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+Diana[a] is a goddess in Roman and Hellenistic religion, primarily considered a patroness of the countryside, hunters, crossroads, and the Moon. She is equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, and absorbed much of Artemis' mythology early in Roman history, including a birth on the island of Delos to parents Jupiter and Latona, and a twin brother, Apollo,[2] though she had an independent origin in Italy.
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+Diana is considered a virgin goddess and protector of childbirth. Historically, Diana made up a triad with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god.[3]
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+Diana is revered in modern neopagan religions including Roman neopaganism, Stregheria, and Wicca. From the medieval to the modern period, as folklore attached to her developed and was eventually adapted into neopagan religions, the mythology surrounding Diana grew to include a consort (Lucifer) and daughter (Aradia), figures sometimes recognized by modern traditions.[4] In the ancient, medieval, and modern periods, Diana has been considered a triple deity, merged with a goddess of the moon (Luna/Selene) and the underworld (usually Hecate).[5][6]
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+The name Dīāna probably derives from Latin dīus ('godly'), ultimately from Proto-Italic *divios (diwios), meaning 'divine, heavenly'.[7][8] It stems from Proto-Indo-European *diwyós ('divine, heavenly'), formed with the root *dyew- ('daylight sky') attached the thematic suffix -yós.[9][10] Cognates appear in Myceanean Greek di-wi-ja, in Ancient Greek dîos (δῖος; 'belonging to heaven, godlike'), or in Sanskrit divyá ('heavenly').[11]
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+The ancient Latin writers Varro and Cicero considered the etymology of Dīāna as allied to that of dies and connected to the shine of the Moon, noting that one of her titles is Diana Lucifera ("light-bearer").
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+... people regard Diana and the moon as one and the same. ... the moon (luna) is so called from the verb to shine (lucere). Lucina is identified with it, which is why in our country they invoke Juno Lucina in childbirth, just as the Greeks call on Diana the Light-bearer. Diana also has the name Omnivaga ("wandering everywhere"), not because of her hunting but because she is numbered as one of the seven planets; her name Diana derives from the fact that she turns darkness into daylight (dies). She is invoked at childbirth because children are born occasionally after seven, or usually after nine, lunar revolutions ...
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+The persona of Diana is complex, and contains a number of archaic features. Diana was originally considered to be a goddess of the wilderness and of the hunt, a central sport in both Roman and Greek culture.[13] Early Roman inscriptions to Diana celebrated her primarily as a huntress and patron of hunters. Later, in the Hellenistic period, Diana came to be equally or more revered as a goddess not of the wild woodland but of the "tame" countryside, or villa rustica, the idealization of which was common in Greek thought and poetry. This dual role as goddess of both civilization and the wild, and therefore the civilized countryside, first applied to the Greek goddess Artemis (for example, in the 3rd century BCE poetry of Anacreon).[14] By the 3rd century CE, after Greek influence had a profound impact on Roman religion, Diana had been almost fully combined with Artemis and took on many of her attributes, both in her spiritual domains and in the description of her appearance. The Roman poet Nemesianus wrote a typical description of Diana: She carried a bow and a quiver full of golden arrows, wore a golden cloak, purple half-boots, and a belt with a jeweled buckle to hold her tunic together, and wore her hair gathered in a ribbon.[13] By the 5th century CE, almost a millennia after her cult's entry into Rome, the philosopher Proclus could still characterize Diana as "the inspective guardian of every thing rural, [who] represses every thing rustic and uncultivated."[15]
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+Diana was often considered an aspect of a triple goddess, known as Diana triformis: Diana, Luna, and Hecate. According to historian C.M. Green, "these were neither different goddesses nor an amalgamation of different goddesses. They were Diana...Diana as huntress, Diana as the moon, Diana of the underworld."[6] At her sacred grove on the shores of Lake Nemi, Diana was venerated as a triple goddess beginning in the late 6th century BCE.
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+Andreas Alföldi interpreted an image on a late Republican coin as the Latin Diana "conceived as a threefold unity of the divine huntress, the Moon goddess and the goddess of the nether world, Hekate".[17] This coin, minted by P. Accoleius Lariscolus in 43 BCE, has been acknowledged as representing an archaic statue of Diana Nemorensis.[18] It represents Artemis with the bow at one extremity, Luna-Selene with flowers at the other and a central deity not immediately identifiable, all united by a horizontal bar. The iconographical analysis allows the dating of this image to the 6th century at which time there are Etruscan models. The coin shows that the triple goddess cult image still stood in the lucus of Nemi in 43 BCE. Lake Nemi was called Triviae lacus by Virgil (Aeneid 7.516), while Horace called Diana montium custos nemoremque virgo ("keeper of the mountains and virgin of Nemi") and diva triformis ("three-form goddess").[19]
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+Two heads found in the sanctuary[20] and the Roman theatre at Nemi, which have a hollow on their back, lend support to this interpretation of an archaic triple Diana.[21]
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+The earliest epithet of Diana was Trivia, and she was addressed with that title by Virgil,[22] Catullus,[23] and many others. "Trivia" comes from the Latin trivium, "triple way", and refers to Diana's guardianship over roadways, particularly Y-junctions or three-way crossroads. This role carried a somewhat dark and dangerous connotation, as it metaphorically pointed the way to the underworld.[6] In the 1st-century CE play Medea, Seneca's titular sorceress calls on Trivia to cast a magic spell. She evokes the triple goddess of Diana, Selene, and Hecate, and specifies that she requires the powers of the latter.[6] The 1st century poet Horace similarly wrote of a magic incantation invoking the power of both Diana and Proserpina.[24] The symbol of the crossroads is relevant to several aspects of Diana's domain. It can symbolize the paths hunters may encounter in the forest, lit only by the full moon; this symbolizes making choices "in the dark" without the light of guidance.[6]
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+Diana's role as a goddess of the underworld, or at least of ushering people between life and death, caused her early on to be conflated with Hecate (and occasionally also with Proserpina). However, her role as an underworld goddess appears to pre-date strong Greek influence (though the early Greek colony of Cumae had a cult of Hekate and certainly had contacts with the Latins[25]). A theater in her sanctuary at Lake Nemi included a pit and tunnel that would have allowed actors to easily descend on one side of the stage and ascend on the other, indicating a connection between the phases of the moon and a descent by the moon goddess into the underworld.[6] It is likely that her underworld aspect in her original Latin worship did not have a distinct name, like Luna was for her moon aspect. This is due to a seeming reluctance or taboo by the early Latins to name underworld deities, and the fact that they believed the underworld to be silent, precluding naming. Hekate, a Greek goddess also associated with the boundary between the earth and the underworld, became attached to Diana as a name for her underworld aspect following Greek influence.[6]
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+Diana was often considered to be a goddess associated with fertility and childbirth, and the protection of women during labor. This probably arose as an extension of her association with the moon, whose cycles were believed to parallel the menstrual cycle, and which was used to track the months during pregnancy.[6] At her shrine in Aricia, worshipers left votive terracotta offerings for the goddess in the shapes of babies and wombs, and the temple there also offered care of pups and pregnant dogs. This care of infants also extended to the training of both young people and dogs, especially for hunting.[6] In her role as a protector of childbirth, Diana was called Diana Lucina or even Juno Lucina, because her domain overlapped with that of the goddess Juno. The title of Juno may also have had an independent origin as it applied to Diana, with the literal meaning of "helper" - Diana as Juno Lucina would be the "helper of childbirth".[6]
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+According to a theory proposed by Georges Dumézil, Diana falls into a particular subset of celestial gods, referred to in histories of religion as frame gods. Such gods, while keeping the original features of celestial divinities (i.e. transcendent heavenly power and abstention from direct rule in worldly matters), did not share the fate of other celestial gods in Indoeuropean religions - that of becoming dei otiosi, or gods without practical purpose,[26] since they did retain a particular sort of influence over the world and mankind.[27] The celestial character of Diana is reflected in her connection with inaccessibility, virginity, light, and her preference for dwelling on high mountains and in sacred woods. Diana, therefore, reflects the heavenly world in its sovereignty, supremacy, impassibility, and indifference towards such secular matters as the fates of mortals and states. At the same time, however, she is seen as active in ensuring the succession of kings and in the preservation of humankind through the protection of childbirth.[28] These functions are apparent in the traditional institutions and cults related to the goddess:
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+According to Dumezil, the forerunner of all frame gods is an Indian epic hero who was the image (avatar) of the Vedic god Dyaus. Having renounced the world, in his roles of father and king, he attained the status of an immortal being while retaining the duty of ensuring that his dynasty is preserved and that there is always a new king for each generation. The Scandinavian god Heimdallr performs an analogous function: he is born first and will die last. He too gives origin to kingship and the first king, bestowing on him regal prerogatives.
+Diana, although a female deity, has exactly the same functions, preserving mankind through childbirth and royal succession.
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+F. H. Pairault, in her essay on Diana, qualified Dumézil's theory as "impossible to verify".
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+Unlike the Greek gods, Roman gods were originally considered to be numina: divine powers of presence and will that did not necessarily have physical form. At the time Rome was founded, Diana and the other major Roman gods probably did not have much mythology per se, or any depictions in human form. The idea of gods as having anthropomorphic qualities and human-like personalities and actions developed later, under the influence of Greek and Etruscan religion.[31]
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+By the 3rd century BCE, Diana is found listed among the twelve major gods of the Roman pantheon by the poet Ennius. Though the Capitoline Triad were the primary state gods of Rome, early Roman myth did not assign a strict hierarchy to the gods the way Greek mythology did, though the Greek hierarchy would eventually be adopted by Roman religion as well.[31]
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+Once Greek influence had caused Diana to be considered identical to the Greek goddess Artemis, Diana acquired Artemis's physical description, attributes, and variants of her myths as well. Like Artemis, Diana is usually depicted in art wearing a short skirt, with a hunting bow and quiver, and often accompanied by hunting dogs. A 1st-century BCE Roman coin (see above) depicted her with a unique, short hairstyle, and in triple form, with one form holding a bow and another holding a poppy.[6]
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+When worship of Apollo was first introduced to Rome, Diana became conflated with Apollo's sister Artemis as in the earlier Greek myths, and as such she became identified as the daughter of Apollo's parents Latona and Jupiter. Though Diana was usually considered to be a virgin goddess like Artemis, later authors sometimes attributed consorts and children to her. According to Cicero and Ennius, Trivia (an epithet of Diana) and Caelus were the parents of Janus, as well as of Saturn and Ops.[32]
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+According to Macrobius (who cited Nigidius Figulus and Cicero), Janus and Jana (Diana) are a pair of divinities, worshiped as the sun and moon. Janus was said to receive sacrifices before all the others because, through him, the way of access to the desired deity is made apparent.[33]
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+Diana's mythology incorporated stories which were variants of earlier stories about Artemis. Possibly the most well-known of these is the myth of Actaeon. In Ovid's version of this myth, part of his poem Metamorphoses, he tells of a pool or grotto hidden in the wooded valley of Gargaphie. There, Diana, the goddess of the woods, would bathe and rest after a hunt. Actaeon, a young hunter, stumbled across the grotto and accidentally witnessed the goddess bathing without invitation. In retaliation, Diana splashed him with water from the pool, cursing him, and he transformed into a deer. His own hunting dogs caught his scent, and tore him apart.[6]
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+Ovid's version of the myth of Actaeon differs from most earlier sources. Unlike earlier myths about Artemis, Actaeon is killed for an innocent mistake, glimpsing Diana bathing. An earlier variant of this myth, known as the Bath of Pallas, had the hunter intentionally spy on the bathing goddess Pallas (Athena), and earlier versions of the myth involving Artemis did not involve the bath at all.[34]
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+Diana was an ancient goddess common to all Latin tribes. Therefore, many sanctuaries were dedicated to her in the lands inhabited by Latins. Her primary sanctuary was a woodland grove overlooking Lake Nemi, a body of water also known as "Diana's Mirror", where she was worshiped as Diana Nemorensis, or "Diana of the Wood". In Rome, the cult of Diana may have been almost as old as the city itself. Varro mentions her in the list of deities to whom king Titus Tatius promised to build a shrine. His list included Luna and Diana Lucina as separate entities. Another testimony to the antiquity of her cult is to be found in the lex regia of King Tullus Hostilius that condemns those guilty of incest to the sacratio to Diana. She had a temple in Rome on the Aventine Hill, according to tradition dedicated by king Servius Tullius. Its location is remarkable as the Aventine is situated outside the pomerium, i.e. original territory of the city, in order to comply with the tradition that Diana was a goddess common to all Latins and not exclusively of the Romans. Being placed on the Aventine, and thus outside the pomerium, meant that Diana's cult essentially remained a foreign one, like that of Bacchus; she was never officially transferred to Rome as Juno was after the sack of Veii.
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+Other known sanctuaries and temples to Diana include Colle di Corne near Tusculum,[35] where she is referred to with the archaic Latin name of deva Cornisca and where existed a collegium of worshippers;[36] at Évora, Portugal;[37] Mount Algidus, also near Tusculum;[38] at Lavinium;[39] and at Tibur (Tivoli), where she is referred to as Diana Opifera Nemorensis.[40] Diana was also worshiped at a sacred wood mentioned by Livy[41] - ad compitum Anagninum (near Anagni), and on Mount Tifata in Campania.[42]
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+According to Plutarch, men and women alike were worshipers of Diana and were welcomed into all of her temples. The one exception seems to have been a temple on the Vicus Patricius, which men either did not enter due to tradition, or were not allowed to enter. Plutarch related a legend that a man had attempted to assault a woman worshiping in this temple and was killed by a pack of dogs (echoing the myth of Diana and Actaeon), which resulted in a superstition against men entering the temple.[43]
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+A feature common to nearly all of Diana's temples and shrines by the second century AD was the hanging up of stag antlers. Plutarch noted that the only exception to this was the temple on the Aventine Hill, in which bull horns had been hung up instead. Plutarch explains this by way of reference to a legend surrounding the sacrifice of an impressive Sabine bull by King Servius at the founding of the Aventine temple.[43]
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+Diana's worship may have originated at an open-air sanctuary overlooking Lake Nemi in the Alban Hills near Aricia, where she was worshiped as Diana Nemorensis, or ("Diana of the Sylvan Glade").[44] According to legendary accounts, the sanctuary was founded by Orestes and Iphigenia after they fled from the Tauri. In this tradition, the Nemi sanctuary was supposedly built on the pattern of an earlier Temple of Artemis Tauropolos,[45] and the first cult statue at Nemi was said to have been stolen from the Tauri and brought to Nemi by Orestes.[13][46] Historical evidence suggests that worship of Diana at Nemi flourished from at least the 6th century BCE[46] until the 2nd century CE. Her cult there was first attested in Latin literature by Cato the Elder, in a surviving quote by the late grammarian Priscian.[47] By the 4th century BCE, the simple shrine at Nemi had been joined by a temple complex.[46] The sanctuary served an important political role as it was held in common by the Latin League.[48][49]
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+A festival to Diana, the Nemoralia, was held yearly at Nemi on the Ides of August (August 13–15[50]). Worshipers traveled to Nemi carrying torches and garlands, and once at the lake, they left pieces of thread tied to fences and tablets inscribed with prayers.[51][52] Diana's festival eventually became widely celebrated throughout Italy, which was unusual given the provincial nature of Diana's cult. The poet Statius wrote of the festival:[6]
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+Statius describes the triple nature of the goddess by invoking heavenly (the stars), earthly (the grove itself) and underworld (Hecate) imagery. He also suggests by the garlanding of the dogs and polishing of the spears that no hunting was allowed during the festival.[6]
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+Legend has it that Diana's high priest at Nemi, known as the Rex Nemorensis, was always an escaped slave who could only obtain the position by defeating his predecessor in a fight to the death.[44] Sir James George Frazer wrote of this sacred grove in The Golden Bough, basing his interpretation on brief remarks in Strabo (5.3.12), Pausanias (2,27.24) and Servius' commentary on the Aeneid (6.136). The legend tells of a tree that stood in the center of the grove and was heavily guarded. No one was allowed to break off its limbs, with the exception of a runaway slave, who was allowed, if he could, to break off one of the boughs. He was then in turn granted the privilege to engage the Rex Nemorensis, the current king and priest of Diana, in a fight to the death. If the slave prevailed, he became the next king for as long as he could defeat his challengers. However, Joseph Fontenrose criticised Frazer's assumption that a rite of this sort actually occurred at the sanctuary,[53] and no contemporary records exist that support the historical existence of the Rex Nemorensis.[54]
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+Rome hoped to unify into and control the Latin tribes around Nemi,[48] so Diana's worship was imported to Rome as a show of political solidarity. Diana soon afterwards became Hellenized, and combined with the Greek goddess Artemis, "a process which culminated with the appearance of Diana beside Apollo [the brother of Artemis] in the first lectisternium at Rome" in 399 BCE.[55] The process of identification between the two goddesses probably began when artists who were commissioned to create new cult statues for Diana's temples outside Nemi were struck by the similar attributes between Diana and the more familiar Artemis, and sculpted Diana in a manner inspired by previous depictions of Artemis. Sibyllene influence and trade with Massilia, where similar cult statues of Artemis existed, would have completed the process.[46]
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+According to Françoise Hélène Pairault's study,[56] historical and archaeological evidence point to the fact that the characteristics given to both Diana of the Aventine Hill and Diana Nemorensis were the product of the direct or indirect influence of the cult of Artemis, which was spread by the Phoceans among the Greek towns of Campania Cuma and Capua, who in turn had passed it over to the Etruscans and the Latins by the 6th and 5th centuries BCE.
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+Evidence suggests that a confrontation occurred between two groups of Etruscans who fought for supremacy, those from Tarquinia, Vulci and Caere (allied with the Greeks of Capua) and those of Clusium. This is reflected in the legend of the coming of Orestes to Nemi and of the inhumation of his bones in the Roman Forum near the temple of Saturn.[57] The cult introduced by Orestes at Nemi is apparently that of the Artemis Tauropolos. The literary amplification[58] reveals a confused religious background: different versions of Artemis were conflated under the epithet.[59] As far as Nemi's Diana is concerned there are two different versions, by Strabo[60] and Servius Honoratus. Strabo's version looks to be the most authoritative as he had access to first-hand primary sources on the sanctuaries of Artemis, i.e. the priest of Artemis Artemidoros of Ephesus. The meaning of Tauropolos denotes an Asiatic goddess with lunar attributes, lady of the herds.[61] The only possible interpretatio graeca of high antiquity concerning Diana Nemorensis could have been the one based on this ancient aspect of a deity of light, master of wildlife. Tauropolos is an ancient epithet attached to Artemis, Hecate, and even Athena.[62] According to the legend Orestes founded Nemi together with Iphigenia.[63] At Cuma the Sybil is the priestess of both Phoibos and Trivia.[64] Hesiod[65] and Stesichorus[66] tell the story according to which after her death Iphigenia was divinised under the name of Hecate, a fact which would support the assumption that Artemis Tauropolos had a real ancient alliance with the heroine, who was her priestess in Taurid and her human paragon. This religious complex is in turn supported by the triple statue of Artemis-Hecate.[18]
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+In Rome, Diana was regarded with great reverence and was a patroness of lower-class citizens, called plebeians, as well as slaves, who could receive asylum in her temples. Georg Wissowa proposed that this might be because the first slaves of the Romans were Latins of the neighboring tribes.[67] However, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus had the same custom of the asylum.
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+Worship of Diana probably spread into the city of Rome beginning around 550 BCE,[46] during her Hellenization and combination with the Greek goddess Artemis. Diana was first worshiped along with her brother and mother, Apollo and Latona, in their temple in the Campus Martius, and later in the Temple of Apollo Palatinus.[13]
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+The first major temple dedicated primarily to Diana in the vicinity of Rome was the Temple of Diana Aventina (Diana of the Aventine Hill). According to the Roman historian Livy, the construction of this temple began in the 6th century BCE and was inspired by stories of the massive Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, which was said to have been built through the combined efforts of all the cities of Asia Minor. Legend has it that Servius Tullius was impressed with this act of massive political and economic cooperation, and convinced the cities of the Latin League to work with the Romans to build their own temple to the goddess.[68] However, there is no compelling evidence for such an early construction of the temple, and it is more likely that it was built in the 3rd century BCE, following the influence of the temple at Nemi, and probably about the same time the first temples to Vertumnus (who was associated with Diana) were built in Rome (264 BCE).[46] The misconception that the Aventine Temple was inspired by the Ephesian Temple might originate in the fact that the cult images and statues used at the former were based heavily on those found in the latter.[46] Whatever its initial construction date, records show that the Avantine Temple was rebuilt by Lucius Cornificius in 32 BCE.[45] If it was still in use by the 4th century CE, the Aventine temple would have been permanently closed during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire. Today, a short street named the Via del Tempio di Diana and an associated plaza, Piazza del Tempio di Diana, commemorates the site of the temple. Part of its wall is located within one of the halls of the Apuleius restaurant.[69]
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+Later temple dedications often were based on the model for ritual formulas and regulations of the Temple of Diana.[70] Roman politicians built several minor temples to Diana elsewhere in Rome to secure public support. One of these was built in the Campus Martius in 187 BCE; no Imperial period records of this temple have been found, and it is possible it was one of the temples demolished around 55 BCE in order to build a theater.[45] Diana also had a public temple on the Quirinal Hill, the sanctuary of Diana Planciana. It was dedicated by Plancius in 55 BCE, though it is unclear which Plancius.[45]
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+In their worship of Artemis, Greeks filled their temples with sculptures of the goddess created by well-known sculptors, and many were adapted for use in the worship of Diana by the Romans, beginning around the 2nd century BCE (the beginning of a period of strong Hellenistic influence on Roman religion). The earliest depictions of the Artemis of Ephesus are found on Ephesian coins from this period. By the Imperial period, small marble statues of the Ephesian Artemis were being produced in the Western region of the Mediterranean and were often bought by Roman patrons.[71] The Romans obtained a large copy of an Ephesian Artemis statue for their temple on the Aventine Hill.[13] Diana was usually depicted for educated Romans in her Greek guise. If she was shown accompanied by a deer, as in the Diana of Versailles, this is because Diana was the patroness of hunting. The deer may also offer a covert reference to the myth of Acteon (or Actaeon), who saw her bathing naked. Diana transformed Acteon into a stag and set his own hunting dogs to kill him.
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+In Campania, Diana had a major temple at Mount Tifata, near Capua. She was worshiped there as Diana Tifatina. This was one of the oldest sanctuaries in Campania. As a rural sanctuary, it included lands and estates that would have been worked by slaves following the Roman conquest of Campania, and records show that expansion and renovation projects at her temple were funded in part by other conquests by Roman military campaigns. The modern Christian church of Sant'Angelo in Formis was built on the ruins of the Tifata temple.[45]
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+In the Roman provinces, Diana was widely worshiped alongside local deities. Over 100 inscriptions to Diana have been cataloged in the provinces, mainly from Gaul, Upper Germania, and Britannia. Diana was commonly invoked alongside another forest god, Silvanus, as well as other "mountain gods". In the provinces, she was occasionally conflated with local goddesses such as Abnoba, and was given high status, with Augusta and regina ("queen") being common epithets.[72]
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+Diana was not only regarded as a goddess of the wilderness and the hunt, but was often worshiped as a patroness of families. She served a similar function to the hearth goddess Vesta, and was sometimes considered to be a member of the Penates, the deities most often invoked in household rituals. In this role, she was often given a name reflecting the tribe of family who worshiped her and asked for her protection. For example, in what is now Wiesbaden, Diana was worshiped as Diana Mattiaca by the Mattiaci tribe. Other family-derived named attested in the ancient literature include Diana Cariciana, Diana Valeriana, and Diana Plancia. As a house goddess, Diana often became reduced in stature compared to her official worship by the Roman state religion. In personal or family worship, Diana was brought to the level of other household spirits, and was believed to have a vested interest in the prosperity of the household and the continuation of the family. The Roman poet Horace regarded Diana as a household goddess in his Odes, and had an altar dedicated to her in his villa where household worship could be conducted. In his poetry, Horace deliberately contrasted the kinds of grand, elevated hymns to Diana on behalf of the entire Roman state, the kind of worship that would have been typical at her Aventine temple, with a more personal form of devotion.[14]
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+Images of Diana and her associated myths have been found on sarcophagi of wealthy Romans. They often included scenes depicting sacrifices to the goddess, and on at least one example, the deceased man is shown joining Diana's hunt.[13]
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+Since ancient times, philosophers and theologians have examined the nature of Diana in light of her worship traditions, attributes, mythology, and identification with other gods.
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+Diana was initially a hunting goddess and goddess of the local woodland at Nemi,[73] but as her worship spread, she acquired attributes of other similar goddesses. As she became conflated with Artemis, she became a moon goddess, identified with the other lunar goddesses goddess Luna and Hekate.[73] She also became the goddess of childbirth and ruled over the countryside. Catullus wrote a poem to Diana in which she has more than one alias: Latonia, Lucina, Juno, Trivia, Luna.[74]
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+Along with Mars, Diana was often venerated at games held in Roman amphitheaters, and some inscriptions from the Danubian provinces show that she was conflated with Nemesis in this role, as Diana Nemesis.[13]
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+Outside of Italy, Diana had important centers of worship where she was syncretised with similar local deities in Gaul, Upper Germania, and Britannia. Diana was particularly important in the region in and around the Black Forest, where she was conflated with the local goddess Abnoba and worshiped as Diana Abnoba.[75]
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+Some late antique sources went even further, syncretizing many local "great goddesses" into a single "Queen of Heaven". The Platonist philosopher Apuleius, writing in the late 2nd century, depicted the goddess declaring:
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+"I come, Lucius, moved by your entreaties: I, mother of the universe, mistress of all the elements, first-born of the ages, highest of the gods, queen of the shades, first of those who dwell in heaven, representing in one shape all gods and goddesses. My will controls the shining heights of heaven, the health-giving sea-winds, and the mournful silences of hell; the entire world worships my single godhead in a thousand shapes, with divers rites, and under many a different name. The Phrygians, first-born of mankind, call me the Pessinuntian Mother of the gods; the native Athenians the Cecropian Minerva; the island-dwelling Cypriots Paphian Venus; the archer Cretans Dictynnan Diana; the triple-tongued Sicilians Stygian Proserpine; the ancient Eleusinians Actaean Ceres; some call me Juno, some Bellona, others Hecate, others Rhamnusia; but both races of Ethiopians, those on whom the rising and those on whom the setting sun shines, and the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning, honour me with the worship which is truly mine and call me by my true name: Queen Isis."
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+Later poets and historians looked to Diana's identity as a triple goddess to merge her with triads heavenly, earthly, and underworld (cthonic) goddesses. Maurus Servius Honoratus said that the same goddess was called Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Proserpina in hell.[5]
+Michael Drayton praises the Triple Diana in poem The Man in the Moone (1606): "So these great three most powerful of the rest, Phoebe, Diana, Hecate, do tell. Her sovereignty in Heaven, in Earth and Hell".[77][78][79]
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+Based on the earlier writings of Plato, the Neoplatonist philosophers of late antiquity united the various major gods of Hellenic tradition into a series of monads containing within them triads, with some creating the world, some animating it or bringing it to life, and others harmonizing it. Within this system, Proclus considered Diana to be one of the primary animating, or life-giving, deities. Proclus, citing Orphic tradition, concludes that Diana "presides over all the generation in nature, and is the midwife of physical productive principles" and that she "extends these genitals, distributing as far as to subterranean natures the prolific power of [Bacchus]."[15] Specifically, Proclus considered the life-generating principle of the highest order, within the Intellectual realm, to be Rhea, who he identified with Ceres. Within her divinity was produced the cause of the basic principle of life. Projecting this principle into the lower, Hypercosmic realm of reality generated a lower monad, Kore, who could therefore be understood as Ceres' "daughter". Kore embodied the "maidenly" principle of generation that, more importantly, included a principle of division - where Demeter generates life indiscriminately, Kore distributes it individually. This division results in another triad or trinity, known as the Maidenly trinity, within the monad of Kore: namely, Diana, Proserpine, and Minerva, through whom individual living beings are given life and perfected. Specifically, according to a commentary by scholar Spyridon Rangos, Diana (equated with Hecate) gives existence, Proserpine (equated with "Soul") gives form, and Minerva (equated with "Virtue") gives intellect.[80]
+
+In his commentary on Proclus, the 19th century Platonist scholar Thomas Taylor expanded upon the theology of the classical philosophers, further interpreting the nature and roles of the gods in light of the whole body of Neoplatonist philosophy. He cites Plato in giving a three-form aspect to her central characteristic of virginity: the undefiled, the mundane, and the anagogic. Through the first form, Diana is regarded as a "lover of virginity". Through the second, she is the guardian of virtue. Through the third, she is considered to "hate the impulses arising from generation." Through the principle of the undefiled, Taylor suggests that she is given supremacy in Proclus' triad of life-giving or animating deities, and in this role the theurgists called her Hekate. In this role, Diana is granted undefiled power (Amilieti) from the other gods. This generative power does not proceed forth from the goddess (according to a statement by the Oracle of Delphi) but rather resides with her, giving her unparalleled virtue, and in this way she can be said to embody virginity.[81] Later commentators on Proclus have clarified that the virginity of Diana is not an absence of sexual drive, but a renunciation of sexuality. Diana embodies virginity because she generates but precedes active fertility (within Neoplatonism, an important maxim is that "every productive cause is superior to the nature of the produced effect").[80]
+
+Using the ancient Neoplatonists as a basis, Taylor also commented on the triadic nature of Diana and related goddesses, and the ways in which they subsist within one another, partaking unevenly in each other's powers and attributes. For example, Kore is said to embody both Diana/Hecate and Minerva, who create the virtuous or virgin power within her, but also Proserpine (her sole traditional identification), through whom the generative power of the Kore as a whole is able to proceed forth into the world, where it joins with the demiurge to produce further deities, including Bacchus and "nine azure-eyed, flower-producing daughters".[81]
+
+Proclus also included Artemis/Diana in a second triad of deities, along with Ceres and Juno. According to Proclus:
+
+Proclus pointed to the conflict between Hera and Artmeis in the Illiad as a representation of the two kinds of human souls. Where Hera creates the higher, more cultured, or "worthy" souls, Artemis brings light to and perfects the "less worthy" or less rational. As explained by Ragnos (2000), "The aspect of reality which Artemis and Hera share, and because of which they engage in a symbolic conflict, is the engendering of life." Hera elevates rational living beings up to intellectual rational existence, whereas Artemis's power pertains to human life as far as its physical existence as a living thing. "Artemis deals with the most elementary forms of life or the most elementary part of all life, whereas Hera operates in the most elevated forms of life or the most elevated part of all life.[80]
+
+Sermons and other religious documents have provided evidence for the worship of Diana during the Middle Ages. Though few details have been recorded, enough references to Diana worship during the early Christian period exist to give some indication that it may have been relatively widespread among remote and rural communities throughout Europe, and that such beliefs persisted into the Merovingian period.[82] References to contemporary Diana worship exist from the 6th century on the Iberian peninsula and what is now southern France,[82] though more detailed accounts of Dianic cults were given for the Low Countries, and southern Belgium in particular. Many of these were probably local goddesses, and wood nymphs or dryads, which had been conflated with Diana by Christian writers Latinizing local names and traditions.[82]
+
+The 6th century bishop Gregory of Tours reported meeting with a deacon named Vulfilaic (also known as Saint Wulflaicus or Walfroy the Stylite), who founded a hermitage on a hill in what is now Margut, France. On the same hill, he found "an image of Diana which the unbelieving people worshiped as a god." According to Gregory's report, worshipers would also sing chants in Diana's honor as they drank and feasted. Vulfilaic destroyed a number of smaller pagan statues in the area, but the statue of Diana was too large. After converting some of the local population to Christianity, Vulfilaic and a group of local residents attempted to pull the large statue down the mountain in order to destroy it, but failed, as it was too large to be moved. In Vulfilaic's account, after praying for a miracle, he was then able to single-handedly pull down the statue, at which point he and his group smashed it to dust with their hammers. According to Vulfilaic, this incident was quickly followed by an outbreak of pimples or sores that covered his entire body, which he attributed to demonic activity and similarly cured via what he described as a miracle. Vulfilaic would later found a church on the site, which is today known as Mont Saint-Walfroy.[83]
+
+Additional evidence for surviving pagan practices in the Low Countries region comes from the Vita Eligii, or "Life of Saint Eligius", written by Audoin in the 7th century. Audoin drew together the familiar admonitions of Eligius to the people of Flanders. In his sermons, he denounced "pagan customs" that the people continued to follow. In particular, he denounced several Roman gods and goddesses alongside Druidic mythological beliefs and objects:
+
+"I denounce and contest, that you shall observe no sacrilegious pagan customs. For no cause or infirmity should you consult magicians, diviners, sorcerers or incantators. ..Do not observe auguries ... No influence attaches to the first work of the day or the [phase of the] moon. ... [Do not] make vetulas, little deer or iotticos or set tables at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous drinks... No Christian... performs solestitia or dancing or leaping or diabolical chants. No Christian should presume to invoke the name of a demon, not Neptune or Orcus or Diana or Minerva or Geniscus... No one should observe Jove's day in idleness. ... No Christian should make or render any devotion to the gods of the trivium, where three roads meet, to the fanes or the rocks, or springs or groves or corners. None should presume to hang any phylacteries from the neck of man nor beast. ..None should presume to make lustrations or incantations with herbs, or to pass cattle through a hollow tree or ditch ... No woman should presume to hang amber from her neck or call upon Minerva or other ill-starred beings in their weaving or dyeing. .. None should call the sun or moon lord or swear by them. .. No one should tell fate or fortune or horoscopes by them as those do who believe that a person must be what he was born to be."[84]
+
+Legends from medieval Belgium concern a natural spring which came to be known as the "Fons Remacli", a location which may have been home to late-surviving worship of Diana. Remacle was a monk appointed by Eligius to head a monastery at Solignac, and he is reported to have encountered Diana worship in the area around the river Warche. The population in this region was said to have been involved in the worship of "Diana of the Ardennes" (a syncretism of Diana and the Celtic goddess Arduinna), with effigies and "stones of Diana" used as evidence of pagan practices. Remacle believed that demonic entities were present in the spring, and had caused it to run dry. He performed and exorcism of the water source, and installed a lead pipe, which allowed the water to flow again.[85]
+
+Diana is the only pagan goddess mentioned by name in the New Testament (Acts 19). As a result, she became associated with many folk beliefs involving goddess-like supernatural figures that Catholic clergy wished to demonize. In the Middle Ages, legends of night-time processions of spirits led by a female figure are recorded in the church records of Northern Italy, western Germany, and southern France. The spirits were said to enter houses and consume food which then miraculously re-appeared. They would sing and dance, and dispense advise regarding healing herbs and the whereabouts of lost objects. If the house was in good order, they would bring fertility and plenty. If not, they would bring curses to the family. Some women reported participating in these processions while their bodies still lay in bed. Historian Carlo Ginzburg has referred to these legendary spirit gatherings as "The Society of Diana".[86]
+
+Local clergy complained that women believed they were following Diana or Herodias, riding out on appointed nights to join the processions or carry out instructions from the goddess.[4] The earliest reports of these legends appear in the writings of Regino of Prüm in the year 899, followed by many additional reports and variants of the legend in documents by Ratherius and others. By 1310, the names of the goddess figures attached to the legend were sometimes combined as Herodiana.[4] It is likely that the clergy of this time used the identification of the procession's leader as Diana or Herodias in order to fit an older folk belief into a Biblical framework, as both are featured and demonized in the New Testament. Herodias was often conflated with her daughter Salome in legend, which also holds that, upon being presented with the severed head of John the Baptist, she was blown into the air by wind from the saint's mouth, through which she continued to wander for eternity. Diana was often conflated with Hecate, a goddess associated with the spirits of the dead and with witchcraft. These associations, and the fact that both figures are attested to in the Bible, made them a natural fit for the leader of the ghostly procession. Clergy used this identification to assert that the spirits were evil, and that the women who followed them were inspired by demons. As was typical of this time period, though pagan beliefs and practices were near totally eliminated from Europe, the clergy and other authorities still treated paganism as a real threat, in part thanks to biblical influence; much of the Bible had been written when various forms of paganism were still active if not dominant, so medieval clergy applied the same kinds of warnings and admonitions for any non-standard folk beliefs and practices they encountered.[4] Based on analysis of church documents and parishioner confessions, it is likely that the spirit identified by the Church as Diana or Herodias was called by names of pre-Christian figures like Holda (a Germanic goddess of the winter solstice), or with names referencing her bringing of prosperity, like the Latin Abundia (meaning "plenty"), Satia (meaning "full" or "plentiful") and the Italian Richella (meaning "rich").[4] Some of the local titles for her, such as bonae res (meaning "good things"), are similar to late classical titles for Hecate, like bona dea. This might indicate a cultural mixture of medieval folk ideas with holdovers from earlier pagan belief systems. Whatever her true origin, by the 13th century, the leader of the legendary spirit procession had come to be firmly identified with Diana and Herodias through the influence of the Church.[4]
+
+In his wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, The Golden Bough, anthropologist James George Frazer drew on various lines of evidence to re-interpret the legendary rituals associated with Diana at Nemi, particularly that of the rex Nemorensis. Frazer developed his ideas in relation to J. M. W. Turner's painting, also titled The Golden Bough, depicting a dream-like vision of the woodland lake of Nemi. According to Frazer, the rex Nemorensis or king at Nemi was the incarnation of a dying and reviving god, a solar deity who participated in a mystical marriage to a goddess. He died at the harvest and was reincarnated in the spring. Frazer claimed that this motif of death and rebirth is central to nearly all of the world's religions and mythologies. In Frazer's theory, Diana functioned as a goddess of fertility and childbirth, who, assisted by the sacred king, ritually returned life to the land in spring. The king in this scheme served not only as a high priest but as a god of the grove. Frazer identifies this figure with Virbius, of which little is known, but also with Jupiter via an association with sacred oak trees. Frazer argued furthermore that Jupiter and Juno were simply duplicate names of Jana and Janus; that is, Diana and Dianus, all of whom had identical functions and origins.[87]
+
+Frazer's speculatively reconstructed folklore of Diana's origins and the nature of her cult at Nemi were not well received even by his contemporaries. Godfrey Lienhardt noted that even during Frazer's lifetime, other anthropologists had "for the most part distanced themselves from his theories and opinions", and that the lasting influence of The Golden Bough and Frazer's wider body of work "has been in the literary rather than the academic world."[88] Robert Ackerman wrote that, for anthropologists, Frazer is "an embarrassment" for being "the most famous of them all" and that most distance themselves from his work. While The Golden Bough achieved wide "popular appeal" and exerted a "disproportionate" influence "on so many [20th century] creative writers", Frazer's ideas played "a much smaller part" in the history of academic social anthropology.[88]
+
+Folk legends like the Society of Diana, which linked the goddess to forbidden gatherings of women with spirits, may have influenced later works of folklore. One of these is Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, which prominently featured Diana at the center of an Italian witch-cult.[4] In Leland's interpretation of supposed Italian folk witchcraft, Diana is considered Queen of the Witches. In this belief system, Diana is said to have created the world of her own being having in herself the seeds of all creation yet to come. It was said that out of herself she divided the darkness and the light, keeping for herself the darkness of creation and creating her brother Lucifer. Diana was believed to have loved and ruled with her brother, and with him bore a daughter, Aradia (a name likely derived from Herodias), who leads and teaches the witches on earth.[89][4]
+
+Leland's claim that Aradia represented an authentic tradition from an underground witch-cult, which had secretly worshiped Diana since ancient times has been dismissed by most scholars of folklore, religion, and medieval history. After the 1921 publication of Margaret Murray's The Witch-cult in Western Europe, which hypothesized that the European witch trials were actually a persecution of a pagan religious survival, American sensationalist author Theda Kenyon's 1929 book Witches Still Live connected Murray's thesis with the witchcraft religion in Aradia.[90][91] Arguments against Murray's thesis would eventually include arguments against Leland. Witchcraft scholar Jeffrey Russell devoted some of his 1980 book A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans to arguing against the claims Leland presented in Aradia.[92] Historian Elliot Rose's A Razor for a Goat dismissed Aradia as a collection of incantations unsuccessfully attempting to portray a religion.[93] In his book Triumph of the Moon, historian Ronald Hutton doubted not only of the existence of the religion that Aradia claimed to represent, and that the traditions Leland presented were unlike anything found in actual medieval literature,[94] but also of the existence of Leland's sources, arguing that it is more likely that Leland created the entire story than that Leland could be so easily "duped".[95] Religious scholar Chas S. Clifton took exception to Hutton's position, writing that it amounted to an accusation of "serious literary fraud" made by an "argument from absence".[96]
+
+Building on the work of Frazer, Murray, and others, some 20th and 21st century authors have attempted to identify links between Diana and more localized deities. R. Lowe Thompson, for example, in his 2013 book The History of the Devil,  speculated that Diana may have been linked as an occasional "spouse" to the Gaulish horned god Cernunnos. Thompson suggested that Diana in her role as wild goddess of the hunt would have made a fitting consort for Cernunnos in Western Europe, and further noted the link between Diana as Proserpina with Pluto, the Greek god associated with the riches of the earth who served a similar role to the Gaulish Cernunnos.
+
+Because Leland's claims about an Italian witch-cult are questionable, the first verifiable worship of Diana in the modern age was probably begun by Wicca. The earliest known practitioners of Neopagan witchcraft were members of a tradition begun by Gerald Gardner. Published versions of the devotional materials used by Gardner's group, dated to 1949, are heavily focused on the worship of Aradia, the daughter of Diana in Leland's folklore. Diana herself was recognized as an aspect of a single "great goddess" in the tradition of Apuleius, as described in the Wiccan Charge of the Goddess (itself adapted from Leland's text).[97] Some later Wiccans, such as Scott Cunningham, would replace Aradia with Diana as the central focus of worship.[98]
+
+In the early 1960s, Victor Henry Anderson founded the Feri Tradition, a form of Wicca that draws from both Charles Leland's folklore and the Gardnerian tradition. Anderson claimed that he had first been initiated into a witchcraft tradition as a child in 1926,[99] and that he had been told the name of the goddess worshiped by witches was Tana.[100] The name Tana originated in Leland's Aradia, where he claimed it was an old Etruscan name for Diana. The Feri Tradition founded by Anderson continues to recognize Tana/Diana as an aspect of the Star Goddess related to the element of fire, and representing "the fiery womb that gives birth to and transforms all matter."[100] (In Aradia, Diana is also credited as the creatrix of the material world and Queen of Faeries[101]).
+
+A few Wiccan traditions would elevate Diana to a more prominent position of worship, and there are two distinct modern branches of Wicca focused primarily on Diana. The first, founded during the early 1970s in the United States by Morgan McFarland and Mark Roberts, has a feminist theology and only occasionally accepts male participants, and leadership is limited to female priestesses.[102][103] McFarland Dianic Wiccans base their tradition primarily on the work of Robert Graves and his book The White Goddess, and were inspired by references to the existence of medieval European "Dianic cults" in Margaret Murray's book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe.[103] The second Dianic tradition, founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest in the mid 1970s, is characterized by an exclusive focus on the feminine aspect of the divine, and as a result is exclusively female. This tradition combines elements from British Traditional Wicca, Italian folk-magic based on the work of Charles Leland, feminist values, and healing practices drawn from a variety of different cultures.[104][102]
+
+A third Neopagan tradition heavily inspired by the worship of Diana through the lens of Italian folklore is Stregheria, founded in the 1980s. It centers around a pair of deities regarded as divine lovers, who are known by several variant names including Diana and Dianus, alternately given as Tana and Tanus or Jana and Janus (the later two deity names were mentioned by James Frazer in The Golden Bough as later corruptions of Diana and Dianus, which themselves were alternate and possibly older names for Juno and Jupiter).[105] The tradition was founded by author Raven Grimassi, and influenced by Italian folktales he was told by his mother. One such folktale describes the moon being impregnated by her lover the morning star, a parallel to Leland's mythology of Diana and her lover Lucifer.[86]
+
+Diana was also a subject of worship in certain Feraferian rites, particularly those surrounding the autumnal equinox, beginning in 1967.[106]
+
+Both the Romanian words for "fairy" Zână[107] and Sânziană, the Leonese and Portuguese word for "water nymph" xana, and the Spanish word for "shooting target" and "morning call" (diana) seem to come from the name of Diana.
+
+Since the Renaissance, Diana's myths have often been represented in the visual and dramatic arts, including the opera L'arbore di Diana. In the 16th century, Diana's image figured prominently at the châteaus of Fontainebleau, Chenonceau, & at Anet, in deference to Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henri of France. At Versailles she was incorporated into the Olympian iconography with which Louis XIV, the Apollo-like "Sun King" liked to surround himself. Diana is also a character in the 1876 Léo Delibes ballet Sylvia. The plot deals with Sylvia, one of Diana's nymphs and sworn to chastity, and Diana's assault on Sylvia's affections for the shepherd Amyntas.
+
+Diana has been one of the most popular themes in art. Painters like Titian, Peter Paul Rubens, François Boucher, Nicholas Poussin and made use of her myth as a major theme. Most depictions of Diana in art featured the stories of Diana and Actaeon, or Callisto, or depicted her resting after hunting. Some famous work of arts with a Diana theme are:

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+
+
+Poverty is not  having enough material possessions or income for a person's needs.[2]  Poverty may include social, economic, and political elements.
+
+Absolute poverty is the complete lack of the means necessary to meet basic personal needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter.[3]  The threshold at which absolute poverty is defined is always about the same, independent of the person's permanent location or era.
+
+On the other hand, relative poverty occurs when a person cannot meet a minimum level of living standards, compared to others in the same time and place. Therefore, the threshold at which relative poverty is defined varies from one country to another, or from one society to another.[4]  For example, a person who cannot afford housing better than a small tent in an open field would be said to live in relative poverty if almost everyone else in that area lives in modern brick homes, but not if everyone else also lives in small tents in open fields (for example, in a nomadic tribe).
+
+Governments and non-governmental organizations try to reduce poverty.  Providing basic needs to people who are unable to earn a sufficient income can be hampered by constraints on government's ability to deliver services, such as corruption, tax avoidance, debt and loan conditionalities and by the brain drain of health care and educational professionals. Strategies of increasing income to make basic needs more affordable typically include welfare, economic freedoms and providing financial services.[5]
+
+The word poverty comes from the old (Norman) French word poverté (Modern French: pauvreté), from Latin paupertās from pauper (poor).[6]
+
+There are several definitions of poverty depending on the context of the situation it is placed in, and the views of the person giving the definition.
+
+United Nations: Fundamentally, poverty is the inability of having choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and clothe a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one's food or a job to earn one's living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living in marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation.[7]
+
+World Bank: Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one's life.[8]
+
+Absolute poverty refers to a set standard which is consistent over time and between countries. First introduced in 1990, the dollar a day poverty line measured absolute poverty by the standards of the world's poorest countries. The World Bank defined the new international poverty line as $1.25 a day in 2008 for 2005 (equivalent to $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices).[9][10] In October 2015, they reset it to $1.90 a day.[11]
+
+Absolute poverty, extreme poverty, or abject poverty is "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services."[12] The term 'absolute poverty', when used in this fashion, is usually synonymous with 'extreme poverty': Robert McNamara, the former president of the World Bank, described absolute or extreme poverty as, "a condition so limited by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality, and low life expectancy as to be beneath any reasonable definition of human decency."[13][notes 1][14] Australia is one of the world's wealthier nations. In his article published in Australian Policy Online, Robert Tanton notes that, "While this amount is appropriate for third world countries, in Australia, the amount required to meet these basic needs will naturally be much higher because prices of these basic necessities are higher."
+
+However, as the amount of wealth required for survival is not the same in all places and time periods, particularly in highly developed countries where few people would fall below the World Bank Group's poverty lines, countries often develop their own national poverty lines.
+
+An absolute poverty line was calculated in Australia for the Henderson poverty inquiry in 1973. It was $62.70 a week, which was the disposable income required to support the basic needs of a family of two adults and two dependent children at the time. This poverty line has been updated regularly by the Melbourne Institute according to increases in average incomes; for a single employed person it was $391.85 per week (including housing costs) in March 2009.[15] In Australia the OECD poverty would equate to a "disposable income of less than $358 per week for a single adult (higher for larger households to take account of their greater costs).[16] in 2015 Australia implemented the Individual Deprivation Measure which address gender disparities in poverty.[17]
+
+For a few years starting 1990, the World Bank anchored absolute poverty line as $1 per day. This was revised in 1993, and through 2005, absolute poverty was $1.08 a day for all countries on a purchasing power parity basis, after adjusting for inflation to the 1993 U.S. dollar. In 2005, after extensive studies of cost of living across the world, The World Bank raised the measure for global poverty line to reflect the observed higher cost of living.[18] In 2015, the World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than US$1.90 (PPP) per day, and moderate poverty[citation needed] as less than $2 or $5 a day (but note that a person or family with access to subsistence resources, e.g., subsistence farmers, may have a low cash income without a correspondingly low standard of living – they are not living "on" their cash income but using it as a top up). It estimated that "in 2001, 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below $1 a day and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day."[19] A 'dollar a day', in nations that do not use the U.S. dollar as currency, does not translate to living a day on the equivalent amount of local currency as determined by the exchange rate.[20] Rather, it is determined by the purchasing power parity rate, which would look at how much local currency is needed to buy the same things that a dollar could buy in the United States.[20] Usually, this would translate to less local currency than the exchange rate in poorer countries as the United States is a relatively more expensive country.[20]
+
+The poverty line threshold of $1.90 per day, as set by the World Bank, is controversial. Each nation has its own threshold for absolute poverty line; in the United States, for example, the absolute poverty line was US$15.15 per day in 2010 (US$22,000 per year for a family of four),[21] while in India it was US$1.0 per day[22] and in China the absolute poverty line was US$0.55 per day, each on PPP basis in 2010.[23] These different poverty lines make data comparison between each nation's official reports qualitatively difficult. Some scholars argue that the World Bank method sets the bar too high, others argue it is too low. Still others suggest that poverty line misleads as it measures everyone below the poverty line the same, when in reality someone living on $1.20 per day is in a different state of poverty than someone living on $0.20 per day. In other words, the depth and intensity of poverty varies across the world and in any regional populations, and $1.25 per day poverty line and head counts are inadequate measures.[22][24][25]
+
+Relative poverty views poverty as socially defined and dependent on social context, hence relative poverty is a measure of income inequality. Usually, relative poverty is measured as the percentage of the population with income less than some fixed proportion of median income. There are several other different income inequality metrics, for example, the Gini coefficient or the Theil Index.
+
+Relative poverty is the "most useful measure for ascertaining poverty rates in wealthy developed nations".[26][27][28][29][30] Relative poverty measure is used by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Canadian poverty researchers.[26][27][28][29][30] In the European Union, the "relative poverty measure is the most prominent and most-quoted of the EU social inclusion indicators".[31]
+
+"Relative poverty reflects better the cost of social inclusion and equality of opportunity in a specific time and space."[32]
+
+"Once economic development has progressed beyond a certain minimum level, the rub of the poverty problem – from the point of view of both the poor individual and of the societies in which they live – is not so much the effects of poverty in any absolute form but the effects of the contrast, daily perceived, between the lives of the poor and the lives of those around them. For practical purposes, the problem of poverty in the industrialized nations today is a problem of relative poverty (page 9)."[32][33]
+
+In 1776 Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations argued that poverty is the inability to afford, "not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without".[34][35]
+
+In 1958 J. K. Galbraith argued that "People are poverty stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival, falls markedly behind that of their community."[35][36]
+
+In 1964 in a joint committee economic President's report in the United States, Republicans endorsed the concept of relative poverty. "No objective definition of poverty exists... The definition varies from place to place and time to time. In America as our standard of living rises, so does our idea of what is substandard."[35][37]
+
+In 1965 Rose Friedman argued for the use of relative poverty claiming that the definition of poverty changes with general living standards. Those labeled as poor in 1995 would have had "a higher standard of living than many labeled not poor" in 1965.[35][38]
+
+In 1979, British sociologist, Peter Townsend published his famous definition, "individuals ... can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or are at least widely encouraged or approved, in the societies to which they belong (page 31)".[39]
+
+Brian Nolan and Christopher T. Whelan of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in Ireland explained that "Poverty has to be seen in terms of the standard of living of the society in question."[40]
+
+Relative poverty measures are used as official poverty rates by the European Union, UNICEF, and the OECD. The main poverty line used in the OECD and the European Union is based on "economic distance", a level of income set at 60% of the median household income.[41]
+
+Many wealthy nations have seen an increase in relative poverty rates ever since the Great Recession, in particular among children from impoverished families who often reside in substandard housing and find educational opportunities out of reach.[42]
+
+Poverty rate is a calculation of the percentage of people whose family household income falls below the Poverty Line. The United States federal government typically regulates this line, and typically the cost of the line is set to three times the cost an adequate meal. This line is subject to change based on the level of price changes and size of the family. According to census, poverty rate helped determine that around 14.8% of U.S population had household incomes that was below the poverty line for their family size in 2014.[43]
+
+Secondary poverty refers to those that earn enough income to not be impoverished, but who spend their income on unnecessary pleasures, such as alcoholic beverages, thus placing them below it in practice.[44]
+
+In 18th- and 19th-century Great Britain, the practice of temperance among Methodists, as well as their rejection of gambling, allowed them to eliminate secondary poverty and accumulate capital.[45]
+
+Economic aspects of poverty focus on material needs, typically including the necessities of daily living, such as food, clothing, shelter, or safe drinking water. Poverty in this sense may be understood as a condition in which a person or community is lacking in the basic needs for a minimum standard of well-being and life, particularly as a result of a persistent lack of income. The increase in poverty runs parallel sides with unemployment, hunger, and higher crime rate.
+
+Analysis of social aspects of poverty links conditions of scarcity to aspects of the distribution of resources and power in a society and recognizes that poverty may be a function of the diminished "capability" of people to live the kinds of lives they value. The social aspects of poverty may include lack of access to information, education, health care, social capital or political power.[46][47]
+
+Poverty levels are snapshot pictures in time that omits the transitional dynamics between levels. Mobility statistics supply additional information about the fraction who leave the poverty level. For example, one study finds that in a sixteen-year period (1975 to 1991 in the U.S.) only 5% of those in the lower fifth of the income level were still at that level, while 95% transitioned to a higher income category.[48] Poverty levels can remain the same while those who rise out of poverty are replaced by others. The transient poor and chronic poor differ in each society. In a nine-year period ending in 2005 for the U.S., 50% of the poorest quintile transitioned to a higher quintile.[49]
+
+Poverty may also be understood as an aspect of unequal social status and inequitable social relationships, experienced as social exclusion, dependency, and diminished capacity to participate, or to develop meaningful connections with other people in society.[50][51][39] Such social exclusion can be minimized through strengthened connections with the mainstream, such as through the provision of relational care to those who are experiencing poverty.
+
+The World Bank's "Voices of the Poor," based on research with over 20,000 poor people in 23 countries, identifies a range of factors which poor people identify as part of poverty. These include:
+
+David Moore, in his book The World Bank, argues that some analysis of poverty reflect pejorative, sometimes racial, stereotypes of impoverished people as powerless victims and passive recipients of aid programs.[52]
+
+Ultra-poverty, a term apparently coined by Michael Lipton,[53] connotes being amongst poorest of the poor in low-income countries. Lipton defined ultra-poverty as receiving less than 80 percent of minimum caloric intake whilst spending more than 80% of income on food. Alternatively a 2007 report issued by International Food Policy Research Institute defined ultra-poverty as living on less than 54 cents per day.[54]
+
+Asset poverty is an economic and social condition that is more persistent and prevalent than income poverty.[55] It can be defined as a household's inability to access wealth resources that are enough to provide for basic needs for a period of three months. Basic needs refer to the minimum standards for consumption and acceptable needs.Wealth resources consist of home ownership, other real estate (second home, rented properties, etc.), net value of farm and business assets, stocks, checking and savings accounts, and other savings (money in savings bonds, life insurance policy cash values, etc.). Wealth is measured in three forms: net worth, net worth minus home equity, and liquid assets. Net worth consists of all the aspects mentioned above. Net worth minus home equity is the same except it does not include home ownership in asset calculations. Liquid assets are resources that are readily available such as cash, checking and savings accounts, stocks, and other sources of savings. There are two types of assets: tangible and intangible. Tangible assets most closely resemble liquid assets in that they include stocks, bonds, property, natural resources, and hard assets not in the form of real estate. Intangible assets are simply the access to credit, social capital, cultural capital, political capital, and human capital.
+
+The absolute poverty measure trends are supported by human development indicators, which have also been improving. Life expectancy has greatly increased in the developing world since World War II and is starting to close the gap to the developed world.[citation needed] Child mortality has decreased in every developing region of the world.[56] The proportion of the world's population living in countries where per-capita food supplies are less than 2,200 calories (9,200 kilojoules) per day decreased from 56% in the mid-1960s to below 10% by the 1990s. Similar trends can be observed for literacy, access to clean water and electricity and basic consumer items.[57]
+
+In the United Kingdom, the second Cameron ministry came under attack for their redefinition of poverty; poverty is no longer classified by a family's income, but as to whether a family is in work or not.[58] Considering that two-thirds of people who found work were accepting wages that are below the living wage (according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation[59]) this has been criticised by anti-poverty campaigners as an unrealistic view of poverty in the United Kingdom.[58]
+
+The share of the world's population living in absolute poverty fell from 43% in 1981 to 14% in 2011.[19] The absolute number of people in poverty fell from 1.95 billion in 1981 to 1.01 billion in 2011.[60] The economist Max Roser estimates that the number of people in poverty is therefore roughly the same as 200 years ago.[60] This is the case since the world population was just little more than 1 billion in 1820 and the majority (84% to 94%[61]) of the world population was living poverty.
+The proportion of the developing world's population living in extreme economic poverty fell from 28 percent in 1990 to 21 percent in 2001.[19] Most of this improvement has occurred in East and South Asia.[62] In East Asia the World Bank reported that "The poverty headcount rate at the $2-a-day level is estimated to have fallen to about 27 percent [in 2007], down from 29.5 percent in 2006 and 69 percent in 1990."[63] In Sub-Saharan Africa extreme poverty went up from 41 percent in 1981 to 46 percent in 2001,[64] which combined with growing population increased the number of people living in extreme poverty from 231 million to 318 million.[65]
+
+In the early 1990s some of the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia experienced a sharp drop in income.[66] The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in large declines in GDP per capita, of about 30 to 35% between 1990 and the through year of 1998 (when it was at its minimum). As a result, poverty rates tripled,[67] excess mortality increased,[68] and life expectancy declined.[69] In subsequent years as per capita incomes recovered the poverty rate dropped from 31.4% of the population to 19.6%.[70][71] The average post-communist country had returned to 1989 levels of per-capita GDP by 2005,[72] although as of 2015 some are still far behind that.[73] According to an article in Foreign Affairs, there were generally three paths to economic reform taken post Soviet collapse.  Those nations that took a "radical" or "gradual" reform rate have GDP per capita similar to other nations in their stage of economic development at generally 150% of their transition year (1991) GDP.  Nations that took a "slow" approach (an approach that limited free market reforms generally) had much slower, and lower economic growth, higher Gini coefficients, and poorer health outcomes.  Currently, those nations sit at 125% of their transition year GDP per capita.[74] A 2009 study published in The Lancet suggested that radical economic changes and the resulting short term unemployment led to temporary increases in the mortality rate of adult males.[75]
+
+World Bank data shows that the percentage of the population living in households with consumption or income per person below the poverty line has decreased in each region of the world except Middle East and North Africa since 1990:[76][77]
+
+According to Chen and Ravallion, about 1.76 billion people in developing world lived above $1.25 per day and 1.9 billion people lived below $1.25 per day in 1981. The world's population increased over the next 25 years. In 2005, about 4.09 billion people in developing world lived above $1.25 per day and 1.4 billion people lived below $1.25 per day (both 1981 and 2005 data are on inflation adjusted basis).[80][81] Some scholars caution that these trends are subject to various assumptions and not certain. Additionally, they note that the poverty reduction is not uniform across the world; economically prospering countries such as China, India and Brazil have made more progress in absolute poverty reduction than countries in other regions of the world.[82]
+
+In 2012 it was estimated that, using a poverty line of $1.25 a day, 1.2 billion people lived in poverty.[83] Given the current economic model, built on GDP, it would take 100 years to bring the world's poorest up to the poverty line of $1.25 a day.[84] UNICEF estimates half the world's children (or 1.1 billion) live in poverty.[85]
+
+The World Bank forecasted in 2015 that 702.1 million people were living in extreme poverty, down from 1.75 billion in 1990.[86] Extreme poverty is observed in all parts of the world, including developed economies.[87][88] Of the 2015 population, about 347.1 million people (35.2%) lived in Sub-Saharan Africa and 231.3 million (13.5%) lived in South Asia. According to the World Bank, between 1990 and 2015, the percentage of the world's population living in extreme poverty fell from 37.1% to 9.6%, falling below 10% for the first time.[89] The People's Republic of China accounts for over three quarters of global poverty reduction from 1990 to 2005.  Though, as noted, China accounted for nearly half of all extreme poverty in 1990.[90] In public opinion around the world people surveyed tend to incorrectly think extreme poverty has not decreased.[91][92]
+
+During the 2013 to 2015 period The World Bank reported that extreme poverty fell from 11% to 10%, however they also noted that the rate of decline had slowed by nearly half from the 25 year average with parts of sub-saharan Africa returning to early 2000 levels.[93][94] The World Bank attributed this to increasing violence following the Arab Spring, population increases in Sub-Saharan Africa, and general African inflationary pressures and economic malaise were the primary drivers for this slow down.[95][96]
+
+There is disagreement among experts as to what would be considered a realistic poverty rate with one considering it "an inaccurately measured and arbitrary cut off".[97] Some contend that a higher poverty line is needed, such as a minimum of $7.40 or even $10 to $15 a day.  They argue that these levels would better reflect the cost of basic needs and normal life expectancy.[98] One estimate places the true scale of poverty much higher than the World Bank, with an estimated 4.3 billion people (59% of the world's population) living with less than $5 a day and unable to meet basic needs adequately.[99] It has been argued by some academics that the neoliberal policies promoted by global financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank are actually exacerbating both inequality and poverty.[100][101]
+
+An data based scientific empirical research, which studied the impact of dynastic politics on the level of poverty of the provinces, found a positive correlation between dynastic politics and poverty i.e. the higher proportion of dynastic politicians in power in a province leads to higher poverty rate.[102] There is significant evidence that these political dynasties use their political dominance over their respective regions to enrich themselves, using methods such as graft or outright bribery of legislators.[103]
+
+According to Philip Alston's final report as UN's special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights (July 2020), the World Bank’s international poverty line of $1.90 a day is fundamentally flawed, and has allowed for "self congratulatory" triumphalism in the fight against extreme global poverty, which he asserts is "completely off track" with opportunities being squandered, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Alston, nearly half of the global population, or 3.4 billion, lives on less than $5.50 a day, and this number has barely moved since 1990.[104]
+
+The effects of poverty may also be causes as listed above, thus creating a "poverty cycle" operating across multiple levels, individual, local, national and global.
+
+One third of deaths around the world – some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day – are due to poverty-related causes. People living in developing nations, among them women and children, are over represented among the global poor and these effects of severe poverty.[105][106][107] Those living in poverty suffer disproportionately from hunger or even starvation and disease, as well as lower life expectancy.[108][109] According to the World Health Organization, hunger and malnutrition are the single gravest threats to the world's public health and malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases.[110]
+
+Almost 90% of maternal deaths during childbirth occur in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, compared to less than 1% in the developed world.[111] Those who live in poverty have also been shown to have a far greater likelihood of having or incurring a disability within their lifetime.[112] Infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis can perpetuate poverty by diverting health and economic resources from investment and productivity; malaria decreases GDP growth by up to 1.3% in some developing nations and AIDS decreases African growth by 0.3–1.5% annually.[113][114][115]
+
+Poverty has been shown to impede cognitive function. One way in which this may happen is that financial worries put a severe burden on one's mental resources so that they are no longer fully available for solving complicated problems. The reduced capability for problem solving can lead to suboptimal decisions and further perpetuate poverty.[116] Many other pathways from poverty to compromised cognitive capacities have been noted, from poor nutrition and environmental toxins to the effects of stress on parenting behavior, all of which lead to suboptimal psychological development.[117][118] Neuroscientists have documented the impact of poverty on brain structure and function throughout the lifespan.[119]
+
+Infectious diseases continue to blight the lives of the poor across the world. 36.8 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, with 954,492 deaths in 2017.[120] Every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide.[121]
+
+Poor people often are more prone to severe diseases due to the lack of health care, and due to living in non-optimal conditions. Among the poor, girls tend to suffer even more due to gender discrimination. Economic stability is paramount in a poor household otherwise they go in an endless loop of negative income trying to treat diseases. Often time when a person in a poor household falls ill it is up to the family members to take care of their family members due to limited access to health care and lack of health insurance. The household members oftentimes have to give up their income or stop seeking further education to tend to the sick member. There is a greater opportunity cost imposed on the poor to tend to someone compared to someone with better financial stability.[122]
+
+Rises in the costs of living make poor people less able to afford items. Poor people spend a greater portion of their budgets on food than wealthy people. As a result, poor households and those near the poverty threshold can be particularly vulnerable to increases in food prices. For example, in late 2007 increases in the price of grains[123] led to food riots in some countries.[124][125][126] The World Bank warned that 100 million people were at risk of sinking deeper into poverty.[127] Threats to the supply of food may also be caused by drought and the water crisis.[128] Intensive farming often leads to a vicious cycle of exhaustion of soil fertility and decline of agricultural yields.[129] Approximately 40% of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded.[130][131] In Africa, if current trends of soil degradation continue, the continent might be able to feed just 25% of its population by 2025, according to United Nations University's Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa.[132] Every year nearly 11 million children living in poverty die before their fifth birthday. 1.02 billion people go to bed hungry every night.[133]
+
+According to the Global Hunger Index, Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest child malnutrition rate of the world's regions over the 2001–2006 period.[134]
+
+The Associated Press reports that people gather every evening in downtown Caracas in search of food thrown out on sidewalks due to 90% of Venezuela's population living in poverty.[135]
+
+As part of the Sustainable Development Goals the global community has made the elimination of hunger and undernutrition a priority for the coming years. While the Goal 2 of the SDGs aims to reach this goal by 2030[136] a number of initiatives aim to achieve the goal 5 years earlier, by 2025:
+
+Research has found that there is a high risk of educational underachievement for children who are from low-income housing circumstances. This is often a process that begins in primary school for some less fortunate children. Instruction in the US educational system, as well as in most other countries, tends to be geared towards those students who come from more advantaged backgrounds. As a result, children in poverty are at a higher risk than advantaged children for retention in their grade, special deleterious placements during the school's hours and even not completing their high school education.[142] Advantage breeds advantage.[143] There are indeed many explanations for why students tend to drop out of school. One is the conditions of which they attend school. Schools in poverty-stricken areas have conditions that hinder children from learning in a safe environment. Researchers have developed a name for areas like this: an urban war zone is a poor, crime-laden district in which deteriorated, violent, even war-like conditions and underfunded, largely ineffective schools promote inferior academic performance, including irregular attendance and disruptive or non-compliant classroom behavior.[144] Because of poverty, "Students from low-income families are 2.4 times more likely to drop out than middle-income kids, and over 10 times more likely than high-income peers to drop out"[145]
+
+For children with low resources, the risk factors are similar to others such as juvenile delinquency rates, higher levels of teenage pregnancy, and the economic dependency upon their low-income parent or parents.[142]
+Families and society who submit low levels of investment in the education and development of less fortunate children end up with less favorable results for the children who see a life of parental employment reduction and low wages. Higher rates of early childbearing with all the connected risks to family, health and well-being are major important issues to address since education from preschool to high school are both identifiably meaningful in a life.[142]
+
+Poverty often drastically affects children's success in school. A child's "home activities, preferences, mannerisms" must align with the world and in the cases that they do not do these, students are at a disadvantage in the school and, most importantly, the classroom.[146] Therefore, it is safe to state that children who live at or below the poverty level will have far less success educationally than children who live above the poverty line. Poor children have a great deal less healthcare and this ultimately results in many absences from the academic year. Additionally, poor children are much more likely to suffer from hunger, fatigue, irritability, headaches, ear infections, flu, and colds.[146] These illnesses could potentially restrict a child or student's focus and concentration.[147]
+
+For a child to grow up emotionally healthy, the children under three need "A strong, reliable primary caregiver who provides consistent and unconditional love, guidance, and support. Safe, predictable, stable environments. Ten to 20 hours each week of harmonious, reciprocal interactions. This process, known as attunement, is most crucial during the first 6–24 months of infants' lives and helps them develop a wider range of healthy emotions, including gratitude, forgiveness, and empathy. Enrichment through personalized, increasingly complex activities".
+
+Harmful spending habits mean that the poor typically spend about 2 percent of their income educating their children but larger percentages of alcohol and tobacco (For example, 6 percent in Indonesia and 8 percent in Mexico).[148]
+
+In general, the interaction of gender with poverty or location tends to work to the disadvantage of girls in poorer countries with low completion rates and social expectations that they marry early, and to the disadvantage of boys in richer countries with high completion rates but social expectations that they enter the labour force early.[149] At the primary education level, most countries with a completion rate below 60% exhibit gender disparity at girls’ expense, particularly poor and rural girls. In Mauritania, the adjusted gender parity index is 0.86 on average, but only 0.63 for the poorest 20%, while there is parity among the richest 20%. In countries with completion rates between 60% and 80%, gender disparity is generally smaller, but disparity at the expense of poor girls is especially marked in Cameroon, Nigeria and Yemen. Exceptions in the opposite direction are observed in countries with pastoralist economies that rely on boys’ labour, such as the Kingdom of Eswatini, Lesotho and Namibia.[149]
+
+Poverty increases the risk of homelessness.[151] Slum-dwellers, who make up a third of the world's urban population, live in a poverty no better, if not worse, than rural people, who are the traditional focus of the poverty in the developing world, according to a report by the United Nations.[152]
+
+There are over 100 million street children worldwide.[153] Most of the children living in institutions around the world have a surviving parent or close relative, and they most commonly entered orphanages because of poverty.[150] It is speculated that, flush with money, orphanages are increasing and push for children to join even though demographic data show that even the poorest extended families usually take in children whose parents have died.[150] Experts and child advocates maintain that orphanages are expensive and often harm children's development by separating them from their families and that it would be more effective and cheaper to aid close relatives who want to take in the orphans.[150]
+
+As of 2012, 2.5 billion people lack access to sanitation services and 15% practice open defecation.[154] The most noteworthy example is Bangladesh, which has half the GDP per capita of India but has a lower mortality from diarrhea than India or the world average, with diarrhea deaths declining by 90% since the 1990s. Even while providing latrines is a challenge, people still do not use them even when available. By strategically providing pit latrines to the poorest, charities in Bangladesh sparked a cultural change as those better off perceived it as an issue of status to not use one. The vast majority of the latrines built were then not from charities but by villagers themselves.[155]
+
+Water utility subsidies tend to subsidize water consumption by those connected to the supply grid, which is typically skewed towards the richer and urban segment of the population and those outside informal housing. As a result of heavy consumption subsidies, the price of water decreases to the extent that only 30%, on average, of the supplying costs in developing countries is covered.[156][157]
+This results in a lack of incentive to maintain delivery systems, leading to losses from leaks annually that are enough for 200 million people.[156][158]
+This also leads to a lack of incentive to invest in expanding the network, resulting in much of the poor population being unconnected to the network. Instead, the poor buy water from water vendors for, on average, about five to 16 times the metered price.[156][159] However, subsidies for laying new connections to the network rather than for consumption have shown more promise for the poor.[157]
+
+Similarly, the poorest fifth receive 0.1% of the world's lighting but pay a fifth of total spending on light, accounting for 25 to 30 percent of their income.[160] Indoor air pollution from burning fuels kills 2 million, with almost half the deaths from pneumonia in children under 5.[161] Fuel from Bamboo burns more cleanly and also matures much faster than wood, thus also reducing deforestation.[161] Additionally, using solar panels is promoted as being cheaper over the products' lifetime even if upfront costs are higher.[160] Thus, payment schemes such as lend-to-own programs are promoted and up to 14% of Kenyan households use solar as their primary energy source.[162]
+
+According to experts, many women become victims of trafficking, the most common form of which is prostitution, as a means of survival and economic desperation.[163] Deterioration of living conditions can often compel children to abandon school to contribute to the family income, putting them at risk of being exploited.[164] For example, in Zimbabwe, a number of girls are turning to sex in return for food to survive because of the increasing poverty.[165] According to studies, as poverty decreases there will be fewer and fewer instances of violence.[166]
+
+In one survey, 67% of children from disadvantaged inner cities said they had witnessed a serious assault, and 33% reported witnessing a homicide.[167] 51% of fifth graders from New Orleans (median income for a household: $27,133) have been found to be victims of violence, compared to 32% in Washington, DC (mean income for a household: $40,127).[168]
+
+Max Weber and some schools of modernization theory suggest that cultural values could affect economic success.[169][170] However, researchers[who?] have gathered evidence that suggest that values are not as deeply ingrained and that changing economic opportunities explain most of the movement into and out of poverty, as opposed to shifts in values.[171] Studies have shown that poverty changes the personalities of children who live in it. The Great Smoky Mountains Study was a ten-year study that was able to demonstrate this. During the study, about one-quarter of the families saw a dramatic and unexpected increase in income. The study showed that among these children, instances of behavioral and emotional disorders decreased, and conscientiousness and agreeableness increased.[172]
+
+One 2012 paper, based on a sampling of 9,646 U.S, adults, claimed that poverty tends to correlate with laziness and other such traits.[173][need quotation to verify] A 2018 report on poverty in the United States by UN special rapporteur Philip Alston asserts that caricatured narratives about the rich and the poor, that "the rich are industrious, entrepreneurial, patriotic and the drivers of economic success. The poor are wasters, losers and scammers" are largely inaccurate, as "the poor are overwhelmingly those born into poverty, or those thrust there by circumstances largely beyond their control, such as physical or mental disabilities, divorce, family breakdown, illness, old age, unliveable wages or discrimination in the job market."[174]
+
+A psychological study has been conducted by four scientists during inaugural Convention of Psychological Science. The results find that people who thrive with financial stability or fall under low socioeconomic status (SES), tend to perform worse cognitively due to external pressure imposed upon them. The research found that stressors such as low income, inadequate health care, discrimination, exposure to criminal activities all contribute to mental disorders. This study also found that it slows cognitive thinking in children when they are exposed to poverty stricken environments.[175] In kids it is seen that kids perform better under the care and nourishment from their parents, and found that children tend to adopt speaking language at a younger age. Since being in poverty from childhood is especially more harmful than it is for an adult, therefore it is seen that children in poor households tend to fall behind in certain cognitive abilities compared to other average families.[176]
+
+Cultural factors, such as discrimination of various kinds, can negatively affect productivity such as age discrimination, stereotyping,[177] discrimination against people with physical disability,[178] gender discrimination, racial discrimination, and caste discrimination. Women are the group suffering from the highest rate of poverty after children; 14.5% of women and 22% of children are poor in the United States. In addition, the fact that women are more likely to be caregivers, regardless of income level, to either the generations before or after them, exacerbates the burdens of their poverty.[179]
+Marking the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty Philip Alston warned in a statement that, “The world’s poor are at disproportionate risk of torture, arrest, early death and domestic violence, but their civil and political rights are being airbrushed out of the picture.” ... people in lower socio-economic classes are much more likely to get killed, tortured or experience an invasion of their privacy, and are far less likely to realize their right to vote, or otherwise participate in the political process.”[180]
+
+Causes of poverty is a highly ideologically charged subject, as different causes point to different remedies. Very broadly speaking, the socialist tradition locates the roots of poverty in problems of distribution and the use of the means of production as capital benefiting individuals, and calls for re-distribution of wealth as the solution, whereas the neoliberal school of thought is dedicated the idea that creating conditions for profitable private investment is the solutions. Neoliberal think tanks have received extensive funding,[181] and the ability to apply many of their ideas in highly indebted countries in the global South as a condition for receiving emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund.
+
+Various poverty reduction strategies are broadly categorized based on whether they make more of the basic human needs available or whether they increase the disposable income needed to purchase those needs. Some strategies such as building roads can both bring access to various basic needs, such as fertilizer or healthcare from urban areas, as well as increase incomes, by bringing better access to urban markets. Statistics of 2018 shows population living in extreme conditions has declined by more than 1 billion in the last 25 years. As per the report published by the world bank on 19 September 2018 world poverty falls below 750 million.[182]
+
+Agricultural technologies such as nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides, new seed varieties and new irrigation methods have dramatically reduced food shortages in modern times by boosting yields past previous constraints.[183]
+
+Before the Industrial Revolution, poverty had been mostly accepted as inevitable as economies produced little, making wealth scarce.[184] Geoffrey Parker wrote that "In Antwerp and Lyon, two of the largest cities in western Europe, by 1600 three-quarters of the total population were too poor to pay taxes, and therefore likely to need relief in times of crisis."[185] The initial industrial revolution led to high economic growth and eliminated mass absolute poverty in what is now considered the developed world.[186] Mass production of goods in places such as rapidly industrializing China has made what were once considered luxuries, such as vehicles and computers, inexpensive and thus accessible to many who were otherwise too poor to afford them.[187][188]
+
+Even with new products, such as better seeds, or greater volumes of them, such as industrial production, the poor still require access to these products. Improving road and transportation infrastructure helps solve this major bottleneck.  In Africa, it costs more to move fertilizer from an African seaport 60 miles inland than to ship it from the United States to Africa because of sparse, low-quality roads, leading to fertilizer costs two to six times the world average.[189] Microfranchising models such as door to door distributors who earn commission-based income or Coca-Cola's successful distribution system[190][191] are used to disseminate basic needs to remote areas for below market prices.[192][193]
+
+Nations do not necessarily need wealth to gain health.[194] For example, Sri Lanka had a maternal mortality rate of 2% in the 1930s, higher than any nation today.[195] It reduced it to 0.5–0.6% in the 1950s and to 0.6% today while spending less each year on maternal health because it learned what worked and what did not.[195] Knowledge on the cost effectiveness of healthcare interventions can be elusive and educational measures have been made to disseminate what works, such as the Copenhagen Consensus.[196] Cheap water filters and promoting hand washing are some of the most cost effective health interventions and can cut deaths from diarrhea and pneumonia.[197][198]
+
+Strategies to provide education cost effectively include deworming children, which costs about 50 cents per child per year and reduces non-attendance from anemia, illness and malnutrition, while being only a twenty-fifth as expensive as increasing school attendance by constructing schools.[199] Schoolgirl absenteeism could be cut in half by simply providing free sanitary towels.[200] Fortification with micronutrients was ranked the most cost effective aid strategy by the Copenhagen Consensus.[201] For example, iodised salt costs 2 to 3 cents per person a year while even moderate iodine deficiency in pregnancy shaves off 10 to 15 IQ points.[202] Paying for school meals is argued to be an efficient strategy in increasing school enrollment, reducing absenteeism and increasing student attention.[203]
+
+Desirable actions such as enrolling children in school or receiving vaccinations can be encouraged by a form of aid known as conditional cash transfers.[204] In Mexico, for example, dropout rates of 16- to 19-year-olds in rural area dropped by 20% and children gained half an inch in height.[205] Initial fears that the program would encourage families to stay at home rather than work to collect benefits have proven to be unfounded. Instead, there is less excuse for neglectful behavior as, for example, children stopped begging on the streets instead of going to school because it could result in suspension from the program.[205]
+
+Government revenue can be diverted away from basic services by corruption.[206][207] Funds from aid and natural resources are often sent by government individuals for money laundering to overseas banks which insist on bank secrecy, instead of spending on the poor.[208] A Global Witness report asked for more action from Western banks as they have proved capable of stanching the flow of funds linked to terrorism.[208]
+
+Illicit capital flight from the developing world is estimated at ten times the size of aid it receives and twice the debt service it pays,[209] with one estimate that most of Africa would be developed if the taxes owed were paid.[210] About 60 per cent of illicit capital flight from Africa is from transfer mispricing, where a subsidiary in a developing nation sells to another subsidiary or shell company in a tax haven at an artificially low price to pay less tax.[211] An African Union report estimates that about 30% of sub-Saharan Africa's GDP has been moved to tax havens.[212] Solutions include corporate "country-by-country reporting" where corporations disclose activities in each country and thereby prohibit the use of tax havens where no effective economic activity occurs.[211]
+
+Developing countries' debt service to banks and governments from richer countries can constrain government spending on the poor.[213] For example, Zambia spent 40% of its total budget to repay foreign debt, and only 7% for basic state services in 1997.[214] One of the proposed ways to help poor countries has been debt relief. Zambia began offering services, such as free health care even while overwhelming the health care infrastructure, because of savings that resulted from a 2005 round of debt relief.[215]
+
+The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as primary holders of developing countries' debt, attach structural adjustment conditionalities in return for loans which are generally geared toward loan repayment with austerity measures such as the elimination of state subsidies and the privatization of state services. For example, the World Bank presses poor nations to eliminate subsidies for fertilizer even while many farmers cannot afford them at market prices.[216] In Malawi, almost five million of its 13 million people used to need emergency food aid but after the government changed policy and subsidies for fertilizer and seed were introduced, farmers produced record-breaking corn harvests in 2006 and 2007 as Malawi became a major food exporter.[216] A major proportion of aid from donor nations is tied, mandating that a receiving nation spend on products and expertise originating only from the donor country.[217] US law requires food aid be spent on buying food at home, instead of where the hungry live, and, as a result, half of what is spent is used on transport.[218]
+
+Distressed securities funds, also known as vulture funds, buy up the debt of poor nations cheaply and then sue countries for the full value of the debt plus interest which can be ten or 100 times what they paid.[219] They may pursue any companies which do business with their target country to force them to pay to the fund instead.[219] Considerable resources are diverted on costly court cases. For example, a court in Jersey ordered the Democratic Republic of the Congo to pay an American speculator $100 million in 2010.[219] Now, the UK, Isle of Man and Jersey have banned such payments.[219]
+
+The loss of basic needs providers emigrating from impoverished countries has a damaging effect.[220] As of 2004, there were more Ethiopia-trained doctors living in Chicago than in Ethiopia.[221] Proposals to mitigate the problem include compulsory government service for graduates of public medical and nursing schools[220] and promoting medical tourism so that health care personnel have more incentive to practice in their home countries.[222] It is very easy for Ugandan doctors to emigrate to other countries. It is seen that only 69 percent of the health care jobs were filled in Uganda. Other Ugandan doctors were seeking jobs in other countries leaving inadequate or less skilled doctors to stay in Uganda.[223]
+
+Some argue that overpopulation and lack of access to birth control can lead to population increase to exceed food production and other resources.[224][65][225][226] Better education for both men and women, and more control of their lives, reduces population growth due to family planning.[227] According to United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), by giving better education to men and women, they can earn money for their lives and can help them to strengthen economic security.[228]
+
+The following are strategies used or proposed to increase personal incomes among the poor. Raising farm incomes is described as the core of the antipoverty effort as three-quarters of the poor today are farmers.[229] Estimates show that growth in the agricultural productivity of small farmers is, on average, at least twice as effective in benefiting the poorest half of a country's population as growth generated in nonagricultural sectors.[230]
+
+A guaranteed minimum income ensures that every citizen will be able to purchase a desired level of basic needs. A basic income (or negative income tax) is a system of social security, that periodically provides each citizen, rich or poor, with a sum of money that is sufficient to live on. Studies of large cash-transfer programs in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Malawi show that the programs can be effective in increasing consumption, schooling, and nutrition, whether they are tied to such conditions or not.[231][232][233] Proponents argue that a basic income is more economically efficient than a minimum wage and unemployment benefits, as the minimum wage effectively imposes a high marginal tax on employers, causing losses in efficiency. In 1968, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith and another 1,200 economists signed a document calling for the US Congress to introduce a system of income guarantees.[234] Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics, with often diverse political convictions, who support a basic income include Herbert A. Simon,[235] Friedrich Hayek,[236] Robert Solow,[235] Milton Friedman,[237] Jan Tinbergen,[235] James Tobin[238][239][240]
+and James Meade.[235]
+
+Income grants are argued to be vastly more efficient in extending basic needs to the poor than subsidizing supplies whose effectiveness in poverty alleviation is diluted by the non-poor who enjoy the same subsidized prices.[241] With cars and other appliances, the wealthiest 20% of Egypt uses about 93% of the country's fuel subsidies.[242] In some countries, fuel subsidies are a larger part of the budget than health and education.[242][243] A 2008 study concluded that the money spent on in-kind transfers in India in a year could lift all India's poor out of poverty for that year if transferred directly.[244] The primary obstacle argued against direct cash transfers is the impractically for poor countries of such large and direct transfers. In practice, payments determined by complex iris scanning are used by war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan,[245] while India is phasing out its fuel subsidies in favor of direct transfers.[246] Additionally, in aid models, the famine relief model increasingly used by aid groups calls for giving cash or cash vouchers to the hungry to pay local farmers instead of buying food from donor countries, often required by law, as it wastes money on transport costs.[247][248]
+
+Corruption often leads to many civil services being treated by governments as employment agencies to loyal supporters[249] and so it could mean going through 20 procedures, paying $2,696 in fees, and waiting 82 business days to start a business in Bolivia, while in Canada it takes two days, two registration procedures, and $280 to do the same.[250] Such costly barriers favor big firms at the expense of small enterprises, where most jobs are created.[251] Often, businesses have to bribe government officials even for routine activities, which is, in effect, a tax on business.[252] Noted reductions in poverty in recent decades has occurred in China and India mostly as a result of the abandonment of collective farming in China and the ending of the central planning model known as the License Raj in India.[253][254][255]
+
+The World Bank concludes that governments and feudal elites extending to the poor the right to the land that they live and use are 'the key to reducing poverty' citing that land rights greatly increase poor people's wealth, in some cases doubling it.[256] Although approaches varied, the World Bank said the key issues were security of tenure and ensuring land transactions costs were low.[256]
+
+Greater access to markets brings more income to the poor. Road infrastructure has a direct impact on poverty.[257][258] Additionally, migration from poorer countries resulted in $328 billion sent from richer to poorer countries in 2010, more than double the $120 billion in official aid flows from OECD members. In 2011, India got $52 billion from its diaspora, more than it took in foreign direct investment.[259]
+
+Microloans, made famous by the Grameen Bank, is where small amounts of money are loaned to farmers or villages, mostly women, who can then obtain physical capital to increase their economic rewards. However, microlending has been criticized for making hyperprofits off the poor even from its founder, Muhammad Yunus,[260] and in India, Arundhati Roy asserts that some 250,000 debt-ridden farmers have been driven to suicide.[261][262][263]
+
+There has been significant rise of agriculture and small business that started booming up after the introduction of Grameen Banking especially in the rural areas. While making the foundation of this loan, from 1984 to 1989 loan recovery decreased from 99.4 percent to 96.9 percent.[264]
+
+Those in poverty place overwhelming importance on having a safe place to save money, much more so than receiving loans.[265] Additionally, a large part of microfinance loans are spent not on investments but on products that would usually be paid by a checking or savings account.[265] Microsavings are designs to make savings products available for the poor, who make small deposits. Mobile banking utilizes the wide availability of mobile phones to address the problem of the heavy regulation and costly maintenance of saving accounts.[265] This usually involves a network of agents of mostly shopkeepers, instead of bank branches, would take deposits in cash and translate these onto a virtual account on customers' phones. Cash transfers can be done between phones and issued back in cash with a small commission, making remittances safer.[266]
+
+In USA there are abundance of payday loan companies that strive to serve those people whose credit scores are much below the standard credit score in order to take an eligible loan. While these companies initially gives money to people who would likely default from traditional loans, many still frown on these loan services due to charging astonishingly high interest rates.
+
+Poverty can also be reduced as an improved economic policy is developed by the governing authorities to facilitate a more equitable distribution of the nation's wealth. Oxfam has called for an international movement to end extreme wealth concentration as a significant step towards ameliorating global poverty. The group stated that the $240 billion added to the fortunes of the world's richest billionaires in 2012 was enough to end extreme poverty four times over. Oxfam argues that the "concentration of resources in the hands of the top 1% depresses economic activity and makes life harder for everyone else – particularly those at the bottom of the economic ladder."[267][268] It has been reported that only 1% of the world population controls 50% of the wealth today, and the other 99% is having access to the remaining 50% only, and the gap has sharply increased in the recent past.[269] In 2018, Oxfam reported that the gains of the world's billionaires in 2017, which amounted to $762 billion, was enough to end extreme global poverty seven times over.[270]
+
+José Antonio Ocampo, professor at Columbia University and former finance minister of Colombia, and Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, former UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, argue that global tax reform is integral to human development and fighting poverty, as corporate tax avoidance has disproportionately impacted those mired in poverty, noting that "the human impact is devastatingly real. When profits are shifted out, the tax revenues from those profits that could be available to fund healthcare, schools, water sanitation and other public goods vanish from the ledger, leaving women and men, boys and girls without pathways to a better future."[271]
+
+Raghuram G. Rajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business has blamed the ever-widening gulf between the rich and the poor especially in the US to be one of the main Fault Lines which caused the financial institutions to pump money into subprime mortgages – on political behest, as a palliative and not a remedy, for poverty – causing the financial crisis of 2007–2009. In Rajan's view the main cause of increasing gap between the high income and low income earners, was lack of equal access to high class education for the latter.[272]
+
+The existence of inequality is in part due to a set of self-reinforcing behaviors that all together constitute one aspect of the cycle of poverty. These behaviors, in addition to unfavorable, external circumstances, also explain the existence of the Matthew effect, which not only exacerbates existing inequality, but is more likely to make it multigenerational. Widespread, multigenerational poverty is an important contributor to civil unrest and political instability.[273]
+
+The concept of business serving the world's poorest four billion or so people has been popular since CK Prahalad introduced the idea through his book  Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits in 2004, among many business corporations and business schools.[274][275] Kash Rangan, John Quelch, and other faculty members at the Global Poverty Project at Harvard Business School "believe that in pursuing its own self-interest in opening and expanding the BoP market, business can make a profit while serving the poorest of consumers and contributing to development."[276] According to Rangan "For business, the bulk of emerging markets worldwide is at the bottom of the pyramid so it makes good business sense – not a sense of do-gooding – to go after it.".[276]
+
+In their 2013 book, "The Business Solution to Poverty," Paul Polak and Mal Warwick directly addressed the criticism leveled against Prahalad's concept.[277] They noted that big business often failed to create products that actually met the needs and desires of the customers who lived at the bottom-of-the-pyramid. Their answer was that a business that wanted to succeed in that market had to spend time talking to and understanding those customers. Polak had previously promoted this approach in his previous book, "Out of Poverty," that described the work of International Development Enterprises (iDE), which he had formed in 1982.[278] Polak and Warwick provided practical advice: a product needed to affect at least a billion people (i.e., have universal appeal), it had to be able to be delivered to customers living where there was not a FedEx office or even a road, and it had to be "radically affordable" to attract someone who earned less than $2 a day.
+
+Rather than encouraging multinational businesses to meet the needs of the poor, some organizations such as iDE, the World Resources Institute, and the United Nations Development Programme began to focus on working directly with helping bottom-of-the-pyramid populations become local, small-scale entrepreneurs.[280] Since so much of this population is engaged in agriculture, these NGOs have addressed market gaps that enable small-scale (i.e., plots less than 2 hectares) farmers to increase their production and find markets for their harvests. This is done by increasing the availability of farming equipment (e.g., pumps, tillers, seeders) and better quality seed and fertilizer, as well as expanding access for training in farming best practices (e.g., crop rotation).
+
+Creating entrepreneurs through microfinance can produce unintended outcomes: Some entrepreneurial borrowers become informal intermediaries between microfinance initiatives and poorer micro-entrepreneurs. Those who more easily qualify for microfinance split loans into smaller credit to even poorer borrowers. Informal intermediation ranges from casual intermediaries at the good or benign end of the spectrum to 'loan sharks' at the professional and sometimes criminal end of the spectrum.[281]
+
+Milton Friedman argues that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits only,[282] thus, it needs to be examined whether business in BoP markets is capable of achieving the dual objective of making a profit while serving the poorest of consumers and contributing to development? Erik Simanis has reported that the model has a fatal flaw. According to Erik "Despite achieving healthy penetration rates of 5% to 10% in four test markets, for instance, Procter & Gamble couldn't generate a competitive return on its Pur water-purification powder after launching the product on a large scale in 2001...DuPont ran into similar problems with a venture piloted from 2006 to 2008 in Andhra Pradesh, India, by its subsidiary Solae, a global manufacturer of soy protein ... Because the high costs of doing business among the very poor demand a high contribution per transaction, companies must embrace the reality that high margins and price points aren't just a top-of-the-pyramid phenomenon; they're also a necessity for ensuring sustainable businesses at the bottom of the pyramid."[283] Marc Gunther states that "The bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) market leader, arguably, is Unilever ... Its signature BOP product is Pureit, a countertop water-purification system sold in India, Africa and Latin America. It's saving lives, but it's not making money for shareholders."[275] This leaves the ideal of eradicating poverty through profits or with a good business sense – not a sense of do-gooding rather questionable.
+
+Others have noted that relying on BoP consumers to choose to purchase items that increase their incomes is naive. Poor consumers may spend their income disproportionately on events or goods and services that offer short-term benefits rather than invest in things that could change their lives in the long-term.[284]
+
+A report published in 2013 by the World Bank, with support from the Climate & Development Knowledge Network, found that climate change was likely to hinder future attempts to reduce poverty. The report presented the likely impacts of present day, 2 °C and 4 °C warming on agricultural production, water resources, coastal ecosystems and cities across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and South East Asia. The impacts of a temperature rise of 2 °C included: regular food shortages in Sub-Saharan Africa; shifting rain patterns in South Asia leaving some parts under water and others without enough water for power generation, irrigation or drinking; degradation and loss of reefs in South East Asia, resulting in reduced fish stocks; and coastal communities and cities more vulnerable to increasingly violent storms.[285] In 2016, a UN report claimed that by 2030, an additional 122 million more people could be driven to extreme poverty because of climate change.[286]
+
+Many think that poverty is the cause of environmental degradation, while there are others who claim that rather the poor are the worst sufferers of environmental degradation caused by reckless exploitation of natural resources by the rich.[287] A Delhi-based environment organisation, the Centre for Science and Environment, points out that if the poor world were to develop and consume in the same manner as the West to achieve the same living standards, "we would need two additional planet Earths to produce resources and absorb wastes.", reports Anup Shah (2003). in his article Poverty and the Environment on Global Issues.[288]
+
+Among some individuals, poverty is considered a necessary or desirable condition, which must be embraced to reach certain spiritual, moral, or intellectual states. Poverty is often understood to be an essential element of renunciation in religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism (only for monks, not for lay persons) and Jainism, whilst in Roman Catholicism it is one of the evangelical counsels.  The main aim of giving up things of the materialistic world is to withdraw oneself from sensual pleasures (as they are considered illusionary and only temporary in some religions – such as the concept of dunya in Islam). This self-invited poverty (or giving up pleasures) is different from the one caused by economic imbalance.
+
+Some Christian communities, such as the Simple Way, the Bruderhof, and the Amish value voluntary poverty;[289] some even take a vow of poverty, similar to that of the traditional Catholic orders, in order to live a more complete life of discipleship.[290]
+
+Benedict XVI distinguished "poverty chosen" (the poverty of spirit proposed by Jesus), and "poverty to be fought" (unjust and imposed poverty). He considered that the moderation implied in the former favors solidarity, and is a necessary condition so as to fight effectively to eradicate the abuse of the latter.[291]
+
+As it was indicated above the reduction of poverty results from religion, but also can result from solidarity.[292]
+
+This article incorporates text from a free content work.  Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO Global education monitoring report 2019: gender report: Building bridges for gender equality,  UNESCO, UNESCO. UNESCO. To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles, please see this how-to page. For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see the terms of use.

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+Mississippi (/ˌmɪsɪˈsɪpi/ (listen)) is a state located in the Deep South region of the United States. Mississippi is the 32nd largest and 34th-most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Mississippi is bordered to the north by Tennessee, to the east by Alabama, to the south by the Gulf of Mexico, to the southwest by Louisiana, and to the northwest by Arkansas. Mississippi's western boundary is largely defined by the Mississippi River. Jackson is both the state's capital and largest city. Greater Jackson, with an estimated population of 580,166 in 2018, is the most populous metropolitan area in Mississippi and the 95th-most populous in the United States.
+
+On December 10, 1817, Mississippi became the 20th state admitted to the Union. By 1860, Mississippi was the nation's top cotton producing state and enslaved persons accounted for 55% of the state population.[5] Mississippi declared its secession from the Union on March 23, 1861, and was one of the seven original Confederate States. Following the Civil War, it was restored to the Union on February 23, 1870.[6]
+
+Until the Great Migration of the 1930s, African Americans were a majority of Mississippi's population. Mississippi was the site of many prominent events during the American Civil Rights movement, including the 1962 Ole Miss riots, the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers, and the 1964 Freedom Summer murders. Mississippi frequently ranks low among states in measures of health, education, and development, and high in measures of poverty.[7][8][9][10] In 2010, 37.3% of Mississippi's population was African American, the highest percentage for any state.
+
+Mississippi is almost entirely within the Gulf coastal plain, and generally consists of lowland plains and low hills. The northwest remainder of the state consists of the Mississippi Delta, a section of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. Mississippi's highest point is Woodall Mountain at 807 feet (246 m) above sea level adjacent to the Cumberland Plateau; the lowest is the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi has a humid subtropical climate classification.
+
+The state's name is derived from the Mississippi River that flows along its western boundary; settlers named it after the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi (English: Great river).
+
+Mississippi is bordered to the north by Tennessee, to the east by Alabama, to the south by Louisiana and a narrow coast on the Gulf of Mexico; and to the west, across the Mississippi River, by Louisiana and Arkansas.
+
+In addition to its namesake, major rivers in Mississippi include the Big Black River, the Pearl River, the Yazoo River, the Pascagoula River, and the Tombigbee River. Major lakes include Ross Barnett Reservoir, Arkabutla Lake, Sardis Lake, and Grenada Lake with the largest lake being Sardis Lake.
+
+Mississippi is entirely composed of lowlands, the highest point being Woodall Mountain, in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains, 807 feet (246 m) above sea level. The lowest point is sea level at the Gulf Coast. The state's mean elevation is 300 feet (91 m) above sea level.
+
+Most of Mississippi is part of the East Gulf Coastal Plain. The coastal plain is generally composed of low hills, such as the Pine Hills in the south and the North Central Hills. The Pontotoc Ridge and the Fall Line Hills in the northeast have somewhat higher elevations. Yellow-brown loess soil is found in the western parts of the state. The northeast is a region of fertile black earth that extends into the Alabama Black Belt.
+
+The coastline includes large bays at Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, and Pascagoula. It is separated from the Gulf of Mexico proper by the shallow Mississippi Sound, which is partially sheltered by Petit Bois Island, Horn Island, East and West Ship Islands, Deer Island, Round Island, and Cat Island.
+
+The northwest remainder of the state consists of the Mississippi Delta, a section of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. The plain is narrow in the south and widens north of Vicksburg. The region has rich soil, partly made up of silt which had been regularly deposited by the flood waters of the Mississippi River.
+
+Areas under the management of the National Park Service include:[11]
+
+Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 50,000 (United States Census Bureau as of 2017):[12]
+
+Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 20,000 but fewer than 50,000 (United States Census Bureau as of 2017):[12]
+
+Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 10,000 but fewer than 20,000 (United States Census Bureau as of 2017):[12]
+
+(See: Lists of cities, towns and villages, census-designated places, metropolitan areas, micropolitan areas, and counties in Mississippi)
+
+Mississippi has a humid subtropical climate with long, hot and humid summers, and short, mild winters. Temperatures average about 81°F (about 27°C) in July and about 42 °F (about 9 °C) in January. The temperature varies little statewide in the summer; however, in winter, the region near Mississippi Sound is significantly warmer than the inland portion of the state. The recorded temperature in Mississippi has ranged from −19 °F (−28 °C), in 1966, at Corinth in the northeast, to 115 °F (46 °C), in 1930, at Holly Springs in the north. Heavy snowfall rarely occurs, but isn't unheard of, such as during the New Year's Eve 1963 snowstorm. Yearly precipitation generally increases from north to south, with the regions closer to the Gulf being the most humid. Thus, Clarksdale, in the northwest, gets about 50 inches (about 1,270 mm) of precipitation annually and Biloxi, in the south, about 61 inches (about 1,550 mm). Small amounts of snow fall in northern and central Mississippi; snow is occasional in the southern part of the state.
+
+The late summer and fall is the seasonal period of risk for hurricanes moving inland from the Gulf of Mexico, especially in the southern part of the state. Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which killed 238 people in the state, were the most devastating hurricanes to hit the state. Both caused nearly total storm surge destruction of structures in and around Gulfport, Biloxi, and Pascagoula.
+
+As in the rest of the Deep South, thunderstorms are common in Mississippi, especially in the southern part of the state. On average, Mississippi has around 27 tornadoes annually; the northern part of the state has more tornadoes earlier in the year and the southern part a higher frequency later in the year. Two of the five deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history have occurred in the state. These storms struck Natchez, in southwest Mississippi (see The Great Natchez Tornado) and Tupelo, in the northeast corner of the state. About seven F5 tornadoes have been recorded in the state.
+
+
+
+Mississippi is heavily forested, with over half of the state's area covered by wild or cultivated trees. The southeastern part of the state is dominated by longleaf pine, in both uplands and lowland flatwoods and Sarracenia bogs. The Mississippi Alluvial Plain, or Delta, is primarily farmland and aquaculture ponds but also has sizeable tracts of cottonwood, willows, bald cypress, and oaks. A belt of loess extends north to south in the western part of the state, where the Mississippi Alluvial Plain reaches the first hills; this region is characterized by rich, mesic mixed hardwood forests, with some species disjunct from Appalachian forests.[15] Two bands of historical prairie, the Jackson Prairie and the Black Belt, run northwest to southeast in the middle and northeastern part of the state. Although these areas have been highly degraded by conversion to agriculture, a few areas remain, consisting of grassland with interspersed woodland of eastern redcedar, oaks, hickories, osage-orange, and sugarberry. The rest of the state, primarily north of Interstate 20 not including the prairie regions, consists of mixed pine-hardwood forest, common species being loblolly pine, oaks (e.g., water oak), hickories, sweetgum, and elm. Areas along large rivers are commonly inhabited by bald cypress, water tupelo, water elm, and bitter pecan. Commonly cultivated trees include loblolly pine, longleaf pine, cherrybark oak, and cottonwood.
+
+There are approximately 3000 species of vascular plants known from Mississippi.[16] As of 2018, a project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation aims to update that checklist of plants with museum (herbarium) vouchers and create an online atlas of each species's distribution.[17]
+
+About 420 species of birds are known to inhabit Mississippi.
+
+Mississippi has one of the richest fish faunas in the United States, with 204 native fish species.[18]
+
+Mississippi also has a rich freshwater mussel fauna, with about 90 species in the primary family of native mussels (Unionidae).[19] Several of these species were extirpated during the construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.
+
+Mississippi is home to 63 crayfish species, including at least 17 endemic species.[20]
+
+Mississippi is home to eight winter stonefly species.[21]
+
+Due to seasonal flooding, possible from December to June, the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers and their tributaries created a fertile floodplain in the Mississippi Delta. The river's flooding created natural levees, which planters had built higher to try to prevent flooding of land cultivated for cotton crops. Temporary workers built levees along the Mississippi River on top of the natural levees that formed from dirt deposited after the river flooded.
+
+From 1858 to 1861, the state took over levee building, accomplishing it through contractors and hired labor. In those years, planters considered their slaves too valuable to hire out for such dangerous work. Contractors hired gangs of Irish immigrant laborers to build levees and sometimes clear land. Many of the Irish were relatively recent immigrants from the famine years who were struggling to get established.[22] Before the American Civil War, the earthwork levees averaged six feet in height, although in some areas they reached twenty feet.
+
+Flooding has been an integral part of Mississippi history, but clearing of the land for cultivation and to supply wood fuel for steamboats took away the absorption of trees and undergrowth. The banks of the river were denuded, becoming unstable and changing the character of the river. After the Civil War, major floods swept down the valley in 1865, 1867, 1874 and 1882. Such floods regularly overwhelmed levees damaged by Confederate and Union fighting during the war, as well as those constructed after the war.[23] In 1877, the state created the Mississippi Levee District for southern counties.
+
+In 1879, the United States Congress created the Mississippi River Commission, whose responsibilities included aiding state levee boards in the construction of levees. Both white and black transient workers were hired to build the levees in the late 19th century. By 1882, levees averaged seven feet in height, but many in the southern Delta were severely tested by the flood that year.[23] After the 1882 flood, the levee system was expanded. In 1884, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee District was established to oversee levee construction and maintenance in the northern Delta counties; also included were some counties in Arkansas which were part of the Delta.[24]
+
+Flooding overwhelmed northwestern Mississippi in 1912–1913, causing heavy damage to the levee districts. Regional losses and the Mississippi River Levee Association's lobbying for a flood control bill helped gain passage of national bills in 1917 and 1923 to provide federal matching funds for local levee districts, on a scale of 2:1. Although U.S. participation in World War I interrupted funding of levees, the second round of funding helped raise the average height of levees in the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta to 22 feet (6.7 m) in the 1920s.[25] Scientists now understand the levees have increased the severity of flooding by increasing the flow speed of the river and reducing the area of the floodplains. The region was severely damaged due to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which broke through the levees. There were losses of millions of dollars in property, stock and crops. The most damage occurred in the lower Delta, including Washington and Bolivar counties.[26]
+
+Even as scientific knowledge about the Mississippi River has grown, upstream development and the consequences of the levees have caused more severe flooding in some years. Scientists now understand that the widespread clearing of land and building of the levees have changed the nature of the river. Such work removed the natural protection and absorption of wetlands and forest cover, strengthening the river's current. The state and federal governments have been struggling for the best approaches to restore some natural habitats in order to best interact with the original riverine ecology.
+
+Near 10,000 BC Native Americans or Paleo-Indians arrived in what today is referred to as the American South.[27] Paleo-Indians in the South were hunter-gatherers who pursued the megafauna that became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age. In the Mississippi Delta, Native American settlements and agricultural fields were developed on the natural levees, higher ground in the proximity of rivers. The Native Americans developed extensive fields near their permanent villages. Together with other practices, they created some localized deforestation but did not alter the ecology of the Mississippi Delta as a whole.[28]
+
+After thousands of years, succeeding cultures of the Woodland and Mississippian culture eras developed rich and complex agricultural societies, in which surplus supported the development of specialized trades. Both were mound builder cultures. Those of the Mississippian culture were the largest and most complex, constructed beginning about 950 AD. The peoples had a trading network spanning the continent from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast. Their large earthworks, which expressed their cosmology of political and religious concepts, still stand throughout the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys.
+
+Descendant Native American tribes of the Mississippian culture in the Southeast include the Chickasaw and Choctaw. Other tribes who inhabited the territory of Mississippi (and whose names were honored by colonists in local towns) include the Natchez, the Yazoo, and the Biloxi.
+
+The first major European expedition into the territory that became Mississippi was that of the Spanish explorer, Hernando de Soto, who passed through the northeast part of the state in 1540, in his second expedition to the New World.
+
+In April 1699, French colonists established the first European settlement at Fort Maurepas (also known as Old Biloxi), built in the vicinity of present-day Ocean Springs on the Gulf Coast. It was settled by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville. In 1716, the French founded Natchez on the Mississippi River (as Fort Rosalie); it became the dominant town and trading post of the area. The French called the greater territory "New France"; the Spanish continued to claim part of the Gulf coast area (east of Mobile Bay) of present-day southern Alabama, in addition to the entire area of present-day Florida.
+
+Through the 18th century, the area was ruled variously by Spanish, French, and British colonial governments. The colonists imported African slaves as laborers. Under French and Spanish rule, there developed a class of free people of color (gens de couleur libres), mostly multiracial descendants of European men and enslaved or free black women, and their mixed-race children. In the early days the French and Spanish colonists were chiefly men. Even as more European women joined the settlements, the men had interracial unions among women of African descent (and increasingly, multiracial descent), both before and after marriages to European women. Often the European men would help their multiracial children get educated or gain apprenticeships for trades, and sometimes they settled property on them; they often freed the mothers and their children if enslaved, as part of contracts of plaçage. With this social capital, the free people of color became artisans, and sometimes educated merchants and property owners, forming a third class between the Europeans and most enslaved Africans in the French and Spanish settlements, although not so large a free community as in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana.
+
+After Great Britain's victory in the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War), the French surrendered the Mississippi area to them under the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763). They also ceded their areas to the north that were east of the Mississippi River, including the Illinois Country and Quebec. After the Peace of Paris (1783), the lower third of Mississippi came under Spanish rule as part of West Florida. In 1819 the United States completed the purchase of West Florida and all of East Florida in the Adams–Onís Treaty, and in 1822 both were merged into the Florida Territory.
+
+After the American Revolution (1765–83), Britain ceded this area to the new United States of America. The Mississippi Territory was organized on April 7, 1798, from territory ceded by Georgia and South Carolina to the United States. Their original colonial charters theoretically extended west to the Pacific Ocean. The Mississippi Territory was later twice expanded to include disputed territory claimed by both the United States and Spain.
+
+From 1800 to about 1830, the United States purchased some lands (Treaty of Doak's Stand) from Native American tribes for new settlements of European Americans; they were mostly migrants from other Southern states, particularly Virginia and North Carolina, where soils were exhausted.[29] On September 27, 1830, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed between the U.S. Government and the Choctaw. The Choctaw agreed to sell their traditional homelands in Mississippi and Alabama, for compensation and removal to reservations in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). This opened up land for sale to European-American immigrant settlement. Article 14 in the treaty allowed those Choctaw who chose to remain in the state to become U.S. citizens, as they were considered to be giving up their tribal membership. They were the second major non-European ethnic group to do so (the Cherokee were the first).[30][31] Today approximately 9,500 Choctaw live in Neshoba, Newton, Leake, and Jones counties. Federally recognized tribes include the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
+
+Many slaveholders brought slaves with them or purchased them through the domestic slave trade, especially in New Orleans. Through the trade, an estimated nearly one million slaves were transported to the Deep South, including Mississippi, in a forced internal migration that broke up many slave families of the Upper South, where planters were selling excess slaves. The Southerners imposed slave laws and restricted the rights of free blacks.
+
+Beginning in 1822, slaves in Mississippi were protected by law from cruel and unusual punishment by their owners.[32] The Southern slave codes made the willful killing of a slave illegal in most cases.[33] For example, the 1860 Mississippi case of Oliver v. State charged the defendant with murdering his own slave.[34]
+
+Mississippi became the 20th state on December 10, 1817. David Holmes was the first governor.[35] The state was still occupied as ancestral land by several Native American tribes, including Choctaw, Natchez, Houma, Creek, and Chickasaw.[36][37]
+
+Plantations were developed primarily along the major rivers, where the waterfront provided access to the major transportation routes. This is also where early towns developed, linked by the steamboats that carried commercial products and crops to markets. The remainder of Native American ancestral land remained largely undeveloped but was sold through treaties until 1826, when the Choctaws and Chickasaws refused to sell more land.[38] 
+The combination of the Mississippi state legislature's abolition of Choctaw Tribal Government in 1829,[39] President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act and the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek[40] of 1830, the Choctaw were effectively forced to sell their land and were transported to Oklahoma Territory. The forced migration of the Choctaw, together with other southeastern tribes removed as a result of the Act, became known as the Trail of Tears.
+
+When cotton was king during the 1850s, Mississippi plantation owners—especially those of the Delta and Black Belt central regions—became wealthy due to the high fertility of the soil, the high price of cotton on the international market, and free labor gained through their holding enslaved African Americans. They used some of their profits to buy more cotton land and more slaves. The planters' dependence on hundreds of thousands of slaves for labor and the severe wealth imbalances among whites, played strong roles both in state politics and in planters' support for secession. Mississippi was a slave society, with the economy dependent on slavery. The state was thinly settled, with population concentrated in the riverfront areas and towns.
+
+By 1860, the enslaved African-American population numbered 436,631 or 55% of the state's total of 791,305 persons. Fewer than 1000 were free people of color.[41] The relatively low population of the state before the Civil War reflected the fact that land and villages were developed only along the riverfronts, which formed the main transportation corridors. Ninety percent of the Delta bottomlands were still frontier and undeveloped.[42] The state needed many more settlers for development. The land further away from the rivers was cleared by freedmen and white migrants during Reconstruction and later.[42]
+
+On January 9, 1861, Mississippi became the second state to declare its secession from the Union, and it was one of the founding members of the Confederate States. The first six states to secede were those with the highest number of slaves. During the war, Union and Confederate forces struggled for dominance on the Mississippi River, critical to supply routes and commerce. More than 80,000 Mississippians fought in the Civil War, and casualties were extremely heavy. Union General Ulysses S. Grant's long siege of Vicksburg finally gained the Union control of the river in 1863.
+
+In the postwar period, freedmen withdrew from white-run churches to set up independent congregations. The majority of blacks left the Southern Baptist Church, sharply reducing its membership. They created independent black Baptist congregations. By 1895 they had established numerous black Baptist state associations and the National Baptist Convention of black churches.[43]
+
+In addition, independent black denominations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (established in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early 19th century) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (established in New York City), sent missionaries to the South in the postwar years. They quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of converts and founded new churches across the South. Southern congregations brought their own influences to those denominations as well.[43][44]
+
+During Reconstruction, the first Mississippi constitutional convention in 1868, with delegates both black and white, framed a constitution whose major elements would be maintained for 22 years.[45] The convention was the first political organization in the state to include African-American representatives, 17 among the 100 members (32 counties had black majorities at the time). Some among the black delegates were freedmen, but others were educated free blacks who had migrated from the North. The convention adopted universal suffrage; did away with property qualifications for suffrage or for office, a change that also benefited both blacks and poor whites; provided for the state's first public school system; forbade race distinctions in the possession and inheritance of property; and prohibited limiting civil rights in travel.[45] Under the terms of Reconstruction, Mississippi was restored to the Union on February 23, 1870.
+
+Because the Mississippi Delta contained so much fertile bottomland that had not been developed before the Civil War, 90 percent of the land was still frontier. After the Civil War, tens of thousands of migrants were attracted to the area by higher wages offered by planters trying to develop land. In addition, black and white workers could earn money by clearing the land and selling timber, and eventually advance to ownership. The new farmers included many freedmen, who by the late 19th century achieved unusually high rates of land ownership in the Mississippi bottomlands. In the 1870s and 1880s, many black farmers succeeded in gaining land ownership.[42]
+
+Around the start of the 20th century, two-thirds of the Mississippi farmers who owned land in the Delta were African American.[42] But many had become overextended with debt during the falling cotton prices of the difficult years of the late 19th century. Cotton prices fell throughout the decades following the Civil War. As another agricultural depression lowered cotton prices into the 1890s, numerous African-American farmers finally had to sell their land to pay off debts, thus losing the land which they had developed by hard, personal labor.[42]
+
+Democrats had regained control of the state legislature in 1875, after a year of expanded violence against blacks and intimidation of whites in what was called the "white line" campaign, based on asserting white supremacy. Democratic whites were well armed and formed paramilitary organizations such as the Red Shirts to suppress black voting. From 1874 to the elections of 1875, they pressured whites to join the Democrats, and conducted violence against blacks in at least 15 known "riots" in cities around the state to intimidate blacks. They killed a total of 150 blacks, although other estimates place the death toll at twice as many. A total of three white Republicans and five white Democrats were reported killed. In rural areas, deaths of blacks could be covered up. Riots (better described as massacres of blacks) took place in Vicksburg, Clinton, Macon, and in their counties, as well-armed whites broke up black meetings and lynched known black leaders, destroying local political organizations.[46] Seeing the success of this deliberate "Mississippi Plan", South Carolina and other states followed it and also achieved white Democratic dominance. In 1877 by a national compromise, the last of federal troops were withdrawn from the region.
+
+Even in this environment, black Mississippians continued to be elected to local office. However, black residents were deprived of all political power after white legislators passed a new state constitution in 1890 specifically to "eliminate the nigger from politics", according to the state's Democratic governor, James K. Vardaman.[47] It erected barriers to voter registration and instituted electoral provisions that effectively disenfranchised most black Mississippians and many poor whites. Estimates are that 100,000 black and 50,000 white men were removed from voter registration rolls in the state over the next few years.[48]
+
+The loss of political influence contributed to the difficulties of African Americans in their attempts to obtain extended credit in the late 19th century. Together with imposition of Jim Crow and racial segregation laws, whites increased violence against blacks, lynching mostly men, through the period of the 1890s and extending to 1930. Cotton crops failed due to boll weevil infestation and successive severe flooding in 1912 and 1913, creating crisis conditions for many African Americans. With control of the ballot box and more access to credit, white planters bought out such farmers, expanding their ownership of Delta bottomlands. They also took advantage of new railroads sponsored by the state.[42]
+
+In 1900, blacks made up more than half of the state's population. By 1910, a majority of black farmers in the Delta had lost their land and become sharecroppers. By 1920, the third generation after freedom, most African Americans in Mississippi were landless laborers again facing poverty.[42] Starting about 1913, tens of thousands of black Americans left Mississippi for the North in the Great Migration to industrial cities such as St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia and New York. They sought jobs, better education for their children, the right to vote, relative freedom from discrimination, and better living. In the migration of 1910–1940, they left a society that had been steadily closing off opportunity. Most migrants from Mississippi took trains directly north to Chicago and often settled near former neighbors.
+
+Blacks also faced violence in the form of lynching, shooting, and the burning of churches. In 1923, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People stated "the Negro feels that life is not safe in Mississippi and his life may be taken with impunity at any time upon the slightest pretext or provocation by a white man".[49]
+
+In the early 20th century, some industries were established in Mississippi, but jobs were generally restricted to whites, including child workers. The lack of jobs also drove some southern whites north to cities such as Chicago and Detroit, seeking employment, where they also competed with European immigrants. The state depended on agriculture, but mechanization put many farm laborers out of work.
+
+By 1900, many white ministers, especially in the towns, subscribed to the Social Gospel movement, which attempted to apply Christian ethics to social and economic needs of the day. Many strongly supported Prohibition, believing it would help alleviate and prevent many sins.[50] Mississippi became a dry state in 1908 by an act of the State legislature.[51] It remained dry until the legislature passed a local option bill in 1966.[52]
+
+African-American Baptist churches grew to include more than twice the number of members as their white Baptist counterparts. The African-American call for social equality resonated throughout the Great Depression in the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s.
+
+The Second Great Migration from the South started in the 1940s, lasting until 1970. Almost half a million people left Mississippi in the second migration, three-quarters of them black. Nationwide during the first half of the 20th century, African Americans became rapidly urbanized and many worked in industrial jobs. The Second Great Migration included destinations in the West, especially California, where the buildup of the defense industry offered higher-paying jobs to both African Americans and whites.
+
+Blacks and whites in Mississippi generated rich, quintessentially American music traditions: gospel music, country music, jazz, blues and rock and roll. All were invented, promulgated or heavily developed by Mississippi musicians, many of them African American, and most came from the Mississippi Delta. Many musicians carried their music north to Chicago, where they made it the heart of that city's jazz and blues.
+
+So many African Americans left in the Great Migration that after the 1930s, they became a minority in Mississippi. In 1960 they made up 42% of the state's population.[53] The whites maintained their discriminatory voter registration processes established in 1890, preventing most blacks from voting, even if they were well educated. Court challenges were not successful until later in the century. After World War II, African-American veterans returned with renewed commitment to be treated as full citizens of the United States and increasingly organized to gain enforcement of their constitutional rights.
+
+The Civil Rights Movement had many roots in religion, and the strong community of churches helped supply volunteers and moral purpose for their activism. Mississippi was a center of activity, based in black churches, to educate and register black voters, and to work for integration. In 1954 the state had created the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a tax-supported agency, chaired by the Governor, that claimed to work for the state's image but effectively spied on activists and passed information to the local White Citizens' Councils to suppress black activism. White Citizens Councils had been formed in many cities and towns to resist integration of schools following the unanimous 1954 United States Supreme Court ruling (Brown v. Board of Education) that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. They used intimidation and economic blackmail against activists and suspected activists, including teachers and other professionals. Techniques included loss of jobs and eviction from rental housing.
+
+In the summer of 1964 students and community organizers from across the country came to help register black voters in Mississippi and establish Freedom Schools. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was established to challenge the all-white Democratic Party of the Solid South. Most white politicians resisted such changes. Chapters of the Ku Klux Klan and its sympathizers used violence against activists, most notably the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in 1964 during the Freedom Summer campaign. This was a catalyst for Congressional passage the following year of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mississippi earned a reputation in the 1960s as a reactionary state.[54][55]
+
+After decades of disenfranchisement, African Americans in the state gradually began to exercise their right to vote again for the first time since the 19th century, following the passage of federal civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965, which ended de jure segregation and enforced constitutional voting rights. Registration of African-American voters increased and black candidates ran in the 1967 elections for state and local offices. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party fielded some candidates. Teacher Robert G. Clark of Holmes County was the first African American to be elected to the State House since Reconstruction. He continued as the only African American in the state legislature until 1976 and was repeatedly elected into the 21st century, including three terms as Speaker of the House.[56]
+
+In 1966, the state was the last to repeal officially statewide prohibition of alcohol. Before that, Mississippi had taxed the illegal alcohol brought in by bootleggers. Governor Paul Johnson urged repeal and the sheriff "raided the annual Junior League Mardi Gras ball at the Jackson Country Club, breaking open the liquor cabinet and carting off the Champagne before a startled crowd of nobility and high-ranking state officials".[57]
+
+On August 17, 1969, Category 5 Hurricane Camille hit the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars).
+
+Mississippi was the last state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in March 1984, granting women the right to vote.[58]
+
+In 1987, 20 years after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1967's Loving v. Virginia that a similar Virginian law was unconstitutional, Mississippi repealed its ban on interracial marriage (also known as miscegenation), which had been enacted in 1890. It also repealed the segregationist-era poll tax in 1989. In 1995, the state symbolically ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which had abolished slavery in 1865. Though ratified in 1995, the state never officially notified the U.S. archivist, which kept the ratification unofficial until 2013, when Ken Sullivan contacted the office of Secretary of State of Mississippi, Delbert Hosemann, who agreed to file the paperwork and make it official.[59][60][61] In 2009, the legislature passed a bill to repeal other discriminatory civil rights laws, which had been enacted in 1964, the same year as the federal Civil Rights Act, but ruled unconstitutional in 1967 by federal courts. Republican Governor Haley Barbour signed the bill into law.[62]
+
+The end of legal segregation and Jim Crow led to the integration of some churches, but most today remain divided along racial and cultural lines, having developed different traditions. After the Civil War, most African Americans left white churches to establish their own independent congregations, particularly Baptist churches, establishing state associations and a national association by the end of the century. They wanted to express their own traditions of worship and practice.[63] In more diverse communities, such as Hattiesburg, some churches have multiracial congregations.[64]
+
+On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, though a Category 3 storm upon final landfall, caused even greater destruction across the entire 90 miles (145 km) of the Mississippi Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Alabama.
+
+Mississippi became the last state to remove the Confederate battle flag as an official state symbol on June 30, 2020, when Governor Tate Reeves signed a law officially retiring the second state flag. A new flag, which will be the third state flag in Mississippi's history, will be selected by referendum.[65]
+
+The center of population of Mississippi is located in Leake County, in the town of Lena.[68]
+
+The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Mississippi was 2,976,149 on July 1, 2019, a 0.30% increase since the 2010 census.[67] The state's economist characterized the state as losing population as job markets elsewhere have caused 3.2 per 1000 to migrate recently.[69]
+
+From 2000 to 2010, the United States Census Bureau reported that Mississippi had the highest rate of increase in people identifying as mixed-race, up 70 percent in the decade; it amounts to a total of 1.1 percent of the population.[64] In addition, Mississippi led the nation for most of the last decade in the growth of mixed marriages among its population. The total population has not increased significantly, but is young. Some of the above change in identification as mixed race is due to new births. But, it appears mostly to reflect those residents who have chosen to identify as more than one race, who in earlier years may have identified by just one ethnicity. A binary racial system had been in place since slavery times and the days of racial segregation. In the civil rights era, people of African descent banded together in an inclusive community to achieve political power and gain restoration of their civil rights.
+
+As the demographer William H. Frey noted, "In Mississippi, I think it's [identifying as mixed race] changed from within."[64] Historically in Mississippi, after Indian removal in the 1830s, the major groups were designated as black (African American), who were then mostly enslaved, and white (primarily European American). Matthew Snipp, also a demographer, commented on the increase in the 21st century in the number of people identifying as being of more than one race: "In a sense, they're rendering a more accurate portrait of their racial heritage that in the past would have been suppressed."[64]
+
+After having accounted for a majority of the state's population since well before the Civil War and through the 1930s, today African Americans constitute approximately 37 percent of the state's population. Most have ancestors who were enslaved, with many forcibly transported from the Upper South in the 19th century to work on the area's new plantations. Some of these slaves were mixed race, with European ancestors, as there were many children born into slavery with white fathers. Some also have Native American ancestry.[70] During the first half of the 20th century, a total of nearly 400,000 African Americans left the state during the Great Migration, for opportunities in the North, Midwest and West. They became a minority in the state for the first time since early in its development.[citation needed]
+
+At the 2010 U.S. census, the racial makeup of the population was:
+
+Ethnically, 2.7% of the total population, among all racial groups, was of Hispanic or Latino origin (they may be of any race).[71] As of 2011, 53.8% of Mississippi's population younger than age 1 were minorities, meaning that they had at least one parent who was not non-Hispanic white.[72] For more information on racial and ethnic classifications in the United States see race and ethnicity in the United States Census.
+
+Americans of Scots-Irish, English and Scottish ancestry are present throughout the state. It is believed that there are more people with such ancestry than identify as such on the census, in part because their immigrant ancestors are more distant in their family histories. English, Scottish and Scots-Irish are generally the most under-reported ancestry groups in both the South Atlantic States and the East South Central States. The historian David Hackett Fischer estimated that a minimum 20% of Mississippi's population is of English ancestry, though the figure is probably much higher, and another large percentage is of Scottish ancestry. Many Mississippians of such ancestry identify simply as American on questionnaires, because their families have been in North America for centuries.[76][77] In the 1980 census 656,371 Mississippians of a total of 1,946,775 identified as being of English ancestry, making them 38% of the state at the time.[78]
+
+The state in 2010 had the highest proportion of African Americans in the nation. The African-American percentage of population has begun to increase due mainly to a younger population than the whites (the total fertility rates of the two races are approximately equal). Due to patterns of settlement and whites putting their children in private schools, in almost all of Mississippi's public school districts, a majority of students are African American. African Americans are the majority ethnic group in the northwestern Yazoo Delta, and the southwestern and the central parts of the state. These are areas where, historically, African Americans owned land as farmers in the 19th century following the Civil War, or worked on cotton plantations and farms.[79]
+
+People of French Creole ancestry form the largest demographic group in Hancock County on the Gulf Coast. The African-American; Choctaw, mostly in Neshoba County; and Chinese American portions of the population are also almost entirely native born.
+
+The Chinese first came to Mississippi as contract workers from Cuba and California in the 1870s, and they originally worked as laborers on the cotton plantations. However, most Chinese families came later between 1910 and 1930 from other states, and most operated small family-owned groceries stores in the many small towns of the Delta.[80] In these roles, the ethnic Chinese carved out a niche in the state between black and white, where they were concentrated in the Delta. These small towns have declined since the late 20th century, and many ethnic Chinese have joined the exodus to larger cities, including Jackson. Their population in the state overall has increased in the 21st century.[81][82][83][84]
+
+In the early 1980s many Vietnamese immigrated to Mississippi and other states along the Gulf of Mexico, where they became employed in fishing-related work.[85]
+
+In 2000, 96.4% of Mississippi residents five years old and older spoke only English in the home, a decrease from 97.2% in 1990.[86] English is largely Southern American English, with some South Midland speech in northern and eastern Mississippi. There is a common absence of final /r/ and the lengthening and weakening of the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /ɔɪ/ as in 'ride' and 'oil'. South Midland terms in northern Mississippi include: tow sack (burlap bag), dog irons (andirons), plum peach (clingstone peach), snake doctor (dragonfly), and stone wall (rock fence).[86]
+
+Under French and Spanish rule beginning in the 17th century, European colonists were mostly Roman Catholics. The growth of the cotton culture after 1815 brought in tens of thousands of Anglo-American settlers each year, most of whom were Protestants from Southeastern states. Due to such migration, there was rapid growth in the number of Protestant churches, especially Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist.[88]
+
+The revivals of the Great Awakening in the late 18th and early 19th centuries initially attracted the "plain folk" by reaching out to all members of society, including women and blacks. Both slaves and free blacks were welcomed into Methodist and Baptist churches. Independent black Baptist churches were established before 1800 in Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Georgia, and later developed in Mississippi as well.
+
+In the post-Civil War years, religion became more influential as the South became known as the "Bible Belt".
+
+Since the 1970s, fundamentalist conservative churches have grown rapidly, fueling Mississippi's conservative political trends among whites.[88] In 1973 the Presbyterian Church in America attracted numerous conservative congregations. As of 2010, Mississippi remained a stronghold of the denomination, which originally was brought by Scots immigrants. The state has the highest adherence rate of the PCA in 2010, with 121 congregations and 18,500 members. It is among the few states where the PCA has higher membership than the PC(USA).[89]
+According to the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), in 2010 the Southern Baptist Convention had 907,384 adherents and was the largest religious denomination in the state, followed by the United Methodist Church with 204,165, and the Roman Catholic Church with 112,488.[90] Other religions have a small presence in Mississippi; as of 2010, there were 5,012 Muslims; 4,389 Hindus; and 816 Bahá'í.[90]
+
+Public opinion polls have consistently ranked Mississippi as the most religious state in the United States, with 59% of Mississippians considering themselves "very religious". The same survey also found that 11% of the population were non-Religious.[91] In a 2009 Gallup poll, 63% of Mississippians said that they attended church weekly or almost weekly—the highest percentage of all states (U.S. average was 42%, and the lowest percentage was in Vermont at 23%).[92] Another 2008 Gallup poll found that 85% of Mississippians considered religion an important part of their daily lives, the highest figure among all states (U.S. average 65%).[93]
+
+Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.
+
+The 2010 United States Census counted 6,286 same-sex unmarried-partner households in Mississippi, an increase of 1,512 since the 2000 United States census.[101] Of those same-sex couples roughly 33% contained at least one child, giving Mississippi the distinction of leading the nation in the percentage of same-sex couples raising children.[102] Mississippi has the largest percentage of African-American same-sex couples among total households. The state capital, Jackson, ranks tenth in the nation in concentration of African-American same-sex couples. The state ranks fifth in the nation in the percentage of Hispanic same-sex couples among all Hispanic households and ninth in the highest concentration of same-sex couples who are seniors.[103]
+
+The state is ranked 50th or last place among all the states for health care, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation working to advance performance of the health care system.[104]
+
+Mississippi has the highest rate of infant and neonatal deaths of any U.S. state. Age-adjusted data also shows Mississippi has the highest overall death rate, and the highest death rate from heart disease, hypertension and hypertensive renal disease, influenza and pneumonia.[105]
+
+In 2011, Mississippi (and Arkansas) had the fewest dentists per capita in the United States.[106]
+
+For three years in a row, more than 30 percent of Mississippi's residents have been classified as obese. In a 2006 study, 22.8 percent of the state's children were classified as such. Mississippi had the highest rate of obesity of any U.S. state from 2005 to 2008, and also ranks first in the nation for high blood pressure, diabetes, and adult inactivity.[107][108] In a 2008 study of African-American women, contributing risk factors were shown to be: lack of knowledge about body mass index (BMI), dietary behavior, physical inactivity and lack of social support, defined as motivation and encouragement by friends.[109] A 2002 report on African-American adolescents noted a 1999 survey which suggests that a third of children were obese, with higher ratios for those in the Delta.[110]
+
+The study stressed that "obesity starts in early childhood extending into the adolescent years and then possibly into adulthood." It noted impediments to needed behavioral modification, including the Delta likely being "the most underserved region in the state" with African Americans the major ethnic group; lack of accessibility and availability of medical care; and an estimated 60% of residents living below the poverty level.[110] Additional risk factors were that most schools had no physical education curriculum and nutrition education is not emphasized. Previous intervention strategies may have been largely ineffective due to not being culturally sensitive or practical.[110] A 2006 survey found nearly 95 percent of Mississippi adults considered childhood obesity to be a serious problem.[111]
+
+A 2017 study found that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Mississippi was the leading health insurer with 53% followed by UnitedHealth Group at 13%.[112]
+
+The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Mississippi's total state product in 2010 was $98 billion.[113] GDP growth was .5 percent in 2015 and is estimated to be 2.4 in 2016 according to Dr. Darrin Webb, the state's chief economist, who noted it would make two consecutive years of positive growth since the recession.[114] Per capita personal income in 2006 was $26,908, the lowest per capita personal income of any state, but the state also has the nation's lowest living costs. 2015 data records the adjusted per capita personal income at $40,105.[114] Mississippians consistently rank as one of the highest per capita in charitable contributions.[115]
+
+At 56 percent, the state has one of the lowest workforce participation rates in the country. Approximately 70,000 adults are disabled, which is 10 percent of the workforce.[114]
+
+Mississippi's rank as one of the poorest states is related to its dependence on cotton agriculture before and after the Civil War, late development of its frontier bottomlands in the Mississippi Delta, repeated natural disasters of flooding in the late 19th and early 20th century that required massive capital investment in levees, and ditching and draining the bottomlands, and slow development of railroads to link bottomland towns and river cities.[116] In addition, when Democrats regained control of the state legislature, they passed the 1890 constitution that discouraged corporate industrial development in favor of rural agriculture, a legacy that would slow the state's progress for years.[117]
+
+Before the Civil War, Mississippi was the fifth-wealthiest state in the nation, its wealth generated by the labor of slaves in cotton plantations along the rivers.[118]
+Slaves were counted as property and the rise in the cotton markets since the 1840s had increased their value. By 1860, a majority—55 percent—of the population of Mississippi was enslaved.[119] Ninety percent of the Delta bottomlands were undeveloped and the state had low overall density of population.
+
+Largely due to the domination of the plantation economy, focused on the production of agricultural cotton, the state's elite was reluctant to invest in infrastructure such as roads and railroads. They educated their children privately. Industrialization did not reach many areas until the late 20th century. The planter aristocracy, the elite of antebellum Mississippi, kept the tax structure low for their own benefit, making only private improvements. Before the war the most successful planters, such as Confederate President Jefferson Davis, owned riverside properties along the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers in the Mississippi Delta. Away from the riverfronts, most of the Delta was undeveloped frontier.
+
+During the Civil War, 30,000 Mississippi soldiers, mostly white, died from wounds and disease, and many more were left crippled and wounded. Changes to the labor structure and an agricultural depression throughout the South caused severe losses in wealth. In 1860 assessed valuation of property in Mississippi had been more than $500 million, of which $218 million (43 percent) was estimated as the value of slaves. By 1870, total assets had decreased in value to roughly $177 million.[120]
+
+Poor whites and landless former slaves suffered the most from the postwar economic depression. The constitutional convention of early 1868 appointed a committee to recommend what was needed for relief of the state and its citizens. The committee found severe destitution among the laboring classes.[121] It took years for the state to rebuild levees damaged in battles. The upset of the commodity system impoverished the state after the war. By 1868 an increased cotton crop began to show possibilities for free labor in the state, but the crop of 565,000 bales produced in 1870 was still less than half of prewar figures.[122]
+
+Blacks cleared land, selling timber and developing bottomland to achieve ownership. In 1900, two-thirds of farm owners in Mississippi were blacks, a major achievement for them and their families. Due to the poor economy, low cotton prices and difficulty of getting credit, many of these farmers could not make it through the extended financial difficulties. Two decades later, the majority of African Americans were sharecroppers. The low prices of cotton into the 1890s meant that more than a generation of African Americans lost the result of their labor when they had to sell their farms to pay off accumulated debts.[42]
+
+After the Civil War, the state refused for years to build human capital by fully educating all its citizens. In addition, the reliance on agriculture grew increasingly costly as the state suffered loss of cotton crops due to the devastation of the boll weevil in the early 20th century, devastating floods in 1912–1913 and 1927, collapse of cotton prices after 1920, and drought in 1930.[116]
+
+It was not until 1884, after the flood of 1882, that the state created the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta District Levee Board and started successfully achieving longer-term plans for levees in the upper Delta.[24] Despite the state's building and reinforcing levees for years, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 broke through and caused massive flooding of 27,000 square miles (70,000 km2) throughout the Delta, homelessness for hundreds of thousands, and millions of dollars in property damages. With the Depression coming so soon after the flood, the state suffered badly during those years. In the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of African Americans migrated North and West for jobs and chances to live as full citizens.
+
+The legislature's 1990 decision to legalize casino gambling along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast has led to increased revenues and economic gains for the state. Gambling towns in Mississippi have attracted increased tourism: they include the Gulf Coast resort towns of Bay St. Louis, Gulfport and Biloxi, and the Mississippi River towns of Tunica (the third largest gaming area in the United States), Greenville, Vicksburg and Natchez.
+
+Before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Mississippi was the second-largest gambling state in the Union, after Nevada and ahead of New Jersey.[citation needed] An estimated $500,000 per day in tax revenue was lost following Hurricane Katrina's severe damage to several coastal casinos in Biloxi in August 2005.[123] Because of the destruction from this hurricane, on October 17, 2005, Governor Haley Barbour signed a bill into law that allows casinos in Hancock and Harrison counties to rebuild on land (but within 800 feet (240 m) of the water). The only exception is in Harrison County, where the new law states that casinos can be built to the southern boundary of U.S. Route 90.[citation needed]
+
+In 2012, Mississippi had the sixth largest gambling revenue of any state, with $2.25 billion.[124] The federally recognized Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians has established a gaming casino on its reservation, which yields revenue to support education and economic development.[citation needed]
+
+Momentum Mississippi, a statewide, public–private partnership dedicated to the development of economic and employment opportunities in Mississippi, was adopted in 2005.[125]
+
+Mississippi, like the rest of its southern neighbors, is a right-to-work state. It has some major automotive factories, such as the Toyota Mississippi Plant in Blue Springs and a Nissan Automotive plant in Canton. The latter produces the Nissan Titan.
+
+Mississippi collects personal income tax in three tax brackets, ranging from 3% to 5%. The retail sales tax rate in Mississippi is 7%. Tupelo levies a local sales tax of 2.5%.[126] State sales tax growth was 1.4 percent in 2016 and estimated to be slightly less in 2017.[114] For purposes of assessment for ad valorem taxes, taxable property is divided into five classes.[127]
+
+On August 30, 2007, a report by the United States Census Bureau indicated that Mississippi was the poorest state in the country. Major cotton farmers in the Delta have large, mechanized plantations, and they receive the majority of extensive federal subsidies going to the state, yet many other residents still live as poor, rural, landless laborers. The state's sizable poultry industry has faced similar challenges in its transition from family-run farms to large mechanized operations.[128] Of $1.2 billion from 2002 to 2005 in federal subsidies to farmers in the Bolivar County area of the Delta, only 5% went to small farmers. There has been little money apportioned for rural development. Small towns are struggling. More than 100,000 people have left the region in search of work elsewhere.[129] The state had a median household income of $34,473.[130]
+
+As of December 2018, the state's unemployment rate was 4.7%, the seventh highest in the country after Arizona (4.9%), Louisiana (4.9%), New Mexico (5.0%), West Virginia (5.1%), District of Columbia (5.4%) and Alaska (6.5%).[131]
+
+With Mississippi's fiscal conservatism, in which Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, and other social programs are often cut, eligibility requirements are tightened, and stricter employment criteria are imposed, Mississippi ranks as having the second-highest ratio of spending to tax receipts of any state. In 2005, Mississippi citizens received approximately $2.02 per dollar of taxes in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state second-highest nationally, and represents an increase from 1995, when Mississippi received $1.54 per dollar of taxes in federal spending and was 3rd highest nationally.[132] This figure is based on federal spending after large portions of the state were devastated by Hurricane Katrina, requiring large amounts of federal aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). However, from 1981 to 2005, it was at least number four in the nation for federal spending vs. taxes received.[133]
+
+A proportion of federal spending in Mississippi is directed toward large federal installations such as Camp Shelby, John C. Stennis Space Center, Meridian Naval Air Station, Columbus Air Force Base, and Keesler Air Force Base. Three of these installations are located in the area affected by Hurricane Katrina.
+
+As with all other U.S. states and the federal government, Mississippi's government is based on the separation of legislative, executive and judicial power. Executive authority in the state rests with the Governor, currently Tate Reeves (R). The lieutenant governor, currently Delbert Hosemann (R), is elected on a separate ballot. Both the governor and lieutenant governor are elected to four-year terms of office. Unlike the federal government, but like many other U.S. States, most of the heads of major executive departments are elected by the citizens of Mississippi rather than appointed by the governor.
+
+Mississippi is one of five states that elects its state officials in odd-numbered years (the others are Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey and Virginia). Mississippi holds elections for these offices every four years, always in the year preceding presidential elections.
+
+In 2004, Mississippi voters approved a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and prohibiting Mississippi from recognizing same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. The amendment passed 86% to 14%, the largest margin in any state.[134][135] Same-sex marriage became legal in Mississippi on June 26, 2015, when the United States Supreme Court invalidated all state-level bans on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional in the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges.[136]
+
+With the passing of HB 1523 in April 2016, from July it became legal in Mississippi to refuse service to same-sex couples, based on one's religious beliefs.[137][138] The bill has become the subject of controversy.[139] A federal judge blocked the law in July,[140] however it was challenged and a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the law in October 2017.[141][142]
+
+Mississippi has banned sanctuary cities.[143] Mississippi is one of thirty-one states which have capital punishment (see Capital punishment in Mississippi).
+
+Section 265 of the Constitution of the State of Mississippi declares that "No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state."[144] This religious test restriction was held to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Torcaso v. Watkins (1961).
+
+Mississippi led the South in developing a disenfranchising constitution, passing it in 1890. By raising barriers to voter registration, the state legislature disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites, excluding them from politics until the late 1960s. It established a one-party state dominated by white Democrats.
+
+In the 1980s whites divided evenly between the parties. In the 1990s those voters shifted their allegiance to the Republican Party, first for national and then for state offices.[145] Most blacks were still disenfranchised under the state's 1890 constitution and discriminatory practices, until passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and concerted grassroots efforts to achieve registration and encourage voting.
+
+In 2019, a lawsuit was filed against an 1890 election law known as The Mississippi Plan, which requires that candidates must win the popular vote and a majority of districts.[146]
+
+Mississippi has six airports with commercial passenger service, the busiest in Jackson (Jackson-Evers International Airport) and one in Gulfport (Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport)
+
+Mississippi is the only American state where people in cars may legally consume beer. Some localities have laws restricting the practice.[147] In 2018, the state was ranked number eight in the Union in terms of impaired driving deaths.[148]
+
+Mississippi is served by nine interstate highways:
+
+
+
+and fourteen main U.S. Routes:
+
+
+
+as well as a system of State Highways.
+
+Amtrak provides scheduled passenger service along two routes, the Crescent and City of New Orleans. Prior to severe damage from Hurricane Katrina, the Sunset Limited traversed the far south of the state; the route originated in Los Angeles, California and it terminated in Florida.
+
+All but two of the United States Class I railroads serve Mississippi (the exceptions are the Union Pacific and Canadian Pacific):
+
+http://www.mvk.usace.army.mil/Missions/Recreation/Enid-Lake/
+
+Until the Civil War era, Mississippi had a small number of schools and no educational institutions for African Americans. The first school for black students was not established until 1862.
+
+During Reconstruction in 1871, black and white Republicans drafted a constitution that was the first to provide for a system of free public education in the state. The state's dependence on agriculture and resistance to taxation limited the funds it had available to spend on any schools. In the early 20th century, there were still few schools in rural areas, particularly for black children. With seed money from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, many rural black communities across Mississippi raised matching funds and contributed public funds to build new schools for their children. Essentially, many black adults taxed themselves twice and made significant sacrifices to raise money for the education of children in their communities, in many cases donating land and/or labor to build such schools.[152]
+
+Blacks and whites attended segregated and separate public schools in Mississippi until the late 1960s, although such segregation had been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in its 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. In the majority-black Mississippi Delta counties, white parents worked through White Citizens' Councils to set up private segregation academies, where they enrolled their children. Often funding declined for the public schools.[153]
+
+But in the state as a whole, only a small minority of white children were withdrawn from public schools. State officials believed they needed to maintain public education to attract new businesses. After several years of integration, whites often dominated local systems anyway, maintaining white supremacy. Many black parents complained that they had little representation in school administration, and that many of their former administrators and teachers had been pushed out. They have had to work to have their interests and children represented.[153]
+
+In the late 1980s Mississippi's 954 public schools enrolled about 369,500 elementary and 132,500 secondary students. Some 45,700 students attended private schools.
+
+In the 21st century, 91% of white children and most of the black children in the state attend public schools.[154] In 2008, Mississippi was ranked last among the fifty states in academic achievement by the American Legislative Exchange Council's Report Card on Education,[155] with the lowest average ACT scores and sixth-lowest spending per pupil in the nation. In contrast, Mississippi had the 17th-highest average SAT scores in the nation. As an explanation, the Report noted that 92% of Mississippi high school graduates took the ACT, but only 3% of graduates took the SAT, apparently a self-selection of higher achievers. This breakdown compares to the national average of high school graduates taking the ACT and SAT, of 43% and 45%, respectively.[155]
+
+Generally prohibited in the West at large, school corporal punishment is not unusual in Mississippi, with 31,236 public school students[156] paddled at least one time circa 2016.[157] A greater percentage of students were paddled in Mississippi than in any other state, according to government data for the 2011–2012 school year.[157]
+
+In 2007, Mississippi students scored the lowest of any state on the National Assessments of Educational Progress in both math and science.[158]
+
+Jackson, the state's capital city, is the site of the state residential school for deaf and hard of hearing students. The Mississippi School for the Deaf was established by the state legislature in 1854 before the civil war.
+
+While Mississippi has been especially known for its music and literature, it has embraced other forms of art. Its strong religious traditions have inspired striking works by outsider artists who have been shown nationally.
+
+Jackson established the USA International Ballet Competition, which is held every four years. This ballet competition attracts the most talented young dancers from around the world.[159]
+
+The Magnolia Independent Film Festival, still held annually in Starkville, is the first and oldest in the state.
+
+George Ohr, known as the "Mad Potter of Biloxi" and the father of abstract expressionism in pottery, lived and worked in Biloxi, MS.
+
+Musicians of the state's Delta region were historically significant to the development of the blues. Although by the end of the 19th century, two-thirds of the farm owners were black, continued low prices for cotton and national financial pressures resulted in most of them losing their land. More problems built up with the boll weevil infestation, when thousands of agricultural jobs were lost.
+
+Jimmie Rodgers, a native of Meridian and guitarist/singer/songwriter known as the "Father of Country Music", played a significant role in the development of the blues. He and Chester Arthur Burnett were friends and admirers of each other's music. Their friendship and respect is an important example of Mississippi's musical legacy. While the state has had a reputation for being the most racist in the United States[citation needed], Mississippi musicians created new forms by combining and creating variations on musical traditions from Africa, African American traditions, and the musical traditions of white Southerners strongly shaped by Scots-Irish and other styles.
+
+The state is creating a Mississippi Blues Trail, with dedicated markers explaining historic sites significant to the history of blues music, such as Clarksdale's Riverside Hotel, where Bessie Smith died after her auto accident on Highway 61. The Riverside Hotel is just one of many historical blues sites in Clarksdale. The Delta Blues Museum there is visited by tourists from all over the world. Close by is "Ground Zero", a contemporary blues club and restaurant co-owned by actor Morgan Freeman.
+
+Elvis Presley, who created a sensation in the 1950s as a crossover artist and contributed to rock 'n' roll, was a native of Tupelo. From opera star Leontyne Price to the alternative rock band 3 Doors Down, to gulf and western singer Jimmy Buffett, modern rock/jazz/world music guitarist-producer Clifton Hyde, to rappers David Banner, Big K.R.I.T. and Afroman, Mississippi musicians have been significant in all genres.
+
+
+
+Coordinates: 33°N 90°W / 33°N 90°W / 33; -90

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+Mississippi (/ˌmɪsɪˈsɪpi/ (listen)) is a state located in the Deep South region of the United States. Mississippi is the 32nd largest and 34th-most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Mississippi is bordered to the north by Tennessee, to the east by Alabama, to the south by the Gulf of Mexico, to the southwest by Louisiana, and to the northwest by Arkansas. Mississippi's western boundary is largely defined by the Mississippi River. Jackson is both the state's capital and largest city. Greater Jackson, with an estimated population of 580,166 in 2018, is the most populous metropolitan area in Mississippi and the 95th-most populous in the United States.
+
+On December 10, 1817, Mississippi became the 20th state admitted to the Union. By 1860, Mississippi was the nation's top cotton producing state and enslaved persons accounted for 55% of the state population.[5] Mississippi declared its secession from the Union on March 23, 1861, and was one of the seven original Confederate States. Following the Civil War, it was restored to the Union on February 23, 1870.[6]
+
+Until the Great Migration of the 1930s, African Americans were a majority of Mississippi's population. Mississippi was the site of many prominent events during the American Civil Rights movement, including the 1962 Ole Miss riots, the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers, and the 1964 Freedom Summer murders. Mississippi frequently ranks low among states in measures of health, education, and development, and high in measures of poverty.[7][8][9][10] In 2010, 37.3% of Mississippi's population was African American, the highest percentage for any state.
+
+Mississippi is almost entirely within the Gulf coastal plain, and generally consists of lowland plains and low hills. The northwest remainder of the state consists of the Mississippi Delta, a section of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. Mississippi's highest point is Woodall Mountain at 807 feet (246 m) above sea level adjacent to the Cumberland Plateau; the lowest is the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi has a humid subtropical climate classification.
+
+The state's name is derived from the Mississippi River that flows along its western boundary; settlers named it after the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi (English: Great river).
+
+Mississippi is bordered to the north by Tennessee, to the east by Alabama, to the south by Louisiana and a narrow coast on the Gulf of Mexico; and to the west, across the Mississippi River, by Louisiana and Arkansas.
+
+In addition to its namesake, major rivers in Mississippi include the Big Black River, the Pearl River, the Yazoo River, the Pascagoula River, and the Tombigbee River. Major lakes include Ross Barnett Reservoir, Arkabutla Lake, Sardis Lake, and Grenada Lake with the largest lake being Sardis Lake.
+
+Mississippi is entirely composed of lowlands, the highest point being Woodall Mountain, in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains, 807 feet (246 m) above sea level. The lowest point is sea level at the Gulf Coast. The state's mean elevation is 300 feet (91 m) above sea level.
+
+Most of Mississippi is part of the East Gulf Coastal Plain. The coastal plain is generally composed of low hills, such as the Pine Hills in the south and the North Central Hills. The Pontotoc Ridge and the Fall Line Hills in the northeast have somewhat higher elevations. Yellow-brown loess soil is found in the western parts of the state. The northeast is a region of fertile black earth that extends into the Alabama Black Belt.
+
+The coastline includes large bays at Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, and Pascagoula. It is separated from the Gulf of Mexico proper by the shallow Mississippi Sound, which is partially sheltered by Petit Bois Island, Horn Island, East and West Ship Islands, Deer Island, Round Island, and Cat Island.
+
+The northwest remainder of the state consists of the Mississippi Delta, a section of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. The plain is narrow in the south and widens north of Vicksburg. The region has rich soil, partly made up of silt which had been regularly deposited by the flood waters of the Mississippi River.
+
+Areas under the management of the National Park Service include:[11]
+
+Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 50,000 (United States Census Bureau as of 2017):[12]
+
+Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 20,000 but fewer than 50,000 (United States Census Bureau as of 2017):[12]
+
+Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 10,000 but fewer than 20,000 (United States Census Bureau as of 2017):[12]
+
+(See: Lists of cities, towns and villages, census-designated places, metropolitan areas, micropolitan areas, and counties in Mississippi)
+
+Mississippi has a humid subtropical climate with long, hot and humid summers, and short, mild winters. Temperatures average about 81°F (about 27°C) in July and about 42 °F (about 9 °C) in January. The temperature varies little statewide in the summer; however, in winter, the region near Mississippi Sound is significantly warmer than the inland portion of the state. The recorded temperature in Mississippi has ranged from −19 °F (−28 °C), in 1966, at Corinth in the northeast, to 115 °F (46 °C), in 1930, at Holly Springs in the north. Heavy snowfall rarely occurs, but isn't unheard of, such as during the New Year's Eve 1963 snowstorm. Yearly precipitation generally increases from north to south, with the regions closer to the Gulf being the most humid. Thus, Clarksdale, in the northwest, gets about 50 inches (about 1,270 mm) of precipitation annually and Biloxi, in the south, about 61 inches (about 1,550 mm). Small amounts of snow fall in northern and central Mississippi; snow is occasional in the southern part of the state.
+
+The late summer and fall is the seasonal period of risk for hurricanes moving inland from the Gulf of Mexico, especially in the southern part of the state. Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which killed 238 people in the state, were the most devastating hurricanes to hit the state. Both caused nearly total storm surge destruction of structures in and around Gulfport, Biloxi, and Pascagoula.
+
+As in the rest of the Deep South, thunderstorms are common in Mississippi, especially in the southern part of the state. On average, Mississippi has around 27 tornadoes annually; the northern part of the state has more tornadoes earlier in the year and the southern part a higher frequency later in the year. Two of the five deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history have occurred in the state. These storms struck Natchez, in southwest Mississippi (see The Great Natchez Tornado) and Tupelo, in the northeast corner of the state. About seven F5 tornadoes have been recorded in the state.
+
+
+
+Mississippi is heavily forested, with over half of the state's area covered by wild or cultivated trees. The southeastern part of the state is dominated by longleaf pine, in both uplands and lowland flatwoods and Sarracenia bogs. The Mississippi Alluvial Plain, or Delta, is primarily farmland and aquaculture ponds but also has sizeable tracts of cottonwood, willows, bald cypress, and oaks. A belt of loess extends north to south in the western part of the state, where the Mississippi Alluvial Plain reaches the first hills; this region is characterized by rich, mesic mixed hardwood forests, with some species disjunct from Appalachian forests.[15] Two bands of historical prairie, the Jackson Prairie and the Black Belt, run northwest to southeast in the middle and northeastern part of the state. Although these areas have been highly degraded by conversion to agriculture, a few areas remain, consisting of grassland with interspersed woodland of eastern redcedar, oaks, hickories, osage-orange, and sugarberry. The rest of the state, primarily north of Interstate 20 not including the prairie regions, consists of mixed pine-hardwood forest, common species being loblolly pine, oaks (e.g., water oak), hickories, sweetgum, and elm. Areas along large rivers are commonly inhabited by bald cypress, water tupelo, water elm, and bitter pecan. Commonly cultivated trees include loblolly pine, longleaf pine, cherrybark oak, and cottonwood.
+
+There are approximately 3000 species of vascular plants known from Mississippi.[16] As of 2018, a project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation aims to update that checklist of plants with museum (herbarium) vouchers and create an online atlas of each species's distribution.[17]
+
+About 420 species of birds are known to inhabit Mississippi.
+
+Mississippi has one of the richest fish faunas in the United States, with 204 native fish species.[18]
+
+Mississippi also has a rich freshwater mussel fauna, with about 90 species in the primary family of native mussels (Unionidae).[19] Several of these species were extirpated during the construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.
+
+Mississippi is home to 63 crayfish species, including at least 17 endemic species.[20]
+
+Mississippi is home to eight winter stonefly species.[21]
+
+Due to seasonal flooding, possible from December to June, the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers and their tributaries created a fertile floodplain in the Mississippi Delta. The river's flooding created natural levees, which planters had built higher to try to prevent flooding of land cultivated for cotton crops. Temporary workers built levees along the Mississippi River on top of the natural levees that formed from dirt deposited after the river flooded.
+
+From 1858 to 1861, the state took over levee building, accomplishing it through contractors and hired labor. In those years, planters considered their slaves too valuable to hire out for such dangerous work. Contractors hired gangs of Irish immigrant laborers to build levees and sometimes clear land. Many of the Irish were relatively recent immigrants from the famine years who were struggling to get established.[22] Before the American Civil War, the earthwork levees averaged six feet in height, although in some areas they reached twenty feet.
+
+Flooding has been an integral part of Mississippi history, but clearing of the land for cultivation and to supply wood fuel for steamboats took away the absorption of trees and undergrowth. The banks of the river were denuded, becoming unstable and changing the character of the river. After the Civil War, major floods swept down the valley in 1865, 1867, 1874 and 1882. Such floods regularly overwhelmed levees damaged by Confederate and Union fighting during the war, as well as those constructed after the war.[23] In 1877, the state created the Mississippi Levee District for southern counties.
+
+In 1879, the United States Congress created the Mississippi River Commission, whose responsibilities included aiding state levee boards in the construction of levees. Both white and black transient workers were hired to build the levees in the late 19th century. By 1882, levees averaged seven feet in height, but many in the southern Delta were severely tested by the flood that year.[23] After the 1882 flood, the levee system was expanded. In 1884, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee District was established to oversee levee construction and maintenance in the northern Delta counties; also included were some counties in Arkansas which were part of the Delta.[24]
+
+Flooding overwhelmed northwestern Mississippi in 1912–1913, causing heavy damage to the levee districts. Regional losses and the Mississippi River Levee Association's lobbying for a flood control bill helped gain passage of national bills in 1917 and 1923 to provide federal matching funds for local levee districts, on a scale of 2:1. Although U.S. participation in World War I interrupted funding of levees, the second round of funding helped raise the average height of levees in the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta to 22 feet (6.7 m) in the 1920s.[25] Scientists now understand the levees have increased the severity of flooding by increasing the flow speed of the river and reducing the area of the floodplains. The region was severely damaged due to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which broke through the levees. There were losses of millions of dollars in property, stock and crops. The most damage occurred in the lower Delta, including Washington and Bolivar counties.[26]
+
+Even as scientific knowledge about the Mississippi River has grown, upstream development and the consequences of the levees have caused more severe flooding in some years. Scientists now understand that the widespread clearing of land and building of the levees have changed the nature of the river. Such work removed the natural protection and absorption of wetlands and forest cover, strengthening the river's current. The state and federal governments have been struggling for the best approaches to restore some natural habitats in order to best interact with the original riverine ecology.
+
+Near 10,000 BC Native Americans or Paleo-Indians arrived in what today is referred to as the American South.[27] Paleo-Indians in the South were hunter-gatherers who pursued the megafauna that became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age. In the Mississippi Delta, Native American settlements and agricultural fields were developed on the natural levees, higher ground in the proximity of rivers. The Native Americans developed extensive fields near their permanent villages. Together with other practices, they created some localized deforestation but did not alter the ecology of the Mississippi Delta as a whole.[28]
+
+After thousands of years, succeeding cultures of the Woodland and Mississippian culture eras developed rich and complex agricultural societies, in which surplus supported the development of specialized trades. Both were mound builder cultures. Those of the Mississippian culture were the largest and most complex, constructed beginning about 950 AD. The peoples had a trading network spanning the continent from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast. Their large earthworks, which expressed their cosmology of political and religious concepts, still stand throughout the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys.
+
+Descendant Native American tribes of the Mississippian culture in the Southeast include the Chickasaw and Choctaw. Other tribes who inhabited the territory of Mississippi (and whose names were honored by colonists in local towns) include the Natchez, the Yazoo, and the Biloxi.
+
+The first major European expedition into the territory that became Mississippi was that of the Spanish explorer, Hernando de Soto, who passed through the northeast part of the state in 1540, in his second expedition to the New World.
+
+In April 1699, French colonists established the first European settlement at Fort Maurepas (also known as Old Biloxi), built in the vicinity of present-day Ocean Springs on the Gulf Coast. It was settled by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville. In 1716, the French founded Natchez on the Mississippi River (as Fort Rosalie); it became the dominant town and trading post of the area. The French called the greater territory "New France"; the Spanish continued to claim part of the Gulf coast area (east of Mobile Bay) of present-day southern Alabama, in addition to the entire area of present-day Florida.
+
+Through the 18th century, the area was ruled variously by Spanish, French, and British colonial governments. The colonists imported African slaves as laborers. Under French and Spanish rule, there developed a class of free people of color (gens de couleur libres), mostly multiracial descendants of European men and enslaved or free black women, and their mixed-race children. In the early days the French and Spanish colonists were chiefly men. Even as more European women joined the settlements, the men had interracial unions among women of African descent (and increasingly, multiracial descent), both before and after marriages to European women. Often the European men would help their multiracial children get educated or gain apprenticeships for trades, and sometimes they settled property on them; they often freed the mothers and their children if enslaved, as part of contracts of plaçage. With this social capital, the free people of color became artisans, and sometimes educated merchants and property owners, forming a third class between the Europeans and most enslaved Africans in the French and Spanish settlements, although not so large a free community as in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana.
+
+After Great Britain's victory in the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War), the French surrendered the Mississippi area to them under the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763). They also ceded their areas to the north that were east of the Mississippi River, including the Illinois Country and Quebec. After the Peace of Paris (1783), the lower third of Mississippi came under Spanish rule as part of West Florida. In 1819 the United States completed the purchase of West Florida and all of East Florida in the Adams–Onís Treaty, and in 1822 both were merged into the Florida Territory.
+
+After the American Revolution (1765–83), Britain ceded this area to the new United States of America. The Mississippi Territory was organized on April 7, 1798, from territory ceded by Georgia and South Carolina to the United States. Their original colonial charters theoretically extended west to the Pacific Ocean. The Mississippi Territory was later twice expanded to include disputed territory claimed by both the United States and Spain.
+
+From 1800 to about 1830, the United States purchased some lands (Treaty of Doak's Stand) from Native American tribes for new settlements of European Americans; they were mostly migrants from other Southern states, particularly Virginia and North Carolina, where soils were exhausted.[29] On September 27, 1830, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed between the U.S. Government and the Choctaw. The Choctaw agreed to sell their traditional homelands in Mississippi and Alabama, for compensation and removal to reservations in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). This opened up land for sale to European-American immigrant settlement. Article 14 in the treaty allowed those Choctaw who chose to remain in the state to become U.S. citizens, as they were considered to be giving up their tribal membership. They were the second major non-European ethnic group to do so (the Cherokee were the first).[30][31] Today approximately 9,500 Choctaw live in Neshoba, Newton, Leake, and Jones counties. Federally recognized tribes include the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
+
+Many slaveholders brought slaves with them or purchased them through the domestic slave trade, especially in New Orleans. Through the trade, an estimated nearly one million slaves were transported to the Deep South, including Mississippi, in a forced internal migration that broke up many slave families of the Upper South, where planters were selling excess slaves. The Southerners imposed slave laws and restricted the rights of free blacks.
+
+Beginning in 1822, slaves in Mississippi were protected by law from cruel and unusual punishment by their owners.[32] The Southern slave codes made the willful killing of a slave illegal in most cases.[33] For example, the 1860 Mississippi case of Oliver v. State charged the defendant with murdering his own slave.[34]
+
+Mississippi became the 20th state on December 10, 1817. David Holmes was the first governor.[35] The state was still occupied as ancestral land by several Native American tribes, including Choctaw, Natchez, Houma, Creek, and Chickasaw.[36][37]
+
+Plantations were developed primarily along the major rivers, where the waterfront provided access to the major transportation routes. This is also where early towns developed, linked by the steamboats that carried commercial products and crops to markets. The remainder of Native American ancestral land remained largely undeveloped but was sold through treaties until 1826, when the Choctaws and Chickasaws refused to sell more land.[38] 
+The combination of the Mississippi state legislature's abolition of Choctaw Tribal Government in 1829,[39] President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act and the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek[40] of 1830, the Choctaw were effectively forced to sell their land and were transported to Oklahoma Territory. The forced migration of the Choctaw, together with other southeastern tribes removed as a result of the Act, became known as the Trail of Tears.
+
+When cotton was king during the 1850s, Mississippi plantation owners—especially those of the Delta and Black Belt central regions—became wealthy due to the high fertility of the soil, the high price of cotton on the international market, and free labor gained through their holding enslaved African Americans. They used some of their profits to buy more cotton land and more slaves. The planters' dependence on hundreds of thousands of slaves for labor and the severe wealth imbalances among whites, played strong roles both in state politics and in planters' support for secession. Mississippi was a slave society, with the economy dependent on slavery. The state was thinly settled, with population concentrated in the riverfront areas and towns.
+
+By 1860, the enslaved African-American population numbered 436,631 or 55% of the state's total of 791,305 persons. Fewer than 1000 were free people of color.[41] The relatively low population of the state before the Civil War reflected the fact that land and villages were developed only along the riverfronts, which formed the main transportation corridors. Ninety percent of the Delta bottomlands were still frontier and undeveloped.[42] The state needed many more settlers for development. The land further away from the rivers was cleared by freedmen and white migrants during Reconstruction and later.[42]
+
+On January 9, 1861, Mississippi became the second state to declare its secession from the Union, and it was one of the founding members of the Confederate States. The first six states to secede were those with the highest number of slaves. During the war, Union and Confederate forces struggled for dominance on the Mississippi River, critical to supply routes and commerce. More than 80,000 Mississippians fought in the Civil War, and casualties were extremely heavy. Union General Ulysses S. Grant's long siege of Vicksburg finally gained the Union control of the river in 1863.
+
+In the postwar period, freedmen withdrew from white-run churches to set up independent congregations. The majority of blacks left the Southern Baptist Church, sharply reducing its membership. They created independent black Baptist congregations. By 1895 they had established numerous black Baptist state associations and the National Baptist Convention of black churches.[43]
+
+In addition, independent black denominations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (established in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early 19th century) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (established in New York City), sent missionaries to the South in the postwar years. They quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of converts and founded new churches across the South. Southern congregations brought their own influences to those denominations as well.[43][44]
+
+During Reconstruction, the first Mississippi constitutional convention in 1868, with delegates both black and white, framed a constitution whose major elements would be maintained for 22 years.[45] The convention was the first political organization in the state to include African-American representatives, 17 among the 100 members (32 counties had black majorities at the time). Some among the black delegates were freedmen, but others were educated free blacks who had migrated from the North. The convention adopted universal suffrage; did away with property qualifications for suffrage or for office, a change that also benefited both blacks and poor whites; provided for the state's first public school system; forbade race distinctions in the possession and inheritance of property; and prohibited limiting civil rights in travel.[45] Under the terms of Reconstruction, Mississippi was restored to the Union on February 23, 1870.
+
+Because the Mississippi Delta contained so much fertile bottomland that had not been developed before the Civil War, 90 percent of the land was still frontier. After the Civil War, tens of thousands of migrants were attracted to the area by higher wages offered by planters trying to develop land. In addition, black and white workers could earn money by clearing the land and selling timber, and eventually advance to ownership. The new farmers included many freedmen, who by the late 19th century achieved unusually high rates of land ownership in the Mississippi bottomlands. In the 1870s and 1880s, many black farmers succeeded in gaining land ownership.[42]
+
+Around the start of the 20th century, two-thirds of the Mississippi farmers who owned land in the Delta were African American.[42] But many had become overextended with debt during the falling cotton prices of the difficult years of the late 19th century. Cotton prices fell throughout the decades following the Civil War. As another agricultural depression lowered cotton prices into the 1890s, numerous African-American farmers finally had to sell their land to pay off debts, thus losing the land which they had developed by hard, personal labor.[42]
+
+Democrats had regained control of the state legislature in 1875, after a year of expanded violence against blacks and intimidation of whites in what was called the "white line" campaign, based on asserting white supremacy. Democratic whites were well armed and formed paramilitary organizations such as the Red Shirts to suppress black voting. From 1874 to the elections of 1875, they pressured whites to join the Democrats, and conducted violence against blacks in at least 15 known "riots" in cities around the state to intimidate blacks. They killed a total of 150 blacks, although other estimates place the death toll at twice as many. A total of three white Republicans and five white Democrats were reported killed. In rural areas, deaths of blacks could be covered up. Riots (better described as massacres of blacks) took place in Vicksburg, Clinton, Macon, and in their counties, as well-armed whites broke up black meetings and lynched known black leaders, destroying local political organizations.[46] Seeing the success of this deliberate "Mississippi Plan", South Carolina and other states followed it and also achieved white Democratic dominance. In 1877 by a national compromise, the last of federal troops were withdrawn from the region.
+
+Even in this environment, black Mississippians continued to be elected to local office. However, black residents were deprived of all political power after white legislators passed a new state constitution in 1890 specifically to "eliminate the nigger from politics", according to the state's Democratic governor, James K. Vardaman.[47] It erected barriers to voter registration and instituted electoral provisions that effectively disenfranchised most black Mississippians and many poor whites. Estimates are that 100,000 black and 50,000 white men were removed from voter registration rolls in the state over the next few years.[48]
+
+The loss of political influence contributed to the difficulties of African Americans in their attempts to obtain extended credit in the late 19th century. Together with imposition of Jim Crow and racial segregation laws, whites increased violence against blacks, lynching mostly men, through the period of the 1890s and extending to 1930. Cotton crops failed due to boll weevil infestation and successive severe flooding in 1912 and 1913, creating crisis conditions for many African Americans. With control of the ballot box and more access to credit, white planters bought out such farmers, expanding their ownership of Delta bottomlands. They also took advantage of new railroads sponsored by the state.[42]
+
+In 1900, blacks made up more than half of the state's population. By 1910, a majority of black farmers in the Delta had lost their land and become sharecroppers. By 1920, the third generation after freedom, most African Americans in Mississippi were landless laborers again facing poverty.[42] Starting about 1913, tens of thousands of black Americans left Mississippi for the North in the Great Migration to industrial cities such as St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia and New York. They sought jobs, better education for their children, the right to vote, relative freedom from discrimination, and better living. In the migration of 1910–1940, they left a society that had been steadily closing off opportunity. Most migrants from Mississippi took trains directly north to Chicago and often settled near former neighbors.
+
+Blacks also faced violence in the form of lynching, shooting, and the burning of churches. In 1923, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People stated "the Negro feels that life is not safe in Mississippi and his life may be taken with impunity at any time upon the slightest pretext or provocation by a white man".[49]
+
+In the early 20th century, some industries were established in Mississippi, but jobs were generally restricted to whites, including child workers. The lack of jobs also drove some southern whites north to cities such as Chicago and Detroit, seeking employment, where they also competed with European immigrants. The state depended on agriculture, but mechanization put many farm laborers out of work.
+
+By 1900, many white ministers, especially in the towns, subscribed to the Social Gospel movement, which attempted to apply Christian ethics to social and economic needs of the day. Many strongly supported Prohibition, believing it would help alleviate and prevent many sins.[50] Mississippi became a dry state in 1908 by an act of the State legislature.[51] It remained dry until the legislature passed a local option bill in 1966.[52]
+
+African-American Baptist churches grew to include more than twice the number of members as their white Baptist counterparts. The African-American call for social equality resonated throughout the Great Depression in the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s.
+
+The Second Great Migration from the South started in the 1940s, lasting until 1970. Almost half a million people left Mississippi in the second migration, three-quarters of them black. Nationwide during the first half of the 20th century, African Americans became rapidly urbanized and many worked in industrial jobs. The Second Great Migration included destinations in the West, especially California, where the buildup of the defense industry offered higher-paying jobs to both African Americans and whites.
+
+Blacks and whites in Mississippi generated rich, quintessentially American music traditions: gospel music, country music, jazz, blues and rock and roll. All were invented, promulgated or heavily developed by Mississippi musicians, many of them African American, and most came from the Mississippi Delta. Many musicians carried their music north to Chicago, where they made it the heart of that city's jazz and blues.
+
+So many African Americans left in the Great Migration that after the 1930s, they became a minority in Mississippi. In 1960 they made up 42% of the state's population.[53] The whites maintained their discriminatory voter registration processes established in 1890, preventing most blacks from voting, even if they were well educated. Court challenges were not successful until later in the century. After World War II, African-American veterans returned with renewed commitment to be treated as full citizens of the United States and increasingly organized to gain enforcement of their constitutional rights.
+
+The Civil Rights Movement had many roots in religion, and the strong community of churches helped supply volunteers and moral purpose for their activism. Mississippi was a center of activity, based in black churches, to educate and register black voters, and to work for integration. In 1954 the state had created the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a tax-supported agency, chaired by the Governor, that claimed to work for the state's image but effectively spied on activists and passed information to the local White Citizens' Councils to suppress black activism. White Citizens Councils had been formed in many cities and towns to resist integration of schools following the unanimous 1954 United States Supreme Court ruling (Brown v. Board of Education) that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. They used intimidation and economic blackmail against activists and suspected activists, including teachers and other professionals. Techniques included loss of jobs and eviction from rental housing.
+
+In the summer of 1964 students and community organizers from across the country came to help register black voters in Mississippi and establish Freedom Schools. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was established to challenge the all-white Democratic Party of the Solid South. Most white politicians resisted such changes. Chapters of the Ku Klux Klan and its sympathizers used violence against activists, most notably the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in 1964 during the Freedom Summer campaign. This was a catalyst for Congressional passage the following year of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mississippi earned a reputation in the 1960s as a reactionary state.[54][55]
+
+After decades of disenfranchisement, African Americans in the state gradually began to exercise their right to vote again for the first time since the 19th century, following the passage of federal civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965, which ended de jure segregation and enforced constitutional voting rights. Registration of African-American voters increased and black candidates ran in the 1967 elections for state and local offices. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party fielded some candidates. Teacher Robert G. Clark of Holmes County was the first African American to be elected to the State House since Reconstruction. He continued as the only African American in the state legislature until 1976 and was repeatedly elected into the 21st century, including three terms as Speaker of the House.[56]
+
+In 1966, the state was the last to repeal officially statewide prohibition of alcohol. Before that, Mississippi had taxed the illegal alcohol brought in by bootleggers. Governor Paul Johnson urged repeal and the sheriff "raided the annual Junior League Mardi Gras ball at the Jackson Country Club, breaking open the liquor cabinet and carting off the Champagne before a startled crowd of nobility and high-ranking state officials".[57]
+
+On August 17, 1969, Category 5 Hurricane Camille hit the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars).
+
+Mississippi was the last state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in March 1984, granting women the right to vote.[58]
+
+In 1987, 20 years after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1967's Loving v. Virginia that a similar Virginian law was unconstitutional, Mississippi repealed its ban on interracial marriage (also known as miscegenation), which had been enacted in 1890. It also repealed the segregationist-era poll tax in 1989. In 1995, the state symbolically ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which had abolished slavery in 1865. Though ratified in 1995, the state never officially notified the U.S. archivist, which kept the ratification unofficial until 2013, when Ken Sullivan contacted the office of Secretary of State of Mississippi, Delbert Hosemann, who agreed to file the paperwork and make it official.[59][60][61] In 2009, the legislature passed a bill to repeal other discriminatory civil rights laws, which had been enacted in 1964, the same year as the federal Civil Rights Act, but ruled unconstitutional in 1967 by federal courts. Republican Governor Haley Barbour signed the bill into law.[62]
+
+The end of legal segregation and Jim Crow led to the integration of some churches, but most today remain divided along racial and cultural lines, having developed different traditions. After the Civil War, most African Americans left white churches to establish their own independent congregations, particularly Baptist churches, establishing state associations and a national association by the end of the century. They wanted to express their own traditions of worship and practice.[63] In more diverse communities, such as Hattiesburg, some churches have multiracial congregations.[64]
+
+On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, though a Category 3 storm upon final landfall, caused even greater destruction across the entire 90 miles (145 km) of the Mississippi Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Alabama.
+
+Mississippi became the last state to remove the Confederate battle flag as an official state symbol on June 30, 2020, when Governor Tate Reeves signed a law officially retiring the second state flag. A new flag, which will be the third state flag in Mississippi's history, will be selected by referendum.[65]
+
+The center of population of Mississippi is located in Leake County, in the town of Lena.[68]
+
+The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Mississippi was 2,976,149 on July 1, 2019, a 0.30% increase since the 2010 census.[67] The state's economist characterized the state as losing population as job markets elsewhere have caused 3.2 per 1000 to migrate recently.[69]
+
+From 2000 to 2010, the United States Census Bureau reported that Mississippi had the highest rate of increase in people identifying as mixed-race, up 70 percent in the decade; it amounts to a total of 1.1 percent of the population.[64] In addition, Mississippi led the nation for most of the last decade in the growth of mixed marriages among its population. The total population has not increased significantly, but is young. Some of the above change in identification as mixed race is due to new births. But, it appears mostly to reflect those residents who have chosen to identify as more than one race, who in earlier years may have identified by just one ethnicity. A binary racial system had been in place since slavery times and the days of racial segregation. In the civil rights era, people of African descent banded together in an inclusive community to achieve political power and gain restoration of their civil rights.
+
+As the demographer William H. Frey noted, "In Mississippi, I think it's [identifying as mixed race] changed from within."[64] Historically in Mississippi, after Indian removal in the 1830s, the major groups were designated as black (African American), who were then mostly enslaved, and white (primarily European American). Matthew Snipp, also a demographer, commented on the increase in the 21st century in the number of people identifying as being of more than one race: "In a sense, they're rendering a more accurate portrait of their racial heritage that in the past would have been suppressed."[64]
+
+After having accounted for a majority of the state's population since well before the Civil War and through the 1930s, today African Americans constitute approximately 37 percent of the state's population. Most have ancestors who were enslaved, with many forcibly transported from the Upper South in the 19th century to work on the area's new plantations. Some of these slaves were mixed race, with European ancestors, as there were many children born into slavery with white fathers. Some also have Native American ancestry.[70] During the first half of the 20th century, a total of nearly 400,000 African Americans left the state during the Great Migration, for opportunities in the North, Midwest and West. They became a minority in the state for the first time since early in its development.[citation needed]
+
+At the 2010 U.S. census, the racial makeup of the population was:
+
+Ethnically, 2.7% of the total population, among all racial groups, was of Hispanic or Latino origin (they may be of any race).[71] As of 2011, 53.8% of Mississippi's population younger than age 1 were minorities, meaning that they had at least one parent who was not non-Hispanic white.[72] For more information on racial and ethnic classifications in the United States see race and ethnicity in the United States Census.
+
+Americans of Scots-Irish, English and Scottish ancestry are present throughout the state. It is believed that there are more people with such ancestry than identify as such on the census, in part because their immigrant ancestors are more distant in their family histories. English, Scottish and Scots-Irish are generally the most under-reported ancestry groups in both the South Atlantic States and the East South Central States. The historian David Hackett Fischer estimated that a minimum 20% of Mississippi's population is of English ancestry, though the figure is probably much higher, and another large percentage is of Scottish ancestry. Many Mississippians of such ancestry identify simply as American on questionnaires, because their families have been in North America for centuries.[76][77] In the 1980 census 656,371 Mississippians of a total of 1,946,775 identified as being of English ancestry, making them 38% of the state at the time.[78]
+
+The state in 2010 had the highest proportion of African Americans in the nation. The African-American percentage of population has begun to increase due mainly to a younger population than the whites (the total fertility rates of the two races are approximately equal). Due to patterns of settlement and whites putting their children in private schools, in almost all of Mississippi's public school districts, a majority of students are African American. African Americans are the majority ethnic group in the northwestern Yazoo Delta, and the southwestern and the central parts of the state. These are areas where, historically, African Americans owned land as farmers in the 19th century following the Civil War, or worked on cotton plantations and farms.[79]
+
+People of French Creole ancestry form the largest demographic group in Hancock County on the Gulf Coast. The African-American; Choctaw, mostly in Neshoba County; and Chinese American portions of the population are also almost entirely native born.
+
+The Chinese first came to Mississippi as contract workers from Cuba and California in the 1870s, and they originally worked as laborers on the cotton plantations. However, most Chinese families came later between 1910 and 1930 from other states, and most operated small family-owned groceries stores in the many small towns of the Delta.[80] In these roles, the ethnic Chinese carved out a niche in the state between black and white, where they were concentrated in the Delta. These small towns have declined since the late 20th century, and many ethnic Chinese have joined the exodus to larger cities, including Jackson. Their population in the state overall has increased in the 21st century.[81][82][83][84]
+
+In the early 1980s many Vietnamese immigrated to Mississippi and other states along the Gulf of Mexico, where they became employed in fishing-related work.[85]
+
+In 2000, 96.4% of Mississippi residents five years old and older spoke only English in the home, a decrease from 97.2% in 1990.[86] English is largely Southern American English, with some South Midland speech in northern and eastern Mississippi. There is a common absence of final /r/ and the lengthening and weakening of the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /ɔɪ/ as in 'ride' and 'oil'. South Midland terms in northern Mississippi include: tow sack (burlap bag), dog irons (andirons), plum peach (clingstone peach), snake doctor (dragonfly), and stone wall (rock fence).[86]
+
+Under French and Spanish rule beginning in the 17th century, European colonists were mostly Roman Catholics. The growth of the cotton culture after 1815 brought in tens of thousands of Anglo-American settlers each year, most of whom were Protestants from Southeastern states. Due to such migration, there was rapid growth in the number of Protestant churches, especially Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist.[88]
+
+The revivals of the Great Awakening in the late 18th and early 19th centuries initially attracted the "plain folk" by reaching out to all members of society, including women and blacks. Both slaves and free blacks were welcomed into Methodist and Baptist churches. Independent black Baptist churches were established before 1800 in Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Georgia, and later developed in Mississippi as well.
+
+In the post-Civil War years, religion became more influential as the South became known as the "Bible Belt".
+
+Since the 1970s, fundamentalist conservative churches have grown rapidly, fueling Mississippi's conservative political trends among whites.[88] In 1973 the Presbyterian Church in America attracted numerous conservative congregations. As of 2010, Mississippi remained a stronghold of the denomination, which originally was brought by Scots immigrants. The state has the highest adherence rate of the PCA in 2010, with 121 congregations and 18,500 members. It is among the few states where the PCA has higher membership than the PC(USA).[89]
+According to the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), in 2010 the Southern Baptist Convention had 907,384 adherents and was the largest religious denomination in the state, followed by the United Methodist Church with 204,165, and the Roman Catholic Church with 112,488.[90] Other religions have a small presence in Mississippi; as of 2010, there were 5,012 Muslims; 4,389 Hindus; and 816 Bahá'í.[90]
+
+Public opinion polls have consistently ranked Mississippi as the most religious state in the United States, with 59% of Mississippians considering themselves "very religious". The same survey also found that 11% of the population were non-Religious.[91] In a 2009 Gallup poll, 63% of Mississippians said that they attended church weekly or almost weekly—the highest percentage of all states (U.S. average was 42%, and the lowest percentage was in Vermont at 23%).[92] Another 2008 Gallup poll found that 85% of Mississippians considered religion an important part of their daily lives, the highest figure among all states (U.S. average 65%).[93]
+
+Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.
+
+The 2010 United States Census counted 6,286 same-sex unmarried-partner households in Mississippi, an increase of 1,512 since the 2000 United States census.[101] Of those same-sex couples roughly 33% contained at least one child, giving Mississippi the distinction of leading the nation in the percentage of same-sex couples raising children.[102] Mississippi has the largest percentage of African-American same-sex couples among total households. The state capital, Jackson, ranks tenth in the nation in concentration of African-American same-sex couples. The state ranks fifth in the nation in the percentage of Hispanic same-sex couples among all Hispanic households and ninth in the highest concentration of same-sex couples who are seniors.[103]
+
+The state is ranked 50th or last place among all the states for health care, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation working to advance performance of the health care system.[104]
+
+Mississippi has the highest rate of infant and neonatal deaths of any U.S. state. Age-adjusted data also shows Mississippi has the highest overall death rate, and the highest death rate from heart disease, hypertension and hypertensive renal disease, influenza and pneumonia.[105]
+
+In 2011, Mississippi (and Arkansas) had the fewest dentists per capita in the United States.[106]
+
+For three years in a row, more than 30 percent of Mississippi's residents have been classified as obese. In a 2006 study, 22.8 percent of the state's children were classified as such. Mississippi had the highest rate of obesity of any U.S. state from 2005 to 2008, and also ranks first in the nation for high blood pressure, diabetes, and adult inactivity.[107][108] In a 2008 study of African-American women, contributing risk factors were shown to be: lack of knowledge about body mass index (BMI), dietary behavior, physical inactivity and lack of social support, defined as motivation and encouragement by friends.[109] A 2002 report on African-American adolescents noted a 1999 survey which suggests that a third of children were obese, with higher ratios for those in the Delta.[110]
+
+The study stressed that "obesity starts in early childhood extending into the adolescent years and then possibly into adulthood." It noted impediments to needed behavioral modification, including the Delta likely being "the most underserved region in the state" with African Americans the major ethnic group; lack of accessibility and availability of medical care; and an estimated 60% of residents living below the poverty level.[110] Additional risk factors were that most schools had no physical education curriculum and nutrition education is not emphasized. Previous intervention strategies may have been largely ineffective due to not being culturally sensitive or practical.[110] A 2006 survey found nearly 95 percent of Mississippi adults considered childhood obesity to be a serious problem.[111]
+
+A 2017 study found that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Mississippi was the leading health insurer with 53% followed by UnitedHealth Group at 13%.[112]
+
+The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Mississippi's total state product in 2010 was $98 billion.[113] GDP growth was .5 percent in 2015 and is estimated to be 2.4 in 2016 according to Dr. Darrin Webb, the state's chief economist, who noted it would make two consecutive years of positive growth since the recession.[114] Per capita personal income in 2006 was $26,908, the lowest per capita personal income of any state, but the state also has the nation's lowest living costs. 2015 data records the adjusted per capita personal income at $40,105.[114] Mississippians consistently rank as one of the highest per capita in charitable contributions.[115]
+
+At 56 percent, the state has one of the lowest workforce participation rates in the country. Approximately 70,000 adults are disabled, which is 10 percent of the workforce.[114]
+
+Mississippi's rank as one of the poorest states is related to its dependence on cotton agriculture before and after the Civil War, late development of its frontier bottomlands in the Mississippi Delta, repeated natural disasters of flooding in the late 19th and early 20th century that required massive capital investment in levees, and ditching and draining the bottomlands, and slow development of railroads to link bottomland towns and river cities.[116] In addition, when Democrats regained control of the state legislature, they passed the 1890 constitution that discouraged corporate industrial development in favor of rural agriculture, a legacy that would slow the state's progress for years.[117]
+
+Before the Civil War, Mississippi was the fifth-wealthiest state in the nation, its wealth generated by the labor of slaves in cotton plantations along the rivers.[118]
+Slaves were counted as property and the rise in the cotton markets since the 1840s had increased their value. By 1860, a majority—55 percent—of the population of Mississippi was enslaved.[119] Ninety percent of the Delta bottomlands were undeveloped and the state had low overall density of population.
+
+Largely due to the domination of the plantation economy, focused on the production of agricultural cotton, the state's elite was reluctant to invest in infrastructure such as roads and railroads. They educated their children privately. Industrialization did not reach many areas until the late 20th century. The planter aristocracy, the elite of antebellum Mississippi, kept the tax structure low for their own benefit, making only private improvements. Before the war the most successful planters, such as Confederate President Jefferson Davis, owned riverside properties along the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers in the Mississippi Delta. Away from the riverfronts, most of the Delta was undeveloped frontier.
+
+During the Civil War, 30,000 Mississippi soldiers, mostly white, died from wounds and disease, and many more were left crippled and wounded. Changes to the labor structure and an agricultural depression throughout the South caused severe losses in wealth. In 1860 assessed valuation of property in Mississippi had been more than $500 million, of which $218 million (43 percent) was estimated as the value of slaves. By 1870, total assets had decreased in value to roughly $177 million.[120]
+
+Poor whites and landless former slaves suffered the most from the postwar economic depression. The constitutional convention of early 1868 appointed a committee to recommend what was needed for relief of the state and its citizens. The committee found severe destitution among the laboring classes.[121] It took years for the state to rebuild levees damaged in battles. The upset of the commodity system impoverished the state after the war. By 1868 an increased cotton crop began to show possibilities for free labor in the state, but the crop of 565,000 bales produced in 1870 was still less than half of prewar figures.[122]
+
+Blacks cleared land, selling timber and developing bottomland to achieve ownership. In 1900, two-thirds of farm owners in Mississippi were blacks, a major achievement for them and their families. Due to the poor economy, low cotton prices and difficulty of getting credit, many of these farmers could not make it through the extended financial difficulties. Two decades later, the majority of African Americans were sharecroppers. The low prices of cotton into the 1890s meant that more than a generation of African Americans lost the result of their labor when they had to sell their farms to pay off accumulated debts.[42]
+
+After the Civil War, the state refused for years to build human capital by fully educating all its citizens. In addition, the reliance on agriculture grew increasingly costly as the state suffered loss of cotton crops due to the devastation of the boll weevil in the early 20th century, devastating floods in 1912–1913 and 1927, collapse of cotton prices after 1920, and drought in 1930.[116]
+
+It was not until 1884, after the flood of 1882, that the state created the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta District Levee Board and started successfully achieving longer-term plans for levees in the upper Delta.[24] Despite the state's building and reinforcing levees for years, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 broke through and caused massive flooding of 27,000 square miles (70,000 km2) throughout the Delta, homelessness for hundreds of thousands, and millions of dollars in property damages. With the Depression coming so soon after the flood, the state suffered badly during those years. In the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of African Americans migrated North and West for jobs and chances to live as full citizens.
+
+The legislature's 1990 decision to legalize casino gambling along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast has led to increased revenues and economic gains for the state. Gambling towns in Mississippi have attracted increased tourism: they include the Gulf Coast resort towns of Bay St. Louis, Gulfport and Biloxi, and the Mississippi River towns of Tunica (the third largest gaming area in the United States), Greenville, Vicksburg and Natchez.
+
+Before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Mississippi was the second-largest gambling state in the Union, after Nevada and ahead of New Jersey.[citation needed] An estimated $500,000 per day in tax revenue was lost following Hurricane Katrina's severe damage to several coastal casinos in Biloxi in August 2005.[123] Because of the destruction from this hurricane, on October 17, 2005, Governor Haley Barbour signed a bill into law that allows casinos in Hancock and Harrison counties to rebuild on land (but within 800 feet (240 m) of the water). The only exception is in Harrison County, where the new law states that casinos can be built to the southern boundary of U.S. Route 90.[citation needed]
+
+In 2012, Mississippi had the sixth largest gambling revenue of any state, with $2.25 billion.[124] The federally recognized Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians has established a gaming casino on its reservation, which yields revenue to support education and economic development.[citation needed]
+
+Momentum Mississippi, a statewide, public–private partnership dedicated to the development of economic and employment opportunities in Mississippi, was adopted in 2005.[125]
+
+Mississippi, like the rest of its southern neighbors, is a right-to-work state. It has some major automotive factories, such as the Toyota Mississippi Plant in Blue Springs and a Nissan Automotive plant in Canton. The latter produces the Nissan Titan.
+
+Mississippi collects personal income tax in three tax brackets, ranging from 3% to 5%. The retail sales tax rate in Mississippi is 7%. Tupelo levies a local sales tax of 2.5%.[126] State sales tax growth was 1.4 percent in 2016 and estimated to be slightly less in 2017.[114] For purposes of assessment for ad valorem taxes, taxable property is divided into five classes.[127]
+
+On August 30, 2007, a report by the United States Census Bureau indicated that Mississippi was the poorest state in the country. Major cotton farmers in the Delta have large, mechanized plantations, and they receive the majority of extensive federal subsidies going to the state, yet many other residents still live as poor, rural, landless laborers. The state's sizable poultry industry has faced similar challenges in its transition from family-run farms to large mechanized operations.[128] Of $1.2 billion from 2002 to 2005 in federal subsidies to farmers in the Bolivar County area of the Delta, only 5% went to small farmers. There has been little money apportioned for rural development. Small towns are struggling. More than 100,000 people have left the region in search of work elsewhere.[129] The state had a median household income of $34,473.[130]
+
+As of December 2018, the state's unemployment rate was 4.7%, the seventh highest in the country after Arizona (4.9%), Louisiana (4.9%), New Mexico (5.0%), West Virginia (5.1%), District of Columbia (5.4%) and Alaska (6.5%).[131]
+
+With Mississippi's fiscal conservatism, in which Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, and other social programs are often cut, eligibility requirements are tightened, and stricter employment criteria are imposed, Mississippi ranks as having the second-highest ratio of spending to tax receipts of any state. In 2005, Mississippi citizens received approximately $2.02 per dollar of taxes in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state second-highest nationally, and represents an increase from 1995, when Mississippi received $1.54 per dollar of taxes in federal spending and was 3rd highest nationally.[132] This figure is based on federal spending after large portions of the state were devastated by Hurricane Katrina, requiring large amounts of federal aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). However, from 1981 to 2005, it was at least number four in the nation for federal spending vs. taxes received.[133]
+
+A proportion of federal spending in Mississippi is directed toward large federal installations such as Camp Shelby, John C. Stennis Space Center, Meridian Naval Air Station, Columbus Air Force Base, and Keesler Air Force Base. Three of these installations are located in the area affected by Hurricane Katrina.
+
+As with all other U.S. states and the federal government, Mississippi's government is based on the separation of legislative, executive and judicial power. Executive authority in the state rests with the Governor, currently Tate Reeves (R). The lieutenant governor, currently Delbert Hosemann (R), is elected on a separate ballot. Both the governor and lieutenant governor are elected to four-year terms of office. Unlike the federal government, but like many other U.S. States, most of the heads of major executive departments are elected by the citizens of Mississippi rather than appointed by the governor.
+
+Mississippi is one of five states that elects its state officials in odd-numbered years (the others are Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey and Virginia). Mississippi holds elections for these offices every four years, always in the year preceding presidential elections.
+
+In 2004, Mississippi voters approved a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and prohibiting Mississippi from recognizing same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. The amendment passed 86% to 14%, the largest margin in any state.[134][135] Same-sex marriage became legal in Mississippi on June 26, 2015, when the United States Supreme Court invalidated all state-level bans on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional in the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges.[136]
+
+With the passing of HB 1523 in April 2016, from July it became legal in Mississippi to refuse service to same-sex couples, based on one's religious beliefs.[137][138] The bill has become the subject of controversy.[139] A federal judge blocked the law in July,[140] however it was challenged and a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the law in October 2017.[141][142]
+
+Mississippi has banned sanctuary cities.[143] Mississippi is one of thirty-one states which have capital punishment (see Capital punishment in Mississippi).
+
+Section 265 of the Constitution of the State of Mississippi declares that "No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state."[144] This religious test restriction was held to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Torcaso v. Watkins (1961).
+
+Mississippi led the South in developing a disenfranchising constitution, passing it in 1890. By raising barriers to voter registration, the state legislature disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites, excluding them from politics until the late 1960s. It established a one-party state dominated by white Democrats.
+
+In the 1980s whites divided evenly between the parties. In the 1990s those voters shifted their allegiance to the Republican Party, first for national and then for state offices.[145] Most blacks were still disenfranchised under the state's 1890 constitution and discriminatory practices, until passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and concerted grassroots efforts to achieve registration and encourage voting.
+
+In 2019, a lawsuit was filed against an 1890 election law known as The Mississippi Plan, which requires that candidates must win the popular vote and a majority of districts.[146]
+
+Mississippi has six airports with commercial passenger service, the busiest in Jackson (Jackson-Evers International Airport) and one in Gulfport (Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport)
+
+Mississippi is the only American state where people in cars may legally consume beer. Some localities have laws restricting the practice.[147] In 2018, the state was ranked number eight in the Union in terms of impaired driving deaths.[148]
+
+Mississippi is served by nine interstate highways:
+
+
+
+and fourteen main U.S. Routes:
+
+
+
+as well as a system of State Highways.
+
+Amtrak provides scheduled passenger service along two routes, the Crescent and City of New Orleans. Prior to severe damage from Hurricane Katrina, the Sunset Limited traversed the far south of the state; the route originated in Los Angeles, California and it terminated in Florida.
+
+All but two of the United States Class I railroads serve Mississippi (the exceptions are the Union Pacific and Canadian Pacific):
+
+http://www.mvk.usace.army.mil/Missions/Recreation/Enid-Lake/
+
+Until the Civil War era, Mississippi had a small number of schools and no educational institutions for African Americans. The first school for black students was not established until 1862.
+
+During Reconstruction in 1871, black and white Republicans drafted a constitution that was the first to provide for a system of free public education in the state. The state's dependence on agriculture and resistance to taxation limited the funds it had available to spend on any schools. In the early 20th century, there were still few schools in rural areas, particularly for black children. With seed money from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, many rural black communities across Mississippi raised matching funds and contributed public funds to build new schools for their children. Essentially, many black adults taxed themselves twice and made significant sacrifices to raise money for the education of children in their communities, in many cases donating land and/or labor to build such schools.[152]
+
+Blacks and whites attended segregated and separate public schools in Mississippi until the late 1960s, although such segregation had been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in its 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. In the majority-black Mississippi Delta counties, white parents worked through White Citizens' Councils to set up private segregation academies, where they enrolled their children. Often funding declined for the public schools.[153]
+
+But in the state as a whole, only a small minority of white children were withdrawn from public schools. State officials believed they needed to maintain public education to attract new businesses. After several years of integration, whites often dominated local systems anyway, maintaining white supremacy. Many black parents complained that they had little representation in school administration, and that many of their former administrators and teachers had been pushed out. They have had to work to have their interests and children represented.[153]
+
+In the late 1980s Mississippi's 954 public schools enrolled about 369,500 elementary and 132,500 secondary students. Some 45,700 students attended private schools.
+
+In the 21st century, 91% of white children and most of the black children in the state attend public schools.[154] In 2008, Mississippi was ranked last among the fifty states in academic achievement by the American Legislative Exchange Council's Report Card on Education,[155] with the lowest average ACT scores and sixth-lowest spending per pupil in the nation. In contrast, Mississippi had the 17th-highest average SAT scores in the nation. As an explanation, the Report noted that 92% of Mississippi high school graduates took the ACT, but only 3% of graduates took the SAT, apparently a self-selection of higher achievers. This breakdown compares to the national average of high school graduates taking the ACT and SAT, of 43% and 45%, respectively.[155]
+
+Generally prohibited in the West at large, school corporal punishment is not unusual in Mississippi, with 31,236 public school students[156] paddled at least one time circa 2016.[157] A greater percentage of students were paddled in Mississippi than in any other state, according to government data for the 2011–2012 school year.[157]
+
+In 2007, Mississippi students scored the lowest of any state on the National Assessments of Educational Progress in both math and science.[158]
+
+Jackson, the state's capital city, is the site of the state residential school for deaf and hard of hearing students. The Mississippi School for the Deaf was established by the state legislature in 1854 before the civil war.
+
+While Mississippi has been especially known for its music and literature, it has embraced other forms of art. Its strong religious traditions have inspired striking works by outsider artists who have been shown nationally.
+
+Jackson established the USA International Ballet Competition, which is held every four years. This ballet competition attracts the most talented young dancers from around the world.[159]
+
+The Magnolia Independent Film Festival, still held annually in Starkville, is the first and oldest in the state.
+
+George Ohr, known as the "Mad Potter of Biloxi" and the father of abstract expressionism in pottery, lived and worked in Biloxi, MS.
+
+Musicians of the state's Delta region were historically significant to the development of the blues. Although by the end of the 19th century, two-thirds of the farm owners were black, continued low prices for cotton and national financial pressures resulted in most of them losing their land. More problems built up with the boll weevil infestation, when thousands of agricultural jobs were lost.
+
+Jimmie Rodgers, a native of Meridian and guitarist/singer/songwriter known as the "Father of Country Music", played a significant role in the development of the blues. He and Chester Arthur Burnett were friends and admirers of each other's music. Their friendship and respect is an important example of Mississippi's musical legacy. While the state has had a reputation for being the most racist in the United States[citation needed], Mississippi musicians created new forms by combining and creating variations on musical traditions from Africa, African American traditions, and the musical traditions of white Southerners strongly shaped by Scots-Irish and other styles.
+
+The state is creating a Mississippi Blues Trail, with dedicated markers explaining historic sites significant to the history of blues music, such as Clarksdale's Riverside Hotel, where Bessie Smith died after her auto accident on Highway 61. The Riverside Hotel is just one of many historical blues sites in Clarksdale. The Delta Blues Museum there is visited by tourists from all over the world. Close by is "Ground Zero", a contemporary blues club and restaurant co-owned by actor Morgan Freeman.
+
+Elvis Presley, who created a sensation in the 1950s as a crossover artist and contributed to rock 'n' roll, was a native of Tupelo. From opera star Leontyne Price to the alternative rock band 3 Doors Down, to gulf and western singer Jimmy Buffett, modern rock/jazz/world music guitarist-producer Clifton Hyde, to rappers David Banner, Big K.R.I.T. and Afroman, Mississippi musicians have been significant in all genres.
+
+
+
+Coordinates: 33°N 90°W / 33°N 90°W / 33; -90

