).
+
+An antiferromagnet has two networks of equal and opposite magnetic moments, which cancel each other out so that the net magnetization is zero. For example, in nickel(II) oxide (NiO), half the nickel atoms have moments aligned in one direction and half in the opposite direction.
+
+In a ferrimagnet, the two networks of magnetic moments are opposite but unequal, so that cancellation is incomplete and there is a non-zero net magnetization. An example is magnetite (Fe3O4), which contains Fe2+ and Fe3+ ions with different magnetic moments.
+
+A quantum spin liquid (QSL) is a disordered state in a system of interacting quantum spins which preserves its disorder to very low temperatures, unlike other disordered states. It is not a liquid in physical sense, but a solid whose magnetic order is inherently disordered. The name "liquid" is due to an analogy with the molecular disorder in a conventional liquid. A QSL is neither a ferromagnet, where magnetic domains are parallel, nor an antiferromagnet, where the magnetic domains are antiparallel; instead, the magnetic domains are randomly oriented. This can be realized e.g. by geometrically frustrated magnetic moments that cannot point uniformly parallel or antiparallel. When cooling down and settling to a state, the domain must "choose" an orientation, but if the possible states are similar in energy, one will be chosen randomly. Consequently, despite strong short-range order, there is no long-range magnetic order.
+
+Copolymers can undergo microphase separation to form a diverse array of periodic nanostructures, as shown in the example of the styrene-butadiene-styrene block copolymer shown at right. Microphase separation can be understood by analogy to the phase separation between oil and water. Due to chemical incompatibility between the blocks, block copolymers undergo a similar phase separation. However, because the blocks are covalently bonded to each other, they cannot demix macroscopically as water and oil can, and so instead the blocks form nanometre-sized structures. Depending on the relative lengths of each block and the overall block topology of the polymer, many morphologies can be obtained, each its own phase of matter.
+
+Ionic liquids also display microphase separation. The anion and cation are not necessarily compatible and would demix otherwise, but electric charge attraction prevents them from separating. Their anions and cations appear to diffuse within compartmentalized layers or micelles instead of freely as in a uniform liquid.[8]
+
+Close to absolute zero, some liquids form a second liquid state described as superfluid because it has zero viscosity (or infinite fluidity; i.e., flowing without friction). This was discovered in 1937 for helium, which forms a superfluid below the lambda temperature of 2.17 K (−270.98 °C; −455.76 °F). In this state it will attempt to "climb" out of its container.[9] It also has infinite thermal conductivity so that no temperature gradient can form in a superfluid. Placing a superfluid in a spinning container will result in quantized vortices.
+
+These properties are explained by the theory that the common isotope helium-4 forms a Bose–Einstein condensate (see next section) in the superfluid state. More recently, Fermionic condensate superfluids have been formed at even lower temperatures by the rare isotope helium-3 and by lithium-6.[10]
+
+In 1924, Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose predicted the "Bose–Einstein condensate" (BEC), sometimes referred to as the fifth state of matter. In a BEC, matter stops behaving as independent particles, and collapses into a single quantum state that can be described with a single, uniform wavefunction.
+
+In the gas phase, the Bose–Einstein condensate remained an unverified theoretical prediction for many years. In 1995, the research groups of Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman, of JILA at the University of Colorado at Boulder, produced the first such condensate experimentally. A Bose–Einstein condensate is "colder" than a solid. It may occur when atoms have very similar (or the same) quantum levels, at temperatures very close to absolute zero, −273.15 °C (−459.67 °F).
+
+A fermionic condensate is similar to the Bose–Einstein condensate but composed of fermions. The Pauli exclusion principle prevents fermions from entering the same quantum state, but a pair of fermions can behave as a boson, and multiple such pairs can then enter the same quantum state without restriction.
+
+One of the metastable states of strongly non-ideal plasma is Rydberg matter, which forms upon condensation of excited atoms. These atoms can also turn into ions and electrons if they reach a certain temperature. In April 2009, Nature reported the creation of Rydberg molecules from a Rydberg atom and a ground state atom,[11] confirming that such a state of matter could exist.[12] The experiment was performed using ultracold rubidium atoms.
+
+A quantum Hall state gives rise to quantized Hall voltage measured in the direction perpendicular to the current flow. A quantum spin Hall state is a theoretical phase that may pave the way for the development of electronic devices that dissipate less energy and generate less heat. This is a derivation of the Quantum Hall state of matter.
+
+Photonic matter is a phenomenon where photons interacting with a gas develop apparent mass, and can interact with each other, even forming photonic "molecules". The source of mass is the gas, which is massive. This is in contrast to photons moving in empty space, which have no rest mass, and cannot interact.
+
+A "quantum fog" of electrons and holes that flow around each other and even ripple like a liquid, rather than existing as discrete pairs.[13]
+
+Under extremely high pressure, as in the cores of dead stars, ordinary matter undergoes a transition to a series of exotic states of matter collectively known as degenerate matter, which are supported mainly by quantum mechanical effects. In physics, "degenerate" refers to two states that have the same energy and are thus interchangeable. Degenerate matter is supported by the Pauli exclusion principle, which prevents two fermionic particles from occupying the same quantum state. Unlike regular plasma, degenerate plasma expands little when heated, because there are simply no momentum states left. Consequently, degenerate stars collapse into very high densities. More massive degenerate stars are smaller, because the gravitational force increases, but pressure does not increase proportionally.
+
+Electron-degenerate matter is found inside white dwarf stars. Electrons remain bound to atoms but are able to transfer to adjacent atoms. Neutron-degenerate matter is found in neutron stars. Vast gravitational pressure compresses atoms so strongly that the electrons are forced to combine with protons via inverse beta-decay, resulting in a superdense conglomeration of neutrons. Normally free neutrons outside an atomic nucleus will decay with a half life of just under 15 minutes, but in a neutron star, the decay is overtaken by inverse decay. Cold degenerate matter is also present in planets such as Jupiter and in the even more massive brown dwarfs, which are expected to have a core with metallic hydrogen. Because of the degeneracy, more massive brown dwarfs are not significantly larger. In metals, the electrons can be modeled as a degenerate gas moving in a lattice of non-degenerate positive ions.
+
+In regular cold matter, quarks, fundamental particles of nuclear matter, are confined by the strong force into hadrons that consist of 2–4 quarks, such as protons and neutrons. Quark matter or quantum chromodynanamical (QCD) matter is a group of phases where the strong force is overcome and quarks are deconfined and free to move. Quark matter phases occur at extremely high densities or temperatures, and there are no known ways to produce them in equilibrium in the laboratory; in ordinary conditions, any quark matter formed immediately undergoes radioactive decay.
+
+Strange matter is a type of quark matter that is suspected to exist inside some neutron stars close to the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit (approximately 2–3 solar masses), although there is no direct evidence of its existence. In strange matter, part of the energy available manifests as strange quarks, a heavier analogue of the common down quark. It may be stable at lower energy states once formed, although this is not known.
+
+Quark–gluon plasma is a very high-temperature phase in which quarks become free and able to move independently, rather than being perpetually bound into particles, in a sea of gluons, subatomic particles that transmit the strong force that binds quarks together. This is analogous to the liberation of electrons from atoms in a plasma. This state is briefly attainable in extremely high-energy heavy ion collisions in particle accelerators, and allows scientists to observe the properties of individual quarks, and not just theorize. Quark–gluon plasma was discovered at CERN in 2000. Unlike plasma, which flows like a gas, interactions within QGP are strong and it flows like a liquid.
+
+At high densities but relatively low temperatures, quarks are theorized to form a quark liquid whose nature is presently unknown. It forms a distinct color-flavor locked (CFL) phase at even higher densities. This phase is superconductive for color charge. These phases may occur in neutron stars but they are presently theoretical.
+
+Color-glass condensate is a type of matter theorized to exist in atomic nuclei traveling near the speed of light. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, a high-energy nucleus appears length contracted, or compressed, along its direction of motion. As a result, the gluons inside the nucleus appear to a stationary observer as a "gluonic wall" traveling near the speed of light. At very high energies, the density of the gluons in this wall is seen to increase greatly. Unlike the quark–gluon plasma produced in the collision of such walls, the color-glass condensate describes the walls themselves, and is an intrinsic property of the particles that can only be observed under high-energy conditions such as those at RHIC and possibly at the Large Hadron Collider as well.
+
+Various theories predict new states of matter at very high energies. An unknown state has created the baryon asymmetry in the universe, but little is known about it. In string theory, a Hagedorn temperature is predicted for superstrings at about 1030 K, where superstrings are copiously produced. At Planck temperature (1032 K), gravity becomes a significant force between individual particles. No current theory can describe these states and they cannot be produced with any foreseeable experiment. However, these states are important in cosmology because the universe may have passed through these states in the Big Bang.
+
+The gravitational singularity predicted by general relativity to exist at the center of a black hole is not a phase of matter; it is not a material object at all (although the mass-energy of matter contributed to its creation) but rather a property of spacetime. Because spacetime breaks down there, the singularity should not be thought of as a localized structure, but as a global, topological feature of spacetime.[14] It has been argued that elementary particles are fundamentally not material, either, but are localized properties of spacetime.[15]. In quantum gravity, singularities may in fact mark transitions to a new phase of matter.[16]
+
+A supersolid is a spatially ordered material (that is, a solid or crystal) with superfluid properties. Similar to a superfluid, a supersolid is able to move without friction but retains a rigid shape. Although a supersolid is a solid, it exhibits so many characteristic properties different from other solids that many argue it is another state of matter.[17]
+
+In a string-net liquid, atoms have apparently unstable arrangement, like a liquid, but are still consistent in overall pattern, like a solid. When in a normal solid state, the atoms of matter align themselves in a grid pattern, so that the spin of any electron is the opposite of the spin of all electrons touching it. But in a string-net liquid, atoms are arranged in some pattern that requires some electrons to have neighbors with the same spin. This gives rise to curious properties, as well as supporting some unusual proposals about the fundamental conditions of the universe itself.
+
+A superglass is a phase of matter characterized, at the same time, by superfluidity and a frozen amorphous structure.
