The Golden Heian Era: The geomancers in 794 decided that Heian-kyo (modern Kyoto) would be an auspicious site for the imperial family. It was indeeduntil 1869. Grants of tax-free land over the years had been made to Buddhist temples and members of the court aristocracy. The most powerful families thus carved out for themselves whole regions that were to become the fiefdoms of Japanese feudalism. By the end of the eighth century the clans had created a hierarchy of shiki, or rights, from the highest to the lowest ranks of society. The aristocrat or court patron lent his prestige to a powerful provincial proprietor, who employed a competent estate-manager to oversee smallholders, who in turn worked their farms with dependent laborers. This elaborate structure of interdependent rights and obligations was to serve Japanese society right into the 20th century. Meanwhile, Heian court life blossomed in an effusion of aesthetic expression. Princes and princesses judged the merits of birds, insects, flowers, roots, or seashells. Literary party games held in ornate palace gardens required each guest to compose a small poem as his wine cup floated toward him along a miniature winding channel of water. Expeditions were organized to the best viewing points for the first spring cherry blossoms, and special pavilions were built to watch the rising of the full moon. Every gesture, from the most banal opening of an umbrella to the sublimest act of lovemaking, had its appropriate ceremonial. Conversation often took the form of elegant exchanges of improvised verse. The changing role of Chinese culture in Japanese life was epitomized in the language itself. In the absence of an indigenous alphabet, Japanese scholars had with the greatest difficulty tried to adapt the complex ideograms of monosyllabic Chinese to the essentially polysyllabic Japanese. Thus developed the katakana system used as a vehicle for writing Buddhist names and concepts. After rival Fujiwara factions had been struggling for years to gain control of the imperial throne, they turned to the Taira and Minamoto armies in 1156 to wage the four-year war that heralded the end of the golden age of the Heian court. The Taira, controlling the region along the Inland Sea, defeated the Minamoto armies based in the Kanto province east of the capital.

Question: "How did Japanese feudalism impact Kyoto?"

Response: "It was abolished"

A: no

The modern Republic of Turkey dates only from 1923, but the history of the land within its borders stretches back to the dawn of humanity. Widespread finds of Stone Age implements in cave excavations show that Anatolia was already inhabited during the Middle of the Palaeolithic period (about 200,000 to 40,000 years ago). By Neolithic times, organized communities had arisen, such as the one at Catalhoyuk, near Konya, Turkey's most important prehistoric site. This town, which flourished between 6500 and 5500 b.c. , had flat-roofed houses of mud and timber decorated with wall-paintings, some of which show patterns that still appear on Anatolian kilims. The advent of the Bronze Age (about 3200 b.c. ), and the spread of city-states ruled by kings, is marked by the appearance of royal tombs containing bronze objects in such places as Troy in the west, and Alacahoyuk near Ankara. Around this time the Sumerian civilization living in Mesopotamia (the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present-day Iraq) founded and developed the cuneiform script, the world's oldest form of writing on record. The technique was introduced by Assyrian traders 1,000 years later into Anatolia, where it was quickly adopted by the indigenous Hatti people, who, at this point, had already reached an advanced state of civilization. The Hittites: The capital of the Hatti was Kanesh (modern Kultepe, near Kayseri). Cuneiform tablets found here record the arrival in Anatolia of warlike invaders around the second millennium b.c. Their origins remain a mystery (their written language was finally deciphered in 1915), but they came from the direction of the Caucasus mountains, spreading destruction and disorder throughout Anatolia. It was two hundred years before they were firmly entrenched in their newly conquered empire. The newcomers were the Hittites, and their domination of Anatolia can be divided into three distinct periods: the Old Kingdom (c. 16001450 b.c. ), then the New or Empire Period (c. 14501200 b.c. ), and the Late Hittite Period (c.

Question: "How long did it take after the town near Catalhoyuk flourished for the advent of the Bronze Age?"

Response: "2300-3000 years"

A: yes

The second major point on which the principals had agreed on March 10 was the need to crack down on terrorist organizations and curtail their fund-raising. The embassy bombings of 1998 had focused attention on al Qaeda's finances. One result had been the creation of an NSC-led interagency committee on terrorist financing. On its recommendation, the President had designated Bin Laden and al Qaeda as subject to sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. This gave theTreasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) the ability to search for and freeze any Bin Laden or al Qaeda assets that reached the U.S. financial system. But since OFAC had little information to go on, few funds were frozen. In July 1999, the President applied the same designation to the Taliban for harboring Bin Laden. Here, OFAC had more success. It blocked more than $34 million in Taliban assets held in U.S. banks. Another $215 million in gold and $2 million in demand deposits, all belonging to the Afghan central bank and held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, were also frozen. After October 1999, when the State Department formally designated al Qaeda a "foreign terrorist organization," it became the duty of U.S. banks to block its transactions and seize its funds. Neither this designation nor UN sanctions had much additional practical effect; the sanctions were easily circumvented, and there were no multilateral mechanisms to ensure that other countries' financial systems were not used as conduits for terrorist funding. Attacking the funds of an institution, even the Taliban, was easier than finding and seizing the funds of a clandestine worldwide organization like al Qaeda. Although the CIA's Bin Laden unit had originally been inspired by the idea of studying terrorist financial links, few personnel assigned to it had any experience in financial investigations. Any terrorist-financing intelligence appeared to have been collected collaterally, as a consequence of gathering other intelligence. This attitude may have stemmed in large part from the chief of this unit, who did not believe that simply following the money from point A to point B revealed much about the terrorists' plans and intentions. As a result, the CIA placed little emphasis on terrorist financing. Nevertheless, the CIA obtained a general understanding of how al Qaeda raised money.

Question: "What gave the OFAC the ability to search for and freeze any Al Qaeda assets that reached the U.S. financial system?"

Response: "Financial systems were not used as conduits for terrorist funding"

A:
no