en/3883.html.txt

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+Mississippi (/ˌmɪsɪˈsɪpi/ (listen)) is a state located in the Deep South region of the United States. Mississippi is the 32nd largest and 34th-most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Mississippi is bordered to the north by Tennessee, to the east by Alabama, to the south by the Gulf of Mexico, to the southwest by Louisiana, and to the northwest by Arkansas. Mississippi's western boundary is largely defined by the Mississippi River. Jackson is both the state's capital and largest city. Greater Jackson, with an estimated population of 580,166 in 2018, is the most populous metropolitan area in Mississippi and the 95th-most populous in the United States.
+
+On December 10, 1817, Mississippi became the 20th state admitted to the Union. By 1860, Mississippi was the nation's top cotton producing state and enslaved persons accounted for 55% of the state population.[5] Mississippi declared its secession from the Union on March 23, 1861, and was one of the seven original Confederate States. Following the Civil War, it was restored to the Union on February 23, 1870.[6]
+
+Until the Great Migration of the 1930s, African Americans were a majority of Mississippi's population. Mississippi was the site of many prominent events during the American Civil Rights movement, including the 1962 Ole Miss riots, the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers, and the 1964 Freedom Summer murders. Mississippi frequently ranks low among states in measures of health, education, and development, and high in measures of poverty.[7][8][9][10] In 2010, 37.3% of Mississippi's population was African American, the highest percentage for any state.
+
+Mississippi is almost entirely within the Gulf coastal plain, and generally consists of lowland plains and low hills. The northwest remainder of the state consists of the Mississippi Delta, a section of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. Mississippi's highest point is Woodall Mountain at 807 feet (246 m) above sea level adjacent to the Cumberland Plateau; the lowest is the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi has a humid subtropical climate classification.
+
+The state's name is derived from the Mississippi River that flows along its western boundary; settlers named it after the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi (English: Great river).
+
+Mississippi is bordered to the north by Tennessee, to the east by Alabama, to the south by Louisiana and a narrow coast on the Gulf of Mexico; and to the west, across the Mississippi River, by Louisiana and Arkansas.
+
+In addition to its namesake, major rivers in Mississippi include the Big Black River, the Pearl River, the Yazoo River, the Pascagoula River, and the Tombigbee River. Major lakes include Ross Barnett Reservoir, Arkabutla Lake, Sardis Lake, and Grenada Lake with the largest lake being Sardis Lake.
+
+Mississippi is entirely composed of lowlands, the highest point being Woodall Mountain, in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains, 807 feet (246 m) above sea level. The lowest point is sea level at the Gulf Coast. The state's mean elevation is 300 feet (91 m) above sea level.
+
+Most of Mississippi is part of the East Gulf Coastal Plain. The coastal plain is generally composed of low hills, such as the Pine Hills in the south and the North Central Hills. The Pontotoc Ridge and the Fall Line Hills in the northeast have somewhat higher elevations. Yellow-brown loess soil is found in the western parts of the state. The northeast is a region of fertile black earth that extends into the Alabama Black Belt.
+
+The coastline includes large bays at Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, and Pascagoula. It is separated from the Gulf of Mexico proper by the shallow Mississippi Sound, which is partially sheltered by Petit Bois Island, Horn Island, East and West Ship Islands, Deer Island, Round Island, and Cat Island.
+
+The northwest remainder of the state consists of the Mississippi Delta, a section of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. The plain is narrow in the south and widens north of Vicksburg. The region has rich soil, partly made up of silt which had been regularly deposited by the flood waters of the Mississippi River.
+
+Areas under the management of the National Park Service include:[11]
+
+Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 50,000 (United States Census Bureau as of 2017):[12]
+
+Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 20,000 but fewer than 50,000 (United States Census Bureau as of 2017):[12]
+
+Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 10,000 but fewer than 20,000 (United States Census Bureau as of 2017):[12]
+
+(See: Lists of cities, towns and villages, census-designated places, metropolitan areas, micropolitan areas, and counties in Mississippi)
+
+Mississippi has a humid subtropical climate with long, hot and humid summers, and short, mild winters. Temperatures average about 81°F (about 27°C) in July and about 42 °F (about 9 °C) in January. The temperature varies little statewide in the summer; however, in winter, the region near Mississippi Sound is significantly warmer than the inland portion of the state. The recorded temperature in Mississippi has ranged from −19 °F (−28 °C), in 1966, at Corinth in the northeast, to 115 °F (46 °C), in 1930, at Holly Springs in the north. Heavy snowfall rarely occurs, but isn't unheard of, such as during the New Year's Eve 1963 snowstorm. Yearly precipitation generally increases from north to south, with the regions closer to the Gulf being the most humid. Thus, Clarksdale, in the northwest, gets about 50 inches (about 1,270 mm) of precipitation annually and Biloxi, in the south, about 61 inches (about 1,550 mm). Small amounts of snow fall in northern and central Mississippi; snow is occasional in the southern part of the state.
+
+The late summer and fall is the seasonal period of risk for hurricanes moving inland from the Gulf of Mexico, especially in the southern part of the state. Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which killed 238 people in the state, were the most devastating hurricanes to hit the state. Both caused nearly total storm surge destruction of structures in and around Gulfport, Biloxi, and Pascagoula.
+
+As in the rest of the Deep South, thunderstorms are common in Mississippi, especially in the southern part of the state. On average, Mississippi has around 27 tornadoes annually; the northern part of the state has more tornadoes earlier in the year and the southern part a higher frequency later in the year. Two of the five deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history have occurred in the state. These storms struck Natchez, in southwest Mississippi (see The Great Natchez Tornado) and Tupelo, in the northeast corner of the state. About seven F5 tornadoes have been recorded in the state.
+
+
+
+Mississippi is heavily forested, with over half of the state's area covered by wild or cultivated trees. The southeastern part of the state is dominated by longleaf pine, in both uplands and lowland flatwoods and Sarracenia bogs. The Mississippi Alluvial Plain, or Delta, is primarily farmland and aquaculture ponds but also has sizeable tracts of cottonwood, willows, bald cypress, and oaks. A belt of loess extends north to south in the western part of the state, where the Mississippi Alluvial Plain reaches the first hills; this region is characterized by rich, mesic mixed hardwood forests, with some species disjunct from Appalachian forests.[15] Two bands of historical prairie, the Jackson Prairie and the Black Belt, run northwest to southeast in the middle and northeastern part of the state. Although these areas have been highly degraded by conversion to agriculture, a few areas remain, consisting of grassland with interspersed woodland of eastern redcedar, oaks, hickories, osage-orange, and sugarberry. The rest of the state, primarily north of Interstate 20 not including the prairie regions, consists of mixed pine-hardwood forest, common species being loblolly pine, oaks (e.g., water oak), hickories, sweetgum, and elm. Areas along large rivers are commonly inhabited by bald cypress, water tupelo, water elm, and bitter pecan. Commonly cultivated trees include loblolly pine, longleaf pine, cherrybark oak, and cottonwood.
+
+There are approximately 3000 species of vascular plants known from Mississippi.[16] As of 2018, a project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation aims to update that checklist of plants with museum (herbarium) vouchers and create an online atlas of each species's distribution.[17]
+
+About 420 species of birds are known to inhabit Mississippi.
+
+Mississippi has one of the richest fish faunas in the United States, with 204 native fish species.[18]
+
+Mississippi also has a rich freshwater mussel fauna, with about 90 species in the primary family of native mussels (Unionidae).[19] Several of these species were extirpated during the construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.
+
+Mississippi is home to 63 crayfish species, including at least 17 endemic species.[20]
+
+Mississippi is home to eight winter stonefly species.[21]
+
+Due to seasonal flooding, possible from December to June, the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers and their tributaries created a fertile floodplain in the Mississippi Delta. The river's flooding created natural levees, which planters had built higher to try to prevent flooding of land cultivated for cotton crops. Temporary workers built levees along the Mississippi River on top of the natural levees that formed from dirt deposited after the river flooded.
+
+From 1858 to 1861, the state took over levee building, accomplishing it through contractors and hired labor. In those years, planters considered their slaves too valuable to hire out for such dangerous work. Contractors hired gangs of Irish immigrant laborers to build levees and sometimes clear land. Many of the Irish were relatively recent immigrants from the famine years who were struggling to get established.[22] Before the American Civil War, the earthwork levees averaged six feet in height, although in some areas they reached twenty feet.
+
+Flooding has been an integral part of Mississippi history, but clearing of the land for cultivation and to supply wood fuel for steamboats took away the absorption of trees and undergrowth. The banks of the river were denuded, becoming unstable and changing the character of the river. After the Civil War, major floods swept down the valley in 1865, 1867, 1874 and 1882. Such floods regularly overwhelmed levees damaged by Confederate and Union fighting during the war, as well as those constructed after the war.[23] In 1877, the state created the Mississippi Levee District for southern counties.
+
+In 1879, the United States Congress created the Mississippi River Commission, whose responsibilities included aiding state levee boards in the construction of levees. Both white and black transient workers were hired to build the levees in the late 19th century. By 1882, levees averaged seven feet in height, but many in the southern Delta were severely tested by the flood that year.[23] After the 1882 flood, the levee system was expanded. In 1884, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee District was established to oversee levee construction and maintenance in the northern Delta counties; also included were some counties in Arkansas which were part of the Delta.[24]
+
+Flooding overwhelmed northwestern Mississippi in 1912–1913, causing heavy damage to the levee districts. Regional losses and the Mississippi River Levee Association's lobbying for a flood control bill helped gain passage of national bills in 1917 and 1923 to provide federal matching funds for local levee districts, on a scale of 2:1. Although U.S. participation in World War I interrupted funding of levees, the second round of funding helped raise the average height of levees in the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta to 22 feet (6.7 m) in the 1920s.[25] Scientists now understand the levees have increased the severity of flooding by increasing the flow speed of the river and reducing the area of the floodplains. The region was severely damaged due to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which broke through the levees. There were losses of millions of dollars in property, stock and crops. The most damage occurred in the lower Delta, including Washington and Bolivar counties.[26]
+
+Even as scientific knowledge about the Mississippi River has grown, upstream development and the consequences of the levees have caused more severe flooding in some years. Scientists now understand that the widespread clearing of land and building of the levees have changed the nature of the river. Such work removed the natural protection and absorption of wetlands and forest cover, strengthening the river's current. The state and federal governments have been struggling for the best approaches to restore some natural habitats in order to best interact with the original riverine ecology.
+
+Near 10,000 BC Native Americans or Paleo-Indians arrived in what today is referred to as the American South.[27] Paleo-Indians in the South were hunter-gatherers who pursued the megafauna that became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age. In the Mississippi Delta, Native American settlements and agricultural fields were developed on the natural levees, higher ground in the proximity of rivers. The Native Americans developed extensive fields near their permanent villages. Together with other practices, they created some localized deforestation but did not alter the ecology of the Mississippi Delta as a whole.[28]
+
+After thousands of years, succeeding cultures of the Woodland and Mississippian culture eras developed rich and complex agricultural societies, in which surplus supported the development of specialized trades. Both were mound builder cultures. Those of the Mississippian culture were the largest and most complex, constructed beginning about 950 AD. The peoples had a trading network spanning the continent from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast. Their large earthworks, which expressed their cosmology of political and religious concepts, still stand throughout the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys.
+
+Descendant Native American tribes of the Mississippian culture in the Southeast include the Chickasaw and Choctaw. Other tribes who inhabited the territory of Mississippi (and whose names were honored by colonists in local towns) include the Natchez, the Yazoo, and the Biloxi.
+
+The first major European expedition into the territory that became Mississippi was that of the Spanish explorer, Hernando de Soto, who passed through the northeast part of the state in 1540, in his second expedition to the New World.
+
+In April 1699, French colonists established the first European settlement at Fort Maurepas (also known as Old Biloxi), built in the vicinity of present-day Ocean Springs on the Gulf Coast. It was settled by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville. In 1716, the French founded Natchez on the Mississippi River (as Fort Rosalie); it became the dominant town and trading post of the area. The French called the greater territory "New France"; the Spanish continued to claim part of the Gulf coast area (east of Mobile Bay) of present-day southern Alabama, in addition to the entire area of present-day Florida.
+
+Through the 18th century, the area was ruled variously by Spanish, French, and British colonial governments. The colonists imported African slaves as laborers. Under French and Spanish rule, there developed a class of free people of color (gens de couleur libres), mostly multiracial descendants of European men and enslaved or free black women, and their mixed-race children. In the early days the French and Spanish colonists were chiefly men. Even as more European women joined the settlements, the men had interracial unions among women of African descent (and increasingly, multiracial descent), both before and after marriages to European women. Often the European men would help their multiracial children get educated or gain apprenticeships for trades, and sometimes they settled property on them; they often freed the mothers and their children if enslaved, as part of contracts of plaçage. With this social capital, the free people of color became artisans, and sometimes educated merchants and property owners, forming a third class between the Europeans and most enslaved Africans in the French and Spanish settlements, although not so large a free community as in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana.
+
+After Great Britain's victory in the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War), the French surrendered the Mississippi area to them under the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763). They also ceded their areas to the north that were east of the Mississippi River, including the Illinois Country and Quebec. After the Peace of Paris (1783), the lower third of Mississippi came under Spanish rule as part of West Florida. In 1819 the United States completed the purchase of West Florida and all of East Florida in the Adams–Onís Treaty, and in 1822 both were merged into the Florida Territory.
+
+After the American Revolution (1765–83), Britain ceded this area to the new United States of America. The Mississippi Territory was organized on April 7, 1798, from territory ceded by Georgia and South Carolina to the United States. Their original colonial charters theoretically extended west to the Pacific Ocean. The Mississippi Territory was later twice expanded to include disputed territory claimed by both the United States and Spain.
+
+From 1800 to about 1830, the United States purchased some lands (Treaty of Doak's Stand) from Native American tribes for new settlements of European Americans; they were mostly migrants from other Southern states, particularly Virginia and North Carolina, where soils were exhausted.[29] On September 27, 1830, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed between the U.S. Government and the Choctaw. The Choctaw agreed to sell their traditional homelands in Mississippi and Alabama, for compensation and removal to reservations in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). This opened up land for sale to European-American immigrant settlement. Article 14 in the treaty allowed those Choctaw who chose to remain in the state to become U.S. citizens, as they were considered to be giving up their tribal membership. They were the second major non-European ethnic group to do so (the Cherokee were the first).[30][31] Today approximately 9,500 Choctaw live in Neshoba, Newton, Leake, and Jones counties. Federally recognized tribes include the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
+
+Many slaveholders brought slaves with them or purchased them through the domestic slave trade, especially in New Orleans. Through the trade, an estimated nearly one million slaves were transported to the Deep South, including Mississippi, in a forced internal migration that broke up many slave families of the Upper South, where planters were selling excess slaves. The Southerners imposed slave laws and restricted the rights of free blacks.
+
+Beginning in 1822, slaves in Mississippi were protected by law from cruel and unusual punishment by their owners.[32] The Southern slave codes made the willful killing of a slave illegal in most cases.[33] For example, the 1860 Mississippi case of Oliver v. State charged the defendant with murdering his own slave.[34]
+
+Mississippi became the 20th state on December 10, 1817. David Holmes was the first governor.[35] The state was still occupied as ancestral land by several Native American tribes, including Choctaw, Natchez, Houma, Creek, and Chickasaw.[36][37]
+
+Plantations were developed primarily along the major rivers, where the waterfront provided access to the major transportation routes. This is also where early towns developed, linked by the steamboats that carried commercial products and crops to markets. The remainder of Native American ancestral land remained largely undeveloped but was sold through treaties until 1826, when the Choctaws and Chickasaws refused to sell more land.[38] 
+The combination of the Mississippi state legislature's abolition of Choctaw Tribal Government in 1829,[39] President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act and the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek[40] of 1830, the Choctaw were effectively forced to sell their land and were transported to Oklahoma Territory. The forced migration of the Choctaw, together with other southeastern tribes removed as a result of the Act, became known as the Trail of Tears.
+
+When cotton was king during the 1850s, Mississippi plantation owners—especially those of the Delta and Black Belt central regions—became wealthy due to the high fertility of the soil, the high price of cotton on the international market, and free labor gained through their holding enslaved African Americans. They used some of their profits to buy more cotton land and more slaves. The planters' dependence on hundreds of thousands of slaves for labor and the severe wealth imbalances among whites, played strong roles both in state politics and in planters' support for secession. Mississippi was a slave society, with the economy dependent on slavery. The state was thinly settled, with population concentrated in the riverfront areas and towns.
+
+By 1860, the enslaved African-American population numbered 436,631 or 55% of the state's total of 791,305 persons. Fewer than 1000 were free people of color.[41] The relatively low population of the state before the Civil War reflected the fact that land and villages were developed only along the riverfronts, which formed the main transportation corridors. Ninety percent of the Delta bottomlands were still frontier and undeveloped.[42] The state needed many more settlers for development. The land further away from the rivers was cleared by freedmen and white migrants during Reconstruction and later.[42]
+
+On January 9, 1861, Mississippi became the second state to declare its secession from the Union, and it was one of the founding members of the Confederate States. The first six states to secede were those with the highest number of slaves. During the war, Union and Confederate forces struggled for dominance on the Mississippi River, critical to supply routes and commerce. More than 80,000 Mississippians fought in the Civil War, and casualties were extremely heavy. Union General Ulysses S. Grant's long siege of Vicksburg finally gained the Union control of the river in 1863.
+
+In the postwar period, freedmen withdrew from white-run churches to set up independent congregations. The majority of blacks left the Southern Baptist Church, sharply reducing its membership. They created independent black Baptist congregations. By 1895 they had established numerous black Baptist state associations and the National Baptist Convention of black churches.[43]
+
+In addition, independent black denominations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (established in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early 19th century) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (established in New York City), sent missionaries to the South in the postwar years. They quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of converts and founded new churches across the South. Southern congregations brought their own influences to those denominations as well.[43][44]
+
+During Reconstruction, the first Mississippi constitutional convention in 1868, with delegates both black and white, framed a constitution whose major elements would be maintained for 22 years.[45] The convention was the first political organization in the state to include African-American representatives, 17 among the 100 members (32 counties had black majorities at the time). Some among the black delegates were freedmen, but others were educated free blacks who had migrated from the North. The convention adopted universal suffrage; did away with property qualifications for suffrage or for office, a change that also benefited both blacks and poor whites; provided for the state's first public school system; forbade race distinctions in the possession and inheritance of property; and prohibited limiting civil rights in travel.[45] Under the terms of Reconstruction, Mississippi was restored to the Union on February 23, 1870.
+
+Because the Mississippi Delta contained so much fertile bottomland that had not been developed before the Civil War, 90 percent of the land was still frontier. After the Civil War, tens of thousands of migrants were attracted to the area by higher wages offered by planters trying to develop land. In addition, black and white workers could earn money by clearing the land and selling timber, and eventually advance to ownership. The new farmers included many freedmen, who by the late 19th century achieved unusually high rates of land ownership in the Mississippi bottomlands. In the 1870s and 1880s, many black farmers succeeded in gaining land ownership.[42]
+
+Around the start of the 20th century, two-thirds of the Mississippi farmers who owned land in the Delta were African American.[42] But many had become overextended with debt during the falling cotton prices of the difficult years of the late 19th century. Cotton prices fell throughout the decades following the Civil War. As another agricultural depression lowered cotton prices into the 1890s, numerous African-American farmers finally had to sell their land to pay off debts, thus losing the land which they had developed by hard, personal labor.[42]
+
+Democrats had regained control of the state legislature in 1875, after a year of expanded violence against blacks and intimidation of whites in what was called the "white line" campaign, based on asserting white supremacy. Democratic whites were well armed and formed paramilitary organizations such as the Red Shirts to suppress black voting. From 1874 to the elections of 1875, they pressured whites to join the Democrats, and conducted violence against blacks in at least 15 known "riots" in cities around the state to intimidate blacks. They killed a total of 150 blacks, although other estimates place the death toll at twice as many. A total of three white Republicans and five white Democrats were reported killed. In rural areas, deaths of blacks could be covered up. Riots (better described as massacres of blacks) took place in Vicksburg, Clinton, Macon, and in their counties, as well-armed whites broke up black meetings and lynched known black leaders, destroying local political organizations.[46] Seeing the success of this deliberate "Mississippi Plan", South Carolina and other states followed it and also achieved white Democratic dominance. In 1877 by a national compromise, the last of federal troops were withdrawn from the region.
+
+Even in this environment, black Mississippians continued to be elected to local office. However, black residents were deprived of all political power after white legislators passed a new state constitution in 1890 specifically to "eliminate the nigger from politics", according to the state's Democratic governor, James K. Vardaman.[47] It erected barriers to voter registration and instituted electoral provisions that effectively disenfranchised most black Mississippians and many poor whites. Estimates are that 100,000 black and 50,000 white men were removed from voter registration rolls in the state over the next few years.[48]
+
+The loss of political influence contributed to the difficulties of African Americans in their attempts to obtain extended credit in the late 19th century. Together with imposition of Jim Crow and racial segregation laws, whites increased violence against blacks, lynching mostly men, through the period of the 1890s and extending to 1930. Cotton crops failed due to boll weevil infestation and successive severe flooding in 1912 and 1913, creating crisis conditions for many African Americans. With control of the ballot box and more access to credit, white planters bought out such farmers, expanding their ownership of Delta bottomlands. They also took advantage of new railroads sponsored by the state.[42]
+
+In 1900, blacks made up more than half of the state's population. By 1910, a majority of black farmers in the Delta had lost their land and become sharecroppers. By 1920, the third generation after freedom, most African Americans in Mississippi were landless laborers again facing poverty.[42] Starting about 1913, tens of thousands of black Americans left Mississippi for the North in the Great Migration to industrial cities such as St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia and New York. They sought jobs, better education for their children, the right to vote, relative freedom from discrimination, and better living. In the migration of 1910–1940, they left a society that had been steadily closing off opportunity. Most migrants from Mississippi took trains directly north to Chicago and often settled near former neighbors.
+
+Blacks also faced violence in the form of lynching, shooting, and the burning of churches. In 1923, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People stated "the Negro feels that life is not safe in Mississippi and his life may be taken with impunity at any time upon the slightest pretext or provocation by a white man".[49]
+
+In the early 20th century, some industries were established in Mississippi, but jobs were generally restricted to whites, including child workers. The lack of jobs also drove some southern whites north to cities such as Chicago and Detroit, seeking employment, where they also competed with European immigrants. The state depended on agriculture, but mechanization put many farm laborers out of work.
+
+By 1900, many white ministers, especially in the towns, subscribed to the Social Gospel movement, which attempted to apply Christian ethics to social and economic needs of the day. Many strongly supported Prohibition, believing it would help alleviate and prevent many sins.[50] Mississippi became a dry state in 1908 by an act of the State legislature.[51] It remained dry until the legislature passed a local option bill in 1966.[52]
+
+African-American Baptist churches grew to include more than twice the number of members as their white Baptist counterparts. The African-American call for social equality resonated throughout the Great Depression in the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s.
+
+The Second Great Migration from the South started in the 1940s, lasting until 1970. Almost half a million people left Mississippi in the second migration, three-quarters of them black. Nationwide during the first half of the 20th century, African Americans became rapidly urbanized and many worked in industrial jobs. The Second Great Migration included destinations in the West, especially California, where the buildup of the defense industry offered higher-paying jobs to both African Americans and whites.
+
+Blacks and whites in Mississippi generated rich, quintessentially American music traditions: gospel music, country music, jazz, blues and rock and roll. All were invented, promulgated or heavily developed by Mississippi musicians, many of them African American, and most came from the Mississippi Delta. Many musicians carried their music north to Chicago, where they made it the heart of that city's jazz and blues.
+
+So many African Americans left in the Great Migration that after the 1930s, they became a minority in Mississippi. In 1960 they made up 42% of the state's population.[53] The whites maintained their discriminatory voter registration processes established in 1890, preventing most blacks from voting, even if they were well educated. Court challenges were not successful until later in the century. After World War II, African-American veterans returned with renewed commitment to be treated as full citizens of the United States and increasingly organized to gain enforcement of their constitutional rights.
+
+The Civil Rights Movement had many roots in religion, and the strong community of churches helped supply volunteers and moral purpose for their activism. Mississippi was a center of activity, based in black churches, to educate and register black voters, and to work for integration. In 1954 the state had created the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a tax-supported agency, chaired by the Governor, that claimed to work for the state's image but effectively spied on activists and passed information to the local White Citizens' Councils to suppress black activism. White Citizens Councils had been formed in many cities and towns to resist integration of schools following the unanimous 1954 United States Supreme Court ruling (Brown v. Board of Education) that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. They used intimidation and economic blackmail against activists and suspected activists, including teachers and other professionals. Techniques included loss of jobs and eviction from rental housing.
+
+In the summer of 1964 students and community organizers from across the country came to help register black voters in Mississippi and establish Freedom Schools. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was established to challenge the all-white Democratic Party of the Solid South. Most white politicians resisted such changes. Chapters of the Ku Klux Klan and its sympathizers used violence against activists, most notably the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in 1964 during the Freedom Summer campaign. This was a catalyst for Congressional passage the following year of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mississippi earned a reputation in the 1960s as a reactionary state.[54][55]
+
+After decades of disenfranchisement, African Americans in the state gradually began to exercise their right to vote again for the first time since the 19th century, following the passage of federal civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965, which ended de jure segregation and enforced constitutional voting rights. Registration of African-American voters increased and black candidates ran in the 1967 elections for state and local offices. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party fielded some candidates. Teacher Robert G. Clark of Holmes County was the first African American to be elected to the State House since Reconstruction. He continued as the only African American in the state legislature until 1976 and was repeatedly elected into the 21st century, including three terms as Speaker of the House.[56]
+
+In 1966, the state was the last to repeal officially statewide prohibition of alcohol. Before that, Mississippi had taxed the illegal alcohol brought in by bootleggers. Governor Paul Johnson urged repeal and the sheriff "raided the annual Junior League Mardi Gras ball at the Jackson Country Club, breaking open the liquor cabinet and carting off the Champagne before a startled crowd of nobility and high-ranking state officials".[57]
+
+On August 17, 1969, Category 5 Hurricane Camille hit the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars).
+
+Mississippi was the last state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in March 1984, granting women the right to vote.[58]
+
+In 1987, 20 years after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1967's Loving v. Virginia that a similar Virginian law was unconstitutional, Mississippi repealed its ban on interracial marriage (also known as miscegenation), which had been enacted in 1890. It also repealed the segregationist-era poll tax in 1989. In 1995, the state symbolically ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which had abolished slavery in 1865. Though ratified in 1995, the state never officially notified the U.S. archivist, which kept the ratification unofficial until 2013, when Ken Sullivan contacted the office of Secretary of State of Mississippi, Delbert Hosemann, who agreed to file the paperwork and make it official.[59][60][61] In 2009, the legislature passed a bill to repeal other discriminatory civil rights laws, which had been enacted in 1964, the same year as the federal Civil Rights Act, but ruled unconstitutional in 1967 by federal courts. Republican Governor Haley Barbour signed the bill into law.[62]
+
+The end of legal segregation and Jim Crow led to the integration of some churches, but most today remain divided along racial and cultural lines, having developed different traditions. After the Civil War, most African Americans left white churches to establish their own independent congregations, particularly Baptist churches, establishing state associations and a national association by the end of the century. They wanted to express their own traditions of worship and practice.[63] In more diverse communities, such as Hattiesburg, some churches have multiracial congregations.[64]
+
+On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, though a Category 3 storm upon final landfall, caused even greater destruction across the entire 90 miles (145 km) of the Mississippi Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Alabama.
+
+Mississippi became the last state to remove the Confederate battle flag as an official state symbol on June 30, 2020, when Governor Tate Reeves signed a law officially retiring the second state flag. A new flag, which will be the third state flag in Mississippi's history, will be selected by referendum.[65]
+
+The center of population of Mississippi is located in Leake County, in the town of Lena.[68]
+
+The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Mississippi was 2,976,149 on July 1, 2019, a 0.30% increase since the 2010 census.[67] The state's economist characterized the state as losing population as job markets elsewhere have caused 3.2 per 1000 to migrate recently.[69]
+
+From 2000 to 2010, the United States Census Bureau reported that Mississippi had the highest rate of increase in people identifying as mixed-race, up 70 percent in the decade; it amounts to a total of 1.1 percent of the population.[64] In addition, Mississippi led the nation for most of the last decade in the growth of mixed marriages among its population. The total population has not increased significantly, but is young. Some of the above change in identification as mixed race is due to new births. But, it appears mostly to reflect those residents who have chosen to identify as more than one race, who in earlier years may have identified by just one ethnicity. A binary racial system had been in place since slavery times and the days of racial segregation. In the civil rights era, people of African descent banded together in an inclusive community to achieve political power and gain restoration of their civil rights.
+
+As the demographer William H. Frey noted, "In Mississippi, I think it's [identifying as mixed race] changed from within."[64] Historically in Mississippi, after Indian removal in the 1830s, the major groups were designated as black (African American), who were then mostly enslaved, and white (primarily European American). Matthew Snipp, also a demographer, commented on the increase in the 21st century in the number of people identifying as being of more than one race: "In a sense, they're rendering a more accurate portrait of their racial heritage that in the past would have been suppressed."[64]
+
+After having accounted for a majority of the state's population since well before the Civil War and through the 1930s, today African Americans constitute approximately 37 percent of the state's population. Most have ancestors who were enslaved, with many forcibly transported from the Upper South in the 19th century to work on the area's new plantations. Some of these slaves were mixed race, with European ancestors, as there were many children born into slavery with white fathers. Some also have Native American ancestry.[70] During the first half of the 20th century, a total of nearly 400,000 African Americans left the state during the Great Migration, for opportunities in the North, Midwest and West. They became a minority in the state for the first time since early in its development.[citation needed]
+
+At the 2010 U.S. census, the racial makeup of the population was:
+
+Ethnically, 2.7% of the total population, among all racial groups, was of Hispanic or Latino origin (they may be of any race).[71] As of 2011, 53.8% of Mississippi's population younger than age 1 were minorities, meaning that they had at least one parent who was not non-Hispanic white.[72] For more information on racial and ethnic classifications in the United States see race and ethnicity in the United States Census.
+
+Americans of Scots-Irish, English and Scottish ancestry are present throughout the state. It is believed that there are more people with such ancestry than identify as such on the census, in part because their immigrant ancestors are more distant in their family histories. English, Scottish and Scots-Irish are generally the most under-reported ancestry groups in both the South Atlantic States and the East South Central States. The historian David Hackett Fischer estimated that a minimum 20% of Mississippi's population is of English ancestry, though the figure is probably much higher, and another large percentage is of Scottish ancestry. Many Mississippians of such ancestry identify simply as American on questionnaires, because their families have been in North America for centuries.[76][77] In the 1980 census 656,371 Mississippians of a total of 1,946,775 identified as being of English ancestry, making them 38% of the state at the time.[78]
+
+The state in 2010 had the highest proportion of African Americans in the nation. The African-American percentage of population has begun to increase due mainly to a younger population than the whites (the total fertility rates of the two races are approximately equal). Due to patterns of settlement and whites putting their children in private schools, in almost all of Mississippi's public school districts, a majority of students are African American. African Americans are the majority ethnic group in the northwestern Yazoo Delta, and the southwestern and the central parts of the state. These are areas where, historically, African Americans owned land as farmers in the 19th century following the Civil War, or worked on cotton plantations and farms.[79]
+
+People of French Creole ancestry form the largest demographic group in Hancock County on the Gulf Coast. The African-American; Choctaw, mostly in Neshoba County; and Chinese American portions of the population are also almost entirely native born.
+
+The Chinese first came to Mississippi as contract workers from Cuba and California in the 1870s, and they originally worked as laborers on the cotton plantations. However, most Chinese families came later between 1910 and 1930 from other states, and most operated small family-owned groceries stores in the many small towns of the Delta.[80] In these roles, the ethnic Chinese carved out a niche in the state between black and white, where they were concentrated in the Delta. These small towns have declined since the late 20th century, and many ethnic Chinese have joined the exodus to larger cities, including Jackson. Their population in the state overall has increased in the 21st century.[81][82][83][84]
+
+In the early 1980s many Vietnamese immigrated to Mississippi and other states along the Gulf of Mexico, where they became employed in fishing-related work.[85]
+
+In 2000, 96.4% of Mississippi residents five years old and older spoke only English in the home, a decrease from 97.2% in 1990.[86] English is largely Southern American English, with some South Midland speech in northern and eastern Mississippi. There is a common absence of final /r/ and the lengthening and weakening of the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /ɔɪ/ as in 'ride' and 'oil'. South Midland terms in northern Mississippi include: tow sack (burlap bag), dog irons (andirons), plum peach (clingstone peach), snake doctor (dragonfly), and stone wall (rock fence).[86]
+
+Under French and Spanish rule beginning in the 17th century, European colonists were mostly Roman Catholics. The growth of the cotton culture after 1815 brought in tens of thousands of Anglo-American settlers each year, most of whom were Protestants from Southeastern states. Due to such migration, there was rapid growth in the number of Protestant churches, especially Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist.[88]
+
+The revivals of the Great Awakening in the late 18th and early 19th centuries initially attracted the "plain folk" by reaching out to all members of society, including women and blacks. Both slaves and free blacks were welcomed into Methodist and Baptist churches. Independent black Baptist churches were established before 1800 in Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Georgia, and later developed in Mississippi as well.
+
+In the post-Civil War years, religion became more influential as the South became known as the "Bible Belt".
+
+Since the 1970s, fundamentalist conservative churches have grown rapidly, fueling Mississippi's conservative political trends among whites.[88] In 1973 the Presbyterian Church in America attracted numerous conservative congregations. As of 2010, Mississippi remained a stronghold of the denomination, which originally was brought by Scots immigrants. The state has the highest adherence rate of the PCA in 2010, with 121 congregations and 18,500 members. It is among the few states where the PCA has higher membership than the PC(USA).[89]
+According to the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), in 2010 the Southern Baptist Convention had 907,384 adherents and was the largest religious denomination in the state, followed by the United Methodist Church with 204,165, and the Roman Catholic Church with 112,488.[90] Other religions have a small presence in Mississippi; as of 2010, there were 5,012 Muslims; 4,389 Hindus; and 816 Bahá'í.[90]
+
+Public opinion polls have consistently ranked Mississippi as the most religious state in the United States, with 59% of Mississippians considering themselves "very religious". The same survey also found that 11% of the population were non-Religious.[91] In a 2009 Gallup poll, 63% of Mississippians said that they attended church weekly or almost weekly—the highest percentage of all states (U.S. average was 42%, and the lowest percentage was in Vermont at 23%).[92] Another 2008 Gallup poll found that 85% of Mississippians considered religion an important part of their daily lives, the highest figure among all states (U.S. average 65%).[93]
+
+Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.
+
+The 2010 United States Census counted 6,286 same-sex unmarried-partner households in Mississippi, an increase of 1,512 since the 2000 United States census.[101] Of those same-sex couples roughly 33% contained at least one child, giving Mississippi the distinction of leading the nation in the percentage of same-sex couples raising children.[102] Mississippi has the largest percentage of African-American same-sex couples among total households. The state capital, Jackson, ranks tenth in the nation in concentration of African-American same-sex couples. The state ranks fifth in the nation in the percentage of Hispanic same-sex couples among all Hispanic households and ninth in the highest concentration of same-sex couples who are seniors.[103]
+
+The state is ranked 50th or last place among all the states for health care, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation working to advance performance of the health care system.[104]
+
+Mississippi has the highest rate of infant and neonatal deaths of any U.S. state. Age-adjusted data also shows Mississippi has the highest overall death rate, and the highest death rate from heart disease, hypertension and hypertensive renal disease, influenza and pneumonia.[105]
+
+In 2011, Mississippi (and Arkansas) had the fewest dentists per capita in the United States.[106]
+
+For three years in a row, more than 30 percent of Mississippi's residents have been classified as obese. In a 2006 study, 22.8 percent of the state's children were classified as such. Mississippi had the highest rate of obesity of any U.S. state from 2005 to 2008, and also ranks first in the nation for high blood pressure, diabetes, and adult inactivity.[107][108] In a 2008 study of African-American women, contributing risk factors were shown to be: lack of knowledge about body mass index (BMI), dietary behavior, physical inactivity and lack of social support, defined as motivation and encouragement by friends.[109] A 2002 report on African-American adolescents noted a 1999 survey which suggests that a third of children were obese, with higher ratios for those in the Delta.[110]
+
+The study stressed that "obesity starts in early childhood extending into the adolescent years and then possibly into adulthood." It noted impediments to needed behavioral modification, including the Delta likely being "the most underserved region in the state" with African Americans the major ethnic group; lack of accessibility and availability of medical care; and an estimated 60% of residents living below the poverty level.[110] Additional risk factors were that most schools had no physical education curriculum and nutrition education is not emphasized. Previous intervention strategies may have been largely ineffective due to not being culturally sensitive or practical.[110] A 2006 survey found nearly 95 percent of Mississippi adults considered childhood obesity to be a serious problem.[111]
+
+A 2017 study found that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Mississippi was the leading health insurer with 53% followed by UnitedHealth Group at 13%.[112]
+
+The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Mississippi's total state product in 2010 was $98 billion.[113] GDP growth was .5 percent in 2015 and is estimated to be 2.4 in 2016 according to Dr. Darrin Webb, the state's chief economist, who noted it would make two consecutive years of positive growth since the recession.[114] Per capita personal income in 2006 was $26,908, the lowest per capita personal income of any state, but the state also has the nation's lowest living costs. 2015 data records the adjusted per capita personal income at $40,105.[114] Mississippians consistently rank as one of the highest per capita in charitable contributions.[115]
+
+At 56 percent, the state has one of the lowest workforce participation rates in the country. Approximately 70,000 adults are disabled, which is 10 percent of the workforce.[114]
+
+Mississippi's rank as one of the poorest states is related to its dependence on cotton agriculture before and after the Civil War, late development of its frontier bottomlands in the Mississippi Delta, repeated natural disasters of flooding in the late 19th and early 20th century that required massive capital investment in levees, and ditching and draining the bottomlands, and slow development of railroads to link bottomland towns and river cities.[116] In addition, when Democrats regained control of the state legislature, they passed the 1890 constitution that discouraged corporate industrial development in favor of rural agriculture, a legacy that would slow the state's progress for years.[117]
+
+Before the Civil War, Mississippi was the fifth-wealthiest state in the nation, its wealth generated by the labor of slaves in cotton plantations along the rivers.[118]
+Slaves were counted as property and the rise in the cotton markets since the 1840s had increased their value. By 1860, a majority—55 percent—of the population of Mississippi was enslaved.[119] Ninety percent of the Delta bottomlands were undeveloped and the state had low overall density of population.
+
+Largely due to the domination of the plantation economy, focused on the production of agricultural cotton, the state's elite was reluctant to invest in infrastructure such as roads and railroads. They educated their children privately. Industrialization did not reach many areas until the late 20th century. The planter aristocracy, the elite of antebellum Mississippi, kept the tax structure low for their own benefit, making only private improvements. Before the war the most successful planters, such as Confederate President Jefferson Davis, owned riverside properties along the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers in the Mississippi Delta. Away from the riverfronts, most of the Delta was undeveloped frontier.
+
+During the Civil War, 30,000 Mississippi soldiers, mostly white, died from wounds and disease, and many more were left crippled and wounded. Changes to the labor structure and an agricultural depression throughout the South caused severe losses in wealth. In 1860 assessed valuation of property in Mississippi had been more than $500 million, of which $218 million (43 percent) was estimated as the value of slaves. By 1870, total assets had decreased in value to roughly $177 million.[120]
+
+Poor whites and landless former slaves suffered the most from the postwar economic depression. The constitutional convention of early 1868 appointed a committee to recommend what was needed for relief of the state and its citizens. The committee found severe destitution among the laboring classes.[121] It took years for the state to rebuild levees damaged in battles. The upset of the commodity system impoverished the state after the war. By 1868 an increased cotton crop began to show possibilities for free labor in the state, but the crop of 565,000 bales produced in 1870 was still less than half of prewar figures.[122]
+
+Blacks cleared land, selling timber and developing bottomland to achieve ownership. In 1900, two-thirds of farm owners in Mississippi were blacks, a major achievement for them and their families. Due to the poor economy, low cotton prices and difficulty of getting credit, many of these farmers could not make it through the extended financial difficulties. Two decades later, the majority of African Americans were sharecroppers. The low prices of cotton into the 1890s meant that more than a generation of African Americans lost the result of their labor when they had to sell their farms to pay off accumulated debts.[42]
+
+After the Civil War, the state refused for years to build human capital by fully educating all its citizens. In addition, the reliance on agriculture grew increasingly costly as the state suffered loss of cotton crops due to the devastation of the boll weevil in the early 20th century, devastating floods in 1912–1913 and 1927, collapse of cotton prices after 1920, and drought in 1930.[116]
+
+It was not until 1884, after the flood of 1882, that the state created the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta District Levee Board and started successfully achieving longer-term plans for levees in the upper Delta.[24] Despite the state's building and reinforcing levees for years, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 broke through and caused massive flooding of 27,000 square miles (70,000 km2) throughout the Delta, homelessness for hundreds of thousands, and millions of dollars in property damages. With the Depression coming so soon after the flood, the state suffered badly during those years. In the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of African Americans migrated North and West for jobs and chances to live as full citizens.
+
+The legislature's 1990 decision to legalize casino gambling along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast has led to increased revenues and economic gains for the state. Gambling towns in Mississippi have attracted increased tourism: they include the Gulf Coast resort towns of Bay St. Louis, Gulfport and Biloxi, and the Mississippi River towns of Tunica (the third largest gaming area in the United States), Greenville, Vicksburg and Natchez.
+
+Before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Mississippi was the second-largest gambling state in the Union, after Nevada and ahead of New Jersey.[citation needed] An estimated $500,000 per day in tax revenue was lost following Hurricane Katrina's severe damage to several coastal casinos in Biloxi in August 2005.[123] Because of the destruction from this hurricane, on October 17, 2005, Governor Haley Barbour signed a bill into law that allows casinos in Hancock and Harrison counties to rebuild on land (but within 800 feet (240 m) of the water). The only exception is in Harrison County, where the new law states that casinos can be built to the southern boundary of U.S. Route 90.[citation needed]
+
+In 2012, Mississippi had the sixth largest gambling revenue of any state, with $2.25 billion.[124] The federally recognized Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians has established a gaming casino on its reservation, which yields revenue to support education and economic development.[citation needed]
+
+Momentum Mississippi, a statewide, public–private partnership dedicated to the development of economic and employment opportunities in Mississippi, was adopted in 2005.[125]
+
+Mississippi, like the rest of its southern neighbors, is a right-to-work state. It has some major automotive factories, such as the Toyota Mississippi Plant in Blue Springs and a Nissan Automotive plant in Canton. The latter produces the Nissan Titan.
+
+Mississippi collects personal income tax in three tax brackets, ranging from 3% to 5%. The retail sales tax rate in Mississippi is 7%. Tupelo levies a local sales tax of 2.5%.[126] State sales tax growth was 1.4 percent in 2016 and estimated to be slightly less in 2017.[114] For purposes of assessment for ad valorem taxes, taxable property is divided into five classes.[127]
+
+On August 30, 2007, a report by the United States Census Bureau indicated that Mississippi was the poorest state in the country. Major cotton farmers in the Delta have large, mechanized plantations, and they receive the majority of extensive federal subsidies going to the state, yet many other residents still live as poor, rural, landless laborers. The state's sizable poultry industry has faced similar challenges in its transition from family-run farms to large mechanized operations.[128] Of $1.2 billion from 2002 to 2005 in federal subsidies to farmers in the Bolivar County area of the Delta, only 5% went to small farmers. There has been little money apportioned for rural development. Small towns are struggling. More than 100,000 people have left the region in search of work elsewhere.[129] The state had a median household income of $34,473.[130]
+
+As of December 2018, the state's unemployment rate was 4.7%, the seventh highest in the country after Arizona (4.9%), Louisiana (4.9%), New Mexico (5.0%), West Virginia (5.1%), District of Columbia (5.4%) and Alaska (6.5%).[131]
+
+With Mississippi's fiscal conservatism, in which Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, and other social programs are often cut, eligibility requirements are tightened, and stricter employment criteria are imposed, Mississippi ranks as having the second-highest ratio of spending to tax receipts of any state. In 2005, Mississippi citizens received approximately $2.02 per dollar of taxes in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state second-highest nationally, and represents an increase from 1995, when Mississippi received $1.54 per dollar of taxes in federal spending and was 3rd highest nationally.[132] This figure is based on federal spending after large portions of the state were devastated by Hurricane Katrina, requiring large amounts of federal aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). However, from 1981 to 2005, it was at least number four in the nation for federal spending vs. taxes received.[133]
+
+A proportion of federal spending in Mississippi is directed toward large federal installations such as Camp Shelby, John C. Stennis Space Center, Meridian Naval Air Station, Columbus Air Force Base, and Keesler Air Force Base. Three of these installations are located in the area affected by Hurricane Katrina.
+
+As with all other U.S. states and the federal government, Mississippi's government is based on the separation of legislative, executive and judicial power. Executive authority in the state rests with the Governor, currently Tate Reeves (R). The lieutenant governor, currently Delbert Hosemann (R), is elected on a separate ballot. Both the governor and lieutenant governor are elected to four-year terms of office. Unlike the federal government, but like many other U.S. States, most of the heads of major executive departments are elected by the citizens of Mississippi rather than appointed by the governor.
+
+Mississippi is one of five states that elects its state officials in odd-numbered years (the others are Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey and Virginia). Mississippi holds elections for these offices every four years, always in the year preceding presidential elections.
+
+In 2004, Mississippi voters approved a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and prohibiting Mississippi from recognizing same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. The amendment passed 86% to 14%, the largest margin in any state.[134][135] Same-sex marriage became legal in Mississippi on June 26, 2015, when the United States Supreme Court invalidated all state-level bans on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional in the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges.[136]
+
+With the passing of HB 1523 in April 2016, from July it became legal in Mississippi to refuse service to same-sex couples, based on one's religious beliefs.[137][138] The bill has become the subject of controversy.[139] A federal judge blocked the law in July,[140] however it was challenged and a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the law in October 2017.[141][142]
+
+Mississippi has banned sanctuary cities.[143] Mississippi is one of thirty-one states which have capital punishment (see Capital punishment in Mississippi).
+
+Section 265 of the Constitution of the State of Mississippi declares that "No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state."[144] This religious test restriction was held to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Torcaso v. Watkins (1961).
+
+Mississippi led the South in developing a disenfranchising constitution, passing it in 1890. By raising barriers to voter registration, the state legislature disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites, excluding them from politics until the late 1960s. It established a one-party state dominated by white Democrats.
+
+In the 1980s whites divided evenly between the parties. In the 1990s those voters shifted their allegiance to the Republican Party, first for national and then for state offices.[145] Most blacks were still disenfranchised under the state's 1890 constitution and discriminatory practices, until passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and concerted grassroots efforts to achieve registration and encourage voting.
+
+In 2019, a lawsuit was filed against an 1890 election law known as The Mississippi Plan, which requires that candidates must win the popular vote and a majority of districts.[146]
+
+Mississippi has six airports with commercial passenger service, the busiest in Jackson (Jackson-Evers International Airport) and one in Gulfport (Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport)
+
+Mississippi is the only American state where people in cars may legally consume beer. Some localities have laws restricting the practice.[147] In 2018, the state was ranked number eight in the Union in terms of impaired driving deaths.[148]
+
+Mississippi is served by nine interstate highways:
+
+
+
+and fourteen main U.S. Routes:
+
+
+
+as well as a system of State Highways.
+
+Amtrak provides scheduled passenger service along two routes, the Crescent and City of New Orleans. Prior to severe damage from Hurricane Katrina, the Sunset Limited traversed the far south of the state; the route originated in Los Angeles, California and it terminated in Florida.
+
+All but two of the United States Class I railroads serve Mississippi (the exceptions are the Union Pacific and Canadian Pacific):
+
+http://www.mvk.usace.army.mil/Missions/Recreation/Enid-Lake/
+
+Until the Civil War era, Mississippi had a small number of schools and no educational institutions for African Americans. The first school for black students was not established until 1862.
+
+During Reconstruction in 1871, black and white Republicans drafted a constitution that was the first to provide for a system of free public education in the state. The state's dependence on agriculture and resistance to taxation limited the funds it had available to spend on any schools. In the early 20th century, there were still few schools in rural areas, particularly for black children. With seed money from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, many rural black communities across Mississippi raised matching funds and contributed public funds to build new schools for their children. Essentially, many black adults taxed themselves twice and made significant sacrifices to raise money for the education of children in their communities, in many cases donating land and/or labor to build such schools.[152]
+
+Blacks and whites attended segregated and separate public schools in Mississippi until the late 1960s, although such segregation had been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in its 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. In the majority-black Mississippi Delta counties, white parents worked through White Citizens' Councils to set up private segregation academies, where they enrolled their children. Often funding declined for the public schools.[153]
+
+But in the state as a whole, only a small minority of white children were withdrawn from public schools. State officials believed they needed to maintain public education to attract new businesses. After several years of integration, whites often dominated local systems anyway, maintaining white supremacy. Many black parents complained that they had little representation in school administration, and that many of their former administrators and teachers had been pushed out. They have had to work to have their interests and children represented.[153]
+
+In the late 1980s Mississippi's 954 public schools enrolled about 369,500 elementary and 132,500 secondary students. Some 45,700 students attended private schools.
+
+In the 21st century, 91% of white children and most of the black children in the state attend public schools.[154] In 2008, Mississippi was ranked last among the fifty states in academic achievement by the American Legislative Exchange Council's Report Card on Education,[155] with the lowest average ACT scores and sixth-lowest spending per pupil in the nation. In contrast, Mississippi had the 17th-highest average SAT scores in the nation. As an explanation, the Report noted that 92% of Mississippi high school graduates took the ACT, but only 3% of graduates took the SAT, apparently a self-selection of higher achievers. This breakdown compares to the national average of high school graduates taking the ACT and SAT, of 43% and 45%, respectively.[155]
+
+Generally prohibited in the West at large, school corporal punishment is not unusual in Mississippi, with 31,236 public school students[156] paddled at least one time circa 2016.[157] A greater percentage of students were paddled in Mississippi than in any other state, according to government data for the 2011–2012 school year.[157]
+
+In 2007, Mississippi students scored the lowest of any state on the National Assessments of Educational Progress in both math and science.[158]
+
+Jackson, the state's capital city, is the site of the state residential school for deaf and hard of hearing students. The Mississippi School for the Deaf was established by the state legislature in 1854 before the civil war.
+
+While Mississippi has been especially known for its music and literature, it has embraced other forms of art. Its strong religious traditions have inspired striking works by outsider artists who have been shown nationally.
+
+Jackson established the USA International Ballet Competition, which is held every four years. This ballet competition attracts the most talented young dancers from around the world.[159]
+
+The Magnolia Independent Film Festival, still held annually in Starkville, is the first and oldest in the state.
+
+George Ohr, known as the "Mad Potter of Biloxi" and the father of abstract expressionism in pottery, lived and worked in Biloxi, MS.
+
+Musicians of the state's Delta region were historically significant to the development of the blues. Although by the end of the 19th century, two-thirds of the farm owners were black, continued low prices for cotton and national financial pressures resulted in most of them losing their land. More problems built up with the boll weevil infestation, when thousands of agricultural jobs were lost.
+
+Jimmie Rodgers, a native of Meridian and guitarist/singer/songwriter known as the "Father of Country Music", played a significant role in the development of the blues. He and Chester Arthur Burnett were friends and admirers of each other's music. Their friendship and respect is an important example of Mississippi's musical legacy. While the state has had a reputation for being the most racist in the United States[citation needed], Mississippi musicians created new forms by combining and creating variations on musical traditions from Africa, African American traditions, and the musical traditions of white Southerners strongly shaped by Scots-Irish and other styles.
+
+The state is creating a Mississippi Blues Trail, with dedicated markers explaining historic sites significant to the history of blues music, such as Clarksdale's Riverside Hotel, where Bessie Smith died after her auto accident on Highway 61. The Riverside Hotel is just one of many historical blues sites in Clarksdale. The Delta Blues Museum there is visited by tourists from all over the world. Close by is "Ground Zero", a contemporary blues club and restaurant co-owned by actor Morgan Freeman.
+
+Elvis Presley, who created a sensation in the 1950s as a crossover artist and contributed to rock 'n' roll, was a native of Tupelo. From opera star Leontyne Price to the alternative rock band 3 Doors Down, to gulf and western singer Jimmy Buffett, modern rock/jazz/world music guitarist-producer Clifton Hyde, to rappers David Banner, Big K.R.I.T. and Afroman, Mississippi musicians have been significant in all genres.
+
+
+
+Coordinates: 33°N 90°W / 33°N 90°W / 33; -90

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+Missouri is a state in the Midwestern United States.[5] With more than six million residents, it is the 18th-most populous state of the country. The largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield and Columbia; the capital is Jefferson City. The state is the 21st-most extensive in area. Missouri is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee (via the Mississippi River) to the east, Arkansas to the south and Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska to the west. In the south are the Ozarks, a forested highland, providing timber, minerals and recreation. The Missouri River, after which the state is named, flows through the center of the state into the Mississippi River, which makes up Missouri's eastern border.
+
+Humans have inhabited the land now known as Missouri for at least 12,000 years. The Mississippian culture built cities and mounds, before declining in the 14th century. When European explorers arrived in the 17th century, they encountered the Osage and Missouria nations. The French established Louisiana, a part of New France, founding Ste. Genevieve in 1735 and St. Louis in 1764. After a brief period of Spanish rule, the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Americans from the Upland South, including enslaved African Americans, rushed into the new Missouri Territory. Missouri was admitted as a slave state as part of the Missouri Compromise. Many from Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee settled in the Boonslick area of Mid-Missouri. Soon after, heavy German immigration formed the Missouri Rhineland.
+
+Missouri played a central role in the westward expansion of the United States, as memorialized by the Gateway Arch. The Pony Express, Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail and California Trail all began in Missouri.[6] As a border state, Missouri's role in the American Civil War was complex and there were many conflicts within. After the war, both Greater St. Louis and the Kansas City metropolitan area became centers of industrialization and business. Today the state is divided into 114 counties and the independent city of St. Louis.
+
+Missouri's culture blends elements from the Midwestern and Southern United States. The musical styles of ragtime, Kansas City jazz and St. Louis blues developed in Missouri. The well-known Kansas City-style barbecue and lesser-known St. Louis-style barbecue, can be found across the state and beyond. Missouri is also a major center of beer brewing; Anheuser-Busch is the largest producer in the world. Missouri wine is produced in the Missouri Rhineland and Ozarks. Missouri's alcohol laws are among the most permissive in the United States.[7] Outside of the state's major cities, popular tourist destinations include the Lake of the Ozarks, Table Rock Lake and Branson.
+
+Well-known Missourians include Chuck Berry, Sheryl Crow, Walt Disney, Edwin Hubble, Nelly, Brad Pitt, Harry S. Truman, and Mark Twain. Some of the largest companies based in the state include Cerner, Express Scripts, Monsanto, Emerson Electric, Edward Jones, H&R Block, Wells Fargo Advisors, and O'Reilly Auto Parts. Universities in Missouri include the University of Missouri and the top-ranked Washington University in St. Louis.[8] Missouri has been called the "Mother of the West" and the "Cave State", but its most famous nickname is the "Show Me State".[9]
+
+The state is named for the Missouri River, which was named after the indigenous Missouri Indians, a Siouan-language tribe. It is said they were called the ouemessourita (wimihsoorita),[10] meaning "those who have dugout canoes", by the Miami-Illinois language speakers.[11] This appears to be folk etymology—the Illinois spoke an Algonquian language and the closest approximation that can be made in that of their close neighbors, the Ojibwe, is "You Ought to Go Downriver & Visit Those People."[12] This would be an odd occurrence, as the French who first explored and attempted to settle the Mississippi River usually got their translations during that time fairly accurate, often giving things French names that were exact translations of the native tongue(s).
+
+Assuming Missouri were deriving from the Siouan language, it would translate as "It connects to the side of it," in reference to the river itself.[13] This is not entirely likely either, as this would be coming out as "Maya Sunni" (Mah-yah soo-nee) Most likely, though, the name Missouri comes from Chiwere, a Siouan language spoken by people who resided in the modern day states of Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri & Nebraska.
+
+The name "Missouri" has several different pronunciations even among its present-day natives,[14] the two most common being /mɪˈzɜːri/ (listen) miz-UR-ee and /mɪˈzɜːrə/ (listen) miz-UR-ə.[15][16] Further pronunciations also exist in Missouri or elsewhere in the United States, involving the realization of the medial consonant as either /z/ or /s/; the vowel in the second syllable as either /ɜːr/ or /ʊər/;[17] and the third syllable as /i/ (phonetically [i] (listen), [ɪ] (listen) or [ɪ̈] (listen)) or /ə/.[16] Any combination of these phonetic realizations may be observed coming from speakers of American English. In British received pronunciation, the preferred variant is /mɪˈzʊəri/ miz-OOR-ee, with /mɪˈsʊəri/ mis-OOR-ee being a possible alternative.[18][19]
+
+The linguistic history was treated definitively by Donald M. Lance, who acknowledged that the question is sociologically complex, but no pronunciation could be declared "correct", nor could any be clearly defined as native or outsider, rural or urban, southern or northern, educated or otherwise.[20] Politicians often employ multiple pronunciations, even during a single speech, to appeal to a greater number of listeners.[14] In informal contexts respellings of the state's name, such as "Missour-ee" or "Missour-uh", are occasionally used to distinguish pronunciations phonetically.
+
+There is no official state nickname.[21] However, Missouri's unofficial nickname is the "Show Me State", which appears on its license plates. This phrase has several origins. One is popularly ascribed to a speech by Congressman Willard Vandiver in 1899, who declared that "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton, cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I'm from Missouri, and you have got to show me." This is in keeping with the saying "I'm from Missouri" which means "I'm skeptical of the matter and not easily convinced."[22] However, according to researchers, the phrase "show me" was already in use before the 1890s.[23] Another one states that it is a reference to Missouri miners who were taken to Leadville, Colorado to replace striking workers. Since the new men were unfamiliar with the mining methods, they required frequent instruction.[21]
+
+Other nicknames for Missouri include "The Lead State", "The Bullion State", "The Ozark State", "The Mother of the West", "The Iron Mountain State", and "Pennsylvania of the West".[24] It is also known as the "Cave State" because there are more than 7,300 recorded caves in the state (second to Tennessee). Perry County is the county with the largest number of caves and the single longest cave.[25][26]
+
+The official state motto is Latin: "Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto", which means "Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law."[27]
+
+Indigenous peoples inhabited Missouri for thousands of years before European exploration and settlement. Archaeological excavations along the rivers have shown continuous habitation for more than 7,000 years. Beginning before 1000 CE, there arose the complex Mississippian culture, whose people created regional political centers at present-day St. Louis and across the Mississippi River at Cahokia, near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. Their large cities included thousands of individual residences, but they are known for their surviving massive earthwork mounds, built for religious, political and social reasons, in platform, ridgetop and conical shapes. Cahokia was the center of a regional trading network that reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The civilization declined by 1400 CE, and most descendants left the area long before the arrival of Europeans. St. Louis was at one time known as Mound City by the European Americans, because of the numerous surviving prehistoric mounds, since lost to urban development. The Mississippian culture left mounds throughout the middle Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, extending into the southeast as well as the upper river.
+
+The first European settlers were mostly ethnic French Canadians, who created their first settlement in Missouri at present-day Ste. Genevieve, about an hour south of St. Louis. They had migrated about 1750 from the Illinois Country. They came from colonial villages on the east side of the Mississippi River, where soils were becoming exhausted and there was insufficient river bottom land for the growing population. Sainte-Geneviève became a thriving agricultural center, producing enough surplus wheat, corn and tobacco to ship tons of grain annually downriver to Lower Louisiana for trade. Grain production in the Illinois Country was critical to the survival of Lower Louisiana and especially the city of New Orleans.
+
+St. Louis was founded soon after by French fur traders, Pierre Laclède and stepson Auguste Chouteau from New Orleans in 1764. From 1764 to 1803, European control of the area west of the Mississippi to the northernmost part of the Missouri River basin, called Louisiana, was assumed by the Spanish as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, due to Treaty of Fontainebleau[28] (in order to have Spain join with France in the war against England). The arrival of the Spanish in St. Louis was in September 1767.
+
+St. Louis became the center of a regional fur trade with Native American tribes that extended up the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, which dominated the regional economy for decades. Trading partners of major firms shipped their furs from St. Louis by river down to New Orleans for export to Europe. They provided a variety of goods to traders, for sale and trade with their Native American clients. The fur trade and associated businesses made St. Louis an early financial center and provided the wealth for some to build fine houses and import luxury items. Its location near the confluence of the Illinois River meant it also handled produce from the agricultural areas. River traffic and trade along the Mississippi were integral to the state's economy, and as the area's first major city, St. Louis expanded greatly after the invention of the steamboat and the increased river trade.
+
+Napoleon Bonaparte had gained Louisiana for French ownership from Spain in 1800 under the Treaty of San Ildefonso, after it had been a Spanish colony since 1762. But the treaty was kept secret. Louisiana remained nominally under Spanish control until a transfer of power to France on November 30, 1803, just three weeks before the cession to the United States.
+
+Part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase by the United States, Missouri earned the nickname Gateway to the West because it served as a major departure point for expeditions and settlers heading to the West during the 19th century. St. Charles, just west of St. Louis, was the starting point and the return destination of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which ascended the Missouri River in 1804, in order to explore the western lands to the Pacific Ocean. St. Louis was a major supply point for decades, for parties of settlers heading west.
+
+As many of the early settlers in western Missouri migrated from the Upper South, they brought enslaved African Americans as agricultural laborers, and they desired to continue their culture and the institution of slavery. They settled predominantly in 17 counties along the Missouri River, in an area of flatlands that enabled plantation agriculture and became known as "Little Dixie."
+
+The state was rocked by the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes. Casualties were few due to the sparse population.
+
+In 1821, the former Missouri Territory was admitted as a slave state, in accordance with the Missouri Compromise, and with a temporary state capital in St. Charles. In 1826, the capital was shifted to its current, permanent location of Jefferson City, also on the Missouri River.
+
+Originally the state's western border was a straight line, defined as the meridian passing through the Kawsmouth,[29] the point where the Kansas River enters the Missouri River. The river has moved since this designation. This line is known as the Osage Boundary.[30] In 1836 the Platte Purchase was added to the northwest corner of the state after purchase of the land from the native tribes, making the Missouri River the border north of the Kansas River. This addition increased the land area of what was already the largest state in the Union at the time (about 66,500 square miles (172,000 km2) to Virginia's 65,000 square miles, which then included West Virginia).[31]
+
+In the early 1830s, Mormon migrants from northern states and Canada began settling near Independence and areas just north of there. Conflicts over religion and slavery arose between the 'old settlers' (mainly from the South) and the Mormons (mainly from the North). The Mormon War erupted in 1838. By 1839, with the help of an "Extermination Order" by Governor Lilburn Boggs, the old settlers forcefully expelled the Mormons from Missouri and confiscated their lands.
+
+Conflicts over slavery exacerbated border tensions among the states and territories. From 1838 to 1839, a border dispute with Iowa over the so-called Honey Lands resulted in both states' calling-up of militias along the border.
+
+With increasing migration, from the 1830s to the 1860s Missouri's population almost doubled with every decade. Most of the newcomers were American-born, but many Irish and German immigrants arrived in the late 1840s and 1850s. As a majority were Catholic, they set up their own religious institutions in the state, which had been mostly Protestant. Many settled in cities, where they created a regional and then state network of Catholic churches and schools. Nineteenth-century German immigrants created the wine industry along the Missouri River and the beer industry in St. Louis.
+
+While many German immigrants were strongly anti-slavery,[32][33] many Irish immigrants living in cities were pro-slavery, fearing that liberating African-American slaves would create a glut of unskilled labor, driving wages down.[33]
+
+Most Missouri farmers practiced subsistence farming before the American Civil War. The majority of those who held slaves had fewer than five each. Planters, defined by some historians as those holding twenty slaves or more, were concentrated in the counties known as "Little Dixie", in the central part of the state along the Missouri River. The tensions over slavery chiefly had to do with the future of the state and nation. In 1860, enslaved African Americans made up less than 10% of the state's population of 1,182,012.[34] In order to control the flooding of farmland and low-lying villages along the Mississippi, the state had completed construction of 140 miles (230 km) of levees along the river by 1860.[35]
+
+After the secession of Southern states began in 1861, the Missouri legislature called for the election of a special convention on secession. The convention voted decisively to remain within the Union. Pro-Southern Governor Claiborne F. Jackson ordered the mobilization of several hundred members of the state militia who had gathered in a camp in St. Louis for training. Alarmed at this action, Union General Nathaniel Lyon struck first, encircling the camp and forcing the state troops to surrender. Lyon directed his soldiers, largely non-English-speaking German immigrants, to march the prisoners through the streets, and they opened fire on the largely hostile crowds of civilians who gathered around them. Soldiers killed unarmed prisoners as well as men, women and children of St. Louis in the incident that became known as the "St. Louis Massacre".
+
+These events heightened Confederate support within the state. Governor Jackson appointed Sterling Price, president of the convention on secession, as head of the new Missouri State Guard. In the face of Union General Lyon's rapid advance through the state, Jackson and Price were forced to flee the capital of Jefferson City on June 14, 1861. In the town of Neosho, Missouri, Jackson called the state legislature into session. They enacted a secession ordinance. However, even under the Southern view of secession, only the state convention had the power to secede. Since the convention was dominated by unionists, and the state was more pro-Union than pro-Confederate in any event, the ordinance of secession adopted by the legislature is generally given little credence. The Confederacy nonetheless recognized it on October 30, 1861.
+
+With the elected governor absent from the capital and the legislators largely dispersed, the state convention was reassembled with most of its members present, save 20 that fled south with Jackson's forces. The convention declared all offices vacant, and installed Hamilton Gamble as the new governor of Missouri. President Lincoln's administration immediately recognized Gamble's government as the legal Missouri government. The federal government's decision enabled raising pro-Union militia forces for service within the state as well as volunteer regiments for the Union Army.
+
+Fighting ensued between Union forces and a combined army of General Price's Missouri State Guard and Confederate troops from Arkansas and Texas under General Ben McCulloch. After winning victories at the battle of Wilson's Creek and the siege of Lexington, Missouri and suffering losses elsewhere, the Confederate forces retreated to Arkansas and later Marshall, Texas, in the face of a largely reinforced Union Army.
+
+Though regular Confederate troops staged some large-scale raids into Missouri, the fighting in the state for the next three years consisted chiefly of guerrilla warfare. "Citizen soldiers" or insurgents such as Captain William Quantrill, Frank and Jesse James, the Younger brothers, and William T. Anderson made use of quick, small-unit tactics. Pioneered by the Missouri Partisan Rangers, such insurgencies also arose in portions of the Confederacy occupied by the Union during the Civil War. Historians have portrayed stories of the James brothers' outlaw years as an American "Robin Hood" myth.[36] The vigilante activities of the Bald Knobbers of the Ozarks in the 1880s were an unofficial continuation of insurgent mentality long after the official end of the war, and they are a favorite theme in Branson's self-image.[37]
+
+The Progressive Era (1890s to 1920s) saw numerous prominent leaders from Missouri trying to end corruption and modernize politics, government and society. Joseph "Holy Joe" Folk was a key leader who made a strong appeal to middle class and rural evangelical Protestants. Folk was elected governor as a progressive reformer and Democrat in the 1904 election. He promoted what he called "the Missouri Idea", the concept of Missouri as a leader in public morality through popular control of law and strict enforcement. He successfully conducted antitrust prosecutions, ended free railroad passes for state officials, extended bribery statutes, improved election laws, required formal registration for lobbyists, made racetrack gambling illegal, and enforced the Sunday-closing law. He helped enact Progressive legislation, including an initiative and referendum provision, regulation of elections, education, employment and child labor, railroads, food, business, and public utilities. A number of efficiency-oriented examiner boards and commissions were established during Folk's administration, including many agricultural boards and the Missouri library commission.[38]
+
+Between the Civil War and the end of World War II, Missouri transitioned from a rural economy to a hybrid industrial-service-agricultural economy as the Midwest rapidly industrialized. The expansion of railroads to the West transformed Kansas City into a major transportation hub within the nation. The growth of the Texas cattle industry along with this increased rail infrastructure and the invention of the refrigerated boxcar also made Kansas City a major meatpacking center, as large cattle drives from Texas brought herds of cattle to Dodge City and other Kansas towns. There, the cattle were loaded onto trains destined for Kansas City, where they were butchered and distributed to the eastern markets. The first half of the twentieth century was the height of Kansas City's prominence and its downtown became a showcase for stylish Art Deco skyscrapers as construction boomed.
+
+In 1930, there was a diphtheria epidemic in the area around Springfield, which killed approximately 100 people. Serum was rushed to the area, and medical personnel stopped the epidemic.
+
+During the mid-1950s and 1960s, St. Louis and Kansas City suffered deindustrialization and loss of jobs in railroads and manufacturing, as did other Midwestern industrial cities. In 1956 St. Charles claims to be the site of the first interstate highway project.[39] Such highway construction made it easy for middle-class residents to leave the city for newer housing developed in the suburbs, often former farmland where land was available at lower prices. These major cities have gone through decades of readjustment to develop different economies and adjust to demographic changes. Suburban areas have developed separate job markets, both in knowledge industries and services, such as major retail malls.
+
+In 2014, Missouri received national attention for the protests and riots that followed the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer of Ferguson,[40][41][42] which led Governor Jay Nixon to call out the Missouri National Guard.[43][44] A grand jury declined to indict the officer, and the U.S. Department of Justice concluded, after careful investigation, that the police officer legitimately feared for his safety.[45] However, in a separate investigation, the Department of Justice also found that the Ferguson Police Department and the City of Ferguson relied on unconstitutional practices in order to balance the city's budget through racially motivated excessive fines and punishments,[46] that the Ferguson police "had used excessive and dangerous force and had disproportionately targeted blacks,"[47] and that the municipal court "emphasized revenue over public safety, leading to routine breaches of citizens' constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law."[48]
+
+A series of student protests at the University of Missouri against what the protesters viewed as poor response by the administration to racist incidents on campus began in September 2015.[49][50]
+
+On June 7, 2017, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People issued a warning to prospective African-American travelers to Missouri. This is the first NAACP warning ever covering an entire state.[51][52] According to a 2018 report by the Missouri Attorney General's office, for the past 18 years, "African Americans, Hispanics and other people of color are disproportionately affected by stops, searches and arrests."[53] The same report found that the biggest discrepancy was in 2017, when "black motorists were 85% more likely to be pulled over in traffic stops".[54]
+
+In 2018 the USDA announced its plans to relocate Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food & Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City. They have since decided on a specific location in downtown Kansas City, MO.[55] With the addition of the KC Streetcar project and construction of the Sprint Center Arena, the downtown area in KC has attracted investment in new offices, hotels, and residential complexes. Both Kansas City and Saint Louis are undergoing a rebirth in their downtown areas with the addition of the new Power & Light (KC) and Ballpark Village (STL) districts as well as the renovation of existing historic buildings in each downtown area.[56] The 2019 announcement of an MLS expansion team in Saint Louis is driving even more development in the downtown west area of Saint Louis.[57]
+
+Missouri is landlocked and borders eight different states as does its neighbor, Tennessee. No state in the U.S. touches more than eight. Missouri is bounded by Iowa on the north; by Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee across the Mississippi River on the east; on the south by Arkansas; and by Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska (the last across the Missouri River) on the west. Whereas the northern and southern boundaries are straight lines, the Missouri Bootheel extends south between the St. Francis and the Mississippi rivers. The two largest rivers are the Mississippi (which defines the eastern boundary of the state) and the Missouri River (which flows from west to east through the state) essentially connecting the two largest metros of Kansas City and St. Louis.
+
+Although today it is usually considered part of the Midwest,[58] Missouri was historically seen by many as a border state, chiefly because of the settlement of migrants from the South and its status as a slave state before the Civil War, balanced by the influence of St. Louis. The counties that made up "Little Dixie" were those along the Missouri River in the center of the state, settled by Southern migrants who held the greatest concentration of slaves.
+
+In 2005, Missouri received 16,695,000 visitors to its national parks and other recreational areas totaling 101,000 acres (410 km2), giving it $7.41 million in annual revenues, 26.6% of its operating expenditures.[59]
+
+North of, and in some cases just south of, the Missouri River lie the Northern Plains that stretch into Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Here, rolling hills remain from the glaciation that once extended from the Canadian Shield to the Missouri River. Missouri has many large river bluffs along the Mississippi, Missouri, and Meramec Rivers. Southern Missouri rises to the Ozark Mountains, a dissected plateau surrounding the Precambrian igneous St. Francois Mountains. This region also hosts karst topography characterized by high limestone content with the formation of sinkholes and caves.[60]
+
+The southeastern part of the state is known as the Missouri Bootheel region, which is part of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain or Mississippi embayment. This region is the lowest, flattest, warmest, and wettest part of the state. It is also among the poorest, as the economy there is mostly agricultural.[61] It is also the most fertile, with cotton and rice crops predominant. The Bootheel was the epicenter of the four New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811 and 1812.
+
+Missouri generally has a humid continental climate with cool, and sometimes cold, winters and hot, humid, and wet summers. In the southern part of the state, particularly in the Bootheel, the climate becomes humid subtropical. Located in the interior United States, Missouri often experiences extreme temperatures. Without high mountains or oceans nearby to moderate temperature, its climate is alternately influenced by air from the cold Arctic and the hot and humid Gulf of Mexico. Missouri's highest recorded temperature is 118 °F (48 °C) at Warsaw and Union on July 14, 1954, while the lowest recorded temperature is −40 °F (−40 °C) also at Warsaw on February 13, 1905.
+
+Located in Tornado Alley, Missouri also receives extreme weather in the form of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.  On May 22, 2011, a massive EF-5 tornado, killed 158 people and destroyed roughly one-third of the city of Joplin. The tornado caused an estimated $1–3 billion in damages, killed 159 people, and injured more than a thousand. It was the first EF5 to hit the state since 1957 and the deadliest in the U.S. since 1947, making it the seventh deadliest tornado in American history and 27th deadliest in the world. St. Louis and its suburbs also have a history of experiencing particularly severe tornadoes, the most recent memorable one being an EF4 that damaged Lambert-St. Louis International Airport on April 22, 2011. One of the worst tornadoes in American history struck St. Louis on May 27, 1896, killing at least 255 and causing $10 million in damage (equivalent to $3.9 billion in 2009 or $4.65 billion in today's dollars).
+
+Missouri is home to diverse flora and fauna, including several endemic species.[63]There is a large amount of fresh water present due to the Mississippi River, Missouri River, Table Rock Lake and Lake of the Ozarks, with numerous smaller tributary rivers, streams, and lakes. North of the Missouri River, the state is primarily rolling hills of the Great Plains, whereas south of the Missouri River, the state is dominated by the Oak-Hickory Central U.S. hardwood forest.
+
+Recreational and commercial uses of public forests including grazing, logging and mining increased after World War II. Fishermen, hikers, campers and others started lobbying to protect areas of the forest that had a "wilderness character". During the 1930s and 1940s Aldo Leopold, Arthur Carhart and Bob Marshall developed a "wilderness" policy for the Forest Service. Their efforts bore fruit with The Wilderness Act of 1964 which designated wilderness areas "where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by men, where man himself is a visitor and does not remain". This included second growth public forests like the Mark Twain National Forest.[64]
+
+The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Missouri was 6,137,428 on July 1, 2019, a 2.48% increase since the 2010 United States Census.[66]
+
+Missouri had a population of 5,988,927, according to the 2010 Census; an increase of 137,525 (2.3 percent) since the year 2010. From 2010 to 2018, this includes a natural increase of 137,564 people since the last census (480,763 births less 343,199 deaths), and an increase of 88,088 people due to net migration into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 50,450 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 37,638 people. More than half of Missourians (3,294,936 people, or 55.0%) live within the state's two largest metropolitan areas—St. Louis and Kansas City. The state's population density 86.9 in 2009, is also closer to the national average (86.8 in 2009) than any other state.
+
+In 2011, the racial composition of the state was:
+
+In 2011, 3.7% of the total population was of Hispanic or Latino origin (they may be of any race).[67]
+
+The U.S. Census of 2010 found that the population center of the United States is in Texas County, while the 2000 Census found the mean population center to be in Phelps County. The center of population of Missouri is in Osage County, in the city of Westphalia.[71]
+
+In 2004, the population included 194,000 foreign-born (3.4 percent of the state population).
+
+The five largest ancestry groups in Missouri are: German (27.4 percent), Irish (14.8 percent), English (10.2 percent), American (8.5 percent) and French (3.7 percent).
+
+German Americans are an ancestry group present throughout Missouri. African Americans are a substantial part of the population in St. Louis (56.6% of African Americans in the state lived in St. Louis or St. Louis County as of the 2010 census), Kansas City, Boone County and in the southeastern Bootheel and some parts of the Missouri River Valley, where plantation agriculture was once important. Missouri Creoles of French ancestry are concentrated in the Mississippi River Valley south of St. Louis (see Missouri French). Kansas City is home to large and growing immigrant communities from Latin America esp. Mexico and Colombia, Africa (i.e. Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria), and Southeast Asia including China and the Philippines; and Europe like the former Yugoslavia (see Bosnian American). A notable Cherokee Indian population exists in Missouri.
+
+In 2004, 6.6 percent of the state's population was reported as younger than 5, 25.5 percent younger than 18, and 13.5 percent 65 or older. Females were approximately 51.4 percent of the population. 81.3 percent of Missouri residents were high school graduates (more than the national average), and 21.6 percent had a bachelor's degree or higher. 3.4 percent of Missourians were foreign-born, and 5.1 percent reported speaking a language other than English at home.
+
+In 2010, there were 2,349,955 households in Missouri, with 2.45 people per household. The home ownership rate was 70.0 percent, and the median value of an owner-occupied housing unit was $137,700. The median household income for 2010 was $46,262, or $24,724 per capita. There were 14.0 percent (1,018,118) of Missourians living below the poverty line in 2010.
+
+The mean commute time to work was 23.8 minutes.
+
+In 2011, 28.1% of Missouri's population younger than age 1 were minorities.[72]
+
+Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.
+
+The vast majority of people in Missouri speak English. Approximately 5.1% of the population reported speaking a language other than English at home. The Spanish language is spoken in small Latino communities in the St. Louis and Kansas City Metro areas.[79]
+
+Missouri is home to an endangered dialect of the French language known as Missouri French. Speakers of the dialect, who call themselves Créoles, are descendants of the French pioneers who settled the area then known as the Illinois Country beginning in the late 17th century. It developed in isolation from French speakers in Canada and Louisiana, becoming quite distinct from the varieties of Canadian French and Louisiana Creole French. Once widely spoken throughout the area, Missouri French is now nearly extinct, with only a few elderly speakers able to use it.[80][81]
+
+Religion in Missouri (2014)[82]
+
+According to a Pew Research study[82] conducted in 2014, 80% of Missourians identify with a religion. 77% affiliate with Christianity and its various denominations, and the other 3% are adherents of non-Christian religions. The remaining 20% have no religion, with 2% specifically identifying as atheists and 3% identifying as agnostics (the other 15% do not identify as "anything in particular").
+
+The religious demographics of Missouri are as follows:
+
+The largest denominations by number of adherents in 2010 were the Southern Baptist Convention with 749,685; the Roman Catholic Church with 724,315; and the United Methodist Church with 226,409.[83]
+
+Among the other denominations there are approximately 93,000 Mormons in 253 congregations, 25,000 Jewish adherents in 21 synagogues, 12,000 Muslims in 39 masjids, 7,000 Buddhists in 34 temples, 20,000 Hindus in 17 temples, 2,500 Unitarians in nine congregations, 2,000 Baha'i in 17 temples, five Sikh temples, a Zoroastrian temple, a Jain temple and an uncounted number of neopagans.[84]
+
+Several religious organizations have headquarters in Missouri, including the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, which has its headquarters in Kirkwood, as well as the United Pentecostal Church International in Hazelwood, both outside St. Louis.
+
+Independence, near Kansas City, is the headquarters for the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) and the group Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This area and other parts of Missouri are also of significant religious and historical importance to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which maintains several sites and visitors centers.
+
+Springfield is the headquarters of the Assemblies of God USA and the Baptist Bible Fellowship International. The General Association of General Baptists has its headquarters in Poplar Bluff. The Unity Church is headquartered in Unity Village.
+
+Hindu Temple of St. Louis is the largest Hindu Temple in Missouri, serving more than 14,000 Hindus.
+
+The U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated Missouri's 2016 gross state product at $299.1 billion, ranking 22nd among U.S. states.[86] Per capita personal income in 2006 was $32,705,[59] ranking 26th in the nation. Major industries include aerospace, transportation equipment, food processing, chemicals, printing/publishing, electrical equipment, light manufacturing, financial services and beer.
+
+The agriculture products of the state are beef, soybeans, pork, dairy products, hay, corn, poultry, sorghum, cotton, rice, and eggs. Missouri is ranked 6th in the nation for the production of hogs and 7th for cattle. Missouri is ranked in the top five states in the nation for production of soy beans, and it is ranked fourth in the nation for the production of rice. In 2001, there were 108,000 farms, the second-largest number in any state after Texas. Missouri actively promotes its rapidly growing wine industry. According to the Missouri Partnership, Missouri's agriculture industry contributes $33 billion in GDP to Missouri's economy, and generates $88 billion in sales and more than 378,000 jobs.[87]
+
+Missouri has vast quantities of limestone. Other resources mined are lead, coal, and crushed stone. Missouri produces the most lead of all the states. Most of the lead mines are in the central eastern portion of the state. Missouri also ranks first or near first in the production of lime, a key ingredient in Portland cement.
+
+Missouri also has a growing science, agricultural technology and biotechnology field. Monsanto, one of the largest biotech companies in America, is based in St. Louis.
+
+Tourism, services and wholesale/retail trade follow manufacturing in importance. Tourism benefits from the many rivers, lakes, caves, parks, etc. throughout the state. In addition to a network of state parks, Missouri is home to the Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis and the Ozark National Scenic Riverways National Park. A much-visited show cave is Meramec Caverns in Stanton, Missouri.
+
+Missouri is the only state in the Union to have two Federal Reserve Banks: one in Kansas City (serving western Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, northern New Mexico, and Wyoming) and one in St. Louis (serving eastern Missouri, southern Illinois, southern Indiana, western Kentucky, western Tennessee, northern Mississippi, and all of Arkansas).[88]
+
+The state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in April 2017 was 3.9 percent.[89] In 2017, Missouri became a right-to-work state,[90] but in August 2018, Missouri voters rejected a right-to-work law with 67% to 33%.[91][92][93]
+
+Personal income is taxed in ten different earning brackets, ranging from 1.5% to 6.0%. Missouri's sales tax rate for most items is 4.225% with some additional local levies. More than 2,500 Missouri local governments rely on property taxes levied on real property (real estate) and personal property.
+
+Most personal property is exempt, except for motorized vehicles. Exempt real estate includes property owned by governments and property used as nonprofit cemeteries, exclusively for religious worship, for schools and colleges and for purely charitable purposes. There is no inheritance tax and limited Missouri estate tax related to federal estate tax collection.
+
+In 2017, the Tax Foundation rated Missouri as having the 5th-best corporate tax index,[94] and the 15th-best overall tax climate.[94] Missouri's corporate income tax rate is 6.25%; however, 50% of federal income tax payments may be deducted before computing taxable income, leading to an effective rate of 5.2%.[95]
+
+In 2012, Missouri had roughly 22,000 MW of installed electricity generation capacity.[96] In 2011, 82% of Missouri's electricity was generated by coal.[97] Ten percent was generated from the state's only nuclear power plant,[97] the Callaway Plant in Callaway County, northeast of Jefferson City. Five percent was generated by natural gas.[97] One percent was generated by hydroelectric sources,[97] such as the dams for Truman Lake and Lake of the Ozarks. Missouri has a small but growing amount of wind and solar power—wind capacity increased from 309 MW in 2009 to 459 MW in 2011, while photovoltaics have increased from 0.2 MW to 1.3 MW over the same period.[98][99] As of 2016, Missouri's solar installations had reached 141 MW.[100]
+
+Oil wells in Missouri produced 120,000 barrels of crude oil in fiscal 2012.[101] There are no oil refineries in Missouri.[99][102]
+
+Missouri has two major airport hubs: Lambert–St. Louis International Airport and Kansas City International Airport. Southern Missouri has the Springfield–Branson National Airport (SGF) with multiple non-stop destinations.[103] Residents of Mid-Missouri use Columbia Regional Airport (COU) to fly to Chicago (ORD), Dallas (DFW) or Denver (DEN).[104]
+
+Two of the nation's three busiest rail centers are in Missouri. Kansas City is a major railroad hub for BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway, Kansas City Southern Railway, and Union Pacific Railroad, and every class 1 railroad serves Missouri. Kansas City is the second largest freight rail center in the US (but is first in the amount of tonnage handled). Like Kansas City, St. Louis is a major destination for train freight. Springfield remains an operational hub for BNSF Railway.
+
+Amtrak passenger trains serve Kansas City, La Plata, Jefferson City, St. Louis, Lee's Summit, Independence, Warrensburg, Hermann, Washington, Kirkwood, Sedalia, and Poplar Bluff. A proposed high-speed rail route in Missouri as part of the Chicago Hub Network has received $31 million in funding.[105]
+
+The only urban light rail/subway system operating in Missouri is MetroLink, which connects the city of St. Louis with suburbs in Illinois and St. Louis County. It is one of the largest systems (by track mileage) in the United States. The KC Streetcar in downtown Kansas City opened in May 2016.[106]
+
+The Gateway Multimodal Transportation Center in St. Louis is the largest active multi-use transportation center in the state. It is in downtown St. Louis, next to the historic Union Station complex. It serves as a hub center/station for MetroLink, the MetroBus regional bus system, Greyhound, Amtrak, and taxi services.
+
+The proposed Missouri Hyperloop would connect St. Louis, Kansas City, and Columbia, reducing travel times to around a half hour.[107]
+
+Many cities have regular fixed-route systems, and many rural counties have rural public transit services. Greyhound and Trailways provide inter-city bus service in Missouri. Megabus serves St. Louis, but discontinued service to Columbia and Kansas City in 2015.[108]
+
+The Mississippi River and Missouri River are commercially navigable over their entire lengths in Missouri. The Missouri was channelized through dredging and jettys and the Mississippi was given a series of locks and dams to avoid rocks and deepen the river. St. Louis is a major destination for barge traffic on the Mississippi.
+
+Following the passage of Amendment 3 in late 2004, the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) began its Smoother, Safer, Sooner road-building program with a goal of bringing 2,200 miles (3,500 km) of highways up to good condition by December 2007. From 2006 to 2010 traffic deaths have decreased annually from 1,257 in 2005, to 1,096 in 2006, to 992 for 2007, to 960 for 2008, to 878 in 2009, to 821 in 2010.[109]
+
+The current Constitution of Missouri, the fourth constitution for the state, was adopted in 1945. It provides for three branches of government: the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. The legislative branch consists of two bodies: the House of Representatives and the Senate. These bodies comprise the Missouri General Assembly.
+
+The House of Representatives has 163 members who are apportioned based on the last decennial census. The Senate consists of 34 members from districts of approximately equal populations. The judicial department comprises the Supreme Court of Missouri, which has seven judges, the Missouri Court of Appeals (an intermediate appellate court divided into three districts), sitting in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Springfield, and 45 Circuit Courts which function as local trial courts. The executive branch is headed by the Governor of Missouri and includes five other statewide elected offices. Following the death of Tom Schweich in 2015, only one of Missouri's statewide elected offices is held by a Democrat.
+
+Harry S Truman (1884–1972), the 33rd President of the United States (Democrat, 1945–1953), was born in Lamar. He was a judge in Jackson County and then represented the state in the United States Senate for ten years, before being elected vice-president in 1944. He lived in Independence after retiring.
+
+Missouri was widely regarded as a bellwether in American politics, often making it a swing state. The state had a longer stretch of supporting the winning presidential candidate than any other state, having voted with the nation in every election from 1904 to 2004 with a single exception: 1956, when Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson of neighboring Illinois lost the election despite carrying Missouri. However, in recent years, areas of the state outside Kansas City, St. Louis, and Columbia have shifted heavily to the right, and so the state is no longer considered a bellwether by most analysts. Missouri twice voted against Democrat Barack Obama, who won in 2008 and 2012. Missouri voted for Romney by nearly 10% in 2012, and voted for Trump by nearly 18% in 2016.
+
+On October 24, 2012, there were 4,190,936 registered voters.[110] At the state level, both Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill and Democratic Governor Jay Nixon were re-elected. On November 8, 2016, there were 4,223,787 registered voters, with 2,811,549 voting (66.6%).[111]
+
+Missouri has been known for its population's generally "stalwart, conservative, noncredulous" attitude toward regulatory regimes, which is one of the origins of the state's unofficial nickname, the "Show-Me State".[112] As a result, and combined with the fact that Missouri is one of America's leading alcohol states, regulation of alcohol and tobacco in Missouri is among the most laissez-faire in America. For 2013, the annual "Freedom in the 50 States" study prepared by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University ranked Missouri as #3 in America for alcohol freedom and #1 for tobacco freedom (#7 for freedom overall).[113] The study notes that Missouri's "alcohol regime is one of the least restrictive in the United States, with no blue laws and taxes well below average", and that "Missouri ranks best in the nation on tobacco freedom".[113]
+
+Missouri law makes it "an improper employment practice" for an employer to refuse to hire, to fire, or otherwise to disadvantage any person because that person lawfully uses alcohol and/or tobacco products when he or she is not at work.[114]
+
+With a large German immigrant population and the development of a brewing industry, Missouri always has had among the most permissive alcohol laws in the United States. It never enacted statewide prohibition. Missouri voters rejected prohibition in three separate referenda in 1910, 1912, and 1918. Alcohol regulation did not begin in Missouri until 1934.
+
+Today, alcohol laws are controlled by the state government, and local jurisdictions are prohibited from going beyond those state laws. Missouri has no statewide open container law or prohibition on drinking in public, no alcohol-related blue laws, no local option, no precise locations for selling liquor by the package (allowing even drug stores and gas stations to sell any kind of liquor), and no differentiation of laws based on alcohol percentage. State law protects persons from arrest or criminal penalty for public intoxication.[115]
+
+Missouri law expressly prohibits any jurisdiction from going dry.[116] Missouri law also expressly allows parents and guardians to serve alcohol to their children.[117] The Power & Light District in Kansas City is one of the few places in the United States where a state law explicitly allows persons over 21 to possess and consume open containers of alcohol in the street (as long as the beverage is in a plastic cup).[118]
+
+As for tobacco (as of July 2016), Missouri has the lowest cigarette excise taxes in the United States, at 17 cents per pack,[119] and the state electorate voted in 2002, 2006, 2012, and twice in 2016 to keep it that way.[120][121] In 2007, Forbes named Missouri's largest metropolitan area, St. Louis, America's "best city for smokers".[122][123]
+
+According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2008 Missouri had the fourth highest percentage of adult smokers among U.S states, at 24.5%.[124] Although Missouri's minimum age for purchase and distribution of tobacco products is 18, tobacco products can be distributed to persons under 18 by family members on private property.[125]
+
+No statewide smoking ban ever has been seriously entertained before the Missouri General Assembly, and in October 2008, a statewide survey by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services found that only 27.5% of Missourians support a statewide ban on smoking in all bars and restaurants.[126] Missouri state law permits restaurants seating less than 50 people, bars, bowling alleys, and billiard parlors to decide their own smoking policies, without limitation.[127]
+
+In 2014, a Republican-lead legislature and Democratic governor Jay Nixon enacted a series of laws to partially decriminalize possession of cannabis by making first time possession of up to 10 grams no longer punishable with jail time and legalizing CBD oil.  In November 2018, 66% of voters approved a constitutional amendment that established a right to medical marijuana and a system for licensing, regulating, and taxing medical marijuana.
+
+Missouri has 114 counties and one independent city, St. Louis, which is Missouri's most densely populated—5,140 people per square mile.
+
+The largest counties by population are St. Louis (996,726), Jackson (698,895), and St. Charles (395,504). Worth County is the smallest (2,057).
+
+The largest counties by size are Texas (1,179 square miles) and Shannon (1,004). Worth County is the smallest (266).
+
+Jefferson City is the capital of Missouri.
+
+The five largest cities in Missouri are Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, Columbia, and Independence.[128]
+
+St. Louis is the principal city of the largest metropolitan area in Missouri, composed of 17 counties and the independent city of St. Louis; eight of those counties lie in Illinois. As of 2017 St. Louis was the 21st-largest metropolitan area in the nation with 2.81 million people. However, if ranked using Combined Statistical Area, it is 19th-largest with 2.91 million people in 2017. Some of the major cities making up the St. Louis Metro area in Missouri are O'Fallon, St. Charles, St. Peters, Florissant, Chesterfield, Wentzville, Wildwood, University City, and Ballwin.
+
+Kansas City is Missouri's largest city and the principal city of the fourteen-county Kansas City Metropolitan Statistical Area, including five counties in the state of Kansas. As of 2017, it was the 30th-largest metropolitan area in the nation, with 2.13 million people. In the Combined Statistical Area in 2017, it ranked 25th with 2.47 million. Some of the other major cities comprising the Kansas City metro area in Missouri include Independence, Lee's Summit, Blue Springs, Liberty, Raytown, Gladstone, and Grandview.
+
+Springfield is Missouri's third-largest city and the principal city of the Springfield-Branson Metropolitan Area, which has a population of 549,423 and includes seven counties in southwestern Missouri. Branson is a major tourist attraction in the Ozarks of southwestern Missouri. Some of the other major cities comprising the Springfield-Branson metro area include Nixa, Ozark, and Republic.
+
+The Missouri State Board of Education has general authority over all public education in the state of Missouri. It is made up of eight citizens appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Missouri Senate.
+
+Education is compulsory from ages seven to seventeen, and it is required that any parent, guardian or other person with custody of a child between the ages of seven and seventeen the compulsory attendance age for the district, must ensure that the child is enrolled in and regularly attends public, private, parochial school, home school or a combination of schools for the full term of the school year. Compulsory attendance also ends when children complete sixteen credits in high school.
+
+Children in Missouri between the ages of five and seven are not required to be enrolled in school. However, if they are enrolled in a public school their parent, guardian or custodian must ensure that they regularly attend.
+
+Missouri schools are commonly but not exclusively divided into three tiers of primary and secondary education: elementary school, middle school or junior high school and high school. The public schools system includes kindergarten to 12th grade. District territories are often complex in structure. In some cases, elementary, middle and junior high schools of a single district feed into high schools in another district. High school athletics and competitions are governed by the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA).
+
+Homeschooling is legal in Missouri and is an option to meet the compulsory education requirement. It is neither monitored nor regulated by the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education[129]
+
+Another gifted school is the Missouri Academy of Science, Mathematics and Computing, which is at the Northwest Missouri State University.
+
+The University of Missouri System is Missouri's statewide public university system. The flagship institution and largest university in the state is the University of Missouri in Columbia. The others in the system are University of Missouri–Kansas City, University of Missouri–St. Louis, and Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla.
+
+During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the state established a series of normal schools in each region of the state, originally named after the geographic districts: Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University) (1867), Central Missouri State University (now the University of Central Missouri) (1871), Southeast Missouri State University (1873), Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University) (1905), Northwest Missouri State University (1905), Missouri Western State University (1915), Maryville University (1872) and Missouri Southern State University (1937). Lincoln University and Harris–Stowe State University were established in the mid-nineteenth century and are historically black colleges and universities.
+
+Among private institutions Washington University in St. Louis and Saint Louis University are two top ranked schools in the US.[130] There are numerous junior colleges, trade schools, church universities and other private universities in the state. A.T. Still University was the first osteopathic medical school in the world. Hannibal–LaGrange University in Hannibal, Missouri, was one of the first colleges west of the Mississippi (founded 1858 in LaGrange, Missouri, and moved to Hannibal in 1928).[131]
+
+The state funds a $2000, renewable merit-based scholarship, Bright Flight, given to the top three percent of Missouri high school graduates who attend a university in-state.
+
+The 19th century border wars between Missouri and Kansas have continued as a sports rivalry between the University of Missouri and University of Kansas. The rivalry was chiefly expressed through football and basketball games between the two universities, but since Missouri left the Big 12 Conference in 2012, the teams no longer regularly play one another. It was the oldest college rivalry west of the Mississippi River and the second-oldest in the nation. Each year when the universities met to play, the game was coined the "Border War." An exchange occurred following the game where the winner took a historic Indian War Drum, which had been passed back and forth for decades. Though Missouri and Kansas no longer have an annual game after the University of Missouri moved to the Southeastern Conference, tension still exists between the two schools.
+
+Many well-known musicians were born or have lived in Missouri. These include guitarist and rock pioneer Chuck Berry, singer and actress Josephine Baker, "Queen of Rock" Tina Turner, pop singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers, and rappers Nelly, Chingy and Akon, all of whom are either current or former residents of St. Louis.
+
+Country singers from Missouri include New Franklin native Sara Evans, Cantwell native Ferlin Husky, West Plains native Porter Wagoner, Tyler Farr of Garden City, and Mora native Leroy Van Dyke, along with bluegrass musician Rhonda Vincent, a native of Greentop. Rapper Eminem was born in St. Joseph and also lived in Savannah and Kansas City. Ragtime composer Scott Joplin lived in St. Louis and Sedalia. Jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker lived in Kansas City. Rock and Roll singer Steve Walsh of the group Kansas was born in St. Louis and grew up in St. Joseph.
+
+The Kansas City Symphony and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra are the state's major orchestras. The latter is the nation's second-oldest symphony orchestra and achieved prominence in recent years under conductor Leonard Slatkin. Branson is well known for its music theaters, most of which bear the name of a star performer or musical group.
+
+Missouri is the native state of Mark Twain. His novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are set in his boyhood hometown of Hannibal. Authors Kate Chopin, T. S. Eliot and Tennessee Williams were from St. Louis. Kansas City-born writer William Least Heat-Moon resides in Rocheport. He is best known for Blue Highways, a chronicle of his travels to small towns across America, which was on The New York Times Bestseller list for 42 weeks in 1982–1983.
+
+Filmmaker, animator, and businessman Walt Disney spent part of his childhood in the Linn County town of Marceline before settling in Kansas City. Disney began his artistic career in Kansas City, where he founded the Laugh-O-Gram Studio.
+
+Several film versions of Mark Twain's novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have been made. Meet Me in St. Louis, a musical involving the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, starred Judy Garland. Part of the 1983 road movie National Lampoon's Vacation was shot on location in Missouri, for the Griswolds' trip from Chicago to Los Angeles. The Thanksgiving holiday film Planes, Trains, and Automobiles was partially shot at Lambert–St. Louis International Airport. White Palace was filmed in St. Louis. The award-winning 2010 film Winter's Bone was shot in the Ozarks of Missouri. Up in the Air starring George Clooney was filmed in St. Louis. John Carpenter's Escape from New York was filmed in St. Louis during the early 1980s due to the large number of abandoned buildings in the city. The 1973 movie Paper Moon, which starred Ryan and Tatum O'Neal, was partly filmed in St. Joseph. Most of HBO's film Truman (1995) was filmed in Kansas City, Independence, and the surrounding area; Gary Sinise won an Emmy for his portrayal of Harry Truman in the film. Ride With the Devil (1999), starring Jewel and Tobey Maguire, was filmed in the countryside of Jackson County (where the historic events of the film actually took place). Gone Girl, a 2014 film starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, and Tyler Perry, was filmed in Cape Girardeau.
+
+Missouri hosted the 1904 Summer Olympics at St. Louis, the first time the games were hosted in the United States.
+
+Professional major league teams
+
+Former professional major league teams
+
+Coordinates: 38°30′N 92°30′W / 38.5°N 92.5°W / 38.5; -92.5

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+Missouri is a state in the Midwestern United States.[5] With more than six million residents, it is the 18th-most populous state of the country. The largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield and Columbia; the capital is Jefferson City. The state is the 21st-most extensive in area. Missouri is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee (via the Mississippi River) to the east, Arkansas to the south and Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska to the west. In the south are the Ozarks, a forested highland, providing timber, minerals and recreation. The Missouri River, after which the state is named, flows through the center of the state into the Mississippi River, which makes up Missouri's eastern border.
+
+Humans have inhabited the land now known as Missouri for at least 12,000 years. The Mississippian culture built cities and mounds, before declining in the 14th century. When European explorers arrived in the 17th century, they encountered the Osage and Missouria nations. The French established Louisiana, a part of New France, founding Ste. Genevieve in 1735 and St. Louis in 1764. After a brief period of Spanish rule, the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Americans from the Upland South, including enslaved African Americans, rushed into the new Missouri Territory. Missouri was admitted as a slave state as part of the Missouri Compromise. Many from Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee settled in the Boonslick area of Mid-Missouri. Soon after, heavy German immigration formed the Missouri Rhineland.
+
+Missouri played a central role in the westward expansion of the United States, as memorialized by the Gateway Arch. The Pony Express, Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail and California Trail all began in Missouri.[6] As a border state, Missouri's role in the American Civil War was complex and there were many conflicts within. After the war, both Greater St. Louis and the Kansas City metropolitan area became centers of industrialization and business. Today the state is divided into 114 counties and the independent city of St. Louis.
+
+Missouri's culture blends elements from the Midwestern and Southern United States. The musical styles of ragtime, Kansas City jazz and St. Louis blues developed in Missouri. The well-known Kansas City-style barbecue and lesser-known St. Louis-style barbecue, can be found across the state and beyond. Missouri is also a major center of beer brewing; Anheuser-Busch is the largest producer in the world. Missouri wine is produced in the Missouri Rhineland and Ozarks. Missouri's alcohol laws are among the most permissive in the United States.[7] Outside of the state's major cities, popular tourist destinations include the Lake of the Ozarks, Table Rock Lake and Branson.
+
+Well-known Missourians include Chuck Berry, Sheryl Crow, Walt Disney, Edwin Hubble, Nelly, Brad Pitt, Harry S. Truman, and Mark Twain. Some of the largest companies based in the state include Cerner, Express Scripts, Monsanto, Emerson Electric, Edward Jones, H&R Block, Wells Fargo Advisors, and O'Reilly Auto Parts. Universities in Missouri include the University of Missouri and the top-ranked Washington University in St. Louis.[8] Missouri has been called the "Mother of the West" and the "Cave State", but its most famous nickname is the "Show Me State".[9]
+
+The state is named for the Missouri River, which was named after the indigenous Missouri Indians, a Siouan-language tribe. It is said they were called the ouemessourita (wimihsoorita),[10] meaning "those who have dugout canoes", by the Miami-Illinois language speakers.[11] This appears to be folk etymology—the Illinois spoke an Algonquian language and the closest approximation that can be made in that of their close neighbors, the Ojibwe, is "You Ought to Go Downriver & Visit Those People."[12] This would be an odd occurrence, as the French who first explored and attempted to settle the Mississippi River usually got their translations during that time fairly accurate, often giving things French names that were exact translations of the native tongue(s).
+
+Assuming Missouri were deriving from the Siouan language, it would translate as "It connects to the side of it," in reference to the river itself.[13] This is not entirely likely either, as this would be coming out as "Maya Sunni" (Mah-yah soo-nee) Most likely, though, the name Missouri comes from Chiwere, a Siouan language spoken by people who resided in the modern day states of Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri & Nebraska.
+
+The name "Missouri" has several different pronunciations even among its present-day natives,[14] the two most common being /mɪˈzɜːri/ (listen) miz-UR-ee and /mɪˈzɜːrə/ (listen) miz-UR-ə.[15][16] Further pronunciations also exist in Missouri or elsewhere in the United States, involving the realization of the medial consonant as either /z/ or /s/; the vowel in the second syllable as either /ɜːr/ or /ʊər/;[17] and the third syllable as /i/ (phonetically [i] (listen), [ɪ] (listen) or [ɪ̈] (listen)) or /ə/.[16] Any combination of these phonetic realizations may be observed coming from speakers of American English. In British received pronunciation, the preferred variant is /mɪˈzʊəri/ miz-OOR-ee, with /mɪˈsʊəri/ mis-OOR-ee being a possible alternative.[18][19]
+
+The linguistic history was treated definitively by Donald M. Lance, who acknowledged that the question is sociologically complex, but no pronunciation could be declared "correct", nor could any be clearly defined as native or outsider, rural or urban, southern or northern, educated or otherwise.[20] Politicians often employ multiple pronunciations, even during a single speech, to appeal to a greater number of listeners.[14] In informal contexts respellings of the state's name, such as "Missour-ee" or "Missour-uh", are occasionally used to distinguish pronunciations phonetically.
+
+There is no official state nickname.[21] However, Missouri's unofficial nickname is the "Show Me State", which appears on its license plates. This phrase has several origins. One is popularly ascribed to a speech by Congressman Willard Vandiver in 1899, who declared that "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton, cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I'm from Missouri, and you have got to show me." This is in keeping with the saying "I'm from Missouri" which means "I'm skeptical of the matter and not easily convinced."[22] However, according to researchers, the phrase "show me" was already in use before the 1890s.[23] Another one states that it is a reference to Missouri miners who were taken to Leadville, Colorado to replace striking workers. Since the new men were unfamiliar with the mining methods, they required frequent instruction.[21]
+
+Other nicknames for Missouri include "The Lead State", "The Bullion State", "The Ozark State", "The Mother of the West", "The Iron Mountain State", and "Pennsylvania of the West".[24] It is also known as the "Cave State" because there are more than 7,300 recorded caves in the state (second to Tennessee). Perry County is the county with the largest number of caves and the single longest cave.[25][26]
+
+The official state motto is Latin: "Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto", which means "Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law."[27]
+
+Indigenous peoples inhabited Missouri for thousands of years before European exploration and settlement. Archaeological excavations along the rivers have shown continuous habitation for more than 7,000 years. Beginning before 1000 CE, there arose the complex Mississippian culture, whose people created regional political centers at present-day St. Louis and across the Mississippi River at Cahokia, near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. Their large cities included thousands of individual residences, but they are known for their surviving massive earthwork mounds, built for religious, political and social reasons, in platform, ridgetop and conical shapes. Cahokia was the center of a regional trading network that reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The civilization declined by 1400 CE, and most descendants left the area long before the arrival of Europeans. St. Louis was at one time known as Mound City by the European Americans, because of the numerous surviving prehistoric mounds, since lost to urban development. The Mississippian culture left mounds throughout the middle Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, extending into the southeast as well as the upper river.
+
+The first European settlers were mostly ethnic French Canadians, who created their first settlement in Missouri at present-day Ste. Genevieve, about an hour south of St. Louis. They had migrated about 1750 from the Illinois Country. They came from colonial villages on the east side of the Mississippi River, where soils were becoming exhausted and there was insufficient river bottom land for the growing population. Sainte-Geneviève became a thriving agricultural center, producing enough surplus wheat, corn and tobacco to ship tons of grain annually downriver to Lower Louisiana for trade. Grain production in the Illinois Country was critical to the survival of Lower Louisiana and especially the city of New Orleans.
+
+St. Louis was founded soon after by French fur traders, Pierre Laclède and stepson Auguste Chouteau from New Orleans in 1764. From 1764 to 1803, European control of the area west of the Mississippi to the northernmost part of the Missouri River basin, called Louisiana, was assumed by the Spanish as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, due to Treaty of Fontainebleau[28] (in order to have Spain join with France in the war against England). The arrival of the Spanish in St. Louis was in September 1767.
+
+St. Louis became the center of a regional fur trade with Native American tribes that extended up the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, which dominated the regional economy for decades. Trading partners of major firms shipped their furs from St. Louis by river down to New Orleans for export to Europe. They provided a variety of goods to traders, for sale and trade with their Native American clients. The fur trade and associated businesses made St. Louis an early financial center and provided the wealth for some to build fine houses and import luxury items. Its location near the confluence of the Illinois River meant it also handled produce from the agricultural areas. River traffic and trade along the Mississippi were integral to the state's economy, and as the area's first major city, St. Louis expanded greatly after the invention of the steamboat and the increased river trade.
+
+Napoleon Bonaparte had gained Louisiana for French ownership from Spain in 1800 under the Treaty of San Ildefonso, after it had been a Spanish colony since 1762. But the treaty was kept secret. Louisiana remained nominally under Spanish control until a transfer of power to France on November 30, 1803, just three weeks before the cession to the United States.
+
+Part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase by the United States, Missouri earned the nickname Gateway to the West because it served as a major departure point for expeditions and settlers heading to the West during the 19th century. St. Charles, just west of St. Louis, was the starting point and the return destination of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which ascended the Missouri River in 1804, in order to explore the western lands to the Pacific Ocean. St. Louis was a major supply point for decades, for parties of settlers heading west.
+
+As many of the early settlers in western Missouri migrated from the Upper South, they brought enslaved African Americans as agricultural laborers, and they desired to continue their culture and the institution of slavery. They settled predominantly in 17 counties along the Missouri River, in an area of flatlands that enabled plantation agriculture and became known as "Little Dixie."
+
+The state was rocked by the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes. Casualties were few due to the sparse population.
+
+In 1821, the former Missouri Territory was admitted as a slave state, in accordance with the Missouri Compromise, and with a temporary state capital in St. Charles. In 1826, the capital was shifted to its current, permanent location of Jefferson City, also on the Missouri River.
+
+Originally the state's western border was a straight line, defined as the meridian passing through the Kawsmouth,[29] the point where the Kansas River enters the Missouri River. The river has moved since this designation. This line is known as the Osage Boundary.[30] In 1836 the Platte Purchase was added to the northwest corner of the state after purchase of the land from the native tribes, making the Missouri River the border north of the Kansas River. This addition increased the land area of what was already the largest state in the Union at the time (about 66,500 square miles (172,000 km2) to Virginia's 65,000 square miles, which then included West Virginia).[31]
+
+In the early 1830s, Mormon migrants from northern states and Canada began settling near Independence and areas just north of there. Conflicts over religion and slavery arose between the 'old settlers' (mainly from the South) and the Mormons (mainly from the North). The Mormon War erupted in 1838. By 1839, with the help of an "Extermination Order" by Governor Lilburn Boggs, the old settlers forcefully expelled the Mormons from Missouri and confiscated their lands.
+
+Conflicts over slavery exacerbated border tensions among the states and territories. From 1838 to 1839, a border dispute with Iowa over the so-called Honey Lands resulted in both states' calling-up of militias along the border.
+
+With increasing migration, from the 1830s to the 1860s Missouri's population almost doubled with every decade. Most of the newcomers were American-born, but many Irish and German immigrants arrived in the late 1840s and 1850s. As a majority were Catholic, they set up their own religious institutions in the state, which had been mostly Protestant. Many settled in cities, where they created a regional and then state network of Catholic churches and schools. Nineteenth-century German immigrants created the wine industry along the Missouri River and the beer industry in St. Louis.
+
+While many German immigrants were strongly anti-slavery,[32][33] many Irish immigrants living in cities were pro-slavery, fearing that liberating African-American slaves would create a glut of unskilled labor, driving wages down.[33]
+
+Most Missouri farmers practiced subsistence farming before the American Civil War. The majority of those who held slaves had fewer than five each. Planters, defined by some historians as those holding twenty slaves or more, were concentrated in the counties known as "Little Dixie", in the central part of the state along the Missouri River. The tensions over slavery chiefly had to do with the future of the state and nation. In 1860, enslaved African Americans made up less than 10% of the state's population of 1,182,012.[34] In order to control the flooding of farmland and low-lying villages along the Mississippi, the state had completed construction of 140 miles (230 km) of levees along the river by 1860.[35]
+
+After the secession of Southern states began in 1861, the Missouri legislature called for the election of a special convention on secession. The convention voted decisively to remain within the Union. Pro-Southern Governor Claiborne F. Jackson ordered the mobilization of several hundred members of the state militia who had gathered in a camp in St. Louis for training. Alarmed at this action, Union General Nathaniel Lyon struck first, encircling the camp and forcing the state troops to surrender. Lyon directed his soldiers, largely non-English-speaking German immigrants, to march the prisoners through the streets, and they opened fire on the largely hostile crowds of civilians who gathered around them. Soldiers killed unarmed prisoners as well as men, women and children of St. Louis in the incident that became known as the "St. Louis Massacre".
+
+These events heightened Confederate support within the state. Governor Jackson appointed Sterling Price, president of the convention on secession, as head of the new Missouri State Guard. In the face of Union General Lyon's rapid advance through the state, Jackson and Price were forced to flee the capital of Jefferson City on June 14, 1861. In the town of Neosho, Missouri, Jackson called the state legislature into session. They enacted a secession ordinance. However, even under the Southern view of secession, only the state convention had the power to secede. Since the convention was dominated by unionists, and the state was more pro-Union than pro-Confederate in any event, the ordinance of secession adopted by the legislature is generally given little credence. The Confederacy nonetheless recognized it on October 30, 1861.
+
+With the elected governor absent from the capital and the legislators largely dispersed, the state convention was reassembled with most of its members present, save 20 that fled south with Jackson's forces. The convention declared all offices vacant, and installed Hamilton Gamble as the new governor of Missouri. President Lincoln's administration immediately recognized Gamble's government as the legal Missouri government. The federal government's decision enabled raising pro-Union militia forces for service within the state as well as volunteer regiments for the Union Army.
+
+Fighting ensued between Union forces and a combined army of General Price's Missouri State Guard and Confederate troops from Arkansas and Texas under General Ben McCulloch. After winning victories at the battle of Wilson's Creek and the siege of Lexington, Missouri and suffering losses elsewhere, the Confederate forces retreated to Arkansas and later Marshall, Texas, in the face of a largely reinforced Union Army.
+
+Though regular Confederate troops staged some large-scale raids into Missouri, the fighting in the state for the next three years consisted chiefly of guerrilla warfare. "Citizen soldiers" or insurgents such as Captain William Quantrill, Frank and Jesse James, the Younger brothers, and William T. Anderson made use of quick, small-unit tactics. Pioneered by the Missouri Partisan Rangers, such insurgencies also arose in portions of the Confederacy occupied by the Union during the Civil War. Historians have portrayed stories of the James brothers' outlaw years as an American "Robin Hood" myth.[36] The vigilante activities of the Bald Knobbers of the Ozarks in the 1880s were an unofficial continuation of insurgent mentality long after the official end of the war, and they are a favorite theme in Branson's self-image.[37]
+
+The Progressive Era (1890s to 1920s) saw numerous prominent leaders from Missouri trying to end corruption and modernize politics, government and society. Joseph "Holy Joe" Folk was a key leader who made a strong appeal to middle class and rural evangelical Protestants. Folk was elected governor as a progressive reformer and Democrat in the 1904 election. He promoted what he called "the Missouri Idea", the concept of Missouri as a leader in public morality through popular control of law and strict enforcement. He successfully conducted antitrust prosecutions, ended free railroad passes for state officials, extended bribery statutes, improved election laws, required formal registration for lobbyists, made racetrack gambling illegal, and enforced the Sunday-closing law. He helped enact Progressive legislation, including an initiative and referendum provision, regulation of elections, education, employment and child labor, railroads, food, business, and public utilities. A number of efficiency-oriented examiner boards and commissions were established during Folk's administration, including many agricultural boards and the Missouri library commission.[38]
+
+Between the Civil War and the end of World War II, Missouri transitioned from a rural economy to a hybrid industrial-service-agricultural economy as the Midwest rapidly industrialized. The expansion of railroads to the West transformed Kansas City into a major transportation hub within the nation. The growth of the Texas cattle industry along with this increased rail infrastructure and the invention of the refrigerated boxcar also made Kansas City a major meatpacking center, as large cattle drives from Texas brought herds of cattle to Dodge City and other Kansas towns. There, the cattle were loaded onto trains destined for Kansas City, where they were butchered and distributed to the eastern markets. The first half of the twentieth century was the height of Kansas City's prominence and its downtown became a showcase for stylish Art Deco skyscrapers as construction boomed.
+
+In 1930, there was a diphtheria epidemic in the area around Springfield, which killed approximately 100 people. Serum was rushed to the area, and medical personnel stopped the epidemic.
+
+During the mid-1950s and 1960s, St. Louis and Kansas City suffered deindustrialization and loss of jobs in railroads and manufacturing, as did other Midwestern industrial cities. In 1956 St. Charles claims to be the site of the first interstate highway project.[39] Such highway construction made it easy for middle-class residents to leave the city for newer housing developed in the suburbs, often former farmland where land was available at lower prices. These major cities have gone through decades of readjustment to develop different economies and adjust to demographic changes. Suburban areas have developed separate job markets, both in knowledge industries and services, such as major retail malls.
+
+In 2014, Missouri received national attention for the protests and riots that followed the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer of Ferguson,[40][41][42] which led Governor Jay Nixon to call out the Missouri National Guard.[43][44] A grand jury declined to indict the officer, and the U.S. Department of Justice concluded, after careful investigation, that the police officer legitimately feared for his safety.[45] However, in a separate investigation, the Department of Justice also found that the Ferguson Police Department and the City of Ferguson relied on unconstitutional practices in order to balance the city's budget through racially motivated excessive fines and punishments,[46] that the Ferguson police "had used excessive and dangerous force and had disproportionately targeted blacks,"[47] and that the municipal court "emphasized revenue over public safety, leading to routine breaches of citizens' constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law."[48]
+
+A series of student protests at the University of Missouri against what the protesters viewed as poor response by the administration to racist incidents on campus began in September 2015.[49][50]
+
+On June 7, 2017, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People issued a warning to prospective African-American travelers to Missouri. This is the first NAACP warning ever covering an entire state.[51][52] According to a 2018 report by the Missouri Attorney General's office, for the past 18 years, "African Americans, Hispanics and other people of color are disproportionately affected by stops, searches and arrests."[53] The same report found that the biggest discrepancy was in 2017, when "black motorists were 85% more likely to be pulled over in traffic stops".[54]
+
+In 2018 the USDA announced its plans to relocate Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food & Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City. They have since decided on a specific location in downtown Kansas City, MO.[55] With the addition of the KC Streetcar project and construction of the Sprint Center Arena, the downtown area in KC has attracted investment in new offices, hotels, and residential complexes. Both Kansas City and Saint Louis are undergoing a rebirth in their downtown areas with the addition of the new Power & Light (KC) and Ballpark Village (STL) districts as well as the renovation of existing historic buildings in each downtown area.[56] The 2019 announcement of an MLS expansion team in Saint Louis is driving even more development in the downtown west area of Saint Louis.[57]
+
+Missouri is landlocked and borders eight different states as does its neighbor, Tennessee. No state in the U.S. touches more than eight. Missouri is bounded by Iowa on the north; by Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee across the Mississippi River on the east; on the south by Arkansas; and by Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska (the last across the Missouri River) on the west. Whereas the northern and southern boundaries are straight lines, the Missouri Bootheel extends south between the St. Francis and the Mississippi rivers. The two largest rivers are the Mississippi (which defines the eastern boundary of the state) and the Missouri River (which flows from west to east through the state) essentially connecting the two largest metros of Kansas City and St. Louis.
+
+Although today it is usually considered part of the Midwest,[58] Missouri was historically seen by many as a border state, chiefly because of the settlement of migrants from the South and its status as a slave state before the Civil War, balanced by the influence of St. Louis. The counties that made up "Little Dixie" were those along the Missouri River in the center of the state, settled by Southern migrants who held the greatest concentration of slaves.
+
+In 2005, Missouri received 16,695,000 visitors to its national parks and other recreational areas totaling 101,000 acres (410 km2), giving it $7.41 million in annual revenues, 26.6% of its operating expenditures.[59]
+
+North of, and in some cases just south of, the Missouri River lie the Northern Plains that stretch into Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Here, rolling hills remain from the glaciation that once extended from the Canadian Shield to the Missouri River. Missouri has many large river bluffs along the Mississippi, Missouri, and Meramec Rivers. Southern Missouri rises to the Ozark Mountains, a dissected plateau surrounding the Precambrian igneous St. Francois Mountains. This region also hosts karst topography characterized by high limestone content with the formation of sinkholes and caves.[60]
+
+The southeastern part of the state is known as the Missouri Bootheel region, which is part of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain or Mississippi embayment. This region is the lowest, flattest, warmest, and wettest part of the state. It is also among the poorest, as the economy there is mostly agricultural.[61] It is also the most fertile, with cotton and rice crops predominant. The Bootheel was the epicenter of the four New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811 and 1812.
+
+Missouri generally has a humid continental climate with cool, and sometimes cold, winters and hot, humid, and wet summers. In the southern part of the state, particularly in the Bootheel, the climate becomes humid subtropical. Located in the interior United States, Missouri often experiences extreme temperatures. Without high mountains or oceans nearby to moderate temperature, its climate is alternately influenced by air from the cold Arctic and the hot and humid Gulf of Mexico. Missouri's highest recorded temperature is 118 °F (48 °C) at Warsaw and Union on July 14, 1954, while the lowest recorded temperature is −40 °F (−40 °C) also at Warsaw on February 13, 1905.
+
+Located in Tornado Alley, Missouri also receives extreme weather in the form of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.  On May 22, 2011, a massive EF-5 tornado, killed 158 people and destroyed roughly one-third of the city of Joplin. The tornado caused an estimated $1–3 billion in damages, killed 159 people, and injured more than a thousand. It was the first EF5 to hit the state since 1957 and the deadliest in the U.S. since 1947, making it the seventh deadliest tornado in American history and 27th deadliest in the world. St. Louis and its suburbs also have a history of experiencing particularly severe tornadoes, the most recent memorable one being an EF4 that damaged Lambert-St. Louis International Airport on April 22, 2011. One of the worst tornadoes in American history struck St. Louis on May 27, 1896, killing at least 255 and causing $10 million in damage (equivalent to $3.9 billion in 2009 or $4.65 billion in today's dollars).
+
+Missouri is home to diverse flora and fauna, including several endemic species.[63]There is a large amount of fresh water present due to the Mississippi River, Missouri River, Table Rock Lake and Lake of the Ozarks, with numerous smaller tributary rivers, streams, and lakes. North of the Missouri River, the state is primarily rolling hills of the Great Plains, whereas south of the Missouri River, the state is dominated by the Oak-Hickory Central U.S. hardwood forest.
+
+Recreational and commercial uses of public forests including grazing, logging and mining increased after World War II. Fishermen, hikers, campers and others started lobbying to protect areas of the forest that had a "wilderness character". During the 1930s and 1940s Aldo Leopold, Arthur Carhart and Bob Marshall developed a "wilderness" policy for the Forest Service. Their efforts bore fruit with The Wilderness Act of 1964 which designated wilderness areas "where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by men, where man himself is a visitor and does not remain". This included second growth public forests like the Mark Twain National Forest.[64]
+
+The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Missouri was 6,137,428 on July 1, 2019, a 2.48% increase since the 2010 United States Census.[66]
+
+Missouri had a population of 5,988,927, according to the 2010 Census; an increase of 137,525 (2.3 percent) since the year 2010. From 2010 to 2018, this includes a natural increase of 137,564 people since the last census (480,763 births less 343,199 deaths), and an increase of 88,088 people due to net migration into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 50,450 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 37,638 people. More than half of Missourians (3,294,936 people, or 55.0%) live within the state's two largest metropolitan areas—St. Louis and Kansas City. The state's population density 86.9 in 2009, is also closer to the national average (86.8 in 2009) than any other state.
+
+In 2011, the racial composition of the state was:
+
+In 2011, 3.7% of the total population was of Hispanic or Latino origin (they may be of any race).[67]
+
+The U.S. Census of 2010 found that the population center of the United States is in Texas County, while the 2000 Census found the mean population center to be in Phelps County. The center of population of Missouri is in Osage County, in the city of Westphalia.[71]
+
+In 2004, the population included 194,000 foreign-born (3.4 percent of the state population).
+
+The five largest ancestry groups in Missouri are: German (27.4 percent), Irish (14.8 percent), English (10.2 percent), American (8.5 percent) and French (3.7 percent).
+
+German Americans are an ancestry group present throughout Missouri. African Americans are a substantial part of the population in St. Louis (56.6% of African Americans in the state lived in St. Louis or St. Louis County as of the 2010 census), Kansas City, Boone County and in the southeastern Bootheel and some parts of the Missouri River Valley, where plantation agriculture was once important. Missouri Creoles of French ancestry are concentrated in the Mississippi River Valley south of St. Louis (see Missouri French). Kansas City is home to large and growing immigrant communities from Latin America esp. Mexico and Colombia, Africa (i.e. Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria), and Southeast Asia including China and the Philippines; and Europe like the former Yugoslavia (see Bosnian American). A notable Cherokee Indian population exists in Missouri.
+
+In 2004, 6.6 percent of the state's population was reported as younger than 5, 25.5 percent younger than 18, and 13.5 percent 65 or older. Females were approximately 51.4 percent of the population. 81.3 percent of Missouri residents were high school graduates (more than the national average), and 21.6 percent had a bachelor's degree or higher. 3.4 percent of Missourians were foreign-born, and 5.1 percent reported speaking a language other than English at home.
+
+In 2010, there were 2,349,955 households in Missouri, with 2.45 people per household. The home ownership rate was 70.0 percent, and the median value of an owner-occupied housing unit was $137,700. The median household income for 2010 was $46,262, or $24,724 per capita. There were 14.0 percent (1,018,118) of Missourians living below the poverty line in 2010.
+
+The mean commute time to work was 23.8 minutes.
+
+In 2011, 28.1% of Missouri's population younger than age 1 were minorities.[72]
+
+Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.
+
+The vast majority of people in Missouri speak English. Approximately 5.1% of the population reported speaking a language other than English at home. The Spanish language is spoken in small Latino communities in the St. Louis and Kansas City Metro areas.[79]
+
+Missouri is home to an endangered dialect of the French language known as Missouri French. Speakers of the dialect, who call themselves Créoles, are descendants of the French pioneers who settled the area then known as the Illinois Country beginning in the late 17th century. It developed in isolation from French speakers in Canada and Louisiana, becoming quite distinct from the varieties of Canadian French and Louisiana Creole French. Once widely spoken throughout the area, Missouri French is now nearly extinct, with only a few elderly speakers able to use it.[80][81]
+
+Religion in Missouri (2014)[82]
+
+According to a Pew Research study[82] conducted in 2014, 80% of Missourians identify with a religion. 77% affiliate with Christianity and its various denominations, and the other 3% are adherents of non-Christian religions. The remaining 20% have no religion, with 2% specifically identifying as atheists and 3% identifying as agnostics (the other 15% do not identify as "anything in particular").
+
+The religious demographics of Missouri are as follows:
+
+The largest denominations by number of adherents in 2010 were the Southern Baptist Convention with 749,685; the Roman Catholic Church with 724,315; and the United Methodist Church with 226,409.[83]
+
+Among the other denominations there are approximately 93,000 Mormons in 253 congregations, 25,000 Jewish adherents in 21 synagogues, 12,000 Muslims in 39 masjids, 7,000 Buddhists in 34 temples, 20,000 Hindus in 17 temples, 2,500 Unitarians in nine congregations, 2,000 Baha'i in 17 temples, five Sikh temples, a Zoroastrian temple, a Jain temple and an uncounted number of neopagans.[84]
+
+Several religious organizations have headquarters in Missouri, including the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, which has its headquarters in Kirkwood, as well as the United Pentecostal Church International in Hazelwood, both outside St. Louis.
+
+Independence, near Kansas City, is the headquarters for the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) and the group Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This area and other parts of Missouri are also of significant religious and historical importance to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which maintains several sites and visitors centers.
+
+Springfield is the headquarters of the Assemblies of God USA and the Baptist Bible Fellowship International. The General Association of General Baptists has its headquarters in Poplar Bluff. The Unity Church is headquartered in Unity Village.
+
+Hindu Temple of St. Louis is the largest Hindu Temple in Missouri, serving more than 14,000 Hindus.
+
+The U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated Missouri's 2016 gross state product at $299.1 billion, ranking 22nd among U.S. states.[86] Per capita personal income in 2006 was $32,705,[59] ranking 26th in the nation. Major industries include aerospace, transportation equipment, food processing, chemicals, printing/publishing, electrical equipment, light manufacturing, financial services and beer.
+
+The agriculture products of the state are beef, soybeans, pork, dairy products, hay, corn, poultry, sorghum, cotton, rice, and eggs. Missouri is ranked 6th in the nation for the production of hogs and 7th for cattle. Missouri is ranked in the top five states in the nation for production of soy beans, and it is ranked fourth in the nation for the production of rice. In 2001, there were 108,000 farms, the second-largest number in any state after Texas. Missouri actively promotes its rapidly growing wine industry. According to the Missouri Partnership, Missouri's agriculture industry contributes $33 billion in GDP to Missouri's economy, and generates $88 billion in sales and more than 378,000 jobs.[87]
+
+Missouri has vast quantities of limestone. Other resources mined are lead, coal, and crushed stone. Missouri produces the most lead of all the states. Most of the lead mines are in the central eastern portion of the state. Missouri also ranks first or near first in the production of lime, a key ingredient in Portland cement.
+
+Missouri also has a growing science, agricultural technology and biotechnology field. Monsanto, one of the largest biotech companies in America, is based in St. Louis.
+
+Tourism, services and wholesale/retail trade follow manufacturing in importance. Tourism benefits from the many rivers, lakes, caves, parks, etc. throughout the state. In addition to a network of state parks, Missouri is home to the Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis and the Ozark National Scenic Riverways National Park. A much-visited show cave is Meramec Caverns in Stanton, Missouri.
+
+Missouri is the only state in the Union to have two Federal Reserve Banks: one in Kansas City (serving western Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, northern New Mexico, and Wyoming) and one in St. Louis (serving eastern Missouri, southern Illinois, southern Indiana, western Kentucky, western Tennessee, northern Mississippi, and all of Arkansas).[88]
+
+The state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in April 2017 was 3.9 percent.[89] In 2017, Missouri became a right-to-work state,[90] but in August 2018, Missouri voters rejected a right-to-work law with 67% to 33%.[91][92][93]
+
+Personal income is taxed in ten different earning brackets, ranging from 1.5% to 6.0%. Missouri's sales tax rate for most items is 4.225% with some additional local levies. More than 2,500 Missouri local governments rely on property taxes levied on real property (real estate) and personal property.
+
+Most personal property is exempt, except for motorized vehicles. Exempt real estate includes property owned by governments and property used as nonprofit cemeteries, exclusively for religious worship, for schools and colleges and for purely charitable purposes. There is no inheritance tax and limited Missouri estate tax related to federal estate tax collection.
+
+In 2017, the Tax Foundation rated Missouri as having the 5th-best corporate tax index,[94] and the 15th-best overall tax climate.[94] Missouri's corporate income tax rate is 6.25%; however, 50% of federal income tax payments may be deducted before computing taxable income, leading to an effective rate of 5.2%.[95]
+
+In 2012, Missouri had roughly 22,000 MW of installed electricity generation capacity.[96] In 2011, 82% of Missouri's electricity was generated by coal.[97] Ten percent was generated from the state's only nuclear power plant,[97] the Callaway Plant in Callaway County, northeast of Jefferson City. Five percent was generated by natural gas.[97] One percent was generated by hydroelectric sources,[97] such as the dams for Truman Lake and Lake of the Ozarks. Missouri has a small but growing amount of wind and solar power—wind capacity increased from 309 MW in 2009 to 459 MW in 2011, while photovoltaics have increased from 0.2 MW to 1.3 MW over the same period.[98][99] As of 2016, Missouri's solar installations had reached 141 MW.[100]
+
+Oil wells in Missouri produced 120,000 barrels of crude oil in fiscal 2012.[101] There are no oil refineries in Missouri.[99][102]
+
+Missouri has two major airport hubs: Lambert–St. Louis International Airport and Kansas City International Airport. Southern Missouri has the Springfield–Branson National Airport (SGF) with multiple non-stop destinations.[103] Residents of Mid-Missouri use Columbia Regional Airport (COU) to fly to Chicago (ORD), Dallas (DFW) or Denver (DEN).[104]
+
+Two of the nation's three busiest rail centers are in Missouri. Kansas City is a major railroad hub for BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway, Kansas City Southern Railway, and Union Pacific Railroad, and every class 1 railroad serves Missouri. Kansas City is the second largest freight rail center in the US (but is first in the amount of tonnage handled). Like Kansas City, St. Louis is a major destination for train freight. Springfield remains an operational hub for BNSF Railway.
+
+Amtrak passenger trains serve Kansas City, La Plata, Jefferson City, St. Louis, Lee's Summit, Independence, Warrensburg, Hermann, Washington, Kirkwood, Sedalia, and Poplar Bluff. A proposed high-speed rail route in Missouri as part of the Chicago Hub Network has received $31 million in funding.[105]
+
+The only urban light rail/subway system operating in Missouri is MetroLink, which connects the city of St. Louis with suburbs in Illinois and St. Louis County. It is one of the largest systems (by track mileage) in the United States. The KC Streetcar in downtown Kansas City opened in May 2016.[106]
+
+The Gateway Multimodal Transportation Center in St. Louis is the largest active multi-use transportation center in the state. It is in downtown St. Louis, next to the historic Union Station complex. It serves as a hub center/station for MetroLink, the MetroBus regional bus system, Greyhound, Amtrak, and taxi services.
+
+The proposed Missouri Hyperloop would connect St. Louis, Kansas City, and Columbia, reducing travel times to around a half hour.[107]
+
+Many cities have regular fixed-route systems, and many rural counties have rural public transit services. Greyhound and Trailways provide inter-city bus service in Missouri. Megabus serves St. Louis, but discontinued service to Columbia and Kansas City in 2015.[108]
+
+The Mississippi River and Missouri River are commercially navigable over their entire lengths in Missouri. The Missouri was channelized through dredging and jettys and the Mississippi was given a series of locks and dams to avoid rocks and deepen the river. St. Louis is a major destination for barge traffic on the Mississippi.
+
+Following the passage of Amendment 3 in late 2004, the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) began its Smoother, Safer, Sooner road-building program with a goal of bringing 2,200 miles (3,500 km) of highways up to good condition by December 2007. From 2006 to 2010 traffic deaths have decreased annually from 1,257 in 2005, to 1,096 in 2006, to 992 for 2007, to 960 for 2008, to 878 in 2009, to 821 in 2010.[109]
+
+The current Constitution of Missouri, the fourth constitution for the state, was adopted in 1945. It provides for three branches of government: the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. The legislative branch consists of two bodies: the House of Representatives and the Senate. These bodies comprise the Missouri General Assembly.
+
+The House of Representatives has 163 members who are apportioned based on the last decennial census. The Senate consists of 34 members from districts of approximately equal populations. The judicial department comprises the Supreme Court of Missouri, which has seven judges, the Missouri Court of Appeals (an intermediate appellate court divided into three districts), sitting in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Springfield, and 45 Circuit Courts which function as local trial courts. The executive branch is headed by the Governor of Missouri and includes five other statewide elected offices. Following the death of Tom Schweich in 2015, only one of Missouri's statewide elected offices is held by a Democrat.
+
+Harry S Truman (1884–1972), the 33rd President of the United States (Democrat, 1945–1953), was born in Lamar. He was a judge in Jackson County and then represented the state in the United States Senate for ten years, before being elected vice-president in 1944. He lived in Independence after retiring.
+
+Missouri was widely regarded as a bellwether in American politics, often making it a swing state. The state had a longer stretch of supporting the winning presidential candidate than any other state, having voted with the nation in every election from 1904 to 2004 with a single exception: 1956, when Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson of neighboring Illinois lost the election despite carrying Missouri. However, in recent years, areas of the state outside Kansas City, St. Louis, and Columbia have shifted heavily to the right, and so the state is no longer considered a bellwether by most analysts. Missouri twice voted against Democrat Barack Obama, who won in 2008 and 2012. Missouri voted for Romney by nearly 10% in 2012, and voted for Trump by nearly 18% in 2016.
+
+On October 24, 2012, there were 4,190,936 registered voters.[110] At the state level, both Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill and Democratic Governor Jay Nixon were re-elected. On November 8, 2016, there were 4,223,787 registered voters, with 2,811,549 voting (66.6%).[111]
+
+Missouri has been known for its population's generally "stalwart, conservative, noncredulous" attitude toward regulatory regimes, which is one of the origins of the state's unofficial nickname, the "Show-Me State".[112] As a result, and combined with the fact that Missouri is one of America's leading alcohol states, regulation of alcohol and tobacco in Missouri is among the most laissez-faire in America. For 2013, the annual "Freedom in the 50 States" study prepared by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University ranked Missouri as #3 in America for alcohol freedom and #1 for tobacco freedom (#7 for freedom overall).[113] The study notes that Missouri's "alcohol regime is one of the least restrictive in the United States, with no blue laws and taxes well below average", and that "Missouri ranks best in the nation on tobacco freedom".[113]
+
+Missouri law makes it "an improper employment practice" for an employer to refuse to hire, to fire, or otherwise to disadvantage any person because that person lawfully uses alcohol and/or tobacco products when he or she is not at work.[114]
+
+With a large German immigrant population and the development of a brewing industry, Missouri always has had among the most permissive alcohol laws in the United States. It never enacted statewide prohibition. Missouri voters rejected prohibition in three separate referenda in 1910, 1912, and 1918. Alcohol regulation did not begin in Missouri until 1934.
+
+Today, alcohol laws are controlled by the state government, and local jurisdictions are prohibited from going beyond those state laws. Missouri has no statewide open container law or prohibition on drinking in public, no alcohol-related blue laws, no local option, no precise locations for selling liquor by the package (allowing even drug stores and gas stations to sell any kind of liquor), and no differentiation of laws based on alcohol percentage. State law protects persons from arrest or criminal penalty for public intoxication.[115]
+
+Missouri law expressly prohibits any jurisdiction from going dry.[116] Missouri law also expressly allows parents and guardians to serve alcohol to their children.[117] The Power & Light District in Kansas City is one of the few places in the United States where a state law explicitly allows persons over 21 to possess and consume open containers of alcohol in the street (as long as the beverage is in a plastic cup).[118]
+
+As for tobacco (as of July 2016), Missouri has the lowest cigarette excise taxes in the United States, at 17 cents per pack,[119] and the state electorate voted in 2002, 2006, 2012, and twice in 2016 to keep it that way.[120][121] In 2007, Forbes named Missouri's largest metropolitan area, St. Louis, America's "best city for smokers".[122][123]
+
+According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2008 Missouri had the fourth highest percentage of adult smokers among U.S states, at 24.5%.[124] Although Missouri's minimum age for purchase and distribution of tobacco products is 18, tobacco products can be distributed to persons under 18 by family members on private property.[125]
+
+No statewide smoking ban ever has been seriously entertained before the Missouri General Assembly, and in October 2008, a statewide survey by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services found that only 27.5% of Missourians support a statewide ban on smoking in all bars and restaurants.[126] Missouri state law permits restaurants seating less than 50 people, bars, bowling alleys, and billiard parlors to decide their own smoking policies, without limitation.[127]
+
+In 2014, a Republican-lead legislature and Democratic governor Jay Nixon enacted a series of laws to partially decriminalize possession of cannabis by making first time possession of up to 10 grams no longer punishable with jail time and legalizing CBD oil.  In November 2018, 66% of voters approved a constitutional amendment that established a right to medical marijuana and a system for licensing, regulating, and taxing medical marijuana.
+
+Missouri has 114 counties and one independent city, St. Louis, which is Missouri's most densely populated—5,140 people per square mile.
+
+The largest counties by population are St. Louis (996,726), Jackson (698,895), and St. Charles (395,504). Worth County is the smallest (2,057).
+
+The largest counties by size are Texas (1,179 square miles) and Shannon (1,004). Worth County is the smallest (266).
+
+Jefferson City is the capital of Missouri.
+
+The five largest cities in Missouri are Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, Columbia, and Independence.[128]
+
+St. Louis is the principal city of the largest metropolitan area in Missouri, composed of 17 counties and the independent city of St. Louis; eight of those counties lie in Illinois. As of 2017 St. Louis was the 21st-largest metropolitan area in the nation with 2.81 million people. However, if ranked using Combined Statistical Area, it is 19th-largest with 2.91 million people in 2017. Some of the major cities making up the St. Louis Metro area in Missouri are O'Fallon, St. Charles, St. Peters, Florissant, Chesterfield, Wentzville, Wildwood, University City, and Ballwin.
+
+Kansas City is Missouri's largest city and the principal city of the fourteen-county Kansas City Metropolitan Statistical Area, including five counties in the state of Kansas. As of 2017, it was the 30th-largest metropolitan area in the nation, with 2.13 million people. In the Combined Statistical Area in 2017, it ranked 25th with 2.47 million. Some of the other major cities comprising the Kansas City metro area in Missouri include Independence, Lee's Summit, Blue Springs, Liberty, Raytown, Gladstone, and Grandview.
+
+Springfield is Missouri's third-largest city and the principal city of the Springfield-Branson Metropolitan Area, which has a population of 549,423 and includes seven counties in southwestern Missouri. Branson is a major tourist attraction in the Ozarks of southwestern Missouri. Some of the other major cities comprising the Springfield-Branson metro area include Nixa, Ozark, and Republic.
+
+The Missouri State Board of Education has general authority over all public education in the state of Missouri. It is made up of eight citizens appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Missouri Senate.
+
+Education is compulsory from ages seven to seventeen, and it is required that any parent, guardian or other person with custody of a child between the ages of seven and seventeen the compulsory attendance age for the district, must ensure that the child is enrolled in and regularly attends public, private, parochial school, home school or a combination of schools for the full term of the school year. Compulsory attendance also ends when children complete sixteen credits in high school.
+
+Children in Missouri between the ages of five and seven are not required to be enrolled in school. However, if they are enrolled in a public school their parent, guardian or custodian must ensure that they regularly attend.
+
+Missouri schools are commonly but not exclusively divided into three tiers of primary and secondary education: elementary school, middle school or junior high school and high school. The public schools system includes kindergarten to 12th grade. District territories are often complex in structure. In some cases, elementary, middle and junior high schools of a single district feed into high schools in another district. High school athletics and competitions are governed by the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA).
+
+Homeschooling is legal in Missouri and is an option to meet the compulsory education requirement. It is neither monitored nor regulated by the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education[129]
+
+Another gifted school is the Missouri Academy of Science, Mathematics and Computing, which is at the Northwest Missouri State University.
+
+The University of Missouri System is Missouri's statewide public university system. The flagship institution and largest university in the state is the University of Missouri in Columbia. The others in the system are University of Missouri–Kansas City, University of Missouri–St. Louis, and Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla.
+
+During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the state established a series of normal schools in each region of the state, originally named after the geographic districts: Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University) (1867), Central Missouri State University (now the University of Central Missouri) (1871), Southeast Missouri State University (1873), Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University) (1905), Northwest Missouri State University (1905), Missouri Western State University (1915), Maryville University (1872) and Missouri Southern State University (1937). Lincoln University and Harris–Stowe State University were established in the mid-nineteenth century and are historically black colleges and universities.
+
+Among private institutions Washington University in St. Louis and Saint Louis University are two top ranked schools in the US.[130] There are numerous junior colleges, trade schools, church universities and other private universities in the state. A.T. Still University was the first osteopathic medical school in the world. Hannibal–LaGrange University in Hannibal, Missouri, was one of the first colleges west of the Mississippi (founded 1858 in LaGrange, Missouri, and moved to Hannibal in 1928).[131]
+
+The state funds a $2000, renewable merit-based scholarship, Bright Flight, given to the top three percent of Missouri high school graduates who attend a university in-state.
+
+The 19th century border wars between Missouri and Kansas have continued as a sports rivalry between the University of Missouri and University of Kansas. The rivalry was chiefly expressed through football and basketball games between the two universities, but since Missouri left the Big 12 Conference in 2012, the teams no longer regularly play one another. It was the oldest college rivalry west of the Mississippi River and the second-oldest in the nation. Each year when the universities met to play, the game was coined the "Border War." An exchange occurred following the game where the winner took a historic Indian War Drum, which had been passed back and forth for decades. Though Missouri and Kansas no longer have an annual game after the University of Missouri moved to the Southeastern Conference, tension still exists between the two schools.
+
+Many well-known musicians were born or have lived in Missouri. These include guitarist and rock pioneer Chuck Berry, singer and actress Josephine Baker, "Queen of Rock" Tina Turner, pop singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers, and rappers Nelly, Chingy and Akon, all of whom are either current or former residents of St. Louis.
+
+Country singers from Missouri include New Franklin native Sara Evans, Cantwell native Ferlin Husky, West Plains native Porter Wagoner, Tyler Farr of Garden City, and Mora native Leroy Van Dyke, along with bluegrass musician Rhonda Vincent, a native of Greentop. Rapper Eminem was born in St. Joseph and also lived in Savannah and Kansas City. Ragtime composer Scott Joplin lived in St. Louis and Sedalia. Jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker lived in Kansas City. Rock and Roll singer Steve Walsh of the group Kansas was born in St. Louis and grew up in St. Joseph.
+
+The Kansas City Symphony and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra are the state's major orchestras. The latter is the nation's second-oldest symphony orchestra and achieved prominence in recent years under conductor Leonard Slatkin. Branson is well known for its music theaters, most of which bear the name of a star performer or musical group.
+
+Missouri is the native state of Mark Twain. His novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are set in his boyhood hometown of Hannibal. Authors Kate Chopin, T. S. Eliot and Tennessee Williams were from St. Louis. Kansas City-born writer William Least Heat-Moon resides in Rocheport. He is best known for Blue Highways, a chronicle of his travels to small towns across America, which was on The New York Times Bestseller list for 42 weeks in 1982–1983.
+
+Filmmaker, animator, and businessman Walt Disney spent part of his childhood in the Linn County town of Marceline before settling in Kansas City. Disney began his artistic career in Kansas City, where he founded the Laugh-O-Gram Studio.
+
+Several film versions of Mark Twain's novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have been made. Meet Me in St. Louis, a musical involving the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, starred Judy Garland. Part of the 1983 road movie National Lampoon's Vacation was shot on location in Missouri, for the Griswolds' trip from Chicago to Los Angeles. The Thanksgiving holiday film Planes, Trains, and Automobiles was partially shot at Lambert–St. Louis International Airport. White Palace was filmed in St. Louis. The award-winning 2010 film Winter's Bone was shot in the Ozarks of Missouri. Up in the Air starring George Clooney was filmed in St. Louis. John Carpenter's Escape from New York was filmed in St. Louis during the early 1980s due to the large number of abandoned buildings in the city. The 1973 movie Paper Moon, which starred Ryan and Tatum O'Neal, was partly filmed in St. Joseph. Most of HBO's film Truman (1995) was filmed in Kansas City, Independence, and the surrounding area; Gary Sinise won an Emmy for his portrayal of Harry Truman in the film. Ride With the Devil (1999), starring Jewel and Tobey Maguire, was filmed in the countryside of Jackson County (where the historic events of the film actually took place). Gone Girl, a 2014 film starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, and Tyler Perry, was filmed in Cape Girardeau.
+
+Missouri hosted the 1904 Summer Olympics at St. Louis, the first time the games were hosted in the United States.
+
+Professional major league teams
+
+Former professional major league teams
+
+Coordinates: 38°30′N 92°30′W / 38.5°N 92.5°W / 38.5; -92.5

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+
+
+The metre (Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling) (from the French unit mètre, from the Greek noun μέτρον, "measure") is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). The SI unit symbol is m.
+The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 of a second.
+The metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle, so the Earth's circumference is approximately 40000 km. In 1799, the metre was redefined in terms of a prototype metre bar (the actual bar used was changed in 1889). In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of a certain number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86. The current definition was adopted in 1983 and slightly updated in 2019.
+
+Metre is the standard spelling of the metric unit for length in nearly all English-speaking nations except the United States[2][3][4][5] and the Philippines,[6] which use meter. Other Germanic languages, such as German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages[7]  likewise spell the word meter.
+
+Measuring devices (such as ammeter, speedometer) are spelled "-meter" in all variants of English.[8] The suffix "-meter" has the same Greek origin as the unit of length.[9][10]
+
+The etymological roots of metre can be traced to the Greek verb μετρέω (metreo) (to measure, count or compare) and noun μέτρον (metron) (a measure), which were used for physical measurement, for poetic metre and by extension for moderation or avoiding extremism (as in "be measured in your response"). This range of uses is also found in Latin (metior, mensura), French (mètre, mesure), English and other languages.  The motto ΜΕΤΡΩ ΧΡΩ (metro chro) in the seal of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), which was a saying of the Greek statesman and philosopher Pittacus of Mytilene and may be translated as "Use measure!", thus calls for both measurement and moderation. The use of the word metre (for the French unit mètre) in English began at least as early as 1797.[11]
+
+In 1671 Jean Picard measured the length of a "seconds pendulum" (a pendulum with a period of two seconds) at the Paris observatory. He found the value of 440.5 lines of the Toise of Châtelet which had been recently renewed. He proposed a universal toise (French: Toise universelle) which was twice the length of the seconds pendulum.[12][13] However, it was soon discovered that the length of a seconds pendulum varies from place to place: French astronomer Jean Richer had measured the 0.3% difference in length between Cayenne (in French Guiana) and Paris.[14][15][16]
+
+Jean Richer and Giovanni Domenico Cassini measured the parallax of Mars between Paris and Cayenne in French Guiana when Mars was at its closest to Earth in 1672. They arrived at a figure for the solar parallax of 9.5 arcseconds, equivalent to an Earth–Sun distance of about 22000 Earth radii. They were also the first astronomers to have access to an accurate and reliable value for the radius of Earth, which had been measured by their colleague Jean Picard in 1669 as 3269 thousand toises. Picard's geodetic observations had been confined to the determination of the magnitude of the Earth considered as a sphere, but the discovery made by Jean Richer turned the attention of mathematicians to its deviation from a spherical form. In addition to its significance for cartography, the determination of the Figure of the Earth became a problem of the highest importance in astronomy, inasmuch as the diameter of the Earth was the unit to which all celestial distances had to be referred.[17] [18][19][20]
+
+As a result of the French Revolution, the French Academy of Sciences charged a commission with determining a single scale for all measures. On 7 October 1790 that commission advised the adoption of a decimal system, and on 19 March 1791 advised the adoption of the term mètre ("measure"), a basic unit of length, which they defined as equal to one ten-millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the Equator along the meridian through Paris.[21][22][23][24][25] In 1793, the French National Convention adopted the proposal.[11]
+
+The French Academy of Sciences commissioned an expedition led by Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre and Pierre Méchain, lasting from 1792 to 1799, which attempted to accurately measure the distance between a belfry in Dunkerque and Montjuïc castle in Barcelona at the longitude of Paris Panthéon.[26] The expedition was fictionalised in Denis Guedj, Le Mètre du Monde.[27] Ken Alder wrote factually about the expedition in The Measure of All Things: the seven year odyssey and hidden error that transformed the world.[28] This portion of  the Paris meridian, was to serve as the basis for the length of the half meridian connecting the North Pole with the Equator. From 1801 to 1812 France adopted this definition of the metre as its official unit of length based on results from this expedition combined with those of the Geodesic Mission to Peru.[29][30] The latter was related by Larrie D. Ferreiro in Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment Expedition that Reshaped Our World.[31]
+
+A more accurate determination of the Figure of the Earth would soon result from the measurement of the Struve Geodetic Arc (1816–1855) and would have given another value for the definition of this standard of length. This did not invalidate the metre but highlighted that progresses in science would allow better measurement of Earth's size and shape.[20] After the July Revolution of 1830 the metre became the definitive French standard from 1840. At that time it had already been adopted by Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler for the U.S Survey of the Coast.[29][32][33]
+
+"The unit of length to which all distances measured in the Coast Survey are referred is the French metre, an authentic copy of which is preserved in the archives of the Coast Survey Office. It is the property of the American Philosophical Society, to whom it was presented by Mr. Hassler, who had received it from Tralles, a member of the French Committee charged with  the construction of the standard metre by comparison with the toise, which had served as unit of length in the measurement of the meridional arcs in France and Peru. It possesses all the authenticity of any original metre extant, bearing not only the stamp of the Committee but also the original mark by which it was distiguished from the other bars during the operation of standarding. It is always designated as the Committee metre" (French : Mètre des Archives).[34]
+
+In 1830 President Andrew Jackson mandated Ferdinand Rudolf Hassler  to work out new standards for all U.S. states. According to the decision of the Congress of the United States, the British Parlementary Standard from 1758 was introduced as the unit of length.[35] Another geodesist with metrology skills was to play a pivotal role in the process of internationalization of weights and measures, Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero who would become the first president of both the International Geodetic Association and the International Committee for Weights and Measures.[36]
+
+In 1867 at the second general conference of the International Association of Geodesy held in Berlin, the question of an international standard unit of length was discussed in order to combine the measurements made in different countries to determine the size and shape of the Earth.[37][38][39] The conference recommended the adoption of the metre in replacement of the toise and the creation of an international metre commission, according to the proposal of Johann Jacob Baeyer, Adolphe Hirsch and Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero who had devised two geodetic standards calibrated on the metre for the map of Spain.[33][37][39][40] Measurement traceability between the toise and the metre was ensured by comparison of the Spanish standard with the standard devised by Borda and Lavoisier for the survey of the meridian arc connecting Dunkirk with Barcelona.[36][40][41]
+
+A member of the Preparatory Committee since 1870 and Spanish representative at the Paris Conference in 1875, Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero intervened with the French Academy of Sciences to rally France to the project to create an International Bureau of Weights and Measures equipped with the scientific means necessary to redefine the units of the metric system according to the progress of sciences.[42]
+
+In the 1870s and in light of modern precision, a series of international conferences was held to devise new metric standards. The Metre Convention (Convention du Mètre) of 1875 mandated the establishment of a permanent International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM: Bureau International des Poids et Mesures) to be located in Sèvres, France. This new organisation was to construct and preserve a prototype metre bar, distribute national metric prototypes, and maintain comparisons between them and non-metric measurement standards. The organisation distributed such bars in 1889 at the first General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM: Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures), establishing the International Prototype Metre as the distance between two lines on a standard bar composed of an alloy of 90% platinum and 10% iridium, measured at the melting point of ice.[43]
+
+The comparison of the new prototypes of the metre with each other and with the Committee metre (French: Mètre des Archives) involved the development of special measuring equipment and the definition of a reproducible temperature scale. The BIPM's thermometry work led to the discovery of special alloys of iron-nickel, in particular invar, for which its director, the Swiss physicist Charles-Edouard Guillaume, was granted the Nobel Prize for physics in 1920.[44]
+
+As Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero stated, the progress of metrology combined with those of gravimetry through improvement of Kater's pendulum led to a new era of geodesy. If precision metrology had needed the help of geodesy, the latter could not continue to prosper without the help of metrology. Indeed, how to express all the measurements of terrestrial arcs as a function of a single unit, and all the determinations of the force of gravity with the pendulum, if metrology had not created a common unit, adopted and respected by all civilized nations, and if in addition one had not compared, with great precision, to the same unit all the standards for measuring geodesic bases, and all the pendulum rods that had hitherto been used or would be used in the future? Only when this series of metrological comparisons would be finished with a probable error of a thousandth of a millimetre would geodesy be able to link the works of the different nations with one another, and then proclaim the result of the last measurement of the Globe. As the figure of the Earth could be inferred from variations of the seconds pendulum length with latitude, the United States Coast Survey instructed Charles Sanders Peirce in the spring of 1875 to proceed to Europe for the purpose of making pendulum experiments to chief initial stations for operations of this sort, in order to bring the determinations of the forces of gravity in America into communication with those of other parts of the world; and also for the purpose of making a careful study of the methods of pursuing these researches in the different countries of Europe. In 1886 the association of geodesy changed name for the International Geodetic Association, which Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero presided up to his death in 1891. During this period the International Geodetic Association (German: Internationale Erdmessung) gained worldwide importance with the joining of United States, Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Japan.[36][45][46][47][48][49]
+
+Efforts to supplement the various national surveying systems, which begun in the 19th century with the foundation of the Mitteleuropäische Gradmessung, resulted in a series of global ellipsoids of the Earth (e.g., Helmert 1906, Hayford 1910/1924) which would later lead to develop the World Geodetic System. Nowadays the practical realisation of the metre is possible everywhere thanks to the atomic clocks embedded in GPS satellites.[50][51]
+
+In 1873, James Clerk Maxwell suggested that light emitted by an element be used as the standard both for the meter and for the second. These two quantities could then be used to define the unit of mass.[52]
+
+In 1893, the standard metre was first measured with an interferometer by Albert A. Michelson, the inventor of the device and an advocate of using some particular wavelength of light as a standard of length. By 1925, interferometry was in regular use at the BIPM. However, the International Prototype Metre remained the standard until 1960, when the eleventh CGPM defined the metre in the new International System of Units (SI) as equal to 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum.[53]
+
+To further reduce uncertainty, the 17th CGPM in 1983 replaced the definition of the metre with its current definition, thus fixing the length of the metre in terms of the second and the speed of light:[54]
+
+This definition fixed the speed of light in vacuum at exactly 299792458 metres per second (≈300000 km/s).[54] An intended by-product of the 17th CGPM's definition was that it enabled scientists to compare lasers accurately using frequency, resulting in wavelengths with one-fifth the uncertainty involved in the direct comparison of wavelengths, because interferometer errors were eliminated. To further facilitate reproducibility from lab to lab, the 17th CGPM also made the iodine-stabilised helium–neon laser "a recommended radiation" for realising the metre.[55] For the purpose of delineating the metre, the BIPM currently considers the HeNe laser wavelength, λHeNe, to be 632.99121258 nm with an estimated relative standard uncertainty (U) of 2.1×10−11.[55][56][57] This uncertainty is currently one limiting factor in laboratory realisations of the metre, and it is several orders of magnitude poorer than that of the second, based upon the caesium fountain atomic clock (U = 5×10−16).[58] Consequently, a  realisation of the metre is usually delineated (not defined) today in labs as 1579800.762042(33) wavelengths of helium-neon laser light in a vacuum, the error stated being only that of frequency determination.[55] This bracket notation expressing the error is explained in the article on measurement uncertainty.
+
+Practical realisation of the metre is subject to uncertainties in characterising the medium, to various uncertainties of interferometry, and to uncertainties in measuring the frequency of the source.[59] A commonly used medium is air, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has set up an online calculator to convert wavelengths in vacuum to wavelengths in air.[60] As described by NIST, in air, the uncertainties in characterising the medium are dominated by errors in measuring temperature and pressure. Errors in the theoretical formulas used are secondary.[61] By implementing a refractive index correction such as this, an approximate realisation of the metre can be implemented in air, for example, using the formulation of the metre as 1579800.762042(33) wavelengths of helium–neon laser light in vacuum, and converting the wavelengths in a vacuum to wavelengths in air. Air is only one possible medium to use in a realisation of the metre, and any partial vacuum can be used, or some inert atmosphere like helium gas, provided the appropriate corrections for refractive index are implemented.[62]
+
+The metre is defined as the path length travelled by light in a given time and practical laboratory length measurements in metres are determined by counting the number of wavelengths of laser light of one of the standard types that fit into the length,[65] and converting the selected unit of wavelength to metres. Three major factors limit the accuracy attainable with laser interferometers for a length measurement:[59][66]
+
+Of these, the last is peculiar to the interferometer itself. The conversion of a length in wavelengths to a length in metres is based upon the relation
+
+which converts the unit of wavelength λ to metres using c, the speed of light in vacuum in m/s. Here n is the refractive index of the medium in which the measurement is made, and f is the measured frequency of the source. Although conversion from wavelengths to metres introduces an additional error in the overall length due to measurement error in determining the refractive index and the frequency, the measurement of frequency is one of the most accurate measurements available.[66]
+
+SI prefixes are often employed to denote decimal multiples and submultiples of the metre, as shown in the table below. As indicated in the table, some are commonly used, while others are not. Long distances are usually expressed in km, astronomical units (149.6 Gm), light-years (10 Pm), or parsecs (31 Pm), rather than in Mm, Gm, Tm, Pm, Em, Zm or Ym; "30 cm", "30 m", and "300 m" are more common than "3 dm", "3 dam", and "3 hm", respectively.
+
+The terms micron and (occasionally) millimicron are often used instead of micrometre (μm) and nanometre (nm), but this practice is officially discouraged.[76]
+
+
+
+Within this table, "inch" and "yard" mean "international inch" and "international yard"[77] respectively, though approximate conversions in the left column hold for both international and survey units.
+
+One metre is exactly equivalent to 5 000/127 inches and to 1 250/1 143 yards.
+
+A simple mnemonic aid exists to assist with conversion, as three "3"s:
+
+The ancient Egyptian cubit was about 0.5 m (surviving rods are 523–529 mm).[78] Scottish and English definitions of the ell (two cubits) were 941 mm (0.941 m) and 1143 mm (1.143 m) respectively.[79][80] The ancient Parisian toise (fathom) was slightly shorter than 2 m and was standardised at exactly 2 m in the mesures usuelles system, such that 1 m was exactly ​1⁄2 toise.[81] The Russian verst was 1.0668 km.[82] The Swedish mil was 10.688 km, but was changed to 10 km when Sweden converted to metric units.[83]