+

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+
+
+
+
+The United States of America is a federal republic[1] consisting of 50 states, a federal district (Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States), five major territories, and various minor islands.[2][3] The 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., are in North America between Canada and Mexico, while Alaska is in the far northwestern part of North America and Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. Territories of the United States are scattered throughout the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
+
+States possess a number of powers and rights under the United States Constitution, such as regulating intrastate commerce, running elections, creating local governments, and ratifying constitutional amendments. Each state has its own constitution, grounded in republican principles, and government, consisting of three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial.[4] All states and their residents are represented in the federal Congress, a bicameral legislature consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each state is represented by two senators, while representatives are distributed among the states in proportion to the most recent constitutionally mandated decennial census.[5] Additionally, each state is entitled to select a number of electors to vote in the Electoral College, the body that elects the president of the United States, equal to the total of representatives and senators in Congress from that state.[6] Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 of the Constitution grants to Congress the authority to admit new states into the Union. Since the establishment of the United States in 1776, the number of states has expanded from the original 13 to the current total of 50, and each new state is admitted on an equal footing with the existing states.[7]
+
+As provided by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress exercises "exclusive jurisdiction" over the federal district, which is not part of any state. Prior to passage of the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which devolved certain Congressional powers to an elected mayor and council, the district did not have an elected local government. Even so, Congress retains the right to review and overturn laws created by the council and intervene in local affairs.[8] As it is not a state, the district does not have representation in the Senate. However, since 1971, its residents have been represented in the House of Representatives by a non-voting delegate.[9] Additionally, since 1961, following ratification of the 23rd Amendment, the district has been entitled to select three electors to vote in the Electoral College.
+
+In addition to the 50 states and federal district, the United States has sovereignty over 14 territories. Five of them (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) have a permanent, nonmilitary population, while nine of them do not. With the exception of Navassa Island, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which are located in the Caribbean, all territories are located in the Pacific Ocean. One territory, Palmyra Atoll, is considered to be incorporated, meaning the full body of the Constitution has been applied to it; the other territories are unincorporated, meaning the Constitution does not fully apply to them. Ten territories (the Minor Outlying Islands and American Samoa) are considered to be unorganized, meaning they have not had an Organic Act enacted by Congress; the four other territories are organized, meaning they have had an Organic Act that has been enacted by Congress. The five inhabited territories each have limited autonomy and a non-voting delegate in Congress, in addition to having territorial legislatures and governors, but residents cannot vote in federal elections.
+
+California is the most populous state, with 38,332,521 residents (2013 estimate); Wyoming is the least populous, with an estimated 582,658 residents. The District of Columbia, with an estimated 646,449 residents as of 2012, has a higher population than the two least populous states (Wyoming and Vermont). The largest state by area is Alaska, encompassing 665,384 square miles (1,723,340 km2), while the smallest is Rhode Island, encompassing 1,545 square miles (4,000 km2). The first state to ratify the current Constitution was Delaware, which it did on December 7, 1787, while the newest state is Hawaii, which was admitted to the Union on August 21, 1959. The largest territory in terms of both population and size is Puerto Rico, with 3,725,789 residents as of the 2010 Census and a total area of 5,325 square miles (13,790 km2).
+
+The table below lists the 50 states, with their current capital, largest city,[A] the date they ratified the U.S. Constitution or were admitted to the Union, population and area data, and number of representative(s) in the U.S. House of Representatives.[B]

en/1849.html.txt

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+
+
+
+
+The United States of America is a federal republic[1] consisting of 50 states, a federal district (Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States), five major territories, and various minor islands.[2][3] The 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., are in North America between Canada and Mexico, while Alaska is in the far northwestern part of North America and Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. Territories of the United States are scattered throughout the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
+
+States possess a number of powers and rights under the United States Constitution, such as regulating intrastate commerce, running elections, creating local governments, and ratifying constitutional amendments. Each state has its own constitution, grounded in republican principles, and government, consisting of three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial.[4] All states and their residents are represented in the federal Congress, a bicameral legislature consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each state is represented by two senators, while representatives are distributed among the states in proportion to the most recent constitutionally mandated decennial census.[5] Additionally, each state is entitled to select a number of electors to vote in the Electoral College, the body that elects the president of the United States, equal to the total of representatives and senators in Congress from that state.[6] Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 of the Constitution grants to Congress the authority to admit new states into the Union. Since the establishment of the United States in 1776, the number of states has expanded from the original 13 to the current total of 50, and each new state is admitted on an equal footing with the existing states.[7]
+
+As provided by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress exercises "exclusive jurisdiction" over the federal district, which is not part of any state. Prior to passage of the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which devolved certain Congressional powers to an elected mayor and council, the district did not have an elected local government. Even so, Congress retains the right to review and overturn laws created by the council and intervene in local affairs.[8] As it is not a state, the district does not have representation in the Senate. However, since 1971, its residents have been represented in the House of Representatives by a non-voting delegate.[9] Additionally, since 1961, following ratification of the 23rd Amendment, the district has been entitled to select three electors to vote in the Electoral College.
+
+In addition to the 50 states and federal district, the United States has sovereignty over 14 territories. Five of them (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) have a permanent, nonmilitary population, while nine of them do not. With the exception of Navassa Island, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which are located in the Caribbean, all territories are located in the Pacific Ocean. One territory, Palmyra Atoll, is considered to be incorporated, meaning the full body of the Constitution has been applied to it; the other territories are unincorporated, meaning the Constitution does not fully apply to them. Ten territories (the Minor Outlying Islands and American Samoa) are considered to be unorganized, meaning they have not had an Organic Act enacted by Congress; the four other territories are organized, meaning they have had an Organic Act that has been enacted by Congress. The five inhabited territories each have limited autonomy and a non-voting delegate in Congress, in addition to having territorial legislatures and governors, but residents cannot vote in federal elections.
+
+California is the most populous state, with 38,332,521 residents (2013 estimate); Wyoming is the least populous, with an estimated 582,658 residents. The District of Columbia, with an estimated 646,449 residents as of 2012, has a higher population than the two least populous states (Wyoming and Vermont). The largest state by area is Alaska, encompassing 665,384 square miles (1,723,340 km2), while the smallest is Rhode Island, encompassing 1,545 square miles (4,000 km2). The first state to ratify the current Constitution was Delaware, which it did on December 7, 1787, while the newest state is Hawaii, which was admitted to the Union on August 21, 1959. The largest territory in terms of both population and size is Puerto Rico, with 3,725,789 residents as of the 2010 Census and a total area of 5,325 square miles (13,790 km2).
+
+The table below lists the 50 states, with their current capital, largest city,[A] the date they ratified the U.S. Constitution or were admitted to the Union, population and area data, and number of representative(s) in the U.S. House of Representatives.[B]

en/185.html.txt

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+An ambulance is a medically equipped vehicle which transports patients to treatment facilities, such as hospitals.[1] Typically, out-of-hospital medical care is provided to the patient.
+
+Ambulances are used to respond to medical emergencies by emergency medical services. For this purpose, they are generally equipped with flashing warning lights and sirens. They can rapidly transport paramedics and other first responders to the scene, carry equipment for administering emergency care and transport patients to hospital or other definitive care. Most ambulances use a design based on vans or pick-up trucks. Others take the form of motorcycles, cars, buses, aircraft and boats.
+
+Generally, vehicles count as an ambulance if they can transport patients. However, it varies by jurisdiction as to whether a non-emergency patient transport vehicle (also called an ambulette) is counted as an ambulance. These vehicles are not usually (although there are exceptions) equipped with life-support equipment, and are usually crewed by staff with fewer qualifications than the crew of emergency ambulances. Conversely, EMS agencies may also have emergency response vehicles that cannot transport patients.[2]  These are known by names such as nontransporting EMS vehicles, fly-cars or response vehicles.
+
+The term ambulance comes from the Latin word "ambulare" as meaning "to walk or move about"[3] which is a reference to early medical care where patients were moved by lifting or wheeling. The word originally meant a moving hospital, which follows an army in its movements.[4] Ambulances (Ambulancias in Spanish) were first used for emergency transport in 1487 by the Spanish forces during the siege of Málaga by the Catholic Monarchs against the Emirate of Granada. During the American Civil War vehicles for conveying the wounded off the field of battle were called ambulance wagons.[5] Field hospitals were still called ambulances during the Franco-Prussian War[6] of 1870 and in the Serbo-Turkish war of 1876[7] even though the wagons were first referred to as ambulances about 1854 during the Crimean War.[8]
+
+The history of the ambulance begins in ancient times, with the use of carts to transport incurable patients by force. Ambulances were first used for emergency transport in 1487 by the Spanish, and civilian variants were put into operation during the 1830s.[9] Advances in technology throughout the 19th and 20th centuries led to the modern self-powered ambulances.
+
+Ambulances can be grouped into types depending on whether or not they transport patients, and under what conditions. In some cases, ambulances may fulfill more than one function (such as combining emergency ambulance care with patient transport:
+
+In the US, there are four types of ambulances. There are Type I, Type II, Type III, and Type IV. Type I is based upon a heavy truck chassis with a custom rear compartment that is often referred to as a "box." Type I ambulances are primarily used for Advanced Life Support(ALS), also referred to as Mobile Intensive Care Unit(MICU) in some jurisdictions, and rescue work. A Type II ambulance is based on a commercial heavy-duty van with few modifications except for a raised roof and a secondary air conditioning unit for the rear of the vehicle. These types of ambulances are primarily used for Basic Life Support(BLS) and transfer of patients but it is not uncommon to find them used for advanced life support and rescue. Type III is a van chassis but with a custom-made rear compartment and has the same uses as Type I ambulances. Type IV is for smaller ad hoc patient transfer that use smaller utility vehicles in which passenger vehicles and trucks would have difficulty in traversing, such as large industrial complexes, commercial venues, and special events with large crowds; they generally do not fall under Federal Regulations.[13][14][15]
+
+Ambulances can be based on many types of vehicle although emergency and disaster conditions may lead to other vehicles serving as makeshift ambulances:
+
+Ambulance in Switzerland
+
+New York City Fire Department
+
+Ford Econoline van-body Ambulance in Philippines
+
+Audi A4 Avant fly-car in Germany
+
+An EMT's scooter in Israel
+
+In large, congested cities, paramedics may travel by bicycle, such as this one of the London Ambulance Service
+
+An air ambulance in Austria
+
+An air ambulance in Australia
+
+A water ambulance in the Scilly Isles
+
+Norwegian boat ambulance operating on the coast of Helgeland.
+
+A Russian hospital train
+
+Ambulance bus
+
+Ambulance design must take into account local conditions and infrastructure. Maintained roads are necessary for road-going ambulances to arrive on scene and then transport the patient to a hospital, though in rugged areas four-wheel drive or all-terrain vehicles can be used. Fuel must be available and service facilities are necessary to maintain the vehicle.