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+Transport (commonly used in the U.K.), or transportation (used in the U.S.), is the movement of humans, animals and goods from one location to another. In other words, the action of transport is defined as a particular movement of an organism or thing from a point A (a place in space) to a point B.  Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipeline and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles and operations. Transport enables trade between people, which is essential for the development of civilizations.
+
+Transport infrastructure consists of the fixed installations, including roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals and pipelines and terminals such as airports, railway stations, bus stations, warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots (including fueling docks and fuel stations) and seaports. Terminals may be used both for interchange of passengers and cargo and for maintenance.
+
+Vehicles traveling on these networks may include automobiles, bicycles, buses, trains, trucks, helicopters, watercraft, spacecraft and aircraft.
+
+Operations deal with the way the vehicles are operated, and the procedures set for this purpose, including financing, legalities, and policies. In the transport industry, operations and ownership of infrastructure can be either public or private, depending on the country and mode.
+
+Passenger transport may be public, where operators provide scheduled services, or private. Freight transport has become focused on containerization, although bulk transport is used for large volumes of durable items. Transport plays an important part in economic growth and globalization, but most types cause air pollution and use large amounts of land. While it is heavily subsidized by governments, good planning of transport is essential to make traffic flow and restrain urban sprawl.
+
+Humans' first means of transport involved walking, running and swimming. The domestication of animals introduced a new way to lay the burden of transport on more powerful creatures, allowing the hauling of heavier loads, or humans riding animals for greater speed and duration. Inventions such as the wheel and the sled helped make animal transport more efficient through the introduction of vehicles. Water transport, including rowed and sailed vessels, dates back to time immemorial, and was the only efficient way to transport large quantities or over large distances prior to the Industrial Revolution.
+
+The first forms of road transport involved animals, such as horses (domesticated in the 4th or the 3rd millennium BCE), oxen (from about 8000 BCE)[1]
+or humans carrying goods over dirt tracks that often followed game trails. Many early civilizations, including those in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, constructed paved roads.  In classical antiquity, the Persian and Roman empires built stone-paved roads to allow armies to travel quickly. Deep roadbeds of crushed stone underneath kept such roads dry. The medieval Caliphate later built tar-paved roads. The first watercraft were canoes cut out from tree trunks. Early water transport was accomplished with ships that were either rowed or used the wind for propulsion, or a combination of the two. The importance of water has led to most cities that grew up as sites for trading being located on rivers or on the sea-shore, often at the intersection of two bodies of water. Until the Industrial Revolution, transport remained slow and costly, and production and consumption gravitated as close to each other as feasible.
+
+The Industrial Revolution in the 19th century saw a number of inventions fundamentally change transport. With telegraphy, communication became instant and independent of the transport of physical objects. The invention of the steam engine, closely followed by its application in rail transport, made land transport independent of human or animal muscles. Both speed and capacity increased, allowing specialization through manufacturing being located independently of natural resources. The 19th century also saw the development of the steam ship, which sped up global transport.
+
+With the development of the combustion engine and the automobile around 1900, road transport became more competitive again, and mechanical private transport originated. The first "modern" highways were constructed during the 19th century[citation needed] with macadam. Later, tarmac and concrete became the dominant paving materials. In 1903 the Wright brothers demonstrated the first successful controllable airplane, and after World War I (1914–1918) aircraft became a fast way to transport people and express goods over long distances.[2]
+
+After World War II (1939–1945) the automobile and airlines took higher shares of transport, reducing rail and water to freight and short-haul passenger services.[3] Scientific spaceflight began in the 1950s, with rapid growth until the 1970s, when interest dwindled. In the 1950s the introduction of containerization gave massive efficiency gains in freight transport, fostering globalization.[4] International air travel became much more accessible in the 1960s with the commercialization of the jet engine. Along with the growth in automobiles and motorways, rail and water transport declined in relative importance. After the introduction of the Shinkansen in Japan in 1964, high-speed rail in Asia and Europe started attracting passengers on long-haul routes away from the airlines.[3]
+
+Early in U.S. history,[when?] private joint-stock corporations owned most aqueducts, bridges, canals, railroads, roads, and tunnels. Most such transport infrastructure came under government control in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, culminating in the nationalization of inter-city passenger rail-service with the establishment of Amtrak. Recently,[when?] however, a movement to privatize roads and other infrastructure has gained some[quantify] ground and adherents.[5]
+
+A mode of transport is a solution that makes use of a particular type of vehicle, infrastructure, and operation. The transport of a person or of cargo may involve one mode or several of the modes, with the latter case being called intermodal or multimodal transport. Each mode has its own advantages and disadvantages, and will be chosen on the basis of cost, capability, and route.
+
+Human-powered transport, a form of sustainable transport, is the transport of people and/or goods using human muscle-power, in the form of walking, running and swimming. Modern technology has allowed machines to enhance human power. Human-powered transport remains popular for reasons of cost-saving, leisure, physical exercise, and environmentalism; it is sometimes the only type available, especially in underdeveloped or inaccessible regions.
+
+Although humans are able to walk without infrastructure, the transport can be enhanced through the use of roads, especially when using the human power with vehicles, such as bicycles and inline skates. Human-powered vehicles have also been developed for difficult environments, such as snow and water, by watercraft rowing and skiing; even the air can be entered with human-powered aircraft.
+
+Animal-powered transport is the use of working animals for the movement of people and commodities. Humans may ride some of the animals directly, use them as pack animals for carrying goods, or harness them, alone or in teams, to pull sleds or wheeled vehicles.
+
+A fixed-wing aircraft, commonly called airplane, is a heavier-than-air craft where movement of the air in relation to the wings is used to generate lift. The term is used to distinguish this from rotary-wing aircraft, where the movement of the lift surfaces relative to the air generates lift. A gyroplane is both fixed-wing and rotary wing. Fixed-wing aircraft range from small trainers and recreational aircraft to large airliners and military cargo aircraft.
+
+Two things necessary for aircraft are air flow over the wings for lift and an area for landing. The majority of aircraft also need an airport with the infrastructure to receive maintenance, restocking, refueling and for the loading and unloading of crew, cargo, and passengers. While the vast majority of aircraft land and take off on land, some are capable of take-off and landing on ice, snow, and calm water.
+
+The aircraft is the second fastest method of transport, after the rocket. Commercial jets can reach up to 955 kilometres per hour (593 mph), single-engine aircraft 555 kilometres per hour (345 mph). Aviation is able to quickly transport people and limited amounts of cargo over longer distances, but incurs high costs and energy use; for short distances or in inaccessible places, helicopters can be used.[6] As of April 28, 2009, The Guardian article notes that "the WHO estimates that up to 500,000 people are on planes at any time."[7]
+
+Land transport covers all land-based transport systems that provide for the movement of people, goods and services. Land transport plays a vital role in linking communities to each other. Land transport is a key factor in urban planning. It consists of 2 kinds, rail and road.
+
+Rail transport is where a train runs along a set of two parallel steel rails, known as a railway or railroad. The rails are anchored perpendicular to ties (or sleepers) of timber, concrete or steel, to maintain a consistent distance apart, or gauge. The rails and perpendicular beams are placed on a foundation made of concrete or compressed earth and gravel in a bed of ballast. Alternative methods include monorail and maglev.
+
+A train consists of one or more connected vehicles that operate on the rails. Propulsion is commonly provided by a locomotive, that hauls a series of unpowered cars, that can carry passengers or freight. The locomotive can be powered by steam, diesel or by electricity supplied by trackside systems. Alternatively, some or all the cars can be powered, known as a multiple unit. Also, a train can be powered by horses, cables, gravity, pneumatics and gas turbines. Railed vehicles move with much less friction than rubber tires on paved roads, making trains more energy efficient, though not as efficient as ships.
+
+Intercity trains are long-haul services connecting cities;[8] modern high-speed rail is capable of speeds up to 350 km/h (220 mph), but this requires specially built track. Regional and commuter trains feed cities from suburbs and surrounding areas, while intra-urban transport is performed by high-capacity tramways and rapid transits, often making up the backbone of a city's public transport. Freight trains traditionally used box cars, requiring manual loading and unloading of the cargo. Since the 1960s, container trains have become the dominant solution for general freight, while large quantities of bulk are transported by dedicated trains.
+
+A road is an identifiable route, way or path between two or more places.[9] Roads are typically smoothed, paved, or otherwise prepared to allow easy travel;[10] though they need not be, and historically many roads were simply recognizable routes without any formal construction or maintenance.[11] In urban areas, roads may pass through a city or village and be named as streets, serving a dual function as urban space easement and route.[12]
+
+The most common road vehicle is the automobile; a wheeled passenger vehicle that carries its own motor. Other users of roads include buses, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians. As of 2010, there were 1.015 billion automobiles worldwide.
+Road transport offers a complete freedom to road users to transfer the vehicle from one lane to the other and from one road to another according to the need and convenience. This flexibility of changes in location, direction, speed, and timings of travel is not available to other modes of transport. It is possible to provide door to door service only by road transport.
+
+Automobiles provide high flexibility with low capacity, but require high energy and area use, and are the main source of harmful noise and air pollution in cities;[13] buses allow for more efficient travel at the cost of reduced flexibility.[14] Road transport by truck is often the initial and final stage of freight transport.
+
+Water transport is movement by means of a watercraft—such as a barge, boat, ship or sailboat—over a body of water, such as a sea, ocean, lake, canal or river. The need for buoyancy is common to watercraft, making the hull a dominant aspect of its construction, maintenance and appearance.
+
+In the 19th century, the first steam ships were developed, using a steam engine to drive a paddle wheel or propeller to move the ship. The steam was produced in a boiler using wood or coal and fed through a steam external combustion engine. Now most ships have an internal combustion engine using a slightly refined type of petroleum called bunker fuel. Some ships, such as submarines, use nuclear power to produce the steam. Recreational or educational craft still use wind power, while some smaller craft use internal combustion engines to drive one or more propellers, or in the case of jet boats, an inboard water jet. In shallow draft areas, hovercraft are propelled by large pusher-prop fans. (See Marine propulsion.)
+
+Although it is slow compared to other transport, modern sea transport is a highly efficient method of transporting large quantities of goods. Commercial vessels, nearly 35,000 in number, carried 7.4 billion tons of cargo in 2007.[15] Transport by water is significantly less costly than air transport for transcontinental shipping;[16] short sea shipping and ferries remain viable in coastal areas.[17][18]
+
+Pipeline transport sends goods through a pipe; most commonly liquid and gases are sent, but pneumatic tubes can also send solid capsules using compressed air. For liquids/gases, any chemically stable liquid or gas can be sent through a pipeline. Short-distance systems exist for sewage, slurry, water and beer, while long-distance networks are used for petroleum and natural gas.
+
+Cable transport is a broad mode where vehicles are pulled by cables instead of an internal power source. It is most commonly used at steep gradient. Typical solutions include aerial tramway, elevators, escalator and ski lifts; some of these are also categorized as conveyor transport.
+
+Spaceflight is transport out of Earth's atmosphere into outer space by means of a spacecraft. While large amounts of research have gone into technology, it is rarely used except to put satellites into orbit, and conduct scientific experiments. However, man has landed on the moon, and probes have been sent to all the planets of the Solar System.
+
+Suborbital spaceflight is the fastest of the existing and planned transport systems from a place on Earth to a distant "other place" on Earth. Faster transport could be achieved through part of a low Earth orbit, or following that trajectory even faster using the propulsion of the rocket to steer it.
+
+Infrastructure is the fixed installations that allow a vehicle to operate. It consists of a roadway, a terminal, and facilities for parking and maintenance. For rail, pipeline, road and cable transport, the entire way the vehicle travels must be constructed. Air and watercraft are able to avoid this, since the airway and seaway do not need to be constructed. However, they require fixed infrastructure at terminals.
+
+Terminals such as airports, ports, and stations, are locations where passengers and freight can be transferred from one vehicle or mode to another. For passenger transport, terminals are integrating different modes to allow riders, who are interchanging between modes, to take advantage of each mode's benefits. For instance, airport rail links connect airports to the city centers and suburbs. The terminals for automobiles are parking lots, while buses and coaches can operate from simple stops.[19] For freight, terminals act as transshipment points, though some cargo is transported directly from the point of production to the point of use.
+
+The financing of infrastructure can either be public or private. Transport is often a natural monopoly and a necessity for the public; roads, and in some countries railways and airports are funded through taxation. New infrastructure projects can have high costs and are often financed through debt. Many infrastructure owners, therefore, impose usage fees, such as landing fees at airports, or toll plazas on roads. Independent of this, authorities may impose taxes on the purchase or use of vehicles. Because of poor forecasting and overestimation of passenger numbers by planners, there is frequently a benefits shortfall for transport infrastructure projects.[20]
+
+A vehicle is a non-living device that is used to move people and goods. Unlike the infrastructure, the vehicle moves along with the cargo and riders. Unless being pulled/pushed by a cable or muscle-power, the vehicle must provide its own propulsion; this is most commonly done through a steam engine, combustion engine, electric motor, a jet engine or a rocket, though other means of propulsion also exist. Vehicles also need a system of converting the energy into movement; this is most commonly done through wheels, propellers and pressure.
+
+Vehicles are most commonly staffed by a driver. However, some systems, such as people movers and some rapid transits, are fully automated. For passenger transport, the vehicle must have a compartment, seat, or platform for the passengers. Simple vehicles, such as automobiles, bicycles or simple aircraft, may have one of the passengers as a driver.
+
+Private transport is only subject to the owner of the vehicle, who operates the vehicle themselves. For public transport and freight transport, operations are done through private enterprise or by governments. The infrastructure and vehicles may be owned and operated by the same company, or they may be operated by different entities. Traditionally, many countries have had a national airline and national railway. Since the 1980s, many of these have been privatized. International shipping remains a highly competitive industry with little regulation,[21] but ports can be public-owned.[22]
+
+As the population of the world increases, cities grow in size and population—according to the United Nations, 55% of the world’s population live in cities, and by 2050 this number is expected to rise to 68%.[23] Public transport policy must evolve to meet the changing priorities of the urban world.[24] The institution of policy enforces order in transport, which is by nature chaotic as people attempt to travel from one place to another as fast as possible. This policy helps to reduce accidents and save lives.
+
+Relocation of travelers and cargo are the most common uses of transport. However, other uses exist, such as the strategic and tactical relocation of armed forces during warfare, or the civilian mobility construction or emergency equipment.
+
+Passenger transport, or travel, is divided into public and private transport. Public transport is scheduled services on fixed routes, while private is vehicles that provide ad hoc services at the riders desire. The latter offers better flexibility, but has lower capacity, and a higher environmental impact. Travel may be as part of daily commuting, for business, leisure or migration.
+
+Short-haul transport is dominated by the automobile and mass transit. The latter consists of buses in rural and small cities, supplemented with commuter rail, trams and rapid transit in larger cities. Long-haul transport involves the use of the automobile, trains, coaches and aircraft, the last of which have become predominantly used for the longest, including intercontinental, travel. Intermodal passenger transport is where a journey is performed through the use of several modes of transport; since all human transport normally starts and ends with walking, all passenger transport can be considered intermodal. Public transport may also involve the intermediate change of vehicle, within or across modes, at a transport hub, such as a bus or railway station.
+
+Taxis and buses can be found on both ends of the public transport spectrum. Buses are the cheapest mode of transport but are not necessarily flexible, and taxis are very flexible but more expensive. In the middle is demand-responsive transport, offering flexibility whilst remaining affordable.
+
+International travel may be restricted for some individuals due to legislation and visa requirements.
+
+An ambulance is a vehicle used to transport people from or between places of treatment,[25] and in some instances will also provide out-of-hospital medical care to the patient. The word is often associated with road-going "emergency ambulances", which form part of emergency medical services, administering emergency care to those with acute medical problems.
+
+Air medical services is a comprehensive term covering the use of air transport to move patients to and from healthcare facilities and accident scenes. Personnel provide comprehensive prehospital and emergency and critical care to all types of patients during aeromedical evacuation or rescue operations, aboard helicopters, propeller aircraft, or jet aircraft.[26][27]
+
+Freight transport, or shipping, is a key in the value chain in manufacturing.[28] With increased specialization and globalization, production is being located further away from consumption, rapidly increasing the demand for transport.[29] Transport creates place utility by moving the goods from the place of production to the place of consumption. While all modes of transport are used for cargo transport, there is high differentiation between the nature of the cargo transport, in which mode is chosen.[30] Logistics refers to the entire process of transferring products from producer to consumer, including storage, transport, transshipment, warehousing, material-handling, and packaging, with associated exchange of information.[31] Incoterm deals with the handling of payment and responsibility of risk during transport.[32]
+
+Containerization, with the standardization of ISO containers on all vehicles and at all ports, has revolutionized international and domestic trade, offering a huge reduction in transshipment costs. Traditionally, all cargo had to be manually loaded and unloaded into the haul of any ship or car; containerization allows for automated handling and transfer between modes, and the standardized sizes allow for gains in economy of scale in vehicle operation. This has been one of the key driving factors in international trade and globalization since the 1950s.[4]
+
+Bulk transport is common with cargo that can be handled roughly without deterioration; typical examples are ore, coal, cereals and petroleum. Because of the uniformity of the product, mechanical handling can allow enormous quantities to be handled quickly and efficiently. The low value of the cargo combined with high volume also means that economies of scale become essential in transport, and gigantic ships and whole trains are commonly used to transport bulk. Liquid products with sufficient volume may also be transported by pipeline.
+
+Air freight has become more common for products of high value; while less than one percent of world transport by volume is by airline, it amounts to forty percent of the value. Time has become especially important in regards to principles such as postponement and just-in-time within the value chain, resulting in a high willingness to pay for quick delivery of key components or items of high value-to-weight ratio.[33] In addition to mail, common items sent by air include electronics and fashion clothing.
+
+Transport is a key necessity for specialization—allowing production and consumption of products to occur at different locations.  Throughout history, transport has been a spur to expansion; better transport allows more trade and a greater spread of people. Economic growth has always been dependent on increasing the capacity and rationality of transport.[34] But the infrastructure and operation of transport have a great impact on the land, and transport is the largest drainer of energy, making transport sustainability a major issue.
+
+Due to the way modern cities and communities are planned and operated, a physical distinction between home and work is usually created, forcing people to transport themselves to places of work, study, or leisure, as well as to temporarily relocate for other daily activities. Passenger transport is also the essence of tourism, a major part of recreational transport. Commerce requires the transport of people to conduct business, either to allow face-to-face communication for important decisions or to move specialists from their regular place of work to sites where they are needed.
+
+Transport planning allows for high utilization and less impact regarding new infrastructure. Using models of transport forecasting, planners are able to predict future transport patterns. On the operative level, logistics allows owners of cargo to plan transport as part of the supply chain. Transport as a field is also studied through transport economics, a component for the creation of regulation policy by authorities. Transport engineering, a sub-discipline of civil engineering, must take into account trip generation, trip distribution, mode choice and route assignment, while the operative level is handled through traffic engineering.
+
+Because of the negative impacts incurred, transport often becomes the subject of controversy related to choice of mode, as well as increased capacity. Automotive transport can be seen as a tragedy of the commons, where the flexibility and comfort for the individual deteriorate the natural and urban environment for all. Density of development depends on mode of transport, with public transport allowing for better spatial utilization. Good land use keeps common activities close to people's homes and places higher-density development closer to transport lines and hubs, to minimize the need for transport. There are economies of agglomeration. Beyond transport, some land uses are more efficient when clustered. Transport facilities consume land, and in cities pavement (devoted to streets and parking) can easily exceed 20 percent of the total land use. An efficient transport system can reduce land waste.
+
+Too much infrastructure and too much smoothing for maximum vehicle throughput mean that in many cities there is too much traffic and many—if not all—of the negative impacts that come with it. It is only in recent years that traditional practices have started to be questioned in many places; as a result of new types of analysis which bring in a much broader range of skills than those traditionally relied on—spanning such areas as environmental impact analysis, public health, sociology and economics—the viability of the old mobility solutions is increasingly being questioned.
+
+Transport is a major use of energy and burns most of the world's petroleum. This creates air pollution, including nitrous oxides and particulates, and is a significant contributor to global warming through emission of carbon dioxide,[35] for which transport is the fastest-growing emission sector.[36] By subsector, road transport is the largest contributor to global warming.[37] Environmental regulations in developed countries have reduced individual vehicles' emissions; however, this has been offset by increases in the numbers of vehicles and in the use of each vehicle.[35] Some pathways to reduce the carbon emissions of road vehicles considerably have been studied.[38][39] Energy use and emissions vary largely between modes, causing environmentalists to call for a transition from air and road to rail and human-powered transport, as well as increased transport electrification and energy efficiency.
+
+Other environmental impacts of transport systems include traffic congestion and automobile-oriented urban sprawl, which can consume natural habitat and agricultural lands. By reducing transport emissions globally, it is predicted that there will be significant positive effects on Earth's air quality, acid rain, smog and climate change.[40]

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+Fashion is a popular aesthetic expression at a particular time and place and in a specific context, especially in clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body proportions.[1] Whereas a trend often connotes a peculiar aesthetic expression and often lasting shorter than a season, fashion is a distinctive and industry-supported expression traditionally tied to the fashion season and collections.[2] Style is an expression that lasts over many seasons and is often connected to cultural movements and social markers, symbols, class, and culture (ex. Baroque, Rococo, etc.). According to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, fashion connotes "the latest fashion, the latest difference."[3]
+
+Even though they are often used together, the term fashion differs from clothes and costumes, where the first describes the material and technical garment, whereas the second has been relegated to special senses like fancy-dress or masquerade wear. Fashion instead describes the social and temporal system that "activates" dress as a social signifier in a certain time and context. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben connects fashion to the current intensity of the qualitative moment, to the temporal aspect the Greek called kairos, whereas clothes belong to the quantitative, to what the Greek called Chronos.[4]
+
+Exclusive brands aspire for the label haute couture, but the term is technically limited to members of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris.[2] It is more aspirational and inspired by art, culture and movement. It is extremely exclusive in nature.
+
+With increasing mass-production of consumer commodities at Lower prices, and with global reach, sustainability has become an urgent issue amongst politicians, brands, and consumers.[5]
+
+Early Western travelers, traveling to India, Persia, Turkey, or China, would frequently remark on the absence of change in fashion in those countries. The Japanese shōgun's secretary bragged (not completely accurately) to a Spanish visitor in 1609 that Japanese clothing had not changed in over a thousand years.[6] However, there is considerable evidence in Ming China of rapidly changing fashions in Chinese clothing.[7] Changes in costume often took place at times of economic or social change, as occurred in ancient Rome and the medieval Caliphate, followed by a long period without significant changes. In 8th-century Moorish Spain, the musician Ziryab introduced to Córdoba[8][unreliable source][9] sophisticated clothing-styles based on seasonal and daily fashions from his native Baghdad, modified by his inspiration. Similar changes in fashion occurred in the 11th century in the Middle East following the arrival of the Turks, who introduced clothing styles from Central Asia and the Far East.[10]
+
+Additionally, there is a long history of fashion in West Africa.[11] The Cloth was used as a form of currency in trade with the Portuguese and Dutch as early as the 16th Century.[11] Locally produced cloth and cheaper European imports were assembled into new styles to accommodate the growing elite class of West Africans and resident gold and slave traders.[11] There was an exceptionally strong tradition of cloth-weaving in Oyo and the areas inhabited by the Igbo people.[11]
+
+The beginning in Europe of continual and increasingly rapid change in clothing styles can be fairly reliably dated. Historians, including James Laver and Fernand Braudel, date the start of Western fashion in clothing to the middle of the 14th century,[12][13] though they tend to rely heavily on contemporary imagery[14] and illuminated manuscripts were not common before the fourteenth century.[15] The most dramatic early change in fashion was a sudden drastic shortening and tightening of the male over-garment from calf-length to barely covering the buttocks,[16] sometimes accompanied with stuffing in the chest to make it look bigger. This created the distinctive Western outline of a tailored top worn over leggings or trousers.
+
+The pace of change accelerated considerably in the following century, and women's and men's fashion, especially in the dressing and adorning of the hair, became equally complex. Art historians are, therefore, able to use fashion with confidence and precision to date images, often to within five years, particularly in the case of images from the 15th century. Initially, changes in fashion led to a fragmentation across the upper classes of Europe of what had previously been a very similar style of dressing and the subsequent development of distinctive national styles. These national styles remained very different until a counter-movement in the 17th to 18th centuries imposed similar styles once again, mostly originating from Ancien Régime France.[17] Though the rich usually led fashion, the increasing affluence of early modern Europe led to the bourgeoisie and even peasants following trends at a distance, but still uncomfortably close for the elites – a factor that Fernand Braudel regards as one of the main motors of changing fashion.[18]
+
+In the 16th century, national differences were at their most pronounced. Ten 16th century portraits of German or Italian gentlemen may show ten entirely different hats. Albrecht Dürer illustrated the differences in his actual (or composite) contrast of Nuremberg and Venetian fashions at the close of the 15th century (illustration, right). The "Spanish style" of the late 16th century began the move back to synchronicity among upper-class Europeans, and after a struggle in the mid-17th century, French styles decisively took over leadership, a process completed in the 18th century.[20]
+
+Though different textile colors and patterns changed from year to year,[21] the cut of a gentleman's coat and the length of his waistcoat, or the pattern to which a lady's dress was cut, changed more slowly. Men's fashions were primarily derived from military models, and changes in a European male silhouette were galvanized in theaters of European war where gentleman officers had opportunities to make notes of different styles such as the "Steinkirk" cravat or necktie.
+
+Though there had been distribution of dressed dolls from France since the 16th century and Abraham Bosse had produced engravings of fashion in the 1620s, the pace of change picked up in the 1780s with increased publication of French engravings illustrating the latest Paris styles. By 1800, all Western Europeans were dressing alike (or thought they were); local variation became first a sign of provincial culture and later a badge of the conservative peasant.[22]
+
+Although tailors and dressmakers were no doubt responsible for many innovations, and the textile industry indeed led many trends, the history of fashion design is generally understood to date from 1858 when the English-born Charles Frederick Worth opened the first authentic haute couture house in Paris. The Haute house was the name established by the government for the fashion houses that met the standards of the industry. These fashion houses have to adhere to standards such as keeping at least twenty employees engaged in making the clothes, showing two collections per year at fashion shows, and presenting a certain number of patterns to costumers.[23] Since then, the idea of the fashion designer as a celebrity in his or her own right has become increasingly dominant.[24]
+
+Although aspects of fashion can be feminine or masculine, some trends are androgynous.[25] The idea of unisex dressing originated in the 1960s when designers such as Pierre Cardin and Rudi Gernreich created garments, such as stretch jersey tunics or leggings, meant to be worn by both males and females. The impact of unisex expands more broadly to encompass various themes in fashion, including androgyny, mass-market retail, and conceptual clothing.[26] The fashion trends of the 1970s, such as sheepskin jackets, flight jackets, duffel coats, and unstructured clothing, influenced men to attend social gatherings without a tuxedo jacket and to accessorize in new ways. Some men's styles blended the sensuality and expressiveness despite the conservative trend, the growing gay-rights movement and an emphasis on youth allowed for a new freedom to experiment with style, fabrics such as wool crepe, which had previously been associated with women's attire was used by designers when creating male clothing.[27]
+
+The four major current fashion capitals are acknowledged to be Paris, Milan, New York City, and London, which are all headquarters to the most significant fashion companies and are renowned for their major influence on global fashion. Fashion weeks are held in these cities, where designers exhibit their new clothing collections to audiences. A succession of major designers such as Coco Chanel and Yves Saint-Laurent have kept Paris as the center most watched by the rest of the world, although haute couture is now subsidized by the sale of ready-to-wear collections and perfume using the same branding.
+
+Modern Westerners have a vast number of choices available in the selection of their clothes. What a person chooses to wear can reflect his or her personality or interests. When people who have high cultural status start to wear new or different clothes, a fashion trend may start. People who like or respect these people become influenced by their style and begin wearing similarly styled clothes. Fashions may vary considerably within a society according to age, social class, generation, occupation, and geography and may also vary over time. If an older person dresses according to the fashion young people use, he or she may look ridiculous in the eyes of both young and older people. The terms fashionista and fashion victim refer to someone who slavishly follows current fashions.
+
+One can regard the system of sporting various fashions as a fashion language incorporating various fashion statements using a grammar of fashion. (Compare some of the work of Roland Barthes.)
+
+In recent years, Asian fashion has become increasingly significant in local and global markets. Countries such as China, Japan, India, and Pakistan have traditionally had large textile industries, which have often been drawn upon by Western designers, but now Asian clothing styles are also gaining influence based on their ideas.[28]
+
+The notion of the global fashion industry is a product of the modern age.[29] Before the mid-19th century, most clothing was custom-made. It was handmade for individuals, either as home production or on order from dressmakers and tailors. By the beginning of the 20th century—with the rise of new technologies such as the sewing machine, the rise of global capitalism and the development of the factory system of production, and the proliferation of retail outlets such as department stores—clothing had increasingly come to be mass-produced in standard sizes and sold at fixed prices.
+
+Although the fashion industry developed first in Europe and America, as of 2017[update], it is an international and highly globalized industry, with clothing often designed in one country, manufactured in another, and sold worldwide. For example, an American fashion company might source fabric in China and have the clothes manufactured in Vietnam, finished in Italy, and shipped to a warehouse in the United States for distribution to retail outlets internationally. The fashion industry has long been one of the largest employers in the United States,[29] and it remains so in the 21st century. However, U.S. employment declined considerably as production increasingly moved overseas, especially to China. Because data on the fashion industry typically are reported for national economies and expressed in terms of the industry's many separate sectors, aggregate figures for the world production of textiles and clothing are difficult to obtain. However, by any measure, the clothing industry accounts for a significant share of world economic output.[30]
+The fashion industry consists of four levels:
+
+These levels consist of many separate but interdependent sectors. These sectors are Textile Design and Production, Fashion Design and Manufacturing, Fashion Retailing, Marketing and Merchandising, Fashion Shows, and Media and Marketing. Each sector is devoted to the goal of satisfying consumer demand for apparel under conditions that enable participants in the industry to operate at a profit.[29][29][29][29]
+
+Fashion trends influenced by several factors, including cinema, celebrities, climate, creative explorations, political, economic, social, and technological. Examining these factors is called a PEST analysis. Fashion forecasters can use this information to help determine the growth or decline of a particular trend.
+
+Politics has played a central role in the development of fashion. For example, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy was a fashionable icon of the early 1960s who led the formal dressing trend. By wearing a Chanel suit, a structural Givenchy shift dress, or a soft color Cassini coat with large buttons, it created her elegant look and led a delicate trend.[31]
+
+Furthermore, the political revolution also made much impact on the fashion trend. For example, during the 1960s, the economy had become wealthier, the divorce rate was increasing, and the government approved the birth control pill. This revolution inspired the younger generation to rebellion. In 1964, the leg-baring mini-skirt became a significant fashion trend of the 1960s. Given that fashion designers began to experiment with the shapes of garment, loose sleeveless, micro-minis, flared skirts, and trumpet sleeves. In this case, the mini-skirt trend became an icon of the 1960s.
+
+Moreover, the political movement built an impressive relationship with fashion trends. For instance, during the Vietnam war, the youth of America made a movement that affected the whole country. In the 1960s, the fashion trend was full of fluorescent colors, prints patterns, bell-bottom jeans, fringed vests, and skirt became a protest outfit of the 1960s. This trend was called Hippie, and it is still affecting the current fashion trend.[32]
+
+Technology plays a significant role in most aspects of today's society. Technological influences are growing more apparent in the fashion industry. Advances and new developments are shaping and creating current and future trends.
+
+Developments such as wearable technology have become an essential trend in fashion. They will continue with advances such as clothing constructed with solar panels that charge devices and smart fabrics that enhance wearer comfort by changing color or texture based on environmental changes.[33]
+
+The fashion industry is seeing how 3D printing technology has influenced designers such as Iris Van Herpen and Kimberly Ovitz. These designers have been heavily experimenting and developing 3D printed couture pieces. As the technology grows, the 3D printers will become more accessible to designers and eventually, consumers, which could potentially shape the fashion industry entirely.
+
+Internet technology such as online retailers and social media platforms have given way for trends to be identified, marketed, and sold immediately.[34] Styles and trends are easily conveyed online to attract trendsetters. Posts on Instagram or Facebook can quickly increase awareness about new trends in fashion, which subsequently may create high demand for specific items or brands,[35] new "buy now button" technology can link these styles with direct sales.
+
+Machine vision technology has been developed to track how fashions spread through society. The industry can now see the direct correlation on how fashion shows influence street-chic outfits. The effects can now be quantified and provide valuable feedback to fashion houses, designers, and consumers regarding trends.[36]
+
+Military technology has played an essential role in the fashion industry. The camouflage pattern in clothing was developed to help military personnel be less visible to enemy forces. A trend emerged in the 1960s, and camouflage fabric was introduced to streetwear. The camouflage fabric trend disappeared and resurfaced several times since then. Camouflage started to appear in high fashion by the 1990s.[37] Designers such as Valentino, Dior, and Dolce & Gabbana combined camouflage into their runway and ready-to-wear collections.
+
+Fashion relates to social and cultural context of an environment. According to Matika,[38] "Elements of popular culture become fused when a person's trend is associated with a preference for a genre of music…like music, news or literature, fashion has been fused into everyday lives." Fashion is not only seen as pure aesthetic values; fashion is also a medium for performers to create an overall atmosphere and express their opinions altogether through music video. The latest music video ‘Formation’ by Beyoncé, according to Carlos,[39] "The pop star pays homage to her Creole root.... tracing the roots of the Louisiana cultural nerve center from the post-abolition era to present day, Beyoncé catalogs the evolution of the city's vibrant style and its tumultuous history all at once. Atop a New Orleans police car in a red-and-white Gucci high-collar dress and combat boots, she sits among the ruins of Hurricane Katrina, immediately implanting herself in the biggest national debate on police brutality and race relations in modern day."
+
+Runway show is a reflection of fashion trend and a designer's thought. For designer like Vivienne Westwood, runway shows are a platform for her voice on politics and current events. For her AW15 menswear show, according to Water,[40] "where models with severely bruised faces channeled eco-warriors on a mission to save the planet." Another recent example is a staged feminist protest march for Chanel's SS15 show, rioting models chanting words of empowerment with signs like "Feminist but feminine" and "Ladies first." According to Water,[40] "The show tapped into Chanel's long history of championing female independence: founder Coco Chanel was a trailblazer for liberating the female body in the post-WWI era, introducing silhouettes that countered the restrictive corsets then in favour."
+
+With increasing environmental awareness, the economic imperative to "Spend now, think later" is getting increasingly scrutinized.[41] Today's consumer tends to be more mindful about consumption, looking for just enough and better, more durable options. People have also become more conscious of the impact their everyday consumption has on the environment and society, and these initiatives are often described as a move towards sustainable fashion, yet critics argue a circular economy based on growth is an oxymoron, or an increasing spiral of consumption, rather than a utopian cradle-to-cradle circular solution.
+
+In today's linear economical system, manufacturers extract resources from the earth to make products that will soon be discarded in landfills, on the other hand, under the circular model, the production of goods operates like systems in nature, where the waste and demise of a substance becomes the food and source of growth for something new. Companies such as MUD Jeans, which is based in the Netherlands employs a leasing scheme for jeans. This Dutch company "represents a new consuming philosophy that is about using instead of owning," according to MUD's website. The concept also protects the company from volatile cotton prices. Consumers pay €7.50 a month for a pair of jeans; after a year, they can return the jeans to Mud, trade them for a new pair and start another year-long lease, or keep them. MUD is responsible for any repairs during the lease period.[41] Another ethical fashion company, Patagonia set up the first multi-seller branded store on EBay in order to facilitate secondhand sales; consumers who take the Common Threads pledge can sell in this store and have their gear listed on Patagonia.com's "Used Gear" section.[41]
+
+Consumption as a share of gross domestic product in China has fallen for six decades, from 76 percent in 1952 to 28 percent in 2011. China plans to reduce tariffs on a number of consumer goods and expand its 72-hour transit visa plan to more cities in an effort to stimulate domestic consumption.[42]
+
+The announcement of import tax reductions follows changes in June 2015, when the government cut the tariffs on clothing, cosmetics and various other goods by half. Among the changes — easier tax refunds for overseas shoppers and accelerated openings of more duty-free shops in cities covered by the 72-hour visa scheme. The 72-hour visa was introduced in Beijing and Shanghai in January 2013 and has been extended to 18 Chinese cities.[42]
+
+According to reports at the same time, Chinese consumer spending in other countries such as Japan has slowed even though the yen has dropped.[43] There is clearly a trend in the next 5 years that the domestic fashion market will show an increase.
+
+China is an interesting market for fashion retail as Chinese consumers' motivation to shop for fashion items are unique from Western Audiences.[44] Demographics have limited association with shopping motivation, with occupation, income and education level having no impact; unlike in Western Countries. Chinese high-street shoppers prefer adventure and social shopping, while online shoppers are motivated by idea shopping. Another difference is how gratification and idea shopping influence spending over ¥1k per month on fashion items, and regular spending influenced by value shopping.
+
+Consumers of different groups have varying needs and demands. Factors taken into consideration when thinking of consumers' needs include key demographics.[45]
+To understand consumers' needs and predict fashion trends, fashion companies have to do market research [46] There are two research methods: primary and secondary.[47] Secondary methods are taking other information that has already been collected, for example using a book or an article for research. Primary research is collecting data through surveys, interviews, observation, and/or focus groups. Primary research often focuses on large sample sizes to determine customer's motivations to shop.[44]
+
+Benefits of primary research is specific information about a fashion brand's consumer is explored. Surveys are helpful tools; questions can be open-ended or closed-ended. A negative factor surveys and interviews present is that the answers can be biased, due to wording in the survey or on face-to-face interactions. Focus groups, about 8 to 12 people, can be beneficial because several points can be addressed in depth. However, there are drawbacks to this tactic, too. With such a small sample size, it is hard to know if the greater public would react the same way as the focus group.[47] Observation can really help a company gain insight on what a consumer truly wants. There is less of a bias because consumers are just performing their daily tasks, not necessarily realizing they are being observed. For example, observing the public by taking street style photos of people, the consumer did not get dressed in the morning knowing that would have their photo taken necessarily. They just wear what they would normally wear. Through observation patterns can be seen, helping trend forecasters know what their target market needs and wants.
+
+Knowing the needs of the consumers will increase a fashion companies' sales and profits. Through research and studying the consumers' lives the needs of the customer can be obtained and help fashion brands know what trends the consumers are ready for.
+
+Consumption is driven not only by need, the symbolic meaning for consumers is also a factor. Consumers engaging in symbolic consumption may develop a sense of self over an extended period of time as various objects are collected as part of the process of establishing their identity and, when the symbolic meaning is shared in a social group, to communicate their identity to others. For teenagers consumption plays a role in distinguishing the child self from the adult. Researchers have found that the fashion choices of teenagers are used for self-expression and also to recognize other teens who wear similar clothes. The symbolic association of clothing items can link individuals personality and interests, with music as a prominent factor influencing fashion decisions.[48]
+
+The media plays a significant role when it comes to fashion. For instance, an important part of fashion is fashion journalism. Editorial critique, guidelines, and commentary can be found on television and in magazines, newspapers, fashion websites, social networks, and fashion blogs. In recent years, fashion blogging and YouTube videos have become a major outlet for spreading trends and fashion tips, creating an online culture of sharing one's style on a website or Instagram account. Through these media outlets readers and viewers all over the world can learn about fashion, making it very accessible.[49] In addition to fashion journalism, another media platform that is important in fashion industry is advertisement. Advertisements provide information to audiences and promote the sales of products and services. Fashion industry utilizes advertisements to attract consumers and promote its products to generate sales. Few decades ago when technology was still underdeveloped, advertisements heavily relied on radio, magazines, billboards, and newspapers.[50] These days, there are more various ways in advertisements such as television ads, online-based ads using internet websites, and posts, videos, and live streaming in social media platforms.
+
+At the beginning of the 20th century, fashion magazines began to include photographs of various fashion designs and became even more influential than in the past.[51] In cities throughout the world these magazines were greatly sought after and had a profound effect on public taste in clothing. Talented illustrators drew exquisite fashion plates for the publications which covered the most recent developments in fashion and beauty. Perhaps the most famous of these magazines was La Gazette du Bon Ton, which was founded in 1912 by Lucien Vogel and regularly published until 1925 (with the exception of the war years).[52]
+
+Vogue, founded in the United States in 1892, has been the longest-lasting and most successful of the hundreds of fashion magazines that have come and gone. Increasing affluence after World War II and, most importantly, the advent of cheap color printing in the 1960s, led to a huge boost in its sales and heavy coverage of fashion in mainstream women's magazines, followed by men's magazines in the 1990s. One such example of Vogue's popularity is the younger version, Teen Vogue, which covers clothing and trends that are targeted more toward the "fashionista on a budget". Haute couture designers followed the trend by starting ready-to-wear and perfume lines which are heavily advertised in the magazines and now dwarf their original couture businesses. A recent development within fashion print media is the rise of text-based and critical magazines which aim to prove that fashion is not superficial, by creating a dialogue between fashion academia and the industry. Examples of this trend are: Fashion Theory (1997) and Vestoj (2009). Television coverage began in the 1950s with small fashion features. In the 1960s and 1970s, fashion segments on various entertainment shows became more frequent, and by the 1980s, dedicated fashion shows such as Fashion Television started to appear. FashionTV was the pioneer in this undertaking and has since grown to become the leader in both Fashion Television and new media channels. The Fashion Industry is beginning to promote their styles through Bloggers on social media's. Vogue specified Chiara Ferragni as "blogger of the moment" due to the rises of followers through her Fashion Blog, that became popular.[53]
+
+A few days after the 2010 Fall Fashion Week in New York City came to a close, The New Islander's Fashion Editor, Genevieve Tax, criticized the fashion industry for running on a seasonal schedule of its own, largely at the expense of real-world consumers. "Because designers release their fall collections in the spring and their spring collections in the fall, fashion magazines such as Vogue always and only look forward to the upcoming season, promoting parkas come September while issuing reviews on shorts in January", she writes. "Savvy shoppers, consequently, have been conditioned to be extremely, perhaps impractically, farsighted with their buying."[54]
+
+The fashion industry has been the subject of numerous films and television shows, including the reality show Project Runway and the drama series Ugly Betty. Specific fashion brands have been featured in film, not only as product placement opportunities, but as bespoke items that have subsequently led to trends in fashion.[55]
+
+Videos in general have been very useful in promoting the fashion industry. This is evident not only from television shows directly spotlighting the fashion industry, but also movies, events and music videos which showcase fashion statements as well as promote specific brands through product placements.
+
+There are some fashion advertisements that were accused of racism and led to boycotts from the customers. Globally known, Swedish fashion brand H&M faced this issue with one of its children's wear advertisements in 2018. A black child wearing a hoodie with a slogan written as "coolest monkey in the jungle" right at the center was featured in the ad. When it was released, it immediate became controversial and even led to boycott. A lot of people including celebrities posted on social media about their resentments towards H&M and refusal to work with and buy its products. H&M issued a statement saying "we apologise to anyone this may have offended", which seemed insincere to some.[56] 
+Another fashion advertisement regarding racism is from GAP, American worldwide clothing brand. GAP collaborated with Ellen DeGeneres in 2016 for the advertisement. It features playful, four young girls where tall white girl is leaning with her arm on a shorter black girl's head. When this ad was released, some viewers harshly criticized that it underlies passive racism. A representative from The Root, black culture magazine commented on the ad that it portrays the message that the black people are undervalued and seen like props for white people to look better.[57] There were different points of views on this issue, some saying that people are being too sensitive, and some getting offended. Regardless of various views and thoughts, GAP replaced the ad to different image and apologized to critics.[58]
+
+Many fashion brands have published ads that were too provocative and sexy to attract customers’ attention. British high fashion brand, Jimmy Choo, was blamed for having sexism in its ad which featured a female British mode wearing the brand's boots. In this two-minute ad, men whistle at a model, walking on the street with red, sleeveless mini dress. This ad gained much backlash and criticism by the viewers since sexual harassment and misconduct were a huge issue during this time and even till now. Many people showed their dismay through social media posts, leading Jimmy Choo to pull down the ad from social media platforms.[59]
+
+French luxury fashion brand Yves Saint Laurent also faced this issue with its print ad shown in Paris in 2017. A female model is wearing a fishnet tights with roller-skate stilettos, almost lying down with her legs opened in front of the camera. This advertisement brought harsh comments from the viewers and French advertising organization directors for going against the advertising codes related to "respect for decency, dignity and those prohibiting submission, violence or dependence, as well as the use of stereotypes." They even said that this ad is causing "mental harm to adolescents."[60] Lot of sarcastic comments were made in social media about the ad and the poster was removed from the city.
+
+Fashion public relations involves being in touch with a company's audiences and creating strong relationships with them, reaching out to media and initiating messages that project positive images of the company.[61] Social media plays an important role in modern-day fashion public relations; enabling practitioners to reach a wide range of consumers through various platforms.[62]
+
+Building brand awareness and credibility is a key implication of good public relations. In some cases, great hype is built about new designers' collections before they are released into the market, due to the immense exposure generated by practitioners.[63] Social media, such as blogs, micro blogs, podcasts, photo and video sharing sites have all become increasingly important to fashion public relations.[64] The interactive nature of these platforms allows practitioners to engage and communicate with the public in real time, and tailor their clients' brand or campaign messages to the target audience. With blogging platforms such as Instagram, Tumblr, Wordpress, and other sharing sites, bloggers have emerged as expert fashion commentators, shaping brands and having a great impact on what is ‘on trend’.[65] Women in the fashion public relations industry such as Sweaty Betty PR founder Roxy Jacenko and Oscar de la Renta's PR girl Erika Bearman, have acquired copious followers on their social media sites, by providing a brand identity and a behind the scenes look into the companies they work for.
+
+Social media is changing the way practitioners deliver messages,[16] as they are concerned with the media, and also customer relationship building.[66] PR practitioners must provide effective communication among all platforms, in order to engage the fashion public in an industry socially connected via online shopping.[67] Consumers have the ability to share their purchases on their personal social media pages (such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), and if practitioners deliver the brand message effectively and meet the needs of its public, word-of-mouth publicity will be generated and potentially provide a wide reach for the designer and their products.
+
+Anthropology, the study of culture and human societies, studies fashion by asking why certain styles are deemed socially appropriate and others are not. A certain way is chosen and that becomes the fashion as defined by a certain people as a whole, so if a particular style has a meaning in an already occurring set of beliefs that style will become fashion.[68] According to Ted Polhemus and Lynn Procter, fashion can be described as adornment, of which there are two types: fashion and anti-fashion. Through the capitalization and commoditisation of clothing, accessories, and shoes, etc., what once constituted anti-fashion becomes part of fashion as the lines between fashion and anti-fashion are blurred.[69]
+
+The definition of fashion and anti-fashion is as follows: Anti-fashion is fixed and changes little over time. Anti-fashion is different depending on the cultural or social group one is associated with or where one lives, but within that group or locality the style changes little. Fashion is the exact opposite of anti-fashion. Fashion changes very quickly and is not affiliated with one group or area of the world but is spread out throughout the world wherever people can communicate easily with each other. For example, Queen Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation gown is an example of anti-fashion because it is traditional and does not change over any period whereas a gown from fashion designer Dior's collection of 1953 is fashion because the style will change every season as Dior comes up with a new gown to replace the old one. In the Dior gown the length, cut, fabric, and embroidery of the gown change from season to season. Anti-fashion is concerned with maintaining the status quo while fashion is concerned with social mobility. Time is expressed in terms of continuity in anti-fashion and as change in fashion. Fashion has changing modes of adornment while anti-fashion has fixed modes of adornment. Indigenous and peasant modes of adornment are an example of anti-fashion. Change in fashion is part of the larger system and is structured to be a deliberate change in style.[70]
+
+Today, people in rich countries are linked to people in poor countries through the commoditization and consumption of what is called fashion. People work long hours in one area of the globe to produce things that people in another part of the globe are anxious to consume. An example of this is the chain of production and consumption of Nike shoes, which are produced in Taiwan and then purchased in North America. At the production end, there is nation-building a hard working ideology that leads people to produce and entices people to consume with a vast amount of goods for the offering[clarification needed]. Commodities are no longer just utilitarian but are fashionable, be they running shoes or sweat suits.[71]
+
+The change from anti-fashion to fashion because of the influence of western consumer-driven civilization can be seen in eastern Indonesia. The ikat textiles of the Ngada area of eastern Indonesia are changing because of modernization and development. Traditionally, in the Ngada area there was no idea similar to that of the Western idea of fashion, but anti-fashion in the form of traditional textiles and ways to adorn oneself were widely popular. Textiles in Indonesia have played many roles for the local people. Textiles defined a person's rank and status; certain textiles indicated being part of the ruling class. People expressed their ethnic identity and social hierarchy through textiles. Because some Indonesians bartered ikat textiles for food, the textiles constituted economic goods, and as some textile design motifs had spiritual religious meanings, textiles were also a way to communicate religious messages.[72]
+
+In eastern Indonesia, both the production and use of traditional textiles have been transformed as the production, use and value associated with textiles have changed due to modernization. In the past, women produced the textiles either for home consumption or to trade with others. Today, this has changed as most textiles are not being produced at home. Western goods are considered modern and are valued more than traditional goods, including the sarong, which retain a lingering association with colonialism. Now, sarongs are used only for rituals and ceremonial occasions, whereas western clothes are worn to church or government offices. Civil servants working in urban areas are more likely than peasants to make the distinction between western and traditional clothes. Following Indonesia's independence from the Dutch, people increasingly started buying factory made shirts and sarongs. In textile-producing areas the growing of cotton and production of naturally colored thread became obsolete. Traditional motifs on textiles are no longer considered the property of a certain social class or age group. Wives of government officials are promoting the use of traditional textiles in the form of western garments such as skirts, vests and blouses. This trend is also being followed by the general populace, and whoever can afford to hire a tailor is doing so to stitch traditional ikat textiles into western clothes. Thus, traditional textiles are now fashion goods and are no longer confined to the black, white and brown colour palette but come in array of colours. Traditional textiles are also being used in interior decorations and to make handbags, wallets and other accessories, which are considered fashionable by civil servants and their families. There is also a booming tourist trade in the eastern Indonesian city of Kupang where international as well as domestic tourists are eager to purchase traditionally printed western goods.[73]
+
+The use of traditional textiles for fashion is becoming big business in eastern Indonesia, but these traditional textiles are losing their ethnic identity markers and are being used as an item of fashion.[74]
+
+In the fashion industry, intellectual property is not enforced as it is within the film industry and music industry. Robert Glariston, an intellectual property expert, mentioned in a fashion seminar held in LA[which?] that "Copyright law regarding clothing is a current hot-button issue in the industry. We often have to draw the line between designers being inspired by a design and those outright stealing it in different places."[75] To take inspiration from others' designs contributes to the fashion industry's ability to establish clothing trends. For the past few years, WGSN has been a dominant source of fashion news and forecasts in encouraging fashion brands worldwide to be inspired by one another. Enticing consumers to buy clothing by establishing new trends is, some have argued, a key component of the industry's success. Intellectual property rules that interfere with this process of trend-making would, in this view, be counter-productive. On the other hand, it is often argued that the blatant theft of new ideas, unique designs, and design details by larger companies is what often contributes to the failure of many smaller or independent design companies.
+
+Since fakes are distinguishable by their poorer quality, there is still a demand for luxury goods, and as only a trademark or logo can be copyrighted, many fashion brands make this one of the most visible aspects of the garment or accessory. In handbags, especially, the designer's brand may be woven into the fabric (or the lining fabric) from which the bag is made, making the brand an intrinsic element of the bag.
+
+In 2005, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a conference calling for stricter intellectual property enforcement within the fashion industry to better protect small and medium businesses and promote competitiveness within the textile and clothing industries.[76][77]
+
+There has been great debate about politics' place in fashion and traditionally, the fashion industry has maintained a rather apolitical stance.[78] Considering the U.S.'s political climate in the surrounding months of the 2016 presidential election, during 2017 fashion weeks in London, Milan, New York, Paris and São Paulo amongst others, many designers took the opportunity to take political stances leveraging their platforms and influence to reach the masses.[79][80]
+
+Aiming to "amplify a greater message of unity, inclusion, diversity, and feminism in a fashion space", Mara Hoffman invited the founders of the Women's March on Washington to open her show which featured modern silhouettes of utilitarian wear, described by critics as "Made for a modern warrior" and "Clothing for those who still have work to do".[81] Prabal Gurung debuted his collection of T-shirts featuring slogans such as "The Future is Female", "We Will Not Be Silenced", and "Nevertheless She Persisted", with proceeds going to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Gurung's own charity, "Shikshya Foundation Nepal".[78] Similarly, The Business of Fashion launched the #TiedTogether movement on Social Media, encouraging member of the industry from editors to models, to wear a white bandana advocating for "unity, solidarity, and inclusiveness during fashion week".[82]
+
+Fashion may be used to promote a cause, such as to promote healthy behavior,[83] to raise money for a cancer cure,[84] or to raise money for local charities[85] such as the Juvenile Protective Association[86] or a children's hospice.[87]
+
+One fashion cause is trashion, which is using trash to make clothes, jewelry, and other fashion items in order to promote awareness of pollution. There are a number of modern trashion artists such as Marina DeBris, Ann Wizer,[88] and Nancy Judd.[89]
+
+African-Americans have used fashion through the years, to express themselves and their ideas.[90] It has grown and developed with time. African-American influencers often have been known to start trends though modern day social media, and even in past years they have been able to reach others with their fashion and style.
+
+Celebrities like Rihanna, Lupita Nyong'o, Zendaya, and Michelle Obama have been a few of the many fashion idols in the black female community. For men, Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, and Ice Cube have also helped define modern day fashion for black men. Today's fashion scene is not just clothes, but also hair and makeup. Recent trends have included the embracing of natural hair, traditional clothing worn with modern clothing, or traditional patterns used in modern clothing styles. All of these trends come with the long existing and persevering movement of "Black is Beautiful".
+
+In the mid to end of the 1900s, African American style changed and developed with the times. Around the 1950s is really when the black community was able to create their own distinct styles. The term "Sunday attire" was coined, communities emphasized "Correct" dress, it was especially important when "stepping out" for social occasions with community members, a habit that continues in the early 2000s.[91] Hair-dos and hairstyles also became a fashion statement, for example the "conk" which is hair that is slightly flattened and waved.[91] Afros also emerged and they were often used to symbolize the rejection of white beauty standards at the time.[92] Around the 1970s is when flashy costumes began to appear and black artists really started to define their presences through fashion. Around this time is also when movements started using fashion as one of their outlets.[92]
+
+Black activists and supporters used fashion to express their solidarity and support of this civil rights movement. Supporters adorned symbolic clothing, accessories and hairstyles, usually native to Africa. Politics and fashion were fused together during this time and the use of these symbolic fashion statements sent a message to America and the rest of the world that African Americans were proud of their heritage.[92] They aimed to send an even stronger message that black is beautiful and they were not afraid to embrace their identities.[92] An example would the Kente cloth, it is a brightly colored strip of cloth that is stitched and woven together to create different accessories.[92] This woven cloth of brightly colored strips of fabric became a strong symbolic representation of pride in African identity for African Americans of the 1960s and later. It was developed into what is called a dashiki, a flowing, loose fitting, tunic style shirt. This cloth became one of the most notorious symbols of this revolution.[93]
+
+The Black Panther Party (BPP) was an essential piece of the Black Power movement that allowed members that were involved advocate for the African American race in different subjects like equality and politics. The BPP members wore a very distinctive uniform: a black leather jacket, black pants, light blue shirts, a black beret, an afro, dark sunglasses, and usually a fist in the air.[94] Their image gave off a very militant like feel to it. This notable uniform was established in 1996, but a different uniform was still in place before; just the sunglasses and leather jackets.[94] Each member wore this uniform at events, rallies, and in their day-today life. Very few members changed the essential parts of the outfit, but some added personal touches such as necklaces or other jewelry that was usually were a part of African culture.[93] The Black Panther uniform did succeeded in intimidating enemies and onlookers and clearly sent a message of black pride and power even though the initial intention of this party was to communicate solidarity among the Black Panther Party members.[94]
+
+Since the 1970s, fashion models of color, especially black men and women, have experienced an increase in discrimination in the fashion industry. In the years from 1970 to 1990, black designers and models were very successful, but as the 1990s came to an end, the fashion aesthetic changed and it did not include black models or designers.[95] In today's fashion, black models, influencers, and designers account for one of the smallest percentages of the industry.[95] There are many theories about this lack of diversity, that it can be attributed to the economic differences usually associated with race and class, or it can reflect the differences in arts schooling given to mostly black populated schools, and also blatant racism.
+
+A report from New York Fashion (Spring 2015) week found that while 79.69% of models on the runway were white, only 9.75% of models were black, 7.67% were Asian, and 2.12% were Latina. The lack of diversity also accounts for not only designers but models too, out of four hundred and seventy members of The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) only twelve of the members are black.[96] From the same study on New York Fashion Week, it was shown that only 2.7% of the 260 designers presented were black men, and an even smaller percentage were black female designers.[96] Even the relationship between independent designers and retailers can show the racial gap, only 1% of designers stocked at department stores being people of color. It was also found that in editorial spreads, over eighty percent of models pictured were white and only nine percent were black models. These numbers have stayed stagnant over the past few years.[96]
+
+Many fashion designers have come under fire over the years for what is known as tokenism. Designer or editors will add one or two members on an underrepresented group to help them appear as inclusive and diverse, and to also help them give the illusion that they have equality.[95] This idea of tokenism helps designers avoid accusations of racism, sexism, body shaming, etc.[95]
+
+There are many examples of cultural appropriation in fashion. In many instances, designers can be found using aspects of culture inappropriately, in most cases taking traditional clothing from middle eastern, African, and Hispanic culture and adding it to their runway fashion.[97] Some examples are in a 2018 Gucci runway show, white models wore Sikh headdresses, causing a lot of backlash. Victoria's secret was also under fire for putting traditional native headdresses on their models during a lingerie runway show. Marc Jacobs sent down models sporting dreadlocks in his spring 2017 New York Fashion Week show, also facing immense criticism.[98]

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+An artery (plural  arteries) (from Greek  ἀρτηρία (artēria), meaning 'windpipe, artery')[1] is a blood vessel that takes blood  away from the human heart to all parts of the body (tissues, lungs, Brain etc.). Most arteries carry oxygenated blood; the two exceptions are the pulmonary and the umbilical arteries, which carry deoxygenated blood to the organs that oxygenate it (lungs). The effective arterial blood volume is that extracellular fluid which fills the arterial system.
+
+The arteries are part of the circulatory system, which is responsible for the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to all cells, as well as the removal of carbon dioxide and waste products, the maintenance of optimum blood pH, and the circulation of proteins and cells of the human immune system
+
+
+
+The anatomy of arteries can be separated into gross anatomy, at the macroscopic level, and microanatomy, which must be studied with a microscope. The arterial system of the human body is divided into systemic arteries, carrying blood from the heart to the whole body, and pulmonary arteries, carrying deoxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs.
+
+The outermost layer of an artery (or vein) is known as the tunica externa, also known as tunica adventitia, and is composed of collagen fibers and elastic tissue - with the largest arteries containing vasa vasorum (small blood vessels that supply large blood vessels).[2] Most of the layers have a clear boundary between them, however the tunica externa has a boundary that is ill-defined. Normally its boundary is considered when it meets or touches the connective tissue.[3]  Inside this layer is the tunica media, or media, which is made up of smooth muscle cells, elastic tissue (also called connective tissue proper) and collagen fibres.[2] The innermost layer, which is in direct contact with the flow of blood, is the tunica intima, commonly called the intima. The elastic tissue allows the artery to bend and fit through places in the body. This layer is mainly made up of endothelial cells (and a supporting layer of elastin rich collagen in elastic arteries). The hollow internal cavity in which the blood flows is called the lumen.
+
+Arterial formation begins and ends when endothelial cells begin to express arterial specific genes, such as ephrin B2.[4]
+
+Arteries form part of the circulatory system. They carry blood that is oxygenated after it has been pumped from the heart. Coronary arteries also aid the heart in pumping blood by sending oxygenated blood to the heart, allowing the muscles to function. Arteries carry oxygenated blood away from the heart to the tissues, except for pulmonary arteries, which carry blood to the lungs for oxygenation (usually veins carry deoxygenated blood to the heart but the pulmonary veins carry oxygenated blood as well).[5]  There are two types of unique arteries. The pulmonary artery carries blood from the heart to the lungs, where it receives oxygen. It is unique because the blood in it is not "oxygenated", as it has not yet passed through the lungs. The other unique artery is the umbilical artery, which carries deoxygenated blood from a fetus to its mother.
+
+Arteries have a blood pressure higher than other parts of the circulatory system. The pressure in arteries varies during the cardiac cycle. It is highest when the heart contracts and lowest when heart relaxes. The variation in pressure produces a pulse, which can be felt in different areas of the body, such as the radial pulse. Arterioles have the greatest collective influence on both local blood flow and on overall blood pressure. They are the primary "adjustable nozzles" in the blood system, across which the greatest pressure drop occurs. The combination of heart output (cardiac output) and systemic vascular resistance, which refers to the collective resistance of all of the body's arterioles, are the principal determinants of arterial blood pressure at any given moment.
+
+Arteries have the highest pressure and have narrow lumen diameter. It consists of the three tunics: Tunica media, intima and externa.
+
+Systemic arteries are the arteries (including the peripheral arteries), of the systemic circulation, which is the part of the cardiovascular system that carries oxygenated blood away from the heart, to the body, and returns deoxygenated blood back to the heart. Systemic arteries can be subdivided into two types—muscular and elastic—according to the relative compositions of elastic and muscle tissue in their tunica media as well as their size and the makeup of the internal and external elastic lamina. The larger arteries (>10 mm diameter) are generally elastic and the smaller ones (0.1–10 mm) tend to be muscular. Systemic arteries deliver blood to the arterioles, and then to the capillaries, where nutrients and gases are exchanged.
+
+After travelling from the aorta, blood travels through peripheral arteries into smaller arteries called arterioles, and eventually to capillaries. Arterioles help in regulating blood pressure by the variable contraction of the smooth muscle of their walls, and deliver blood to the capillaries.
+
+The aorta is the root systemic artery (i.e., main artery). In humans, it receives blood directly from the left ventricle of the heart via the aortic valve. As the aorta branches, and these arteries branch in turn, they become successively smaller in diameter, down to the arterioles. The arterioles supply capillaries, which in turn empty into venules. The very first branches off of the aorta are the coronary arteries, which supply blood to the heart muscle itself. These are followed by the branches off the aortic arch, namely the brachiocephalic artery, the left common carotid, and the left subclavian arteries.
+
+The capillaries are the smallest of the blood vessels and are part of the microcirculation. The microvessels have a width of a single cell in diameter to aid in the fast and easy diffusion of gases, sugars and nutrients to surrounding tissues. Capillaries have no smooth muscle surrounding them and have a diameter less than that of red blood cells; a red blood cell is typically 7 micrometers outside diameter, capillaries typically 5 micrometers inside diameter. The red blood cells must distort in order to pass through the capillaries.
+
+These small diameters of the capillaries provide a relatively large surface area for the exchange of gases and nutrients.
+
+Systemic arterial pressures are generated by the forceful contractions of the heart's left ventricle. High blood pressure is a factor in causing arterial damage. Healthy resting arterial pressures are relatively low, mean systemic pressures typically being under 100 mmHg (1.9 psi; 13 kPa) above surrounding atmospheric pressure (about 760 mmHg, 14.7 psi, 101 kPa at sea level). To withstand and adapt to the pressures within, arteries are surrounded by varying thicknesses of smooth muscle which have extensive elastic and inelastic connective tissues. The pulse pressure, being the difference between systolic and diastolic pressure, is determined primarily by the amount of blood ejected by each heart beat, stroke volume, versus the volume and elasticity of the major arteries.
+
+A  blood squirt also known as an arterial gush is the effect when an artery is cut due to the higher arterial pressures. Blood is spurted out at a rapid, intermittent rate, that coincides with the heartbeat. The amount of blood loss can be copious, can occur very rapidly, and be life-threatening.[6]
+
+Over time, factors such as elevated arterial blood sugar (particularly as seen in diabetes mellitus), lipoprotein, cholesterol, high blood pressure, stress and smoking, are all implicated in damaging both the endothelium and walls of the arteries, resulting in atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is a disease marked by the hardening of arteries. This is caused by an atheroma or plaque in the artery wall and is a build-up of cell debris, that contain lipids, (cholesterol and fatty acids), calcium[7][8] and a variable amount of fibrous connective tissue.
+
+Accidental intraarterial injection either iatrogenically or through recreational drug use can cause symptoms such as intense pain, paresthesia and necrosis. It usually causes permanent damage to the limb;  often amputation is necessary.[9]
+
+Among the Ancient Greeks, the arteries were considered to be "air holders" that were responsible for the transport of air to the tissues and were connected to the trachea. This was as a result of finding the arteries of cadavers devoid of blood.
+
+In medieval times, it was recognized that arteries carried a fluid, called "spiritual blood" or "vital spirits", considered to be different from the contents of the veins. This theory went back to Galen. In the late medieval period, the trachea,[10] and ligaments were also called "arteries".[11]
+
+William Harvey described and popularized the modern concept of the circulatory system and the roles of arteries and veins in the 17th century.
+
+Alexis Carrel at the beginning of the 20th century first described the technique for vascular suturing and anastomosis and successfully performed many organ transplantations in animals; he thus actually opened the way to modern vascular surgery that was previously limited to vessels’ permanent ligation.
+
+Theodor Kocher reported that atherosclerosis often developed in patients who had undergone a thyroidectomy and suggested that hypothyroidism favors atherosclerosis, which was, in 1900s autopsies, seen more frequently in iodine-deficient Austrians compared to Icelanders, who are not deficient in iodine. Turner reported the effectiveness of iodide and dried extracts of thyroid in the prevention of atherosclerosis in laboratory rabbits.[12][citation needed]
+
+ocular group: central retinal

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+Fashion is a popular aesthetic expression at a particular time and place and in a specific context, especially in clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body proportions.[1] Whereas a trend often connotes a peculiar aesthetic expression and often lasting shorter than a season, fashion is a distinctive and industry-supported expression traditionally tied to the fashion season and collections.[2] Style is an expression that lasts over many seasons and is often connected to cultural movements and social markers, symbols, class, and culture (ex. Baroque, Rococo, etc.). According to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, fashion connotes "the latest fashion, the latest difference."[3]
+
+Even though they are often used together, the term fashion differs from clothes and costumes, where the first describes the material and technical garment, whereas the second has been relegated to special senses like fancy-dress or masquerade wear. Fashion instead describes the social and temporal system that "activates" dress as a social signifier in a certain time and context. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben connects fashion to the current intensity of the qualitative moment, to the temporal aspect the Greek called kairos, whereas clothes belong to the quantitative, to what the Greek called Chronos.[4]
+
+Exclusive brands aspire for the label haute couture, but the term is technically limited to members of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris.[2] It is more aspirational and inspired by art, culture and movement. It is extremely exclusive in nature.
+
+With increasing mass-production of consumer commodities at Lower prices, and with global reach, sustainability has become an urgent issue amongst politicians, brands, and consumers.[5]
+
+Early Western travelers, traveling to India, Persia, Turkey, or China, would frequently remark on the absence of change in fashion in those countries. The Japanese shōgun's secretary bragged (not completely accurately) to a Spanish visitor in 1609 that Japanese clothing had not changed in over a thousand years.[6] However, there is considerable evidence in Ming China of rapidly changing fashions in Chinese clothing.[7] Changes in costume often took place at times of economic or social change, as occurred in ancient Rome and the medieval Caliphate, followed by a long period without significant changes. In 8th-century Moorish Spain, the musician Ziryab introduced to Córdoba[8][unreliable source][9] sophisticated clothing-styles based on seasonal and daily fashions from his native Baghdad, modified by his inspiration. Similar changes in fashion occurred in the 11th century in the Middle East following the arrival of the Turks, who introduced clothing styles from Central Asia and the Far East.[10]
+
+Additionally, there is a long history of fashion in West Africa.[11] The Cloth was used as a form of currency in trade with the Portuguese and Dutch as early as the 16th Century.[11] Locally produced cloth and cheaper European imports were assembled into new styles to accommodate the growing elite class of West Africans and resident gold and slave traders.[11] There was an exceptionally strong tradition of cloth-weaving in Oyo and the areas inhabited by the Igbo people.[11]
+
+The beginning in Europe of continual and increasingly rapid change in clothing styles can be fairly reliably dated. Historians, including James Laver and Fernand Braudel, date the start of Western fashion in clothing to the middle of the 14th century,[12][13] though they tend to rely heavily on contemporary imagery[14] and illuminated manuscripts were not common before the fourteenth century.[15] The most dramatic early change in fashion was a sudden drastic shortening and tightening of the male over-garment from calf-length to barely covering the buttocks,[16] sometimes accompanied with stuffing in the chest to make it look bigger. This created the distinctive Western outline of a tailored top worn over leggings or trousers.
+
+The pace of change accelerated considerably in the following century, and women's and men's fashion, especially in the dressing and adorning of the hair, became equally complex. Art historians are, therefore, able to use fashion with confidence and precision to date images, often to within five years, particularly in the case of images from the 15th century. Initially, changes in fashion led to a fragmentation across the upper classes of Europe of what had previously been a very similar style of dressing and the subsequent development of distinctive national styles. These national styles remained very different until a counter-movement in the 17th to 18th centuries imposed similar styles once again, mostly originating from Ancien Régime France.[17] Though the rich usually led fashion, the increasing affluence of early modern Europe led to the bourgeoisie and even peasants following trends at a distance, but still uncomfortably close for the elites – a factor that Fernand Braudel regards as one of the main motors of changing fashion.[18]
+
+In the 16th century, national differences were at their most pronounced. Ten 16th century portraits of German or Italian gentlemen may show ten entirely different hats. Albrecht Dürer illustrated the differences in his actual (or composite) contrast of Nuremberg and Venetian fashions at the close of the 15th century (illustration, right). The "Spanish style" of the late 16th century began the move back to synchronicity among upper-class Europeans, and after a struggle in the mid-17th century, French styles decisively took over leadership, a process completed in the 18th century.[20]
+
+Though different textile colors and patterns changed from year to year,[21] the cut of a gentleman's coat and the length of his waistcoat, or the pattern to which a lady's dress was cut, changed more slowly. Men's fashions were primarily derived from military models, and changes in a European male silhouette were galvanized in theaters of European war where gentleman officers had opportunities to make notes of different styles such as the "Steinkirk" cravat or necktie.
+
+Though there had been distribution of dressed dolls from France since the 16th century and Abraham Bosse had produced engravings of fashion in the 1620s, the pace of change picked up in the 1780s with increased publication of French engravings illustrating the latest Paris styles. By 1800, all Western Europeans were dressing alike (or thought they were); local variation became first a sign of provincial culture and later a badge of the conservative peasant.[22]
+
+Although tailors and dressmakers were no doubt responsible for many innovations, and the textile industry indeed led many trends, the history of fashion design is generally understood to date from 1858 when the English-born Charles Frederick Worth opened the first authentic haute couture house in Paris. The Haute house was the name established by the government for the fashion houses that met the standards of the industry. These fashion houses have to adhere to standards such as keeping at least twenty employees engaged in making the clothes, showing two collections per year at fashion shows, and presenting a certain number of patterns to costumers.[23] Since then, the idea of the fashion designer as a celebrity in his or her own right has become increasingly dominant.[24]
+
+Although aspects of fashion can be feminine or masculine, some trends are androgynous.[25] The idea of unisex dressing originated in the 1960s when designers such as Pierre Cardin and Rudi Gernreich created garments, such as stretch jersey tunics or leggings, meant to be worn by both males and females. The impact of unisex expands more broadly to encompass various themes in fashion, including androgyny, mass-market retail, and conceptual clothing.[26] The fashion trends of the 1970s, such as sheepskin jackets, flight jackets, duffel coats, and unstructured clothing, influenced men to attend social gatherings without a tuxedo jacket and to accessorize in new ways. Some men's styles blended the sensuality and expressiveness despite the conservative trend, the growing gay-rights movement and an emphasis on youth allowed for a new freedom to experiment with style, fabrics such as wool crepe, which had previously been associated with women's attire was used by designers when creating male clothing.[27]
+
+The four major current fashion capitals are acknowledged to be Paris, Milan, New York City, and London, which are all headquarters to the most significant fashion companies and are renowned for their major influence on global fashion. Fashion weeks are held in these cities, where designers exhibit their new clothing collections to audiences. A succession of major designers such as Coco Chanel and Yves Saint-Laurent have kept Paris as the center most watched by the rest of the world, although haute couture is now subsidized by the sale of ready-to-wear collections and perfume using the same branding.
+
+Modern Westerners have a vast number of choices available in the selection of their clothes. What a person chooses to wear can reflect his or her personality or interests. When people who have high cultural status start to wear new or different clothes, a fashion trend may start. People who like or respect these people become influenced by their style and begin wearing similarly styled clothes. Fashions may vary considerably within a society according to age, social class, generation, occupation, and geography and may also vary over time. If an older person dresses according to the fashion young people use, he or she may look ridiculous in the eyes of both young and older people. The terms fashionista and fashion victim refer to someone who slavishly follows current fashions.
+
+One can regard the system of sporting various fashions as a fashion language incorporating various fashion statements using a grammar of fashion. (Compare some of the work of Roland Barthes.)
+
+In recent years, Asian fashion has become increasingly significant in local and global markets. Countries such as China, Japan, India, and Pakistan have traditionally had large textile industries, which have often been drawn upon by Western designers, but now Asian clothing styles are also gaining influence based on their ideas.[28]
+
+The notion of the global fashion industry is a product of the modern age.[29] Before the mid-19th century, most clothing was custom-made. It was handmade for individuals, either as home production or on order from dressmakers and tailors. By the beginning of the 20th century—with the rise of new technologies such as the sewing machine, the rise of global capitalism and the development of the factory system of production, and the proliferation of retail outlets such as department stores—clothing had increasingly come to be mass-produced in standard sizes and sold at fixed prices.
+
+Although the fashion industry developed first in Europe and America, as of 2017[update], it is an international and highly globalized industry, with clothing often designed in one country, manufactured in another, and sold worldwide. For example, an American fashion company might source fabric in China and have the clothes manufactured in Vietnam, finished in Italy, and shipped to a warehouse in the United States for distribution to retail outlets internationally. The fashion industry has long been one of the largest employers in the United States,[29] and it remains so in the 21st century. However, U.S. employment declined considerably as production increasingly moved overseas, especially to China. Because data on the fashion industry typically are reported for national economies and expressed in terms of the industry's many separate sectors, aggregate figures for the world production of textiles and clothing are difficult to obtain. However, by any measure, the clothing industry accounts for a significant share of world economic output.[30]
+The fashion industry consists of four levels:
+
+These levels consist of many separate but interdependent sectors. These sectors are Textile Design and Production, Fashion Design and Manufacturing, Fashion Retailing, Marketing and Merchandising, Fashion Shows, and Media and Marketing. Each sector is devoted to the goal of satisfying consumer demand for apparel under conditions that enable participants in the industry to operate at a profit.[29][29][29][29]
+
+Fashion trends influenced by several factors, including cinema, celebrities, climate, creative explorations, political, economic, social, and technological. Examining these factors is called a PEST analysis. Fashion forecasters can use this information to help determine the growth or decline of a particular trend.
+
+Politics has played a central role in the development of fashion. For example, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy was a fashionable icon of the early 1960s who led the formal dressing trend. By wearing a Chanel suit, a structural Givenchy shift dress, or a soft color Cassini coat with large buttons, it created her elegant look and led a delicate trend.[31]
+
+Furthermore, the political revolution also made much impact on the fashion trend. For example, during the 1960s, the economy had become wealthier, the divorce rate was increasing, and the government approved the birth control pill. This revolution inspired the younger generation to rebellion. In 1964, the leg-baring mini-skirt became a significant fashion trend of the 1960s. Given that fashion designers began to experiment with the shapes of garment, loose sleeveless, micro-minis, flared skirts, and trumpet sleeves. In this case, the mini-skirt trend became an icon of the 1960s.
+
+Moreover, the political movement built an impressive relationship with fashion trends. For instance, during the Vietnam war, the youth of America made a movement that affected the whole country. In the 1960s, the fashion trend was full of fluorescent colors, prints patterns, bell-bottom jeans, fringed vests, and skirt became a protest outfit of the 1960s. This trend was called Hippie, and it is still affecting the current fashion trend.[32]
+
+Technology plays a significant role in most aspects of today's society. Technological influences are growing more apparent in the fashion industry. Advances and new developments are shaping and creating current and future trends.
+
+Developments such as wearable technology have become an essential trend in fashion. They will continue with advances such as clothing constructed with solar panels that charge devices and smart fabrics that enhance wearer comfort by changing color or texture based on environmental changes.[33]
+
+The fashion industry is seeing how 3D printing technology has influenced designers such as Iris Van Herpen and Kimberly Ovitz. These designers have been heavily experimenting and developing 3D printed couture pieces. As the technology grows, the 3D printers will become more accessible to designers and eventually, consumers, which could potentially shape the fashion industry entirely.
+
+Internet technology such as online retailers and social media platforms have given way for trends to be identified, marketed, and sold immediately.[34] Styles and trends are easily conveyed online to attract trendsetters. Posts on Instagram or Facebook can quickly increase awareness about new trends in fashion, which subsequently may create high demand for specific items or brands,[35] new "buy now button" technology can link these styles with direct sales.
+
+Machine vision technology has been developed to track how fashions spread through society. The industry can now see the direct correlation on how fashion shows influence street-chic outfits. The effects can now be quantified and provide valuable feedback to fashion houses, designers, and consumers regarding trends.[36]
+
+Military technology has played an essential role in the fashion industry. The camouflage pattern in clothing was developed to help military personnel be less visible to enemy forces. A trend emerged in the 1960s, and camouflage fabric was introduced to streetwear. The camouflage fabric trend disappeared and resurfaced several times since then. Camouflage started to appear in high fashion by the 1990s.[37] Designers such as Valentino, Dior, and Dolce & Gabbana combined camouflage into their runway and ready-to-wear collections.
+
+Fashion relates to social and cultural context of an environment. According to Matika,[38] "Elements of popular culture become fused when a person's trend is associated with a preference for a genre of music…like music, news or literature, fashion has been fused into everyday lives." Fashion is not only seen as pure aesthetic values; fashion is also a medium for performers to create an overall atmosphere and express their opinions altogether through music video. The latest music video ‘Formation’ by Beyoncé, according to Carlos,[39] "The pop star pays homage to her Creole root.... tracing the roots of the Louisiana cultural nerve center from the post-abolition era to present day, Beyoncé catalogs the evolution of the city's vibrant style and its tumultuous history all at once. Atop a New Orleans police car in a red-and-white Gucci high-collar dress and combat boots, she sits among the ruins of Hurricane Katrina, immediately implanting herself in the biggest national debate on police brutality and race relations in modern day."
+
+Runway show is a reflection of fashion trend and a designer's thought. For designer like Vivienne Westwood, runway shows are a platform for her voice on politics and current events. For her AW15 menswear show, according to Water,[40] "where models with severely bruised faces channeled eco-warriors on a mission to save the planet." Another recent example is a staged feminist protest march for Chanel's SS15 show, rioting models chanting words of empowerment with signs like "Feminist but feminine" and "Ladies first." According to Water,[40] "The show tapped into Chanel's long history of championing female independence: founder Coco Chanel was a trailblazer for liberating the female body in the post-WWI era, introducing silhouettes that countered the restrictive corsets then in favour."
+
+With increasing environmental awareness, the economic imperative to "Spend now, think later" is getting increasingly scrutinized.[41] Today's consumer tends to be more mindful about consumption, looking for just enough and better, more durable options. People have also become more conscious of the impact their everyday consumption has on the environment and society, and these initiatives are often described as a move towards sustainable fashion, yet critics argue a circular economy based on growth is an oxymoron, or an increasing spiral of consumption, rather than a utopian cradle-to-cradle circular solution.
+
+In today's linear economical system, manufacturers extract resources from the earth to make products that will soon be discarded in landfills, on the other hand, under the circular model, the production of goods operates like systems in nature, where the waste and demise of a substance becomes the food and source of growth for something new. Companies such as MUD Jeans, which is based in the Netherlands employs a leasing scheme for jeans. This Dutch company "represents a new consuming philosophy that is about using instead of owning," according to MUD's website. The concept also protects the company from volatile cotton prices. Consumers pay €7.50 a month for a pair of jeans; after a year, they can return the jeans to Mud, trade them for a new pair and start another year-long lease, or keep them. MUD is responsible for any repairs during the lease period.[41] Another ethical fashion company, Patagonia set up the first multi-seller branded store on EBay in order to facilitate secondhand sales; consumers who take the Common Threads pledge can sell in this store and have their gear listed on Patagonia.com's "Used Gear" section.[41]
+
+Consumption as a share of gross domestic product in China has fallen for six decades, from 76 percent in 1952 to 28 percent in 2011. China plans to reduce tariffs on a number of consumer goods and expand its 72-hour transit visa plan to more cities in an effort to stimulate domestic consumption.[42]
+
+The announcement of import tax reductions follows changes in June 2015, when the government cut the tariffs on clothing, cosmetics and various other goods by half. Among the changes — easier tax refunds for overseas shoppers and accelerated openings of more duty-free shops in cities covered by the 72-hour visa scheme. The 72-hour visa was introduced in Beijing and Shanghai in January 2013 and has been extended to 18 Chinese cities.[42]
+
+According to reports at the same time, Chinese consumer spending in other countries such as Japan has slowed even though the yen has dropped.[43] There is clearly a trend in the next 5 years that the domestic fashion market will show an increase.
+
+China is an interesting market for fashion retail as Chinese consumers' motivation to shop for fashion items are unique from Western Audiences.[44] Demographics have limited association with shopping motivation, with occupation, income and education level having no impact; unlike in Western Countries. Chinese high-street shoppers prefer adventure and social shopping, while online shoppers are motivated by idea shopping. Another difference is how gratification and idea shopping influence spending over ¥1k per month on fashion items, and regular spending influenced by value shopping.
+
+Consumers of different groups have varying needs and demands. Factors taken into consideration when thinking of consumers' needs include key demographics.[45]
+To understand consumers' needs and predict fashion trends, fashion companies have to do market research [46] There are two research methods: primary and secondary.[47] Secondary methods are taking other information that has already been collected, for example using a book or an article for research. Primary research is collecting data through surveys, interviews, observation, and/or focus groups. Primary research often focuses on large sample sizes to determine customer's motivations to shop.[44]
+
+Benefits of primary research is specific information about a fashion brand's consumer is explored. Surveys are helpful tools; questions can be open-ended or closed-ended. A negative factor surveys and interviews present is that the answers can be biased, due to wording in the survey or on face-to-face interactions. Focus groups, about 8 to 12 people, can be beneficial because several points can be addressed in depth. However, there are drawbacks to this tactic, too. With such a small sample size, it is hard to know if the greater public would react the same way as the focus group.[47] Observation can really help a company gain insight on what a consumer truly wants. There is less of a bias because consumers are just performing their daily tasks, not necessarily realizing they are being observed. For example, observing the public by taking street style photos of people, the consumer did not get dressed in the morning knowing that would have their photo taken necessarily. They just wear what they would normally wear. Through observation patterns can be seen, helping trend forecasters know what their target market needs and wants.
+
+Knowing the needs of the consumers will increase a fashion companies' sales and profits. Through research and studying the consumers' lives the needs of the customer can be obtained and help fashion brands know what trends the consumers are ready for.
+
+Consumption is driven not only by need, the symbolic meaning for consumers is also a factor. Consumers engaging in symbolic consumption may develop a sense of self over an extended period of time as various objects are collected as part of the process of establishing their identity and, when the symbolic meaning is shared in a social group, to communicate their identity to others. For teenagers consumption plays a role in distinguishing the child self from the adult. Researchers have found that the fashion choices of teenagers are used for self-expression and also to recognize other teens who wear similar clothes. The symbolic association of clothing items can link individuals personality and interests, with music as a prominent factor influencing fashion decisions.[48]
+
+The media plays a significant role when it comes to fashion. For instance, an important part of fashion is fashion journalism. Editorial critique, guidelines, and commentary can be found on television and in magazines, newspapers, fashion websites, social networks, and fashion blogs. In recent years, fashion blogging and YouTube videos have become a major outlet for spreading trends and fashion tips, creating an online culture of sharing one's style on a website or Instagram account. Through these media outlets readers and viewers all over the world can learn about fashion, making it very accessible.[49] In addition to fashion journalism, another media platform that is important in fashion industry is advertisement. Advertisements provide information to audiences and promote the sales of products and services. Fashion industry utilizes advertisements to attract consumers and promote its products to generate sales. Few decades ago when technology was still underdeveloped, advertisements heavily relied on radio, magazines, billboards, and newspapers.[50] These days, there are more various ways in advertisements such as television ads, online-based ads using internet websites, and posts, videos, and live streaming in social media platforms.
+
+At the beginning of the 20th century, fashion magazines began to include photographs of various fashion designs and became even more influential than in the past.[51] In cities throughout the world these magazines were greatly sought after and had a profound effect on public taste in clothing. Talented illustrators drew exquisite fashion plates for the publications which covered the most recent developments in fashion and beauty. Perhaps the most famous of these magazines was La Gazette du Bon Ton, which was founded in 1912 by Lucien Vogel and regularly published until 1925 (with the exception of the war years).[52]
+
+Vogue, founded in the United States in 1892, has been the longest-lasting and most successful of the hundreds of fashion magazines that have come and gone. Increasing affluence after World War II and, most importantly, the advent of cheap color printing in the 1960s, led to a huge boost in its sales and heavy coverage of fashion in mainstream women's magazines, followed by men's magazines in the 1990s. One such example of Vogue's popularity is the younger version, Teen Vogue, which covers clothing and trends that are targeted more toward the "fashionista on a budget". Haute couture designers followed the trend by starting ready-to-wear and perfume lines which are heavily advertised in the magazines and now dwarf their original couture businesses. A recent development within fashion print media is the rise of text-based and critical magazines which aim to prove that fashion is not superficial, by creating a dialogue between fashion academia and the industry. Examples of this trend are: Fashion Theory (1997) and Vestoj (2009). Television coverage began in the 1950s with small fashion features. In the 1960s and 1970s, fashion segments on various entertainment shows became more frequent, and by the 1980s, dedicated fashion shows such as Fashion Television started to appear. FashionTV was the pioneer in this undertaking and has since grown to become the leader in both Fashion Television and new media channels. The Fashion Industry is beginning to promote their styles through Bloggers on social media's. Vogue specified Chiara Ferragni as "blogger of the moment" due to the rises of followers through her Fashion Blog, that became popular.[53]
+
+A few days after the 2010 Fall Fashion Week in New York City came to a close, The New Islander's Fashion Editor, Genevieve Tax, criticized the fashion industry for running on a seasonal schedule of its own, largely at the expense of real-world consumers. "Because designers release their fall collections in the spring and their spring collections in the fall, fashion magazines such as Vogue always and only look forward to the upcoming season, promoting parkas come September while issuing reviews on shorts in January", she writes. "Savvy shoppers, consequently, have been conditioned to be extremely, perhaps impractically, farsighted with their buying."[54]
+
+The fashion industry has been the subject of numerous films and television shows, including the reality show Project Runway and the drama series Ugly Betty. Specific fashion brands have been featured in film, not only as product placement opportunities, but as bespoke items that have subsequently led to trends in fashion.[55]
+
+Videos in general have been very useful in promoting the fashion industry. This is evident not only from television shows directly spotlighting the fashion industry, but also movies, events and music videos which showcase fashion statements as well as promote specific brands through product placements.
+
+There are some fashion advertisements that were accused of racism and led to boycotts from the customers. Globally known, Swedish fashion brand H&M faced this issue with one of its children's wear advertisements in 2018. A black child wearing a hoodie with a slogan written as "coolest monkey in the jungle" right at the center was featured in the ad. When it was released, it immediate became controversial and even led to boycott. A lot of people including celebrities posted on social media about their resentments towards H&M and refusal to work with and buy its products. H&M issued a statement saying "we apologise to anyone this may have offended", which seemed insincere to some.[56] 
+Another fashion advertisement regarding racism is from GAP, American worldwide clothing brand. GAP collaborated with Ellen DeGeneres in 2016 for the advertisement. It features playful, four young girls where tall white girl is leaning with her arm on a shorter black girl's head. When this ad was released, some viewers harshly criticized that it underlies passive racism. A representative from The Root, black culture magazine commented on the ad that it portrays the message that the black people are undervalued and seen like props for white people to look better.[57] There were different points of views on this issue, some saying that people are being too sensitive, and some getting offended. Regardless of various views and thoughts, GAP replaced the ad to different image and apologized to critics.[58]
+
+Many fashion brands have published ads that were too provocative and sexy to attract customers’ attention. British high fashion brand, Jimmy Choo, was blamed for having sexism in its ad which featured a female British mode wearing the brand's boots. In this two-minute ad, men whistle at a model, walking on the street with red, sleeveless mini dress. This ad gained much backlash and criticism by the viewers since sexual harassment and misconduct were a huge issue during this time and even till now. Many people showed their dismay through social media posts, leading Jimmy Choo to pull down the ad from social media platforms.[59]
+
+French luxury fashion brand Yves Saint Laurent also faced this issue with its print ad shown in Paris in 2017. A female model is wearing a fishnet tights with roller-skate stilettos, almost lying down with her legs opened in front of the camera. This advertisement brought harsh comments from the viewers and French advertising organization directors for going against the advertising codes related to "respect for decency, dignity and those prohibiting submission, violence or dependence, as well as the use of stereotypes." They even said that this ad is causing "mental harm to adolescents."[60] Lot of sarcastic comments were made in social media about the ad and the poster was removed from the city.
+
+Fashion public relations involves being in touch with a company's audiences and creating strong relationships with them, reaching out to media and initiating messages that project positive images of the company.[61] Social media plays an important role in modern-day fashion public relations; enabling practitioners to reach a wide range of consumers through various platforms.[62]
+
+Building brand awareness and credibility is a key implication of good public relations. In some cases, great hype is built about new designers' collections before they are released into the market, due to the immense exposure generated by practitioners.[63] Social media, such as blogs, micro blogs, podcasts, photo and video sharing sites have all become increasingly important to fashion public relations.[64] The interactive nature of these platforms allows practitioners to engage and communicate with the public in real time, and tailor their clients' brand or campaign messages to the target audience. With blogging platforms such as Instagram, Tumblr, Wordpress, and other sharing sites, bloggers have emerged as expert fashion commentators, shaping brands and having a great impact on what is ‘on trend’.[65] Women in the fashion public relations industry such as Sweaty Betty PR founder Roxy Jacenko and Oscar de la Renta's PR girl Erika Bearman, have acquired copious followers on their social media sites, by providing a brand identity and a behind the scenes look into the companies they work for.
+
+Social media is changing the way practitioners deliver messages,[16] as they are concerned with the media, and also customer relationship building.[66] PR practitioners must provide effective communication among all platforms, in order to engage the fashion public in an industry socially connected via online shopping.[67] Consumers have the ability to share their purchases on their personal social media pages (such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), and if practitioners deliver the brand message effectively and meet the needs of its public, word-of-mouth publicity will be generated and potentially provide a wide reach for the designer and their products.
+
+Anthropology, the study of culture and human societies, studies fashion by asking why certain styles are deemed socially appropriate and others are not. A certain way is chosen and that becomes the fashion as defined by a certain people as a whole, so if a particular style has a meaning in an already occurring set of beliefs that style will become fashion.[68] According to Ted Polhemus and Lynn Procter, fashion can be described as adornment, of which there are two types: fashion and anti-fashion. Through the capitalization and commoditisation of clothing, accessories, and shoes, etc., what once constituted anti-fashion becomes part of fashion as the lines between fashion and anti-fashion are blurred.[69]
+
+The definition of fashion and anti-fashion is as follows: Anti-fashion is fixed and changes little over time. Anti-fashion is different depending on the cultural or social group one is associated with or where one lives, but within that group or locality the style changes little. Fashion is the exact opposite of anti-fashion. Fashion changes very quickly and is not affiliated with one group or area of the world but is spread out throughout the world wherever people can communicate easily with each other. For example, Queen Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation gown is an example of anti-fashion because it is traditional and does not change over any period whereas a gown from fashion designer Dior's collection of 1953 is fashion because the style will change every season as Dior comes up with a new gown to replace the old one. In the Dior gown the length, cut, fabric, and embroidery of the gown change from season to season. Anti-fashion is concerned with maintaining the status quo while fashion is concerned with social mobility. Time is expressed in terms of continuity in anti-fashion and as change in fashion. Fashion has changing modes of adornment while anti-fashion has fixed modes of adornment. Indigenous and peasant modes of adornment are an example of anti-fashion. Change in fashion is part of the larger system and is structured to be a deliberate change in style.[70]
+
+Today, people in rich countries are linked to people in poor countries through the commoditization and consumption of what is called fashion. People work long hours in one area of the globe to produce things that people in another part of the globe are anxious to consume. An example of this is the chain of production and consumption of Nike shoes, which are produced in Taiwan and then purchased in North America. At the production end, there is nation-building a hard working ideology that leads people to produce and entices people to consume with a vast amount of goods for the offering[clarification needed]. Commodities are no longer just utilitarian but are fashionable, be they running shoes or sweat suits.[71]
+
+The change from anti-fashion to fashion because of the influence of western consumer-driven civilization can be seen in eastern Indonesia. The ikat textiles of the Ngada area of eastern Indonesia are changing because of modernization and development. Traditionally, in the Ngada area there was no idea similar to that of the Western idea of fashion, but anti-fashion in the form of traditional textiles and ways to adorn oneself were widely popular. Textiles in Indonesia have played many roles for the local people. Textiles defined a person's rank and status; certain textiles indicated being part of the ruling class. People expressed their ethnic identity and social hierarchy through textiles. Because some Indonesians bartered ikat textiles for food, the textiles constituted economic goods, and as some textile design motifs had spiritual religious meanings, textiles were also a way to communicate religious messages.[72]
+
+In eastern Indonesia, both the production and use of traditional textiles have been transformed as the production, use and value associated with textiles have changed due to modernization. In the past, women produced the textiles either for home consumption or to trade with others. Today, this has changed as most textiles are not being produced at home. Western goods are considered modern and are valued more than traditional goods, including the sarong, which retain a lingering association with colonialism. Now, sarongs are used only for rituals and ceremonial occasions, whereas western clothes are worn to church or government offices. Civil servants working in urban areas are more likely than peasants to make the distinction between western and traditional clothes. Following Indonesia's independence from the Dutch, people increasingly started buying factory made shirts and sarongs. In textile-producing areas the growing of cotton and production of naturally colored thread became obsolete. Traditional motifs on textiles are no longer considered the property of a certain social class or age group. Wives of government officials are promoting the use of traditional textiles in the form of western garments such as skirts, vests and blouses. This trend is also being followed by the general populace, and whoever can afford to hire a tailor is doing so to stitch traditional ikat textiles into western clothes. Thus, traditional textiles are now fashion goods and are no longer confined to the black, white and brown colour palette but come in array of colours. Traditional textiles are also being used in interior decorations and to make handbags, wallets and other accessories, which are considered fashionable by civil servants and their families. There is also a booming tourist trade in the eastern Indonesian city of Kupang where international as well as domestic tourists are eager to purchase traditionally printed western goods.[73]
+
+The use of traditional textiles for fashion is becoming big business in eastern Indonesia, but these traditional textiles are losing their ethnic identity markers and are being used as an item of fashion.[74]
+
+In the fashion industry, intellectual property is not enforced as it is within the film industry and music industry. Robert Glariston, an intellectual property expert, mentioned in a fashion seminar held in LA[which?] that "Copyright law regarding clothing is a current hot-button issue in the industry. We often have to draw the line between designers being inspired by a design and those outright stealing it in different places."[75] To take inspiration from others' designs contributes to the fashion industry's ability to establish clothing trends. For the past few years, WGSN has been a dominant source of fashion news and forecasts in encouraging fashion brands worldwide to be inspired by one another. Enticing consumers to buy clothing by establishing new trends is, some have argued, a key component of the industry's success. Intellectual property rules that interfere with this process of trend-making would, in this view, be counter-productive. On the other hand, it is often argued that the blatant theft of new ideas, unique designs, and design details by larger companies is what often contributes to the failure of many smaller or independent design companies.
+
+Since fakes are distinguishable by their poorer quality, there is still a demand for luxury goods, and as only a trademark or logo can be copyrighted, many fashion brands make this one of the most visible aspects of the garment or accessory. In handbags, especially, the designer's brand may be woven into the fabric (or the lining fabric) from which the bag is made, making the brand an intrinsic element of the bag.
+
+In 2005, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a conference calling for stricter intellectual property enforcement within the fashion industry to better protect small and medium businesses and promote competitiveness within the textile and clothing industries.[76][77]
+
+There has been great debate about politics' place in fashion and traditionally, the fashion industry has maintained a rather apolitical stance.[78] Considering the U.S.'s political climate in the surrounding months of the 2016 presidential election, during 2017 fashion weeks in London, Milan, New York, Paris and São Paulo amongst others, many designers took the opportunity to take political stances leveraging their platforms and influence to reach the masses.[79][80]
+
+Aiming to "amplify a greater message of unity, inclusion, diversity, and feminism in a fashion space", Mara Hoffman invited the founders of the Women's March on Washington to open her show which featured modern silhouettes of utilitarian wear, described by critics as "Made for a modern warrior" and "Clothing for those who still have work to do".[81] Prabal Gurung debuted his collection of T-shirts featuring slogans such as "The Future is Female", "We Will Not Be Silenced", and "Nevertheless She Persisted", with proceeds going to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Gurung's own charity, "Shikshya Foundation Nepal".[78] Similarly, The Business of Fashion launched the #TiedTogether movement on Social Media, encouraging member of the industry from editors to models, to wear a white bandana advocating for "unity, solidarity, and inclusiveness during fashion week".[82]
+
+Fashion may be used to promote a cause, such as to promote healthy behavior,[83] to raise money for a cancer cure,[84] or to raise money for local charities[85] such as the Juvenile Protective Association[86] or a children's hospice.[87]
+
+One fashion cause is trashion, which is using trash to make clothes, jewelry, and other fashion items in order to promote awareness of pollution. There are a number of modern trashion artists such as Marina DeBris, Ann Wizer,[88] and Nancy Judd.[89]
+
+African-Americans have used fashion through the years, to express themselves and their ideas.[90] It has grown and developed with time. African-American influencers often have been known to start trends though modern day social media, and even in past years they have been able to reach others with their fashion and style.
+
+Celebrities like Rihanna, Lupita Nyong'o, Zendaya, and Michelle Obama have been a few of the many fashion idols in the black female community. For men, Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, and Ice Cube have also helped define modern day fashion for black men. Today's fashion scene is not just clothes, but also hair and makeup. Recent trends have included the embracing of natural hair, traditional clothing worn with modern clothing, or traditional patterns used in modern clothing styles. All of these trends come with the long existing and persevering movement of "Black is Beautiful".
+
+In the mid to end of the 1900s, African American style changed and developed with the times. Around the 1950s is really when the black community was able to create their own distinct styles. The term "Sunday attire" was coined, communities emphasized "Correct" dress, it was especially important when "stepping out" for social occasions with community members, a habit that continues in the early 2000s.[91] Hair-dos and hairstyles also became a fashion statement, for example the "conk" which is hair that is slightly flattened and waved.[91] Afros also emerged and they were often used to symbolize the rejection of white beauty standards at the time.[92] Around the 1970s is when flashy costumes began to appear and black artists really started to define their presences through fashion. Around this time is also when movements started using fashion as one of their outlets.[92]
+
+Black activists and supporters used fashion to express their solidarity and support of this civil rights movement. Supporters adorned symbolic clothing, accessories and hairstyles, usually native to Africa. Politics and fashion were fused together during this time and the use of these symbolic fashion statements sent a message to America and the rest of the world that African Americans were proud of their heritage.[92] They aimed to send an even stronger message that black is beautiful and they were not afraid to embrace their identities.[92] An example would the Kente cloth, it is a brightly colored strip of cloth that is stitched and woven together to create different accessories.[92] This woven cloth of brightly colored strips of fabric became a strong symbolic representation of pride in African identity for African Americans of the 1960s and later. It was developed into what is called a dashiki, a flowing, loose fitting, tunic style shirt. This cloth became one of the most notorious symbols of this revolution.[93]
+
+The Black Panther Party (BPP) was an essential piece of the Black Power movement that allowed members that were involved advocate for the African American race in different subjects like equality and politics. The BPP members wore a very distinctive uniform: a black leather jacket, black pants, light blue shirts, a black beret, an afro, dark sunglasses, and usually a fist in the air.[94] Their image gave off a very militant like feel to it. This notable uniform was established in 1996, but a different uniform was still in place before; just the sunglasses and leather jackets.[94] Each member wore this uniform at events, rallies, and in their day-today life. Very few members changed the essential parts of the outfit, but some added personal touches such as necklaces or other jewelry that was usually were a part of African culture.[93] The Black Panther uniform did succeeded in intimidating enemies and onlookers and clearly sent a message of black pride and power even though the initial intention of this party was to communicate solidarity among the Black Panther Party members.[94]
+
+Since the 1970s, fashion models of color, especially black men and women, have experienced an increase in discrimination in the fashion industry. In the years from 1970 to 1990, black designers and models were very successful, but as the 1990s came to an end, the fashion aesthetic changed and it did not include black models or designers.[95] In today's fashion, black models, influencers, and designers account for one of the smallest percentages of the industry.[95] There are many theories about this lack of diversity, that it can be attributed to the economic differences usually associated with race and class, or it can reflect the differences in arts schooling given to mostly black populated schools, and also blatant racism.
+
+A report from New York Fashion (Spring 2015) week found that while 79.69% of models on the runway were white, only 9.75% of models were black, 7.67% were Asian, and 2.12% were Latina. The lack of diversity also accounts for not only designers but models too, out of four hundred and seventy members of The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) only twelve of the members are black.[96] From the same study on New York Fashion Week, it was shown that only 2.7% of the 260 designers presented were black men, and an even smaller percentage were black female designers.[96] Even the relationship between independent designers and retailers can show the racial gap, only 1% of designers stocked at department stores being people of color. It was also found that in editorial spreads, over eighty percent of models pictured were white and only nine percent were black models. These numbers have stayed stagnant over the past few years.[96]
+
+Many fashion designers have come under fire over the years for what is known as tokenism. Designer or editors will add one or two members on an underrepresented group to help them appear as inclusive and diverse, and to also help them give the illusion that they have equality.[95] This idea of tokenism helps designers avoid accusations of racism, sexism, body shaming, etc.[95]
+
+There are many examples of cultural appropriation in fashion. In many instances, designers can be found using aspects of culture inappropriately, in most cases taking traditional clothing from middle eastern, African, and Hispanic culture and adding it to their runway fashion.[97] Some examples are in a 2018 Gucci runway show, white models wore Sikh headdresses, causing a lot of backlash. Victoria's secret was also under fire for putting traditional native headdresses on their models during a lingerie runway show. Marc Jacobs sent down models sporting dreadlocks in his spring 2017 New York Fashion Week show, also facing immense criticism.[98]

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+Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (Italian pronunciation: [ameˈdɛːo modiʎˈʎaːni]; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian Jewish painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by elongation of faces, necks, and figures that were not received well during his lifetime but later found acceptance. Modigliani spent his youth in Italy, where he studied the art of antiquity and the Renaissance. In 1906 he moved to Paris, where he came into contact with such artists as Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brâncuși. By 1912 Modigliani was exhibiting highly stylized sculptures with Cubists of the Section d'Or group at the Salon d'Automne.
+
+Modigliani's oeuvre includes paintings and drawings. From 1909 to 1914 he devoted himself mainly to sculpture. His main subject was portraits and full figures, both in the images and in the sculptures. Modigliani had little success while alive, but after his death achieved great popularity. He died of tubercular meningitis, at the age of 35, in Paris.
+
+Modigliani was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Livorno, Italy.[1] A port city, Livorno had long served as a refuge for those persecuted for their religion, and was home to a large Jewish community. His maternal great-great-grandfather, Solomon Garsin, had immigrated to Livorno in the 18th century as a refugee.[2]
+
+Modigliani's mother, Eugénie Garsin, born and raised in Marseille, was descended from an intellectual, scholarly family of Sephardic ancestry that for generations had lived along the Mediterranean coastline. Fluent in many languages, her ancestors were authorities on sacred Jewish texts and had founded a school of Talmudic studies. Family legend traced the family lineage to the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The family business was a credit agency with branches in Livorno, Marseille, Tunis, and London, though their fortunes ebbed and flowed.[3][4]
+
+Modigliani's father, Flaminio, was a member of an Italian Jewish family of successful businessmen and entrepreneurs. While not as culturally sophisticated as the Garsins, they knew how to invest in and develop thriving business endeavors. When the Garsin and Modigliani families announced the engagement of their children, Flaminio was a wealthy young mining engineer. He managed the mine in Sardinia and also managed the almost 30,000 acres (12,141 ha) of timberland the family owned.[5]
+
+A reversal in fortune occurred to this prosperous family in 1883. An economic downturn in the price of metal plunged the Modiglianis into bankruptcy. Ever resourceful, Modigliani's mother used her social contacts to establish a school and, along with her two sisters, made the school into a successful enterprise.[6]
+
+Amedeo Modigliani was the fourth child, whose birth coincided with the disastrous financial collapse of his father's business interests. Amedeo's birth saved the family from ruin; according to an ancient law, creditors could not seize the bed of a pregnant woman or a mother with a newborn child. The bailiffs entered the family's home just as Eugenia went into labour; the family protected their most valuable assets by piling them on top of her.
+
+Modigliani had a close relationship with his mother, who taught him at home until he was 10. Beset with health problems after an attack of pleurisy when he was about 11, a few years later he developed a case of typhoid fever. When he was 16 he was taken ill again and contracted the tuberculosis which would later claim his life. After Modigliani recovered from the second bout of pleurisy, his mother took him on a tour of southern Italy: Naples, Capri, Rome and Amalfi, then north to Florence and Venice.[7][8][9]
+
+His mother was, in many ways, instrumental in his ability to pursue art as a vocation. When he was 11 years of age, she had noted in her diary: "The child's character is still so unformed that I cannot say what I think of it. He behaves like a spoiled child, but he does not lack intelligence. We shall have to wait and see what is inside this chrysalis. Perhaps an artist?"[10]
+
+Modigliani is known to have drawn and painted from a very early age, and thought himself "already a painter", his mother wrote,[11] even before beginning formal studies. Despite her misgivings that launching him on a course of studying art would impinge upon his other studies, his mother indulged the young Modigliani's passion for the subject.
+
+At the age of fourteen, while sick with typhoid fever, he raved in his delirium that he wanted, above all else, to see the paintings in the Palazzo Pitti and the Uffizi in Florence. As Livorno's local museum housed only a sparse few paintings by the Italian Renaissance masters, the tales he had heard about the great works held in Florence intrigued him, and it was a source of considerable despair to him, in his sickened state, that he might never get the chance to view them in person. His mother promised that she would take him to Florence herself, the moment he was recovered. Not only did she fulfil this promise, but she also undertook to enroll him with the best painting master in Livorno, Guglielmo Micheli.
+
+Modigliani worked in Micheli's Art School from 1898 to 1900. Among his colleagues in that studio would have been Llewelyn Lloyd, Giulio Cesare Vinzio, Manlio Martinelli, Gino Romiti, Renato Natali, and Oscar Ghiglia. Here his earliest formal artistic instruction took place in an atmosphere steeped in a study of the styles and themes of 19th-century Italian art. In his earliest Parisian work, traces of this influence, and that of his studies of Renaissance art, can still be seen. His nascent work was influenced by such Parisian artists as Giovanni Boldini and Toulouse-Lautrec.
+
+Modigliani showed great promise while with Micheli, and ceased his studies only when he was forced to, by the onset of tuberculosis.
+
+In 1901, whilst in Rome, Modigliani admired the work of Domenico Morelli, a painter of dramatic religious and literary scenes. Morelli had served as an inspiration for a group of iconoclasts who were known by the title "the Macchiaioli" (from macchia —"dash of colour", or, more derogatively, "stain"), and Modigliani had already been exposed to the influences of the Macchiaioli. This localized landscape movement reacted against the bourgeois stylings of the academic genre painters. While sympathetically connected to (and actually pre-dating) the French Impressionists, the Macchiaioli did not make the same impact upon international art culture as did the contemporaries and followers of Monet, and are today largely forgotten outside Italy.
+
+Modigliani's connection with the movement was through Guglielmo Micheli, his first art teacher. Micheli was not only a Macchiaiolo himself, but had been a pupil of the famous Giovanni Fattori, a founder of the movement. Micheli's work, however, was so fashionable and the genre so commonplace that the young Modigliani reacted against it, preferring to ignore the obsession with landscape that, as with French Impressionism, characterized the movement. Micheli also tried to encourage his pupils to paint en plein air, but Modigliani never really got a taste for this style of working, sketching in cafés, but preferring to paint indoors, and especially in his own studio. Even when compelled to paint landscapes (three are known to exist),[12] Modigliani chose a proto-Cubist palette more akin to Cézanne than to the Macchiaioli.
+
+While with Micheli, Modigliani studied not only landscape, but also portraiture, still life, and the nude. His fellow students recall that the last was where he displayed his greatest talent, and apparently this was not an entirely academic pursuit for the teenager: when not painting nudes, he was occupied with seducing the household maid.[11]
+
+Despite his rejection of the Macchiaioli approach, Modigliani nonetheless found favour with his teacher, who referred to him as "Superman", a pet name reflecting the fact that Modigliani was not only quite adept at his art, but also that he regularly quoted from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Fattori himself would often visit the studio, and approved of the young artist's innovations.[13]
+
+In 1902, Modigliani continued what was to be a lifelong infatuation with life drawing, enrolling in the Scuola Libera di Nudo, or "Free School of Nude Studies", of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. A year later, while still suffering from tuberculosis, he moved to Venice, where he registered to study at the Regia Accademia ed Istituto di Belle Arti.
+It is in Venice that he first smoked hashish and, rather than studying, began to spend time frequenting disreputable parts of the city. The impact of these lifestyle choices upon his developing artistic style is open to conjecture, although these choices do seem to be more than simple teenage rebellion, or the cliched hedonism and bohemianism that was almost expected of artists of the time; his pursuit of the seedier side of life appears to have roots in his appreciation of radical philosophies, including those of Nietzsche.
+
+Having been exposed to erudite philosophical literature as a young boy under the tutelage of Isaco Garsin, his maternal grandfather, he continued to read and be influenced through his art studies by the writings of Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Carducci, Comte de Lautréamont, and others, and developed the belief that the only route to true creativity was through defiance and disorder.
+
+Letters that he wrote from his 'sabbatical' in Capri in 1901 clearly indicate that he is being more and more influenced by the thinking of Nietzsche. In these letters, he advised friend Oscar Ghiglia;
+
+(hold sacred all) which can exalt and excite your intelligence... (and) ... seek to provoke ... and to perpetuate ... these fertile stimuli, because they can push the intelligence to its maximum creative power.[14]
+
+The work of Lautréamont was equally influential at this time. This doomed poet's Les Chants de Maldoror became the seminal work for the Parisian Surrealists of Modigliani's generation, and the book became Modigliani's favourite to the extent that he learnt it by heart.[13] The poetry of Lautréamont is characterized by the juxtaposition of fantastical elements, and by sadistic imagery; the fact that Modigliani was so taken by this text in his early teens gives a good indication of his developing tastes. Baudelaire and D'Annunzio similarly appealed to the young artist, with their interest in corrupted beauty, and the expression of that insight through Symbolist imagery.
+
+Modigliani wrote to Ghiglia extensively from Capri, where his mother had taken him to assist in his recovery from tuberculosis. These letters are a sounding board for the developing ideas brewing in Modigliani's mind. Ghiglia was seven years Modigliani's senior, and it is likely that it was he who showed the young man the limits of his horizons in Livorno. Like all precocious teenagers, Modigliani preferred the company of older companions, and Ghiglia's role in his adolescence was to be a sympathetic ear as he worked himself out, principally in the convoluted letters that he regularly sent, and which survive today.[15]
+
+Dear friend, I write to pour myself out to you and to affirm myself to myself. I am the prey of great powers that surge forth and then disintegrate ... A bourgeois told me today–insulted me–that I or at least my brain was lazy. It did me good. I should like such a warning every morning upon awakening: but they cannot understand us nor can they understand life...[16]
+
+In 1906, Modigliani moved to Paris, then the focal point of the avant-garde. In fact, his arrival at the centre of artistic experimentation coincided with the arrival of two other foreigners who were also to leave their marks upon the art world: Gino Severini and Juan Gris.
+
+He later befriended Jacob Epstein, they aimed to set up a studio together with a shared vision to create a Temple of Beauty to be enjoyed by all, for which Modigliani created drawings and paintings of the intended stone caryatids for ‘The Pillars of Tenderness’ which would support the imagined temple.[17]
+
+Modigliani squatted in the Bateau-Lavoir,[18] a commune for penniless artists in Montmartre, renting himself a studio in Rue Caulaincourt. Even though this artists' quarter of Montmartre was characterized by generalized poverty, Modigliani himself presented—initially, at least—as one would expect the son of a family trying to maintain the appearances of its lost financial standing to present: his wardrobe was dapper without ostentation, and the studio he rented was appointed in a style appropriate to someone with a finely attuned taste in plush drapery and Renaissance reproductions. He soon made efforts to assume the guise of the bohemian artist, but, even in his brown corduroys, scarlet scarf and large black hat, he continued to appear as if he were slumming it, having fallen upon harder times.[14]
+
+When he first arrived in Paris, he wrote home regularly to his mother, he sketched his nudes at the Académie Colarossi, and he drank wine in moderation. He was at that time considered by those who knew him as a bit reserved, verging on the asocial.[14] He is noted to have commented, upon meeting Picasso who, at the time, was wearing his trademark workmen's clothes, that even though the man was a genius, that did not excuse his uncouth appearance.[14]
+
+Within a year of arriving in Paris, however, his demeanour and reputation had changed dramatically. He transformed himself from a dapper academician artist into a sort of prince of vagabonds.
+
+The poet and journalist Louis Latourette, upon visiting the artist's previously well-appointed studio after his transformation, discovered the place in upheaval, the Renaissance reproductions discarded from the walls, the plush drapes in disarray. Modigliani was already an alcoholic and a drug addict by this time, and his studio reflected this. Modigliani's behaviour at this time sheds some light upon his developing style as an artist, in that the studio had become almost a sacrificial effigy for all that he resented about the academic art that had marked his life and his training up to that point.
+
+Not only did he remove all the trappings of his bourgeois heritage from his studio, but he also set about destroying practically all of his own early work, which he described as "Childish baubles, done when I was a dirty bourgeois".[19]
+
+The motivation for this violent rejection of his earlier self is the subject of considerable speculation. From the time of his arrival in Paris, Modigliani consciously crafted a charade persona for himself and cultivated his reputation as a hopeless drunk and voracious drug user. His escalating intake of drugs and alcohol may have been a means by which Modigliani masked his tuberculosis from his acquaintances, few of whom knew of his condition.[20] Tuberculosis—the leading cause of death in France by 1900[21]—was highly communicable, there was no cure, and those who had it were feared, ostracized, and pitied. Modigliani thrived on camaraderie and would not let himself be isolated as an invalid; he used drink and drugs as palliatives to ease his physical pain, helping him to maintain a façade of vitality and allowing him to continue to create his art.[22]
+
+Modigliani's use of drink and drugs intensified from about 1914 onward. After years of remission and recurrence, this was the period during which the symptoms of his tuberculosis worsened, signaling that the disease had reached an advanced stage.[23]
+
+He sought the company of artists such as Utrillo and Soutine, seeking acceptance and validation for his work from his colleagues.[19] Modigliani's behavior stood out even in these Bohemian surroundings: he carried on frequent affairs, drank heavily, and used absinthe and hashish. While drunk, he would sometimes strip himself naked at social gatherings.[25] He died in Paris, aged 35. He became the epitome of the tragic artist, creating a posthumous legend almost as well known as that of Vincent van Gogh.
+
+During the 1920s, in the wake of Modigliani's career and spurred on by comments by André Salmon crediting hashish and absinthe with the genesis of Modigliani's style, many hopefuls tried to emulate his "success" by embarking on a path of substance abuse and bohemian excess. Salmon claimed that whereas Modigliani was a totally pedestrian artist when sober, "...from the day that he abandoned himself to certain forms of debauchery, an unexpected light came upon him, transforming his art. From that day on, he became one who must be counted among the masters of living art."[26]
+
+Some art historians suggest[26] that it is entirely possible that Modigliani would have achieved even greater artistic heights had he not been immured in, and destroyed by, his own self-indulgences.
+
+During his early years in Paris, Modigliani worked at a furious pace. He was constantly sketching, making as many as a hundred drawings a day. However, many of his works were lost—destroyed by him as inferior, left behind in his frequent changes of address, or given to girlfriends who did not keep them.[25]
+
+He was first influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but around 1907 he became fascinated with the work of Paul Cézanne. Eventually he developed his own unique style, one that cannot be adequately categorized with those of other artists.
+
+He met the first serious love of his life, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, in 1910, when he was 26. They had studios in the same building, and although 21-year-old Anna had recently married, they began an affair.[27] Anna was tall with dark hair, pale skin and grey-green eyes: she embodied Modigliani's aesthetic ideal and the pair became engrossed in each other. After a year, however, Anna returned to her husband.[28]
+
+Portrait of Maude Abrantes, 1907, Hecht Museum
+
+Paul Guillaume, Novo Pilota, 1915, Musée de l'Orangerie
+
+Bride and Groom, 1915
+
+Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz, 1916
+
+Jean Cocteau, 1916, Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection, on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum
+
+Léon Indenbaum, 1916, Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection, on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum
+
+Portrait of Beatrice Hastings, 1916
+
+Portrait of Moise Kisling, 1915
+
+Madame Kisling, 1917
+
+Portrait of the Artist's Wife (Jeanne Hébuterne), 1918
+
+Dedie Hayden, 1918, Centre Georges Pompidou
+
+Self-portrait, 1919, oil on canvas, Museum of Contemporary Art, São Paulo, Brazil
+
+Gypsy Woman with Baby, 1919, National Gallery of Art
+
+The Little Peasant, 1918, Tate Liverpool
+
+Portrait of a Young Woman, 1918, New Orleans Museum of Art
+
+Buste de femme, unknown, before 1919, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires)
+
+Beatrice Hastings, 1916–1919, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
+
+Woman with a Fan, 1919, stolen from Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
+
+Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne, Seated, 1918, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
+
+Portrait of Blaise Cendrars, 1917, Galleria Sabauda, Turin
+
+In 1909, Modigliani returned home to Livorno, sickly and tired from his wild lifestyle. Soon he was back in Paris, this time renting a studio in Montparnasse. He originally saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter, and was encouraged to continue after Paul Guillaume, an ambitious young art dealer, took an interest in his work and introduced him to sculptor Constantin Brâncuși. He was Constantin Brâncuși's disciple for one year.
+
+Although a series of Modigliani's sculptures were exhibited in the Salon d'Automne of 1912, by 1914 he abandoned sculpting and focused solely on his painting, a move precipitated by the difficulty in acquiring sculptural materials due to the outbreak of war, and by Modigliani's physical debilitation.[4]
+
+In June 2010 Modigliani's Tête, a limestone carving of a woman's head, became the third most expensive sculpture ever sold.
+
+Modigliani painted a series of portraits of contemporary artists and friends in Montparnasse: Chaim Soutine, Moïse Kisling, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Marie "Marevna" Vorobyev-Stebeslka, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Jacques Lipchitz, Blaise Cendrars, and Jean Cocteau, all sat for stylized renditions.
+
+At the outset of World War I, Modigliani tried to enlist in the army but was refused because of his poor health.[29]
+
+Known as Modì (which plays on the French word 'maudit', meaning 'cursed') by many Parisians, but as Dedo to his family and friends, Modigliani was a handsome man, and attracted much female attention.[30] Women came and went until Beatrice Hastings entered his life. She stayed with him for almost two years, was the subject of several of his portraits, including Madame Pompadour, and the object of much of his drunken wrath.[30]
+
+When the British painter Nina Hamnett arrived in Montparnasse in 1914, on her first evening there the smiling man at the next table in the café introduced himself as "Modigliani, painter and Jew". They became great friends.
+
+In 1916, Modigliani befriended the Polish poet and art dealer Léopold Zborowski and his wife Anna. Zborowski became Modigliani's primary art dealer and friend during the artist's final years, helping him financially, and also organizing his show in Paris in 1917.
+
+The several dozen nudes Modigliani painted between 1916 and 1919 constitute many of his best-known works. This series of nudes was commissioned by Modigliani's dealer and friend Léopold Zborowski, who lent the artist use of his apartment, supplied models and painting materials, and paid him between fifteen and twenty francs each day for his work.[31]
+
+The paintings from this arrangement were thus different from his previous depictions of friends and lovers in that they were funded by Zborowski either for his own collection, as a favor to his friend, or with an eye to their "commercial potential", rather than originating from the artist's personal circle of acquaintances.[32]
+
+The Paris show of 1917 was Modigliani's only solo exhibition during his life, and is "notorious" in modern art history for its sensational public reception and the attendant issues of obscenity.[33] The show was closed by police on its opening day, but continued thereafter, most likely after the removal of paintings from the gallery's streetfront window.[33]
+
+Nude Sitting on a Divan is one of a series of nudes painted by Modigliani in 1917 that created a sensation when exhibited in Paris that year. According to the catalogue description from the 2010 sale of the painting at Sotheby's, seven nudes were exhibited in the 1917 show.
+
+Nu couché realized $170,405,000 at a Christie's, New York, sale on 9 November 2015, a record for a Modigliani painting and placing it high among the most expensive paintings ever sold.[34]
+
+Iris Tree, c. 1916, Courtauld Institute of Art
+
+Reclining Nude, 1917, Metropolitan Museum of Art
+
+Seated Nude, 1917, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp
+
+Nude Sitting on a Divan ("La Belle Romaine"), 1917
+
+Nude, 1917, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
+
+Nude on a Blue Cushion, 1917, National Gallery of Art
+
+Nu couché, 1917–18, sold for $170.4 million in 2015 to Liu Yiqian[35]
+
+Seated Nude, 1918, Honolulu Museum of Art
+
+On a trip to Nice which had been conceived and organized by Zborowski, Modigliani, Foujita and other artists tried to sell their works to rich tourists. Modigliani managed to sell a few pictures, but only for a few francs each. Despite this, during this time he produced most of the paintings that later became his most popular and valued works.[citation needed]
+
+During his lifetime, he sold a number of his works, but never for any great amount of money. What funds he did receive soon vanished for his habits.[36]
+
+In the spring of 1917, the Russian sculptor Chana Orloff introduced him to a beautiful 19-year-old art student named Jeanne Hébuterne[37] who had posed for Tsuguharu Foujita. From a conservative bourgeois background, Hébuterne was renounced by her devout Roman Catholic family for her liaison with Modigliani, whom they saw as little more than a debauched derelict. Despite her family's objections, soon they were living together.
+
+Modigliani ended his relationship with the English poet and art critic Beatrice Hastings and a short time later Hébuterne and Modigliani moved together into a studio on the Rue de la Grande Chaumière. Jeanne began to pose for him and appears in several of his paintings. Jeanne Hébuterne became a principal subject for Modigliani's art.
+
+On 3 December 1917, Modigliani's first one-man exhibition opened at the Berthe Weill Gallery in Paris. The chief of the Paris police was scandalized by Modigliani's nudes and forced him to close the exhibition within a few hours after its opening.
+
+Towards the end of the First World War, early in 1918, Modigliani left Paris with Hébuterne to escape from the war and travelled to Nice and Cagnes-sur-Mer. They would spend a year in France. During that time they had a busy social life with many friends, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico and André Derain.
+
+After he and Hébuterne moved to Nice on 29 November 1918, she gave birth to a daughter whom they named Jeanne (1918–1984). In May 1919 they returned to Paris with their infant daughter and moved into an apartment on the rue de la Grande Chaumière.
+
+Hébuterne became pregnant again. Modigliani then got engaged to her, but Jeanne's parents were against the marriage, especially because of Modigliani's reputation as an alcoholic and drug user. However, Modigliani officially recognized her daughter as his child. The wedding plans were shattered independently of Jeanne's parents' resistance when Modigliani discovered he had a severe form of tuberculosis.
+
+Although he continued to paint, Modigliani's health deteriorated rapidly, and his alcohol-induced blackouts became more frequent.
+
+In 1920, after not hearing from him for several days, a neighbour checked on the family and found Modigliani in bed delirious and holding onto Hébuterne. A doctor was summoned, but little could be done because Modigliani was in the final stage of his disease, tubercular meningitis. He died on 24 January 1920, at the Hôpital de la Charité.
+
+There was an enormous funeral, attended by many from the artistic communities in Montmartre and Montparnasse. When Modigliani died, twenty-one-year-old Hébuterne was eight months pregnant with their second child.
+
+A day later, Hébuterne was taken to her parents' home. There, inconsolable, she threw herself out of a fifth-floor window, two days after Modigliani's death, killing herself and her unborn child. Modigliani was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Hébuterne was buried at the Cimetière de Bagneux near Paris, and it was not until 1930 that her embittered family allowed her body to be moved to rest beside Modigliani. A single tombstone honors them both. His epitaph reads: "Struck down by death at the moment of glory". Hers reads: "Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice".[38]
+
+Managing only one solo exhibition in his life and giving his work away in exchange for meals in restaurants, Modigliani died destitute.
+
+The linear form of African sculpture and the depictive humanism of the figurative Renaissance painters informed his work. Working during that fertile period of “isms,” Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, Modigliani did not choose to be categorized within any of these prevailing, defining confines. He was unclassifiable, stubbornly insisting on his difference. He was an artist putting down paint on canvas creating works not to shock and outrage, but to say, “This is what I see.”
+
+More appreciated over the years by collectors than academicians and critics, Modigliani was indifferent to staking a claim for himself in the intellectual avant-garde of the art world. One can say he recognized the merit of Jean Cocteau’s proclamation: “Ne t'attardes pas avec l'avant-garde” (“Don’t wait with the avant-garde”).[39] Pseudo-goitre, a medical condition is also known as Modigliani syndrome. This name was derived from the curved neck of women in Modigliani's paintings which appeared like pseudogoitre.[40]
+
+Since his death, Modigliani's reputation has soared. Nine novels, a play, a documentary, and three feature films have been devoted to his life. Modigliani's sister in Florence adopted his daughter, Jeanne (1918–1984). As an adult, she wrote a biography of her father titled Modigliani: Man and Myth.
+
+The Modigliani estate is one of the most problematic in the art world. There are at least five catalogues raisonnés of the artist's work including two volumes by Ambrogio Ceroni, last updated in 1972. Arthur Pfannstiel (1929 and 1956) and Joseph Lanthemann's (1970) books are widely dismissed today. Milanese scholar Osvaldo Patani produced three volumes: paintings (1991), drawings (1992) and one on the Paul Alexandre period (1994), while Christian Parisot has published Volumes I, II and IV (in 1970, 1971 and 1996) of a catalogue raisonné.[41]
+
+In 2006, about 6,000 documents from the estate—believed to be the only ones existing—were moved permanently from France to Italy. Parisot, as president of the Modigliani Institut Archives Légales in Rome, had the legal right to authenticate Modigliani's work.[42] In 2013, Parisot was arrested by the Italian Art forgery unit after a two-year investigation (following a largely advertised exhibition in Catania, presenting original artworks[43]); the police seized works attributed to the artist, along with suspect authenticity certificates.[44]
+
+The French art historian Marc Restellini is preparing Modigliani's catalogue raisonné.[45]
+
+The Modigliani Project, headed by Dr. Kenneth Wayne, was founded in 2012 to aid in the researching of Modigliani artworks.[46] As part of this endeavor the organization is preparing a new catalogue raisonné of Modigliani's artwork.[45]
+
+In November 2010, a painting of a nude by Amedeo Modigliani, part of a series of nudes he created around 1917, sold for more than $68.9m (£42.7m) at an auction in New York—a record for the artist's work. Bidding for La Belle Romaine pushed its price well past its $40m (£24.8m) estimate. Modigliani's previous auction record was 43.2m euros (£35.8m), set earlier in 2010 in Paris. Another painting by the artist—Jeanne Hébuterne (au chapeau), one of the first portraits he painted of his lover—sold for $19.1m (£11.8m), much higher than its pre-sale estimate of $9–12m (£5.6–7.4m).[47]
+
+On 9 November 2015 the 1917 painting Nu couché, sold at Christie's in New York for US$170.4 million.[48] On 14 May 2018 the 1917 painting Nu couché (sur le côté gauche) sold at Sotheby's in New York for $157.2 million. This was the highest auction price in Sotheby's history.[49]
+
+Two films have been made about Modigliani: Les Amants de Montparnasse (1958), directed by Jacques Becker and starring Gérard Philipe as Modigliani; and Modigliani (2004), directed by Mick Davis and starring Andy García as Modigliani.
+
+Modigliani's art was an influence on director Andy Muschietti, who found his works frightening as a child. Creatures based on Modigliani's style have appeared in his films Mama (2013) and It (2017).[50]
+
+In 1987 the U.S. synth-pop band Book of Love released the single "Modigliani (Lost In Your Eyes)".
+
+In 1991 the Italian singer-songwriter Vinicio Capossela, released his second album titled Modi' which is also the title of the album's first track. The song's title recalls the French term "Maudit" (cursed) and gives an almost impressionist depiction of Modigliani's troubled soul, embracing in its lyrics the painter's well known love of poetry.
+
+In 2015 Italian jazz player Claudio Ottaviano released the composition "Modigliani", opening track for the album Aurora on NuomRecords.
+
+Modi'Tango (Giovanna Pieri Buti, violin - Emiliano Degl'Innocenti, doublebass - Alessandro Ottaviani, accordion) is a musical band based in Livorno, that honours Modigliani taking inspiration from an oneiric meeting in Montparnasse between Modigliani and Carlos Gardel in front of a Milonga
+
+In 2011 Peter Schjeldahl, reviewing Meryle Secrest's book Modigliani: A Life, wrote:
+
+I recall my thrilled first exposure, as a teenager, to one of his long-necked women, with their piquantly tipped heads and mask-like faces. The rakish stylization and the succulent color were easy to enjoy, and the payoff was sanguinely erotic in a way that endorsed my personal wishes to be bold and tender and noble, overcoming the wimp that I was. In that moment, I used up Modigliani's value for my life. But in museums ever since I have been happy to salute his pictures with residually grateful, quick looks.[51]
+
+Schjeldahl reports Secrest's speculation that Modigliani was happy to let people consider him an alcoholic and drug addict, "and thus to mistake the symptoms of his tuberculosis, which he kept a secret. Drunks were tolerated; carriers of infectious diseases were not."[51]
+
+27 sculptures by Modigliani are known to exist.[citation needed]

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+The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular structure made up of nervous tissue, which extends from the medulla oblongata in the brainstem to the lumbar region of the vertebral column. It encloses the central canal of the spinal cord, which contains cerebrospinal fluid. The brain and spinal cord together make up the central nervous system (CNS). In humans, the spinal cord begins at the occipital bone, passing through the foramen magnum and entering the spinal canal at the beginning of the cervical vertebrae. The spinal cord extends down to between the first and second lumbar vertebrae, where it ends. The enclosing bony vertebral column protects the relatively shorter spinal cord. It is around 45 cm (18 in) in men and around 43 cm (17 in) long in women. The diameter of the spinal cord ranges from 13 mm (1⁄2 in) in the cervical and lumbar regions to 6.4 mm (1⁄4 in) in the thoracic area.
+
+The spinal cord functions primarily in the transmission of nerve signals from the motor cortex to the body, and from the afferent fibers of the sensory neurons to the sensory cortex.  It is also a center for coordinating many reflexes and contains reflex arcs that can independently control reflexes.[1] It is also the location of groups of spinal interneurons that make up the neural circuits known as central pattern generators. These circuits are responsible for controlling motor instructions for rhythmic movements such as walking.[2]
+
+The spinal cord is the main pathway for information connecting the brain and peripheral nervous system.[3][4] Much shorter than its protecting spinal column, the human spinal cord originates in the brainstem, passes through the foramen magnum, and continues through to the conus medullaris near the second lumbar vertebra before terminating in a fibrous extension known as the filum terminale.
+
+It is about 45 cm (18 in) long in men and about 43 cm (17 in) in women, ovoid-shaped, and is enlarged in the cervical and lumbar regions. The cervical enlargement, stretching from the C5 to T1 vertebrae, is where sensory input comes from and motor output goes to the arms and trunk. The lumbar enlargement, located between L1 and S3, handles sensory input and motor output coming from and going to the legs.
+
+The spinal cord is continuous with the caudal portion of the medulla, running from the base of the skull to the body of the first lumbar vertebra. It does not run the full length of the vertebral column in adults. It is made of 31 segments from which branch one pair of sensory nerve roots and one pair of motor nerve roots. The nerve roots then merge into bilaterally symmetrical pairs of spinal nerves. The peripheral nervous system is made up of these spinal roots, nerves, and ganglia.
+
+The dorsal roots are afferent fascicles, receiving sensory information from the skin, muscles, and visceral organs to be relayed to the brain. The roots terminate in dorsal root ganglia, which are composed of the cell bodies of the corresponding neurons. Ventral roots consist of efferent fibers that arise from motor neurons whose cell bodies are found in the ventral (or anterior) gray horns of the spinal cord.
+
+The spinal cord (and brain) are protected by three layers of tissue or membranes called meninges, that surround the canal . The dura mater is the outermost layer, and it forms a tough protective coating. Between the dura mater and the surrounding bone of the vertebrae is a space called the epidural space. The epidural space is filled with adipose tissue, and it contains a network of blood vessels. The arachnoid mater, the middle protective layer, is named for its open, spiderweb-like appearance. The space between the arachnoid and the underlying pia mater is called the subarachnoid space. The subarachnoid space contains cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which can be sampled with a lumbar puncture, or "spinal tap" procedure. The delicate pia mater, the innermost protective layer, is tightly associated with the surface of the spinal cord. The cord is stabilized within the dura mater by the connecting denticulate ligaments, which extend from the enveloping pia mater laterally between the dorsal and ventral roots. The dural sac ends at the vertebral level of the second sacral vertebra.
+
+In cross-section, the peripheral region of the cord contains neuronal white matter tracts containing sensory and motor axons. Internal to this peripheral region is the grey matter, which contains the nerve cell bodies arranged in the three grey columns that give the region its butterfly-shape. This central region surrounds the central canal, which is an extension of the fourth ventricle and contains cerebrospinal fluid.
+
+The spinal cord is elliptical in cross section, being compressed dorsolaterally. Two prominent grooves, or sulci, run along its length. The posterior median sulcus is the groove in the dorsal side, and the anterior median fissure is the groove in the ventral side.
+
+The human spinal cord is divided into segments where pairs of spinal nerves (mixed; sensory and motor) form. Six to eight motor nerve rootlets branch out of right and left ventro lateral sulci in a very orderly manner.  Nerve rootlets combine to form nerve roots. Likewise, sensory nerve rootlets form off right and left dorsal lateral sulci and form sensory nerve roots. The ventral (motor) and dorsal (sensory) roots combine to form spinal nerves (mixed; motor and sensory), one on each side of the spinal cord.  Spinal nerves, with the exception of C1 and C2, form inside the intervertebral foramen (IVF).  These rootlets form the demarcation between the central and peripheral nervous systems.
+
+The grey column, (as three regions of grey columns) in the center of the cord, is shaped like a butterfly and consists of cell bodies of interneurons, motor neurons, neuroglia cells and unmyelinated axons. The anterior and posterior grey column present as projections of the grey matter and are also known as the horns of the spinal cord. Together, the grey columns and the gray commissure form the "grey H."
+
+The white matter is located outside of the grey matter and consists almost totally of myelinated motor and sensory axons. "Columns" of white matter carry information either up or down the spinal cord.
+
+The spinal cord proper terminates in a region called the conus medullaris, while the pia mater continues as an extension called the filum terminale, which anchors the spinal cord to the coccyx. The cauda equina ("horse's tail") is a collection of nerves inferior to the conus medullaris that continue to travel through the vertebral column to the coccyx. The cauda equina forms because the spinal cord stops growing in length at about age four, even though the vertebral column continues to lengthen until adulthood. This results in sacral spinal nerves originating in the upper lumbar region.
+
+Within the Central Nervous System (CNS), nerve cell bodies are generally organized into functional clusters, called nuclei. Axons within the CNS are grouped into tracts.
+
+There are 31 spinal cord nerve segments in a human spinal cord:
+
+In the fetus, vertebral segments correspond with spinal cord segments.  However, because the vertebral column grows longer than the spinal cord, spinal cord segments do not correspond to vertebral segments in the adult, particularly in the lower spinal cord. For example, lumbar and sacral spinal cord segments are found between vertebral levels T9 and L2, and the spinal cord ends around the L1/L2 vertebral level, forming a structure known as the conus medullaris.
+
+Although the spinal cord cell bodies end around the L1/L2 vertebral level, the spinal nerves for each segment exit at the level of the corresponding vertebra. For the nerves of the lower spinal cord, this means that they exit the vertebral column much lower (more caudally) than their roots. As these nerves travel from their respective roots to their point of exit from the vertebral column, the nerves of the lower spinal segments form a bundle called the cauda equina.
+
+There are two regions where the spinal cord enlarges:
+
+The spinal cord is made from part of the neural tube during development. There are four stages of the spinal cord that arises from the neural tube: The neural plate, neural fold, neural tube, and the spinal cord. Neural differentiation occurs within the spinal cord portion of the tube.[7] As the neural tube begins to develop, the notochord begins to secrete a factor known as Sonic hedgehog or SHH. As a result, the floor plate then also begins to secrete SHH, and this will induce the basal plate to develop motor neurons. During the maturation of the neural tube, its lateral walls thicken and form a longtitudinal groove called the sulcus limitans. This extends the length of the spinal cord into dorsal and ventral portions as well.[8] Meanwhile, the overlying ectoderm secretes bone morphogenetic protein (BMP). This induces the roof plate to begin to secrete BMP, which will induce the alar plate to develop sensory neurons.  Opposing gradients of such morphogens as BMP and SHH form different domains of dividing cells along the dorsal ventral axis.[9] Dorsal root ganglion neurons differentiate from neural crest progenitors. As the dorsal and ventral column cells proliferate, the lumen of the neural tube narrows to form the small central canal of the spinal cord.[10]  The alar plate and the basal plate are separated by the sulcus limitans.  
+Additionally, the floor plate also secretes netrins. The netrins act as chemoattractants to decussation of pain and temperature sensory neurons in the alar plate across the anterior white commissure, where they then ascend towards the thalamus. Following the closure of the caudal neuropore and formation of the brain's ventricles that contain the choroid plexus tissue, the central canal of the caudal spinal cord is filled with cerebrospinal fluid.
+
+Earlier findings by Viktor Hamburger and Rita Levi-Montalcini in the chick embryo have been confirmed by more recent studies which have demonstrated that the elimination of neuronal cells by programmed cell death (PCD) is necessary for the correct assembly of the nervous system.[11]
+
+Overall, spontaneous embryonic activity has been shown to play a role in neuron and muscle development but is probably not involved in the initial formation of connections between spinal neurons.
+
+The spinal cord is supplied with blood by three arteries that run along its length starting in the brain, and many arteries that approach it through the sides of the spinal column. The three longitudinal arteries are the anterior spinal artery, and the right and left posterior spinal arteries.[12] These travel in the subarachnoid space and send branches into the spinal cord. They form anastamoses (connections) via the anterior and posterior segmental medullary arteries, which enter the spinal cord at various points along its length.[12] The actual blood flow caudally through these arteries, derived from the posterior cerebral circulation, is inadequate to maintain the spinal cord beyond the cervical segments.
+
+The major contribution to the arterial blood supply of the spinal cord below the cervical region comes from the radially arranged posterior and anterior radicular arteries, which run into the spinal cord alongside the dorsal and ventral nerve roots, but with one exception do not connect directly with any of the three longitudinal arteries.[12]  These intercostal and lumbar radicular arteries arise from the aorta, provide major anastomoses and supplement the blood flow to the spinal cord. In humans the largest of the anterior radicular arteries is known as the artery of Adamkiewicz, or anterior radicularis magna (ARM) artery, which usually arises between L1 and L2, but can arise anywhere from T9 to L5.[13] Impaired blood flow through these critical radicular arteries, especially during surgical procedures that involve abrupt disruption of blood flow through the aorta for example during aortic aneursym repair, can result in spinal cord infarction and paraplegia.
+
+
+
+In the dorsal column-medial leminiscus tract, a primary neuron's axon enters the spinal cord and then enters the dorsal column. If the primary axon enters below spinal level T6, the axon travels in the fasciculus gracilis, the medial part of the column. If the axon enters above level T6, then it travels in the fasciculus cuneatus, which is lateral to the fasciculus gracilis. Either way, the primary axon ascends to the lower medulla, where it leaves its fasciculus and synapses with a secondary neuron in one of the dorsal column nuclei: either the nucleus gracilis or the nucleus cuneatus, depending on the pathway it took. At this point, the secondary axon leaves its nucleus and passes anteriorly and medially. The collection of secondary axons that do this are known as internal arcuate fibers. The internal arcuate fibers decussate and continue ascending as the contralateral medial lemniscus. Secondary axons from the medial lemniscus finally terminate in the ventral posterolateral nucleus (VPLN) of the thalamus, where they synapse with tertiary neurons. From there, tertiary neurons ascend via the posterior limb of the internal capsule and end in the primary sensory cortex.
+
+The proprioception of the lower limbs differs from the upper limbs and upper trunk. There is a four-neuron pathway for lower limb proprioception. This pathway initially follows the dorsal spino-cerebellar pathway. It is arranged as follows: proprioceptive receptors of lower limb → peripheral process → dorsal root ganglion → central process → Clarke's column → 2nd order neuron → medulla oblongata (Caudate nucleus) → 3rd order neuron → VPLN of thalamus → 4th order neuron → posterior limb of internal capsule → corona radiata → sensory area of cerebrum.
+
+The anterolateral system works somewhat differently. Its primary neurons axons enter the spinal cord and then ascend one to two levels before synapsing in the substantia gelatinosa. The tract that ascends before synapsing is known as Lissauer's tract. After synapsing, secondary axons decussate and ascend in the anterior lateral portion of the spinal cord as the spinothalamic tract. This tract ascends all the way to the VPLN, where it synapses on tertiary neurons. Tertiary neuronal axons then travel to the primary sensory cortex via the posterior limb of the internal capsule.
+
+Some of the "pain fibers" in the ALS deviate from their pathway towards the VPLN. In one such deviation, axons travel towards the reticular formation in the midbrain. The reticular formation then projects to a number of places including the hippocampus (to create memories about the pain), the centromedian nucleus (to cause diffuse, non-specific pain) and various parts of the cortex. Additionally, some ALS axons project to the periaqueductal gray in the pons, and the axons forming the periaqueductal gray then project to the nucleus raphes magnus, which projects back down to where the pain signal is coming from and inhibits it. This helps control the sensation of pain to some degree.
+
+The corticospinal tract serves as the motor pathway for upper motor neuronal signals coming from the cerebral cortex and from primitive brainstem motor nuclei.
+
+Cortical upper motor neurons originate from Brodmann areas 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 and then descend in the posterior limb of the internal capsule, through the crus cerebri, down through the pons, and to the medullary pyramids, where about 90% of the axons cross to the contralateral side at the decussation of the pyramids. They then descend as the lateral corticospinal tract. These axons synapse with lower motor neurons in the ventral horns of all levels of the spinal cord. The remaining 10% of axons descend on the ipsilateral side as the ventral corticospinal tract. These axons also synapse with lower motor neurons in the ventral horns. Most of them will cross to the contralateral side of the cord (via the anterior white commissure) right before synapsing.
+
+The midbrain nuclei include four motor tracts that send upper motor neuronal axons down the spinal cord to lower motor neurons. These are the rubrospinal tract, the vestibulospinal tract, the tectospinal tract and the reticulospinal tract. The rubrospinal tract descends with the lateral corticospinal tract, and the remaining three descend with the anterior corticospinal tract.
+
+The function of lower motor neurons can be divided into two different groups: the lateral corticospinal tract and the anterior cortical spinal tract. The lateral tract contains upper motor neuronal axons which synapse on dorsal lateral (DL) lower motor neurons. The DL neurons are involved in distal limb control. Therefore, these DL neurons are found specifically only in the cervical and lumbosacral enlargements within the spinal cord. There is no decussation in the lateral corticospinal tract after the decussation at the medullary pyramids.
+
+The anterior corticospinal tract descends ipsilaterally in the anterior column, where the axons emerge and either synapse on lower ventromedial (VM) motor neurons in the ventral horn ipsilaterally or descussate at the anterior white commissure where they synapse on VM lower motor neurons contralaterally . The tectospinal, vestibulospinal and reticulospinal descend ipsilaterally in the anterior column but do not synapse across the anterior white commissure. Rather, they only synapse on VM lower motor neurons ipsilaterally. The VM lower motor neurons control the large, postural muscles of the axial skeleton. These lower motor neurons, unlike those of the DL, are located in the ventral horn all the way throughout the spinal cord.
+
+Proprioceptive information in the body travels up the spinal cord via three tracks. Below L2, the proprioceptive information travels up the spinal cord in the ventral spinocerebellar tract. Also known as the anterior spinocerebellar tract, sensory receptors take in the information and travel into the spinal cord. The cell bodies of these primary neurons are located in the dorsal root ganglia. In the spinal cord, the axons synapse and the secondary neuronal axons decussates and then travel up to the superior cerebellar peduncle where they decussate again. From here, the information is brought to deep nuclei of the cerebellum including the fastigial and interposed nuclei.
+
+From the levels of L2 to T1, proprioceptive information enters the spinal cord and ascends ipsilaterally, where it synapses in Clarke's nucleus. The secondary neuronal axons continue to ascend ipsilaterally and then pass into the cerebellum via the inferior cerebellar peduncle. This tract is known as the dorsal spinocerebellar tract.
+
+From above T1, proprioceptive primary axons enter the spinal cord and ascend ipsilaterally until reaching the accessory cuneate nucleus, where they synapse. The secondary axons pass into the cerebellum via the inferior cerebellar peduncle where again, these axons synapse on cerebellar deep nuclei. This tract is known as the cuneocerebellar tract.
+
+Motor information travels from the brain down the spinal cord via descending spinal cord tracts.  Descending tracts involve two neurons: the upper motor neuron (UMN) and lower motor neuron (LMN).[14]  A nerve signal travels down the upper motor neuron until it synapses with the lower motor neuron in the spinal cord.  Then, the lower motor neuron conducts the nerve signal to the spinal root where efferent nerve fibers carry the motor signal toward the target muscle.  The descending tracts are composed of white matter.  There are several descending tracts serving different functions.  The corticospinal tracts (lateral and anterior) are responsible for coordinated limb movements.[14]
+
+A congenital disorder is diastematomyelia in which part of the spinal cord is split usually at the level of the upper lumbar vertebrae. Sometimes the split can be along the length of the spinal cord.
+
+Spinal cord injuries can be caused by trauma to the spinal column (stretching, bruising, applying pressure, severing, laceration, etc.).  The vertebral bones or intervertebral disks can shatter, causing the spinal cord to be punctured by a sharp fragment of bone. Usually, victims of spinal cord injuries will suffer loss of feeling in certain parts of their body. In milder cases, a victim might only suffer loss of hand or foot function. More severe injuries may result in paraplegia, tetraplegia (also known as quadriplegia), or full body paralysis below the site of injury to the spinal cord.
+
+Damage to upper motor neuron axons in the spinal cord results in a characteristic pattern of ipsilateral deficits. These include hyperreflexia, hypertonia and muscle weakness. Lower motor neuronal damage results in its own characteristic pattern of deficits. Rather than an entire side of deficits, there is a pattern relating to the myotome affected by the damage. Additionally, lower motor neurons are characterized by muscle weakness, hypotonia, hyporeflexia and muscle atrophy.
+
+Spinal shock and neurogenic shock can occur from a spinal injury. Spinal shock is usually temporary, lasting only for 24–48 hours, and is a temporary absence of sensory and motor functions.  Neurogenic shock lasts for weeks and can lead to a loss of muscle tone due to disuse of the muscles below the injured site.
+
+The two areas of the spinal cord most commonly injured are the cervical spine (C1–C7) and the lumbar spine (L1–L5). (The notation C1, C7, L1, L5 refer to the location of a specific vertebra in either the cervical, thoracic, or lumbar region of the spine.)  Spinal cord injury can also be non-traumatic and caused by disease (transverse myelitis, polio, spina bifida, Friedreich's ataxia, spinal cord tumor, spinal stenosis etc.)[15]
+
+In the U.S., 10,000–12,000 people become paralyzed annually as a result of various injuries to the spinal cord.[citation needed]
+
+Real or suspected spinal cord injuries need immediate immobilisation including that of the head. Scans will be needed to assess the injury.  A steroid, methylprednisolone, can be of help as can physical therapy and possibly antioxidants.[citation needed] Treatments need to focus on limiting post-injury cell death, promoting cell regeneration, and replacing lost cells. Regeneration is facilitated by maintaining electric transmission in neural elements.
+
+The spinal cord ends at the level of vertebrae L1–L2, while the subarachnoid space —the compartment that contains cerebrospinal fluid— extends down to the lower border of S2.[15] Lumbar punctures in adults are usually performed between L3–L5 (cauda equina level) in order to avoid damage to the spinal cord.[15]  In the fetus, the spinal cord extends the full length of the spine and regresses as the body grows.
+
+Spinal tumours can occur in the spinal cord and these can be either inside (intradural) or outside (extradural) the dura mater.
+
+Spinal Cord Sectional Anatomy. Animation in the reference.
+
+Diagrams of the spinal cord.
+
+Cross-section through the spinal cord at the mid-thoracic level.
+
+Cross-sections of the spinal cord at varying levels.
+
+Cervical vertebra
+
+A portion of the spinal cord, showing its right lateral surface. The dura is opened and arranged to show the nerve roots.
+
+The spinal cord with dura cut open, showing the exits of the spinal nerves.
+
+The spinal cord showing how the anterior and posterior roots join in the spinal nerves.
+
+The spinal cord showing how the anterior and posterior roots join in the spinal nerves.
+
+A longer view of the spinal cord.
+
+Projections of the spinal cord into the nerves (red motor, blue sensory).
+
+Projections of the spinal cord into the nerves (red motor, blue sensory).
+
+Cross-section of rabbit spinal cord.
+
+Cross-section of adult mouse spinal cord: astrocytes (red) and neurons (green)
+
+Cross section of adult rat spinal cord stained using Cajal method.
+
+An overview of the spinal cord.
+
+Sagittal section of pig vertebrae showing a section of the spinal cord.
+
+The base of the brain and the top of the spinal cord
+
+Spinal cord. Spinal membranes and nerve roots.Deep dissection. Posterior view.
+
+Spinal cord. Spinal membranes and nerve roots.Deep dissection. Posterior view.
+
+Spinal cord. Spinal membranes and nerve roots.Deep dissection. Posterior view.
+
+Spinal cord. Spinal membranes and nerve roots.Deep dissection. Posterior view.
+
+Spinal cord. Spinal membranes and nerve roots.Deep dissection. Posterior view.
+
+Spinal cord. Spinal membranes and nerve roots.Deep dissection. Posterior view.
+
+Spinal cord. Spinal membranes and nerve roots.Deep dissection. Posterior view.
+
+Cerebrum.Inferior view.Deep dissection
+
+Cerebrum.Inferior view.Deep dissection
+
+Spinal cord. Brachial plexus. Cerebrum.Inferior view.Deep dissection.
+
+Spinal cord. Brachial plexus. Cerebrum.Inferior view.Deep dissection.
+
+Spinal cord
+
+Medulla spinalis of 8-week-old human embryo

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+
+A monk  (/mʌŋk/, from Greek: μοναχός,  monachos, "single, solitary" via Latin monachus)[1][2] is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic  living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedicate his life to serving all other living beings, or to be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live his or her life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many religions and in philosophy.
+
+In the Greek language the term can apply to women, but in modern English it is mainly in use for men. The word nun is typically used for female monastics.
+
+Although the term monachos is of Christian origin, in the English language monk tends to be used loosely also for both male and female ascetics from other religious or philosophical backgrounds.  However, being generic, it is not interchangeable with terms that denote particular kinds of monk, such as cenobite, hermit, anchorite, hesychast, or solitary.
+
+Traditions of Christian monasticism exist in major Christian denominations, with religious orders being present in Catholicism, Lutheranism, Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Reformed Christianity, Anglicanism and Methodism. Indian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism also have monastic traditions as well.
+
+In Theravada Buddhism, bhikkhu is the term for monk. Their disciplinary code is called the patimokkha, which is part of the larger Vinaya. They live lives of mendicancy, and go on a morning almsround (Pali: pindapata) every day. The local people give food for the monks to eat, though the monks are not permitted to positively ask for anything. The monks live in monasteries, and have an important function in traditional Asian society. Young boys can be ordained as samaneras. Both bhikkhus and samaneras eat only in the morning, and are not supposed to lead a luxurious life. Their rules forbid the use of money, although this rule is nowadays not kept by all monks. The monks are part of the Sangha, the third of the Triple Gem of Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha.
+
+In Mahayana Buddhism, the term 'Sangha' strictly speaking refers to those who have achieved certain levels of understanding. They are therefore called 'community of the excellent ones' (Standard Tibetan: mchog kyi tshogs); however, these in turn need not be monks (i.e., hold such vows). Several Mahayana orders accept female practitioners as monks, instead of using the normal title of "nun", and they are considered equal to male ascetics in all respects.
+
+The Bhikkhus are only allowed 4 items (other than their robes): a razor, a needle, an alms bowl and a water strainer.[citation needed]
+
+In Vajrayana Buddhism, monkhood is part of the system of 'vows of individual liberation'; these vows are taken in order to develop one's own personal ethical discipline. The monks and nuns form the (ordinary) sangha. As for the Vajrayana vows of individual liberation, there are four steps: A lay person may take the 5 vows called 'approaching virtue' (in Tibetan 'genyen' < dge snyan>). The next step is to enter the monastic way of life (Tib. rabjung) which includes wearing monk's or nun's robes. After that, one can become a 'novice' (Pali samanera, Tib. getshül); the last and final step is to take all vows of the 'fully ordained monk' (gelong). This term 'gelong' (Tib. < dge long>, in the female form gelongma) is the translation of Skt. bikshu (for women bikshuni) which is the equivalent of the Pali term bhikkhuni; bhikkhu is the word used in Theravada Buddhism (Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand).
+
+Chinese Buddhist monks have been traditionally and stereotypically linked with the practice of the Chinese martial arts or Kung fu, and monks are frequently important characters in martial arts films.  This association is focused around the Shaolin Monastery.  The Buddhist monk Bodhidharma, traditionally credited as the founder of Zen Buddhism in China, is also claimed to have introduced Kalaripayattu (which later evolved into Kung Fu) to the country. This latter claim has however been a source of much controversy (see Bodhidharma, the martial arts, and the disputed India connection) One more feature about the Chinese Buddhist monks is that they practice the burning marks on their scalp, finger or part of the skin on their anterior side of the forearm with incense as a sign of ordination.
+
+In Thailand and Burma, it is common for boys to spend some time living as a monk in a monastery. Most stay for only a few years and then leave, but a number continue on in the ascetic life for the rest of their lives.
+
+In Mongolia during the 1920s, there were about 110,000 monks, including children, who made up about one-third of the male population,[3] many of whom were killed in the purges of Choibalsan.
+
+Within Catholicism, a monk is a member of a religious order who lives a communal life in a monastery, abbey, or priory under a monastic rule of life (such as the Rule of St. Benedict). St. Benedict of Nursia, (480-543 or 547 AD) is considered to be the founder of western monasticism. He authored the Rule of St. Benedict, which is the foundation for the Order of St. Benedict and all of its reform groups such as the Cistercians and the Trappists. He founded the great Benedictine monastery, Monte Cassino, in 529.
+
+The religious vows taken in the West were first developed by St. Benedict.  These vows were three in number: obedience, conversion of life, and stability.  Obedience calls for the monk to obey Christ, as represented by the superior person of the monastery, which is an abbot or prior.  Conversion of life means, generally, that the monk convert himself to the way of a monk, which is death to self and to the world and life to God and to his work. A Christian monk is to be an instrument of God's work. Stability entails that the monk commit himself to the monastery for the remainder of his life, and so, upon death, will be buried at its cemetery.  The vow of stability is unique to Benedictines.
+
+The solemn vows in other religious communities were eventually established as vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. Poverty requires that they renounce any ownership of property or assets, except for items that were allowed to them by their superior (such as a religious habit, shoes, a cloak, etc.), and to live meekly, sharing whatever they might have with the poor.  Chastity requires that since they were willing to dedicate their lives to God, they sacrificed the love between men and women and would not marry. Also, they give up any act of sexual conduct.
+
+To become a monk, one first must become a postulant, during which time the man lives at the monastery to evaluate whether he is called to become a monk. As a postulant, the man is not bound by any vows, and is free to leave the monastery at any time. If the postulant and the community agree that the postulant should become a monk, the man is received as a novice, at which time he is given his religious habit, and begins to participate more fully in the life of the monastery. Following a period as a novice, usually six months to a year, the novice professes temporary vows, which can be renewed for a period of years. After a few years, the monk professes permanent vows, which are binding for life.
+
+The monastic life generally consists of prayer in the form of the Liturgy of the Hours (also known as the Divine Office) and divine reading (lectio divina) and manual labor. Among most religious orders, monks live in simple, austere rooms called cells and come together daily to celebrate the Conventual Mass and to recite the Liturgy of the Hours. In most communities, the monks take their meals together in the refectory. While there is no vow of silence, many communities have a period of silence lasting from evening until the next morning and some others restrict talking to only when it is necessary for the monks to perform their work and during weekly recreation.
+
+Monks who have been or will be ordained into Holy Orders as priests or deacons are referred to as choir monks, as they have the obligation to recite the entire Divine Office daily in choir. Those monks who are not ordained into Holy Orders are referred to as lay brothers. In most monastic communities today, little distinction exists between the lay brothers and the choir monks. However, historically, the roles of the two groups of monks within the monastery differed. The work of the choir monks was considered to be prayer, chanting the seven hours of the Divine Office and celebrating the Mass daily whereas the lay brothers provided for the material needs of the community by growing food, preparing meals, maintaining the monastery and the grounds. This distinction arose historically because generally those monks who could read Latin typically became choir monks, while those monks who were illiterate or could not read Latin became lay brothers. Since the lay brothers could not recite the Divine Office in Latin, they would instead pray easily memorizable prayers such as the Our Father or the Hail Mary as many as 150 times per day. Since the Second Vatican Council, the distinction between choir monks and lay brothers has been deemphasized, as the council allowed the Divine Office to be said in the vernacular language, effectively opening participation to all of the monks.
+
+Within western monasticism, it is important to differentiate between monks and friars. Monks generally live a contemplative life of prayer confined within a monastery while friars usually engage in an active ministry of service to the outside community. The monastic orders include all Benedictines (the Order of Saint Benedict and its later reforms including the Cistercians and the Trappists) and the Carthusians, who live according to their own Statutes, and not according to the Rule of St. Benedict proper. Orders of friars include the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustinians. Although the Canons Regular, such as the Norbertines, live in community, they are neither monks nor friars as they are characterized by their clerical state and not by any monastic vows.
+
+Loccum Abbey and Amelungsborn Abbey have the longest traditions as Lutheran monasteries; after the Reformation, many monasteries and convents were received into the Lutheran Church and continued religious life, existing to this day.[4]
+
+Since the 19th and 20th century, there has been a renewal in the monastic life among Lutheranism. Lutheran religious orders in the Franciscan, Benedictine and other traditions exist, with some Lutheran monasteries having third orders and accepting oblates.[5][6]
+
+In American Lutheran traditions, "The Congregation of the Servants of Christ" was established at St. Augustine's House in Oxford, Michigan, in 1958 when some other men joined Father Arthur Kreinheder in observing the monastic life and offices of prayer. These men and others came and went over the years. The community has always remained small; at times the only member was Father Arthur.[7] During the 35 years of its existence over 25 men tested their vocations to monastic life by living at the house for some time, from a few months to many years, but at Father Arthur's death in 1989 only one permanent resident remained. At the beginning of 2006, there was 2 permanent professed members and 2 long-term guests. Strong ties remain with this community and their brothers in Sweden (Östanbäck monastery) and in Germany (Priory of St. Wigbert).[8]
+
+There is also the Order of Lutheran Franciscans, a religious community of friars and sisters within the tradition of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
+
+Monastic life in England came to an abrupt end when King Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church and made himself the head of the Church of England. He initiated the Dissolution of the Monasteries, during which all of the monasteries within England were destroyed. A large number of monks were executed, others fled to continental European monasteries where they were able to continue their monastic life.
+
+Shortly after the beginning of the Anglo-Catholic Movement in the Church of England, there was felt to be a need for a restoration of the monastic life. In the 1840s, the then Anglican priest and future Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman established a community of men at Littlemore near Oxford. From then on, there have been established many communities of monks, friars and other religious communities for men in the Anglican Communion. There are Anglican Benedictines, Franciscans, Cistercians, and in the Episcopal Church in the United States, Dominicans. There are also uniquely Anglican monastic orders such as the Society of Saint John the Evangelist and the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield.
+
+Some Anglican religious communities are contemplative, some active, but a distinguishing feature of the monastic life among Anglicans is that most practice the so-called "mixed life". Anglican monks recite the Divine Office in choir daily, either the full eight services of the Breviary or the four offices found in the Book of Common Prayer and celebrate the Eucharist daily. Many orders take on external works such as service to the poor, giving religious retreats, or other active ministries within their immediate communities. Like Catholic monks, Anglican monks also take the monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
+
+In the early 20th century when the Oxford Movement was at its height, the Anglican Communion had hundreds[citation needed] of orders and communities and thousands of religious followers. However, since the 1960s there has been a sharp falling off in the numbers of religious in many parts of the Anglican Communion. Many once large and international communities have been reduced to a single convent or monastery composed of elderly men or women. In the last few decades of the 20th century, novices have for most communities been few and far between. Some orders and communities have already become extinct.
+
+There are however, still several thousand Anglican monks working today in approximately 200 communities around the world. The most surprising growth has been in the Melanesian countries of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. The Melanesian Brotherhood, founded at Tabalia, Guadalcanal, in 1925 by Ini Kopuria, is now the largest Anglican community in the world with over 450 brothers in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and the United Kingdom.
+
+The Saint Brigid of Kildare Monastery is a double monastery of the United Methodist Church rooted in the Benedictine tradition, being located in Collegeville, Minnesota.[9] Besides monastic orders, the Order of Saint Luke is a dispersed religious order within Methodism, though being ecumenical, it accepts believers of other Christian denominations.
+
+The Emmanuel Sisters is a convent of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon that was founded by Rev Mother Magdaline Marie Handy.[10] These nuns are engaged in prayer, teaching, and healthcare.[10]
+
+In Eastern Orthodoxy monasticism holds a very special and important place: "Angels are a light for monks, monks are a light for laymen" (St. John Klimakos). Orthodox monastics separate themselves from the world in order to pray unceasingly for the world. They do not, in general, have as their primary purpose the running of social services, but instead are concerned with attaining theosis, or union with God. However, care for the poor and needy has always been an obligation of monasticism,[citation needed] so not all monasteries are "cloistered". The level of contact will vary from community to community. Hermits, on the other hand, have little or no contact with the outside world.
+
+Orthodox monasticism does not have religious orders as are found in the West, nor do they have Rules in the same sense as the Rule of St. Benedict. Rather, Eastern monastics study and draw inspiration from the writings of the Desert Fathers as well as other Church Fathers; probably the most influential of which are the Greater Asketikon and Lesser Asketikon of St. Basil the Great and the Philokalia, which was compiled by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. Hesychasm is of primary importance in the ascetical theology of the Orthodox Church.
+
+Most communities are self-supporting, and the monastic’s daily life is usually divided into three parts: (a) communal worship in the catholicon (the monastery's main church); (b) hard manual labour; and (c) private prayer, spiritual study, and rest when necessary. Meals are usually taken in common in a sizable dining hall known as a trapeza (refectory), at elongated refectory tables. Food is usually simple and is eaten in silence while one of the brethren reads aloud from the spiritual writings of the Holy Fathers. The monastic lifestyle takes a great deal of serious commitment. Within the cenobitic community, all monks conform to a common way of living based on the traditions of that particular monastery. In struggling to attain this conformity, the monastic comes to realize his own shortcomings and is guided by his spiritual father in how to deal honestly with them. For this same reason, bishops are almost always chosen from the ranks of monks.
+
+Eastern monasticism is found in three distinct forms: anchoritic (a solitary living in isolation), cenobitic (a community living and worshiping together under the direct rule of an abbot or abbess), and the "middle way" between the two, known as the skete (a community of individuals living separately but in close proximity to one another, who come together only on Sundays and feast days, working and praying the rest of the time in solitude, but under the direction of an elder). One normally enters a cenobitic community first, and only after testing and spiritual growth would one go on to the skete or, for the most advanced, become a solitary anchorite. However, one is not necessarily expected to join a skete or become a solitary; most monastics remain in the cenobium the whole of their lives.
+
+In general, Orthodox monastics have little or no contact with the outside world, including their own families. The purpose of the monastic life is union with God, the means is through leaving the world (i.e., the life of the passions). After tonsure, Orthodox monks and nuns are never permitted to cut their hair. The hair of the head and the beard remain uncut as a symbol of the vows they have taken, reminiscent of the Nazarites from the Old Testament. The tonsure of monks is the token of a consecrated life, and symbolizes the cutting off of their self-will.
+
+The process of becoming a monk is intentionally slow, as the vows taken are considered to entail a lifelong commitment to God, and are not to be entered into lightly. In Orthodox monasticism after completing the novitiate, there are three ranks of monasticism. There is only one monastic habit in the Eastern Church (with certain slight regional variations), and it is the same for both monks and nuns. Each successive grade is given a portion of the habit, the full habit being worn only by those in the highest grade, known for that reason as the "Great Schema", or "Great Habit".
+
+The various profession rites are normally performed by the Abbot, but if the abbot has not been ordained a priest, or if the monastic community is a convent, a hieromonk will perform the service. The abbot or hieromonk who performs a tonsure must be of at least the rank he is tonsuring into. In other words, only a hieromonk who has been tonsured into the Great Schema may himself tonsure a Schemamonk. A bishop, however, may tonsure into any rank, regardless of his own.
+
+Novice (Church Slavonic: Poslushnik), lit. "one under obedience"—Those wishing to join a monastery begin their lives as novices. After coming to the monastery and living as a guest for not less than three days, the revered abbot or abbess may bless the candidate to become a novice. There is no formal ceremony for the clothing of a novice, he or she simply receives permission to wear the clothing of a novice. In the Eastern monastic tradition, novices may or may not dress in the black inner cassock (Greek: Anterion, Eisorasson; Church Slavonic: Podriasnik) and wear the soft monastic hat (Greek: Skoufos, Church Slavonic: Skufia), depending on the tradition of the local community, and in accordance to the abbot’s directives. The inner-cassock and the skoufos are the first part of the Orthodox monastic habit. In some communities, the novice also wears the leather belt. He is also given a prayer rope and instructed in the use of the Jesus Prayer. If a novice chooses to leave during the period of the novitiate, no penalty is incurred. He may also be asked to leave at any time if his behaviour does not conform to the monastic life, or if the superior discerns that he is not called to monasticism. When the abbot or abbess deems the novice ready, he is asked if he wishes to join the monastery. Some, out of humility, will choose to remain novices all their lives. Every stage of the monastic life must be entered into voluntarily.
+
+Rassophore (Church Slavonic: Ryassofor), lit. "Robe-bearer"—If the novice continues on to become a monk, he is clothed in the first degree of monasticism at a formal service known as the Tonsure. Although there are no formal vows made at this point, the candidate is normally required to affirm his commitment to persevere in the monastic life. The abbot will then perform the tonsure, cutting a small amount of hair from four spots on the head, forming a cross. He is then given the outer cassock (Greek: Rasson, Exorasson, or Mandorasson; Church Slavonic: Ryassa)—an outer robe with wide sleeves, something like the cowl used in the West, but without a hood—from which the name of Rassophore is derived. He is also given a brimless hat with a veil, known as a klobuk, and a leather belt is fastened around his waist. His habit is usually black, signifying that he is now dead to the world, and he receives a new name. Although the Rassophore does not make formal vows, he is still morally obligated to continue in the monastic estate for the rest of his life. Some will remain Rassophores permanently without going on to the higher degrees.
+
+Stavrophore (Church Slavonic: Krestonosets), lit. "Cross-bearer"—The next level for Eastern monastics takes place some years after the first tonsure when the abbot feels the monk has reached an appropriate level of discipline, dedication, and humility. This degree is also known as the Little Schema, and is considered to be a "betrothal" to the Great Schema. At this stage, the monk makes formal vows of stability, chastity, obedience and poverty. Then he is tonsured and clothed in the habit, which in addition to that worn by the Rassophore, includes the paramandyas (Church Slavonic: paraman), a piece of square cloth worn on the back, embroidered with the instruments of the Passion (see picture above), and connected by ties to a wooden cross worn over the heart. The paramandyas represents the yoke of Christ. Because of this addition he is now called Stavrophore, or Cross-bearer. He is also given a wooden hand cross (or "profession cross"), which he should keep in his icon corner, and a beeswax candle, symbolic of monastic vigilance the sacrificing of himself for God. He will be buried holding the cross, and the candle will be burned at his funeral. In the Slavic practice, the Stavrophore also wears the monastic mantle. The rasson (outer robe) worn by the Stavrophore is more ample than that worn by the Rassophore. The abbot increases the Stavrophore monk’s prayer rule, allows a more strict personal ascetic practice, and gives the monk more responsibility.
+
+Great Schema (Greek: Megaloschemos, Church Slavonic: Skhimnik)—Monks whose abbot feels they have reached a high level of spiritual excellence reach the final stage, called the Great Schema. The tonsure of a Schemamonk follows the same format as the Stavrophore, and he makes the same vows and is tonsured in the same manner. But in addition to all the garments worn by the Stavrophore, he is given the Analavos (Church Slavonic: Analav) which is the article of monastic vesture emblematic of the Great Schema. For this reason, the analavos itself is sometimes called the "Great Schema". The analavos comes down in the front and the back, somewhat like the scapular in Western monasticism, although the two garments are probably not related. It is often intricately embroidered with the instruments of the Passion and the Trisagion (the angelic hymn). The Greek form does not have a hood, the Slavic form has a hood and lappets on the shoulders, so that the garment forms a large cross covering the monk's shoulders, chest, and back. Another piece added is the Polystavrion or "Many Crosses", which consists of a cord with a number of small crosses plaited into it.  The polystavrion forms a yoke around the monk and serves to hold the analavos in place, and reminds the monastic that he is bound to Christ and that his arms are no longer fit for worldly activities, but that he must labor only for the Kingdom of Heaven.  Among the Greeks, the mantle is added at this stage.  The paramandyas of the Megaloschemos is larger than that of the Stavrophore, and if he wears the klobuk, it is of a distinctive thimble shape, called a koukoulion, the veil of which is usually embroidered with crosses.  In some monastic traditions the Great Schema is only given to monks and nuns on their death bed, while in others they may be elevated after as little as 25 years of service.
+
+Eastern Orthodox monks are addressed as "Father" even if they are not priests; but when conversing among themselves, monks will often address one another as "Brother".  Novices are always referred to as "Brother". Among the Greeks, old monks are often called Gheronda, or "Elder", out of respect for their dedication.  In the Slavic tradition, the title of Elder (Church Slavonic: Starets) is normally reserved for those who are of an advanced spiritual life, and who serve as guides to others.
+
+For the Orthodox, Mother is the correct term for nuns who have been tonsured Stavrophore or higher. Novices and Rassophores are addressed as "Sister".  Nuns live identical ascetic lives to their male counterparts and are therefore also called monachai (the feminine plural of monachos), and their community is likewise called a monastery.
+
+Many (but not all) Orthodox seminaries are attached to monasteries, combining academic preparation for ordination with participation in the community's life of prayer, and hopefully benefiting from the example and wise counsel of the monks.  Bishops are required by the sacred canons of the Orthodox Church to be chosen from among the monastic clergy. The requirement is specifically that they be monastics, not simply celibate (see clerical celibacy).  Monks who have been ordained to the priesthood are called hieromonks (priest-monks); monks who have been ordained to the diaconate are called hierodeacons (deacon-monks).  A Schemamonk who is a priest is called a Hieroschemamonk.  Most monks are not ordained; a community will normally only present as many candidates for ordination to the bishop as the liturgical needs of the community require.
+
+Hinduism has many monastic orders, including the Dashanami Sampradaya ("Tradition of Ten Names") orders established by Adi Shankara as well as Vaishnava orders.
+
+Madhvaacharya (Madhvacharya), the Dwaita philosopher, established ashta matha (Eight Monasteries). He appointed a monk (called swamiji or swamigalu in local parlance) for each matha or monastery who has the right to worship Madhvacharya's murti of Lord Krishna by rotation. Each matha's swamiji gets a chance to worship after fourteen years. This ritual is called Paryaya and has been used also outside his sampradaya, e.g. in Gaudiya Vaisnava Radharamana temple in Vrindavan.
+
+Similar in appearance to Buddhist monks, brahmacari monks from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), or Hare Krishnas as they are popularly known, are the best known Vaishnava monks outside India. They are a common sight in many places around the world. Their appearance—simple saffron dhoti, shaved head with sikha, Tulasi neckbeads and tilaka markings—and social customs (sadhana) date back many thousands of years to the Vedic era with its varnasrama society. This social scheme includes both monastic and lay stages meant for various persons in various stages of life as per their characteristics (guna) and work (karma).
+
+ISKCON started as a predominantly monastic group but nowadays the majority of members live as lay persons. Many of them, however, spent some time as monks. New persons joining ISKCON as full-time members (living in its centers) first undergo a three-month Bhakta training, which includes learning the basics of brahmacari (monastic) life. After that they can decide if they prefer to continue as monks or as married Grihasthas.
+
+Brahmacari older than fifty years (as per ISKCON rule) can become sannyasi. Sannyasa, a life of full dedication to spiritual pursuits, is the highest stage of life in the varnasrama society. It is permanent and one cannot give it up. A Sannyasi is given the title Swami. Older grihastha with grown-up children are traditionally expected to accept vanaprastha (celibate retired) life.
+
+The role of monastic orders in Indian and now also Western society has to some extent been adapted over the years in accordance with ever-changing social structures.
+
+One of the most intense forms of Asceticism can be found in Jainism, one of the world's oldest religions. Jainism encourages fasting, yoga practices, meditation in difficult postures, and other austerities.[11] According to Jains, one's highest goal should be attaining Nirvana or Moksha (i.e., liberation from samsara, the cycle of birth and rebirth). For this, a soul has to be without attachment or self-indulgence. This can be achieved only by the monks and nuns who take five great vows: of non-violence, of truth, of non-stealing, of non-possession and of celibacy.
+
+Most of the austerities and ascetic practices can be traced back to Vardhaman Mahavira, the twenty-fourth "fordmaker" or Tirthankara. The Acaranga Sutra, or Book of Good Conduct, is a sacred book within Jainism that discusses the ascetic code of conduct. Other texts that provide insight into conduct of ascetics include Yogashastra by Acharya Hemachandra and Niyamasara by Acharya Kundakunda. Other illustrious Jain works on ascetic conduct are Oghanijjutti, Pindanijjutti, Cheda Sutta, and Nisiha Suttafee.
+
+Full Jain monk in either Svetambara or Digambara tradition[12] can belong to one of these ranks:
+
+These three are mentioned is the three lines of the Namokar Mantra. In the Digambara tradition, a junior monk can be a:
+
+The Svetambar Terapanthi sect has a new rank of junior monks who are called samana. The nuns are called Aryikas in Digambar tradition and Sadhvi in the Svetambar tradition.
+
+As per the Jain vows, the monks and nuns renounce all relations and possessions. Jain ascetics practice complete non-violence. Ahimsa is the first and foremost vow of a Jain ascetic. They do not hurt any living being, be it an insect or a human. They carry a special broom to sweep away any insects that may cross their path. Some Jain monks wear a cloth over the mouth to prevent accidental harm to airborne germs and insects. They also do not use electricity as it involves violence. Furthermore, they do not use any devices or machines.
+
+As they are without possession and attachment, they travel from city to city, often crossing forests and deserts, and always barefoot. Jain ascetics do not stay in a single place for more than two months to prevent themselves from becoming attached to any location. However, during four months of monsoon (rainy season) known as chaturmaas, they continue to stay in a single place to avoid killing the life forms that thrive during the rains.
+Jain monks and nuns practice complete celibacy. They do not touch or share a sitting platform with a person of opposite sex.
+
+Jain ascetics follow a strict vegetarian diet without root vegetables. Shvetambara monks do not cook food but solicit alms from householders. Digambara monks have only a single meal a day. Neither group will beg for food, but a Jain ascetic may accept a meal from a householder, provided that the latter is pure of mind and body and offers the food of his own volition and in the prescribed manner. During such an encounter, the monk remains standing and eats only a measured amount. Fasting (i.e., abstinence from food and sometimes water) is a routine feature of Jain asceticism. Fasts last for a day or longer, up to a month. Some monks avoid (or limit) medicine or hospitalization due to their careful attention to body.
+
+Other austerities include meditation in seated or standing posture near river banks in the cold wind, or meditation atop hills and mountains, especially at noon when the sun is at its fiercest. Such austerities are undertaken according to the physical and mental limits of the individual ascetic. Jain ascetics are (almost) completely without possessions. Some Jains (Shvetambara monks and nuns) own only unstitched white robes (an upper and lower garment) and a bowl used for eating and collecting alms. Male Digambara monks do not wear any clothes and carry nothing with them except a soft broom made of shed peacock feathers (pinchi) and eat from their hands. They sleep on the floor without blankets and sit on special wooden platforms.
+
+Every day is spent either in study of scriptures or meditation or teaching to lay people. They stand aloof from worldly matters. Many Jain ascetics take a final vow of Santhara or Sallekhana (i.e., a peaceful and detached death where medicines, food, and water are abandoned). This is done when death is imminent or when a monk feels that he is unable to adhere to his vows on account of advanced age or terminal disease.
+
+Quotes on ascetic practices from the Akaranga Sutra as Hermann Jacobi translated it:[13][14]
+
+A monk or a nun wandering from village to village should look forward for four cubits, and seeing animals they should move on by walking on his toes or heels or the sides of his feet. If there be some bypath, they should choose it, and not go straight on; then they may circumspectly wander from village to village.
+
+I shall become a Sramana who owns no house, no property, no sons, no cattle, who eats what others give him; I shall commit no sinful action; Master, I renounce to accept anything that has not been given.' Having taken such vows, (a mendicant) should not, on entering a village or scot-free town, &c., take himself, or induce others to take, or allow others to take, what has not been given.