+
+Methods of summoning (e.g. telephone) and dispatching ambulances usually rely on electronic equipment, which itself often relies on an intact power grid. Similarly, modern ambulances are equipped with two-way radios[31] or cellular telephones to enable them to contact hospitals, either to notify the appropriate hospital of the ambulance's pending arrival, or, in cases where physicians do not form part of the ambulance's crew, to confer with a physician for medical oversight.[32]
+
+Ambulances often have two manufacturers. The first is frequently a manufacturer of light or medium trucks or full-size vans (or in some places, cars) such as Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota, or Ford.[33] The second manufacturer (known as second stage manufacturer) purchases the vehicle (which is sometimes purchased incomplete, having no body or interior behind the driver's seat) and turns it into an ambulance by adding bodywork, emergency vehicle equipment, and interior fittings. This is done by one of two methods – either coachbuilding, where the modifications are started from scratch and built on to the vehicle, or using a modular system, where a pre-built 'box' is put on to the empty chassis of the ambulance, and then finished off.
+
+Modern ambulances are typically powered by internal combustion engines, which can be powered by any conventional fuel, including diesel, gasoline or liquefied petroleum gas,[34][35] depending on the preference of the operator and the availability of different options. Colder regions often use gasoline-powered engines, as diesels can be difficult to start when they are cold. Warmer regions may favor diesel engines, as they are more efficient and more durable. Diesel power is sometimes chosen due to safety concerns, after a series of fires involving gasoline-powered ambulances during the 1980s. These fires were ultimately attributed in part to gasoline's higher volatility in comparison to diesel fuel.[36][37] The type of engine may be determined by the manufacturer: in the past two decades, Ford[38][39][40] would only sell vehicles for ambulance conversion if they are diesel-powered. Beginning in 2010, Ford will sell its ambulance chassis with a gasoline engine in order to meet emissions requirements.[41]
+
+Many regions have prescribed standards which ambulances should, or must, meet in order to be used for their role. These standards may have different levels which reflect the type of patient which the ambulance is expected to transport (for instance specifying a different standard for routine patient transport than high dependency), or may base standards on the size of vehicle.
+
+For instance, in Europe, the European Committee for Standardization publishes the standard CEN 1789, which specifies minimum compliance levels across the build of ambulance, including crash resistance, equipment levels, and exterior marking. In the United States, standards for ambulance design have existed since 1976, where the standard is published by the General Services Administration and known as KKK-1822-A.[42] This standard has been revised several times, and is currently in version 'F' change #10, known as KKK-A-1822F, although not all states have adopted this version. The National Fire Protection Association has also published a design standard, NFPA 1917, which some administrations are considering switching to if KKK-A-1822F is withdrawn.[43] The Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services (CAAS) has published its Ground Vehicle Standard for Ambulances effective July 2016.  This standard is similar to the KKK-A-1822F and NFPA 1917-2016 specifications.
+
+The move towards standardisation is now reaching countries without a history of prescriptive codes, such as India, which approved its first national standard for ambulance construction in 2013.[44]
+
+Ambulances, like other emergency vehicles, are required[citation needed] to operate in most weather conditions, including those during which civilian drivers often elect to stay off the road. Also, the ambulance crew's responsibilities to their patient often preclude their use of safety devices such as seat belts. Research has shown that ambulances are more likely to be involved in motor vehicle collisions resulting in injury or death than either fire trucks or police cars. Unrestrained occupants, particularly those riding in the patient-care compartment, are particularly vulnerable.[45] When compared to civilian vehicles of similar size, one study found that on a per-accident basis, ambulance collisions tend to involve more people, and result in more injuries.[46] An 11-year retrospective study concluded in 2001 found that although most fatal ambulance crashes in the United States occurred during emergency runs, they typically occurred on improved, straight, dry roads, during clear weather.[47] Furthermore, paramedics are also at risk in ambulances while helping patients, as 27 paramedics died during ambulance trips in the US between 1991 and 2006.[48]
+
+In addition to the equipment directly used for the treatment of patients, ambulances may be fitted with a range of additional equipment which is used in order to facilitate patient care. This could include:
+
+In parts of the world that lack a high level of infrastructure, ambulances are designed to meet local conditions, being built using intermediate technology. Ambulances can also be trailers, which are pulled by bicycles, motorcycles, tractors, or animals. Animal-powered ambulances can be particularly useful in regions that are subject to flooding. Motorcycles fitted with sidecars (or motorcycle ambulances) are also used, though they are subject to some of the same limitations as more traditional over-the-road ambulances. The level of care provided by these ambulances varies between merely providing transport to a medical clinic to providing on-scene and continuing care during transport.[17]
+
+The design of intermediate technology ambulances must take into account not only the operation and maintenance of the ambulance, but its construction as well. The robustness of the design becomes more important, as does the nature of the skills required to properly operate the vehicle. Cost-effectiveness can be a high priority.[18][54]
+
+Emergency ambulances are highly likely to be involved in hazardous situations, including incidents such as a road traffic collision, as these emergencies create people who are likely to be in need of treatment. They are required to gain access to patients as quickly as possible, and in many countries, are given dispensation from obeying certain traffic laws. For instance, they may be able to treat a red traffic light or stop sign as a yield sign ('give way'),[55] or be permitted to break the speed limit.[56] Generally, the priority of the response to the call will be assigned by the dispatcher, but the priority of the return will be decided by the ambulance crew based on the severity of the patient's illness or injury. Patients in significant danger to life and limb (as determined by triage) require urgent treatment by advanced medical personnel,[57] and because of this need, emergency ambulances are often fitted with passive and active visual and/or audible warnings to alert road users.
+
+The passive visual warnings are usually part of the design of the vehicle, and involve the use of high contrast patterns. Older ambulances (and those in developing countries) are more likely to have their pattern painted on, whereas modern ambulances generally carry retro-reflective designs, which reflects light from car headlights or torches. Popular patterns include 'checker board' (alternate coloured squares, sometimes called 'Battenburg', named after a type of cake), chevrons (arrowheads – often pointed towards the front of the vehicle if on the side, or pointing vertically upwards on the rear) or stripes along the side (these were the first type of retro-reflective device introduced, as the original reflective material, invented by 3M, only came in tape form). In addition to retro-reflective markings, some services now have the vehicles painted in a bright (sometimes fluorescent) yellow or orange for maximum visual impact, though classic white or red are also common. Fire department-operated ambulances are often painted red to match the fire apparatuses.
+
+Another passive marking form is the word ambulance (or local language variant) spelled out in reverse on the front of the vehicle. This enables drivers of other vehicles to more easily identify an approaching ambulance in their rear view mirrors. Ambulances may display the name of their owner or operator, and an emergency telephone number for the ambulance service.
+
+Ambulances may also carry an emblem (either as part of the passive warning markings or not), such as a Red Cross, Red Crescent or Red Crystal (collective known as the Protective Symbols). These are symbols laid down by the Geneva Convention, and all countries signatory to it agree to restrict their use to either (1) Military Ambulances or (2) the national Red Cross or Red Crescent society. Use by any other person, organization or agency is in breach of international law. The protective symbols are designed to indicate to all people (especially combatants in the case of war) that the vehicle is neutral and is not to be fired upon, hence giving protection to the medics and their casualties, although this has not always been adhered to [58]. In Israel, Magen David Adom, the Red Cross member organization use a red Star of David, but this does not have recognition beyond Israeli borders, where they must use the Red Crystal.
+
+The Star of Life is widely used, and was originally designed and governed by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,[59] because the Red Cross symbol is legally protected by both National[60] and international[61][62] law.
+
+Ambulance services that have historical origins such as the Order of St John, the Order of Malta Ambulance Corps[63] and Malteser International[64] often use the Maltese cross to identify their ambulances. This is especially important in countries such as Australia, where St. John Ambulance operate one state and one territory ambulance service, and all of Australia's other ambulance services use variations on a red Maltese cross.[65][66][67][68]
+
+Fire service operated ambulances may display the Cross of St. Florian (often incorrectly called a Maltese cross) as this cross is frequently used as a fire department logo (St. Florian being the patron saint of firefighters).[69]
+
+The active visual warnings are usually in the form of flashing lights. These flash in order to attract the attention of other road users as the ambulance approaches, or to provide warning to motorists approaching a stopped ambulance in a dangerous position on the road. Common colours for ambulance warning beacons are blue, red, amber, and white (clear). However the colours may vary by country and sometimes by operator.
+
+There are several technologies in use to achieve the flashing effect. These include flashing a light bulb or LED, flashing or rotating halogen, and strobe lights, which are usually brighter than incandescent lights. Each of these can be programmed to flash singly or in groups, and can be programmed to flash in patterns (such as a left -> right pattern for use when the ambulance is parked on the left hand side of the road, indicating to other road users that they should move to the right (away from the ambulance)). Incandescent and LED lights may also be programmed to burn steadily, without flashing, which is required in some provinces.
+
+Emergency lights may simply be mounted directly on the body, or may be housed in special fittings, such as in a lightbar or in special flush-mount designs (as seen on the Danish ambulance to the right), or may be hidden in a host light (such as a headlamp) by drilling a hole in the host light's reflector and inserting the emergency light. These hidden lights may not be apparent until they are activated. Additionally, some of the standard lights fitted to an ambulance (e.g. headlamps, tail lamps) may be programmed to flash. Flashing headlights (typically the high beams, flashed alternately) are known as a wig-wag. Additional white lights may be placed strategically around the vehicle to illuminate the area around it when it is dark, almost always at the rear for loading and unloading stretchers and often at the sides as well. In areas very far North or South where there are times of year with long periods of darkness, additional driving lights at the front are often fitted as well to increase visibility for the driver.
+
+In order to increase safety, it is best practice to have 360° coverage with the active warnings, improving the chance of the vehicle being seen from all sides. In some countries, such as the United States, this may be mandatory. The roof, front grille, sides and rear of the body, and front fenders are common places to mount emergency lights. A certain balance must be made when deciding on the number and location of lights: too few and the ambulance may not be noticed easily, too many and it becomes a massive distraction for other road users more than it is already, increasing the risk of local accidents.
+
+See also Emergency vehicle equipment.
+
+In addition to visual warnings, ambulances can be fitted with audible warnings, sometimes known as sirens, which can alert people and vehicles to the presence of an ambulance before they can be seen. The first audible warnings were mechanical bells, mounted to either the front or roof of the ambulance. Most modern ambulances are now fitted with electronic sirens, producing a range of different noises which ambulance operators can use to attract more attention to themselves, particularly when proceeding through an intersection or in heavy traffic.[70]f
+
+The speakers for modern sirens can be integral to the lightbar, or they may be hidden in or flush to the grill to reduce noise inside the ambulance that may interfere with patient care and radio communications. Ambulances can additionally be fitted with airhorn audible warnings to augment the effectiveness of the siren system, or may be fitted with extremely loud two-tone air horns as their primary siren.
+
+A recent development is the use of the RDS system of car radios. The ambulance is fitted with a short range FM transmitter, set to RDS code 31, which interrupts the radio of all cars within range, in the manner of a traffic broadcast, but in such a way that the user of the receiving radio is unable to opt-out of the message (as with traffic broadcasts).[71] This feature is built into every RDS radio for use in national emergency broadcast systems, but short-range units on emergency vehicles can prove an effective means of alerting traffic to their presence. It is, however, unlikely that this system could replace audible warnings, as it is unable to alert pedestrians, those not using a compatible radio or even have it turned off.[72]
+
+The cost of an ambulance ride may be paid for from several sources, and this will depend on the local situation type of service being provided, by whom, and to whom.
+
+There are differing levels of qualification that the ambulance crew may hold, from holding no formal qualification to having a fully qualified doctor on board. Most ambulance services require at least two crew members to be on every ambulance (one to drive, and one to attend the patient). It may be the case that only the attendant need be qualified, and the driver might have no medical training. In some locations, an advanced life support ambulance may be crewed by one paramedic and one technician.
+
+Common ambulance crew qualifications are:
+
+Military ambulances have historically included vehicles based on civilian designs and at times also included armored, but unarmed, vehicle ambulances based upon armoured personnel carriers (APCs). In the Second World War vehicles such as the Hanomag Sd Kfz 251 half-track were pressed into service as ad hoc ambulances, and in more recent times purpose-built AFVs such as the U.S. M1133 Medical Evacuation Vehicle serve the exclusive purpose of armored medical vehicles. Civilian based designs may be painted in appropriate colors, depending on the operational requirements (i.e. camouflage for field use, white for United Nations peacekeeping, etc.). For example, the British Royal Army Medical Corps has a fleet of white ambulances, based on production trucks. Military helicopters have also served both as ad hoc and purpose-built air ambulances since they are extremely useful for MEDEVAC.[88] In terms of equipment, military ambulances are barebones, often being nothing more than a box on wheels with racks to place manual stretchers, though for the operational conditions and level of care involved this is usually sufficient.
+
+Since laws of war demand ambulances be marked with one of the Emblems of the Red Cross not to mount offensive weapons, military ambulances are often unarmed.[89] It is a generally accepted practice in most countries to classify the personnel attached to military vehicles marked as ambulances as non-combatants; however, this does not always exempt medical personnel from coming under fire—accidental or deliberate. As a result, medics and other medical personnel attached to military ambulances are usually put through basic military training,[90] on the assumption that they may have to use a weapon. The laws of war do allow non-combatant military personnel to carry individual weapons for protecting themselves and casualties. However, not all militaries exercise this right to their personnel.
+
+Recently, the Israeli Defense Forces has modified a number of its Merkava main battle tanks with ambulance features in order to allow rescue operations to take place under heavy fire in urban warfare.[91] The modifications were made following a failed rescue attempt in which Palestinian gunmen killed two soldiers who were providing aid for a Palestinian woman in Rafah.[92] Since M-113 armored personnel carriers and regular up-armored ambulances are not sufficiently protected against anti-tank weapons and improvised explosive devices,[93] it was decided to use the heavily armored Merkava tank. Its rear door enables the evacuation of critically wounded soldiers. Israel did not remove the Merkava's weaponry, claiming that weapons were more effective protection than emblems since Palestinian militants would disregard any symbols of protection and fire at ambulances anyway.[citation needed] For use as ground ambulances and treatment & evacuation vehicles, the United States military currently employs the M113, the M577, the M1133 Stryker Medical Evacuation Vehicle (MEV), and the RG-33 Heavily Armored Ground Ambulance (HAGA) as treatment and evacuation vehicles, with contracts to incorporate the newly designed M2A0 Armored Medical Evacuation Vehicle (AMEV), a variant of the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle (formerly known as the ATTV).[94][95][96]
+
+Some navies operate ocean-going hospital ships to lend medical assistance in high casualty situations like wars or natural disasters.[97] These hospital ships fulfill the criteria of an ambulance (transporting the sick or injured), although the capabilities of a hospital ship are more on par with a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. In line with the laws of war, these ships can display a prominent Red Cross or Red Crescent to confer protection under the appropriate Geneva Convention. However, this designation has not always protected hospital ships from enemy fire.[98]
+
+Ambulettes provide patient transport service for non-emergency situations. Scheduling is a major factor in their effective use.[99]
+
+When an ambulance is retired, it may be donated or sold to another EMS provider.[100][101] Alternately, it may be adapted into a storage and transport vehicle for crime scene identification equipment, a command post at community events, or support vehicle, such as a logistics unit.[102] Others are refurbished and resold,[103] or may just have their emergency equipment removed to be sold to private businesses or individuals, who then can use them as small recreational vehicles. They may also have a perfectly serviceable body or vehicle (or both) separated from the other and reused.
+
+Toronto City Council has begun a "Caravan of Hope" project to provide retired Toronto ambulances a second life by donating them to the people of El Salvador. Since laws in Ontario require ambulances to be retired after just four and a half years in service, the City of Toronto decommissions and auctions 28 ambulances each year.[104]

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+Washington may also refer to:

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+in Europe (dark grey)  –  [Legend]
+
+Vatican City /ˈvætɪkən/ (listen), officially the Vatican City State (Italian: Stato della Città del Vaticano;[g] Latin: Status Civitatis Vaticanae),[h][i] is the Holy See's independent city-state enclaved within Rome, Italy.[12] Vatican City became independent from Italy with the Lateran Treaty (1929), and it is a distinct territory under "full ownership, exclusive dominion, and sovereign authority and jurisdiction" of the Holy See, itself a sovereign entity of international law, which maintains the city state's temporal, diplomatic, and spiritual independence.[j][13] With an area of 49 hectares (121 acres)[b] and a population of about 805,[c] it is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population.[14]
+
+As governed by the Holy See, the Vatican City is an ecclesiastical or sacerdotal-monarchical state (a type of theocracy) ruled by the pope who is the bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church.[3][15] The highest state functionaries are all Catholic clergy of various national origins. Except the Avignon Papacy (1309–1437), the popes have generally resided at the Apostolic Palace within what is now Vatican City, although at times residing instead in the Quirinal Palace in Rome or elsewhere.
+
+The Holy See dates back to Early Christianity and is the principal episcopal see of the Catholic Church, with approximately 1.313 billion baptised Catholic Christians in the world as of 2017[update] in the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches.[16] The independent Vatican City-state, on the other hand, came into existence on 11 February 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and Italy, which spoke of it as a new creation,[17] not as a vestige of the much larger Papal States (756–1870), which had previously encompassed much of central Italy.
+
+Within the Vatican City are religious and cultural sites such as St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, and the Vatican Museums. They feature some of the world's most famous paintings and sculptures. The unique economy of Vatican City is supported financially by the sale of postage stamps and souvenirs, fees for admission to museums, and sales of publications.
+
+The name Vatican City was first used in the Lateran Treaty, signed on 11 February 1929, which established the modern city-state named after Vatican Hill, the geographic location of the state. "Vatican" is derived from the name of an Etruscan settlement, Vatica or Vaticum located in the general area the Romans called Ager Vaticanus, "Vatican territory".[18]
+
+The official Italian name of the city is Città del Vaticano or, more formally, Stato della Città del Vaticano, meaning "Vatican City State". Although the Holy See (which is distinct from the Vatican City) and the Catholic Church use Ecclesiastical Latin in official documents, the Vatican City uses Italian.[citation needed] The Latin name is Status Civitatis Vaticanae;[19][20] this is used in official documents by the Holy See, the Church and the Pope.
+
+The name "Vatican" was already in use in the time of the Roman Republic for the Ager Vaticanus, a marshy area on the west bank of the Tiber across from the city of Rome, located between the Janiculum, the Vatican Hill and Monte Mario, down to the Aventine Hill and up to the confluence of the Cremera creek.[21]
+
+Because of its vicinity to their arch-fiend, the Etruscan city of Veii (another naming for the Ager Vaticanus was Ripa Veientana or Ripa Etrusca) and for being subjected to the floods of the Tiber, the Romans considered this originally uninhabited part of Rome unsalubrious and ominous.[22]
+
+The particularly low quality of Vatican wine, even after the reclamation of the area, was commented on by the poet Martial (40 – between 102 and 104 AD).[23] Tacitus wrote, that in AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors, when the northern army that brought Vitellius to power arrived in Rome, "a large proportion camped in the unhealthy districts of the Vatican, which resulted in many deaths among the common soldiery; and the Tiber being close by, the inability of the Gauls and Germans to bear the heat and the consequent greed with which they drank from the stream weakened their bodies, which were already an easy prey to disease".[24]
+
+The toponym Ager Vaticanus is attested until the 1st century AD: afterwards, another toponym appeared, Vaticanus, denoting an area much more restricted: the Vatican hill, today's St. Peter's Square, and possibly today's Via della Conciliazione.[21]
+
+Under the Roman Empire, many villas were constructed there, after Agrippina the Elder (14 BC–18 October AD 33) drained the area and laid out her gardens in the early 1st century AD. In AD 40, her son, Emperor Caligula (31 August AD 12–24 January AD 41; r. 37–41) built in her gardens a circus for charioteers (AD 40) that was later completed by Nero, the Circus Gaii et Neronis,[25] usually called, simply, the Circus of Nero.[26]
+
+The Vatican Obelisk was originally taken by Caligula from Heliopolis in Egypt to decorate the spina of his circus and is thus its last visible remnant.[27] This area became the site of martyrdom of many Christians after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64. Ancient tradition holds that it was in this circus that Saint Peter was crucified upside-down.[28]
+
+Opposite the circus was a cemetery separated by the Via Cornelia. Funeral monuments and mausoleums, and small tombs, as well as altars to pagan gods of all kinds of polytheistic religions, were constructed lasting until before the construction of the Constantinian Basilica of St. Peter in the first half of the 4th century. A shrine dedicated to the Phrygian goddess Cybele and her consort Attis remained active long after the ancient Basilica of St. Peter was built nearby.[29]
+Remains of this ancient necropolis were brought to light sporadically during renovations by various popes throughout the centuries, increasing in frequency during the Renaissance until it was systematically excavated by orders of Pope Pius XII from 1939 to 1941. The Constantinian basilica was built in 326 over what was believed to be the tomb of Saint Peter, buried in that cemetery.[30]
+
+From then on, the area became more populated in connection with activity at the basilica. A palace was constructed nearby as early as the 5th century during the pontificate of Pope Symmachus (reigned 498–514).[31]
+
+Popes gradually came to have a secular role as governors of regions near Rome. They ruled the Papal States, which covered a large portion of the Italian peninsula, for more than a thousand years until the mid-19th century, when all the territory belonging to the papacy was seized by the newly created Kingdom of Italy.