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+A monk  (/mʌŋk/, from Greek: μοναχός,  monachos, "single, solitary" via Latin monachus)[1][2] is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic  living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedicate his life to serving all other living beings, or to be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live his or her life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many religions and in philosophy.
+
+In the Greek language the term can apply to women, but in modern English it is mainly in use for men. The word nun is typically used for female monastics.
+
+Although the term monachos is of Christian origin, in the English language monk tends to be used loosely also for both male and female ascetics from other religious or philosophical backgrounds.  However, being generic, it is not interchangeable with terms that denote particular kinds of monk, such as cenobite, hermit, anchorite, hesychast, or solitary.
+
+Traditions of Christian monasticism exist in major Christian denominations, with religious orders being present in Catholicism, Lutheranism, Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Reformed Christianity, Anglicanism and Methodism. Indian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism also have monastic traditions as well.
+
+In Theravada Buddhism, bhikkhu is the term for monk. Their disciplinary code is called the patimokkha, which is part of the larger Vinaya. They live lives of mendicancy, and go on a morning almsround (Pali: pindapata) every day. The local people give food for the monks to eat, though the monks are not permitted to positively ask for anything. The monks live in monasteries, and have an important function in traditional Asian society. Young boys can be ordained as samaneras. Both bhikkhus and samaneras eat only in the morning, and are not supposed to lead a luxurious life. Their rules forbid the use of money, although this rule is nowadays not kept by all monks. The monks are part of the Sangha, the third of the Triple Gem of Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha.
+
+In Mahayana Buddhism, the term 'Sangha' strictly speaking refers to those who have achieved certain levels of understanding. They are therefore called 'community of the excellent ones' (Standard Tibetan: mchog kyi tshogs); however, these in turn need not be monks (i.e., hold such vows). Several Mahayana orders accept female practitioners as monks, instead of using the normal title of "nun", and they are considered equal to male ascetics in all respects.
+
+The Bhikkhus are only allowed 4 items (other than their robes): a razor, a needle, an alms bowl and a water strainer.[citation needed]
+
+In Vajrayana Buddhism, monkhood is part of the system of 'vows of individual liberation'; these vows are taken in order to develop one's own personal ethical discipline. The monks and nuns form the (ordinary) sangha. As for the Vajrayana vows of individual liberation, there are four steps: A lay person may take the 5 vows called 'approaching virtue' (in Tibetan 'genyen' < dge snyan>). The next step is to enter the monastic way of life (Tib. rabjung) which includes wearing monk's or nun's robes. After that, one can become a 'novice' (Pali samanera, Tib. getshül); the last and final step is to take all vows of the 'fully ordained monk' (gelong). This term 'gelong' (Tib. < dge long>, in the female form gelongma) is the translation of Skt. bikshu (for women bikshuni) which is the equivalent of the Pali term bhikkhuni; bhikkhu is the word used in Theravada Buddhism (Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand).
+
+Chinese Buddhist monks have been traditionally and stereotypically linked with the practice of the Chinese martial arts or Kung fu, and monks are frequently important characters in martial arts films.  This association is focused around the Shaolin Monastery.  The Buddhist monk Bodhidharma, traditionally credited as the founder of Zen Buddhism in China, is also claimed to have introduced Kalaripayattu (which later evolved into Kung Fu) to the country. This latter claim has however been a source of much controversy (see Bodhidharma, the martial arts, and the disputed India connection) One more feature about the Chinese Buddhist monks is that they practice the burning marks on their scalp, finger or part of the skin on their anterior side of the forearm with incense as a sign of ordination.
+
+In Thailand and Burma, it is common for boys to spend some time living as a monk in a monastery. Most stay for only a few years and then leave, but a number continue on in the ascetic life for the rest of their lives.
+
+In Mongolia during the 1920s, there were about 110,000 monks, including children, who made up about one-third of the male population,[3] many of whom were killed in the purges of Choibalsan.
+
+Within Catholicism, a monk is a member of a religious order who lives a communal life in a monastery, abbey, or priory under a monastic rule of life (such as the Rule of St. Benedict). St. Benedict of Nursia, (480-543 or 547 AD) is considered to be the founder of western monasticism. He authored the Rule of St. Benedict, which is the foundation for the Order of St. Benedict and all of its reform groups such as the Cistercians and the Trappists. He founded the great Benedictine monastery, Monte Cassino, in 529.
+
+The religious vows taken in the West were first developed by St. Benedict.  These vows were three in number: obedience, conversion of life, and stability.  Obedience calls for the monk to obey Christ, as represented by the superior person of the monastery, which is an abbot or prior.  Conversion of life means, generally, that the monk convert himself to the way of a monk, which is death to self and to the world and life to God and to his work. A Christian monk is to be an instrument of God's work. Stability entails that the monk commit himself to the monastery for the remainder of his life, and so, upon death, will be buried at its cemetery.  The vow of stability is unique to Benedictines.
+
+The solemn vows in other religious communities were eventually established as vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. Poverty requires that they renounce any ownership of property or assets, except for items that were allowed to them by their superior (such as a religious habit, shoes, a cloak, etc.), and to live meekly, sharing whatever they might have with the poor.  Chastity requires that since they were willing to dedicate their lives to God, they sacrificed the love between men and women and would not marry. Also, they give up any act of sexual conduct.
+
+To become a monk, one first must become a postulant, during which time the man lives at the monastery to evaluate whether he is called to become a monk. As a postulant, the man is not bound by any vows, and is free to leave the monastery at any time. If the postulant and the community agree that the postulant should become a monk, the man is received as a novice, at which time he is given his religious habit, and begins to participate more fully in the life of the monastery. Following a period as a novice, usually six months to a year, the novice professes temporary vows, which can be renewed for a period of years. After a few years, the monk professes permanent vows, which are binding for life.
+
+The monastic life generally consists of prayer in the form of the Liturgy of the Hours (also known as the Divine Office) and divine reading (lectio divina) and manual labor. Among most religious orders, monks live in simple, austere rooms called cells and come together daily to celebrate the Conventual Mass and to recite the Liturgy of the Hours. In most communities, the monks take their meals together in the refectory. While there is no vow of silence, many communities have a period of silence lasting from evening until the next morning and some others restrict talking to only when it is necessary for the monks to perform their work and during weekly recreation.
+
+Monks who have been or will be ordained into Holy Orders as priests or deacons are referred to as choir monks, as they have the obligation to recite the entire Divine Office daily in choir. Those monks who are not ordained into Holy Orders are referred to as lay brothers. In most monastic communities today, little distinction exists between the lay brothers and the choir monks. However, historically, the roles of the two groups of monks within the monastery differed. The work of the choir monks was considered to be prayer, chanting the seven hours of the Divine Office and celebrating the Mass daily whereas the lay brothers provided for the material needs of the community by growing food, preparing meals, maintaining the monastery and the grounds. This distinction arose historically because generally those monks who could read Latin typically became choir monks, while those monks who were illiterate or could not read Latin became lay brothers. Since the lay brothers could not recite the Divine Office in Latin, they would instead pray easily memorizable prayers such as the Our Father or the Hail Mary as many as 150 times per day. Since the Second Vatican Council, the distinction between choir monks and lay brothers has been deemphasized, as the council allowed the Divine Office to be said in the vernacular language, effectively opening participation to all of the monks.
+
+Within western monasticism, it is important to differentiate between monks and friars. Monks generally live a contemplative life of prayer confined within a monastery while friars usually engage in an active ministry of service to the outside community. The monastic orders include all Benedictines (the Order of Saint Benedict and its later reforms including the Cistercians and the Trappists) and the Carthusians, who live according to their own Statutes, and not according to the Rule of St. Benedict proper. Orders of friars include the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustinians. Although the Canons Regular, such as the Norbertines, live in community, they are neither monks nor friars as they are characterized by their clerical state and not by any monastic vows.
+
+Loccum Abbey and Amelungsborn Abbey have the longest traditions as Lutheran monasteries; after the Reformation, many monasteries and convents were received into the Lutheran Church and continued religious life, existing to this day.[4]
+
+Since the 19th and 20th century, there has been a renewal in the monastic life among Lutheranism. Lutheran religious orders in the Franciscan, Benedictine and other traditions exist, with some Lutheran monasteries having third orders and accepting oblates.[5][6]
+
+In American Lutheran traditions, "The Congregation of the Servants of Christ" was established at St. Augustine's House in Oxford, Michigan, in 1958 when some other men joined Father Arthur Kreinheder in observing the monastic life and offices of prayer. These men and others came and went over the years. The community has always remained small; at times the only member was Father Arthur.[7] During the 35 years of its existence over 25 men tested their vocations to monastic life by living at the house for some time, from a few months to many years, but at Father Arthur's death in 1989 only one permanent resident remained. At the beginning of 2006, there was 2 permanent professed members and 2 long-term guests. Strong ties remain with this community and their brothers in Sweden (Östanbäck monastery) and in Germany (Priory of St. Wigbert).[8]
+
+There is also the Order of Lutheran Franciscans, a religious community of friars and sisters within the tradition of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
+
+Monastic life in England came to an abrupt end when King Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church and made himself the head of the Church of England. He initiated the Dissolution of the Monasteries, during which all of the monasteries within England were destroyed. A large number of monks were executed, others fled to continental European monasteries where they were able to continue their monastic life.
+
+Shortly after the beginning of the Anglo-Catholic Movement in the Church of England, there was felt to be a need for a restoration of the monastic life. In the 1840s, the then Anglican priest and future Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman established a community of men at Littlemore near Oxford. From then on, there have been established many communities of monks, friars and other religious communities for men in the Anglican Communion. There are Anglican Benedictines, Franciscans, Cistercians, and in the Episcopal Church in the United States, Dominicans. There are also uniquely Anglican monastic orders such as the Society of Saint John the Evangelist and the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield.
+
+Some Anglican religious communities are contemplative, some active, but a distinguishing feature of the monastic life among Anglicans is that most practice the so-called "mixed life". Anglican monks recite the Divine Office in choir daily, either the full eight services of the Breviary or the four offices found in the Book of Common Prayer and celebrate the Eucharist daily. Many orders take on external works such as service to the poor, giving religious retreats, or other active ministries within their immediate communities. Like Catholic monks, Anglican monks also take the monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
+
+In the early 20th century when the Oxford Movement was at its height, the Anglican Communion had hundreds[citation needed] of orders and communities and thousands of religious followers. However, since the 1960s there has been a sharp falling off in the numbers of religious in many parts of the Anglican Communion. Many once large and international communities have been reduced to a single convent or monastery composed of elderly men or women. In the last few decades of the 20th century, novices have for most communities been few and far between. Some orders and communities have already become extinct.
+
+There are however, still several thousand Anglican monks working today in approximately 200 communities around the world. The most surprising growth has been in the Melanesian countries of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. The Melanesian Brotherhood, founded at Tabalia, Guadalcanal, in 1925 by Ini Kopuria, is now the largest Anglican community in the world with over 450 brothers in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and the United Kingdom.
+
+The Saint Brigid of Kildare Monastery is a double monastery of the United Methodist Church rooted in the Benedictine tradition, being located in Collegeville, Minnesota.[9] Besides monastic orders, the Order of Saint Luke is a dispersed religious order within Methodism, though being ecumenical, it accepts believers of other Christian denominations.
+
+The Emmanuel Sisters is a convent of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon that was founded by Rev Mother Magdaline Marie Handy.[10] These nuns are engaged in prayer, teaching, and healthcare.[10]
+
+In Eastern Orthodoxy monasticism holds a very special and important place: "Angels are a light for monks, monks are a light for laymen" (St. John Klimakos). Orthodox monastics separate themselves from the world in order to pray unceasingly for the world. They do not, in general, have as their primary purpose the running of social services, but instead are concerned with attaining theosis, or union with God. However, care for the poor and needy has always been an obligation of monasticism,[citation needed] so not all monasteries are "cloistered". The level of contact will vary from community to community. Hermits, on the other hand, have little or no contact with the outside world.
+
+Orthodox monasticism does not have religious orders as are found in the West, nor do they have Rules in the same sense as the Rule of St. Benedict. Rather, Eastern monastics study and draw inspiration from the writings of the Desert Fathers as well as other Church Fathers; probably the most influential of which are the Greater Asketikon and Lesser Asketikon of St. Basil the Great and the Philokalia, which was compiled by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. Hesychasm is of primary importance in the ascetical theology of the Orthodox Church.
+
+Most communities are self-supporting, and the monastic’s daily life is usually divided into three parts: (a) communal worship in the catholicon (the monastery's main church); (b) hard manual labour; and (c) private prayer, spiritual study, and rest when necessary. Meals are usually taken in common in a sizable dining hall known as a trapeza (refectory), at elongated refectory tables. Food is usually simple and is eaten in silence while one of the brethren reads aloud from the spiritual writings of the Holy Fathers. The monastic lifestyle takes a great deal of serious commitment. Within the cenobitic community, all monks conform to a common way of living based on the traditions of that particular monastery. In struggling to attain this conformity, the monastic comes to realize his own shortcomings and is guided by his spiritual father in how to deal honestly with them. For this same reason, bishops are almost always chosen from the ranks of monks.
+
+Eastern monasticism is found in three distinct forms: anchoritic (a solitary living in isolation), cenobitic (a community living and worshiping together under the direct rule of an abbot or abbess), and the "middle way" between the two, known as the skete (a community of individuals living separately but in close proximity to one another, who come together only on Sundays and feast days, working and praying the rest of the time in solitude, but under the direction of an elder). One normally enters a cenobitic community first, and only after testing and spiritual growth would one go on to the skete or, for the most advanced, become a solitary anchorite. However, one is not necessarily expected to join a skete or become a solitary; most monastics remain in the cenobium the whole of their lives.
+
+In general, Orthodox monastics have little or no contact with the outside world, including their own families. The purpose of the monastic life is union with God, the means is through leaving the world (i.e., the life of the passions). After tonsure, Orthodox monks and nuns are never permitted to cut their hair. The hair of the head and the beard remain uncut as a symbol of the vows they have taken, reminiscent of the Nazarites from the Old Testament. The tonsure of monks is the token of a consecrated life, and symbolizes the cutting off of their self-will.
+
+The process of becoming a monk is intentionally slow, as the vows taken are considered to entail a lifelong commitment to God, and are not to be entered into lightly. In Orthodox monasticism after completing the novitiate, there are three ranks of monasticism. There is only one monastic habit in the Eastern Church (with certain slight regional variations), and it is the same for both monks and nuns. Each successive grade is given a portion of the habit, the full habit being worn only by those in the highest grade, known for that reason as the "Great Schema", or "Great Habit".
+
+The various profession rites are normally performed by the Abbot, but if the abbot has not been ordained a priest, or if the monastic community is a convent, a hieromonk will perform the service. The abbot or hieromonk who performs a tonsure must be of at least the rank he is tonsuring into. In other words, only a hieromonk who has been tonsured into the Great Schema may himself tonsure a Schemamonk. A bishop, however, may tonsure into any rank, regardless of his own.
+
+Novice (Church Slavonic: Poslushnik), lit. "one under obedience"—Those wishing to join a monastery begin their lives as novices. After coming to the monastery and living as a guest for not less than three days, the revered abbot or abbess may bless the candidate to become a novice. There is no formal ceremony for the clothing of a novice, he or she simply receives permission to wear the clothing of a novice. In the Eastern monastic tradition, novices may or may not dress in the black inner cassock (Greek: Anterion, Eisorasson; Church Slavonic: Podriasnik) and wear the soft monastic hat (Greek: Skoufos, Church Slavonic: Skufia), depending on the tradition of the local community, and in accordance to the abbot’s directives. The inner-cassock and the skoufos are the first part of the Orthodox monastic habit. In some communities, the novice also wears the leather belt. He is also given a prayer rope and instructed in the use of the Jesus Prayer. If a novice chooses to leave during the period of the novitiate, no penalty is incurred. He may also be asked to leave at any time if his behaviour does not conform to the monastic life, or if the superior discerns that he is not called to monasticism. When the abbot or abbess deems the novice ready, he is asked if he wishes to join the monastery. Some, out of humility, will choose to remain novices all their lives. Every stage of the monastic life must be entered into voluntarily.
+
+Rassophore (Church Slavonic: Ryassofor), lit. "Robe-bearer"—If the novice continues on to become a monk, he is clothed in the first degree of monasticism at a formal service known as the Tonsure. Although there are no formal vows made at this point, the candidate is normally required to affirm his commitment to persevere in the monastic life. The abbot will then perform the tonsure, cutting a small amount of hair from four spots on the head, forming a cross. He is then given the outer cassock (Greek: Rasson, Exorasson, or Mandorasson; Church Slavonic: Ryassa)—an outer robe with wide sleeves, something like the cowl used in the West, but without a hood—from which the name of Rassophore is derived. He is also given a brimless hat with a veil, known as a klobuk, and a leather belt is fastened around his waist. His habit is usually black, signifying that he is now dead to the world, and he receives a new name. Although the Rassophore does not make formal vows, he is still morally obligated to continue in the monastic estate for the rest of his life. Some will remain Rassophores permanently without going on to the higher degrees.
+
+Stavrophore (Church Slavonic: Krestonosets), lit. "Cross-bearer"—The next level for Eastern monastics takes place some years after the first tonsure when the abbot feels the monk has reached an appropriate level of discipline, dedication, and humility. This degree is also known as the Little Schema, and is considered to be a "betrothal" to the Great Schema. At this stage, the monk makes formal vows of stability, chastity, obedience and poverty. Then he is tonsured and clothed in the habit, which in addition to that worn by the Rassophore, includes the paramandyas (Church Slavonic: paraman), a piece of square cloth worn on the back, embroidered with the instruments of the Passion (see picture above), and connected by ties to a wooden cross worn over the heart. The paramandyas represents the yoke of Christ. Because of this addition he is now called Stavrophore, or Cross-bearer. He is also given a wooden hand cross (or "profession cross"), which he should keep in his icon corner, and a beeswax candle, symbolic of monastic vigilance the sacrificing of himself for God. He will be buried holding the cross, and the candle will be burned at his funeral. In the Slavic practice, the Stavrophore also wears the monastic mantle. The rasson (outer robe) worn by the Stavrophore is more ample than that worn by the Rassophore. The abbot increases the Stavrophore monk’s prayer rule, allows a more strict personal ascetic practice, and gives the monk more responsibility.
+
+Great Schema (Greek: Megaloschemos, Church Slavonic: Skhimnik)—Monks whose abbot feels they have reached a high level of spiritual excellence reach the final stage, called the Great Schema. The tonsure of a Schemamonk follows the same format as the Stavrophore, and he makes the same vows and is tonsured in the same manner. But in addition to all the garments worn by the Stavrophore, he is given the Analavos (Church Slavonic: Analav) which is the article of monastic vesture emblematic of the Great Schema. For this reason, the analavos itself is sometimes called the "Great Schema". The analavos comes down in the front and the back, somewhat like the scapular in Western monasticism, although the two garments are probably not related. It is often intricately embroidered with the instruments of the Passion and the Trisagion (the angelic hymn). The Greek form does not have a hood, the Slavic form has a hood and lappets on the shoulders, so that the garment forms a large cross covering the monk's shoulders, chest, and back. Another piece added is the Polystavrion or "Many Crosses", which consists of a cord with a number of small crosses plaited into it.  The polystavrion forms a yoke around the monk and serves to hold the analavos in place, and reminds the monastic that he is bound to Christ and that his arms are no longer fit for worldly activities, but that he must labor only for the Kingdom of Heaven.  Among the Greeks, the mantle is added at this stage.  The paramandyas of the Megaloschemos is larger than that of the Stavrophore, and if he wears the klobuk, it is of a distinctive thimble shape, called a koukoulion, the veil of which is usually embroidered with crosses.  In some monastic traditions the Great Schema is only given to monks and nuns on their death bed, while in others they may be elevated after as little as 25 years of service.
+
+Eastern Orthodox monks are addressed as "Father" even if they are not priests; but when conversing among themselves, monks will often address one another as "Brother".  Novices are always referred to as "Brother". Among the Greeks, old monks are often called Gheronda, or "Elder", out of respect for their dedication.  In the Slavic tradition, the title of Elder (Church Slavonic: Starets) is normally reserved for those who are of an advanced spiritual life, and who serve as guides to others.
+
+For the Orthodox, Mother is the correct term for nuns who have been tonsured Stavrophore or higher. Novices and Rassophores are addressed as "Sister".  Nuns live identical ascetic lives to their male counterparts and are therefore also called monachai (the feminine plural of monachos), and their community is likewise called a monastery.
+
+Many (but not all) Orthodox seminaries are attached to monasteries, combining academic preparation for ordination with participation in the community's life of prayer, and hopefully benefiting from the example and wise counsel of the monks.  Bishops are required by the sacred canons of the Orthodox Church to be chosen from among the monastic clergy. The requirement is specifically that they be monastics, not simply celibate (see clerical celibacy).  Monks who have been ordained to the priesthood are called hieromonks (priest-monks); monks who have been ordained to the diaconate are called hierodeacons (deacon-monks).  A Schemamonk who is a priest is called a Hieroschemamonk.  Most monks are not ordained; a community will normally only present as many candidates for ordination to the bishop as the liturgical needs of the community require.
+
+Hinduism has many monastic orders, including the Dashanami Sampradaya ("Tradition of Ten Names") orders established by Adi Shankara as well as Vaishnava orders.
+
+Madhvaacharya (Madhvacharya), the Dwaita philosopher, established ashta matha (Eight Monasteries). He appointed a monk (called swamiji or swamigalu in local parlance) for each matha or monastery who has the right to worship Madhvacharya's murti of Lord Krishna by rotation. Each matha's swamiji gets a chance to worship after fourteen years. This ritual is called Paryaya and has been used also outside his sampradaya, e.g. in Gaudiya Vaisnava Radharamana temple in Vrindavan.
+
+Similar in appearance to Buddhist monks, brahmacari monks from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), or Hare Krishnas as they are popularly known, are the best known Vaishnava monks outside India. They are a common sight in many places around the world. Their appearance—simple saffron dhoti, shaved head with sikha, Tulasi neckbeads and tilaka markings—and social customs (sadhana) date back many thousands of years to the Vedic era with its varnasrama society. This social scheme includes both monastic and lay stages meant for various persons in various stages of life as per their characteristics (guna) and work (karma).
+
+ISKCON started as a predominantly monastic group but nowadays the majority of members live as lay persons. Many of them, however, spent some time as monks. New persons joining ISKCON as full-time members (living in its centers) first undergo a three-month Bhakta training, which includes learning the basics of brahmacari (monastic) life. After that they can decide if they prefer to continue as monks or as married Grihasthas.
+
+Brahmacari older than fifty years (as per ISKCON rule) can become sannyasi. Sannyasa, a life of full dedication to spiritual pursuits, is the highest stage of life in the varnasrama society. It is permanent and one cannot give it up. A Sannyasi is given the title Swami. Older grihastha with grown-up children are traditionally expected to accept vanaprastha (celibate retired) life.
+
+The role of monastic orders in Indian and now also Western society has to some extent been adapted over the years in accordance with ever-changing social structures.
+
+One of the most intense forms of Asceticism can be found in Jainism, one of the world's oldest religions. Jainism encourages fasting, yoga practices, meditation in difficult postures, and other austerities.[11] According to Jains, one's highest goal should be attaining Nirvana or Moksha (i.e., liberation from samsara, the cycle of birth and rebirth). For this, a soul has to be without attachment or self-indulgence. This can be achieved only by the monks and nuns who take five great vows: of non-violence, of truth, of non-stealing, of non-possession and of celibacy.
+
+Most of the austerities and ascetic practices can be traced back to Vardhaman Mahavira, the twenty-fourth "fordmaker" or Tirthankara. The Acaranga Sutra, or Book of Good Conduct, is a sacred book within Jainism that discusses the ascetic code of conduct. Other texts that provide insight into conduct of ascetics include Yogashastra by Acharya Hemachandra and Niyamasara by Acharya Kundakunda. Other illustrious Jain works on ascetic conduct are Oghanijjutti, Pindanijjutti, Cheda Sutta, and Nisiha Suttafee.
+
+Full Jain monk in either Svetambara or Digambara tradition[12] can belong to one of these ranks:
+
+These three are mentioned is the three lines of the Namokar Mantra. In the Digambara tradition, a junior monk can be a:
+
+The Svetambar Terapanthi sect has a new rank of junior monks who are called samana. The nuns are called Aryikas in Digambar tradition and Sadhvi in the Svetambar tradition.
+
+As per the Jain vows, the monks and nuns renounce all relations and possessions. Jain ascetics practice complete non-violence. Ahimsa is the first and foremost vow of a Jain ascetic. They do not hurt any living being, be it an insect or a human. They carry a special broom to sweep away any insects that may cross their path. Some Jain monks wear a cloth over the mouth to prevent accidental harm to airborne germs and insects. They also do not use electricity as it involves violence. Furthermore, they do not use any devices or machines.
+
+As they are without possession and attachment, they travel from city to city, often crossing forests and deserts, and always barefoot. Jain ascetics do not stay in a single place for more than two months to prevent themselves from becoming attached to any location. However, during four months of monsoon (rainy season) known as chaturmaas, they continue to stay in a single place to avoid killing the life forms that thrive during the rains.
+Jain monks and nuns practice complete celibacy. They do not touch or share a sitting platform with a person of opposite sex.
+
+Jain ascetics follow a strict vegetarian diet without root vegetables. Shvetambara monks do not cook food but solicit alms from householders. Digambara monks have only a single meal a day. Neither group will beg for food, but a Jain ascetic may accept a meal from a householder, provided that the latter is pure of mind and body and offers the food of his own volition and in the prescribed manner. During such an encounter, the monk remains standing and eats only a measured amount. Fasting (i.e., abstinence from food and sometimes water) is a routine feature of Jain asceticism. Fasts last for a day or longer, up to a month. Some monks avoid (or limit) medicine or hospitalization due to their careful attention to body.
+
+Other austerities include meditation in seated or standing posture near river banks in the cold wind, or meditation atop hills and mountains, especially at noon when the sun is at its fiercest. Such austerities are undertaken according to the physical and mental limits of the individual ascetic. Jain ascetics are (almost) completely without possessions. Some Jains (Shvetambara monks and nuns) own only unstitched white robes (an upper and lower garment) and a bowl used for eating and collecting alms. Male Digambara monks do not wear any clothes and carry nothing with them except a soft broom made of shed peacock feathers (pinchi) and eat from their hands. They sleep on the floor without blankets and sit on special wooden platforms.
+
+Every day is spent either in study of scriptures or meditation or teaching to lay people. They stand aloof from worldly matters. Many Jain ascetics take a final vow of Santhara or Sallekhana (i.e., a peaceful and detached death where medicines, food, and water are abandoned). This is done when death is imminent or when a monk feels that he is unable to adhere to his vows on account of advanced age or terminal disease.
+
+Quotes on ascetic practices from the Akaranga Sutra as Hermann Jacobi translated it:[13][14]
+
+A monk or a nun wandering from village to village should look forward for four cubits, and seeing animals they should move on by walking on his toes or heels or the sides of his feet. If there be some bypath, they should choose it, and not go straight on; then they may circumspectly wander from village to village.
+
+I shall become a Sramana who owns no house, no property, no sons, no cattle, who eats what others give him; I shall commit no sinful action; Master, I renounce to accept anything that has not been given.' Having taken such vows, (a mendicant) should not, on entering a village or scot-free town, &c., take himself, or induce others to take, or allow others to take, what has not been given.

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+In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Moirai (/ˈmɔɪraɪ, -riː/, also spelled Moirae or Mœræ;[1][2] Ancient Greek: Μοῖραι, "lots, destinies, apportioners"), often known in English as the Fates (Latin: Fata), were the incarnations of destiny; their Roman equivalent was the Parcae (euphemistically the "sparing ones"), and there are other equivalents in cultures that descend from the Proto-Indo-European culture. Their number became fixed at three: Clotho ("spinner"), Lachesis ("allotter") and Atropos ("the unturnable", a metaphor for death).
+
+They controlled the mother thread of life of every mortal from birth to death. They were independent, at the helm of necessity, directed fate, and watched that the fate assigned to every being by eternal laws might take its course without obstruction. Both gods and men had to submit to them, although Zeus's relationship with them is a matter of debate: some sources say he can command them (as Zeus Moiragetes "leader of the Fates"), while others suggest he was also bound to the Moirai's dictates.[3]
+
+In the Homeric poems Moira or Aisa are related to the limit and end of life, and Zeus appears as the guider of destiny. In the Theogony of Hesiod, the three Moirai are personified, daughters of Nyx and are acting over the gods.[4] Later they are daughters of Zeus and Themis, who was the embodiment of divine order and law. In Plato's Republic the Three Fates are daughters of Ananke (necessity).[5]
+
+It seems that Moira is related with Tekmor ("proof, ordinance") and with Ananke ("destiny, necessity"), who were primordial goddesses in mythical cosmogonies. The ancient Greek writers might call this power Moira or Ananke, and even the gods could not alter what was ordained:
+
+To the Moirai (Moirae, Fates) the might of Zeus must bow; and by the Immortals' purpose all these things had come to pass, or by the Moirai's ordinance.[6][7]
+
+The concept of a universal principle of natural order and balance has been compared to similar concepts in other cultures like the Vedic Ṛta, the Avestan Asha (Arta) and the Egyptian Maat.
+
+In earliest Greek philosophy, the cosmogony of Anaximander is based on these mythical beliefs. The goddess Dike ("justice, divine retribution"), keeps the order and sets a limit to any actions.[8]
+
+The feminine name Moira is derived from it.
+
+The ancient Greek word moira (μοῖρα) means a portion or lot of the whole, and is related to meros, "part, lot" and moros, "fate, doom",[9] Latin meritum, "reward", English merit, derived from the PIE root *(s)mer, "to allot, assign".[10]
+
+Moira may mean portion or share in the distribution of booty (ίση μοῖρα, ísē moîra, "equal booty"),[11] portion in life, lot, destiny, (μοῖραv ἔθηκαν ἀθάνατοι, moîran éthēken athánatoi, "the immortals fixed the destiny"),[12] death (μοῖρα θανάτοιο, moîra thanátoio, "destiny of death"), portion of the distributed land.[13] The word is also used for something which is meet and right (κατὰ μοῖραν, kata moîran, "according to fate, in order, rightly").[14]
+
+It seems that originally the word moira did not indicate destiny but included ascertainment or proof, a non-abstract certainty. The word daemon, which was an agent related to unexpected events, came to be similar to the word moira.[15]  This agent or cause against human control might be also called tyche (chance, fate): "You mistress moira, and tyche, and my daemon."[16]
+
+The word nomos, "law", may have meant originally a portion or lot, as in the verb nemein, "to distribute", and thus "natural lot" came to mean "natural law".[17] The word dike, "justice", conveyed the notion that someone should stay within his own specified boundaries, respecting the ones of his neighbour. If someone broke his boundaries, thus getting more than his ordained part, then he would be punished by law. By extension, moira was one's portion or part in destiny which consisted of good and bad moments as was predetermined by the Moirai (Fates), and it was impossible for anyone to get more than his ordained part. In modern Greek the word came to mean "destiny" (μοίρα or ειμαρμένη).
+
+Kismet, the predetermined course of events in the Muslim traditions, seems to have a similar etymology and function: Arabic qismat "lot" qasama, "to divide, allot"  developed to mean Fate or destiny. As a loanword, qesmat 'fate' appears in Persian, whence in Urdu language, and eventually in English Kismet.
+
+When they were three,[18] the Moirai were:
+
+In the Republic of Plato, the three Moirai sing in unison with the music of the Seirenes. Lachesis sings the things that were, Clotho the things that are, and Atropos the things that are to be.[21] Pindar in his Hymn to the Fates, holds them in high honour. He calls them to send their sisters, the Hours Eunomia ("lawfulness"), Dike ("right"), and Eirene ("peace"), to stop the internal civil strife:
+
+Listen Fates, who sit nearest of gods to the throne of Zeus,
+and weave with shuttles of adamant,
+inescapable devices for councels of every kind beyond counting,
+Aisa, Clotho and Lachesis,
+fine-armed daughters of Night,
+hearken to our prayers, all-terrible goddesses,
+of sky and earth.
+Send us rose-bosomed Lawfulness,
+and her sisters on glittering thrones,
+Right and crowned Peace, and make this city forget the misfortunes which lie heavily on her heart.[22]
+
+In ancient times caves were used for burial purposes in eastern Mediterranean, along with underground shrines or temples. The priests and the priestesses had considerable influence upon the world of the living. Births are recorded in such shrines, and the Greek legend of conception and birth in the tomb—as in the story of Danae—is based on the ancient belief that the dead know the future. Such caves were the caves of Ida and Dikte mountains in Crete, where myth situates the birth of Zeus and other gods, and the cave of Eileithyia near Knossos.[23] The relative Minoan goddesses were named Diktynna (later identified with Artemis), who was a mountain nymph of hunting, and Eileithyia who was the goddess of childbirth.[24]
+
+It seems that in Pre-Greek religion Aisa was a daemon. In Mycenaean religion Aisa or Moira was originally a living power related with the limit and end of life. At the moment of birth she spins the destiny, because birth ordains death.[25] Later Aisa is not alone, but she is accompanied by the "Spinners", who are the personifications of Fate.[26] The act of spinning is also associated with the gods, who at birth and at marriage do not spin the thread of life, but individual events like destruction, return or good fortune. Everything which has been spun must be wound on the spindle, and this was considered a cloth, like a net or loop which captured man.[27]
+
+Invisible bonds and knots could be controlled from a loom, and twining was a magic art used by the magicians to harm a person and control his individual fate.[28]  Similar ideas appear in Norse mythology,[29] and in Greek folklore. The appearance of the gods and the Moirai may be related to the fairy tale motif, which is common in many Indo-European sagas and also in Greek folklore. The fairies appear beside the cradle of the newborn child and bring gifts to him.[30]
+
+Temple attendants may be considered representations of the Moirai, who belonged to the underworld, but secretly guided the lives of those in the upperworld. Their power could be sustained by witchcraft and oracles.[23] In Greek mythology the Moirai at birth are accompanied by Eileithyia. At the birth of Hercules they use together a magic art, to free the newborn from any "bonds" and  "knots".[28]
+
+Much of the Mycenaean religion survived into classical Greece, but it is not known to what extent classical religious belief is Mycenaean, nor how much is a product of the Greek Dark Ages or later. Moses I. Finley detected only few authentic Mycenaean beliefs in the 8th-century Homeric world.[31] The religion which later the Greeks considered Hellenic embodies a paradox. Though the world is dominated by a divine power bestowed in different ways on men, nothing but "darkness" lay ahead. Life was frail and unsubstantial, and man was like "a shadow in a dream".[32]
+
+In the Homeric poems the words moira, aisa, moros mean "portion, part". Originally they did not indicate a power which led destiny, and must be considered to include the "ascertainment" or "proof". By extension Moira is the portion in glory, happiness,  mishappenings, death (μοίρα θανάτοιο "destiny of death")  which are unexpected events. The unexpected events were usually attributed to daemons, who appeared in special occurrences. In that regard Moira was later considered an agent; Martin P. Nilsson associated these daemons to a supposed "Pre-Greek religion".[33]
+
+People believed that their portion in destiny was something similar with their portion in booty, which was distributed according to their descent, and traditional rules. It was possible to get more than their ordained portion (moira), but they had to face severe consequences because their action was "over moira" (υπέρ μοίραν "over the portion"). It may be considered that they "broke the order".  The most certain order in human lives is that every human should die, and this was determined by Aisa or Moira at the moment of birth.[25] The Mycenaeans believed that what comes should come (fatalism), and this was considered rightly offered (according to fate: in order). If someone died in battle, he would exist like a shadow in the gloomy space of the underworld.[33]
+
+The kingdom of Moira is the kingdom of the limit and the end. In a passage in Iliad, Apollo tries three times to stop Patroclus in front of the walls of Troy, warning him that it is "over his portion" to sack the city. Aisa (moira) seems to set a limit on the most vigorous men's actions.[34]
+
+Moira is a power acting in parallel with the gods, and even they could not change the destiny which was predetermined. In the Iliad, Zeus knows that his dearest Sarpedon will be killed by Patroclus, but he cannot save him.[35] In the famous scene of Kerostasia, Zeus appears as the guider of destiny. Using a pair of scales he decides that Hector must die, according to his  aisa (destiny).[36] His decision seems to be independent from his will, and is not related with any  "moral purpose". His attitude is explained by Achilleus to Priam, in a parable of two jars at the door of Zeus, one of which contains good things, and the other evil. Zeus gives a mixture to some men, to others only evil and such are driven by hunger over the earth. This was the old  "heroic outlook".[37]
+
+The personification of  Moira appears in the newer parts of the epos. In the Odyssey, she is accompanied by the "Spinners", the personifications of Fate, who do not have separate names.[26] Moira seems to spin the predetermined course of events. Agamemnon claims that he is not responsible for his arrogance. He took the prize of Achilleus, because Zeus and Moira predetermined his decision.[38] In the last section of the Iliad, Moira is the  "mighty fate" (μοίρα κραταιά moíra krataiá) who leads destiny and the course of events. Thetis the mother of Achilleus warns him that he will not live long because mighty fate stands hard by him, therefore he must give to Priam the corpse of Hector.[39] At Hector's birth mighty fate predetermined that his corpse would be devoured by dogs after his death, and Hecabe is crying desperately asking for revenge.[40]
+
+The three Moirai are daughters of the primeval goddess Nyx ("night"), and sisters of Keres ("the black fates"), Thanatos ("death") and Nemesis ("retribution").[4]  Later they are daughters of Zeus and the Titaness Themis ("the Institutor"),[41] who was the embodiment of divine order and law.[42][43]  and sisters of Eunomia ("lawfulness, order"), Dike ("justice"),  and Eirene ("peace").[41]
+
+Hesiod introduces a moral purpose which is absent in the Homeric poems. The Moirai represent a power to which even the gods have to conform. They give men at birth both evil and good moments, and they punish not only men but also gods for their sins.[4]
+
+In the cosmogony of Alcman (7th century BC),  first came Thetis ("disposer, creation"), and then simultaneously Poros ("path") and Tekmor  ("end post, ordinance").[44][45] Poros is related with the beginning of all things, and Tekmor is related with the end of all things.[46]
+
+Later in the Orphic cosmogony, first came Thesis ("disposer"), whose ineffable nature is unexpressed. Ananke ("necessity") is the primeval goddess of inevitability who is entwined with the time-god Chronos, at the very beginning of time. They represented the cosmic forces of Fate and Time, and they were called sometimes to control the fates of the gods. The three Moirai are daughters of Ananke.[47]
+
+The Moirai were supposed to appear three nights after a child's birth to determine the course of its life, as in the story of Meleager and the firebrand taken from the hearth and preserved by his mother to extend his life.[48] Bruce Karl Braswell from readings in the lexicon of Hesychius, associates the appearance of the Moirai at the family hearth on the seventh day with the ancient Greek custom of waiting seven days after birth to decide whether to accept the infant into the Gens and to give it a name, cemented with a ritual at the hearth.[49] At Sparta the temple to the Moirai stood near the communal hearth of the polis, as Pausanias observed.[50]
+
+As goddesses of birth who even prophesied the fate of the newly born, Eileithyia, the ancient Minoan goddess of childbirth and divine midwifery, was their companion. Pausanias mentions an ancient role of Eileythia as "the clever spinner", relating her with destiny too.[51] Their appearance indicate the Greek desire for health which was connected with the Greek cult of the body that was essentially a religious activity.[52]
+
+The Moirai assigned to the terrible chthonic goddesses Erinyes who inflicted the punishment for evil deeds their proper functions, and with them directed fate according to necessity. As goddesses of death they appeared together with the daemons of death Keres and the infernal Erinyes.[53]
+
+In earlier times they were represented as only a few—perhaps only one—individual goddess. Homer's Iliad (xxiv.209) speaks generally of the Moira, who spins the thread of life for men at their birth; she is Moira Krataia "powerful Moira" (xvi.334) or there are several Moirai (xxiv.49). In the Odyssey (vii.197) there is a reference to the Klôthes, or Spinners. At Delphi, only the Fates of Birth and Death were revered.[54] In Athens, Aphrodite, who had an earlier, pre-Olympic existence, was called Aphrodite Urania the "eldest of the Fates" according to Pausanias (x.24.4).
+
+Some Greek mythographers went so far as to claim that the Moirai were the daughters of Zeus—paired with Themis ("fundament"), as Hesiod had it in one passage.[55]  In the older myths they are daughters of primeval beings like Nyx ("night") in Theogony,  or Ananke ("necessity") in Orphic cosmogony. Whether or not providing a father even for the Moirai was a symptom of how far Greek mythographers were willing to go, in order to modify the old myths to suit the patrilineal Olympic order,[56] the claim of a paternity was certainly not acceptable to Aeschylus, Herodotus, or Plato.
+
+Despite their forbidding reputation, the Moirai could be placated as goddesses. Brides in Athens offered them locks of hair, and women swore by them. They may have originated as birth goddesses and only later acquired their reputation as the agents of destiny.
+
+According to the mythographer Apollodorus, in the Gigantomachy, the war between the Giants and Olympians, the Moirai killed the Giants Agrios and Thoon with their bronze clubs.[57]
+
+In the Homeric poems Moira, who is almost always one, is acting independently from the gods. Only Zeus, the chief sky-deity of the Mycenaeans is close to Moira, and in a passage he is the being of this power.[33] Using a weighing scale (balance) Zeus weighs Hector's "lot of death" (Ker) against the one of Achilleus. Hector's lot weighs down, and he dies according to Fate. Zeus appears as the guider of destiny, who gives everyone the right portion.[58][59]
+
+In a Mycenaean vase, Zeus holds a weighing scale  (balance) in front of two warriors, indicating that he is measuring their destiny before the battle. The belief (fatalism) was that if they die in battle, they must die, and this was rightly offered (according to fate).[60]
+
+In Theogony, the three Moirai are daughters of the primeval goddess, Nyx ("Night"),[61] representing a power acting over the gods.[4] Later they are daughters of Zeus who gives them the greatest honour, and Themis,  the ancient goddess of law and divine order.[42][43]
+
+Even the gods feared the Moirai or Fates, which according to Herodotus a god could not escape.[62] The Pythian priestess at Delphi once admitted that Zeus was also subject to their power, though no recorded classical writing clarifies to what exact extent the lives of immortals were affected by the whims of the Fates.  It is to be expected that the relationship of Zeus and the Moirai was not immutable over the centuries. In either case in antiquity we can see a feeling towards a notion of an order to which even the gods have to conform. Simonides names this power Ananke (necessity) (the mother of the Moirai in Orphic cosmogony) and says that even the gods don't fight against it.[63] Aeschylus combines Fate and necessity in a scheme, and claims that even Zeus cannot alter which is ordained.[7]
+
+A supposed epithet Zeus Moiragetes, meaning "Zeus Leader of the Moirai" was inferred by Pausanias from an inscription he saw in the 2nd century AD at Olympia: "As you go to the starting-point for the chariot-race there is an altar with an inscription to the Bringer of Fate.[64] This is plainly a surname of Zeus, who knows the affairs of men, all that the Fates give them, and all that is not destined for them."[65] At the Temple of Zeus at Megara, Pausanias inferred from the relief sculptures he saw "Above the head of Zeus are the Horai and Moirai, and all may see that he is the only god obeyed by Moira." Pausanias' inferred assertion is unsupported in cult practice, though he noted a sanctuary of the Moirai there at Olympia (v.15.4), and also at Corinth (ii.4.7) and Sparta (iii.11.8), and adjoining the sanctuary of Themis outside a city gate of Thebes.[66]
+
+The fates had at least three known temples, in Ancient Corinth, Sparta and Thebes. At least the temple of Corinth contained statues of them:
+
+The temple in Thebes was explicitly imageless:
+
+The temple in Sparta was situated next to the grave of Orestes.[69]
+
+Aside from actual temples, there was also altars to the Moirai. Among them was notably the altar in Olympia near the altar of Zeus Moiragetes,[70] a connection to Zeus which was also repeated in the images of the Moirai in the temple of Despoine in Arkadia[71] as well as in Delphi, where they were depicted with Zeus Moiragetes (Guide of Fate) as well as with Apollon Moiragetes (Guide of Fate).[72]
+On Korkyra, the shrine of Apollo, which according to legend was founded by Medea was also a place where offerings were made to the Moirai and the nymphs.[73] 
+The worship of the Moirai are described by Pausanias for their altar near Sicyon:
+
+In Hurrian mythology the three goddesses of fate, the Hutena, was believed to dispense good and evil, life and death to humans.
+
+In Roman mythology the three Moirai are the Parcae or Fata, plural of "fatum" meaning prophetic declaration, oracle, or destiny. The English words fate (native wyrd) and fairy ("magic, enchantment"), are both derived from "fata", "fatum".[75]
+
+In Norse mythology the Norns are female beings who rule the destiny of gods and men, twining the thread of life. They set up the laws and decided on the lives of the children of men.[76] Their names were Urðr, related with Old English wyrd, modern weird ("fate, destiny, luck"), Verðandi,  and Skuld, and it has often been inferred that they ruled over the past, present and future respectively, based on the sequence and partly the etymology of the names, of which the first two (literally 'Fate' and 'Becoming') are derived from the past and present stems of the verb verða, "to be", respectively,[77] and the name of the third one means "debt" or "guilt", originally "that which must happen".[78]
+
+In younger legendary sagas, the Norns appear to have been synonymous with witches (völvas), and they arrive at the birth of the hero to shape his destiny. It seems that originally all of them were Disir, ghosts or deities associated with destruction and destiny. The notion that they were three may be due to a late influence from Greek and Roman mythology.[79] The same applies to their (disputed) association with the past, present and future.
+
+The Valkyries (choosers of the slain), were originally daemons of death. They were female figures who decided who will die in battle, and brought their chosen to the afterlife hall of the slain. They were also related with spinning, and one of them was named Skuld ("debt, guilt").[80] They may be related to Keres, the daemons of death in Greek mythology, who accompanied the dead to the entrance of Hades. In the scene of Kerostasia, Keres are the "lots of death", and in some cases Ker ("destruction") has the same meaning, with Moira interpreted as "destiny of death" (moira thanatoio: μοίρα θανάτοιο).[4][81]
+
+The Celtic Matres and Matrones, female deities almost entirely in a group of three, have been proposed as connected to the Norns and the Valkyries.[82]
+
+In Anglo-Saxon culture Wyrd (Weird) is a concept corresponding to fate or personal destiny (literally: "what befalls one"). Its Norse cognate is Urðr, and both names are derived from the PIE root wert, "to turn, wind",[83] related with "spindle, distaff".[84] In Old English literature Wyrd goes ever as she shall, and remains wholly inevitable.[85][86]
+
+In Dante's Divine Comedy, the Fates are mentioned in both Inferno (XXXIII.126) and Purgatorio (XXI.25-27, XXV.79-81) by their Greek names and their traditional role in measuring out and determining the length of human life is assumed by the narrator.
+
+In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the Weird sisters (or Three Witches), are prophetesses, who are deeply entrenched in both worlds of reality and supernatural. Their creation was influenced by British folklore, witchcraft, and the legends of the Norns and the Moirai.[87] Hecate, the chthonic Greek goddess associated with magic, witchcraft, necromancy, and three-way crossroads,[88] appears as the master of the "Three witches". In ancient Greek religion, Hecate as goddess of childbirth is identified with Artemis,[89] who was the leader (ηγεμόνη: hegemone ) of the nymphs.[90]
+
+In Lithuanian mythology Laima is the personification of destiny, and her most important duty was to prophecy how the life of a newborn will take place. She may be related to the Hindu goddess Laksmi, who was the personification of wealth and prosperity, and associated with good fortune.[91][92] In Latvian mythology, Laima and her sisters were a trinity of fate deities.[93]
+
+The Moirai were usually described as cold, remorseless and unfeeling, and depicted as old crones or hags. The independent spinster has always inspired fear rather than matrimony: "this sinister connotation we inherit from the spinning goddess," write Ruck and Staples (Ruck and Staples 1994). See Weaving (mythology).
+
+The Three Fates continue as common characters in modern literature.
+
+The notion of a universal principle of natural order has been compared to similar ideas in other cultures, such as aša (Asha) in Avestan religion, Rta in Vedic religion, and Maat in ancient Egyptian religion.[94]
+
+In the Avestan religion and Zoroastrianism, aša, is commonly summarized in accord with its contextual implications of "truth", "right(eousness)", "order". Aša and its Vedic equivalent, Rta, are both derived from a PIE root meaning "properly joined, right, true". The word is the proper name of the divinity Asha, the personification of "Truth" and "Righteousness". Aša corresponds to an objective, material reality which embraces all of existence.[95] This cosmic force is imbued also with morality, as verbal Truth, and Righteousness, action conforming with the moral order.[96] In the literature of the Mandeans, an angelic being has the responsibility of weighing the souls of the deceased to determine their worthiness, using a set of scales.[97]
+
+In the Vedic religion, Rta is an ontological principle of natural order which regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe. The term is now interpreted abstractly as "cosmic order", or simply as "truth",[98] although it was never abstract at the time.[99] It seems that this idea originally arose in the Indo-Aryan period, from a consideration (so denoted to indicate the original meaning of communing with the star beings) of the qualities of nature which either remain constant or which occur on a regular basis.[100]
+
+The individuals fulfill their true natures when they follow the path set for them by the ordinances of Rta, acting according to the Dharma, which is related to social and moral spheres.[101]  The god of the waters Varuna was probably originally conceived as the personalized aspect of the otherwise impersonal Ṛta.[102] The gods are never portrayed as having command over Ṛta, but instead they remain subject to it like all created beings.[101]
+
+In Egyptian religion, maat was the ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice. The word is the proper name of the divinity Maat, who was the goddess of harmony, justice, and truth represented as a young woman. It was considered that she set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of creation.[103] Maat was the norm and basic values that formed the backdrop for the application of justice that had to be carried out in the spirit of truth and fairness.[104]
+
+In Egyptian mythology, Maat dealt with the weighing of souls that took place in the underworld. Her feather was the measure that determined whether the souls (considered to reside in the heart) of the departed would reach the paradise of afterlife successfully. In the famous scene of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Anubis, using a scale, weighs the sins of a man's heart against the feather of truth, which represents maat. If man's heart weighs down, then he is devoured by a monster.[105]
+
+The asteroids (97) Klotho, (120) Lachesis, and (273) Atropos  are named for the Three Fates.

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+A month is a unit of time, used with calendars, which is approximately as long as a natural period related to the motion of the Moon; month and Moon are cognates. The traditional concept arose with the cycle of Moon phases; such months (lunations) are synodic months and last approximately 29.53 days. From excavated tally sticks, researchers have deduced that people counted days in relation to the Moon's phases as early as the Paleolithic age. Synodic months, based on the Moon's orbital period with respect to the Earth-Sun line, are still the basis of many calendars today, and are used to divide the year.
+
+The following types of months are mainly of significance in astronomy, most of them (but not the distinction between sidereal and tropical months) first recognized in Babylonian lunar astronomy.
+
+A synodic month is longer than a sidereal month because the Earth-Moon system is orbiting the Sun in the same direction as the Moon is orbiting the Earth. The Sun moves eastward with respect to the stars (as does the Moon) and it takes about 2.2 days longer for the Moon to return to the same apparent position with respect to the Sun.
+
+An anomalistic month is longer than a sidereal month because the perigee moves in the same direction as the Moon is orbiting the Earth, one revolution in nine years. Therefore, the Moon takes a little longer to return to perigee than to return to the same star.
+
+A draconic month is shorter than a sidereal month because the nodes move in the opposite direction as the Moon is orbiting the Earth, one revolution in 18.6 years. Therefore, the Moon returns to the same node slightly earlier than it returns to the same star.
+
+At the simplest level, most well-known lunar calendars are based on the initial approximation that 2 lunations last 59 days: a 30-day full month followed by a 29-day hollow month—but this is only roughly accurate, and eventually needs correction by using larger cycles, or the equivalent of leap days. Additionally, the synodic month does not fit easily into the year, which makes accurate, rule-based lunisolar calendars complicated. The most common solution to this problem is the Metonic cycle, which takes advantage of the fact that 235 lunations are approximately 19 tropical years (which add up to not quite 6,940 days). However, a Metonic calendar will drift against the seasons by about one day every 200 years. Metonic calendars include the calendar used in the Antikythera Mechanism about 2,000 years ago, and the Hebrew calendar.
+
+The complexity required in an accurate lunisolar calendar may explain why solar calendars (which have months which no longer relate to the phase of the Moon, but are based only on the motion of the Sun relative to the equinoxes and solstices) have generally replaced lunar calendars for civil use in most societies.
+
+The Hellenic calendars, the Hebrew Lunisolar calendar and the Islamic Lunar calendar started the month with the first appearance of the thin crescent of the new moon.
+
+However, the motion of the Moon in its orbit is very complicated and its period is not constant. The date and time of this actual observation depends on the exact geographical longitude as well as latitude, atmospheric conditions, the visual acuity of the observers, etc. Therefore, the beginning and lengths of months defined by observation cannot be accurately predicted.
+
+While some like the Jewish Karaites still rely on actual moon observations, most people use the Gregorian solar calendar.
+
+Pingelapese, a language from Micronesia, also uses a lunar calendar. There are 12 months associated with their calendar. The moon first appears in March, they name this month Kahlek. This system has been used for hundreds of years and throughout many generations. This calendar is cyclical and relies on the position and shape of the moon.[1]
+
+The Gregorian calendar, like the Julian calendar before it, has twelve months:
+
+The mean month length of the Gregorian calendar is 30.436875 days.
+
+Months existing in the Roman calendar in the past include:
+
+The famous mnemonic Thirty days hath September is a common way of teaching the lengths of the months in the English-speaking world.
+Any five consecutive months (not including February) contain 153 days.
+The knuckles of the four fingers of one's hand and the spaces between them can be used to remember the lengths of the months. By making a fist, each month will be listed as one proceeds across the hand. All months landing on a knuckle are 31 days long and those landing between them are not. When the knuckle of the index finger is reached (July), go back to the first knuckle (or over to the first knuckle on the other fist, held next to the first) and continue with August. This physical mnemonic has been taught to primary school students for many decades.[2][3]
+
+This cyclical pattern of month lengths matches the musical keyboard alternation of white and black keys (with the note 'F' correlating to the month of January).
+
+The ides occur on the thirteenth day in eight of the months, but in March, May, July, and October, they occur on the fifteenth. The nones always occur 8 days (one Roman week) before the ides, i.e., on the fifth or the seventh. The calends are always the first day of the month, and before Julius Caesar's reform fell sixteen days (two Roman weeks) after the ides (except the ides of February and the intercalary month).
+
+Within a month, the following dates fall on the same weekday:
+
+Some months have the same date/weekday structure.
+
+In a non-leap year:
+
+In a leap year:
+
+The Hebrew calendar has 12 or 13 months.
+
+Adar 1 is only added 7 times in 19 years. In ordinary years, Adar 2 is simply called Adar.
+
+There are also twelve months in the Islamic calendar. They are named as follows:
+
+See Islamic calendar for more information on the Islamic calendar.
+
+The Hindu calendar has various systems of naming the months. The months in the lunar calendar are:
+
+These are also the names used in the Indian national calendar for the newly redefined months. Purushottam Maas or Adhik Maas (translit. adhika = 'extra', māsa = 'month') is an extra month in the Hindu calendar that is inserted to keep the lunar and solar calendars aligned. "Purushottam" is an epithet of Vishnu, to whom the month is dedicated.
+
+The names in the solar calendar are just the names of the zodiac sign in which the sun travels. They are
+
+The Bahá'í calendar is the calendar used by the Bahá'í Faith. It is a solar calendar with regular years of 365 days, and leap years of 366 days. Years are composed of 19 months of 19 days each (361 days), plus an extra period of "Intercalary Days" (4 in regular and 5 in leap years).[4] The months are named after the attributes of God. Days of the year begin and end at sundown.[4]
+
+The Iranian / Persian calendar, currently used in Iran and Afghanistan, also has 12 months. The Persian names are included in the parentheses. It begins on the northern Spring equinox.
+
+The Bangla calendar, used in Bangladesh, follows solar months and it has six seasons. The months and seasons in the calendar are:
+
+The months in the Nanakshahi calendar are:[5]
+
+Like the Hindu calendar, the Khmer calendar consists of both a lunar calendar and a solar calendar. The solar is used more commonly than the lunar calendar. There are 12 months and the numbers of days follow the Julian and Gregorian calendar.
+
+The Khmer lunar calendar contains 12 months; however, the eighth month is repeated (as a "leap month") every two or three years, making 13 months instead of 12.[6]
+
+The Tongan calendar is based on the cycles of the moon around the earth in one year. The months are:
+
+The Sinhalese calendar is the Buddhist calendar in Sri Lanka with Sinhala names. Each full moon Poya day marks the start of a Buddhist lunar month.[7] The first month is Vesak.[8]
+
+The old Icelandic calendar is not in official use anymore, but some Icelandic holidays and annual feasts are still calculated from it. It has 12 months, broken down into two groups of six often termed "winter months" and "summer months". The calendar is peculiar in that the months always start on the same weekday rather than on the same date. Hence Þorri always starts on a Friday sometime between January 22 and January 28 (Old style: January 9 to January 15), Góa always starts on a Sunday between February 21 and February 27 (Old style: February 8 to February 14).
+
+*NOTE: New Year in ancient Georgia started from September.
+
+Like the Old Norse calendar, the Anglo-Saxons had their own calendar before they were Christianized which reflected native traditions and deities. These months were attested by Bede in his works On Chronology and The Reckoning of Time written in the 8th century.[9] His months are probably those as written in the Northumbrian dialect of Old English which he was familiar with. The months were so named after the moon; the new moon marking the end of an old month and start of a new month; the full moon occurring in the middle of the month, after which the month was named.
+
+Nagyszombati kalendárium (in Latin: Calendarium Tyrnaviense) from 1579.
+Historically Hungary used a 12-month calendar that appears to have been zodiacal in nature[10] but eventually came to correspond to the Gregorian months as shown below:[11]
+
+The ancient civil Egyptian calendar had a year that was 365 days long and was divided into 12 months of 30 days each, plus 5 extra days (epagomenes) at the end of the year. The months were divided into 3 "weeks" of ten days each. Because the ancient Egyptian year was almost a quarter of a day shorter than the solar year and stellar events "wandered" through the calendar, it is referred to as Annus Vagus or "Wandering Year".
+
+The Nisga'a calendar coincides with the Gregorian calendar with each month referring to the type of harvesting that is done during the month.[citation needed]
+
+This calendar was proposed during the French Revolution, and used by the French government for about twelve years from late 1793. There were twelve months of 30 days each, grouped into three ten-day weeks called décades. The five or six extra days needed to approximate the tropical year were placed after the months at the end of each year. A period of four years ending on a leap day was to be called a Franciade. It began at the autumn equinox:
+
+Ojibwe month names are based on the key feature of the month. Consequently, months between various regions have different names based on the key feature of each month in their particular region. In the Eastern Ojibwe, this can be seen in when the sucker makes its run, which allows the Ojibwe to fish for them. Additionally, in the Eastern Ojibwa-Chippewa-Ottawa Dictionary, Dr. Richard Rhodes also informs of not only the variability in the month names but how in the Eastern Ojibwe, these names were originally applied to the lunar months the Ojibwe originally used, which was a lunisolar calendar marked by the moon, fixed to Akiinaaniwan (typically December 27) that marks when sunrise is the latest in the Northern Hemisphere. Due to Eastern Ojibwe is a vowel syncope dialect, the elided vowels (and the occasionally elided consonants) have been added back in the table below, shown in brackets.
+

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+
+
+A tooth (plural teeth) is a hard, calcified structure found in the jaws (or mouths) of many vertebrates and used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores, also use teeth for hunting or for defensive purposes. The roots of teeth are covered by gums. Teeth are not made of bone, but rather of multiple tissues of varying density and hardness that originate from the embryonic germ layer, the ectoderm.
+
+The general structure of teeth is similar across the vertebrates, although there is considerable variation in their form and position. The teeth of mammals have deep roots, and this pattern is also found in some fish, and in crocodilians. In most teleost fish, however, the teeth are attached to the outer surface of the bone, while in lizards they are attached to the inner surface of the jaw by one side. In cartilaginous fish, such as sharks, the teeth are attached by tough ligaments to the hoops of cartilage that form the jaw.[1]
+
+Some animals develop only one set of teeth (monophyodonts) while others develop many sets (polyphyodonts). Sharks, for example, grow a new set of teeth every two weeks to replace worn teeth. Rodent incisors grow and wear away continually through gnawing, which helps maintain relatively constant length. The industry of the beaver is due in part to this qualification. Many rodents such as voles and guinea pigs, but not mice, as well as leporidae like rabbits, have continuously growing molars in addition to incisors.[2][3]
+
+Teeth are not always attached to the jaw, as they are in mammals. In many reptiles and fish, teeth are attached to the palate or to the floor of the mouth, forming additional rows inside those on the jaws proper. Some teleosts even have teeth in the pharynx. While not true teeth in the usual sense, the dermal denticles of sharks are almost identical in structure and are likely to have the same evolutionary origin. Indeed, teeth appear to have first evolved in sharks, and are not found in the more primitive jawless fish – while lampreys do have tooth-like structures on the tongue, these are in fact, composed of keratin, not of dentine or enamel, and bear no relationship to true teeth.[1] Though "modern" teeth-like structures with dentine and enamel have been found in late conodonts, they are now supposed to have evolved independently of later vertebrates' teeth.[4][5]
+
+Living amphibians typically have small teeth, or none at all, since they commonly feed only on soft foods. In reptiles, teeth are generally simple and conical in shape, although there is some variation between species, most notably the venom-injecting fangs of snakes. The pattern of incisors, canines, premolars and molars is found only in mammals, and to varying extents, in their evolutionary ancestors. The numbers of these types of teeth vary greatly between species; zoologists use a standardised dental formula to describe the precise pattern in any given group.[1]
+
+The genes governing tooth development in mammals are homologous to those involved in the development of fish scales.[6] Study of a tooth plate of a fossil of the extinct fish Romundina stellina showed that the teeth and scales were made of the same tissues, also found in mammal teeth, lending support to the theory that teeth evolved as a modification of scales.[7]
+
+Teeth are among the most distinctive (and long-lasting) features of mammal species. Paleontologists use teeth to identify fossil species and determine their relationships. The shape of the animal's teeth are related to its diet. For example, plant matter is hard to digest, so herbivores have many molars for chewing and grinding. Carnivores, on the other hand, have canine teeth to kill prey and to tear meat.
+
+Mammals, in general, are diphyodont, meaning that they develop two sets of teeth. In humans, the first set (the "baby," "milk," "primary" or "deciduous" set) normally starts to appear at about six months of age, although some babies are born with one or more visible teeth, known as neonatal teeth.  Normal tooth eruption at about six months is known as teething and can be painful.  Kangaroos, elephants, and manatees are unusual among mammals because they are polyphyodonts.
+
+In Aardvarks, teeth lack enamel and have many pulp tubules, hence the name of the order Tubulidentata.
+
+In dogs, the teeth are less likely than humans to form dental cavities because of the very high pH of dog saliva, which prevents enamel from demineralizing.[8] Sometimes called cuspids, these teeth are shaped like points (cusps) and are used for tearing and grasping food[9]
+
+Like human teeth, whale teeth have polyp-like protrusions located on the root surface of the tooth. These polyps are made of cementum in both species, but in human teeth, the protrusions are located on the outside of the root, while in whales the nodule is located on the inside of the pulp chamber. While the roots of human teeth are made of cementum on the outer surface, whales have cementum on the entire surface of the tooth with a very small layer of enamel at the tip. This small enamel layer is only seen in older whales where the cementum has been worn away to show the underlying enamel.[10]
+
+The toothed whale is a suborder of the cetaceans characterized by having teeth.  The teeth differ considerably among the species. They may be numerous, with some dolphins bearing over 100 teeth in their jaws.  On the other hand, the narwhals have a giant unicorn-like tusk, which is a tooth containing millions of sensory pathways and used for sensing during feeding, navigation, and mating. It is the most neurologically complex tooth known.  Beaked whales are almost toothless, with only bizarre teeth found in males.  These teeth may be used for feeding but also for demonstrating aggression and showmanship.
+
+In humans (and most other primates) there are usually 20 primary (also "baby" or "milk") teeth, and later up to 32 permanent teeth. Four of these 32 may be third molars or wisdom teeth, although these are not present in all adults, and may be removed surgically later in life.[11]
+
+Among primary teeth, 10 of them are usually found in the maxilla (i.e. upper jaw) and the other 10 in the mandible (i.e. lower jaw). Among permanent teeth, 16 are found in the maxilla and the other 16 in the mandible. Most of the teeth have uniquely distinguishing features.
+
+An adult horse has between 36 and 44 teeth. The enamel and dentin layers of horse teeth are intertwined.[12] All horses have 12 premolars, 12 molars, and 12 incisors.[13]  Generally, all male equines also have four canine teeth (called tushes) between the molars and incisors.  However, few female horses (less than 28%) have canines, and those that do usually have only one or two, which many times are only partially erupted.[14]  A few horses have one to four wolf teeth, which are vestigial premolars, with most of those having only one or two. They are equally common in male and female horses and much more likely to be on the upper jaw.  If present these can cause problems as they can interfere with the horse's bit contact. Therefore, wolf teeth are commonly removed.[13]
+
+Horse teeth can be used to estimate the animal's age.  Between birth and five years, age can be closely estimated by observing the eruption pattern on milk teeth and then permanent teeth.  By age five, all permanent teeth have usually erupted. The horse is then said to have a "full" mouth.  After the age of five, age can only be conjectured by studying the wear patterns on the incisors, shape, the angle at which the incisors meet, and other factors. The wear of teeth may also be affected by diet, natural abnormalities, and cribbing.  Two horses of the same age may have different wear patterns.
+
+A horse's incisors, premolars, and molars, once fully developed, continue to erupt as the grinding surface is worn down through chewing. A young adult horse will have teeth which are 4.5-5 inches long, with the majority of the crown remaining below the gumline in the dental socket. The rest of the tooth will slowly emerge from the jaw, erupting about 1/8" each year, as the horse ages. When the animal reaches old age, the crowns of the teeth are very short and the teeth are often lost altogether. Very old horses, if lacking molars, may need to have their fodder ground up and soaked in water to create a soft mush for them to eat in order to obtain adequate nutrition.
+
+Elephants' tusks are specialized incisors for digging food up and fighting. Some elephant teeth are similar to those in manatees, and it is notable that elephants are believed to have undergone an aquatic phase in their evolution.
+
+At birth, elephants have a total of 28 molar plate-like grinding teeth not including the tusks.  These are organized into four sets of seven successively larger teeth which the elephant will slowly wear through during its lifetime of chewing rough plant material.  Only four teeth are used for chewing at a given time, and as each tooth wears out, another tooth moves forward to take its place in a process similar to a conveyor belt.  The last and largest of these teeth usually becomes exposed when the animal is around 40 years of age, and will often last for an additional 20 years. When the last of these teeth has fallen out, regardless of the elephant's age, the animal will no longer be able to chew food and will die of starvation.[15][16]
+
+Rabbits and other lagomorphs usually shed their deciduous teeth before (or very shortly after) their birth, and are usually born with their permanent teeth.[17]  The teeth of rabbits complement their diet, which consists of a wide range of vegetation. Since many of the foods are abrasive enough to cause attrition, rabbit teeth grow continuously throughout life.[18]  Rabbits have a total of 6 incisors, three upper premolars, three upper molars, two lower premolars, and two lower molars on each side. There are no canines. Three to four millimeters of the tooth is worn away by incisors every week, whereas the posterior teeth require a month to wear away the same amount.[19]
+
+The incisors and cheek teeth of rabbits are called aradicular hypsodont teeth. This is sometimes referred to as an elodent dentition. These teeth grow or erupt continuously.  The growth or eruption is held in balance by dental abrasion from chewing a diet high in fiber.
+
+Rodents have upper and lower hypselodont incisors that can continuously grow enamel throughout its life without having properly formed roots.[20] These teeth are also known as aradicular teeth, and unlike humans whose ameloblasts die after tooth development, rodents continually produce enamel, they must wear down their teeth by gnawing on various materials.[21] Enamel and dentin are produced by the enamel organ, and growth is dependent on the presence of stem cells, cellular amplification, and cellular maturation structures in the odontogenic region.[22] Rodent incisors are used for cutting wood, biting through the skin of fruit, or for defense. This allows for the rate of wear and tooth growth to be at equilibrium.[20] The microstructure of rodent incisor enamel has shown to be useful in studying the phylogeny and systematics of rodents because of its independent evolution from the other dental traits. The enamel on rodent incisors are composed of two layers: the inner portio interna (PI) with Hunter-Schreger bands (HSB) and an outer portio externa (PE) with radial enamel (RE).[23] It usually involves the differential regulation of the epithelial stem cell niche in the tooth of two rodent species, such as guinea pigs.[24][25]
+
+The teeth have enamel on the outside and exposed dentin on the inside, so they self-sharpen during gnawing. On the other hand, continually growing molars are found in some rodent species, such as the sibling vole and the guinea pig.[24][25][24][25] There is variation in the dentition of the rodents, but generally, rodents lack canines and premolars, and have a space between their incisors and molars, called the diastema region.
+
+Manatees are polyphyodont with mandibular molars developing separately from the jaw and are encased in a bony shell separated by soft tissue.
+
+Walrus tusks are canine teeth that grow continuously throughout life.[26]
+
+Fish, such as sharks, may go through many teeth in their lifetime. The replacement of multiple teeth is known as polyphyodontia.
+
+A class of prehistoric shark are called cladodonts for their strange forked teeth.
+
+All amphibians have pedicellate teeth which are modified to be flexible due to connective tissue and uncalcified dentine that separates the crown from the base of the tooth.[27]
+
+Most amphibians exhibit teeth that have a slight attachment to the jaw or acrodont teeth. Acrodont teeth exhibit limited connection to the dentary and have little enervation.[28] This is ideal for organisms who mostly use their teeth for grasping, but not for crushing and allows for rapid regeneration of teeth at a low energy cost. Teeth are usually lost in the course of feeding if the prey is struggling.  Additionally, amphibians that undergo a metamorphosis develop bicuspid shaped teeth.[29]
+
+The teeth of reptiles are replaced constantly during their life.  Juvenile crocodilians replace teeth with larger ones at a rate as high as one new tooth per socket every month.  Once adult, tooth replacement rates can slow to two years and even longer.  Overall, crocodilians may use 3,000 teeth from birth to death. New teeth are created within old teeth.[citation needed]
+
+A skull of Ichthyornis discovered in 2014 suggests that the beak of birds may have evolved from teeth to allow chicks to escape their shells earlier, and thus avoid predators and also to penetrate protective covers such as hard earth to access underlying food.[30][31]
+
+True teeth are unique to vertebrates,[32] although many invertebrates have analogous structures often referred to as teeth. The organisms with the simplest genome bearing such tooth-like structures are perhaps the parasitic worms of the family Ancylostomatidae.[33] For example, the hookworm Necator americanus has two dorsal and two ventral cutting plates or teeth around the anterior margin of the buccal capsule. It also has a pair of subdorsal and a pair of subventral teeth located close to the rear.[34]
+
+Historically the European medicinal leech, another invertebrate parasite, has been used in medicine to remove blood from patients.[35] They have three jaws (tripartite) that look like little saws, and on them are about 100 sharp teeth used to incise the host. The incision leaves a mark that is an inverted Y inside of a circle. After piercing the skin and injecting anticoagulants (hirudin) and anaesthetics, they suck out blood, consuming up to ten times their body weight in a single meal.[36]
+
+In some species of Bryozoa, the first part of the stomach forms a muscular gizzard lined with chitinous teeth that crush armoured prey such as diatoms. Wave-like peristaltic contractions then move the food through the stomach for digestion.[37]
+
+Molluscs have a structure called a radula which bears a ribbon of chitinous teeth. However, these teeth are histologically and developmentally different from vertebrate teeth and are unlikely to be homologous. For example, vertebrate teeth develop from a neural crest mesenchyme-derived dental papilla, and the neural crest is specific to vertebrates, as are tissues such as enamel.[32]
+
+The radula is used by molluscs for feeding and is sometimes compared rather inaccurately to a tongue. It is a minutely toothed, chitinous ribbon, typically used for scraping or cutting food before the food enters the oesophagus. The radula is unique to molluscs, and is found in every class of mollusc apart from bivalves.
+
+Within the gastropods, the radula is used in feeding by both herbivorous and carnivorous snails and slugs. The arrangement of teeth (also known as denticles) on the radula ribbon varies considerably from one group to another as shown in the diagram on the left.
+
+Predatory marine snails such as the Naticidae use the radula plus an acidic secretion to bore through the shell of other molluscs. Other predatory marine snails, such as the Conidae, use a specialized radula tooth as a poisoned harpoon. Predatory pulmonate land slugs, such as the ghost slug, use elongated razor-sharp teeth on the radula to seize and devour earthworms. Predatory cephalopods, such as squid, use the radula for cutting prey.
+
+In most of the more ancient lineages of gastropods, the radula is used to graze by scraping diatoms and other microscopic algae off rock surfaces and other substrates. Limpets scrape algae from rocks using radula equipped with exceptionally hard rasping teeth.[38] These teeth have the strongest known tensile strength of any biological material, outperforming spider silk.[38] The mineral protein of the limpet teeth can withstand a tensile stress of 4.9 GPa, compared to 4 GPa of spider silk and 0.5 GPa of human teeth.[39]
+
+Because teeth are very resistant, often preserved when bones are not,[40] and reflect the diet of the host organism, they are very valuable to archaeologists and palaeontologists.[41] Early fish such as the thelodonts had scales composed of dentine and an enamel-like compound, suggesting that the origin of teeth was from scales which were retained in the mouth. Fish as early as the late Cambrian had dentine in their exoskeleton, which may have functioned in defense or for sensing their environment.[42] Dentine can be as hard as the rest of teeth and is composed of collagen fibres, reinforced with hydroxyapatite.[42]
+
+Though teeth are very resistant, they also can be brittle and highly susceptible to cracking.[43] However, cracking of the tooth can be used as a diagnostic tool for predicting bite force. Additionally, enamel fractures can also give valuable insight into the diet and behaviour of archaeological and fossil samples.
+
+Decalcification removes the enamel from teeth and leaves only the organic interior intact, which comprises dentine and cementine.[44] Enamel is quickly decalcified in acids,[45] perhaps by dissolution by plant acids or via diagenetic solutions, or in the stomachs of vertebrate predators.[44] Enamel can be lost by abrasion or spalling,[44] and is lost before dentine or bone are destroyed by the fossilisation process.[45]  In such a case, the 'skeleton' of the teeth would consist of the dentine, with a hollow pulp cavity.[44]
+The organic part of dentine, conversely, is destroyed by alkalis.[45]

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+Economics (/ɛkəˈnɒmɪks, iːkə-/)[1][2][3] is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.[4]
+
+Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyzes the economy as a system where production, consumption, saving, and investment interact,  and factors affecting it: employment of the resources of labour, capital, and land, currency inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements.
+
+Other broad distinctions within economics include those between positive economics, describing "what is", and normative economics, advocating "what ought to be"; between economic theory and applied economics; between rational and behavioural economics; and between mainstream economics and heterodox economics.[5]
+
+Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, in real estate,[6] business,[7] finance, health care,[8] and government.[9] Economic analysis is sometimes also applied to such diverse subjects as crime, education,[10] the family, law, politics, religion,[11] social institutions, war,[12] science,[13] and the environment.[14]
+
+
+
+The discipline was renamed in the late 19th century, primarily due to Alfred Marshall, from "political economy" to "economics" as a shorter term for "economic science". At that time, it became more open to rigorous thinking and made increased use of mathematics, which helped support efforts to have it accepted as a science and as a separate discipline outside of political science and other social sciences.[a][16][17][18]
+
+There are a variety of modern definitions of economics; some reflect evolving views of the subject or different views among economists.[19][20] Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1776) defined what was then called political economy as "an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations", in particular as:
+
+a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator [with the twofold objectives of providing] a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people ... [and] to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services.[21]
+
+Jean-Baptiste Say (1803), distinguishing the subject from its public-policy uses, defines it as the science of production, distribution, and consumption of wealth.[22] On the satirical side, Thomas Carlyle (1849) coined "the dismal science" as an epithet for classical economics, in this context, commonly linked to the pessimistic analysis of Malthus (1798).[23] John Stuart Mill (1844) defines the subject in a social context as:
+
+The science which traces the laws of such of the phenomena of society as arise from the combined operations of mankind for the production of wealth, in so far as those phenomena are not modified by the pursuit of any other object.[24]
+
+Alfred Marshall provides a still widely cited definition in his textbook Principles of Economics (1890) that extends analysis beyond wealth and from the societal to the microeconomic level:
+
+Economics is a study of man in the ordinary business of life. It enquires how he gets his income and how he uses it. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man.[25]
+
+Lionel Robbins (1932) developed implications of what has been termed "[p]erhaps the most commonly accepted current definition of the subject":[20]
+
+Economics is a science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.[26]
+
+Robbins describes the definition as not classificatory in "pick[ing] out certain kinds of behaviour" but rather analytical in "focus[ing] attention on a particular aspect of behaviour, the form imposed by the influence of scarcity."[27] He affirmed that previous economists have usually centred their studies on the analysis of wealth: how wealth is created (production), distributed, and consumed; and how wealth can grow.[28] But he said that economics can be used to study other things, such as war, that are outside its usual focus.  This is because war has as the goal winning it (as a sought after end), generates both cost and benefits; and, resources (human life and other costs) are used to attain the goal.  If the war is not winnable or if the expected costs outweigh the benefits, the deciding actors (assuming they are rational) may never go to war (a decision) but rather explore other alternatives. We cannot define economics as the science that studies wealth, war, crime, education, and any other field economic analysis can be applied to; but, as the science that studies a particular common aspect of each of those subjects (they all use scarce resources to attain a sought after end).
+
+Some subsequent comments criticized the definition as overly broad in failing to limit its subject matter to analysis of markets. From the 1960s, however, such comments abated as the economic theory of maximizing behaviour and rational-choice modelling expanded the domain of the subject to areas previously treated in other fields.[29] There are other criticisms as well, such as in scarcity not accounting for the macroeconomics of high unemployment.[30]
+
+Gary Becker, a contributor to the expansion of economics into new areas, describes the approach he favours as "combin[ing the] assumptions of maximizing behaviour, stable preferences, and market equilibrium, used relentlessly and unflinchingly."[31] One commentary characterizes the remark as making economics an approach rather than a subject matter but with great specificity as to the "choice process and the type of social interaction that [such] analysis involves." The same source reviews a range of definitions included in principles of economics textbooks and concludes that the lack of agreement need not affect the subject-matter that the texts treat. Among economists more generally, it argues that a particular definition presented may reflect the direction toward which the author believes economics is evolving, or should evolve.[20]
+
+Economic writings date from earlier Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Indian subcontinent, Chinese, Persian, and Arab civilizations. Economic precepts occur throughout the writings of the Boeotian poet Hesiod and several economic historians have described Hesiod himself as the "first economist".[32] Other notable writers from Antiquity through to the Renaissance include Aristotle, Xenophon, Chanakya (also known as Kautilya), Qin Shi Huang, Thomas Aquinas, and Ibn Khaldun. Joseph Schumpeter described Aquinas as "coming nearer than any other group to being the "founders' of scientific economics" as to monetary, interest, and value theory within a natural-law perspective.[33][failed verification]
+
+Two groups, who later were called "mercantilists" and "physiocrats", more directly influenced the subsequent development of the subject. Both groups were associated with the rise of economic nationalism and modern capitalism in Europe. Mercantilism was an economic doctrine that flourished from the 16th to 18th century in a prolific pamphlet literature, whether of merchants or statesmen. It held that a nation's wealth depended on its accumulation of gold and silver. Nations without access to mines could obtain gold and silver from trade only by selling goods abroad and restricting imports other than of gold and silver. The doctrine called for importing cheap raw materials to be used in manufacturing goods, which could be exported, and for state regulation to impose protective tariffs on foreign manufactured goods and prohibit manufacturing in the colonies.[34]
+
+Physiocrats, a group of 18th-century French thinkers and writers, developed the idea of the economy as a circular flow of income and output. Physiocrats believed that only agricultural production generated a clear surplus over cost, so that agriculture was the basis of all wealth. Thus, they opposed the mercantilist policy of promoting manufacturing and trade at the expense of agriculture, including import tariffs. Physiocrats advocated replacing administratively costly tax collections with a single tax on income of land owners. In reaction against copious mercantilist trade regulations, the physiocrats advocated a policy of laissez-faire, which called for minimal government intervention in the economy.[35]
+
+Adam Smith (1723–1790) was an early economic theorist.[36] Smith was harshly critical of the mercantilists but described the physiocratic system "with all its imperfections" as "perhaps the purest approximation to the truth that has yet been published" on the subject.[37]
+
+The publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in 1776, has been described as "the effective birth of economics as a separate discipline."[38] The book identified land, labour, and capital as the three factors of production and the major contributors to a nation's wealth, as distinct from the physiocratic idea that only agriculture was productive.
+
+Smith discusses potential benefits of specialization by division of labour, including increased labour productivity and gains from trade, whether between town and country or across countries.[39] His "theorem" that "the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market" has been described as the "core of a theory of the functions of firm and industry" and a "fundamental principle of economic organization."[40] To Smith has also been ascribed "the most important substantive proposition in all of economics" and foundation of resource-allocation theory – that, under competition, resource owners (of labour, land, and capital) seek their most profitable uses, resulting in an equal rate of return for all uses in equilibrium (adjusted for apparent differences arising from such factors as training and unemployment).[41]
+
+In an argument that includes "one of the most famous passages in all economics,"[42] Smith represents every individual as trying to employ any capital they might command for their own advantage, not that of the society,[b] and for the sake of profit, which is necessary at some level for employing capital in domestic industry, and positively related to the value of produce.[44] In this:
+
+He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.[45]
+
+The Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus (1798) used the concept of diminishing returns to explain low living standards. Human population, he argued, tended to increase geometrically, outstripping the production of food, which increased arithmetically. The force of a rapidly growing population against a limited amount of land meant diminishing returns to labour. The result, he claimed, was chronically low wages, which prevented the standard of living for most of the population from rising above the subsistence level.[46] Economist Julian Lincoln Simon has criticized Malthus's conclusions.[47]
+
+While Adam Smith emphasized the production of income, David Ricardo (1817) focused on the distribution of income among landowners, workers, and capitalists. Ricardo saw an inherent conflict between landowners on the one hand and labour and capital on the other. He posited that the growth of population and capital, pressing against a fixed supply of land, pushes up rents and holds down wages and profits. Ricardo was the first to state and prove the principle of comparative advantage, according to which each country should specialize in producing and exporting goods in that it has a lower relative cost of production, rather relying only on its own production.[48] It has been termed a "fundamental analytical explanation" for gains from trade.[49]
+
+Coming at the end of the classical tradition, John Stuart Mill (1848) parted company with the earlier classical economists on the inevitability of the distribution of income produced by the market system. Mill pointed to a distinct difference between the market's two roles: allocation of resources and distribution of income. The market might be efficient in allocating resources but not in distributing income, he wrote, making it necessary for society to intervene.[50]
+
+Value theory was important in classical theory. Smith wrote that the "real price of every thing ... is the toil and trouble of acquiring it". Smith maintained that, with rent and profit, other costs besides wages also enter the price of a commodity.[51] Other classical economists presented variations on Smith, termed the 'labour theory of value'. Classical economics focused on the tendency of any market economy to settle in a final stationary state made up of a constant stock of physical wealth (capital) and a constant population size.
+
+Marxist (later, Marxian) economics descends from classical economics and it derives from the work of Karl Marx. The first volume of Marx's major work, Das Kapital, was published in German in 1867. In it, Marx focused on the labour theory of value and the theory of surplus value which, he believed, explained the exploitation of labour by capital.[52] The labour theory of value held that the value of an exchanged commodity was determined by the labour that went into its production and the theory of surplus value demonstrated how the workers only got paid a proportion of the value their work had created.[53]
+
+At the dawn as a social science, economics was defined and discussed at length as the study of production, distribution, and consumption of wealth by Jean-Baptiste Say in his Treatise on Political Economy or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth (1803). These three items are considered by the science only in relation to the increase or diminution of wealth, and not in reference to their processes of execution.[c] Say's definition has prevailed up to our time, saved by substituting the word "wealth" for "goods and services" meaning that wealth may include non-material objects as well. One hundred and thirty years later, Lionel Robbins noticed that this definition no longer sufficed,[d] because many economists were making theoretical and philosophical inroads in other areas of human activity. In his Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, he proposed a definition of economics as a study of a particular aspect of human behaviour, the one that falls under the influence of scarcity,[e] which forces people to choose, allocate scarce resources to competing ends, and economize (seeking the greatest welfare while avoiding the wasting of scarce resources). For Robbins, the insufficiency was solved, and his definition allows us to proclaim, with an easy conscience, education economics, safety and security economics, health economics, war economics, and of course, production, distribution and consumption economics as valid subjects of the economic science."  Citing Robbins: "Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses".[27] After discussing it for decades, Robbins' definition became widely accepted by mainstream economists, and it has opened way into current textbooks.[54] Although far from unanimous, most mainstream economists would accept some version of Robbins' definition, even though many have raised serious objections to the scope and method of economics, emanating from that definition.[55] Due to the lack of strong consensus, and that production, distribution and consumption of goods and services is the prime area of study of economics, the old definition still stands in many quarters.
+
+A body of theory later termed "neoclassical economics" or "marginalism" formed from about 1870 to 1910. The term "economics" was popularized by such neoclassical economists as Alfred Marshall as a concise synonym for "economic science" and a substitute for the earlier "political economy".[17][18] This corresponded to the influence on the subject of mathematical methods used in the natural sciences.[56]
+
+Neoclassical economics systematized supply and demand as joint determinants of price and quantity in market equilibrium, affecting both the allocation of output and the distribution of income. It dispensed with the labour theory of value inherited from classical economics in favour of a marginal utility theory of value on the demand side and a more general theory of costs on the supply side.[57] In the 20th century, neoclassical theorists moved away from an earlier notion suggesting that total utility for a society could be measured in favour of ordinal utility, which hypothesizes merely behaviour-based relations across persons.[58][59]
+
+In microeconomics, neoclassical economics represents incentives and costs as playing a pervasive role in shaping decision making. An immediate example of this is the consumer theory of individual demand, which isolates how prices (as costs) and income affect quantity demanded.[58] In macroeconomics it is reflected in an early and lasting neoclassical synthesis with Keynesian macroeconomics.[60][58]
+
+Neoclassical economics is occasionally referred as orthodox economics whether by its critics or sympathizers. Modern mainstream economics builds on neoclassical economics but with many refinements that either supplement or generalize earlier analysis, such as econometrics, game theory, analysis of market failure and imperfect competition, and the neoclassical model of economic growth for analysing long-run variables affecting national income.
+
+Neoclassical economics studies the behaviour of individuals, households, and organizations (called economic actors, players, or agents), when they manage or use scarce resources, which have alternative uses, to achieve desired ends. Agents are assumed to act rationally, have multiple desirable ends in sight, limited resources to obtain these ends, a set of stable preferences, a definite overall guiding objective, and the capability of making a choice. There exists an economic problem, subject to study by economic science, when a decision (choice) is made by one or more resource-controlling players to attain the best possible outcome under bounded rational conditions. In other words, resource-controlling agents maximize value subject to the constraints imposed by the information the agents have, their cognitive limitations, and the finite amount of time they have to make and execute a decision. Economic science centres on the activities of the economic agents that comprise society.[61] They are the focus of economic analysis.[f]
+
+An approach to understanding these processes, through the study of agent behaviour under scarcity, may go as follows:
+
+The continuous interplay (exchange or trade) done by economic actors in all markets sets the prices for all goods and services which, in turn, make the rational managing of scarce resources possible. At the same time, the decisions (choices) made by the same actors, while they are pursuing their own interest, determine the level of output (production), consumption, savings, and investment, in an economy, as well as the remuneration (distribution) paid to the owners of labour (in the form of wages), capital (in the form of profits) and land (in the form of rent).[g] Each period, as if they were in a giant feedback system, economic players influence the pricing processes and the economy, and are in turn influenced by them until a steady state (equilibrium) of all variables involved is reached or until an external shock throws the system toward a new equilibrium point. Because of the autonomous actions of rational interacting agents, the economy is a complex adaptive system.[h]
+
+Keynesian economics derives from John Maynard Keynes, in particular his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), which ushered in contemporary macroeconomics as a distinct field.[62] The book focused on determinants of national income in the short run when prices are relatively inflexible. Keynes attempted to explain in broad theoretical detail why high labour-market unemployment might not be self-correcting due to low "effective demand" and why even price flexibility and monetary policy might be unavailing. The term "revolutionary" has been applied to the book in its impact on economic analysis.[63]
+
+Keynesian economics has two successors. Post-Keynesian economics also concentrates on macroeconomic rigidities and adjustment processes. Research on micro foundations for their models is represented as based on real-life practices rather than simple optimizing models. It is generally associated with the University of Cambridge and the work of Joan Robinson.[64]
+
+New-Keynesian economics is also associated with developments in the Keynesian fashion. Within this group researchers tend to share with other economists the emphasis on models employing micro foundations and optimizing behaviour but with a narrower focus on standard Keynesian themes such as price and wage rigidity. These are usually made to be endogenous features of the models, rather than simply assumed as in older Keynesian-style ones.
+
+The Chicago School of economics is best known for its free market advocacy and monetarist ideas. According to Milton Friedman and monetarists, market economies are inherently stable if the money supply does not greatly expand or contract. Ben Bernanke, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is among the economists today generally accepting Friedman's analysis of the causes of the Great Depression.[65]
+
+Milton Friedman effectively took many of the basic principles set forth by Adam Smith and the classical economists and modernized them. One example of this is his article in the 13 September 1970 issue of The New York Times Magazine, in which he claims that the social responsibility of business should be "to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits ... (through) open and free competition without deception or fraud."[66]
+
+Other well-known schools or trends of thought referring to a particular style of economics practised at and disseminated from well-defined groups of academicians that have become known worldwide, include the Austrian School, the Freiburg School, the School of Lausanne, post-Keynesian economics and the Stockholm school. Contemporary mainstream economics is sometimes separated into the Saltwater approach of those universities along the Eastern and Western coasts of the US, and the Freshwater, or Chicago-school approach.
+
+Within macroeconomics there is, in general order of their appearance in the literature; classical economics, Keynesian economics, the neoclassical synthesis, post-Keynesian economics, monetarism, new classical economics, and supply-side economics. Alternative developments include ecological economics, constitutional economics, institutional economics, evolutionary economics, dependency theory, structuralist economics, world systems theory, econophysics, feminist economics and biophysical economics.[67]
+
+Economic systems is the branch of economics that studies the methods and institutions by which societies determine the ownership, direction, and allocation of economic resources. An economic system of a society is the unit of analysis.
+
+Among contemporary systems at different ends of the organizational spectrum are socialist systems and capitalist systems, in which most production occurs in respectively state-run and private enterprises. In between are mixed economies. A common element is the interaction of economic and political influences, broadly described as political economy. Comparative economic systems studies the relative performance and behaviour of different economies or systems.[68]
+
+The U.S. Export-Import Bank defines a Marxist–Leninist state as having a centrally planned economy.[53] They are now rare; examples can still be seen in Cuba, North Korea and Laos.[69][needs update]
+
+Mainstream economic theory relies upon a priori quantitative economic models, which employ a variety of concepts. Theory typically proceeds with an assumption of ceteris paribus, which means holding constant explanatory variables other than the one under consideration. When creating theories, the objective is to find ones which are at least as simple in information requirements, more precise in predictions, and more fruitful in generating additional research than prior theories.[70] While neoclassical economic theory constitutes both the dominant or orthodox theoretical as well as methodological framework, economic theory can also take the form of other schools of thought such as in heterodox economic theories.
+
+In microeconomics, principal concepts include supply and demand, marginalism, rational choice theory, opportunity cost, budget constraints, utility, and the theory of the firm.[71] Early macroeconomic models focused on modelling the relationships between aggregate variables, but as the relationships appeared to change over time macroeconomists, including new Keynesians, reformulated their models in microfoundations.[72]
+
+The aforementioned microeconomic concepts play a major part in macroeconomic models – for instance, in monetary theory, the quantity theory of money predicts that increases in the growth rate of the money supply increase inflation, and inflation is assumed to be influenced by rational expectations. In development economics, slower growth in developed nations has been sometimes predicted because of the declining marginal returns of investment and capital, and this has been observed in the Four Asian Tigers. Sometimes an economic hypothesis is only qualitative, not quantitative.[73]
+
+Expositions of economic reasoning often use two-dimensional graphs to illustrate theoretical relationships. At a higher level of generality, Paul Samuelson's treatise Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947) used mathematical methods beyond graphs to represent the theory, particularly as to maximizing behavioural relations of agents reaching equilibrium. The book focused on examining the class of statements called operationally meaningful theorems in economics, which are theorems that can conceivably be refuted by empirical data.[74]
+
+Microeconomics examines how entities, forming a market structure, interact within a market to create a market system. These entities include private and public players with various classifications, typically operating under scarcity of tradable units and light government regulation.[clarification needed] The item traded may be a tangible product such as apples or a service such as repair services, legal counsel, or entertainment.
+
+In theory, in a free market the aggregates (sum of) of quantity demanded by buyers and quantity supplied by sellers may reach economic equilibrium over time in reaction to price changes; in practice, various issues may prevent equilibrium, and any equilibrium reached may not necessarily be morally equitable. For example, if the supply of healthcare services is limited by external factors, the equilibrium price may be unaffordable for many who desire it but cannot pay for it.
+
+Various market structures exist. In perfectly competitive markets, no participants are large enough to have the market power to set the price of a homogeneous product. In other words, every participant is a "price taker" as no participant influences the price of a product. In the real world, markets often experience imperfect competition.
+
+Forms include monopoly (in which there is only one seller of a good), duopoly (in which there are only two sellers of a good), oligopoly (in which there are few sellers of a good), monopolistic competition (in which there are many sellers producing highly differentiated goods), monopsony (in which there is only one buyer of a good), and oligopsony (in which there are few buyers of a good). Unlike perfect competition, imperfect competition invariably means market power is unequally distributed. Firms under imperfect competition have the potential to be "price makers", which means that, by holding a disproportionately high share of market power, they can influence the prices of their products.
+
+Microeconomics studies individual markets by simplifying the economic system by assuming that activity in the market being analysed does not affect other markets. This method of analysis is known as partial-equilibrium analysis (supply and demand). This method aggregates (the sum of all activity) in only one market. General-equilibrium theory studies various markets and their behaviour. It aggregates (the sum of all activity) across all markets. This method studies both changes in markets and their interactions leading towards equilibrium.[75]
+
+In microeconomics, production is the conversion of inputs into outputs. It is an economic process that uses inputs to create a commodity or a service for exchange or direct use. Production is a flow and thus a rate of output per period of time. Distinctions include such production alternatives as for consumption (food, haircuts, etc.) vs. investment goods (new tractors, buildings, roads, etc.), public goods (national defence, smallpox vaccinations, etc.) or private goods (new computers, bananas, etc.), and "guns" vs "butter".
+
+Opportunity cost is the economic cost of production: the value of the next best opportunity foregone. Choices must be made between desirable yet mutually exclusive actions. It has been described as expressing "the basic relationship between scarcity and choice".[76] For example, if a baker uses a sack of flour to make pretzels one morning, then the baker cannot use either the flour or the morning to make bagels instead.  Part of the cost of making pretzels is that neither the flour nor the morning are available any longer, for use in some other way.  The opportunity cost of an activity is an element in ensuring that scarce resources are used efficiently, such that the cost is weighed against the value of that activity in deciding on more or less of it. Opportunity costs are not restricted to monetary or financial costs but could be measured by the real cost of output forgone, leisure, or anything else that provides the alternative benefit (utility).[77]
+
+Inputs used in the production process include such primary factors of production as labour services, capital (durable produced goods used in production, such as an existing factory), and land (including natural resources). Other inputs may include intermediate goods used in production of final goods, such as the steel in a new car.
+
+Economic efficiency measures how well a system generates desired output with a given set of inputs and available technology. Efficiency is improved if more output is generated without changing inputs, or in other words, the amount of "waste" is reduced. A widely accepted general standard is Pareto efficiency, which is reached when no further change can make someone better off without making someone else worse off.
+
+The production–possibility frontier (PPF) is an expository figure for representing scarcity, cost, and efficiency. In the simplest case an economy can produce just two goods (say "guns" and "butter"). The PPF is a table or graph (as at the right) showing the different quantity combinations of the two goods producible with a given technology and total factor inputs, which limit feasible total output. Each point on the curve shows potential total output for the economy, which is the maximum feasible output of one good, given a feasible output quantity of the other good.
+
+Scarcity is represented in the figure by people being willing but unable in the aggregate to consume beyond the PPF (such as at X) and by the negative slope of the curve.[78] If production of one good increases along the curve, production of the other good decreases, an inverse relationship. This is because increasing output of one good requires transferring inputs to it from production of the other good, decreasing the latter.
+
+The slope of the curve at a point on it gives the trade-off between the two goods. It measures what an additional unit of one good costs in units forgone of the other good, an example of a real opportunity cost. Thus, if one more Gun costs 100 units of butter, the opportunity cost of one Gun is 100 Butter. Along the PPF, scarcity implies that choosing more of one good in the aggregate entails doing with less of the other good. Still, in a market economy, movement along the curve may indicate that the choice of the increased output is anticipated to be worth the cost to the agents.
+
+By construction, each point on the curve shows productive efficiency in maximizing output for given total inputs. A point inside the curve (as at A), is feasible but represents production inefficiency (wasteful use of inputs), in that output of one or both goods could increase by moving in a northeast direction to a point on the curve. Examples cited of such inefficiency include high unemployment during a business-cycle recession or economic organization of a country that discourages full use of resources. Being on the curve might still not fully satisfy allocative efficiency (also called Pareto efficiency) if it does not produce a mix of goods that consumers prefer over other points.
+
+Much applied economics in public policy is concerned with determining how the efficiency of an economy can be improved. Recognizing the reality of scarcity and then figuring out how to organize society for the most efficient use of resources has been described as the "essence of economics", where the subject "makes its unique contribution."[79]
+
+Specialization is considered key to economic efficiency based on theoretical and empirical considerations. Different individuals or nations may have different real opportunity costs of production, say from differences in stocks of human capital per worker or capital/labour ratios. According to theory, this may give a comparative advantage in production of goods that make more intensive use of the relatively more abundant, thus relatively cheaper, input.
+
+Even if one region has an absolute advantage as to the ratio of its outputs to inputs in every type of output, it may still specialize in the output in which it has a comparative advantage and thereby gain from trading with a region that lacks any absolute advantage but has a comparative advantage in producing something else.
+
+It has been observed that a high volume of trade occurs among regions even with access to a similar technology and mix of factor inputs, including high-income countries. This has led to investigation of economies of scale and agglomeration to explain specialization in similar but differentiated product lines, to the overall benefit of respective trading parties or regions.[80]
+
+The general theory of specialization applies to trade among individuals, farms, manufacturers, service providers, and economies. Among each of these production systems, there may be a corresponding division of labour with different work groups specializing, or correspondingly different types of capital equipment and differentiated land uses.[81]
+
+An example that combines features above is a country that specializes in the production of high-tech knowledge products, as developed countries do, and trades with developing nations for goods produced in factories where labour is relatively cheap and plentiful, resulting in different in opportunity costs of production. More total output and utility thereby results from specializing in production and trading than if each country produced its own high-tech and low-tech products.
+
+Theory and observation set out the conditions such that market prices of outputs and productive inputs select an allocation of factor inputs by comparative advantage, so that (relatively) low-cost inputs go to producing low-cost outputs. In the process, aggregate output may increase as a by-product or by design.[82] Such specialization of production creates opportunities for gains from trade whereby resource owners benefit from trade in the sale of one type of output for other, more highly valued goods. A measure of gains from trade is the increased income levels that trade may facilitate.[83]
+
+Prices and quantities have been described as the most directly observable attributes of goods produced and exchanged in a market economy.[84] The theory of supply and demand is an organizing principle for explaining how prices coordinate the amounts produced and consumed. In microeconomics, it applies to price and output determination for a market with perfect competition, which includes the condition of no buyers or sellers large enough to have price-setting power.
+
+For a given market of a commodity, demand is the relation of the quantity that all buyers would be prepared to purchase at each unit price of the good. Demand is often represented by a table or a graph showing price and quantity demanded (as in the figure). Demand theory describes individual consumers as rationally choosing the most preferred quantity of each good, given income, prices, tastes, etc. A term for this is "constrained utility maximization" (with income and wealth as the constraints on demand). Here, utility refers to the hypothesized relation of each individual consumer for ranking different commodity bundles as more or less preferred.
+
+The law of demand states that, in general, price and quantity demanded in a given market are inversely related. That is, the higher the price of a product, the less of it people would be prepared to buy (other things unchanged). As the price of a commodity falls, consumers move toward it from relatively more expensive goods (the substitution effect). In addition, purchasing power from the price decline increases ability to buy (the income effect). Other factors can change demand; for example an increase in income will shift the demand curve for a normal good outward relative to the origin, as in the figure. All determinants are predominantly taken as constant factors of demand and supply.
+
+Supply is the relation between the price of a good and the quantity available for sale at that price. It may be represented as a table or graph relating price and quantity supplied. Producers, for example business firms, are hypothesized to be profit maximizers, meaning that they attempt to produce and supply the amount of goods that will bring them the highest profit. Supply is typically represented as a function relating price and quantity, if other factors are unchanged.
+
+That is, the higher the price at which the good can be sold, the more of it producers will supply, as in the figure. The higher price makes it profitable to increase production. Just as on the demand side, the position of the supply can shift, say from a change in the price of a productive input or a technical improvement. The "Law of Supply" states that, in general, a rise in price leads to an expansion in supply and a fall in price leads to a contraction in supply. Here as well, the determinants of supply, such as price of substitutes, cost of production, technology applied and various factors inputs of production are all taken to be constant for a specific time period of evaluation of supply.
+
+Market equilibrium occurs where quantity supplied equals quantity demanded, the intersection of the supply and demand curves in the figure above. At a price below equilibrium, there is a shortage of quantity supplied compared to quantity demanded. This is posited to bid the price up. At a price above equilibrium, there is a surplus of quantity supplied compared to quantity demanded. This pushes the price down. The model of supply and demand predicts that for given supply and demand curves, price and quantity will stabilize at the price that makes quantity supplied equal to quantity demanded. Similarly, demand-and-supply theory predicts a new price-quantity combination from a shift in demand (as to the figure), or in supply.
+
+People frequently do not trade directly on markets. Instead, on the supply side, they may work in and produce through firms. The most obvious kinds of firms are corporations, partnerships and trusts. According to Ronald Coase, people begin to organize their production in firms when the costs of doing business becomes lower than doing it on the market.[85] Firms combine labour and capital, and can achieve far greater economies of scale (when the average cost per unit declines as more units are produced) than individual market trading.
+
+In perfectly competitive markets studied in the theory of supply and demand, there are many producers, none of which significantly influence price. Industrial organization generalizes from that special case to study the strategic behaviour of firms that do have significant control of price. It considers the structure of such markets and their interactions. Common market structures studied besides perfect competition include monopolistic competition, various forms of oligopoly, and monopoly.[86]
+
+Managerial economics applies microeconomic analysis to specific decisions in business firms or other management units. It draws heavily from quantitative methods such as operations research and programming and from statistical methods such as regression analysis in the absence of certainty and perfect knowledge. A unifying theme is the attempt to optimize business decisions, including unit-cost minimization and profit maximization, given the firm's objectives and constraints imposed by technology and market conditions.[87]
+
+Uncertainty in economics is an unknown prospect of gain or loss, whether quantifiable as risk or not. Without it, household behaviour would be unaffected by uncertain employment and income prospects, financial and capital markets would reduce to exchange of a single instrument in each market period, and there would be no communications industry.[88] Given its different forms, there are various ways of representing uncertainty and modelling economic agents' responses to it.[89]
+
+Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that considers strategic interactions between agents, one kind of uncertainty. It provides a mathematical foundation of industrial organization, discussed above, to model different types of firm behaviour, for example in a solipsistic industry (few sellers), but equally applicable to wage negotiations, bargaining, contract design, and any situation where individual agents are few enough to have perceptible effects on each other. In behavioural economics, it has been used to model the strategies agents choose when interacting with others whose interests are at least partially adverse to their own.[90]
+
+In this, it generalizes maximization approaches developed to analyse market actors such as in the supply and demand model and allows for incomplete information of actors. The field dates from the 1944 classic Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. It has significant applications seemingly outside of economics in such diverse subjects as formulation of nuclear strategies, ethics, political science, and evolutionary biology.[91]
+
+Risk aversion may stimulate activity that in well-functioning markets smooths out risk and communicates information about risk, as in markets for insurance, commodity futures contracts, and financial instruments. Financial economics or simply finance describes the allocation of financial resources. It also analyses the pricing of financial instruments, the financial structure of companies, the efficiency and fragility of financial markets,[92] financial crises, and related government policy or regulation.[93]
+
+Some market organizations may give rise to inefficiencies associated with uncertainty. Based on George Akerlof's "Market for Lemons" article, the paradigm example is of a dodgy second-hand car market. Customers without knowledge of whether a car is a "lemon" depress its price below what a quality second-hand car would be.[94] Information asymmetry arises here, if the seller has more relevant information than the buyer but no incentive to disclose it. Related problems in insurance are adverse selection, such that those at most risk are most likely to insure (say reckless drivers), and moral hazard, such that insurance results in riskier behaviour (say more reckless driving).[95]
+
+Both problems may raise insurance costs and reduce efficiency by driving otherwise willing transactors from the market ("incomplete markets"). Moreover, attempting to reduce one problem, say adverse selection by mandating insurance, may add to another, say moral hazard. Information economics, which studies such problems, has relevance in subjects such as insurance, contract law, mechanism design, monetary economics, and health care.[95] Applied subjects include market and legal remedies to spread or reduce risk, such as warranties, government-mandated partial insurance, restructuring or bankruptcy law, inspection, and regulation for quality and information disclosure.[96][97]
+
+The term "market failure" encompasses several problems which may undermine standard economic assumptions. Although economists categorize market failures differently, the following categories emerge in the main texts.[i]
+
+Information asymmetries and incomplete markets may result in economic inefficiency but also a possibility of improving efficiency through market, legal, and regulatory remedies, as discussed above.
+
+Natural monopoly, or the overlapping concepts of "practical" and "technical" monopoly, is an extreme case of failure of competition as a restraint on producers. Extreme economies of scale are one possible cause.
+
+Public goods are goods which are under-supplied in a typical market. The defining features are that people can consume public goods without having to pay for them and that more than one person can consume the good at the same time.
+
+Externalities occur where there are significant social costs or benefits from production or consumption that are not reflected in market prices. For example, air pollution may generate a negative externality, and education may generate a positive externality (less crime, etc.). Governments often tax and otherwise restrict the sale of goods that have negative externalities and subsidize or otherwise promote the purchase of goods that have positive externalities in an effort to correct the price distortions caused by these externalities.[98] Elementary demand-and-supply theory predicts equilibrium but not the speed of adjustment for changes of equilibrium due to a shift in demand or supply.[99]
+
+In many areas, some form of price stickiness is postulated to account for quantities, rather than prices, adjusting in the short run to changes on the demand side or the supply side. This includes standard analysis of the business cycle in macroeconomics. Analysis often revolves around causes of such price stickiness and their implications for reaching a hypothesized long-run equilibrium. Examples of such price stickiness in particular markets include wage rates in labour markets and posted prices in markets deviating from perfect competition.
+
+Some specialized fields of economics deal in market failure more than others. The economics of the public sector is one example. Much environmental economics concerns externalities or "public bads".
+
+Policy options include regulations that reflect cost-benefit analysis or market solutions that change incentives, such as emission fees or redefinition of property rights.[100]
+
+Public finance is the field of economics that deals with budgeting the revenues and expenditures of a public sector entity, usually government. The subject addresses such matters as tax incidence (who really pays a particular tax), cost-benefit analysis of government programmes, effects on economic efficiency and income distribution of different kinds of spending and taxes, and fiscal politics. The latter, an aspect of public choice theory, models public-sector behaviour analogously to microeconomics, involving interactions of self-interested voters, politicians, and bureaucrats.[101]
+
+Much of economics is positive, seeking to describe and predict economic phenomena. Normative economics seeks to identify what economies ought to be like.
+
+Welfare economics is a normative branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to simultaneously determine the allocative efficiency within an economy and the income distribution associated with it. It attempts to measure social welfare by examining the economic activities of the individuals that comprise society.[102]
+
+Macroeconomics examines the economy as a whole to explain broad aggregates and their interactions "top down", that is, using a simplified form of general-equilibrium theory.[103] Such aggregates include national income and output, the unemployment rate, and price inflation and subaggregates like total consumption and investment spending and their components. It also studies effects of monetary policy and fiscal policy.
+
+Since at least the 1960s, macroeconomics has been characterized by further integration as to micro-based modelling of sectors, including rationality of players, efficient use of market information, and imperfect competition.[104] This has addressed a long-standing concern about inconsistent developments of the same subject.[105]
+
+Macroeconomic analysis also considers factors affecting the long-term level and growth of national income. Such factors include capital accumulation, technological change and labour force growth.[106]
+
+Growth economics studies factors that explain economic growth – the increase in output per capita of a country over a long period of time. The same factors are used to explain differences in the level of output per capita between countries, in particular why some countries grow faster than others, and whether countries converge at the same rates of growth.
+
+Much-studied factors include the rate of investment, population growth, and technological change. These are represented in theoretical and empirical forms (as in the neoclassical and endogenous growth models) and in growth accounting.[107]
+
+The economics of a depression were the spur for the creation of "macroeconomics" as a separate discipline. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes authored a book entitled The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money outlining the key theories of Keynesian economics. Keynes contended that aggregate demand for goods might be insufficient during economic downturns, leading to unnecessarily high unemployment and losses of potential output.
+
+He therefore advocated active policy responses by the public sector, including monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle.[108]
+Thus, a central conclusion of Keynesian economics is that, in some situations, no strong automatic mechanism moves output and employment towards full employment levels. John Hicks' IS/LM model has been the most influential interpretation of The General Theory.
+
+Over the years, understanding of the business cycle has branched into various research programmes, mostly related to or distinct from Keynesianism. The neoclassical synthesis refers to the reconciliation of Keynesian economics with neoclassical economics, stating that Keynesianism is correct in the short run but qualified by neoclassical-like considerations in the intermediate and long run.[60]
+
+New classical macroeconomics, as distinct from the Keynesian view of the business cycle, posits market clearing with imperfect information. It includes Friedman's permanent income hypothesis on consumption and "rational expectations" theory,[109] led by Robert Lucas, and real business cycle theory.[110]
+
+In contrast, the new Keynesian approach retains the rational expectations assumption, however it assumes a variety of market failures. In particular, New Keynesians assume prices and wages are "sticky", which means they do not adjust instantaneously to changes in economic conditions.[72]
+
+Thus, the new classicals assume that prices and wages adjust automatically to attain full employment, whereas the new Keynesians see full employment as being automatically achieved only in the long run, and hence government and central-bank policies are needed because the "long run" may be very long.
+
+The amount of unemployment in an economy is measured by the unemployment rate, the percentage of workers without jobs in the labour force. The labour force only includes workers actively looking for jobs. People who are retired, pursuing education, or discouraged from seeking work by a lack of job prospects are excluded from the labour force. Unemployment can be generally broken down into several types that are related to different causes.[111]
+
+Classical models of unemployment occurs when wages are too high for employers to be willing to hire more workers. Consistent with classical unemployment, frictional unemployment occurs when appropriate job vacancies exist for a worker, but the length of time needed to search for and find the job leads to a period of unemployment.[111]
+
+Structural unemployment covers a variety of possible causes of unemployment including a mismatch between workers' skills and the skills required for open jobs.[112] Large amounts of structural unemployment can occur when an economy is transitioning industries and workers find their previous set of skills are no longer in demand. Structural unemployment is similar to frictional unemployment since both reflect the problem of matching workers with job vacancies, but structural unemployment covers the time needed to acquire new skills not just the short term search process.[113]
+
+While some types of unemployment may occur regardless of the condition of the economy, cyclical unemployment occurs when growth stagnates. Okun's law represents the empirical relationship between unemployment and economic growth.[114] The original version of Okun's law states that a 3% increase in output would lead to a 1% decrease in unemployment.[115]
+
+Money is a means of final payment for goods in most price system economies, and is the unit of account in which prices are typically stated. Money has general acceptability, relative consistency in value, divisibility, durability, portability, elasticity in supply, and longevity with mass public confidence. It includes currency held by the nonbank public and checkable deposits. It has been described as a social convention, like language, useful to one largely because it is useful to others. In the words of Francis Amasa Walker, a well-known 19th-century economist, "Money is what money does" ("Money is that money does" in the original).[116]
+
+As a medium of exchange, money facilitates trade. It is essentially a measure of value and more importantly, a store of value being a basis for credit creation. Its economic function can be contrasted with barter (non-monetary exchange). Given a diverse array of produced goods and specialized producers, barter may entail a hard-to-locate double coincidence of wants as to what is exchanged, say apples and a book. Money can reduce the transaction cost of exchange because of its ready acceptability. Then it is less costly for the seller to accept money in exchange, rather than what the buyer produces.[117]
+
+At the level of an economy, theory and evidence are consistent with a positive relationship running from the total money supply to the nominal value of total output and to the general price level. For this reason, management of the money supply is a key aspect of monetary policy.[118]
+
+Governments implement fiscal policy to influence macroeconomic conditions by adjusting spending and taxation policies to alter aggregate demand. When aggregate demand falls below the potential output of the economy, there is an output gap where some productive capacity is left unemployed. Governments increase spending and cut taxes to boost aggregate demand. Resources that have been idled can be used by the government.
+
+For example, unemployed home builders can be hired to expand highways. Tax cuts allow consumers to increase their spending, which boosts aggregate demand. Both tax cuts and spending have multiplier effects where the initial increase in demand from the policy percolates through the economy and generates additional economic activity.
+
+The effects of fiscal policy can be limited by crowding out. When there is no output gap, the economy is producing at full capacity and there are no excess productive resources. If the government increases spending in this situation, the government uses resources that otherwise would have been used by the private sector, so there is no increase in overall output. Some economists think that crowding out is always an issue while others do not think it is a major issue when output is depressed.
+
+Sceptics of fiscal policy also make the argument of Ricardian equivalence. They argue that an increase in debt will have to be paid for with future tax increases, which will cause people to reduce their consumption and save money to pay for the future tax increase. Under Ricardian equivalence, any boost in demand from tax cuts will be offset by the increased saving intended to pay for future higher taxes.
+
+International trade studies determinants of goods-and-services flows across international boundaries. It also concerns the size and distribution of gains from trade. Policy applications include estimating the effects of changing tariff rates and trade quotas. International finance is a macroeconomic field which examines the flow of capital across international borders, and the effects of these movements on exchange rates. Increased trade in goods, services and capital between countries is a major effect of contemporary globalization.[119]
+
+Development economics examines economic aspects of the economic development process in relatively low-income countries focusing on structural change, poverty, and economic growth. Approaches in development economics frequently incorporate social and political factors.[120]
+
+Labor economics seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the markets for wage labor. Labor markets function through the interaction of workers and employers. Labor economics looks at the suppliers of labor services (workers), the demands of labor services (employers), and attempts to understand the resulting pattern of wages, employment, and income.  In economics, labor  is a measure of the work done by human beings. It is conventionally contrasted with such other factors of production as land and capital. There are theories which have developed a concept called human capital (referring to the skills that workers possess, not necessarily their actual work), although there are also counter posing macro-economic system theories that think human capital is a contradiction in terms.
+
+Welfare economics uses microeconomics techniques to evaluate well-being from allocation of productive factors as to desirability and economic efficiency within an economy, often relative to competitive general equilibrium.[121] It analyzes social welfare, however measured, in terms of economic activities of the individuals that compose the theoretical society considered.  Accordingly, individuals, with associated economic activities, are the basic units for aggregating to social welfare, whether of a group, a community, or a society, and there is no "social welfare" apart from the "welfare" associated with its individual units.
+
+According to various random and anonymous surveys of members of the American Economic Association, economists have agreement about the following propositions by percentage:[122][123][124][125][126]
+
+"The dismal science" is a derogatory alternative name for economics devised by the Victorian historian Thomas Carlyle in the 19th century. It is often stated that Carlyle gave economics the nickname "the dismal science" as a response to the late 18th century writings of The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, who grimly predicted that starvation would result, as projected population growth exceeded the rate of increase in the food supply. However, the actual phrase was coined by Carlyle in the context of a debate with John Stuart Mill on slavery, in which Carlyle argued for slavery, while Mill opposed it.[23]
+
+Some economists, like John Stuart Mill or Léon Walras, have maintained that the production of wealth should not be tied to its distribution.[127]
+
+In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith addressed many issues that are currently also the subject of debate and dispute. Smith repeatedly attacks groups of politically aligned individuals who attempt to use their collective influence to manipulate a government into doing their bidding. In Smith's day, these were referred to as factions, but are now more commonly called special interests, a term which can comprise international bankers, corporate conglomerations, outright oligopolies, monopolies, trade unions and other groups.[j]
+
+Economics per se, as a social science, is independent of the political acts of any government or other decision-making organization; however, many policymakers or individuals holding highly ranked positions that can influence other people's lives are known for arbitrarily using a plethora of economic concepts and rhetoric as vehicles to legitimize agendas and value systems, and do not limit their remarks to matters relevant to their responsibilities.[128] The close relation of economic theory and practice with politics[129] is a focus of contention that may shade or distort the most unpretentious original tenets of economics, and is often confused with specific social agendas and value systems.[130]
+
+Notwithstanding, economics legitimately has a role in informing government policy. It is, indeed, in some ways an outgrowth of the older field of political economy. Some academic economic journals have increased their efforts to gauge the consensus of economists regarding certain policy issues in hopes of effecting a more informed political environment. Often there exists a low approval rate from professional economists regarding many public policies. Policy issues featured in one survey of American Economic Association economists include trade restrictions, social insurance for those put out of work by international competition, genetically modified foods, curbside recycling, health insurance (several questions), medical malpractice, barriers to entering the medical profession, organ donations, unhealthy foods, mortgage deductions, taxing internet sales, Wal-Mart, casinos, ethanol subsidies, and inflation targeting.[131]
+
+In Steady State Economics 1977, leading ecological economist and steady-state theorist Herman Daly argues that there exist logical inconsistencies between the emphasis placed on economic growth and the limited availability of natural resources.[132]
+
+Issues like central bank independence, central bank policies and rhetoric in central bank governors discourse or the premises of macroeconomic policies[133] (monetary and fiscal policy) of the state, are focus of contention and criticism.[134]
+
+Deirdre McCloskey has argued that many empirical economic studies are poorly reported, and she and Stephen Ziliak argue that although her critique has been well-received, practice has not improved.[135] This latter contention is controversial.[136]
+
+A 2002 International Monetary Fund study assessed the national economic growth predictions from Consensus Forecasts in the 1990s. Of the 60 different national recessions that occurred, only 2 (3%) were predicted a year in advance.[137]
+
+Economics has been subject to criticism that it relies on unrealistic, unverifiable, or highly simplified assumptions, in some cases because these assumptions simplify the proofs of desired conclusions. Examples of such assumptions include perfect information, profit maximization and rational choices.[138] The field of information economics includes both mathematical-economical research and also behavioural economics, akin to studies in behavioural psychology.[139]
+
+Nevertheless, prominent mainstream economists such as Keynes[140] and Joskow have observed that much of economics is conceptual rather than quantitative, and difficult to model and formalize quantitatively. In a discussion on oligopoly research, Paul Joskow pointed out in 1975 that in practice, serious students of actual economies tended to use "informal models" based upon qualitative factors specific to particular industries. Joskow had a strong feeling that the important work in oligopoly was done through informal observations while formal models were "trotted out ex post". He argued that formal models were largely not important in the empirical work, either, and that the fundamental factor behind the theory of the firm, behaviour, was neglected.[141]
+
+In recent years, feminist critiques of neoclassical economic models gained prominence, leading to the formation of feminist economics.[142] Contrary to common conceptions of economics as a positive and objective science, feminist economists call attention to the social construction of economics[143] and highlight the ways in which its models and methods reflect masculine preferences. Primary criticisms focus on failures to account for: the selfish nature of actors (homo economicus); exogenous tastes; the impossibility of utility comparisons; the exclusion of unpaid work; and the exclusion of class and gender considerations. Feminist economics developed to address these concerns, and the field now includes critical examinations of many areas of economics including paid and unpaid work, economic epistemology and history, globalization, household economics and the care economy. In 1988, Marilyn Waring published the book If Women Counted, in which she argues that the discipline of economics ignores women's unpaid work and the value of nature;[144] according to Julie A. Nelson, If Women Counted "showed exactly how the unpaid work traditionally done by women has been made invisible within national accounting systems" and "issued a wake-up call to issues of ecological sustainability."[145] Bjørnholt and McKay argue that the financial crisis of 2007–08 and the response to it revealed a crisis of ideas in mainstream economics and within the economics profession, and call for a reshaping of both the economy, economic theory and the economics profession. They argue that such a reshaping should include new advances within feminist economics that take as their starting point the socially responsible, sensible and accountable subject in creating an economy and economic theories that fully acknowledge care for each other as well as the planet.[146]
+
+Philip Mirowski observes that:
+
+The imperatives of the orthodox research programme [of economic science] leave little room for maneuver and less room for originality. ... These mandates ... Appropriate as many mathematical techniques and metaphorical expressions from contemporary respectable science, primarily physics as possible. ... Preserve to the maximum extent possible the attendant nineteenth-century overtones of "natural order" ... Deny strenuously that neoclassical theory slavishly imitates physics. ... Above all, prevent all rival research programmes from encroaching ... by ridiculing all external attempts to appropriate twentieth century physics models. ... All theorizing is [in this way] held hostage to nineteenth-century concepts of energy.[147]
+
+In a series of peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and books published over a period of several decades, John McMurtry has provided extensive criticism of what he terms the "unexamined assumptions and implications [of economics], and their consequent cost to people's lives."[148][k]
+
+Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Michael Perelman are two additional scholars who criticized conventional or mainstream economics. Taleb opposes most economic theorizing, which in his view suffers acutely from the problem of overuse of Plato's Theory of Forms, and calls for cancellation of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, saying that the damage from economic theories can be devastating.[149]  Michael Perelman provides extensive criticism of economics and its assumptions in all his books (and especially his books published from 2000 to date), papers and interviews.
+
+Despite these concerns, mainstream graduate programs have become increasingly technical and mathematical.[150]
+
+Economics is one social science among several and has fields bordering on other areas, including economic geography, economic history, public choice, energy economics, cultural economics, family economics and institutional economics.
+
+Law and economics, or economic analysis of law, is an approach to legal theory that applies methods of economics to law. It includes the use of economic concepts to explain the effects of legal rules, to assess which legal rules are economically efficient, and to predict what the legal rules will be.[151] A seminal article by Ronald Coase published in 1961 suggested that well-defined property rights could overcome the problems of externalities.[152]
+
+Political economy is the interdisciplinary study that combines economics, law, and political science in explaining how political institutions, the political environment, and the economic system (capitalist, socialist, mixed) influence each other. It studies questions such as how monopoly, rent-seeking behaviour, and externalities should impact government policy.[153] Historians have employed political economy to explore the ways in the past that persons and groups with common economic interests have used politics to effect changes beneficial to their interests.[154]
+
+Energy economics is a broad scientific subject area which includes topics related to energy supply and energy demand. Georgescu-Roegen reintroduced the concept of entropy in relation to economics and energy from thermodynamics, as distinguished from what he viewed as the mechanistic foundation of neoclassical economics drawn from Newtonian physics. His work contributed significantly to thermoeconomics and to ecological economics. He also did foundational work which later developed into evolutionary economics.[155]
+
+The sociological subfield of economic sociology arose, primarily through the work of Émile Durkheim, Max Weber and Georg Simmel, as an approach to analysing the effects of economic phenomena in relation to the overarching social paradigm (i.e. modernity).[156] Classic works include Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) and Georg Simmel's The Philosophy of Money (1900). More recently, the works of Mark Granovetter, Peter Hedstrom and Richard Swedberg have been influential in this field.
+
+Contemporary economics uses mathematics. Economists draw on the tools of calculus, linear algebra, statistics, game theory, and computer science.[157] Professional economists are expected to be familiar with these tools, while a minority specialize in econometrics and mathematical methods.
+
+Economic theories are frequently tested empirically, largely through the use of econometrics using economic data.[158] The controlled experiments common to the physical sciences are difficult and uncommon in economics,[159] and instead broad data is observationally studied; this type of testing is typically regarded as less rigorous than controlled experimentation, and the conclusions typically more tentative. However, the field of experimental economics is growing, and increasing use is being made of natural experiments.
+
+Statistical methods such as regression analysis are common. Practitioners use such methods to estimate the size, economic significance, and statistical significance ("signal strength") of the hypothesized relation(s) and to adjust for noise from other variables. By such means, a hypothesis may gain acceptance, although in a probabilistic, rather than certain, sense. Acceptance is dependent upon the falsifiable hypothesis surviving tests. Use of commonly accepted methods need not produce a final conclusion or even a consensus on a particular question, given different tests, data sets, and prior beliefs.
+
+Criticisms based on professional standards and non-replicability of results serve as further checks against bias, errors, and over-generalization,[160][161] although much economic research has been accused of being non-replicable, and prestigious journals have been accused of not facilitating replication through the provision of the code and data.[162] Like theories, uses of test statistics are themselves open to critical analysis,[163] although critical commentary on papers in economics in prestigious journals such as the American Economic Review has declined precipitously in the past 40 years. This has been attributed to journals' incentives to maximize citations in order to rank higher on the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI).[164]
+
+In applied economics, input-output models employing linear programming methods are quite common. Large amounts of data are run through computer programs to analyse the impact of certain policies; IMPLAN is one well-known example.
+
+Experimental economics has promoted the use of scientifically controlled experiments. This has reduced the long-noted distinction of economics from natural sciences because it allows direct tests of what were previously taken as axioms.[165] In some cases these have found that the axioms are not entirely correct; for example, the ultimatum game has revealed that people reject unequal offers.
+
+In behavioural economics, psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 for his and Amos Tversky's empirical discovery of several cognitive biases and heuristics. Similar empirical testing occurs in neuroeconomics. Another example is the assumption of narrowly selfish preferences versus a model that tests for selfish, altruistic, and cooperative preferences.[166] These techniques have led some to argue that economics is a "genuine science".[167]
+
+The professionalization of economics, reflected in the growth of graduate programmes on the subject, has been described as "the main change in economics since around 1900".[168] Most major universities and many colleges have a major, school, or department in which academic degrees are awarded in the subject, whether in the liberal arts, business, or for professional study.
+See Bachelor of Economics and Master of Economics.
+
+In the private sector, professional economists are employed as consultants and in industry, including banking and finance. Economists also work for various government departments and agencies, for example, the national treasury, central bank or bureau of statistics.
+
+There are dozens of prizes awarded to economists each year for outstanding intellectual contributions to the field, the most prominent of which is the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, though it is not a Nobel Prize.
+

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+An artery (plural  arteries) (from Greek  ἀρτηρία (artēria), meaning 'windpipe, artery')[1] is a blood vessel that takes blood  away from the human heart to all parts of the body (tissues, lungs, Brain etc.). Most arteries carry oxygenated blood; the two exceptions are the pulmonary and the umbilical arteries, which carry deoxygenated blood to the organs that oxygenate it (lungs). The effective arterial blood volume is that extracellular fluid which fills the arterial system.
+
+The arteries are part of the circulatory system, which is responsible for the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to all cells, as well as the removal of carbon dioxide and waste products, the maintenance of optimum blood pH, and the circulation of proteins and cells of the human immune system
+
+
+
+The anatomy of arteries can be separated into gross anatomy, at the macroscopic level, and microanatomy, which must be studied with a microscope. The arterial system of the human body is divided into systemic arteries, carrying blood from the heart to the whole body, and pulmonary arteries, carrying deoxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs.
+
+The outermost layer of an artery (or vein) is known as the tunica externa, also known as tunica adventitia, and is composed of collagen fibers and elastic tissue - with the largest arteries containing vasa vasorum (small blood vessels that supply large blood vessels).[2] Most of the layers have a clear boundary between them, however the tunica externa has a boundary that is ill-defined. Normally its boundary is considered when it meets or touches the connective tissue.[3]  Inside this layer is the tunica media, or media, which is made up of smooth muscle cells, elastic tissue (also called connective tissue proper) and collagen fibres.[2] The innermost layer, which is in direct contact with the flow of blood, is the tunica intima, commonly called the intima. The elastic tissue allows the artery to bend and fit through places in the body. This layer is mainly made up of endothelial cells (and a supporting layer of elastin rich collagen in elastic arteries). The hollow internal cavity in which the blood flows is called the lumen.
+
+Arterial formation begins and ends when endothelial cells begin to express arterial specific genes, such as ephrin B2.[4]
+
+Arteries form part of the circulatory system. They carry blood that is oxygenated after it has been pumped from the heart. Coronary arteries also aid the heart in pumping blood by sending oxygenated blood to the heart, allowing the muscles to function. Arteries carry oxygenated blood away from the heart to the tissues, except for pulmonary arteries, which carry blood to the lungs for oxygenation (usually veins carry deoxygenated blood to the heart but the pulmonary veins carry oxygenated blood as well).[5]  There are two types of unique arteries. The pulmonary artery carries blood from the heart to the lungs, where it receives oxygen. It is unique because the blood in it is not "oxygenated", as it has not yet passed through the lungs. The other unique artery is the umbilical artery, which carries deoxygenated blood from a fetus to its mother.
+
+Arteries have a blood pressure higher than other parts of the circulatory system. The pressure in arteries varies during the cardiac cycle. It is highest when the heart contracts and lowest when heart relaxes. The variation in pressure produces a pulse, which can be felt in different areas of the body, such as the radial pulse. Arterioles have the greatest collective influence on both local blood flow and on overall blood pressure. They are the primary "adjustable nozzles" in the blood system, across which the greatest pressure drop occurs. The combination of heart output (cardiac output) and systemic vascular resistance, which refers to the collective resistance of all of the body's arterioles, are the principal determinants of arterial blood pressure at any given moment.
+
+Arteries have the highest pressure and have narrow lumen diameter. It consists of the three tunics: Tunica media, intima and externa.
+
+Systemic arteries are the arteries (including the peripheral arteries), of the systemic circulation, which is the part of the cardiovascular system that carries oxygenated blood away from the heart, to the body, and returns deoxygenated blood back to the heart. Systemic arteries can be subdivided into two types—muscular and elastic—according to the relative compositions of elastic and muscle tissue in their tunica media as well as their size and the makeup of the internal and external elastic lamina. The larger arteries (>10 mm diameter) are generally elastic and the smaller ones (0.1–10 mm) tend to be muscular. Systemic arteries deliver blood to the arterioles, and then to the capillaries, where nutrients and gases are exchanged.
+
+After travelling from the aorta, blood travels through peripheral arteries into smaller arteries called arterioles, and eventually to capillaries. Arterioles help in regulating blood pressure by the variable contraction of the smooth muscle of their walls, and deliver blood to the capillaries.
+
+The aorta is the root systemic artery (i.e., main artery). In humans, it receives blood directly from the left ventricle of the heart via the aortic valve. As the aorta branches, and these arteries branch in turn, they become successively smaller in diameter, down to the arterioles. The arterioles supply capillaries, which in turn empty into venules. The very first branches off of the aorta are the coronary arteries, which supply blood to the heart muscle itself. These are followed by the branches off the aortic arch, namely the brachiocephalic artery, the left common carotid, and the left subclavian arteries.
+
+The capillaries are the smallest of the blood vessels and are part of the microcirculation. The microvessels have a width of a single cell in diameter to aid in the fast and easy diffusion of gases, sugars and nutrients to surrounding tissues. Capillaries have no smooth muscle surrounding them and have a diameter less than that of red blood cells; a red blood cell is typically 7 micrometers outside diameter, capillaries typically 5 micrometers inside diameter. The red blood cells must distort in order to pass through the capillaries.
+
+These small diameters of the capillaries provide a relatively large surface area for the exchange of gases and nutrients.
+
+Systemic arterial pressures are generated by the forceful contractions of the heart's left ventricle. High blood pressure is a factor in causing arterial damage. Healthy resting arterial pressures are relatively low, mean systemic pressures typically being under 100 mmHg (1.9 psi; 13 kPa) above surrounding atmospheric pressure (about 760 mmHg, 14.7 psi, 101 kPa at sea level). To withstand and adapt to the pressures within, arteries are surrounded by varying thicknesses of smooth muscle which have extensive elastic and inelastic connective tissues. The pulse pressure, being the difference between systolic and diastolic pressure, is determined primarily by the amount of blood ejected by each heart beat, stroke volume, versus the volume and elasticity of the major arteries.
+
+A  blood squirt also known as an arterial gush is the effect when an artery is cut due to the higher arterial pressures. Blood is spurted out at a rapid, intermittent rate, that coincides with the heartbeat. The amount of blood loss can be copious, can occur very rapidly, and be life-threatening.[6]
+
+Over time, factors such as elevated arterial blood sugar (particularly as seen in diabetes mellitus), lipoprotein, cholesterol, high blood pressure, stress and smoking, are all implicated in damaging both the endothelium and walls of the arteries, resulting in atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is a disease marked by the hardening of arteries. This is caused by an atheroma or plaque in the artery wall and is a build-up of cell debris, that contain lipids, (cholesterol and fatty acids), calcium[7][8] and a variable amount of fibrous connective tissue.
+
+Accidental intraarterial injection either iatrogenically or through recreational drug use can cause symptoms such as intense pain, paresthesia and necrosis. It usually causes permanent damage to the limb;  often amputation is necessary.[9]
+
+Among the Ancient Greeks, the arteries were considered to be "air holders" that were responsible for the transport of air to the tissues and were connected to the trachea. This was as a result of finding the arteries of cadavers devoid of blood.
+
+In medieval times, it was recognized that arteries carried a fluid, called "spiritual blood" or "vital spirits", considered to be different from the contents of the veins. This theory went back to Galen. In the late medieval period, the trachea,[10] and ligaments were also called "arteries".[11]
+
+William Harvey described and popularized the modern concept of the circulatory system and the roles of arteries and veins in the 17th century.
+
+Alexis Carrel at the beginning of the 20th century first described the technique for vascular suturing and anastomosis and successfully performed many organ transplantations in animals; he thus actually opened the way to modern vascular surgery that was previously limited to vessels’ permanent ligation.
+
+Theodor Kocher reported that atherosclerosis often developed in patients who had undergone a thyroidectomy and suggested that hypothyroidism favors atherosclerosis, which was, in 1900s autopsies, seen more frequently in iodine-deficient Austrians compared to Icelanders, who are not deficient in iodine. Turner reported the effectiveness of iodide and dried extracts of thyroid in the prevention of atherosclerosis in laboratory rabbits.[12][citation needed]
+
+ocular group: central retinal

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+Coordinates: 47°N 29°E / 47°N 29°E / 47; 29
+
+Moldova (/mɒlˈdoʊvə/ (listen), sometimes UK: /ˈmɒldəvə/),[12][13][14] officially the Republic of Moldova (Romanian: Republica Moldova), is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe.[15] It is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south.[16] The capital city is Chișinău.
+
+Most of the Moldovan territory was a part of the Principality of Moldavia from the 14th century until 1812, when it was ceded to the Russian Empire by the Ottoman Empire (to which Moldavia was a vassal state) and became known as Bessarabia. In 1856, southern Bessarabia was returned to Moldavia, which three years later united with Wallachia to form Romania, but Russian rule was restored over the whole of the region in 1878. During the 1917 Russian Revolution, Bessarabia briefly became an autonomous state within the Russian Republic, known as the Moldavian Democratic Republic. In February 1918, the Moldavian Democratic Republic declared independence and then integrated into Romania later that year following a vote of its assembly. The decision was disputed by Soviet Russia, which in 1924 established, within the Ukrainian SSR, a Moldavian autonomous republic (MASSR) on partially Moldovan-inhabited territories to the east of Bessarabia. In 1940, as a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Romania was compelled to cede Bessarabia to the Soviet Union, leading to the creation of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (Moldavian SSR), which included the greater part of Bessarabia and the westernmost strip of the former MASSR (east of the Dniester River).
+
+On 27 August 1991, as the dissolution of the Soviet Union was underway, the Moldavian SSR declared independence and took the name Moldova.[17] The constitution of Moldova was adopted in 1994. The strip of the Moldovan territory on the east bank of the Dniester has been under the de facto control of the breakaway government of Transnistria since 1990.
+
+Due to a decrease in industrial and agricultural output following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the service sector has grown to dominate Moldova's economy and is over 60% of the nation's GDP. It is the poorest country in Europe by GDP per capita,[16] and it has the lowest Human Development Index in the continent.
+
+Moldova is a parliamentary republic with a president as head of state and a prime minister as head of government. It is a member state of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC).
+
+The name Moldova is derived from the Moldova River; the valley of this river served as a political centre at the time of the foundation of the Principality of Moldavia in 1359.[18] The origin of the name of the river remains unclear. According to a legend recounted by Moldavian chroniclers Dimitrie Cantemir and Grigore Ureche, Prince Dragoș named the river after hunting an aurochs: following the chase, the prince's exhausted hound Molda drowned in the river. The dog's name, given to the river, extended to the Principality.[19]
+
+For a short time in the 1990s, at the founding of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the name of the current Republic of Moldova was also spelled Moldava.[20] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country began to use the Romanian name, Moldova. Officially, the name Republic of Moldova is designated by the United Nations.
+
+The prehistory of Moldova covers the period from the Upper Paleolithic which begins with the presence of Homo sapiens in the area of Southeastern Europe some 44,000 years ago and extends into the appearance of the first written records in Classical Antiquity in Greece.
+
+In 2010 N.K. Anisjutkin discovered Oldowan flint tools at Bayraki that are 800,000–1.2 million years old.[21] During the Neolithic Stone-Age era, Moldova's territory stood at the centre of the large Cucuteni–Trypillia culture that stretched east beyond the Dniester River in Ukraine and west up to and beyond the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. The people of this civilization, which lasted roughly from 5500 to 2750 BC, practised agriculture, raised livestock, hunted, and made intricately-designed pottery.[22]
+
+Dacian tribes inhabited Moldova's territory in the period of classical antiquity. Between the 1st and 7th centuries AD, the south came intermittently under the control of the Roman and then the Byzantine Empires. Due to its strategic location on a route between Asia and Europe, the territory of modern Moldova experienced many invasions in late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, including by Goths, Huns, Avars, Bulgarians, Magyars, Pechenegs, Cumans, Mongols and Tatars.
+
+Friar William of Rubruck, who visited the court of the Great Khan in 1254, listed "the Blac",[23][need quotation to verify] or Vlachs, among the peoples who paid tribute to the Mongols, but the extent of the Vlachs' territory remains uncertain.[24][25] Friar William described "Blakia" as "Assan's territory"[26] south of the lower Danube, showing that he identified it with the northern regions of the Second Bulgarian Empire.[27]
+
+On the border between Halych and the Brodniks, in the 11th century, a Viking by the name of Rodfos was killed in the area by Blakumen who supposedly betrayed him.[28] In 1164 Vlach shepherds around the same region took the future Byzantine emperor Andronikos I Komnenos, as a prisoner.
+
+The land and settlements of the Pechenegs in 1030 CE.
+
+Both Bessarabia and Transnistria were a part of Cumania in the 11th and 12th centuries.
+
+The lands which currently compose Moldova within Bulgarian Empire under Ivan Asen II.
+
+The East Slavic Hypatian Chronicle mentions the Bolohoveni, a Vlach population, in the 13th century. The chronicle records that this land bordered on the principalities of Halych, Volhynia and Kiev. Archaeological research has identified the location of 13th-century fortified settlements in this region. Alexandru V. Boldur identified Voscodavie, Voscodavti, Voloscovti, Volcovti, Volosovca and their other towns and villages between the middle course of the rivers Nistru/Dniester and Nipru/Dnieper.[29] The Bolohoveni disappeared from chronicles after their defeat in 1257 by Daniel of Galicia's troops.
+
+In the early 13th century, the Brodniks, a possible Slavic–Vlach vassal state of Halych, were present, alongside the Vlachs, in much of the region's territory (towards 1216, the Brodniks are mentioned[by whom?] as in service of Suzdal).
+
+The founding of the Principality of Moldavia began with the arrival of a Vlach voivode (military leader), Dragoș, soon followed by his people from Maramureș to the region of the Moldova River. Dragoș established a polity there as a vassal to the Kingdom of Hungary in the 1350s. The independence of the Principality of Moldavia was gained when Bogdan I, another Vlach voivode from Maramureș who had fallen out with the Hungarian king, crossed the Carpathian mountains in 1359 and took control of Moldavia, wresting the region from Hungary. The Principality of Moldavia was bounded by the Carpathian Mountains in the west, the Dniester River in the east, and the Danube River and Black Sea to the south. Its territory comprised the present-day territory of the Republic of Moldova, the eastern eight counties of Romania, and parts of the Chernivtsi Oblast and Budjak region of Ukraine. Like the present-day republic and Romania's north-eastern region, it was known to the locals as Moldova.
+
+The history of what is today Moldova has been intertwined with that of Poland for centuries. The Polish chronicler Jan Długosz mentioned Moldavians (under the name Wallachians) as having joined a military expedition in 1342, under King Ladislaus I, against the Margraviate of Brandenburg.[30] The Polish state was powerful enough to counter the Hungarian Kingdom which was consistently interested in bringing the area that would become Moldova into its political orbit.
+
+Ties between Poland and Moldavia expanded after the founding of the Moldavian state by Bogdan of Cuhea, a Vlach voivode from Maramureș who had fallen out with the Hungarian king. Crossing the Carpathian mountains in 1359, the voivode took control of Moldavia and succeeded in creating Moldavia as an independent political entity. Despite being disfavored by the brief union of Angevin Poland and Hungary (the latter was still the country's overlord), Bogdan's successor Lațcu, the Moldavian ruler also likely allied himself with the Poles. Lațcu also accepted conversion to Roman Catholicism around 1370, but his gesture was to remain without consequences.
+
+Petru I profited from the end of the Polish-Hungarian union and moved the country closer to the Jagiellon realm, becoming a vassal of king Jogaila of Poland on September 26, 1387. This gesture was to have unexpected consequences: Petru supplied the Polish ruler with funds needed in the war against the Teutonic Knights, and was granted control over Pokuttya until the debt was to be repaid; as this is not recorded to have been carried out, the region became disputed by the two states, until it was lost by Moldavia in the Battle of Obertyn (1531). Prince Petru also expanded his rule southwards to the Danube Delta. His brother Roman I conquered the Hungarian-ruled Cetatea Albă in 1392, giving Moldavia an outlet to the Black Sea, before being toppled from the throne for supporting Fyodor Koriatovych in his conflict with Vytautas the Great of Lithuania. Under Stephen I, growing Polish influence was challenged by Sigismund of Hungary, whose expedition was defeated at Ghindăoani in 1385; however, Stephen disappeared in mysterious circumstances.
+
+Although Alexander I was brought to the throne in 1400 by the Hungarians (with assistance from Mircea I of Wallachia), this ruler shifted his allegiances towards Poland (notably engaging Moldavian forces on the Polish side in the Battle of Grunwald and the Siege of Marienburg), and placed his own choice of rulers in Wallachia. His reign was one of the most successful in Moldavia's history.
+
+For all of his success, it was under the reign of Alexander I that the very first confrontation with the Ottoman Turks took place at Cetatea Albă in 1420. A deep crisis was to follow Alexandru's long reign, with his successors battling each other in a succession of wars that divided the country until the murder of Bogdan II and the ascension of Peter III Aaron in 1451. Nevertheless, Moldavia was subject to further Hungarian interventions after that moment, as Matthias Corvinus deposed Aron and backed Alexăndrel to the throne in Suceava. Petru Aron's rule also signified the beginning of Moldavia's Ottoman Empire allegiance, as the ruler agreed to pay tribute to Sultan Mehmed II.
+
+During this time, Moldavia was invaded repeatedly by Crimean Tatars and, beginning in the 15th century, by the Turks. In 1538, the principality became a tributary to the Ottoman Empire, but it retained internal and partial external autonomy.[32] Nonetheless, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth continued to strongly influence Moldavia both through national politics as well as on the local level through significant intermarriage between Moldavian nobility and the Polish szlachta. When in May 1600, Michael the Brave removed Ieremia Movilă from Moldavia's throne by winning the battle of Bacău, briefly reuniting under his rule Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania, a Polish army led by Jan Zamoyski drove the Wallachians from Moldavia. Zamoyski reinstalled Ieremia Movilă to the throne, who put the country under the vassalage of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Moldavia finally returned to Ottoman vassalage in 1621.
+
+While the region of Transnistria was never politically part of the Principality of Moldavia, there were sizable areas which were owned by Moldavian boyars and given by the Moldavian rulers. The earliest surviving deeds referring to lands beyond the Dniester river date from the 16th century.[33] Moldavian chronicle Grigore Ureche which mentions that in 1584, some Moldavian villages from beyond the Dniester in the Kingdom of Poland were attacked and plundered by Cossacks.[34] Many Moldovans were members of Cossacks units as well, with two of them, Ioan Potcoavă and Dănilă Apostol becoming hetmans of Ukraine. Ruxandra Lupu, the daughter of Moldavian voivode Vasile Lupu who married Tymish Khmelnytsky, lived in Rașcov according to Ukrainian tradition.
+
+While most of today's Moldova came into the Ottoman orbit in the 16th century, a substantial part of Transnistria remained a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until the Second Partition of Poland in 1793.
+
+In accordance with the Treaty of Bucharest of 1812, and despite numerous protests by Moldavian nobles on behalf of the sovereignty of their principality, the Ottoman Empire (of which Moldavia was a vassal) ceded to the Russian Empire the eastern half of the territory of the Principality of Moldavia along with Khotyn and old Bessarabia (modern Budjak), which Russia had already conquered and annexed. The new Russian province was called Oblast of Moldavia and Bessarabia, and initially enjoyed a large degree of autonomy. After 1828 this autonomy was progressively restricted and in 1871 the Oblast was transformed into the Bessarabia Governorate, in a process of state-imposed assimilation, Russification. As part of this process, the Tsarist administration in Bessarabia gradually removed the Romanian language from official and religious use.[35]
+
+The Treaty of Paris (1856) returned the southern part of Bessarabia (later organised as the Cahul, Bolgrad and Ismail counties) to Moldavia, which remained an autonomous principality and, in 1859, united with Wallachia to form Romania. In 1878, as a result of the Treaty of Berlin, Romania was forced to cede the three counties back to the Russian Empire.
+
+Over the 19th century, the Russian authorities encouraged the colonization of Bessarabia by Romanians, Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Bulgarians, Poles, and Gagauzes, primarily in the northern and southern areas vacated by Turks and Nogai Tatar, the latter having been expelled in the 1770s and 1780s, during Russo-Turkish Wars;[36][37][38][39] the inclusion of the province in the Pale of Settlement also allowed the immigration of more Jews.[a] The Romanian proportion of the population decreased from an estimated 86% in 1816,[41] to around 52% in 1905.[42] During this time there were anti-Semitic riots, leading to an exodus of thousands of Jews to the United States.[43]
+
+World War I brought in a rise in political and cultural (ethnic) awareness among the inhabitants of the region, as 300,000 Bessarabians were drafted into the Russian Army formed in 1917; within bigger units several "Moldavian Soldiers' Committees" were formed. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, a Bessarabian parliament, Sfatul Țării (a National Council), was elected in October–November 1917 and opened on December 3 [O.S. 21 November] 1917. The Sfatul Țării proclaimed the Moldavian Democratic Republic (December 15 [O.S. 2 December] 1917) within a federal Russian state, and formed a government (21 December [O.S. 8 December] 1917).
+
+After the Romanian army occupied the region in early January at the request of the National Council, Bessarabia proclaimed independence from Russia on February 6 [O.S. 24 January] 1918 and requested the assistance of the French army present in Romania (general Henri Berthelot) and of the Romanian Army.[44] On April 9 [O.S. 27 March] 1918, the Sfatul Țării decided with 86 votes for, 3 against and 36 abstaining, to unite with the Kingdom of Romania. The union was conditional upon fulfilment of the agrarian reform, autonomy, and respect for universal human rights.[45] A part of the interim Parliament agreed to drop these conditions after Bukovina and Transylvania also joined the Kingdom of Romania, although historians note that they lacked the quorum to do so.[46][47][48][49][50]
+
+This union was recognized by the principal Allied Powers in the 1920 Treaty of Paris, which however was not ratified by all of its signatories.[51][52] The newly communist Russia did not recognize Romanian rule over Bessarabia, considering it an occupation of Russian territory.[53]
+
+In May 1919, the Bessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed as a government in exile. After the failure of the Tatarbunary Uprising in 1924, the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Moldavian ASSR) was formed by Soviet Russia within the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, in Transnistria region.
+
+In August 1939, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and its secret additional protocol were signed, by which Nazi Germany recognized Bessarabia as being within the Soviet sphere of influence, which led the latter to actively revive its claim to the region.[54] On 28 June 1940, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to Romania requesting the cession of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, with which Romania complied the following day. Soon after, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (Moldavian SSR, MSSR) was established,[54] comprising about 65% of Bessarabia, and 50% of the now-disbanded Moldavian ASSR (the present-day Transnistria). Ethnic Germans left in 1940.
+
+As part of the 1941 Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, Romania regained the territories of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, and seized a territory which became known as Transnistria Governorate. Romanian forces, working with the Germans, deported or massacred about 300,000 Jews, including 147,000 from Bessarabia and Bukovina. Of the latter, approximately 90,000 died.[55] Between 1941 and 1944 partisan detachments acted against the Romanian administration. The Soviet Army re-captured the region in February–August 1944, and re-established the Moldavian SSR. Between the end of the Jassy–Kishinev Offensive in August 1944 and the end of the war in May 1945, 256,800 inhabitants of the Moldavian SSR were drafted into the Soviet Army. 40,592 of them perished.[56]
+
+During the periods 1940–1941 and 1944–1953, deportations of locals to the northern Urals, to Siberia, and northern Kazakhstan occurred regularly, with the largest ones on 12–13 June 1941, and 5–6 July 1949, accounting from MSSR alone for 18,392[b] and 35,796 deportees respectively.[57] Other forms of Soviet persecution of the population included political arrests or, in 8,360 cases, execution.
+
+In 1946, as a result of a severe drought and excessive delivery quota obligations and requisitions imposed by the Soviet government, the southwestern part of the USSR suffered from a major famine.[58][59] In 1946–1947, at least 216,000 deaths and about 350,000 cases of dystrophy were accounted by historians in the Moldavian SSR alone.[57] Similar events occurred in the 1930s in the Moldavian ASSR.[57] In 1944–53, there were several anti-Soviet resistance groups in Moldova; however the NKVD and later MGB managed to eventually arrest, execute or deport their members.[57]
+
+In the postwar period, the Soviet government organized the immigration of working age Russian speakers (mostly Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians), into the new Soviet republic, especially into urbanized areas, partly to compensate for the demographic loss caused by the war and the emigration of 1940 and 1944.[60] In the 1970s and 1980s, the Moldavian SSR received substantial allocations from the budget of the USSR to develop industrial and scientific facilities and housing. In 1971, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a decision "About the measures for further development of the city of Kishinev" (modern Chișinău), that allotted more than one billion Soviet rubles (approximately 6.8 billion in 2018 US dollars) from the USSR budget for building projects.[61]
+
+The Soviet government conducted a campaign to promote a Moldovan ethnic identity distinct from that of the Romanians, based on a theory developed during the existence of the Moldavian ASSR. Official Soviet policy asserted that the language spoken by Moldovans was distinct from the Romanian language (see Moldovenism). To distinguish the two, during the Soviet period, Moldovan was written in the Cyrillic alphabet, in contrast with Romanian, which since 1860 had been written in the Latin alphabet.
+
+All independent organizations were severely reprimanded, with the National Patriotic Front leaders being sentenced in 1972 to long prison terms.[62] The Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Moldova is assessing the activity of the communist totalitarian regime.
+
+In the 1980s, amid political conditions created by the glasnost and perestroika, a Democratic Movement of Moldova was formed, which in 1989 became known as the nationalist Popular Front of Moldova (FPM).[63][64] Along with several other Soviet republics, from 1988 onwards, Moldova started to move towards independence. On 27 August 1989, the FPM organized a mass demonstration in Chișinău that became known as the Grand National Assembly. The assembly pressured the authorities of the Moldavian SSR to adopt a language law on 31 August 1989 that proclaimed the Moldovan language written in the Latin script to be the state language of the MSSR. Its identity with the Romanian language was also established.[63][65] In 1989, as opposition to the Communist Party grew, there were major riots in November.
+
+The first democratic elections for the local parliament were held in February and March 1990. Mircea Snegur was elected as Speaker of the Parliament, and Mircea Druc as Prime Minister. On 23 June 1990, the Parliament adopted the Declaration of Sovereignty of the "Soviet Socialist Republic Moldova", which, among other things, stipulated the supremacy of Moldovan laws over those of the Soviet Union.[63] After the failure of the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, Moldova declared its independence on 27 August 1991.
+
+On 21 December of the same year, Moldova, along with most of the other Soviet republics, signed the constitutive act that formed the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Moldova received official recognition on 25 December. On 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Declaring itself a neutral state, Moldova did not join the military branch of the CIS. Three months later, on 2 March 1992, the country gained formal recognition as an independent state at the United Nations. In 1994, Moldova became a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace program, and a member of the Council of Europe on 29 June 1995.[63]
+
+In the region east of the Dniester river, Transnistria, which includes a large proportion of predominantly russophone East Slavs of Ukrainian (28%) and Russian (26%) descent (altogether 54% as of 1989), an independent Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed on 16 August 1990, with its capital in Tiraspol.[63] The motives behind this move were fear of the rise of nationalism in Moldova. In the winter of 1991–1992 clashes occurred between Transnistrian forces, supported by elements of the 14th Army, and the Moldovan police. Between 2 March and 26 July 1992, the conflict escalated into a military engagement.
+
+On 2 January 1992, Moldova introduced a market economy, liberalizing prices, which resulted in rapid inflation. From 1992 to 2001, the country suffered a serious economic crisis, leaving most of the population below the poverty line. In 1993, the government introduced a new national currency, the Moldovan leu, to replace the temporary cupon. The economy of Moldova began to change in 2001; and until 2008 the country saw a steady annual growth between 5% and 10%. The early 2000s also saw a considerable growth of emigration of Moldovans looking for work (mostly illegally) in Russia (especially the Moscow region), Italy, Portugal, Spain, and other countries; remittances from Moldovans abroad account for almost 38% of Moldova's GDP, the second-highest percentage in the world, after Tajikistan (45%).[66][67]
+
+In the 1994 parliamentary elections, the Democratic Agrarian Party gained a majority of the seats, setting a turning point in Moldovan politics. With the nationalist Popular Front now in a parliamentary minority, new measures aiming to moderate the ethnic tensions in the country could be adopted. Plans for a union with Romania were abandoned,[63] and the new Constitution gave autonomy to the breakaway Transnistria and Gagauzia. On 23 December 1994, the Parliament of Moldova adopted a "Law on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia", and in 1995 the latter was constituted.
+
+After winning the 1996 presidential elections, on 15 January 1997, Petru Lucinschi, the former First Secretary of the Moldavian Communist Party in 1989–91, became the country's second president (1997–2001), succeeding Mircea Snegur (1991–1996). In 2000, the Constitution was amended, transforming Moldova into a parliamentary republic, with the president being chosen through indirect election rather than direct popular vote.
+
+Winning 49.9% of the vote, the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (reinstituted in 1993 after being outlawed in 1991), gained 71 of the 101 MPs, and on 4 April 2001, elected Vladimir Voronin as the country's third president (re-elected in 2005). The country became the first post-Soviet state where a non-reformed Communist Party returned to power.[63] New governments were formed by Vasile Tarlev (19 April 2001 – 31 March 2008), and Zinaida Greceanîi (31 March 2008 – 14 September 2009). In 2001–2003 relations between Moldova and Russia improved, but then temporarily deteriorated in 2003–2006, in the wake of the failure of the Kozak memorandum, culminating in the 2006 wine exports crisis. The Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova managed to stay in power for eight years. The fragmentation of the liberal bloc helped consolidate its power. The decline of the Communist Party started in 2009 after Marian Lupu joined the Democratic Party.[68]
+
+In the April 2009 parliamentary elections, the Communist Party won 49.48% of the votes, followed by the Liberal Party with 13.14% of the votes, the Liberal Democratic Party with 12.43%, and the Alliance "Moldova Noastră" with 9.77%. The controversial results of this election sparked civil unrest[69][70][71]
+
+In August 2009, four Moldovan parties (Liberal Democratic Party, Liberal Party, Democratic Party, and Our Moldova Alliance) agreed to create the Alliance For European Integration that pushed the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova into opposition. On 28 August 2009, this coalition chose a new parliament speaker (Mihai Ghimpu) in a vote that was boycotted by Communist legislators. Vladimir Voronin, who had been President of Moldova since 2001, eventually resigned on 11 September 2009, but the Parliament failed to elect a new president. The acting president Mihai Ghimpu instituted the Commission for constitutional reform in Moldova to adopt a new version of the Constitution of Moldova. After the constitutional referendum aimed to approve the reform failed in September 2010,[72] the parliament was dissolved again and a new parliamentary election was scheduled for 28 November 2010.[73] On 30 December 2010, Marian Lupu was elected as the Speaker of the Parliament and the acting President of Republic of Moldova.[74] After the Alliance for European Integration lost a no confidence vote, the Pro-European Coalition was formed on 30 May 2013.
+
+In November 2014, Moldova's central bank took control of Banca de Economii, the country's largest lender, and two smaller institutions, Banca Sociala and Unibank. Investigations into activities at these three banks uncovered a large-scale fraud by means of fraudulent loans to business entities controlled by a Moldovan-Israeli business oligarch, Ilan Shor, of funds worth about 1 billion U.S. dollars.[75] The large scale of the fraud compared to the size of the Moldovan economy are cited as tilting the country's politics in favour of the pro-Russian Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova.[76] In 2015, Shor was still at large, after a period of house arrest.
+
+Following a period of political instability and massive public protests, a new Government led by Pavel Filip was invested in January 2016.[77] Concerns over statewide corruption, the independence of the judiciary system, and the intransparency of the banking system, were expressed. Germany's broadcaster Deutsche Welle also raised concerns over the alleged influence of Moldovan oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc over the Filip government.[78]
+
+In the December 2016 presidential election, Socialist, pro-Russian Igor Dodon was elected as the new president of the republic.
+
+In 2019, from 7 June to 15 June, the Moldovan government went through a period of dual power in what is known as the 2019 Moldovan constitutional crisis. On 7 June, the Constitutional Court, which is largely believed to be controlled by Vladimir Plahotniuc[79] from the Democratic Party, announced that they have temporarily removed the sitting president, Igor Dodon, from power due to his ‘inability’ to call new parliamentary elections as the parliament did not form a coalition within 3 months of the validation of the election results. According to Moldovan constitutional law, the president may call snap elections if no government is formed after 3 months.[80] However, on 8 June, the NOW Platform DA and PAS reached an agreement with the Socialist party forming a government led by Maia Sandu as the new prime minister, pushing the Democratic Party out of power.[81] This new government was also supported by Igor Dodon. The new coalition and Igor Dodon argued that the president may call snap elections after consulting the parliament but is not obligated. Additionally, because the election results were verified on 9 March, 3 months should be interpreted as 3 calendar months, not 90 days as was the case. The former prime minister, Pavel Filip from the Democratic Party, said that new parliamentary elections will be held on 6 September and refused to recognize the new coalition, calling it an illegal government. After a week of dual government meetings, some protest, and the international community mostly supporting the new government coalition, Pavel Filip stepped down as prime minister but still called for new elections.[82] The Constitutional court repealed the decision on 15 June effectively ending the crisis.[83]
+
+In March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the government called a "national red code alert" as the number of coronavirus cases in the country rose to six on 13 March. Government "banned all gatherings of over 50 people until 1 April and closed all schools and kindergartens in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus". Flights were banned to Spain, Italy, France, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Germany, Ireland, the U.K., Poland, Portugal and Romania.[84] On 17 March, Parliament declared a state of emergency for at least 60 days, suspended all international flights and closed borders with neighbours Romania and the Ukraine. Moldova reported 29 cases of the disease on 17 March.[85] The country reported its first death from the disease on 18 March, a date on which the total number of cases reached 30.[86]
+
+Moldova is a unitary parliamentary representative democratic republic. The 1994 Constitution of Moldova sets the framework for the government of the country. A parliamentary majority of at least two-thirds is required to amend the Constitution of Moldova, which cannot be revised in time of war or national emergency. Amendments to the Constitution affecting the state's sovereignty, independence, or unity can only be made after a majority of voters support the proposal in a referendum. Furthermore, no revision can be made to limit the fundamental rights of people enumerated in the Constitution.[87]
+
+The country's central legislative body is the unicameral Moldovan Parliament (Parlament), which has 101 seats, and whose members are elected by popular vote on party lists every four years.
+
+The head of state is the President of Moldova, who between 2001 and 2015 was elected by the Moldovan Parliament, requiring the support of three-fifths of the deputies (at least 61 votes). The president of Moldova has been elected by the parliament since 2001, a change designed to decrease executive authority in favour of the legislature. Nevertheless, the Constitutional Court ruled on 4 March 2016, that this constitutional change adopted in 2000 regarding the presidential election was unconstitutional,[88] thus reverting the election method of the President to a two-round system direct election.
+
+The president appoints a prime minister who functions as the head of government, and who in turn assembles a cabinet, both subject to parliamentary approval.
+
+The 1994 constitution also establishes an independent Constitutional Court, composed of six judges (two appointed by the President, two by Parliament, and two by the Supreme Council of Magistrature), serving six-year terms, during which they are irremovable and not subordinate to any power. The Court is invested with the power of judicial review over all acts of the parliament, over presidential decrees, and over international treaties, signed by the country.[87]
+
+On 19 December 2016, Moldovan MPs approved raising the retirement age to 63 years[89] from the current level of 57 for women and 62 for men, a reform that is part of a 3-year-old assistance program agreed with the International Monetary Fund. The retirement age will be lifted gradually by a few months every year until coming fully into effect in 2028.
+
+Life expectancy in the ex-Soviet country (which is among Europe's poorest) is 67.5 years for men and 75.5 years for women. In a country with a population of 3.5 million, of which 1 million are abroad, there are more than 700,000 pensioners.
+
+After achieving independence from the Soviet Union, Moldova's foreign policy was designed with a view to establishing relations with other European countries, neutrality, and European Union integration. In 1995 the country was admitted to the Council of Europe.
+
+In addition to its participation in NATO's Partnership for Peace programme, Moldova is also a member state of the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Francophonie and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
+
+In 2005, Moldova and the EU established an action plan that sought to improve collaboration between its two neighbouring countries, Romania and Ukraine. At the end of 2005 EUBAM, the European Union Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine, was established at the joint request of the presidents of Moldova and Ukraine. EUBAM assists the Moldovan and Ukrainian governments in approximating their border and customs procedures to EU standards and offers support in both countries' fight against cross-border crime.
+
+After the 1990–1992 War of Transnistria, Moldova sought a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Transnistria region by working with Romania, Ukraine, and Russia, calling for international mediation, and co-operating with the OSCE and UN fact-finding and observer missions. The foreign minister of Moldova, Andrei Stratan, repeatedly stated that the Russian troops stationed in the breakaway region were there against the will of the Moldovan government and called on them to leave "completely and unconditionally".[90] In 2012, a security zone incident resulted in the death of a civilian, raising tensions with Russia.[91]
+
+In September 2010, the European Parliament approved a grant of €90 million to Moldova.[92] The money was to supplement US$570 million in International Monetary Fund loans,[93] World Bank and other bilateral support already granted to Moldova. In April 2010, Romania offered Moldova development aid worth of €100 million while the number of scholarships for Moldovan students doubled to 5,000.[94] According to a lending agreement signed in February 2010, Poland provided US$15 million as a component of its support for Moldova in its European integration efforts.[95] The first joint meeting of the Governments of Romania and Moldova, held in March 2012, concluded with several bilateral agreements in various fields.[96][97] The European orientation "has been the policy of Moldova in recent years and this is the policy that must continue," Nicolae Timofti told lawmakers before his election.[98]
+
+On 29 November 2013, at a summit in Vilnius, Moldova signed an association agreement with the European Union dedicated to the European Union's 'Eastern Partnership' with ex-Soviet countries.[99] The ex-Romanian President Traian Băsescu stated that Romania will make all efforts for Moldova to join the EU as soon as possible. Likewise, Traian Băsescu declared that the unification of Moldova with Romania is the next national project for Romania, as more than 75% of the population speaks Romanian.[100]
+
+Moldova has signed the Association Agreement with the European Union in Brussels on 27 June 2014. The signing comes after the accord has been initialed in Vilnius in November 2013.[101][102]
+
+It can be said that religious leaders play a role in shaping foreign policy. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Government has frequently used its connections with the Russian Orthodox Church to block and stymie the integration of former Soviet states like Moldova into the West.[103]
+
+The Moldovan armed forces consist of the Ground Forces and Air Force. Moldova has accepted all relevant arms control obligations of the former Soviet Union. On 30 October 1992, Moldova ratified the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which establishes comprehensive limits on key categories of conventional military equipment and provides for the destruction of weapons in excess of those limits. The country acceded to the provisions of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in October 1994 in Washington, D.C. It does not have nuclear, biological, chemical or radiological weapons. Moldova joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's Partnership for Peace on 16 March 1994.
+
+Moldova is committed to a number of international and regional control of arms regulations such as the UN Firearms Protocol, Stability Pact Regional Implementation Plan, the UN Programme of Action (PoA) and the OSCE Documents on Stockpiles of Conventional Ammunition.
+
+Since declaring independence in 1991, Moldova has participated in UN peacekeeping missions in Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Sudan and Georgia.
+
+Moldova signed a military agreement with Romania to strengthen regional security. The agreement is part of Moldova's strategy to reform its military and cooperate with its neighbours.[104]
+
+On 12 November 2014, the US donated to Moldovan Armed Forces 39 Humvees and 10 trailers, with a value of US$700,000, to the 22nd Peacekeeping Battalion of the Moldovan National Army to "increase the capability of Moldovan peacekeeping contingents."[105]
+
+According to Amnesty International, as of 2004 "Torture and other ill-treatment in police detention remained widespread; the state failed to carry out prompt and impartial investigations and police officers sometimes evaded penalties. Political dissidents from Ilașcu Group were released from arbitrary detention in the break-away Transdinester region only after an order of the European Court of Human Rights.[106] In 2009, when Moldova experienced its most serious civil unrest in a decade, several civilians, including Valeriu Boboc, were killed and many more injured.[107]
+
+According to Human Rights Report of the United States Department of State, released in April 2011, "In contrast to the previous year, there were no reports of killings by security forces. During the year reports of government exercising undue influence over the media substantially decreased." But "Transnistrian authorities continued to harass independent media and opposition lawmakers; restrict freedom of association, movement, and religion; and discriminate against Romanian speakers."[108] Moldova "has made noteworthy progress" on religious freedom since the era of the Soviet Union, but it can still take further steps to foster diversity," said the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief Heiner Bielefeldt, in Chișinău, in September 2011.[109] Moldova improved its legislation by enacting the Law on Preventing and Combating Family Violence, in 2008.[110]
+
+Moldova is divided into 32 districts (raioane, singular raion), three municipalities and two autonomous regions (Gagauzia and Transnistria).[111] The final status of Transnistria is disputed, as the central government does not control that territory. 10 other cities, including Comrat and Tiraspol, the administrative seats of the two autonomous territories, also have municipality status.
+
+Moldova has 66 cities (towns), including 13 with municipality status, and 916 communes. Another 700 villages are too small to have a separate administration and are administratively part of either cities (41 of them) or communes (659). This makes for a total of 1,682 localities in Moldova, two of which are uninhabited.[112]
+
+Chișinău
+Tiraspol
+
+Bălți
+Bender
+
+The largest city in Moldova is Chișinău with a population of 635,994 people.
+
+Moldova lies between latitudes 45° and 49° N, and mostly between meridians 26° and 30° E (a small area lies east of 30°). The total land area is 33,851 km2
+
+The largest part of the nation lies between two rivers, the Dniester and the Prut. The western border of Moldova is formed by the Prut river, which joins the Danube before flowing into the Black Sea. Moldova has access to the Danube for only about 480 m (1,575 ft), and Giurgiulești is the only Moldovan port on the Danube. In the east, the Dniester is the main river, flowing through the country from north to south, receiving the waters of Răut, Bîc, Ichel, Botna. Ialpug flows into one of the Danube limans, while Cogîlnic into the Black Sea chain of limans.
+
+The country is landlocked, though it is close to the Black Sea. While most of the country is hilly, elevations never exceed 430 m (1,411 ft) – the highest point being the Bălănești Hill. Moldova's hills are part of the Moldavian Plateau, which geologically originate from the Carpathian Mountains. Its subdivisions in Moldova include the Dniester Hills (Northern Moldavian Hills and Dniester Ridge), the Moldavian Plain (Middle Prut Valley and Bălți Steppe), and the Central Moldavian Plateau (Ciuluc-Soloneț Hills, Cornești Hills—Codri Massive, "Codri" meaning "forests"—Lower Dniester Hills, Lower Prut Valley, and Tigheci Hills). In the south, the country has a small flatland, the Bugeac Plain. The territory of Moldova east of the river Dniester is split between parts of the Podolian Plateau, and parts of the Eurasian Steppe.
+
+The country's main cities are the capital Chișinău, in the centre of the country, Tiraspol (in the eastern region of Transnistria), Bălți (in the north) and Bender (in the south-east). Comrat is the administrative centre of Gagauzia.
+
+Moldova has a climate which is moderately continental; its proximity to the Black Sea leads to the climate being mildly cold in the autumn and winter and relatively cool in the spring and summer.[113]
+
+The summers are warm and long, with temperatures averaging about 20 °C (68 °F) and the winters are relatively mild and dry, with January temperatures averaging −4 °C (25 °F). Annual rainfall, which ranges from around 600 mm (24 in) in the north to 400 mm (16 in) in the south, can vary greatly; long dry spells are not unusual. The heaviest rainfall occurs in early summer and again in October; heavy showers and thunderstorms are common. Because of the irregular terrain, heavy summer rains often cause erosion and river silting.
+
+The highest temperature ever recorded in Moldova was 41.5 °C (106.7 °F) on 21 July 2007 in Camenca.[114] The lowest temperature ever recorded was −35.5 °C (−31.9 °F) on 20 January 1963 in Brătușeni, Edineț county.[115]
+
+Phytogeographically, Moldova is split between the East European Plain and the Pontic–Caspian steppe of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. Forests currently cover only 11% of Moldova, though the state is making efforts to increase their range. Game animals, such as red deer, roe deer and wild boar can be found in these wooded areas.[117]
+
+The environment of Moldova suffered extreme degradation during the Soviet period, when industrial and agricultural development proceeded without regard for environmental protection.[117] Excessive use of pesticides resulted in heavily polluted topsoil, and industries lacked emission controls.[117] Founded in 1990, the Ecological Movement of Moldova, a national, non-governmental, nonprofit organization which is a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature has been working to restore the damage to Moldova's natural environment.[117] The movement is national representative of the Center "Naturopa" of the Council of Europe and United Nations Environment Programme of the United Nations.[118]
+
+Once possessing a range from the British Isles through Central Asia over the Bering Strait into Alaska and Canada's Yukon as well as the Northwest Territories, saiga survived in Moldova and Romania into the late 18th century. Deforestation, demographic pressure, as well as excessive hunting eradicated the native saiga herds which is currently threatened with extinction. They were considered a characteristic animal of Scythia in antiquity. Historian Strabo referred to the Saiga as the kolos, describing it as "between the deer and ram in size" which (understandably but wrongly) was believed to drink through its nose.[121]
+
+Another animal which was extinct in Moldova since the 18th century until recently was the wisent. The species was reintroduced with the arrival of three European bison from Białowieża Forest in Poland several days before Moldova's Independence Day on August 27, 2005.[122] Moldova is currently interested in expanding their wisent population, and began talks with Belarus in 2019 regarding a bison exchange program between the two countries.[123]
+
+After the breakup from the USSR in 1991, energy shortages, political uncertainty, trade obstacles and weak administrative capacity contributed to the decline of economy. As a part of an ambitious economic liberalization effort, Moldova introduced a convertible currency, liberalized all prices, stopped issuing preferential credits to state enterprises, backed steady land privatization, removed export controls, and liberalized interest rates. The government entered into agreements with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to promote growth. 
+The economy reversed from decline in the late 1990s. Since 1999 the GDP (PPP) has had a steady growth as follows:[16][124]
+
+Although estimates point to possible modest overvaluation of the real exchange rate, external competitiveness appears broadly adequate as reflected in strong sustained export performance.[125] However, the near-term economic outlook is weak. Main risks to the near-term outlook relate to serious vulnerabilities and governance issues in the banking sector, policy slippages in the run up to the elections, intensification of geopolitical tensions in the region, and a further slowdown in activity in main trading partners.
+
+Moldova remains highly vulnerable to fluctuations in remittances from workers abroad (24 percent of GDP), exports to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and European Union (EU) (88 per cent of total exports), and donor support (about 10 per cent of government spending). The main transmission channels through which adverse exogenous shocks could impact the Moldovan economy are: remittances (also due to potentially returning migrants), external trade, and capital flows.
+
+Moldova largely achieved the main objectives of the combined ECF/EFF (IMF financial credit) supported program. The economy recovered from the drought-related contraction in 2012.
+
+The gross average monthly salary in the Republic of Moldova has registered a steady positive growth after 1999, being 5906 lei or 298 euros in 2018.
+
+Corporate governance in the banking sector is a major concern. In line with FSAP recommendations, significant weaknesses in the legal and regulatory frameworks must be urgently addressed to ensure stability and soundness of the financial sector. Moldova has achieved a substantial degree of fiscal consolidation in recent years, but this trend is now reversing. Resisting pre-election pressures for selective spending increases and returning to the path of fiscal consolidation would reduce reliance on exceptionally-high donor support. Structural fiscal reforms would help safeguard sustainability.[125] Monetary policy has been successful in maintaining inflation within the NBM's target range. The implementation of structural reforms outlined in the National Development Strategy (NDS) Moldova 2020—especially in the business environment, physical infrastructure, and human resources development areas—would help boost potential growth and reduce poverty.[125] Moldova's remarkable recovery from the severe recession of 2009 was largely the result of sound macroeconomic and financial policies and structural reforms. Despite a small contraction in 2012, Moldova's economic performance was among the strongest in the region during 2010–13. Economic activity grew cumulatively by about 24 percent; consumer price inflation was brought under control; and real wages increased cumulatively by about 13 percent. This expansion was made possible by adequate macroeconomic stabilization measures and ambitious structural reforms implemented in the wake of the crisis under a Fund-supported program. In November 2013, Moldova initialed an Association Agreement with the EU which includes provisions establishing a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA).
+
+A political crisis in early 2013 led to policy slippages in the fiscal and financial areas. The political crisis that broke out in early 2013 was resolved with the appointment of a government supported by a pro-European center-right/center coalition in May 2013. However, delays in policy implementation prevented completion of the final reviews under the ECF/EFF arrangements.[citation needed]
+
+Despite a sharp decline in poverty in recent years, Moldova remains one of the poorest countries in Europe and structural reforms are needed to promote sustainable growth. Based on the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) regional poverty line of US$5/day (PPP), 55 percent of the population was poor in 2011. While this was significantly lower than 94 percent in 2002, Moldova's poverty rate is still more than double the ECA average of 25 percent. The NDS—Moldova (National Development System) 2020, which was published in November 2012, focuses on several critical areas to boost economic development and reduce poverty. These include education, infrastructure, financial sector, business climate, energy consumption, pension system, and judicial framework. Following the regional financial crisis in 1998, Moldova has made significant progress towards achieving and retaining macroeconomic and financial stabilization. It has, furthermore, implemented many structural and institutional reforms that are indispensable for the efficient functioning of a market economy. These efforts have helped maintain macroeconomic and financial stability under difficult external circumstances, enabled the resumption of economic growth and contributed to establishing an environment conducive to the economy's further growth and development in the medium term.[citation needed]
+
+The government's goal of EU integration has resulted in some market-oriented progress. Moldova experienced better than expected economic growth in 2013 due to increased agriculture production, to economic policies adopted by the Moldovan government since 2009, and to the receipt of EU trade preferences connecting Moldovan products to the world's largest market. Moldova has signed the Association Agreement and the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the European Union during summer 2014.[136] Moldova has also achieved a Free Visa Regime[137] with the EU which represents the biggest achievement of Moldovan diplomacy since independence.[138] Still, growth has been hampered by high prices for Russian natural gas, a Russian import ban on Moldovan wine, increased foreign scrutiny of Moldovan agricultural products, and by Moldova's large external debt. Over the longer term, Moldova's economy remains vulnerable to political uncertainty, weak administrative capacity, vested bureaucratic interests, corruption, higher fuel prices, Russian pressure, and the separatist regime in Moldova's Transnistria region.[139]
+According to IMF World Economic Outlook April 2014, the Moldovan GDP (PPP) per capita is 3,927 International Dollars,[140][141] excluding grey economy and tax evasion.
+
+With few natural energy resources, Moldova imports almost all of its energy supplies from Russia and Ukraine. Moldova's dependence on Russian energy is underscored by a growing US$5 billion debt to Russian natural gas supplier Gazprom, largely the result of unreimbursed natural gas consumption in the separatist Transnistria region. In August 2013, work began on a new pipeline between Moldova and Romania that may eventually break Russia's monopoly on Moldova's gas supplies.[139] Moldova is a partner country of the EU INOGATE energy programme, which has four key topics: enhancing energy security, convergence of member state energy markets on the basis of EU internal energy market principles, supporting sustainable energy development, and attracting investment for energy projects of common and regional interest.[142]
+
+The country has a well-established wine industry. It has a vineyard area of 147,000 hectares (360,000 acres), of which 102,500 ha (253,000 acres) are used for commercial production. Most of the country's wine production is made for export. Many families have their own recipes and grape varieties that have been passed down through the generations. Mileștii Mici is the home of the largest wine cellar in the world. It stretches for 200 km and holds almost 2 million bottles of wine[143]
+
+Moldova's rich soil and temperate continental climate (with warm summers and mild winters) have made the country one of the most productive agricultural regions since ancient times, and a major supplier of agricultural products in southeastern Europe. In agriculture, the economic reform started with the land cadastre reform.[144]
+Moldova's agricultural products include vegetables, fruits, grapes, wine, and grains.[145]
+
+The main means of transportation in Moldova are railways 1,138 km (707 mi) and a highway system (12,730 km or 7,910 mi overall, including 10,937 km or 6,796 mi of paved surfaces). The sole international air gateway of Moldova is the Chișinău International Airport. The Giurgiulești terminal on the Danube is compatible with small seagoing vessels. Shipping on the lower Prut and Nistru rivers plays only a modest role in the country's transportation system.
+
+The first million mobile telephone users were registered in September 2005. The number of mobile telephone users in Moldova increased by 47.3% in the first quarter of 2008 against the last year and exceeded 2.89 million.[146]
+
+In September 2009, Moldova was the first country in the world to launch high-definition voice services (HD voice) for mobile phones, and the first country in Europe to launch 14.4 Mbit/s mobile broadband on a national scale, with over 40% population coverage.[147]
+
+As of 2010[update], there are around 1,295,000 Internet users in Moldova with overall Internet penetration of 35.9%.[148]
+
+On 6 June 2012, the Government approved the licensing of 4G / LTE for mobile operators.[149]
+
+Moldovans or Moldavians (Romanian: moldoveni, pronounced [moldoˈvenʲ]; Moldovan Cyrillic: Молдовень) are the largest ethnic group of the Republic of Moldova (75.1% of the population, as of 2014). Under the variant Moldavians, the term may also be used to refer to all inhabitants of the territory of historical Principality of Moldavia, currently divided among Romania (47.5%), Moldova (30.5%) and Ukraine (22%), regardless of ethnic identity. In Romania, the inhabitants from the Republic of Moldova are colloquially called "Bessarabians" (basarabeni) (after the Bessarabia region), in order to be distinguished from the inhabitants of the Romanian Moldavia region who also generally refer to themselves (or are referred to by the inhabitants of the other Romanian regions) as "Moldavians" (moldoveni), but declare Romanian ethnicity.
+
+According to the 2014 census preliminary data, 2,998,235 inhabitants lived in Moldova (within the areas controlled by the central government), an 11.3% decrease from the figure recorded at the 2004 census. The urbanization rate was 45% of the total population living in urban areas (as of 2015[update]).[156]
+
+According to the last census in Transnistria (October 2015), the population of the region was 475,665, a 14.3% decrease from the figure recorded at the 2004 census. The urbanization rate was 69.9%.[157][158]
+
+The official language of Moldova is Romanian, a Romance language related to Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
+
+The 1991 Declaration of Independence names the official language Romanian.[162][163] The Constitution of 1994 stated that the national language of the Republic of Moldova was Moldovan, and its writing is based on the Latin alphabet.[164]
+
+In 2013, the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled that the name "Romanian", as used in the Declaration of Independence to identify the official language, prevails over the name "Moldovan", given in Article 13 of the Constitution.[165]
+
+At the 2014 census (which did not include data from the Transnistrian region), 54.7% of the population named Moldovan whereas 24.0% named Romanian as their first language in daily use. Although only 4.1% are ethnic Russians, Russian is still used as the main language by 14.5% of the total population. Around 50% of ethnic Ukrainians, 33% of Gagauz, 33% of Bulgarians, and 5.7% of Moldovans declared Russian as their daily use language.
+
+Historically Russian was taught in schools as the first foreign language, because of the relationship with the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. In the 21st century, the primary foreign language taught in the schools is English. In 2013 more than 60% of schoolchildren took it as their first foreign language. This was followed by French, taken by less than 50% of students. Since 1996, the Republic of Moldova has been a full member of La Francophonie. German was the third-ranked choice.[169]
+
+For the 2004 census, Orthodox Christians, who make up 93.3% of Moldova's population, were not required to declare the particular of the two main churches they belong to. The Metropolis of Chișinău and All Moldova, autonomous and subordinated to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Metropolis of Bessarabia, autonomous and subordinated to the Romanian Orthodox Church, both claim to be the national church of the country. More than 2.0% of the population is Protestant including a growing number of Jehovah's Witnesses, 0.9% belongs to other religions, 1.0% is non-religious, 0.4% is atheist, and 2.2% did not answer the religion question at the census.
+
+There are 16 state and 15[170] private institutions of higher education in Moldova, with a total of 126,100 students, including 104,300 in the state institutions and 21,700 in the private ones. The number of students per 10,000 inhabitants in Moldova has been constantly growing since the collapse of the Soviet Union, reaching 217 in 2000–2001, and 351 in 2005–2006.
+
+The National Library of Moldova was founded in 1832. The Moldova State University and the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, the main scientific organizations of Moldova, were established in 1946.
+
+As of 2015[update], Romania allocates 5,000 scholarships in high schools and universities for Moldovan students.[171] Likewise, more than half of preschool children in Moldova benefit from Romania funded program to renovate and equip kindergartens.[172] Almost all the population is literate: the literacy rate of the population aged 15 and over is estimated at 99.4% (as of 2015[update]).[173]
+
+The CIA World Factbook lists widespread crime and underground economic activity among major issues in Moldova.[16] Human trafficking of Moldovan women and children to other parts of Europe is a serious problem.[174][175]
+
+In 2014, US$1 billion disappeared from three of Moldova's leading banks.[176] In two days loans worth US$1 billion were transferred in to United Kingdom and Hong Kong-registered companies whose ultimate owners are unknown.[176][177] Banks are administered by the National Bank of Moldova, so this loss was covered from state reserves.[176]
+
+The total fertility rate (TFR) in Moldova was estimated in 2015 at 1.56 children/woman,[178] which is below the replacement rate of 2.1. In 2012, the average age of women at first birth was 23.9 years, with 75.2% of births being to women under 30, and 22.4% of births being to unmarried women.[179] The maternal mortality rate was 41 deaths/100,000 live births (in 2010)[180] and the infant mortality rate was 12.59 deaths/1,000 live births (in 2015).[181] The life expectancy in 2015 was estimated at 70.42 years (66.55 years male, 74.54 years female).[181]
+
+Public expenditure on health was 4.2% of the GDP and private expenditure on health 3.2%.[182] There are about 264 physicians per 100,000 people.[182] Health expenditure was US$138 (PPP) per capita in 2004.[182]
+
+Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the country has seen a decrease in spending on health care and, as a result, the tuberculosis incidence rate in the country has grown.[183] According to a 2009 study, Moldova was struggling with one of the highest incidence rates of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the world.[184]
+
+The percentage of adults (aged 15–49) living with HIV/AIDS was estimated in 2009 at 0.40%.[185]
+
+Emigration is a mass phenomenon in Moldova and has a major impact on the country's demographics and economy. The Moldovan Intelligence and Security Service has estimated that 600,000 to one million Moldovan citizens (almost 25% of the population) are working abroad.[186]
+
+Moldova's cultural tradition has been influenced primarily by the Romanian origins of its majority population, the roots of which go back to the 2nd century AD, the period of Roman colonization in Dacia.[187] Located geographically at the crossroads of Latin, Slavic and other cultures, Moldova has enriched its own culture adopting and maintaining traditions of neighbouring regions and of other influential sources.[188] The largest ethnic group, which had come to identify itself widely as "Moldovan" by the 14th century, played a significant role in the shaping of classical Romanian culture. The culture has been also influenced by the Byzantine culture, the neighbouring Magyar and Slavic populations, and later by the Ottoman Turks. A strong Western European influence in Moldovan literature and arts was prevalent in the 19th century. During the periods 1812-1917 and 1944–89, Moldovans were influenced by Russian and Soviet administrative control as well and by ethnic Russian immigration.[187]
+
+The country's cultural heritage was marked by numerous churches and monasteries built by the Moldavian ruler Stephen the Great in the 15th century, by the works of the later renaissance Metropolitans Varlaam and Dosoftei, and those of scholars such as Grigore Ureche, Miron Costin, Nicolae Milescu, Dimitrie Cantemir[c] and Ion Neculce. In the 19th century, Moldavians from the territories of the medieval Principality of Moldavia, divided into Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Western Moldavia (after 1859, Romania), made a significant contribution to the formation of the modern Romanian culture. Among these were many Bessarabians, such as Alexandru Donici, Alexandru Hâjdeu, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Constantin Stamati, Constantin Stamati-Ciurea, Costache Negruzzi, Alecu Russo, Constantin Stere.
+
+Mihai Eminescu, a late Romantic poet, and Ion Creangă, a writer, are the most influential Romanian language artists, considered national writers both in Romania and Moldova.[189]
+
+The country has also important minority ethnic communities. Gagauz, 4.4% of the population, are Christian Turkic people. Greeks, Armenians, Poles, Ukrainians, although not numerous, were present since as early as the 17th century, and had left cultural marks. The 19th century saw the arrival of many more Ukrainians from Podolia and Galicia, as well as new communities, such as Lipovans, Bulgarians, and Germans.
+
+In October 1939, Radio Basarabia, a local station of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company, was the first radio station opened in Chișinău. Television in Moldova was introduced in April 1958, within the framework of Soviet television. Through cable, Moldovan viewers can receive a large number of Russian channels, a few Romanian channels, and several Russian language versions of international channels in addition to several local channels.[citation needed] One Russian and two local channels are aired.[citation needed] Infotag is the state news agency.
+
+Moldovan cuisine is similar to neighbouring Romania, and has been influenced by elements of Russian, Turkish, and Ukrainian cuisine. Main dishes include beef, pork, potatoes, cabbage, and a variety of cereals. Popular alcoholic beverages are divin (Moldovan brandy), beer, and local wine.
+
+Total recorded adult alcohol consumption is approximately evenly split between spirits, beer and wine.
+
+Among Moldova's most prominent composers are Gavriil Musicescu, Ștefan Neaga and Eugen Doga.
+
+In the field of pop music, Moldova has produced the band O-Zone, who came to prominence in 2003, with their hit song "Dragostea Din Tei", which topped multiple notable single charts. Moldova has been participating in the Eurovision Song Contest since 2005. Another popular band from Moldova is Zdob și Zdub that represented the country in the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing 6th.
+
+In May 2007, Natalia Barbu represented Moldova in Helsinki at the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 with her entry "Fight". Natalia squeezed into the final by a very small margin. She took 10th place with 109 points.
+Then Zdob și Zdub again represented Moldova in the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest finishing 12th.
+
+The band SunStroke Project with Olia Tira represented the country in the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest with their hit song "Run Away". Their performance gained international notoriety as an internet meme due to the pelvic thrusting and dancing of Sergey Stepanov, the band saxophonist. He has been fittingly dubbed "Epic Sax Guy". SunStroke Project featured again in the 2017 Eurovision entry "Hey Mama" which got third place.[190]
+
+In 2015 a new musical project by the name of Carla's Dreams has risen in popularity around Moldova. Carla's Dreams reached the top charts in multiple countries in Europe with the release of their song "Sub Pielea Mea" in 2016. The song received a lot of airplay and reached number one place on the charts in Moldova as well as Russia. The group is still active and released their latest album in 2017. The theme of the musical group is "Anonymous" as they perform with painted faces, hoodies and sunglasses. The identity of the group members is still unknown.
+
+Among most prominent classical musicians in Moldova are Maria Bieșu, one of the leading world's sopranos and the winner of the Japan International Competition; pianist Mark Zeltser, winner of the USSR National Competition, Margueritte Long Competition in Paris and Busoni Competition in Bolzano, Italy.
+
+Most retail businesses close on New Year's Day and Independence Day, but remain open on all other holidays. Christmas is celebrated either on 7 January, the traditional date in Old Calendarists Eastern Orthodox Churches, or on 25 December, with both dates being recognized as public holidays.[191]
+
+Trîntă (a form of wrestling) is the national sport in Moldova. Association football is the most popular team sport.
+
+Rugby union is popular as well. More than 10,000 supporters turn out for home internationals. Since 2004, playing numbers at all levels have more than doubled to 3,200. Despite the hardships and deprivations the national team are ranked 34th in the world.[192] The most prestigious cycling race is the Moldova President's Cup, which was first run in 2004.
+
+Athletes from Moldova have won European medals in Athletics, Biathlon, Football and Gymnastics, World medals in Archery, Judo, Swimming and Taekwondo, as well as Olympic medals in Boxing, Canoeing, Shooting, Weightlifting and Wrestling.

en/3901.html.txt

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+Coordinates: 47°N 29°E / 47°N 29°E / 47; 29
+
+Moldova (/mɒlˈdoʊvə/ (listen), sometimes UK: /ˈmɒldəvə/),[12][13][14] officially the Republic of Moldova (Romanian: Republica Moldova), is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe.[15] It is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south.[16] The capital city is Chișinău.
+
+Most of the Moldovan territory was a part of the Principality of Moldavia from the 14th century until 1812, when it was ceded to the Russian Empire by the Ottoman Empire (to which Moldavia was a vassal state) and became known as Bessarabia. In 1856, southern Bessarabia was returned to Moldavia, which three years later united with Wallachia to form Romania, but Russian rule was restored over the whole of the region in 1878. During the 1917 Russian Revolution, Bessarabia briefly became an autonomous state within the Russian Republic, known as the Moldavian Democratic Republic. In February 1918, the Moldavian Democratic Republic declared independence and then integrated into Romania later that year following a vote of its assembly. The decision was disputed by Soviet Russia, which in 1924 established, within the Ukrainian SSR, a Moldavian autonomous republic (MASSR) on partially Moldovan-inhabited territories to the east of Bessarabia. In 1940, as a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Romania was compelled to cede Bessarabia to the Soviet Union, leading to the creation of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (Moldavian SSR), which included the greater part of Bessarabia and the westernmost strip of the former MASSR (east of the Dniester River).
+
+On 27 August 1991, as the dissolution of the Soviet Union was underway, the Moldavian SSR declared independence and took the name Moldova.[17] The constitution of Moldova was adopted in 1994. The strip of the Moldovan territory on the east bank of the Dniester has been under the de facto control of the breakaway government of Transnistria since 1990.
+
+Due to a decrease in industrial and agricultural output following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the service sector has grown to dominate Moldova's economy and is over 60% of the nation's GDP. It is the poorest country in Europe by GDP per capita,[16] and it has the lowest Human Development Index in the continent.
+
+Moldova is a parliamentary republic with a president as head of state and a prime minister as head of government. It is a member state of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC).
+
+The name Moldova is derived from the Moldova River; the valley of this river served as a political centre at the time of the foundation of the Principality of Moldavia in 1359.[18] The origin of the name of the river remains unclear. According to a legend recounted by Moldavian chroniclers Dimitrie Cantemir and Grigore Ureche, Prince Dragoș named the river after hunting an aurochs: following the chase, the prince's exhausted hound Molda drowned in the river. The dog's name, given to the river, extended to the Principality.[19]
+
+For a short time in the 1990s, at the founding of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the name of the current Republic of Moldova was also spelled Moldava.[20] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country began to use the Romanian name, Moldova. Officially, the name Republic of Moldova is designated by the United Nations.
+
+The prehistory of Moldova covers the period from the Upper Paleolithic which begins with the presence of Homo sapiens in the area of Southeastern Europe some 44,000 years ago and extends into the appearance of the first written records in Classical Antiquity in Greece.
+
+In 2010 N.K. Anisjutkin discovered Oldowan flint tools at Bayraki that are 800,000–1.2 million years old.[21] During the Neolithic Stone-Age era, Moldova's territory stood at the centre of the large Cucuteni–Trypillia culture that stretched east beyond the Dniester River in Ukraine and west up to and beyond the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. The people of this civilization, which lasted roughly from 5500 to 2750 BC, practised agriculture, raised livestock, hunted, and made intricately-designed pottery.[22]
+
+Dacian tribes inhabited Moldova's territory in the period of classical antiquity. Between the 1st and 7th centuries AD, the south came intermittently under the control of the Roman and then the Byzantine Empires. Due to its strategic location on a route between Asia and Europe, the territory of modern Moldova experienced many invasions in late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, including by Goths, Huns, Avars, Bulgarians, Magyars, Pechenegs, Cumans, Mongols and Tatars.
+
+Friar William of Rubruck, who visited the court of the Great Khan in 1254, listed "the Blac",[23][need quotation to verify] or Vlachs, among the peoples who paid tribute to the Mongols, but the extent of the Vlachs' territory remains uncertain.[24][25] Friar William described "Blakia" as "Assan's territory"[26] south of the lower Danube, showing that he identified it with the northern regions of the Second Bulgarian Empire.[27]
+
+On the border between Halych and the Brodniks, in the 11th century, a Viking by the name of Rodfos was killed in the area by Blakumen who supposedly betrayed him.[28] In 1164 Vlach shepherds around the same region took the future Byzantine emperor Andronikos I Komnenos, as a prisoner.
+
+The land and settlements of the Pechenegs in 1030 CE.
+
+Both Bessarabia and Transnistria were a part of Cumania in the 11th and 12th centuries.
+
+The lands which currently compose Moldova within Bulgarian Empire under Ivan Asen II.
+
+The East Slavic Hypatian Chronicle mentions the Bolohoveni, a Vlach population, in the 13th century. The chronicle records that this land bordered on the principalities of Halych, Volhynia and Kiev. Archaeological research has identified the location of 13th-century fortified settlements in this region. Alexandru V. Boldur identified Voscodavie, Voscodavti, Voloscovti, Volcovti, Volosovca and their other towns and villages between the middle course of the rivers Nistru/Dniester and Nipru/Dnieper.[29] The Bolohoveni disappeared from chronicles after their defeat in 1257 by Daniel of Galicia's troops.
+
+In the early 13th century, the Brodniks, a possible Slavic–Vlach vassal state of Halych, were present, alongside the Vlachs, in much of the region's territory (towards 1216, the Brodniks are mentioned[by whom?] as in service of Suzdal).
+
+The founding of the Principality of Moldavia began with the arrival of a Vlach voivode (military leader), Dragoș, soon followed by his people from Maramureș to the region of the Moldova River. Dragoș established a polity there as a vassal to the Kingdom of Hungary in the 1350s. The independence of the Principality of Moldavia was gained when Bogdan I, another Vlach voivode from Maramureș who had fallen out with the Hungarian king, crossed the Carpathian mountains in 1359 and took control of Moldavia, wresting the region from Hungary. The Principality of Moldavia was bounded by the Carpathian Mountains in the west, the Dniester River in the east, and the Danube River and Black Sea to the south. Its territory comprised the present-day territory of the Republic of Moldova, the eastern eight counties of Romania, and parts of the Chernivtsi Oblast and Budjak region of Ukraine. Like the present-day republic and Romania's north-eastern region, it was known to the locals as Moldova.
+
+The history of what is today Moldova has been intertwined with that of Poland for centuries. The Polish chronicler Jan Długosz mentioned Moldavians (under the name Wallachians) as having joined a military expedition in 1342, under King Ladislaus I, against the Margraviate of Brandenburg.[30] The Polish state was powerful enough to counter the Hungarian Kingdom which was consistently interested in bringing the area that would become Moldova into its political orbit.
+
+Ties between Poland and Moldavia expanded after the founding of the Moldavian state by Bogdan of Cuhea, a Vlach voivode from Maramureș who had fallen out with the Hungarian king. Crossing the Carpathian mountains in 1359, the voivode took control of Moldavia and succeeded in creating Moldavia as an independent political entity. Despite being disfavored by the brief union of Angevin Poland and Hungary (the latter was still the country's overlord), Bogdan's successor Lațcu, the Moldavian ruler also likely allied himself with the Poles. Lațcu also accepted conversion to Roman Catholicism around 1370, but his gesture was to remain without consequences.
+
+Petru I profited from the end of the Polish-Hungarian union and moved the country closer to the Jagiellon realm, becoming a vassal of king Jogaila of Poland on September 26, 1387. This gesture was to have unexpected consequences: Petru supplied the Polish ruler with funds needed in the war against the Teutonic Knights, and was granted control over Pokuttya until the debt was to be repaid; as this is not recorded to have been carried out, the region became disputed by the two states, until it was lost by Moldavia in the Battle of Obertyn (1531). Prince Petru also expanded his rule southwards to the Danube Delta. His brother Roman I conquered the Hungarian-ruled Cetatea Albă in 1392, giving Moldavia an outlet to the Black Sea, before being toppled from the throne for supporting Fyodor Koriatovych in his conflict with Vytautas the Great of Lithuania. Under Stephen I, growing Polish influence was challenged by Sigismund of Hungary, whose expedition was defeated at Ghindăoani in 1385; however, Stephen disappeared in mysterious circumstances.
+
+Although Alexander I was brought to the throne in 1400 by the Hungarians (with assistance from Mircea I of Wallachia), this ruler shifted his allegiances towards Poland (notably engaging Moldavian forces on the Polish side in the Battle of Grunwald and the Siege of Marienburg), and placed his own choice of rulers in Wallachia. His reign was one of the most successful in Moldavia's history.
+
+For all of his success, it was under the reign of Alexander I that the very first confrontation with the Ottoman Turks took place at Cetatea Albă in 1420. A deep crisis was to follow Alexandru's long reign, with his successors battling each other in a succession of wars that divided the country until the murder of Bogdan II and the ascension of Peter III Aaron in 1451. Nevertheless, Moldavia was subject to further Hungarian interventions after that moment, as Matthias Corvinus deposed Aron and backed Alexăndrel to the throne in Suceava. Petru Aron's rule also signified the beginning of Moldavia's Ottoman Empire allegiance, as the ruler agreed to pay tribute to Sultan Mehmed II.
+
+During this time, Moldavia was invaded repeatedly by Crimean Tatars and, beginning in the 15th century, by the Turks. In 1538, the principality became a tributary to the Ottoman Empire, but it retained internal and partial external autonomy.[32] Nonetheless, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth continued to strongly influence Moldavia both through national politics as well as on the local level through significant intermarriage between Moldavian nobility and the Polish szlachta. When in May 1600, Michael the Brave removed Ieremia Movilă from Moldavia's throne by winning the battle of Bacău, briefly reuniting under his rule Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania, a Polish army led by Jan Zamoyski drove the Wallachians from Moldavia. Zamoyski reinstalled Ieremia Movilă to the throne, who put the country under the vassalage of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Moldavia finally returned to Ottoman vassalage in 1621.
+
+While the region of Transnistria was never politically part of the Principality of Moldavia, there were sizable areas which were owned by Moldavian boyars and given by the Moldavian rulers. The earliest surviving deeds referring to lands beyond the Dniester river date from the 16th century.[33] Moldavian chronicle Grigore Ureche which mentions that in 1584, some Moldavian villages from beyond the Dniester in the Kingdom of Poland were attacked and plundered by Cossacks.[34] Many Moldovans were members of Cossacks units as well, with two of them, Ioan Potcoavă and Dănilă Apostol becoming hetmans of Ukraine. Ruxandra Lupu, the daughter of Moldavian voivode Vasile Lupu who married Tymish Khmelnytsky, lived in Rașcov according to Ukrainian tradition.
+
+While most of today's Moldova came into the Ottoman orbit in the 16th century, a substantial part of Transnistria remained a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until the Second Partition of Poland in 1793.
+
+In accordance with the Treaty of Bucharest of 1812, and despite numerous protests by Moldavian nobles on behalf of the sovereignty of their principality, the Ottoman Empire (of which Moldavia was a vassal) ceded to the Russian Empire the eastern half of the territory of the Principality of Moldavia along with Khotyn and old Bessarabia (modern Budjak), which Russia had already conquered and annexed. The new Russian province was called Oblast of Moldavia and Bessarabia, and initially enjoyed a large degree of autonomy. After 1828 this autonomy was progressively restricted and in 1871 the Oblast was transformed into the Bessarabia Governorate, in a process of state-imposed assimilation, Russification. As part of this process, the Tsarist administration in Bessarabia gradually removed the Romanian language from official and religious use.[35]
+
+The Treaty of Paris (1856) returned the southern part of Bessarabia (later organised as the Cahul, Bolgrad and Ismail counties) to Moldavia, which remained an autonomous principality and, in 1859, united with Wallachia to form Romania. In 1878, as a result of the Treaty of Berlin, Romania was forced to cede the three counties back to the Russian Empire.
+
+Over the 19th century, the Russian authorities encouraged the colonization of Bessarabia by Romanians, Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Bulgarians, Poles, and Gagauzes, primarily in the northern and southern areas vacated by Turks and Nogai Tatar, the latter having been expelled in the 1770s and 1780s, during Russo-Turkish Wars;[36][37][38][39] the inclusion of the province in the Pale of Settlement also allowed the immigration of more Jews.[a] The Romanian proportion of the population decreased from an estimated 86% in 1816,[41] to around 52% in 1905.[42] During this time there were anti-Semitic riots, leading to an exodus of thousands of Jews to the United States.[43]
+
+World War I brought in a rise in political and cultural (ethnic) awareness among the inhabitants of the region, as 300,000 Bessarabians were drafted into the Russian Army formed in 1917; within bigger units several "Moldavian Soldiers' Committees" were formed. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, a Bessarabian parliament, Sfatul Țării (a National Council), was elected in October–November 1917 and opened on December 3 [O.S. 21 November] 1917. The Sfatul Țării proclaimed the Moldavian Democratic Republic (December 15 [O.S. 2 December] 1917) within a federal Russian state, and formed a government (21 December [O.S. 8 December] 1917).
+
+After the Romanian army occupied the region in early January at the request of the National Council, Bessarabia proclaimed independence from Russia on February 6 [O.S. 24 January] 1918 and requested the assistance of the French army present in Romania (general Henri Berthelot) and of the Romanian Army.[44] On April 9 [O.S. 27 March] 1918, the Sfatul Țării decided with 86 votes for, 3 against and 36 abstaining, to unite with the Kingdom of Romania. The union was conditional upon fulfilment of the agrarian reform, autonomy, and respect for universal human rights.[45] A part of the interim Parliament agreed to drop these conditions after Bukovina and Transylvania also joined the Kingdom of Romania, although historians note that they lacked the quorum to do so.[46][47][48][49][50]
+
+This union was recognized by the principal Allied Powers in the 1920 Treaty of Paris, which however was not ratified by all of its signatories.[51][52] The newly communist Russia did not recognize Romanian rule over Bessarabia, considering it an occupation of Russian territory.[53]
+
+In May 1919, the Bessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed as a government in exile. After the failure of the Tatarbunary Uprising in 1924, the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Moldavian ASSR) was formed by Soviet Russia within the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, in Transnistria region.
+
+In August 1939, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and its secret additional protocol were signed, by which Nazi Germany recognized Bessarabia as being within the Soviet sphere of influence, which led the latter to actively revive its claim to the region.[54] On 28 June 1940, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to Romania requesting the cession of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, with which Romania complied the following day. Soon after, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (Moldavian SSR, MSSR) was established,[54] comprising about 65% of Bessarabia, and 50% of the now-disbanded Moldavian ASSR (the present-day Transnistria). Ethnic Germans left in 1940.
+
+As part of the 1941 Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, Romania regained the territories of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, and seized a territory which became known as Transnistria Governorate. Romanian forces, working with the Germans, deported or massacred about 300,000 Jews, including 147,000 from Bessarabia and Bukovina. Of the latter, approximately 90,000 died.[55] Between 1941 and 1944 partisan detachments acted against the Romanian administration. The Soviet Army re-captured the region in February–August 1944, and re-established the Moldavian SSR. Between the end of the Jassy–Kishinev Offensive in August 1944 and the end of the war in May 1945, 256,800 inhabitants of the Moldavian SSR were drafted into the Soviet Army. 40,592 of them perished.[56]
+
+During the periods 1940–1941 and 1944–1953, deportations of locals to the northern Urals, to Siberia, and northern Kazakhstan occurred regularly, with the largest ones on 12–13 June 1941, and 5–6 July 1949, accounting from MSSR alone for 18,392[b] and 35,796 deportees respectively.[57] Other forms of Soviet persecution of the population included political arrests or, in 8,360 cases, execution.
+
+In 1946, as a result of a severe drought and excessive delivery quota obligations and requisitions imposed by the Soviet government, the southwestern part of the USSR suffered from a major famine.[58][59] In 1946–1947, at least 216,000 deaths and about 350,000 cases of dystrophy were accounted by historians in the Moldavian SSR alone.[57] Similar events occurred in the 1930s in the Moldavian ASSR.[57] In 1944–53, there were several anti-Soviet resistance groups in Moldova; however the NKVD and later MGB managed to eventually arrest, execute or deport their members.[57]
+
+In the postwar period, the Soviet government organized the immigration of working age Russian speakers (mostly Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians), into the new Soviet republic, especially into urbanized areas, partly to compensate for the demographic loss caused by the war and the emigration of 1940 and 1944.[60] In the 1970s and 1980s, the Moldavian SSR received substantial allocations from the budget of the USSR to develop industrial and scientific facilities and housing. In 1971, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a decision "About the measures for further development of the city of Kishinev" (modern Chișinău), that allotted more than one billion Soviet rubles (approximately 6.8 billion in 2018 US dollars) from the USSR budget for building projects.[61]
+
+The Soviet government conducted a campaign to promote a Moldovan ethnic identity distinct from that of the Romanians, based on a theory developed during the existence of the Moldavian ASSR. Official Soviet policy asserted that the language spoken by Moldovans was distinct from the Romanian language (see Moldovenism). To distinguish the two, during the Soviet period, Moldovan was written in the Cyrillic alphabet, in contrast with Romanian, which since 1860 had been written in the Latin alphabet.
+
+All independent organizations were severely reprimanded, with the National Patriotic Front leaders being sentenced in 1972 to long prison terms.[62] The Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Moldova is assessing the activity of the communist totalitarian regime.
+
+In the 1980s, amid political conditions created by the glasnost and perestroika, a Democratic Movement of Moldova was formed, which in 1989 became known as the nationalist Popular Front of Moldova (FPM).[63][64] Along with several other Soviet republics, from 1988 onwards, Moldova started to move towards independence. On 27 August 1989, the FPM organized a mass demonstration in Chișinău that became known as the Grand National Assembly. The assembly pressured the authorities of the Moldavian SSR to adopt a language law on 31 August 1989 that proclaimed the Moldovan language written in the Latin script to be the state language of the MSSR. Its identity with the Romanian language was also established.[63][65] In 1989, as opposition to the Communist Party grew, there were major riots in November.
+
+The first democratic elections for the local parliament were held in February and March 1990. Mircea Snegur was elected as Speaker of the Parliament, and Mircea Druc as Prime Minister. On 23 June 1990, the Parliament adopted the Declaration of Sovereignty of the "Soviet Socialist Republic Moldova", which, among other things, stipulated the supremacy of Moldovan laws over those of the Soviet Union.[63] After the failure of the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, Moldova declared its independence on 27 August 1991.
+
+On 21 December of the same year, Moldova, along with most of the other Soviet republics, signed the constitutive act that formed the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Moldova received official recognition on 25 December. On 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Declaring itself a neutral state, Moldova did not join the military branch of the CIS. Three months later, on 2 March 1992, the country gained formal recognition as an independent state at the United Nations. In 1994, Moldova became a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace program, and a member of the Council of Europe on 29 June 1995.[63]
+
+In the region east of the Dniester river, Transnistria, which includes a large proportion of predominantly russophone East Slavs of Ukrainian (28%) and Russian (26%) descent (altogether 54% as of 1989), an independent Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed on 16 August 1990, with its capital in Tiraspol.[63] The motives behind this move were fear of the rise of nationalism in Moldova. In the winter of 1991–1992 clashes occurred between Transnistrian forces, supported by elements of the 14th Army, and the Moldovan police. Between 2 March and 26 July 1992, the conflict escalated into a military engagement.
+
+On 2 January 1992, Moldova introduced a market economy, liberalizing prices, which resulted in rapid inflation. From 1992 to 2001, the country suffered a serious economic crisis, leaving most of the population below the poverty line. In 1993, the government introduced a new national currency, the Moldovan leu, to replace the temporary cupon. The economy of Moldova began to change in 2001; and until 2008 the country saw a steady annual growth between 5% and 10%. The early 2000s also saw a considerable growth of emigration of Moldovans looking for work (mostly illegally) in Russia (especially the Moscow region), Italy, Portugal, Spain, and other countries; remittances from Moldovans abroad account for almost 38% of Moldova's GDP, the second-highest percentage in the world, after Tajikistan (45%).[66][67]
+
+In the 1994 parliamentary elections, the Democratic Agrarian Party gained a majority of the seats, setting a turning point in Moldovan politics. With the nationalist Popular Front now in a parliamentary minority, new measures aiming to moderate the ethnic tensions in the country could be adopted. Plans for a union with Romania were abandoned,[63] and the new Constitution gave autonomy to the breakaway Transnistria and Gagauzia. On 23 December 1994, the Parliament of Moldova adopted a "Law on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia", and in 1995 the latter was constituted.
+
+After winning the 1996 presidential elections, on 15 January 1997, Petru Lucinschi, the former First Secretary of the Moldavian Communist Party in 1989–91, became the country's second president (1997–2001), succeeding Mircea Snegur (1991–1996). In 2000, the Constitution was amended, transforming Moldova into a parliamentary republic, with the president being chosen through indirect election rather than direct popular vote.
+
+Winning 49.9% of the vote, the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (reinstituted in 1993 after being outlawed in 1991), gained 71 of the 101 MPs, and on 4 April 2001, elected Vladimir Voronin as the country's third president (re-elected in 2005). The country became the first post-Soviet state where a non-reformed Communist Party returned to power.[63] New governments were formed by Vasile Tarlev (19 April 2001 – 31 March 2008), and Zinaida Greceanîi (31 March 2008 – 14 September 2009). In 2001–2003 relations between Moldova and Russia improved, but then temporarily deteriorated in 2003–2006, in the wake of the failure of the Kozak memorandum, culminating in the 2006 wine exports crisis. The Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova managed to stay in power for eight years. The fragmentation of the liberal bloc helped consolidate its power. The decline of the Communist Party started in 2009 after Marian Lupu joined the Democratic Party.[68]
+
+In the April 2009 parliamentary elections, the Communist Party won 49.48% of the votes, followed by the Liberal Party with 13.14% of the votes, the Liberal Democratic Party with 12.43%, and the Alliance "Moldova Noastră" with 9.77%. The controversial results of this election sparked civil unrest[69][70][71]
+
+In August 2009, four Moldovan parties (Liberal Democratic Party, Liberal Party, Democratic Party, and Our Moldova Alliance) agreed to create the Alliance For European Integration that pushed the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova into opposition. On 28 August 2009, this coalition chose a new parliament speaker (Mihai Ghimpu) in a vote that was boycotted by Communist legislators. Vladimir Voronin, who had been President of Moldova since 2001, eventually resigned on 11 September 2009, but the Parliament failed to elect a new president. The acting president Mihai Ghimpu instituted the Commission for constitutional reform in Moldova to adopt a new version of the Constitution of Moldova. After the constitutional referendum aimed to approve the reform failed in September 2010,[72] the parliament was dissolved again and a new parliamentary election was scheduled for 28 November 2010.[73] On 30 December 2010, Marian Lupu was elected as the Speaker of the Parliament and the acting President of Republic of Moldova.[74] After the Alliance for European Integration lost a no confidence vote, the Pro-European Coalition was formed on 30 May 2013.
+
+In November 2014, Moldova's central bank took control of Banca de Economii, the country's largest lender, and two smaller institutions, Banca Sociala and Unibank. Investigations into activities at these three banks uncovered a large-scale fraud by means of fraudulent loans to business entities controlled by a Moldovan-Israeli business oligarch, Ilan Shor, of funds worth about 1 billion U.S. dollars.[75] The large scale of the fraud compared to the size of the Moldovan economy are cited as tilting the country's politics in favour of the pro-Russian Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova.[76] In 2015, Shor was still at large, after a period of house arrest.
+
+Following a period of political instability and massive public protests, a new Government led by Pavel Filip was invested in January 2016.[77] Concerns over statewide corruption, the independence of the judiciary system, and the intransparency of the banking system, were expressed. Germany's broadcaster Deutsche Welle also raised concerns over the alleged influence of Moldovan oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc over the Filip government.[78]
+
+In the December 2016 presidential election, Socialist, pro-Russian Igor Dodon was elected as the new president of the republic.
+
+In 2019, from 7 June to 15 June, the Moldovan government went through a period of dual power in what is known as the 2019 Moldovan constitutional crisis. On 7 June, the Constitutional Court, which is largely believed to be controlled by Vladimir Plahotniuc[79] from the Democratic Party, announced that they have temporarily removed the sitting president, Igor Dodon, from power due to his ‘inability’ to call new parliamentary elections as the parliament did not form a coalition within 3 months of the validation of the election results. According to Moldovan constitutional law, the president may call snap elections if no government is formed after 3 months.[80] However, on 8 June, the NOW Platform DA and PAS reached an agreement with the Socialist party forming a government led by Maia Sandu as the new prime minister, pushing the Democratic Party out of power.[81] This new government was also supported by Igor Dodon. The new coalition and Igor Dodon argued that the president may call snap elections after consulting the parliament but is not obligated. Additionally, because the election results were verified on 9 March, 3 months should be interpreted as 3 calendar months, not 90 days as was the case. The former prime minister, Pavel Filip from the Democratic Party, said that new parliamentary elections will be held on 6 September and refused to recognize the new coalition, calling it an illegal government. After a week of dual government meetings, some protest, and the international community mostly supporting the new government coalition, Pavel Filip stepped down as prime minister but still called for new elections.[82] The Constitutional court repealed the decision on 15 June effectively ending the crisis.[83]
+
+In March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the government called a "national red code alert" as the number of coronavirus cases in the country rose to six on 13 March. Government "banned all gatherings of over 50 people until 1 April and closed all schools and kindergartens in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus". Flights were banned to Spain, Italy, France, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Germany, Ireland, the U.K., Poland, Portugal and Romania.[84] On 17 March, Parliament declared a state of emergency for at least 60 days, suspended all international flights and closed borders with neighbours Romania and the Ukraine. Moldova reported 29 cases of the disease on 17 March.[85] The country reported its first death from the disease on 18 March, a date on which the total number of cases reached 30.[86]
+
+Moldova is a unitary parliamentary representative democratic republic. The 1994 Constitution of Moldova sets the framework for the government of the country. A parliamentary majority of at least two-thirds is required to amend the Constitution of Moldova, which cannot be revised in time of war or national emergency. Amendments to the Constitution affecting the state's sovereignty, independence, or unity can only be made after a majority of voters support the proposal in a referendum. Furthermore, no revision can be made to limit the fundamental rights of people enumerated in the Constitution.[87]
+
+The country's central legislative body is the unicameral Moldovan Parliament (Parlament), which has 101 seats, and whose members are elected by popular vote on party lists every four years.
+
+The head of state is the President of Moldova, who between 2001 and 2015 was elected by the Moldovan Parliament, requiring the support of three-fifths of the deputies (at least 61 votes). The president of Moldova has been elected by the parliament since 2001, a change designed to decrease executive authority in favour of the legislature. Nevertheless, the Constitutional Court ruled on 4 March 2016, that this constitutional change adopted in 2000 regarding the presidential election was unconstitutional,[88] thus reverting the election method of the President to a two-round system direct election.
+
+The president appoints a prime minister who functions as the head of government, and who in turn assembles a cabinet, both subject to parliamentary approval.
+
+The 1994 constitution also establishes an independent Constitutional Court, composed of six judges (two appointed by the President, two by Parliament, and two by the Supreme Council of Magistrature), serving six-year terms, during which they are irremovable and not subordinate to any power. The Court is invested with the power of judicial review over all acts of the parliament, over presidential decrees, and over international treaties, signed by the country.[87]
+
+On 19 December 2016, Moldovan MPs approved raising the retirement age to 63 years[89] from the current level of 57 for women and 62 for men, a reform that is part of a 3-year-old assistance program agreed with the International Monetary Fund. The retirement age will be lifted gradually by a few months every year until coming fully into effect in 2028.
+
+Life expectancy in the ex-Soviet country (which is among Europe's poorest) is 67.5 years for men and 75.5 years for women. In a country with a population of 3.5 million, of which 1 million are abroad, there are more than 700,000 pensioners.
+
+After achieving independence from the Soviet Union, Moldova's foreign policy was designed with a view to establishing relations with other European countries, neutrality, and European Union integration. In 1995 the country was admitted to the Council of Europe.
+
+In addition to its participation in NATO's Partnership for Peace programme, Moldova is also a member state of the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Francophonie and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
+
+In 2005, Moldova and the EU established an action plan that sought to improve collaboration between its two neighbouring countries, Romania and Ukraine. At the end of 2005 EUBAM, the European Union Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine, was established at the joint request of the presidents of Moldova and Ukraine. EUBAM assists the Moldovan and Ukrainian governments in approximating their border and customs procedures to EU standards and offers support in both countries' fight against cross-border crime.
+
+After the 1990–1992 War of Transnistria, Moldova sought a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Transnistria region by working with Romania, Ukraine, and Russia, calling for international mediation, and co-operating with the OSCE and UN fact-finding and observer missions. The foreign minister of Moldova, Andrei Stratan, repeatedly stated that the Russian troops stationed in the breakaway region were there against the will of the Moldovan government and called on them to leave "completely and unconditionally".[90] In 2012, a security zone incident resulted in the death of a civilian, raising tensions with Russia.[91]
+
+In September 2010, the European Parliament approved a grant of €90 million to Moldova.[92] The money was to supplement US$570 million in International Monetary Fund loans,[93] World Bank and other bilateral support already granted to Moldova. In April 2010, Romania offered Moldova development aid worth of €100 million while the number of scholarships for Moldovan students doubled to 5,000.[94] According to a lending agreement signed in February 2010, Poland provided US$15 million as a component of its support for Moldova in its European integration efforts.[95] The first joint meeting of the Governments of Romania and Moldova, held in March 2012, concluded with several bilateral agreements in various fields.[96][97] The European orientation "has been the policy of Moldova in recent years and this is the policy that must continue," Nicolae Timofti told lawmakers before his election.[98]
+
+On 29 November 2013, at a summit in Vilnius, Moldova signed an association agreement with the European Union dedicated to the European Union's 'Eastern Partnership' with ex-Soviet countries.[99] The ex-Romanian President Traian Băsescu stated that Romania will make all efforts for Moldova to join the EU as soon as possible. Likewise, Traian Băsescu declared that the unification of Moldova with Romania is the next national project for Romania, as more than 75% of the population speaks Romanian.[100]
+
+Moldova has signed the Association Agreement with the European Union in Brussels on 27 June 2014. The signing comes after the accord has been initialed in Vilnius in November 2013.[101][102]
+
+It can be said that religious leaders play a role in shaping foreign policy. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Government has frequently used its connections with the Russian Orthodox Church to block and stymie the integration of former Soviet states like Moldova into the West.[103]
+
+The Moldovan armed forces consist of the Ground Forces and Air Force. Moldova has accepted all relevant arms control obligations of the former Soviet Union. On 30 October 1992, Moldova ratified the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which establishes comprehensive limits on key categories of conventional military equipment and provides for the destruction of weapons in excess of those limits. The country acceded to the provisions of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in October 1994 in Washington, D.C. It does not have nuclear, biological, chemical or radiological weapons. Moldova joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's Partnership for Peace on 16 March 1994.
+
+Moldova is committed to a number of international and regional control of arms regulations such as the UN Firearms Protocol, Stability Pact Regional Implementation Plan, the UN Programme of Action (PoA) and the OSCE Documents on Stockpiles of Conventional Ammunition.
+
+Since declaring independence in 1991, Moldova has participated in UN peacekeeping missions in Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Sudan and Georgia.
+
+Moldova signed a military agreement with Romania to strengthen regional security. The agreement is part of Moldova's strategy to reform its military and cooperate with its neighbours.[104]
+
+On 12 November 2014, the US donated to Moldovan Armed Forces 39 Humvees and 10 trailers, with a value of US$700,000, to the 22nd Peacekeeping Battalion of the Moldovan National Army to "increase the capability of Moldovan peacekeeping contingents."[105]
+
+According to Amnesty International, as of 2004 "Torture and other ill-treatment in police detention remained widespread; the state failed to carry out prompt and impartial investigations and police officers sometimes evaded penalties. Political dissidents from Ilașcu Group were released from arbitrary detention in the break-away Transdinester region only after an order of the European Court of Human Rights.[106] In 2009, when Moldova experienced its most serious civil unrest in a decade, several civilians, including Valeriu Boboc, were killed and many more injured.[107]
+
+According to Human Rights Report of the United States Department of State, released in April 2011, "In contrast to the previous year, there were no reports of killings by security forces. During the year reports of government exercising undue influence over the media substantially decreased." But "Transnistrian authorities continued to harass independent media and opposition lawmakers; restrict freedom of association, movement, and religion; and discriminate against Romanian speakers."[108] Moldova "has made noteworthy progress" on religious freedom since the era of the Soviet Union, but it can still take further steps to foster diversity," said the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief Heiner Bielefeldt, in Chișinău, in September 2011.[109] Moldova improved its legislation by enacting the Law on Preventing and Combating Family Violence, in 2008.[110]
+
+Moldova is divided into 32 districts (raioane, singular raion), three municipalities and two autonomous regions (Gagauzia and Transnistria).[111] The final status of Transnistria is disputed, as the central government does not control that territory. 10 other cities, including Comrat and Tiraspol, the administrative seats of the two autonomous territories, also have municipality status.
+
+Moldova has 66 cities (towns), including 13 with municipality status, and 916 communes. Another 700 villages are too small to have a separate administration and are administratively part of either cities (41 of them) or communes (659). This makes for a total of 1,682 localities in Moldova, two of which are uninhabited.[112]
+
+Chișinău
+Tiraspol
+
+Bălți
+Bender
+
+The largest city in Moldova is Chișinău with a population of 635,994 people.
+
+Moldova lies between latitudes 45° and 49° N, and mostly between meridians 26° and 30° E (a small area lies east of 30°). The total land area is 33,851 km2
+
+The largest part of the nation lies between two rivers, the Dniester and the Prut. The western border of Moldova is formed by the Prut river, which joins the Danube before flowing into the Black Sea. Moldova has access to the Danube for only about 480 m (1,575 ft), and Giurgiulești is the only Moldovan port on the Danube. In the east, the Dniester is the main river, flowing through the country from north to south, receiving the waters of Răut, Bîc, Ichel, Botna. Ialpug flows into one of the Danube limans, while Cogîlnic into the Black Sea chain of limans.
+
+The country is landlocked, though it is close to the Black Sea. While most of the country is hilly, elevations never exceed 430 m (1,411 ft) – the highest point being the Bălănești Hill. Moldova's hills are part of the Moldavian Plateau, which geologically originate from the Carpathian Mountains. Its subdivisions in Moldova include the Dniester Hills (Northern Moldavian Hills and Dniester Ridge), the Moldavian Plain (Middle Prut Valley and Bălți Steppe), and the Central Moldavian Plateau (Ciuluc-Soloneț Hills, Cornești Hills—Codri Massive, "Codri" meaning "forests"—Lower Dniester Hills, Lower Prut Valley, and Tigheci Hills). In the south, the country has a small flatland, the Bugeac Plain. The territory of Moldova east of the river Dniester is split between parts of the Podolian Plateau, and parts of the Eurasian Steppe.
+
+The country's main cities are the capital Chișinău, in the centre of the country, Tiraspol (in the eastern region of Transnistria), Bălți (in the north) and Bender (in the south-east). Comrat is the administrative centre of Gagauzia.
+
+Moldova has a climate which is moderately continental; its proximity to the Black Sea leads to the climate being mildly cold in the autumn and winter and relatively cool in the spring and summer.[113]
+
+The summers are warm and long, with temperatures averaging about 20 °C (68 °F) and the winters are relatively mild and dry, with January temperatures averaging −4 °C (25 °F). Annual rainfall, which ranges from around 600 mm (24 in) in the north to 400 mm (16 in) in the south, can vary greatly; long dry spells are not unusual. The heaviest rainfall occurs in early summer and again in October; heavy showers and thunderstorms are common. Because of the irregular terrain, heavy summer rains often cause erosion and river silting.
+
+The highest temperature ever recorded in Moldova was 41.5 °C (106.7 °F) on 21 July 2007 in Camenca.[114] The lowest temperature ever recorded was −35.5 °C (−31.9 °F) on 20 January 1963 in Brătușeni, Edineț county.[115]
+
+Phytogeographically, Moldova is split between the East European Plain and the Pontic–Caspian steppe of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. Forests currently cover only 11% of Moldova, though the state is making efforts to increase their range. Game animals, such as red deer, roe deer and wild boar can be found in these wooded areas.[117]
+
+The environment of Moldova suffered extreme degradation during the Soviet period, when industrial and agricultural development proceeded without regard for environmental protection.[117] Excessive use of pesticides resulted in heavily polluted topsoil, and industries lacked emission controls.[117] Founded in 1990, the Ecological Movement of Moldova, a national, non-governmental, nonprofit organization which is a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature has been working to restore the damage to Moldova's natural environment.[117] The movement is national representative of the Center "Naturopa" of the Council of Europe and United Nations Environment Programme of the United Nations.[118]
+
+Once possessing a range from the British Isles through Central Asia over the Bering Strait into Alaska and Canada's Yukon as well as the Northwest Territories, saiga survived in Moldova and Romania into the late 18th century. Deforestation, demographic pressure, as well as excessive hunting eradicated the native saiga herds which is currently threatened with extinction. They were considered a characteristic animal of Scythia in antiquity. Historian Strabo referred to the Saiga as the kolos, describing it as "between the deer and ram in size" which (understandably but wrongly) was believed to drink through its nose.[121]
+
+Another animal which was extinct in Moldova since the 18th century until recently was the wisent. The species was reintroduced with the arrival of three European bison from Białowieża Forest in Poland several days before Moldova's Independence Day on August 27, 2005.[122] Moldova is currently interested in expanding their wisent population, and began talks with Belarus in 2019 regarding a bison exchange program between the two countries.[123]
+
+After the breakup from the USSR in 1991, energy shortages, political uncertainty, trade obstacles and weak administrative capacity contributed to the decline of economy. As a part of an ambitious economic liberalization effort, Moldova introduced a convertible currency, liberalized all prices, stopped issuing preferential credits to state enterprises, backed steady land privatization, removed export controls, and liberalized interest rates. The government entered into agreements with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to promote growth. 
+The economy reversed from decline in the late 1990s. Since 1999 the GDP (PPP) has had a steady growth as follows:[16][124]
+
+Although estimates point to possible modest overvaluation of the real exchange rate, external competitiveness appears broadly adequate as reflected in strong sustained export performance.[125] However, the near-term economic outlook is weak. Main risks to the near-term outlook relate to serious vulnerabilities and governance issues in the banking sector, policy slippages in the run up to the elections, intensification of geopolitical tensions in the region, and a further slowdown in activity in main trading partners.
+
+Moldova remains highly vulnerable to fluctuations in remittances from workers abroad (24 percent of GDP), exports to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and European Union (EU) (88 per cent of total exports), and donor support (about 10 per cent of government spending). The main transmission channels through which adverse exogenous shocks could impact the Moldovan economy are: remittances (also due to potentially returning migrants), external trade, and capital flows.
+
+Moldova largely achieved the main objectives of the combined ECF/EFF (IMF financial credit) supported program. The economy recovered from the drought-related contraction in 2012.
+
+The gross average monthly salary in the Republic of Moldova has registered a steady positive growth after 1999, being 5906 lei or 298 euros in 2018.
+
+Corporate governance in the banking sector is a major concern. In line with FSAP recommendations, significant weaknesses in the legal and regulatory frameworks must be urgently addressed to ensure stability and soundness of the financial sector. Moldova has achieved a substantial degree of fiscal consolidation in recent years, but this trend is now reversing. Resisting pre-election pressures for selective spending increases and returning to the path of fiscal consolidation would reduce reliance on exceptionally-high donor support. Structural fiscal reforms would help safeguard sustainability.[125] Monetary policy has been successful in maintaining inflation within the NBM's target range. The implementation of structural reforms outlined in the National Development Strategy (NDS) Moldova 2020—especially in the business environment, physical infrastructure, and human resources development areas—would help boost potential growth and reduce poverty.[125] Moldova's remarkable recovery from the severe recession of 2009 was largely the result of sound macroeconomic and financial policies and structural reforms. Despite a small contraction in 2012, Moldova's economic performance was among the strongest in the region during 2010–13. Economic activity grew cumulatively by about 24 percent; consumer price inflation was brought under control; and real wages increased cumulatively by about 13 percent. This expansion was made possible by adequate macroeconomic stabilization measures and ambitious structural reforms implemented in the wake of the crisis under a Fund-supported program. In November 2013, Moldova initialed an Association Agreement with the EU which includes provisions establishing a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA).
+
+A political crisis in early 2013 led to policy slippages in the fiscal and financial areas. The political crisis that broke out in early 2013 was resolved with the appointment of a government supported by a pro-European center-right/center coalition in May 2013. However, delays in policy implementation prevented completion of the final reviews under the ECF/EFF arrangements.[citation needed]
+
+Despite a sharp decline in poverty in recent years, Moldova remains one of the poorest countries in Europe and structural reforms are needed to promote sustainable growth. Based on the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) regional poverty line of US$5/day (PPP), 55 percent of the population was poor in 2011. While this was significantly lower than 94 percent in 2002, Moldova's poverty rate is still more than double the ECA average of 25 percent. The NDS—Moldova (National Development System) 2020, which was published in November 2012, focuses on several critical areas to boost economic development and reduce poverty. These include education, infrastructure, financial sector, business climate, energy consumption, pension system, and judicial framework. Following the regional financial crisis in 1998, Moldova has made significant progress towards achieving and retaining macroeconomic and financial stabilization. It has, furthermore, implemented many structural and institutional reforms that are indispensable for the efficient functioning of a market economy. These efforts have helped maintain macroeconomic and financial stability under difficult external circumstances, enabled the resumption of economic growth and contributed to establishing an environment conducive to the economy's further growth and development in the medium term.[citation needed]
+
+The government's goal of EU integration has resulted in some market-oriented progress. Moldova experienced better than expected economic growth in 2013 due to increased agriculture production, to economic policies adopted by the Moldovan government since 2009, and to the receipt of EU trade preferences connecting Moldovan products to the world's largest market. Moldova has signed the Association Agreement and the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the European Union during summer 2014.[136] Moldova has also achieved a Free Visa Regime[137] with the EU which represents the biggest achievement of Moldovan diplomacy since independence.[138] Still, growth has been hampered by high prices for Russian natural gas, a Russian import ban on Moldovan wine, increased foreign scrutiny of Moldovan agricultural products, and by Moldova's large external debt. Over the longer term, Moldova's economy remains vulnerable to political uncertainty, weak administrative capacity, vested bureaucratic interests, corruption, higher fuel prices, Russian pressure, and the separatist regime in Moldova's Transnistria region.[139]
+According to IMF World Economic Outlook April 2014, the Moldovan GDP (PPP) per capita is 3,927 International Dollars,[140][141] excluding grey economy and tax evasion.
+
+With few natural energy resources, Moldova imports almost all of its energy supplies from Russia and Ukraine. Moldova's dependence on Russian energy is underscored by a growing US$5 billion debt to Russian natural gas supplier Gazprom, largely the result of unreimbursed natural gas consumption in the separatist Transnistria region. In August 2013, work began on a new pipeline between Moldova and Romania that may eventually break Russia's monopoly on Moldova's gas supplies.[139] Moldova is a partner country of the EU INOGATE energy programme, which has four key topics: enhancing energy security, convergence of member state energy markets on the basis of EU internal energy market principles, supporting sustainable energy development, and attracting investment for energy projects of common and regional interest.[142]
+
+The country has a well-established wine industry. It has a vineyard area of 147,000 hectares (360,000 acres), of which 102,500 ha (253,000 acres) are used for commercial production. Most of the country's wine production is made for export. Many families have their own recipes and grape varieties that have been passed down through the generations. Mileștii Mici is the home of the largest wine cellar in the world. It stretches for 200 km and holds almost 2 million bottles of wine[143]
+
+Moldova's rich soil and temperate continental climate (with warm summers and mild winters) have made the country one of the most productive agricultural regions since ancient times, and a major supplier of agricultural products in southeastern Europe. In agriculture, the economic reform started with the land cadastre reform.[144]
+Moldova's agricultural products include vegetables, fruits, grapes, wine, and grains.[145]
+
+The main means of transportation in Moldova are railways 1,138 km (707 mi) and a highway system (12,730 km or 7,910 mi overall, including 10,937 km or 6,796 mi of paved surfaces). The sole international air gateway of Moldova is the Chișinău International Airport. The Giurgiulești terminal on the Danube is compatible with small seagoing vessels. Shipping on the lower Prut and Nistru rivers plays only a modest role in the country's transportation system.
+
+The first million mobile telephone users were registered in September 2005. The number of mobile telephone users in Moldova increased by 47.3% in the first quarter of 2008 against the last year and exceeded 2.89 million.[146]
+
+In September 2009, Moldova was the first country in the world to launch high-definition voice services (HD voice) for mobile phones, and the first country in Europe to launch 14.4 Mbit/s mobile broadband on a national scale, with over 40% population coverage.[147]
+
+As of 2010[update], there are around 1,295,000 Internet users in Moldova with overall Internet penetration of 35.9%.[148]
+
+On 6 June 2012, the Government approved the licensing of 4G / LTE for mobile operators.[149]
+
+Moldovans or Moldavians (Romanian: moldoveni, pronounced [moldoˈvenʲ]; Moldovan Cyrillic: Молдовень) are the largest ethnic group of the Republic of Moldova (75.1% of the population, as of 2014). Under the variant Moldavians, the term may also be used to refer to all inhabitants of the territory of historical Principality of Moldavia, currently divided among Romania (47.5%), Moldova (30.5%) and Ukraine (22%), regardless of ethnic identity. In Romania, the inhabitants from the Republic of Moldova are colloquially called "Bessarabians" (basarabeni) (after the Bessarabia region), in order to be distinguished from the inhabitants of the Romanian Moldavia region who also generally refer to themselves (or are referred to by the inhabitants of the other Romanian regions) as "Moldavians" (moldoveni), but declare Romanian ethnicity.
+
+According to the 2014 census preliminary data, 2,998,235 inhabitants lived in Moldova (within the areas controlled by the central government), an 11.3% decrease from the figure recorded at the 2004 census. The urbanization rate was 45% of the total population living in urban areas (as of 2015[update]).[156]
+
+According to the last census in Transnistria (October 2015), the population of the region was 475,665, a 14.3% decrease from the figure recorded at the 2004 census. The urbanization rate was 69.9%.[157][158]
+
+The official language of Moldova is Romanian, a Romance language related to Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
+
+The 1991 Declaration of Independence names the official language Romanian.[162][163] The Constitution of 1994 stated that the national language of the Republic of Moldova was Moldovan, and its writing is based on the Latin alphabet.[164]
+
+In 2013, the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled that the name "Romanian", as used in the Declaration of Independence to identify the official language, prevails over the name "Moldovan", given in Article 13 of the Constitution.[165]
+
+At the 2014 census (which did not include data from the Transnistrian region), 54.7% of the population named Moldovan whereas 24.0% named Romanian as their first language in daily use. Although only 4.1% are ethnic Russians, Russian is still used as the main language by 14.5% of the total population. Around 50% of ethnic Ukrainians, 33% of Gagauz, 33% of Bulgarians, and 5.7% of Moldovans declared Russian as their daily use language.
+
+Historically Russian was taught in schools as the first foreign language, because of the relationship with the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. In the 21st century, the primary foreign language taught in the schools is English. In 2013 more than 60% of schoolchildren took it as their first foreign language. This was followed by French, taken by less than 50% of students. Since 1996, the Republic of Moldova has been a full member of La Francophonie. German was the third-ranked choice.[169]
+
+For the 2004 census, Orthodox Christians, who make up 93.3% of Moldova's population, were not required to declare the particular of the two main churches they belong to. The Metropolis of Chișinău and All Moldova, autonomous and subordinated to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Metropolis of Bessarabia, autonomous and subordinated to the Romanian Orthodox Church, both claim to be the national church of the country. More than 2.0% of the population is Protestant including a growing number of Jehovah's Witnesses, 0.9% belongs to other religions, 1.0% is non-religious, 0.4% is atheist, and 2.2% did not answer the religion question at the census.
+
+There are 16 state and 15[170] private institutions of higher education in Moldova, with a total of 126,100 students, including 104,300 in the state institutions and 21,700 in the private ones. The number of students per 10,000 inhabitants in Moldova has been constantly growing since the collapse of the Soviet Union, reaching 217 in 2000–2001, and 351 in 2005–2006.
+
+The National Library of Moldova was founded in 1832. The Moldova State University and the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, the main scientific organizations of Moldova, were established in 1946.
+
+As of 2015[update], Romania allocates 5,000 scholarships in high schools and universities for Moldovan students.[171] Likewise, more than half of preschool children in Moldova benefit from Romania funded program to renovate and equip kindergartens.[172] Almost all the population is literate: the literacy rate of the population aged 15 and over is estimated at 99.4% (as of 2015[update]).[173]
+
+The CIA World Factbook lists widespread crime and underground economic activity among major issues in Moldova.[16] Human trafficking of Moldovan women and children to other parts of Europe is a serious problem.[174][175]
+
+In 2014, US$1 billion disappeared from three of Moldova's leading banks.[176] In two days loans worth US$1 billion were transferred in to United Kingdom and Hong Kong-registered companies whose ultimate owners are unknown.[176][177] Banks are administered by the National Bank of Moldova, so this loss was covered from state reserves.[176]
+
+The total fertility rate (TFR) in Moldova was estimated in 2015 at 1.56 children/woman,[178] which is below the replacement rate of 2.1. In 2012, the average age of women at first birth was 23.9 years, with 75.2% of births being to women under 30, and 22.4% of births being to unmarried women.[179] The maternal mortality rate was 41 deaths/100,000 live births (in 2010)[180] and the infant mortality rate was 12.59 deaths/1,000 live births (in 2015).[181] The life expectancy in 2015 was estimated at 70.42 years (66.55 years male, 74.54 years female).[181]
+
+Public expenditure on health was 4.2% of the GDP and private expenditure on health 3.2%.[182] There are about 264 physicians per 100,000 people.[182] Health expenditure was US$138 (PPP) per capita in 2004.[182]
+
+Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the country has seen a decrease in spending on health care and, as a result, the tuberculosis incidence rate in the country has grown.[183] According to a 2009 study, Moldova was struggling with one of the highest incidence rates of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the world.[184]
+
+The percentage of adults (aged 15–49) living with HIV/AIDS was estimated in 2009 at 0.40%.[185]
+
+Emigration is a mass phenomenon in Moldova and has a major impact on the country's demographics and economy. The Moldovan Intelligence and Security Service has estimated that 600,000 to one million Moldovan citizens (almost 25% of the population) are working abroad.[186]
+
+Moldova's cultural tradition has been influenced primarily by the Romanian origins of its majority population, the roots of which go back to the 2nd century AD, the period of Roman colonization in Dacia.[187] Located geographically at the crossroads of Latin, Slavic and other cultures, Moldova has enriched its own culture adopting and maintaining traditions of neighbouring regions and of other influential sources.[188] The largest ethnic group, which had come to identify itself widely as "Moldovan" by the 14th century, played a significant role in the shaping of classical Romanian culture. The culture has been also influenced by the Byzantine culture, the neighbouring Magyar and Slavic populations, and later by the Ottoman Turks. A strong Western European influence in Moldovan literature and arts was prevalent in the 19th century. During the periods 1812-1917 and 1944–89, Moldovans were influenced by Russian and Soviet administrative control as well and by ethnic Russian immigration.[187]
+
+The country's cultural heritage was marked by numerous churches and monasteries built by the Moldavian ruler Stephen the Great in the 15th century, by the works of the later renaissance Metropolitans Varlaam and Dosoftei, and those of scholars such as Grigore Ureche, Miron Costin, Nicolae Milescu, Dimitrie Cantemir[c] and Ion Neculce. In the 19th century, Moldavians from the territories of the medieval Principality of Moldavia, divided into Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Western Moldavia (after 1859, Romania), made a significant contribution to the formation of the modern Romanian culture. Among these were many Bessarabians, such as Alexandru Donici, Alexandru Hâjdeu, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Constantin Stamati, Constantin Stamati-Ciurea, Costache Negruzzi, Alecu Russo, Constantin Stere.
+
+Mihai Eminescu, a late Romantic poet, and Ion Creangă, a writer, are the most influential Romanian language artists, considered national writers both in Romania and Moldova.[189]
+
+The country has also important minority ethnic communities. Gagauz, 4.4% of the population, are Christian Turkic people. Greeks, Armenians, Poles, Ukrainians, although not numerous, were present since as early as the 17th century, and had left cultural marks. The 19th century saw the arrival of many more Ukrainians from Podolia and Galicia, as well as new communities, such as Lipovans, Bulgarians, and Germans.
+
+In October 1939, Radio Basarabia, a local station of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company, was the first radio station opened in Chișinău. Television in Moldova was introduced in April 1958, within the framework of Soviet television. Through cable, Moldovan viewers can receive a large number of Russian channels, a few Romanian channels, and several Russian language versions of international channels in addition to several local channels.[citation needed] One Russian and two local channels are aired.[citation needed] Infotag is the state news agency.
+
+Moldovan cuisine is similar to neighbouring Romania, and has been influenced by elements of Russian, Turkish, and Ukrainian cuisine. Main dishes include beef, pork, potatoes, cabbage, and a variety of cereals. Popular alcoholic beverages are divin (Moldovan brandy), beer, and local wine.
+
+Total recorded adult alcohol consumption is approximately evenly split between spirits, beer and wine.
+
+Among Moldova's most prominent composers are Gavriil Musicescu, Ștefan Neaga and Eugen Doga.
+
+In the field of pop music, Moldova has produced the band O-Zone, who came to prominence in 2003, with their hit song "Dragostea Din Tei", which topped multiple notable single charts. Moldova has been participating in the Eurovision Song Contest since 2005. Another popular band from Moldova is Zdob și Zdub that represented the country in the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing 6th.
+
+In May 2007, Natalia Barbu represented Moldova in Helsinki at the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 with her entry "Fight". Natalia squeezed into the final by a very small margin. She took 10th place with 109 points.
+Then Zdob și Zdub again represented Moldova in the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest finishing 12th.
+
+The band SunStroke Project with Olia Tira represented the country in the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest with their hit song "Run Away". Their performance gained international notoriety as an internet meme due to the pelvic thrusting and dancing of Sergey Stepanov, the band saxophonist. He has been fittingly dubbed "Epic Sax Guy". SunStroke Project featured again in the 2017 Eurovision entry "Hey Mama" which got third place.[190]
+
+In 2015 a new musical project by the name of Carla's Dreams has risen in popularity around Moldova. Carla's Dreams reached the top charts in multiple countries in Europe with the release of their song "Sub Pielea Mea" in 2016. The song received a lot of airplay and reached number one place on the charts in Moldova as well as Russia. The group is still active and released their latest album in 2017. The theme of the musical group is "Anonymous" as they perform with painted faces, hoodies and sunglasses. The identity of the group members is still unknown.
+
+Among most prominent classical musicians in Moldova are Maria Bieșu, one of the leading world's sopranos and the winner of the Japan International Competition; pianist Mark Zeltser, winner of the USSR National Competition, Margueritte Long Competition in Paris and Busoni Competition in Bolzano, Italy.
+
+Most retail businesses close on New Year's Day and Independence Day, but remain open on all other holidays. Christmas is celebrated either on 7 January, the traditional date in Old Calendarists Eastern Orthodox Churches, or on 25 December, with both dates being recognized as public holidays.[191]
+
+Trîntă (a form of wrestling) is the national sport in Moldova. Association football is the most popular team sport.
+
+Rugby union is popular as well. More than 10,000 supporters turn out for home internationals. Since 2004, playing numbers at all levels have more than doubled to 3,200. Despite the hardships and deprivations the national team are ranked 34th in the world.[192] The most prestigious cycling race is the Moldova President's Cup, which was first run in 2004.
+
+Athletes from Moldova have won European medals in Athletics, Biathlon, Football and Gymnastics, World medals in Archery, Judo, Swimming and Taekwondo, as well as Olympic medals in Boxing, Canoeing, Shooting, Weightlifting and Wrestling.

en/3902.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,319 @@
+
+
+Water is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms. It is vital for all known forms of life, even though it provides no calories or organic nutrients. Its chemical formula is H2O, meaning that each of its molecules contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, connected by covalent bonds.
+
+"Water" is the name of the liquid state of H2O at standard ambient temperature and pressure. It forms precipitation in the form of rain and aerosols in the form of fog. Clouds are formed from suspended droplets of water and ice, its solid state. When finely divided, crystalline ice may precipitate in the form of snow. The gaseous state of water is steam or water vapor. Water moves continually through the water cycle of evaporation, transpiration (evapotranspiration), condensation, precipitation, and runoff, usually reaching the sea.
+
+Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface, mostly in seas and oceans.[1] Small portions of water occur as groundwater (1.7%), in the glaciers and the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland (1.7%), and in the air as vapor, clouds (formed of ice and liquid water suspended in air), and precipitation (0.001%).[2][3]
+
+Water plays an important role in the world economy. Approximately 70% of the freshwater used by humans goes to agriculture.[4] Fishing in salt and fresh water bodies is a major source of food for many parts of the world. Much of the long-distance trade of commodities (such as oil, natural gas, and manufactured products) is transported by boats through seas, rivers, lakes, and canals. Large quantities of water, ice, and steam are used for cooling and heating, in industry and homes. Water is an excellent solvent for a wide variety of substances both mineral and organic; as such it is widely used in industrial processes, and in cooking and washing. Water, ice and snow are also central to many sports and other forms of entertainment, such as swimming, pleasure boating, boat racing, surfing, sport fishing, diving, ice skating and skiing.
+
+The word water comes from Old English wæter, from Proto-Germanic *watar (source also of Old Saxon watar, Old Frisian wetir, Dutch water, Old High German wazzar, German Wasser, Old Norse vatn, Gothic wato), from Proto-Indo-European *wod-or, suffixed form of root *wed- ("water"; "wet").[5] Also cognate, through the Indo-European root, with Greek ύδωρ (ýdor), Russian вода́ (vodá), Irish uisce, Albanian ujë.
+
+Water (H2O) is a polar inorganic compound that is at room temperature a tasteless and odorless liquid, nearly colorless with a hint of blue. This simplest hydrogen chalcogenide is by far the most studied chemical compound and is described as the "universal solvent" for its ability to dissolve many substances.[6][7] This allows it to be the "solvent of life":[8] indeed, water as found in nature almost always includes various dissolved substances, and special steps are required to obtain chemically pure water. Water is the only common substance to exist as a solid, liquid, and gas in normal terrestrial conditions.[9]
+
+Along with oxidane, water is one of the two official names for the chemical compound H2O;[10] it is also the liquid phase of H2O.[11] The other two common states of matter of water are the solid phase, ice, and the gaseous phase, water vapor or steam. The addition or removal of heat can cause phase transitions:  freezing (water to ice), melting (ice to water), vaporization (water to vapor), condensation (vapor to water), sublimation (ice to vapor) and deposition (vapor to ice).[12]
+
+Water differs from most liquids in that it becomes less dense as it freezes.[14] In 1 atm pressure, it reaches its maximum density of 1,000 kg/m3 (62.43 lb/cu ft) at 3.98 °C (39.16 °F).[15] The density of ice is 917 kg/m3 (57.25 lb/cu ft), an expansion of 9%.[16][17] This expansion can exert enormous pressure, bursting pipes and cracking rocks (see Frost weathering).[18]
+
+In a lake or ocean, water at 4 °C sinks to the bottom and ice forms on the surface, floating on the liquid water. This ice insulates the water below, preventing it from freezing solid. Without this protection, most aquatic organisms would perish during the winter.[19]
+
+At a pressure of one atmosphere (atm), ice melts or water freezes at 0 °C (32 °F) and water boils or vapor condenses at 100 °C (212 °F). However, even below the boiling point, water can change to vapor at its surface by evaporation (vaporization throughout the liquid is known as boiling). Sublimation and deposition also occur on surfaces.[12] For example, frost is deposited on cold surfaces while snowflakes form by deposition on an aerosol particle or ice nucleus.[20] In the process of freeze-drying, a food is frozen and then stored at low pressure so the ice on its surface sublimates.[21]
+
+The melting and boiling points depend on pressure. A good approximation for the rate of change of the melting temperature with pressure is given by the Clausius–Clapeyron relation:
+
+where 
+
+
+
+
+v
+
+L
+
+
+
+
+{\displaystyle v_{\text{L}}}
+
+ and 
+
+
+
+
+v
+
+G
+
+
+
+
+{\displaystyle v_{\text{G}}}
+
+ are the molar volumes of the liquid and gas phases, and 
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+f
+
+
+
+
+{\displaystyle L_{\text{f}}}
+
+ is the molar latent heat of melting. In most substances, the volume increases when melting occurs, so the melting temperature increases with pressure. However, because ice is less dense than water, the melting temperature decreases.[13] In glaciers, pressure melting can occur under sufficiently thick volumes of ice, resulting in subglacial lakes.[22][23]
+
+The Clausius-Clapeyron relation also applies to the boiling point, except now the vapor phase has a much lower density than the liquid phase, so the boiling point increases with pressure.[24] Water can remain in a liquid state at high temperatures in the deep ocean or underground. For example, temperatures exceed 205 °C (401 °F) in Old Faithful, a geyser in Yellowstone National Park.[25] In hydrothermal vents, the temperature can exceed 400 °C (752 °F).[26]
+
+At sea level, the boiling point of water is 100 °C (212 °F). As atmospheric pressure decreases with altitude, the boiling point decreases by 1 °C every 274 meters. High-altitude cooking takes longer than sea-level cooking. For example, at 1,524 metres (5,000 ft), cooking time must be increased by a fourth to achieve the desired result.[27] (Conversely, a pressure cooker can be used to decrease cooking times by raising the boiling temperature.[28])
+In a vacuum, water will boil at room temperature.[29]
+
+On a pressure/temperature phase diagram (see figure), there are curves separating solid from vapor, vapor from liquid, and liquid from solid. These meet at a single point called the triple point, where all three phases can coexist. The triple point is at a temperature of 273.16 K (0.01 °C) and a pressure of 611.657 pascals (0.00604 atm);[30] it is the lowest pressure at which liquid water can exist. Until 2019, the triple point was used to define the Kelvin temperature scale.[31][32]
+
+The water/vapor phase curve terminates at 647.096 K (373.946 °C; 705.103 °F) and 22.064 megapascals (3,200.1 psi; 217.75 atm).[33] This is known as the critical point. At higher temperatures and pressures the liquid and vapor phases form a continuous phase called a supercritical fluid. It can be gradually compressed or expanded between gas-like and liquid-like densities, its properties (which are quite different from those of ambient water) are sensitive to density. For example, for suitable pressures and temperatures it can mix freely with nonpolar compounds, including most organic compounds. This makes it useful in a variety of applications including high-temperature electrochemistry and as an ecologically benign solvent or catalyst in chemical reactions involving organic compounds. In Earth's mantle, it acts as a solvent during mineral formation, dissolution and deposition.[34][35]
+
+The normal form of ice on the surface of Earth is Ice Ih, a phase that forms crystals with hexagonal symmetry. Another with cubic crystalline symmetry, Ice Ic, can occur in the upper atmosphere.[36] As the pressure increases, ice forms other crystal structures. As of 2019, 17 have been experimentally confirmed and several more are predicted theoretically.[37] When sandwiched between layers of graphene, ice forms a square lattice.[38]
+
+The details of the chemical nature of liquid water are not well understood; some theories suggest that its unusual behaviour is due to the existence of 2 liquid states.[15][39][40][41]
+
+Pure water is usually described as tasteless and odorless, although humans have specific sensors that can feel the presence of water in their mouths,[42] and frogs are known to be able to smell it.[43] However, water from ordinary sources (including bottled mineral water) usually has many dissolved substances, that may give it varying tastes and odors. Humans and other animals have developed senses that enable them to evaluate the potability of water by avoiding water that is too salty or putrid.[44]
+
+Pure water is visibly blue due to absorption of light in the region ca. 600 nm - 800 nm.[45] The color can be easily observed in a glass of tap-water placed against a pure white background, in daylight.The principal absorption bands responsible for the color are overtones of the O-H stretching vibrations. The apparent intensity of the color increases with the depth of the water column, following Beer's law. This also applies, for example, with a swimming pool when the light source is sunlight reflected from the pool's white tiles.
+
+In nature, the color may also be modified from blue to green due to the presence of suspended solids or algae.
+
+In industry, near-infrared spectroscopy is used with aqueous solutions as the greater intensity of the lower overtones of water means that glass cuvettes with short path-length may be employed. To observe the fundamental stretching absorption spectrum of water or of an aqueous solution in the region around 3500 cm−1 (2.85 μm)[46] a path length of about 25 μm is needed. Also, the cuvette must be both transparent around 3500 cm−1 and insoluble in water; calcium fluoride is one material that is in common use for the cuvette windows with aqueous solutions.
+
+The Raman-active fundamental vibrations may be observed with, for example, a 1 cm sample cell.
+
+Aquatic plants, algae, and other photosynthetic organisms can live in water up to hundreds of meters deep, because sunlight can reach them.
+Practically no sunlight reaches the parts of the oceans below 1,000 meters (3,300 ft) of depth.
+
+The refractive index of liquid water (1.333 at 20 °C (68 °F)) is much higher than that of air (1.0), similar to those of alkanes and ethanol, but lower than those of glycerol (1.473), benzene (1.501), carbon disulfide (1.627), and common types of glass (1.4 to 1.6). The refraction index of ice (1.31) is lower than that of liquid water.
+
+In a water molecule, the hydrogen atoms form a 104.5° angle with the oxygen atom. The hydrogen atoms are close to two corners of a tetrahedron centered on the oxygen. At the other two corners are lone pairs of valence electrons that do not participate in the bonding. In a perfect tetrahedron, the atoms would form a 109.5° angle, but the repulsion between the lone pairs is greater than the repulsion between the hydrogen atoms.[47][48]
+
+Other substances have a tetrahedral molecular structure, for example, methane (CH4) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S). However, oxygen is more electronegative (holds on to its electrons more tightly) than most other elements, so the oxygen atom retains a negative charge while the hydrogen atoms are positively charged. Along with the bent structure, this gives the molecule an electrical dipole moment and it is classified as a polar molecule.[49]
+
+Water is a good polar solvent, that dissolves many salts and hydrophilic organic molecules such as sugars and simple alcohols such as ethanol. Water also dissolves many gases, such as oxygen and carbon dioxide—the latter giving the fizz of carbonated beverages, sparkling wines and beers. In addition, many substances in living organisms, such as proteins, DNA and polysaccharides, are dissolved in water. The interactions between water and the subunits of these biomacromolecules shape protein folding, DNA base pairing, and other phenomena crucial to life (hydrophobic effect).
+
+Many organic substances (such as fats and oils and alkanes) are hydrophobic, that is, insoluble in water. Many inorganic substances are insoluble too, including most metal oxides, sulfides, and silicates.
+
+Because of its polarity, a molecule of water in the liquid or solid state can form up to four hydrogen bonds with neighboring molecules. Hydrogen bonds are about ten times as strong as the Van der Waals force that attracts molecules to each other in most liquids. This is the reason why the melting and boiling points of water are much higher than those of other analogous compounds like hydrogen sulfide. They also explain its exceptionally high specific heat capacity (about 4.2 J/g/K), heat of fusion (about 333 J/g), heat of vaporization (2257 J/g), and thermal conductivity (between 0.561 and 0.679 W/m/K). These properties make water more effective at moderating Earth's climate, by storing heat and transporting it between the oceans and the atmosphere. The hydrogen bonds of water are around 23 kJ/mol (compared to a covalent O-H bond at 492 kJ/mol). Of this, it is estimated that 90% is attributable to electrostatics, while the remaining 10% is partially covalent.[50]
+
+These bonds are the cause of water's high surface tension[51] and capillary forces. The capillary action refers to the tendency of water to move up a narrow tube against the force of gravity. This property is relied upon by all vascular plants, such as trees.[52]
+
+Water is a weak solution of hydronium hydroxide - there is an equilibrium 2H2O ⇔ H3O+ + OH−, in combination with solvation of the resulting hydronium ions.
+
+Pure water has a low electrical conductivity, which increases with the dissolution of a small amount of ionic material such as common salt.
+
+Liquid water can be split into the elements hydrogen and oxygen by passing an electric current through it—a process called electrolysis. The decomposition requires more energy input than the heat released by the inverse process (285.8 kJ/mol, or 15.9 MJ/kg).[53]
+
+Liquid water can be assumed to be incompressible for most purposes: its compressibility ranges from 4.4 to 5.1×10−10 Pa−1 in ordinary conditions.[54] Even in oceans at 4 km depth, where the pressure is 400 atm, water suffers only a 1.8% decrease in volume.[55]
+
+The viscosity of water is about 10−3 Pa·s or 0.01 poise at 20 °C (68 °F), and the speed of sound in liquid water ranges between 1,400 and 1,540 meters per second (4,600 and 5,100 ft/s) depending on temperature. Sound travels long distances in water with little attenuation, especially at low frequencies (roughly 0.03 dB/km for 1 kHz), a property that is exploited by cetaceans and humans for communication and environment sensing (sonar).[56]
+
+Metallic elements which are more electropositive than hydrogen, particularly the alkali metals and alkaline earth metals such as lithium, sodium, calcium, potassium and cesium displace hydrogen from water, forming hydroxides and releasing hydrogen. At high temperatures, carbon reacts with steam to form carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
+
+Hydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water throughout the Earth. The study of the distribution of water is hydrography. The study of the distribution and movement of groundwater is hydrogeology, of glaciers is glaciology, of inland waters is limnology and distribution of oceans is oceanography. Ecological processes with hydrology are in focus of ecohydrology.
+
+The collective mass of water found on, under, and over the surface of a planet is called the hydrosphere. Earth's approximate water volume (the total water supply of the world) is 1.386 × 109 cubic kilometers (3.33 × 108 cubic miles).[2]
+
+Liquid water is found in bodies of water, such as an ocean, sea, lake, river, stream, canal, pond, or puddle. The majority of water on Earth is sea water. Water is also present in the atmosphere in solid, liquid, and vapor states. It also exists as groundwater in aquifers.
+
+Water is important in many geological processes. Groundwater is present in most rocks, and the pressure of this groundwater affects patterns of faulting. Water in the mantle is responsible for the melt that produces volcanoes at subduction zones. On the surface of the Earth, water is important in both chemical and physical weathering processes. Water, and to a lesser but still significant extent, ice, are also responsible for a large amount of sediment transport that occurs on the surface of the earth. Deposition of transported sediment forms many types of sedimentary rocks, which make up the geologic record of Earth history.
+
+The water cycle (known scientifically as the hydrologic cycle) refers to the continuous exchange of water within the hydrosphere, between the atmosphere, soil water, surface water, groundwater, and plants.
+
+Water moves perpetually through each of these regions in the water cycle consisting of the following transfer processes:
+
+Most water vapor over the oceans returns to the oceans, but winds carry water vapor over land at the same rate as runoff into the sea, about 47 Tt per year. Over land, evaporation and transpiration contribute another 72 Tt per year. Precipitation, at a rate of 119 Tt per year over land, has several forms: most commonly rain, snow, and hail, with some contribution from fog and dew.[57] Dew is small drops of water that are condensed when a high density of water vapor meets a cool surface. Dew usually forms in the morning when the temperature is the lowest, just before sunrise and when the temperature of the earth's surface starts to increase.[58] Condensed water in the air may also refract sunlight to produce rainbows.
+
+Water runoff often collects over watersheds flowing into rivers. A mathematical model used to simulate river or stream flow and calculate water quality parameters is a hydrological transport model. Some water is diverted to irrigation for agriculture. Rivers and seas offer opportunity for travel and commerce. Through erosion, runoff shapes the environment creating river valleys and deltas which provide rich soil and level ground for the establishment of population centers. A flood occurs when an area of land, usually low-lying, is covered with water. It is when a river overflows its banks or flood comes from the sea. A drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. This occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation.
+
+Water occurs as both "stocks" and "flows." Water can be stored as lakes, water vapor, groundwater or "aquifers," and ice and snow. Of the total volume of global freshwater, an estimated 69 percent is stored in glaciers and permanent snow cover; 30 percent is in groundwater; and the remaining 1 percent in lakes, rivers, the atmosphere, and biota.[59] The length of time water remains in storage is highly variable: some aquifers consist of water stored over thousands of years but lake volumes may fluctuate on a seasonal basis, decreasing during dry periods and increasing during wet ones. A substantial fraction of the water supply for some regions consists of water extracted from water stored in stocks, and when withdrawals exceed recharge, stocks decrease. By some estimates, as much as 30 percent of total water used for irrigation comes from unsustainable withdrawals of groundwater, causing groundwater depletion.[60]
+
+Sea water contains about 3.5% sodium chloride on average, plus smaller amounts of other substances. The physical properties of sea water differ from fresh water in some important respects. It freezes at a lower temperature (about −1.9 °C (28.6 °F)) and its density increases with decreasing temperature to the freezing point, instead of reaching maximum density at a temperature above freezing. The salinity of water in major seas varies from about 0.7% in the Baltic Sea to 4.0% in the Red Sea. (The Dead Sea, known for its ultra-high salinity levels of between 30–40%, is really a salt lake.)
+
+Tides are the cyclic rising and falling of local sea levels caused by the tidal forces of the Moon and the Sun acting on the oceans. Tides cause changes in the depth of the marine and estuarine water bodies and produce oscillating currents known as tidal streams. The changing tide produced at a given location is the result of the changing positions of the Moon and Sun relative to the Earth coupled with the effects of Earth rotation and the local bathymetry. The strip of seashore that is submerged at high tide and exposed at low tide, the intertidal zone, is an important ecological product of ocean tides.
+
+High tide
+
+Low tide
+
+From a biological standpoint, water has many distinct properties that are critical for the proliferation of life. It carries out this role by allowing organic compounds to react in ways that ultimately allow replication. All known forms of life depend on water. Water is vital both as a solvent in which many of the body's solutes dissolve and as an essential part of many metabolic processes within the body. Metabolism is the sum total of anabolism and catabolism. In anabolism, water is removed from molecules (through energy requiring enzymatic chemical reactions) in order to grow larger molecules (e.g., starches, triglycerides and proteins for storage of fuels and information). In catabolism, water is used to break bonds in order to generate smaller molecules (e.g., glucose, fatty acids and amino acids to be used for fuels for energy use or other purposes). Without water, these particular metabolic processes could not exist.
+
+Water is fundamental to photosynthesis and respiration. Photosynthetic cells use the sun's energy to split off water's hydrogen from oxygen.[citation needed] Hydrogen is combined with CO2 (absorbed from air or water) to form glucose and release oxygen.[citation needed] All living cells use such fuels and oxidize the hydrogen and carbon to capture the sun's energy and reform water and CO2 in the process (cellular respiration).
+
+Water is also central to acid-base neutrality and enzyme function. An acid, a hydrogen ion (H+, that is, a proton) donor, can be neutralized by a base, a proton acceptor such as a hydroxide ion (OH−) to form water. Water is considered to be neutral, with a pH (the negative log of the hydrogen ion concentration) of 7. Acids have pH values less than 7 while bases have values greater than 7.
+
+Earth surface waters are filled with life. The earliest life forms appeared in water; nearly all fish live exclusively in water, and there are many types of marine mammals, such as dolphins and whales. Some kinds of animals, such as amphibians, spend portions of their lives in water and portions on land. Plants such as kelp and algae grow in the water and are the basis for some underwater ecosystems. Plankton is generally the foundation of the ocean food chain.
+
+Aquatic vertebrates must obtain oxygen to survive, and they do so in various ways. Fish have gills instead of lungs, although some species of fish, such as the lungfish, have both. Marine mammals, such as dolphins, whales, otters, and seals need to surface periodically to breathe air. Some amphibians are able to absorb oxygen through their skin. Invertebrates exhibit a wide range of modifications to survive in poorly oxygenated waters including breathing tubes (see insect and mollusc siphons) and gills (Carcinus). However as invertebrate life evolved in an aquatic habitat most have little or no specialization for respiration in water.
+
+Some of the biodiversity of a coral reef
+
+Some marine diatoms – a key phytoplankton group
+
+Squat lobster and Alvinocarididae shrimp at the Von Damm hydrothermal field survive by altered water chemistry
+
+Civilization has historically flourished around rivers and major waterways; Mesopotamia, the so-called cradle of civilization, was situated between the major rivers Tigris and Euphrates; the ancient society of the Egyptians depended entirely upon the Nile. Rome was also founded on the banks of the Italian river Tiber. Large metropolises like Rotterdam, London, Montreal, Paris, New York City, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Tokyo, Chicago, and Hong Kong owe their success in part to their easy accessibility via water and the resultant expansion of trade. Islands with safe water ports, like Singapore, have flourished for the same reason. In places such as North Africa and the Middle East, where water is more scarce, access to clean drinking water was and is a major factor in human development.
+
+Water fit for human consumption is called drinking water or potable water. Water that is not potable may be made potable by filtration or distillation, or by a range of other methods.
+
+Water that is not fit for drinking but is not harmful to humans when used for swimming or bathing is called by various names other than potable or drinking water, and is sometimes called safe water, or "safe for bathing". Chlorine is a skin and mucous membrane irritant that is used to make water safe for bathing or drinking. Its use is highly technical and is usually monitored by government regulations (typically 1 part per million (ppm) for drinking water, and 1–2 ppm of chlorine not yet reacted with impurities for bathing water). Water for bathing may be maintained in satisfactory microbiological condition using chemical disinfectants such as chlorine or ozone or by the use of ultraviolet light.
+
+In the US, non-potable forms of wastewater generated by humans may be referred to as grey water, which is treatable and thus easily able to be made potable again, and blackwater, which generally contains sewage and other forms of waste which require further treatment in order to be made reusable. Greywater composes 50–80% of residential wastewater generated by a household's sanitation equipment (sinks, showers and kitchen runoff, but not toilets, which generate blackwater.) These terms may have different meanings in other countries and cultures.
+
+This natural resource is becoming scarcer in certain places, and its availability is a major social and economic concern. Currently, about a billion people around the world routinely drink unhealthy water. In 2000, the United Nations established the Millennium Development Goals for water to halve by 2015 the proportion of people worldwide without access to safe water and sanitation. Progress toward that goal was uneven, and in 2015 the UN committed to the following targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals of achieving universal access to safe and affordable water and sanitation by 2030. Poor water quality and bad sanitation are deadly; some five million deaths a year are caused by water-related diseases. The World Health Organization estimates that safe water could prevent 1.4 million child deaths from diarrhoea each year.[61]
+
+Water is not an infinite resource (meaning the availability of water is limited), but rather re-circulated as potable water in precipitation.[62]
+
+In the developing world, 90% of all wastewater still goes untreated into local rivers and streams.[63] Some 50 countries, with roughly a third of the world's population, also suffer from medium or high water stress, and 17 of these extract more water annually than is recharged through their natural water cycles.[64] The strain not only affects surface freshwater bodies like rivers and lakes, but it also degrades groundwater resources.
+
+The most important use of water in agriculture is for irrigation, which is a key component to produce enough food. Irrigation takes up to 90% of water withdrawn in some developing countries[66] and significant proportions in more economically developed countries (in the United States, 42% of freshwater withdrawn for use is for irrigation).[67]
+
+Fifty years ago, the common perception was that water was an infinite resource. At the time, there were fewer than half the current number of people on the planet. People were not as wealthy as today, consumed fewer calories and ate less meat, so less water was needed to produce their food. They required a third of the volume of water we presently take from rivers. Today, the competition for the fixed amount of water resources is much more intense, giving rise to the concept of peak water.[68] This is because there are now nearly eight billion people on the planet, their consumption of water-thirsty meat and vegetables is rising, and there is increasing competition for water from industry, urbanization and biofuel crops. In future, even more, water will be needed to produce food because the Earth's population is forecast to rise to 9 billion by 2050.[69]
+
+An assessment of water management in agriculture was conducted in 2007 by the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka to see if the world had sufficient water to provide food for its growing population.[70] It assessed the current availability of water for agriculture on a global scale and mapped out locations suffering from water scarcity. It found that a fifth of the world's people, more than 1.2 billion, live in areas of physical water scarcity, where there is not enough water to meet all demands. A further 1.6 billion people live in areas experiencing economic water scarcity, where the lack of investment in water or insufficient human capacity make it impossible for authorities to satisfy the demand for water. The report found that it would be possible to produce the food required in future, but that continuation of today's food production and environmental trends would lead to crises in many parts of the world. To avoid a global water crisis, farmers will have to strive to increase productivity to meet growing demands for food, while industry and cities find ways to use water more efficiently.[71]
+
+Water scarcity is also caused by production of cotton: 1 kg of cotton—equivalent of a pair of jeans—requires 10.9 cubic meters (380 cu ft) water to produce. While cotton accounts for 2.4% of world water use, the water is consumed in regions which are already at a risk of water shortage. Significant environmental damage has been caused, such as disappearance of the Aral Sea.[72]
+
+Water requirement per tonne of food product
+
+Water distribution in subsurface drip irrigation
+
+Irrigation of field crops
+
+On 7 April 1795, the gram was defined in France to be equal to "the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to a cube of one hundredth of a meter, and at the temperature of melting ice".[73] For practical purposes though, a metallic reference standard was required, one thousand times more massive, the kilogram. Work was therefore commissioned to determine precisely the mass of one liter of water. In spite of the fact that the decreed definition of the gram specified water at 0 °C (32 °F)—a highly reproducible temperature—the scientists chose to redefine the standard and to perform their measurements at the temperature of highest water density, which was measured at the time as 4 °C (39 °F).[74]
+
+The Kelvin temperature scale of the SI system was based on the triple point of water, defined as exactly 273.16 K (0.01 °C; 32.02 °F), but as of May 2019 is based on the Boltzmann constant instead. The scale is an absolute temperature scale with the same increment as the Celsius temperature scale, which was originally defined according to the boiling point (set to 100 °C (212 °F)) and melting point (set to 0 °C (32 °F)) of water.
+
+Natural water consists mainly of the isotopes hydrogen-1 and oxygen-16, but there is also a small quantity of heavier isotopes oxygen-18, oxygen-17, and hydrogen-2 (deuterium). The percentage of the heavier isotopes is very small, but it still affects the properties of water. Water from rivers and lakes tends to contain less heavy isotopes than seawater. Therefore, standard water is defined in the Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water specification.
+
+The human body contains from 55% to 78% water, depending on body size.[75] To function properly, the body requires between one and seven liters (0.22 and 1.54 imp gal; 0.26 and 1.85 U.S. gal)[citation needed] of water per day to avoid dehydration; the precise amount depends on the level of activity, temperature, humidity, and other factors. Most of this is ingested through foods or beverages other than drinking straight water. It is not clear how much water intake is needed by healthy people, though the British Dietetic Association advises that 2.5 liters of total water daily is the minimum to maintain proper hydration, including 1.8 liters (6 to 7 glasses) obtained directly from beverages.[76] Medical literature favors a lower consumption, typically 1 liter of water for an average male, excluding extra requirements due to fluid loss from exercise or warm weather.[77]
+
+Healthy kidneys can excrete 0.8 to 1 liter of water per hour, but stress such as exercise can reduce this amount. People can drink far more water than necessary while exercising, putting them at risk of water intoxication (hyperhydration), which can be fatal.[78][79] The popular claim that "a person should consume eight glasses of water per day" seems to have no real basis in science.[80] Studies have shown that extra water intake, especially up to 500 milliliters (18 imp fl oz; 17 U.S. fl oz) at mealtime was conducive to weight loss.[81][82][83][84][85][86] Adequate fluid intake is helpful in preventing constipation.[87]
+
+An original recommendation for water intake in 1945 by the Food and Nutrition Board of the United States National Research Council read: "An ordinary standard for diverse persons is 1 milliliter for each calorie of food. Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods."[88] The latest dietary reference intake report by the United States National Research Council in general recommended, based on the median total water intake from US survey data (including food sources): 3.7 liters (0.81 imp gal; 0.98 U.S. gal) for men and 2.7 liters (0.59 imp gal; 0.71 U.S. gal) of water total for women, noting that water contained in food provided approximately 19% of total water intake in the survey.[89]
+
+Specifically, pregnant and breastfeeding women need additional fluids to stay hydrated. The Institute of Medicine (US) recommends that, on average, men consume 3 liters (0.66 imp gal; 0.79 U.S. gal) and women 2.2 liters (0.48 imp gal; 0.58 U.S. gal); pregnant women should increase intake to 2.4 liters (0.53 imp gal; 0.63 U.S. gal) and breastfeeding women should get 3 liters (12 cups), since an especially large amount of fluid is lost during nursing.[90] Also noted is that normally, about 20% of water intake comes from food, while the rest comes from drinking water and beverages (caffeinated included). Water is excreted from the body in multiple forms; through urine and feces, through sweating, and by exhalation of water vapor in the breath. With physical exertion and heat exposure, water loss will increase and daily fluid needs may increase as well.
+
+Humans require water with few impurities. Common impurities include metal salts and oxides, including copper, iron, calcium and lead,[91] and/or harmful bacteria, such as Vibrio. Some solutes are acceptable and even desirable for taste enhancement and to provide needed electrolytes.[92]
+
+The single largest (by volume) freshwater resource suitable for drinking is Lake Baikal in Siberia.[93]
+
+The propensity of water to form solutions and emulsions is useful in various washing processes. Washing is also an important component of several aspects of personal body hygiene. Most of personal water use is due to showering, doing the laundry and dishwashing, reaching hundreds of liters per day per person in developed countries.
+
+The use of water for transportation of materials through rivers and canals as well as the international shipping lanes is an important part of the world economy.
+
+Water is widely used in chemical reactions as a solvent or reactant and less commonly as a solute or catalyst. In inorganic reactions, water is a common solvent, dissolving many ionic compounds, as well as other polar compounds such as ammonia and compounds closely related to water. In organic reactions, it is not usually used as a reaction solvent, because it does not dissolve the reactants well and is amphoteric (acidic and basic) and nucleophilic. Nevertheless, these properties are sometimes desirable. Also, acceleration of Diels-Alder reactions by water has been observed. Supercritical water has recently been a topic of research. Oxygen-saturated supercritical water combusts organic pollutants efficiently. Water vapor is used for some processes in the chemical industry. An example is the production of acrylic acid from acrolein, propylene and propane.[94][95][96][97] The possible effect of water in these reactions includes the physical-, chemical interaction of water with the catalyst and the chemical reaction of water with the reaction intermediates.
+
+Water and steam are a common fluid used for heat exchange, due to its availability and high heat capacity, both for cooling and heating. Cool water may even be naturally available from a lake or the sea. It's especially effective to transport heat through vaporization and condensation of water because of its large latent heat of vaporization. A disadvantage is that metals commonly found in industries such as steel and copper are oxidized faster by untreated water and steam. In almost all thermal power stations, water is used as the working fluid (used in a closed loop between boiler, steam turbine and condenser), and the coolant (used to exchange the waste heat to a water body or carry it away by evaporation in a cooling tower). In the United States, cooling power plants is the largest use of water.[98]
+
+In the nuclear power industry, water can also be used as a neutron moderator. In most nuclear reactors, water is both a coolant and a moderator. This provides something of a passive safety measure, as removing the water from the reactor also slows the nuclear reaction down. However other methods are favored for stopping a reaction and it is preferred to keep the nuclear core covered with water so as to ensure adequate cooling.
+
+Water has a high heat of vaporization and is relatively inert, which makes it a good fire extinguishing fluid. The evaporation of water carries heat away from the fire. It is dangerous to use water on fires involving oils and organic solvents, because many organic materials float on water and the water tends to spread the burning liquid.
+
+Use of water in fire fighting should also take into account the hazards of a steam explosion, which may occur when water is used on very hot fires in confined spaces, and of a hydrogen explosion, when substances which react with water, such as certain metals or hot carbon such as coal, charcoal, or coke graphite, decompose the water, producing water gas.
+
+The power of such explosions was seen in the Chernobyl disaster, although the water involved did not come from fire-fighting at that time but the reactor's own water cooling system. A steam explosion occurred when the extreme overheating of the core caused water to flash into steam. A hydrogen explosion may have occurred as a result of reaction between steam and hot zirconium.
+
+Some metallic oxides, most notably those of alkali metals and alkaline earth metals, produce so much heat on reaction with water that a fire hazard can develop. The alkaline earth oxide quicklime is a mass-produced substance which is often transported in paper bags. If these are soaked through, they may ignite as their contents react with water.[99]
+
+Humans use water for many recreational purposes, as well as for exercising and for sports. Some of these include swimming, waterskiing, boating, surfing and diving. In addition, some sports, like ice hockey and ice skating, are played on ice. Lakesides, beaches and water parks are popular places for people to go to relax and enjoy recreation. Many find the sound and appearance of flowing water to be calming, and fountains and other water features are popular decorations. Some keep fish and other life in aquariums or ponds for show, fun, and companionship. Humans also use water for snow sports i.e. skiing, sledding, snowmobiling or snowboarding, which require the water to be frozen.
+
+The water industry provides drinking water and wastewater services (including sewage treatment) to households and industry. Water supply facilities include water wells, cisterns for rainwater harvesting, water supply networks, and water purification facilities, water tanks, water towers, water pipes including old aqueducts. Atmospheric water generators are in development.
+
+Drinking water is often collected at springs, extracted from artificial borings (wells) in the ground, or pumped from lakes and rivers. Building more wells in adequate places is thus a possible way to produce more water, assuming the aquifers can supply an adequate flow. Other water sources include rainwater collection. Water may require purification for human consumption. This may involve removal of undissolved substances, dissolved substances and harmful microbes. Popular methods are filtering with sand which only removes undissolved material, while chlorination and boiling kill harmful microbes. Distillation does all three functions. More advanced techniques exist, such as reverse osmosis. Desalination of abundant seawater is a more expensive solution used in coastal arid climates.
+
+The distribution of drinking water is done through municipal water systems, tanker delivery or as bottled water. Governments in many countries have programs to distribute water to the needy at no charge.
+
+Reducing usage by using drinking (potable) water only for human consumption is another option. In some cities such as Hong Kong, sea water is extensively used for flushing toilets citywide in order to conserve fresh water resources.
+
+Polluting water may be the biggest single misuse of water; to the extent that a pollutant limits other uses of the water, it becomes a waste of the resource, regardless of benefits to the polluter. Like other types of pollution, this does not enter standard accounting of market costs, being conceived as externalities for which the market cannot account. Thus other people pay the price of water pollution, while the private firms' profits are not redistributed to the local population, victims of this pollution. Pharmaceuticals consumed by humans often end up in the waterways and can have detrimental effects on aquatic life if they bioaccumulate and if they are not biodegradable.
+
+Municipal and industrial wastewater are typically treated at wastewater treatment plants. Mitigation of polluted surface runoff is addressed through a variety of prevention and treatment techniques. (See Surface runoff#Mitigation and treatment.)
+
+A water-carrier in India, 1882. In many places where running water is not available, water has to be transported by people.
+
+A manual water pump in China
+
+Water purification facility
+
+Reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant in Barcelona, Spain
+
+Many industrial processes rely on reactions using chemicals dissolved in water, suspension of solids in water slurries or using water to dissolve and extract substances, or to wash products or process equipment. Processes such as mining, chemical pulping, pulp bleaching, paper manufacturing, textile production, dyeing, printing, and cooling of power plants use large amounts of water, requiring a dedicated water source, and often cause significant water pollution.
+
+Water is used in power generation. Hydroelectricity is electricity obtained from hydropower. Hydroelectric power comes from water driving a water turbine connected to a generator. Hydroelectricity is a low-cost, non-polluting, renewable energy source. The energy is supplied by the motion of water. Typically a dam is constructed on a river, creating an artificial lake behind it. Water flowing out of the lake is forced through turbines that turn generators.
+
+Pressurized water is used in water blasting and water jet cutters. Also, very high pressure water guns are used for precise cutting. It works very well, is relatively safe, and is not harmful to the environment. It is also used in the cooling of machinery to prevent overheating, or prevent saw blades from overheating.
+
+Water is also used in many industrial processes and machines, such as the steam turbine and heat exchanger, in addition to its use as a chemical solvent. Discharge of untreated water from industrial uses is pollution. Pollution includes discharged solutes (chemical pollution) and discharged coolant water (thermal pollution). Industry requires pure water for many applications and utilizes a variety of purification techniques both in water supply and discharge.
+
+Boiling, steaming, and simmering are popular cooking methods that often require immersing food in water or its gaseous state, steam.[100] Water is also used for dishwashing. Water also plays many critical roles within the field of food science.
+
+Solutes such as salts and sugars found in water affect the physical properties of water. The boiling and freezing points of water are affected by solutes, as well as air pressure, which is in turn affected by altitude. Water boils at lower temperatures with the lower air pressure that occurs at higher elevations. One mole of sucrose (sugar) per kilogram of water raises the boiling point of water by 0.51 °C (0.918 °F), and one mole of salt per kg raises the boiling point by 1.02 °C (1.836 °F); similarly, increasing the number of dissolved particles lowers water's freezing point.[101]
+
+Solutes in water also affect water activity that affects many chemical reactions and the growth of microbes in food.[102] Water activity can be described as a ratio of the vapor pressure of water in a solution to the vapor pressure of pure water.[101] Solutes in water lower water activity—this is important to know because most bacterial growth ceases at low levels of water activity.[102] Not only does microbial growth affect the safety of food, but also the preservation and shelf life of food.
+
+Water hardness is also a critical factor in food processing and may be altered or treated by using a chemical ion exchange system. It can dramatically affect the quality of a product, as well as playing a role in sanitation. Water hardness is classified based on concentration of calcium carbonate the water contains. Water is classified as soft if it contains less than 100 mg/l (UK)[103] or less than 60 mg/l (US).[104]
+
+According to a report published by the Water Footprint organization in 2010, a single kilogram of beef requires 15 thousand liters (3.3×10^3 imp gal; 4.0×10^3 U.S. gal) of water; however, the authors also make clear that this is a global average and circumstantial factors determine the amount of water used in beef production.[105]
+
+Water for injection is on the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines.[106]
+
+Much of the universe's water is produced as a byproduct of star formation. The formation of stars is accompanied by a strong outward wind of gas and dust. When this outflow of material eventually impacts the surrounding gas, the shock waves that are created compress and heat the gas. The water observed is quickly produced in this warm dense gas.[108]
+
+On 22 July 2011, a report described the discovery of a gigantic cloud of water vapor containing "140 trillion times more water than all of Earth's oceans combined" around a quasar located 12 billion light years from Earth. According to the researchers, the "discovery shows that water has been prevalent in the universe for nearly its entire existence".[109][110]
+
+Water has been detected in interstellar clouds within our galaxy, the Milky Way.[111] Water probably exists in abundance in other galaxies, too, because its components, hydrogen and oxygen, are among the most abundant elements in the universe. Based on models of the formation and evolution of the Solar System and that of other star systems, most other planetary systems are likely to have similar ingredients.
+
+Water is present as vapor in:
+
+Liquid water is present on Earth, covering 71% of its surface.[1] Liquid water is also occasionally present in small amounts on Mars.[132] Scientists believe liquid water is present in the Saturnian moons of Enceladus, as a 10-kilometre thick ocean approximately 30–40 kilometres below Enceladus' south polar surface,[133][134] and Titan, as a subsurface layer, possibly mixed with ammonia.[135] Jupiter's moon Europa has surface characteristics which suggest a subsurface liquid water ocean.[136] Liquid water may also exist on Jupiter's moon Ganymede as a layer sandwiched between high pressure ice and rock.[137]
+
+Water is present as ice on:
+
+And is also likely present on:
+
+Water and other volatiles probably comprise much of the internal structures of Uranus and Neptune and the water in the deeper layers may be in the form of ionic water in which the molecules break down into a soup of hydrogen and oxygen ions, and deeper still as superionic water in which the oxygen crystallises but the hydrogen ions float about freely within the oxygen lattice.[156]
+
+The existence of liquid water, and to a lesser extent its gaseous and solid forms, on Earth are vital to the existence of life on Earth as we know it. The Earth is located in the habitable zone of the Solar System; if it were slightly closer to or farther from the Sun (about 5%, or about 8 million kilometers), the conditions which allow the three forms to be present simultaneously would be far less likely to exist.[157][158]
+
+Earth's gravity allows it to hold an atmosphere. Water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere provide a temperature buffer (greenhouse effect) which helps maintain a relatively steady surface temperature. If Earth were smaller, a thinner atmosphere would allow temperature extremes, thus preventing the accumulation of water except in polar ice caps (as on Mars).[citation needed]
+
+The surface temperature of Earth has been relatively constant through geologic time despite varying levels of incoming solar radiation (insolation), indicating that a dynamic process governs Earth's temperature via a combination of greenhouse gases and surface or atmospheric albedo. This proposal is known as the Gaia hypothesis.[citation needed]
+
+The state of water on a planet depends on ambient pressure, which is determined by the planet's gravity. If a planet is sufficiently massive, the water on it may be solid even at high temperatures, because of the high pressure caused by gravity, as it was observed on exoplanets Gliese 436 b[159] and GJ 1214 b.[160]
+
+Water politics is politics affected by water and water resources. For this reason, water is a strategic resource in the globe and an important element in many political conflicts. It causes health impacts and damage to biodiversity.
+
+Access to safe drinking water has improved over the last decades in almost every part of the world, but approximately one billion people still lack access to safe water and over 2.5 billion lack access to adequate sanitation.[161] However, some observers have estimated that by 2025 more than half of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability.[162] A report, issued in November 2009, suggests that by 2030, in some developing regions of the world, water demand will exceed supply by 50%.[163]
+
+1.6 billion people have gained access to a safe water source since 1990.[164] The proportion of people in developing countries with access to safe water is calculated to have improved from 30% in 1970[165] to 71% in 1990, 79% in 2000 and 84% in 2004.[161]
+
+A 2006 United Nations report stated that "there is enough water for everyone", but that access to it is hampered by mismanagement and corruption.[166] In addition, global initiatives to improve the efficiency of aid delivery, such as the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, have not been taken up by water sector donors as effectively as they have in education and health, potentially leaving multiple donors working on overlapping projects and recipient governments without empowerment to act.[167]
+
+The authors of the 2007 Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture cited poor governance as one reason for some forms of water scarcity. Water governance is the set of formal and informal processes through which decisions related to water management are made. Good water governance is primarily about knowing what processes work best in a particular physical and socioeconomic context. Mistakes have sometimes been made by trying to apply 'blueprints' that work in the developed world to developing world locations and contexts. The Mekong river is one example; a review by the International Water Management Institute of policies in six countries that rely on the Mekong river for water found that thorough and transparent cost-benefit analyses and environmental impact assessments were rarely undertaken. They also discovered that Cambodia's draft water law was much more complex than it needed to be.[168]
+
+The UN World Water Development Report (WWDR, 2003) from the World Water Assessment Program indicates that, in the next 20 years, the quantity of water available to everyone is predicted to decrease by 30%. 40% of the world's inhabitants currently have insufficient fresh water for minimal hygiene. More than 2.2 million people died in 2000 from waterborne diseases (related to the consumption of contaminated water) or drought. In 2004, the UK charity WaterAid reported that a child dies every 15 seconds from easily preventable water-related diseases; often this means lack of sewage disposal.[citation needed]
+
+Organizations concerned with water protection include the International Water Association (IWA), WaterAid, Water 1st, and the American Water Resources Association. The International Water Management Institute undertakes projects with the aim of using effective water management to reduce poverty. Water related conventions are United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and Ramsar Convention. World Day for Water takes place on 22 March and World Oceans Day on 8 June.[citation needed]
+
+Water is considered a purifier in most religions. Faiths that incorporate ritual washing (ablution) include Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, the Rastafari movement, Shinto, Taoism, and Wicca. Immersion (or aspersion or affusion) of a person in water is a central sacrament of Christianity (where it is called baptism); it is also a part of the practice of other religions, including Islam (Ghusl), Judaism (mikvah) and Sikhism (Amrit Sanskar). In addition, a ritual bath in pure water is performed for the dead in many religions including Islam and Judaism. In Islam, the five daily prayers can be done in most cases after completing washing certain parts of the body using clean water (wudu), unless water is unavailable (see Tayammum). In Shinto, water is used in almost all rituals to cleanse a person or an area (e.g., in the ritual of misogi).
+
+In Christianity, holy water is water that has been sanctified by a priest for the purpose of baptism, the blessing of persons, places, and objects, or as a means of repelling evil.[169][170]
+
+In Zoroastrianism, water (āb) is respected as the source of life.[171]
+
+The Ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles held that water is one of the four classical elements along with fire, earth and air, and was regarded as the ylem, or basic substance of the universe. Thales, who was portrayed by Aristotle as an astronomer and an engineer, theorized that the earth, which is denser than water, emerged from the water. Thales, a monist, believed further that all things are made from water. Plato believed the shape of water is an icosahedron which accounts for why it is able to flow easily compared to the cube-shaped earth.[172]
+
+In the theory of the four bodily humors, water was associated with phlegm, as being cold and moist. The classical element of water was also one of the five elements in traditional Chinese philosophy, along with earth, fire, wood, and metal.
+
+Water is also taken as a role model in some parts of traditional and popular Asian philosophy. James Legge's 1891 translation of the Dao De Jing states, "The highest excellence is like (that of) water. The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and in its occupying, without striving (to the contrary), the low place which all men dislike. Hence (its way) is near to (that of) the Tao" and "There is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water, and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can take precedence of it—for there is nothing (so effectual) for which it can be changed."[173] Guanzi in the "Shui di" 水地 chapter further elaborates on the symbolism of water, proclaiming that "man is water" and attributing natural qualities of the people of different Chinese regions to the character of local water resources.[174]
+
+Water's technically correct but rarely used chemical name, "dihydrogen monoxide", has been used in a series of hoaxes and pranks that mock scientific illiteracy. This began in 1983, when an April Fools' Day article appeared in a newspaper in Durand, Michigan. The false story consisted of safety concerns about the substance.[175]

en/3903.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+
+
+A molecule is an electrically neutral group of two or more atoms held together by chemical bonds.[4][5][6][7][8] Molecules are distinguished from ions by their lack of electrical charge. However, in quantum physics, organic chemistry, and biochemistry, the term molecule is often used less strictly, also being applied to polyatomic ions.
+
+In the kinetic theory of gases, the term molecule is often used for any gaseous particle regardless of its composition. According to this definition, noble gas atoms are considered molecules as they are monatomic molecules.[9]
+
+A molecule may be homonuclear, that is, it consists of atoms of one chemical element, as with oxygen (O2); or it may be heteronuclear, a chemical compound composed of more than one element, as with water (H2O). Atoms and complexes connected by non-covalent interactions, such as hydrogen bonds or ionic bonds, are typically not considered single molecules.[10]
+
+Molecules as components of matter are common in organic substances (and therefore biochemistry). They also make up most of the oceans and atmosphere. However, the majority of familiar solid substances on Earth, including most of the minerals that make up the crust, mantle, and core of the Earth, contain many chemical bonds, but are not made of identifiable molecules. Also, no typical molecule can be defined for ionic crystals (salts) and covalent crystals (network solids), although these are often composed of repeating unit cells that extend either in a plane (such as in graphene) or three-dimensionally (such as in diamond, quartz, or sodium chloride). The theme of repeated unit-cellular-structure also holds for most condensed phases with metallic bonding, which means that solid metals are also not made of molecules. In glasses (solids that exist in a vitreous disordered state), atoms may also be held together by chemical bonds with no presence of any definable molecule, nor any of the regularity of repeating units that characterizes crystals.
+
+The science of molecules is called molecular chemistry or molecular physics, depending on whether the focus is on chemistry or physics. Molecular chemistry deals with the laws governing the interaction between molecules that results in the formation and breakage of chemical bonds, while molecular physics deals with the laws governing their structure and properties. In practice, however, this distinction is vague. In molecular sciences, a molecule consists of a stable system (bound state) composed of two or more atoms. Polyatomic ions may sometimes be usefully thought of as electrically charged molecules. The term unstable molecule is used for very reactive species, i.e., short-lived assemblies (resonances) of electrons and nuclei, such as radicals, molecular ions, Rydberg molecules, transition states, van der Waals complexes, or systems of colliding atoms as in Bose–Einstein condensate.
+
+According to Merriam-Webster and the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word "molecule" derives from the Latin "moles" or small unit of mass.
+
+The definition of the molecule has evolved as knowledge of the structure of molecules has increased. Earlier definitions were less precise, defining molecules as the smallest particles of pure chemical substances that still retain their composition and chemical properties.[13] This definition often breaks down since many substances in ordinary experience, such as rocks, salts, and metals, are composed of large crystalline networks of chemically bonded atoms or ions, but are not made of discrete molecules.
+
+Molecules are held together by either covalent bonding or ionic bonding. Several types of non-metal elements exist only as molecules in the environment. For example, hydrogen only exists as hydrogen molecule. A molecule of a compound is made out of two or more elements.[14]
+
+A covalent bond is a chemical bond that involves the sharing of electron pairs between atoms. These electron pairs are termed shared pairs or bonding pairs, and the stable balance of attractive and repulsive forces between atoms, when they share electrons, is termed covalent bonding.[15]
+
+Ionic bonding is a type of chemical bond that involves the electrostatic attraction between oppositely charged ions, and is the primary interaction occurring in ionic compounds. The ions are atoms that have lost one or more electrons (termed cations) and atoms that have gained one or more electrons (termed anions).[16] This transfer of electrons is termed electrovalence in contrast to covalence. In the simplest case, the cation is a metal atom and the anion is a nonmetal atom, but these ions can be of a more complicated nature, e.g. molecular ions like NH4+ or SO42−.
+
+Most molecules are far too small to be seen with the naked eye, although molecules of many polymers can reach macroscopic sizes, including biopolymers such as DNA. Molecules commonly used as building blocks for organic synthesis have a dimension of a few angstroms (Å) to several dozen Å, or around one billionth of a meter. Single molecules cannot usually be observed by light (as noted above), but small molecules and even the outlines of individual atoms may be traced in some circumstances by use of an atomic force microscope. Some of the largest molecules are macromolecules or supermolecules.
+
+The smallest molecule is the diatomic hydrogen (H2), with a bond length of 0.74 Å.[17]
+
+Effective molecular radius is the size a molecule displays in solution.[18][19]
+The table of permselectivity for different substances contains examples.
+
+The chemical formula for a molecule uses one line of chemical element symbols, numbers, and sometimes also other symbols, such as parentheses, dashes, brackets, and plus (+) and minus (−) signs. These are limited to one typographic line of symbols, which may include subscripts and superscripts.
+
+A compound's empirical formula is a very simple type of chemical formula.[20] It is the simplest integer ratio of the chemical elements that constitute it.[21] For example, water is always composed of a 2:1 ratio of hydrogen to oxygen atoms, and ethanol (ethyl alcohol) is always composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in a 2:6:1 ratio. However, this does not determine the kind of molecule uniquely – dimethyl ether has the same ratios as ethanol, for instance. Molecules with the same atoms in different arrangements are called isomers. Also carbohydrates, for example, have the same ratio (carbon:hydrogen:oxygen= 1:2:1) (and thus the same empirical formula) but different total numbers of atoms in the molecule.
+
+The molecular formula reflects the exact number of atoms that compose the molecule and so characterizes different molecules. However different isomers can have the same atomic composition while being different molecules.
+
+The empirical formula is often the same as the molecular formula but not always. For example, the molecule acetylene has molecular formula C2H2, but the simplest integer ratio of elements is CH.
+
+The molecular mass can be calculated from the chemical formula and is expressed in conventional atomic mass units equal to 1/12 of the mass of a neutral carbon-12 (12C isotope) atom. For network solids, the term formula unit is used in stoichiometric calculations.
+
+For molecules with a complicated 3-dimensional structure, especially involving atoms bonded to four different substituents, a simple molecular formula or even semi-structural chemical formula may not be enough to completely specify the molecule. In this case, a graphical type of formula called a structural formula may be needed. Structural formulas may in turn be represented with a one-dimensional chemical name, but such chemical nomenclature requires many words and terms which are not part of chemical formulas.
+
+Molecules have fixed equilibrium geometries—bond lengths and angles— about which they continuously oscillate through vibrational and rotational motions. A pure substance is composed of molecules with the same average geometrical structure. The chemical formula and the structure of a molecule are the two important factors that determine its properties, particularly its reactivity. Isomers share a chemical formula but normally have very different properties because of their different structures. Stereoisomers, a particular type of isomer, may have very similar physico-chemical properties and at the same time different biochemical activities.
+
+Molecular spectroscopy deals with the response (spectrum) of molecules interacting with probing signals of known energy (or frequency, according to Planck's formula). Molecules have quantized energy levels that can be analyzed by detecting the molecule's energy exchange through absorbance or emission.[24]
+Spectroscopy does not generally refer to diffraction studies where particles such as neutrons, electrons, or high energy X-rays interact with a regular arrangement of molecules (as in a crystal).
+
+Microwave spectroscopy commonly measures changes in the rotation of molecules, and can be used to identify molecules in outer space. Infrared spectroscopy measures the vibration of molecules, including stretching, bending or twisting motions. It is commonly used to identify the kinds of bonds or functional groups in molecules. Changes in the arrangements of electrons yield absorption or emission lines in ultraviolet, visible or near infrared light, and result in colour. Nuclear resonance spectroscopy measures the environment of particular nuclei in the molecule, and can be used to characterise the numbers of atoms in different positions in a molecule.
+
+The study of molecules by molecular physics and theoretical chemistry is largely based on quantum mechanics and is essential for the understanding of the chemical bond. The simplest of molecules is the hydrogen molecule-ion, H2+, and the simplest of all the chemical bonds is the one-electron bond. H2+ is composed of two positively charged protons and one negatively charged electron, which means that the Schrödinger equation for the system can be solved more easily due to the lack of electron–electron repulsion. With the development of fast digital computers, approximate solutions for more complicated molecules became possible and are one of the main aspects of computational chemistry.
+
+When trying to define rigorously whether an arrangement of atoms is sufficiently stable to be considered a molecule, IUPAC suggests that it "must correspond to a depression on the potential energy surface that is deep enough to confine at least one vibrational state".[4] This definition does not depend on the nature of the interaction between the atoms, but only on the strength of the interaction. In fact, it includes weakly bound species that would not traditionally be considered molecules, such as the helium dimer, He2, which has one vibrational bound state[25] and is so loosely bound that it is only likely to be observed at very low temperatures.
+
+Whether or not an arrangement of atoms is sufficiently stable to be considered a molecule is inherently an operational definition. Philosophically, therefore, a molecule is not a fundamental entity (in contrast, for instance, to an elementary particle); rather, the concept of a molecule is the chemist's way of making a useful statement about the strengths of atomic-scale interactions in the world that we observe.

en/3904.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+
+
+A molecule is an electrically neutral group of two or more atoms held together by chemical bonds.[4][5][6][7][8] Molecules are distinguished from ions by their lack of electrical charge. However, in quantum physics, organic chemistry, and biochemistry, the term molecule is often used less strictly, also being applied to polyatomic ions.
+
+In the kinetic theory of gases, the term molecule is often used for any gaseous particle regardless of its composition. According to this definition, noble gas atoms are considered molecules as they are monatomic molecules.[9]
+
+A molecule may be homonuclear, that is, it consists of atoms of one chemical element, as with oxygen (O2); or it may be heteronuclear, a chemical compound composed of more than one element, as with water (H2O). Atoms and complexes connected by non-covalent interactions, such as hydrogen bonds or ionic bonds, are typically not considered single molecules.[10]
+
+Molecules as components of matter are common in organic substances (and therefore biochemistry). They also make up most of the oceans and atmosphere. However, the majority of familiar solid substances on Earth, including most of the minerals that make up the crust, mantle, and core of the Earth, contain many chemical bonds, but are not made of identifiable molecules. Also, no typical molecule can be defined for ionic crystals (salts) and covalent crystals (network solids), although these are often composed of repeating unit cells that extend either in a plane (such as in graphene) or three-dimensionally (such as in diamond, quartz, or sodium chloride). The theme of repeated unit-cellular-structure also holds for most condensed phases with metallic bonding, which means that solid metals are also not made of molecules. In glasses (solids that exist in a vitreous disordered state), atoms may also be held together by chemical bonds with no presence of any definable molecule, nor any of the regularity of repeating units that characterizes crystals.
+
+The science of molecules is called molecular chemistry or molecular physics, depending on whether the focus is on chemistry or physics. Molecular chemistry deals with the laws governing the interaction between molecules that results in the formation and breakage of chemical bonds, while molecular physics deals with the laws governing their structure and properties. In practice, however, this distinction is vague. In molecular sciences, a molecule consists of a stable system (bound state) composed of two or more atoms. Polyatomic ions may sometimes be usefully thought of as electrically charged molecules. The term unstable molecule is used for very reactive species, i.e., short-lived assemblies (resonances) of electrons and nuclei, such as radicals, molecular ions, Rydberg molecules, transition states, van der Waals complexes, or systems of colliding atoms as in Bose–Einstein condensate.
+
+According to Merriam-Webster and the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word "molecule" derives from the Latin "moles" or small unit of mass.
+
+The definition of the molecule has evolved as knowledge of the structure of molecules has increased. Earlier definitions were less precise, defining molecules as the smallest particles of pure chemical substances that still retain their composition and chemical properties.[13] This definition often breaks down since many substances in ordinary experience, such as rocks, salts, and metals, are composed of large crystalline networks of chemically bonded atoms or ions, but are not made of discrete molecules.
+
+Molecules are held together by either covalent bonding or ionic bonding. Several types of non-metal elements exist only as molecules in the environment. For example, hydrogen only exists as hydrogen molecule. A molecule of a compound is made out of two or more elements.[14]
+
+A covalent bond is a chemical bond that involves the sharing of electron pairs between atoms. These electron pairs are termed shared pairs or bonding pairs, and the stable balance of attractive and repulsive forces between atoms, when they share electrons, is termed covalent bonding.[15]
+
+Ionic bonding is a type of chemical bond that involves the electrostatic attraction between oppositely charged ions, and is the primary interaction occurring in ionic compounds. The ions are atoms that have lost one or more electrons (termed cations) and atoms that have gained one or more electrons (termed anions).[16] This transfer of electrons is termed electrovalence in contrast to covalence. In the simplest case, the cation is a metal atom and the anion is a nonmetal atom, but these ions can be of a more complicated nature, e.g. molecular ions like NH4+ or SO42−.
+
+Most molecules are far too small to be seen with the naked eye, although molecules of many polymers can reach macroscopic sizes, including biopolymers such as DNA. Molecules commonly used as building blocks for organic synthesis have a dimension of a few angstroms (Å) to several dozen Å, or around one billionth of a meter. Single molecules cannot usually be observed by light (as noted above), but small molecules and even the outlines of individual atoms may be traced in some circumstances by use of an atomic force microscope. Some of the largest molecules are macromolecules or supermolecules.
+
+The smallest molecule is the diatomic hydrogen (H2), with a bond length of 0.74 Å.[17]
+
+Effective molecular radius is the size a molecule displays in solution.[18][19]
+The table of permselectivity for different substances contains examples.
+
+The chemical formula for a molecule uses one line of chemical element symbols, numbers, and sometimes also other symbols, such as parentheses, dashes, brackets, and plus (+) and minus (−) signs. These are limited to one typographic line of symbols, which may include subscripts and superscripts.
+
+A compound's empirical formula is a very simple type of chemical formula.[20] It is the simplest integer ratio of the chemical elements that constitute it.[21] For example, water is always composed of a 2:1 ratio of hydrogen to oxygen atoms, and ethanol (ethyl alcohol) is always composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in a 2:6:1 ratio. However, this does not determine the kind of molecule uniquely – dimethyl ether has the same ratios as ethanol, for instance. Molecules with the same atoms in different arrangements are called isomers. Also carbohydrates, for example, have the same ratio (carbon:hydrogen:oxygen= 1:2:1) (and thus the same empirical formula) but different total numbers of atoms in the molecule.
+
+The molecular formula reflects the exact number of atoms that compose the molecule and so characterizes different molecules. However different isomers can have the same atomic composition while being different molecules.
+
+The empirical formula is often the same as the molecular formula but not always. For example, the molecule acetylene has molecular formula C2H2, but the simplest integer ratio of elements is CH.
+
+The molecular mass can be calculated from the chemical formula and is expressed in conventional atomic mass units equal to 1/12 of the mass of a neutral carbon-12 (12C isotope) atom. For network solids, the term formula unit is used in stoichiometric calculations.
+
+For molecules with a complicated 3-dimensional structure, especially involving atoms bonded to four different substituents, a simple molecular formula or even semi-structural chemical formula may not be enough to completely specify the molecule. In this case, a graphical type of formula called a structural formula may be needed. Structural formulas may in turn be represented with a one-dimensional chemical name, but such chemical nomenclature requires many words and terms which are not part of chemical formulas.
+
+Molecules have fixed equilibrium geometries—bond lengths and angles— about which they continuously oscillate through vibrational and rotational motions. A pure substance is composed of molecules with the same average geometrical structure. The chemical formula and the structure of a molecule are the two important factors that determine its properties, particularly its reactivity. Isomers share a chemical formula but normally have very different properties because of their different structures. Stereoisomers, a particular type of isomer, may have very similar physico-chemical properties and at the same time different biochemical activities.
+
+Molecular spectroscopy deals with the response (spectrum) of molecules interacting with probing signals of known energy (or frequency, according to Planck's formula). Molecules have quantized energy levels that can be analyzed by detecting the molecule's energy exchange through absorbance or emission.[24]
+Spectroscopy does not generally refer to diffraction studies where particles such as neutrons, electrons, or high energy X-rays interact with a regular arrangement of molecules (as in a crystal).
+
+Microwave spectroscopy commonly measures changes in the rotation of molecules, and can be used to identify molecules in outer space. Infrared spectroscopy measures the vibration of molecules, including stretching, bending or twisting motions. It is commonly used to identify the kinds of bonds or functional groups in molecules. Changes in the arrangements of electrons yield absorption or emission lines in ultraviolet, visible or near infrared light, and result in colour. Nuclear resonance spectroscopy measures the environment of particular nuclei in the molecule, and can be used to characterise the numbers of atoms in different positions in a molecule.
+
+The study of molecules by molecular physics and theoretical chemistry is largely based on quantum mechanics and is essential for the understanding of the chemical bond. The simplest of molecules is the hydrogen molecule-ion, H2+, and the simplest of all the chemical bonds is the one-electron bond. H2+ is composed of two positively charged protons and one negatively charged electron, which means that the Schrödinger equation for the system can be solved more easily due to the lack of electron–electron repulsion. With the development of fast digital computers, approximate solutions for more complicated molecules became possible and are one of the main aspects of computational chemistry.
+
+When trying to define rigorously whether an arrangement of atoms is sufficiently stable to be considered a molecule, IUPAC suggests that it "must correspond to a depression on the potential energy surface that is deep enough to confine at least one vibrational state".[4] This definition does not depend on the nature of the interaction between the atoms, but only on the strength of the interaction. In fact, it includes weakly bound species that would not traditionally be considered molecules, such as the helium dimer, He2, which has one vibrational bound state[25] and is so loosely bound that it is only likely to be observed at very low temperatures.
+
+Whether or not an arrangement of atoms is sufficiently stable to be considered a molecule is inherently an operational definition. Philosophically, therefore, a molecule is not a fundamental entity (in contrast, for instance, to an elementary particle); rather, the concept of a molecule is the chemist's way of making a useful statement about the strengths of atomic-scale interactions in the world that we observe.

en/3905.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
+Organic chemistry is a branch of chemistry that studies the structure, properties and reactions of organic compounds, which contain carbon in covalent bonding.[1] Study of structure determines their chemical composition and formula. Study of properties includes physical and chemical properties, and evaluation of chemical reactivity to understand their behavior. The study of organic reactions includes the chemical synthesis of natural products, drugs, and polymers, and study of individual organic molecules in the laboratory and via theoretical (in silico) study.
+
+The range of chemicals studied in organic chemistry includes hydrocarbons (compounds containing only carbon and hydrogen) as well as compounds based on carbon, but also containing other elements,[1][2][3] especially oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus (included in many biochemicals) and the halogens. Organometallic chemistry is the study of compounds containing carbon–metal bonds.
+
+In addition, contemporary research focuses on organic chemistry involving other organometallics including the lanthanides, but especially the transition metals zinc, copper, palladium, nickel, cobalt, titanium and chromium.
+
+Organic compounds form the basis of all earthly life and constitute the majority of known chemicals.  The bonding patterns of carbon, with its valence of four—formal single, double, and triple bonds, plus structures with delocalized electrons—make the array of organic compounds structurally diverse, and their range of applications enormous. They form the basis of, or are constituents of, many commercial products including pharmaceuticals; petrochemicals and agrichemicals, and products made from them including lubricants, solvents; plastics; fuels and explosives. The study of organic chemistry overlaps organometallic chemistry and  biochemistry, but also with medicinal chemistry, polymer chemistry, and materials science.[1]
+
+Before the nineteenth century, chemists generally believed that compounds obtained from living organisms were endowed with a vital force that distinguished them from inorganic compounds. According to the concept of vitalism (vital force theory), organic matter was endowed with a "vital force".[4]  During the first half of the nineteenth century,  some of the first systematic studies of organic compounds were reported. Around 1816 Michel Chevreul started a study of soaps made from various fats and alkalis. He separated the acids that, in combination with the alkali, produced the soap.  Since these were all individual compounds, he demonstrated that it was possible to make a chemical change in various fats (which traditionally come from organic sources), producing new compounds, without "vital force". In 1828 Friedrich Wöhler produced the organic chemical urea (carbamide), a constituent of urine, from inorganic starting materials (the salts potassium cyanate and ammonium sulfate), in what is now called the Wöhler synthesis.  Although Wöhler himself was cautious about claiming he had disproved vitalism, this was the first time a substance thought to be organic was synthesized in the laboratory without biological (organic) starting materials. The event is now generally accepted as indeed disproving the doctrine of vitalism.[5]
+
+In 1856 William Henry Perkin, while trying to manufacture quinine accidentally produced the organic dye now known as Perkin's mauve. His discovery, made widely known through its  financial success,  greatly increased interest in organic chemistry.[6]
+
+A crucial breakthrough for organic chemistry was the concept of chemical structure, developed independently in 1858 by both Friedrich August Kekulé and Archibald Scott Couper.[7] Both researchers suggested that tetravalent carbon atoms could link to each other to form a carbon lattice, and that the detailed patterns of atomic bonding could be discerned by skillful interpretations of appropriate chemical reactions.[8]
+
+The era of the pharmaceutical industry began in the last decade of the 19th century when the manufacturing of acetylsalicylic acid—more commonly referred to as aspirin—in Germany was started by Bayer.[9] By 1910 Paul Ehrlich and his laboratory group began developing arsenic-based arsphenamine, (Salvarsan), as the first effective medicinal treatment of syphilis, and thereby initiated the medical practice of chemotherapy. Ehrlich popularized the concepts of "magic bullet" drugs and of systematically improving drug therapies.[10][11] His laboratory made decisive contributions to developing antiserum for diphtheria and standardizing therapeutic serums.[12]
+
+Early examples of organic reactions and applications were often found because of a combination of luck and preparation for unexpected observations. The latter half of the 19th century however witnessed systematic studies of organic compounds. The development of synthetic indigo is illustrative. The production of indigo from plant sources dropped from 19,000 tons in 1897 to 1,000 tons by 1914 thanks to the synthetic methods developed by Adolf von Baeyer. In 2002, 17,000 tons of synthetic indigo were produced from petrochemicals.[14]
+
+In the early part of the 20th century, polymers and enzymes were shown to be large organic molecules, and petroleum was shown to be of biological origin.
+
+The multiple-step synthesis of complex organic compounds is called total synthesis. Total synthesis of complex natural compounds increased in complexity to glucose and terpineol. For example, cholesterol-related compounds have opened ways to synthesize complex human hormones and their modified derivatives. Since the start of the 20th century, complexity of total syntheses has been increased to include molecules of high complexity such as lysergic acid and vitamin B12.[15]
+
+The discovery of petroleum and the development of the petrochemical industry spurred the development of organic chemistry. Converting individual petroleum compounds into types of compounds by various chemical processes led to organic reactions enabling a broad range of industrial and commercial products including, among (many) others: plastics, synthetic rubber, organic adhesives, and various property-modifying petroleum additives and catalysts.
+
+The majority of chemical compounds occurring in biological organisms are carbon compounds, so the association between organic chemistry and biochemistry is so close that biochemistry might be regarded as in essence a branch of organic chemistry. Although the history of biochemistry might be taken to span some four centuries, fundamental understanding of the field only began to develop in the late 19th century and the actual term biochemistry was coined around the start of 20th century. Research in the field increased throughout the twentieth century, without any indication of slackening in the rate of increase, as may be verified by inspection of abstraction and indexing services such as BIOSIS Previews and Biological Abstracts, which began in the 1920s as a single annual volume, but has grown so drastically that by the end of the 20th century it was only available to the everyday user as an online electronic database.[16]
+
+Since organic compounds often exist as mixtures, a variety of techniques have also been developed to assess purity, especially important being chromatography techniques such as HPLC and gas chromatography.  Traditional methods of separation include distillation, crystallization, and solvent extraction.
+
+Organic compounds were traditionally characterized by a variety of chemical tests, called "wet methods", but such tests have been largely displaced by spectroscopic or other computer-intensive methods of analysis.[17]  Listed in approximate order of utility, the chief analytical methods are:
+
+Traditional spectroscopic methods such as infrared spectroscopy, optical rotation, and UV/VIS spectroscopy provide relatively nonspecific structural information but remain in use for specific classes of compounds. Refractive index and density were also important for substance identification.
+
+The physical properties of organic compounds typically of interest include both quantitative and qualitative features.  Quantitative information includes a melting point, boiling point, and index of refraction. Qualitative properties include odor, consistency, solubility, and color.
+
+Organic compounds typically melt and many boil. In contrast, while inorganic materials generally can be melted, many do not boil, tending instead to degrade.  In earlier times, the melting point (m.p.) and boiling point (b.p.) provided crucial information on the purity and identity of organic compounds.  The melting and boiling points correlate with the polarity of the molecules and their molecular weight.  Some organic compounds, especially symmetrical ones, sublime, that is they evaporate without melting.  A well-known example of a sublimable organic compound is para-dichlorobenzene, the odiferous constituent of modern mothballs.  Organic compounds are usually not very stable at temperatures above 300 °C, although some exceptions exist.
+
+Neutral organic compounds tend to be hydrophobic; that is, they are less soluble in water than in organic solvents.  Exceptions include organic compounds that contain ionizable (which can be converted in ions) groups as well as low molecular weight alcohols, amines, and carboxylic acids where hydrogen bonding occurs.  Otherwise organic compounds tend to dissolve in organic solvents.  Solubility varies widely with the organic solute and with the organic solvent.
+
+Various specialized properties of molecular crystals and organic polymers with conjugated systems are of interest depending on applications, e.g. thermo-mechanical and electro-mechanical such as piezoelectricity, electrical conductivity (see conductive polymers and organic semiconductors), and electro-optical (e.g. non-linear optics) properties.  For historical reasons, such properties are mainly the subjects of the areas of polymer science and materials science.
+
+The names of organic compounds are either systematic, following logically from a set of rules, or nonsystematic, following various traditions. Systematic nomenclature is stipulated by specifications from IUPAC.  Systematic nomenclature starts with the name for a parent structure within the molecule of interest.  This parent name is then modified by prefixes, suffixes, and numbers to unambiguously convey the structure. Given that millions of organic compounds are known, rigorous use of systematic names can be cumbersome.  Thus, IUPAC recommendations are more closely followed for simple compounds, but not complex molecules.  To use the systematic naming, one must know the structures and names of the parent structures.  Parent structures include unsubstituted hydrocarbons, heterocycles, and mono functionalized derivatives thereof.
+
+Nonsystematic nomenclature is simpler and unambiguous, at least to organic chemists.  Nonsystematic names do not indicate the structure of the compound. They are common for complex molecules, which include most natural products.  Thus, the informally named lysergic acid diethylamide is systematically named
+(6aR,9R)-N,N-diethyl-7-methyl-4,6,6a,7,8,9-hexahydroindolo-[4,3-fg] quinoline-9-carboxamide.
+
+With the increased use of computing, other naming methods have evolved that are intended to be interpreted by machines.  Two popular formats are SMILES and InChI.
+
+Organic molecules are described more commonly by drawings or structural formulas, combinations of drawings and chemical symbols.  The line-angle formula is simple and unambiguous.  In this system, the endpoints and intersections of each line represent one carbon, and hydrogen atoms can either be notated explicitly or assumed to be present as implied by tetravalent carbon.
+
+By 1880 an explosion in the number of chemical compounds being discovered occurred assisted by new synthetic and analytical techniques. Grignard described the situation as "chaos le plus complet" as due to the lack of convention it was possible to have multiple names for the same compound. This led to the creation of the Geneva rules in 1892.[18]
+
+The concept of functional groups is central in organic chemistry, both as a means to classify structures and for predicting properties.  A functional group is a molecular module, and the reactivity of that functional group is assumed, within limits, to be the same in a variety of molecules. Functional groups can have a decisive influence on the chemical and physical properties of organic compounds. Molecules are classified based on their functional groups. Alcohols, for example, all have the subunit C-O-H. All alcohols tend to be somewhat hydrophilic, usually form esters, and usually can be converted to the corresponding halides.  Most functional groups feature heteroatoms (atoms other than C and H). Organic compounds are classified according to functional groups, alcohols, carboxylic acids, amines, etc.[19]
+
+The aliphatic hydrocarbons are subdivided into three groups of homologous series according to their state of saturation:
+
+The rest of the group is classed according to the functional groups present.  Such compounds can be "straight-chain", branched-chain or cyclic.  The degree of branching affects characteristics, such as the octane number or cetane number in petroleum chemistry.
+
+Both saturated (alicyclic) compounds and unsaturated compounds exist as cyclic derivatives. The most stable rings contain five or six carbon atoms, but large rings (macrocycles) and smaller rings are common. The smallest cycloalkane family is the three-membered cyclopropane ((CH2)3). Saturated cyclic compounds contain single bonds only, whereas aromatic rings have an alternating (or conjugated) double bond. Cycloalkanes do not contain multiple bonds, whereas the cycloalkenes and the cycloalkynes do.
+
+Aromatic hydrocarbons contain conjugated double bonds. This means that every carbon atom in the ring is sp2 hybridized, allowing for added stability. The most important example is benzene, the structure of which was formulated by Kekulé who first proposed the delocalization or resonance principle for explaining its structure.  For "conventional" cyclic compounds, aromaticity is conferred by the presence of 4n + 2 delocalized pi electrons, where n is an integer.  Particular instability (antiaromaticity) is conferred by the presence of 4n conjugated pi electrons.
+
+The characteristics of the cyclic hydrocarbons are again altered if heteroatoms are present, which can exist as either substituents attached externally to the ring (exocyclic) or as a member of the ring itself (endocyclic). In the case of the latter, the ring is termed a heterocycle.  Pyridine and furan are examples of aromatic heterocycles while piperidine and tetrahydrofuran are the corresponding alicyclic heterocycles. The heteroatom of heterocyclic molecules is generally oxygen, sulfur, or nitrogen, with the latter being particularly common in biochemical systems.
+
+Heterocycles are commonly found in a wide range of products including aniline dyes and medicines. Additionally, they are prevalent in a wide range of biochemical compounds such as alkaloids, vitamins, steroids, and nucleic acids (e.g. DNA, RNA).
+
+Rings can fuse with other rings on an edge to give polycyclic compounds. The purine nucleoside bases are notable polycyclic aromatic heterocycles.  Rings can also fuse on a "corner" such that one atom (almost always carbon) has two bonds going to one ring and two to another.  Such compounds are termed spiro and are important in several natural products.
+
+One important property of carbon is that it readily forms chains, or networks, that are linked by carbon-carbon (carbon-to-carbon) bonds. The linking process is called polymerization, while the chains, or networks, are called polymers. The source compound is called a monomer.
+
+Two main groups of polymers exist synthetic polymers and biopolymers. Synthetic polymers are artificially manufactured, and are commonly referred to as industrial polymers.[20] Biopolymers occur within a respectfully natural environment, or without human intervention.
+
+Biomolecular chemistry is a major category within organic chemistry which is frequently studied by biochemists. Many complex multi-functional group molecules are important in living organisms. Some are long-chain biopolymers, and these include peptides, DNA, RNA and the polysaccharides such as starches in animals and celluloses in plants. The other main classes are amino acids (monomer building blocks of peptides and proteins), carbohydrates (which includes the polysaccharides), the nucleic acids (which include DNA and RNA as polymers), and the lipids. Besides, animal biochemistry contains many small molecule intermediates which assist in energy production through the Krebs cycle, and produces isoprene, the most common hydrocarbon in animals. Isoprenes in animals form the important steroid structural (cholesterol) and steroid hormone compounds; and in plants form terpenes, terpenoids, some alkaloids, and a class of hydrocarbons called biopolymer polyisoprenoids present in the latex of various species of plants, which is the basis for making rubber.
+
+See also: peptide synthesis,  oligonucleotide synthesis and carbohydrate synthesis.
+
+In pharmacology, an important group of organic compounds is small molecules, also referred to as 'small organic compounds'. In this context, a small molecule is a small organic compound that is biologically active but is not a polymer. In practice, small molecules have a molar mass less than approximately 1000 g/mol.
+
+Fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, carbon compounds with spheroidal and tubular structures, have stimulated much research into the related field of materials science. The first fullerene was discovered in 1985 by Sir Harold W. Kroto of the United Kingdom and by Richard E. Smalley and Robert F. Curl, Jr., of the United States. Using a laser to vaporize graphite rods in an atmosphere of helium gas, these chemists and their assistants obtained cagelike molecules composed of 60 carbon atoms (C60) joined together by single and double bonds to form a hollow sphere with 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal faces—a design that resembles a football, or soccer ball. In 1996 the trio was awarded the Nobel Prize for their pioneering efforts. The C60 molecule was named buckminsterfullerene (or, more simply, the buckyball) after the American architect R. Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic dome is constructed on the same structural principles.
+
+Organic compounds containing bonds of carbon to nitrogen, oxygen and the halogens are not normally grouped separately. Others are sometimes put into major groups within organic chemistry and discussed under titles such as organosulfur chemistry, organometallic chemistry, organophosphorus chemistry and organosilicon chemistry.
+
+Organic reactions are chemical reactions involving organic compounds. Many of these reactions are associated with functional groups. The general theory of these reactions involves careful analysis of such properties as the electron affinity of key atoms, bond strengths and steric hindrance. These factors can determine the relative stability of short-lived reactive intermediates, which usually directly determine the path of the reaction.
+
+The basic reaction types are: addition reactions, elimination reactions, substitution reactions, pericyclic reactions, rearrangement reactions and redox reactions. An example of a common reaction is a substitution reaction written as:
+
+where X is some functional group and Nu is a nucleophile.
+
+The number of possible organic reactions is infinite. However, certain general patterns are observed that can be used to describe many common or useful reactions. Each reaction has a stepwise reaction mechanism that explains how it happens in sequence—although the detailed description of steps is not always clear from a list of reactants alone.
+
+The stepwise course of any given reaction mechanism can be represented using  arrow pushing techniques in which curved arrows are used to track the movement of electrons as starting materials transition through intermediates to final products.
+
+Synthetic organic chemistry is an applied science as it borders engineering, the "design, analysis, and/or construction of works for practical purposes". Organic synthesis of a novel compound is a problem-solving task, where a synthesis is designed for a target molecule by selecting optimal reactions from optimal starting materials. Complex compounds can have tens of reaction steps that sequentially build the desired molecule. The synthesis proceeds by utilizing the reactivity of the functional groups in the molecule. For example, a carbonyl compound can be used as a nucleophile by converting it into an enolate, or as an electrophile; the combination of the two is called the aldol reaction. Designing practically useful syntheses always requires conducting the actual synthesis in the laboratory. The scientific practice of creating novel synthetic routes for complex molecules is called total synthesis.
+
+Strategies to design a synthesis include retrosynthesis, popularized by E.J. Corey, which starts with the target molecule and splices it to pieces according to known reactions. The pieces, or the proposed precursors, receive the same treatment, until available and ideally inexpensive starting materials are reached. Then, the retrosynthesis is written in the opposite direction to give the synthesis. A "synthetic tree" can be constructed because each compound and also each precursor has multiple syntheses.

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+Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (baptised 15 January 1622; died 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (UK: /ˈmɒliɛər, ˈmoʊl-/, US: /moʊlˈjɛər, ˌmoʊliˈɛər/,[1][2][3] French: [mɔljɛʁ]), was a French playwright, actor and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and universal literature. His extant works include comedies, farces, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets and more. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed at the Comédie-Française more often than those of any other playwright today.[4] His influence is such that the French language itself is often referred to as the "language of Molière".[5][6]
+
+Born into a prosperous family and having studied at the Collège de Clermont (now Lycée Louis-le-Grand), Molière was well suited to begin a life in the theatre. Thirteen years as an itinerant actor helped him polish his comic abilities while he began writing, combining Commedia dell'arte elements with the more refined French comedy.[7]
+
+Through the patronage of aristocrats including Philippe I, Duke of Orléans—the brother of Louis XIV—Molière procured a command performance before the King at the Louvre. Performing a classic play by Pierre Corneille and a farce of his own, The Doctor in Love, Molière was granted the use of salle du Petit-Bourbon near the Louvre, a spacious room appointed for theatrical performances. Later, he was granted the use of the theatre in the Palais-Royal. In both locations Molière found success among Parisians with plays such as The Affected Ladies, The School for Husbands and The School for Wives. This royal favour brought a royal pension to his troupe and the title Troupe du Roi ("The King's Troupe"). Molière continued as the official author of court entertainments.[8]
+
+Despite the adulation of the court and Parisians, Molière's satires attracted criticism from churchmen. For Tartuffe's impiety, the Catholic Church denounced this study of religious hypocrisy followed by the Parliament's ban, while Don Juan was withdrawn and never restaged by Molière.[9]  His hard work in so many theatrical capacities took its toll on his health and, by 1667, he was forced to take a break from the stage. In 1673, during a production of his final play, The Imaginary Invalid, Molière, who suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, was seized by a coughing fit and a haemorrhage while playing the hypochondriac Argan. He finished the performance but collapsed again and died a few hours later.[8]
+
+Molière was born in Paris shortly before his christening as Jean Poquelin on 15 January 1622. Known as Jean-Baptiste, he was the first son of Jean Poquelin and Marie Cressé, who had married on 27 April 1621.[10] His mother was the daughter of a prosperous bourgeois family.[11] Upon seeing him for the first time, a maid exclaimed, "Le nez!", a reference to the infant's large nose.  Molière was called "Le Nez" by his family from that time.[12] He lost his mother when he was eleven, and he does not seem to have been particularly close to his father. After his mother's death, he lived with his father above the Pavillon des Singes on the rue Saint-Honoré, an affluent area of Paris. It is likely that his education commenced with studies at a Parisian elementary school,[13] followed by his enrolment in the prestigious Jesuit Collège de Clermont, where he completed his studies in a strict academic environment and got a first taste of life on the stage.[14]
+
+In 1631, his father Jean Poquelin purchased from the court of Louis XIII the posts of "valet de chambre ordinaire et tapissier du Roi" ("valet of the King's chamber and keeper of carpets and upholstery"). His son assumed the same posts in 1641.[15] The title required only three months' work and an initial cost of 1,200 livres; the title paid 300 livres a year and provided a number of lucrative contracts. Molière also studied as a provincial lawyer some time around 1642, probably in Orléans, but it is not documented that he ever qualified. So far he had followed his father's plans, which had served him well; he had mingled with nobility at the Collège de Clermont and seemed destined for a career in office.
+
+In June 1643, when Molière was 21, he decided to abandon his social class and pursue a career on the stage. Taking leave of his father, he joined the actress Madeleine Béjart, with whom he had crossed paths before, and founded the Illustre Théâtre with 630 livres. They were later joined by Madeleine's brother and sister.
+
+The new theatre troupe went bankrupt in 1645. Molière had become head of the troupe, due in part, perhaps, to his acting prowess and his legal training. However, the troupe had acquired large debts, mostly for the rent of the theatre (a court for jeu de paume), for which they owed 2000 livres. Historians differ as to whether his father or the lover of a member of his troupe paid his debts; either way, after a 24-hour stint in prison he returned to the acting circuit. It was at this time that he began to use the pseudonym Molière, possibly inspired by a small village of the same name in the Midi near Le Vigan. It was also likely that he changed his name to spare his father the shame of having an actor in the family (actors, although no longer vilified by the state under Louis XIV, were still not allowed to be buried in sacred ground).
+
+After his imprisonment, he and Madeleine began a theatrical circuit of the provinces with a new theatre troupe; this life was to last about twelve years, during which he initially played in the company of Charles Dufresne, and subsequently created a company of his own, which had sufficient success and obtained the patronage of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. Few plays survive from this period. The most noteworthy are L'Étourdi ou les Contretemps (The Bungler) and Le Docteur Amoureux (The Doctor in Love); with these two plays, Molière moved away from the heavy influence of the Italian improvisational Commedia dell'arte, and displayed his talent for mockery. In the course of his travels he met Armand, Prince of Conti, the governor of Languedoc, who became his patron, and named his company after him. This friendship later ended when Armand, having contracted syphilis from a courtesan, turned towards religion and joined Molière's enemies in the Parti des Dévots and the Compagnie de Saint Sacrement.
+
+In Lyon, Mademoiselle Du Parc, known as Marquise, joined the company. Marquise was courted, in vain, by Pierre Corneille and later became the lover of Jean Racine. Racine offered Molière his tragedy Théagène et Chariclée (one of the first works he wrote after he had abandoned his theology studies), but Molière would not perform it, though he encouraged Racine to pursue his artistic career. It is said that soon thereafter Molière became angry with Racine when he was told that he had secretly presented his tragedy to the company of the Hôtel de Bourgogne as well.
+
+Molière was forced to reach Paris in stages, staying outside for a few weeks in order to promote himself with society gentlemen and allow his reputation to feed in to Paris. Molière reached Paris in 1658 and performed in front of the King at the Louvre (then for rent as a theatre) in Corneille's tragedy Nicomède and in the farce Le Docteur Amoureux with some success. He was awarded the title of Troupe de Monsieur (Monsieur being the honorific for the king's brother Philippe I, Duke of Orléans). With the help of Monsieur, his company was allowed to share the theatre in the large hall of the Petit-Bourbon with the famous Italian Commedia dell'arte company of Tiberio Fiorillo, famous for his character of Scaramouche. (The two companies performed in the theatre on different nights.) The premiere of Molière's Les Précieuses Ridicules (The Affected Young Ladies) took place at the Petit-Bourbon on 18 November 1659.
+
+Les Précieuses Ridicules was the first of Molière's many attempts to satirize certain societal mannerisms and affectations then common in France. It is widely accepted that the plot was based on Samuel Chappuzeau's Le Cercle des Femmes of 1656. He primarily mocks the Académie Française, a group created by Richelieu under a royal patent to establish the rules of the fledgling French theatre. The Académie preached unity of time, action, and styles of verse. Molière is often associated with the claim that comedy castigat ridendo mores or "criticises customs through humour" (a phrase in fact coined by his contemporary Jean de Santeuil and sometimes mistaken for a classical Latin proverb).[16]
+
+Despite his own preference for tragedy, which he had tried to further with the Illustre Théâtre, Molière became famous for his farces, which were generally in one act and performed after the tragedy. Some of these farces were only partly written, and were played in the style of Commedia dell'arte with improvisation over a canovaccio (a vague plot outline). He began to write full, five-act comedies in verse (L'Étourdi (Lyon, 1654) and Le dépit amoureux (Béziers, 1656)), which although immersed in the gags of contemporary Italian troupes, were successful as part of Madeleine Béjart and Molière's plans to win aristocratic patronage and, ultimately, move the troupe to a position in a Paris theater-venue.[17] Later Molière concentrated on writing musical comedies, in which the drama is interrupted by songs and/or dances, but for years the fundamentals of numerous comedy-traditions would remain strong, especially Italian (e.g. the semi-improvisatory style that in the 1750s writers started calling commedia dell'arte), Spanish, and French plays, all also drawing on classical models (e.g. Plautus and Terence), especially the trope of the clever slave/servant.[18]
+
+Les précieuses ridicules won Molière the attention and the criticism of many, but it was not a popular success. He then asked Fiorillo to teach him the techniques of Commedia dell'arte. His 1660 play Sganarelle, ou Le Cocu imaginaire (The Imaginary Cuckold) seems to be a tribute both to Commedia dell'arte and to his teacher. Its theme of marital relationships dramatizes Molière's pessimistic views on the falsity inherent in human relationships. This view is also evident in his later works and was a source of inspiration for many later authors, including (in a different field and with different effect) Luigi Pirandello. It describes a kind of round dance where two couples believe that each of their partners has been betrayed by the other's and is the first in Molière's "Jealousy series", which includes Dom Garcie de Navarre, L'École des maris and L'École des femmes.
+
+In 1660 the Petit-Bourbon was demolished to make way for the eastern expansion of the Louvre, but Molière's company was allowed to move into the abandoned theatre in the east wing of the Palais-Royal. After a period of refurbishment they opened there on 20 January 1661. In order to please his patron, Monsieur, who was so enthralled with entertainment and art that he was soon excluded from state affairs, Molière wrote and played Dom Garcie de Navarre ou Le Prince jaloux (The Jealous Prince, 4 February 1661), a heroic comedy derived from a work of Cicognini's. Two other comedies of the same year were the successful L'École des maris (The School for Husbands) and Les Fâcheux, subtitled Comédie faite pour les divertissements du Roi (a comedy for the King's amusements) because it was performed during a series of parties that Nicolas Fouquet gave in honor of the sovereign. These entertainments led Jean-Baptiste Colbert to demand the arrest of Fouquet for wasting public money, and he was condemned to life imprisonment.[19]
+
+On 20 February 1662 Molière married Armande Béjart, whom he believed to be the sister of Madeleine. (She may instead have been her illegitimate daughter with the Duke of Modena.) The same year he premiered L'École des femmes (The School for Wives), subsequently regarded as a masterpiece. It poked fun at the limited education that was given to daughters of rich families and reflected Molière's own marriage. Both this work and his marriage attracted much criticism. The play sparked the protest called the "Quarrel of L'École des femmes". On the artistic side he responded with two lesser-known works: La Critique de "L'École des femmes", in which he imagined the spectators of his previous work attending it. The piece mocks the people who had criticised L'École des femmes by showing them at dinner after watching the play; it addresses all the criticism raised about the piece by presenting the critics' arguments and then dismissing them. This was the so-called Guerre comique (War of Comedy), in which the opposite side was taken by writers like Donneau de Visé, Edmé Boursault, and Montfleury.
+
+But more serious opposition was brewing, focusing on Molière's politics and his personal life. A so-called parti des Dévots arose in French high society, who protested against Molière's excessive "realism" and irreverence, which were causing some embarrassment. These people accused Molière of having married his daughter. The Prince of Conti, once Molière's friend, joined them. Molière had other enemies, too, among them the Jansenists and some traditional authors. However, the king expressed support for the author, granting him a pension and agreeing to be the godfather of Molière's first son. Boileau also supported him through statements that he included in his Art poétique.
+
+Molière's friendship with Jean-Baptiste Lully influenced him towards writing his Le Mariage forcé and La Princesse d'Élide (subtitled as Comédie galante mêlée de musique et d'entrées de ballet), written for royal "divertissements" at the Palace of Versailles.
+
+Tartuffe, ou L'Imposteur was also performed at Versailles, in 1664, and created the greatest scandal of Molière's artistic career. Its depiction of the hypocrisy of the dominant classes was taken as an outrage and violently contested. It also aroused the wrath of the Jansenists and the play was banned.
+
+Molière was always careful not to attack the institution of monarchy. He earned a position as one of the king's favourites and enjoyed his protection from the attacks of the court. The king allegedly suggested that Molière suspend performances of Tartuffe, and the author rapidly wrote Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre to replace it. It was a strange work, derived from a work by Tirso de Molina and rendered in a prose that still seems modern today. It describes the story of an atheist who becomes a religious hypocrite and for this is punished by God. This work too was quickly suspended. The king, demonstrating his protection once again, became the new official sponsor of Molière's troupe.
+
+With music by Lully, Molière presented L'Amour médecin (Love Doctor or Medical Love). Subtitles on this occasion reported that the work was given "par ordre du Roi" (by order of the king) and this work was received much more warmly than its predecessors.
+
+In 1666, Le Misanthrope was produced. It is now widely regarded as Molière's most refined masterpiece, the one with the highest moral content, but it was little appreciated at its time. It caused the "conversion" of Donneau de Visé, who became fond of his theatre. But it was a commercial flop, forcing Molière to immediately write Le médecin malgré lui (The Doctor Despite Himself), a satire against the official sciences. This was a success despite a moral treatise by the Prince of Conti, criticizing the theatre in general and Molière in particular. In several of his plays, Molière depicted the physicians of his day as pompous individuals who speak (poor) Latin to impress others with false erudition, and know only clysters and bleedings as (ineffective) remedies.
+
+After the Mélicerte and the Pastorale comique, he tried again to perform a revised Tartuffe in 1667, this time with the name of Panulphe or L'Imposteur. As soon as the King left Paris for a tour, Lamoignon and the archbishop banned the play. The King finally imposed respect for Tartuffe a few years later, after he had gained more power over the clergy.
+
+Molière, now ill, wrote less. Le Sicilien ou L'Amour peintre was written for festivities at the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and was followed in 1668 by Amphitryon, inspired both by Plautus' work of the same name and Jean Rotrou's successful reconfiguration of the drama. With some conjecture, Molière's play can be seen to allude to the love affairs of Louis XIV, then king of France. George Dandin, ou Le mari confondu (The Confounded Husband) was little appreciated, but success returned with L'Avare (The Miser), now very well known.
+
+With Lully he again used music for Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, for Les Amants magnifiques, and finally for Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Middle Class Gentleman), another of his masterpieces. It is claimed to be particularly directed against Colbert, the minister who had condemned his old patron Fouquet. The collaboration with Lully ended with a tragédie et ballet, Psyché, written in collaboration with Pierre Corneille and Philippe Quinault.
+
+In 1672, Madeleine Béjart died, and Molière suffered from this loss and from the worsening of his own illness. Nevertheless, he wrote a successful Les Fourberies de Scapin ("Scapin's Deceits"), a farce and a comedy in five acts. His following play, La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, is considered one of his lesser works.
+
+Les Femmes savantes (The Learned Ladies) of 1672 is considered another of Molière's masterpieces. It was born from the termination of the legal use of music in theatre, since Lully had patented the opera in France (and taken most of the best available singers for his own performances), so Molière had to go back to his traditional genre. It was a great success, and it led to his last work (see below), which is still held in high esteem.
+
+In his 14 years in Paris, Molière singlehandedly wrote 31 of the 85 plays performed on his stage.
+
+In 1661, Molière introduced the comédies-ballets in conjunction with Les Fâcheux.  These ballets were a transitional form of dance performance between the court ballets of Louis XIV and the art of professional theatre which was developing in the advent of the use of the proscenium stage.[20]   The comédies-ballets developed accidentally when Molière was enlisted to mount both a play and a ballet in the honor of Louis XIV and found that he did not have a big enough cast to meet these demands.  Molière therefore decided to combine the ballet and the play so that his goal could be met while the performers catch their breath and change costume.[20] The risky move paid off and Molière was asked to produce twelve more comédies-ballets before his death.[20] During the comédies-ballets, Molière collaborated with Pierre Beauchamp.[20] Beauchamp codified the five balletic positions of the feet and arms and was partly responsible for the creation of the Beauchamp-Feuillet dance notation.[21] Molière also collaborated with Jean-Baptiste Lully.[20] Lully was a dancer, choreographer, and composer, whose dominant reign at the Paris Opéra lasted fifteen years.  Under his command, ballet and opera rightly became professional arts unto themselves.[22] The comédies-ballets closely integrated dance with music and the action of the play and the style of continuity distinctly separated these performances from the court ballets of the time;[23] additionally, the comédies-ballets demanded that both the dancers and the actors play an important role in advancing the story. Similar to the court ballets, both professionally trained dancers and courtiers socialized together at the comédies-ballets - Louis XIV even played the part of an Egyptian in Molière's Le Mariage forcé (1664) and also appeared as Neptune and Apollo in his retirement performance of Les Amants magnifiques (1670).[23]
+
+Molière suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, possibly contracted when he was imprisoned for debt as a young man. One of the most famous moments in Molière's life was his last, which became legend: he collapsed on stage in a fit of coughing and haemorrhaging while performing in the last play he had written, which had lavish ballets performed to the music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier and which ironically was entitled Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid). Molière insisted on completing his performance. Afterwards he collapsed again with another, larger haemorrhage before being taken home, where he died a few hours later, without receiving the last rites because two priests refused to visit him while a third arrived too late. The superstition that green brings bad luck to actors is said to originate from the colour of the clothing he was wearing at the time of his death.
+
+Under French law at the time, actors were not allowed to be buried in the sacred ground of a cemetery. However, Molière's widow, Armande, asked the King if her spouse could be granted a normal funeral at night. The King agreed and Molière's body was buried in the part of the cemetery reserved for unbaptised infants.
+
+In 1792 his remains were brought to the museum of French monuments and in 1817 transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, close to those of La Fontaine.
+
+Though conventional thinkers, religious leaders and medical professionals in Molière's time criticised his work, their ideas did not really diminish his widespread success with the public. Other playwrights and companies began to emulate his dramatic style in England and in France. Molière's works continued to garner positive feedback in 18th-century England, but they were not so warmly welcomed in France at this time. However, during the French Restoration of the 19th century, Molière's comedies became popular with both the French public and the critics. Romanticists admired his plays for the unconventional individualism they portrayed. 20th-century scholars have carried on this interest in Molière and his plays and have continued to study a wide array of issues relating to this playwright. Many critics now are shifting their attention from the philosophical, religious and moral implications in his comedies to the more objective study of his comic technique.[24]
+
+Molière's works were translated into English prose by John Ozell in 1714,[25] but the first complete version in English, by Baker and Miller in 1739, remained "influential" and was long reprinted.[26] The first to offer full translations of Molière's verse plays such as Tartuffe into English verse was Curtis Hidden Page, who produced blank verse versions of three of the plays in his 1908 translation.[27] Since then, notable translations have been made by Richard Wilbur, Donald M. Frame, and many others.
+
+In his memoir A Terrible Liar, actor Hume Cronyn writes that, in 1962, celebrated actor Laurence Olivier criticized Molière. According to Cronyn, he mentioned to Olivier that he (Cronyn) was about to play the title role in The Miser, and that Olivier then responded, "Molière? Funny as a baby's open grave." Cronyn comments on the incident: "You may imagine how that made me feel. Fortunately, he was dead wrong."[28]
+
+Author Martha Bellinger points out that:
+
+[Molière] has been accused of not having a consistent, organic style, of using faulty grammar, of mixing his metaphors, and of using unnecessary words for the purpose of filling out his lines. All these things are occasionally true, but they are trifles in comparison to the wealth of character he portrayed, to his brilliancy of wit, and to the resourcefulness of his technique. He was wary of sensibility or pathos; but in place of pathos he had "melancholy — a puissant and searching melancholy, which strangely sustains his inexhaustible mirth and his triumphant gaiety".[29]
+
+Molière is considered the creator of modern French comedy. Many words or phrases used in Molière's plays are still used in current French:
+
+French and 
+Francophone literature
+
+French literature 
+By category 
+French language
+
+Medieval
+16th century • 17th century
+18th century • 19th century
+20th century • Contemporary
+
+Francophone literature
+Literature of Quebec
+Postcolonial literature
+Literature of Haiti
+
+Chronological list
+
+Writers •
+Novelists 
+Playwrights •
+Poets 
+Essayists 
+Short story writers
+
+Novel • Poetry • Plays
+
+Science fiction • Comics
+Fantastique
+
+Naturalism • Symbolism
+Surrealism • Existentialism
+Nouveau roman
+Theatre of the Absurd
+
+Literary theory •
+Critics
+Literary prizes
+
+Molière • Racine •
+Balzac
+Stendhal • Flaubert
+Zola •
+Proust
+Beckett •
+Camus
+
+France • Literature
+
+Molière plays a small part in Alexandre Dumas's novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne, in which he is seen taking inspiration from the muskeeter Porthos for his central character in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
+
+Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov wrote a semi-fictitious biography-tribute to Molière, titled Life of Mr. de Molière. Written 1932–1933, first published 1962.
+
+The French 1978 film simply titled Molière directed by Ariane Mnouchkine and starring Philippe Caubère presents his complete biography. It was in competition for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1978.
+
+He is portrayed among other writers in The Blasphemers' Banquet (1989).
+
+The 2000 film Le Roi Danse (The King Dances), in which Molière is played by Tchéky Karyo, shows his collaborations with Jean-Baptiste Lully, as well as his illness and on-stage death.
+
+The 2007 French film Molière was more loosely based on the life of Molière, starring Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini and Ludivine Sagnier.
+
+David Hirson's play La Bête, itself in the style of Molière, includes the character Elomire as an anagrammatic parody of him.

en/3907.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,139 @@
+Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (baptised 15 January 1622; died 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (UK: /ˈmɒliɛər, ˈmoʊl-/, US: /moʊlˈjɛər, ˌmoʊliˈɛər/,[1][2][3] French: [mɔljɛʁ]), was a French playwright, actor and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and universal literature. His extant works include comedies, farces, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets and more. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed at the Comédie-Française more often than those of any other playwright today.[4] His influence is such that the French language itself is often referred to as the "language of Molière".[5][6]
+
+Born into a prosperous family and having studied at the Collège de Clermont (now Lycée Louis-le-Grand), Molière was well suited to begin a life in the theatre. Thirteen years as an itinerant actor helped him polish his comic abilities while he began writing, combining Commedia dell'arte elements with the more refined French comedy.[7]
+
+Through the patronage of aristocrats including Philippe I, Duke of Orléans—the brother of Louis XIV—Molière procured a command performance before the King at the Louvre. Performing a classic play by Pierre Corneille and a farce of his own, The Doctor in Love, Molière was granted the use of salle du Petit-Bourbon near the Louvre, a spacious room appointed for theatrical performances. Later, he was granted the use of the theatre in the Palais-Royal. In both locations Molière found success among Parisians with plays such as The Affected Ladies, The School for Husbands and The School for Wives. This royal favour brought a royal pension to his troupe and the title Troupe du Roi ("The King's Troupe"). Molière continued as the official author of court entertainments.[8]
+
+Despite the adulation of the court and Parisians, Molière's satires attracted criticism from churchmen. For Tartuffe's impiety, the Catholic Church denounced this study of religious hypocrisy followed by the Parliament's ban, while Don Juan was withdrawn and never restaged by Molière.[9]  His hard work in so many theatrical capacities took its toll on his health and, by 1667, he was forced to take a break from the stage. In 1673, during a production of his final play, The Imaginary Invalid, Molière, who suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, was seized by a coughing fit and a haemorrhage while playing the hypochondriac Argan. He finished the performance but collapsed again and died a few hours later.[8]
+
+Molière was born in Paris shortly before his christening as Jean Poquelin on 15 January 1622. Known as Jean-Baptiste, he was the first son of Jean Poquelin and Marie Cressé, who had married on 27 April 1621.[10] His mother was the daughter of a prosperous bourgeois family.[11] Upon seeing him for the first time, a maid exclaimed, "Le nez!", a reference to the infant's large nose.  Molière was called "Le Nez" by his family from that time.[12] He lost his mother when he was eleven, and he does not seem to have been particularly close to his father. After his mother's death, he lived with his father above the Pavillon des Singes on the rue Saint-Honoré, an affluent area of Paris. It is likely that his education commenced with studies at a Parisian elementary school,[13] followed by his enrolment in the prestigious Jesuit Collège de Clermont, where he completed his studies in a strict academic environment and got a first taste of life on the stage.[14]
+
+In 1631, his father Jean Poquelin purchased from the court of Louis XIII the posts of "valet de chambre ordinaire et tapissier du Roi" ("valet of the King's chamber and keeper of carpets and upholstery"). His son assumed the same posts in 1641.[15] The title required only three months' work and an initial cost of 1,200 livres; the title paid 300 livres a year and provided a number of lucrative contracts. Molière also studied as a provincial lawyer some time around 1642, probably in Orléans, but it is not documented that he ever qualified. So far he had followed his father's plans, which had served him well; he had mingled with nobility at the Collège de Clermont and seemed destined for a career in office.
+
+In June 1643, when Molière was 21, he decided to abandon his social class and pursue a career on the stage. Taking leave of his father, he joined the actress Madeleine Béjart, with whom he had crossed paths before, and founded the Illustre Théâtre with 630 livres. They were later joined by Madeleine's brother and sister.
+
+The new theatre troupe went bankrupt in 1645. Molière had become head of the troupe, due in part, perhaps, to his acting prowess and his legal training. However, the troupe had acquired large debts, mostly for the rent of the theatre (a court for jeu de paume), for which they owed 2000 livres. Historians differ as to whether his father or the lover of a member of his troupe paid his debts; either way, after a 24-hour stint in prison he returned to the acting circuit. It was at this time that he began to use the pseudonym Molière, possibly inspired by a small village of the same name in the Midi near Le Vigan. It was also likely that he changed his name to spare his father the shame of having an actor in the family (actors, although no longer vilified by the state under Louis XIV, were still not allowed to be buried in sacred ground).
+
+After his imprisonment, he and Madeleine began a theatrical circuit of the provinces with a new theatre troupe; this life was to last about twelve years, during which he initially played in the company of Charles Dufresne, and subsequently created a company of his own, which had sufficient success and obtained the patronage of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. Few plays survive from this period. The most noteworthy are L'Étourdi ou les Contretemps (The Bungler) and Le Docteur Amoureux (The Doctor in Love); with these two plays, Molière moved away from the heavy influence of the Italian improvisational Commedia dell'arte, and displayed his talent for mockery. In the course of his travels he met Armand, Prince of Conti, the governor of Languedoc, who became his patron, and named his company after him. This friendship later ended when Armand, having contracted syphilis from a courtesan, turned towards religion and joined Molière's enemies in the Parti des Dévots and the Compagnie de Saint Sacrement.
+
+In Lyon, Mademoiselle Du Parc, known as Marquise, joined the company. Marquise was courted, in vain, by Pierre Corneille and later became the lover of Jean Racine. Racine offered Molière his tragedy Théagène et Chariclée (one of the first works he wrote after he had abandoned his theology studies), but Molière would not perform it, though he encouraged Racine to pursue his artistic career. It is said that soon thereafter Molière became angry with Racine when he was told that he had secretly presented his tragedy to the company of the Hôtel de Bourgogne as well.
+
+Molière was forced to reach Paris in stages, staying outside for a few weeks in order to promote himself with society gentlemen and allow his reputation to feed in to Paris. Molière reached Paris in 1658 and performed in front of the King at the Louvre (then for rent as a theatre) in Corneille's tragedy Nicomède and in the farce Le Docteur Amoureux with some success. He was awarded the title of Troupe de Monsieur (Monsieur being the honorific for the king's brother Philippe I, Duke of Orléans). With the help of Monsieur, his company was allowed to share the theatre in the large hall of the Petit-Bourbon with the famous Italian Commedia dell'arte company of Tiberio Fiorillo, famous for his character of Scaramouche. (The two companies performed in the theatre on different nights.) The premiere of Molière's Les Précieuses Ridicules (The Affected Young Ladies) took place at the Petit-Bourbon on 18 November 1659.
+
+Les Précieuses Ridicules was the first of Molière's many attempts to satirize certain societal mannerisms and affectations then common in France. It is widely accepted that the plot was based on Samuel Chappuzeau's Le Cercle des Femmes of 1656. He primarily mocks the Académie Française, a group created by Richelieu under a royal patent to establish the rules of the fledgling French theatre. The Académie preached unity of time, action, and styles of verse. Molière is often associated with the claim that comedy castigat ridendo mores or "criticises customs through humour" (a phrase in fact coined by his contemporary Jean de Santeuil and sometimes mistaken for a classical Latin proverb).[16]
+
+Despite his own preference for tragedy, which he had tried to further with the Illustre Théâtre, Molière became famous for his farces, which were generally in one act and performed after the tragedy. Some of these farces were only partly written, and were played in the style of Commedia dell'arte with improvisation over a canovaccio (a vague plot outline). He began to write full, five-act comedies in verse (L'Étourdi (Lyon, 1654) and Le dépit amoureux (Béziers, 1656)), which although immersed in the gags of contemporary Italian troupes, were successful as part of Madeleine Béjart and Molière's plans to win aristocratic patronage and, ultimately, move the troupe to a position in a Paris theater-venue.[17] Later Molière concentrated on writing musical comedies, in which the drama is interrupted by songs and/or dances, but for years the fundamentals of numerous comedy-traditions would remain strong, especially Italian (e.g. the semi-improvisatory style that in the 1750s writers started calling commedia dell'arte), Spanish, and French plays, all also drawing on classical models (e.g. Plautus and Terence), especially the trope of the clever slave/servant.[18]
+
+Les précieuses ridicules won Molière the attention and the criticism of many, but it was not a popular success. He then asked Fiorillo to teach him the techniques of Commedia dell'arte. His 1660 play Sganarelle, ou Le Cocu imaginaire (The Imaginary Cuckold) seems to be a tribute both to Commedia dell'arte and to his teacher. Its theme of marital relationships dramatizes Molière's pessimistic views on the falsity inherent in human relationships. This view is also evident in his later works and was a source of inspiration for many later authors, including (in a different field and with different effect) Luigi Pirandello. It describes a kind of round dance where two couples believe that each of their partners has been betrayed by the other's and is the first in Molière's "Jealousy series", which includes Dom Garcie de Navarre, L'École des maris and L'École des femmes.
+
+In 1660 the Petit-Bourbon was demolished to make way for the eastern expansion of the Louvre, but Molière's company was allowed to move into the abandoned theatre in the east wing of the Palais-Royal. After a period of refurbishment they opened there on 20 January 1661. In order to please his patron, Monsieur, who was so enthralled with entertainment and art that he was soon excluded from state affairs, Molière wrote and played Dom Garcie de Navarre ou Le Prince jaloux (The Jealous Prince, 4 February 1661), a heroic comedy derived from a work of Cicognini's. Two other comedies of the same year were the successful L'École des maris (The School for Husbands) and Les Fâcheux, subtitled Comédie faite pour les divertissements du Roi (a comedy for the King's amusements) because it was performed during a series of parties that Nicolas Fouquet gave in honor of the sovereign. These entertainments led Jean-Baptiste Colbert to demand the arrest of Fouquet for wasting public money, and he was condemned to life imprisonment.[19]
+
+On 20 February 1662 Molière married Armande Béjart, whom he believed to be the sister of Madeleine. (She may instead have been her illegitimate daughter with the Duke of Modena.) The same year he premiered L'École des femmes (The School for Wives), subsequently regarded as a masterpiece. It poked fun at the limited education that was given to daughters of rich families and reflected Molière's own marriage. Both this work and his marriage attracted much criticism. The play sparked the protest called the "Quarrel of L'École des femmes". On the artistic side he responded with two lesser-known works: La Critique de "L'École des femmes", in which he imagined the spectators of his previous work attending it. The piece mocks the people who had criticised L'École des femmes by showing them at dinner after watching the play; it addresses all the criticism raised about the piece by presenting the critics' arguments and then dismissing them. This was the so-called Guerre comique (War of Comedy), in which the opposite side was taken by writers like Donneau de Visé, Edmé Boursault, and Montfleury.
+
+But more serious opposition was brewing, focusing on Molière's politics and his personal life. A so-called parti des Dévots arose in French high society, who protested against Molière's excessive "realism" and irreverence, which were causing some embarrassment. These people accused Molière of having married his daughter. The Prince of Conti, once Molière's friend, joined them. Molière had other enemies, too, among them the Jansenists and some traditional authors. However, the king expressed support for the author, granting him a pension and agreeing to be the godfather of Molière's first son. Boileau also supported him through statements that he included in his Art poétique.
+
+Molière's friendship with Jean-Baptiste Lully influenced him towards writing his Le Mariage forcé and La Princesse d'Élide (subtitled as Comédie galante mêlée de musique et d'entrées de ballet), written for royal "divertissements" at the Palace of Versailles.
+
+Tartuffe, ou L'Imposteur was also performed at Versailles, in 1664, and created the greatest scandal of Molière's artistic career. Its depiction of the hypocrisy of the dominant classes was taken as an outrage and violently contested. It also aroused the wrath of the Jansenists and the play was banned.
+
+Molière was always careful not to attack the institution of monarchy. He earned a position as one of the king's favourites and enjoyed his protection from the attacks of the court. The king allegedly suggested that Molière suspend performances of Tartuffe, and the author rapidly wrote Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre to replace it. It was a strange work, derived from a work by Tirso de Molina and rendered in a prose that still seems modern today. It describes the story of an atheist who becomes a religious hypocrite and for this is punished by God. This work too was quickly suspended. The king, demonstrating his protection once again, became the new official sponsor of Molière's troupe.
+
+With music by Lully, Molière presented L'Amour médecin (Love Doctor or Medical Love). Subtitles on this occasion reported that the work was given "par ordre du Roi" (by order of the king) and this work was received much more warmly than its predecessors.
+
+In 1666, Le Misanthrope was produced. It is now widely regarded as Molière's most refined masterpiece, the one with the highest moral content, but it was little appreciated at its time. It caused the "conversion" of Donneau de Visé, who became fond of his theatre. But it was a commercial flop, forcing Molière to immediately write Le médecin malgré lui (The Doctor Despite Himself), a satire against the official sciences. This was a success despite a moral treatise by the Prince of Conti, criticizing the theatre in general and Molière in particular. In several of his plays, Molière depicted the physicians of his day as pompous individuals who speak (poor) Latin to impress others with false erudition, and know only clysters and bleedings as (ineffective) remedies.
+
+After the Mélicerte and the Pastorale comique, he tried again to perform a revised Tartuffe in 1667, this time with the name of Panulphe or L'Imposteur. As soon as the King left Paris for a tour, Lamoignon and the archbishop banned the play. The King finally imposed respect for Tartuffe a few years later, after he had gained more power over the clergy.
+
+Molière, now ill, wrote less. Le Sicilien ou L'Amour peintre was written for festivities at the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and was followed in 1668 by Amphitryon, inspired both by Plautus' work of the same name and Jean Rotrou's successful reconfiguration of the drama. With some conjecture, Molière's play can be seen to allude to the love affairs of Louis XIV, then king of France. George Dandin, ou Le mari confondu (The Confounded Husband) was little appreciated, but success returned with L'Avare (The Miser), now very well known.
+
+With Lully he again used music for Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, for Les Amants magnifiques, and finally for Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Middle Class Gentleman), another of his masterpieces. It is claimed to be particularly directed against Colbert, the minister who had condemned his old patron Fouquet. The collaboration with Lully ended with a tragédie et ballet, Psyché, written in collaboration with Pierre Corneille and Philippe Quinault.
+
+In 1672, Madeleine Béjart died, and Molière suffered from this loss and from the worsening of his own illness. Nevertheless, he wrote a successful Les Fourberies de Scapin ("Scapin's Deceits"), a farce and a comedy in five acts. His following play, La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, is considered one of his lesser works.
+
+Les Femmes savantes (The Learned Ladies) of 1672 is considered another of Molière's masterpieces. It was born from the termination of the legal use of music in theatre, since Lully had patented the opera in France (and taken most of the best available singers for his own performances), so Molière had to go back to his traditional genre. It was a great success, and it led to his last work (see below), which is still held in high esteem.
+
+In his 14 years in Paris, Molière singlehandedly wrote 31 of the 85 plays performed on his stage.
+
+In 1661, Molière introduced the comédies-ballets in conjunction with Les Fâcheux.  These ballets were a transitional form of dance performance between the court ballets of Louis XIV and the art of professional theatre which was developing in the advent of the use of the proscenium stage.[20]   The comédies-ballets developed accidentally when Molière was enlisted to mount both a play and a ballet in the honor of Louis XIV and found that he did not have a big enough cast to meet these demands.  Molière therefore decided to combine the ballet and the play so that his goal could be met while the performers catch their breath and change costume.[20] The risky move paid off and Molière was asked to produce twelve more comédies-ballets before his death.[20] During the comédies-ballets, Molière collaborated with Pierre Beauchamp.[20] Beauchamp codified the five balletic positions of the feet and arms and was partly responsible for the creation of the Beauchamp-Feuillet dance notation.[21] Molière also collaborated with Jean-Baptiste Lully.[20] Lully was a dancer, choreographer, and composer, whose dominant reign at the Paris Opéra lasted fifteen years.  Under his command, ballet and opera rightly became professional arts unto themselves.[22] The comédies-ballets closely integrated dance with music and the action of the play and the style of continuity distinctly separated these performances from the court ballets of the time;[23] additionally, the comédies-ballets demanded that both the dancers and the actors play an important role in advancing the story. Similar to the court ballets, both professionally trained dancers and courtiers socialized together at the comédies-ballets - Louis XIV even played the part of an Egyptian in Molière's Le Mariage forcé (1664) and also appeared as Neptune and Apollo in his retirement performance of Les Amants magnifiques (1670).[23]
+
+Molière suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, possibly contracted when he was imprisoned for debt as a young man. One of the most famous moments in Molière's life was his last, which became legend: he collapsed on stage in a fit of coughing and haemorrhaging while performing in the last play he had written, which had lavish ballets performed to the music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier and which ironically was entitled Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid). Molière insisted on completing his performance. Afterwards he collapsed again with another, larger haemorrhage before being taken home, where he died a few hours later, without receiving the last rites because two priests refused to visit him while a third arrived too late. The superstition that green brings bad luck to actors is said to originate from the colour of the clothing he was wearing at the time of his death.
+
+Under French law at the time, actors were not allowed to be buried in the sacred ground of a cemetery. However, Molière's widow, Armande, asked the King if her spouse could be granted a normal funeral at night. The King agreed and Molière's body was buried in the part of the cemetery reserved for unbaptised infants.
+
+In 1792 his remains were brought to the museum of French monuments and in 1817 transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, close to those of La Fontaine.
+
+Though conventional thinkers, religious leaders and medical professionals in Molière's time criticised his work, their ideas did not really diminish his widespread success with the public. Other playwrights and companies began to emulate his dramatic style in England and in France. Molière's works continued to garner positive feedback in 18th-century England, but they were not so warmly welcomed in France at this time. However, during the French Restoration of the 19th century, Molière's comedies became popular with both the French public and the critics. Romanticists admired his plays for the unconventional individualism they portrayed. 20th-century scholars have carried on this interest in Molière and his plays and have continued to study a wide array of issues relating to this playwright. Many critics now are shifting their attention from the philosophical, religious and moral implications in his comedies to the more objective study of his comic technique.[24]
+
+Molière's works were translated into English prose by John Ozell in 1714,[25] but the first complete version in English, by Baker and Miller in 1739, remained "influential" and was long reprinted.[26] The first to offer full translations of Molière's verse plays such as Tartuffe into English verse was Curtis Hidden Page, who produced blank verse versions of three of the plays in his 1908 translation.[27] Since then, notable translations have been made by Richard Wilbur, Donald M. Frame, and many others.
+
+In his memoir A Terrible Liar, actor Hume Cronyn writes that, in 1962, celebrated actor Laurence Olivier criticized Molière. According to Cronyn, he mentioned to Olivier that he (Cronyn) was about to play the title role in The Miser, and that Olivier then responded, "Molière? Funny as a baby's open grave." Cronyn comments on the incident: "You may imagine how that made me feel. Fortunately, he was dead wrong."[28]
+
+Author Martha Bellinger points out that:
+
+[Molière] has been accused of not having a consistent, organic style, of using faulty grammar, of mixing his metaphors, and of using unnecessary words for the purpose of filling out his lines. All these things are occasionally true, but they are trifles in comparison to the wealth of character he portrayed, to his brilliancy of wit, and to the resourcefulness of his technique. He was wary of sensibility or pathos; but in place of pathos he had "melancholy — a puissant and searching melancholy, which strangely sustains his inexhaustible mirth and his triumphant gaiety".[29]
+
+Molière is considered the creator of modern French comedy. Many words or phrases used in Molière's plays are still used in current French:
+
+French and 
+Francophone literature
+
+French literature 
+By category 
+French language
+
+Medieval
+16th century • 17th century
+18th century • 19th century
+20th century • Contemporary
+
+Francophone literature
+Literature of Quebec
+Postcolonial literature
+Literature of Haiti
+
+Chronological list
+
+Writers •
+Novelists 
+Playwrights •
+Poets 
+Essayists 
+Short story writers
+
+Novel • Poetry • Plays
+
+Science fiction • Comics
+Fantastique
+
+Naturalism • Symbolism
+Surrealism • Existentialism
+Nouveau roman
+Theatre of the Absurd
+
+Literary theory •
+Critics
+Literary prizes
+
+Molière • Racine •
+Balzac
+Stendhal • Flaubert
+Zola •
+Proust
+Beckett •
+Camus
+
+France • Literature
+
+Molière plays a small part in Alexandre Dumas's novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne, in which he is seen taking inspiration from the muskeeter Porthos for his central character in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
+
+Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov wrote a semi-fictitious biography-tribute to Molière, titled Life of Mr. de Molière. Written 1932–1933, first published 1962.
+
+The French 1978 film simply titled Molière directed by Ariane Mnouchkine and starring Philippe Caubère presents his complete biography. It was in competition for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1978.
+
+He is portrayed among other writers in The Blasphemers' Banquet (1989).
+
+The 2000 film Le Roi Danse (The King Dances), in which Molière is played by Tchéky Karyo, shows his collaborations with Jean-Baptiste Lully, as well as his illness and on-stage death.
+
+The 2007 French film Molière was more loosely based on the life of Molière, starring Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini and Ludivine Sagnier.
+
+David Hirson's play La Bête, itself in the style of Molière, includes the character Elomire as an anagrammatic parody of him.