+
+For most of this time the popes did not live at the Vatican. The Lateran Palace, on the opposite side of Rome, was their habitual residence for about a thousand years. From 1309 to 1377, they lived at Avignon in France. On their return to Rome they chose to live at the Vatican. They moved to the Quirinal Palace in 1583, after work on it was completed under Pope Paul V (1605–1621), but on the capture of Rome in 1870 retired to the Vatican, and what had been their residence became that of the King of Italy.
+
+In 1870, the Pope's holdings were left in an uncertain situation when Rome itself was annexed by the Piedmont-led forces which had united the rest of Italy, after a nominal resistance by the papal forces. Between 1861 and 1929 the status of the Pope was referred to as the "Roman Question".
+
+Italy made no attempt to interfere with the Holy See within the Vatican walls. However, it confiscated church property in many places. In 1871, the Quirinal Palace was confiscated by the King of Italy and became the royal palace. Thereafter, the popes resided undisturbed within the Vatican walls, and certain papal prerogatives were recognized by the Law of Guarantees, including the right to send and receive ambassadors. But the Popes did not recognise the Italian king's right to rule in Rome, and they refused to leave the Vatican compound until the dispute was resolved in 1929; Pope Pius IX (1846–1878), the last ruler of the Papal States, was referred to as a "prisoner in the Vatican". Forced to give up secular power, the popes focused on spiritual issues.[32]
+
+This situation was resolved on 11 February 1929, when the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy was signed by Prime Minister and Head of Government Benito Mussolini on behalf of King Victor Emmanuel III and by Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri for Pope Pius XI.[17][13][33] The treaty, which became effective on 7 June 1929, established the independent state of Vatican City and reaffirmed the special status of Catholic Christianity in Italy.[34]
+
+The Holy See, which ruled Vatican City, pursued a policy of neutrality during World War II, under the leadership of Pope Pius XII. Although German troops occupied the city of Rome after the September 1943 Armistice of Cassibile, and the Allies from 1944, they respected Vatican City as neutral territory.[35] One of the main diplomatic priorities of the bishop of Rome was to prevent the bombing of the city; so sensitive was the pontiff that he protested even the British air dropping of pamphlets over Rome, claiming that the few landing within the city-state violated the Vatican's neutrality.[36] The British policy, as expressed in the minutes of a Cabinet meeting, was: "that we should on no account molest the Vatican City, but that our action as regards the rest of Rome would depend upon how far the Italian government observed the rules of war".[36]
+
+After the US entered into the war, the US opposed such a bombing, fearful of offending Catholic members of its military forces, but said that "they could not stop the British from bombing Rome if the British so decided". The US military even exempted Catholic pilots and crew from air raids on Rome and other Church holdings, unless voluntarily agreed upon. Notably, with the exception of Rome, and presumably the possibility of the Vatican, no Catholic US pilot or air crew refused a mission within German-held Italy. The British uncompromisingly said "they would bomb Rome whenever the needs of the war demanded".[37] In December 1942, the UK's envoy suggested to the Holy See that Rome be declared an "open city", a suggestion that the Holy See took more seriously than was probably meant by the UK, who did not want Rome to be an open city, but Mussolini rejected the suggestion when the Holy See put it to him. In connection with the Allied invasion of Sicily, 500 US aircraft bombed Rome on 19 July 1943, aiming particularly at the railway hub. Some 1,500 people were killed; Pius XII himself, who had been described in the previous month as "worried sick" about the possible bombing, viewed the aftermath. Another raid took place on 13 August 1943, after Mussolini had been ousted from power.[38] On the following day, the new government declared Rome an open city, after consulting the Holy See on the wording of the declaration, but the UK had decided that they would never recognize Rome as an open city.[39]
+
+Pius XII had refrained from creating cardinals during the war. By the end of World War II, there were several prominent vacancies: Cardinal Secretary of State, Camerlengo, Chancellor, and Prefect for the Congregation for the Religious among them.[40] Pius XII created 32 cardinals in early 1946, having announced his intentions to do so in his preceding Christmas message.
+
+The Pontifical Military Corps, except for the Swiss Guard, was disbanded by will of Paul VI, as expressed in a letter of 14 September 1970.[41] The Gendarmerie Corps was transformed into a civilian police and security force.
+
+In 1984, a new concordat between the Holy See and Italy modified certain provisions of the earlier treaty, including the position of Catholic Christianity as the Italian state religion, a position given to it by a statute of the Kingdom of Sardinia of 1848.[34]
+
+Construction in 1995 of a new guest house, Domus Sanctae Marthae, adjacent to St Peter's Basilica was criticized by Italian environmental groups, backed by Italian politicians. They claimed the new building would block views of the Basilica from nearby Italian apartments.[42] For a short while the plans strained the relations between the Vatican and the Italian government. The head of the Vatican's Department of Technical Services robustly rejected challenges to the Vatican State's right to build within its borders.[42]
+
+The name "Vatican" was already in use in the time of the Roman Republic for the Ager Vaticanus, a marshy area on the west bank of the Tiber across from the city of Rome, located between the Janiculum, the Vatican Hill and Monte Mario, down to the Aventine Hill and up to the confluence of the Cremera creek.[21] The territory of Vatican City is part of the Vatican Hill, and of the adjacent former Vatican Fields. It is in this territory that St. Peter's Basilica, the Apostolic Palace, the Sistine Chapel, and museums were built, along with various other buildings. The area was part of the Roman rione of Borgo until 1929. Being separated from the city, on the west bank of the river Tiber, the area was an outcrop of the city that was protected by being included within the walls of Leo IV (847–855), and later expanded by the current fortification walls, built under Paul III (1534–1549), Pius IV (1559–1565), and Urban VIII (1623–1644).
+
+When the Lateran Treaty of 1929 that gave the state its form was being prepared, the boundaries of the proposed territory were influenced by the fact that much of it was all but enclosed by this loop. For some tracts of the frontier, there was no wall, but the line of certain buildings supplied part of the boundary, and for a small part of the frontier a modern wall was constructed.
+
+The territory includes St. Peter's Square, distinguished from the territory of Italy only by a white line along the limit of the square, where it touches Piazza Pio XII. St. Peter's Square is reached through the Via della Conciliazione which runs from close to the Tiber to St. Peter's. This grand approach was constructed by Benito Mussolini after the conclusion of the Lateran Treaty.
+
+According to the Lateran Treaty, certain properties of the Holy See that are located in Italian territory, most notably the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo and the major basilicas, enjoy extraterritorial status similar to that of foreign embassies.[43][44] These properties, scattered all over Rome and Italy, house essential offices and institutions necessary to the character and mission of the Holy See.[44]
+
+Castel Gandolfo and the named basilicas are patrolled internally by police agents of Vatican City State and not by Italian police. According to the Lateran Treaty (Art. 3) St. Peter's Square, up to but not including the steps leading to the basilica, is normally patrolled by the Italian police.[43]
+
+There are no passport controls for visitors entering Vatican City from the surrounding Italian territory. There is free public access to Saint Peter's Square and Basilica and, on the occasion of papal general audiences, to the hall in which they are held. For these audiences and for major ceremonies in Saint Peter's Basilica and Square, tickets free of charge must be obtained beforehand. The Vatican Museums, incorporating the Sistine Chapel, usually charge an entrance fee. There is no general public access to the gardens, but guided tours for small groups can be arranged to the gardens and excavations under the basilica. Other places are open to only those individuals who have business to transact there.
+
+Vatican City's climate is the same as Rome's: a temperate, Mediterranean climate Csa with mild, rainy winters from October to mid-May and hot, dry summers from May to September. Some minor local features, principally mists and dews, are caused by the anomalous bulk of St Peter's Basilica, the elevation, the fountains, and the size of the large paved square.
+
+In July 2007, the Vatican accepted a proposal by two firms based respectively in San Francisco and Budapest,[47] whereby it would become the first carbon neutral state by offsetting its carbon dioxide emissions with the creation of a Vatican Climate Forest in Hungary,[48] as a purely symbolic gesture[49] to encourage Catholics to do more to safeguard the planet.[50] Nothing came of the project.[51][52]
+
+On 26 November 2008, the Vatican itself put into effect a plan announced in May 2007 to cover the roof of the Paul VI Audience Hall with solar panels.[53][54]
+
+Within the territory of Vatican City are the Vatican Gardens (Italian: Giardini Vaticani),[55] which account for about half of this territory. The gardens, established during the Renaissance and Baroque era, are decorated with fountains and sculptures.
+
+The gardens cover approximately 23 hectares (57 acres). The highest point is 60 metres (197 ft) above mean sea level. Stone walls bound the area in the north, south and west.
+
+The gardens date back to medieval times when orchards and vineyards extended to the north of the Papal Apostolic Palace.[56] In 1279, Pope Nicholas III (Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, 1277–1280) moved his residence back to the Vatican from the Lateran Palace and enclosed this area with walls.[57] He planted an orchard (pomerium), a lawn (pratellum), and a garden (viridarium).[57]
+
+The politics of Vatican City takes place in an absolute elective monarchy, in which the head of the Catholic Church takes power. The pope exercises principal legislative, executive, and judicial power over the State of Vatican City (an entity distinct from the Holy See), which is a rare case of a non-hereditary monarchy.[58]
+
+Vatican City is one of the few widely recognized independent states that has not become a member of the United Nations.[59] The Holy See, which is distinct from Vatican City State, has permanent observer status with all the rights of a full member except for a vote in the UN General Assembly.
+
+The government of Vatican City has a unique structure. The pope is the sovereign of the state. Legislative authority is vested in the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, a body of cardinals appointed by the pope for five-year periods. Executive power is in the hands of the president of that commission, assisted by the general secretary and deputy general secretary. The state's foreign relations are entrusted to the Holy See's Secretariat of State and diplomatic service. Nevertheless, the pope has absolute power in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches over Vatican City. He is the only absolute monarch in Europe.
+
+There are departments that deal with health, security, telecommunications, etc.[60]
+
+The Cardinal Camerlengo presides over the Apostolic Camera to which is entrusted the administration of the property and protection of other papal temporal powers and rights of the Holy See during the period of the empty throne or sede vacante (papal vacancy). Those of the Vatican State remain under the control of the Pontifical Commission for the State of Vatican City. Acting with three other cardinals chosen by lot every three days, one from each order of cardinals (cardinal bishop, cardinal priest, and cardinal deacon), he in a sense performs during that period the functions of head of state of Vatican City.[citation needed] All the decisions these four cardinals take must be approved by the College of Cardinals as a whole.