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+Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (baptised 15 January 1622; died 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (UK: /ˈmɒliɛər, ˈmoʊl-/, US: /moʊlˈjɛər, ˌmoʊliˈɛər/,[1][2][3] French: [mɔljɛʁ]), was a French playwright, actor and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and universal literature. His extant works include comedies, farces, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets and more. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed at the Comédie-Française more often than those of any other playwright today.[4] His influence is such that the French language itself is often referred to as the "language of Molière".[5][6]
+
+Born into a prosperous family and having studied at the Collège de Clermont (now Lycée Louis-le-Grand), Molière was well suited to begin a life in the theatre. Thirteen years as an itinerant actor helped him polish his comic abilities while he began writing, combining Commedia dell'arte elements with the more refined French comedy.[7]
+
+Through the patronage of aristocrats including Philippe I, Duke of Orléans—the brother of Louis XIV—Molière procured a command performance before the King at the Louvre. Performing a classic play by Pierre Corneille and a farce of his own, The Doctor in Love, Molière was granted the use of salle du Petit-Bourbon near the Louvre, a spacious room appointed for theatrical performances. Later, he was granted the use of the theatre in the Palais-Royal. In both locations Molière found success among Parisians with plays such as The Affected Ladies, The School for Husbands and The School for Wives. This royal favour brought a royal pension to his troupe and the title Troupe du Roi ("The King's Troupe"). Molière continued as the official author of court entertainments.[8]
+
+Despite the adulation of the court and Parisians, Molière's satires attracted criticism from churchmen. For Tartuffe's impiety, the Catholic Church denounced this study of religious hypocrisy followed by the Parliament's ban, while Don Juan was withdrawn and never restaged by Molière.[9]  His hard work in so many theatrical capacities took its toll on his health and, by 1667, he was forced to take a break from the stage. In 1673, during a production of his final play, The Imaginary Invalid, Molière, who suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, was seized by a coughing fit and a haemorrhage while playing the hypochondriac Argan. He finished the performance but collapsed again and died a few hours later.[8]
+
+Molière was born in Paris shortly before his christening as Jean Poquelin on 15 January 1622. Known as Jean-Baptiste, he was the first son of Jean Poquelin and Marie Cressé, who had married on 27 April 1621.[10] His mother was the daughter of a prosperous bourgeois family.[11] Upon seeing him for the first time, a maid exclaimed, "Le nez!", a reference to the infant's large nose.  Molière was called "Le Nez" by his family from that time.[12] He lost his mother when he was eleven, and he does not seem to have been particularly close to his father. After his mother's death, he lived with his father above the Pavillon des Singes on the rue Saint-Honoré, an affluent area of Paris. It is likely that his education commenced with studies at a Parisian elementary school,[13] followed by his enrolment in the prestigious Jesuit Collège de Clermont, where he completed his studies in a strict academic environment and got a first taste of life on the stage.[14]
+
+In 1631, his father Jean Poquelin purchased from the court of Louis XIII the posts of "valet de chambre ordinaire et tapissier du Roi" ("valet of the King's chamber and keeper of carpets and upholstery"). His son assumed the same posts in 1641.[15] The title required only three months' work and an initial cost of 1,200 livres; the title paid 300 livres a year and provided a number of lucrative contracts. Molière also studied as a provincial lawyer some time around 1642, probably in Orléans, but it is not documented that he ever qualified. So far he had followed his father's plans, which had served him well; he had mingled with nobility at the Collège de Clermont and seemed destined for a career in office.
+
+In June 1643, when Molière was 21, he decided to abandon his social class and pursue a career on the stage. Taking leave of his father, he joined the actress Madeleine Béjart, with whom he had crossed paths before, and founded the Illustre Théâtre with 630 livres. They were later joined by Madeleine's brother and sister.
+
+The new theatre troupe went bankrupt in 1645. Molière had become head of the troupe, due in part, perhaps, to his acting prowess and his legal training. However, the troupe had acquired large debts, mostly for the rent of the theatre (a court for jeu de paume), for which they owed 2000 livres. Historians differ as to whether his father or the lover of a member of his troupe paid his debts; either way, after a 24-hour stint in prison he returned to the acting circuit. It was at this time that he began to use the pseudonym Molière, possibly inspired by a small village of the same name in the Midi near Le Vigan. It was also likely that he changed his name to spare his father the shame of having an actor in the family (actors, although no longer vilified by the state under Louis XIV, were still not allowed to be buried in sacred ground).
+
+After his imprisonment, he and Madeleine began a theatrical circuit of the provinces with a new theatre troupe; this life was to last about twelve years, during which he initially played in the company of Charles Dufresne, and subsequently created a company of his own, which had sufficient success and obtained the patronage of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. Few plays survive from this period. The most noteworthy are L'Étourdi ou les Contretemps (The Bungler) and Le Docteur Amoureux (The Doctor in Love); with these two plays, Molière moved away from the heavy influence of the Italian improvisational Commedia dell'arte, and displayed his talent for mockery. In the course of his travels he met Armand, Prince of Conti, the governor of Languedoc, who became his patron, and named his company after him. This friendship later ended when Armand, having contracted syphilis from a courtesan, turned towards religion and joined Molière's enemies in the Parti des Dévots and the Compagnie de Saint Sacrement.
+
+In Lyon, Mademoiselle Du Parc, known as Marquise, joined the company. Marquise was courted, in vain, by Pierre Corneille and later became the lover of Jean Racine. Racine offered Molière his tragedy Théagène et Chariclée (one of the first works he wrote after he had abandoned his theology studies), but Molière would not perform it, though he encouraged Racine to pursue his artistic career. It is said that soon thereafter Molière became angry with Racine when he was told that he had secretly presented his tragedy to the company of the Hôtel de Bourgogne as well.
+
+Molière was forced to reach Paris in stages, staying outside for a few weeks in order to promote himself with society gentlemen and allow his reputation to feed in to Paris. Molière reached Paris in 1658 and performed in front of the King at the Louvre (then for rent as a theatre) in Corneille's tragedy Nicomède and in the farce Le Docteur Amoureux with some success. He was awarded the title of Troupe de Monsieur (Monsieur being the honorific for the king's brother Philippe I, Duke of Orléans). With the help of Monsieur, his company was allowed to share the theatre in the large hall of the Petit-Bourbon with the famous Italian Commedia dell'arte company of Tiberio Fiorillo, famous for his character of Scaramouche. (The two companies performed in the theatre on different nights.) The premiere of Molière's Les Précieuses Ridicules (The Affected Young Ladies) took place at the Petit-Bourbon on 18 November 1659.
+
+Les Précieuses Ridicules was the first of Molière's many attempts to satirize certain societal mannerisms and affectations then common in France. It is widely accepted that the plot was based on Samuel Chappuzeau's Le Cercle des Femmes of 1656. He primarily mocks the Académie Française, a group created by Richelieu under a royal patent to establish the rules of the fledgling French theatre. The Académie preached unity of time, action, and styles of verse. Molière is often associated with the claim that comedy castigat ridendo mores or "criticises customs through humour" (a phrase in fact coined by his contemporary Jean de Santeuil and sometimes mistaken for a classical Latin proverb).[16]
+
+Despite his own preference for tragedy, which he had tried to further with the Illustre Théâtre, Molière became famous for his farces, which were generally in one act and performed after the tragedy. Some of these farces were only partly written, and were played in the style of Commedia dell'arte with improvisation over a canovaccio (a vague plot outline). He began to write full, five-act comedies in verse (L'Étourdi (Lyon, 1654) and Le dépit amoureux (Béziers, 1656)), which although immersed in the gags of contemporary Italian troupes, were successful as part of Madeleine Béjart and Molière's plans to win aristocratic patronage and, ultimately, move the troupe to a position in a Paris theater-venue.[17] Later Molière concentrated on writing musical comedies, in which the drama is interrupted by songs and/or dances, but for years the fundamentals of numerous comedy-traditions would remain strong, especially Italian (e.g. the semi-improvisatory style that in the 1750s writers started calling commedia dell'arte), Spanish, and French plays, all also drawing on classical models (e.g. Plautus and Terence), especially the trope of the clever slave/servant.[18]
+
+Les précieuses ridicules won Molière the attention and the criticism of many, but it was not a popular success. He then asked Fiorillo to teach him the techniques of Commedia dell'arte. His 1660 play Sganarelle, ou Le Cocu imaginaire (The Imaginary Cuckold) seems to be a tribute both to Commedia dell'arte and to his teacher. Its theme of marital relationships dramatizes Molière's pessimistic views on the falsity inherent in human relationships. This view is also evident in his later works and was a source of inspiration for many later authors, including (in a different field and with different effect) Luigi Pirandello. It describes a kind of round dance where two couples believe that each of their partners has been betrayed by the other's and is the first in Molière's "Jealousy series", which includes Dom Garcie de Navarre, L'École des maris and L'École des femmes.
+
+In 1660 the Petit-Bourbon was demolished to make way for the eastern expansion of the Louvre, but Molière's company was allowed to move into the abandoned theatre in the east wing of the Palais-Royal. After a period of refurbishment they opened there on 20 January 1661. In order to please his patron, Monsieur, who was so enthralled with entertainment and art that he was soon excluded from state affairs, Molière wrote and played Dom Garcie de Navarre ou Le Prince jaloux (The Jealous Prince, 4 February 1661), a heroic comedy derived from a work of Cicognini's. Two other comedies of the same year were the successful L'École des maris (The School for Husbands) and Les Fâcheux, subtitled Comédie faite pour les divertissements du Roi (a comedy for the King's amusements) because it was performed during a series of parties that Nicolas Fouquet gave in honor of the sovereign. These entertainments led Jean-Baptiste Colbert to demand the arrest of Fouquet for wasting public money, and he was condemned to life imprisonment.[19]
+
+On 20 February 1662 Molière married Armande Béjart, whom he believed to be the sister of Madeleine. (She may instead have been her illegitimate daughter with the Duke of Modena.) The same year he premiered L'École des femmes (The School for Wives), subsequently regarded as a masterpiece. It poked fun at the limited education that was given to daughters of rich families and reflected Molière's own marriage. Both this work and his marriage attracted much criticism. The play sparked the protest called the "Quarrel of L'École des femmes". On the artistic side he responded with two lesser-known works: La Critique de "L'École des femmes", in which he imagined the spectators of his previous work attending it. The piece mocks the people who had criticised L'École des femmes by showing them at dinner after watching the play; it addresses all the criticism raised about the piece by presenting the critics' arguments and then dismissing them. This was the so-called Guerre comique (War of Comedy), in which the opposite side was taken by writers like Donneau de Visé, Edmé Boursault, and Montfleury.
+
+But more serious opposition was brewing, focusing on Molière's politics and his personal life. A so-called parti des Dévots arose in French high society, who protested against Molière's excessive "realism" and irreverence, which were causing some embarrassment. These people accused Molière of having married his daughter. The Prince of Conti, once Molière's friend, joined them. Molière had other enemies, too, among them the Jansenists and some traditional authors. However, the king expressed support for the author, granting him a pension and agreeing to be the godfather of Molière's first son. Boileau also supported him through statements that he included in his Art poétique.
+
+Molière's friendship with Jean-Baptiste Lully influenced him towards writing his Le Mariage forcé and La Princesse d'Élide (subtitled as Comédie galante mêlée de musique et d'entrées de ballet), written for royal "divertissements" at the Palace of Versailles.
+
+Tartuffe, ou L'Imposteur was also performed at Versailles, in 1664, and created the greatest scandal of Molière's artistic career. Its depiction of the hypocrisy of the dominant classes was taken as an outrage and violently contested. It also aroused the wrath of the Jansenists and the play was banned.
+
+Molière was always careful not to attack the institution of monarchy. He earned a position as one of the king's favourites and enjoyed his protection from the attacks of the court. The king allegedly suggested that Molière suspend performances of Tartuffe, and the author rapidly wrote Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre to replace it. It was a strange work, derived from a work by Tirso de Molina and rendered in a prose that still seems modern today. It describes the story of an atheist who becomes a religious hypocrite and for this is punished by God. This work too was quickly suspended. The king, demonstrating his protection once again, became the new official sponsor of Molière's troupe.
+
+With music by Lully, Molière presented L'Amour médecin (Love Doctor or Medical Love). Subtitles on this occasion reported that the work was given "par ordre du Roi" (by order of the king) and this work was received much more warmly than its predecessors.
+
+In 1666, Le Misanthrope was produced. It is now widely regarded as Molière's most refined masterpiece, the one with the highest moral content, but it was little appreciated at its time. It caused the "conversion" of Donneau de Visé, who became fond of his theatre. But it was a commercial flop, forcing Molière to immediately write Le médecin malgré lui (The Doctor Despite Himself), a satire against the official sciences. This was a success despite a moral treatise by the Prince of Conti, criticizing the theatre in general and Molière in particular. In several of his plays, Molière depicted the physicians of his day as pompous individuals who speak (poor) Latin to impress others with false erudition, and know only clysters and bleedings as (ineffective) remedies.
+
+After the Mélicerte and the Pastorale comique, he tried again to perform a revised Tartuffe in 1667, this time with the name of Panulphe or L'Imposteur. As soon as the King left Paris for a tour, Lamoignon and the archbishop banned the play. The King finally imposed respect for Tartuffe a few years later, after he had gained more power over the clergy.
+
+Molière, now ill, wrote less. Le Sicilien ou L'Amour peintre was written for festivities at the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and was followed in 1668 by Amphitryon, inspired both by Plautus' work of the same name and Jean Rotrou's successful reconfiguration of the drama. With some conjecture, Molière's play can be seen to allude to the love affairs of Louis XIV, then king of France. George Dandin, ou Le mari confondu (The Confounded Husband) was little appreciated, but success returned with L'Avare (The Miser), now very well known.
+
+With Lully he again used music for Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, for Les Amants magnifiques, and finally for Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Middle Class Gentleman), another of his masterpieces. It is claimed to be particularly directed against Colbert, the minister who had condemned his old patron Fouquet. The collaboration with Lully ended with a tragédie et ballet, Psyché, written in collaboration with Pierre Corneille and Philippe Quinault.
+
+In 1672, Madeleine Béjart died, and Molière suffered from this loss and from the worsening of his own illness. Nevertheless, he wrote a successful Les Fourberies de Scapin ("Scapin's Deceits"), a farce and a comedy in five acts. His following play, La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, is considered one of his lesser works.
+
+Les Femmes savantes (The Learned Ladies) of 1672 is considered another of Molière's masterpieces. It was born from the termination of the legal use of music in theatre, since Lully had patented the opera in France (and taken most of the best available singers for his own performances), so Molière had to go back to his traditional genre. It was a great success, and it led to his last work (see below), which is still held in high esteem.
+
+In his 14 years in Paris, Molière singlehandedly wrote 31 of the 85 plays performed on his stage.
+
+In 1661, Molière introduced the comédies-ballets in conjunction with Les Fâcheux.  These ballets were a transitional form of dance performance between the court ballets of Louis XIV and the art of professional theatre which was developing in the advent of the use of the proscenium stage.[20]   The comédies-ballets developed accidentally when Molière was enlisted to mount both a play and a ballet in the honor of Louis XIV and found that he did not have a big enough cast to meet these demands.  Molière therefore decided to combine the ballet and the play so that his goal could be met while the performers catch their breath and change costume.[20] The risky move paid off and Molière was asked to produce twelve more comédies-ballets before his death.[20] During the comédies-ballets, Molière collaborated with Pierre Beauchamp.[20] Beauchamp codified the five balletic positions of the feet and arms and was partly responsible for the creation of the Beauchamp-Feuillet dance notation.[21] Molière also collaborated with Jean-Baptiste Lully.[20] Lully was a dancer, choreographer, and composer, whose dominant reign at the Paris Opéra lasted fifteen years.  Under his command, ballet and opera rightly became professional arts unto themselves.[22] The comédies-ballets closely integrated dance with music and the action of the play and the style of continuity distinctly separated these performances from the court ballets of the time;[23] additionally, the comédies-ballets demanded that both the dancers and the actors play an important role in advancing the story. Similar to the court ballets, both professionally trained dancers and courtiers socialized together at the comédies-ballets - Louis XIV even played the part of an Egyptian in Molière's Le Mariage forcé (1664) and also appeared as Neptune and Apollo in his retirement performance of Les Amants magnifiques (1670).[23]
+
+Molière suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, possibly contracted when he was imprisoned for debt as a young man. One of the most famous moments in Molière's life was his last, which became legend: he collapsed on stage in a fit of coughing and haemorrhaging while performing in the last play he had written, which had lavish ballets performed to the music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier and which ironically was entitled Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid). Molière insisted on completing his performance. Afterwards he collapsed again with another, larger haemorrhage before being taken home, where he died a few hours later, without receiving the last rites because two priests refused to visit him while a third arrived too late. The superstition that green brings bad luck to actors is said to originate from the colour of the clothing he was wearing at the time of his death.
+
+Under French law at the time, actors were not allowed to be buried in the sacred ground of a cemetery. However, Molière's widow, Armande, asked the King if her spouse could be granted a normal funeral at night. The King agreed and Molière's body was buried in the part of the cemetery reserved for unbaptised infants.
+
+In 1792 his remains were brought to the museum of French monuments and in 1817 transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, close to those of La Fontaine.
+
+Though conventional thinkers, religious leaders and medical professionals in Molière's time criticised his work, their ideas did not really diminish his widespread success with the public. Other playwrights and companies began to emulate his dramatic style in England and in France. Molière's works continued to garner positive feedback in 18th-century England, but they were not so warmly welcomed in France at this time. However, during the French Restoration of the 19th century, Molière's comedies became popular with both the French public and the critics. Romanticists admired his plays for the unconventional individualism they portrayed. 20th-century scholars have carried on this interest in Molière and his plays and have continued to study a wide array of issues relating to this playwright. Many critics now are shifting their attention from the philosophical, religious and moral implications in his comedies to the more objective study of his comic technique.[24]
+
+Molière's works were translated into English prose by John Ozell in 1714,[25] but the first complete version in English, by Baker and Miller in 1739, remained "influential" and was long reprinted.[26] The first to offer full translations of Molière's verse plays such as Tartuffe into English verse was Curtis Hidden Page, who produced blank verse versions of three of the plays in his 1908 translation.[27] Since then, notable translations have been made by Richard Wilbur, Donald M. Frame, and many others.
+
+In his memoir A Terrible Liar, actor Hume Cronyn writes that, in 1962, celebrated actor Laurence Olivier criticized Molière. According to Cronyn, he mentioned to Olivier that he (Cronyn) was about to play the title role in The Miser, and that Olivier then responded, "Molière? Funny as a baby's open grave." Cronyn comments on the incident: "You may imagine how that made me feel. Fortunately, he was dead wrong."[28]
+
+Author Martha Bellinger points out that:
+
+[Molière] has been accused of not having a consistent, organic style, of using faulty grammar, of mixing his metaphors, and of using unnecessary words for the purpose of filling out his lines. All these things are occasionally true, but they are trifles in comparison to the wealth of character he portrayed, to his brilliancy of wit, and to the resourcefulness of his technique. He was wary of sensibility or pathos; but in place of pathos he had "melancholy — a puissant and searching melancholy, which strangely sustains his inexhaustible mirth and his triumphant gaiety".[29]
+
+Molière is considered the creator of modern French comedy. Many words or phrases used in Molière's plays are still used in current French:
+
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+
+Molière plays a small part in Alexandre Dumas's novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne, in which he is seen taking inspiration from the muskeeter Porthos for his central character in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
+
+Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov wrote a semi-fictitious biography-tribute to Molière, titled Life of Mr. de Molière. Written 1932–1933, first published 1962.
+
+The French 1978 film simply titled Molière directed by Ariane Mnouchkine and starring Philippe Caubère presents his complete biography. It was in competition for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1978.
+
+He is portrayed among other writers in The Blasphemers' Banquet (1989).
+
+The 2000 film Le Roi Danse (The King Dances), in which Molière is played by Tchéky Karyo, shows his collaborations with Jean-Baptiste Lully, as well as his illness and on-stage death.
+
+The 2007 French film Molière was more loosely based on the life of Molière, starring Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini and Ludivine Sagnier.
+
+David Hirson's play La Bête, itself in the style of Molière, includes the character Elomire as an anagrammatic parody of him.

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+Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (baptised 15 January 1622; died 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (UK: /ˈmɒliɛər, ˈmoʊl-/, US: /moʊlˈjɛər, ˌmoʊliˈɛər/,[1][2][3] French: [mɔljɛʁ]), was a French playwright, actor and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and universal literature. His extant works include comedies, farces, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets and more. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed at the Comédie-Française more often than those of any other playwright today.[4] His influence is such that the French language itself is often referred to as the "language of Molière".[5][6]
+
+Born into a prosperous family and having studied at the Collège de Clermont (now Lycée Louis-le-Grand), Molière was well suited to begin a life in the theatre. Thirteen years as an itinerant actor helped him polish his comic abilities while he began writing, combining Commedia dell'arte elements with the more refined French comedy.[7]
+
+Through the patronage of aristocrats including Philippe I, Duke of Orléans—the brother of Louis XIV—Molière procured a command performance before the King at the Louvre. Performing a classic play by Pierre Corneille and a farce of his own, The Doctor in Love, Molière was granted the use of salle du Petit-Bourbon near the Louvre, a spacious room appointed for theatrical performances. Later, he was granted the use of the theatre in the Palais-Royal. In both locations Molière found success among Parisians with plays such as The Affected Ladies, The School for Husbands and The School for Wives. This royal favour brought a royal pension to his troupe and the title Troupe du Roi ("The King's Troupe"). Molière continued as the official author of court entertainments.[8]
+
+Despite the adulation of the court and Parisians, Molière's satires attracted criticism from churchmen. For Tartuffe's impiety, the Catholic Church denounced this study of religious hypocrisy followed by the Parliament's ban, while Don Juan was withdrawn and never restaged by Molière.[9]  His hard work in so many theatrical capacities took its toll on his health and, by 1667, he was forced to take a break from the stage. In 1673, during a production of his final play, The Imaginary Invalid, Molière, who suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, was seized by a coughing fit and a haemorrhage while playing the hypochondriac Argan. He finished the performance but collapsed again and died a few hours later.[8]
+
+Molière was born in Paris shortly before his christening as Jean Poquelin on 15 January 1622. Known as Jean-Baptiste, he was the first son of Jean Poquelin and Marie Cressé, who had married on 27 April 1621.[10] His mother was the daughter of a prosperous bourgeois family.[11] Upon seeing him for the first time, a maid exclaimed, "Le nez!", a reference to the infant's large nose.  Molière was called "Le Nez" by his family from that time.[12] He lost his mother when he was eleven, and he does not seem to have been particularly close to his father. After his mother's death, he lived with his father above the Pavillon des Singes on the rue Saint-Honoré, an affluent area of Paris. It is likely that his education commenced with studies at a Parisian elementary school,[13] followed by his enrolment in the prestigious Jesuit Collège de Clermont, where he completed his studies in a strict academic environment and got a first taste of life on the stage.[14]
+
+In 1631, his father Jean Poquelin purchased from the court of Louis XIII the posts of "valet de chambre ordinaire et tapissier du Roi" ("valet of the King's chamber and keeper of carpets and upholstery"). His son assumed the same posts in 1641.[15] The title required only three months' work and an initial cost of 1,200 livres; the title paid 300 livres a year and provided a number of lucrative contracts. Molière also studied as a provincial lawyer some time around 1642, probably in Orléans, but it is not documented that he ever qualified. So far he had followed his father's plans, which had served him well; he had mingled with nobility at the Collège de Clermont and seemed destined for a career in office.
+
+In June 1643, when Molière was 21, he decided to abandon his social class and pursue a career on the stage. Taking leave of his father, he joined the actress Madeleine Béjart, with whom he had crossed paths before, and founded the Illustre Théâtre with 630 livres. They were later joined by Madeleine's brother and sister.
+
+The new theatre troupe went bankrupt in 1645. Molière had become head of the troupe, due in part, perhaps, to his acting prowess and his legal training. However, the troupe had acquired large debts, mostly for the rent of the theatre (a court for jeu de paume), for which they owed 2000 livres. Historians differ as to whether his father or the lover of a member of his troupe paid his debts; either way, after a 24-hour stint in prison he returned to the acting circuit. It was at this time that he began to use the pseudonym Molière, possibly inspired by a small village of the same name in the Midi near Le Vigan. It was also likely that he changed his name to spare his father the shame of having an actor in the family (actors, although no longer vilified by the state under Louis XIV, were still not allowed to be buried in sacred ground).
+
+After his imprisonment, he and Madeleine began a theatrical circuit of the provinces with a new theatre troupe; this life was to last about twelve years, during which he initially played in the company of Charles Dufresne, and subsequently created a company of his own, which had sufficient success and obtained the patronage of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. Few plays survive from this period. The most noteworthy are L'Étourdi ou les Contretemps (The Bungler) and Le Docteur Amoureux (The Doctor in Love); with these two plays, Molière moved away from the heavy influence of the Italian improvisational Commedia dell'arte, and displayed his talent for mockery. In the course of his travels he met Armand, Prince of Conti, the governor of Languedoc, who became his patron, and named his company after him. This friendship later ended when Armand, having contracted syphilis from a courtesan, turned towards religion and joined Molière's enemies in the Parti des Dévots and the Compagnie de Saint Sacrement.
+
+In Lyon, Mademoiselle Du Parc, known as Marquise, joined the company. Marquise was courted, in vain, by Pierre Corneille and later became the lover of Jean Racine. Racine offered Molière his tragedy Théagène et Chariclée (one of the first works he wrote after he had abandoned his theology studies), but Molière would not perform it, though he encouraged Racine to pursue his artistic career. It is said that soon thereafter Molière became angry with Racine when he was told that he had secretly presented his tragedy to the company of the Hôtel de Bourgogne as well.
+
+Molière was forced to reach Paris in stages, staying outside for a few weeks in order to promote himself with society gentlemen and allow his reputation to feed in to Paris. Molière reached Paris in 1658 and performed in front of the King at the Louvre (then for rent as a theatre) in Corneille's tragedy Nicomède and in the farce Le Docteur Amoureux with some success. He was awarded the title of Troupe de Monsieur (Monsieur being the honorific for the king's brother Philippe I, Duke of Orléans). With the help of Monsieur, his company was allowed to share the theatre in the large hall of the Petit-Bourbon with the famous Italian Commedia dell'arte company of Tiberio Fiorillo, famous for his character of Scaramouche. (The two companies performed in the theatre on different nights.) The premiere of Molière's Les Précieuses Ridicules (The Affected Young Ladies) took place at the Petit-Bourbon on 18 November 1659.
+
+Les Précieuses Ridicules was the first of Molière's many attempts to satirize certain societal mannerisms and affectations then common in France. It is widely accepted that the plot was based on Samuel Chappuzeau's Le Cercle des Femmes of 1656. He primarily mocks the Académie Française, a group created by Richelieu under a royal patent to establish the rules of the fledgling French theatre. The Académie preached unity of time, action, and styles of verse. Molière is often associated with the claim that comedy castigat ridendo mores or "criticises customs through humour" (a phrase in fact coined by his contemporary Jean de Santeuil and sometimes mistaken for a classical Latin proverb).[16]
+
+Despite his own preference for tragedy, which he had tried to further with the Illustre Théâtre, Molière became famous for his farces, which were generally in one act and performed after the tragedy. Some of these farces were only partly written, and were played in the style of Commedia dell'arte with improvisation over a canovaccio (a vague plot outline). He began to write full, five-act comedies in verse (L'Étourdi (Lyon, 1654) and Le dépit amoureux (Béziers, 1656)), which although immersed in the gags of contemporary Italian troupes, were successful as part of Madeleine Béjart and Molière's plans to win aristocratic patronage and, ultimately, move the troupe to a position in a Paris theater-venue.[17] Later Molière concentrated on writing musical comedies, in which the drama is interrupted by songs and/or dances, but for years the fundamentals of numerous comedy-traditions would remain strong, especially Italian (e.g. the semi-improvisatory style that in the 1750s writers started calling commedia dell'arte), Spanish, and French plays, all also drawing on classical models (e.g. Plautus and Terence), especially the trope of the clever slave/servant.[18]
+
+Les précieuses ridicules won Molière the attention and the criticism of many, but it was not a popular success. He then asked Fiorillo to teach him the techniques of Commedia dell'arte. His 1660 play Sganarelle, ou Le Cocu imaginaire (The Imaginary Cuckold) seems to be a tribute both to Commedia dell'arte and to his teacher. Its theme of marital relationships dramatizes Molière's pessimistic views on the falsity inherent in human relationships. This view is also evident in his later works and was a source of inspiration for many later authors, including (in a different field and with different effect) Luigi Pirandello. It describes a kind of round dance where two couples believe that each of their partners has been betrayed by the other's and is the first in Molière's "Jealousy series", which includes Dom Garcie de Navarre, L'École des maris and L'École des femmes.
+
+In 1660 the Petit-Bourbon was demolished to make way for the eastern expansion of the Louvre, but Molière's company was allowed to move into the abandoned theatre in the east wing of the Palais-Royal. After a period of refurbishment they opened there on 20 January 1661. In order to please his patron, Monsieur, who was so enthralled with entertainment and art that he was soon excluded from state affairs, Molière wrote and played Dom Garcie de Navarre ou Le Prince jaloux (The Jealous Prince, 4 February 1661), a heroic comedy derived from a work of Cicognini's. Two other comedies of the same year were the successful L'École des maris (The School for Husbands) and Les Fâcheux, subtitled Comédie faite pour les divertissements du Roi (a comedy for the King's amusements) because it was performed during a series of parties that Nicolas Fouquet gave in honor of the sovereign. These entertainments led Jean-Baptiste Colbert to demand the arrest of Fouquet for wasting public money, and he was condemned to life imprisonment.[19]
+
+On 20 February 1662 Molière married Armande Béjart, whom he believed to be the sister of Madeleine. (She may instead have been her illegitimate daughter with the Duke of Modena.) The same year he premiered L'École des femmes (The School for Wives), subsequently regarded as a masterpiece. It poked fun at the limited education that was given to daughters of rich families and reflected Molière's own marriage. Both this work and his marriage attracted much criticism. The play sparked the protest called the "Quarrel of L'École des femmes". On the artistic side he responded with two lesser-known works: La Critique de "L'École des femmes", in which he imagined the spectators of his previous work attending it. The piece mocks the people who had criticised L'École des femmes by showing them at dinner after watching the play; it addresses all the criticism raised about the piece by presenting the critics' arguments and then dismissing them. This was the so-called Guerre comique (War of Comedy), in which the opposite side was taken by writers like Donneau de Visé, Edmé Boursault, and Montfleury.
+
+But more serious opposition was brewing, focusing on Molière's politics and his personal life. A so-called parti des Dévots arose in French high society, who protested against Molière's excessive "realism" and irreverence, which were causing some embarrassment. These people accused Molière of having married his daughter. The Prince of Conti, once Molière's friend, joined them. Molière had other enemies, too, among them the Jansenists and some traditional authors. However, the king expressed support for the author, granting him a pension and agreeing to be the godfather of Molière's first son. Boileau also supported him through statements that he included in his Art poétique.
+
+Molière's friendship with Jean-Baptiste Lully influenced him towards writing his Le Mariage forcé and La Princesse d'Élide (subtitled as Comédie galante mêlée de musique et d'entrées de ballet), written for royal "divertissements" at the Palace of Versailles.
+
+Tartuffe, ou L'Imposteur was also performed at Versailles, in 1664, and created the greatest scandal of Molière's artistic career. Its depiction of the hypocrisy of the dominant classes was taken as an outrage and violently contested. It also aroused the wrath of the Jansenists and the play was banned.
+
+Molière was always careful not to attack the institution of monarchy. He earned a position as one of the king's favourites and enjoyed his protection from the attacks of the court. The king allegedly suggested that Molière suspend performances of Tartuffe, and the author rapidly wrote Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre to replace it. It was a strange work, derived from a work by Tirso de Molina and rendered in a prose that still seems modern today. It describes the story of an atheist who becomes a religious hypocrite and for this is punished by God. This work too was quickly suspended. The king, demonstrating his protection once again, became the new official sponsor of Molière's troupe.
+
+With music by Lully, Molière presented L'Amour médecin (Love Doctor or Medical Love). Subtitles on this occasion reported that the work was given "par ordre du Roi" (by order of the king) and this work was received much more warmly than its predecessors.
+
+In 1666, Le Misanthrope was produced. It is now widely regarded as Molière's most refined masterpiece, the one with the highest moral content, but it was little appreciated at its time. It caused the "conversion" of Donneau de Visé, who became fond of his theatre. But it was a commercial flop, forcing Molière to immediately write Le médecin malgré lui (The Doctor Despite Himself), a satire against the official sciences. This was a success despite a moral treatise by the Prince of Conti, criticizing the theatre in general and Molière in particular. In several of his plays, Molière depicted the physicians of his day as pompous individuals who speak (poor) Latin to impress others with false erudition, and know only clysters and bleedings as (ineffective) remedies.
+
+After the Mélicerte and the Pastorale comique, he tried again to perform a revised Tartuffe in 1667, this time with the name of Panulphe or L'Imposteur. As soon as the King left Paris for a tour, Lamoignon and the archbishop banned the play. The King finally imposed respect for Tartuffe a few years later, after he had gained more power over the clergy.
+
+Molière, now ill, wrote less. Le Sicilien ou L'Amour peintre was written for festivities at the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and was followed in 1668 by Amphitryon, inspired both by Plautus' work of the same name and Jean Rotrou's successful reconfiguration of the drama. With some conjecture, Molière's play can be seen to allude to the love affairs of Louis XIV, then king of France. George Dandin, ou Le mari confondu (The Confounded Husband) was little appreciated, but success returned with L'Avare (The Miser), now very well known.
+
+With Lully he again used music for Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, for Les Amants magnifiques, and finally for Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Middle Class Gentleman), another of his masterpieces. It is claimed to be particularly directed against Colbert, the minister who had condemned his old patron Fouquet. The collaboration with Lully ended with a tragédie et ballet, Psyché, written in collaboration with Pierre Corneille and Philippe Quinault.
+
+In 1672, Madeleine Béjart died, and Molière suffered from this loss and from the worsening of his own illness. Nevertheless, he wrote a successful Les Fourberies de Scapin ("Scapin's Deceits"), a farce and a comedy in five acts. His following play, La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, is considered one of his lesser works.
+
+Les Femmes savantes (The Learned Ladies) of 1672 is considered another of Molière's masterpieces. It was born from the termination of the legal use of music in theatre, since Lully had patented the opera in France (and taken most of the best available singers for his own performances), so Molière had to go back to his traditional genre. It was a great success, and it led to his last work (see below), which is still held in high esteem.
+
+In his 14 years in Paris, Molière singlehandedly wrote 31 of the 85 plays performed on his stage.
+
+In 1661, Molière introduced the comédies-ballets in conjunction with Les Fâcheux.  These ballets were a transitional form of dance performance between the court ballets of Louis XIV and the art of professional theatre which was developing in the advent of the use of the proscenium stage.[20]   The comédies-ballets developed accidentally when Molière was enlisted to mount both a play and a ballet in the honor of Louis XIV and found that he did not have a big enough cast to meet these demands.  Molière therefore decided to combine the ballet and the play so that his goal could be met while the performers catch their breath and change costume.[20] The risky move paid off and Molière was asked to produce twelve more comédies-ballets before his death.[20] During the comédies-ballets, Molière collaborated with Pierre Beauchamp.[20] Beauchamp codified the five balletic positions of the feet and arms and was partly responsible for the creation of the Beauchamp-Feuillet dance notation.[21] Molière also collaborated with Jean-Baptiste Lully.[20] Lully was a dancer, choreographer, and composer, whose dominant reign at the Paris Opéra lasted fifteen years.  Under his command, ballet and opera rightly became professional arts unto themselves.[22] The comédies-ballets closely integrated dance with music and the action of the play and the style of continuity distinctly separated these performances from the court ballets of the time;[23] additionally, the comédies-ballets demanded that both the dancers and the actors play an important role in advancing the story. Similar to the court ballets, both professionally trained dancers and courtiers socialized together at the comédies-ballets - Louis XIV even played the part of an Egyptian in Molière's Le Mariage forcé (1664) and also appeared as Neptune and Apollo in his retirement performance of Les Amants magnifiques (1670).[23]
+
+Molière suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, possibly contracted when he was imprisoned for debt as a young man. One of the most famous moments in Molière's life was his last, which became legend: he collapsed on stage in a fit of coughing and haemorrhaging while performing in the last play he had written, which had lavish ballets performed to the music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier and which ironically was entitled Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid). Molière insisted on completing his performance. Afterwards he collapsed again with another, larger haemorrhage before being taken home, where he died a few hours later, without receiving the last rites because two priests refused to visit him while a third arrived too late. The superstition that green brings bad luck to actors is said to originate from the colour of the clothing he was wearing at the time of his death.
+
+Under French law at the time, actors were not allowed to be buried in the sacred ground of a cemetery. However, Molière's widow, Armande, asked the King if her spouse could be granted a normal funeral at night. The King agreed and Molière's body was buried in the part of the cemetery reserved for unbaptised infants.
+
+In 1792 his remains were brought to the museum of French monuments and in 1817 transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, close to those of La Fontaine.
+
+Though conventional thinkers, religious leaders and medical professionals in Molière's time criticised his work, their ideas did not really diminish his widespread success with the public. Other playwrights and companies began to emulate his dramatic style in England and in France. Molière's works continued to garner positive feedback in 18th-century England, but they were not so warmly welcomed in France at this time. However, during the French Restoration of the 19th century, Molière's comedies became popular with both the French public and the critics. Romanticists admired his plays for the unconventional individualism they portrayed. 20th-century scholars have carried on this interest in Molière and his plays and have continued to study a wide array of issues relating to this playwright. Many critics now are shifting their attention from the philosophical, religious and moral implications in his comedies to the more objective study of his comic technique.[24]
+
+Molière's works were translated into English prose by John Ozell in 1714,[25] but the first complete version in English, by Baker and Miller in 1739, remained "influential" and was long reprinted.[26] The first to offer full translations of Molière's verse plays such as Tartuffe into English verse was Curtis Hidden Page, who produced blank verse versions of three of the plays in his 1908 translation.[27] Since then, notable translations have been made by Richard Wilbur, Donald M. Frame, and many others.
+
+In his memoir A Terrible Liar, actor Hume Cronyn writes that, in 1962, celebrated actor Laurence Olivier criticized Molière. According to Cronyn, he mentioned to Olivier that he (Cronyn) was about to play the title role in The Miser, and that Olivier then responded, "Molière? Funny as a baby's open grave." Cronyn comments on the incident: "You may imagine how that made me feel. Fortunately, he was dead wrong."[28]
+
+Author Martha Bellinger points out that:
+
+[Molière] has been accused of not having a consistent, organic style, of using faulty grammar, of mixing his metaphors, and of using unnecessary words for the purpose of filling out his lines. All these things are occasionally true, but they are trifles in comparison to the wealth of character he portrayed, to his brilliancy of wit, and to the resourcefulness of his technique. He was wary of sensibility or pathos; but in place of pathos he had "melancholy — a puissant and searching melancholy, which strangely sustains his inexhaustible mirth and his triumphant gaiety".[29]
+
+Molière is considered the creator of modern French comedy. Many words or phrases used in Molière's plays are still used in current French:
+
+French and 
+Francophone literature
+
+French literature 
+By category 
+French language
+
+Medieval
+16th century • 17th century
+18th century • 19th century
+20th century • Contemporary
+
+Francophone literature
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+Postcolonial literature
+Literature of Haiti
+
+Chronological list
+
+Writers •
+Novelists 
+Playwrights •
+Poets 
+Essayists 
+Short story writers
+
+Novel • Poetry • Plays
+
+Science fiction • Comics
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+
+Naturalism • Symbolism
+Surrealism • Existentialism
+Nouveau roman
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+
+Literary theory •
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+
+Molière • Racine •
+Balzac
+Stendhal • Flaubert
+Zola •
+Proust
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+Camus
+
+France • Literature
+
+Molière plays a small part in Alexandre Dumas's novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne, in which he is seen taking inspiration from the muskeeter Porthos for his central character in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
+
+Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov wrote a semi-fictitious biography-tribute to Molière, titled Life of Mr. de Molière. Written 1932–1933, first published 1962.
+
+The French 1978 film simply titled Molière directed by Ariane Mnouchkine and starring Philippe Caubère presents his complete biography. It was in competition for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1978.
+
+He is portrayed among other writers in The Blasphemers' Banquet (1989).
+
+The 2000 film Le Roi Danse (The King Dances), in which Molière is played by Tchéky Karyo, shows his collaborations with Jean-Baptiste Lully, as well as his illness and on-stage death.
+
+The 2007 French film Molière was more loosely based on the life of Molière, starring Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini and Ludivine Sagnier.
+
+David Hirson's play La Bête, itself in the style of Molière, includes the character Elomire as an anagrammatic parody of him.

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+An artery (plural  arteries) (from Greek  ἀρτηρία (artēria), meaning 'windpipe, artery')[1] is a blood vessel that takes blood  away from the human heart to all parts of the body (tissues, lungs, Brain etc.). Most arteries carry oxygenated blood; the two exceptions are the pulmonary and the umbilical arteries, which carry deoxygenated blood to the organs that oxygenate it (lungs). The effective arterial blood volume is that extracellular fluid which fills the arterial system.
+
+The arteries are part of the circulatory system, which is responsible for the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to all cells, as well as the removal of carbon dioxide and waste products, the maintenance of optimum blood pH, and the circulation of proteins and cells of the human immune system
+
+
+
+The anatomy of arteries can be separated into gross anatomy, at the macroscopic level, and microanatomy, which must be studied with a microscope. The arterial system of the human body is divided into systemic arteries, carrying blood from the heart to the whole body, and pulmonary arteries, carrying deoxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs.
+
+The outermost layer of an artery (or vein) is known as the tunica externa, also known as tunica adventitia, and is composed of collagen fibers and elastic tissue - with the largest arteries containing vasa vasorum (small blood vessels that supply large blood vessels).[2] Most of the layers have a clear boundary between them, however the tunica externa has a boundary that is ill-defined. Normally its boundary is considered when it meets or touches the connective tissue.[3]  Inside this layer is the tunica media, or media, which is made up of smooth muscle cells, elastic tissue (also called connective tissue proper) and collagen fibres.[2] The innermost layer, which is in direct contact with the flow of blood, is the tunica intima, commonly called the intima. The elastic tissue allows the artery to bend and fit through places in the body. This layer is mainly made up of endothelial cells (and a supporting layer of elastin rich collagen in elastic arteries). The hollow internal cavity in which the blood flows is called the lumen.
+
+Arterial formation begins and ends when endothelial cells begin to express arterial specific genes, such as ephrin B2.[4]
+
+Arteries form part of the circulatory system. They carry blood that is oxygenated after it has been pumped from the heart. Coronary arteries also aid the heart in pumping blood by sending oxygenated blood to the heart, allowing the muscles to function. Arteries carry oxygenated blood away from the heart to the tissues, except for pulmonary arteries, which carry blood to the lungs for oxygenation (usually veins carry deoxygenated blood to the heart but the pulmonary veins carry oxygenated blood as well).[5]  There are two types of unique arteries. The pulmonary artery carries blood from the heart to the lungs, where it receives oxygen. It is unique because the blood in it is not "oxygenated", as it has not yet passed through the lungs. The other unique artery is the umbilical artery, which carries deoxygenated blood from a fetus to its mother.
+
+Arteries have a blood pressure higher than other parts of the circulatory system. The pressure in arteries varies during the cardiac cycle. It is highest when the heart contracts and lowest when heart relaxes. The variation in pressure produces a pulse, which can be felt in different areas of the body, such as the radial pulse. Arterioles have the greatest collective influence on both local blood flow and on overall blood pressure. They are the primary "adjustable nozzles" in the blood system, across which the greatest pressure drop occurs. The combination of heart output (cardiac output) and systemic vascular resistance, which refers to the collective resistance of all of the body's arterioles, are the principal determinants of arterial blood pressure at any given moment.
+
+Arteries have the highest pressure and have narrow lumen diameter. It consists of the three tunics: Tunica media, intima and externa.
+
+Systemic arteries are the arteries (including the peripheral arteries), of the systemic circulation, which is the part of the cardiovascular system that carries oxygenated blood away from the heart, to the body, and returns deoxygenated blood back to the heart. Systemic arteries can be subdivided into two types—muscular and elastic—according to the relative compositions of elastic and muscle tissue in their tunica media as well as their size and the makeup of the internal and external elastic lamina. The larger arteries (>10 mm diameter) are generally elastic and the smaller ones (0.1–10 mm) tend to be muscular. Systemic arteries deliver blood to the arterioles, and then to the capillaries, where nutrients and gases are exchanged.
+
+After travelling from the aorta, blood travels through peripheral arteries into smaller arteries called arterioles, and eventually to capillaries. Arterioles help in regulating blood pressure by the variable contraction of the smooth muscle of their walls, and deliver blood to the capillaries.
+
+The aorta is the root systemic artery (i.e., main artery). In humans, it receives blood directly from the left ventricle of the heart via the aortic valve. As the aorta branches, and these arteries branch in turn, they become successively smaller in diameter, down to the arterioles. The arterioles supply capillaries, which in turn empty into venules. The very first branches off of the aorta are the coronary arteries, which supply blood to the heart muscle itself. These are followed by the branches off the aortic arch, namely the brachiocephalic artery, the left common carotid, and the left subclavian arteries.
+
+The capillaries are the smallest of the blood vessels and are part of the microcirculation. The microvessels have a width of a single cell in diameter to aid in the fast and easy diffusion of gases, sugars and nutrients to surrounding tissues. Capillaries have no smooth muscle surrounding them and have a diameter less than that of red blood cells; a red blood cell is typically 7 micrometers outside diameter, capillaries typically 5 micrometers inside diameter. The red blood cells must distort in order to pass through the capillaries.
+
+These small diameters of the capillaries provide a relatively large surface area for the exchange of gases and nutrients.
+
+Systemic arterial pressures are generated by the forceful contractions of the heart's left ventricle. High blood pressure is a factor in causing arterial damage. Healthy resting arterial pressures are relatively low, mean systemic pressures typically being under 100 mmHg (1.9 psi; 13 kPa) above surrounding atmospheric pressure (about 760 mmHg, 14.7 psi, 101 kPa at sea level). To withstand and adapt to the pressures within, arteries are surrounded by varying thicknesses of smooth muscle which have extensive elastic and inelastic connective tissues. The pulse pressure, being the difference between systolic and diastolic pressure, is determined primarily by the amount of blood ejected by each heart beat, stroke volume, versus the volume and elasticity of the major arteries.
+
+A  blood squirt also known as an arterial gush is the effect when an artery is cut due to the higher arterial pressures. Blood is spurted out at a rapid, intermittent rate, that coincides with the heartbeat. The amount of blood loss can be copious, can occur very rapidly, and be life-threatening.[6]
+
+Over time, factors such as elevated arterial blood sugar (particularly as seen in diabetes mellitus), lipoprotein, cholesterol, high blood pressure, stress and smoking, are all implicated in damaging both the endothelium and walls of the arteries, resulting in atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is a disease marked by the hardening of arteries. This is caused by an atheroma or plaque in the artery wall and is a build-up of cell debris, that contain lipids, (cholesterol and fatty acids), calcium[7][8] and a variable amount of fibrous connective tissue.
+
+Accidental intraarterial injection either iatrogenically or through recreational drug use can cause symptoms such as intense pain, paresthesia and necrosis. It usually causes permanent damage to the limb;  often amputation is necessary.[9]
+
+Among the Ancient Greeks, the arteries were considered to be "air holders" that were responsible for the transport of air to the tissues and were connected to the trachea. This was as a result of finding the arteries of cadavers devoid of blood.
+
+In medieval times, it was recognized that arteries carried a fluid, called "spiritual blood" or "vital spirits", considered to be different from the contents of the veins. This theory went back to Galen. In the late medieval period, the trachea,[10] and ligaments were also called "arteries".[11]
+
+William Harvey described and popularized the modern concept of the circulatory system and the roles of arteries and veins in the 17th century.
+
+Alexis Carrel at the beginning of the 20th century first described the technique for vascular suturing and anastomosis and successfully performed many organ transplantations in animals; he thus actually opened the way to modern vascular surgery that was previously limited to vessels’ permanent ligation.
+
+Theodor Kocher reported that atherosclerosis often developed in patients who had undergone a thyroidectomy and suggested that hypothyroidism favors atherosclerosis, which was, in 1900s autopsies, seen more frequently in iodine-deficient Austrians compared to Icelanders, who are not deficient in iodine. Turner reported the effectiveness of iodide and dried extracts of thyroid in the prevention of atherosclerosis in laboratory rabbits.[12][citation needed]
+
+ocular group: central retinal

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+
+
+See text.
+
+Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda. The members are known as molluscs or mollusks[a] (/ˈmɒləsk/). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized.[3] The number of fossil species is estimated between 60,000 and 100,000 additional species.[4] The proportion of undescribed species is very high. Many taxa remain poorly studied.[5]
+
+Molluscs are the largest marine phylum, comprising about 23% of all the named marine organisms. Numerous molluscs also live in freshwater and terrestrial habitats. They are highly diverse, not just in size and  anatomical structure, but also in behaviour and  habitat. The phylum is typically divided into 8 or 9 taxonomic classes, of which two are entirely extinct. Cephalopod molluscs, such as squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses, are among the most neurologically advanced of all invertebrates—and either the giant squid or the colossal squid is the largest known invertebrate species. The gastropods (snails and slugs) are by far the most numerous molluscs and account for 80% of the total classified species.
+
+The three most universal features defining modern molluscs are a mantle with a significant cavity used for breathing and excretion, the presence of a radula (except for bivalves), and the structure of the nervous system. Other than these common elements, molluscs express great morphological diversity, so many textbooks base their descriptions on a "hypothetical ancestral mollusc" (see image below). This has a single, "limpet-like" shell on top, which is made of proteins and chitin reinforced with calcium carbonate, and is secreted by a mantle covering the whole upper surface. The underside of the animal consists of a single muscular "foot". Although molluscs are coelomates, the coelom tends to be small.
+The main body cavity is a hemocoel through which blood circulates; as such, their circulatory systems are mainly open. The "generalized" mollusc's feeding system consists of a rasping "tongue", the radula, and a complex digestive system in which exuded mucus and microscopic, muscle-powered "hairs" called cilia play various important roles. The generalized mollusc has two paired nerve cords, or three in bivalves. The brain, in species that have one, encircles the esophagus. Most molluscs have eyes, and all have sensors to detect chemicals, vibrations, and touch. The simplest type of molluscan reproductive system relies on external fertilization, but more complex variations occur. Nearly all produce eggs, from which may emerge trochophore larvae, more complex veliger larvae, or miniature adults. The coelomic  cavity is reduced. They have an open circulatory system and kidney-like organs for excretion.
+
+Good evidence exists for the appearance of gastropods, cephalopods, and bivalves in the Cambrian period, 541–485.4 million years ago. However, the evolutionary history both of molluscs' emergence from the ancestral Lophotrochozoa and of their diversification into the well-known living and fossil forms are still subjects of vigorous debate among scientists.
+
+Molluscs have been and still are an important food source for anatomically modern humans. A risk of food poisoning exists from toxins that can accumulate in certain molluscs under specific conditions, however, and because of this, many countries have regulations to reduce this risk. Molluscs have, for centuries, also been the source of important luxury goods, notably pearls, mother of pearl, Tyrian purple dye, and sea silk. Their shells have also been used as money in some preindustrial societies.
+
+Mollusc species can also represent hazards or pests for human activities. The bite of the blue-ringed octopus is often fatal, and that of Octopus apollyon causes inflammation that can last over a month. Stings from a few species of large tropical cone shells can also kill, but their sophisticated, though easily produced, venoms have become important tools in neurological research. Schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia, bilharziosis, or snail fever) is transmitted to humans by water snail hosts, and affects about 200 million people. Snails and slugs can also be serious agricultural pests, and accidental or deliberate introduction of some snail species into new environments has seriously damaged some ecosystems.
+
+The words mollusc and mollusk are both derived from the French mollusque, which originated from the Latin molluscus, from mollis, soft. Molluscus was itself an adaptation of Aristotle's τὰ μαλάκια ta malákia (the soft ones; < μαλακός malakós "soft"), which he applied inter alia to cuttlefish.[6][7] The scientific study of molluscs is accordingly called malacology.[8]
+
+The name Molluscoida was formerly used to denote a division of the animal kingdom containing the brachiopods, bryozoans, and tunicates, the members of the three groups having been supposed to somewhat resemble the molluscs. As now known, these groups have no relation to molluscs, and very little to one another, so the name Molluscoida has been abandoned.[9]
+
+The most universal features of the body structure of molluscs are a mantle with a significant cavity used for breathing and excretion, and the organization of the nervous system. Many have a calcareous shell.[10]
+
+Molluscs have developed such a varied range of body structures,  finding synapomorphies (defining characteristics) to apply to all modern groups is difficult.[11] The most general characteristic of molluscs is they are unsegmented and bilaterally symmetrical.[12] The following are present in all modern molluscs:[13][15]
+
+Other characteristics that commonly appear in textbooks have significant exceptions:
+
+Estimates of accepted described living species of molluscs vary from 50,000 to a maximum of 120,000 species.[1] In 1969 David Nicol estimated the probable total number of living mollusc species at 107,000 of which were about 12,000 fresh-water gastropods and 35,000 terrestrial. The Bivalvia would comprise about 14% of the total and the other five classes less than 2% of the living molluscs.[17] In 2009, Chapman estimated the number of described living mollusc species at 85,000.[1] Haszprunar in 2001 estimated about 93,000 named species,[18] which include 23% of all named marine organisms.[19] Molluscs are second only to arthropods in numbers of living animal species[16] — far behind the arthropods' 1,113,000 but well ahead of chordates' 52,000.[14](pFront endpaper) About 200,000 living species in total are estimated,[1][20] and 70,000 fossil species,[13] although the total number of mollusc species ever to have existed, whether or not preserved, must be many times greater than the number alive today.[21]
+
+Molluscs have more varied forms than any other animal phylum. They include snails, slugs and other gastropods; clams and other bivalves; squids and other cephalopods; and other lesser-known but similarly distinctive subgroups. The majority of species still live in the oceans, from the seashores to the abyssal zone, but some form a significant part of the freshwater fauna and the terrestrial ecosystems. Molluscs are extremely diverse in tropical and temperate regions, but can be found at all latitudes.[11] About 80% of all known mollusc species are gastropods.[16] Cephalopoda such as squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses are among the neurologically most advanced of all invertebrates.[22] The giant squid, which until recently had not been observed alive in its adult form,[23] is one of the largest invertebrates, but a recently caught specimen of the colossal squid, 10 m (33 ft) long and weighing 500 kg (1,100 lb), may have overtaken it.[24]
+
+Freshwater and terrestrial molluscs appear exceptionally vulnerable to extinction. Estimates of the numbers of nonmarine molluscs vary widely, partly because many regions have not been thoroughly surveyed. There is also a shortage of specialists who can identify all the animals in any one area to species. However, in 2004 the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species included nearly 2,000 endangered nonmarine molluscs. For comparison, the great majority of mollusc species are marine, but only 41 of these appeared on the 2004 Red List. About 42% of recorded extinctions since the year 1500 are of molluscs, consisting almost entirely of nonmarine species.[25]
+
+Because of the great range of anatomical diversity among molluscs, many textbooks start the subject of molluscan anatomy by describing what is called an archi-mollusc, hypothetical generalized mollusc, or hypothetical ancestral mollusc (HAM) to illustrate the most common features found within the phylum. The depiction is visually rather similar to modern monoplacophorans.[11][15][26]
+
+The generalized mollusc is bilaterally symmetrical and has a single, "limpet-like" shell on top. The shell is secreted by a mantle covering the upper surface. The underside consists of a single muscular "foot".[15] The visceral mass, or visceropallium, is the soft, nonmuscular metabolic region of the mollusc. It contains the body organs.[12]
+
+The mantle cavity, a fold in the mantle, encloses a significant amount of space. It is lined with epidermis, and is exposed, according to habitat, to sea, fresh water or air. The cavity was at the rear in the earliest molluscs, but its position now varies from group to group. The anus, a pair of osphradia (chemical sensors) in the incoming "lane", the hindmost pair of gills and the exit openings of the nephridia ("kidneys") and gonads (reproductive organs) are in the mantle cavity.[15] The whole soft body of bivalves lies within an enlarged mantle cavity.[12]
+
+The mantle edge secretes a shell (secondarily absent in a number of taxonomic groups, such as the nudibranchs[12]) that consists of mainly chitin and conchiolin (a protein hardened with calcium carbonate),[15][27] except the outermost layer, which in almost all cases is all conchiolin (see periostracum).[15] Molluscs never use phosphate to construct their hard parts,[28] with the questionable exception of Cobcrephora.[29]
+While most mollusc shells are composed mainly of aragonite, those gastropods that lay eggs with a hard shell use calcite (sometimes with traces of aragonite) to construct the eggshells.[30]
+
+The shell consists of three layers: the outer layer (the periostracum) made of organic matter, a middle layer made of columnar calcite, and an inner layer consisting of laminated calcite, often nacreous.[12]
+
+In some forms the shell contains openings. In abalones there are holes in the shell used for respiration and the release of egg and sperm, in the nautilus a string of tissue called the siphuncle goes through all the chambers, and the eight plates that make up the shell of chitons are penetrated with living tissue with nerves and sensory structures.[31]
+
+The underside consists of a muscular foot, which has adapted to different purposes in different classes.[32] The foot carries a pair of statocysts, which act as balance sensors. In gastropods, it secretes mucus as a lubricant to aid movement. In forms having only a top shell, such as limpets, the foot acts as a sucker attaching the animal to a hard surface, and the vertical muscles clamp the shell down over it; in other molluscs, the vertical muscles pull the foot and other exposed soft parts into the shell.[15] In bivalves, the foot is adapted for burrowing into the sediment;[32] in cephalopods it is used for jet propulsion,[32] and the tentacles and arms are derived from the foot.[33]
+
+Most molluscs' circulatory systems are mainly open. Although molluscs are coelomates, their coeloms are reduced to fairly small spaces enclosing the heart and gonads. The main body cavity is a hemocoel through which blood and coelomic fluid circulate and which encloses most of the other internal organs. These hemocoelic spaces act as an efficient hydrostatic skeleton.[12] The blood of these molluscs contains the respiratory pigment hemocyanin as an oxygen-carrier. The heart consists of one or more pairs of atria (auricles), which receive oxygenated blood from the gills and pump it to the ventricle, which pumps it into the aorta (main artery), which is fairly short and opens into the hemocoel.[15] The atria of the heart also function as part of the excretory system by filtering waste products out of the blood and dumping it into the coelom as urine. A pair of nephridia ("little kidneys") to the rear of and connected to the coelom extracts any re-usable materials from the urine and dumps additional waste products into it, and then ejects it via tubes that discharge into the mantle cavity.[15]
+
+Exceptions to the above are the molluscs Planorbidae or ram's horn snails, which are air-breathing snails that use iron-based hemoglobin instead of the copper-based hemocyanin to carry oxygen through their blood.
+
+Most molluscs have only one pair of gills, or even only a singular gill. Generally, the gills are rather like feathers in shape, although some species have gills with filaments on only one side. They divide the mantle cavity so water enters near the bottom and exits near the top. Their filaments have three kinds of cilia, one of which drives the water current through the mantle cavity, while the other two help to keep the gills clean. If the osphradia detect noxious chemicals or possibly sediment entering the mantle cavity, the gills' cilia may stop beating until the unwelcome intrusions have ceased. Each gill has an incoming blood vessel connected to the hemocoel and an outgoing one to the heart.[15]
+
+Members of the mollusc family use intracellular digestion to function. Most molluscs have muscular mouths with radulae, "tongues", bearing many rows of chitinous teeth, which are replaced from the rear as they wear out. The radula primarily functions to scrape bacteria and algae off rocks, and is associated with the odontophore, a cartilaginous supporting organ.[12] The radula is unique to the molluscs and has no equivalent in any other animal.
+
+Molluscs' mouths also contain glands that secrete slimy mucus, to which the food sticks. Beating cilia (tiny "hairs") drive the mucus towards the stomach, so the mucus forms a long string called a "food string".[15]
+
+At the tapered rear end of the stomach and projecting slightly into the hindgut is the prostyle, a backward-pointing cone of feces and mucus, which is rotated by further cilia so it acts as a bobbin, winding the mucus string onto itself. Before the mucus string reaches the prostyle, the acidity of the stomach makes the mucus less sticky and frees particles from it.[15]
+
+The particles are sorted by yet another group of cilia, which send the smaller particles, mainly minerals, to the prostyle so eventually they are excreted, while the larger ones, mainly food, are sent to the stomach's cecum (a pouch with no other exit) to be digested. The sorting process is by no means perfect.[15]
+
+Periodically, circular muscles at the hindgut's entrance pinch off and excrete a piece of the prostyle, preventing the prostyle from growing too large. The anus, in the part of the mantle cavity, is swept by the outgoing "lane" of the current created by the gills. Carnivorous molluscs usually have simpler digestive systems.[15]
+
+As the head has largely disappeared in bivalves, the mouth has been equipped with labial palps (two on each side of the mouth) to collect the detritus from its mucus.[12]
+
+The cephalic molluscs have two pairs of main nerve cords organized around a number of paired ganglia, the visceral cords serving the internal organs and the pedal ones serving the foot. Most pairs of corresponding ganglia on both sides of the body are linked by commissures (relatively large bundles of nerves). The ganglia above the gut are the cerebral, the pleural, and the visceral, which are located above the esophagus (gullet). The pedal ganglia, which control the foot, are below the esophagus and their commissure and connectives to the cerebral and pleural ganglia surround the esophagus in a circumesophageal nerve ring or nerve collar.[15]
+
+The acephalic molluscs (i.e., bivalves) also have this ring but it is less obvious and less important.  The bivalves have only three pairs of ganglia— cerebral, pedal, and visceral— with the visceral as the largest and most important of the three functioning as the principal center of "thinking".  Some such as the scallops have eyes around the edges of their shells which connect to a pair of looped nerves and which provide the ability to distinguish between light and shadow.
+
+The simplest molluscan reproductive system relies on external fertilization, but with more complex variations. All produce eggs, from which may emerge trochophore larvae, more complex veliger larvae, or miniature adults. Two gonads sit next to the coelom, a small cavity that surrounds the heart, into which they shed ova or sperm. The nephridia extract the gametes from the coelom and emit them into the mantle cavity. Molluscs that use such a system remain of one sex all their lives and rely on external fertilization. Some molluscs use internal fertilization and/or are hermaphrodites, functioning as both sexes; both of these methods require more complex reproductive systems.[15]
+
+The most basic molluscan larva is a trochophore, which is planktonic and feeds on floating food particles by using the two bands of cilia around its "equator" to sweep food into the mouth, which uses more cilia to drive them into the stomach, which uses further cilia to expel undigested remains through the anus. New tissue grows in the bands of mesoderm in the interior, so the apical tuft and anus are pushed further apart as the animal grows. The trochophore stage is often succeeded by a veliger stage in which the prototroch, the "equatorial" band of cilia nearest the apical tuft, develops into the velum ("veil"), a pair of cilia-bearing lobes with which the larva swims. Eventually, the larva sinks to the seafloor and metamorphoses into the adult form. While metamorphosis is the usual state in molluscs, the cephalopods differ in exhibiting direct development: the hatchling is a 'miniaturized' form of the adult.[35]
+
+Most molluscs are herbivorous, grazing on algae or filter feeders.  For those grazing, two feeding strategies are predominant. Some feed on microscopic, filamentous algae, often using their radula as a 'rake' to comb up filaments from the sea floor.  Others feed on macroscopic 'plants' such as kelp, rasping the plant surface with its radula.  To employ this strategy, the plant has to be large enough for the mollusc to 'sit' on, so smaller macroscopic plants are not as often eaten as their larger counterparts.[36]
+Filter feeders are molluscs that feed by straining suspended matter and food particle from water, typically by passing the water over their gills. Most bivalves are filter feeders.
+
+Cephalopods are primarily predatory, and the radula takes a secondary role to the jaws and tentacles in food acquisition.  The monoplacophoran  Neopilina uses its radula in the usual fashion, but its diet includes protists such as the xenophyophore Stannophyllum.[37] Sacoglossan sea-slugs suck the sap from algae, using their one-row radula to pierce the cell walls,[38] whereas dorid nudibranchs and some Vetigastropoda feed on sponges[39][40] and others feed on hydroids.[41] (An extensive list of molluscs with unusual feeding habits is available in the appendix of GRAHAM, A. (1955). "Molluscan diets". Journal of Molluscan Studies. 31 (3–4): 144..)
+
+Opinions vary about the number of classes of molluscs; for example, the table below shows seven living classes,[18] and two extinct ones. Although they are unlikely to form a clade, some older works combine the Caudofoveata and Solenogasters into one class, the Aplacophora.[26][14](p291–292) Two of the commonly recognized "classes" are known only from fossils.[16]
+
+Classification into higher taxa for these groups has been and remains problematic. A phylogenetic study suggests the Polyplacophora form a clade with a monophyletic Aplacophora.[44] Additionally, it suggests a sister taxon relationship exists between the Bivalvia and the Gastropoda. Tentaculita may also be in Mollusca (see Tentaculites).
+
+Good evidence exists for the appearance of gastropods (e.g. Aldanella), cephalopods (e.g. Plectronoceras, ?Nectocaris) and bivalves (Pojetaia, Fordilla) towards the middle of the Cambrian period, c. 500 million years ago, though arguably each of these may belong only to the stem lineage of their respective classes.[45] However, the evolutionary history both of the emergence of molluscs from the ancestral group Lophotrochozoa, and of their diversification into the well-known living and fossil forms, is still vigorously debated.
+
+Debate occurs about whether some Ediacaran and Early Cambrian fossils really are molluscs. Kimberella, from about 555 million years ago, has been described by some paleontologists as "mollusc-like",[46][47] but others are unwilling to go further than "probable bilaterian",[48][49] if that.[50]
+
+There is an even sharper debate about whether Wiwaxia, from about 505 million years ago, was a mollusc, and much of this centers on whether its feeding apparatus was a type of radula or more similar to that of some polychaete worms.[48][51] Nicholas Butterfield, who opposes the idea that Wiwaxia was a mollusc, has written that earlier microfossils from 515 to 510 million years ago are fragments of a genuinely mollusc-like radula.[52] This appears to contradict the concept that the ancestral molluscan radula was mineralized.[53]
+
+However, the Helcionellids, which first appear over 540 million years ago in Early Cambrian rocks from Siberia and China,[54][55] are thought to be early molluscs with rather snail-like shells. Shelled molluscs therefore predate the earliest trilobites.[43] Although most helcionellid fossils are only a few millimeters long, specimens a few centimeters long have also been found, most with more limpet-like shapes. The tiny specimens have been suggested to be juveniles and the larger ones adults.[56]
+
+Some analyses of helcionellids concluded these were the earliest gastropods.[57] However, other scientists are not convinced these Early Cambrian fossils show clear signs of the torsion that identifies modern gastropods twists the internal organs so the anus lies above the head.[14](pp300–343)[58][59]
+
+Volborthella, some fossils of which predate 530 million years ago, was long thought to be a cephalopod, but discoveries of more detailed fossils showed its shell was not secreted, but built from grains of the mineral silicon dioxide (silica), and it was not divided into a series of compartments by septa as those of fossil shelled cephalopods and the living Nautilus are. Volborthella's classification is uncertain.[60] The Late Cambrian fossil Plectronoceras is now thought to be the earliest clearly cephalopod fossil, as its shell had septa and a siphuncle, a strand of tissue that Nautilus uses to remove water from compartments it has vacated as it grows, and which is also visible in fossil ammonite shells. However, Plectronoceras and other early cephalopods crept along the seafloor instead of swimming, as their shells contained a "ballast" of stony deposits on what is thought to be the underside, and had stripes and blotches on what is thought to be the upper surface.[61] All cephalopods with external shells except the nautiloids became extinct by the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago.[62] However, the shell-less Coleoidea (squid, octopus, cuttlefish) are abundant today.[63]
+
+The Early Cambrian fossils Fordilla and Pojetaia are regarded as bivalves.[64][65][66][67] "Modern-looking" bivalves appeared in the Ordovician period, 488 to 443 million years ago.[68] One bivalve group, the rudists, became major reef-builders in the Cretaceous, but became extinct in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.[69] Even so, bivalves remain abundant and diverse.
+
+The Hyolitha are a class of extinct animals with a shell and operculum that may be molluscs. Authors who suggest they deserve their own phylum do not comment on the position of this phylum in the tree of life.[70]
+
+Brachiopods
+
+Bivalves
+
+Monoplacophorans("limpet-like", "living fossils")
+
+Gastropods(snails, slugs, limpets, sea hares)
+
+Cephalopods(nautiloids, ammonites, octopus, squid, etc.)
+
+Scaphopods (tusk shells)
+
+Aplacophorans(spicule-covered, worm-like)
+
+Polyplacophorans (chitons)
+
+Wiwaxia
+
+Halkieria
+
+Orthrozanclus
+
+Odontogriphus
+
+The phylogeny (evolutionary "family tree") of molluscs is a controversial subject. In addition to the debates about whether Kimberella and any of the "halwaxiids" were molluscs or closely related to molluscs,[47][48][51][52] debates arise about the relationships between the classes of living molluscs.[49] In fact, some groups traditionally classified as molluscs may have to be redefined as distinct but related.[73]
+
+Molluscs are generally regarded members of the Lophotrochozoa,[71] a group defined by having trochophore larvae and, in the case of living Lophophorata, a feeding structure called a lophophore. The other members of the Lophotrochozoa are the annelid worms and seven marine phyla.[74] The diagram on the right summarizes a phylogeny presented in 2007 without the annelid worms.
+
+Because the relationships between the members of the family tree are uncertain, it is difficult to identify the features inherited from the last common ancestor of all molluscs.[75] For example, it is uncertain whether the ancestral mollusc was metameric (composed of repeating units)—if it was, that would suggest an origin from an annelid-like worm.[76] Scientists disagree about this: Giribet and colleagues concluded, in 2006, the repetition of gills and of the foot's retractor muscles were later developments,[11] while in 2007, Sigwart concluded the ancestral mollusc was metameric, and it had a foot used for creeping and a "shell" that was mineralized.[49] In one particular branch of the family tree, the shell of conchiferans is thought to have evolved from the spicules (small spines) of aplacophorans; but this is difficult to reconcile with the embryological origins of spicules.[75]
+
+The molluscan shell appears to have originated from a mucus coating, which eventually stiffened into a cuticle. This would have been impermeable and thus forced the development of more sophisticated respiratory apparatus in the form of gills.[43] Eventually, the cuticle would have become mineralized,[43] using the same genetic machinery (engrailed) as most other bilaterian skeletons.[76] The first mollusc shell almost certainly was reinforced with the mineral aragonite.[27]
+
+The evolutionary relationships within the molluscs are also debated, and the diagrams below show two widely supported reconstructions:
+
+Solenogastres
+
+Caudofoveata
+
+Polyplacophorans
+
+Monoplacophorans
+
+Bivalves
+
+Scaphopods
+
+Gastropods
+
+Cephalopods
+
+
+
+Solenogastres
+
+Caudofoveata
+
+Polyplacophorans
+
+Monoplacophorans
+
+Bivalves
+
+Scaphopods
+
+Gastropods
+
+Cephalopods
+
+
+
+Morphological analyses tend to recover a conchiferan clade that receives less support from molecular analyses,[77] although these results also lead to unexpected paraphylies, for instance scattering the bivalves throughout all other mollusc groups.[78]
+
+However, an analysis in 2009 using both morphological and molecular phylogenetics comparisons concluded the molluscs are not monophyletic; in particular, Scaphopoda and Bivalvia are both separate, monophyletic lineages unrelated to the remaining molluscan classes; the traditional phylum Mollusca is polyphyletic, and it can only be made monophyletic if scaphopods and bivalves are excluded.[73] A 2010 analysis recovered the traditional conchiferan and aculiferan groups, and showed molluscs were monophyletic, demonstrating that available data for solenogastres was contaminated.[79] Current molecular data are insufficient to constrain the molluscan phylogeny, and since the methods used to determine the confidence in clades are prone to overestimation, it is risky to place too much emphasis even on the areas of which different studies agree.[80] Rather than eliminating unlikely relationships, the latest studies add new permutations of internal molluscan relationships, even bringing the conchiferan hypothesis into question.[81]
+
+For millennia, molluscs have been a source of food for humans, as well as important luxury goods, notably pearls, mother of pearl, Tyrian purple dye, sea silk, and chemical compounds. Their shells have also been used as a form of currency in some preindustrial societies.  A number of species of molluscs can bite or sting humans, and some have become agricultural pests.
+
+Molluscs, especially bivalves such as clams and mussels, have been an important food source since at least the advent of anatomically modern humans, and this has often resulted in overfishing.[82] Other commonly eaten molluscs include octopuses and squids, whelks, oysters, and scallops.[83] In 2005, China accounted for 80% of the global mollusc catch, netting almost 11,000,000 tonnes (11,000,000 long tons; 12,000,000 short tons). Within Europe, France remained the industry leader.[84] Some countries regulate importation and handling of molluscs and other seafood, mainly to minimize the poison risk from toxins that can sometimes accumulate in the animals.[85]
+
+Most molluscs with shells can produce pearls, but only the pearls of bivalves and some gastropods, whose shells are lined with nacre, are valuable.[14](pp300–343, 367–403) The best natural pearls are produced by marine pearl oysters, Pinctada margaritifera and Pinctada mertensi, which live in the tropical and subtropical waters of the Pacific Ocean. Natural pearls form when a small foreign object gets stuck between the mantle and shell.
+
+The two methods of culturing pearls insert either "seeds" or beads into oysters. The "seed" method uses grains of ground shell from freshwater mussels, and overharvesting for this purpose has endangered several freshwater mussel species in the southeastern United States.[14](pp367–403) The pearl industry is so important in some areas, significant sums of money are spent on monitoring the health of farmed molluscs.[86]
+
+Other luxury and high-status products were made from molluscs. Tyrian purple, made from the ink glands of murex shells, "fetched its weight in silver" in the fourth century BC, according to Theopompus.[87] The discovery of large numbers of Murex shells on Crete suggests the Minoans may have pioneered the extraction of "imperial purple" during the Middle Minoan period in the 20th–18th centuries BC, centuries before the Tyrians.[88][89] Sea silk is a fine, rare, and valuable fabric produced from the long silky threads (byssus) secreted by several bivalve molluscs, particularly Pinna nobilis, to attach themselves to the sea bed.[90] Procopius, writing on the Persian wars circa 550 CE, "stated that the five hereditary satraps (governors) of Armenia who received their insignia from the Roman Emperor were given chlamys (or cloaks) made from lana pinna. Apparently, only the ruling classes were allowed to wear these chlamys."[91]
+
+Mollusc shells, including those of cowries, were used as a kind of money (shell money) in several preindustrial societies. However, these "currencies" generally differed in important ways from the standardized government-backed and -controlled money familiar to industrial societies. Some shell "currencies" were not used for commercial transactions, but mainly as social status displays at important occasions, such as weddings.[92] When used for commercial transactions, they functioned as commodity money, as a tradable commodity whose value differed from place to place, often as a result of difficulties in transport, and which was vulnerable to incurable inflation if more efficient transport or "goldrush" behavior appeared.[93]
+
+Bivalve molluscs are used as bioindicators to monitor the health of aquatic environments in both fresh water and the marine environments. Their population status or structure, physiology, behaviour or the level of contamination with elements or compounds can indicate the state of contamination status of the ecosystem. They are particularly useful since they are sessile so that they are representative of the environment where they are sampled or placed.[94] Potamopyrgus antipodarum is used by some water treatment plants to test for estrogen-mimicking pollutants from industrial agriculture.
+
+Some molluscs sting or bite, but deaths from mollusc venoms total less than 10% of those from jellyfish stings.[96]
+
+All octopuses are venomous,[97] but only a few species pose a significant threat to humans. Blue-ringed octopuses in the genus Hapalochlaena, which live around Australia and New Guinea, bite humans only if severely provoked,[95] but their venom kills 25% of human victims. Another tropical species, Octopus apollyon, causes severe inflammation that can last for over a month even if treated correctly,[98] and the bite of Octopus rubescens can cause necrosis that lasts longer than one month if untreated, and headaches and weakness persisting for up to a week even if treated.[99]
+
+All species of cone snails are venomous and can sting painfully when handled, although many species are too small to pose much of a risk to humans, and only a few fatalities have been reliably reported. Their venom is a complex mixture of toxins, some fast-acting and others slower but deadlier.[100][96][101] The effects of individual cone-shell toxins on victims' nervous systems are so precise as to be useful tools for research in neurology, and the small size of their molecules makes it easy to synthesize them.[100][102]
+
+Schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia, bilharziosis or snail fever), a disease caused by the fluke worm Schistosoma, is "second only to malaria as the most devastating parasitic disease in tropical countries. An estimated 200 million people in 74 countries are infected with the disease – 100 million in Africa alone."[103] The parasite has 13 known species, two of which infect humans. The parasite itself is not a mollusc, but all the species have freshwater snails as intermediate hosts.[104]
+
+Some species of molluscs, particularly certain snails and slugs, can be serious crop pests,[105] and when introduced into new environments, can unbalance local ecosystems. One such pest, the giant African snail Achatina fulica, has been introduced to many parts of Asia, as well as to many islands in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. In the 1990s, this species reached the West Indies. Attempts to control it by introducing the predatory snail Euglandina rosea proved disastrous, as the predator ignored Achatina fulica and went on to extirpate several native snail species, instead.[106]

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+Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda. The members are known as molluscs or mollusks[a] (/ˈmɒləsk/). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized.[3] The number of fossil species is estimated between 60,000 and 100,000 additional species.[4] The proportion of undescribed species is very high. Many taxa remain poorly studied.[5]
+
+Molluscs are the largest marine phylum, comprising about 23% of all the named marine organisms. Numerous molluscs also live in freshwater and terrestrial habitats. They are highly diverse, not just in size and  anatomical structure, but also in behaviour and  habitat. The phylum is typically divided into 8 or 9 taxonomic classes, of which two are entirely extinct. Cephalopod molluscs, such as squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses, are among the most neurologically advanced of all invertebrates—and either the giant squid or the colossal squid is the largest known invertebrate species. The gastropods (snails and slugs) are by far the most numerous molluscs and account for 80% of the total classified species.
+
+The three most universal features defining modern molluscs are a mantle with a significant cavity used for breathing and excretion, the presence of a radula (except for bivalves), and the structure of the nervous system. Other than these common elements, molluscs express great morphological diversity, so many textbooks base their descriptions on a "hypothetical ancestral mollusc" (see image below). This has a single, "limpet-like" shell on top, which is made of proteins and chitin reinforced with calcium carbonate, and is secreted by a mantle covering the whole upper surface. The underside of the animal consists of a single muscular "foot". Although molluscs are coelomates, the coelom tends to be small.
+The main body cavity is a hemocoel through which blood circulates; as such, their circulatory systems are mainly open. The "generalized" mollusc's feeding system consists of a rasping "tongue", the radula, and a complex digestive system in which exuded mucus and microscopic, muscle-powered "hairs" called cilia play various important roles. The generalized mollusc has two paired nerve cords, or three in bivalves. The brain, in species that have one, encircles the esophagus. Most molluscs have eyes, and all have sensors to detect chemicals, vibrations, and touch. The simplest type of molluscan reproductive system relies on external fertilization, but more complex variations occur. Nearly all produce eggs, from which may emerge trochophore larvae, more complex veliger larvae, or miniature adults. The coelomic  cavity is reduced. They have an open circulatory system and kidney-like organs for excretion.
+
+Good evidence exists for the appearance of gastropods, cephalopods, and bivalves in the Cambrian period, 541–485.4 million years ago. However, the evolutionary history both of molluscs' emergence from the ancestral Lophotrochozoa and of their diversification into the well-known living and fossil forms are still subjects of vigorous debate among scientists.
+
+Molluscs have been and still are an important food source for anatomically modern humans. A risk of food poisoning exists from toxins that can accumulate in certain molluscs under specific conditions, however, and because of this, many countries have regulations to reduce this risk. Molluscs have, for centuries, also been the source of important luxury goods, notably pearls, mother of pearl, Tyrian purple dye, and sea silk. Their shells have also been used as money in some preindustrial societies.
+
+Mollusc species can also represent hazards or pests for human activities. The bite of the blue-ringed octopus is often fatal, and that of Octopus apollyon causes inflammation that can last over a month. Stings from a few species of large tropical cone shells can also kill, but their sophisticated, though easily produced, venoms have become important tools in neurological research. Schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia, bilharziosis, or snail fever) is transmitted to humans by water snail hosts, and affects about 200 million people. Snails and slugs can also be serious agricultural pests, and accidental or deliberate introduction of some snail species into new environments has seriously damaged some ecosystems.
+
+The words mollusc and mollusk are both derived from the French mollusque, which originated from the Latin molluscus, from mollis, soft. Molluscus was itself an adaptation of Aristotle's τὰ μαλάκια ta malákia (the soft ones; < μαλακός malakós "soft"), which he applied inter alia to cuttlefish.[6][7] The scientific study of molluscs is accordingly called malacology.[8]
+
+The name Molluscoida was formerly used to denote a division of the animal kingdom containing the brachiopods, bryozoans, and tunicates, the members of the three groups having been supposed to somewhat resemble the molluscs. As now known, these groups have no relation to molluscs, and very little to one another, so the name Molluscoida has been abandoned.[9]
+
+The most universal features of the body structure of molluscs are a mantle with a significant cavity used for breathing and excretion, and the organization of the nervous system. Many have a calcareous shell.[10]
+
+Molluscs have developed such a varied range of body structures,  finding synapomorphies (defining characteristics) to apply to all modern groups is difficult.[11] The most general characteristic of molluscs is they are unsegmented and bilaterally symmetrical.[12] The following are present in all modern molluscs:[13][15]
+
+Other characteristics that commonly appear in textbooks have significant exceptions:
+
+Estimates of accepted described living species of molluscs vary from 50,000 to a maximum of 120,000 species.[1] In 1969 David Nicol estimated the probable total number of living mollusc species at 107,000 of which were about 12,000 fresh-water gastropods and 35,000 terrestrial. The Bivalvia would comprise about 14% of the total and the other five classes less than 2% of the living molluscs.[17] In 2009, Chapman estimated the number of described living mollusc species at 85,000.[1] Haszprunar in 2001 estimated about 93,000 named species,[18] which include 23% of all named marine organisms.[19] Molluscs are second only to arthropods in numbers of living animal species[16] — far behind the arthropods' 1,113,000 but well ahead of chordates' 52,000.[14](pFront endpaper) About 200,000 living species in total are estimated,[1][20] and 70,000 fossil species,[13] although the total number of mollusc species ever to have existed, whether or not preserved, must be many times greater than the number alive today.[21]
+
+Molluscs have more varied forms than any other animal phylum. They include snails, slugs and other gastropods; clams and other bivalves; squids and other cephalopods; and other lesser-known but similarly distinctive subgroups. The majority of species still live in the oceans, from the seashores to the abyssal zone, but some form a significant part of the freshwater fauna and the terrestrial ecosystems. Molluscs are extremely diverse in tropical and temperate regions, but can be found at all latitudes.[11] About 80% of all known mollusc species are gastropods.[16] Cephalopoda such as squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses are among the neurologically most advanced of all invertebrates.[22] The giant squid, which until recently had not been observed alive in its adult form,[23] is one of the largest invertebrates, but a recently caught specimen of the colossal squid, 10 m (33 ft) long and weighing 500 kg (1,100 lb), may have overtaken it.[24]
+
+Freshwater and terrestrial molluscs appear exceptionally vulnerable to extinction. Estimates of the numbers of nonmarine molluscs vary widely, partly because many regions have not been thoroughly surveyed. There is also a shortage of specialists who can identify all the animals in any one area to species. However, in 2004 the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species included nearly 2,000 endangered nonmarine molluscs. For comparison, the great majority of mollusc species are marine, but only 41 of these appeared on the 2004 Red List. About 42% of recorded extinctions since the year 1500 are of molluscs, consisting almost entirely of nonmarine species.[25]
+
+Because of the great range of anatomical diversity among molluscs, many textbooks start the subject of molluscan anatomy by describing what is called an archi-mollusc, hypothetical generalized mollusc, or hypothetical ancestral mollusc (HAM) to illustrate the most common features found within the phylum. The depiction is visually rather similar to modern monoplacophorans.[11][15][26]
+
+The generalized mollusc is bilaterally symmetrical and has a single, "limpet-like" shell on top. The shell is secreted by a mantle covering the upper surface. The underside consists of a single muscular "foot".[15] The visceral mass, or visceropallium, is the soft, nonmuscular metabolic region of the mollusc. It contains the body organs.[12]
+
+The mantle cavity, a fold in the mantle, encloses a significant amount of space. It is lined with epidermis, and is exposed, according to habitat, to sea, fresh water or air. The cavity was at the rear in the earliest molluscs, but its position now varies from group to group. The anus, a pair of osphradia (chemical sensors) in the incoming "lane", the hindmost pair of gills and the exit openings of the nephridia ("kidneys") and gonads (reproductive organs) are in the mantle cavity.[15] The whole soft body of bivalves lies within an enlarged mantle cavity.[12]
+
+The mantle edge secretes a shell (secondarily absent in a number of taxonomic groups, such as the nudibranchs[12]) that consists of mainly chitin and conchiolin (a protein hardened with calcium carbonate),[15][27] except the outermost layer, which in almost all cases is all conchiolin (see periostracum).[15] Molluscs never use phosphate to construct their hard parts,[28] with the questionable exception of Cobcrephora.[29]
+While most mollusc shells are composed mainly of aragonite, those gastropods that lay eggs with a hard shell use calcite (sometimes with traces of aragonite) to construct the eggshells.[30]
+
+The shell consists of three layers: the outer layer (the periostracum) made of organic matter, a middle layer made of columnar calcite, and an inner layer consisting of laminated calcite, often nacreous.[12]
+
+In some forms the shell contains openings. In abalones there are holes in the shell used for respiration and the release of egg and sperm, in the nautilus a string of tissue called the siphuncle goes through all the chambers, and the eight plates that make up the shell of chitons are penetrated with living tissue with nerves and sensory structures.[31]
+
+The underside consists of a muscular foot, which has adapted to different purposes in different classes.[32] The foot carries a pair of statocysts, which act as balance sensors. In gastropods, it secretes mucus as a lubricant to aid movement. In forms having only a top shell, such as limpets, the foot acts as a sucker attaching the animal to a hard surface, and the vertical muscles clamp the shell down over it; in other molluscs, the vertical muscles pull the foot and other exposed soft parts into the shell.[15] In bivalves, the foot is adapted for burrowing into the sediment;[32] in cephalopods it is used for jet propulsion,[32] and the tentacles and arms are derived from the foot.[33]
+
+Most molluscs' circulatory systems are mainly open. Although molluscs are coelomates, their coeloms are reduced to fairly small spaces enclosing the heart and gonads. The main body cavity is a hemocoel through which blood and coelomic fluid circulate and which encloses most of the other internal organs. These hemocoelic spaces act as an efficient hydrostatic skeleton.[12] The blood of these molluscs contains the respiratory pigment hemocyanin as an oxygen-carrier. The heart consists of one or more pairs of atria (auricles), which receive oxygenated blood from the gills and pump it to the ventricle, which pumps it into the aorta (main artery), which is fairly short and opens into the hemocoel.[15] The atria of the heart also function as part of the excretory system by filtering waste products out of the blood and dumping it into the coelom as urine. A pair of nephridia ("little kidneys") to the rear of and connected to the coelom extracts any re-usable materials from the urine and dumps additional waste products into it, and then ejects it via tubes that discharge into the mantle cavity.[15]
+
+Exceptions to the above are the molluscs Planorbidae or ram's horn snails, which are air-breathing snails that use iron-based hemoglobin instead of the copper-based hemocyanin to carry oxygen through their blood.
+
+Most molluscs have only one pair of gills, or even only a singular gill. Generally, the gills are rather like feathers in shape, although some species have gills with filaments on only one side. They divide the mantle cavity so water enters near the bottom and exits near the top. Their filaments have three kinds of cilia, one of which drives the water current through the mantle cavity, while the other two help to keep the gills clean. If the osphradia detect noxious chemicals or possibly sediment entering the mantle cavity, the gills' cilia may stop beating until the unwelcome intrusions have ceased. Each gill has an incoming blood vessel connected to the hemocoel and an outgoing one to the heart.[15]
+
+Members of the mollusc family use intracellular digestion to function. Most molluscs have muscular mouths with radulae, "tongues", bearing many rows of chitinous teeth, which are replaced from the rear as they wear out. The radula primarily functions to scrape bacteria and algae off rocks, and is associated with the odontophore, a cartilaginous supporting organ.[12] The radula is unique to the molluscs and has no equivalent in any other animal.
+
+Molluscs' mouths also contain glands that secrete slimy mucus, to which the food sticks. Beating cilia (tiny "hairs") drive the mucus towards the stomach, so the mucus forms a long string called a "food string".[15]
+
+At the tapered rear end of the stomach and projecting slightly into the hindgut is the prostyle, a backward-pointing cone of feces and mucus, which is rotated by further cilia so it acts as a bobbin, winding the mucus string onto itself. Before the mucus string reaches the prostyle, the acidity of the stomach makes the mucus less sticky and frees particles from it.[15]
+
+The particles are sorted by yet another group of cilia, which send the smaller particles, mainly minerals, to the prostyle so eventually they are excreted, while the larger ones, mainly food, are sent to the stomach's cecum (a pouch with no other exit) to be digested. The sorting process is by no means perfect.[15]
+
+Periodically, circular muscles at the hindgut's entrance pinch off and excrete a piece of the prostyle, preventing the prostyle from growing too large. The anus, in the part of the mantle cavity, is swept by the outgoing "lane" of the current created by the gills. Carnivorous molluscs usually have simpler digestive systems.[15]
+
+As the head has largely disappeared in bivalves, the mouth has been equipped with labial palps (two on each side of the mouth) to collect the detritus from its mucus.[12]
+
+The cephalic molluscs have two pairs of main nerve cords organized around a number of paired ganglia, the visceral cords serving the internal organs and the pedal ones serving the foot. Most pairs of corresponding ganglia on both sides of the body are linked by commissures (relatively large bundles of nerves). The ganglia above the gut are the cerebral, the pleural, and the visceral, which are located above the esophagus (gullet). The pedal ganglia, which control the foot, are below the esophagus and their commissure and connectives to the cerebral and pleural ganglia surround the esophagus in a circumesophageal nerve ring or nerve collar.[15]
+
+The acephalic molluscs (i.e., bivalves) also have this ring but it is less obvious and less important.  The bivalves have only three pairs of ganglia— cerebral, pedal, and visceral— with the visceral as the largest and most important of the three functioning as the principal center of "thinking".  Some such as the scallops have eyes around the edges of their shells which connect to a pair of looped nerves and which provide the ability to distinguish between light and shadow.
+
+The simplest molluscan reproductive system relies on external fertilization, but with more complex variations. All produce eggs, from which may emerge trochophore larvae, more complex veliger larvae, or miniature adults. Two gonads sit next to the coelom, a small cavity that surrounds the heart, into which they shed ova or sperm. The nephridia extract the gametes from the coelom and emit them into the mantle cavity. Molluscs that use such a system remain of one sex all their lives and rely on external fertilization. Some molluscs use internal fertilization and/or are hermaphrodites, functioning as both sexes; both of these methods require more complex reproductive systems.[15]
+
+The most basic molluscan larva is a trochophore, which is planktonic and feeds on floating food particles by using the two bands of cilia around its "equator" to sweep food into the mouth, which uses more cilia to drive them into the stomach, which uses further cilia to expel undigested remains through the anus. New tissue grows in the bands of mesoderm in the interior, so the apical tuft and anus are pushed further apart as the animal grows. The trochophore stage is often succeeded by a veliger stage in which the prototroch, the "equatorial" band of cilia nearest the apical tuft, develops into the velum ("veil"), a pair of cilia-bearing lobes with which the larva swims. Eventually, the larva sinks to the seafloor and metamorphoses into the adult form. While metamorphosis is the usual state in molluscs, the cephalopods differ in exhibiting direct development: the hatchling is a 'miniaturized' form of the adult.[35]
+
+Most molluscs are herbivorous, grazing on algae or filter feeders.  For those grazing, two feeding strategies are predominant. Some feed on microscopic, filamentous algae, often using their radula as a 'rake' to comb up filaments from the sea floor.  Others feed on macroscopic 'plants' such as kelp, rasping the plant surface with its radula.  To employ this strategy, the plant has to be large enough for the mollusc to 'sit' on, so smaller macroscopic plants are not as often eaten as their larger counterparts.[36]
+Filter feeders are molluscs that feed by straining suspended matter and food particle from water, typically by passing the water over their gills. Most bivalves are filter feeders.
+
+Cephalopods are primarily predatory, and the radula takes a secondary role to the jaws and tentacles in food acquisition.  The monoplacophoran  Neopilina uses its radula in the usual fashion, but its diet includes protists such as the xenophyophore Stannophyllum.[37] Sacoglossan sea-slugs suck the sap from algae, using their one-row radula to pierce the cell walls,[38] whereas dorid nudibranchs and some Vetigastropoda feed on sponges[39][40] and others feed on hydroids.[41] (An extensive list of molluscs with unusual feeding habits is available in the appendix of GRAHAM, A. (1955). "Molluscan diets". Journal of Molluscan Studies. 31 (3–4): 144..)
+
+Opinions vary about the number of classes of molluscs; for example, the table below shows seven living classes,[18] and two extinct ones. Although they are unlikely to form a clade, some older works combine the Caudofoveata and Solenogasters into one class, the Aplacophora.[26][14](p291–292) Two of the commonly recognized "classes" are known only from fossils.[16]
+
+Classification into higher taxa for these groups has been and remains problematic. A phylogenetic study suggests the Polyplacophora form a clade with a monophyletic Aplacophora.[44] Additionally, it suggests a sister taxon relationship exists between the Bivalvia and the Gastropoda. Tentaculita may also be in Mollusca (see Tentaculites).
+
+Good evidence exists for the appearance of gastropods (e.g. Aldanella), cephalopods (e.g. Plectronoceras, ?Nectocaris) and bivalves (Pojetaia, Fordilla) towards the middle of the Cambrian period, c. 500 million years ago, though arguably each of these may belong only to the stem lineage of their respective classes.[45] However, the evolutionary history both of the emergence of molluscs from the ancestral group Lophotrochozoa, and of their diversification into the well-known living and fossil forms, is still vigorously debated.
+
+Debate occurs about whether some Ediacaran and Early Cambrian fossils really are molluscs. Kimberella, from about 555 million years ago, has been described by some paleontologists as "mollusc-like",[46][47] but others are unwilling to go further than "probable bilaterian",[48][49] if that.[50]
+
+There is an even sharper debate about whether Wiwaxia, from about 505 million years ago, was a mollusc, and much of this centers on whether its feeding apparatus was a type of radula or more similar to that of some polychaete worms.[48][51] Nicholas Butterfield, who opposes the idea that Wiwaxia was a mollusc, has written that earlier microfossils from 515 to 510 million years ago are fragments of a genuinely mollusc-like radula.[52] This appears to contradict the concept that the ancestral molluscan radula was mineralized.[53]
+
+However, the Helcionellids, which first appear over 540 million years ago in Early Cambrian rocks from Siberia and China,[54][55] are thought to be early molluscs with rather snail-like shells. Shelled molluscs therefore predate the earliest trilobites.[43] Although most helcionellid fossils are only a few millimeters long, specimens a few centimeters long have also been found, most with more limpet-like shapes. The tiny specimens have been suggested to be juveniles and the larger ones adults.[56]
+
+Some analyses of helcionellids concluded these were the earliest gastropods.[57] However, other scientists are not convinced these Early Cambrian fossils show clear signs of the torsion that identifies modern gastropods twists the internal organs so the anus lies above the head.[14](pp300–343)[58][59]
+
+Volborthella, some fossils of which predate 530 million years ago, was long thought to be a cephalopod, but discoveries of more detailed fossils showed its shell was not secreted, but built from grains of the mineral silicon dioxide (silica), and it was not divided into a series of compartments by septa as those of fossil shelled cephalopods and the living Nautilus are. Volborthella's classification is uncertain.[60] The Late Cambrian fossil Plectronoceras is now thought to be the earliest clearly cephalopod fossil, as its shell had septa and a siphuncle, a strand of tissue that Nautilus uses to remove water from compartments it has vacated as it grows, and which is also visible in fossil ammonite shells. However, Plectronoceras and other early cephalopods crept along the seafloor instead of swimming, as their shells contained a "ballast" of stony deposits on what is thought to be the underside, and had stripes and blotches on what is thought to be the upper surface.[61] All cephalopods with external shells except the nautiloids became extinct by the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago.[62] However, the shell-less Coleoidea (squid, octopus, cuttlefish) are abundant today.[63]
+
+The Early Cambrian fossils Fordilla and Pojetaia are regarded as bivalves.[64][65][66][67] "Modern-looking" bivalves appeared in the Ordovician period, 488 to 443 million years ago.[68] One bivalve group, the rudists, became major reef-builders in the Cretaceous, but became extinct in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.[69] Even so, bivalves remain abundant and diverse.
+
+The Hyolitha are a class of extinct animals with a shell and operculum that may be molluscs. Authors who suggest they deserve their own phylum do not comment on the position of this phylum in the tree of life.[70]
+
+Brachiopods
+
+Bivalves
+
+Monoplacophorans("limpet-like", "living fossils")
+
+Gastropods(snails, slugs, limpets, sea hares)
+
+Cephalopods(nautiloids, ammonites, octopus, squid, etc.)
+
+Scaphopods (tusk shells)
+
+Aplacophorans(spicule-covered, worm-like)
+
+Polyplacophorans (chitons)
+
+Wiwaxia
+
+Halkieria
+
+Orthrozanclus
+
+Odontogriphus
+
+The phylogeny (evolutionary "family tree") of molluscs is a controversial subject. In addition to the debates about whether Kimberella and any of the "halwaxiids" were molluscs or closely related to molluscs,[47][48][51][52] debates arise about the relationships between the classes of living molluscs.[49] In fact, some groups traditionally classified as molluscs may have to be redefined as distinct but related.[73]
+
+Molluscs are generally regarded members of the Lophotrochozoa,[71] a group defined by having trochophore larvae and, in the case of living Lophophorata, a feeding structure called a lophophore. The other members of the Lophotrochozoa are the annelid worms and seven marine phyla.[74] The diagram on the right summarizes a phylogeny presented in 2007 without the annelid worms.
+
+Because the relationships between the members of the family tree are uncertain, it is difficult to identify the features inherited from the last common ancestor of all molluscs.[75] For example, it is uncertain whether the ancestral mollusc was metameric (composed of repeating units)—if it was, that would suggest an origin from an annelid-like worm.[76] Scientists disagree about this: Giribet and colleagues concluded, in 2006, the repetition of gills and of the foot's retractor muscles were later developments,[11] while in 2007, Sigwart concluded the ancestral mollusc was metameric, and it had a foot used for creeping and a "shell" that was mineralized.[49] In one particular branch of the family tree, the shell of conchiferans is thought to have evolved from the spicules (small spines) of aplacophorans; but this is difficult to reconcile with the embryological origins of spicules.[75]
+
+The molluscan shell appears to have originated from a mucus coating, which eventually stiffened into a cuticle. This would have been impermeable and thus forced the development of more sophisticated respiratory apparatus in the form of gills.[43] Eventually, the cuticle would have become mineralized,[43] using the same genetic machinery (engrailed) as most other bilaterian skeletons.[76] The first mollusc shell almost certainly was reinforced with the mineral aragonite.[27]
+
+The evolutionary relationships within the molluscs are also debated, and the diagrams below show two widely supported reconstructions:
+
+Solenogastres
+
+Caudofoveata
+
+Polyplacophorans
+
+Monoplacophorans
+
+Bivalves
+
+Scaphopods
+
+Gastropods
+
+Cephalopods
+
+
+
+Solenogastres
+
+Caudofoveata
+
+Polyplacophorans
+
+Monoplacophorans
+
+Bivalves
+
+Scaphopods
+
+Gastropods
+
+Cephalopods
+
+
+
+Morphological analyses tend to recover a conchiferan clade that receives less support from molecular analyses,[77] although these results also lead to unexpected paraphylies, for instance scattering the bivalves throughout all other mollusc groups.[78]
+
+However, an analysis in 2009 using both morphological and molecular phylogenetics comparisons concluded the molluscs are not monophyletic; in particular, Scaphopoda and Bivalvia are both separate, monophyletic lineages unrelated to the remaining molluscan classes; the traditional phylum Mollusca is polyphyletic, and it can only be made monophyletic if scaphopods and bivalves are excluded.[73] A 2010 analysis recovered the traditional conchiferan and aculiferan groups, and showed molluscs were monophyletic, demonstrating that available data for solenogastres was contaminated.[79] Current molecular data are insufficient to constrain the molluscan phylogeny, and since the methods used to determine the confidence in clades are prone to overestimation, it is risky to place too much emphasis even on the areas of which different studies agree.[80] Rather than eliminating unlikely relationships, the latest studies add new permutations of internal molluscan relationships, even bringing the conchiferan hypothesis into question.[81]
+
+For millennia, molluscs have been a source of food for humans, as well as important luxury goods, notably pearls, mother of pearl, Tyrian purple dye, sea silk, and chemical compounds. Their shells have also been used as a form of currency in some preindustrial societies.  A number of species of molluscs can bite or sting humans, and some have become agricultural pests.
+
+Molluscs, especially bivalves such as clams and mussels, have been an important food source since at least the advent of anatomically modern humans, and this has often resulted in overfishing.[82] Other commonly eaten molluscs include octopuses and squids, whelks, oysters, and scallops.[83] In 2005, China accounted for 80% of the global mollusc catch, netting almost 11,000,000 tonnes (11,000,000 long tons; 12,000,000 short tons). Within Europe, France remained the industry leader.[84] Some countries regulate importation and handling of molluscs and other seafood, mainly to minimize the poison risk from toxins that can sometimes accumulate in the animals.[85]
+
+Most molluscs with shells can produce pearls, but only the pearls of bivalves and some gastropods, whose shells are lined with nacre, are valuable.[14](pp300–343, 367–403) The best natural pearls are produced by marine pearl oysters, Pinctada margaritifera and Pinctada mertensi, which live in the tropical and subtropical waters of the Pacific Ocean. Natural pearls form when a small foreign object gets stuck between the mantle and shell.
+
+The two methods of culturing pearls insert either "seeds" or beads into oysters. The "seed" method uses grains of ground shell from freshwater mussels, and overharvesting for this purpose has endangered several freshwater mussel species in the southeastern United States.[14](pp367–403) The pearl industry is so important in some areas, significant sums of money are spent on monitoring the health of farmed molluscs.[86]
+
+Other luxury and high-status products were made from molluscs. Tyrian purple, made from the ink glands of murex shells, "fetched its weight in silver" in the fourth century BC, according to Theopompus.[87] The discovery of large numbers of Murex shells on Crete suggests the Minoans may have pioneered the extraction of "imperial purple" during the Middle Minoan period in the 20th–18th centuries BC, centuries before the Tyrians.[88][89] Sea silk is a fine, rare, and valuable fabric produced from the long silky threads (byssus) secreted by several bivalve molluscs, particularly Pinna nobilis, to attach themselves to the sea bed.[90] Procopius, writing on the Persian wars circa 550 CE, "stated that the five hereditary satraps (governors) of Armenia who received their insignia from the Roman Emperor were given chlamys (or cloaks) made from lana pinna. Apparently, only the ruling classes were allowed to wear these chlamys."[91]
+
+Mollusc shells, including those of cowries, were used as a kind of money (shell money) in several preindustrial societies. However, these "currencies" generally differed in important ways from the standardized government-backed and -controlled money familiar to industrial societies. Some shell "currencies" were not used for commercial transactions, but mainly as social status displays at important occasions, such as weddings.[92] When used for commercial transactions, they functioned as commodity money, as a tradable commodity whose value differed from place to place, often as a result of difficulties in transport, and which was vulnerable to incurable inflation if more efficient transport or "goldrush" behavior appeared.[93]
+
+Bivalve molluscs are used as bioindicators to monitor the health of aquatic environments in both fresh water and the marine environments. Their population status or structure, physiology, behaviour or the level of contamination with elements or compounds can indicate the state of contamination status of the ecosystem. They are particularly useful since they are sessile so that they are representative of the environment where they are sampled or placed.[94] Potamopyrgus antipodarum is used by some water treatment plants to test for estrogen-mimicking pollutants from industrial agriculture.
+
+Some molluscs sting or bite, but deaths from mollusc venoms total less than 10% of those from jellyfish stings.[96]
+
+All octopuses are venomous,[97] but only a few species pose a significant threat to humans. Blue-ringed octopuses in the genus Hapalochlaena, which live around Australia and New Guinea, bite humans only if severely provoked,[95] but their venom kills 25% of human victims. Another tropical species, Octopus apollyon, causes severe inflammation that can last for over a month even if treated correctly,[98] and the bite of Octopus rubescens can cause necrosis that lasts longer than one month if untreated, and headaches and weakness persisting for up to a week even if treated.[99]
+
+All species of cone snails are venomous and can sting painfully when handled, although many species are too small to pose much of a risk to humans, and only a few fatalities have been reliably reported. Their venom is a complex mixture of toxins, some fast-acting and others slower but deadlier.[100][96][101] The effects of individual cone-shell toxins on victims' nervous systems are so precise as to be useful tools for research in neurology, and the small size of their molecules makes it easy to synthesize them.[100][102]
+
+Schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia, bilharziosis or snail fever), a disease caused by the fluke worm Schistosoma, is "second only to malaria as the most devastating parasitic disease in tropical countries. An estimated 200 million people in 74 countries are infected with the disease – 100 million in Africa alone."[103] The parasite has 13 known species, two of which infect humans. The parasite itself is not a mollusc, but all the species have freshwater snails as intermediate hosts.[104]
+
+Some species of molluscs, particularly certain snails and slugs, can be serious crop pests,[105] and when introduced into new environments, can unbalance local ecosystems. One such pest, the giant African snail Achatina fulica, has been introduced to many parts of Asia, as well as to many islands in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. In the 1990s, this species reached the West Indies. Attempts to control it by introducing the predatory snail Euglandina rosea proved disastrous, as the predator ignored Achatina fulica and went on to extirpate several native snail species, instead.[106]

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+The gastropods (/ˈɡæstroʊpɒdz/), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda. This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from the land. There are many thousands of species of sea snails and slugs, as well as freshwater snails, freshwater limpets, and land snails and slugs.
+
+The class Gastropoda contains a vast total of named species, second only to the insects in overall number. The fossil history of this class goes back to the Late Cambrian. As of 2017[update], 721 families of gastropods are known, of which 245 are extinct and appear only in the fossil record, while 476 are currently extant with or without a fossil record.[5]
+
+Gastropoda (previously known as univalves and sometimes spelled "Gasteropoda") are a major part of the phylum Mollusca, and are the most highly diversified class in the phylum, with 65,000 to 80,000[3][4] living snail and slug species. The anatomy, behavior, feeding, and reproductive adaptations of gastropods vary significantly from one clade or group to another. Therefore, it is difficult to state many generalities for all gastropods.
+
+The class Gastropoda has an extraordinary diversification of habitats. Representatives live in gardens, woodland, deserts, and on mountains; in small ditches, great rivers and lakes; in estuaries, mudflats, the rocky intertidal, the sandy subtidal, in the abyssal depths of the oceans including the hydrothermal vents, and numerous other ecological niches, including parasitic ones.
+
+Although the name "snail" can be, and often is, applied to all the members of this class, commonly this word means only those species with an external shell big enough that the soft parts can withdraw completely into it. Those gastropods without a shell, and those with only a very reduced or internal shell, are usually known as slugs; those with a shell into which they can partly but not completely withdraw are termed semi-slugs.
+
+The marine shelled species of gastropod include species such as abalone, conches, periwinkles, whelks, and numerous other sea snails that produce seashells that are coiled in the adult stage—though in some, the coiling may not be very visible, for example in cowries. In a number of families of species, such as all the various limpets, the shell is coiled only in the larval stage, and is a simple conical structure after that.
+
+In the scientific literature, gastropods were described under "gasteropodes" by Georges Cuvier in 1795.[2] The word "gastropod" derives from the Ancient Greek γαστήρ ("stomach") and πούς ("foot"), a reference to the fact that the animal's "foot" is positioned below its guts.[6]
+
+The earlier name univalve means "one valve" or shell, in contrast to bivalve applied to other molluscs such as clams and meaning that those animals possess two valves or shells.
+
+At all taxonomic levels, gastropods are second only to the insects in terms of their diversity.[7]
+
+Gastropods have the greatest numbers of named mollusc species. However, estimates of the total number of gastropod species vary widely, depending on cited sources. The number of gastropod species can be ascertained from estimates of the number of described species of Mollusca with accepted names: about 85,000 (minimum 50,000, maximum 120,000).[8] But an estimate of the total number of Mollusca, including undescribed species, is about 240,000 species.[9] The estimate of 85,000 molluscs includes 24,000 described species of terrestrial gastropods.[8]
+
+Different estimates for aquatic gastropods (based on different sources) give about 30,000 species of marine gastropods, and about 5,000 species of freshwater and brackish gastropods. Many deep-sea species remain to be discovered as only 0.0001% of the deep-sea floor has been studied biologically.[10][11] The total number of living species of freshwater snails is about 4,000.[12]
+
+There are 444 recently extinct species of gastropods (extinct since the year 1500), 18 species that are now extinct in the wild (but still existing in captivity) and 69 "possibly extinct" species.[13]
+
+The number of prehistoric (fossil) species of gastropods is at least 15,000 species.[14]
+
+In marine habitats, the continental slope and the continental rise are home to the highest diversity of marine gastropods, while the continental shelf and abyssal depths have a low diversity of marine gastropods.[15]
+
+Some of the more familiar and better-known gastropods are terrestrial gastropods (the land snails and slugs). Some live in freshwater, but the majority of all named species of gastropods live in a marine environment.
+
+Gastropods have a worldwide distribution, from the near Arctic and Antarctic zones to the tropics. They have become adapted to almost every kind of existence on earth, having colonized nearly every available medium.
+
+In habitats where there is not enough calcium carbonate to build a really solid shell, such as on some acidic soils on land, there are still various species of slugs, and also some snails with a thin translucent shell, mostly or entirely composed of the protein conchiolin.
+
+Snails such as Sphincterochila boissieri and Xerocrassa seetzeni have adapted to desert conditions. Other snails have adapted to an existence in ditches, near deepwater hydrothermal vents, the pounding surf of rocky shores, caves, and many other diverse areas.
+
+Gastropods can be accidentally transferred from one habitat to another by other animals, e.g. by birds.[16]
+
+Snails are distinguished by an anatomical process known as torsion, where the visceral mass of the animal rotates 180° to one side during development, such that the anus is situated more or less above the head. This process is unrelated to the coiling of the shell, which is a separate phenomenon. Torsion is present in all gastropods, but the opisthobranch gastropods are secondarily de-torted to various degrees.[17][18]
+
+Torsion occurs in two stages. The first, mechanistic stage, is muscular, and the second is mutagenetic. The effects of torsion are primarily physiological - the organism develops an asymmetrical growth, with the majority occurring on the left side. This leads to the loss of right-paired appendages (e.g., ctenidia (comb-like respiratory apparatus), gonads, nephridia, etc.). Furthermore, the anus becomes redirected to the same space as the head. This is speculated to have some evolutionary function, as prior to torsion, when retracting into the shell, first the posterior end would get pulled in, and then the anterior. Now, the front can be retracted more easily, perhaps suggesting a defensive purpose.
+
+However, this "rotation hypothesis" is being challenged by the "asymmetry hypothesis" in which the gastropod mantle cavity originated from one side only of a bilateral set of mantle cavities.[19]
+
+Gastropods typically have a well-defined head with two or four sensory tentacles with eyes, and a ventral foot, which gives them their name (Greek gaster, stomach, and pous, foot). The foremost division of the foot is called the propodium. Its function is to push away sediment as the snail crawls. The larval shell of a gastropod is called a protoconch.
+
+The principal characteristic of the Gastropoda is the asymmetry of their principal organs. The essential feature of this asymmetry is that the anus generally lies to one side of the median plane.; The ctenidium (gill-combs), the osphradium (olfactory organs), the hypobranchial gland (or pallial mucous gland), and the auricle of the heart are single or at least are more developed on one side of the body than the other ; Furthermore, there is only one genital orifice, which lies on the same side of the body as the anus.[20]
+
+Most shelled gastropods have a one piece shell, typically coiled or spiraled, at least in the larval stage. This coiled shell usually opens on the right-hand side (as viewed with the shell apex pointing upward). Numerous species have an operculum, which in many species acts as a trapdoor to close the shell. This is usually made of a horn-like material, but in some molluscs it is calcareous. In the land slugs, the shell is reduced or absent, and the body is streamlined.
+
+Some sea slugs are very brightly colored. This serves either as a warning, when they are poisonous or contain stinging cells, or to camouflage them on the brightly colored hydroids, sponges and seaweeds on which many of the species are found.
+
+Lateral outgrowths on the body of nudibranchs are called cerata. These contain an outpocketing of digestive gland called the diverticula.
+
+The sensory organs of gastropods include olfactory organs, eyes, statocysts and mechanoreceptors.[21] Gastropods have no hearing.[21]
+
+In terrestrial gastropods (land snails and slugs), the olfactory organs, located on the tips of the four tentacles, are the most important sensory organ.[21] The chemosensory organs of opisthobranch marine gastropods are called  rhinophores.
+
+The majority of gastropods have simple visual organs, eye spots either at the tip or base of the tentacles. However, "eyes" in gastropods range from simple ocelli that only distinguish light and dark, to more complex pit eyes, and even to lens eyes.[22] In land snails and slugs, vision is not the most important sense, because they are mainly nocturnal animals.[21]
+
+The nervous system of gastropods includes the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system. The central nervous system consist of ganglia connected by nerve cells. It includes paired ganglia: the cerebral ganglia, pedal ganglia, osphradial ganglia, pleural ganglia, parietal ganglia and the visceral ganglia. There are sometimes also buccal ganglia.[21]
+
+The radula of a gastropod is usually adapted to the food that a species eats. The simplest gastropods are the limpets and abalones, herbivores that use their hard radula to rasp at seaweeds on rocks.
+
+Many marine gastropods are burrowers, and have a siphon that extends out from the mantle edge. Sometimes the shell has a siphonal canal to accommodate this structure. A siphon enables the animal to draw water into their mantle cavity and over the gill. They use the siphon primarily to "taste" the water to detect prey from a distance. Gastropods with siphons tend to be either predators or scavengers.
+
+Almost all marine gastropods breathe with a gill, but many freshwater species, and the majority of terrestrial species, have a pallial lung. The respiratory protein in almost all gastropods is hemocyanin, but one freshwater pulmonate family, the Planorbidae, have hemoglobin as the respiratory protein.
+
+In one large group of sea slugs, the gills are arranged as a rosette of feathery plumes on their backs, which gives rise to their other name, nudibranchs. Some nudibranchs have smooth or warty backs with no visible gill mechanism, such that respiration may likely take place directly through the skin.
+
+Gastropods have open circulatory system and the transport fluid is hemolymph. Hemocyanin is present in the hemolymph as the respiratory pigment.
+
+The primary organs of excretion in gastropods are nephridia, which produce either ammonia or uric acid as a waste product. The nephridium also plays an important role in maintaining water balance in freshwater and terrestrial species. Additional organs of excretion, at least in some species, include pericardial glands in the body cavity, and digestive glands opening into the stomach.
+
+Courtship is a part of mating behavior in some gastropods, including some of the Helicidae. Again, in some land snails, an unusual feature of the reproductive system of gastropods is the presence and utilization of love darts.
+
+In many marine gastropods other than the opisthobranchs, there are separate sexes; most land gastropods, however, are hermaphrodites.
+
+Courtship is a part of the behavior of mating gastropods with some pulmonate families of land snails creating and utilizing love darts, the throwing of which have been identified as a form of sexual selection.[23]
+
+The main aspects of the life cycle of gastropods include:
+
+The diet of gastropods differs according to the group considered. Marine gastropods include some that are herbivores, detritus feeders, predatory carnivores, scavengers, parasites, and also a few ciliary feeders, in which the radula is reduced or absent. Land-dwelling species can chew up leaves, bark, fruit and decomposing animals while marine species can scrape algae off the rocks on the sea floor. In some species that have evolved into endoparasites, such as the eulimid Thyonicola doglieli, many of the standard gastropod features are strongly reduced or absent.
+
+A few sea slugs are herbivores and some are carnivores. The carnivorous habit is due to specialisation. Many gastropods have distinct dietary preferences and regularly occur in close association with their food species.
+
+Some predatory carnivorous gastropods include, for example: Cone shells, Testacella, Daudebardia, Ghost slug and others.
+
+Gastropods exhibit an important degree of variation in mitochondrial gene organization when compared to other animals.[24] Main events of gene rearrangement occurred at the origin of Patellogastropoda and Heterobranchia, whereas fewer changes occurred between the ancestors of Vetigastropoda (only tRNAs D, C and N) and Caenogastropoda (a large single inversion, and translocations of the tRNAs D and N).[24] Within Heterobranchia, gene order seems relatively conserved, and gene rearrangements are mostly related with transposition of tRNA genes.[24]
+
+The first gastropods were exclusively marine, with the earliest representatives of the group appearing in the Late Cambrian (Chippewaella, Strepsodiscus),[25] though their only gastropod character is a coiled shell, so they could lie in the stem lineage, if they are gastropods at all.[26]  Earliest Cambrian organisms like Helcionella, Barskovia and Scenella are no longer considered gastropods,[citation needed] and the tiny coiled Aldanella of earliest Cambrian time is probably not even a mollusk.[citation needed]
+
+As such, it's not until the Ordovician that the first crown-group members arise.[27]  By the Ordovician period the gastropods were a varied group present in a range of aquatic habitats. Commonly, fossil gastropods from the rocks of the early Palaeozoic era are too poorly preserved for accurate identification. Still, the Silurian genus Poleumita contains fifteen identified species. Fossil gastropods were less common during the Palaeozoic era than bivalves.[27]
+
+Most of the gastropods of the Palaeozoic era belong to primitive groups, a few of which still survive. By the Carboniferous period many of the shapes seen in living gastropods can be matched in the fossil record, but despite these similarities in appearance the majority of these older forms are not directly related to living forms. It was during the Mesozoic era that the ancestors of many of the living gastropods evolved.[27]
+
+One of the earliest known terrestrial (land-dwelling) gastropods is Maturipupa, which is found in the Coal Measures of the Carboniferous period in Europe, but relatives of the modern land snails are rare before the Cretaceous period, when the familiar Helix first appeared.[27]
+
+In rocks of the Mesozoic era, gastropods are slightly more common as fossils; their shells are often well preserved. Their fossils occur in ancient beds deposited in both freshwater and marine environments. The "Purbeck Marble" of the Jurassic period and the "Sussex Marble" of the early Cretaceous period, which both occur in southern England, are limestones containing the tightly packed remains of the pond snail Viviparus.[27]
+
+Rocks of the Cenozoic era yield very large numbers of gastropod fossils, many of these fossils being closely related to modern living forms. The diversity of the gastropods increased markedly at the beginning of this era, along with that of the bivalves.[27]
+
+Certain trail-like markings preserved in ancient sedimentary rocks are thought to have been made by gastropods crawling over the soft mud and sand. Although these trace fossils are of debatable origin, some of them do resemble the trails made by living gastropods today.[27]
+
+Gastropod fossils may sometimes be confused with ammonites or other shelled cephalopods. An example of this is Bellerophon from the limestones of the Carboniferous period in Europe, the shell of which is planispirally coiled and can be mistaken for the shell of a cephalopod.[citation needed]
+
+Gastropods are one of the groups that record the changes in fauna caused by the advance and retreat of the Ice Sheets during the Pleistocene epoch.
+
+A cladogram showing the phylogenic relationships of Gastropoda with example species:[28]
+
+Panpulmonata ►
+
+Euopisthobranchia ►
+
+Nudipleura ►
+
+Caenogastropoda
+
+Neritimorpha
+
+Vetigastropoda
+
+Patellogastropoda ►
+
+Cocculiniformia, Neomphalina and Lower Heterobranchia are not included in the above cladogram.
+
+Since Darwin, biological taxonomy has attempted to reflect the phylogeny of organisms, i.e., the tree of life. The classifications used in taxonomy attempt to represent the precise interrelatedness of the various taxa. However, the taxonomy of the Gastropoda is constantly being revised and so the versions shown in various texts can differ in major ways.
+
+In the older classification of the gastropods, there were four subclasses:[29]
+
+The taxonomy of the Gastropoda is still under revision, and more and more of the old taxonomy is being abandoned, as the results of DNA studies slowly become clearer. Nevertheless, a few of the older terms such as "opisthobranch" and "prosobranch" are still sometimes used in a descriptive way.
+
+New insights based on DNA sequencing of gastropods have produced some revolutionary new taxonomic insights. In the case of the Gastropoda, the taxonomy is now gradually being rewritten to embody strictly monophyletic groups (only one lineage of gastropods in each group). Integrating new findings into a working taxonomy remain challenging. Consistent ranks within the taxonomy at the level of subclass, superorder, order, and suborder have already been abandoned as unworkable. Ongoing revisions of the higher taxonomic levels are expected in the near future.
+
+Convergent evolution, which appears to exist at especially high frequency in gastropods, may account for the observed differences between the older phylogenies, which were based on morphological data, and more recent gene-sequencing studies.
+
+Bouchet & Rocroi (2005)[3][30] made sweeping changes in the systematics, resulting in a taxonomy that is a step closer to the evolutionary history of the phylum. The Bouchet & Rocroi classification system is based partly on the older systems of classification, and partly on new cladistic research.
+
+In the past, the taxonomy of gastropods was largely based on phenetic morphological characters of the taxa. The recent advances are more based on molecular characters from DNA[31] and RNA research. This has made the taxonomical ranks and their hierarchy controversial. The debate about these issues is not likely to end soon.
+
+In the Bouchet, Rocroi et al. taxonomy, the authors have used unranked clades for taxa above the rank of superfamily (replacing the ranks suborder, order, superorder and subclass), while using the traditional Linnaean approach for all taxa below the rank of superfamily. Whenever monophyly has not been tested, or is known to be paraphyletic or polyphyletic, the term "group" or "informal group" has been used. The classification of families into subfamilies is often not well resolved, and should be regarded as the best possible hypothesis.
+
+In 2004, Brian Simison and David R. Lindberg showed possible diphyletic origins of the Gastropoda based on mitochondrial gene order and amino acid sequence analyses of complete genes.[32]
+
+In the 2017 issue of "Malacologia" journal (available online from 4 January 2018) new much updated version of 2005 "Bouchet & Rocroi" taxonomy was published: "Revised Classification, Nomenclator and Typification of Gastropod and Monoplacophoran Families".[33]
+
+This article incorporates CC-BY-2.0 text from the reference.[24]
+

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+See text.
+
+Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda. The members are known as molluscs or mollusks[a] (/ˈmɒləsk/). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized.[3] The number of fossil species is estimated between 60,000 and 100,000 additional species.[4] The proportion of undescribed species is very high. Many taxa remain poorly studied.[5]
+
+Molluscs are the largest marine phylum, comprising about 23% of all the named marine organisms. Numerous molluscs also live in freshwater and terrestrial habitats. They are highly diverse, not just in size and  anatomical structure, but also in behaviour and  habitat. The phylum is typically divided into 8 or 9 taxonomic classes, of which two are entirely extinct. Cephalopod molluscs, such as squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses, are among the most neurologically advanced of all invertebrates—and either the giant squid or the colossal squid is the largest known invertebrate species. The gastropods (snails and slugs) are by far the most numerous molluscs and account for 80% of the total classified species.
+
+The three most universal features defining modern molluscs are a mantle with a significant cavity used for breathing and excretion, the presence of a radula (except for bivalves), and the structure of the nervous system. Other than these common elements, molluscs express great morphological diversity, so many textbooks base their descriptions on a "hypothetical ancestral mollusc" (see image below). This has a single, "limpet-like" shell on top, which is made of proteins and chitin reinforced with calcium carbonate, and is secreted by a mantle covering the whole upper surface. The underside of the animal consists of a single muscular "foot". Although molluscs are coelomates, the coelom tends to be small.
+The main body cavity is a hemocoel through which blood circulates; as such, their circulatory systems are mainly open. The "generalized" mollusc's feeding system consists of a rasping "tongue", the radula, and a complex digestive system in which exuded mucus and microscopic, muscle-powered "hairs" called cilia play various important roles. The generalized mollusc has two paired nerve cords, or three in bivalves. The brain, in species that have one, encircles the esophagus. Most molluscs have eyes, and all have sensors to detect chemicals, vibrations, and touch. The simplest type of molluscan reproductive system relies on external fertilization, but more complex variations occur. Nearly all produce eggs, from which may emerge trochophore larvae, more complex veliger larvae, or miniature adults. The coelomic  cavity is reduced. They have an open circulatory system and kidney-like organs for excretion.
+
+Good evidence exists for the appearance of gastropods, cephalopods, and bivalves in the Cambrian period, 541–485.4 million years ago. However, the evolutionary history both of molluscs' emergence from the ancestral Lophotrochozoa and of their diversification into the well-known living and fossil forms are still subjects of vigorous debate among scientists.
+
+Molluscs have been and still are an important food source for anatomically modern humans. A risk of food poisoning exists from toxins that can accumulate in certain molluscs under specific conditions, however, and because of this, many countries have regulations to reduce this risk. Molluscs have, for centuries, also been the source of important luxury goods, notably pearls, mother of pearl, Tyrian purple dye, and sea silk. Their shells have also been used as money in some preindustrial societies.
+
+Mollusc species can also represent hazards or pests for human activities. The bite of the blue-ringed octopus is often fatal, and that of Octopus apollyon causes inflammation that can last over a month. Stings from a few species of large tropical cone shells can also kill, but their sophisticated, though easily produced, venoms have become important tools in neurological research. Schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia, bilharziosis, or snail fever) is transmitted to humans by water snail hosts, and affects about 200 million people. Snails and slugs can also be serious agricultural pests, and accidental or deliberate introduction of some snail species into new environments has seriously damaged some ecosystems.
+
+The words mollusc and mollusk are both derived from the French mollusque, which originated from the Latin molluscus, from mollis, soft. Molluscus was itself an adaptation of Aristotle's τὰ μαλάκια ta malákia (the soft ones; < μαλακός malakós "soft"), which he applied inter alia to cuttlefish.[6][7] The scientific study of molluscs is accordingly called malacology.[8]
+
+The name Molluscoida was formerly used to denote a division of the animal kingdom containing the brachiopods, bryozoans, and tunicates, the members of the three groups having been supposed to somewhat resemble the molluscs. As now known, these groups have no relation to molluscs, and very little to one another, so the name Molluscoida has been abandoned.[9]
+
+The most universal features of the body structure of molluscs are a mantle with a significant cavity used for breathing and excretion, and the organization of the nervous system. Many have a calcareous shell.[10]
+
+Molluscs have developed such a varied range of body structures,  finding synapomorphies (defining characteristics) to apply to all modern groups is difficult.[11] The most general characteristic of molluscs is they are unsegmented and bilaterally symmetrical.[12] The following are present in all modern molluscs:[13][15]
+
+Other characteristics that commonly appear in textbooks have significant exceptions:
+
+Estimates of accepted described living species of molluscs vary from 50,000 to a maximum of 120,000 species.[1] In 1969 David Nicol estimated the probable total number of living mollusc species at 107,000 of which were about 12,000 fresh-water gastropods and 35,000 terrestrial. The Bivalvia would comprise about 14% of the total and the other five classes less than 2% of the living molluscs.[17] In 2009, Chapman estimated the number of described living mollusc species at 85,000.[1] Haszprunar in 2001 estimated about 93,000 named species,[18] which include 23% of all named marine organisms.[19] Molluscs are second only to arthropods in numbers of living animal species[16] — far behind the arthropods' 1,113,000 but well ahead of chordates' 52,000.[14](pFront endpaper) About 200,000 living species in total are estimated,[1][20] and 70,000 fossil species,[13] although the total number of mollusc species ever to have existed, whether or not preserved, must be many times greater than the number alive today.[21]
+
+Molluscs have more varied forms than any other animal phylum. They include snails, slugs and other gastropods; clams and other bivalves; squids and other cephalopods; and other lesser-known but similarly distinctive subgroups. The majority of species still live in the oceans, from the seashores to the abyssal zone, but some form a significant part of the freshwater fauna and the terrestrial ecosystems. Molluscs are extremely diverse in tropical and temperate regions, but can be found at all latitudes.[11] About 80% of all known mollusc species are gastropods.[16] Cephalopoda such as squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses are among the neurologically most advanced of all invertebrates.[22] The giant squid, which until recently had not been observed alive in its adult form,[23] is one of the largest invertebrates, but a recently caught specimen of the colossal squid, 10 m (33 ft) long and weighing 500 kg (1,100 lb), may have overtaken it.[24]
+
+Freshwater and terrestrial molluscs appear exceptionally vulnerable to extinction. Estimates of the numbers of nonmarine molluscs vary widely, partly because many regions have not been thoroughly surveyed. There is also a shortage of specialists who can identify all the animals in any one area to species. However, in 2004 the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species included nearly 2,000 endangered nonmarine molluscs. For comparison, the great majority of mollusc species are marine, but only 41 of these appeared on the 2004 Red List. About 42% of recorded extinctions since the year 1500 are of molluscs, consisting almost entirely of nonmarine species.[25]
+
+Because of the great range of anatomical diversity among molluscs, many textbooks start the subject of molluscan anatomy by describing what is called an archi-mollusc, hypothetical generalized mollusc, or hypothetical ancestral mollusc (HAM) to illustrate the most common features found within the phylum. The depiction is visually rather similar to modern monoplacophorans.[11][15][26]
+
+The generalized mollusc is bilaterally symmetrical and has a single, "limpet-like" shell on top. The shell is secreted by a mantle covering the upper surface. The underside consists of a single muscular "foot".[15] The visceral mass, or visceropallium, is the soft, nonmuscular metabolic region of the mollusc. It contains the body organs.[12]
+
+The mantle cavity, a fold in the mantle, encloses a significant amount of space. It is lined with epidermis, and is exposed, according to habitat, to sea, fresh water or air. The cavity was at the rear in the earliest molluscs, but its position now varies from group to group. The anus, a pair of osphradia (chemical sensors) in the incoming "lane", the hindmost pair of gills and the exit openings of the nephridia ("kidneys") and gonads (reproductive organs) are in the mantle cavity.[15] The whole soft body of bivalves lies within an enlarged mantle cavity.[12]
+
+The mantle edge secretes a shell (secondarily absent in a number of taxonomic groups, such as the nudibranchs[12]) that consists of mainly chitin and conchiolin (a protein hardened with calcium carbonate),[15][27] except the outermost layer, which in almost all cases is all conchiolin (see periostracum).[15] Molluscs never use phosphate to construct their hard parts,[28] with the questionable exception of Cobcrephora.[29]
+While most mollusc shells are composed mainly of aragonite, those gastropods that lay eggs with a hard shell use calcite (sometimes with traces of aragonite) to construct the eggshells.[30]
+
+The shell consists of three layers: the outer layer (the periostracum) made of organic matter, a middle layer made of columnar calcite, and an inner layer consisting of laminated calcite, often nacreous.[12]
+
+In some forms the shell contains openings. In abalones there are holes in the shell used for respiration and the release of egg and sperm, in the nautilus a string of tissue called the siphuncle goes through all the chambers, and the eight plates that make up the shell of chitons are penetrated with living tissue with nerves and sensory structures.[31]
+
+The underside consists of a muscular foot, which has adapted to different purposes in different classes.[32] The foot carries a pair of statocysts, which act as balance sensors. In gastropods, it secretes mucus as a lubricant to aid movement. In forms having only a top shell, such as limpets, the foot acts as a sucker attaching the animal to a hard surface, and the vertical muscles clamp the shell down over it; in other molluscs, the vertical muscles pull the foot and other exposed soft parts into the shell.[15] In bivalves, the foot is adapted for burrowing into the sediment;[32] in cephalopods it is used for jet propulsion,[32] and the tentacles and arms are derived from the foot.[33]
+
+Most molluscs' circulatory systems are mainly open. Although molluscs are coelomates, their coeloms are reduced to fairly small spaces enclosing the heart and gonads. The main body cavity is a hemocoel through which blood and coelomic fluid circulate and which encloses most of the other internal organs. These hemocoelic spaces act as an efficient hydrostatic skeleton.[12] The blood of these molluscs contains the respiratory pigment hemocyanin as an oxygen-carrier. The heart consists of one or more pairs of atria (auricles), which receive oxygenated blood from the gills and pump it to the ventricle, which pumps it into the aorta (main artery), which is fairly short and opens into the hemocoel.[15] The atria of the heart also function as part of the excretory system by filtering waste products out of the blood and dumping it into the coelom as urine. A pair of nephridia ("little kidneys") to the rear of and connected to the coelom extracts any re-usable materials from the urine and dumps additional waste products into it, and then ejects it via tubes that discharge into the mantle cavity.[15]
+
+Exceptions to the above are the molluscs Planorbidae or ram's horn snails, which are air-breathing snails that use iron-based hemoglobin instead of the copper-based hemocyanin to carry oxygen through their blood.
+
+Most molluscs have only one pair of gills, or even only a singular gill. Generally, the gills are rather like feathers in shape, although some species have gills with filaments on only one side. They divide the mantle cavity so water enters near the bottom and exits near the top. Their filaments have three kinds of cilia, one of which drives the water current through the mantle cavity, while the other two help to keep the gills clean. If the osphradia detect noxious chemicals or possibly sediment entering the mantle cavity, the gills' cilia may stop beating until the unwelcome intrusions have ceased. Each gill has an incoming blood vessel connected to the hemocoel and an outgoing one to the heart.[15]
+
+Members of the mollusc family use intracellular digestion to function. Most molluscs have muscular mouths with radulae, "tongues", bearing many rows of chitinous teeth, which are replaced from the rear as they wear out. The radula primarily functions to scrape bacteria and algae off rocks, and is associated with the odontophore, a cartilaginous supporting organ.[12] The radula is unique to the molluscs and has no equivalent in any other animal.
+
+Molluscs' mouths also contain glands that secrete slimy mucus, to which the food sticks. Beating cilia (tiny "hairs") drive the mucus towards the stomach, so the mucus forms a long string called a "food string".[15]
+
+At the tapered rear end of the stomach and projecting slightly into the hindgut is the prostyle, a backward-pointing cone of feces and mucus, which is rotated by further cilia so it acts as a bobbin, winding the mucus string onto itself. Before the mucus string reaches the prostyle, the acidity of the stomach makes the mucus less sticky and frees particles from it.[15]
+
+The particles are sorted by yet another group of cilia, which send the smaller particles, mainly minerals, to the prostyle so eventually they are excreted, while the larger ones, mainly food, are sent to the stomach's cecum (a pouch with no other exit) to be digested. The sorting process is by no means perfect.[15]
+
+Periodically, circular muscles at the hindgut's entrance pinch off and excrete a piece of the prostyle, preventing the prostyle from growing too large. The anus, in the part of the mantle cavity, is swept by the outgoing "lane" of the current created by the gills. Carnivorous molluscs usually have simpler digestive systems.[15]
+
+As the head has largely disappeared in bivalves, the mouth has been equipped with labial palps (two on each side of the mouth) to collect the detritus from its mucus.[12]
+
+The cephalic molluscs have two pairs of main nerve cords organized around a number of paired ganglia, the visceral cords serving the internal organs and the pedal ones serving the foot. Most pairs of corresponding ganglia on both sides of the body are linked by commissures (relatively large bundles of nerves). The ganglia above the gut are the cerebral, the pleural, and the visceral, which are located above the esophagus (gullet). The pedal ganglia, which control the foot, are below the esophagus and their commissure and connectives to the cerebral and pleural ganglia surround the esophagus in a circumesophageal nerve ring or nerve collar.[15]
+
+The acephalic molluscs (i.e., bivalves) also have this ring but it is less obvious and less important.  The bivalves have only three pairs of ganglia— cerebral, pedal, and visceral— with the visceral as the largest and most important of the three functioning as the principal center of "thinking".  Some such as the scallops have eyes around the edges of their shells which connect to a pair of looped nerves and which provide the ability to distinguish between light and shadow.
+
+The simplest molluscan reproductive system relies on external fertilization, but with more complex variations. All produce eggs, from which may emerge trochophore larvae, more complex veliger larvae, or miniature adults. Two gonads sit next to the coelom, a small cavity that surrounds the heart, into which they shed ova or sperm. The nephridia extract the gametes from the coelom and emit them into the mantle cavity. Molluscs that use such a system remain of one sex all their lives and rely on external fertilization. Some molluscs use internal fertilization and/or are hermaphrodites, functioning as both sexes; both of these methods require more complex reproductive systems.[15]
+
+The most basic molluscan larva is a trochophore, which is planktonic and feeds on floating food particles by using the two bands of cilia around its "equator" to sweep food into the mouth, which uses more cilia to drive them into the stomach, which uses further cilia to expel undigested remains through the anus. New tissue grows in the bands of mesoderm in the interior, so the apical tuft and anus are pushed further apart as the animal grows. The trochophore stage is often succeeded by a veliger stage in which the prototroch, the "equatorial" band of cilia nearest the apical tuft, develops into the velum ("veil"), a pair of cilia-bearing lobes with which the larva swims. Eventually, the larva sinks to the seafloor and metamorphoses into the adult form. While metamorphosis is the usual state in molluscs, the cephalopods differ in exhibiting direct development: the hatchling is a 'miniaturized' form of the adult.[35]
+
+Most molluscs are herbivorous, grazing on algae or filter feeders.  For those grazing, two feeding strategies are predominant. Some feed on microscopic, filamentous algae, often using their radula as a 'rake' to comb up filaments from the sea floor.  Others feed on macroscopic 'plants' such as kelp, rasping the plant surface with its radula.  To employ this strategy, the plant has to be large enough for the mollusc to 'sit' on, so smaller macroscopic plants are not as often eaten as their larger counterparts.[36]
+Filter feeders are molluscs that feed by straining suspended matter and food particle from water, typically by passing the water over their gills. Most bivalves are filter feeders.
+
+Cephalopods are primarily predatory, and the radula takes a secondary role to the jaws and tentacles in food acquisition.  The monoplacophoran  Neopilina uses its radula in the usual fashion, but its diet includes protists such as the xenophyophore Stannophyllum.[37] Sacoglossan sea-slugs suck the sap from algae, using their one-row radula to pierce the cell walls,[38] whereas dorid nudibranchs and some Vetigastropoda feed on sponges[39][40] and others feed on hydroids.[41] (An extensive list of molluscs with unusual feeding habits is available in the appendix of GRAHAM, A. (1955). "Molluscan diets". Journal of Molluscan Studies. 31 (3–4): 144..)
+
+Opinions vary about the number of classes of molluscs; for example, the table below shows seven living classes,[18] and two extinct ones. Although they are unlikely to form a clade, some older works combine the Caudofoveata and Solenogasters into one class, the Aplacophora.[26][14](p291–292) Two of the commonly recognized "classes" are known only from fossils.[16]
+
+Classification into higher taxa for these groups has been and remains problematic. A phylogenetic study suggests the Polyplacophora form a clade with a monophyletic Aplacophora.[44] Additionally, it suggests a sister taxon relationship exists between the Bivalvia and the Gastropoda. Tentaculita may also be in Mollusca (see Tentaculites).
+
+Good evidence exists for the appearance of gastropods (e.g. Aldanella), cephalopods (e.g. Plectronoceras, ?Nectocaris) and bivalves (Pojetaia, Fordilla) towards the middle of the Cambrian period, c. 500 million years ago, though arguably each of these may belong only to the stem lineage of their respective classes.[45] However, the evolutionary history both of the emergence of molluscs from the ancestral group Lophotrochozoa, and of their diversification into the well-known living and fossil forms, is still vigorously debated.
+
+Debate occurs about whether some Ediacaran and Early Cambrian fossils really are molluscs. Kimberella, from about 555 million years ago, has been described by some paleontologists as "mollusc-like",[46][47] but others are unwilling to go further than "probable bilaterian",[48][49] if that.[50]
+
+There is an even sharper debate about whether Wiwaxia, from about 505 million years ago, was a mollusc, and much of this centers on whether its feeding apparatus was a type of radula or more similar to that of some polychaete worms.[48][51] Nicholas Butterfield, who opposes the idea that Wiwaxia was a mollusc, has written that earlier microfossils from 515 to 510 million years ago are fragments of a genuinely mollusc-like radula.[52] This appears to contradict the concept that the ancestral molluscan radula was mineralized.[53]
+
+However, the Helcionellids, which first appear over 540 million years ago in Early Cambrian rocks from Siberia and China,[54][55] are thought to be early molluscs with rather snail-like shells. Shelled molluscs therefore predate the earliest trilobites.[43] Although most helcionellid fossils are only a few millimeters long, specimens a few centimeters long have also been found, most with more limpet-like shapes. The tiny specimens have been suggested to be juveniles and the larger ones adults.[56]
+
+Some analyses of helcionellids concluded these were the earliest gastropods.[57] However, other scientists are not convinced these Early Cambrian fossils show clear signs of the torsion that identifies modern gastropods twists the internal organs so the anus lies above the head.[14](pp300–343)[58][59]
+
+Volborthella, some fossils of which predate 530 million years ago, was long thought to be a cephalopod, but discoveries of more detailed fossils showed its shell was not secreted, but built from grains of the mineral silicon dioxide (silica), and it was not divided into a series of compartments by septa as those of fossil shelled cephalopods and the living Nautilus are. Volborthella's classification is uncertain.[60] The Late Cambrian fossil Plectronoceras is now thought to be the earliest clearly cephalopod fossil, as its shell had septa and a siphuncle, a strand of tissue that Nautilus uses to remove water from compartments it has vacated as it grows, and which is also visible in fossil ammonite shells. However, Plectronoceras and other early cephalopods crept along the seafloor instead of swimming, as their shells contained a "ballast" of stony deposits on what is thought to be the underside, and had stripes and blotches on what is thought to be the upper surface.[61] All cephalopods with external shells except the nautiloids became extinct by the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago.[62] However, the shell-less Coleoidea (squid, octopus, cuttlefish) are abundant today.[63]
+
+The Early Cambrian fossils Fordilla and Pojetaia are regarded as bivalves.[64][65][66][67] "Modern-looking" bivalves appeared in the Ordovician period, 488 to 443 million years ago.[68] One bivalve group, the rudists, became major reef-builders in the Cretaceous, but became extinct in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.[69] Even so, bivalves remain abundant and diverse.
+
+The Hyolitha are a class of extinct animals with a shell and operculum that may be molluscs. Authors who suggest they deserve their own phylum do not comment on the position of this phylum in the tree of life.[70]
+
+Brachiopods
+
+Bivalves
+
+Monoplacophorans("limpet-like", "living fossils")
+
+Gastropods(snails, slugs, limpets, sea hares)
+
+Cephalopods(nautiloids, ammonites, octopus, squid, etc.)
+
+Scaphopods (tusk shells)
+
+Aplacophorans(spicule-covered, worm-like)
+
+Polyplacophorans (chitons)
+
+Wiwaxia
+
+Halkieria
+
+Orthrozanclus
+
+Odontogriphus
+
+The phylogeny (evolutionary "family tree") of molluscs is a controversial subject. In addition to the debates about whether Kimberella and any of the "halwaxiids" were molluscs or closely related to molluscs,[47][48][51][52] debates arise about the relationships between the classes of living molluscs.[49] In fact, some groups traditionally classified as molluscs may have to be redefined as distinct but related.[73]
+
+Molluscs are generally regarded members of the Lophotrochozoa,[71] a group defined by having trochophore larvae and, in the case of living Lophophorata, a feeding structure called a lophophore. The other members of the Lophotrochozoa are the annelid worms and seven marine phyla.[74] The diagram on the right summarizes a phylogeny presented in 2007 without the annelid worms.
+
+Because the relationships between the members of the family tree are uncertain, it is difficult to identify the features inherited from the last common ancestor of all molluscs.[75] For example, it is uncertain whether the ancestral mollusc was metameric (composed of repeating units)—if it was, that would suggest an origin from an annelid-like worm.[76] Scientists disagree about this: Giribet and colleagues concluded, in 2006, the repetition of gills and of the foot's retractor muscles were later developments,[11] while in 2007, Sigwart concluded the ancestral mollusc was metameric, and it had a foot used for creeping and a "shell" that was mineralized.[49] In one particular branch of the family tree, the shell of conchiferans is thought to have evolved from the spicules (small spines) of aplacophorans; but this is difficult to reconcile with the embryological origins of spicules.[75]
+
+The molluscan shell appears to have originated from a mucus coating, which eventually stiffened into a cuticle. This would have been impermeable and thus forced the development of more sophisticated respiratory apparatus in the form of gills.[43] Eventually, the cuticle would have become mineralized,[43] using the same genetic machinery (engrailed) as most other bilaterian skeletons.[76] The first mollusc shell almost certainly was reinforced with the mineral aragonite.[27]
+
+The evolutionary relationships within the molluscs are also debated, and the diagrams below show two widely supported reconstructions:
+
+Solenogastres
+
+Caudofoveata
+
+Polyplacophorans
+
+Monoplacophorans
+
+Bivalves
+
+Scaphopods
+
+Gastropods
+
+Cephalopods
+
+
+
+Solenogastres
+
+Caudofoveata
+
+Polyplacophorans
+
+Monoplacophorans
+
+Bivalves
+
+Scaphopods
+
+Gastropods
+
+Cephalopods
+
+
+
+Morphological analyses tend to recover a conchiferan clade that receives less support from molecular analyses,[77] although these results also lead to unexpected paraphylies, for instance scattering the bivalves throughout all other mollusc groups.[78]
+
+However, an analysis in 2009 using both morphological and molecular phylogenetics comparisons concluded the molluscs are not monophyletic; in particular, Scaphopoda and Bivalvia are both separate, monophyletic lineages unrelated to the remaining molluscan classes; the traditional phylum Mollusca is polyphyletic, and it can only be made monophyletic if scaphopods and bivalves are excluded.[73] A 2010 analysis recovered the traditional conchiferan and aculiferan groups, and showed molluscs were monophyletic, demonstrating that available data for solenogastres was contaminated.[79] Current molecular data are insufficient to constrain the molluscan phylogeny, and since the methods used to determine the confidence in clades are prone to overestimation, it is risky to place too much emphasis even on the areas of which different studies agree.[80] Rather than eliminating unlikely relationships, the latest studies add new permutations of internal molluscan relationships, even bringing the conchiferan hypothesis into question.[81]
+
+For millennia, molluscs have been a source of food for humans, as well as important luxury goods, notably pearls, mother of pearl, Tyrian purple dye, sea silk, and chemical compounds. Their shells have also been used as a form of currency in some preindustrial societies.  A number of species of molluscs can bite or sting humans, and some have become agricultural pests.
+
+Molluscs, especially bivalves such as clams and mussels, have been an important food source since at least the advent of anatomically modern humans, and this has often resulted in overfishing.[82] Other commonly eaten molluscs include octopuses and squids, whelks, oysters, and scallops.[83] In 2005, China accounted for 80% of the global mollusc catch, netting almost 11,000,000 tonnes (11,000,000 long tons; 12,000,000 short tons). Within Europe, France remained the industry leader.[84] Some countries regulate importation and handling of molluscs and other seafood, mainly to minimize the poison risk from toxins that can sometimes accumulate in the animals.[85]
+
+Most molluscs with shells can produce pearls, but only the pearls of bivalves and some gastropods, whose shells are lined with nacre, are valuable.[14](pp300–343, 367–403) The best natural pearls are produced by marine pearl oysters, Pinctada margaritifera and Pinctada mertensi, which live in the tropical and subtropical waters of the Pacific Ocean. Natural pearls form when a small foreign object gets stuck between the mantle and shell.
+
+The two methods of culturing pearls insert either "seeds" or beads into oysters. The "seed" method uses grains of ground shell from freshwater mussels, and overharvesting for this purpose has endangered several freshwater mussel species in the southeastern United States.[14](pp367–403) The pearl industry is so important in some areas, significant sums of money are spent on monitoring the health of farmed molluscs.[86]
+
+Other luxury and high-status products were made from molluscs. Tyrian purple, made from the ink glands of murex shells, "fetched its weight in silver" in the fourth century BC, according to Theopompus.[87] The discovery of large numbers of Murex shells on Crete suggests the Minoans may have pioneered the extraction of "imperial purple" during the Middle Minoan period in the 20th–18th centuries BC, centuries before the Tyrians.[88][89] Sea silk is a fine, rare, and valuable fabric produced from the long silky threads (byssus) secreted by several bivalve molluscs, particularly Pinna nobilis, to attach themselves to the sea bed.[90] Procopius, writing on the Persian wars circa 550 CE, "stated that the five hereditary satraps (governors) of Armenia who received their insignia from the Roman Emperor were given chlamys (or cloaks) made from lana pinna. Apparently, only the ruling classes were allowed to wear these chlamys."[91]
+
+Mollusc shells, including those of cowries, were used as a kind of money (shell money) in several preindustrial societies. However, these "currencies" generally differed in important ways from the standardized government-backed and -controlled money familiar to industrial societies. Some shell "currencies" were not used for commercial transactions, but mainly as social status displays at important occasions, such as weddings.[92] When used for commercial transactions, they functioned as commodity money, as a tradable commodity whose value differed from place to place, often as a result of difficulties in transport, and which was vulnerable to incurable inflation if more efficient transport or "goldrush" behavior appeared.[93]
+
+Bivalve molluscs are used as bioindicators to monitor the health of aquatic environments in both fresh water and the marine environments. Their population status or structure, physiology, behaviour or the level of contamination with elements or compounds can indicate the state of contamination status of the ecosystem. They are particularly useful since they are sessile so that they are representative of the environment where they are sampled or placed.[94] Potamopyrgus antipodarum is used by some water treatment plants to test for estrogen-mimicking pollutants from industrial agriculture.
+
+Some molluscs sting or bite, but deaths from mollusc venoms total less than 10% of those from jellyfish stings.[96]
+
+All octopuses are venomous,[97] but only a few species pose a significant threat to humans. Blue-ringed octopuses in the genus Hapalochlaena, which live around Australia and New Guinea, bite humans only if severely provoked,[95] but their venom kills 25% of human victims. Another tropical species, Octopus apollyon, causes severe inflammation that can last for over a month even if treated correctly,[98] and the bite of Octopus rubescens can cause necrosis that lasts longer than one month if untreated, and headaches and weakness persisting for up to a week even if treated.[99]
+
+All species of cone snails are venomous and can sting painfully when handled, although many species are too small to pose much of a risk to humans, and only a few fatalities have been reliably reported. Their venom is a complex mixture of toxins, some fast-acting and others slower but deadlier.[100][96][101] The effects of individual cone-shell toxins on victims' nervous systems are so precise as to be useful tools for research in neurology, and the small size of their molecules makes it easy to synthesize them.[100][102]
+
+Schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia, bilharziosis or snail fever), a disease caused by the fluke worm Schistosoma, is "second only to malaria as the most devastating parasitic disease in tropical countries. An estimated 200 million people in 74 countries are infected with the disease – 100 million in Africa alone."[103] The parasite has 13 known species, two of which infect humans. The parasite itself is not a mollusc, but all the species have freshwater snails as intermediate hosts.[104]
+
+Some species of molluscs, particularly certain snails and slugs, can be serious crop pests,[105] and when introduced into new environments, can unbalance local ecosystems. One such pest, the giant African snail Achatina fulica, has been introduced to many parts of Asia, as well as to many islands in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. In the 1990s, this species reached the West Indies. Attempts to control it by introducing the predatory snail Euglandina rosea proved disastrous, as the predator ignored Achatina fulica and went on to extirpate several native snail species, instead.[106]

en/3914.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,256 @@
+
+
+
+
+Canis familiaris Linnaeus, 1758[2][3]
+
+aegyptius Linnaeus, 1758,
+alco C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+americanus Gmelin, 1792,
+anglicus Gmelin, 1792,
+antarcticus Gmelin, 1792,
+aprinus Gmelin, 1792,
+aquaticus Linnaeus, 1758,
+aquatilis Gmelin, 1792,
+avicularis Gmelin, 1792,
+borealis C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+brevipilis Gmelin, 1792,
+cursorius Gmelin, 1792,
+domesticus Linnaeus, 1758,
+extrarius Gmelin, 1792,
+ferus C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+fricator Gmelin, 1792,
+fricatrix Linnaeus, 1758,
+fuillus Gmelin, 1792,
+gallicus Gmelin, 1792,
+glaucus C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+graius Linnaeus, 1758,
+grajus Gmelin, 1792,
+hagenbecki Krumbiegel, 1950,
+haitensis C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+hibernicus Gmelin, 1792,
+hirsutus Gmelin, 1792,
+hybridus Gmelin, 1792,
+islandicus Gmelin, 1792,
+italicus Gmelin, 1792,
+laniarius Gmelin, 1792,
+leoninus Gmelin, 1792,
+leporarius C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+major Gmelin, 1792,
+mastinus Linnaeus, 1758,
+melitacus Gmelin, 1792,
+melitaeus Linnaeus, 1758,
+minor Gmelin, 1792,
+molossus Gmelin, 1792,
+mustelinus Linnaeus, 1758,
+obesus Gmelin, 1792,
+orientalis Gmelin, 1792,
+pacificus C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+plancus Gmelin, 1792,
+pomeranus Gmelin, 1792,
+sagaces C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+sanguinarius C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+sagax Linnaeus, 1758,
+scoticus Gmelin, 1792,
+sibiricus Gmelin, 1792,
+suillus C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+terraenovae C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+terrarius C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+turcicus Gmelin, 1792,
+urcani C. E. H. Smith, 1839,
+variegatus Gmelin, 1792,
+venaticus Gmelin, 1792,
+vertegus Gmelin, 1792[4]
+
+The dog (Canis familiaris when considered a distinct species or Canis lupus familiaris when considered a subspecies of the wolf)[5] is a domesticated carnivoran of the family Canidae. It is part of the wolf-like canids,[6] and is the most widely abundant terrestrial carnivore.[7][8][9][10][11] The dog and the extant gray wolf are sister taxa as modern wolves are not closely related to the wolves that were first domesticated, [12][13][14] which implies that the direct ancestor of the dog is extinct.[15] The dog was the first species to be domesticated,[14][16] and has been selectively bred over millennia for various behaviors, sensory capabilities, and physical attributes.[17]
+
+Their long association with humans has led dogs to be uniquely attuned to human behavior[18] and they are able to thrive on a starch-rich diet that would be inadequate for other canids.[19] Dogs vary widely in shape, size and colors.[20] They perform many roles for humans, such as hunting, herding, pulling loads, protection, assisting police and military, companionship and, more recently, aiding disabled people and therapeutic roles. This influence on human society has given them the sobriquet of "man's best friend".
+
+In 1758, the Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus published in his Systema Naturae the binomial nomenclature – or the two-word naming – of species. Canis is the Latin word meaning "dog",[21] and under this genus he listed the dog-like carnivores including domestic dogs, wolves, and jackals. He classified the domestic dog as Canis familiaris, and on the next page he classified the wolf as Canis lupus.[2] Linnaeus considered the dog to be a separate species from the wolf because of its cauda recurvata - its upturning tail which is not found in any other canid.[22]
+
+In 1999, a study of mitochondrial DNA indicated that the domestic dog may have originated from multiple grey wolf populations, with the dingo and New Guinea singing dog "breeds" having developed at a time when human populations were more isolated from each other.[23] In the third edition of Mammal Species of the World published in 2005, the mammalogist W. Christopher Wozencraft listed under the wolf Canis lupus its wild subspecies, and proposed two additional subspecies: "familiaris Linneaus, 1758 [domestic dog]" and "dingo Meyer, 1793 [domestic dog]". Wozencraft included hallstromi – the New Guinea singing dog – as a taxonomic synonym for the dingo. Wozencraft referred to the mDNA study as one of the guides in forming his decision.[4] The inclusion of familiaris and dingo under a "domestic dog" clade has been noted by other mammalogists.[24] This classification by Wozencraft is debated among zoologists.[25]
+
+In 2019, a workshop hosted by the IUCN/Species Survival Commission's Canid Specialist Group considered the New Guinea singing dog and the dingo to be feral dogs Canis familiaris, and therefore should not be assessed for the IUCN Red List.[26]
+
+The origin of the domestic dog includes the dog's genetic divergence from the wolf, its domestication, and its development into dog types and dog breeds. The dog is a member of the genus Canis, which forms part of the wolf-like canids, and was the first species and the only large carnivore to have been domesticated.[14][27] Genetic studies comparing dogs with modern wolves show reciprocal monophyly (separate groups), which implies that dogs are not genetically close to any living wolf and that their wild ancestor is extinct.[28][14] An extinct Late Pleistocene wolf may have been the ancestor of the dog,[27][1] with the dog's similarity to the extant grey wolf being the result of genetic admixture between the two.[1] In 2020, a literature review of canid domestication stated that modern dogs were not descended from the same Canis lineage as modern wolves, and proposes that dogs may be descended from a Pleistocene wolf closer in size to a village dog.[29]
+
+The genetic divergence between dogs and wolves occurred between 20,000–40,000 years ago, just before or during the Last Glacial Maximum[30][1] (20,000-27,000 years ago). This timespan represents the upper time-limit for the commencement of domestication because it is the time of divergence and not the time of domestication, which occurred later.[30][31] One of the most important transitions in human history was the domestication of animals, which began with the long-term association between wolves and hunter–gatherers more than 15,000 years ago.[28] The archaeological record and genetic analysis show the remains of the Bonn–Oberkassel dog buried beside humans 14,200 years ago to be the first undisputed dog, with disputed remains occurring 36,000 years ago.[1]
+
+Domestic dogs have been selectively bred for millennia for various behaviors, sensory capabilities, and physical attributes.[17] Modern dog breeds show more variation in size, appearance, and behavior than any other domestic animal.[17] Dogs are predators and scavengers; like many other predatory mammals, the dog has powerful muscles, fused wrist bones, a cardiovascular system that supports both sprinting and endurance, and teeth for catching and tearing.
+
+Dogs are highly variable in height and weight. The smallest known adult dog was a Yorkshire Terrier, that stood only 6.3 centimetres (2 1⁄2 inches) at the shoulder, 9.5 cm (3 3⁄4 in) in length along the head-and-body, and weighed only 113 grams (4 ounces). The largest known dog was a Saint Bernard which weighed 167.6 kg (369 1⁄2 lb) and was 250 cm (8 ft 2 in) from the snout to the tail.[32] The tallest dog is a Great Dane that stands 106.7 cm (3 ft 6 in) at the shoulder.[33]
+
+The dog's senses include vision, hearing, sense of smell, sense of taste, touch and sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field. Another study suggested that dogs can see the earth's magnetic field.[34][35][36]
+
+The coats of domestic dogs are of two varieties: "double" being common with dogs (as well as wolves) originating from colder climates, made up of a coarse guard hair and a soft down hair, or "single", with the topcoat only. Breeds may have an occasional "blaze", stripe, or "star" of white fur on their chest or underside.[37]
+
+Regarding coat appearance or health, the coat can be maintained or affected by multiple nutrients present in the diet, see Coat (dog) for more information.
+
+Premature graying can occur in dogs from as early as one year of age. This has been shown to be associated with impulsive behaviors, anxiety behaviors, fear of noise, and fear of unfamiliar people or animals.[38]
+
+There are many different shapes for dog tails: straight, straight up, sickle, curled, or cork-screw. As with many canids, one of the primary functions of a dog's tail is to communicate their emotional state, which can be important in getting along with others. In some hunting dogs, however, the tail is traditionally docked to avoid injuries.[39] In some breeds, such as the Braque du Bourbonnais, puppies can be born with a short tail or no tail at all.[40]
+
+Despite their close genetic relationship and the ability to inter-breed, there are a number of diagnostic features to distinguish the gray wolves from domestic dogs. Domesticated dogs are clearly distinguishable from wolves by starch gel electrophoresis of red blood cell acid phosphatase.[42] The tympanic bullae are large, convex and almost spherical in gray wolves, while the bullae of dogs are smaller, compressed and slightly crumpled.[43] Compared with equally sized wolves, dogs tend to have 20% smaller skulls and 30% smaller brains.[44]:35 The teeth of gray wolves are also proportionately larger than those of dogs.[45] Dogs have a more domed forehead and a distinctive "stop" between forehead and nose.[46] The temporalis muscle that closes the jaws is more robust in wolves.[5]:158 Wolves do not have dewclaws on their back legs, unless there has been admixture with dogs that had them.[47]  Most dogs lack a functioning pre-caudal gland and enter estrus twice yearly, unlike gray wolves which only do so once a year.[48] So-called primitive dogs such as dingoes and Basenjis retain the yearly estrus cycle.[49]
+
+Dogs generally have brown eyes and wolves almost always have amber or light colored eyes.[50] The skin of domestic dogs tends to be thicker than that of wolves, with some Inuit tribes favoring the former for use as clothing due to its greater resistance to wear and tear in harsh weather.[51] The paws of a dog are half the size of those of a wolf, and their tails tend to curl upwards, another trait not found in wolves.[52] The dog has developed into hundreds of varied breeds, and shows more behavioral and morphological variation than any other land mammal.[53]
+
+There are many household plants that are poisonous to dogs (and other mammals) including begonia, Poinsettia and aloe vera.[54]
+
+Some breeds of dogs are prone to certain genetic ailments such as elbow and hip dysplasia, blindness, deafness, pulmonic stenosis, cleft palate, and trick knees. Two serious medical conditions particularly affecting dogs are pyometra, affecting unspayed females of all types and ages, and gastric dilatation volvulus (bloat), which affects the larger breeds or deep-chested dogs. Both of these are acute conditions, and can kill rapidly. Dogs are also susceptible to parasites such as fleas, ticks, mites, hookworms, tapeworms, roundworms, and heartworms (roundworm species that lives in the heart of dogs).
+
+A number of common human foods and household ingestibles are toxic to dogs, including chocolate solids (theobromine poisoning), onion and garlic (thiosulphate, sulfoxide or disulfide poisoning),[55] grapes and raisins, macadamia nuts, xylitol,[56] as well as various plants and other potentially ingested materials.[57][58] The nicotine in tobacco can also be dangerous. Dogs can be exposed to the substance by scavenging through garbage bins or ashtrays and eating cigars and cigarettes. Signs can be vomiting of large amounts (e.g., from eating cigar butts) or diarrhea. Some other signs are abdominal pain, loss of coordination, collapse, or death.[59] Dogs are susceptible to theobromine poisoning, typically from ingestion of chocolate. Theobromine is toxic to dogs because, although the dog's metabolism is capable of breaking down the chemical, the process is so slow that for some dogs even small amounts of chocolate can be fatal, especially dark chocolate.
+
+Dogs are also vulnerable to some of the same health conditions as humans, including diabetes, dental and heart disease, epilepsy, cancer, hypothyroidism, and arthritis.[60]
+
+In 2013, a study found that mixed breeds live on average 1.2 years longer than pure breeds, and that increasing body-weight was negatively correlated with longevity (i.e. the heavier the dog the shorter its lifespan).[61]
+
+The typical lifespan of dogs varies widely among breeds, but for most the median longevity, the age at which half the dogs in a population have died and half are still alive, ranges from 10 to 13 years.[62][63][64][65] Individual dogs may live well beyond the median of their breed.
+
+The breed with the shortest lifespan (among breeds for which there is a questionnaire survey with a reasonable sample size) is the Dogue de Bordeaux, with a median longevity of about 5.2 years, but several breeds, including miniature bull terriers, bloodhounds, and Irish wolfhounds are nearly as short-lived, with median longevities of 6 to 7 years.[65]
+
+The longest-lived breeds, including toy poodles, Japanese spitz, Border terriers, and Tibetan spaniels, have median longevities of 14 to 15 years.[65] The median longevity of mixed-breed dogs, taken as an average of all sizes, is one or more years longer than that of purebred dogs when all breeds are averaged.[63][64][65][66] The longest-lived dog was "Bluey", an Australian Cattle Dog who died in 1939 at 29.5 years of age.[67][68]
+
+In domestic dogs, sexual maturity happens around six to twelve months of age for both males and females,[17][69] although this can be delayed until up to two years old for some large breeds. This is the time at which female dogs will have their first estrous cycle. They will experience subsequent estrous cycles semiannually, during which the body prepares for pregnancy. At the peak of the cycle, females will come into estrus, being mentally and physically receptive to copulation.[17] Because the ova survive and are capable of being fertilized for a week after ovulation, it is possible for more than one male to sire the same litter.[17]
+
+Fertilization typically occurs 2–5 days after ovulation; 14–16 days after ovulation, the embryo attaches to the uterus, and after 7-8 more days the heart beat is detectable.[70][71]
+
+Dogs bear their litters roughly 58 to 68 days after fertilization,[17][72] with an average of 63 days, although the length of gestation can vary. An average litter consists of about six puppies,[73] though this number may vary widely based on the breed of dog. In general, toy dogs produce from one to four puppies in each litter, while much larger breeds may average as many as twelve.
+
+Some dog breeds have acquired traits through selective breeding that interfere with reproduction. Male French Bulldogs, for instance, are incapable of mounting the female. For many dogs of this breed, the female must be artificially inseminated in order to reproduce.[74]
+
+Neutering refers to the sterilization of animals, usually by removal of the male's testicles or the female's ovaries and uterus, in order to eliminate the ability to procreate and reduce sex drive. Because of the overpopulation of dogs in some countries, many animal control agencies, such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), advise that dogs not intended for further breeding should be neutered, so that they do not have undesired puppies that may later be euthanized.[75]
+
+According to the Humane Society of the United States, 3–4 million dogs and cats are euthanized each year in the United States and many more are confined to cages in shelters because there are many more animals than there are homes. Spaying or castrating dogs helps keep overpopulation down.[76] Local humane societies, SPCAs, and other animal protection organizations urge people to neuter their pets and to adopt animals from shelters instead of purchasing them.
+
+Neutering reduces problems caused by hypersexuality, especially in male dogs.[77] Spayed female dogs are less likely to develop some forms of cancer, affecting mammary glands, ovaries, and other reproductive organs.[78] However, neutering increases the risk of urinary incontinence in female dogs,[79] and prostate cancer in males,[80] as well as osteosarcoma, hemangiosarcoma, cruciate ligament rupture, obesity, and diabetes mellitus in either sex.[81]
+
+A common breeding practice for pet dogs is mating between close relatives (e.g. between half- and full siblings).[82] Inbreeding depression is considered to be due largely to the expression of homozygous deleterious recessive mutations.[83] Outcrossing between unrelated individuals, including dogs of different breeds, results in the beneficial masking of deleterious recessive mutations in progeny.[84]
+
+In a study of seven breeds of dogs (Bernese mountain dog, basset hound, Cairn terrier, Epagneul Breton, German Shepherd dog, Leonberger, and West Highland white terrier) it was found that inbreeding decreases litter size and survival.[85] Another analysis of data on 42,855 dachshund litters found that as the inbreeding coefficient increased, litter size decreased and the percentage of stillborn puppies increased, thus indicating inbreeding depression.[86] In a study of boxer litters, 22% of puppies died before reaching 7 weeks of age.[87] Stillbirth was the most frequent cause of death, followed by infection. Mortality due to infection increased significantly with increases in inbreeding.[87]
+
+Dog intelligence is the ability of the dog to perceive information and retain it as knowledge for applying to solve problems. Studies of two dogs suggest that dogs can learn by inference and have advanced memory skills.  A study with Rico, a border collie, showed that he knew the labels of over 200 different items. He inferred the names of novel items by exclusion learning and correctly retrieved those novel items immediately and also 4 weeks after the initial exposure. A study of another border collie, "Chaser", documented his learning and memory capabilities. He had learned the names and could associate by verbal command over 1,000 words.[88] Dogs are able to read and react appropriately to human body language such as gesturing and pointing, and to understand human voice commands.
+
+A 2018 study on canine cognitive abilities found that dogs' capabilities are no more exceptional than those of other animals, such as horses, chimpanzees or cats.[89] Various animals, including pigs, pigeons and chimpanzees, are able to remember the what, where and when of an event, which dogs cannot do.[90]
+
+Dogs demonstrate a theory of mind by engaging in deception.[91] An experimental study showed compelling evidence that Australian dingos can outperform domestic dogs in non-social problem-solving, indicating that domestic dogs may have lost much of their original problem-solving abilities once they joined humans.[92] Another study indicated that after undergoing training to solve a simple manipulation task, dogs that are faced with an insoluble version of the same problem look at the human, while socialized wolves do not.[93]
+
+Dog behavior is the internally coordinated responses (actions or inactions) of the domestic dog (individuals or groups) to internal and/or external stimuli.[94] As the oldest domesticated species, with estimates ranging from 9,000–30,000 years BCE, the minds of dogs inevitably have been shaped by millennia of contact with humans. As a result of this physical and social evolution, dogs, more than any other species, have acquired the ability to understand and communicate with humans, and they are uniquely attuned to human behaviors.[18] Behavioral scientists have uncovered a surprising set of social-cognitive abilities in the domestic dog. These abilities are not possessed by the dog's closest canine
+relatives nor by other highly intelligent mammals such as great apes but rather parallel some of the social-cognitive skills of human children.[95]
+
+Unlike other domestic species which were primarily selected for production-related traits, dogs were initially selected for their behaviors.[96][97] In 2016, a study found that there were only 11 fixed genes that showed variation between wolves and dogs. These gene variations were unlikely to have been the result of natural evolution, and indicate selection on both morphology and behavior during dog domestication. These genes have been shown to affect the catecholamine synthesis pathway, with the majority of the genes affecting the fight-or-flight response[97][98] (i.e. selection for tameness), and emotional processing.[97] Dogs generally show reduced fear and aggression compared with wolves.[97][99] Some of these genes have been associated with aggression in some dog breeds, indicating their importance in both the initial domestication and then later in breed formation.[97] Traits of high sociability and lack of fear in dogs may include genetic modifications related to Williams-Beuren syndrome in humans, which cause hypersociability at the expense of problem solving ability.[100][101][102]
+
+Dog communication is how dogs convey information to other dogs, how they understand messages from humans, and how humans translate the information that dogs are transmitting.[103]:xii Communication behaviors of dogs include eye gaze, facial expression, vocalization, body posture (including movements of bodies and limbs) and gustatory communication (scents, pheromones and taste). Humans communicate to dogs by using vocalization, hand signals and body posture.
+
+In 2013, an estimate of the global dog population was between 700 million[104] and 987 million.[105] Although it is said that the "dog is man's best friend",[106] this refers largely to the ~20% of dogs that live in developed countries. In the developing world, dogs are more commonly feral or communally owned, with pet dogs uncommon.[51] Most of these dogs live their lives as scavengers and have never been owned by humans, with one study showing their most common response when approached by strangers is to run away (52%) or respond aggressively (11%).[107] Little is known about these dogs, or the dogs in developed countries that are feral, stray or are in shelters, because the great majority of modern research on dog cognition has focused on pet dogs living in human homes.[108]
+
+Although dogs are the most abundant and widely distributed terrestrial carnivores, the potential of feral and free-ranging dogs to compete with other large carnivores is limited by their strong association with humans.[7] For example, a review of the studies in the competitive effects of dogs on sympatric carnivores did not mention any research on competition between dogs and wolves.[109][110] Although wolves are known to kill dogs, they tend to live in pairs or in small packs in areas where they are highly persecuted, giving them a disadvantage facing large dog groups.[109][111]
+
+Wolves kill dogs wherever they are found together.[112] One study reported that in Wisconsin in 1999 more compensation had been paid for losses due to wolves taking dogs than for wolves taking livestock. In Wisconsin wolves will often kill hunting dogs, possibly because the dogs are in the wolf's territory.[112] A strategy has been reported in Russia where one wolf lures a dog into heavy brush where another wolf waits in ambush.[113] In some instances, wolves have displayed an uncharacteristic fearlessness of humans and buildings when attacking dogs, to the extent that they have to be beaten off or killed.[114] Although the numbers of dogs killed each year are relatively low, it induces a fear of wolves entering villages and farmyards to take dogs, and losses of dogs to wolves has led to demands for more liberal wolf hunting regulations.[109]
+
+Coyotes and big cats have also been known to attack dogs. Leopards in particular are known to have a predilection for dogs, and have been recorded to kill and consume them regardless of their size.[115] Tigers in Manchuria, Indochina, Indonesia, and Malaysia are also reported to kill dogs.[116] Striped hyenas are known to kill dogs in Turkmenistan, India, and the Caucasus.[117]
+
+Dogs are normal prey for the American alligator.
+
+Dogs have been described as carnivores[118][119] or omnivores.[17][120][121][122] Compared to wolves, dogs from agricultural societies have extra copies of amylase and other genes involved in starch digestion that contribute to an increased ability to thrive on a starch-rich diet.[19] Also like humans, some dog breeds produce amylase in their saliva. Based on metabolism and nutrition, many consider the dog to be an omnivore.[123]
+
+However, the dog is not simply an omnivore. More like the cat and less like other omnivores, the dog can only produce bile acid with taurine, and it cannot produce vitamin D, which it obtains from animal flesh. Also more like the cat, the dog requires arginine to maintain its nitrogen balance. These nutritional requirements place the dog part-way between carnivores and omnivores.[124]
+
+As a domesticated or semi-domesticated animal, the dog is nearly universal among human societies. Notable exceptions once included:
+
+Dogs were introduced to Antarctica as sled dogs but were later outlawed by international agreement due to the possible risk of spreading infections.[132]
+
+The domestic dog is the first species, and the only large carnivore, known to have been domesticated. Especially over the past 200 years, dogs have undergone rapid phenotypic change and were formed into today's modern dog breeds due to artificial selection by humans. These breeds can vary in size and weight from a 0.46 kg (1 lb) teacup poodle to a 90 kg (200 lb) giant mastiff. Phenotypic variation can include height measured to the withers ranging from 15.2 cm (6 in) in the Chihuahua to 76 cm (30 in) in the Irish Wolfhound; color varies from white through grays (usually called "blue") to black, and browns from light (tan) to dark ("red" or "chocolate") in a wide variation of patterns; coats can be short or long, coarse-haired to wool-like, straight, curly, or smooth.[133] The skull, body, and limb proportions vary significantly between breeds, with dogs displaying more phenotypic diversity than can be found within the entire order of carnivores. Some breeds demonstrate outstanding skills in herding, retrieving, scent detection, and guarding, which demonstrates the functional and behavioral diversity of dogs. The first dogs were domesticated from shared ancestors of modern wolves, however the phenotypic changes that coincided with the dog–wolf genetic divergence are not known.[27]
+
+Domestic dogs inherited complex behaviors, such as bite inhibition, from their wolf ancestors, which would have been pack hunters with complex body language. These sophisticated forms of social cognition and communication may account for their trainability, playfulness, and ability to fit into human households and social situations, and these attributes have given dogs a relationship with humans that has enabled them to become one of the most successful species on the planet today.[134]:pages95–136
+
+The dogs' value to early human hunter-gatherers led to them quickly becoming ubiquitous across world cultures. Dogs perform many roles for people, such as hunting, herding, pulling loads, protection, assisting police and military, companionship, and, more recently, aiding handicapped individuals. This influence on human society has given them the nickname "man's best friend" in the Western world. In some cultures, however, dogs are also a source of meat.[135][136]
+
+Wolves, and their dog descendants, likely derived significant benefits from living in human camps – more safety, more reliable food, lesser caloric needs, and more chance to breed.[137] They would have benefited from humans' upright gait that gives them larger range over which to see potential predators and prey, as well as better color vision that, at least by day, gives humans better visual discrimination.[137] Camp dogs would also have benefited from human tool use, as in bringing down larger prey and controlling fire for a range of purposes.[137]
+
+Humans would also have derived enormous benefit from the dogs associated with their camps.[138] For instance, dogs would have improved sanitation by cleaning up food scraps.[138] Dogs may have provided warmth, as referred to in the Australian Aboriginal expression "three dog night" (an exceptionally cold night), and they would have alerted the camp to the presence of predators or strangers, using their acute hearing to provide an early warning.[138]
+
+It has been suggested that the most significant benefit would have been the use of dogs' robust sense of smell to assist with the hunt.[138] The relationship between the presence of a dog and success in the hunt is often mentioned as a primary reason for the domestication of the wolf, and a 2004 study of hunter groups with and without a dog gives quantitative support to the hypothesis that the benefits of cooperative hunting was an important factor in wolf domestication.[139]
+
+The cohabitation of dogs and humans likely improved the chances of survival for early human groups, and the domestication of dogs may have been one of the key forces that led to human success.[140]
+
+Human emigrants from Siberia that came across the Bering land bridge into North America likely had dogs in their company. Although one writer[141] even suggests that the use of sled dogs may have been critical to the success of the waves that entered North America roughly 12,000 years ago,[141] the earliest archaeological evidence of dog-like canids in North America dates from about 9,400 years ago.[134]:104[142] Dogs were an important part of life for the Athabascan population in North America, and were their only domesticated animal. Dogs as pack animals  may have contributed to the migration of the Apache and Navajo tribes 1,400 years ago. This use of dogs in these cultures often persisted after the introduction of the horse to North America.[143]
+
+It is estimated that three-quarters of the world's dog population lives in the developing world as feral, village, or community dogs, with pet dogs uncommon.[51]
+
+"The most widespread form of interspecies bonding occurs between humans and dogs"[138] and the keeping of dogs as companions, particularly by elites, has a long history[144] (see the Bonn–Oberkassel dog). Pet-dog populations grew significantly after World War II as suburbanization increased.[144] In the 1950s and 1960s, dogs were kept outside more often than they tend to be today[145] (the expression "in the doghouse" - recorded since 1932[146] - to describe exclusion from the group implies distance between the doghouse and the home) and were still primarily functional, acting as a guard, children's playmate, or walking companion. From the 1980s there have been changes in the role of the pet dog, such as the increased role of dogs in the emotional support of their human guardians.[147] People and their dogs have become increasingly integrated and implicated in each other's lives,[148] to the point where pet dogs actively shape the way a family and home are experienced.[149]
+
+There have been two major trends occurring within the second half of the 20th century in the changing status of pet dogs. The first has been the "commodification" of the dog, shaping it to conform to human expectations of personality and behaviour.[149] The second has been the broadening of the concept of the family and the home to include dogs-as-dogs within everyday routines and practices.[149]
+
+A vast range of commodity forms aim to transform a pet dog into an ideal companion.[150] The list of goods, services and places available is enormous: from dog perfumes, couture, furniture and housing, to dog groomers, therapists, trainers and caretakers, dog cafes, spas, parks and beaches, and dog hotels, airlines and cemeteries.[150] While dog training as an organized activity has operated since the 18th century, in the last decades of the 20th century it became a high-profile issue as many normal dog behaviors such as barking, jumping up, digging, rolling in dung, fighting, and urine marking (which dogs do to establish territory through scent), became increasingly incompatible with the new role of a pet dog.[151] Dog training books, classes and television programs proliferated as the process of commodifying the pet dog continued.[152]
+
+The majority of contemporary dog-owners describe their pet as part of the family,[149] although some ambivalence about the relationship is evident in the popular reconceptualization of the dog–human family as a pack.[149] Some dog-trainers, such as on the television program Dog Whisperer, have promoted a dominance-model of dog–human relationships. However it has been disputed that "trying to achieve status" is characteristic of dog–human interactions.[153] Pet dogs play an active role in family life; for example, a study of conversations in dog–human families showed how family members use the dog as a resource, talking to the dog, or talking through the dog, to mediate their interactions with each other.[154]
+
+Increasingly, human family-members engage in activities centered on the perceived needs and interests of the dog, or in which the dog is an integral partner, such as dog dancing and dog yoga.[150]
+
+According to statistics published by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association in the National Pet Owner Survey in 2009–2010, an estimated 77.5 million people in the United States have pet dogs.[155] The same source shows that nearly 40% of American households own at least one dog, of which 67% own just one dog, 25% two dogs and nearly 9% more than two dogs. There does not seem to be any gender preference among dogs as pets, as the statistical data reveal an equal number of female and male dog pets. Although several programs promote pet adoption, less than a fifth of the owned dogs come from a shelter.
+
+Some research suggests that a pet dog produces a considerable carbon footprint.[156][157]
+
+A study using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare humans and dogs showed that dogs have the same response to voices and use the same parts of the brain as humans do. This gives dogs the ability to recognize emotional human sounds, making them friendly social pets to humans.[158]
+
+Dogs have lived and worked with humans in many roles. In addition to dogs' role as companion animals, dogs have been bred for herding livestock (collies, sheepdogs),[159][17]  hunting (hounds, pointers),[44] and rodent control (terriers).[17] Other types of working dogs include search and rescue dogs,[160] detection dogs trained to detect illicit drugs[161] or chemical weapons;[162] guard dogs; dogs who assist fishermen with the use of nets; and dogs that pull loads.[17] In 1957, the dog Laika became the first animal to be launched into Earth orbit, aboard the Soviets' Sputnik 2; she died during the flight.[163][164]
+
+Various kinds of service dogs and assistance dogs, including guide dogs, hearing dogs, mobility assistance dogs, and psychiatric service dogs provide assistance to individuals with disabilities.[165][166] Some dogs owned by epileptics have been shown to alert their handler when the handler shows signs of an impending seizure, sometimes well in advance of onset, allowing the guardian to seek safety, medication, or medical care.[167]
+
+People often enter their dogs in competitions[168] such as breed-conformation shows or sports, including racing, sledding and agility competitions.
+
+In conformation shows, also referred to as breed shows, a judge familiar with the specific dog breed evaluates individual purebred dogs for conformity with their established breed type as described in the breed standard. As the breed standard only deals with the externally observable qualities of the dog (such as appearance, movement, and temperament), separately tested qualities (such as ability or health) are not part of the judging in conformation shows.
+
+Dog meat is consumed in some East Asian countries, including Korea, China[135] and Vietnam,[136] a practice that dates back to antiquity.[169] It is estimated that 13–16 million dogs are killed and consumed in Asia every year.[170] In China, debates have ensued over banning the consumption of dog meat.[171]  Following the Sui and Tang dynasties of the first millennium, however, people living on the plains of northern China began to eschew eating dogs. This is likely due to the spread of Buddhism and Islam, two religions that forbade the consumption of certain animals, including dogs. As members of the upper classes shunned dog meat, it gradually became a social taboo to eat it, despite the fact that the general population continued to consume it for centuries afterward.[172] Other cultures, such as Polynesia and pre-Columbian Mexico, also consumed dog meat in their history. However, Western, South Asian, African, and Middle Eastern cultures, in general, regard consumption of dog meat as taboo. In some places, however, such as in rural areas of Poland, dog fat is believed to have medicinal properties – being good for the lungs for instance.[173] Dog meat is also consumed in some parts of Switzerland.[174]  Proponents of eating dog meat have argued that placing a distinction between livestock and dogs is western hypocrisy, and that there is no difference with eating the meat of different animals.[175][176][177][178]
+
+In Korea, the primary dog breed raised for meat, the nureongi (누렁이), differs from those breeds raised for pets that Koreans may keep in their homes.[179]
+
+The most popular Korean dog dish is gaejang-guk (also called bosintang), a spicy stew meant to balance the body's heat during the summer months. Followers of the custom claim this is done to ensure good health by balancing one's gi, or vital energy of the body. A 19th century version of gaejang-guk explains that the dish is prepared by boiling dog meat with scallions and chili powder. Variations of the dish contain chicken and bamboo shoots. While the dishes are still popular in Korea with a segment of the population, dog is not as widely consumed as beef, chicken, and pork.[179]
+
+In 2005, the WHO reported that 55,000 people died in Asia and Africa from rabies, a disease for which dogs are the most important vector.[180]
+
+Citing a 2008 study, the U.S. Center for Disease Control estimated in 2015 that 4.5 million people in the USA are bitten by dogs each year.[181] A 2015 study estimated that 1.8% of the U.S. population is bitten each year.[182] In the 1980s and 1990s the US averaged 17 fatalities per year, while since 2007 this has increased to an average of 31.[183] 77% of dog bites are from the pet of family or friends, and 50% of attacks occur on the property of the dog's legal owner.[183]
+
+A Colorado study found bites in children were less severe than bites in adults.[184] The incidence of dog bites in the US is 12.9 per 10,000 inhabitants, but for boys aged 5 to 9, the incidence rate is 60.7 per 10,000. Moreover, children have a much higher chance to be bitten in the face or neck.[185] Sharp claws with powerful muscles behind them can lacerate flesh in a scratch that can lead to serious infections.[186]
+
+In the UK between 2003 and 2004, there were 5,868 dog attacks on humans, resulting in 5,770 working days lost in sick leave.[187]
+
+In the United States, cats and dogs are a factor in more than 86,000 falls each year.[188] It has been estimated around 2% of dog-related injuries treated in UK hospitals are domestic accidents. The same study found that while dog involvement in road traffic accidents was difficult to quantify, dog-associated road accidents involving injury more commonly involved two-wheeled vehicles.[189]
+
+Toxocara canis (dog roundworm) eggs in dog feces can cause toxocariasis. In the United States, about 10,000 cases of Toxocara infection are reported in humans each year, and almost 14% of the U.S. population is infected.[190] In Great Britain, 24% of soil samples taken from public parks contained T. canis eggs.[191][failed verification] Untreated toxocariasis can cause retinal damage and decreased vision.[191] Dog feces can also contain hookworms that cause cutaneous larva migrans in humans.[192][193][194][195]
+
+Dogs suffer from the same common disorders as humans, these includes cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and neurologic disorders. The pathology is similar to humans, as is their response to treatment and their final outcomes. Researchers are now identifying the genes associated with dog diseases that are similar to human disorders but which lack mouse models in order to find treatments for both dogs and humans. The genes which are involved in canine obsessive compulsive disorders led to the detection of four genes in related pathways in humans.[196]
+
+The scientific evidence is mixed as to whether companionship of a dog can enhance human physical health and psychological wellbeing.[197] Studies suggesting that there are benefits to physical health and psychological wellbeing[198] have been criticised for being poorly controlled,[199] and finding that "the health of elderly people is related to their health habits and social supports but not to their ownership of, or attachment to, a companion animal." Earlier studies have shown that people who keep pet dogs or cats exhibit better mental and physical health than those who do not, making fewer visits to the doctor and being less likely to be on medication than non-guardians.[200]
+
+A 2005 paper states "recent research has failed to support earlier findings that pet ownership is associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, a reduced use of general practitioner services, or any psychological or physical benefits on health for community dwelling older people. Research has, however, pointed to significantly less absenteeism from school through sickness among children who live with pets."[197] In one study, new guardians reported a highly significant reduction in minor health problems during the first month following pet acquisition, and this effect was sustained in those with dogs through to the end of the study.[201]
+
+In addition, people with pet dogs took considerably more physical exercise than those with cats and those without pets. The results provide evidence that keeping pets may have positive effects on human health and behaviour, and that for guardians of dogs these effects are relatively long-term.[201] Pet guardianship has also been associated with increased coronary artery disease survival, with human guardians being significantly less likely to die within one year of an acute myocardial infarction than those who did not own dogs.[202]
+
+The health benefits of dogs can result from contact with dogs in general, and not solely from having dogs as pets. For example, when in the presence of a pet dog, people show reductions in cardiovascular, behavioral, and psychological indicators of anxiety.[203] Other health benefits are gained from exposure to immune-stimulating microorganisms, which, according to the hygiene hypothesis, can protect against allergies and autoimmune diseases. The benefits of contact with a dog also include social support, as dogs are able to not only provide companionship and social support themselves, but also to act as facilitators of social interactions between humans.[204] One study indicated that wheelchair users experience more positive social interactions with strangers when they are accompanied by a dog than when they are not.[205] In 2015, a study found that pet owners were significantly more likely to get to know people in their neighborhood than non-pet owners.[206]
+
+The practice of using dogs and other animals as a part of therapy dates back to the late 18th century, when animals were introduced into mental institutions to help socialize patients with mental disorders.[207] Animal-assisted intervention research has shown that animal-assisted therapy with a dog can increase social behaviors, such as smiling and laughing, among people with Alzheimer's disease.[208] One study demonstrated that children with ADHD and conduct disorders who participated in an education program with dogs and other animals showed increased attendance, increased knowledge and skill objectives, and decreased antisocial and violent behavior compared with those who were not in an animal-assisted program.[209]
+
+Every year, between 6 and 8 million dogs and cats enter US animal shelters.[210] The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) estimates that approximately 3 to 4 million of those dogs and cats are euthanized yearly in the United States.[211] However, the percentage of dogs in US animal shelters that are eventually adopted and removed from the shelters by their new legal owners has increased since the mid-1990s from around 25% to a 2012 average of 40% among reporting shelters[212] (with many shelters reporting 60–75%).[213]
+
+In China, Korea, and Japan, dogs are viewed as kind protectors.[214]
+
+In ancient Mesopotamia, from the Old Babylonian period until the Neo-Babylonian, dogs were the symbol of Ninisina, the goddess of healing and medicine,[215] and her worshippers frequently dedicated small models of seated dogs to her.[215] In the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, dogs were used as emblems of magical protection.[215]
+
+In mythology, dogs often serve as pets or as watchdogs.[214] Stories of dogs guarding the gates of the underworld recur throughout Indo-European mythologies[216][217] and may originate from Proto-Indo-European religion.[216][217] In Greek mythology, Cerberus is a three-headed watchdog who guards the gates of Hades.[214] In Norse mythology, a bloody, four-eyed dog called Garmr guards Helheim.[214] In Persian mythology, two four-eyed dogs guard the Chinvat Bridge.[214] In Welsh mythology, Annwn is guarded by Cŵn Annwn.[214] In Hindu mythology, Yama, the god of death, owns two watch dogs who have four eyes. They are said to watch over the gates of Naraka.[218]
+
+The hunter god Muthappan from North Malabar region of Kerala has a hunting dog as his mount. Dogs are found in and out of the Muthappan Temple and offerings at the shrine take the form of bronze dog figurines.[219] In Philippine mythology, Kimat who is the pet of Tadaklan, god of thunder, is responsible for lightning.
+
+The role of the dog in Chinese mythology includes a position as one of the twelve animals which cyclically represent years (the zodiacal dog). Three of the 88 constellations in western astronomy also represent dogs: Canis Major (the Great Dog, whose brightest star, Sirius, is also called the Dog Star), Canis Minor (the Little Dog), and Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs).
+
+In Christianity, dogs represent faithfulness.[214] Within the Roman Catholic denomination specifically, the iconography of Saint Dominic includes a dog, after the hallow's mother dreamt of a dog springing from her womb and becoming pregnant shortly thereafter.[220] As such, the Dominican Order (Ecclesiastical Latin: Dominicanus) means "dogs of the Lord" or "hounds of the Lord" (Ecclesiastical Latin: domini canis).[220] In Christian folklore, a church grim often takes the form of a black dog to guard Christian churches and their churchyards from sacrilege.[221]
+
+Jewish law does not prohibit keeping dogs and other pets.[222] Jewish law requires Jews to feed dogs (and other animals that they own) before themselves, and make arrangements for feeding them before obtaining them.[222]
+
+The view on dogs in Islam is mixed, with some schools of thought viewing it as unclean,[214] although Khaled Abou El Fadl states that this view is based on "pre-Islamic Arab mythology" and "a tradition to be falsely attributed to the Prophet".[223] Therefore, Sunni Malaki and Hanafi jurists permit the trade of and keeping of dogs as pets.[224]
+
+In Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, when the disguised Odysseus returns home after 20 years he is recognized only by his faithful dog, Argos, who has been waiting for his return.
+
+Cultural depictions of dogs in art extend back thousands of years to when dogs were portrayed on the walls of caves. Representations of dogs became more elaborate as individual breeds evolved and the relationships between human and canine developed. Hunting scenes were popular in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Dogs were depicted to symbolize guidance, protection, loyalty, fidelity, faithfulness, watchfulness, and love.[225]
+
+The American Kennel Club reopened a museum called "Museum of the Dog" in Manhattan after moving the attraction from outside of St. Louis.[226] The museum contains ancient artifacts, fine art, and educational opportunities for visitors.[226]

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+A monk  (/mʌŋk/, from Greek: μοναχός,  monachos, "single, solitary" via Latin monachus)[1][2] is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic  living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedicate his life to serving all other living beings, or to be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live his or her life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many religions and in philosophy.
+
+In the Greek language the term can apply to women, but in modern English it is mainly in use for men. The word nun is typically used for female monastics.
+
+Although the term monachos is of Christian origin, in the English language monk tends to be used loosely also for both male and female ascetics from other religious or philosophical backgrounds.  However, being generic, it is not interchangeable with terms that denote particular kinds of monk, such as cenobite, hermit, anchorite, hesychast, or solitary.
+
+Traditions of Christian monasticism exist in major Christian denominations, with religious orders being present in Catholicism, Lutheranism, Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Reformed Christianity, Anglicanism and Methodism. Indian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism also have monastic traditions as well.
+
+In Theravada Buddhism, bhikkhu is the term for monk. Their disciplinary code is called the patimokkha, which is part of the larger Vinaya. They live lives of mendicancy, and go on a morning almsround (Pali: pindapata) every day. The local people give food for the monks to eat, though the monks are not permitted to positively ask for anything. The monks live in monasteries, and have an important function in traditional Asian society. Young boys can be ordained as samaneras. Both bhikkhus and samaneras eat only in the morning, and are not supposed to lead a luxurious life. Their rules forbid the use of money, although this rule is nowadays not kept by all monks. The monks are part of the Sangha, the third of the Triple Gem of Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha.
+
+In Mahayana Buddhism, the term 'Sangha' strictly speaking refers to those who have achieved certain levels of understanding. They are therefore called 'community of the excellent ones' (Standard Tibetan: mchog kyi tshogs); however, these in turn need not be monks (i.e., hold such vows). Several Mahayana orders accept female practitioners as monks, instead of using the normal title of "nun", and they are considered equal to male ascetics in all respects.
+
+The Bhikkhus are only allowed 4 items (other than their robes): a razor, a needle, an alms bowl and a water strainer.[citation needed]
+
+In Vajrayana Buddhism, monkhood is part of the system of 'vows of individual liberation'; these vows are taken in order to develop one's own personal ethical discipline. The monks and nuns form the (ordinary) sangha. As for the Vajrayana vows of individual liberation, there are four steps: A lay person may take the 5 vows called 'approaching virtue' (in Tibetan 'genyen' < dge snyan>). The next step is to enter the monastic way of life (Tib. rabjung) which includes wearing monk's or nun's robes. After that, one can become a 'novice' (Pali samanera, Tib. getshül); the last and final step is to take all vows of the 'fully ordained monk' (gelong). This term 'gelong' (Tib. < dge long>, in the female form gelongma) is the translation of Skt. bikshu (for women bikshuni) which is the equivalent of the Pali term bhikkhuni; bhikkhu is the word used in Theravada Buddhism (Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand).
+
+Chinese Buddhist monks have been traditionally and stereotypically linked with the practice of the Chinese martial arts or Kung fu, and monks are frequently important characters in martial arts films.  This association is focused around the Shaolin Monastery.  The Buddhist monk Bodhidharma, traditionally credited as the founder of Zen Buddhism in China, is also claimed to have introduced Kalaripayattu (which later evolved into Kung Fu) to the country. This latter claim has however been a source of much controversy (see Bodhidharma, the martial arts, and the disputed India connection) One more feature about the Chinese Buddhist monks is that they practice the burning marks on their scalp, finger or part of the skin on their anterior side of the forearm with incense as a sign of ordination.
+
+In Thailand and Burma, it is common for boys to spend some time living as a monk in a monastery. Most stay for only a few years and then leave, but a number continue on in the ascetic life for the rest of their lives.
+
+In Mongolia during the 1920s, there were about 110,000 monks, including children, who made up about one-third of the male population,[3] many of whom were killed in the purges of Choibalsan.
+
+Within Catholicism, a monk is a member of a religious order who lives a communal life in a monastery, abbey, or priory under a monastic rule of life (such as the Rule of St. Benedict). St. Benedict of Nursia, (480-543 or 547 AD) is considered to be the founder of western monasticism. He authored the Rule of St. Benedict, which is the foundation for the Order of St. Benedict and all of its reform groups such as the Cistercians and the Trappists. He founded the great Benedictine monastery, Monte Cassino, in 529.
+
+The religious vows taken in the West were first developed by St. Benedict.  These vows were three in number: obedience, conversion of life, and stability.  Obedience calls for the monk to obey Christ, as represented by the superior person of the monastery, which is an abbot or prior.  Conversion of life means, generally, that the monk convert himself to the way of a monk, which is death to self and to the world and life to God and to his work. A Christian monk is to be an instrument of God's work. Stability entails that the monk commit himself to the monastery for the remainder of his life, and so, upon death, will be buried at its cemetery.  The vow of stability is unique to Benedictines.
+
+The solemn vows in other religious communities were eventually established as vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. Poverty requires that they renounce any ownership of property or assets, except for items that were allowed to them by their superior (such as a religious habit, shoes, a cloak, etc.), and to live meekly, sharing whatever they might have with the poor.  Chastity requires that since they were willing to dedicate their lives to God, they sacrificed the love between men and women and would not marry. Also, they give up any act of sexual conduct.
+
+To become a monk, one first must become a postulant, during which time the man lives at the monastery to evaluate whether he is called to become a monk. As a postulant, the man is not bound by any vows, and is free to leave the monastery at any time. If the postulant and the community agree that the postulant should become a monk, the man is received as a novice, at which time he is given his religious habit, and begins to participate more fully in the life of the monastery. Following a period as a novice, usually six months to a year, the novice professes temporary vows, which can be renewed for a period of years. After a few years, the monk professes permanent vows, which are binding for life.
+
+The monastic life generally consists of prayer in the form of the Liturgy of the Hours (also known as the Divine Office) and divine reading (lectio divina) and manual labor. Among most religious orders, monks live in simple, austere rooms called cells and come together daily to celebrate the Conventual Mass and to recite the Liturgy of the Hours. In most communities, the monks take their meals together in the refectory. While there is no vow of silence, many communities have a period of silence lasting from evening until the next morning and some others restrict talking to only when it is necessary for the monks to perform their work and during weekly recreation.
+
+Monks who have been or will be ordained into Holy Orders as priests or deacons are referred to as choir monks, as they have the obligation to recite the entire Divine Office daily in choir. Those monks who are not ordained into Holy Orders are referred to as lay brothers. In most monastic communities today, little distinction exists between the lay brothers and the choir monks. However, historically, the roles of the two groups of monks within the monastery differed. The work of the choir monks was considered to be prayer, chanting the seven hours of the Divine Office and celebrating the Mass daily whereas the lay brothers provided for the material needs of the community by growing food, preparing meals, maintaining the monastery and the grounds. This distinction arose historically because generally those monks who could read Latin typically became choir monks, while those monks who were illiterate or could not read Latin became lay brothers. Since the lay brothers could not recite the Divine Office in Latin, they would instead pray easily memorizable prayers such as the Our Father or the Hail Mary as many as 150 times per day. Since the Second Vatican Council, the distinction between choir monks and lay brothers has been deemphasized, as the council allowed the Divine Office to be said in the vernacular language, effectively opening participation to all of the monks.
+
+Within western monasticism, it is important to differentiate between monks and friars. Monks generally live a contemplative life of prayer confined within a monastery while friars usually engage in an active ministry of service to the outside community. The monastic orders include all Benedictines (the Order of Saint Benedict and its later reforms including the Cistercians and the Trappists) and the Carthusians, who live according to their own Statutes, and not according to the Rule of St. Benedict proper. Orders of friars include the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustinians. Although the Canons Regular, such as the Norbertines, live in community, they are neither monks nor friars as they are characterized by their clerical state and not by any monastic vows.
+
+Loccum Abbey and Amelungsborn Abbey have the longest traditions as Lutheran monasteries; after the Reformation, many monasteries and convents were received into the Lutheran Church and continued religious life, existing to this day.[4]
+
+Since the 19th and 20th century, there has been a renewal in the monastic life among Lutheranism. Lutheran religious orders in the Franciscan, Benedictine and other traditions exist, with some Lutheran monasteries having third orders and accepting oblates.[5][6]
+
+In American Lutheran traditions, "The Congregation of the Servants of Christ" was established at St. Augustine's House in Oxford, Michigan, in 1958 when some other men joined Father Arthur Kreinheder in observing the monastic life and offices of prayer. These men and others came and went over the years. The community has always remained small; at times the only member was Father Arthur.[7] During the 35 years of its existence over 25 men tested their vocations to monastic life by living at the house for some time, from a few months to many years, but at Father Arthur's death in 1989 only one permanent resident remained. At the beginning of 2006, there was 2 permanent professed members and 2 long-term guests. Strong ties remain with this community and their brothers in Sweden (Östanbäck monastery) and in Germany (Priory of St. Wigbert).[8]
+
+There is also the Order of Lutheran Franciscans, a religious community of friars and sisters within the tradition of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
+
+Monastic life in England came to an abrupt end when King Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church and made himself the head of the Church of England. He initiated the Dissolution of the Monasteries, during which all of the monasteries within England were destroyed. A large number of monks were executed, others fled to continental European monasteries where they were able to continue their monastic life.
+
+Shortly after the beginning of the Anglo-Catholic Movement in the Church of England, there was felt to be a need for a restoration of the monastic life. In the 1840s, the then Anglican priest and future Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman established a community of men at Littlemore near Oxford. From then on, there have been established many communities of monks, friars and other religious communities for men in the Anglican Communion. There are Anglican Benedictines, Franciscans, Cistercians, and in the Episcopal Church in the United States, Dominicans. There are also uniquely Anglican monastic orders such as the Society of Saint John the Evangelist and the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield.
+
+Some Anglican religious communities are contemplative, some active, but a distinguishing feature of the monastic life among Anglicans is that most practice the so-called "mixed life". Anglican monks recite the Divine Office in choir daily, either the full eight services of the Breviary or the four offices found in the Book of Common Prayer and celebrate the Eucharist daily. Many orders take on external works such as service to the poor, giving religious retreats, or other active ministries within their immediate communities. Like Catholic monks, Anglican monks also take the monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
+
+In the early 20th century when the Oxford Movement was at its height, the Anglican Communion had hundreds[citation needed] of orders and communities and thousands of religious followers. However, since the 1960s there has been a sharp falling off in the numbers of religious in many parts of the Anglican Communion. Many once large and international communities have been reduced to a single convent or monastery composed of elderly men or women. In the last few decades of the 20th century, novices have for most communities been few and far between. Some orders and communities have already become extinct.
+
+There are however, still several thousand Anglican monks working today in approximately 200 communities around the world. The most surprising growth has been in the Melanesian countries of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. The Melanesian Brotherhood, founded at Tabalia, Guadalcanal, in 1925 by Ini Kopuria, is now the largest Anglican community in the world with over 450 brothers in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and the United Kingdom.
+
+The Saint Brigid of Kildare Monastery is a double monastery of the United Methodist Church rooted in the Benedictine tradition, being located in Collegeville, Minnesota.[9] Besides monastic orders, the Order of Saint Luke is a dispersed religious order within Methodism, though being ecumenical, it accepts believers of other Christian denominations.
+
+The Emmanuel Sisters is a convent of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon that was founded by Rev Mother Magdaline Marie Handy.[10] These nuns are engaged in prayer, teaching, and healthcare.[10]
+
+In Eastern Orthodoxy monasticism holds a very special and important place: "Angels are a light for monks, monks are a light for laymen" (St. John Klimakos). Orthodox monastics separate themselves from the world in order to pray unceasingly for the world. They do not, in general, have as their primary purpose the running of social services, but instead are concerned with attaining theosis, or union with God. However, care for the poor and needy has always been an obligation of monasticism,[citation needed] so not all monasteries are "cloistered". The level of contact will vary from community to community. Hermits, on the other hand, have little or no contact with the outside world.
+
+Orthodox monasticism does not have religious orders as are found in the West, nor do they have Rules in the same sense as the Rule of St. Benedict. Rather, Eastern monastics study and draw inspiration from the writings of the Desert Fathers as well as other Church Fathers; probably the most influential of which are the Greater Asketikon and Lesser Asketikon of St. Basil the Great and the Philokalia, which was compiled by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. Hesychasm is of primary importance in the ascetical theology of the Orthodox Church.
+
+Most communities are self-supporting, and the monastic’s daily life is usually divided into three parts: (a) communal worship in the catholicon (the monastery's main church); (b) hard manual labour; and (c) private prayer, spiritual study, and rest when necessary. Meals are usually taken in common in a sizable dining hall known as a trapeza (refectory), at elongated refectory tables. Food is usually simple and is eaten in silence while one of the brethren reads aloud from the spiritual writings of the Holy Fathers. The monastic lifestyle takes a great deal of serious commitment. Within the cenobitic community, all monks conform to a common way of living based on the traditions of that particular monastery. In struggling to attain this conformity, the monastic comes to realize his own shortcomings and is guided by his spiritual father in how to deal honestly with them. For this same reason, bishops are almost always chosen from the ranks of monks.
+
+Eastern monasticism is found in three distinct forms: anchoritic (a solitary living in isolation), cenobitic (a community living and worshiping together under the direct rule of an abbot or abbess), and the "middle way" between the two, known as the skete (a community of individuals living separately but in close proximity to one another, who come together only on Sundays and feast days, working and praying the rest of the time in solitude, but under the direction of an elder). One normally enters a cenobitic community first, and only after testing and spiritual growth would one go on to the skete or, for the most advanced, become a solitary anchorite. However, one is not necessarily expected to join a skete or become a solitary; most monastics remain in the cenobium the whole of their lives.
+
+In general, Orthodox monastics have little or no contact with the outside world, including their own families. The purpose of the monastic life is union with God, the means is through leaving the world (i.e., the life of the passions). After tonsure, Orthodox monks and nuns are never permitted to cut their hair. The hair of the head and the beard remain uncut as a symbol of the vows they have taken, reminiscent of the Nazarites from the Old Testament. The tonsure of monks is the token of a consecrated life, and symbolizes the cutting off of their self-will.
+
+The process of becoming a monk is intentionally slow, as the vows taken are considered to entail a lifelong commitment to God, and are not to be entered into lightly. In Orthodox monasticism after completing the novitiate, there are three ranks of monasticism. There is only one monastic habit in the Eastern Church (with certain slight regional variations), and it is the same for both monks and nuns. Each successive grade is given a portion of the habit, the full habit being worn only by those in the highest grade, known for that reason as the "Great Schema", or "Great Habit".
+
+The various profession rites are normally performed by the Abbot, but if the abbot has not been ordained a priest, or if the monastic community is a convent, a hieromonk will perform the service. The abbot or hieromonk who performs a tonsure must be of at least the rank he is tonsuring into. In other words, only a hieromonk who has been tonsured into the Great Schema may himself tonsure a Schemamonk. A bishop, however, may tonsure into any rank, regardless of his own.
+
+Novice (Church Slavonic: Poslushnik), lit. "one under obedience"—Those wishing to join a monastery begin their lives as novices. After coming to the monastery and living as a guest for not less than three days, the revered abbot or abbess may bless the candidate to become a novice. There is no formal ceremony for the clothing of a novice, he or she simply receives permission to wear the clothing of a novice. In the Eastern monastic tradition, novices may or may not dress in the black inner cassock (Greek: Anterion, Eisorasson; Church Slavonic: Podriasnik) and wear the soft monastic hat (Greek: Skoufos, Church Slavonic: Skufia), depending on the tradition of the local community, and in accordance to the abbot’s directives. The inner-cassock and the skoufos are the first part of the Orthodox monastic habit. In some communities, the novice also wears the leather belt. He is also given a prayer rope and instructed in the use of the Jesus Prayer. If a novice chooses to leave during the period of the novitiate, no penalty is incurred. He may also be asked to leave at any time if his behaviour does not conform to the monastic life, or if the superior discerns that he is not called to monasticism. When the abbot or abbess deems the novice ready, he is asked if he wishes to join the monastery. Some, out of humility, will choose to remain novices all their lives. Every stage of the monastic life must be entered into voluntarily.
+
+Rassophore (Church Slavonic: Ryassofor), lit. "Robe-bearer"—If the novice continues on to become a monk, he is clothed in the first degree of monasticism at a formal service known as the Tonsure. Although there are no formal vows made at this point, the candidate is normally required to affirm his commitment to persevere in the monastic life. The abbot will then perform the tonsure, cutting a small amount of hair from four spots on the head, forming a cross. He is then given the outer cassock (Greek: Rasson, Exorasson, or Mandorasson; Church Slavonic: Ryassa)—an outer robe with wide sleeves, something like the cowl used in the West, but without a hood—from which the name of Rassophore is derived. He is also given a brimless hat with a veil, known as a klobuk, and a leather belt is fastened around his waist. His habit is usually black, signifying that he is now dead to the world, and he receives a new name. Although the Rassophore does not make formal vows, he is still morally obligated to continue in the monastic estate for the rest of his life. Some will remain Rassophores permanently without going on to the higher degrees.
+
+Stavrophore (Church Slavonic: Krestonosets), lit. "Cross-bearer"—The next level for Eastern monastics takes place some years after the first tonsure when the abbot feels the monk has reached an appropriate level of discipline, dedication, and humility. This degree is also known as the Little Schema, and is considered to be a "betrothal" to the Great Schema. At this stage, the monk makes formal vows of stability, chastity, obedience and poverty. Then he is tonsured and clothed in the habit, which in addition to that worn by the Rassophore, includes the paramandyas (Church Slavonic: paraman), a piece of square cloth worn on the back, embroidered with the instruments of the Passion (see picture above), and connected by ties to a wooden cross worn over the heart. The paramandyas represents the yoke of Christ. Because of this addition he is now called Stavrophore, or Cross-bearer. He is also given a wooden hand cross (or "profession cross"), which he should keep in his icon corner, and a beeswax candle, symbolic of monastic vigilance the sacrificing of himself for God. He will be buried holding the cross, and the candle will be burned at his funeral. In the Slavic practice, the Stavrophore also wears the monastic mantle. The rasson (outer robe) worn by the Stavrophore is more ample than that worn by the Rassophore. The abbot increases the Stavrophore monk’s prayer rule, allows a more strict personal ascetic practice, and gives the monk more responsibility.
+
+Great Schema (Greek: Megaloschemos, Church Slavonic: Skhimnik)—Monks whose abbot feels they have reached a high level of spiritual excellence reach the final stage, called the Great Schema. The tonsure of a Schemamonk follows the same format as the Stavrophore, and he makes the same vows and is tonsured in the same manner. But in addition to all the garments worn by the Stavrophore, he is given the Analavos (Church Slavonic: Analav) which is the article of monastic vesture emblematic of the Great Schema. For this reason, the analavos itself is sometimes called the "Great Schema". The analavos comes down in the front and the back, somewhat like the scapular in Western monasticism, although the two garments are probably not related. It is often intricately embroidered with the instruments of the Passion and the Trisagion (the angelic hymn). The Greek form does not have a hood, the Slavic form has a hood and lappets on the shoulders, so that the garment forms a large cross covering the monk's shoulders, chest, and back. Another piece added is the Polystavrion or "Many Crosses", which consists of a cord with a number of small crosses plaited into it.  The polystavrion forms a yoke around the monk and serves to hold the analavos in place, and reminds the monastic that he is bound to Christ and that his arms are no longer fit for worldly activities, but that he must labor only for the Kingdom of Heaven.  Among the Greeks, the mantle is added at this stage.  The paramandyas of the Megaloschemos is larger than that of the Stavrophore, and if he wears the klobuk, it is of a distinctive thimble shape, called a koukoulion, the veil of which is usually embroidered with crosses.  In some monastic traditions the Great Schema is only given to monks and nuns on their death bed, while in others they may be elevated after as little as 25 years of service.
+
+Eastern Orthodox monks are addressed as "Father" even if they are not priests; but when conversing among themselves, monks will often address one another as "Brother".  Novices are always referred to as "Brother". Among the Greeks, old monks are often called Gheronda, or "Elder", out of respect for their dedication.  In the Slavic tradition, the title of Elder (Church Slavonic: Starets) is normally reserved for those who are of an advanced spiritual life, and who serve as guides to others.
+
+For the Orthodox, Mother is the correct term for nuns who have been tonsured Stavrophore or higher. Novices and Rassophores are addressed as "Sister".  Nuns live identical ascetic lives to their male counterparts and are therefore also called monachai (the feminine plural of monachos), and their community is likewise called a monastery.
+
+Many (but not all) Orthodox seminaries are attached to monasteries, combining academic preparation for ordination with participation in the community's life of prayer, and hopefully benefiting from the example and wise counsel of the monks.  Bishops are required by the sacred canons of the Orthodox Church to be chosen from among the monastic clergy. The requirement is specifically that they be monastics, not simply celibate (see clerical celibacy).  Monks who have been ordained to the priesthood are called hieromonks (priest-monks); monks who have been ordained to the diaconate are called hierodeacons (deacon-monks).  A Schemamonk who is a priest is called a Hieroschemamonk.  Most monks are not ordained; a community will normally only present as many candidates for ordination to the bishop as the liturgical needs of the community require.
+
+Hinduism has many monastic orders, including the Dashanami Sampradaya ("Tradition of Ten Names") orders established by Adi Shankara as well as Vaishnava orders.
+
+Madhvaacharya (Madhvacharya), the Dwaita philosopher, established ashta matha (Eight Monasteries). He appointed a monk (called swamiji or swamigalu in local parlance) for each matha or monastery who has the right to worship Madhvacharya's murti of Lord Krishna by rotation. Each matha's swamiji gets a chance to worship after fourteen years. This ritual is called Paryaya and has been used also outside his sampradaya, e.g. in Gaudiya Vaisnava Radharamana temple in Vrindavan.
+
+Similar in appearance to Buddhist monks, brahmacari monks from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), or Hare Krishnas as they are popularly known, are the best known Vaishnava monks outside India. They are a common sight in many places around the world. Their appearance—simple saffron dhoti, shaved head with sikha, Tulasi neckbeads and tilaka markings—and social customs (sadhana) date back many thousands of years to the Vedic era with its varnasrama society. This social scheme includes both monastic and lay stages meant for various persons in various stages of life as per their characteristics (guna) and work (karma).
+
+ISKCON started as a predominantly monastic group but nowadays the majority of members live as lay persons. Many of them, however, spent some time as monks. New persons joining ISKCON as full-time members (living in its centers) first undergo a three-month Bhakta training, which includes learning the basics of brahmacari (monastic) life. After that they can decide if they prefer to continue as monks or as married Grihasthas.
+
+Brahmacari older than fifty years (as per ISKCON rule) can become sannyasi. Sannyasa, a life of full dedication to spiritual pursuits, is the highest stage of life in the varnasrama society. It is permanent and one cannot give it up. A Sannyasi is given the title Swami. Older grihastha with grown-up children are traditionally expected to accept vanaprastha (celibate retired) life.
+
+The role of monastic orders in Indian and now also Western society has to some extent been adapted over the years in accordance with ever-changing social structures.
+
+One of the most intense forms of Asceticism can be found in Jainism, one of the world's oldest religions. Jainism encourages fasting, yoga practices, meditation in difficult postures, and other austerities.[11] According to Jains, one's highest goal should be attaining Nirvana or Moksha (i.e., liberation from samsara, the cycle of birth and rebirth). For this, a soul has to be without attachment or self-indulgence. This can be achieved only by the monks and nuns who take five great vows: of non-violence, of truth, of non-stealing, of non-possession and of celibacy.
+
+Most of the austerities and ascetic practices can be traced back to Vardhaman Mahavira, the twenty-fourth "fordmaker" or Tirthankara. The Acaranga Sutra, or Book of Good Conduct, is a sacred book within Jainism that discusses the ascetic code of conduct. Other texts that provide insight into conduct of ascetics include Yogashastra by Acharya Hemachandra and Niyamasara by Acharya Kundakunda. Other illustrious Jain works on ascetic conduct are Oghanijjutti, Pindanijjutti, Cheda Sutta, and Nisiha Suttafee.
+
+Full Jain monk in either Svetambara or Digambara tradition[12] can belong to one of these ranks:
+
+These three are mentioned is the three lines of the Namokar Mantra. In the Digambara tradition, a junior monk can be a:
+
+The Svetambar Terapanthi sect has a new rank of junior monks who are called samana. The nuns are called Aryikas in Digambar tradition and Sadhvi in the Svetambar tradition.
+
+As per the Jain vows, the monks and nuns renounce all relations and possessions. Jain ascetics practice complete non-violence. Ahimsa is the first and foremost vow of a Jain ascetic. They do not hurt any living being, be it an insect or a human. They carry a special broom to sweep away any insects that may cross their path. Some Jain monks wear a cloth over the mouth to prevent accidental harm to airborne germs and insects. They also do not use electricity as it involves violence. Furthermore, they do not use any devices or machines.
+
+As they are without possession and attachment, they travel from city to city, often crossing forests and deserts, and always barefoot. Jain ascetics do not stay in a single place for more than two months to prevent themselves from becoming attached to any location. However, during four months of monsoon (rainy season) known as chaturmaas, they continue to stay in a single place to avoid killing the life forms that thrive during the rains.
+Jain monks and nuns practice complete celibacy. They do not touch or share a sitting platform with a person of opposite sex.
+
+Jain ascetics follow a strict vegetarian diet without root vegetables. Shvetambara monks do not cook food but solicit alms from householders. Digambara monks have only a single meal a day. Neither group will beg for food, but a Jain ascetic may accept a meal from a householder, provided that the latter is pure of mind and body and offers the food of his own volition and in the prescribed manner. During such an encounter, the monk remains standing and eats only a measured amount. Fasting (i.e., abstinence from food and sometimes water) is a routine feature of Jain asceticism. Fasts last for a day or longer, up to a month. Some monks avoid (or limit) medicine or hospitalization due to their careful attention to body.
+
+Other austerities include meditation in seated or standing posture near river banks in the cold wind, or meditation atop hills and mountains, especially at noon when the sun is at its fiercest. Such austerities are undertaken according to the physical and mental limits of the individual ascetic. Jain ascetics are (almost) completely without possessions. Some Jains (Shvetambara monks and nuns) own only unstitched white robes (an upper and lower garment) and a bowl used for eating and collecting alms. Male Digambara monks do not wear any clothes and carry nothing with them except a soft broom made of shed peacock feathers (pinchi) and eat from their hands. They sleep on the floor without blankets and sit on special wooden platforms.
+
+Every day is spent either in study of scriptures or meditation or teaching to lay people. They stand aloof from worldly matters. Many Jain ascetics take a final vow of Santhara or Sallekhana (i.e., a peaceful and detached death where medicines, food, and water are abandoned). This is done when death is imminent or when a monk feels that he is unable to adhere to his vows on account of advanced age or terminal disease.
+
+Quotes on ascetic practices from the Akaranga Sutra as Hermann Jacobi translated it:[13][14]
+
+A monk or a nun wandering from village to village should look forward for four cubits, and seeing animals they should move on by walking on his toes or heels or the sides of his feet. If there be some bypath, they should choose it, and not go straight on; then they may circumspectly wander from village to village.
+
+I shall become a Sramana who owns no house, no property, no sons, no cattle, who eats what others give him; I shall commit no sinful action; Master, I renounce to accept anything that has not been given.' Having taken such vows, (a mendicant) should not, on entering a village or scot-free town, &c., take himself, or induce others to take, or allow others to take, what has not been given.

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+in Europe (green & dark grey)
+
+Monaco (/ˈmɒnəkoʊ/ (listen); French pronunciation: ​[mɔnako]), officially the Principality of Monaco (French: Principauté de Monaco),[a] is a sovereign city-state, country, and microstate on the French Riviera in Western Europe. It is bordered by France to the north, east and west, and by the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The principality is home to 38,682 residents[10] and is widely recognised for being one of the most expensive and wealthiest places in the world. The official language is French, although Monégasque, English and Italian are spoken and understood by a sizeable group.[b]
+
+With an area of 2.1 km2 (0.81 sq mi), it is one of the smallest sovereign states in Europe and the second-smallest in the world, after the Vatican City. Its 19,009 inhabitants per square kilometre (49,230/sq mi), make it the most densely-populated sovereign state in the world.  Monaco has a land border of 5.47 km (3.40 mi),[11] the world's shortest coastline of approximately 3.83 km (2.38 mi), and a width that varies between 1,700 and 349 m (5,577 and 1,145 ft). The highest point in the country is a narrow pathway named Chemin des Révoires on the slopes of Mont Agel, in the Les Révoires Ward, which is 161 metres (528 feet) above sea level. The principality is about 15 km (9.3 mi) from the state border with Italy.[12] Its most populous Quartier is Monte Carlo and the most populous Ward is Larvotto/Bas Moulins. Through land reclamation, Monaco's land mass has expanded by 20 percent. In 2005, it had an area of only 1.974 km2 (0.762 sq mi).
+
+The principality is governed under a form of constitutional monarchy, with Prince Albert II as head of state. Although Prince Albert II is a constitutional monarch, he wields immense political power. The House of Grimaldi has ruled Monaco, with brief interruptions, since 1297.[13] The state's sovereignty was officially recognised by the Franco-Monegasque Treaty of 1861, with Monaco becoming a full United Nations voting member in 1993. Despite Monaco's independence and separate foreign policy, its defence is the responsibility of France. However, Monaco does maintain two small military units.
+
+Economic development was spurred in the late 19th century with the opening of the country's first casino, Monte Carlo, and a railway connection to Paris.[14] Since then, Monaco's mild climate, scenery, and gambling facilities have contributed to the principality's status as a tourist destination and recreation centre for the rich. In more recent years, Monaco has become a major banking centre and has sought to diversify its economy into the services sector and small, high-value-added, non-polluting industries. The state has no income tax, low business taxes, and is well known for being a tax haven. In 2014, it was noted that about 30% of the population was made up of millionaires.[15]
+
+Monaco is not formally a part of the European Union (EU), but it participates in certain EU policies, including customs and border controls. Through its relationship with France, Monaco uses the euro as its sole currency (prior to this it used the Monégasque franc). Monaco joined the Council of Europe in 2004, and is a member of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). It is also the host of the annual street circuit motor race Monaco Grand Prix, one of the original Grands Prix of Formula One and birthplace of Scuderia Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc. The principality has a club football team, AS Monaco, who have become French champions on multiple occasions.
+
+Monaco's name comes from the nearby 6th-century BC Phocaean Greek colony. Referred to by the Ligurians as Monoikos, from the Greek "μόνοικος", "single house", from "μόνος" (monos) "alone, single"[16] + "οἶκος" (oikos) "house",[17] which bears the sense of a people either settled in a "single habitation" or of "living apart" from others.
+
+According to an ancient myth, Hercules passed through the Monaco area and turned away the previous gods.[18] As a result, a temple was constructed there, the temple of Hercules Monoikos. Because the only temple of this area was the "House" of Hercules, the city was called Monoikos.[19][20] It ended up in the hands of the Holy Roman Empire, which gave it to the Genoese.
+
+An ousted branch of a Genoese family, the Grimaldi, contested it for a hundred years before actually gaining control. Though the Republic of Genoa would last until the 19th century, they allowed the Grimaldi family to keep Monaco, and, likewise, both France and Spain left it alone for hundreds of years. France did not annex it until the French Revolution, but after the defeat of Napoleon it was put under the care of the Kingdom of Sardinia.
+
+In the 19th century, when Sardinia became a part of Italy, the region came under French influence again but France allowed it to remain independent. Like France, Monaco was overrun by the Axis powers during the Second World War and for a short time was administered by Italy, then the Third Reich, before finally being liberated. Although the occupation lasted for just a short time, it meant the deportation of the Jewish population and execution of several resistance members from Monaco. Since then Monaco has been independent.  It has taken some steps towards integration with the European Union.
+
+Following a land grant from Emperor Henry VI in 1191, Monaco was refounded in 1215 as a colony of Genoa.[21][22] Monaco was first ruled by a member of the House of Grimaldi in 1297, when Francesco Grimaldi, known as "Il Malizia" (translated from Italian either as "The Malicious One" or "The Cunning One"), and his men captured the fortress protecting the Rock of Monaco while dressed as Franciscan monks—a monaco in Italian, although this is a coincidence as the area was already known by this name.[23]
+
+Francesco, however, was evicted only a few years afterwards by the Genoese forces, and the struggle over "the Rock" continued for another century.[24] The Grimaldi family was Genoese and the struggle was something of a family feud. However, the Genoese became engaged in other conflicts, and in the late 1300s Genoa lost Monaco in a conflict with the Crown of Aragon over Corsica.[25] Aragon eventually became part of Spain, and other parts of the land grant drifted into various pieces of other kingdoms and nations.[25]
+
+In 1419, the Grimaldi family purchased Monaco from the Crown of Aragon and became the official and undisputed rulers of "the Rock of Monaco". In 1612 Honoré II began to style himself "Prince" of Monaco.[26] In the 1630s, he sought French protection against the Spanish forces and, in 1642, was received at the court of Louis XIII "Duc et Pair Etranger".[27]
+
+The princes of Monaco thus became vassals of the French kings while at the same time remaining sovereign princes.[28] Though successive princes and their families spent most of their lives in Paris, and intermarried with French and Italian nobilities, the House of Grimaldi is Italian. The principality continued its existence as a protectorate of France until the French Revolution.[29]
+
+In 1793, Revolutionary forces captured Monaco and it remained under direct French control until 1814, when the Grimaldi family returned to the throne.[27][30]
+
+Between 1793 and 1814 Monaco was occupied by the French (in this period much of Europe had been overrun by the French under command of Napoleon).[27][30]
+The principality was reestablished in 1814 only to be designated a protectorate of the Kingdom of Sardinia by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.[30] Monaco remained in this position until 1860 when, by the Treaty of Turin, the Sardinian forces pulled out of the principality, and the surrounding county of Nice (as well as Savoy) was ceded to France.[31] Monaco became a French protectorate once again.
+
+Before this time there was unrest in Menton and Roquebrune, where the townspeople had become weary of heavy taxation by the Grimaldi family. They declared their independence, hoping for annexation by Sardinia. France protested. The unrest continued until Charles III of Monaco gave up his claim to the two mainland towns (some 95% of the principality at the time) that had been ruled by the Grimaldi family for over 500 years.[32]
+
+These were ceded to France in return for 4,100,000 francs.[33] The transfer and Monaco's sovereignty were recognised by the Franco-Monegasque Treaty of 1861. In 1869, the principality stopped collecting income tax from its residents—an indulgence the Grimaldi family could afford to entertain thanks solely to the extraordinary success of the casino.[34] This made Monaco not only a playground for the rich, but a favoured place for them to live.[35]
+
+Until the Monegasque Revolution of 1910 forced the adoption of the 1911 constitution, the princes of Monaco were absolute rulers.[36] The new constitution, however, barely reduced the autocratic rule of the Grimaldi family and Prince Albert I soon suspended it during the First World War.
+
+In July 1918, the Franco-Monegasque Treaty was signed, providing for limited French protection over Monaco. The treaty, endorsed in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles, established that Monegasque international policy would be aligned with French political, military, and economic interests, and resolved the Monaco Succession Crisis.[37]
+
+In November 1942, the Italian Army invaded and occupied Monaco, forming a fascist administration.[38]In September 1943, following the collapse of Mussolini, the German Wehrmacht occupied Monaco and the Nazi deportation of the Jewish population began. René Blum, the prominent French Jew who founded the Ballet de l'Opera in Monte Carlo, was arrested in his Paris home and held in the Drancy deportation camp outside the French capital before being transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was later killed.[39] Blum's colleague Raoul Gunsbourg, the director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, helped by the French Resistance, escaped arrest and fled to Switzerland.[40] In August 1944, the Germans executed René Borghini, Joseph-Henri Lajoux and Esther Poggio, who were Resistance leaders.
+
+Rainier III, who ruled until 2005, succeeded to the throne following the death of his grandfather, Prince Louis II, in 1949. On 19 April 1956, Prince Rainier married the American actress Grace Kelly; the event was widely televised and covered in the popular press, focusing the world's attention on the tiny principality.[41]
+
+A 1962 amendment to the constitution abolished capital punishment, provided for women's suffrage, and established a Supreme Court of Monaco to guarantee fundamental liberties.
+
+In 1963, a crisis developed when Charles de Gaulle blockaded Monaco, angered by its status as a tax haven for wealthy French. The 2014 film Grace of Monaco is loosely based on this crisis.[42]
+
+In 1993, the Principality of Monaco became a member of the United Nations, with full voting rights.[31][43]
+
+In 2002, a new treaty between France and Monaco specified that, should there be no heirs to carry on the Grimaldi dynasty, the principality would still remain an independent nation rather than revert to France. Monaco's military defence, however, is still the responsibility of France.[44][45]
+
+On 31 March 2005, Rainier III, who was too ill to exercise his duties, relinquished them to his only son and heir, Albert.[46]  He died six days later, after a reign of 56 years, with his son succeeding him as Albert II, Sovereign Prince of Monaco.
+
+Following a period of official mourning, Prince Albert II formally assumed the princely crown on 12 July 2005,[47] in a celebration that began with a solemn Mass at Saint Nicholas Cathedral, where his father had been buried three months earlier. His accession to the Monégasque throne was a two-step event with a further ceremony, drawing heads of state for an elaborate reception, held on 18 November 2005, at the historic Prince's Palace in Monaco-Ville.[48]
+
+On 27 August 2015, Albert II apologised for Monaco's role during World War II in facilitating the deportation of a total of 90 Jews and resistance fighters, of whom only nine survived. "We committed the irreparable in handing over to the neighbouring authorities women, men and a child who had taken refuge with us to escape the persecutions they had suffered in France," Albert said at a ceremony in which a monument to the victims was unveiled at the Monaco cemetery. "In distress, they came specifically to take shelter with us, thinking they would find neutrality."[49]
+
+In 2015, Monaco unanimously approved a modest land reclamation expansion intended primarily for some desperately needed housing and a small green/park area.[50]
+
+Monaco had previously considered an expansion in 2008, but called it off.[50]  The plan is for about six hectares of apartment buildings, parks, shops and offices for about 1 billion euros for the land.[51]  The development will be adjacent to the Larvotto district and also will include a small marina.[51][52]  There were four main proposals, and the final mix of use will be finalised as the development progresses.[53] The name for the new district is Anse du Portier.[52]
+
+Monaco has been governed under a constitutional monarchy since 1911, with the Sovereign Prince of Monaco as head of state.[54] The executive branch consists of a Minister of State as the head of government, who presides over a five-member Council of Government.[55] Until 2002, the Minister of State was a French citizen appointed by the prince from among candidates proposed by the French government; since a constitutional amendment in 2002, the Minister of State can be French or Monegasque.[21]  On 3 March 2010, Prince Albert II appointed a French citizen, Michel Roger.[56]
+
+Under the 1962 constitution, the prince shares his veto power with the unicameral National Council.[57] The 24 members of the National Council are elected for five-year terms; 16 are chosen through a majority electoral system and 8 by proportional representation.[58] All legislation requires the approval of the National Council, which is dominated by the conservative Rally and Issues for Monaco (REM) party which holds 20 seats.[58] Union Monégasque holds three seats[58] while Renaissance holds one seat. The principality's city affairs are directed by the Communal Council,[59] which consists of 14 elected members and is presided over by a mayor.[60] Unlike the National Council, councillors are elected for four-year terms,[61] and are strictly non-partisan; however, oppositions inside the council frequently form.[59][62]
+
+Monaco is the second-smallest country by area in the world; only Vatican City is smaller.[63]  Monaco is the most densely populated country in the world.[64] The state consists of only one municipality (commune), the Municipality of Monaco. There is no geographical distinction between the State and City of Monaco, although responsibilities of the government (state-level) and of the municipality (city-level) are different.[56]  According to the constitution of 1911, the principality was subdivided into three municipalities:[65]
+
+The municipalities were merged into one in 1917, after accusations that the government was acting according to the motto "divide and conquer,"[citation needed][how?] and they were accorded the status of Wards or Quartiers thereafter.
+
+Subsequently, three additional wards were created:
+
+An additional ward was planned by new land reclamation to be settled beginning in 2014[66] but Prince Albert II announced in his 2009 New Year Speech that he had ended plans due to the economic climate at the time.[67] However, Prince Albert II in mid-2010 firmly restarted the program.[68][69] In 2015, a new development called Anse du Portier was announced.[52]
+
+The four traditional quartiers of Monaco are Monaco-Ville, La Condamine, Monte Carlo and Fontvieille.[70][71] However, the suburb of Moneghetti, the high-level part of La Condamine, is generally seen today as an effective fifth Quartier of the Monaco, having a very distinct atmosphere and topography when compared with low-level La Condamine.[72]
+
+Monaco is divided into ten wards, with their official numbers; either Fontvieille II or Le Portier would become the effective eleventh ward, if built:[69][73][74]
+
+Note: for statistical purposes, the Wards of Monaco are further subdivided into 178 city blocks (îlots), which are comparable to the census blocks in the United States.[75]
+
+The wider defence of the nation is provided by France. Monaco has no navy or air force, but on both a per-capita and per-area basis, Monaco has one of the largest police forces (515 police officers for about 36,000 people) and police presences in the world.[79] Its police includes a special unit which operates patrol and surveillance boats.[80]
+
+There is also a small military force. This consists of a bodyguard unit for the Prince and the palace in Monaco-Ville called the Compagnie des Carabiniers du Prince (Prince's Company of Carabiniers), which is equipped with weapons such as M16A2 rifles and 9 mm pistols (Glock 17),[81] and which together with the militarised, armed fire and civil defence Corps (Sapeurs-Pompiers) forms Monaco's total public forces.[82] The Compagnie des Carabiniers du Prince was created by Prince Honoré IV in 1817 for the protection of the principality and the Princely family. The company numbers exactly 116 officers and men; while the NCOs and soldiers are local, the officers have generally served in the French Army. In addition to their guard duties as described, the Carabiniers patrol the principality's beaches and coastal waters.[83]
+
+Monaco is a sovereign city state, with five quartiers and ten wards,[84] located on the French Riviera in Western Europe. It is bordered by France's Alpes-Maritimes département on three sides, with one side bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Its centre is about 16 km (9.9 mi) from Italy and only 13 km (8.1 mi) northeast of Nice, France.[43]
+
+It has an area of 2.1 km2 (0.81 sq mi), or 208 hectares (510 acres), and a population of 38,400,[85] making Monaco the second-smallest and the most densely populated country in the world.[43] The country has a land border of only 5.47 km (3.40 mi),[85] a coastline of 3.83 km (2.38 mi), a maritime claim that extends 22.2 kilometres (13.8 mi), and a width that varies between 1,700 and 349 m (5,577 and 1,145 ft).[86][87]
+
+The highest point in the country is at the access to the Patio Palace residential building on the Chemin des Révoires (ward Les Révoires) from the D6007 (Moyenne Corniche street) at 164.4 metres (539 feet) above sea level.[88] The lowest point in the country is the Mediterranean Sea.[89]
+
+Saint-Jean is the longest flowing body of water, around 0.19 km (190 metres; 0.12 miles; 620 feet) in length, and Fontvieille is the largest lake, approximately 0.5 ha (5,000.00 m2; 1.24 acres; 53,819.55 sq ft) in area.[90] Monaco's most populated quartier is Monte Carlo, and the most populated ward is Larvotto/Bas Moulins.[75]
+
+After a recent[when?] expansion of Port Hercules,[91] Monaco's total area grew to 2.02 km2 (0.78 sq mi) or 202 hectares (500 acres);[75] consequently, new plans have been approved to extend the district of Fontvieille by 0.08 km2 (0.031 sq mi) or 8 hectares (20 acres), with land reclaimed from the Mediterranean Sea. Land reclamation projects include extending the district of Fontvieille.[92][93][94][91][95] There are two ports in Monaco, Port Hercules and Port Fontvieille.[96] Monaco's only natural resource is fishing;[97] with almost the entire country being an urban area, Monaco lacks any sort of commercial agriculture industry. There is a neighbouring French port called Cap d'Ail that is near Monaco.[96]
+
+Monaco exhibits a wide range of architecture, but the principality's signature style, particularly in Monte Carlo, is that of the Belle Epoque. It finds its most florid expression in the 1878–9 Casino and the Salle Garnier created by Charles Garnier and Jules Dutrou. Decorative elements include turrets, balconies, pinnacles, multi-coloured ceramics, and caryatids.  These were blended to create a picturesque fantasy of pleasure and luxury, and an alluring expression of how Monaco sought, and still seeks, to portray itself.[98]  This capriccio of French, Italian, and Spanish elements was incorporated into hacienda villas and apartments. Following major development in the 1970s, Prince Rainier III banned high-rise development in the principality. His successor, Prince Albert II, overturned this Sovereign Order.[99]  In recent years[when?] the accelerating demolition of Monaco's architectural heritage, including its single-family villas, has created dismay.[100] The principality has no heritage protection legislation.[101]
+
+Monaco has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification: Csa), which is influenced by oceanic climate (Cfb) and humid subtropical climate (Cfa). As a result, it has warm, dry summers and mild, rainy winters.[102] Cool and rainy interludes can interrupt the dry summer season, the average length of which is also shorter. Summer afternoons are infrequently hot (indeed, temperatures greater than 30 °C or 86 °F are rare) as the atmosphere is temperate because of constant sea breezes. On the other hand, the nights are very mild, due to the fairly high temperature of the sea in summer. Generally, temperatures do not drop below 20 °C (68 °F) in this season. In the winter, frosts and snowfalls are extremely rare and generally occur once or twice every ten years.[103][104] On February 27, 2018, both Monaco and Monte Carlo experienced snowfall.[105]
+
+Monaco has the world's highest GDP nominal per capita at US$185,742 GDP PPP per capita at $132,571 and GNI per capita at $183,150.[109][110][111] It also has an unemployment rate of 2%,[112] with over 48,000 workers who commute from France and Italy each day.[75] According to the CIA World Factbook, Monaco has the world's lowest poverty rate[113] and the highest number of millionaires and billionaires per capita in the world.[114] For the fourth year in a row, Monaco in 2012 had the world's most expensive real estate market, at $58,300 per square metre.[115][116][117]
+
+One of Monaco's main sources of income is tourism. Each year many foreigners are attracted to its casino and pleasant climate.[87][118]  It has also become a major banking centre, holding over €100 billion worth of funds.[119] Banks in Monaco specialise in providing private banking, asset and wealth management services.[120] The principality has successfully sought to diversify its economic base into services and small, high-value-added, non-polluting industries, such as cosmetics and biothermics.[113]
+
+The state retains monopolies in numerous sectors, including tobacco and the postal service. The telephone network (Monaco Telecom) used to be fully owned by the state; it now owns only 45%, while the remaining 55% is owned by both Cable & Wireless Communications (49%) and Compagnie Monégasque de Banque (6%). It is still, however, a monopoly. Living standards are high, roughly comparable to those in prosperous French metropolitan areas.[121]
+
+Monaco is not a member of the European Union. However, it is very closely linked via a customs union with France and, as such, its currency is the same as that of France, the euro. Before 2002, Monaco minted its own coins, the Monegasque franc. Monaco has acquired the right to mint euro coins with Monegasque designs on its national side.
+
+The plan for casino gambling was drafted during the reign of Florestan I in 1846. Under Louis-Philippe's petite-bourgeois regime, however, a dignitary such as the Prince of Monaco was not allowed to operate a gambling house.[21]  All this changed in the dissolute Second French Empire under Napoleon III. The House of Grimaldi was in dire need of money.
+
+The towns of Menton and Roquebrune, which had been the main sources of income for the Grimaldi family for centuries, were now accustomed to a much improved standard of living and lenient taxation thanks to Sardinian intervention and clamored for financial and political concession, even for separation. The Grimaldi family hoped the newly legal industry would help alleviate the difficulties they faced, above all the crushing debt the family had incurred, but Monaco's first casino would not be ready to operate until after Charles III assumed the throne in 1856.
+
+The grantee of the princely concession (licence) was unable to attract enough business to sustain the operation and, after relocating the casino several times, sold the concession to French casino magnates François and Louis Blanc for 1.7 million francs.
+
+The Blancs had already set up a highly successful casino (in fact the largest in Europe) in Bad-Homburg in the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Homburg, a small German principality comparable to Monaco, and quickly petitioned Charles III to rename a depressed seaside area known as "Les Spelegures (Den of Thieves)" to "Monte Carlo (Mount Charles)."[122] They then constructed their casino in the newly dubbed "Monte Carlo" and cleared out the area's less-than-savory elements to make the neighbourhood surrounding the establishment more conducive to tourism.
+
+The Blancs opened Le Grand Casino de Monte Carlo in 1858 and the casino benefited from the tourist traffic the newly built French railway system created.[123]  Due to the combination of the casino and the railroads, Monaco finally recovered from the previous half-century of economic slump and the principality's success attracted other businesses.[124] In the years following the casino's opening, Monaco founded its Oceanographic Museum and the Monte Carlo Opera House, 46 hotels were built and the number of jewelers operating in Monaco increased by nearly five-fold.  In an apparent effort to not overtax citizens, it was decreed that the Monégasque citizens were prohibited from entering the casino unless they were employees.[125]  By 1869, the casino was making such a vast sum of money that the principality could afford to end tax collection from the Monegasques—a master stroke that was to attract affluent residents from all over Europe in a policy that still exists today.
+
+Today, Société des bains de mer de Monaco, which owns Le Grand Casino, still operates in the original building that the Blancs constructed and has since been joined by several other casinos, including the Le Casino Café de Paris, the Monte Carlo Sporting Club & Casino and the Sun Casino. The most recent[when?] addition in Monte Carlo is the Monte Carlo Bay Casino, which sits on 4 hectares of the Mediterranean Sea and, among other things, offers 145 slot machines, all equipped with "ticket-in, ticket-out" (TITO); it is the first Mediterranean casino to use this technology.[126]
+
+Monaco has high social-insurance taxes, payable by both employers and employees. The employers' contributions are between 28% and 40% (averaging 35%) of gross salary, including benefits, and employees pay a further 10% to 14% (averaging 13%).[127]
+
+Monaco has never levied income tax on individuals,[92] and foreigners are thus able to use it as a "tax haven" from their own country's high taxes, because as an independent country, Monaco is not obligated to pay taxes to other countries.[128][129]
+
+The absence of a personal income tax has attracted many wealthy "tax refugee" residents from European countries, who derive the majority of their income from activity outside Monaco. Celebrities, such as Formula One drivers, attract most of the attention but the vast majority are lesser-known business people.[130]
+
+However, due to a bilateral treaty with France, French citizens who reside in Monaco must still pay income and wealth taxes to France.[131]  The principality also actively discourages the registration of foreign corporations, charging a 33 per cent corporation tax on profits, unless they can show that at least three-quarters of turnover is generated within Monaco.  Unlike classic tax havens, Monaco does not offer offshore financial services.[92]
+
+In 1998, the Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), issued a first report on the consequences of the financial systems of known tax havens.[132] Monaco did not appear in the list of these territories until 2004, when the OECD became indignant regarding the Monegasque situation and denounced it in a report, along with Andorra, Liechtenstein, Liberia, and the Marshall Islands.  The report underlined Monaco's lack of co-operation regarding financial information disclosure and availability.[133][134]  Later, Monaco overcame the OECD's objections and was removed from the "grey list" of uncooperative jurisdictions.  In 2009, Monaco went a step farther, and secured a place on the "white list", after signing twelve information exchange treaties with other jurisdictions.[92]
+
+In 2000, the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) stated: "The anti-money laundering system in Monaco is comprehensive. However, difficulties have been encountered with Monaco by countries in international investigations on serious crimes that appear to be linked also with tax matters. In addition, the FIU of Monaco (SICCFIN) suffers a great lack of adequate resources. The authorities of Monaco have stated that they will provide additional resources to SICCFIN."[135]
+
+Also in 2000, a report by the French parliamentarians Arnaud Montebourg and Vincent Peillon stated that Monaco had relaxed policies with respect to money laundering, including within its casino, and that the government of Monaco had been placing political pressure on the judiciary, so that alleged crimes were not being properly investigated.[136] In its Progress Report of 2005, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified Monaco, along with 36 other territories, as a tax haven,[137] but in its FATF report of the same year it took a positive view of Monaco's measures against money-laundering.[138][139]
+
+The Council of Europe also decided to issue reports naming tax havens. Twenty-two territories, including Monaco, were thus evaluated between 1998 and 2000 on a first round. Monaco was the only territory that refused to perform the second round, between 2001 and 2003, whereas the 21 other territories had planned implementing the third and final round, planned between 2005 and 2007.[140]
+
+Of interest to numismatists, in Monaco the euro was introduced in 2002, having been preceded by the Monégasque franc.[141] In preparation for this date, the minting of the new euro coins started as early as 2001. Like Belgium, Finland, France, the Netherlands, and Spain, Monaco decided to put the minting date on its coins. This is why the first euro coins from Monaco have the year 2001 on them, instead of 2002, like the other countries of the Eurozone that decided to put the year of first circulation (2002) on their coins.[142][143] Three different designs were selected for the Monégasque coins.[144] However, in 2006, the design was changed after the death of ruling Prince Rainier to have the effigy of Prince Albert.[144][145]
+
+Monaco also mints collectors' coins, with face value ranging from €5 to €100.[146] These coins are a legacy of an old national practice of minting silver and gold commemorative coins.[147][148] Unlike normal issues, these coins are not legal tender in all the Eurozone.[149] The same practice concerning commemorative coins is exercised by all eurozone countries.
+
+Population of Monaco by ethnicity
+
+Monaco's total population was 38,400 in 2015.[150] Monaco's population is unusual in that the native Monégasques are a minority in their own country: the largest group are French nationals at 28.4%, followed by Monégasque (21.6%), Italian (18.7%), British (7.5%), Belgian (2.8%), German (2.5%), Swiss (2.5%) and U.S. nationals (1.2%).[151]
+
+Citizens of Monaco, whether born in the country or naturalised, are called Monégasque.[152] Monaco has the world's highest life expectancy at nearly 90 years.[153][154]
+
+The official language of Monaco is French, while Italian is spoken by the principality's sizeable community from Italy. French and Italian are in fact more spoken in the principality today than Monégasque, its historic vernacular language. A dialect of Ligurian, Monégasque is not recognised as an official language; nevertheless, some signage appears in both French and Monégasque, and the language is taught in schools. English is used by American, British, Anglo-Canadian, and Irish residents.
+
+The Grimaldi, princes of Monaco, have Ligurian origin, thus, the traditional national language is Monégasque, a variety of Ligurian, now spoken by only a minority of residents and as a common second language by many native residents. In Monaco-Ville, street signs are printed in both French and Monégasque.[155][156]
+
+Religion in Monaco according to the Global Religious Landscape survey by the Pew Forum, 2012[157]
+
+Christians comprise a total of 86% of Monaco's population.[157]
+
+According to Monaco 2012 International Religious Freedom Report, Roman Catholics are Monaco's largest religious group, followed by Protestant Christians.  The Report states that there are two Protestant churches, an Anglican church and a Reformed church.  There are also various other Evangelical Protestant communities that gather periodically.
+
+The official religion is Roman Catholicism, with freedom of other religions guaranteed by the constitution.[158] There are five Catholic parish churches in Monaco and one cathedral, which is the seat of the archbishop of Monaco.
+
+The diocese, which has existed since the mid-19th century, was raised to a non-metropolitan archbishopric in 1981 as the Archdiocese of Monaco and remains exempt (i.e. immediately subject to the Holy See). The patron saint is Saint Devota.
+
+There is one Anglican church (St Paul's Church), located in the Avenue de Grande Bretagne in Monte Carlo. The church was dedicated in 1925.  In 2007 this had a formal membership of 135 Anglicans resident in the principality, but was also serving a considerably larger number of Anglicans temporarily in the country, mostly as tourists. The church site also accommodates an English-language library of over 3,000 books.[159] The church is part of the Anglican Diocese in Europe.
+
+There is one Reformed church, located in the Rue Louis Notari.   This church was built in 1958/1959.  It is affiliated to the United Protestant Church of France (Eglise Protestante Unie de France, EPUF), a grouping that incorporates the former Reformed Church of France (Eglise Reformée de France).  Through its affiliation with EPUF, the church is part of the World Communion of Reformed Churches. The Reformed Church of Monaco acts as a host-church to some other Christian communities, in that it allows them to use its Rue Louis Notari building.
+
+The Monaco Parish of the Charismatic Episcopal Church (Parish of St Joseph) dates from 2017 and meets in the Reformed Church's Rue Louis Notari building.
+
+The Monaco Christian Fellowship, formed in 1996, meets in the Reformed Church's Rue Louis Notari building.
+
+Monaco's 2012 International Religious Freedom Report states that there is one Greek Orthodox church in Monaco.
+
+The Russian Orthodox Parish of the Holy Royal Martyrs meets in the Reformed Church's Rue Louis Notari building.
+
+The Association Culturelle Israélite de Monaco (founded in 1948) is a converted house containing a synagogue, a community Hebrew school, and a kosher food shop, located in Monte Carlo.[160] The community mainly consists of retirees from Britain (40%) and North Africa. Two-thirds of the Jewish population is Sephardic, mainly from North Africa, while the other third is Ashkenazi.[161]
+
+The Muslim population of Monaco consists of about 280 people, most of whom are residents not citizens.[162] The majority of the Muslim population of Monaco are Arabs, though there are smaller Turkish minorities as well.[163] Monaco does not have any official mosques.[164] There is a mosque in nearby Beausoleil, France, within easy walking distance of Monaco.
+
+Since 1929, the Monaco Grand Prix has been held annually in the streets of Monaco.[165] It is widely considered to be one of the most prestigious automobile races in the world. The erection of the Circuit de Monaco takes six weeks to complete and the removal after the race takes another three weeks.[165]
+
+The circuit is incredibly narrow and tight and its tunnel, tight corners and many elevation changes make it perhaps the most demanding Formula One track.[166] Driver Nelson Piquet compared driving the circuit to "riding a bicycle around your living room".
+
+Despite the challenging nature of the course it has only had two fatalities, Luigi Fagioli who died from injuries received in practice for the 1952 Monaco Grand Prix (run to sports car regulations that year, not Formula 1)[167] and Lorenzo Bandini, who crashed, burned and died three days later from his injuries in 1967.[168] Two other drivers had lucky escapes after they crashed into the harbour, the most famous being Alberto Ascari in the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix and Paul Hawkins, during the 1965 race.[165]
+
+Monaco also holds a Grand Prix winner, in the form of Charles Leclerc, who has won two races so far in his career, at the 2019 Belgian Grand Prix and 2019 Italian Grand Prix.
+
+Starting in 2015 Formula E started racing biennially with the Historic Grand Prix of Monaco on the Monaco ePrix[169] and used a shorter course of the full Formula 1 course, keeping it around Port Hercules.
+
+Since 1911 part of the Monte Carlo Rally has been held in the principality, originally held at the behest of Prince Albert I. Like the Grand Prix, the rally is organised by Automobile Club de Monaco. It has long been considered to be one of the toughest and most prestigious events in rallying and from 1973 to 2008 was the opening round of the World Rally Championship (WRC).[170] From 2009 until 2011, the rally served as the opening round of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge.[171] The rally returned to the WRC calendar in 2012 and has been held annually since.[172] Due to Monaco's limited size, all but the ending of the rally is held on French territory.
+
+Monaco hosts two major football teams in the principality: the men's football club, AS Monaco FC, and the women's football club, OS Monaco. AS Monaco plays at the Stade Louis II and competes in Ligue 1 the first division of French football. The club is historically one of the most successful clubs in the French league, having won Ligue 1 eight times (most recently in 2016–17) and competed at the top level for all but six seasons since 1953. The club reached the 2004 UEFA Champions League Final, with a team that included Dado Pršo, Fernando Morientes, Jérôme Rothen, Akis Zikos and Ludovic Giuly, but lost 3–0 to Portuguese team FC Porto. French World Cup-winners Thierry Henry, Fabien Barthez, David Trezeguet, and Kylian Mbappe have played for the club. The Stade Louis II also played host to the annual UEFA Super Cup (1998–2012) between the winners of the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League.
+
+The women's team, OS Monaco, competes in the women's French football league system. The club plays in the local regional league, deep down in the league system. It once played in the Division 1 Féminine, in the 1994–95 season, but was quickly relegated.
+
+The Monaco national football team represents the nation in association football and is controlled by the Monégasque Football Federation, the governing body for football in Monaco. However, Monaco is one of only two sovereign states in Europe (along with the Vatican City) that is not a member of UEFA and so does not take part in any UEFA European Football Championship or FIFA World Cup competitions. The team plays its home matches in the Stade Louis II.
+
+Monaco's national rugby team, as of April 2019, is 101st in the World Rugby Rankings.[173]
+
+Multi-sport club AS Monaco owns AS Monaco Basket which was founded in 1928. They play in France top flight in Basketball LNB Pro A while participating in the EuroCup. They have three Pro A Leaders Cup, two Pro B(Second tier), one NM1(Third tier) championship. They play in Salle Gaston Médecin what part of Stade Louis II.
+
+The Monte-Carlo Masters is held annually in neighbouring Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France, as a professional tournament for men as part of tennis's ATP Masters Series.[174] The tournament has been held since 1897. Golf's Monte Carlo Open was also held at the Monte Carlo Golf Club at Mont Agel in France between 1984 and 1992.
+
+Monaco has a national Davis Cup team, which plays in the European/African Zone.
+
+Monaco has also competed in the Olympic Games, although, no athlete from Monaco has ever won an Olympic medal. At the Youth Olympic Winter Games, Monaco won a bronze medal in bobsleigh.
+
+The 2009 Tour de France, the world's premier cycle race, started from Monaco with a 15-kilometre (9 mi) closed-circuit individual time trial starting and finishing there on the first day, and the 182-kilometre (113 mi) second leg starting there on the following day and ending in Brignoles, France.[175]
+
+Monaco has also staged part of the Global Champions Tour (International Show-jumping).[176] In 2009, the Monaco stage of the Global Champions tour took place between 25–27 June.
+
+The Monaco Marathon is the only marathon in the world to pass through three separate countries, those of Monaco, France and Italy, before the finish at the Stade Louis II.
+
+The Monaco Ironman 70.3 triathlon race is an annual event with over 1,000 athletes competing and attracts top professional athletes from around the world. The race includes a 1.9-kilometre (1.2-mile) swim, 90-kilometre (56-mile) bike ride and 21.1-kilometre (13.1-mile) run.
+
+Since 1993, the headquarters of the International Association of Athletics Federations,[177] the world governing body of athletics, is located in Monaco.[178] An IAAF Diamond League meet is annually held at Stade Louis II.[179]
+
+A municipal sports complex, the Rainier III Nautical Stadium in the Port Hercules district consists of a heated saltwater Olympic-size swimming pool, diving boards and a slide.[180] The pool is converted into an ice rink from December to March.[180]
+
+In addition to Formula One, the Circuit de Monaco hosts several support series, including FIA Formula 2 and Porsche Supercup.[citation needed] It has in the past also hosted Formula Three and other Formula Junior programs.
+
+From 10–12 July 2014 Monaco inaugurated the Solar1 Monte Carlo Cup, a series of ocean races exclusively for solar-powered boats.[181],[182]
+
+The women team of the chess club CE Monte Carlo won the European Chess Club Cup several times.
+
+Monaco has an opera house, a symphony orchestra and a classical ballet company.[183]
+
+Monaco has a national museum of contemporary visual art at the New National Museum of Monaco. The country also has numerous works of public art, statues, museums, and memorials (see list of public art in Monaco).
+
+The Principality of Monaco hosts major international events such as :
+
+Monaco also has an annual bread festival on September 17 every year.[184][dead link].
+
+Monaco has ten state-operated schools, including: seven nursery and primary schools; one secondary school, Collège Charles III;[185] one lycée that provides general and technological training, Lycée Albert 1er;[186] and one lycée that provides vocational and hotel training, Lycée technique et hôtelier de Monte-Carlo.[187] There are also two grant-aided denominational private schools, Institution François d'Assise Nicolas Barré and Ecole des Sœurs Dominicaines, and one international school, the International School of Monaco,[188][189] founded in 1994.[190]
+
+There is one university located in Monaco, namely the International University of Monaco (IUM), an English-language school specializing in business education and operated by the Institut des hautes études économiques et commerciales (INSEEC) group of schools.
+
+The flag of Monaco is one of the world's oldest national flag designs.[191] Adopted by Monaco on April 4, 1881, it is almost identical to the flag of Indonesia (adopted by Indonesia in August 17, 1945) except for the ratio of height to width.[192]
+
+The Monaco-Monte Carlo station is served by the SNCF, the French national rail system. The Monaco Heliport provides helicopter service to the closest airport, Côte d'Azur Airport in Nice, France.
+
+The Monaco bus company (CAM) covers all the tourist attractions, museums, Exotic garden, business centres, and the Casino or the Louis II Stadium.[193]
+
+Monaco is so old that it has outlived many of the nations and institutions that it has had relations with. The Crown of Aragon and Republic of Genoa became a part of other countries, as did the Kingdom of Sardinia. Honoré II, Prince of Monaco secured recognition of his independent sovereignty from Spain in 1633, and then from Louis XIII of France by the Treaty of Péronne (1641).
+
+Monaco made a special agreement with France in 1963 in which French customs laws apply in Monaco and its territorial waters.[131] Monaco uses the euro but is not a member of the European Union.[131] Monaco shares a 6-kilometre (3.7-mile) border with France but also has about 2-kilometre (1.2-mile) of coastline with the Mediterranean sea.[194] Two important agreements that support Monaco's independence from France include the Franco-Monégasque Treaty of 1861 and the French Treaty of 1918 (see also Kingdom of Sardinia). The United States CIA Factbook records 1419 as the year of Monaco's independence.[194]
+
+There are two embassies in Monaco: those of France and Italy.[195] There are about another 30 or so consulates.[195] By the 21st century Monaco maintained embassies in Belgium (Brussels), France (Paris), Germany (Berlin), the Vatican, Italy (Rome), Spain (Madrid), Switzerland (Bern), United Kingdom (London) and the United States (Washington).[195]
+
+In the year 2000 nearly two-thirds of the residents of Monaco were foreigners.[196] In 2015 the immigrant population was estimated at 60%[194] However, it is reported to be difficult to gain citizenship in Monaco, or at least in relative number there are not many people who do so.[183] In 2015 an immigration rate of about 4 people per 1,000 was noted, which works out to about 100–150 people a year.[197] The population of Monaco went from 35,000 in 2008 to 36,000 in 2013, and of that about 20 percent were native Monegasque[198] (see also Nationality law of Monaco).
+
+A recurring issue Monaco encounters with other countries is the attempt by foreign nationals to use Monaco to avoid paying taxes in their own country.[194] Monaco actually collects a number of taxes including a 20% VAT and 33% on companies unless they make over 75% of their income inside Monaco.[194] Monaco does not allow dual citizenship, but does have multiple paths to citizenship including by declaration and naturalisation.[199] In many cases the key issue for obtaining citizenship, rather than attaining residency in Monaco, is the person's ties to their departure country.[199] For example, French citizens must still pay taxes to France even if they live full-time in Monaco unless they resided in the country before 1962 for at least 5 years.[199] In the early 1960s there was some tension between France and Monaco over taxation.[200]
+
+There are no border formalities entering or leaving France. For visitors a souvenir passport stamp is available on request at Monaco's tourist office. This is located on the far side of the gardens that face the Casino.
+
+Coordinates: 43°44′N 7°25′E / 43.733°N 7.417°E / 43.733; 7.417

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+
+
+A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, is head of state for life or until abdication. The political legitimacy and authority of the monarch may vary from purely symbolic (crowned republic), to restricted (constitutional monarchy), to fully autocratic (absolute monarchy), and can expand across the domains of the executive, legislative and judicial. A monarchy can be a polity through unity, personal union, vassalage or federation, and monarchs can carry various titles such as king, queen, emperor, khan, caliph, tsar, sultan, or shah.
+
+In most cases, the succession of monarchies is hereditary, often building dynastic periods, however elective and self-proclaimed monarchies are possible. Aristocrats, though not inherent to monarchies, often serve as the pool of persons to draw the monarch from and fill the constituting institutions (e.g. diet and court), giving many monarchies oligarchic elements.
+
+Monarchies were the most common form of government until the 20th century. Today forty-five sovereign nations in the world have a monarch, including sixteen Commonwealth realms that have Elizabeth II as the head of state. Other than that there are a range of sub-national monarchic entities. Modern monarchies tend to be constitutional monarchies, retaining under a constitution unique legal and ceremonial roles for the monarch, exercising limited or no political power, similar to heads of state in a parliamentary republic.
+
+The opposing and alternative form of government to monarchy has become the republic.
+
+The word "monarch" (Late Latin: monarchia) comes from the Ancient Greek word μονάρχης (monárkhēs), derived from μόνος (mónos, "one, single") and ἄρχω (árkhō, "to rule") [compare ἄρχων (árkhōn, "ruler, chief")]. It referred to a single at least nominally absolute ruler. In current usage the word monarchy usually refers to a traditional system of hereditary rule, as elective monarchies are quite rare.
+
+The similar form of societal hierarchy known as chiefdom or tribal kingship is prehistoric. The oldest recorded and evidenced monarchies were Narmer, Pharaoh of Egypt c. 3100 BCE, and Enmebaragesi, a Sumerian King of Kish c. 2600 BCE.
+
+From earliest historical times, with the Egyptian and Mesopotamian monarchs as well as in reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion, the king held sacral functions directly connected to sacrifice or was considered by their people to have divine ancestry. In Germanic antiquity, kingship was primarily a sacral function. The king was directly hereditary for some tribes, while for others he was elected from among eligible members of royal families by the thing. The role of the Roman emperor as the protector of Christianity led eventually to monarchs ruling 'by the Grace of God' in the Christian Middle Ages, only later in the Early modern period there being a conflation of (increased) power with these sacral aspects held by the Germanic kings bringing forth the notion of the "divine right of kings". The Japanese and Nepalese monarchs continued to be considered living Gods into the modern period.
+
+Polybius identified monarchy as one of three "benign" basic forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy), opposed to the three "malignant" basic forms of government (tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy). The monarch in classical antiquity is often identified as "king" or "ruler" (translating archon, basileus, rex, tyrannos, etc.) or as "queen" (basilinna). Polybius originally understood monarchy[note 1] as a component of republics, but since antiquity monarchy has contrasted with forms of republic, where executive power is wielded by free citizens and their assemblies. In antiquity, some monarchies were abolished in favour of such assemblies in Rome (Roman Republic, 509 BCE), and Athens (Athenian democracy, 500 BCE).
+
+Monarchy has been challenged by evolving parliamentarism e.g. through regional assemblies (such as the Icelandic Commonwealth, the Swiss Landsgemeinde and later Tagsatzung, and the High Medieval communal movement linked to the rise of medieval town privileges) and by modern anti-monarchism e.g. of the temporary overthrow of the English monarchy by the Parliament of England in 1649,  the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789. One of many opponents of that trend was Elizabeth Dawbarn, whose anonymous Dialogue between Clara Neville and Louisa Mills, on Loyalty (1794) features "silly Louisa, who admires liberty, Tom Paine and the USA, [who is] lectured by Clara on God's approval of monarchy" and on the influence women can exert on men.[1]
+
+Since then advocacy of the abolition of a monarchy or respectively of republics has been called republicanism, while the advocacy of monarchies is called monarchism. As such republics have become the opposing and alternative form of government to monarchy,[2][3][4] despite some having seen infringements through lifelong or even hereditary heads of state.
+
+With the rise of republicanism a  diverse division between republicanism developed in the 19th-century politics (such as anti-monarchist radicalism) and conservative or even reactionary monarchism.  In the following 20th century many countries abolished monarchy and became republics, especially in the wake of World War I and World War II.
+
+Today forty-five sovereign nations in the world have a monarch, including sixteen Commonwealth realms that have Elizabeth II as the head of state. Most modern monarchs are constitutional monarchs, who retain a unique legal and ceremonial role but exercise limited or no political power under a constitution. Many are so-called crowned republics, surviving particularly in small states.[5]
+
+In some nations, however, such as Brunei, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Eswatini and Thailand, the hereditary monarch has more political influence than any other single source of authority in the state, either by convention or by a constitutional mandate.
+
+According to a 2020 study, monarchy arose as a system of governance because of an efficiency in governing large populations and expansive territories during periods when coordinating such populations was difficult. The authors argue that monarchy declined as an efficient regime type with innovations in communications and transportation technology, as the efficiency of monarchy relative to other regime types declined.[6]
+
+Monarchies are associated with hereditary reign, in which monarchs reign for life[note 2] and the responsibilities and power of the position pass to their child or another member of their family when they die. Most monarchs, both historically and in the modern-day, have been born and brought up within a royal family, the centre of the royal household and court. Growing up in a royal family (called a dynasty when it continues for several generations), future monarchs are often trained for their expected future responsibilities as monarch.
+
+Different systems of hereditary succession have been used, such as proximity of blood, primogeniture, and agnatic seniority (Salic law). While most monarchs in history have been male, many female monarchs also have reigned. The term "queen regnant" refers to a ruling monarch, while "queen consort" refers to the wife of a reigning king. Rule may be hereditary in practice without being considered a monarchy: there have been some family dictatorships[note 3] (and also political families) in many democracies.[note 4]
+
+The principal advantage of hereditary monarchy is the immediate continuity of leadership (as evidenced in the classic phrase "The King is dead. Long live the King!").
+
+Some monarchies are not hereditary. In an elective monarchy, monarchs are elected or appointed by some body (an electoral college) for life or a defined period. Four elective monarchies exist today: Cambodia, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates are 20th-century creations, while one (the papacy) is ancient.[7]
+
+A self-proclaimed monarchy is established when a person claims the monarchy without any historical ties to a previous dynasty. There are examples of republican leaders who have proclaimed themselves monarchs: Napoleon I of France declared himself Emperor of the French and ruled the First French Empire after having held the title of First Consul of the French Republic for five years from his seizing power in the coup of 18 Brumaire. President Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic declared himself Emperor of the Central African Empire in 1976.[8] Yuan Shikai, the first formal President of the Republic of China, crowned himself Emperor of the short-lived "Empire of China" a few years after the Republic of China was founded.[9]
+
+Most monarchies only have a single person acting as monarch at any given time, although two monarchs have ruled simultaneously in some countries, a situation known as diarchy. Historically this was the case in the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta, 17th-century Russia, and the Empire of Austria-Hungary from 1867 till its collapse in the wake of World War I.[11][12][13] here are examples of joint sovereignty of spouses, parent and child or other relatives (such as William III and Mary II in the kingdoms of England and Scotland, tsars Peter I and Ivan V of Russia, and Charles I and Joanna of Castile).
+
+Andorra currently is the world's only constitutional diarchy, a co-principality. Located in the Pyrenees between Spain and France, it has two co-princes: the bishop of Urgell in Spain (a prince-bishop) and the president of France (derived ex officio from the French kings, who themselves inherited the title from the counts of Foix). It is the only situation in which an independent country's (co-)monarch is democratically elected by the citizens of another country.
+
+In a personal union, separate independent states share the same person as monarch, but each realm retains separate laws and government. The sixteen separate Commonwealth realms are sometimes described as being in a personal union with Queen Elizabeth II as monarch; however, they can also be described as being in a shared monarchy.
+
+A regent may rule when the monarch is a minor, absent, or debilitated.
+
+A pretender is a claimant to an abolished throne or a throne already occupied by somebody else.
+
+Abdication is the act of formally giving up one's monarchical power and status.
+
+Monarchs may mark the ceremonial beginning of their reigns with a coronation or enthronement.
+
+Monarchy, especially absolute monarchy, is sometimes linked to religious aspects; many monarchs once claimed the right to rule by the will of a deity (Divine Right of Kings, Mandate of Heaven), or a special connection to a deity (sacred king), or even purported to be divine kings, or incarnations of deities themselves (imperial cult). Many European monarchs have been styled Fidei defensor (Defender of the Faith); some hold official positions relating to the state religion or established church.
+
+In the Western political tradition, a morally based, balanced monarchy was stressed as the ideal form of government, and little attention was paid to modern-day ideals of egalitarian democracy: e.g. Saint Thomas Aquinas unapologetically declared: "Tyranny is wont to occur not less but more frequently on the basis of polyarchy [rule by many, i.e. oligarchy or democracy] than on the basis of monarchy." (On Kingship). However, Thomas Aquinas also stated that the ideal monarchical system would also have at lower levels of government both an aristocracy and elements of democracy in order to create a balance of power. The monarch would also be subject to both natural and divine law, and to the Church in matters of religion.
+
+In Dante Alighieri's De Monarchia, a spiritualised, imperial Catholic monarchy is strongly promoted according to a Ghibelline world-view in which the "royal religion of Melchizedek" is emphasised against the priestly claims of the rival papal ideology.
+
+In Saudi Arabia, the king is a head of state who is both the absolute monarch of the country and the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques of Islam (خادم الحرمين الشريفين).
+
+Monarchs can have various titles. Common European titles of monarchs (in that hierarchical order of nobility) are emperor or empress (from Latin: imperator or imperatrix), king or queen, grand duke or grand duchess, prince or princess, duke or duchess.[14] Some early modern European titles (especially in German states) included elector (German: Kurfürst, Prince-Elector, literally "electing prince"), margrave (German: Markgraf, equivalent to the French title marquis, literally "count of the borderland"), and burgrave (German: Burggraf, literally "count of the castle"). Lesser titles include count and princely count. Slavic titles include knyaz and tsar (ц︢рь) or tsaritsa (царица), a word derived from the Roman imperial title Caesar.
+
+In the Muslim world, titles of monarchs include caliph (successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a leader of the entire Muslim community), padishah (emperor), sultan or sultana, shâhanshâh (emperor), shah, malik (king) or malikah (queen), emir (commander, prince) or emira (princess), sheikh or sheikha, imam (used in Oman). East Asian titles of monarchs include huángdì (emperor or empress regnant), tiānzǐ (son of heaven), tennō (emperor) or josei tennō (empress regnant), wang (king) or yeowang (queen regnant), hwangje (emperor) or yeohwang (empress regnant). South Asian and South East Asian titles included mahārāja ( high king) or maharani ( high queen), raja (king) and rana (king) or rani (queen) and ratu (South East Asian queen). Historically, Mongolic and Turkic monarchs have used the title khan and khagan (emperor) or khatun and khanum; Ancient Egyptian monarchs have used the title pharaoh for men and women. In Ethiopian Empire, monarchs used title nəgusä nägäst (king of kings) or nəgəstä nägäst (queen of kings).
+
+Many monarchs are addressed with particular styles or manners of address, like "Majesty", "Royal Highness", "By the Grace of God", Amīr al-Mu'minīn ("Leader of the Faithful"), Hünkar-i Khanedan-i Âl-i Osman, "Sovereign of the Sublime House of Osman"), Yang Maha Mulia Seri Paduka Baginda ("Majesty"), Jeonha ("Majesty"), Tennō Heika (literally "His Majesty the heavenly sovereign"), Bìxià ("Bottom of the Steps").
+
+Sometimes titles are used to express claims to territories that are not held in fact (for example, English claims to the French throne), or titles not recognised (antipopes). Also, after a monarchy is deposed, often former monarchs and their descendants are given alternative titles (the King of Portugal was given the hereditary title Duke of Braganza).
+
+In some cases monarchs are dependent on other powers (see vassals, suzerainty, puppet state, hegemony). In the British colonial era indirect rule under a paramount power existed, such as the princely states under the British Raj.
+
+In Botswana, South Africa, Ghana and Uganda, the ancient kingdoms and chiefdoms that were met by the colonialists when they first arrived on the continent are now constitutionally protected as regional or sectional entities.
+
+Furthermore, in Nigeria, though the hundreds of sub-regional polities that exist there are not provided for in the current constitution, they are nevertheless legally recognised aspects of the structure of governance that operates in the nation. For example, the Yoruba city-state of Akure in south-western Nigeria is something of an elective monarchy: its reigning Oba Deji has to be chosen by an electoral college of nobles from amongst a finite collection of royal princes of the realm upon the death or removal of an incumbent.
+
+In addition to these five countries, dependent monarchies of varied sizes and complexities exist all over the rest of the continent of Africa.
+
+Monarchies pre-date polities like nation states[15] and even territorial states. A nation or constitution is not necessary in a monarchy since a person, the monarch, binds the separate territories and political legitimacy (e.g. in personal union) together.
+
+Monarchies though have applied state symbols like insignia or abstracts like the concept of the the Crown to create a state identity, which is to be carried and occupied by the monarch, but represents the monarchy even in absence and succession of the monarch.
+
+Never the less monarchies can also be bound to territories (e.g., the King of Norway) and peoples (e.g., the King of the Belgians).
+
+In a hereditary monarchy, the position of monarch is inherited according to a statutory or customary order of succession, usually within one royal family tracing its origin through a historical dynasty or bloodline. This usually means that the heir to the throne is known well in advance of becoming monarch to ensure a smooth succession.[16][17]
+
+Primogeniture, in which the eldest child of the monarch is first in line to become monarch, is the most common system in hereditary monarchy. The order of succession is usually affected by rules on gender. Historically "agnatic primogeniture" or "patrilineal primogeniture" was favoured, that is inheritance according to seniority of birth among the sons of a monarch or head of family, with sons and their male issue inheriting before brothers and their issue, and male-line males inheriting before females of the male line.[18] This is the same as semi-Salic primogeniture. Complete exclusion of females from dynastic succession is commonly referred to as application of the Salic law (see Terra salica).
+
+Before primogeniture was enshrined in European law and tradition, kings would often secure the succession by having their successor (usually their eldest son) crowned during their own lifetime, so for a time there would be two kings in coregency—a senior king and a junior king. Examples were Henry the Young King of England and the early Direct Capetians in France. Sometimes, however, primogeniture can operate through the female line.
+
+In 1980, Sweden became the first European monarchy to declare equal (full cognatic) primogeniture, meaning that the eldest child of the monarch, whether female or male, ascends to the throne.[19] Other kingdoms (such as the Netherlands in 1983, Norway in 1990, Belgium in 1991, Denmark in 2009, and Luxembourg[20] in 2011) have since followed suit. The United Kingdom adopted absolute (equal) primogeniture (subject to the claims of existing heirs) on April 25, 2013, following agreement by the prime ministers of the sixteen Commonwealth Realms at the 22nd Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.[21]
+
+In the absence of children, the next most senior member of the collateral line (for example, a younger sibling of the previous monarch) becomes monarch. In complex cases, this can mean that there are closer blood relatives to the deceased monarch than the next in line according to primogeniture. This has often led, especially in Europe in the Middle Ages, to conflict between the principle of primogeniture and the principle of proximity of blood.
+
+Other hereditary systems of succession included tanistry, which is semi-elective and gives weight to merit and Agnatic seniority. In some monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia, succession to the throne first passes to the monarch's next eldest brother, and only after that to the monarch's children (agnatic seniority). However, on June 21, 2017, King Salman of Saudi Arabi revolted against this style of monarchy and elected his son to inherit the throne.[22]
+
+In an elective monarchy, monarchs are elected or appointed by somebody (an electoral college) for life or a defined period, but then reign like any other monarch. There is no popular vote involved in elective monarchies, as the elective body usually consists of a small number of eligible people. Historical examples of elective monarchy are the Holy Roman Emperors (chosen by prince-electors but often coming from the same dynasty) and the free election of kings of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. For example, Pepin the Short (father of Charlemagne) was elected King of the Franks by an assembly of Frankish leading men; nobleman Stanisław August Poniatowski of Poland was an elected king, as was Frederick I of Denmark. Germanic peoples also had elective monarchies.
+
+Six forms of elective monarchies exist today. The pope of the Roman Catholic Church (who rules as Sovereign of the Vatican City State) is elected for life by the College of Cardinals. In the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the Prince and Grand Master is elected for life tenure by the Council Complete of State from within its members. In Malaysia, the federal king, called the Yang di-Pertuan Agong or Paramount Ruler, is elected for a five-year term from among and by the hereditary rulers (mostly sultans) of nine of the federation's constitutive states, all on the Malay peninsula. The United Arab Emirates also chooses its federal leaders from among emirs of the federated states. Furthermore, Andorra has a unique constitutional arrangement as one of its heads of state is the President of the French Republic in the form of a Co-Prince. This is the only instance in the world where the monarch of a state is elected by the citizens of a different country. In New Zealand, the Maori King, head of the Kingitanga Movement, is elected by a council of Maori elders at the funeral of their predecessor, which is also where their coronation takes place. All of the Heads of the Maori King Movement have been descendants of the first Maori King, Potatau Te Wherowhero, who was elected and became King in June 1858. The current monarch is King Tuheitia Potatau Te Wherowhero VII, who was elected and became King on 21 August 2006, the same day as the funeral of his mother, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, the first Maori Queen. As well as being King and head of the Kingitanga Movement, King Tuheitia is also ex officio the Paramount Chief of the Waikato-Tainui tribe.
+
+Appointment by the current monarch is another system, used in Jordan. It also was used in Imperial Russia; however, it was soon changed to semi-Salic because the instability of the appointment system resulted in an age of palace revolutions. In this system, the monarch chooses the successor, who is always his relative.
+
+Other ways to success a monarchy can be through claiming alternative votes (e.g. as in the case of the Western Schism), claims of a mandate to rule (e.g. a popular or divine mandate), military occupation, a coup d'état, a will of the previous monarch or treaties between factions inside and outside of a monarchy (e.g. as in the case of the War of the Spanish Succession).
+
+The legitimacy and authorities of monarchs are often proclaimed and recognized through occupying and being invested with insignia, seats, deeds and titles, like in the course of coronations.
+
+This is especially employed to legitimize and settle disputed successions, changes in ways of succession, status of a monarch (e.g. as in the case of the privilegium maius deed) or new monarchies altogether (e.g. as in the case of the Coronation of Napoleon I).
+
+Succession is often based on the expected continuation of a dynastic period or association in a dynastic union, which is sometimes challenged by diverging lineage and legitimism.
+
+In cases of succession challenges it can be instrumental for pretenders to secure or install legitimacy through the above, for example proof of accession like insignia, through treaties or a claim of a divine mandate to rule (e.g. by Hong Xiuquan and his Taiping Heavenly Kingdom).
+
+Currently, there are 44 nations and a population of roughly half a billion people in the world with a monarch as head of state. They fall roughly into the following categories:
+
+Queen Elizabeth II is, separately, monarch of sixteen Commonwealth realms (Antigua and Barbuda, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). They evolved out of the British Empire into fully independent states within the Commonwealth of Nations that retain the Queen as head of state. All sixteen realms are constitutional monarchies and full democracies where the Queen has limited powers or a largely ceremonial role. The Queen is head of the Church of England (the established church of England), while the other 15 realms do not have a state religion.
+
+The Principality of Andorra, the Kingdom of Belgium, the Kingdom of Denmark, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Norway, the Kingdom of Spain, and the Kingdom of Sweden are fully democratic states in which the monarch has a limited or largely ceremonial role. In some cases, there is a Christian religion established as the official church in each of these countries. This is the Lutheran form of Protestantism in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, while Andorra is a Roman Catholic country. Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands have no official state religion. Luxembourg, which is predominantly Roman Catholic, has five so-called officially recognised cults of national importance (Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Greek Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Islam), a status which gives to those religions some privileges like the payment of a state salary to their priests.
+
+Andorra is unique among all existing monarchies, as it is a diarchy, with the co-princeship being shared by the president of France and the bishop of Urgell. This situation, based on historical precedence, has created a peculiar situation among monarchies, as:
+
+The Principality of Liechtenstein and the Principality of Monaco are constitutional monarchies in which the prince retains substantial powers. For example, the 2003 Constitution referendum gave the Prince of Liechtenstein the power to veto any law that the Landtag (parliament) proposes, while the Landtag can veto any law that the Prince tries to pass. The prince can appoint or dismiss any elective member or government employee. However, he is not an absolute monarch, as the people can call for a referendum to end the monarch's reign. When Hereditary Prince Alois threatened to veto a referendum to legalize abortion in 2011, it came as a surprise because the prince had not vetoed any law for over 30 years.[note 5] The prince of Monaco has simpler powers; he cannot appoint or dismiss any elective member or government employee to or from his or her post, but he can elect the minister of state, government council and judges. Both Albert II, Prince of Monaco, and Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein, are theoretically very powerful within their small states, but they have very limited power compared to the Islamic monarchs (see below). They also own huge tracts of land and are shareholders in many companies.
+
+The Islamic monarchs of the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Nation of Brunei, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the State of Kuwait, Malaysia, the Kingdom of Morocco, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates generally retain far more powers than their European or Commonwealth counterparts. Brunei, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia remain absolute monarchies; Bahrain, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates are classified as mixed, meaning there are representative bodies of some kind, but the monarch retains most of his powers; Jordan, Malaysia, and Morocco are constitutional monarchies, but their monarchs still retain more substantial powers than European equivalents.
+
+The Kingdom of Bhutan, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Kingdom of Thailand and Japan are constitutional monarchies where the monarch has a limited or merely ceremonial role. Japan changed from traditional absolute monarchy into a constitutional one during the 20th century, and Bhutan made the change in 2008. Cambodia had its own monarchy after independence from the French Colonial Empire, but it was deposed after the Khmer Rouge came into power. The monarchy was subsequently restored in the peace agreement of 1993. Thailand transitioned into a constitutional monarchy over the course of the 20th Century.
+
+Five monarchies do not fit into any of the above groups by virtue of geography or class of monarchy: the Kingdom of Tonga in Polynesia; the Kingdom of Eswatini and the Kingdom of Lesotho in Africa; the Vatican City State in Europe and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Of these, Lesotho and Tonga are constitutional monarchies, while Eswatini and the Vatican City are absolute monarchies. Eswatini is unique among these monarchies, often being considered a diarchy: the King, or Ngwenyama, rules alongside his mother, the Ndlovukati, as dual heads of state (this was originally intended to provide a check on political power). The Ngwenyama, however, is considered the administrative head of state, while the Ndlovukati is considered the spiritual and national head of state, a position which more or less has become symbolic in recent years. The Pope is the absolute monarch of the Vatican City State (a separate entity from the Holy See) by virtue of his position as head of the Roman Catholic Church and Bishop of Rome; he is an elected rather than a hereditary ruler and does not have to be a citizen of the territory prior to his election by the cardinals. The Order of Malta describes itself as a "sovereign subject" based on its unique history and unusual present circumstances, but its exact status in international law is subject of debate. Samoa, the position is described in Part III of the 1960 Samoan constitution. At the time the constitution was adopted, it was anticipated that future heads of state would be chosen from among the four Tama a 'Aiga "royal" paramount chiefs. However, this is not required by the constitution, so, for this reason, Samoa can be considered a republic rather than a constitutional monarchy.
+
+The ruling Kim family in North Korea (Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un) has been described as a de facto absolute monarchy[23][24][25] or a "hereditary dictatorship".[26] In 2013, Clause 2 of Article 10 of the new edited Ten Fundamental Principles of the Korean Workers' Party states that the party and revolution must be carried "eternally" by the "Baekdu (Kim's) bloodline".[27]
+
+This also happened in Azerbaijan, when Heydar Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, died. He was succeeded by his son Ilham. But it is referred as an Monarch President.

en/3918.html.txt

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+
+
+Coordinates: 42°S 173°E / 42°S 173°E / -42; 173
+
+New Zealand (Māori: Aotearoa [aɔˈtɛaɾɔa]) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It comprises two main landmasses—the North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui) and the South Island (Te Waipounamu)—and around 600 smaller islands, covering a total area of 268,021 square kilometres (103,500 sq mi). New Zealand is about 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and 1,000 kilometres (600 mi) south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland.
+
+Owing to their remoteness, the islands of New Zealand were the last large habitable lands to be settled by humans. Between about 1280 and 1350, Polynesians began to settle in the islands, and then developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand. In 1840, representatives of the United Kingdom and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which declared British sovereignty over the islands. In 1841, New Zealand became a colony within the British Empire and in 1907 it became a dominion; it gained full statutory independence in 1947 and the British monarch remained the head of state. Today, the majority of New Zealand's population of 5 million is of European descent; the indigenous Māori are the largest minority, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Reflecting this, New Zealand's culture is mainly derived from Māori and early British settlers, with recent broadening arising from increased immigration. The official languages are English, Māori, and New Zealand Sign Language, with English being very dominant.
+
+A developed country, New Zealand ranks highly in international comparisons of national performance, such as quality of life, education, protection of civil liberties, government transparency, and economic freedom. New Zealand underwent major economic changes during the 1980s, which transformed it from a protectionist to a liberalised free-trade economy. The service sector dominates the national economy, followed by the industrial sector, and agriculture; international tourism is a significant source of revenue. Nationally, legislative authority is vested in an elected, unicameral Parliament, while executive political power is exercised by the Cabinet, led by the prime minister, currently Jacinda Ardern. Queen Elizabeth II is the country's monarch and is represented by a governor-general, currently Dame Patsy Reddy. In addition, New Zealand is organised into 11 regional councils and 67 territorial authorities for local government purposes. The Realm of New Zealand also includes Tokelau (a dependent territory); the Cook Islands and Niue (self-governing states in free association with New Zealand); and the Ross Dependency, which is New Zealand's territorial claim in Antarctica.
+
+New Zealand is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, ASEAN Plus Six, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Pacific Community and the Pacific Islands Forum.
+
+The first European visitor to New Zealand, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, named the islands Staten Land, believing they were part of the Staten Landt that Jacob Le Maire had sighted off the southern end of South America.[11][12] Hendrik Brouwer proved that the South American land was a small island in 1643, and Dutch cartographers subsequently renamed Tasman's discovery Nova Zeelandia, from Latin, after the Dutch province of Zeeland.[11][13] This name was later anglicised to "New Zealand".[14][15]
+
+Aotearoa (pronounced [aɔˈtɛaɾɔa] in Māori and /ˌaʊtɛəˈroʊ.ə/ in English; often translated as "land of the long white cloud")[16] is the current Māori name for New Zealand. It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the whole country before the arrival of Europeans, with Aotearoa originally referring to just the North Island.[17] Māori had several traditional names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui (the fish of Māui) for the North Island and Te Waipounamu (the waters of greenstone) or Te Waka o Aoraki (the canoe of Aoraki) for the South Island.[18] Early European maps labelled the islands North (North Island), Middle (South Island) and South (Stewart Island / Rakiura).[19] In 1830, mapmakers began to use "North" and "South" on their maps to distinguish the two largest islands and by 1907 this was the accepted norm.[15] The New Zealand Geographic Board discovered in 2009 that the names of the North Island and South Island had never been formalised, and names and alternative names were formalised in 2013. This set the names as North Island or Te Ika-a-Māui, and South Island or Te Waipounamu.[20] For each island, either its English or Māori name can be used, or both can be used together.[20]
+
+New Zealand is one of the last major landmasses settled by humans. Radiocarbon dating, evidence of deforestation[22] and mitochondrial DNA variability within Māori populations[23] suggest that Eastern Polynesians first settled the New Zealand archipelago between 1250 and 1300,[18][24] although newer  archaeological and genetic research points to a date no earlier than about 1280, with at least the main settlement period between about 1320 and 1350,[25][26] consistent with evidence based on genealogical traditions.[27][28] This represented a culmination in a long series of voyages through the Pacific islands.[29] Over the centuries that followed, the Polynesian settlers developed a distinct culture now known as Māori. The population formed different iwi (tribes) and hapū (subtribes) which would sometimes cooperate, sometimes compete and sometimes fight against each other.[30] At some point a group of Māori migrated to Rēkohu, now known as the Chatham Islands, where they developed their distinct Moriori culture.[31][32] The Moriori population was all but wiped out between 1835 and 1862, largely because of Taranaki Māori invasion and enslavement in the 1830s, although European diseases also contributed. In 1862 only 101 survived, and the last known full-blooded Moriori died in 1933.[33]
+
+The first Europeans known to have reached New Zealand were the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman and his crew in 1642.[34] In a hostile encounter, four crew members were killed and at least one Māori was hit by canister shot.[35] Europeans did not revisit New Zealand until 1769 when British explorer James Cook mapped almost the entire coastline.[34] Following Cook, New Zealand was visited by numerous European and North American whaling, sealing and trading ships. They traded European food, metal tools, weapons and other goods for timber, Māori food, artefacts and water.[36] The introduction of the potato and the musket transformed Māori agriculture and warfare. Potatoes provided a reliable food surplus, which enabled longer and more sustained military campaigns.[37] The resulting intertribal Musket Wars encompassed over 600 battles between 1801 and 1840, killing 30,000–40,000 Māori.[38] From the early 19th century, Christian missionaries began to settle New Zealand, eventually converting most of the Māori population.[39] The Māori population declined to around 40% of its pre-contact level during the 19th century; introduced diseases were the major factor.[40]
+
+In 1788 Captain Arthur Phillip assumed the position of Governor of the new British colony of New South Wales which according to his commission included New Zealand.[41] The British Government appointed James Busby as British Resident to New Zealand in 1832 following a petition from northern Māori.[42] In 1835, following an announcement of impending French settlement by Charles de Thierry, the nebulous United Tribes of New Zealand sent a Declaration of Independence to King William IV of the United Kingdom asking for protection.[42] Ongoing unrest, the proposed settlement of New Zealand by the New Zealand Company (which had already sent its first ship of surveyors to buy land from Māori) and the dubious legal standing of the Declaration of Independence prompted the Colonial Office to send Captain William Hobson to claim sovereignty for the United Kingdom and negotiate a treaty with the Māori.[43] The Treaty of Waitangi was first signed in the Bay of Islands on 6 February 1840.[44] In response to the New Zealand Company's attempts to establish an independent settlement in Wellington[45] and French settlers purchasing land in Akaroa,[46] Hobson declared British sovereignty over all of New Zealand on 21 May 1840, even though copies of the Treaty were still circulating throughout the country for Māori to sign.[47] With the signing of the Treaty and declaration of sovereignty the number of immigrants, particularly from the United Kingdom, began to increase.[48]
+
+New Zealand, still part of the colony of New South Wales, became a separate Colony of New Zealand on 1 July 1841.[49] Armed conflict began between the Colonial government and
+Māori in 1843 with the Wairau Affray over land and disagreements over sovereignty. These conflicts, mainly in the North Island, saw thousands of imperial troops and the Royal Navy come to New Zealand and became known as the New Zealand Wars. Following these armed conflicts, large amounts of Māori land was confiscated by the government to meet settler demands.[50]
+
+The colony gained a representative government in 1852 and the first Parliament met in 1854.[51] In 1856 the colony effectively became self-governing, gaining responsibility over all domestic matters other than native policy.[51] (Control over native policy was granted in the mid-1860s.[51]) Following concerns that the South Island might form a separate colony, premier Alfred Domett moved a resolution to transfer the capital from Auckland to a locality near Cook Strait.[52] Wellington was chosen for its central location, with Parliament officially sitting there for the first time in 1865.[53]
+
+In 1891 the Liberal Party came to power as the first organised political party.[54] The Liberal Government, led by Richard Seddon for most of its period in office,[55] passed many important social and economic measures. In 1893 New Zealand was the first nation in the world to grant all women the right to vote[54] and in 1894 pioneered the adoption of compulsory arbitration between employers and unions.[56]
+
+In 1907, at the request of the New Zealand Parliament, King Edward VII proclaimed New Zealand a Dominion within the British Empire,[57] reflecting its self-governing status.[58] In 1947 the country adopted the Statute of Westminster, confirming that the British Parliament could no longer legislate for New Zealand without the consent of New Zealand.[51]
+
+Early in the 20th century, New Zealand was involved in world affairs, fighting in the First and Second World Wars[59] and suffering through the Great Depression.[60] The depression led to the election of the First Labour Government and the establishment of a comprehensive welfare state and a protectionist economy.[61] New Zealand experienced increasing prosperity following the Second World War[62] and Māori began to leave their traditional rural life and move to the cities in search of work.[63] A Māori protest movement developed, which criticised Eurocentrism and worked for greater recognition of Māori culture and of the Treaty of Waitangi.[64] In 1975, a Waitangi Tribunal was set up to investigate alleged breaches of the Treaty, and it was enabled to investigate historic grievances in 1985.[44] The government has negotiated settlements of these grievances with many iwi,[65] although Māori claims to the foreshore and seabed proved controversial in the 2000s.[66][67]
+
+New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy,[68] although its constitution is not codified.[69] Elizabeth II is the queen of New Zealand[70] and thus the head of state.[71] The queen is represented by the governor-general, whom she appoints on the advice of the prime minister.[72] The governor-general can exercise the Crown's prerogative powers, such as reviewing cases of injustice and making appointments of ministers, ambassadors and other key public officials,[73] and in rare situations, the reserve powers (e.g. the power to dissolve parliament or refuse the royal assent of a bill into law).[74] The powers of the monarch and the governor-general are limited by constitutional constraints and they cannot normally be exercised without the advice of ministers.[74]
+
+The New Zealand Parliament holds legislative power and consists of the queen and the House of Representatives.[75] It also included an upper house, the Legislative Council, until this was abolished in 1950.[75] The supremacy of parliament over the Crown and other government institutions was established in England by the Bill of Rights 1689 and has been ratified as law in New Zealand.[75] The House of Representatives is democratically elected and a government is formed from the party or coalition with the majority of seats. If no majority is formed, a minority government can be formed if support from other parties during confidence and supply votes is assured.[75] The governor-general appoints ministers under advice from the prime minister, who is by convention the parliamentary leader of the governing party or coalition.[76] Cabinet, formed by ministers and led by the prime minister, is the highest policy-making body in government and responsible for deciding significant government actions.[77] Members of Cabinet make major decisions collectively, and are therefore collectively responsible for the consequences of these decisions.[78]
+
+A parliamentary general election must be called no later than three years after the previous election.[79] Almost all general elections between 1853 and 1993 were held under the first-past-the-post voting system.[80] Since the 1996 election, a form of proportional representation called mixed-member proportional (MMP) has been used.[69] Under the MMP system, each person has two votes; one is for a candidate standing in the voter's electorate and the other is for a party. Since the 2014 election, there have been 71 electorates (which include seven Māori electorates in which only Māori can optionally vote),[81] and the remaining 49 of the 120 seats are assigned so that representation in parliament reflects the party vote, with the threshold that a party must win at least one electorate or 5% of the total party vote before it is eligible for a seat.[82]
+
+Elections since the 1930s have been dominated by two political parties, National and Labour.[80] Between March 2005 and August 2006, New Zealand became the first country in the world in which all the highest offices in the land—head of state, governor-general, prime minister, speaker and chief justice—were occupied simultaneously by women.[83] The current prime minister is Jacinda Ardern, who has been in office since 26 October 2017.[84] She is the country's third female prime minister.[85]
+
+New Zealand's judiciary, headed by the chief justice,[86] includes the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, the High Court, and subordinate courts.[87] Judges and judicial officers are appointed non-politically and under strict rules regarding tenure to help maintain judicial independence.[69] This theoretically allows the judiciary to interpret the law based solely on the legislation enacted by Parliament without other influences on their decisions.[88]
+
+New Zealand is identified as one of the world's most stable and well-governed states.[89] As at 2017[update], the country was ranked fourth in the strength of its democratic institutions,[90] and first in government transparency and lack of corruption.[91] A 2017 Human Rights Report by the U.S. Department of State noted that the government generally respected the rights of individuals, but voiced concerns regarding the social status of the Māori population.[92] New Zealand ranks highly for civic participation in the political process, with 80% voter turnout during recent elections, compared to an OECD average of 68%.[93]
+
+Early colonial New Zealand allowed the British Government to determine external trade and be responsible for foreign policy.[94] The 1923 and 1926 Imperial Conferences decided that New Zealand should be allowed to negotiate its own political treaties and the first commercial treaty was ratified in 1928 with Japan. On 3 September 1939 New Zealand allied itself with Britain and declared war on Germany with Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage proclaiming, "Where she goes, we go; where she stands, we stand."[95]
+
+In 1951 the United Kingdom became increasingly focused on its European interests,[96] while New Zealand joined Australia and the United States in the ANZUS security treaty.[97] The influence of the United States on New Zealand weakened following protests over the Vietnam War,[98] the refusal of the United States to admonish France after the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior,[99] disagreements over environmental and agricultural trade issues and New Zealand's nuclear-free policy.[100][101] Despite the United States' suspension of ANZUS obligations the treaty remained in effect between New Zealand and Australia, whose foreign policy has followed a similar historical trend.[102] Close political contact is maintained between the two countries, with free trade agreements and travel arrangements that allow citizens to visit, live and work in both countries without restrictions.[103] In 2013[update] there were about 650,000 New Zealand citizens living in Australia, which is equivalent to 15% of the resident population of New Zealand.[104]
+
+New Zealand has a strong presence among the Pacific Island countries. A large proportion of New Zealand's aid goes to these countries and many Pacific people migrate to New Zealand for employment.[105] Permanent migration is regulated under the 1970 Samoan Quota Scheme and the 2002 Pacific Access Category, which allow up to 1,100 Samoan nationals and up to 750 other Pacific Islanders respectively to become permanent New Zealand residents each year. A seasonal workers scheme for temporary migration was introduced in 2007 and in 2009 about 8,000 Pacific Islanders were employed under it.[106] New Zealand is involved in the Pacific Islands Forum, the Pacific Community, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (including the East Asia Summit).[103] New Zealand has been described as an emerging power.[107][108] The country is a member of the United Nations,[109] the Commonwealth of Nations[110] and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),[111] and participates in the Five Power Defence Arrangements.[112]
+
+New Zealand's military services—the Defence Force—comprise the New Zealand Army, the Royal New Zealand Air Force and the Royal New Zealand Navy.[113] New Zealand's national defence needs are modest, since a direct attack is unlikely.[114] However, its military has had a global presence. The country fought in both world wars, with notable campaigns in Gallipoli, Crete,[115] El Alamein[116] and Cassino.[117] The Gallipoli campaign played an important part in fostering New Zealand's national identity[118][119] and strengthened the ANZAC tradition it shares with Australia.[120]
+
+In addition to Vietnam and the two world wars, New Zealand fought in the Second Boer War,[121] the Korean War,[122] the Malayan Emergency,[123] the Gulf War and the Afghanistan War. It has contributed forces to several regional and global peacekeeping missions, such as those in Cyprus, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Sinai, Angola, Cambodia, the Iran–Iraq border, Bougainville, East Timor, and the Solomon Islands.[124]
+
+The early European settlers divided New Zealand into provinces, which had a degree of autonomy.[125] Because of financial pressures and the desire to consolidate railways, education, land sales and other policies, government was centralised and the provinces were abolished in 1876.[126] The provinces are remembered in regional public holidays[127] and sporting rivalries.[128]
+
+Since 1876, various councils have administered local areas under legislation determined by the central government.[125][129] In 1989, the government reorganised local government into the current two-tier structure of regional councils and territorial authorities.[130] The 249 municipalities[130] that existed in 1975 have now been consolidated into 67 territorial authorities and 11 regional councils.[131] The regional councils' role is to regulate "the natural environment with particular emphasis on resource management",[130] while territorial authorities are responsible for sewage, water, local roads, building consents and other local matters.[132][133] Five of the territorial councils are unitary authorities and also act as regional councils.[133] The territorial authorities consist of 13 city councils, 53 district councils, and the Chatham Islands Council. While officially the Chatham Islands Council is not a unitary authority, it undertakes many functions of a regional council.[134]
+
+The Realm of New Zealand, one of 16 Commonwealth realms,[135] is the entire area over which the queen of New Zealand is sovereign, and comprises New Zealand, Tokelau, the Ross Dependency, the Cook Islands and Niue.[68] The Cook Islands and Niue are self-governing states in free association with New Zealand.[136][137] The New Zealand Parliament cannot pass legislation for these countries, but with their consent can act on behalf of them in foreign affairs and defence. Tokelau is classified as a non-self-governing territory, but is administered by a council of three elders (one from each Tokelauan atoll).[138] The Ross Dependency is New Zealand's territorial claim in Antarctica, where it operates the Scott Base research facility.[139] New Zealand nationality law treats all parts of the realm equally, so most people born in New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau and the Ross Dependency are New Zealand citizens.[140][n 7]
+
+New Zealand is located near the centre of the water hemisphere and is made up of two main islands and a number of smaller islands. The two main islands (the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu) are separated by Cook Strait, 22 kilometres (14 mi) wide at its narrowest point.[142] Besides the North and South Islands, the five largest inhabited islands are Stewart Island (across the Foveaux Strait), Chatham Island, Great Barrier Island (in the Hauraki Gulf),[143] D'Urville Island (in the Marlborough Sounds)[144] and Waiheke Island (about 22 km (14 mi) from central Auckland).[145]
+
+New Zealand is long and narrow—over 1,600 kilometres (990 mi) along its north-north-east axis with a maximum width of 400 kilometres (250 mi)[146]—with about 15,000 km (9,300 mi) of coastline[147] and a total land area of 268,000 square kilometres (103,500 sq mi).[148] Because of its far-flung outlying islands and long coastline, the country has extensive marine resources. Its exclusive economic zone is one of the largest in the world, covering more than 15 times its land area.[149]
+
+The South Island is the largest landmass of New Zealand. It is divided along its length by the Southern Alps.[150] There are 18 peaks over 3,000 metres (9,800 ft), the highest of which is Aoraki / Mount Cook at 3,724 metres (12,218 ft).[151] Fiordland's steep mountains and deep fiords record the extensive ice age glaciation of this southwestern corner of the South Island.[152] The North Island is less mountainous but is marked by volcanism.[153] The highly active Taupo Volcanic Zone has formed a large volcanic plateau, punctuated by the North Island's highest mountain, Mount Ruapehu (2,797 metres (9,177 ft)). The plateau also hosts the country's largest lake, Lake Taupo,[154] nestled in the caldera of one of the world's most active supervolcanoes.[155]
+
+The country owes its varied topography, and perhaps even its emergence above the waves, to the dynamic boundary it straddles between the Pacific and Indo-Australian Plates.[156] New Zealand is part of Zealandia, a microcontinent nearly half the size of Australia that gradually submerged after breaking away from the Gondwanan supercontinent.[157][158] About 25 million years ago, a shift in plate tectonic movements began to contort and crumple the region. This is now most evident in the Southern Alps, formed by compression of the crust beside the Alpine Fault. Elsewhere the plate boundary involves the subduction of one plate under the other, producing the Puysegur Trench to the south, the Hikurangi Trench east of the North Island, and the Kermadec and Tonga Trenches[159] further north.[156]
+
+New Zealand is part of a region known as Australasia, together with Australia.[160] It also forms the southwestern extremity of the geographic and ethnographic region called Polynesia.[161] The term Oceania is often used to denote the wider region encompassing the Australian continent, New Zealand and various islands in the Pacific Ocean that are not included in the seven-continent model.[162]
+
+Rural scene near Queenstown
+
+The Emerald Lakes, Mt Tongariro
+
+Lake Gunn
+
+Pencarrow Head, Wellington
+
+New Zealand's climate is predominantly temperate maritime (Köppen: Cfb), with mean annual temperatures ranging from 10 °C (50 °F) in the south to 16 °C (61 °F) in the north.[163] Historical maxima and minima are 42.4 °C (108.32 °F) in Rangiora, Canterbury and −25.6 °C (−14.08 °F) in Ranfurly, Otago.[164] Conditions vary sharply across regions from extremely wet on the West Coast of the South Island to almost semi-arid in Central Otago and the Mackenzie Basin of inland Canterbury, and subtropical in Northland.[165][166] Of the seven largest cities, Christchurch is the driest, receiving on average only 640 millimetres (25 in) of rain per year and Wellington the wettest, receiving almost twice that amount.[167] Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch all receive a yearly average of more than 2,000 hours of sunshine. The southern and southwestern parts of the South Island have a cooler and cloudier climate, with around 1,400–1,600 hours; the northern and northeastern parts of the South Island are the sunniest areas of the country and receive about 2,400–2,500 hours.[168] The general snow season is early June until early October, though cold snaps can occur outside this season.[169] Snowfall is common in the eastern and southern parts of the South Island and mountain areas across the country.[163]
+
+The table below lists climate normals for the warmest and coldest months in New Zealand's six largest cities. North Island cities are generally warmest in February. South Island cities are warmest in January.
+
+New Zealand's geographic isolation for 80 million years[171] and island biogeography has influenced evolution of the country's species of animals, fungi and plants. Physical isolation has caused biological isolation, resulting in a dynamic evolutionary ecology with examples of very distinctive plants and animals as well as populations of widespread species.[172][173] About 82% of New Zealand's indigenous vascular plants are endemic, covering 1,944 species across 65 genera.[174][175] The number of fungi recorded from New Zealand, including lichen-forming species, is not known, nor is the proportion of those fungi which are endemic, but one estimate suggests there are about 2,300 species of lichen-forming fungi in New Zealand[174] and 40% of these are endemic.[176] The two main types of forest are those dominated by broadleaf trees with emergent podocarps, or by southern beech in cooler climates.[177] The remaining vegetation types consist of grasslands, the majority of which are tussock.[178]
+
+Before the arrival of humans, an estimated 80% of the land was covered in forest, with only high alpine, wet, infertile and volcanic areas without trees.[179] Massive deforestation occurred after humans arrived, with around half the forest cover lost to fire after Polynesian settlement.[180] Much of the remaining forest fell after European settlement, being logged or cleared to make room for pastoral farming, leaving forest occupying only 23% of the land.[181]
+
+The forests were dominated by birds, and the lack of mammalian predators led to some like the kiwi, kakapo, weka and takahē evolving flightlessness.[182] The arrival of humans, associated changes to habitat, and the introduction of rats, ferrets and other mammals led to the extinction of many bird species, including large birds like the moa and Haast's eagle.[183][184]
+
+Other indigenous animals are represented by reptiles (tuatara, skinks and geckos), frogs,[185] spiders,[186] insects (wētā)[187] and snails.[188] Some, such as the tuatara, are so unique that they have been called living fossils.[189] Three species of bats (one since extinct) were the only sign of native land mammals in New Zealand until the 2006 discovery of bones from a unique, mouse-sized land mammal at least 16 million years old.[190][191] Marine mammals however are abundant, with almost half the world's cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) and large numbers of fur seals reported in New Zealand waters.[192] Many seabirds breed in New Zealand, a third of them unique to the country.[193] More penguin species are found in New Zealand than in any other country.[194]
+
+Since human arrival, almost half of the country's vertebrate species have become extinct, including at least fifty-one birds, three frogs, three lizards, one freshwater fish, and one bat. Others are endangered or have had their range severely reduced.[183] However, New Zealand conservationists have pioneered several methods to help threatened wildlife recover, including island sanctuaries, pest control, wildlife translocation, fostering and ecological restoration of islands and other protected areas.[195][196][197][198]
+
+New Zealand has an advanced market economy,[199] ranked 16th in the 2018[update] Human Development Index[8] and third in the 2018[update] Index of Economic Freedom.[200] It is a high-income economy with a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of US$36,254.[6] The currency is the New Zealand dollar, informally known as the "Kiwi dollar"; it also circulates in the Cook Islands (see Cook Islands dollar), Niue, Tokelau, and the Pitcairn Islands.[201]
+
+Historically, extractive industries have contributed strongly to New Zealand's economy, focussing at different times on sealing, whaling, flax, gold, kauri gum, and native timber.[202] The first shipment of refrigerated meat on the Dunedin in 1882 led to the establishment of meat and dairy exports to Britain, a trade which provided the basis for strong economic growth in New Zealand.[203] High demand for agricultural products from the United Kingdom and the United States helped New Zealanders achieve higher living standards than both Australia and Western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s.[204] In 1973, New Zealand's export market was reduced when the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community[205] and other compounding factors, such as the 1973 oil and 1979 energy crises, led to a severe economic depression.[206] Living standards in New Zealand fell behind those of Australia and Western Europe, and by 1982 New Zealand had the lowest per-capita income of all the developed nations surveyed by the World Bank.[207] In the mid-1980s New Zealand deregulated its agricultural sector by phasing out subsidies over a three-year period.[208][209] Since 1984, successive governments engaged in major macroeconomic restructuring (known first as Rogernomics and then Ruthanasia), rapidly transforming New Zealand from a protected and highly regulated economy to a liberalised free-trade economy.[210][211]
+
+Unemployment peaked above 10% in 1991 and 1992,[213] following the 1987 share market crash, but eventually fell to a record low (since 1986) of 3.7% in 2007 (ranking third from twenty-seven comparable OECD nations).[213] However, the global financial crisis that followed had a major impact on New Zealand, with the GDP shrinking for five consecutive quarters, the longest recession in over thirty years,[214][215] and unemployment rising back to 7% in late 2009.[216] Unemployment rates for different age groups follow similar trends, but are consistently higher among youth. In the December 2014 quarter, the general unemployment rate was around 5.8%, while the unemployment rate for youth aged 15 to 21 was 15.6%.[213] New Zealand has experienced a series of "brain drains" since the 1970s[217] that still continue today.[218] Nearly one quarter of highly skilled workers live overseas, mostly in Australia and Britain, which is the largest proportion from any developed nation.[219] In recent decades, however, a "brain gain" has brought in educated professionals from Europe and less developed countries.[220][221] Today New Zealand's economy benefits from a high level of innovation.[222]
+
+New Zealand is heavily dependent on international trade,[223] particularly in agricultural products.[224] Exports account for 24% of its output,[147] making New Zealand vulnerable to international commodity prices and global economic slowdowns. Food products made up 55% of the value of all the country's exports in 2014; wood was the second largest earner (7%).[225] New Zealand's main trading partners, as at June 2018[update], are China (NZ$27.8b), Australia ($26.2b), the European Union ($22.9b), the United States ($17.6b), and Japan ($8.4b).[226] On 7 April 2008, New Zealand and China signed the New Zealand–China Free Trade Agreement, the first such agreement China has signed with a developed country.[227] The service sector is the largest sector in the economy, followed by manufacturing and construction and then farming and raw material extraction.[147] Tourism plays a significant role in the economy, contributing $12.9 billion (or 5.6%) to New Zealand's total GDP and supporting 7.5% of the total workforce in 2016.[228] International visitor arrivals are expected to increase at a rate of 5.4% annually up to 2022.[228]
+
+Wool was New Zealand's major agricultural export during the late 19th century.[202] Even as late as the 1960s it made up over a third of all export revenues,[202] but since then its price has steadily dropped relative to other commodities[229] and wool is no longer profitable for many farmers.[230] In contrast dairy farming increased, with the number of dairy cows doubling between 1990 and 2007,[231] to become New Zealand's largest export earner.[232] In the year to June 2018, dairy products accounted for 17.7% ($14.1 billion) of total exports,[226] and the country's largest company, Fonterra, controls almost one-third of the international dairy trade.[233] Other exports in 2017-18 were meat (8.8%), wood and wood products (6.2%), fruit (3.6%), machinery (2.2%) and wine (2.1%).[226] New Zealand's wine industry has followed a similar trend to dairy, the number of vineyards doubling over the same period,[234] overtaking wool exports for the first time in 2007.[235][236]
+
+In 2015, renewable energy generated 40.1% of New Zealand's gross energy supply.[237]  The majority of the country's electricity supply is generated from hydroelectric power, with major schemes on the Waikato, Waitaki and Clutha rivers, as well as at Manapouri. Geothermal power is also a significant generator of electricity, with several large stations located across the Taupo Volcanic Zone in the North Island. The five main companies in the generation and retail market are Contact Energy, Genesis Energy, Mercury Energy, Meridian Energy, and TrustPower. State-owned Transpower operates the high-voltage transmission grids in the North and South Islands, as well as the Inter-Island HVDC link connecting the two together.[237]
+
+The provision of water supply and sanitation is generally of good quality. Regional authorities provide water abstraction, treatment and distribution infrastructure to most developed areas.[238][239]
+
+New Zealand's transport network comprises 94,000 kilometres (58,410 mi) of roads, including 199 kilometres (124 mi) of motorways,[240] and 4,128 kilometres (2,565 mi) of railway lines.[147] Most major cities and towns are linked by bus services, although the private car is the predominant mode of transport.[241] The railways were privatised in 1993, but were re-nationalised by the government in stages between 2004 and 2008. The state-owned enterprise KiwiRail now operates the railways, with the exception of commuter services in Auckland and Wellington which are operated by Transdev[242] and Metlink,[243] respectively. Railways run the length of the country, although most lines now carry freight rather than passengers.[244] The road and rail networks in the two main islands are linked by roll-on/roll-off ferries between Wellington and Picton, operated by Interislander (part of KiwiRail) and Bluebridge. Most international visitors arrive via air[245] and New Zealand has six international airports, but currently[update] only the Auckland and Christchurch airports connect directly with countries other than Australia or Fiji.[246]
+
+The New Zealand Post Office had a monopoly over telecommunications in New Zealand until 1987 when Telecom New Zealand was formed, initially as a state-owned enterprise and then privatised in 1990.[247] Chorus, which was split from Telecom (now Spark) in 2011,[248] still owns the majority of the telecommunications infrastructure, but competition from other providers has increased.[247] A large-scale rollout of gigabit-capable fibre to the premises, branded as Ultra-Fast Broadband, began in 2009 with a target of being available to 87% of the population by 2022.[249] As of 2017[update], the United Nations International Telecommunication Union ranks New Zealand 13th in the development of information and communications infrastructure.[250]
+
+Early indigenous contribution to science in New Zealand was by Māori tohunga accumulating knowledge of agricultural practice and the effects of herbal remedies in the treatment of illness and disease. Cook's voyages in the 1700s and Darwin's in 1835 had important scientific botanical and zoological objectives.[251] The establishment of universities in the 19th century fostered scientific discoveries by notable New Zealanders including Ernest Rutherford for splitting the atom, William Pickering for rocket science, Maurice Wilkins for helping discover DNA, Beatrice Tinsley for galaxy formation, and Alan MacDiarmid for conducting polymers.[252]
+
+Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) were formed in 1992 from existing government-owned research organisations. Their role is to research and develop new science, knowledge, products and services across the economic, environmental, social and cultural spectrum for the benefit of New Zealand.[253] The total gross expenditure on research and development (R&D) as a proportion of GDP rose to 1.37% in 2018, up from 1.23% in 2015. New Zealand ranks 21st in the OECD for its gross R&D spending as a percentage of GDP.[254]
+
+The 2018 New Zealand census enumerated a resident population of 4,699,755, an increase of 10.8% over the 2013 figure.[3] As of July 2020, the total population has risen to an estimated 5,010,290.[n 8][5] In May 2020 Statistics New Zealand reported that New Zealand's population had climbed above 5 million people in March 2020.[256]
+
+New Zealand is a predominantly urban country, with 83.6% of the population living in urban areas, and 52.3% of the population living in the seven cities with populations exceeding 100,000.[257] Auckland, with over 1 million residents, is by far the largest city.[257] New Zealand cities generally rank highly on international livability measures. For instance, in 2016 Auckland was ranked the world's third most liveable city and Wellington the twelfth by the Mercer Quality of Living Survey.[258]
+
+Life expectancy for New Zealanders in 2012 was 84 years for females, and 80.2 years for males.[259] Life expectancy at birth is forecast to increase from 80 years to 85 years in 2050 and infant mortality is expected to decline.[260] New Zealand's fertility rate of 2.1 is relatively high for a developed country, and natural births account for a significant proportion of population growth. Consequently, the country has a young population compared to most industrialised nations, with 20% of New Zealanders being 14 years old or younger.[147] In 2018 the median age of the New Zealand population was 38.1 years.[261] By 2050 the median age is projected to rise to 43 years and the percentage of people 60 years of age and older to rise from 18% to 29%.[260] In 2008 the leading cause of premature death was cancer, at 29.8%, followed by ischaemic heart disease, 19.7%, and then cerebrovascular disease, 9.2%.[262] As of 2016[update], total expenditure on health care (including private sector spending) is 9.2% of GDP.[263]
+
+
+
+In the 2018 census, 71.8% of New Zealand residents identified ethnically as European, and 16.5% as Māori. Other major ethnic groups include Asian (15.3%) and Pacific peoples (9.0%), two-thirds of whom live in the Auckland Region.[n 3][3] The population has become more diverse in recent decades: in 1961, the census reported that the population of New Zealand was 92% European and 7% Māori, with Asian and Pacific minorities sharing the remaining 1%.[264]
+
+While the demonym for a New Zealand citizen is New Zealander, the informal "Kiwi" is commonly used both internationally[265] and by locals.[266] The Māori loanword Pākehā has been used to refer to New Zealanders of European descent, although some reject this name. The word Pākehā today is increasingly used to refer to all non-Polynesian New Zealanders.[267]
+
+The Māori were the first people to reach New Zealand, followed by the early European settlers. Following colonisation, immigrants were predominantly from Britain, Ireland and Australia because of restrictive policies similar to the White Australia policy.[268] There was also significant Dutch, Dalmatian,[269] German, and Italian immigration, together with indirect European immigration through Australia, North America, South America and South Africa.[270][271] Net migration increased after the Second World War; in the 1970s and 1980s policies were relaxed and immigration from Asia was promoted.[271][272] In 2009–10, an annual target of 45,000–50,000 permanent residence approvals was set by the New Zealand Immigration Service—more than one new migrant for every 100 New Zealand residents.[273] In the 2018 census, 27.4% of people counted were not born in New Zealand, up from 25.2% in the 2013 census. Over half (52.4%) of New Zealand's overseas-born population lives in the Auckland Region.[274] The United Kingdom remains the largest source of New Zealand's immigrant population, with around a quarter of all overseas-born New Zealanders born there; other major sources of New Zealand's overseas-born population are China, India, Australia, South Africa, Fiji and Samoa.[275] The number of fee-paying international students increased sharply in the late 1990s, with more than 20,000 studying in public tertiary institutions in 2002.[276]
+
+English is the predominant language in New Zealand, spoken by 95.4% of the population.[3] New Zealand English is similar to Australian English and many speakers from the Northern Hemisphere are unable to tell the accents apart.[278] The most prominent differences between the New Zealand English dialect and other English dialects are the shifts in the short front vowels: the short-"i" sound (as in "kit") has centralised towards the schwa sound (the "a" in "comma" and "about"); the short-"e" sound (as in "dress") has moved towards the short-"i" sound; and the short-"a" sound (as in "trap") has moved to the short-"e" sound.[279]
+
+After the Second World War, Māori were discouraged from speaking their own language (te reo Māori) in schools and workplaces and it existed as a community language only in a few remote areas.[280] It has recently undergone a process of revitalisation,[281] being declared one of New Zealand's official languages in 1987,[282] and is spoken by 4.0% of the population.[3][n 9] There are now Māori language immersion schools and two television channels that broadcast predominantly in Māori.[284] Many places have both their Māori and English names officially recognised.[285]
+
+As recorded in the 2018 census,[3] Samoan is the most widely spoken non-official language (2.2%), followed by "Northern Chinese" (including Mandarin, 2.0%), Hindi (1.5%), and French (1.2%). 22,986 people (0.5%) reported the ability to use New Zealand Sign Language, which became one of New Zealand's official languages in 2006.[286]
+
+Christianity is the predominant religion in New Zealand, although its society is among the most secular in the world.[288][289] In the 2018 census, 44.7% of respondents identified with one or more religions, including 37.0% identifying as Christians. Another 48.5% indicated that they had no religion.[n 10][3] Of those who affiliate with a particular Christian denomination, the main responses are Anglicanism (6.7%), Roman Catholicism (6.3%), and Presbyterianism (4.7%).[3] The Māori-based Ringatū and Rātana religions (1.2%) are also Christian in origin.[3][287] Immigration and demographic change in recent decades has contributed to the growth of minority religions, such as Hinduism (2.6%), Islam (1.3%), Buddhism (1.1%), and Sikhism (0.9%).[3] The Auckland Region exhibited the greatest religious diversity.[290]
+
+Primary and secondary schooling is compulsory for children aged 6 to 16, with the majority attending from the age of 5.[291] There are 13 school years and attending state (public) schools is free to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents from a person's 5th birthday to the end of the calendar year following their 19th birthday.[292] New Zealand has an adult literacy rate of 99%,[147] and over half of the population aged 15 to 29 hold a tertiary qualification.[291] There are five types of government-owned tertiary institutions: universities, colleges of education, polytechnics, specialist colleges, and wānanga,[293] in addition to private training establishments.[294] In the adult population 14.2% have a bachelor's degree or higher, 30.4% have some form of secondary qualification as their highest qualification and 22.4% have no formal qualification.[295] The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment ranks New Zealand's education system as the seventh best in the world, with students performing exceptionally well in reading, mathematics and science.[296]
+
+Early Māori adapted the tropically based east Polynesian culture in line with the challenges associated with a larger and more diverse environment, eventually developing their own distinctive culture. Social organisation was largely communal with families (whānau), subtribes (hapū) and tribes (iwi) ruled by a chief (rangatira), whose position was subject to the community's approval.[297] The British and Irish immigrants brought aspects of their own culture to New Zealand and also influenced Māori culture,[298][299] particularly with the introduction of Christianity.[300] However, Māori still regard their allegiance to tribal groups as a vital part of their identity, and Māori kinship roles resemble those of other Polynesian peoples.[301] More recently American, Australian, Asian and other European cultures have exerted influence on New Zealand. Non-Māori Polynesian cultures are also apparent, with Pasifika, the world's largest Polynesian festival, now an annual event in Auckland.[302]
+
+The largely rural life in early New Zealand led to the image of New Zealanders being rugged, industrious problem solvers.[303] Modesty was expected and enforced through the "tall poppy syndrome", where high achievers received harsh criticism.[304] At the time New Zealand was not known as an intellectual country.[305] From the early 20th century until the late 1960s, Māori culture was suppressed by the attempted assimilation of Māori into British New Zealanders.[280] In the 1960s, as tertiary education became more available and cities expanded[306] urban culture began to dominate.[307] However, rural imagery and themes are common in New Zealand's art, literature and media.[308]
+
+New Zealand's national symbols are influenced by natural, historical, and Māori sources. The silver fern is an emblem appearing on army insignia and sporting team uniforms.[309] Certain items of popular culture thought to be unique to New Zealand are called "Kiwiana".[309]
+
+As part of the resurgence of Māori culture, the traditional crafts of carving and weaving are now more widely practised and Māori artists are increasing in number and influence.[310] Most Māori carvings feature human figures, generally with three fingers and either a natural-looking, detailed head or a grotesque head.[311] Surface patterns consisting of spirals, ridges, notches and fish scales decorate most carvings.[312] The pre-eminent Māori architecture consisted of carved meeting houses (wharenui) decorated with symbolic carvings and illustrations. These buildings were originally designed to be constantly rebuilt, changing and adapting to different whims or needs.[313]
+
+Māori decorated the white wood of buildings, canoes and cenotaphs using red (a mixture of red ochre and shark fat) and black (made from soot) paint and painted pictures of birds, reptiles and other designs on cave walls.[314] Māori tattoos (moko) consisting of coloured soot mixed with gum were cut into the flesh with a bone chisel.[315] Since European arrival paintings and photographs have been dominated by landscapes, originally not as works of art but as factual portrayals of New Zealand.[316] Portraits of Māori were also common, with early painters often portraying them as "noble savages", exotic beauties or friendly natives.[316] The country's isolation delayed the influence of European artistic trends allowing local artists to develop their own distinctive style of regionalism.[317] During the 1960s and 1970s many artists combined traditional Māori and Western techniques, creating unique art forms.[318] New Zealand art and craft has gradually achieved an international audience, with exhibitions in the Venice Biennale in 2001 and the "Paradise Now" exhibition in New York in 2004.[310][319]
+
+Māori cloaks are made of fine flax fibre and patterned with black, red and white triangles, diamonds and other geometric shapes.[320] Greenstone was fashioned into earrings and necklaces, with the most well-known design being the hei-tiki, a distorted human figure sitting cross-legged with its head tilted to the side.[321] Europeans brought English fashion etiquette to New Zealand, and until the 1950s most people dressed up for social occasions.[322] Standards have since relaxed and New Zealand fashion has received a reputation for being casual, practical and lacklustre.[323][324] However, the local fashion industry has grown significantly since 2000, doubling exports and increasing from a handful to about 50 established labels, with some labels gaining international recognition.[324]
+
+Māori quickly adopted writing as a means of sharing ideas, and many of their oral stories and poems were converted to the written form.[325] Most early English literature was obtained from Britain and it was not until the 1950s when local publishing outlets increased that New Zealand literature started to become widely known.[326] Although still largely influenced by global trends (modernism) and events (the Great Depression), writers in the 1930s began to develop stories increasingly focused on their experiences in New Zealand. During this period literature changed from a journalistic activity to a more academic pursuit.[327] Participation in the world wars gave some New Zealand writers a new perspective on New Zealand culture and with the post-war expansion of universities local literature flourished.[328] Dunedin is a UNESCO City of Literature.[329]
+
+New Zealand music has been influenced by blues, jazz, country, rock and roll and hip hop, with many of these genres given a unique New Zealand interpretation.[330] Māori developed traditional chants and songs from their ancient Southeast Asian origins, and after centuries of isolation created a unique "monotonous" and "doleful" sound.[331] Flutes and trumpets were used as musical instruments[332] or as signalling devices during war or special occasions.[333] Early settlers brought over their ethnic music, with brass bands and choral music being popular, and musicians began touring New Zealand in the 1860s.[334][335] Pipe bands became widespread during the early 20th century.[336] The New Zealand recording industry began to develop from 1940 onwards and many New Zealand musicians have obtained success in Britain and the United States.[330] Some artists release Māori language songs and the Māori tradition-based art of kapa haka (song and dance) has made a resurgence.[337] The New Zealand Music Awards are held annually by Recorded Music NZ; the awards were first held in 1965 by Reckitt & Colman as the Loxene Golden Disc awards.[338] Recorded Music NZ also publishes the country's official weekly record charts.[339]
+
+Public radio was introduced in New Zealand in 1922.[341] A state-owned television service began in 1960.[342] Deregulation in the 1980s saw a sudden increase in the numbers of radio and television stations.[343] New Zealand television primarily broadcasts American and British programming, along with many Australian and local shows.[344] The number of New Zealand films significantly increased during the 1970s. In 1978 the New Zealand Film Commission started assisting local film-makers and many films attained a world audience, some receiving international acknowledgement.[343] The highest-grossing New Zealand films are Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Boy, The World's Fastest Indian, Whale Rider, Once Were Warriors and The Piano.[345] The country's diverse scenery and compact size, plus government incentives,[346] have encouraged some producers to shoot big-budget productions in New Zealand, including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies, Avatar, The Chronicles of Narnia, King Kong, Wolverine and The Last Samurai.[347] The New Zealand media industry is dominated by a small number of companies, most of which are foreign-owned, although the state retains ownership of some television and radio stations.[348] Since 1994, Freedom House has consistently ranked New Zealand's press freedom in the top twenty, with the 19th freest media in 2015[update].[349]
+
+Most of the major sporting codes played in New Zealand have British origins.[350] Rugby union is considered the national sport[351] and attracts the most spectators.[352] Golf, netball, tennis and cricket have the highest rates of adult participation, while netball, rugby union and football (soccer) are particularly popular among young people.[352][353] Around 54% of New Zealand adolescents participate in sports for their school.[353] Victorious rugby tours to Australia and the United Kingdom in the late 1880s and the early 1900s played an early role in instilling a national identity.[354] Horseracing was also a popular spectator sport and became part of the "Rugby, Racing and Beer" culture during the 1960s.[355] Māori participation in European sports was particularly evident in rugby and the country's team performs a haka, a traditional Māori challenge, before international matches.[356] New Zealand is known for its extreme sports, adventure tourism[357] and strong mountaineering tradition, as seen in the success of notable New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary.[358][359] Other outdoor pursuits such as cycling, fishing, swimming, running, tramping, canoeing, hunting, snowsports, surfing and sailing are also popular.[360] New Zealand has seen regular sailing success in the America's Cup regatta since 1995.[361] The Polynesian sport of waka ama racing has experienced a resurgence of interest in New Zealand since the 1980s.[362]
+
+New Zealand has competitive international teams in rugby union, rugby league, netball, cricket, softball, and sailing. New Zealand participated at the Summer Olympics in 1908 and 1912 as a joint team with Australia, before first participating on its own in 1920.[363] The country has ranked highly on a medals-to-population ratio at recent Games.[364][365] The "All Blacks", the national rugby union team, are the most successful in the history of international rugby[366] and have won the World Cup three times.[367]
+
+The national cuisine has been described as Pacific Rim, incorporating the native Māori cuisine and diverse culinary traditions introduced by settlers and immigrants from Europe, Polynesia and Asia.[368] New Zealand yields produce from land and sea—most crops and livestock, such as maize, potatoes and pigs, were gradually introduced by the early European settlers.[369] Distinctive ingredients or dishes include lamb, salmon, kōura (crayfish),[370] dredge oysters, whitebait, pāua (abalone), mussels, scallops, pipis and tuatua (both are types of New Zealand shellfish),[371] kūmara (sweet potato), kiwifruit, tamarillo and pavlova (considered a national dish).[372][368] A hāngi is a traditional Māori method of cooking food using heated rocks buried in a pit oven. After European colonisation, Māori began cooking with pots and ovens and the hāngi was used less frequently, although it is still used for formal occasions such as tangihanga.[373]
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+Click on a coloured area to see an article about English in that country or region

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+A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, is head of state for life or until abdication. The political legitimacy and authority of the monarch may vary from purely symbolic (crowned republic), to restricted (constitutional monarchy), to fully autocratic (absolute monarchy), and can expand across the domains of the executive, legislative and judicial. A monarchy can be a polity through unity, personal union, vassalage or federation, and monarchs can carry various titles such as king, queen, emperor, khan, caliph, tsar, sultan, or shah.
+
+In most cases, the succession of monarchies is hereditary, often building dynastic periods, however elective and self-proclaimed monarchies are possible. Aristocrats, though not inherent to monarchies, often serve as the pool of persons to draw the monarch from and fill the constituting institutions (e.g. diet and court), giving many monarchies oligarchic elements.
+
+Monarchies were the most common form of government until the 20th century. Today forty-five sovereign nations in the world have a monarch, including sixteen Commonwealth realms that have Elizabeth II as the head of state. Other than that there are a range of sub-national monarchic entities. Modern monarchies tend to be constitutional monarchies, retaining under a constitution unique legal and ceremonial roles for the monarch, exercising limited or no political power, similar to heads of state in a parliamentary republic.
+
+The opposing and alternative form of government to monarchy has become the republic.
+
+The word "monarch" (Late Latin: monarchia) comes from the Ancient Greek word μονάρχης (monárkhēs), derived from μόνος (mónos, "one, single") and ἄρχω (árkhō, "to rule") [compare ἄρχων (árkhōn, "ruler, chief")]. It referred to a single at least nominally absolute ruler. In current usage the word monarchy usually refers to a traditional system of hereditary rule, as elective monarchies are quite rare.
+
+The similar form of societal hierarchy known as chiefdom or tribal kingship is prehistoric. The oldest recorded and evidenced monarchies were Narmer, Pharaoh of Egypt c. 3100 BCE, and Enmebaragesi, a Sumerian King of Kish c. 2600 BCE.
+
+From earliest historical times, with the Egyptian and Mesopotamian monarchs as well as in reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion, the king held sacral functions directly connected to sacrifice or was considered by their people to have divine ancestry. In Germanic antiquity, kingship was primarily a sacral function. The king was directly hereditary for some tribes, while for others he was elected from among eligible members of royal families by the thing. The role of the Roman emperor as the protector of Christianity led eventually to monarchs ruling 'by the Grace of God' in the Christian Middle Ages, only later in the Early modern period there being a conflation of (increased) power with these sacral aspects held by the Germanic kings bringing forth the notion of the "divine right of kings". The Japanese and Nepalese monarchs continued to be considered living Gods into the modern period.
+
+Polybius identified monarchy as one of three "benign" basic forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy), opposed to the three "malignant" basic forms of government (tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy). The monarch in classical antiquity is often identified as "king" or "ruler" (translating archon, basileus, rex, tyrannos, etc.) or as "queen" (basilinna). Polybius originally understood monarchy[note 1] as a component of republics, but since antiquity monarchy has contrasted with forms of republic, where executive power is wielded by free citizens and their assemblies. In antiquity, some monarchies were abolished in favour of such assemblies in Rome (Roman Republic, 509 BCE), and Athens (Athenian democracy, 500 BCE).
+
+Monarchy has been challenged by evolving parliamentarism e.g. through regional assemblies (such as the Icelandic Commonwealth, the Swiss Landsgemeinde and later Tagsatzung, and the High Medieval communal movement linked to the rise of medieval town privileges) and by modern anti-monarchism e.g. of the temporary overthrow of the English monarchy by the Parliament of England in 1649,  the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789. One of many opponents of that trend was Elizabeth Dawbarn, whose anonymous Dialogue between Clara Neville and Louisa Mills, on Loyalty (1794) features "silly Louisa, who admires liberty, Tom Paine and the USA, [who is] lectured by Clara on God's approval of monarchy" and on the influence women can exert on men.[1]
+
+Since then advocacy of the abolition of a monarchy or respectively of republics has been called republicanism, while the advocacy of monarchies is called monarchism. As such republics have become the opposing and alternative form of government to monarchy,[2][3][4] despite some having seen infringements through lifelong or even hereditary heads of state.
+
+With the rise of republicanism a  diverse division between republicanism developed in the 19th-century politics (such as anti-monarchist radicalism) and conservative or even reactionary monarchism.  In the following 20th century many countries abolished monarchy and became republics, especially in the wake of World War I and World War II.
+
+Today forty-five sovereign nations in the world have a monarch, including sixteen Commonwealth realms that have Elizabeth II as the head of state. Most modern monarchs are constitutional monarchs, who retain a unique legal and ceremonial role but exercise limited or no political power under a constitution. Many are so-called crowned republics, surviving particularly in small states.[5]
+
+In some nations, however, such as Brunei, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Eswatini and Thailand, the hereditary monarch has more political influence than any other single source of authority in the state, either by convention or by a constitutional mandate.
+
+According to a 2020 study, monarchy arose as a system of governance because of an efficiency in governing large populations and expansive territories during periods when coordinating such populations was difficult. The authors argue that monarchy declined as an efficient regime type with innovations in communications and transportation technology, as the efficiency of monarchy relative to other regime types declined.[6]
+
+Monarchies are associated with hereditary reign, in which monarchs reign for life[note 2] and the responsibilities and power of the position pass to their child or another member of their family when they die. Most monarchs, both historically and in the modern-day, have been born and brought up within a royal family, the centre of the royal household and court. Growing up in a royal family (called a dynasty when it continues for several generations), future monarchs are often trained for their expected future responsibilities as monarch.
+
+Different systems of hereditary succession have been used, such as proximity of blood, primogeniture, and agnatic seniority (Salic law). While most monarchs in history have been male, many female monarchs also have reigned. The term "queen regnant" refers to a ruling monarch, while "queen consort" refers to the wife of a reigning king. Rule may be hereditary in practice without being considered a monarchy: there have been some family dictatorships[note 3] (and also political families) in many democracies.[note 4]
+
+The principal advantage of hereditary monarchy is the immediate continuity of leadership (as evidenced in the classic phrase "The King is dead. Long live the King!").
+
+Some monarchies are not hereditary. In an elective monarchy, monarchs are elected or appointed by some body (an electoral college) for life or a defined period. Four elective monarchies exist today: Cambodia, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates are 20th-century creations, while one (the papacy) is ancient.[7]
+
+A self-proclaimed monarchy is established when a person claims the monarchy without any historical ties to a previous dynasty. There are examples of republican leaders who have proclaimed themselves monarchs: Napoleon I of France declared himself Emperor of the French and ruled the First French Empire after having held the title of First Consul of the French Republic for five years from his seizing power in the coup of 18 Brumaire. President Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic declared himself Emperor of the Central African Empire in 1976.[8] Yuan Shikai, the first formal President of the Republic of China, crowned himself Emperor of the short-lived "Empire of China" a few years after the Republic of China was founded.[9]
+
+Most monarchies only have a single person acting as monarch at any given time, although two monarchs have ruled simultaneously in some countries, a situation known as diarchy. Historically this was the case in the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta, 17th-century Russia, and the Empire of Austria-Hungary from 1867 till its collapse in the wake of World War I.[11][12][13] here are examples of joint sovereignty of spouses, parent and child or other relatives (such as William III and Mary II in the kingdoms of England and Scotland, tsars Peter I and Ivan V of Russia, and Charles I and Joanna of Castile).
+
+Andorra currently is the world's only constitutional diarchy, a co-principality. Located in the Pyrenees between Spain and France, it has two co-princes: the bishop of Urgell in Spain (a prince-bishop) and the president of France (derived ex officio from the French kings, who themselves inherited the title from the counts of Foix). It is the only situation in which an independent country's (co-)monarch is democratically elected by the citizens of another country.
+
+In a personal union, separate independent states share the same person as monarch, but each realm retains separate laws and government. The sixteen separate Commonwealth realms are sometimes described as being in a personal union with Queen Elizabeth II as monarch; however, they can also be described as being in a shared monarchy.
+
+A regent may rule when the monarch is a minor, absent, or debilitated.
+
+A pretender is a claimant to an abolished throne or a throne already occupied by somebody else.
+
+Abdication is the act of formally giving up one's monarchical power and status.
+
+Monarchs may mark the ceremonial beginning of their reigns with a coronation or enthronement.
+
+Monarchy, especially absolute monarchy, is sometimes linked to religious aspects; many monarchs once claimed the right to rule by the will of a deity (Divine Right of Kings, Mandate of Heaven), or a special connection to a deity (sacred king), or even purported to be divine kings, or incarnations of deities themselves (imperial cult). Many European monarchs have been styled Fidei defensor (Defender of the Faith); some hold official positions relating to the state religion or established church.
+
+In the Western political tradition, a morally based, balanced monarchy was stressed as the ideal form of government, and little attention was paid to modern-day ideals of egalitarian democracy: e.g. Saint Thomas Aquinas unapologetically declared: "Tyranny is wont to occur not less but more frequently on the basis of polyarchy [rule by many, i.e. oligarchy or democracy] than on the basis of monarchy." (On Kingship). However, Thomas Aquinas also stated that the ideal monarchical system would also have at lower levels of government both an aristocracy and elements of democracy in order to create a balance of power. The monarch would also be subject to both natural and divine law, and to the Church in matters of religion.
+
+In Dante Alighieri's De Monarchia, a spiritualised, imperial Catholic monarchy is strongly promoted according to a Ghibelline world-view in which the "royal religion of Melchizedek" is emphasised against the priestly claims of the rival papal ideology.
+
+In Saudi Arabia, the king is a head of state who is both the absolute monarch of the country and the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques of Islam (خادم الحرمين الشريفين).
+
+Monarchs can have various titles. Common European titles of monarchs (in that hierarchical order of nobility) are emperor or empress (from Latin: imperator or imperatrix), king or queen, grand duke or grand duchess, prince or princess, duke or duchess.[14] Some early modern European titles (especially in German states) included elector (German: Kurfürst, Prince-Elector, literally "electing prince"), margrave (German: Markgraf, equivalent to the French title marquis, literally "count of the borderland"), and burgrave (German: Burggraf, literally "count of the castle"). Lesser titles include count and princely count. Slavic titles include knyaz and tsar (ц︢рь) or tsaritsa (царица), a word derived from the Roman imperial title Caesar.
+
+In the Muslim world, titles of monarchs include caliph (successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a leader of the entire Muslim community), padishah (emperor), sultan or sultana, shâhanshâh (emperor), shah, malik (king) or malikah (queen), emir (commander, prince) or emira (princess), sheikh or sheikha, imam (used in Oman). East Asian titles of monarchs include huángdì (emperor or empress regnant), tiānzǐ (son of heaven), tennō (emperor) or josei tennō (empress regnant), wang (king) or yeowang (queen regnant), hwangje (emperor) or yeohwang (empress regnant). South Asian and South East Asian titles included mahārāja ( high king) or maharani ( high queen), raja (king) and rana (king) or rani (queen) and ratu (South East Asian queen). Historically, Mongolic and Turkic monarchs have used the title khan and khagan (emperor) or khatun and khanum; Ancient Egyptian monarchs have used the title pharaoh for men and women. In Ethiopian Empire, monarchs used title nəgusä nägäst (king of kings) or nəgəstä nägäst (queen of kings).
+
+Many monarchs are addressed with particular styles or manners of address, like "Majesty", "Royal Highness", "By the Grace of God", Amīr al-Mu'minīn ("Leader of the Faithful"), Hünkar-i Khanedan-i Âl-i Osman, "Sovereign of the Sublime House of Osman"), Yang Maha Mulia Seri Paduka Baginda ("Majesty"), Jeonha ("Majesty"), Tennō Heika (literally "His Majesty the heavenly sovereign"), Bìxià ("Bottom of the Steps").
+
+Sometimes titles are used to express claims to territories that are not held in fact (for example, English claims to the French throne), or titles not recognised (antipopes). Also, after a monarchy is deposed, often former monarchs and their descendants are given alternative titles (the King of Portugal was given the hereditary title Duke of Braganza).
+
+In some cases monarchs are dependent on other powers (see vassals, suzerainty, puppet state, hegemony). In the British colonial era indirect rule under a paramount power existed, such as the princely states under the British Raj.
+
+In Botswana, South Africa, Ghana and Uganda, the ancient kingdoms and chiefdoms that were met by the colonialists when they first arrived on the continent are now constitutionally protected as regional or sectional entities.
+
+Furthermore, in Nigeria, though the hundreds of sub-regional polities that exist there are not provided for in the current constitution, they are nevertheless legally recognised aspects of the structure of governance that operates in the nation. For example, the Yoruba city-state of Akure in south-western Nigeria is something of an elective monarchy: its reigning Oba Deji has to be chosen by an electoral college of nobles from amongst a finite collection of royal princes of the realm upon the death or removal of an incumbent.
+
+In addition to these five countries, dependent monarchies of varied sizes and complexities exist all over the rest of the continent of Africa.
+
+Monarchies pre-date polities like nation states[15] and even territorial states. A nation or constitution is not necessary in a monarchy since a person, the monarch, binds the separate territories and political legitimacy (e.g. in personal union) together.
+
+Monarchies though have applied state symbols like insignia or abstracts like the concept of the the Crown to create a state identity, which is to be carried and occupied by the monarch, but represents the monarchy even in absence and succession of the monarch.
+
+Never the less monarchies can also be bound to territories (e.g., the King of Norway) and peoples (e.g., the King of the Belgians).
+
+In a hereditary monarchy, the position of monarch is inherited according to a statutory or customary order of succession, usually within one royal family tracing its origin through a historical dynasty or bloodline. This usually means that the heir to the throne is known well in advance of becoming monarch to ensure a smooth succession.[16][17]
+
+Primogeniture, in which the eldest child of the monarch is first in line to become monarch, is the most common system in hereditary monarchy. The order of succession is usually affected by rules on gender. Historically "agnatic primogeniture" or "patrilineal primogeniture" was favoured, that is inheritance according to seniority of birth among the sons of a monarch or head of family, with sons and their male issue inheriting before brothers and their issue, and male-line males inheriting before females of the male line.[18] This is the same as semi-Salic primogeniture. Complete exclusion of females from dynastic succession is commonly referred to as application of the Salic law (see Terra salica).
+
+Before primogeniture was enshrined in European law and tradition, kings would often secure the succession by having their successor (usually their eldest son) crowned during their own lifetime, so for a time there would be two kings in coregency—a senior king and a junior king. Examples were Henry the Young King of England and the early Direct Capetians in France. Sometimes, however, primogeniture can operate through the female line.
+
+In 1980, Sweden became the first European monarchy to declare equal (full cognatic) primogeniture, meaning that the eldest child of the monarch, whether female or male, ascends to the throne.[19] Other kingdoms (such as the Netherlands in 1983, Norway in 1990, Belgium in 1991, Denmark in 2009, and Luxembourg[20] in 2011) have since followed suit. The United Kingdom adopted absolute (equal) primogeniture (subject to the claims of existing heirs) on April 25, 2013, following agreement by the prime ministers of the sixteen Commonwealth Realms at the 22nd Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.[21]
+
+In the absence of children, the next most senior member of the collateral line (for example, a younger sibling of the previous monarch) becomes monarch. In complex cases, this can mean that there are closer blood relatives to the deceased monarch than the next in line according to primogeniture. This has often led, especially in Europe in the Middle Ages, to conflict between the principle of primogeniture and the principle of proximity of blood.
+
+Other hereditary systems of succession included tanistry, which is semi-elective and gives weight to merit and Agnatic seniority. In some monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia, succession to the throne first passes to the monarch's next eldest brother, and only after that to the monarch's children (agnatic seniority). However, on June 21, 2017, King Salman of Saudi Arabi revolted against this style of monarchy and elected his son to inherit the throne.[22]
+
+In an elective monarchy, monarchs are elected or appointed by somebody (an electoral college) for life or a defined period, but then reign like any other monarch. There is no popular vote involved in elective monarchies, as the elective body usually consists of a small number of eligible people. Historical examples of elective monarchy are the Holy Roman Emperors (chosen by prince-electors but often coming from the same dynasty) and the free election of kings of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. For example, Pepin the Short (father of Charlemagne) was elected King of the Franks by an assembly of Frankish leading men; nobleman Stanisław August Poniatowski of Poland was an elected king, as was Frederick I of Denmark. Germanic peoples also had elective monarchies.
+
+Six forms of elective monarchies exist today. The pope of the Roman Catholic Church (who rules as Sovereign of the Vatican City State) is elected for life by the College of Cardinals. In the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the Prince and Grand Master is elected for life tenure by the Council Complete of State from within its members. In Malaysia, the federal king, called the Yang di-Pertuan Agong or Paramount Ruler, is elected for a five-year term from among and by the hereditary rulers (mostly sultans) of nine of the federation's constitutive states, all on the Malay peninsula. The United Arab Emirates also chooses its federal leaders from among emirs of the federated states. Furthermore, Andorra has a unique constitutional arrangement as one of its heads of state is the President of the French Republic in the form of a Co-Prince. This is the only instance in the world where the monarch of a state is elected by the citizens of a different country. In New Zealand, the Maori King, head of the Kingitanga Movement, is elected by a council of Maori elders at the funeral of their predecessor, which is also where their coronation takes place. All of the Heads of the Maori King Movement have been descendants of the first Maori King, Potatau Te Wherowhero, who was elected and became King in June 1858. The current monarch is King Tuheitia Potatau Te Wherowhero VII, who was elected and became King on 21 August 2006, the same day as the funeral of his mother, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, the first Maori Queen. As well as being King and head of the Kingitanga Movement, King Tuheitia is also ex officio the Paramount Chief of the Waikato-Tainui tribe.
+
+Appointment by the current monarch is another system, used in Jordan. It also was used in Imperial Russia; however, it was soon changed to semi-Salic because the instability of the appointment system resulted in an age of palace revolutions. In this system, the monarch chooses the successor, who is always his relative.
+
+Other ways to success a monarchy can be through claiming alternative votes (e.g. as in the case of the Western Schism), claims of a mandate to rule (e.g. a popular or divine mandate), military occupation, a coup d'état, a will of the previous monarch or treaties between factions inside and outside of a monarchy (e.g. as in the case of the War of the Spanish Succession).
+
+The legitimacy and authorities of monarchs are often proclaimed and recognized through occupying and being invested with insignia, seats, deeds and titles, like in the course of coronations.
+
+This is especially employed to legitimize and settle disputed successions, changes in ways of succession, status of a monarch (e.g. as in the case of the privilegium maius deed) or new monarchies altogether (e.g. as in the case of the Coronation of Napoleon I).
+
+Succession is often based on the expected continuation of a dynastic period or association in a dynastic union, which is sometimes challenged by diverging lineage and legitimism.
+
+In cases of succession challenges it can be instrumental for pretenders to secure or install legitimacy through the above, for example proof of accession like insignia, through treaties or a claim of a divine mandate to rule (e.g. by Hong Xiuquan and his Taiping Heavenly Kingdom).
+
+Currently, there are 44 nations and a population of roughly half a billion people in the world with a monarch as head of state. They fall roughly into the following categories:
+
+Queen Elizabeth II is, separately, monarch of sixteen Commonwealth realms (Antigua and Barbuda, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). They evolved out of the British Empire into fully independent states within the Commonwealth of Nations that retain the Queen as head of state. All sixteen realms are constitutional monarchies and full democracies where the Queen has limited powers or a largely ceremonial role. The Queen is head of the Church of England (the established church of England), while the other 15 realms do not have a state religion.
+
+The Principality of Andorra, the Kingdom of Belgium, the Kingdom of Denmark, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Norway, the Kingdom of Spain, and the Kingdom of Sweden are fully democratic states in which the monarch has a limited or largely ceremonial role. In some cases, there is a Christian religion established as the official church in each of these countries. This is the Lutheran form of Protestantism in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, while Andorra is a Roman Catholic country. Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands have no official state religion. Luxembourg, which is predominantly Roman Catholic, has five so-called officially recognised cults of national importance (Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Greek Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Islam), a status which gives to those religions some privileges like the payment of a state salary to their priests.
+
+Andorra is unique among all existing monarchies, as it is a diarchy, with the co-princeship being shared by the president of France and the bishop of Urgell. This situation, based on historical precedence, has created a peculiar situation among monarchies, as:
+
+The Principality of Liechtenstein and the Principality of Monaco are constitutional monarchies in which the prince retains substantial powers. For example, the 2003 Constitution referendum gave the Prince of Liechtenstein the power to veto any law that the Landtag (parliament) proposes, while the Landtag can veto any law that the Prince tries to pass. The prince can appoint or dismiss any elective member or government employee. However, he is not an absolute monarch, as the people can call for a referendum to end the monarch's reign. When Hereditary Prince Alois threatened to veto a referendum to legalize abortion in 2011, it came as a surprise because the prince had not vetoed any law for over 30 years.[note 5] The prince of Monaco has simpler powers; he cannot appoint or dismiss any elective member or government employee to or from his or her post, but he can elect the minister of state, government council and judges. Both Albert II, Prince of Monaco, and Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein, are theoretically very powerful within their small states, but they have very limited power compared to the Islamic monarchs (see below). They also own huge tracts of land and are shareholders in many companies.
+
+The Islamic monarchs of the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Nation of Brunei, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the State of Kuwait, Malaysia, the Kingdom of Morocco, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates generally retain far more powers than their European or Commonwealth counterparts. Brunei, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia remain absolute monarchies; Bahrain, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates are classified as mixed, meaning there are representative bodies of some kind, but the monarch retains most of his powers; Jordan, Malaysia, and Morocco are constitutional monarchies, but their monarchs still retain more substantial powers than European equivalents.
+
+The Kingdom of Bhutan, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Kingdom of Thailand and Japan are constitutional monarchies where the monarch has a limited or merely ceremonial role. Japan changed from traditional absolute monarchy into a constitutional one during the 20th century, and Bhutan made the change in 2008. Cambodia had its own monarchy after independence from the French Colonial Empire, but it was deposed after the Khmer Rouge came into power. The monarchy was subsequently restored in the peace agreement of 1993. Thailand transitioned into a constitutional monarchy over the course of the 20th Century.
+
+Five monarchies do not fit into any of the above groups by virtue of geography or class of monarchy: the Kingdom of Tonga in Polynesia; the Kingdom of Eswatini and the Kingdom of Lesotho in Africa; the Vatican City State in Europe and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Of these, Lesotho and Tonga are constitutional monarchies, while Eswatini and the Vatican City are absolute monarchies. Eswatini is unique among these monarchies, often being considered a diarchy: the King, or Ngwenyama, rules alongside his mother, the Ndlovukati, as dual heads of state (this was originally intended to provide a check on political power). The Ngwenyama, however, is considered the administrative head of state, while the Ndlovukati is considered the spiritual and national head of state, a position which more or less has become symbolic in recent years. The Pope is the absolute monarch of the Vatican City State (a separate entity from the Holy See) by virtue of his position as head of the Roman Catholic Church and Bishop of Rome; he is an elected rather than a hereditary ruler and does not have to be a citizen of the territory prior to his election by the cardinals. The Order of Malta describes itself as a "sovereign subject" based on its unique history and unusual present circumstances, but its exact status in international law is subject of debate. Samoa, the position is described in Part III of the 1960 Samoan constitution. At the time the constitution was adopted, it was anticipated that future heads of state would be chosen from among the four Tama a 'Aiga "royal" paramount chiefs. However, this is not required by the constitution, so, for this reason, Samoa can be considered a republic rather than a constitutional monarchy.
+
+The ruling Kim family in North Korea (Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un) has been described as a de facto absolute monarchy[23][24][25] or a "hereditary dictatorship".[26] In 2013, Clause 2 of Article 10 of the new edited Ten Fundamental Principles of the Korean Workers' Party states that the party and revolution must be carried "eternally" by the "Baekdu (Kim's) bloodline".[27]
+
+This also happened in Azerbaijan, when Heydar Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, died. He was succeeded by his son Ilham. But it is referred as an Monarch President.