+
+The nobility that was closely associated with the Holy See at the time of the Papal States continued to be associated with the Papal Court after the loss of these territories, generally with merely nominal duties (see Papal Master of the Horse, Prefecture of the Pontifical Household, Hereditary officers of the Roman Curia, Black Nobility). They also formed the ceremonial Noble Guard. In the first decades of the existence of the Vatican City State, executive functions were entrusted to some of them, including that of delegate for the State of Vatican City (now denominated president of the Commission for Vatican City). But with the motu proprio Pontificalis Domus of 28 March 1968,[61] Pope Paul VI abolished the honorary positions that had continued to exist until then, such as Quartermaster general and Master of the Horse.[62]
+
+Vatican City State, created in 1929 by the Lateran Pacts, provides the Holy See with a temporal jurisdiction and independence within a small territory. It is distinct from the Holy See. The state can thus be deemed a significant but not essential instrument of the Holy See. The Holy See itself has existed continuously as a juridical entity since Roman Imperial times and has been internationally recognized as a powerful and independent sovereign entity since Late Antiquity to the present, without interruption even at times when it was deprived of territory (e.g. 1870 to 1929). The Holy See has the oldest active continuous diplomatic service in the world, dating back to at least AD 325 with its legation to the Council of Nicea.[63]
+
+The Pope is ex officio head of state[64] of Vatican City since the 1860s, functions dependent on his primordial function as bishop of the diocese of Rome. The term "Holy See" refers not to the Vatican state but to the Pope's spiritual and pastoral governance, largely exercised through the Roman Curia.[65] His official title with regard to Vatican City is Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City.
+
+Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was elected on 13 March 2013. His principal subordinate government official for Vatican City as well as the country's head of government is the President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, who since 1952 exercises the functions previously belonging to the Governor of Vatican City. Since 2001, the president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State also has the title of president of the Governorate of the State of Vatican City. The president is Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, who was appointed on 1 October 2011.
+
+Legislative functions are delegated to the unicameral Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, led by the President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State. Its seven members are cardinals appointed by the Pope for terms of five years. Acts of the commission must be approved by the Pope, through the Holy See's Secretariat of State, and before taking effect must be published in a special appendix of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. Most of the content of this appendix consists of routine executive decrees, such as approval for a new set of postage stamps.
+
+Executive authority is delegated to the Governorate of Vatican City. The Governorate consists of the President of the Pontifical Commission—using the title "President of the Governorate of Vatican City"—a general secretary, and a Vice general secretary, each appointed by the Pope for five-year terms. Important actions of the Governorate must be confirmed by the Pontifical Commission and by the Pope through the Secretariat of State.
+
+The Governorate oversees the central governmental functions through several departments and offices. The directors and officials of these offices are appointed by the Pope for five-year terms. These organs concentrate on material questions concerning the state's territory, including local security, records, transportation, and finances. The Governorate oversees a modern security and police corps, the Corpo della Gendarmeria dello Stato della Città del Vaticano.
+
+Judicial functions are delegated to a supreme court, an appellate court, a tribunal (Tribunal of Vatican City State), and a trial judge. At the Vatican's request, sentences imposed can be served in Italy (see the section on crime, below).
+
+The international postal country code prefix is SCV, and the only postal code is 00120 – altogether SCV-00120.[66]
+
+As the Vatican City is an enclave within Italy, its military defence is provided by the Italian Armed Forces. However, there is no formal defence treaty with Italy, as the Vatican City is a neutral state. Vatican City has no armed forces of its own, although the Swiss Guard is a military corps of the Holy See responsible for the personal security of the Pope, and residents in the state. Soldiers of the Swiss Guard are entitled to hold Vatican City State passports and nationality. Swiss mercenaries were historically recruited by Popes as part of an army for the Papal States, and the Pontifical Swiss Guard was founded by Pope Julius II on 22 January 1506 as the pope's personal bodyguard and continues to fulfill that function. It is listed in the Annuario Pontificio under "Holy See", not under "State of Vatican City". At the end of 2005, the Guard had 134 members. Recruitment is arranged by a special agreement between the Holy See and Switzerland. All recruits must be Catholic, unmarried males with Swiss citizenship who have completed their basic training with the Swiss Armed Forces with certificates of good conduct, be between the ages of 19 and 30, and be at least 174 cm (5 ft 9 in) in height. Members are equipped with small arms and the traditional halberd (also called the Swiss voulge), and trained in bodyguarding tactics. The Palatine Guard and the Noble Guard, the last armed forces of the Vatican City State, were disbanded by Pope Paul VI in 1970.[41] As Vatican City has listed every building in its territory on the International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection, the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict theoretically renders it immune to armed attack.[67]
+
+Civil defence is the responsibility of the Corps of Firefighters of the Vatican City State, the national fire brigade. Dating its origins to the early nineteenth century, the Corps in its present form was established in 1941. It is responsible for fire fighting, as well as a range of civil defence scenarios including flood, natural disaster, and mass casualty management. The Corps is governmentally supervised through the Directorate for Security Services and Civil Defence, which is also responsible for the Gendarmerie (see below).
+
+The Gendarmerie Corps (Corpo della Gendarmeria) is the gendarmerie, or police and security force, of Vatican City and the extraterritorial properties of the Holy See.[68] The corps is responsible for security, public order, border control, traffic control, criminal investigation, and other general police duties in Vatican City including providing security for the Pope outside of Vatican City. The corps has 130 personnel and is a part of the Directorate for Security Services and Civil Defence (which also includes the Vatican Fire Brigade), an organ of the Governorate of Vatican City.[69][70]
+
+Vatican City State is a recognized national territory under international law, but it is the Holy See that conducts diplomatic relations on its behalf, in addition to the Holy See's own diplomacy, entering into international agreements in its regard. Vatican City thus has no diplomatic service of its own.
+
+Because of space limitations, Vatican City is one of the few countries in the world that is unable to host embassies. Foreign embassies to the Holy See are located in the city of Rome; only during the Second World War were the staff of some embassies accredited to the Holy See given what hospitality was possible within the narrow confines of Vatican City—embassies such as that of the United Kingdom while Rome was held by the Axis Powers and Germany's when the Allies controlled Rome.
+
+The size of Vatican City is thus unrelated to the large global reach exercised by the Holy See as an entity quite distinct from the state.[71]
+
+However, Vatican City State itself participates in some international organizations whose functions relate to the state as a geographical entity, distinct from the non-territorial legal persona of the Holy See. These organizations are much less numerous than those in which the Holy See participates either as a member or with observer status. They include the following eight, in each of which Vatican City State holds membership:[72][73]
+
+It also participates in:[72]
+
+The Vatican City State is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In Europe only Belarus is also a non-party, non-signatory state.
+
+Further, the Vatican City State is not a member of the European Court of Human Rights. Again, only Belarus is also not a member in Europe.
+
+The OECD's "Common Reporting Standard" (CRS) aiming at preventing tax evasion and money laundering has also not been signed.[75][76][77] The Vatican City State has been criticized for its money laundering practises in the past decades.[78][79][80] The only other country in Europe that has not agreed to sign the CRS is Belarus.
+
+The Vatican City State is also one of few countries in the world that does not provide any publicly available financial data to the IMF.[81]
+
+The Vatican City State budget includes the Vatican Museums and post office and is supported financially by the sale of stamps, coins, medals and tourist mementos; by fees for admission to museums; and by publications sales.[k] The incomes and living standards of lay workers are comparable to those of counterparts who work in the city of Rome.[82] Other industries include printing, the production of mosaics, and the manufacture of staff uniforms. There is a Vatican Pharmacy.
+
+The Institute for Works of Religion (IOR, Istituto per le Opere di Religione), also known as the Vatican Bank, is a financial agency situated in the Vatican that conducts worldwide financial activities. It has multilingual ATMs with instructions in Latin, possibly the only ATM in the world with this feature.[83]
+
+Vatican City issues its own coins and stamps. It has used the euro as its currency since 1 January 1999, owing to a special agreement with the European Union (council decision 1999/98). Euro coins and notes were introduced on 1 January 2002—the Vatican does not issue euro banknotes. Issuance of euro-denominated coins is strictly limited by treaty, though somewhat more than usual is allowed in a year in which there is a change in the papacy.[84] Because of their rarity, Vatican euro coins are highly sought by collectors.[85] Until the adoption of the Euro, Vatican coinage and stamps were denominated in their own Vatican lira currency, which was on par with the Italian lira.
+
+Vatican City State, which employs nearly 2,000 people, had a surplus of 6.7 million euros in 2007 but ran a deficit in 2008 of over 15 million euros.[86]
+
+In 2012, the US Department of State's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report listed Vatican City for the first time among the nations of concern for money-laundering, placing it in the middle category, which includes countries such as Ireland, but not among the most vulnerable countries, which include the United States itself, Germany, Italy, and Russia.[87]
+
+On 24 February 2014 the Vatican announced it was establishing a secretariat for the economy, to be responsible for all economic, financial and administrative activities of the Holy See and the Vatican City State, headed by Cardinal George Pell. This followed the charging of two senior clerics including a monsignor with money laundering offences. Pope Francis also appointed an auditor-general authorized to carry out random audits of any agency at any time, and engaged a US financial services company to review the Vatican's 19,000 accounts to ensure compliance with international money laundering practices. The pontiff also ordered that the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See would be the Vatican's central bank, with responsibilities similar to other central banks around the world.[88]
+
+As of 2019, Vatican City had a total population of 825, including 453 residents (regardless of citizenship) and 372 Vatican citizens residing elsewhere (diplomats of the Holy See to other countries and cardinals residing in Rome).[9][89] The population is composed of clergy, other religious members, and lay people serving the state (such as the Swiss Guard) and their family members.[90] All citizens, residents and places of worship in the city are Catholic. The city also receives thousands of tourists and workers every day.
+
+Vatican City has no formally enacted official language, but, unlike the Holy See which most often uses Latin for the authoritative version of its official documents, Vatican City uses only Italian in its legislation and official communications.[91] Italian is also the everyday language used by most of those who work in the state. In the Swiss Guard, Swiss German is the language used for giving commands, but the individual guards take their oath of loyalty in their own languages: German, French, Italian or Romansh. The official websites of the Holy See[92] and of Vatican City[93] are primarily in Italian, with versions of their pages in a large number of languages to varying extents.
+
+Unlike citizenship of other states, which is based either on jus sanguinis (birth from a citizen, even outside the state's territory) or on jus soli (birth within the territory of the state), citizenship of Vatican City is granted jus officii, namely on the grounds of appointment to work in a certain capacity in the service of the Holy See. It usually ceases upon cessation of the appointment. Citizenship is also extended to the spouse and children of a citizen, provided they are living together in the city.[89] Some individuals are also authorized to reside in the city but do not qualify or choose not to request citizenship.[89] Anyone who loses Vatican citizenship and does not possess other citizenship automatically becomes an Italian citizen as provided in the Lateran Treaty.[43]
+
+The Holy See, not being a country, issues only diplomatic and service passports, whereas Vatican City issues normal passports for its citizens.