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+Deified emperors:
+
+Diana[a] is a goddess in Roman and Hellenistic religion, primarily considered a patroness of the countryside, hunters, crossroads, and the Moon. She is equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, and absorbed much of Artemis' mythology early in Roman history, including a birth on the island of Delos to parents Jupiter and Latona, and a twin brother, Apollo,[2] though she had an independent origin in Italy.
+
+Diana is considered a virgin goddess and protector of childbirth. Historically, Diana made up a triad with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god.[3]
+
+Diana is revered in modern neopagan religions including Roman neopaganism, Stregheria, and Wicca. From the medieval to the modern period, as folklore attached to her developed and was eventually adapted into neopagan religions, the mythology surrounding Diana grew to include a consort (Lucifer) and daughter (Aradia), figures sometimes recognized by modern traditions.[4] In the ancient, medieval, and modern periods, Diana has been considered a triple deity, merged with a goddess of the moon (Luna/Selene) and the underworld (usually Hecate).[5][6]
+
+The name Dīāna probably derives from Latin dīus ('godly'), ultimately from Proto-Italic *divios (diwios), meaning 'divine, heavenly'.[7][8] It stems from Proto-Indo-European *diwyós ('divine, heavenly'), formed with the root *dyew- ('daylight sky') attached the thematic suffix -yós.[9][10] Cognates appear in Myceanean Greek di-wi-ja, in Ancient Greek dîos (δῖος; 'belonging to heaven, godlike'), or in Sanskrit divyá ('heavenly').[11]
+
+The ancient Latin writers Varro and Cicero considered the etymology of Dīāna as allied to that of dies and connected to the shine of the Moon, noting that one of her titles is Diana Lucifera ("light-bearer").
+
+... people regard Diana and the moon as one and the same. ... the moon (luna) is so called from the verb to shine (lucere). Lucina is identified with it, which is why in our country they invoke Juno Lucina in childbirth, just as the Greeks call on Diana the Light-bearer. Diana also has the name Omnivaga ("wandering everywhere"), not because of her hunting but because she is numbered as one of the seven planets; her name Diana derives from the fact that she turns darkness into daylight (dies). She is invoked at childbirth because children are born occasionally after seven, or usually after nine, lunar revolutions ...
+
+The persona of Diana is complex, and contains a number of archaic features. Diana was originally considered to be a goddess of the wilderness and of the hunt, a central sport in both Roman and Greek culture.[13] Early Roman inscriptions to Diana celebrated her primarily as a huntress and patron of hunters. Later, in the Hellenistic period, Diana came to be equally or more revered as a goddess not of the wild woodland but of the "tame" countryside, or villa rustica, the idealization of which was common in Greek thought and poetry. This dual role as goddess of both civilization and the wild, and therefore the civilized countryside, first applied to the Greek goddess Artemis (for example, in the 3rd century BCE poetry of Anacreon).[14] By the 3rd century CE, after Greek influence had a profound impact on Roman religion, Diana had been almost fully combined with Artemis and took on many of her attributes, both in her spiritual domains and in the description of her appearance. The Roman poet Nemesianus wrote a typical description of Diana: She carried a bow and a quiver full of golden arrows, wore a golden cloak, purple half-boots, and a belt with a jeweled buckle to hold her tunic together, and wore her hair gathered in a ribbon.[13] By the 5th century CE, almost a millennia after her cult's entry into Rome, the philosopher Proclus could still characterize Diana as "the inspective guardian of every thing rural, [who] represses every thing rustic and uncultivated."[15]
+
+Diana was often considered an aspect of a triple goddess, known as Diana triformis: Diana, Luna, and Hecate. According to historian C.M. Green, "these were neither different goddesses nor an amalgamation of different goddesses. They were Diana...Diana as huntress, Diana as the moon, Diana of the underworld."[6] At her sacred grove on the shores of Lake Nemi, Diana was venerated as a triple goddess beginning in the late 6th century BCE.
+
+Andreas Alföldi interpreted an image on a late Republican coin as the Latin Diana "conceived as a threefold unity of the divine huntress, the Moon goddess and the goddess of the nether world, Hekate".[17] This coin, minted by P. Accoleius Lariscolus in 43 BCE, has been acknowledged as representing an archaic statue of Diana Nemorensis.[18] It represents Artemis with the bow at one extremity, Luna-Selene with flowers at the other and a central deity not immediately identifiable, all united by a horizontal bar. The iconographical analysis allows the dating of this image to the 6th century at which time there are Etruscan models. The coin shows that the triple goddess cult image still stood in the lucus of Nemi in 43 BCE. Lake Nemi was called Triviae lacus by Virgil (Aeneid 7.516), while Horace called Diana montium custos nemoremque virgo ("keeper of the mountains and virgin of Nemi") and diva triformis ("three-form goddess").[19]
+
+Two heads found in the sanctuary[20] and the Roman theatre at Nemi, which have a hollow on their back, lend support to this interpretation of an archaic triple Diana.[21]
+
+The earliest epithet of Diana was Trivia, and she was addressed with that title by Virgil,[22] Catullus,[23] and many others. "Trivia" comes from the Latin trivium, "triple way", and refers to Diana's guardianship over roadways, particularly Y-junctions or three-way crossroads. This role carried a somewhat dark and dangerous connotation, as it metaphorically pointed the way to the underworld.[6] In the 1st-century CE play Medea, Seneca's titular sorceress calls on Trivia to cast a magic spell. She evokes the triple goddess of Diana, Selene, and Hecate, and specifies that she requires the powers of the latter.[6] The 1st century poet Horace similarly wrote of a magic incantation invoking the power of both Diana and Proserpina.[24] The symbol of the crossroads is relevant to several aspects of Diana's domain. It can symbolize the paths hunters may encounter in the forest, lit only by the full moon; this symbolizes making choices "in the dark" without the light of guidance.[6]
+
+Diana's role as a goddess of the underworld, or at least of ushering people between life and death, caused her early on to be conflated with Hecate (and occasionally also with Proserpina). However, her role as an underworld goddess appears to pre-date strong Greek influence (though the early Greek colony of Cumae had a cult of Hekate and certainly had contacts with the Latins[25]). A theater in her sanctuary at Lake Nemi included a pit and tunnel that would have allowed actors to easily descend on one side of the stage and ascend on the other, indicating a connection between the phases of the moon and a descent by the moon goddess into the underworld.[6] It is likely that her underworld aspect in her original Latin worship did not have a distinct name, like Luna was for her moon aspect. This is due to a seeming reluctance or taboo by the early Latins to name underworld deities, and the fact that they believed the underworld to be silent, precluding naming. Hekate, a Greek goddess also associated with the boundary between the earth and the underworld, became attached to Diana as a name for her underworld aspect following Greek influence.[6]
+
+Diana was often considered to be a goddess associated with fertility and childbirth, and the protection of women during labor. This probably arose as an extension of her association with the moon, whose cycles were believed to parallel the menstrual cycle, and which was used to track the months during pregnancy.[6] At her shrine in Aricia, worshipers left votive terracotta offerings for the goddess in the shapes of babies and wombs, and the temple there also offered care of pups and pregnant dogs. This care of infants also extended to the training of both young people and dogs, especially for hunting.[6] In her role as a protector of childbirth, Diana was called Diana Lucina or even Juno Lucina, because her domain overlapped with that of the goddess Juno. The title of Juno may also have had an independent origin as it applied to Diana, with the literal meaning of "helper" - Diana as Juno Lucina would be the "helper of childbirth".[6]
+
+According to a theory proposed by Georges Dumézil, Diana falls into a particular subset of celestial gods, referred to in histories of religion as frame gods. Such gods, while keeping the original features of celestial divinities (i.e. transcendent heavenly power and abstention from direct rule in worldly matters), did not share the fate of other celestial gods in Indoeuropean religions - that of becoming dei otiosi, or gods without practical purpose,[26] since they did retain a particular sort of influence over the world and mankind.[27] The celestial character of Diana is reflected in her connection with inaccessibility, virginity, light, and her preference for dwelling on high mountains and in sacred woods. Diana, therefore, reflects the heavenly world in its sovereignty, supremacy, impassibility, and indifference towards such secular matters as the fates of mortals and states. At the same time, however, she is seen as active in ensuring the succession of kings and in the preservation of humankind through the protection of childbirth.[28] These functions are apparent in the traditional institutions and cults related to the goddess:
+
+According to Dumezil, the forerunner of all frame gods is an Indian epic hero who was the image (avatar) of the Vedic god Dyaus. Having renounced the world, in his roles of father and king, he attained the status of an immortal being while retaining the duty of ensuring that his dynasty is preserved and that there is always a new king for each generation. The Scandinavian god Heimdallr performs an analogous function: he is born first and will die last. He too gives origin to kingship and the first king, bestowing on him regal prerogatives.
+Diana, although a female deity, has exactly the same functions, preserving mankind through childbirth and royal succession.
+
+F. H. Pairault, in her essay on Diana, qualified Dumézil's theory as "impossible to verify".
+
+Unlike the Greek gods, Roman gods were originally considered to be numina: divine powers of presence and will that did not necessarily have physical form. At the time Rome was founded, Diana and the other major Roman gods probably did not have much mythology per se, or any depictions in human form. The idea of gods as having anthropomorphic qualities and human-like personalities and actions developed later, under the influence of Greek and Etruscan religion.[31]
+
+By the 3rd century BCE, Diana is found listed among the twelve major gods of the Roman pantheon by the poet Ennius. Though the Capitoline Triad were the primary state gods of Rome, early Roman myth did not assign a strict hierarchy to the gods the way Greek mythology did, though the Greek hierarchy would eventually be adopted by Roman religion as well.[31]
+
+Once Greek influence had caused Diana to be considered identical to the Greek goddess Artemis, Diana acquired Artemis's physical description, attributes, and variants of her myths as well. Like Artemis, Diana is usually depicted in art wearing a short skirt, with a hunting bow and quiver, and often accompanied by hunting dogs. A 1st-century BCE Roman coin (see above) depicted her with a unique, short hairstyle, and in triple form, with one form holding a bow and another holding a poppy.[6]
+
+When worship of Apollo was first introduced to Rome, Diana became conflated with Apollo's sister Artemis as in the earlier Greek myths, and as such she became identified as the daughter of Apollo's parents Latona and Jupiter. Though Diana was usually considered to be a virgin goddess like Artemis, later authors sometimes attributed consorts and children to her. According to Cicero and Ennius, Trivia (an epithet of Diana) and Caelus were the parents of Janus, as well as of Saturn and Ops.[32]
+
+According to Macrobius (who cited Nigidius Figulus and Cicero), Janus and Jana (Diana) are a pair of divinities, worshiped as the sun and moon. Janus was said to receive sacrifices before all the others because, through him, the way of access to the desired deity is made apparent.[33]
+
+Diana's mythology incorporated stories which were variants of earlier stories about Artemis. Possibly the most well-known of these is the myth of Actaeon. In Ovid's version of this myth, part of his poem Metamorphoses, he tells of a pool or grotto hidden in the wooded valley of Gargaphie. There, Diana, the goddess of the woods, would bathe and rest after a hunt. Actaeon, a young hunter, stumbled across the grotto and accidentally witnessed the goddess bathing without invitation. In retaliation, Diana splashed him with water from the pool, cursing him, and he transformed into a deer. His own hunting dogs caught his scent, and tore him apart.[6]
+
+Ovid's version of the myth of Actaeon differs from most earlier sources. Unlike earlier myths about Artemis, Actaeon is killed for an innocent mistake, glimpsing Diana bathing. An earlier variant of this myth, known as the Bath of Pallas, had the hunter intentionally spy on the bathing goddess Pallas (Athena), and earlier versions of the myth involving Artemis did not involve the bath at all.[34]
+
+Diana was an ancient goddess common to all Latin tribes. Therefore, many sanctuaries were dedicated to her in the lands inhabited by Latins. Her primary sanctuary was a woodland grove overlooking Lake Nemi, a body of water also known as "Diana's Mirror", where she was worshiped as Diana Nemorensis, or "Diana of the Wood". In Rome, the cult of Diana may have been almost as old as the city itself. Varro mentions her in the list of deities to whom king Titus Tatius promised to build a shrine. His list included Luna and Diana Lucina as separate entities. Another testimony to the antiquity of her cult is to be found in the lex regia of King Tullus Hostilius that condemns those guilty of incest to the sacratio to Diana. She had a temple in Rome on the Aventine Hill, according to tradition dedicated by king Servius Tullius. Its location is remarkable as the Aventine is situated outside the pomerium, i.e. original territory of the city, in order to comply with the tradition that Diana was a goddess common to all Latins and not exclusively of the Romans. Being placed on the Aventine, and thus outside the pomerium, meant that Diana's cult essentially remained a foreign one, like that of Bacchus; she was never officially transferred to Rome as Juno was after the sack of Veii.
+
+Other known sanctuaries and temples to Diana include Colle di Corne near Tusculum,[35] where she is referred to with the archaic Latin name of deva Cornisca and where existed a collegium of worshippers;[36] at Évora, Portugal;[37] Mount Algidus, also near Tusculum;[38] at Lavinium;[39] and at Tibur (Tivoli), where she is referred to as Diana Opifera Nemorensis.[40] Diana was also worshiped at a sacred wood mentioned by Livy[41] - ad compitum Anagninum (near Anagni), and on Mount Tifata in Campania.[42]
+
+According to Plutarch, men and women alike were worshipers of Diana and were welcomed into all of her temples. The one exception seems to have been a temple on the Vicus Patricius, which men either did not enter due to tradition, or were not allowed to enter. Plutarch related a legend that a man had attempted to assault a woman worshiping in this temple and was killed by a pack of dogs (echoing the myth of Diana and Actaeon), which resulted in a superstition against men entering the temple.[43]
+
+A feature common to nearly all of Diana's temples and shrines by the second century AD was the hanging up of stag antlers. Plutarch noted that the only exception to this was the temple on the Aventine Hill, in which bull horns had been hung up instead. Plutarch explains this by way of reference to a legend surrounding the sacrifice of an impressive Sabine bull by King Servius at the founding of the Aventine temple.[43]
+
+Diana's worship may have originated at an open-air sanctuary overlooking Lake Nemi in the Alban Hills near Aricia, where she was worshiped as Diana Nemorensis, or ("Diana of the Sylvan Glade").[44] According to legendary accounts, the sanctuary was founded by Orestes and Iphigenia after they fled from the Tauri. In this tradition, the Nemi sanctuary was supposedly built on the pattern of an earlier Temple of Artemis Tauropolos,[45] and the first cult statue at Nemi was said to have been stolen from the Tauri and brought to Nemi by Orestes.[13][46] Historical evidence suggests that worship of Diana at Nemi flourished from at least the 6th century BCE[46] until the 2nd century CE. Her cult there was first attested in Latin literature by Cato the Elder, in a surviving quote by the late grammarian Priscian.[47] By the 4th century BCE, the simple shrine at Nemi had been joined by a temple complex.[46] The sanctuary served an important political role as it was held in common by the Latin League.[48][49]
+
+A festival to Diana, the Nemoralia, was held yearly at Nemi on the Ides of August (August 13–15[50]). Worshipers traveled to Nemi carrying torches and garlands, and once at the lake, they left pieces of thread tied to fences and tablets inscribed with prayers.[51][52] Diana's festival eventually became widely celebrated throughout Italy, which was unusual given the provincial nature of Diana's cult. The poet Statius wrote of the festival:[6]
+
+Statius describes the triple nature of the goddess by invoking heavenly (the stars), earthly (the grove itself) and underworld (Hecate) imagery. He also suggests by the garlanding of the dogs and polishing of the spears that no hunting was allowed during the festival.[6]
+
+Legend has it that Diana's high priest at Nemi, known as the Rex Nemorensis, was always an escaped slave who could only obtain the position by defeating his predecessor in a fight to the death.[44] Sir James George Frazer wrote of this sacred grove in The Golden Bough, basing his interpretation on brief remarks in Strabo (5.3.12), Pausanias (2,27.24) and Servius' commentary on the Aeneid (6.136). The legend tells of a tree that stood in the center of the grove and was heavily guarded. No one was allowed to break off its limbs, with the exception of a runaway slave, who was allowed, if he could, to break off one of the boughs. He was then in turn granted the privilege to engage the Rex Nemorensis, the current king and priest of Diana, in a fight to the death. If the slave prevailed, he became the next king for as long as he could defeat his challengers. However, Joseph Fontenrose criticised Frazer's assumption that a rite of this sort actually occurred at the sanctuary,[53] and no contemporary records exist that support the historical existence of the Rex Nemorensis.[54]
+
+Rome hoped to unify into and control the Latin tribes around Nemi,[48] so Diana's worship was imported to Rome as a show of political solidarity. Diana soon afterwards became Hellenized, and combined with the Greek goddess Artemis, "a process which culminated with the appearance of Diana beside Apollo [the brother of Artemis] in the first lectisternium at Rome" in 399 BCE.[55] The process of identification between the two goddesses probably began when artists who were commissioned to create new cult statues for Diana's temples outside Nemi were struck by the similar attributes between Diana and the more familiar Artemis, and sculpted Diana in a manner inspired by previous depictions of Artemis. Sibyllene influence and trade with Massilia, where similar cult statues of Artemis existed, would have completed the process.[46]
+
+According to Françoise Hélène Pairault's study,[56] historical and archaeological evidence point to the fact that the characteristics given to both Diana of the Aventine Hill and Diana Nemorensis were the product of the direct or indirect influence of the cult of Artemis, which was spread by the Phoceans among the Greek towns of Campania Cuma and Capua, who in turn had passed it over to the Etruscans and the Latins by the 6th and 5th centuries BCE.
+
+Evidence suggests that a confrontation occurred between two groups of Etruscans who fought for supremacy, those from Tarquinia, Vulci and Caere (allied with the Greeks of Capua) and those of Clusium. This is reflected in the legend of the coming of Orestes to Nemi and of the inhumation of his bones in the Roman Forum near the temple of Saturn.[57] The cult introduced by Orestes at Nemi is apparently that of the Artemis Tauropolos. The literary amplification[58] reveals a confused religious background: different versions of Artemis were conflated under the epithet.[59] As far as Nemi's Diana is concerned there are two different versions, by Strabo[60] and Servius Honoratus. Strabo's version looks to be the most authoritative as he had access to first-hand primary sources on the sanctuaries of Artemis, i.e. the priest of Artemis Artemidoros of Ephesus. The meaning of Tauropolos denotes an Asiatic goddess with lunar attributes, lady of the herds.[61] The only possible interpretatio graeca of high antiquity concerning Diana Nemorensis could have been the one based on this ancient aspect of a deity of light, master of wildlife. Tauropolos is an ancient epithet attached to Artemis, Hecate, and even Athena.[62] According to the legend Orestes founded Nemi together with Iphigenia.[63] At Cuma the Sybil is the priestess of both Phoibos and Trivia.[64] Hesiod[65] and Stesichorus[66] tell the story according to which after her death Iphigenia was divinised under the name of Hecate, a fact which would support the assumption that Artemis Tauropolos had a real ancient alliance with the heroine, who was her priestess in Taurid and her human paragon. This religious complex is in turn supported by the triple statue of Artemis-Hecate.[18]
+
+In Rome, Diana was regarded with great reverence and was a patroness of lower-class citizens, called plebeians, as well as slaves, who could receive asylum in her temples. Georg Wissowa proposed that this might be because the first slaves of the Romans were Latins of the neighboring tribes.[67] However, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus had the same custom of the asylum.
+
+Worship of Diana probably spread into the city of Rome beginning around 550 BCE,[46] during her Hellenization and combination with the Greek goddess Artemis. Diana was first worshiped along with her brother and mother, Apollo and Latona, in their temple in the Campus Martius, and later in the Temple of Apollo Palatinus.[13]
+
+The first major temple dedicated primarily to Diana in the vicinity of Rome was the Temple of Diana Aventina (Diana of the Aventine Hill). According to the Roman historian Livy, the construction of this temple began in the 6th century BCE and was inspired by stories of the massive Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, which was said to have been built through the combined efforts of all the cities of Asia Minor. Legend has it that Servius Tullius was impressed with this act of massive political and economic cooperation, and convinced the cities of the Latin League to work with the Romans to build their own temple to the goddess.[68] However, there is no compelling evidence for such an early construction of the temple, and it is more likely that it was built in the 3rd century BCE, following the influence of the temple at Nemi, and probably about the same time the first temples to Vertumnus (who was associated with Diana) were built in Rome (264 BCE).[46] The misconception that the Aventine Temple was inspired by the Ephesian Temple might originate in the fact that the cult images and statues used at the former were based heavily on those found in the latter.[46] Whatever its initial construction date, records show that the Avantine Temple was rebuilt by Lucius Cornificius in 32 BCE.[45] If it was still in use by the 4th century CE, the Aventine temple would have been permanently closed during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire. Today, a short street named the Via del Tempio di Diana and an associated plaza, Piazza del Tempio di Diana, commemorates the site of the temple. Part of its wall is located within one of the halls of the Apuleius restaurant.[69]
+
+Later temple dedications often were based on the model for ritual formulas and regulations of the Temple of Diana.[70] Roman politicians built several minor temples to Diana elsewhere in Rome to secure public support. One of these was built in the Campus Martius in 187 BCE; no Imperial period records of this temple have been found, and it is possible it was one of the temples demolished around 55 BCE in order to build a theater.[45] Diana also had a public temple on the Quirinal Hill, the sanctuary of Diana Planciana. It was dedicated by Plancius in 55 BCE, though it is unclear which Plancius.[45]
+
+In their worship of Artemis, Greeks filled their temples with sculptures of the goddess created by well-known sculptors, and many were adapted for use in the worship of Diana by the Romans, beginning around the 2nd century BCE (the beginning of a period of strong Hellenistic influence on Roman religion). The earliest depictions of the Artemis of Ephesus are found on Ephesian coins from this period. By the Imperial period, small marble statues of the Ephesian Artemis were being produced in the Western region of the Mediterranean and were often bought by Roman patrons.[71] The Romans obtained a large copy of an Ephesian Artemis statue for their temple on the Aventine Hill.[13] Diana was usually depicted for educated Romans in her Greek guise. If she was shown accompanied by a deer, as in the Diana of Versailles, this is because Diana was the patroness of hunting. The deer may also offer a covert reference to the myth of Acteon (or Actaeon), who saw her bathing naked. Diana transformed Acteon into a stag and set his own hunting dogs to kill him.
+
+In Campania, Diana had a major temple at Mount Tifata, near Capua. She was worshiped there as Diana Tifatina. This was one of the oldest sanctuaries in Campania. As a rural sanctuary, it included lands and estates that would have been worked by slaves following the Roman conquest of Campania, and records show that expansion and renovation projects at her temple were funded in part by other conquests by Roman military campaigns. The modern Christian church of Sant'Angelo in Formis was built on the ruins of the Tifata temple.[45]
+
+In the Roman provinces, Diana was widely worshiped alongside local deities. Over 100 inscriptions to Diana have been cataloged in the provinces, mainly from Gaul, Upper Germania, and Britannia. Diana was commonly invoked alongside another forest god, Silvanus, as well as other "mountain gods". In the provinces, she was occasionally conflated with local goddesses such as Abnoba, and was given high status, with Augusta and regina ("queen") being common epithets.[72]
+
+Diana was not only regarded as a goddess of the wilderness and the hunt, but was often worshiped as a patroness of families. She served a similar function to the hearth goddess Vesta, and was sometimes considered to be a member of the Penates, the deities most often invoked in household rituals. In this role, she was often given a name reflecting the tribe of family who worshiped her and asked for her protection. For example, in what is now Wiesbaden, Diana was worshiped as Diana Mattiaca by the Mattiaci tribe. Other family-derived named attested in the ancient literature include Diana Cariciana, Diana Valeriana, and Diana Plancia. As a house goddess, Diana often became reduced in stature compared to her official worship by the Roman state religion. In personal or family worship, Diana was brought to the level of other household spirits, and was believed to have a vested interest in the prosperity of the household and the continuation of the family. The Roman poet Horace regarded Diana as a household goddess in his Odes, and had an altar dedicated to her in his villa where household worship could be conducted. In his poetry, Horace deliberately contrasted the kinds of grand, elevated hymns to Diana on behalf of the entire Roman state, the kind of worship that would have been typical at her Aventine temple, with a more personal form of devotion.[14]
+
+Images of Diana and her associated myths have been found on sarcophagi of wealthy Romans. They often included scenes depicting sacrifices to the goddess, and on at least one example, the deceased man is shown joining Diana's hunt.[13]
+
+Since ancient times, philosophers and theologians have examined the nature of Diana in light of her worship traditions, attributes, mythology, and identification with other gods.
+
+Diana was initially a hunting goddess and goddess of the local woodland at Nemi,[73] but as her worship spread, she acquired attributes of other similar goddesses. As she became conflated with Artemis, she became a moon goddess, identified with the other lunar goddesses goddess Luna and Hekate.[73] She also became the goddess of childbirth and ruled over the countryside. Catullus wrote a poem to Diana in which she has more than one alias: Latonia, Lucina, Juno, Trivia, Luna.[74]
+
+Along with Mars, Diana was often venerated at games held in Roman amphitheaters, and some inscriptions from the Danubian provinces show that she was conflated with Nemesis in this role, as Diana Nemesis.[13]
+
+Outside of Italy, Diana had important centers of worship where she was syncretised with similar local deities in Gaul, Upper Germania, and Britannia. Diana was particularly important in the region in and around the Black Forest, where she was conflated with the local goddess Abnoba and worshiped as Diana Abnoba.[75]
+
+Some late antique sources went even further, syncretizing many local "great goddesses" into a single "Queen of Heaven". The Platonist philosopher Apuleius, writing in the late 2nd century, depicted the goddess declaring:
+
+"I come, Lucius, moved by your entreaties: I, mother of the universe, mistress of all the elements, first-born of the ages, highest of the gods, queen of the shades, first of those who dwell in heaven, representing in one shape all gods and goddesses. My will controls the shining heights of heaven, the health-giving sea-winds, and the mournful silences of hell; the entire world worships my single godhead in a thousand shapes, with divers rites, and under many a different name. The Phrygians, first-born of mankind, call me the Pessinuntian Mother of the gods; the native Athenians the Cecropian Minerva; the island-dwelling Cypriots Paphian Venus; the archer Cretans Dictynnan Diana; the triple-tongued Sicilians Stygian Proserpine; the ancient Eleusinians Actaean Ceres; some call me Juno, some Bellona, others Hecate, others Rhamnusia; but both races of Ethiopians, those on whom the rising and those on whom the setting sun shines, and the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning, honour me with the worship which is truly mine and call me by my true name: Queen Isis."
+
+Later poets and historians looked to Diana's identity as a triple goddess to merge her with triads heavenly, earthly, and underworld (cthonic) goddesses. Maurus Servius Honoratus said that the same goddess was called Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Proserpina in hell.[5]
+Michael Drayton praises the Triple Diana in poem The Man in the Moone (1606): "So these great three most powerful of the rest, Phoebe, Diana, Hecate, do tell. Her sovereignty in Heaven, in Earth and Hell".[77][78][79]
+
+Based on the earlier writings of Plato, the Neoplatonist philosophers of late antiquity united the various major gods of Hellenic tradition into a series of monads containing within them triads, with some creating the world, some animating it or bringing it to life, and others harmonizing it. Within this system, Proclus considered Diana to be one of the primary animating, or life-giving, deities. Proclus, citing Orphic tradition, concludes that Diana "presides over all the generation in nature, and is the midwife of physical productive principles" and that she "extends these genitals, distributing as far as to subterranean natures the prolific power of [Bacchus]."[15] Specifically, Proclus considered the life-generating principle of the highest order, within the Intellectual realm, to be Rhea, who he identified with Ceres. Within her divinity was produced the cause of the basic principle of life. Projecting this principle into the lower, Hypercosmic realm of reality generated a lower monad, Kore, who could therefore be understood as Ceres' "daughter". Kore embodied the "maidenly" principle of generation that, more importantly, included a principle of division - where Demeter generates life indiscriminately, Kore distributes it individually. This division results in another triad or trinity, known as the Maidenly trinity, within the monad of Kore: namely, Diana, Proserpine, and Minerva, through whom individual living beings are given life and perfected. Specifically, according to a commentary by scholar Spyridon Rangos, Diana (equated with Hecate) gives existence, Proserpine (equated with "Soul") gives form, and Minerva (equated with "Virtue") gives intellect.[80]
+
+In his commentary on Proclus, the 19th century Platonist scholar Thomas Taylor expanded upon the theology of the classical philosophers, further interpreting the nature and roles of the gods in light of the whole body of Neoplatonist philosophy. He cites Plato in giving a three-form aspect to her central characteristic of virginity: the undefiled, the mundane, and the anagogic. Through the first form, Diana is regarded as a "lover of virginity". Through the second, she is the guardian of virtue. Through the third, she is considered to "hate the impulses arising from generation." Through the principle of the undefiled, Taylor suggests that she is given supremacy in Proclus' triad of life-giving or animating deities, and in this role the theurgists called her Hekate. In this role, Diana is granted undefiled power (Amilieti) from the other gods. This generative power does not proceed forth from the goddess (according to a statement by the Oracle of Delphi) but rather resides with her, giving her unparalleled virtue, and in this way she can be said to embody virginity.[81] Later commentators on Proclus have clarified that the virginity of Diana is not an absence of sexual drive, but a renunciation of sexuality. Diana embodies virginity because she generates but precedes active fertility (within Neoplatonism, an important maxim is that "every productive cause is superior to the nature of the produced effect").[80]
+
+Using the ancient Neoplatonists as a basis, Taylor also commented on the triadic nature of Diana and related goddesses, and the ways in which they subsist within one another, partaking unevenly in each other's powers and attributes. For example, Kore is said to embody both Diana/Hecate and Minerva, who create the virtuous or virgin power within her, but also Proserpine (her sole traditional identification), through whom the generative power of the Kore as a whole is able to proceed forth into the world, where it joins with the demiurge to produce further deities, including Bacchus and "nine azure-eyed, flower-producing daughters".[81]
+
+Proclus also included Artemis/Diana in a second triad of deities, along with Ceres and Juno. According to Proclus:
+
+Proclus pointed to the conflict between Hera and Artmeis in the Illiad as a representation of the two kinds of human souls. Where Hera creates the higher, more cultured, or "worthy" souls, Artemis brings light to and perfects the "less worthy" or less rational. As explained by Ragnos (2000), "The aspect of reality which Artemis and Hera share, and because of which they engage in a symbolic conflict, is the engendering of life." Hera elevates rational living beings up to intellectual rational existence, whereas Artemis's power pertains to human life as far as its physical existence as a living thing. "Artemis deals with the most elementary forms of life or the most elementary part of all life, whereas Hera operates in the most elevated forms of life or the most elevated part of all life.[80]
+
+Sermons and other religious documents have provided evidence for the worship of Diana during the Middle Ages. Though few details have been recorded, enough references to Diana worship during the early Christian period exist to give some indication that it may have been relatively widespread among remote and rural communities throughout Europe, and that such beliefs persisted into the Merovingian period.[82] References to contemporary Diana worship exist from the 6th century on the Iberian peninsula and what is now southern France,[82] though more detailed accounts of Dianic cults were given for the Low Countries, and southern Belgium in particular. Many of these were probably local goddesses, and wood nymphs or dryads, which had been conflated with Diana by Christian writers Latinizing local names and traditions.[82]
+
+The 6th century bishop Gregory of Tours reported meeting with a deacon named Vulfilaic (also known as Saint Wulflaicus or Walfroy the Stylite), who founded a hermitage on a hill in what is now Margut, France. On the same hill, he found "an image of Diana which the unbelieving people worshiped as a god." According to Gregory's report, worshipers would also sing chants in Diana's honor as they drank and feasted. Vulfilaic destroyed a number of smaller pagan statues in the area, but the statue of Diana was too large. After converting some of the local population to Christianity, Vulfilaic and a group of local residents attempted to pull the large statue down the mountain in order to destroy it, but failed, as it was too large to be moved. In Vulfilaic's account, after praying for a miracle, he was then able to single-handedly pull down the statue, at which point he and his group smashed it to dust with their hammers. According to Vulfilaic, this incident was quickly followed by an outbreak of pimples or sores that covered his entire body, which he attributed to demonic activity and similarly cured via what he described as a miracle. Vulfilaic would later found a church on the site, which is today known as Mont Saint-Walfroy.[83]
+
+Additional evidence for surviving pagan practices in the Low Countries region comes from the Vita Eligii, or "Life of Saint Eligius", written by Audoin in the 7th century. Audoin drew together the familiar admonitions of Eligius to the people of Flanders. In his sermons, he denounced "pagan customs" that the people continued to follow. In particular, he denounced several Roman gods and goddesses alongside Druidic mythological beliefs and objects:
+
+"I denounce and contest, that you shall observe no sacrilegious pagan customs. For no cause or infirmity should you consult magicians, diviners, sorcerers or incantators. ..Do not observe auguries ... No influence attaches to the first work of the day or the [phase of the] moon. ... [Do not] make vetulas, little deer or iotticos or set tables at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous drinks... No Christian... performs solestitia or dancing or leaping or diabolical chants. No Christian should presume to invoke the name of a demon, not Neptune or Orcus or Diana or Minerva or Geniscus... No one should observe Jove's day in idleness. ... No Christian should make or render any devotion to the gods of the trivium, where three roads meet, to the fanes or the rocks, or springs or groves or corners. None should presume to hang any phylacteries from the neck of man nor beast. ..None should presume to make lustrations or incantations with herbs, or to pass cattle through a hollow tree or ditch ... No woman should presume to hang amber from her neck or call upon Minerva or other ill-starred beings in their weaving or dyeing. .. None should call the sun or moon lord or swear by them. .. No one should tell fate or fortune or horoscopes by them as those do who believe that a person must be what he was born to be."[84]
+
+Legends from medieval Belgium concern a natural spring which came to be known as the "Fons Remacli", a location which may have been home to late-surviving worship of Diana. Remacle was a monk appointed by Eligius to head a monastery at Solignac, and he is reported to have encountered Diana worship in the area around the river Warche. The population in this region was said to have been involved in the worship of "Diana of the Ardennes" (a syncretism of Diana and the Celtic goddess Arduinna), with effigies and "stones of Diana" used as evidence of pagan practices. Remacle believed that demonic entities were present in the spring, and had caused it to run dry. He performed and exorcism of the water source, and installed a lead pipe, which allowed the water to flow again.[85]
+
+Diana is the only pagan goddess mentioned by name in the New Testament (Acts 19). As a result, she became associated with many folk beliefs involving goddess-like supernatural figures that Catholic clergy wished to demonize. In the Middle Ages, legends of night-time processions of spirits led by a female figure are recorded in the church records of Northern Italy, western Germany, and southern France. The spirits were said to enter houses and consume food which then miraculously re-appeared. They would sing and dance, and dispense advise regarding healing herbs and the whereabouts of lost objects. If the house was in good order, they would bring fertility and plenty. If not, they would bring curses to the family. Some women reported participating in these processions while their bodies still lay in bed. Historian Carlo Ginzburg has referred to these legendary spirit gatherings as "The Society of Diana".[86]
+
+Local clergy complained that women believed they were following Diana or Herodias, riding out on appointed nights to join the processions or carry out instructions from the goddess.[4] The earliest reports of these legends appear in the writings of Regino of Prüm in the year 899, followed by many additional reports and variants of the legend in documents by Ratherius and others. By 1310, the names of the goddess figures attached to the legend were sometimes combined as Herodiana.[4] It is likely that the clergy of this time used the identification of the procession's leader as Diana or Herodias in order to fit an older folk belief into a Biblical framework, as both are featured and demonized in the New Testament. Herodias was often conflated with her daughter Salome in legend, which also holds that, upon being presented with the severed head of John the Baptist, she was blown into the air by wind from the saint's mouth, through which she continued to wander for eternity. Diana was often conflated with Hecate, a goddess associated with the spirits of the dead and with witchcraft. These associations, and the fact that both figures are attested to in the Bible, made them a natural fit for the leader of the ghostly procession. Clergy used this identification to assert that the spirits were evil, and that the women who followed them were inspired by demons. As was typical of this time period, though pagan beliefs and practices were near totally eliminated from Europe, the clergy and other authorities still treated paganism as a real threat, in part thanks to biblical influence; much of the Bible had been written when various forms of paganism were still active if not dominant, so medieval clergy applied the same kinds of warnings and admonitions for any non-standard folk beliefs and practices they encountered.[4] Based on analysis of church documents and parishioner confessions, it is likely that the spirit identified by the Church as Diana or Herodias was called by names of pre-Christian figures like Holda (a Germanic goddess of the winter solstice), or with names referencing her bringing of prosperity, like the Latin Abundia (meaning "plenty"), Satia (meaning "full" or "plentiful") and the Italian Richella (meaning "rich").[4] Some of the local titles for her, such as bonae res (meaning "good things"), are similar to late classical titles for Hecate, like bona dea. This might indicate a cultural mixture of medieval folk ideas with holdovers from earlier pagan belief systems. Whatever her true origin, by the 13th century, the leader of the legendary spirit procession had come to be firmly identified with Diana and Herodias through the influence of the Church.[4]
+
+In his wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, The Golden Bough, anthropologist James George Frazer drew on various lines of evidence to re-interpret the legendary rituals associated with Diana at Nemi, particularly that of the rex Nemorensis. Frazer developed his ideas in relation to J. M. W. Turner's painting, also titled The Golden Bough, depicting a dream-like vision of the woodland lake of Nemi. According to Frazer, the rex Nemorensis or king at Nemi was the incarnation of a dying and reviving god, a solar deity who participated in a mystical marriage to a goddess. He died at the harvest and was reincarnated in the spring. Frazer claimed that this motif of death and rebirth is central to nearly all of the world's religions and mythologies. In Frazer's theory, Diana functioned as a goddess of fertility and childbirth, who, assisted by the sacred king, ritually returned life to the land in spring. The king in this scheme served not only as a high priest but as a god of the grove. Frazer identifies this figure with Virbius, of which little is known, but also with Jupiter via an association with sacred oak trees. Frazer argued furthermore that Jupiter and Juno were simply duplicate names of Jana and Janus; that is, Diana and Dianus, all of whom had identical functions and origins.[87]
+
+Frazer's speculatively reconstructed folklore of Diana's origins and the nature of her cult at Nemi were not well received even by his contemporaries. Godfrey Lienhardt noted that even during Frazer's lifetime, other anthropologists had "for the most part distanced themselves from his theories and opinions", and that the lasting influence of The Golden Bough and Frazer's wider body of work "has been in the literary rather than the academic world."[88] Robert Ackerman wrote that, for anthropologists, Frazer is "an embarrassment" for being "the most famous of them all" and that most distance themselves from his work. While The Golden Bough achieved wide "popular appeal" and exerted a "disproportionate" influence "on so many [20th century] creative writers", Frazer's ideas played "a much smaller part" in the history of academic social anthropology.[88]
+
+Folk legends like the Society of Diana, which linked the goddess to forbidden gatherings of women with spirits, may have influenced later works of folklore. One of these is Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, which prominently featured Diana at the center of an Italian witch-cult.[4] In Leland's interpretation of supposed Italian folk witchcraft, Diana is considered Queen of the Witches. In this belief system, Diana is said to have created the world of her own being having in herself the seeds of all creation yet to come. It was said that out of herself she divided the darkness and the light, keeping for herself the darkness of creation and creating her brother Lucifer. Diana was believed to have loved and ruled with her brother, and with him bore a daughter, Aradia (a name likely derived from Herodias), who leads and teaches the witches on earth.[89][4]
+
+Leland's claim that Aradia represented an authentic tradition from an underground witch-cult, which had secretly worshiped Diana since ancient times has been dismissed by most scholars of folklore, religion, and medieval history. After the 1921 publication of Margaret Murray's The Witch-cult in Western Europe, which hypothesized that the European witch trials were actually a persecution of a pagan religious survival, American sensationalist author Theda Kenyon's 1929 book Witches Still Live connected Murray's thesis with the witchcraft religion in Aradia.[90][91] Arguments against Murray's thesis would eventually include arguments against Leland. Witchcraft scholar Jeffrey Russell devoted some of his 1980 book A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans to arguing against the claims Leland presented in Aradia.[92] Historian Elliot Rose's A Razor for a Goat dismissed Aradia as a collection of incantations unsuccessfully attempting to portray a religion.[93] In his book Triumph of the Moon, historian Ronald Hutton doubted not only of the existence of the religion that Aradia claimed to represent, and that the traditions Leland presented were unlike anything found in actual medieval literature,[94] but also of the existence of Leland's sources, arguing that it is more likely that Leland created the entire story than that Leland could be so easily "duped".[95] Religious scholar Chas S. Clifton took exception to Hutton's position, writing that it amounted to an accusation of "serious literary fraud" made by an "argument from absence".[96]
+
+Building on the work of Frazer, Murray, and others, some 20th and 21st century authors have attempted to identify links between Diana and more localized deities. R. Lowe Thompson, for example, in his 2013 book The History of the Devil,  speculated that Diana may have been linked as an occasional "spouse" to the Gaulish horned god Cernunnos. Thompson suggested that Diana in her role as wild goddess of the hunt would have made a fitting consort for Cernunnos in Western Europe, and further noted the link between Diana as Proserpina with Pluto, the Greek god associated with the riches of the earth who served a similar role to the Gaulish Cernunnos.
+
+Because Leland's claims about an Italian witch-cult are questionable, the first verifiable worship of Diana in the modern age was probably begun by Wicca. The earliest known practitioners of Neopagan witchcraft were members of a tradition begun by Gerald Gardner. Published versions of the devotional materials used by Gardner's group, dated to 1949, are heavily focused on the worship of Aradia, the daughter of Diana in Leland's folklore. Diana herself was recognized as an aspect of a single "great goddess" in the tradition of Apuleius, as described in the Wiccan Charge of the Goddess (itself adapted from Leland's text).[97] Some later Wiccans, such as Scott Cunningham, would replace Aradia with Diana as the central focus of worship.[98]
+
+In the early 1960s, Victor Henry Anderson founded the Feri Tradition, a form of Wicca that draws from both Charles Leland's folklore and the Gardnerian tradition. Anderson claimed that he had first been initiated into a witchcraft tradition as a child in 1926,[99] and that he had been told the name of the goddess worshiped by witches was Tana.[100] The name Tana originated in Leland's Aradia, where he claimed it was an old Etruscan name for Diana. The Feri Tradition founded by Anderson continues to recognize Tana/Diana as an aspect of the Star Goddess related to the element of fire, and representing "the fiery womb that gives birth to and transforms all matter."[100] (In Aradia, Diana is also credited as the creatrix of the material world and Queen of Faeries[101]).
+
+A few Wiccan traditions would elevate Diana to a more prominent position of worship, and there are two distinct modern branches of Wicca focused primarily on Diana. The first, founded during the early 1970s in the United States by Morgan McFarland and Mark Roberts, has a feminist theology and only occasionally accepts male participants, and leadership is limited to female priestesses.[102][103] McFarland Dianic Wiccans base their tradition primarily on the work of Robert Graves and his book The White Goddess, and were inspired by references to the existence of medieval European "Dianic cults" in Margaret Murray's book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe.[103] The second Dianic tradition, founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest in the mid 1970s, is characterized by an exclusive focus on the feminine aspect of the divine, and as a result is exclusively female. This tradition combines elements from British Traditional Wicca, Italian folk-magic based on the work of Charles Leland, feminist values, and healing practices drawn from a variety of different cultures.[104][102]
+
+A third Neopagan tradition heavily inspired by the worship of Diana through the lens of Italian folklore is Stregheria, founded in the 1980s. It centers around a pair of deities regarded as divine lovers, who are known by several variant names including Diana and Dianus, alternately given as Tana and Tanus or Jana and Janus (the later two deity names were mentioned by James Frazer in The Golden Bough as later corruptions of Diana and Dianus, which themselves were alternate and possibly older names for Juno and Jupiter).[105] The tradition was founded by author Raven Grimassi, and influenced by Italian folktales he was told by his mother. One such folktale describes the moon being impregnated by her lover the morning star, a parallel to Leland's mythology of Diana and her lover Lucifer.[86]
+
+Diana was also a subject of worship in certain Feraferian rites, particularly those surrounding the autumnal equinox, beginning in 1967.[106]
+
+Both the Romanian words for "fairy" Zână[107] and Sânziană, the Leonese and Portuguese word for "water nymph" xana, and the Spanish word for "shooting target" and "morning call" (diana) seem to come from the name of Diana.
+
+Since the Renaissance, Diana's myths have often been represented in the visual and dramatic arts, including the opera L'arbore di Diana. In the 16th century, Diana's image figured prominently at the châteaus of Fontainebleau, Chenonceau, & at Anet, in deference to Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henri of France. At Versailles she was incorporated into the Olympian iconography with which Louis XIV, the Apollo-like "Sun King" liked to surround himself. Diana is also a character in the 1876 Léo Delibes ballet Sylvia. The plot deals with Sylvia, one of Diana's nymphs and sworn to chastity, and Diana's assault on Sylvia's affections for the shepherd Amyntas.
+
+Diana has been one of the most popular themes in art. Painters like Titian, Peter Paul Rubens, François Boucher, Nicholas Poussin and made use of her myth as a major theme. Most depictions of Diana in art featured the stories of Diana and Actaeon, or Callisto, or depicted her resting after hunting. Some famous work of arts with a Diana theme are:

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+Islam (/ˈɪslɑːm/;[A] Arabic: اَلْإِسْلَامُ‎, romanized: al-’Islām, [ɪsˈlaːm] (listen) "submission [to God]")[1] is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion that teaches that Muhammad is a messenger of God.[2][3] It is the world's second-largest religion with over 1.8 billion followers or 24.1% of the world's population,[4] known as Muslims.[5] Muslims make up a majority of the population in 49 countries.[6] Islam teaches that God is merciful, all-powerful, and unique,[7] and has guided mankind through prophets, revealed scriptures, and natural signs.[3][8] The primary scriptures of Islam are the Quran, believed to be the verbatim word of God, as well as the teachings and normative examples (called the sunnah, composed of accounts called hadith) of Muhammad (c. 570 – 8 June 632 CE).[9]
+
+Muslims believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed many times before through prophets, including Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.[10] Muslims consider the Quran in Arabic to be the unaltered and final revelation of God.[11] Like other Abrahamic religions, Islam also teaches a final judgment with the righteous rewarded in paradise and the unrighteous punished in hell.[12] Religious concepts and practices include the Five Pillars of Islam, which are obligatory acts of worship, as well as following Islamic law (sharia), which touches on virtually every aspect of life and society, from banking and welfare to women and the environment.[13][14] The cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem are home to the three holiest sites in Islam.[15]
+
+From a historical point of view, Islam originated in early 7th century CE in the Arabian Peninsula, in Mecca,[16] and by the 8th century, the Umayyad Caliphate extended from Iberia in the west to the Indus River in the east. The Islamic Golden Age refers to the period traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 13th century, during the Abbasid Caliphate, when much of the historically Muslim world was experiencing a scientific, economic, and cultural flourishing.[17][18][19] The expansion of the Muslim world involved various caliphates and states such as the Ottoman Empire, trade, and conversion to Islam by missionary activities (dawah).[20]
+
+Most Muslims are of one of two denominations: Sunni (75–90%)[21] or Shia (10–20%).[22][23][24] Sunni and Shia differences arose from disagreement over the succession to Muhammad and acquired broader political significance, as well as theological and juridical dimensions.[25] About 13% of Muslims live in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country;[26] 31% live in South Asia,[27] the largest population of Muslims in the world;[28] 20% in the Middle East–North Africa, where it is the dominant religion;[29] and 15% in sub-Saharan Africa.[29] Sizable Muslim communities can also be found in the Americas, China, Europe, and North Asia.[30][31][29] Islam is the fastest-growing major religion in the world,[32][33] due primarily to the young age and high fertility-rate of Muslims.[34][35]
+
+Islām (Arabic: إسلام‎) is the verbal noun originating from the triliteral root S-L-M, which forms a large class of words mostly relating to concepts of wholeness, submission, sincerity, safeness, and peace.[36] Islām is the verbal noun of Form IV of the root, and means "submission" or "surrender". In a religious context, it means "voluntary submission' to God".[37][38] A Muslim (Arabic: مُسْلِم‎‎), the word applied to an adherent of Islam, is the active participle of the same verb form, and means "submitter (to God)" or "one who surrenders (to God)." The word sometimes has distinct connotations in its various occurrences in the Quran. In some verses, there is stress on the quality of islām as an internal spiritual state: "Whomsoever God desires to guide, He opens his heart to islām."[i][39] Other verses connect islām and religion (dīn) together:[ii]
+
+Today, I have perfected your religion for you; I have completed My blessing upon you; I have approved islām for your religion.
+
+Still, others describe Islām as an action of returning to God—more than just a verbal affirmation of faith.[iii] In the Hadith of Gabriel, islām is presented as one part of a triad that also includes imān (faith), and ihsān (excellence).[40][41]
+
+The word silm (Arabic: سِلْم‎) in Arabic means both peace and also the religion of Islam.[42] A common linguistic phrase demonstrating its usage is "he entered into as-silm" (Arabic: دَخَلَ فِي السِّلْمِ‎) which means "he entered into Islam," with a connotation of finding peace by submitting one's will to the Will of God.[42] The word "Islam" can be used in a linguistic sense of submission or in a technical sense of the religion of Islam, which also is called as-silm which means peace.[42]
+
+Islam was historically itself called Mohammedanism in the English-speaking world. This term has fallen out of use and is sometimes said to be offensive, as it suggests that a human being, rather than God, is central to Muslims' religion, parallel to Buddha in Buddhism.[43] Some authors, however, continue to use the term Muhammadanism as a technical term for the religious system as opposed to the theological concept of Islam that exists within that system.
+
+Faith (iman) in the Islamic creed (aqidah) is often represented as the six articles of faith, notably mentioned in the Hadith of Gabriel. Belief in these articles is necessary and obligatory upon all Muslims.
+
+Islam's most fundamental concept is a rigorous monotheism, called tawḥīd (Arabic: توحيد‎).[44][45][46]:22 God is described in Chapter 112 of the Quran as: "Say, He is God, the One and Only; God, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him."[iv] Islam rejects polytheism and idolatry (shirk), as well as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. In Islam, God is beyond all comprehension and thus Muslims are not expected to think of Him as having a human form.[47][48][49][50] God is described and referred to by several names or attributes, the most common being Ar-Rahmān, meaning "The Compassionate," and Ar-Rahīm, meaning "The Merciful."[51]
+
+Islam teaches that the creation of everything in the universe was brought into being by God's command as expressed by the wording, "Be, and it is,"[v][52] and that the purpose of existence is to worship or to know God.[vi][53][54] He is viewed as a personal god who responds whenever a person in need or distress calls him.[vii][52] There are no intermediaries, such as clergy, to contact God, who states: "I am nearer to him (man) than [his] jugular vein."[viii] Consciousness and awareness of God is referred to as Taqwa. Allāh is traditionally seen as the personal name of God,[55] a term with no plural or gender being ascribed. It is used by Muslims and Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews in reference to God, whereas ʾilāh (Arabic: إله‎) is a term used for a deity or a god in general.[56] Other non-Arab Muslims might use different names as much as Allah, for instance "Khodā" in Persian or "Ḵẖudā" in Urdu.
+
+Belief in angels is fundamental to Islam. The Quranic word for angel (Arabic: ملك‎ malak) derives either from Malaka, meaning "he controlled", due to their power to govern different affairs assigned to them,[57] or from the root ’-l-k, l-’-k or m-l-k with the broad meaning of a 'messenger', just as its counterpart in Hebrew (malʾákh). Unlike the Hebrew word, however, the term is exclusively used for heavenly spirits of the divine world, as opposed to human messengers. The Quran refers to both angelic and human messengers as rasul instead.[58]
+
+The Quran is the principal source for the Islamic concept of angels.[59]:23 Some of them, such as Gabriel and Michael, are mentioned by name in the Quran, others are only referred to by their function. In hadith literature, angels are often assigned to only one specific phenomenon.[59]:79 Angels play a significant role in literature about the Mi'raj, where Muhammad encounters several angels during his journey through the heavens.[59]:79 Further angels have often been featured in Islamic eschatology, theology and philosophy.[59]:22 Duties assigned to angels include, for example, communicating revelations from God, glorifying God, recording every person's actions, and taking a person's soul at the time of death.
+
+In Islam, just as in Judaism and Christianity, angels are often represented in anthropomorphic forms combined with supernatural images, such as wings, being of great size or wearing heavenly articles.[59]:97–9 The Quran describes them as "messengers with wings—two, or three, or four (pairs)."[ix][60][61] Common characteristics for angels are their missing needs for bodily desires, such as eating and drinking.[62] Their lack of affinity to material desires is also expressed by their creation from light: angels of mercy are created from nūr ('light')[63] in opposition to the angels of punishment created from nār ('fire').[64][65] Muslims do not generally share the perceptions of angelic pictorial depictions, such as those found in Western art.
+
+The Islamic holy books are the records which most Muslims believe were dictated by God to various prophets. Muslims believe that parts of the previously revealed scriptures, the Tawrat (Torah) and the Injil (Gospel), had become distorted—either in interpretation, in text, or both.[66] The Quran (lit. "Recitation") is viewed by Muslims as the final revelation and literal word of God and is widely regarded as the finest literary work in the classical Arabic language.[67][68]
+
+Muslims believe that the verses of the Quran were revealed to Muhammad by God through the archangel Gabriel (Jibrīl) on many occasions between 610 CE until his death in 632.[46]:17–18, 21 While Muhammad was alive, all of these revelations were written down by his companions (sahabah), although the prime method of transmission was orally through memorization.[69] The Quran is divided into 114 chapters (suras) which combined, contain 6,236 verses (āyāt). The chronologically earlier suras, revealed at Mecca, are primarily concerned with ethical and spiritual topics. The later Medinan suras mostly discuss social and legal issues relevant to the Muslim community.[52][70]
+
+The Quran is more concerned with moral guidance than legislation, and is considered the "sourcebook of Islamic principles and values."[46]:79 Muslim jurists consult the hadith ('accounts'), or the written record of Prophet Muhammad's life, to both supplement the Quran and assist with its interpretation. The science of Quranic commentary and exegesis is known as tafsir.[71][46]:79–81 The set of rules governing proper elocution of recitation is called tajwid. Muslims usually view "the Quran" as the original scripture as revealed in Arabic and that any translations are necessarily deficient, which are regarded only as commentaries on the Quran.[72][70]
+
+Muslims identify the 'prophets' (Arabic: أنبياء‎, anbiyāʾ) as those humans chosen by God at different times in the past, to convey his messages (warnings and glad tidings), teachings (way of personal life) and legislation (public life) to people while being in contact with God mostly through revelation.[x] According to the Quran, the prophets were instructed by God to bring the "will of God" to the peoples of the nations. Muslims believe that prophets are human and not divine, though some are able to perform miracles to prove their claim. Islamic theology says that all of God's messengers preached the message of Islam—submission to the will of God. The Quran mentions the names of numerous figures considered prophets in Islam, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, among others.[52]
+
+Muslims believe that God finally sent Muhammad as the last law-bearing prophet (Seal of the prophets) to convey the divine message to the whole world (to sum up and to finalize the word of God). In Islam, the "normative" example of Muhammad's life is called the sunnah (literally 'trodden path'). Muslims are encouraged to emulate Muhammad's actions in their daily lives and the sunnah is seen as crucial to guiding interpretation of the Quran.[73] This example is preserved in traditions known as hadith, which recount his words, his actions, and his personal characteristics. Hadith Qudsi is a sub-category of hadith, regarded as verbatim words of God quoted by Muhammad that are not part of the Quran. A hadith involves two elements: a chain of narrators, called sanad, and the actual wording, called matn. Hadiths can be classified, by studying the narration as: 'authentic' or 'correct' (صَحِيْح‎, ṣaḥīḥ); 'good', hasan (حَسَن‎, ḥasan); or 'weak' (ضَعِيْف‎, ḍaʻīf), among others. Scholar Muhammad al-Bukhari (810–870 AD) collected over 300,000 hadith and codified 2,602 of them, having passed veracity tests, as authentic into his Sahih al-Bukhari,[74] a book considered by Sunnis to be the most authentic source after the Quran.[75][76] Another famous source of hadiths is known as The Four Books, which Shias consider as the most authentic hadith reference.[77][78][79]
+
+Belief in the "Day of Resurrection" or Yawm al-Qiyāmah (Arabic: يوم القيامة‎), is also crucial for Muslims. It is believed that the time of Qiyāmah is preordained by God but unknown to man. The trials and tribulations preceding and during the Qiyāmah are described in the Quran and the hadith, as well as in the commentaries of scholars. The Quran emphasizes bodily resurrection, a break from the pre-Islamic Arabian understanding of death.[80]
+
+On Yawm al-Qiyāmah, Muslims believe all humankind will be judged by their good and bad deeds and consigned to Jannah (paradise) or Jahannam (hell). The Qurʼan in Surat al-Zalzalah describes this as: "So whoever does an atom's weight of good will see it. And whoever does an atom's weight of evil will see it." The Qurʼan lists several sins that can condemn a person to hell, such as disbelief in God (كفر‎, kufr), and dishonesty. However, the Qurʼan makes it clear that God will forgive the sins of those who repent if he so wills. Good deeds, such as charity, prayer, and compassion towards animals,[81][82] will be rewarded with entry to heaven. Muslims view heaven as a place of joy and blessings, with Qurʼanic references describing its features. Mystical traditions in Islam place these heavenly delights in the context of an ecstatic awareness of God.[83] Yawm al-Qiyāmah is also identified in the Quran as Yawm ad-Dīn (يوم الدين‎, Day of Religion);[xi] as-Sāʿah (الساعة‎, 'the Last Hour');[xii] and al-Qāriʿah (القارعة‎, 'The Clatterer').[xiii]
+
+The concept of divine will is referred to as al-qadāʾ wa l-qadar, which literally derives from a root that means 'to measure'. Everything, good and bad, is believed to have been decreed.[84]
+
+There are five core beliefs and practices in Islam,[85] collectively known as 'The Pillars of Islam' (Arkan al-Islam) or 'Pillars of the Religion' (Arkan ad-din), which are considered obligatory for all believers. The Quran presents them as a framework for worship and a sign of commitment to the faith:[86] Three of the pillars are obligatory upon all Muslims, while Zakat and Hajj are obligatory only upon able Muslims.[87] Both Sunni and Shia sects agree on the essential details for the performance of these acts.[88] Apart from these, Muslims also perform other religious acts. Notable among them are voluntary charity (Sadaqah) and recitation of the Quran.
+
+The shahadah,[89] which is the basic creed of Islam, must be recited under oath with the specific statement: "ʾašhadu ʾal-lā ʾilāha ʾillā-llāhu wa ʾašhadu ʾanna muħammadan rasūlu-llāh" (أشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وأن محمدا رسول الله‎), or, "I testify that there is no god but Allah and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God."[90] This testament is a foundation for all other beliefs and practices in Islam. Muslims must repeat the shahadah in prayer, and non-Muslims wishing to convert to Islam are required to recite the creed.[91][92]:135
+
+The five daily ritual prayers are called ṣalāh or ṣalāt (Arabic: صلاة). Salat is intended to focus the mind on God, and is seen as a personal communication with him that expresses gratitude and worship. Performing prayers five times a day is compulsory but flexibility in the timing specifics is allowed depending on circumstances. The prayers are recited in the Arabic language, and consist of verses from the Quran.[93] The prayers are done with the chest in direction of the Ka'bah. The act of supplicating is referred to as dua.
+
+A mosque is a place of worship for Muslims, who often refer to it by its Arabic name masjid. A large mosque for gathering for Friday prayers or Eid prayers are called masjid jāmi (مَسْجِد جَامِع‎‎, 'congregational mosque').[94] Although the primary purpose of the mosque is to serve as a place of prayer, it is also important to the Muslim community as a place to meet and study. The Masjid an-Nabawi ('Prophetic Mosque') in Medina, Saudi Arabia, was also a place of refuge for the poor.[95] Modern mosques have evolved greatly from the early designs of the 7th century, and contain a variety of architectural elements such as minarets.[96] The means used to signal the prayer time is a vocal call called the adhan.
+
+Zakāt (Arabic: زكاة‎, zakāh, 'alms') is a means of welfare in a Muslim society, characterized by the giving of a fixed portion (2.5% annually)[97] of accumulated wealth by those who can afford it in order to help the poor or needy, such as for freeing captives, those in debt, or for (stranded) travellers, and for those employed to collect zakat.[xiv][98] It is considered a religious obligation (as opposed to supererogatory charity, known as Sadaqah) that the well-off owe to the needy because their wealth is seen as a "trust from God's bounty." Conservative estimates of annual zakat is estimated to be 15 times global humanitarian aid contributions.[99] The first Caliph, Abu Bakr, distributed zakat as one of the first examples of a guaranteed minimum income, with each man, woman and child getting 10 to 20 dirhams annually.[100]
+
+Sadaqah means optional charity which is practiced as religious duty and out of generosity.[101] Both the Quran and the hadith have put much emphasis on spending money for the welfare of needy people,[102] and have urged the Muslims to give more as an act of optional charity.[xv][103][46]:90 The Quran says:"Spend something (in charity) out of the substance which We have bestowed on you, before Death should come to any of you".[xvi] One of the early teachings of Muhammad was that God expects men to be generous with their wealth and not to be miserly.[xvii][104] Accumulating wealth without spending it to address the needs of the poor is generally prohibited and admonished.[105] Another kind of charity in Islam is waqf, meaning perpetual religious endowment.
+
+Fasting (Arabic: صوم‎‎, ṣawm) from food and drink, among other things, must be performed from dawn to dusk during the month of Ramadan. The fast is to encourage a feeling of nearness to God, and during it Muslims should express their gratitude for and dependence on him, atone for their past sins, develop self-control and restraint and think of the needy. Sawm is not obligatory for several groups for whom it would constitute an undue burden. For others, flexibility is allowed depending on circumstances, but missed fasts must be compensated for later.[xviii][45][46]:90–91
+
+The obligatory Islamic pilgrimage, called the ḥajj (Arabic: حج‎), has to be performed during the first weeks of the twelfth Islamic month of Dhu al-Hijjah in the city of Mecca. Every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it must make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in his or her lifetime. Rituals of the Hajj include: spending a day and a night in the tents in the desert plain of Mina, then a day in the desert plain of Arafat praying and worshiping God, following the footsteps of Abraham; then spending a night out in the open, sleeping on the desert sand in the desert plain of Muzdalifah; then moving to Jamarat, symbolically stoning the Devil recounting Abraham's actions;[106][107][108] then going to Mecca and walking seven times around the Kaaba which Muslims believe was built as a place of worship by Abraham; then walking seven times between Mount Safa and Mount Marwah recounting the steps of Abraham's wife, Hagar, while she was looking for water for her son Ishmael in the desert before Mecca developed into a settlement.[109][92]:145–7 Another form of pilgrimage, umrah, is supererogatory and can be undertaken at any time of the year.
+
+Muslims recite and memorize the whole or part of the Quran as acts of virtue. Reciting the Quran with elocution (tajweed) has been described as an excellent act of worship.[110] Pious Muslims recite the whole Quran at the month of Ramadan.[111] In Muslim societies, any social program generally begins with the recitation of the Quran.[111] One who has memorized the whole Quran is called a hafiz ('memorizer') who, it is said, will be able to intercede for ten people on the Last Judgment Day.[110] Apart from this, almost every Muslim memorizes some portion of the Quran because they need to recite it during their prayers.
+
+Sharia is the religious law forming part of the Islamic tradition.[14] It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the Hadith. In Arabic, the term sharīʿah refers to God's divine law and is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its scholarly interpretations.[112][113] The manner of its application in modern times has been a subject of dispute between Muslim traditionalists and reformists.[14]
+
+Traditional theory of Islamic jurisprudence recognizes four sources of sharia: the Quran, sunnah (Hadith and Sira), qiyas (analogical reasoning), and ijma (juridical consensus).[114] Different legal schools developed methodologies for deriving sharia rulings from scriptural sources using a process known as ijtihad.[112] Traditional jurisprudence distinguishes two principal branches of law,ʿibādāt (rituals) and muʿāmalāt (social relations), which together comprise a wide range of topics.[112] Its rulings assign actions to one of five categories: mandatory (Fard), recommended (mustahabb), permitted (Mubah), abhorred (Makruh), and prohibited (haram).[112][113] Thus, some areas of sharia overlap with the Western notion of law while others correspond more broadly to living life in accordance with God's will.[113]
+
+Historically, sharia was interpreted by independent jurists (muftis). Their legal opinions (fatwas) were taken into account by ruler-appointed judges who presided over qāḍī's courts, and by maẓālim courts, which were controlled by the ruler's council and administered criminal law.[112][113] In the modern era, sharia-based criminal laws were widely replaced by statutes inspired by European models.[113] The Ottoman Empire's 19th-century Tanzimat reforms lead to the Mecelle civil code and represented the first attempt to codify Sharia.[115] While the constitutions of most Muslim-majority states contain references to sharia, its classical rules were largely retained only in personal status (family) laws.[113] Legislative bodies which codified these laws sought to modernize them without abandoning their foundations in traditional jurisprudence.[113][116] The Islamic revival of the late 20th century brought along calls by Islamist movements for complete implementation of sharia.[113][116] The role of sharia has become a contested topic around the world. There are ongoing debates as to whether sharia is compatible with secular forms of government, human rights, freedom of thought, and women's rights.[117][118][119]
+
+Islam, like Judaism, has no clergy in the sacredotal sense, such as priests who mediate between God and people. However, there are many terms in Islam to refer to religiously sanctioned positions of Islam. In the broadest sense, the term ulema (Arabic: علماء‎) is used to describe the body of Muslim scholars who have completed several years of training and study of Islamic sciences. A jurist who interprets Islamic law is called a mufti (مفتي‎) and often issues legal opinions, called fatwas. A scholar of jurisprudence is called a faqih (فقيه‎‎). Someone who studies the science of hadith is called a muhaddith. A qadi is a judge in an Islamic court. Honorific titles given to scholars include sheikh, mullah, and mawlawi. Imam (إمام‎‎) is a leadership position, often used in the context of conducting Islamic worship services.
+
+A school of jurisprudence is referred to as a madhhab (Arabic: مذهب‎). The four major Sunni schools are the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali madhahs while the three major Shia schools are the Ja'fari, Zaidi and Isma'ili madhahib. Each differ in their methodology, called Usul al-fiqh ('principles of jurisprudence'). The following of decisions by a religious expert without necessarily examining the decision's reasoning is called taqlid. The term ghair muqallid literally refers to those who do not use taqlid and by extension do not have a madhhab.[120] The practice of an individual interpreting law with independent reasoning is called ijtihad.[121]
+
+To reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, Islamic economic jurisprudence encourages trade,[122] discourages the hoarding of wealth and outlaws interest-bearing loans (i.e. usury; Arabic: riba).[123][124] Therefore, wealth is taxed through Zakat, but trade is not taxed. Usury, which allows the rich to get richer without sharing in the risk, is forbidden in Islam. Profit sharing and venture capital where the lender is also exposed to risk is acceptable.[125] Hoarding of food for speculation is also discouraged.[126]
+
+The taking of land belonging to others is also prohibited. The prohibition of usury and the revival of interest-based economies has resulted in the development of Islamic banking. During the time of Muhammad, any money that went to the state, was immediately used to help the poor. Then, in AD 634, Umar formally established the welfare state Bayt al-Mal ("House of Wealth"), which was for the Muslim and Non-Muslim poor, needy, elderly, orphans, widows, and the disabled. The Bayt al-Maal ran for hundreds of years under the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century, continuing through the Umayyad period, and well into the Abbasid era. Umar also introduced child support and pensions.[127][128][129][130]
+
+Jihad means 'to strive or struggle [in the way of God]'. In its broadest sense, it is "exerting one's utmost power, efforts, endeavors, or ability in contending with an object of disapprobation." Depending on the object being a visible enemy, the Devil, and aspects of one's own self (such as sinful desires), different categories of jihad are defined.[131]:17–8 Jihad also refers to one's striving to attain religious and moral perfection.[132][133] When used without any qualifier, jihad is understood in its military form.[132][131]:17–8  Some Muslim authorities, especially among the Shi'a and Sufis, distinguish between the "greater jihad," which pertains to spiritual self-perfection, and the "lesser jihad", defined as warfare.[134][131]:17
+
+Within Islamic jurisprudence, jihad is usually taken to mean military exertion against non-Muslim combatants.[135][134] Jihad is the only form of warfare permissible in Islamic law and may be declared against illegal works, terrorists, criminal groups, rebels, apostates, and leaders or states who oppress Muslims.[134][131]:17 Most Muslims today interpret Jihad as only a defensive form of warfare.[136] Jihad only becomes an individual duty for those vested with authority. For the rest of the populace, this happens only in the case of a general mobilization.[134] For most Twelver Shias, offensive jihad can only be declared by a divinely appointed leader of the Muslim community, and as such, is suspended since Muhammad al-Mahdi's occultation in 868 AD.[137][138]
+
+Sufism (Arabic: تصوف‎, tasawwuf), is a mystical-ascetic approach to Islam that seeks to find a direct personal experience of God. It is not a sect of Islam and its adherents belong to the various Muslim denominations. Classical Sufi scholars defined Tasawwuf as "a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God", through "intuitive and emotional faculties" that one must be trained to use.[139][140] Sufis themselves claim that Tasawwuf is an aspect of Islam similar to sharia, inseparable from Islam and an integral part of Islamic belief and practice.[141]
+
+Religiosity of early Sufi ascetics, such as Hasan al-Basri, emphasized fear to fail God's expectations of obedience, in contrast to later and more prominent Sufis, such as Mansur Al-Hallaj and Jalaluddin Rumi, whose religiosity is based on love towards God. For that reason, some academic scholars refuse to refer to the former as Sufis.[142] Nevertheless, Hasan al-Basri is often portrayed as one of the earliest Sufis in Sufi traditions[143] and his ideas were later developed by the influential theologian Al-Ghazali.[citation needed] Traditional Sufis, such as Bayazid Bastami, Jalaluddin Rumi, Haji Bektash Veli, Junaid Baghdadi, and Al-Ghazali, argued for Sufism as being based upon the tenets of Islam and the teachings of the prophet.[144][145] Sufis played an important role in the formation of Muslim societies through their missionary and educational activities.[146][147]
+
+Popular devotional practices such as veneration of Sufi saints have faced stiff opposition from followers of Wahhabism, who have sometimes physically attacked Sufis leading to deterioration in Sufi–Salafi relations. Sufism enjoyed a strong revival in Central Asia and South Asia; the Barelvi movement is Sufi influenced Sunni Islam with over 200 million followers,[148] largely in South Asia.[149][150]  Sufism is also prominent is Central Asia, where different orders are the main religious sources,[151][152] as well as in African countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, Chad and Niger.[153][154]
+
+Mystical interpretations of Islam have also been developed by Ismaili Shias, as well as by the Illuminationist and Isfahan schools of Islamic philosophy.[155]
+
+In a Muslim family, the birth of a child is attended with some religious ceremonies. Immediately after the birth, the words of Adhan is pronounced in the right ear of the child.[156]:106 In the seventh day, the aqiqah ceremony is performed, in which an animal is sacrificed and its meat is distributed among the poor.[157] The head of the child is also shaved, and an amount of money equaling the weight of the child's hair is donated to the poor.[157] Apart from fulfilling the basic needs of food, shelter, and education, the parents or the elderly members of family also undertake the task of teaching moral qualities, religious knowledge, and religious practices to the children.[156]:136 Marriage, which serves as the foundation of a Muslim family, is a civil contract which consists of an offer and acceptance between two qualified parties in the presence of two witnesses. The groom is required to pay a bridal gift (mahr) to the bride, as stipulated in the contract.[158]
+Most families in the Islamic world are monogamous.[159][160] Polyandry, a practice wherein a woman takes on two or more husbands is prohibited in Islam.[161] However, Muslim men are allowed to practice polygyny, that is, they can have more than one wife at the same time, up to a total of four, per Surah 4 Verse 3. A man does not need approval of his first wife for a second marriage as there is no evidence in the Qur'an or hadith to suggest this. With Muslims coming from diverse backgrounds including 49 Muslim-majority countries, plus a strong presence as large minorities throughout the world there are many variations on Muslim weddings. Generally in a Muslim family, a woman's sphere of operation is the home and a man's corresponding sphere is the outside world. However, in practice, this separation is not as rigid as it appears.[162] With regard to inheritance, a son's share is double that of a daughter's.[xix]
+
+Certain religious rites are performed during and after the death of a Muslim. Those near a dying man encourage him to pronounce the Shahada as Muslims want their last word to be their profession of faith. After the death, the body is appropriately bathed by the members of the same gender and then enshrouded in a threefold white garment called kafan.[163] Placing the body on a bier, it is first taken to a mosque where funeral prayer is offered for the dead person, and then to the graveyard for burial.
+
+Many practices fall in the category of adab, or Islamic etiquette. This includes greeting others with "as-salamu 'alaykum" ('peace be unto you'), saying bismillah ('in the name of God') before meals, and using only the right hand for eating and drinking. Islamic hygienic practices mainly fall into the category of personal cleanliness and health. Circumcision of male offspring is also practiced in Islam. Islamic burial rituals include saying the Salat al-Janazah ("funeral prayer") over the bathed and enshrouded dead body, and burying it in a grave. Muslims are restricted in their diet. Prohibited foods include pork products, blood, carrion, and alcohol. All meat must come from a herbivorous animal slaughtered in the name of God by a Muslim, Jew, or Christian, with the exception of game that one has hunted or fished for oneself. Food permissible for Muslims is known as halal food.[164]
+
+— Quran (2:177)
+
+In a Muslim society, various social service activities are performed by the members of the community. As these activities are instructed by Islamic canonical texts, a Muslim's religious life is seen incomplete if not attended by service to humanity.[165] In fact, In Islamic tradition, the idea of social welfare has been presented as one of its principal values.[165] Verse 2:177 of the Quran is often cited to encapsulate the Islamic idea of social welfare.[xx][166]
+
+Similarly, duties to parents, neighbors, relatives, sick people, the old, and minorities have been defined in Islam. Respecting and obeying one's parents, and taking care of them especially in their old age have been made a religious obligation.[167][156]:136 A two-fold approach is generally prescribed with regard to duty to relatives: keeping good relations with them, and offering them financial help if necessary.[168] Severing ties with them has been admonished. Regardless of a neighbor's religious identity, Islam teaches Muslims to treat neighboring people in the best possible manner and not to cause them any difficulty.[169][170] Concerning orphaned children, the Quran forbids harsh and oppressive treatment to them while urging kindness and justice towards them. It also rebukes those who do not honor and feed orphaned children.[xxi]
+
+The Quran and the sunnah of Muhammad prescribe a comprehensive body of moral guidelines for Muslims to be followed in their personal, social, political, and religious life. Proper moral conduct, good deeds, righteousness, and good character come within the sphere of the moral guidelines.[156]:216 In Islam, the observance of moral virtues is always associated with religious significance because it elevates the religious status of a believer[171] and is often seen as a supererogatory act of worshipping.[172] One typical Islamic teaching on morality is that imposing a penalty on an offender in proportion to their offense is permissible and just; but forgiving the offender is better. To go one step further by offering a favor to the offender is regarded the highest excellence.[171] The Quran says: "Repel (evil) with what is best."[xxii] Thus, a Muslim is expected to act only in good manners as bad manners and deeds earn vices.[156]:215 The fundamental moral qualities in Islam are justice, forgiveness, righteousness, kindness, honesty, and piety.[156]:216 Other mostly insisted moral virtues include but not limited to charitable activities, fulfillment of promise, modesty (haya) and humility, decency in speech, tolerance, trustworthiness, patience, truthfulness, anger management, and sincerity of intention.
+
+As a religion, Islam emphasizes the idea of having a good character as Muhammad said: "The best among you are those who have the best manners and character."[xxiii] In Islam, justice is not only a moral virtue but also an obligation to be fulfilled under all circumstances.[173] The Quran and the hadith describe God as being kind and merciful to His creatures, and tell people to be kind likewise. As a virtue, forgiveness is much celebrated in Islam, and is regarded as an important Muslim practice.[174] About modesty, Muhammad is reported as saying: "Every religion has its characteristic, and the characteristic of Islam is modesty."[175]
+
+Mainstream Islamic law does not distinguish between "matters of church" and "matters of state"; the scholars function as both jurists and theologians. Currently no government conforms to Islamic economic jurisprudence, but steps have been taken to implement some of its tenets.[176][177][178] Sunni and Shia sectarian divide also effects intergovernmental Muslim relations such as between Saudi Arabia and Iran.[179]
+
+Islamic tradition views Muhammad (c. 570 – June 8, 632) as the seal of the prophets, sent by God to the rest of mankind.[180][181] During the last 22 years of his life, beginning at age 40 in 610 CE, according to the earliest surviving biographies, Muhammad reported receiving revelations that he believed to be from God, conveyed to him through the archangel Gabriel while he was meditating in a cave.[182] Muhammad's companions memorized and recorded the content of these revelations, known as the Quran.[183]
+
+During this time, Muhammad, while in Mecca, preached to the people, imploring them to abandon polytheism and to worship one God. Although some converted to Islam, the leading Meccan authorities persecuted Muhammad and his followers. This resulted in the Migration to Abyssinia of some Muslims (to the Aksumite Empire). Many early converts to Islam were the poor, foreigners and former slaves like Bilal ibn Rabah al-Habashi who was black. The Meccan élite felt that Muhammad was destabilising their social order by preaching about one God and about racial equality, and that in the process he inculcated dangerous ideas into the heads of the poor and of the slaves.[184][185]
+
+After 12 years of the persecution of Muslims by the Meccans and the Meccan boycott of the Hashemites, Muhammad's relatives, Muhammad and the Muslims performed the Hijra ('emigration')  in AD 622 to the city of Yathrib (current-day Medina). There, with the Medinan converts (the Ansar) and the Meccan migrants (the Muhajirun), Muhammad in Medina established his political and religious authority. The Constitution of Medina was formulated, instituting a number of rights and responsibilities for the Muslim, Jewish, Christian and pagan communities of Medina, bringing them within the fold of one community—the Ummah.[186][B]
+
+The Constitution established:[187][188]
+
+All the tribes signed the agreement to defend Medina from all external threats and to live in harmony amongst themselves. Within a few years, two battles took place against the Meccan forces: first, the Battle of Badr in 624—a Muslim victory, and then a year later, when the Meccans returned to Medina, the Battle of Uhud, which ended inconclusively.
+
+The Arab tribes in the rest of Arabia then formed a confederation and during the Battle of the Trench (March–April 627) besieged Medina, intent on finishing off Islam. In 628, the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah was signed between Mecca and the Muslims and was broken by Mecca two years later. After the signing of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah many more people converted to Islam. At the same time, Meccan trade routes were cut off as Muhammad brought surrounding desert tribes under his control.[189] By 629 Muhammad was victorious in the nearly bloodless conquest of Mecca, and by the time of his death in 632 (at the age of 62) he had united the tribes of Arabia into a single religious polity.[190]
+
+The earliest three generations of Muslims are known as the Salaf, with the companions of Muhammad being known as the Sahaba. Many of them, such as the largest narrator of hadith Abu Hureyrah, recorded and compiled what would constitute the sunnah.
+
+With Muhammad's death in 632, disagreement broke out over who would succeed him as leader of the Muslim community. Abu Bakr, a companion and close friend of Muhammad, was made the first caliph.[191] Under Abu Bakr, Muslims put down a rebellion by Arab tribes in an episode known as the Ridda wars, or "Wars of Apostasy".[192] The Quran was compiled into a single volume at this time.
+
+Abu Bakr's death in 634 about two years after he was elected which resulted in the succession of Umar ibn al-Khattab as the caliph,[191] followed by Uthman ibn al-Affan, Ali ibn Abi Talib and Hasan ibn Ali. The first four caliphs are known in Sunni Islam as al-khulafā' ar-rāshidūn ("Rightly Guided Caliphs").[193] Under the caliphs, the territory under Muslim rule expanded deeply into parts of the Persian and Byzantine territories.[194]
+
+When Umar was assassinated by Persians in 644, the election of Uthman as successor was met with increasing opposition. The standard copies of the Quran were also distributed throughout the Islamic State. In 656, Uthman was also killed, and Ali assumed the position of caliph. This led to the first civil war (the "First Fitna") over who should be caliph. Ali was assassinated by Kharijites in 661. To avoid further fighting, the new caliph Hasan ibn Ali signed a peace treaty, abdicating to Mu'awiyah, beginning the Umayyad dynasty, in return that he not name his own successor.[195] These disputes over religious and political leadership would give rise to schism in the Muslim community. The majority accepted the legitimacy of the first four leaders and became known as Sunnis. A minority disagreed, and believed that only Ali and some of his descendants should rule; they became known as the Shia.[196] Mu'awiyah appointed his son, Yazid I, as successor and after Mu'awiyah's death in 680, the "Second Fitna" broke out, where Husayn ibn Ali was killed at the Battle of Karbala, a significant event in Shia Islam. Sunni Islam and Shia Islam thus differ in some respects.[197]
+
+The Umayyad dynasty conquered the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Narbonnese Gaul and Sindh.[198] Local populations of Jews and indigenous Christians, persecuted as religious minorities and taxed heavily to finance the Byzantine–Sassanid Wars, often aided Muslims to take over their lands from the Byzantines and Persians, resulting in exceptionally speedy conquests.[199][200]
+
+The generation after the death of Muhammad but contemporaries of his companions are known as the Tabi'un, followed by the Tabi‘ al-Tabi‘in. The Caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz set up the influential committee, "The Seven Fuqaha of Medina",[201][202] headed by Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr.[203] Malik ibn Anas wrote one of the earliest books on Islamic jurisprudence, the Muwatta,[204] as a consensus of the opinion of those jurists.[205][206][207]
+
+The descendants of Muhammad's uncle Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib rallied discontented non-Arab converts (mawali), poor Arabs, and some Shi'a against the Umayyads and overthrew them, inaugurating the Abbasid dynasty in 750.[208]
+
+The first Muslim states independent of a unified Islamic state emerged from the Berber Revolt (739/740-743).
+
+Al-Shafi'i codified a method to determine the reliability of hadith.[209] During the early Abbasid era, the major Sunni hadith collections were compiled by scholars such as Bukhari and Muslim while major Shia hadith collections by scholars such as Al-Kulayni and Ibn Babawayh were also compiled. The four Sunni Madh'habs, the Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shafi'i, were established around the teachings of Abū Ḥanīfa, Ahmad bin Hanbal, Malik ibn Anas and al-Shafi'i, while the Ja'fari jurisprudence was formed from the teachings of Ja'far al-Sadiq respectively. In the 9th century, al-Shafi'i provided a theoretical basis for Islamic law and introduced its first methods by a synthesis between proto-rationalism of Iraqian jurisprudence and the pragmatic approach of the Hejaz traditions, in his book ar-Risālah.[210] He also codified a method to determine the reliability of hadith.[211] However, Islamic law would not be codified until 1869.[212] In the 9th century Al-Tabari completed the first commentary of the Quran, that became one of the most cited commentaries in Sunni Islam, the Tafsir al-Tabari. During its expansion through the Samanid Empire, Islam was shaped by the ethno-cultural and religious pluralism by the Sogdians, paving the way for a Persianized rather than Arabized understanding of Islam.[213]
+
+Some Muslims began to question the piety of indulgence in a worldly life and emphasised poverty, humility and avoidance of sin based on renunciation of bodily desires. Ascetics such as Hasan al-Basri would inspire a movement that would evolve into Tasawwuf or Sufism.[214]
+
+By the end of the 9th century, Ismaili Shias spread in Iran, whereupon the city of Multan became a target of activistic Sunni politics.[215] In 930, the Ismaili group known as the Qarmatians unsuccessfully rebelled against the Abbassids, sacked Mecca and stole the Black Stone, which was eventually retrieved.[216]
+
+Abbasid Caliphs such as Mamun al Rashid and Al-Mu'tasim made the mutazilite philosophy an official creed and imposed it upon Muslims to follow. Mu'tazila was a Greek influenced school[citation needed] of Sunni scholastic theology called kalam, which refers to dialectic.[217] Many orthodox Muslims[who?] rejected mutazilite doctrines and condemned their idea of the creation of the Quran. In inquisitions, ibn Hanbal refused to conform[citation needed] and was tortured and sent to an unlit Baghdad prison cell for nearly thirty months.[218] Other branches of kalam were the Ash'ari school founded by Al-Ash'ari and Maturidi founded by Abu Mansur al-Maturidi.
+
+With the expansion of the Abbasid Caliphate into the Sasanian Empire, Islam adapted many Hellenistic and Persian concepts, imported by thinkers of Iranian or Turkic origin.[219][220] Philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna sought to incorporate Greek principles into Islamic theology, while others like Al-Ghazali argued against such syncretism and ultimately prevailed.[221] Avicenna pioneered the science of experimental medicine,[222] and was the first physician to conduct clinical trials.[223] His two most notable works, The Book of Healing and The Canon of Medicine, were used as standard medicinal texts in the Islamic world and later in Europe. Amongst his contributions are the discovery of the contagious nature of infectious diseases,[222] and the introduction of clinical pharmacology.[224] In mathematics, the mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi gave his name to the concept of the algorithm, while the term algebra is derived from al-jabr.[225] The Persian poet Ferdowsi wrote his epic poem Shahnameh. Rumi wrote some of the finest Persian poetry and is still one of the best selling poets in America.[226][227] Legal institutions introduced include the trust and charitable trust (Waqf).[228][229]
+
+This era is sometimes called the "Islamic Golden Age".[230] Public hospitals established during this time (called Bimaristan hospitals), are considered "the first hospitals" in the modern sense of the word,[231][232] and issued the first medical diplomas to license doctors.[233][234] The Guinness World Records recognizes the University of Al Karaouine, founded in 859, as the world's oldest degree-granting university.[235] The doctorate is argued to date back to the licenses to teach in Islamic law schools.[236] Standards of experimental and quantification techniques, as well as the tradition of citation,[237] were introduced. An important pioneer in this, Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of the modern scientific method and often referred to as the "world's first true scientist".[238][239][240][241] The government paid scientists the equivalent salary of professional athletes today.[237] It is argued that the data used by Copernicus for his heliocentric conclusions was gathered and that Al-Jahiz proposed a theory of natural selection.[242][243]
+
+While the Abbasid Caliphate suffered a decline since the reign of Al-Wathiq (842–847) and Al-Mu'tadid (892–902),[244] the Mongol Empire put an end to the Abbassid dynasty in 1258.[245] During its decline, the Abbasid Caliphate disintegrated into minor states and dynasties, such as the Tulunid and the Ghaznavid dynasty. The Ghaznavid dynasty was an Islamic dynasty established by Turkic slave-soldiers from another Islamic empire, the Samanid Empire.[246]
+
+Two Turkish tribes, the Karahanids and the Seljuks, converted to Islam during the 10th century. They were later subdued by the Ottomans, who share the same origin and language. The Seljuks played an important role for the revival of Sunnism, after which Shia increased its influences. The Seljuk military leader Alp Arslan financially supported sciences and literature and established the Nezamiyeh university in Baghdad.[247]
+
+During this time, the Delhi Sultanate took over northern parts of the Indian subcontinent. Religious missions converted Volga Bulgaria to Islam. Many Muslims also went to China to trade, virtually dominating the import and export industry of the Song dynasty.[248]
+
+In scholasticism, Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) worried about the integrity of Islam and tried to establish a theological doctrine to purify Islam from its alleged alterings.[249] Unlike his contemporary scholarship, who relied on traditions and historical narratives from early Islam, Ibn Taymiyya's methodology was a mixture of selective use of hadith and a literal understanding of the Quran.[249][250] He rejected most philosophical approaches of Islam and proposed a clear, simple and dogmatic theology instead.[249] Another major characteristic of his theological approach emphazises the significance of a Theocratic state: While the prevailing opinion held that religious wisdom was necessary for a state, Ibn Taymiyya regarded political power as necessary for religious excellence.[249] He further rejected many hadiths circulating among Muslims during his time and relied only on Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim repeatedly to foil Asharite doctrine.[250][251] Feeling threatened by the Crusaders as well as by the Mongols, Ibn Taymiyya stated it would be obligatory for Muslims to join a physical jihad against the unbelievers. This not only including the invaders, but also the heretics among the Muslims, including Shias, Asharites and "philosophers", who were blamed by Ibn Taimiya for the deterioration of Islam.[252] The Battle of Marj al-Saffar (1303) served as a significant turning point. Nevertheless, his writings only played a marginal role during his lifetime. He was repeatedly accused of blasphemy by anthropomorphizing God and his disciple Ibn Kathir distanced himself from his mentor and negated the anthropomorphizations,[253] but simultaneously adhered to the same anti-rationalistic and hadith oriented methodology.[254] This probably influenced his exegesis on his Tafsir, which discounted much of the exegetical tradition since then.[255][256] However, the writings of Ibn Taimiyya became important sources for Wahhabism and 21st century Salafi theology,[252][249][250] just as Tafsir Ibn Kathir also became highly rewarded in modern Salafism.[257]
+
+The Timurid Renaissance was observed in the Timurid Empire based in Central Asia ruled by the Timurid dynasty, a phenomenal growth in the fields of arts and sciences, covering both eastern and western world.[258] Outstanding throughout the stages of the Renaissance were the inventions of numerous devices and the constructions of Islamic learning centre, mosques, necropolis and observatories. Herat city for example matched with Florence, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, as the focal point of a cultural rebirth.[259][260] Such aspects were seen to be strongly influenced across Islamic Gunpowder empires, mainly in Mughal India.[261][262][263][264]
+
+Islam spread with Muslim trade networks, Sufi orders activity and conquests of the Gunpowder Empires that extended into Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Malay archipelago.[265][266] Conversion to Islam, however, was not a sudden abandonment of old religious practices; rather, it was typically a matter of "assimilating Islamic rituals, cosmologies, and literatures into... local religious systems."[267] Throughout this expanse, Islam blended with local cultures everywhere, as illustrated when the prophet Muhammad appeared in Hindu epics and folklore.[268] The Muslims in China who were descended from earlier immigration began to assimilate by adopting Chinese names and culture while Nanjing became an important center of Islamic study.[269][270] The Turkish Muslims incorporated elements of Turkish Shamanism, which to this date differs Turkish synthesis of Islam from other Muslim societies,[271][272][273] and became a part of a new Islamic interpretation,[274] although Shamanistic influences already occurred during the Battle of Talas (752). Strikingly, Shamans were never mentioned by Muslim Heresiographers.[275] One major change was the status of woman. Unlike Arabic traditions, the Turkic traditions hold woman in higher regard in society.[274] The Turks must have also found striking similarities between Sufi rituals and Shaman practises.[274] Shamanism also influenced orthodox Muslims who subscribed in Anatolia, Central-Asia and Balkans, producing Alevism.[274] As a result, many Shaman traditions were perceived as Islamic,[274] with beliefs such as sacred nature, trees, animals and foreign nature spirits remaining today.[276]
+
+The Ottoman Caliphate, under the Ottoman dynasty of the Ottoman Empire, was the last caliphate of the late medieval and the early modern era. It is important to note, that the following Islamic reign by the Ottomans was strongly influenced by a symbiosis between Ottoman rulers and Sufism since the beginning. According to Ottoman historiography, the legitimation of a ruler is attributed to Sheikh Edebali who, accordingly, interpreted a dream of Osman Gazi as God's legitimation of his reign.[277] Since Murad I's conquest of Edirne in 1362, the caliphate was claimed by the Turkish sultans of the empire.[278] During the period of Ottoman growth, claims on caliphal authority were recognized in 1517 as Selim I, who through conquering and unification of Muslim lands, became the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in Mecca and Medina, and strengthening their claim to caliphate in the Muslim world.[279] The Mevlevi Order and Bektashi Order had close relation to the sultans,[280] as Sufi-mystical as well as heterodox and syncretic approaches to Islam flourished.[281][282] Under the Ottoman Empire, Islam spread to Southeast Europe.[283] The Reconquista, launched against Muslim principalities in Iberia succeeded in 1492. In Ottoman understanding, the state's primary responsibility was to defend and extend the land of the Muslims, and to ensure security and harmony within its borders in the overarching context of orthodox Islamic practice and dynastic sovereignty.[284]
+
+The Shia Safavid dynasty rose to power in 1501 and later conquered all of Iran.[285] The majority and oldest group among Shia at that time, the Zaydis, named after the great grandson of Ali, the scholar Zayd ibn Ali, used the Hanafi jurisprudence, as did most Sunnis.[286][287][288] The ensuing mandatory conversion of Iran to Twelver Shia Islam for the largely Sunni population also ensured the final dominance of the Twelver sect within Shiism over the Zaidi and Ismaili sects.[289] Nader Shah, who overthrew the Safavids, attempted to improve relations with Sunnis by propagating the integration of Shiism by calling it the Jaafari Madh'hab.[290]
+
+In the Indian Subcontinent, during the rule of Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji in Bengal, the Indian Islamic missionaries achieved their greatest success in terms of dawah and number of converts to Islam.[291][292] The Delhi Sultanate, founded by Qutb-ud-din Aybak, emerged as India's first Islamic power, well noted for being one of the few states to repel an attack by the Mongols[293] and enthroning one of the few female rulers in Islamic history, Razia Sultana.[294] The wealthy Islamic Bengal Sultanate was subsequently founded, a major global trading nation in the world, described by the Europeans to be the "richest country to trade with".[295] The Mughal Empire was founded by Babur, a direct descendant of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. The empire was briefly interrupted by the Suri Empire founded by Sher Shah Suri, who re-initiated the rupee currency system.[296] The Mughals gained power during the reign of Akbar the Great and Jahangir. The reign of Shah Jahan observed the height of Indo-Islamic architecture, with notable monuments such as Taj Mahal and Jama Masjid, Delhi, while the reign of his son Aurangzeb saw the compilation of the Fatwa Alamgiri (most well organised fiqh manuscript) and witnessed the peak of the Islamic rule in India. Mughal India surpassed Qing China to become the world's largest economy, worth 25% of world GDP,[297][298][299][300] the Bengal Subah signalling the proto-industrialization and showing signs of the Industrial revolution.[301] After Mughal India's collapse, Tipu Sultan's Kingdom of Mysore based in South India, which witnessed partial establishment of sharia based economic and military policies i.e. Fathul Mujahidin, replaced Bengal ruled by the Nawabs of Bengal as South Asia's foremost economic territory.[302][303] After the British Raj, the Nizams of Hyderabad remained as the major Muslim princely state until the Annexation of Hyderabad by the modern Republic of India.[304]
+
+The Muslim world was generally in political decline starting the 1800s, especially relative to the non-Muslim European powers. This decline was evident culturally; while Taqi al-Din founded an observatory in Istanbul and the Jai Singh Observatory was built in the 18th century, there was not a single Muslim-majority country with a major observatory by the twentieth century.[305] By the 19th century the British Empire had formally ended the Mughal dynasty in India.[306] In the 19th century, the Deobandi and Barelwi movements were initiated.
+
+During the 18th century Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab founded a military movement opposing the Ottoman Sultanate as an illegitimate rule, advising his fellows to return to the principles of Islam based on the theology of Ahmad ibn Hanbal.[307][308] He was deeply influenced by the works of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim and condemned many traditional Islamic practises, such as visiting the grave of Muhammad or Saints, as sin.[308] During the 18th century, he formed an alliance with the Saud family, who founded the Wahhabi sect. This revival movement allegedly seeks to uphold monotheism and purify Islam of what they see as later innovations. Their ideology led to the desecration of shrines around the world, including that of Muhammad and his companions in Mecca and Medina.[309][310] Many Arab nationalists, such as Rashid Rida, regarded the Caliphate as an Arab right taken away by the Turks. Therefore, they rebelled against the Ottoman Sultanate, until the Ottoman Empire disintegrated after World War I and the Caliphate was abolished in 1924.[311] Concurrently Ibn Saud conquered Mecca, the "heartland of Islam", to impose Wahhabism as part of Islamic culture.[312]
+
+At the end of the 19th century, Muslim luminaries such as Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani sought to reconcile Islam with social and intellectual ideas of the Age of Enlightenment by purging Islam from alleged alterations and adhering to the basic tenets held during the Rashidun era.[313] Due to their adherence to the Salafs they called themselves Salafiyya.[314][313] However, they differ from the Salafi movement flourishing in the second half of the 20th century, which is rooted in the Wahhabi movement. Instead, they are also often called Islamic modernists. They rejected the Sunni schools of law and allowed Ijtihad.[314]
+
+The Barelwi movement, founded in India, emphasises the primacy of Islamic law over adherence to Sufi practices and personal devotion to the prophet Muhammad.[315] It grew from the writings of Ahmed Raza Khan, Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, Shah Ahmad Noorani and Mohammad Abdul Ghafoor Hazarvi in the backdrop of an intellectual and moral decline of Muslims in British India.[316] The movement was a mass movement, defending popular Sufism and reforming its practices, grew in response to the Deobandi movement.[317] The movement is famous for the celebration of Mawlid and today, is spread across the globe with followers also in Pakistan, South Africa, United States, and United Kingdom among other countries.[318]
+
+On 3 March 1924, the first President of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as part of his secular reforms, constitutionally abolished the institution of the caliphate. Ottoman Caliphate, the world's last widely recognized caliphate was no more and its powers within Turkey were transferred to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the parliament of the newly formed Turkish Republic and the Directorate of Religious Affairs.[319][320]
+.
+
+Contact with industrialized nations brought Muslim populations to new areas through economic migration. Many Muslims migrated as indentured servants, from mostly India and Indonesia, to the Caribbean, forming the largest Muslim populations by percentage in the Americas.[321] The resulting urbanization and increase in trade in sub-Saharan Africa brought Muslims to settle in new areas and spread their faith, likely doubling its Muslim population between 1869 and 1914.[322] Muslim immigrants began arriving, many as guest workers and largely from former colonies, in several Western European nations since the 1960s.
+
+There are more and more new Muslim intellectuals who increasingly separate perennial Islamic beliefs from archaic cultural traditions.[323] Liberal Islam is a movement that attempts to reconcile religious tradition with modern norms of secular governance and human rights. Its supporters say that there are multiple ways to read Islam's sacred texts, and they stress the need to leave room for "independent thought on religious matters".[324][46]:118–9, 179
+Women's issues receive significant weight in the modern discourse on Islam.[325]
+
+Secular powers such as the Chinese Red Guards closed many mosques and destroyed Qurans,[326] and Communist Albania became the first country to ban the practice of every religion.[327] About half a million Muslims were killed in Cambodia by communists who, it is argued, viewed them as their primary enemy and wished to exterminate them since they stood out and worshipped their own god.[328] In Turkey, the military carried out coups to oust Islamist governments, and headscarves were banned in official buildings, as also happened in Tunisia.[329][330]
+
+Jamal-al-Din al-Afghani, along with his acolyte Muhammad Abduh, have been credited as forerunners of the Islamic revival.[331] Abul A'la Maududi helped influence modern political Islam.[332] Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood advocate Islam as a comprehensive political solution, often in spite of being banned.[333] In Iran, revolution replaced a secular regime with an Islamic state. In Turkey, the Islamist AK Party has democratically been in power for about a decade, while Islamist parties did well in elections following the Arab Spring.[334] The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), consisting of Muslim-majority countries, was established in 1969 after the burning of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.[335]
+
+Religiosity appears to be deepening worldwide.[336][337][338] In many places, the prevalence of the hijab is growing increasingly common[339] and the percentage of Muslims favoring Sharia has increased.[340] With religious guidance increasingly available electronically, Muslims are able to access views that are strict enough for them rather than rely on state clerics who are often seen as stooges.[337]
+
+It is estimated that, by 2050, the number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world, "driven primarily by differences in fertility rates and the size of youth populations among the world's major religions, as well as by people switching faiths."[341] Perhaps as a sign of these changes, most experts agree that Islam is growing faster than any other faith in East and West Africa.[342][343]
+
+Others
+
+Others
+
+The largest denomination in Islam is Sunni Islam, which makes up 75–90% of all Muslims[344] and is arguably the world's largest religious denomination.[345] Sunni Muslims also go by the name Ahl as-Sunnah which means "people of the tradition [of Muhammad]".[346][347][348][349][350]
+
+Sunnis believe that the first four caliphs were the rightful successors to Muhammad; since God did not specify any particular leaders to succeed him and those leaders were elected. Further authorities regarding Sunnis believe that anyone who is righteous and just could be a caliph as long they act according to the teachings of Islam, the example of Muhammad. Alternatively, Sunnis commonly accept the companions of Muhammad as reliable for interpretating Islamic affairs.[351]
+
+The Sunnis follow the Quran and the Hadith, which are recorded in Sunni traditions known as Al-Kutub Al-Sittah (six major books). For legal matters derived from the Quran or the Hadith, many follow four sunni madhhabs: Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shafi'i. All four accept the validity of the others and a Muslim may choose any one that he or she finds agreeable.[352]
+
+Sunni schools of theology encompass Asharism founded by Al-Ashʿarī (c. 874–936), Maturidi by Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (853–944 CE) and traditionalist theology under the leadership of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780–855 CE). Traditionalist theology is characterized by its adherence to a literal understanding of the Quran and the Sunnah, the belief in the Quran to be uncreated and eternal, and opposes reason (kalam) in religious and ethical matters.[353] On the other hand, Maturidism asserts, scripture is not needed for basic ethics and that good and evil can be understood by reason alone.[354] Maturidi's doctrine, based on Hanafi law, asserted man's capacity and will alongside the supremacy of God in man's acts, providing a doctrinal framework for more flexibility, adaptability and syncretism. Maturidism especially flourished in Central-Asia.[355] Nevertheless, people would rely on revelation, because reason alone could not grasp the whole truth. Asharism holds that ethics can just derive from divine revelation, but not from human reason. However, Asharism accepts reason in regard of exegetical matters and combined Muʿtazila approaches with traditionalistic ideas.[356]
+
+In the 18th century, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab led a Salafi movement, referred by outsiders as Wahhabism, in modern-day Saudi Arabia. Originally shaped by Hanbalism, many modern followers departed from any of the established four schools of law Hanafi, Shafi, Maliki, and Hanbali.[357] Similarly, Ahl al-Hadith is a movement that deemphasized sources of jurisprudence outside the Quran and Hadith, such as informed opinion (ra'y).
+
+Nurcu is a Sunni movement based on the writings of Said Nursi (1877–1960) founded at the beginning of the twentieth century.[358] His philosophy is based on Hanafi law and further incorporates elements of Sufism.[358] He emphasized the importance of salvation in both life and afterlife through education and freedom, the synthesis of Islam and science and democracy as the best form governance within the rule of law.[359] Through faith by inquiry instead of faith by imitation, Muslims would reject philosophies such as positivism, materialism and atheism emerging from the Western world of his time.[358] His notion of sharia is twofold: On one hand, sharia applies to the voluntary actions of human beings. On the other hand, sharia denotes the set of laws of nature, but both ultimately derive from one source, which is God.[360] His works on the Quran in the Risale-i Nur were translated into almost all languages of Central Asia.[361] From Nurcu other movements such as the Gülen movement derived.
+
+The Shia constitute 10–20% of Islam and are its second-largest branch.[362]
+
+While the Sunnis believe that a Caliph should be elected by the community, Shia's believe that Muhammad appointed his son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, as his successor and only certain descendants of Ali could hold positions of power. As a result, they believe that Ali ibn Abi Talib was the first Imam (leader), rejecting the legitimacy of the previous Muslim caliphs Abu Bakr, Uthman ibn al-Affan and Umar ibn al-Khattab. Other points of contention include certain practices viewed as innovating the religion, such as the mourning practice of tatbir, and the cursing of figures revered by Sunnis. However, Jafar al-Sadiq himself disapproved of people who disapproved of his great-grandfather Abu Bakr and Zayd ibn Ali revered Abu Bakr and Umar.[363][364] More recently, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei[365] and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani[366] condemned the practice.
+
+Shia Islam has several branches, the most prominent being the Twelvers (the largest branch), Zaidis and Ismailis. Different branches accept different descendants of Ali as Imams. After the death of Imam Jafar al-Sadiq who is considered the sixth Imam by the Twelvers and the Ismaili's, the Ismailis recognized his son Isma'il ibn Jafar as his successor whereas the Twelver Shia's followed his other son Musa al-Kadhim as the seventh Imam. The Zaydis consider Zayd ibn Ali, the uncle of Imam Jafar al-Sadiq, as their fifth Imam, and follow a different line of succession after him. Other smaller groups include the Bohra as well as the Alawites and Alevi.[367] Some Shia branches label other Shia branches that do not agree with their doctrine as Ghulat.
+
+Non-denominational Muslims is an umbrella term that has been used for and by Muslims who do not belong to or do not self-identify with a specific Islamic denomination.[373][374][375] Prominent figures who refused to identify with a particular Islamic denomination have included Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani,[376] and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.[377] Recent surveys report that large proportions of Muslims in some parts of the world self-identify as "just Muslim", although there is little published analysis available regarding the motivations underlying this response.[153][378][379][380] The Pew Research Center reports that respondents self-identifying as "just Muslim" make up a majority of Muslims in seven countries (and a plurality in three others), with the highest proportion in Kazakhstan at 74%. At least one in five Muslims in at least 22 countries self-identify in this way.[153]
+
+Some movements, such as the Druze, Berghouata and Ha-Mim, either emerged from Islam or came to share certain beliefs with Islam and whether each is a separate religion or a sect of Islam is sometimes controversial. Yazdânism is seen as a blend of local Kurdish beliefs and Islamic Sufi doctrine introduced to Kurdistan by Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir in the 12th century. Bábism stems from Twelver Shia passed through Siyyid 'Ali Muhammad i-Shirazi al-Bab while one of his followers Mirza Husayn 'Ali Nuri Baha'u'llah founded the Bahai Faith.[381] Sikhism, founded by Guru Nanak in late-fifteenth-century Punjab, incorporates aspects of both Islam and Hinduism. Bektashi Alevism is a syncretic and heterodox local Islamic tradition, whose adherents follow the mystical (bāṭenī) teachings of Ali and Haji Bektash Veli.[382] Alevism incorporates Turkish beliefs present during the 14th century,[383] such as Shamanism and Animism, mixed with Shias and Sufi beliefs, adopted by some Turkish tribes.
+
+A 2015 demographic study reported that 24.1% of the global population, or 1.8 billion people, are Muslims.[4] Of those, it has been estimated that 87–90% are Sunni and 10–13% are Shia,[384] with a small minority belonging to other sects. Approximately 49 countries are Muslim-majority,[385] and Arabs account for around 20% of all Muslims worldwide.[386] The number of Muslims worldwide increased from 200 million in 1900 to 551 million in 1970,[387] and tripled to 1.6 billion by 2010.[341]
+
+The majority of Muslims live in Asia and Africa.[388] Approximately 62% of the world's Muslims live in Asia, with over 683 million adherents in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.[389][390] In the Middle East, non-Arab countries such as Turkey and Iran are the largest Muslim-majority countries; in Africa, Nigeria and Egypt have the most populous Muslim communities.
+
+Most estimates indicate that the China has approximately 20 to 30 million Muslims (1.5% to 2% of the population).[391][392][393] However, data provided by the San Diego State University's International Population Center to U.S. News & World Report suggests that China has 65.3 million Muslims.[394] Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity in many European countries,[395] and is slowly catching up to that status in the Americas, with between 2,454,000, according to Pew Forum, and approximately 7 million Muslims, according to the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), in the United States.[384][396]
+
+According to the Pew Research Center, Islam is set to equal Christianity worldwide in number of adherents by the year 2050. Islam is set to grow faster than any other major world religion, reaching a total number of 2.76 billion (an increase of 73%). Causes of this trend involve high fertility rates as a factor, with Muslims having a rate of 3.1 compared to the world average of 2.5, and the minimum replacement level for a population at 2.1. Another factor is also due to fact that Islam has the highest number of adherents under the age of 15 (34% of the total religion) of any major religion, compared with Christianity's 27%. 60% of Muslims are between the ages of 16 and 59, while only 7% are aged 60+ (the smallest percentage of any major religion). However, by the Pew Research Center's estimates, the Muslim fertility rate and Christian fertility rate will converge by 2040.[397] According to the same study, religious conversion has no net impact on the Muslim population as the number of people who convert to Islam is roughly similar to those who leave Islam.[398][399] Countries such as Nigeria and North Macedonia are expected to have Muslim majorities by 2050. In India, the Muslim population will be larger than any other country. Europe's non-Muslim population is set to decline as opposed to their Muslim population which is set to grow to 10% of Europe's total.[341] Growth rates of Islam in Europe was due primarily to immigration and higher birth rates of Muslims in 2005.[400]
+
+The term "Islamic culture" could be used to mean aspects of culture that pertain to the religion, such as festivals and dress code. It is also controversially used to denote the cultural aspects of traditionally Muslim people.[401] Finally, "Islamic civilization" may also refer to the aspects of the synthesized culture of the early Caliphates, including that of non-Muslims,[402] sometimes referred to as "Islamicate".
+
+Perhaps the most important expression of Islamic architecture is that of the mosque.[52] Varying cultures have an effect on mosque architecture. For example, North African and Spanish Islamic architecture such as the Great Mosque of Kairouan contain marble and porphyry columns from Roman and Byzantine buildings,[403] while mosques in Indonesia often have multi-tiered roofs from local Javanese styles. The Ottomans mastered the technique of building vast inner spaces confined by seemingly weightless yet massive domes, and achieving perfect harmony between inner and outer spaces, as well as light and shadow.[404][405]
+
+Great Mosque of Djenné, in the west African country of Mali
+
+Interior view of the main domes of the Blue mosque in Istanbul, Turkey
+
+Dome in Po-i-Kalyan, Bukhara, Uzbekistan
+
+Sixty Dome Mosque, in Khalifatabad, Bangladesh
+
+Islamic art encompasses the visual arts produced from the 7th century onwards by people (not necessarily Muslim) who lived within the territory that was inhabited by Muslim populations.[406] It includes fields as varied as architecture, calligraphy, painting, and ceramics, among others.
+
+While not condemned in the Quran, making images of human beings and animals is frowned on in many Islamic cultures and connected with laws against idolatry common to all Abrahamic religions, as Abdullaah ibn Mas'ood reported that Muhammad said, "Those who will be most severely punished by Allah on the Day of Resurrection will be the image-makers" (reported by al-Bukhaari).[xxiv] However, this rule has been interpreted in different ways by different scholars and in different historical periods, and there are examples of paintings of both animals and humans in Mughal, Persian, and Turkish art. The existence of this aversion to creating images of animate beings has been used to explain the prevalence of calligraphy, tessellation, and pattern as key aspects of Islamic artistic culture.[407]
+
+The phrase Bismillah in an 18th-century Islamic calligraphy from the Ottoman region.
+
+Geometric arabesque tiling on the underside of the dome of Hafiz Shirazi's tomb in Shiraz, Iran
+
+Detail of arabesque decoration at the Alhambra in Spain.
+
+The Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, the largest museum of Islamic arts in Southeast Asia
+
+The formal beginning of the Muslim era was chosen, reportedly by Caliph Umar, to be the Hijra in 622 CE, which was an important turning point in Muhammad's fortunes. It is a lunar calendar with days lasting from sunset to sunset.[408] Islamic holy days fall on fixed dates of the lunar calendar, which means that they occur in different seasons in different years in the Gregorian calendar. The most important Islamic festivals are Eid al-Fitr (Arabic: عيد الفطر‎) on the 1st of Shawwal, marking the end of the fasting month Ramadan, and Eid al-Adha (عيد الأضحى) on the 10th of Dhu al-Hijjah, coinciding with the end of the Hajj (pilgrimage).[409]
+
+Criticism of Islam has existed since Islam's formative stages. Early criticism came from Christian authors, many of whom viewed Islam as a Christian heresy or a form of idolatry, often explaining it in apocalyptic terms.[411] Later, there appeared criticism from the Muslim world itself, as well as from Jewish writers and from ecclesiastical Christians.[412][413][414] Issues relating to the authenticity and morality of the Quran, the Islamic holy book, are also discussed by critics.[415] Islamic salvation optimism and its carnality were criticized by Christian writers. Islam's sensual descriptions of paradise led many Christians to conclude that Islam was not a spiritual religion. Although sensual pleasure was also present in early Christianity, as seen in the writings of Irenaeus, the doctrines of the former Manichaean Augustine of Hippo led to the broad repudiation of bodily pleasure in both life and the afterlife. Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari defended the Quranic description of paradise by asserting that the Bible also implies such ideas, such as drinking wine in Gospel of Matthew.
+
+Defamatory images of Muhammad, derived from early 7th century depictions of Byzantine Church,[416] appear in the 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.[417]  Here, Muhammad appears in the eighth circle of hell, along with Ali. Dante does not blame Islam as a whole but accuses Muhammad of schism, by establishing another religion after Christianity.[417]
+
+Since the events of September 11, 2001, Islam has faced criticism over its scriptures and teachings being claimed to be a significant source of terrorism and terrorist ideology.[418][419]
+
+Other criticisms focus on the question of human rights in modern Muslim-majority countries, and the treatment of women in Islamic law and practice.[420][421] In wake of the recent multiculturalism trend, Islam's influence on the ability of Muslim immigrants in the West to assimilate has been criticized.[422] Both in his public and personal life, others objected the morality of Muhammad, therefore also the sunnah as a role model.[414][423]
+
+"Despite the fact that they did not have a quantified theory of error they were well aware that an increased number of observations qualitatively reduces the uncertainty."

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+Globalization or globalisation is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. As a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, globalization is considered by some as a form of capitalist expansion which entails the integration of local and national economies into a global, unregulated market economy.[1] Globalization has grown due to advances in transportation and communication technology. With the increased global interactions comes the growth of international trade, ideas, and culture. Globalization is primarily an economic process of interaction and integration that's associated with social and cultural aspects. However, conflicts and diplomacy are also large parts of the history of globalization, and modern globalization.
+
+Economically, globalization involves goods, services, the economic resources of capital, technology, and data.[2] Also, the expansions of global markets liberalize the economic activities of the exchange of goods and funds. Removal of cross-border trade barriers has made formation of global markets more feasible.[3] The steam locomotive, steamship, jet engine, and container ships are some of the advances in the means of transport while the rise of the telegraph and its modern offspring, the Internet and mobile phones show development in telecommunications infrastructure. All of these improvements have been major factors in globalization and have generated further interdependence of economic and cultural activities around the globe.[4][5][6]
+
+Though many scholars place the origins of globalization in modern times, others trace its history long before the European Age of Discovery and voyages to the New World, some even to the third millennium BC.[7] Large-scale globalization began in the 1820s.[8] In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the connectivity of the world's economies and cultures grew very quickly. The term globalization is recent, only establishing its current meaning in the 1970s.[9]
+
+In 2000, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified four basic aspects of globalization: trade and transactions, capital and investment movements, migration and movement of people, and the dissemination of knowledge.[10] Further, environmental challenges such as global warming, cross-boundary water, air pollution, and over-fishing of the ocean are linked with globalization.[11] Globalizing processes affect and are affected by business and work organization, economics, socio-cultural resources, and the natural environment. Academic literature commonly subdivides globalization into three major areas: economic globalization, cultural globalization, and political globalization.[12]
+
+The term globalization became popular in social science in the 1990s. It derives from the word globalize, which refers to the emergence of an international network of economic systems.[13]  The term 'globalization' had been used in its economic sense at least as early as 1981, and in other senses since at least as early as 1944.[14] Theodore Levitt is credited with popularizing the term and bringing it into the mainstream business audience in the later half of the 1980s. Since its inception, the concept of globalization has inspired competing definitions and interpretations. Its antecedents date back to the great movements of trade and empire across Asia and the Indian Ocean from the 15th century onward.[15][16]
+Due to the complexity of the concept, various research projects, articles, and discussions often stay focused on a single aspect of globalization.[17]
+
+Sociologists Martin Albrow and Elizabeth King define globalization as "all those processes by which the people of the world are incorporated into a single world society."[2] In The Consequences of Modernity, Anthony Giddens writes: "Globalization can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa."[18] In 1992, Roland Robertson, professor of sociology at the University of Aberdeen and an early writer in the field, described globalization as "the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole."[19]
+
+In Global Transformations, David Held and his co-writers state:
+
+Although in its simplistic sense globalization refers to the widening, deepening and speeding up of global interconnection, such a definition begs further elaboration. ... Globalization can be on a continuum with the local, national and regional. At one end of the continuum lie social and economic relations and networks which are organized on a local and/or national basis; at the other end lie social and economic relations and networks which crystallize on the wider scale of regional and global interactions. Globalization can refer to those spatial-temporal processes of change which underpin a transformation in the organization of human affairs by linking together and expanding human activity across regions and continents. Without reference to such expansive spatial connections, there can be no clear or coherent formulation of this term. ... A satisfactory definition of globalization must capture each of these elements: extensity (stretching), intensity, velocity and impact.[20]
+
+Held and his co-writers' definition of globalization in that same book as "transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions—assessed in terms of their extensity, intensity, velocity and impact—generating transcontinental or inter-regional flows" was called "probably the most widely-cited definition" in the 2014 DHL Global Connectiveness Index.[21]
+
+Swedish journalist Thomas Larsson, in his book The Race to the Top: The Real Story of Globalization, states that globalization:
+
+is the process of world shrinkage, of distances getting shorter, things moving closer. It pertains to the increasing ease with which somebody on one side of the world can interact, to mutual benefit, with somebody on the other side of the world.[22]
+
+Paul James defines globalization with a more direct and historically contextualized emphasis:
+
+Globalization is the extension of social relations across world-space, defining that world-space in terms of the historically variable ways that it has been practiced and socially understood through changing world-time.[23]
+
+Manfred Steger, professor of global studies and research leader in the Global Cities Institute at RMIT University, identifies four main empirical dimensions of globalization: economic, political, cultural, and ecological. A fifth dimension—the ideological—cutting across the other four. The ideological dimension, according to Steger, is filled with a range of norms, claims, beliefs, and narratives about the phenomenon itself.[24]
+
+James and Steger stated that the concept of globalization "emerged from the intersection of four interrelated sets of 'communities of practice' (Wenger, 1998): academics, journalists, publishers/editors, and librarians."[9]:424 They note the term was used "in education to describe the global life of the mind"; in international relations to describe the extension of the European Common Market; and in journalism to describe how the "American Negro and his problem are taking on a global significance".[9] They have also argued that four forms of globalization can be distinguished that complement and cut across the solely empirical dimensions.[23][25] According to James, the oldest dominant form of globalization is embodied globalization, the movement of people. A second form is agency-extended globalization, the circulation of agents of different institutions, organizations, and polities, including imperial agents. Object-extended globalization, a third form, is the movement of commodities and other objects of exchange. He calls the transmission of ideas, images, knowledge, and information across world-space disembodied globalization, maintaining that it is currently the dominant form of globalization. James holds that this series of distinctions allows for an understanding of how, today, the most embodied forms of globalization such as the movement of refugees and migrants are increasingly restricted, while the most disembodied forms such as the circulation of financial instruments and codes are the most deregulated.[26]
+
+The journalist Thomas L. Friedman popularized the term "flat world", arguing that globalized trade, outsourcing, supply-chaining, and political forces had permanently changed the world, for better and worse. He asserted that the pace of globalization was quickening and that its impact on business organization and practice would continue to grow.[27]
+
+Economist Takis Fotopoulos defined "economic globalization" as the opening and deregulation of commodity, capital, and labor markets that led toward present neoliberal globalization. He used "political globalization" to refer to the emergence of a transnational élite and a phasing out of the nation-state. Meanwhile, he used "cultural globalization" to reference the worldwide homogenization of culture. Other of his usages included "ideological globalization", "technological globalization", and "social globalization".[28]
+
+Lechner and Boli (2012) define globalization as more people across large distances becoming connected in more and different ways.[29]
+
+"Globophobia" is used to refer to the fear of globalization, though it can also mean the fear of balloons.[30][31][32]
+
+There are both distal and proximate causes which can be traced in the historical factors affecting globalization. Large-scale globalization began in the 19th century.[33]
+
+Archaic globalization conventionally refers to a phase in the history of globalization including globalizing events and developments from the time of the earliest civilizations until roughly the 1600s. This term is used to describe the relationships between communities and states and how they were created by the geographical spread of ideas and social norms at both local and regional levels.[34]
+
+In this schema, three main prerequisites are posited for globalization to occur. The first is the idea of Eastern Origins, which shows how Western states have adapted and implemented learned principles from the East.[34] Without the spread of traditional ideas from the East, Western globalization would not have emerged the way it did. The second is distance. The interactions of states were not on a global scale and most often were confined to Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and certain parts of Europe.[34] With early globalization, it was difficult for states to interact with others that were not within a close proximity. Eventually, technological advances allowed states to learn of others' existence and thus another phase of globalization can occur. The third has to do with inter-dependency, stability, and regularity. If a state is not dependent on another, then there is no way for either state to be mutually affected by the other. This is one of the driving forces behind global connections and trade; without either, globalization would not have emerged the way it did and states would still be dependent on their own production and resources to work. This is one of the arguments surrounding the idea of early globalization. It is argued that archaic globalization did not function in a similar manner to modern globalization because states were not as interdependent on others as they are today.[34]
+
+Also posited is a "multi-polar" nature to archaic globalization, which involved the active participation of non-Europeans. Because it predated the Great Divergence in the nineteenth century, where Western Europe pulled ahead of the rest of the world in terms of industrial production and economic output, archaic globalization was a phenomenon that was driven not only by Europe but also by other economically developed Old World centers such as Gujarat, Bengal, coastal China, and Japan.[35]
+
+The German historical economist and sociologist Andre Gunder Frank argues that a form of globalization began with the rise of trade links between Sumer and the Indus Valley Civilization in the third millennium BCE.  This archaic globalization existed during the Hellenistic Age, when commercialized urban centers enveloped the axis of Greek culture that reached from India to Spain, including Alexandria and the other Alexandrine cities. Early on, the geographic position of Greece and the necessity of importing wheat forced the Greeks to engage in maritime trade. Trade in ancient Greece was largely unrestricted: the state controlled only the supply of grain.[7]
+
+Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of civilizations from China, Indian subcontinent, Persia, Europe, and Arabia, opening long-distance political and economic interactions between them.[36] Though silk was certainly the major trade item from China, common goods such as salt and sugar were traded as well; and religions, syncretic philosophies, and various technologies, as well as diseases, also traveled along the Silk Routes. In addition to economic trade, the Silk Road served as a means of carrying out cultural trade among the civilizations along its network.[37] The movement of people, such as refugees, artists, craftsmen, missionaries, robbers, and envoys, resulted in the exchange of religions, art, languages, and new technologies.[38]
+
+"Early modern-" or "proto-globalization" covers a period of the history of globalization roughly spanning the years between 1600 and 1800. The concept of "proto-globalization" was first introduced by historians A. G. Hopkins and Christopher Bayly. The term describes the phase of increasing trade links and cultural exchange that characterized the period immediately preceding the advent of high "modern globalization" in the late 19th century.[39] This phase of globalization was characterized by the rise of maritime European empires, in the 15th and 17th centuries, first the Portuguese Empire (1415) followed by the Spanish Empire (1492), and later the Dutch and British Empires. In the 17th century, world trade developed further when chartered companies like the British East India Company (founded in 1600) and the Dutch East India Company (founded in 1602, often described as the first multinational corporation in which stock was offered) were established.[40]
+
+Early modern globalization is distinguished from modern globalization on the basis of expansionism, the method of managing global trade, and the level of information exchange. The period is marked by such trade arrangements as the East India Company, the shift of hegemony to Western Europe, the rise of larger-scale conflicts between powerful nations such as the Thirty Years' War, and the rise of newfound commodities—most particularly slave trade. The Triangular Trade made it possible for Europe to take advantage of resources within the Western Hemisphere. The transfer of animal stocks, plant crops, and epidemic diseases associated with Alfred W. Crosby's concept of the Columbian Exchange also played a central role in this process. European, Muslim, Indian, Southeast Asian, and Chinese merchants were all involved in early modern trade and communications, particularly in the Indian Ocean region.
+
+According to economic historians Kevin H. O'Rourke, Leandro Prados de la Escosura, and Guillaume Daudin, several factors promoted globalization in the period 1815–1870:[41]
+
+During the 19th century, globalization approached its form as a direct result of the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization allowed standardized production of household items using economies of scale while rapid population growth created sustained demand for commodities. In the 19th century, steamships reduced the cost of international transport significantly and railroads made inland transportation cheaper. The transport revolution occurred some time between 1820 and 1850.[33] More nations embraced international trade.[33] Globalization in this period was decisively shaped by nineteenth-century imperialism such as in Africa and Asia. The invention of shipping containers in 1956 helped advance the globalization of commerce.[42][43]
+
+After World War II, work by politicians led to the agreements of the Bretton Woods Conference, in which major governments laid down the framework for international monetary policy, commerce, and finance, and the founding of several international institutions intended to facilitate economic growth by lowering trade barriers. Initially, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) led to a series of agreements to remove trade restrictions. GATT's successor was the World Trade Organization (WTO), which provided a framework for negotiating and formalizing trade agreements and a dispute resolution process. Exports nearly doubled from 8.5% of total gross world product in 1970 to 16.2% in 2001.[44] The approach of using global agreements to advance trade stumbled with the failure of the Doha Development Round of trade negotiation. Many countries then shifted to bilateral or smaller multilateral agreements, such as the 2011 South Korea–United States Free Trade Agreement.
+
+Since the 1970s, aviation has become increasingly affordable to middle classes in developed countries. Open skies policies and low-cost carriers have helped to bring competition to the market. In the 1990s, the growth of low-cost communication networks cut the cost of communicating between countries. More work can be performed using a computer without regard to location. This included accounting, software development, and engineering design.
+
+Student exchange programs became popular after World War II, and are intended to increase the participants' understanding and tolerance of other cultures, as well as improving their language skills and broadening their social horizons. Between 1963 and 2006 the number of students studying in a foreign country increased 9 times.[45]
+
+Since the 1980s, modern globalization has spread rapidly through the expansion of capitalism and neoliberal ideologies.[46] The implementation of neoliberal policies has allowed for the privatization of public industry, deregulation of laws or policies that interfered with the free flow of the market, as well as cut-backs to governmental social services.[47] These neoliberal policies were introduced to many developing countries in the form of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) that were implemented by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).[46] These programs required that the country receiving monetary aid would open its markets to capitalism, privatize public industry, allow free trade, cut social services like healthcare and education and allow the free movement of giant multinational corporations.[48] These programs allowed the World Bank and the IMF to become global financial market regulators that would promote neoliberalism and the creation of free markets for multinational corporations on a global scale.[49]
+
+In the late 19th and early 20th century, the connectedness of the world's economies and cultures grew very quickly. This slowed down from the 1910s onward due to the World Wars and the Cold War,[50] but picked up again in the 1980s and 1990s.[51] The revolutions of 1989 and subsequent liberalization in many parts of the world resulted in a significant expansion of global interconnectedness. The migration and movement of people can also be highlighted as a prominent feature of the globalization process. In the period between 1965 and 1990, the proportion of the labor force migrating approximately doubled. Most migration occurred between the developing countries and least developed countries (LDCs).[52] As economic integration intensified workers moved to areas with higher wages and most of the developing world oriented toward the international market economy. The collapse of the Soviet Union not only ended the Cold War's division of the world – it also left the United States its sole policeman and an unfettered advocate of free market.[according to whom?] It also resulted in the growing prominence of attention focused on the movement of diseases, the proliferation of popular culture and consumer values, the growing prominence of international institutions like the UN, and concerted international action on such issues as the environment and human rights.[53]  Other developments as dramatic were the Internet's becoming influential in connecting people across the world; As of June 2012[update], more than 2.4 billion people—over a third of the world's human population—have used the services of the Internet.[54][55] Growth of globalization has never been smooth. One influential event was the late 2000s recession, which was associated with lower growth (in areas such as cross-border phone calls and Skype usage) or even temporarily negative growth (in areas such as trade) of global interconnectedness.[56][57]
+
+Globalized society offers a complex web of forces and factors that bring people, cultures, markets, beliefs, and practices into increasingly greater proximity to one another.[58]
+
+Economic globalization is the increasing economic interdependence of national economies across the world through a rapid increase in cross-border movement of goods, services, technology, and capital.[61] Whereas the globalization of business is centered around the diminution of international trade regulations as well as tariffs, taxes, and other impediments that suppresses global trade, economic globalization is the process of increasing economic integration between countries, leading to the emergence of a global marketplace or a single world market.[62] Depending on the paradigm, economic globalization can be viewed as either a positive or a negative phenomenon. Economic globalization comprises: globalization of production; which refers to the obtainment of goods and services from a particular source from locations around the globe to benefit from difference in cost and quality. Likewise, it also comprises globalization of markets; which is defined as the union of different and separate markets into a massive global marketplace. Economic globalization also includes[63] competition, technology, and corporations and industries.[61]
+
+Current globalization trends can be largely accounted for by developed economies integrating with less developed economies by means of foreign direct investment, the reduction of trade barriers as well as other economic reforms, and, in many cases, immigration.[64]
+
+International standards have made trade in goods and services more efficient. An example of such standard is the intermodal container. Containerization dramatically reduced transport of its costs, supported the post-war boom in international trade, and was a major element in globalization.[42] International Organization for Standardization is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations.
+
+A multinational corporation or worldwide enterprise[65] is an organization that owns or controls production of goods or services in one or more countries other than their home country.[66] It can also be referred as an international corporation, a transnational corporation, or a stateless corporation.[67]
+
+A free-trade area is the region encompassing a trade bloc whose member countries have signed a free-trade agreement (FTA). Such agreements involve cooperation between at least two countries to reduce trade barriers –  import quotas and tariffs –  and to increase trade of goods and services with each other.[68]
+If people are also free to move between the countries, in addition to a free-trade agreement, it would also be considered an open border.
+Arguably the most significant free-trade area in the world is the European Union, a politico-economic union of 27 member states that are primarily located in Europe. The EU has developed European Single Market through a standardized system of laws that apply in all member states. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital within the internal market,[69]
+
+Trade facilitation looks at how procedures and controls governing the movement of goods across national borders can be improved to reduce associated cost burdens and maximize efficiency while safeguarding legitimate regulatory objectives.
+
+Global trade in services is also significant. For example, in India, business process outsourcing has been described as the "primary engine of the country's development over the next few decades, contributing broadly to GDP growth, employment growth, and poverty alleviation".[70][71]
+
+William I. Robinson's theoretical approach to globalization is a critique of Wallerstein's World Systems Theory.  He believes that the global capital experienced today is due to a new and distinct form of globalization which began in the 1980s.  Robinson argues not only are economic activities expanded across national boundaries but also there is a transnational fragmentation of these activities.[72]  One important aspect of Robinson's globalization theory is that production of goods are increasingly global.  This means that one pair of shoes can be produced by six countries, each contributing to a part of the production process.
+
+Cultural globalization refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings, and values around the world in such a way as to extend and intensify social relations.[73] This process is marked by the common consumption of cultures that have been diffused by the Internet, popular culture media, and international travel. This has added to processes of commodity exchange and colonization which have a longer history of carrying cultural meaning around the globe. The circulation of cultures enables individuals to partake in extended social relations that cross national and regional borders. The creation and expansion of such social relations is not merely observed on a material level. Cultural globalization involves the formation of shared norms and knowledge with which people associate their individual and collective cultural identities. It brings increasing interconnectedness among different populations and cultures.[74]
+
+Cross-cultural communication is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavour to communicate across cultures. Intercultural communication is a related field of study.
+
+Cultural diffusion is the spread of cultural items—such as ideas, styles, religions, technologies, languages etc.
+Cultural globalization has increased cross-cultural contacts, but may be accompanied by a decrease in the uniqueness of once-isolated communities. For example, sushi is available in Germany as well as Japan, but Euro-Disney outdraws the city of Paris, potentially reducing demand for "authentic" French pastry.[75][76][77] Globalization's contribution to the alienation of individuals from their traditions may be modest compared to the impact of modernity itself, as alleged by existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Globalization has expanded recreational opportunities by spreading pop culture, particularly via the Internet and satellite television.
+
+Religions were among the earliest cultural elements to globalize, being spread by force, migration, evangelists, imperialists, and traders. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and more recently sects such as Mormonism are among those religions which have taken root and influenced endemic cultures in places far from their origins.[78]
+
+Globalization has strongly influenced sports.[79] For example, the modern Olympic Games has athletes from more than 200 nations participating in a variety of competitions.[80] The FIFA World Cup is the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games; a ninth of the entire population of the planet watched the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final.[81][82][83][84]
+
+The term globalization implies transformation. Cultural practices including traditional music can be lost or turned into a fusion of traditions. Globalization can trigger a state of emergency for the preservation of musical heritage. Archivists may attempt to collect, record, or transcribe repertoires before melodies are assimilated or modified, while local musicians may struggle for authenticity and to preserve local musical traditions. Globalization can lead performers to discard traditional instruments. Fusion genres can become interesting fields of analysis.[85]
+
+Music has an important role in economic and cultural development during globalization. Music genres such as jazz and reggae began locally and later became international phenomena. Globalization gave support to the world music phenomenon by allowing music from developing countries to reach broader audiences.[86] Though the term "World Music" was originally intended for ethnic-specific music, globalization is now expanding its scope such that the term often includes hybrid subgenres such as "world fusion", "global fusion", "ethnic fusion",[87] and worldbeat.[88][89]
+
+Bourdieu claimed that the perception of consumption can be seen as self-identification and the formation of identity. Musically, this translates into each individual having their own musical identity based on likes and tastes. These likes and tastes are greatly influenced by culture, as this is the most basic cause for a person's wants and behavior. The concept of one's own culture is now in a period of change due to globalization. Also, globalization has increased the interdependency of political, personal, cultural, and economic factors.[91]
+
+A 2005 UNESCO report[92] showed that cultural exchange is becoming more frequent from Eastern Asia, but that Western countries are still the main exporters of cultural goods. In 2002, China was the third largest exporter of cultural goods, after the UK and US. Between 1994 and 2002, both North America's and the European Union's shares of cultural exports declined while Asia's cultural exports grew to surpass North America. Related factors are the fact that Asia's population and area are several times that of North America. Americanization is related to a period of high political American clout and of significant growth of America's shops, markets and objects being brought into other countries.
+
+Some critics of globalization argue that it harms the diversity of cultures. As a dominating country's culture is introduced into a receiving country through globalization, it can become a threat to the diversity of local culture. Some argue that globalization may ultimately lead to Westernization or Americanization of culture, where the dominating cultural concepts of economically and politically powerful Western countries spread and cause harm to local cultures.[93]
+
+Globalization is a diverse phenomenon which relates to a multilateral political world and to the increase of cultural objects and markets between countries. The Indian experience particularly reveals the plurality of the impact of cultural globalization.[94]
+
+Transculturalism is defined as "seeing oneself in the other".[95] Transcultural[96] is in turn described as "extending through all human cultures"[96] or "involving, encompassing, or combining elements of more than one culture".[97]
+
+Political globalization refers to the growth of the worldwide political system, both in size and complexity. That system includes national governments, their governmental and intergovernmental organizations as well as government-independent elements of global civil society such as international non-governmental organizations and social movement organizations. One of the key aspects of the political globalization is the declining importance of the nation-state and the rise of other actors on the political scene.
+William R. Thompson has defined it as "the expansion of a global political system, and its institutions, in which inter-regional transactions (including, but certainly not limited to trade) are managed".[98] 
+Political globalization is one of the three main dimensions of globalization commonly found in academic literature, with the two other being economic globalization and cultural globalization.[12]
+
+Intergovernmentalism is a term in political science with two meanings. The first refers to a theory of regional integration originally proposed by Stanley Hoffmann; the second treats states and the national government as the primary factors for integration.[99]
+Multi-level governance is an approach in political science and public administration theory that originated from studies on European integration. Multi-level governance gives expression to the idea that there are many interacting authority structures at work in the emergent global political economy.  It illuminates the intimate entanglement between the domestic and international levels of authority.
+
+Some people are citizens of multiple nation-states. Multiple citizenship, also called dual citizenship or multiple nationality or dual nationality, is a person's citizenship status, in which a person is concurrently regarded as a citizen of more than one state under the laws of those states.
+
+Increasingly, non-governmental organizations influence public policy across national boundaries, including humanitarian aid and developmental efforts.[101] Philanthropic organizations with global missions are also coming to the forefront of humanitarian efforts; charities such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Accion International, the Acumen Fund (now Acumen) and the Echoing Green have combined the business model with philanthropy, giving rise to business organizations such as the Global Philanthropy Group and new associations of philanthropists such as the Global Philanthropy Forum.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation projects include a current multibillion-dollar commitment to funding immunizations in some of the world's more impoverished but rapidly growing countries.[102] The Hudson Institute estimates total private philanthropic flows to developing countries at US$59 billion in 2010.[103]
+
+As a response to globalization, some countries have embraced isolationist policies. For example, the North Korean government makes it very difficult for foreigners to enter the country and strictly monitors their activities when they do. Aid workers are subject to considerable scrutiny and excluded from places and regions the government does not wish them to enter. Citizens cannot freely leave the country.[104][105]
+
+Globalization has been a gendered process where giant multinational corporations have outsourced jobs to low-wage, low skilled, quota free economies like the ready made garment industry in Bangladesh where poor women make up the majority of labor force.[106] Despite a large proportion of women workers in the garment industry, women are still heavily underemployed compared to men.[106] Most women that are employed in the garment industry come from the countryside of Bangladesh triggering migration of women in search of garment work.[106] It is still unclear as to whether or not access to paid work for women where it didn't exist before has empowered them.[106] The answers varied depending on whether it is the employers perspective or the workers and how they view their choices.[106] Women workers did not see the garment industry as economically sustainable for them in the long run due to long hours standing and poor working conditions.[106] Although women workers did show significant autonomy over their personal lives including their ability to negotiate with family, more choice in marriage, and being valued as a wage earner in the family. This did not translate into workers being able to collectively organize themselves in order to negotiate a better deal for themselves at work.[106]
+
+Another example of outsourcing in manufacturing includes the maquiladora industry in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico where poor women make up the majority of the labor force.[107] Women in the maquiladora industry have produced high levels of turnover not staying long enough to be trained compared to men.[107] A gendered two tiered system within the maquiladora industry has been created that focuses on training and worker loyalty.[107] Women are seen as being untrainable, placed in un-skilled, low wage jobs, while men are seen as more trainable with less turnover rates, and placed in more high skilled technical jobs.[107] The idea of training has become a tool used against women to blame them for their high turnover rates which also benefit the industry keeping women as temporary workers.[107]
+
+Scholars also occasionally discuss other, less common dimensions of globalization, such as environmental globalization (the internationally coordinated practices and regulations, often in the form of international treaties, regarding environmental protection)[108] or military globalization (growth in global extent and scope of security relationships).[109] Those dimensions, however, receive much less attention the three described above, as academic literature commonly subdivides globalization into three major areas: economic globalization, cultural globalization and political globalization.[12]
+
+An essential aspect of globalization is movement of people, and state-boundary limits on that movement have changed across history.[110] The movement of tourists and business people opened up over the last century. As transportation technology improved, travel time and costs decreased dramatically between the 18th and early 20th century. For example, travel across the Atlantic ocean used to take up to 5 weeks in the 18th century, but around the time of the 20th century it took a mere 8 days.[111] Today, modern aviation has made long-distance transportation quick and affordable.
+
+Tourism is travel for pleasure. The developments in technology and transport infrastructure, such as jumbo jets, low-cost airlines, and more accessible airports have made many types of tourism more affordable. At any given moment half a million people are in the air.[112] International tourist arrivals surpassed the milestone of 1 billion tourists globally for the first time in 2012.[113]
+A visa is a conditional authorization granted by a country to a foreigner, allowing them to enter and temporarily remain within, or to leave that country. Some countries – such as those in the Schengen Area – have agreements with other countries allowing each other's citizens to travel between them without visas. The World Tourism Organization announced that the number of tourists who require a visa before traveling was at its lowest level ever in 2015.[114][115]
+
+Immigration is the international movement of people into a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle or reside there, especially as permanent residents or naturalized citizens, or to take-up employment as a migrant worker or temporarily as a foreign worker.[116][117][118]
+According to the International Labour Organization, as of 2014[update] there were an estimated 232 million international migrants in the world (defined as persons outside their country of origin for 12 months or more) and approximately half of them were estimated to be economically active (i.e. being employed or seeking employment).[119] International movement of labor is often seen as important to economic development. For example, freedom of movement for workers in the European Union means that people can move freely between member states to live, work, study or retire in another country.
+
+Globalization is associated with a dramatic rise in international education.  More and more students are seeking higher education in foreign countries and many international students now consider overseas study a stepping-stone to permanent residency within a country.[121]  The contributions that foreign students make to host nation economies, both culturally and financially has encouraged major players to implement further initiatives to facilitate the arrival and integration of overseas students, including substantial amendments to immigration and visa policies and procedures.[45]
+
+A transnational marriage is a marriage between two people from different countries. A variety of special issues arise in marriages between people from different countries, including those related to citizenship and culture, which add complexity and challenges to these kinds of relationships.
+In an age of increasing globalization, where a growing number of people have ties to networks of people and places across the globe, rather than to a current geographic location, people are increasingly marrying across national boundaries. Transnational marriage is a by-product of the movement and migration of people.
+
+Before electronic communications, long-distance communications relied on mail. Speed of global communications was limited by the maximum speed of courier services (especially horses and ships) until the mid-19th century. The electric telegraph was the first method of instant long-distance communication. For example, before the first transatlantic cable, communications between Europe and the Americas took weeks because ships had to carry mail across the ocean. The first transatlantic cable reduced communication time considerably, allowing a message and a response in the same day. Lasting transatlantic telegraph connections were achieved in the 1865–1866. The first wireless telegraphy transmitters were developed in 1895.
+
+The Internet has been instrumental in connecting people across geographical boundaries. For example, Facebook is a social networking service which has more than 1.65 billion monthly active users as of 31 March 2016[update].[123]
+
+Globalization can be spread by Global journalism which provides massive information and relies on the internet to interact,  "makes it into an everyday routine to investigate how people and their actions, practices, problems, life conditions, etc. in different parts of the world are interrelated. possible to assume that global threats such as climate change precipitate the further establishment of global journalism."[124]
+
+In the current era of globalization, the world is more interdependent than at any other time. Efficient and inexpensive transportation has left few places inaccessible, and increased global trade has brought more and more people into contact with animal diseases that have subsequently jumped species barriers (see zoonosis).[125]
+
+Coronavirus disease 2019, abbreviated COVID-19, first appeared in Wuhan, China in November 2019. More than 180 countries have reported cases since then.[126] As of April 6, 2020[update], the U.S. has the most confirmed active cases in the world.[127] More than 3.4 million people from the worst-affected countries entered U.S. in the first three months since the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic.[128]
+
+One index of globalization is the KOF Index of Globalization, which measures three important dimensions of globalization:  economic, social, and political.[129] Another is the A.T. Kearney / Foreign Policy Magazine Globalization Index.[130]
+
+Measurements of economic globalization typically focus on variables such as trade, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Gross Domestic Product (GDP), portfolio investment, and income.  However, newer indices attempt to measure globalization in more general terms, including variables related to political, social, cultural, and even environmental aspects of globalization.[131][132]
+
+The DHL Global Connectedness Index studies four main types of cross-border flow: trade (in both goods and services), information, people (including tourists, students, and migrants), and capital. It shows that the depth of global integration fell by about one-tenth after 2008, but by 2013 had recovered well above its pre-crash peak.[21][56] The report also found a shift of economic activity to emerging economies.[21]
+
+Reactions to processes contributing to globalization have varied widely with a history as long as extraterritorial contact and trade. Philosophical differences regarding the costs and benefits of such processes give rise to a broad-range of ideologies and social movements.  Proponents of economic growth, expansion and development, in general, view globalizing processes as desirable or necessary to the well-being of human society.[133]
+
+Antagonists view one or more globalizing processes as detrimental to social well-being on a global or local scale;[133] this includes those who focus on social or natural sustainability of long-term and continuous economic expansion, the social structural inequality caused by these processes, and the colonial, imperialistic, or hegemonic ethnocentrism, cultural assimilation and cultural appropriation that underlie such processes.
+
+Globalization tends to bring people into contact with foreign people and cultures. Xenophobia is the fear of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange.[134][135] Xenophobia can manifest itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an ingroup towards an outgroup, including a fear of losing identity, suspicion of its activities, aggression, and desire to eliminate its presence to secure a presumed purity.[136]
+
+Critiques of globalization generally stem from discussions surrounding the impact of such processes on the planet as well as the human costs. They challenge directly traditional metrics, such as GDP, and look to other measures, such as the Gini coefficient[137] or the Happy Planet Index,[138] and point to a "multitude of interconnected fatal consequences–social disintegration, a breakdown of democracy, more rapid and extensive deterioration of the environment, the spread of new diseases, increasing poverty and alienation"[139] which they claim are the unintended consequences of globalization. Others point out that, while the forces of globalization have led to the spread of western-style democracy, this has been accompanied by an increase in inter-ethnic tension and violence as free market economic policies combine with democratic processes of universal suffrage as well as an escalation in militarization to impose democratic principles and as a means to conflict resolution.[140]
+
+On August 9, 2019, Pope Francis denounced isolationism and hinted that the Catholic Church will embrace globalization at the October 2019 Amazonia Synod, stating “the whole is greater than the parts. Globalization and unity should not be conceived as a sphere, but as a polyhedron: each people retains its identity in unity with others"[141]
+
+A 2005 study by Peer Fis and Paul Hirsch found a large increase in articles negative towards globalization in the years prior. In 1998, negative articles outpaced positive articles by two to one.[142] The number of newspaper articles showing negative framing rose from about 10% of the total in 1991 to 55% of the total in 1999. This increase occurred during a period when the total number of articles concerning globalization nearly doubled.[142]
+
+A number of international polls have shown that residents of Africa and Asia tend to view globalization more favorably than residents of Europe or North America. In Africa, a Gallup poll found that 70% of the population views globalization favorably.[143] The BBC found that 50% of people believed that economic globalization was proceeding too rapidly, while 35% believed it was proceeding too slowly.[144]
+
+In 2004, Philip Gordon stated that "a clear majority of Europeans believe that globalization can enrich their lives, while believing the European Union can help them take advantage of globalization's benefits while shielding them from its negative effects." The main opposition consisted of socialists, environmental groups, and nationalists. Residents of the EU did not appear to feel threatened by globalization in 2004. The EU job market was more stable and workers were less likely to accept wage/benefit cuts. Social spending was much higher than in the US.[145] In a Danish poll in 2007, 76% responded that globalization is a good thing.[146]
+
+Fiss, et al., surveyed US opinion in 1993. Their survey showed that, in 1993, more than 40% of respondents were unfamiliar with the concept of globalization. When the survey was repeated in 1998, 89% of the respondents had a polarized view of globalization as being either good or bad. At the same time, discourse on globalization, which began in the financial community before shifting to a heated debate between proponents and disenchanted students and workers. Polarization increased dramatically after the establishment of the WTO in 1995; this event and subsequent protests led to a large-scale anti-globalization movement.[142]
+Initially, college educated workers were likely to support globalization. Less educated workers, who were more likely to compete with immigrants and workers in developing countries, tended to be opponents. The situation changed after the financial crisis of 2007. According to a 1997 poll 58% of college graduates said globalization had been good for the US. By 2008 only 33% thought it was good. Respondents with high school education also became more opposed.[147]
+
+According to Takenaka Heizo and Chida Ryokichi, as of 1998[update] there was a perception in Japan that the economy was "Small and Frail". However, Japan was resource-poor and used exports to pay for its raw materials. Anxiety over their position caused terms such as internationalization and globalization to enter everyday language. However, Japanese tradition was to be as self-sufficient as possible, particularly in agriculture.[148]
+
+Many in developing countries see globalization as a positive force that lifts them out of poverty.[149] Those opposing globalization typically combine environmental concerns with nationalism. Opponents consider governments as agents of neo-colonialism that are subservient to multinational corporations.[150] Much of this criticism comes from the middle class; the Brookings Institution suggested this was because the middle class perceived upwardly mobile low-income groups as threatening to their economic security.[151]
+
+The literature analyzing the economics of free trade is extremely rich with extensive work having been done on the theoretical and empirical effects. Though it creates winners and losers, the broad consensus among economists is that free trade is a large and unambiguous net gain for society.[152][153] In a 2006 survey of 83 American economists, "87.5% agree that the U.S. should eliminate remaining tariffs and other barriers to trade" and "90.1% disagree with the suggestion that the U.S. should restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries."[154]
+
+Quoting Harvard economics professor N. Gregory Mankiw, "Few propositions command as much consensus among professional economists as that open world trade increases economic growth and raises living standards."[155] In a survey of leading economists, none disagreed with the notion that "freer trade improves productive efficiency and offers consumers better choices, and in the long run these gains are much larger than any effects on employment."[156] Most economists would agree that although increasing returns to scale might mean that certain industry could settle in a geographical area without any strong economic reason derived from comparative advantage, this is not a reason to argue against free trade because the absolute level of output enjoyed by both "winner" and "loser" will increase with the "winner" gaining more than the "loser" but both gaining more than before in an absolute level.
+
+In the book The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs discusses how many factors can affect a country's ability to enter the world market, including government corruption; legal and social disparities based on gender, ethnicity, or caste; diseases such as AIDS and malaria; lack of infrastructure (including transportation, communications, health, and trade); unstable political landscapes; protectionism; and geographic barriers.[157] Jagdish Bhagwati, a former adviser to the U.N. on globalization, holds that, although there are obvious problems with overly rapid development, globalization is a very positive force that lifts countries out of poverty by causing a virtuous economic cycle associated with faster economic growth.[149] However, economic growth does not necessarily mean a reduction in poverty; in fact, the two can coexist. Economic growth is conventionally measured using indicators such as GDP and GNI that do not accurately reflect the growing disparities in wealth.[158] Additionally, Oxfam International argues that poor people are often excluded from globalization-induced opportunities "by a lack of productive assets, weak infrastructure, poor education and ill-health;"[159] effectively leaving these marginalized groups in a poverty trap. Economist Paul Krugman is another staunch supporter of globalization and free trade with a record of disagreeing with many critics of globalization. He argues that many of them lack a basic understanding of comparative advantage and its importance in today's world.[160]
+
+The flow of migrants to advanced economies has been claimed to provide a means through which global wages converge. An IMF study noted a potential for skills to be transferred back to developing countries as wages in those a countries rise.[10] Lastly, the dissemination of knowledge has been an integral aspect of globalization. Technological innovations (or technological transfer) are conjectured to benefit most developing and least developing countries (LDCs), as for example in the adoption of mobile phones.[52]
+
+There has been a rapid economic growth in Asia after embracing market orientation-based economic policies that encourage private property rights, free enterprise and competition. In particular, in East Asian developing countries, GDP per head rose at 5.9% a year from 1975 to 2001 (according to 2003 Human Development Report[162] of UNDP). Like this, the British economic journalist Martin Wolf says that incomes of poor developing countries, with more than half the world's population, grew substantially faster than those of the world's richest countries that remained relatively stable in its growth, leading to reduced international inequality and the incidence of poverty.
+
+Certain demographic changes in the developing world after active economic liberalization and international integration resulted in rising general welfare and, hence, reduced inequality. According to Wolf, in the developing world as a whole, life expectancy rose by four months each year after 1970 and infant mortality rate declined from 107 per thousand in 1970 to 58 in 2000 due to improvements in standards of living and health conditions. Also, adult literacy in developing countries rose from 53% in 1970 to 74% in 1998 and much lower illiteracy rate among the young guarantees that rates will continue to fall as time passes. Furthermore, the reduction in fertility rate in the developing world as a whole from 4.1 births per woman in 1980 to 2.8 in 2000 indicates improved education level of women on fertility, and control of fewer children with more parental attention and investment.[164] Consequently, more prosperous and educated parents with fewer children have chosen to withdraw their children from the labor force to give them opportunities to be educated at school improving the issue of child labor. Thus, despite seemingly unequal distribution of income within these developing countries, their economic growth and development have brought about improved standards of living and welfare for the population as a whole.
+
+Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth among post-1980 globalizing countries accelerated from 1.4 percent a year in the 1960s and 2.9 percent a year in the 1970s to 3.5 percent in the 1980s and 5.0 percent in the 1990s. This acceleration in growth seems even more remarkable given that the rich countries saw steady declines in growth from a high of 4.7 percent in the 1960s to 2.2 percent in the 1990s. Also, the non-globalizing developing countries seem to fare worse than the globalizers, with the former's annual growth rates falling from highs of 3.3 percent during the 1970s to only 1.4 percent during the 1990s. This rapid growth among the globalizers is not simply due to the strong performances of China and India in the 1980s and 1990s—18 out of the 24 globalizers experienced increases in growth, many of them quite substantial.[165]
+
+The globalization of the late 20th and early 21st centuries has led to the resurfacing of the idea that the growth of economic interdependence promotes peace.[166] This idea had been very powerful during the globalization of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was a central doctrine of classical liberals of that era, such as the young John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946).[167]
+
+Some opponents of globalization see the phenomenon as a promotion of corporate interests.[168] They also claim that the increasing autonomy and strength of corporate entities shapes the political policy of countries.[169][170] They advocate global institutions and policies that they believe better address the moral claims of poor and working classes as well as environmental concerns.[171] Economic arguments by fair trade theorists claim that unrestricted free trade benefits those with more financial leverage (i.e. the rich) at the expense of the poor.[172]
+
+Globalization allows corporations to outsource manufacturing and service jobs from high cost locations, creating economic opportunities with the most competitive wages and worker benefits.[70] Critics of globalization say that it disadvantages poorer countries. While it is true that free trade encourages globalization among countries, some countries try to protect their domestic suppliers. The main export of poorer countries is usually agricultural productions. Larger countries often subsidize their farmers (e.g., the EU's Common Agricultural Policy), which lowers the market price for foreign crops.[173]
+
+Democratic globalization is a movement towards an institutional system of global democracy that would give world citizens a say in political organizations. This would, in their view, bypass nation-states, corporate oligopolies, ideological non-governmental organizations (NGO), political cults and mafias.  One of its most prolific proponents is the British political thinker David Held. Advocates of democratic globalization argue that economic expansion and development should be the first phase of democratic globalization, which is to be followed by a phase of building global political institutions. Dr. Francesco Stipo, Director of the United States Association of the Club of Rome, advocates unifying nations under a world government, suggesting that it "should reflect the political and economic balances of world nations. A world confederation would not supersede the authority of the State governments but rather complement it, as both the States and the world authority would have power within their sphere of competence".[174] Former Canadian Senator Douglas Roche, O.C., viewed globalization as inevitable and advocated creating institutions such as a directly elected United Nations Parliamentary Assembly to exercise oversight over unelected international bodies.[175]
+
+Global civics suggests that civics can be understood, in a global sense, as a social contract between global citizens in the age of interdependence and interaction. The disseminators of the concept define it as the notion that we have certain rights and responsibilities towards each other by the mere fact of being human on Earth.[176] World citizen has a variety of similar meanings, often referring to a person who disapproves of traditional geopolitical divisions derived from national citizenship. An early incarnation of this sentiment can be found in Socrates, whom Plutarch quoted as saying: "I am not an Athenian, or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."[177] In an increasingly interdependent world, world citizens need a compass to frame their mindsets and create a shared consciousness and sense of global responsibility in world issues such as environmental problems and nuclear proliferation.[178]
+
+Baha'i-inspired author Meyjes, while favoring the single world community and emergent global consciousness, warns of globalization[179] as a cloak for an expeditious economic, social, and cultural Anglo-dominance that is insufficiently inclusive to inform the emergence of an optimal world civilization. He proposes a process of "universalization" as an alternative.
+
+Cosmopolitanism is the proposal that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. A person who adheres to the idea of cosmopolitanism in any of its forms is called a cosmopolitan or cosmopolite.[180] A cosmopolitan community might be based on an inclusive morality, a shared economic relationship, or a political structure that encompasses different nations. The cosmopolitan community is one in which individuals from different places (e.g. nation-states) form relationships based on mutual respect. For instance, Kwame Anthony Appiah suggests the possibility of a cosmopolitan community in which individuals from varying locations (physical, economic, etc.) enter relationships of mutual respect despite their differing beliefs (religious, political, etc.).[181]
+
+Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan popularized the term Global Village beginning in 1962.[182] His view suggested that globalization would lead to a world where people from all countries will become more integrated and aware of common interests and shared humanity.[183]
+
+Military cooperation – Past examples of international cooperation exist. One example is the security cooperation between the United States and the former Soviet Union after the end of the Cold War, which astonished international society. Arms control and disarmament agreements, including the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (see START I, START II, START III, and New START) and the establishment of NATO's Partnership for Peace, the Russia NATO Council, and the G8 Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, constitute concrete initiatives of arms control and de-nuclearization. The US–Russian cooperation was further strengthened by anti-terrorism agreements enacted in the wake of 9/11.[184]
+
+Environmental cooperation – One of the biggest successes of environmental cooperation has been the agreement to reduce chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) emissions, as specified in the Montreal Protocol, in order to stop ozone depletion. The most recent debate around nuclear energy and the non-alternative coal-burning power plants constitutes one more consensus on what not to do. Thirdly, significant achievements in IC can be observed through development studies.[184]
+
+Economic cooperation - One of the biggest challenges in 2019 with globalization is that many believe the progress made in the past decades are now back tracking. The back tracking of globalization has coined the term "Slobalization." Slobalization is a new, slower pattern of globalization.[185]
+
+Anti-globalization, or counter-globalization,[186] consists of a number of criticisms of globalization but, in general, is critical of the globalization of corporate capitalism.[187] The movement is also commonly referred to as the alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement,[188] or movement against neoliberal globalization. Opponents of globalization argue that there is unequal power and respect in terms of international trade between the developed and underdeveloped countries of the world.[189]  The diverse subgroups that make up this movement include some of the following: trade unionists, environmentalists, anarchists, land rights and indigenous rights activists, organizations promoting human rights and sustainable development, opponents of privatization, and anti-sweatshop campaigners.[190]
+
+In The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, Christopher Lasch analyzes[191] the widening gap between the top and bottom of the social composition in the United States. For him, our epoch is determined by a social phenomenon: the revolt of the elites, in reference to The revolt of the masses (1929) of the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. According to Lasch, the new elites, i.e. those who are in the top 20% in terms of income, through globalization which allows total mobility of capital, no longer live in the same world as their fellow-citizens. In this, they oppose the old bourgeoisie of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which was constrained by its spatial stability to a minimum of rooting and civic obligations. Globalization, according to the sociologist, has turned elites into tourists in their own countries. The denationalization of business enterprise tends to produce a class who see themselves as "world citizens, but without accepting ... any of the obligations that citizenship in a polity normally implies". Their ties to an international culture of work, leisure, information – make many of them deeply indifferent to the prospect of national decline. Instead of financing public services and the public treasury, new elites are investing their money in improving their voluntary ghettos: private schools in their residential neighborhoods, private police, garbage collection systems. They have "withdrawn from common life".
+Composed of those who control the international flows of capital and information, who preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher education, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus fix the terms of public debate. So, the political debate is limited mainly to the dominant classes and political ideologies lose all contact with the concerns of the ordinary citizen. The result of this is that no one has a likely solution to these problems and that there are furious ideological battles on related issues.
+However, they remain protected from the problems affecting the working classes: the decline of industrial activity, the resulting loss of employment, the decline of the middle class, increasing the number of the poor, the rising crime rate, growing drug trafficking, the urban crisis.
+
+D.A. Snow et al. contend that the anti-globalization movement is an example of a new social movement, which uses tactics that are unique and use different resources than previously used before in other social movements.[192]
+
+One of the most infamous tactics of the movement is the Battle of Seattle in 1999, where there were protests against the World Trade Organization's Third Ministerial Meeting. All over the world, the movement has held protests outside meetings of institutions such as the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and the Group of Eight (G8).[190] Within the Seattle demonstrations the protesters that participated used both creative and violent tactics to gain the attention towards the issue of globalization.
+
+Capital markets have to do with raising and investing money in various human enterprises.  Increasing integration of these financial markets between countries leads to the emergence of a global capital marketplace or a single world market. In the long run, increased movement of capital between countries tends to favor owners of capital more than any other group; in the short run, owners and workers in specific sectors in capital-exporting countries bear much of the burden of adjusting to increased movement of capital.[193]
+
+Those opposed to capital market integration on the basis of human rights issues are especially disturbed[according to whom?] by the various abuses which they think are perpetuated by global and international institutions that, they say, promote neoliberalism without regard to ethical standards. Common targets include the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) and free trade treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). In light of the economic gap between rich and poor countries, movement adherents claim free trade without measures in place to protect the under-capitalized will contribute only to the strengthening the power of industrialized nations (often termed the "North" in opposition to the developing world's "South").[194][better source needed]
+
+Corporatist ideology, which privileges the rights of corporations (artificial or juridical persons) over those of natural persons, is an underlying factor in the recent rapid expansion of global commerce.[195] In recent years, there have been an increasing number of books (Naomi Klein's 2000 No Logo, for example) and films (e.g. The Corporation & Surplus) popularizing an anti-corporate ideology to the public.
+
+A related contemporary ideology, consumerism, which encourages the personal acquisition of goods and services, also drives globalization.[196]  Anti-consumerism is a social movement against equating personal happiness with consumption and the purchase of material possessions. Concern over the treatment of consumers by large corporations has spawned substantial activism, and the incorporation of consumer education into school curricula. Social activists hold materialism is connected to global retail merchandizing and supplier convergence, war, greed, anomie, crime, environmental degradation, and general social malaise and discontent. One variation on this topic is activism by postconsumers, with the strategic emphasis on moving beyond addictive consumerism.[197]
+
+The global justice movement is the loose collection of individuals and groups—often referred to as a "movement of movements"—who advocate fair trade rules and perceive current institutions of global economic integration as problems.[199] The movement is often labeled an anti-globalization movement by the mainstream media. Those involved, however, frequently deny that they are anti-globalization, insisting that they support the globalization of communication and people and oppose only the global expansion of corporate power.[200] The movement is based in the idea of social justice, desiring the creation of a society or institution based on the principles of equality and solidarity, the values of human rights, and the dignity of every human being.[201][202][203] Social inequality within and between nations, including a growing global digital divide, is a focal point of the movement. Many nongovernmental organizations have now arisen to fight these inequalities that many in Latin America, Africa and Asia face. A few very popular and well known non-governmental organizations (NGOs) include: War Child, Red Cross, Free The Children and CARE International. They often create partnerships where they work towards improving the lives of those who live in developing countries by building schools, fixing infrastructure, cleaning water supplies, purchasing equipment and supplies for hospitals, and other aid efforts.
+
+The economies of the world have developed unevenly, historically, such that entire geographical regions were left mired in poverty and disease while others began to reduce poverty and disease on a wholesale basis. From around 1980 through at least 2011, the GDP gap, while still wide, appeared to be closing and, in some more rapidly developing countries, life expectancies began to rise.[204] If we look at the Gini coefficient for world income, since the late 1980s, the gap between some regions has markedly narrowed—between Asia and the advanced economies of the West, for example—but huge gaps remain globally.  Overall equality across humanity, considered as individuals, has improved very little. Within the decade between 2003 and 2013, income inequality grew even in traditionally egalitarian countries like Germany, Sweden and Denmark. With a few exceptions—France, Japan, Spain—the top 10 percent of earners in most advanced economies raced ahead, while the bottom 10 percent fell further behind.[205]  By 2013, 85 multibillionaires had amassed wealth equivalent to all the wealth owned by the poorest half (3.5 billion) of the world's total population of 7 billion.[206]
+
+Critics of globalization argue that globalization results in weak labor unions: the surplus in cheap labor coupled with an ever-growing number of companies in transition weakened labor unions in high-cost areas. Unions become less effective and workers their enthusiasm for unions when membership begins to decline.[173] They also cite an increase in the exploitation of child labor: countries with weak protections for children are vulnerable to infestation by rogue companies and criminal gangs who exploit them. Examples include quarrying, salvage, and farm work as well as trafficking, bondage, forced labor, prostitution and pornography.[207]
+
+Women often participate in the workforce in precarious work, including export-oriented employment.  Evidence suggests that while globalization has expanded women's access to employment, the long-term goal of transforming gender inequalities remains unmet and appears unattainable without regulation of capital and a reorientation and expansion of the state's role in funding public goods and providing a social safety net.[208] Furthermore, the intersectionality of gender, race, class, and more remain overlooked when assessing the impact of globalization.[209]
+
+In 2016, a study published by the IMF posited that neoliberalism, the ideological backbone of contemporary globalized capitalism, has been "oversold", with the benefits of neoliberal policies being "fairly difficult to establish when looking at a broad group of countries" and the costs, most significantly higher income inequality within nations, "hurt the level and sustainability of growth."[210]
+
+Beginning in the 1930s, opposition arose to the idea of a world government, as advocated by organizations such as the World Federalist Movement (WFM). Those who oppose global governance typically do so on objections that the idea is unfeasible, inevitably oppressive, or simply unnecessary.[211] In general, these opponents are wary of the concentration of power or wealth that such governance might represent. Such reasoning dates back to the founding of the League of Nations and, later, the United Nations.
+
+Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology[212][213][214] and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment. Environmentalist concerns with globalization include issues such as global warming, global water supply and water crises, inequity in energy consumption and energy conservation, transnational air pollution and pollution of the world ocean, overpopulation, world habitat sustainability, deforestation, biodiversity loss and species extinction.
+
+One critique of globalization is that natural resources of the poor have been systematically taken over by the rich and the pollution promulgated by the rich is systematically dumped on the poor.[215] Some argue that Northern corporations are increasingly exploiting resources of less wealthy countries for their global activities while it is the South that is disproportionately bearing the environmental burden of the globalized economy. Globalization is thus leading to a type of" environmental apartheid".[216]
+
+Helena Norberg-Hodge, the director and founder of Local Futures/International Society for Ecology and Culture, criticizes globalization in many ways. In her book Ancient Futures, Norberg-Hodge claims that "centuries of ecological balance and social harmony are under threat from the pressures of development and globalization." She also criticizes the standardization and rationalization of globalization, as it does not always yield the expected growth outcomes. Although globalization takes similar steps in most countries, scholars such as Hodge claim that it might not be effective to certain countries and that globalization has actually moved some countries backward instead of developing them.[217]
+
+A related area of concern is the pollution haven hypothesis, which posits that, when large industrialized nations seek to set up factories or offices abroad, they will often look for the cheapest option in terms of resources and labor that offers the land and material access they require (see Race to the bottom).[218] This often comes at the cost of environmentally sound practices. Developing countries with cheap resources and labor tend to have less stringent environmental regulations, and conversely, nations with stricter environmental regulations become more expensive for companies as a result of the costs associated with meeting these standards.  Thus, companies that choose to physically invest in foreign countries tend to (re)locate to the countries with the lowest environmental standards or weakest enforcement.
+
+The European Union–Mercosur Free Trade Agreement, which would form one of the world's largest free trade areas,[219] has been denounced by environmental activists and indigenous rights campaigners.[220] The fear is that the deal could lead to more deforestation of the Amazon rainforest as it expands market access to Brazilian beef.[221]
+
+Globalization is associated with a more efficient system of food production. This is because crops are grown in countries with optimum growing conditions. This improvement causes an increase in the world's food supply which encourages improved food security.[222]
+
+Norway's limited crop range advocates globalization of food production and availability. The northern-most country in Europe requires trade with other countries to ensure population food demands are met. The degree of self-sufficiency in food production is around 50% in Norway.[223]

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+Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (Dutch: [ˈpitər ˈmɔndrijaːn]), after 1906 Piet Mondrian (/piːt ˈmɒndriɑːn/,[1][2] also US: /- ˈmɔːn-/,[3][4] Dutch: [pit ˈmɔndrijɑn]; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.[5][6] He is known for being one of the pioneers of 20th-century abstract art, as he changed his artistic direction from figurative painting to an increasingly abstract style, until he reached a point where his artistic vocabulary was reduced to simple geometric elements.[7]
+
+Mondrian's art was highly utopian and was concerned with a search for universal values and aesthetics. He proclaimed in 1914: "Art is higher than reality and has no direct relation to reality. To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual. We find ourselves in the presence of an abstract art. Art should be above reality, otherwise it would have no value for man."[8] His art, however, always remained rooted in nature.
+
+He was a contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which he co-founded with Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neoplasticism. This was the new 'pure plastic art' which he believed was necessary in order to create 'universal beauty'. To express this, Mondrian eventually decided to limit his formal vocabulary to the three primary colors (red, blue and yellow), the three primary values (black, white and gray) and the two primary directions (horizontal and vertical).[9] Mondrian's arrival in Paris from the Netherlands in 1911 marked the beginning of a period of profound change. He encountered experiments in Cubism and with the intent of integrating himself within the Parisian avant-garde removed an 'a' from the Dutch spelling of his name (Mondriaan).[10][11]
+
+Mondrian's work had an enormous influence on 20th century art, influencing not only the course of abstract painting and numerous major styles and art movements (e.g. Color Field painting, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism), but also fields outside the domain of painting, such as design, architecture and fashion.[12] Design historian Stephen Bayley said: 'Mondrian has come to mean Modernism. His name and his work sum up the High Modernist ideal. I don't like the word ‘iconic’, so let's say that he's become totemic – a totem for everything Modernism set out to be.'[12]
+
+Mondrian was born in Amersfoort, province of Utrecht in the Netherlands, the second of his parents' children.[13] He was descended from Christian Dirkzoon Monderyan who lived in The Hague as early as 1670.[10] The family moved to Winterswijk when his father, Pieter Cornelius Mondriaan, was appointed head teacher at a local primary school.[14] Mondrian was introduced to art from an early age. His father was a qualified drawing teacher, and, with his uncle, Fritz Mondriaan (a pupil of Willem Maris of the Hague School of artists), the younger Piet often painted and drew along the river Gein.[15]
+
+After a strict Protestant upbringing, in 1892, Mondrian entered the Academy for Fine Art in Amsterdam.[16] He was already qualified as a teacher.[14] He began his career as a teacher in primary education, but he also practiced painting. Most of his work from this period is naturalistic or Impressionistic, consisting largely of landscapes. These pastoral images of his native country depict windmills, fields, and rivers, initially in the Dutch Impressionist manner of the Hague School and then in a variety of styles and techniques that attest to his search for a personal style. These paintings are representational, and they illustrate the influence that various artistic movements had on Mondrian, including pointillism and the vivid colors of Fauvism.
+
+On display in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag are a number of paintings from this period, including such Post-Impressionist works as The Red Mill and Trees in Moonrise. Another painting, Evening (Avond) (1908), depicting a tree in a field at dusk, even augurs future developments by using a palette consisting almost entirely of red, yellow, and blue. Although Avond is only limitedly abstract, it is the earliest Mondrian painting to emphasize primary colors.
+
+Mondrian's earliest paintings showing a degree of abstraction are a series of canvases from 1905 to 1908 that depict dim scenes of indistinct trees and houses reflected in still water. Although the result leads the viewer to begin focusing on the forms over the content, these paintings are still firmly rooted in nature, and it is only the knowledge of Mondrian's later achievements that leads one to search in these works for the roots of his future abstraction.
+
+Mondrian's art was intimately related to his spiritual and philosophical studies. In 1908, he became interested in the theosophical movement launched by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the late 19th century, and in 1909 he joined the Dutch branch of the Theosophical Society. The work of Blavatsky and a parallel spiritual movement, Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, significantly affected the further development of his aesthetic.[17] Blavatsky believed that it was possible to attain a more profound knowledge of nature than that provided by empirical means, and much of Mondrian's work for the rest of his life was inspired by his search for that spiritual knowledge. In 1918, he wrote "I got everything from the Secret Doctrine", referring to a book written by Blavatsky. In 1921, in a letter to Steiner, Mondrian argued that his neoplasticism was "the art of the foreseeable future for all true Anthroposophists and Theosophists". He remained a committed Theosophist in subsequent years, although he also believed that his own artistic current, neoplasticism, would eventually become part of a larger, ecumenical spirituality.[18]
+
+Mondrian and his later work were deeply influenced by the 1911 Moderne Kunstkring exhibition of Cubism in Amsterdam. His search for simplification is shown in two versions of Still Life with Ginger Pot (Stilleven met Gemberpot). The 1911 version[19] is Cubist; in the 1912 version[20] the objects are reduced to a round shape with triangles and rectangles.
+
+In 1911, Mondrian moved to Paris and changed his name, dropping an 'a' from Mondriaan, to emphasize his departure from the Netherlands, and his integration within the Parisian avant-garde.[11][22] While in Paris, the influence of the Cubist style of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque appeared almost immediately in Mondrian's work. Paintings such as The Sea (1912) and his various studies of trees from that year still contain a measure of representation, but, increasingly, they are dominated by geometric shapes and interlocking planes. While Mondrian was eager to absorb the Cubist influence into his work, it seems clear that he saw Cubism as a "port of call" on his artistic journey, rather than as a destination.
+
+Unlike the Cubists, Mondrian still attempted to reconcile his painting with his spiritual pursuits, and in 1913 he began to fuse his art and his theosophical studies into a theory that signaled his final break from representational painting. While Mondrian was visiting the Netherlands in 1914, World War I began, forcing him to remain there for the duration of the conflict. During this period, he stayed at the Laren artists' colony, where he met Bart van der Leck and Theo van Doesburg, who were both undergoing their own personal journeys toward abstraction. Van der Leck's use of only primary colors in his art greatly influenced Mondrian. After a meeting with Van der Leck in 1916, Mondrian wrote, "My technique which was more or less Cubist, and therefore more or less pictorial, came under the influence of his precise method."[23] With Van Doesburg, Mondrian founded De Stijl (The Style), a journal of the De Stijl Group, in which he first published essays defining his theory, which he called neoplasticism.
+
+Mondrian published "De Nieuwe Beelding in de schilderkunst" ("The New Plastic in Painting")[24] in twelve installments during 1917 and 1918. This was his first major attempt to express his artistic theory in writing. Mondrian's best and most-often quoted expression of this theory, however, comes from a letter he wrote to H. P. Bremmer in 1914:
+
+I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things…
+I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true.[25]
+
+When World War I ended in 1918, Mondrian returned to France, where he would remain until 1938. Immersed in post-war Paris culture of artistic innovation, he flourished and fully embraced the art of pure abstraction for the rest of his life. Mondrian began producing grid-based paintings in late 1919, and in 1920, the style for which he came to be renowned began to appear.
+
+In the early paintings of this style, the lines delineating the rectangular forms are relatively thin, and they are gray, not black. The lines also tend to fade as they approach the edge of the painting, rather than stopping abruptly. The forms themselves, smaller and more numerous than in later paintings, are filled with primary colors, black, or gray, and nearly all of them are colored; only a few are left white.
+
+During late 1920 and 1921, Mondrian's paintings arrive at what is to casual observers their definitive and mature form. Thick black lines now separate the forms, which are larger and fewer in number, and more of the forms are left white. This was not the culmination of his artistic evolution, however. Although the refinements became subtler, Mondrian's work continued to evolve during his years in Paris.
+
+In the 1921 paintings, many, though not all, of the black lines stop short at a seemingly arbitrary distance from the edge of the canvas, although the divisions between the rectangular forms remain intact. Here, too, the rectangular forms remain mostly colored. As the years passed and Mondrian's work evolved further, he began extending all of the lines to the edges of the canvas, and he began to use fewer and fewer colored forms, favoring white instead.
+
+These tendencies are particularly obvious in the "lozenge" works that Mondrian began producing with regularity in the mid-1920s. The "lozenge" paintings are square canvases tilted 45 degrees, so that they have a diamond shape. Typical of these is Schilderij No. 1: Lozenge With Two Lines and Blue (1926). One of the most minimal of Mondrian's canvases, this painting consists only of two black, perpendicular lines and a small blue triangular form. The lines extend all the way to the edges of the canvas, almost giving the impression that the painting is a fragment of a larger work.
+
+Although one's view of the painting is hampered by the glass protecting it, and by the toll that age and handling have obviously taken on the canvas, a close examination of this painting begins to reveal something of the artist's method. The painting is not composed of perfectly flat planes of color, as one might expect. Subtle brush strokes are evident throughout. The artist appears to have used different techniques for the various elements.[citation needed] The black lines are the flattest elements, with the least amount of depth. The colored forms have the most obvious brush strokes, all running in one direction. Most interesting, however, are the white forms, which clearly have been painted in layers, using brush strokes running in different directions. This generates a greater sense of depth in the white forms so that they appear to overwhelm the lines and the colors, which indeed they were doing, as Mondrian's paintings of this period came to be increasingly dominated by white space.
+
+In 1926, Katherine Dreier, co-founder of New York City's Society of Independent Artists (along with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray), visited Piet Mondrian's studio in Paris and acquired one of his diamond compositions, Painting I. This was then shown during an exhibition organized by the Society of Independent Artists in the Brooklyn Museum--the first major exhibition of modern art in America since the Armory Show. She stated in the catalog that "Holland has produced three great painters who, though a logical expression of their own country, rose above it through the vigor of their personality – the first was Rembrandt, the second was Van Gogh, and the third is Mondrian."[26]
+
+As the years progressed, lines began to take precedence over forms in Mondrian's paintings. In the 1930s, he began to use thinner lines and double lines more frequently, punctuated with a few small colored forms, if any at all. Double lines particularly excited Mondrian, for he believed they offered his paintings a new dynamism which he was eager to explore. The introduction of the double line in his work was influenced by the work of his friend and contemporary Marlow Moss.[27]
+
+From 1934 to 1935, three of Mondrian's paintings were exhibited as part of the "Abstract and Concrete" exhibitions in the UK at Oxford, London, and Liverpool.[28]
+
+In September 1938, Mondrian left Paris in the face of advancing fascism and moved to London.[30] After the Netherlands was invaded and Paris fell in 1940, he left London for Manhattan, where he would remain until his death. Some of Mondrian's later works are difficult to place in terms of his artistic development because there were quite a few canvases that he began in Paris or London and only completed months or years later in Manhattan. The finished works from this later period are visually busy, with more lines than any of his work since the 1920s, placed in an overlapping arrangement that is almost cartographical in appearance. He spent many long hours painting on his own until his hands blistered, and he sometimes cried or made himself sick.
+
+Mondrian produced Lozenge Composition With Four Yellow Lines (1933), a simple painting that innovated thick, colored lines instead of black ones. After that one painting, this practice remained dormant in Mondrian's work until he arrived in Manhattan, at which time he began to embrace it with abandon. In some examples of this new direction, such as Composition (1938) / Place de la Concorde (1943), he appears to have taken unfinished black-line paintings from Paris and completed them in New York by adding short perpendicular lines of different colors, running between the longer black lines, or from a black line to the edge of the canvas. The newly colored areas are thick, almost bridging the gap between lines and forms, and it is startling to see color in a Mondrian painting that is unbounded by black. Other works mix long lines of red amidst the familiar black lines, creating a new sense of depth by the addition of a colored layer on top of the black one. His painting Composition No. 10, 1939–1942, characterized by primary colors, white ground and black grid lines clearly defined Mondrian's radical but classical approach to the rectangle.
+
+On 23 September 1940 Mondrian left Europe for New York aboard the Cunard White Star Lines ship RMS Samaria, departing from Liverpool.[31] The new canvases that Mondrian began in Manhattan are even more startling, and indicate the beginning of a new idiom that was cut short by the artist's death. New York City (1942) is a complex lattice of red, blue, and yellow lines, occasionally interlacing to create a greater sense of depth than his previous works. An unfinished 1941 version of this work uses strips of painted paper tape, which the artist could rearrange at will to experiment with different designs.
+
+His painting Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942–43) at The Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan was highly influential in the school of abstract geometric painting. The piece is made up of a number of shimmering squares of bright color that leap from the canvas, then appear to shimmer, drawing the viewer into those neon lights. In this painting and the unfinished Victory Boogie Woogie (1942–1944), Mondrian replaced former solid lines with lines created from small adjoining rectangles of color, created in part by using small pieces of paper tape in various colors. Larger unbounded rectangles of color punctuate the design, some with smaller concentric rectangles inside them. While Mondrian's works of the 1920s and 1930s tend to have an almost scientific austerity about them, these are bright, lively paintings, reflecting the upbeat music that inspired them and the city in which they were made.
+
+In these final works, the forms have indeed usurped the role of the lines, opening another new door for Mondrian's development as an abstractionist. The Boogie-Woogie paintings were clearly more of a revolutionary change than an evolutionary one, representing the most profound development in Mondrian's work since his abandonment of representational art in 1913.
+
+In 2008 the Dutch television program Andere Tijden found the only known movie footage with Mondrian.[32] The discovery of the film footage was announced at the end of a two-year research program on the Victory Boogie Woogie. The research found that the painting was in very good condition and that Mondrian painted the composition in one session. It also was found that the composition was changed radically by Mondrian shortly before his death by using small pieces of colored tape.
+
+When the 47-year-old Piet Mondrian left the Netherlands for unfettered Paris for the second and last time in 1919, he set about at once to make his studio a nurturing environment for paintings he had in mind that would increasingly express the principles of neoplasticism about which he had been writing for two years. To hide the studio's structural flaws quickly and inexpensively, he tacked up large rectangular placards, each in a single color or neutral hue. Smaller colored paper squares and rectangles, composed together, accented the walls. Then came an intense period of painting. Again he addressed the walls, repositioning the colored cutouts, adding to their number, altering the dynamics of color and space, producing new tensions and equilibrium. Before long, he had established a creative schedule in which a period of painting took turns with a period of experimentally regrouping the smaller papers on the walls, a process that directly fed the next period of painting. It was a pattern he followed for the rest of his life, through wartime moves from Paris to London's Hampstead in 1938 and 1940, across the Atlantic to Manhattan.
+
+At the age of 71 in the fall of 1943, Mondrian moved into his second and final Manhattan studio at 15 East 59th Street, and set about to recreate the environment he had learned over the years was most congenial to his modest way of life and most stimulating to his art. He painted the high walls the same off-white he used on his easel and on the seats, tables and storage cases he designed and fashioned meticulously from discarded orange and apple-crates. He glossed the top of a white metal stool in the same brilliant primary red he applied to the cardboard sheath he made for the radio-phonograph that spilled forth his beloved jazz from well-traveled records. Visitors to this last studio seldom saw more than one or two new canvases, but found, often to their astonishment, that eight large compositions of colored bits of paper he had tacked and re-tacked to the walls in ever-changing relationships constituted together an environment that, paradoxically and simultaneously, was both kinetic and serene, stimulating and restful. It was the best space, Mondrian said, that he had inhabited. He was there for only a few months, as he died in February 1944.
+
+After his death, Mondrian's friend and sponsor in Manhattan, artist Harry Holtzman, and another painter friend, Fritz Glarner, carefully documented the studio on film and in still photographs before opening it to the public for a six-week exhibition. Before dismantling the studio, Holtzman (who was also Mondrian's heir) traced the wall compositions precisely, prepared exact portable facsimiles of the space each had occupied, and affixed to each the original surviving cut-out components. These portable Mondrian compositions have become known as "The Wall Works". Since Mondrian's death, they have been exhibited twice at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art  (1983 and 1995–96),[33] once in SoHo at the Carpenter + Hochman Gallery (1984), once each at the Galerie Tokoro in Tokyo, Japan (1993), the XXII Biennial of Sao Paulo (1994), the University of Michigan (1995), and – the first time shown in Europe – at the Akademie der Künste (Academy of The Arts), in Berlin (22 February – 22 April 2007).
+
+Piet Mondrian died of pneumonia on 1 February 1944 and was interred at the Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.[34]
+
+On 3 February 1944 a memorial was held for Mondrian at the Universal Chapel on Lexington Avenue and 52nd Street in Manhattan. The service was attended by nearly 200 people including Alexander Archipenko, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Alexander Calder and Robert Motherwell.[35]
+
+The Mondrian / Holtzman Trust functions as Mondrian's official estate, and "aims to promote awareness of Mondrian's artwork and to ensure the integrity of his work".[36]
+
+From 6 June to 5 October 2014, the Tate Liverpool displayed the largest UK collection of Mondrian's works, in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of his death. Mondrian and his Studios included a life-size reconstruction of his Paris studio. Charles Darwent, in The Guardian, wrote: "With its black floor and white walls hung with moveable panels of red, yellow and blue, the studio at Rue du Départ was not just a place for making Mondrians. It was a Mondrian – and a generator of Mondrians."[11] He has been described as "the world’s greatest abstract geometrist".[53]

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+
+
+Oscar-Claude Monet (UK: /ˈmɒneɪ/, US: /moʊˈneɪ/,[1][2] French: [klod mɔnɛ]; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter, a founder of French Impressionist painting and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air landscape painting.[3][4] The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris.[5]
+
+Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons.[6] From 1883, Monet lived in Giverny, where he purchased a house and property and began a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds that would become the subjects of his best-known works. He began painting the water lilies in 1899, first in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a central feature and later in the series of large-scale paintings that was to occupy him continuously for the next 20 years of his life.
+
+Claude Monet was born on 14 November 1840 on the fifth floor of 45 rue Laffitte, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris.[7] He was the second son of Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet, both of them second-generation Parisians. On 20 May 1841, he was baptized in the local parish church, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, as Oscar-Claude, but his parents called him simply Oscar.[7][8] (He signed his juvenilia "O. Monet".) Despite being baptized Catholic, Monet later became an atheist.[9][10]
+
+In 1845, his family moved to Le Havre in Normandy. His father wanted him to go into the family's ship-chandling and grocery business,[11] but Monet wanted to become an artist. His mother was a singer, and supported Monet's desire for a career in art.[12]
+
+On 1 April 1851, Monet entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts. Locals knew him well for his charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs. Monet also undertook his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard, a former student of Jacques-Louis David. On the beaches of Normandy around 1856 he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin, who became his mentor and taught him to use oil paints. Boudin taught Monet "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting.[13] Both were influenced by Johan Barthold Jongkind.
+
+On 28 January 1857, his mother died. At the age of sixteen, he left school and went to live with his widowed, childless aunt, Marie-Jeanne Lecadre.
+
+When Monet traveled to Paris to visit the Louvre, he witnessed painters copying from the old masters. Having brought his paints and other tools with him, he would instead go and sit by a window and paint what he saw.[14] Monet was in Paris for several years and met other young painters, including Édouard Manet and others who would become friends and fellow Impressionists.
+
+After drawing a low ballot number in March 1861, Monet was drafted into the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry (Chasseurs d'Afrique) in Algeria for a seven-year period of military service. His prosperous father could have purchased Monet's exemption from conscription but declined to do so when his son refused to give up painting. While in Algeria, Monet did only a few sketches of casbah scenes, a single landscape, and several portraits of officers, all of which have been lost. In a Le Temps interview of 1900 however he commented that the light and vivid colours of North Africa "contained the germ of my future researches".[15] After about a year of garrison duty in Algiers, Monet contracted typhoid fever and briefly went absent without leave. Following convalescence, Monet's aunt intervened to remove him from the army if he agreed to complete a course at an art school. It is possible that the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind, whom Monet knew, may have prompted his aunt on this matter.
+
+Disillusioned with the traditional art taught at art schools, in 1862 Monet became a student of Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley. Together they shared new approaches to art, painting the effects of light en plein air with broken colour and rapid brushstrokes, in what later came to be known as Impressionism.
+
+In January 1865 Monet was working on a version of Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, aiming to present it for hanging at the Salon, which had rejected Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe two years earlier.[17] Monet's painting was very large and could not be completed in time. (It was later cut up, with parts now in different galleries.) Monet submitted instead a painting of Camille or The Woman in the Green Dress (La femme à la robe verte), one of many works using his future wife, Camille Doncieux, as his model. Both this painting and a small landscape were hung.[17] The following year Monet used Camille for his model in Women in the Garden, and On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt in 1868. Camille became pregnant and gave birth to their first child, Jean, in 1867.[18] Monet and Camille married on 28 June 1870, just before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War,[19] and, after their excursion to London and Zaandam, they moved to Argenteuil, in December 1871. During this time Monet painted various works of modern life. He and Camille lived in poverty for most of this period. Following the successful exhibition of some maritime paintings, and the winning of a silver medal at Le Havre, Monet's paintings were seized by creditors, from whom they were bought back by a shipping merchant, Gaudibert, who was also a patron of Boudin.[17]
+
+From the late 1860s, Monet and other like-minded artists met with rejection from the conservative Académie des Beaux-Arts, which held its annual exhibition at the Salon de Paris. During the latter part of 1873, Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and Alfred Sisley organized the Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs (Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers) to exhibit their artworks independently. At their first exhibition, held in April 1874, Monet exhibited the work that was to give the group its lasting name. He was inspired by the style and subject matter of previous modern painters Camille Pissarro and Edouard Manet.[20]
+
+Impression, Sunrise was painted in 1872, depicting a Le Havre port landscape. From the painting's title the art critic Louis Leroy, in his review, "L'Exposition des Impressionnistes," which appeared in Le Charivari, coined the term "Impressionism".[21] It was intended as disparagement but the Impressionists appropriated the term for themselves.[22][23]
+
+After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War (19 July 1870), Monet and his family took refuge in England in September 1870,[24] where he studied the works of John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner, both of whose landscapes would serve to inspire Monet's innovations in the study of colour. In the spring of 1871, Monet's works were refused authorisation for inclusion in the Royal Academy exhibition.[19]
+
+In May 1871, he left London to live in Zaandam, in the Netherlands,[19] where he made twenty-five paintings (and the police suspected him of revolutionary activities).[25] He also paid a first visit to nearby Amsterdam. In October or November 1871, he returned to France. From December 1871 to 1878 he lived at Argenteuil, a village on the right bank of the Seine river near Paris, and a popular Sunday-outing destination for Parisians, where he painted some of his best-known works. In 1873, Monet purchased a small boat equipped to be used as a floating studio.[26] From the boat studio Monet painted landscapes and also portraits of Édouard Manet and his wife; Manet in turn depicted Monet painting aboard the boat, accompanied by Camille, in 1874.[26] In 1874, he briefly returned to Holland.[27]
+
+The first Impressionist exhibition was held in 1874 at 35 boulevard des Capucines, Paris, from 15 April to 15 May. The primary purpose of the participants was not so much to promote a new style, but to free themselves from the constraints of the Salon de Paris. The exhibition, open to anyone prepared to pay 60 francs, gave artists the opportunity to show their work without the interference of a jury.[28][29][30]
+
+Renoir chaired the hanging committee and did most of the work himself, as others members failed to present themselves.[28][29]
+
+In addition to Impression: Sunrise (pictured above), Monet presented four oil paintings and seven pastels. Among the paintings he displayed was The Luncheon (1868), which features Camille Doncieux and Jean Monet, and which had been rejected by the Paris Salon of 1870.[31] Also in this exhibition was a painting titled Boulevard des Capucines, a painting of the boulevard done from the photographer Nadar's apartment at no. 35. Monet painted the subject twice, and it is uncertain which of the two pictures, that now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, or that in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, was the painting that appeared in the groundbreaking 1874 exhibition, though more recently the Moscow picture has been favoured.[32][33] Altogether, 165 works were exhibited in the exhibition, including 4 oils, 2 pastels and 3 watercolours by Morisot; 6 oils and 1 pastel by Renoir; 10 works by Degas; 5 by Pissarro; 3 by Cézanne; and 3 by Guillaumin. Several works were on loan, including Cézanne's Modern Olympia, Morisot's Hide and Seek (owned by Manet) and 2 landscapes by Sisley that had been purchased by Durand-Ruel.[28][29][30]
+
+The total attendance is estimated at 3500, and some works did sell, though some exhibitors had placed their prices too high. Pissarro was asking 1000 francs for The Orchard and Monet the same for Impression: Sunrise, neither of which sold. Renoir failed to obtain the 500 francs he was asking for La Loge, but later sold it for 450 francs to Père Martin, dealer and supporter of the group.[28][29][30]
+
+View at Rouelles, Le Havre 1858, Private collection; an early work showing the influence of Corot and Courbet
+
+Mouth of the Seine at Honfleur, 1865, Norton Simon Foundation, Pasadena, CA; indicates the influence of Dutch maritime painting.[34]
+
+Women in the Garden, 1866–1867, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.[35]
+
+Woman in the Garden, 1867, Hermitage, St. Petersburg; a study in the effect of sunlight and shadow on colour
+
+Garden at Sainte-Adresse ("Jardin à Sainte-Adresse"), 1867, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.[36]
+
+The Luncheon, 1868, Städel, which features Camille Doncieux and Jean Monet, was rejected by the Paris Salon of 1870 but included in the first Impressionists' exhibition in 1874.[37]
+
+La Grenouillére 1869, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; a small plein-air painting created with broad strokes of intense colour.[38]
+
+The Magpie, 1868–1869. Musée d'Orsay, Paris; one of Monet's early attempts at capturing the effect of snow on the landscape. See also Snow at Argenteuil.
+
+Le port de Trouville (Breakwater at Trouville, Low Tide), 1870, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.[39]
+
+La plage de Trouville, 1870, National Gallery, London. The left figure may be Camille, on the right possibly the wife of Eugène Boudin, whose beach scenes influenced Monet.[40]
+
+Houses on the Achterzaan, 1871, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
+
+Jean Monet on his hobby horse, 1872, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
+
+Springtime 1872, Walters Art Museum
+
+In 1876, Camille Monet became ill with tuberculosis. Their second son, Michel, was born on 17 March 1878. This second child weakened her already fading health. In the summer of that year, the family moved to the village of Vétheuil where they shared a house with the family of Ernest Hoschedé, a wealthy department store owner and patron of the arts. In 1878, Camille Monet was diagnosed with uterine cancer.[41][42][43] She died on 5 September 1879 at the age of thirty-two.[44][45]
+
+Monet made a study in oils of his dead wife. Many years later, Monet confessed to his friend Georges Clemenceau that his need to analyse colours was both the joy and torment of his life. He explained,
+
+I one day found myself looking at my beloved wife's dead face and just systematically noting the colours according to an automatic reflex!
+
+John Berger describes the work as "a blizzard of white, grey, purplish paint ... a terrible blizzard of loss which will forever efface her features. In fact there can be very few death-bed paintings which have been so intensely felt or subjectively expressive."[46]
+
+After several difficult months following the death of Camille, Monet began to create some of his best paintings of the 19th century. During the early 1880s, Monet painted several groups of landscapes and seascapes in what he considered to be campaigns to document the French countryside. These began to evolve into series of pictures in which he documented the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons.
+
+Monet's friend Ernest Hoschedé became bankrupt, and left in 1878 for Belgium. After the death of Camille Monet in September 1879, and while Monet continued to live in the house in Vétheuil, Alice Hoschedé helped Monet to raise his two sons, Jean and Michel. She took them to Paris to live alongside her own six children,[47] Blanche (who married Jean Monet), Germaine, Suzanne, Marthe, Jean-Pierre, and Jacques. In the spring of 1880, Alice Hoschedé and all the children left Paris and rejoined Monet at Vétheuil.[48] In 1881, all of them moved to Poissy, which Monet hated. In April 1883, looking out the window of the little train between Vernon and Gasny, he discovered Giverny in Normandy.[47][49][50] Monet, Alice Hoschedé and the children moved to Vernon, then to the house in Giverny, where he planted a large garden and where he painted for much of the rest of his life. Following the death of her estranged husband, Monet married Alice Hoschedé in 1892.[13]
+
+Camille Monet on a Garden Bench, 1873, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
+
+The Artist's house at Argenteuil, 1873, The Art Institute of Chicago
+
+Coquelicots, La promenade (Poppies), 1873, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
+
+Argenteuil, 1874, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
+
+The Studio Boat, 1874, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
+
+Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son, 1875
+
+Flowers on the riverbank at Argenteuil, 1877, Pola Museum of Art, Japan
+
+Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877, The Art Institute of Chicago
+
+Vétheuil in the Fog, 1879, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
+
+Monet rented and eventually purchased a house and gardens in Giverny. At the beginning of May 1883, Monet and his large family rented the home and 8,000 square metres (2.0 acres) from a local landowner. The house was situated near the main road between the towns of Vernon and Gasny at Giverny. There was a barn that doubled as a painting studio, orchards and a small garden. The house was close enough to the local schools for the children to attend, and the surrounding landscape offered many suitable motifs for Monet's work.
+
+The family worked and built up the gardens, and Monet's fortunes began to change for the better as his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, had increasing success in selling his paintings.[51] By November 1890, Monet was prosperous enough to buy the house, the surrounding buildings and the land for his gardens. During the 1890s, Monet built a greenhouse and a second studio, a spacious building well lit with skylights.
+
+Monet wrote daily instructions to his gardener, precise designs and layouts for plantings, and invoices for his floral purchases and his collection of botany books. As Monet's wealth grew, his garden evolved. He remained its architect, even after he hired seven gardeners.[52]
+
+Monet purchased additional land with a water meadow. In 1893 he began a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds that would become the subjects of his best-known works. White water lilies local to France were planted along with imported cultivars from South America and Egypt, resulting in a range of colours including yellow, blue and white lilies that turned pink with age.[53] In 1899 he began painting the water lilies, first in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a central feature, and later in the series of large-scale paintings that was to occupy him continuously for the next 20 years of his life.[54] This scenery, with its alternating light and mirror-like reflections, became an integral part of his work. By the mid-1910s Monet had achieved:
+
+"a completely new, fluid, and somewhat audacious style of painting in which the water-lily pond became the point of departure for an almost abstract art".
+
+In the Garden, 1895, Collection E. G. Buehrle, Zürich
+
+Agapanthus, between 1914 and 1926, Museum of Modern Art, New York
+
+Flowering Arches, Giverny, 1913, Phoenix Art Museum
+
+Water Lilies and the Japanese bridge, 1897–1899, Princeton University Art Museum
+
+Water Lilies, 1906, Art Institute of Chicago
+
+Water Lilies, Musée Marmottan Monet
+
+Water Lilies, c. 1915, Neue Pinakothek, Munich
+
+Water Lilies, c. 1915, Musée Marmottan Monet
+
+Monet's second wife, Alice, died in 1911, and his oldest son Jean, who had married Alice's daughter Blanche, Monet's particular favourite, died in 1914.[13] After Alice died, Blanche looked after and cared for Monet. It was during this time that Monet began to develop the first signs of cataracts.[57]
+
+During World War I, in which his younger son Michel served and his friend and admirer Georges Clemenceau led the French nation, Monet painted a series of weeping willow trees as homage to the French fallen soldiers. In 1923, he underwent two operations to remove his cataracts. The paintings done while the cataracts affected his vision have a general reddish tone, which is characteristic of the vision of cataract victims. It may also be that after surgery he was able to see certain ultraviolet wavelengths of light that are normally excluded by the lens of the eye; this may have had an effect on the colours he perceived. After his operations he even repainted some of these paintings, with bluer water lilies than before.[58]
+
+Monet died of lung cancer on 5 December 1926 at the age of 86 and is buried in the Giverny church cemetery.[49] Monet had insisted that the occasion be simple; thus only about fifty people attended the ceremony.[59] At his funeral, his long-time friend Georges Clemenceau removed the black cloth draped over the coffin, stating, "No black for Monet!" and replaced it with a flower-patterned cloth.[60] Monet did not leave a will and so his son Michel inherited his entire estate.
+
+Monet's home, garden, and waterlily pond were bequeathed by Michel to the French Academy of Fine Arts (part of the Institut de France) in 1966. Through the Fondation Claude Monet, the house and gardens were opened for visits in 1980, following restoration.[61] In addition to souvenirs of Monet and other objects of his life, the house contains his collection of Japanese woodcut prints. The house and garden, along with the Museum of Impressionism, are major attractions in Giverny, which hosts tourists from all over the world.
+
+Water Lilies and Reflections of a Willow (1916–1919), Musée Marmottan Monet
+
+Water-Lily Pond and Weeping Willow, 1916–1919, Sale Christie's New York, 1998
+
+Weeping Willow, 1918–19, Columbus Museum of Art
+
+Weeping Willow, 1918–19, Kimball Art Museum, Fort Worth, Monet's Weeping Willow paintings were an homage to the fallen French soldiers of World War I
+
+House Among the Roses, between 1917 and 1919, Albertina, Vienna
+
+The Rose Walk, Giverny, 1920–1922, Musée Marmottan Monet
+
+The Japanese Footbridge, 1920–1922, Museum of Modern Art
+
+The Garden at Giverny
+
+Monet has been described as "the driving force behind Impressionism".[62] Crucial to the art of the Impressionist painters was the understanding of the effects of light on the local colour of objects, and the effects of the juxtaposition of colours with each other.[63] Monet's long career as a painter was spent in the pursuit of this aim.
+
+In 1856, his chance meeting with Eugene Boudin, a painter of small beach scenes, opened his eyes to the possibility of plein-air painting. From that time, with a short interruption for military service, he dedicated himself to searching for new and improved methods of painterly expression. To this end, as a young man, he visited the Paris Salon and familiarised himself with the works of older painters, and made friends with other young artists.[62] The five years that he spent at Argenteuil, spending much time on the River Seine in a little floating studio, were formative in his study of the effects of light and reflections. He began to think in terms of colours and shapes rather than scenes and objects. He used bright colours in dabs and dashes and squiggles of paint. Having rejected the academic teachings of Gleyre's studio, he freed himself from theory, saying "I like to paint as a bird sings."[64]
+
+In 1877 a series of paintings at St-Lazare Station had Monet looking at smoke and steam and the way that they affected colour and visibility, being sometimes opaque and sometimes translucent. He was to further use this study in the painting of the effects of mist and rain on the landscape.[65] The study of the effects of atmosphere was to evolve into a number of series of paintings in which Monet repeatedly painted the same subject (such as his water lilies series)[66] in different lights, at different hours of the day, and through the changes of weather and season. This process began in the 1880s and continued until the end of his life in 1926.
+
+His first series exhibited as such was of Haystacks, painted from different points of view and at different times of the day. Fifteen of the paintings were exhibited at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1891. In 1892 he produced what is probably his best-known series, twenty-six views of Rouen Cathedral.[63] In these paintings Monet broke with painterly traditions by cropping the subject so that only a portion of the façade is seen on the canvas. The paintings do not focus on the grand Medieval building, but on the play of light and shade across its surface, transforming the solid masonry.[67]
+
+Other series include Poplars, Mornings on the Seine, and the Water Lilies that were painted on his property at Giverny. Between 1883 and 1908, Monet traveled to the Mediterranean, where he painted landmarks, landscapes, and seascapes, including a series of paintings in Venice. In London he painted four series: the Houses of Parliament, London, Charing Cross Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, and Views of Westminster Bridge. Helen Gardner writes:
+
+Monet, with a scientific precision, has given us an unparalleled and unexcelled record of the passing of time as seen in the movement of light over identical forms.[68]
+
+La Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877, Musée d'Orsay
+
+Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877, The Art Institute of Chicago[69]
+
+The Cliffs at Etretat, 1885, Clark Institute, Williamstown
+
+Sailboats behind the needle at Etretat, 1885
+
+Two paintings from a series of grainstacks, 1890–91: Grainstacks in the Sunlight, Morning Effect,
+
+Grainstacks, end of day, Autumn, 1890–1891, Art Institute of Chicago
+
+Poplars (Autumn), 1891, Philadelphia Museum of Art
+
+Poplars at the River Epte, 1891 Tate
+
+The Seine Near Giverny, 1897, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
+
+Morning on the Seine, 1898, National Museum of Western Art
+
+Charing Cross Bridge, 1899, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum Madrid
+
+Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1899–1901, Saint Louis Art Museum
+
+Two paintings from a series of The Houses of Parliament, London, 1900–01, Art Institute of Chicago
+
+London, Houses of Parliament. The Sun Shining through the Fog, 1904, Musée d'Orsay
+
+Grand Canal, Venice, 1908, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
+
+Grand Canal, Venice, 1908, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
+
+In 2004, London, the Parliament, Effects of Sun in the Fog (Londres, le Parlement, trouée de soleil dans le brouillard; 1904), sold for US$20.1 million.[70] In 2006, the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society published a paper providing evidence that these were painted in situ at St Thomas' Hospital over the river Thames.[71]
+
+Falaises près de Dieppe (Cliffs Near Dieppe) has been stolen on two separate occasions: once in 1998 (in which the museum's curator was convicted of the theft and jailed for five years and two months along with two accomplices) and most recently in August 2007.[72] It was recovered in June 2008.[73]
+
+Monet's Le Pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil, an 1873 painting of a railway bridge spanning the Seine near Paris, was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder for a record $41.4 million at Christie's auction in New York on 6 May 2008. The previous record for his painting stood at $36.5 million.[74] A few weeks later, Le bassin aux nymphéas (from the water lilies series) sold at Christie's 24 June 2008 auction in London[75] for £40,921,250 ($80,451,178), nearly doubling the record for the artist.[76]
+
+This purchase represented one of the top 20 highest prices paid for a painting at the time.
+
+In October 2013, Monet's paintings, L'Eglise de Vetheuil and Le Bassin aux Nympheas, became subjects of a legal case in New York against NY-based Vilma Bautista, one-time aide to Imelda Marcos, wife of dictator Ferdinand Marcos,[77] after she sold Le Bassin aux Nympheas for $32 million to a Swiss buyer. The said Monet paintings, along with two others, were acquired by Imelda during her husband's presidency and allegedly bought using the nation's funds. Bautista's lawyer claimed that the aide sold the painting for Imelda but did not have a chance to give her the money. The Philippine government seeks the return of the painting.[77] Le Bassin aux Nympheas, also known as Japanese Footbridge over the Water-Lily Pond at Giverny, is part of Monet's famed Water Lilies series.
+
+Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas, 1919. Monet's late series of Waterlily paintings are among his best-known works.
+
+Water Lilies, 1919, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
+
+Water Lilies, 1917–1919, Honolulu Museum of Art
+
+Water lilies (Yellow Nirwana), 1920, The National Gallery, London, London
+
+Water Lilies, c. 1915–1926, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
+
+The Water Lily Pond, c. 1917–1919, Albertina, Vienna