+
+In statistics comparing countries in various per capita or per area metrics, the Vatican City is often an outlier—these can stem from the state's small size and ecclesiastical function.[94] For example, as most of the roles which would confer citizenship are reserved for men, the gender ratio of the citizenship is several men per woman.[95] Further oddities are petty crimes against tourists resulting in a very high per-capita crime rate,[96] and the city-state leading the world in per-capita wine consumption.[94] A jocular illustration of these anomalies is sometimes made by calculating a "Popes per km2" statistic, which is greater than two because the country is less than half a square kilometre in area.[97]
+
+Vatican City is home to some of the most famous art in the world. St. Peter's Basilica, whose successive architects include Bramante, Michelangelo, Giacomo della Porta, Maderno and Bernini, is a renowned work of Renaissance architecture. The Sistine Chapel is famous for its frescos, which include works by Perugino, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Botticelli as well as the ceiling and Last Judgment by Michelangelo. Artists who decorated the interiors of the Vatican include Raphael and Fra Angelico.
+
+The Vatican Apostolic Library and the collections of the Vatican Museums are of the highest historical, scientific and cultural importance. In 1984, the Vatican was added by UNESCO to the List of World Heritage Sites; it is the only one to consist of an entire state.[98] Furthermore, it is the only site to date registered with the UNESCO as a centre containing monuments in the "International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection" according to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.[98]
+
+Michelangelo's Pietà, in the Basilica, is one of the Vatican's best known artworks
+
+Michelangelo's frescos on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, "an artistic vision without precedent"[99]
+
+The elaborately decorated Sistine Hall in the Vatican Library
+
+Main courtyard of the Vatican Museums
+
+There is a football championship, called the Vatican City Championship, with eight teams, including, for example, the Swiss Guard's FC Guardia and police and museum guard teams.[100]
+
+Vatican City has a reasonably well-developed transport network considering its size (consisting mostly of a piazza and walkways). As a state that is 1.05 kilometres (0.65 miles) long and 0.85 kilometres (0.53 miles) wide,[101] it has a small transportation system with no airports or highways. The only aviation facility in Vatican City is the Vatican City Heliport. Vatican City is one of the few independent countries without an airport, and is served by the airports that serve the city of Rome, Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport and to a lesser extent Ciampino Airport.[102]
+
+There is a standard gauge railway, mainly used to transport freight, connected to Italy's network at Rome's Saint Peter's station by an 852-metre-long (932 yd) spur, 300 metres (330 yd) of which is within Vatican territory.[102] Pope John XXIII was the first Pope to make use of the railway; Pope John Paul II rarely used it.[102]
+
+The closest metro station is Ottaviano – San Pietro – Musei Vaticani.[103]
+
+The City is served by an independent, modern telephone system named the Vatican Telephone Service,[104] and a postal system (Poste Vaticane) that started operating on 13 February 1929. On 1 August, the state started to release its own postal stamps, under the authority of the Philatelic and Numismatic Office of the Vatican City State.[105] The City's postal service is sometimes said to be "the best in the world",[106] and faster than the postal service in Rome.[106]
+
+The Vatican also controls its own Internet top-level domain, which is registered as (.va). Broadband service is widely provided within Vatican City. Vatican City has also been given a radio ITU prefix, HV, and this is sometimes used by amateur radio operators.
+
+Vatican Radio, which was organized by Guglielmo Marconi, broadcasts on short-wave, medium-wave and FM frequencies and on the Internet.[107] Its main transmission antennae are located in Italian territory, and exceed Italian environmental protection levels of emission. For this reason, the Vatican Radio has been sued. Television services are provided through another entity, the Vatican Television Center.[108]
+
+L'Osservatore Romano is the multilingual semi-official newspaper of the Holy See. It is published by a private corporation under the direction of Catholic laymen, but reports on official information. However, the official texts of documents are in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official gazette of the Holy See, which has an appendix for documents of the Vatican City State.
+
+Vatican Radio, the Vatican Television Center, and L'Osservatore Romano are organs not of the Vatican State but of the Holy See, and are listed as such in the Annuario Pontificio, which places them in the section "Institutions linked with the Holy See", ahead of the sections on the Holy See's diplomatic service abroad and the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, after which is placed the section on the State of Vatican City.
+
+In 2008, the Vatican began an "ecological island" for renewable waste and has continued the initiative throughout the papacy of Francis. These innovations included, for example, the installation of a solar power system on the roof of the Paul VI Audience Hall. In July 2019, it was announced that Vatican City would ban the use and sale of single-use plastics as soon as its supply was depleted, well before the 2021 deadline established by the European Union. It is estimated that 50–55% of Vatican City's municipal solid waste is properly sorted and recycled, with the goal of reaching the EU standard of 70–75%[109]
+
+Crime in Vatican City consists largely of purse snatching, pickpocketing and shoplifting by outsiders.[110] The tourist foot-traffic in St. Peter's Square is one of the main locations for pickpockets in Vatican City.[111] If crimes are committed in Saint Peter's Square, the perpetrators may be arrested and tried by the Italian authorities, since that area is normally patrolled by Italian police.[112]
+
+Under the terms of article 22 of the Lateran Treaty,[113] Italy will, at the request of the Holy See, punish individuals for crimes committed within Vatican City and will itself proceed against the person who committed the offence, if that person takes refuge in Italian territory. Persons accused of crimes recognized as such both in Italy and in Vatican City that are committed in Italian territory will be handed over to the Italian authorities if they take refuge in Vatican City or in buildings that enjoy immunity under the treaty.[113][114]
+
+Vatican City has no prison system, apart from a few detention cells for pre-trial detention.[115] People convicted of committing crimes in the Vatican serve terms in Italian prisons (Polizia Penitenziaria), with costs covered by the Vatican.[116]

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+
+A federation (also known as a federal state) is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government (federalism). In a federation, the self-governing status of the component states, as well as the division of power between them and the central government, is typically constitutionally entrenched and may not be altered by a unilateral decision of either party, the states or the federal political body. Alternatively, a federation is a form of government in which sovereign power is formally divided between a central authority and a number of constituent regions so that each region retains some degree of control over its internal affairs.
+
+It is often argued that federal states where the central government has overriding powers, are not truly federal states. For example, such overriding powers may include: the constitutional authority to suspend a constituent state's government by invoking gross mismanagement or civil unrest, or to adopt national legislation that overrides or infringe on the constituent states' powers by invoking the central government's constitutional authority to ensure "peace and good government" or to implement obligations contracted under an international treaty.
+
+The governmental or constitutional structure found in a federation is considered to be federalist, or to be an example of federalism. It can be considered the opposite of another system, the unitary state. France, for example, has been unitary for multiple centuries. Austria and its Bundesländer was a unitary state with administrative divisions that became federated through the implementation of the Austrian Constitution following the 1918 collapse of Austria-Hungary. Germany, with its 16 states, or Bundesländer, is an example of a federation. Federations are often multi-ethnic and cover a large area of territory (such as Russia, the United States, Canada, India, or Brazil), but neither is necessarily the case (such as Saint Kitts and Nevis or the Federated States of Micronesia).
+
+Several ancient chiefdoms and kingdoms, such as the 4th-century BCE League of Corinth, Noricum in Central Europe, and the Iroquois Confederacy in pre-Columbian North America, could be described as federations or confederations. The Old Swiss Confederacy was an early example of formal non-unitary statehood.
+
+Several colonies and dominions in the New World consisted of autonomous provinces, transformed to federal states upon independence such as the United States, and various countries in Latin America (see Spanish American wars of independence). Some of the New World federations failed; the Federal Republic of Central America broke up into independent states less than 20 years after its founding. Others, such as Argentina and Mexico, have shifted between federal, confederal, and unitary systems, before settling into federalism. Brazil became a federation only after the fall of the monarchy, and Venezuela became a federation after the Federal War. Australia and Canada are also federations.
+
+Germany is another nation-state that has switched between confederal, federal and unitary rules, since the German Confederation was founded in 1815. The North German Confederation, the succeeding German Empire and the Weimar Republic were federations.
+
+Founded in 1922, the Soviet Union was formally a federation of Soviet republics, autonomous republics and other federal subjects, though in practice highly centralized under the government of the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation has inherited a similar system.
+
+Nigeria, Pakistan, India and Malaysia (then Federation of Malaya) became federations on or shortly before becoming independent from the British Empire.
+
+In some recent cases, federations have been instituted as a measure to handle ethnic conflict within a state, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iraq since 2005.
+
+With the United States Constitution having become effective on 4 March 1789, the United States is the oldest surviving federation. On the other end of the timeline is Nepal, which became the newest federation after its constitution went into effect on 20 September 2015.
+
+The component states are in some sense sovereign, insofar as certain powers are reserved to them that may not be exercised by the central government. However, a federation is more than a mere loose alliance of independent states. The component states of a federation usually possess no powers in relation to foreign policy and so enjoy no independent status under international law. However, German Länder have that power,[1] which is beginning to be exercised on a European level.
+
+Some federations are called asymmetric because some states have more autonomy than others. An example of such a federation is Malaysia, in which Sarawak and Sabah agreed to form the federation on different terms and conditions from the states of Peninsular Malaysia.
+
+A federation often emerges from an initial agreement between a number of separate states. The purpose can be the will to solve mutual problems and to provide for mutual defense or to create a nation-state for an ethnicity spread over several states. The former was the case with the United States and Switzerland. However, as the histories of countries and nations vary, the federalist system of a state can be quite different from these models. Australia, for instance, is unique in that it came into existence as a nation by the democratic vote of the citizens of each state, who voted "yes" in referendums to adopt the Australian Constitution. Brazil, on the other hand, has experienced both the federal and the unitary state during its history. Some present day states of the Brazilian federation retain borders set during the Portuguese colonization (before the very existence of the Brazilian state), whereas the latest state, Tocantins, was created by the 1988 Constitution for chiefly administrative reasons.
+
+Seven of the top eight largest countries by area are governed as federations.
+
+A unitary state is sometimes one with only a single, centralized, national tier of government. However, unitary states often also include one or more self-governing regions. The difference between a federation and this kind of unitary state is that in a unitary state the autonomous status of self-governing regions exists by the sufferance of the central government, and may be unilaterally revoked. While it is common for a federation to be brought into being by agreement between a number of formally independent states, in a unitary state self-governing regions are often created through a process of devolution, where a formerly centralized state agrees to grant autonomy to a region that was previously entirely subordinate. Thus federations are often established voluntarily from "below" whereas devolution grants self-government from "above".
+
+It is often part of the philosophy of a unitary state that, regardless of the actual status of any of its parts, its entire territory constitutes a single sovereign entity or nation-state,[citation needed] and that by virtue of this the central government exercises sovereignty over the whole territory as of right. In a federation, on the other hand, sovereignty is often regarded as residing notionally in the component states, or as being shared between these states and the central government.[citation needed]
+
+A confederation, in modern political terms, is usually limited to a permanent union of sovereign states for common action in relation to other states.[2] The closest entity in the world to a confederation at this time is the European Union. While the word "confederation" was officially used when the Canadian federal system was established in 1867, the term refers only to the process and not the resulting state since Canadian provinces are not sovereign and do not claim to be. In the case of Switzerland, while the country is still known as the Swiss Confederation (Confoederatio Helvetica, Confédération Suisse) this is now a misnomer since the Swiss cantons lost their sovereign status in 1848.[3]
+
+In Belgium, however, the opposite movement is underway.[4] Belgium was founded as a centralized state, after the French model, but has gradually been reformed into a federal state by consecutive constitutional reforms since the 1970s. Moreover, although nominally called a federal state, the country's structure already has a number of confederational traits. At present, there is a growing movement to transform the existing federal state into a looser confederation with two or three constitutive states and/or two special regions.[5]
+
+A confederation is most likely to feature three differences when contrasted with a federation: (1) No real direct powers: many confederal decisions are externalized by member-state legislation; (2) Decisions on day-to-day-matters are not taken by simple majority but by special majorities or even by consensus or unanimity (veto for every member); (3) Changes of the constitution, usually a treaty, require unanimity.
+
+Over time these terms acquired distinct connotations leading to the present difference in definition. An example of this is the United States under the Articles of Confederation. The Articles established a national government under what today would be defined as a federal system (albeit with a comparatively weaker federal government). However, Canadians, designed with a stronger central government than the U.S. in the wake of the Civil War of the latter, use the term "Confederation" to refer to the formation or joining, not the structure, of Canada. Legal reforms, court rulings, and political compromises have decentralized Canada in practice since its formation in 1867.
+
+An empire is a multi-ethnic state, multinational state, or a group of nations with a central government established usually through coercion (on the model of the Roman Empire). An empire often includes self-governing regions, but these will possess autonomy only at the sufferance of the central government. On the other hand, a political entity that is an empire in name, may comprise several partly autonomous kingdoms organised together in a federation, with the empire being ruled over by an emperor or senior king (great king, high king, king of kings...). One example of this was the German Empire (1871–1918).
+
+A federacy[6] is where a unitary state incorporates one or more self-governing autonomous areas. It is distinguished from a federation in that the constitutional structure of the state is still unitary, but incorporates federalist principles. Some federations, notably the Åland Islands, were established through international treaty.
+
+A federation differs from a devolved state, such as Indonesia and the United Kingdom, because, in a devolved state, the central government can revoke the independence of the subunits (Scottish Parliament, Senedd Cymru – Welsh Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly in the case of the UK) without changing the constitution.
+
+A federation also differs from an associated state, such as the Federated States of Micronesia (in free association with the United States) and Cook Islands and Niue (which form part of the Realm of New Zealand). There are two kinds of associated states: in case of Micronesia, the association is concluded by a treaty between two sovereign states; in the case of the Cook Islands and Niue, the association is concluded by domestic legal arrangements.
+
+The relation between the Crown dependencies of the Isle of Man and the bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey in the Channel Islands and the United Kingdom is very similar to a federate relation: the Islands enjoy independence from the United Kingdom, which, via The Crown, takes care of their foreign relations and defense – although the UK Parliament does have overall power to legislate for the dependencies. However, the islands are neither an incorporated part of the United Kingdom nor are they considered to be independent or associated states. The islands do not have a monarch, per se; rather in the Isle of Man the British Monarch is, ex officio, Lord of Mann, and in the Bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey, the British Monarch rules as the Duke of Normandy.
+
+Dependent territories, such as the British overseas territories, are vested with varying degrees of power; some enjoy considerable independence from the sovereign state, which only takes care of their foreign relations and defense. However, they are neither considered to be part of it nor recognized as sovereign or associated states.
+
+The distinction between a federation and a unitary state is often quite ambiguous. A unitary state may closely resemble a federation in structure and, while a central government may possess the theoretical right to revoke the autonomy of a self-governing region, it may be politically difficult for it to do so in practice. The self-governing regions of some unitary states also often enjoy greater autonomy than those of some federations. For these reasons, it is sometimes argued that some modern unitary states are de facto federations.[7]
+
+De facto federations, or quasi-federations, are often termed "regional states".
+
+Spain is suggested as one possible de facto federation[8] as it grants more self-government to its autonomous communities[9][10] than are retained by the constituent entities of most federations.[11] For the Spanish parliament to revoke the autonomy of regions such as Galicia, Catalonia or the Basque Country would be a political near-impossibility, though nothing bars it legally. The Spanish parliament has, however, suspended the autonomy of Catalonia in response to the Catalan declaration of independence, in the lead up to the 2017 Catalan election.[12] Additionally, some autonomies such as Navarre or the Basque Country have full control over taxation and spending, transferring a small payment to the central government for the common services (military, foreign relations, macroeconomic policy). For example, scholar Enrique Guillén López discusses the "federal nature of Spain's government (a trend that almost no one denies)."[13] Each autonomous community is governed by a Statute of Autonomy (Estatuto de Autonomía) under the Spanish Constitution of 1978.
+
+Although South Africa bears some elements of a federal system, such as the allocation of certain powers to provinces, it is nevertheless constitutionally and functionally a unitary state.[14]
+
+The European Union (EU) is a type of political union or confederation (the assemblage of societies or an association of two or more states into one state).[15] Robert Schuman, the initiator of the European Community system, wrote that a transnational Community like the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community lay midway between an association of States where they retained complete independence and a federation leading to a fusion of States in a super-state.[16]  The Founding Fathers of the European Union wrote the Europe Declaration (Charter of the Community) at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 18 April 1951 saying that Europe should be organized on a transnational foundation. They envisaged a structure quite different from a federation called the European Political Community.[citation needed]
+
+The EU is a three-pillar structure of the original supranational European Economic Community and the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Euratom, plus two largely intergovernmental pillars dealing with External Affairs and Justice and Home Affairs. The EU is therefore not a de jure federation, although some[who?] academic observers conclude that after 50 years of institutional evolution since the Treaties of Rome it is becoming one.[17] The European Union possesses attributes of a federal state. However, its central government is far weaker than that of most federations and the individual members are sovereign states under international law, so it is usually characterized as an unprecedented form of supra-national union.  The EU has responsibility for important areas such as trade, monetary union, agriculture, fisheries. Nonetheless, EU member states retain the right to act independently in matters of foreign policy and defense, and also enjoy a near-monopoly over other major policy areas such as criminal justice and taxation. Since the Treaty of Lisbon, the Member States' right to leave the Union is codified, and the Union operates with more qualified majority voting (rather than unanimity) in many areas.[citation needed]
+
+By the signature of this Treaty, the participating Parties give proof of their determination to create the first supranational institution and that thus they are laying the true foundation of an organized Europe. This Europe remains open to all nations. We profoundly hope that other nations will join us in our common endeavor.
+
+Europe has charted its own brand of constitutional federalism.
+
+Those uncomfortable using the "F" word in the EU context should feel free to refer to it as a quasi-federal or federal-like system. Nevertheless, for the purposes of the analysis here, the EU has the necessary attributes of a federal system. It is striking that while many scholars of the EU continue to resist analyzing it as a federation, most contemporary students of federalism view the EU as a federal system. (See, for instance, Bednar, Filippov et al., McKay, Kelemen, Defigueido and Weingast)
+
+A more nuanced view has been given by the German Constitutional Court.[19] Here the EU is defined as 'an association of sovereign national states (Staatenverbund)'.[20] With this view, the European Union resembles more of a confederation.
+
+Constitutionally, the power vested in the special administrative regions of the People's Republic is granted from the Central People's Government, through a decision by the National People's Congress. However, there have been certain largely informal grants of power to the provinces, to handle economic affairs and implement national policies, resulting in a system some have termed federalism "with Chinese characteristics".[21]
+
+Constitutionally a unitary state, the political system in Myanmar bears many elements of federalism. Each administrative divisions have its own cabinets and chief ministers, making it more like a federation rather than a unitary state.
+
+Certain forms of political and constitutional dispute are common to federations. One issue is that the exact division of power and responsibility between federal and regional governments is often a source of controversy. Often, as is the case with the United States, such conflicts are resolved through the judicial system, which delimits the powers of federal and local governments. The relationship between federal and local courts varies from nation to nation and can be a controversial and complex issue in itself.
+
+Another common issue in federal systems is the conflict between regional and national interests, or between the interests and aspirations of different ethnic groups. In some federations the entire jurisdiction is relatively homogeneous and each constituent state resembles a miniature version of the whole; this is known as 'congruent federalism'. On the other hand, incongruent federalism exists where different states or regions possess distinct ethnic groups.
+
+The ability of a federal government to create national institutions that can mediate differences that arise because of linguistic, ethnic, religious, or other regional differences is an important challenge. The inability to meet this challenge may lead to the secession of parts of a federation or to civil war, as occurred in the United States (southern states interpreted slavery under the tenth amendment as a state right, while northern states were against slavery, with a catalysis occurring in the then–Kansas Territory), in Nigeria and in Switzerland. In the case of Malaysia, Singapore was expelled from the federation because of rising racial tension. In some cases, internal conflict may lead a federation to collapse entirely, as occurred the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the Gran Colombia, the United Provinces of Central America, and the West Indies Federation.
+
+The federal government is the common or national government of a federation. A federal government may have distinct powers at various levels authorized or delegated to it by its member states. The structure of federal governments vary. Based on a broad definition of a basic federalism, there are two or more levels of government that exist within an established territory and govern through common institutions with overlapping or shared powers as prescribed by a constitution.
+
+The federal government is the government at the level of the sovereign state. Usual responsibilities of this level of government are maintaining national security and exercising international diplomacy, including the right to sign binding treaties. Basically, a modern federal government, within the limits defined by its constitution, has the power to make laws for the whole country, unlike local governments. As originally written, the United States Constitution was created to limit the federal government from exerting power over the states by enumerating only specific powers.  It was further limited by the addition of the Tenth Amendment contained in the Bill of Rights and the Eleventh Amendment.  However, later amendments, particularly the Fourteenth Amendment, gave the federal government considerable authority over states.
+
+Federal government within this structure are the government ministries and departments and agencies to which the ministers of government are assigned.
+
+[22]
+
+Municipalities of Brazil[23]
+
+Some of the proclaimed Arab federations were confederations de facto.