Little is known of the earliest Stone Age inhabitants of Europe's southwestern extremity. The ancient Greeks called them the Cynetes (or Cunetes). Whatever their origins, their culture evolved under the pressure and influence of foreign forces. Among the many invading armies that settled here and contributed to nascent Portuguese culture were Phoenicians, who settled in the area around 1,000 b.c., followed by the Celts, Iberians, Greeks, and Carthaginians. But it was the Romans, who arrived late in the third century b.c., who most greatly influenced all of Iberia. They built towns, industries, roads, and bridges, developed agriculture, and bequeathed the Latin language, of which Portuguese is a direct descendant. The Romans named the southwestern province of the peninsula Lusitania, oddly enough for one of the Celtiberian tribes they defeated, and by the third century a.d. had introduced Christianity. By the beginning of the fourth century the Algarve had a bishop in place, based in Faro. But Rome had already fallen into decay, and soon hordes of northern tribesmen took over the empire. The Algarve fell to the Visigoths in the mid-fifth century. Under Moorish Rule In a.d. 711, the Moors brought powerful armies from North Africa and launched a devastating attack on the Iberian peninsula, conquering much of what would become Spain and Portugal. They imposed Islam and left an indelible influence on the countryside and the population of the Algarve. The Moorish legacy can still be seen in the form of wells and waterwheels, squat white houses, the dark complexions of the people, and in the very name given the regiontaken from Al-Gharb, which means "country of the west" (when the Moors conquered the territory, it was the most westerly in the known world). The Moors governed their Iberian kingdoms from across the border in Seville, but the Algarve had its own regional capital and huge, invulnerable fortress. The capital was Chelb (or Xelb), and it was bigger and better defended than Lisbon. Today the town, known as Silves, is a provincial outpost whose only besiegers are busloads of tourists who climb the narrow streets up to the old Moorish ramparts.

Question: "Who arrived after the Celts and Iberians?"

Answer: "The Romans"

Response: yes

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- On a plot of soil, nestled against the backdrop of skyscrapers in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, a group of residents are turning a lack of access to fresh produce into a revival of old traditions and self-empowerment. Urban farming is a way for African-Americans to connect with the earth, says Cashawn Myers of HABESHA. HABESHA Gardens is one of many urban gardens sprouting up around the country. Fruits and vegetables are thriving in this community garden located in an economically depressed area of the city known as Mechanicsville. But the garden serves an even greater purpose. The harvest helps feed some of the neediest members of the neighborhood. "It's a reawakening going on. It's almost like it's a renaissance," says Cashawn Myers, director of HABESHA Inc. "There's a Ghanaian proverb that says Sankofa. Sankofa means return to your past so you can move forward. Even if you look at coming over here during our enslavement, we were brought here to cultivate the land because that's something we did on the continent. So really, that's what many of the people are doing now," he said. Myers believes urban farming is a way for many African-Americans to reconnect with their past. iReport.com: Show us your urban farm "They are going through a process of Sankofa and going to what they traditionally did, which is connect to the Earth so they can move forward and grow," he says. But HABESHA Gardens isn't unique. Former pro basketball player Will Allen, who is considered to be one of the nation's leading urban farmers and founder of Growing Power Inc., estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of urban gardens in inner cities across America. Urban farms help feed people, sustain neighorhoods " "It's beyond a movement at this point. Its more like a revolution," says Allen.

Question: "Are urban farms common?"

Answer: "Urban farms exist across the country and hundreds of thousands exist in inner city communities"

Response: yes

Former Long Beach Executive Director Toby Rothschild, now a policy wonk in Iwasaki's outfit, agreed. "To some extent, I did look at it and say, 'We are the littlest kid on the block, and we don't want to get beat up so we need a bigger protector,'" Rothschild said. "Once we got past that, it became a real positive for the Long Beach program and Long Beach clients." But to the San Gabriel-Pomona Valley legal aid program, the positives of merging with Dudovitz's program, San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services, were never obvious. A meeting in late 1999 between Dudovitz and the San Gabriel-Pomona Valley program's board showed how little the two programs had in common and how difficult bridging the gap between their ideologies would be, Dudovitz recalled. Although no merger plans were discussed, board members at the smaller program knew of Dudovitz's preference for impact litigation over direct services. "We had a discussion about what our separate views were," Dudovitz said. "The message we got was that they wanted their program to stay as it was." Lauralea Saddick, former executive director of the San Gabriel-Pomona Valley program, said her board simply did not share Dudovitz's desire to spend money influencing social policy and participating in high-profile litigation over poverty-related issues. "Our board's philosophy was that the money given by the federal government was to help people with basic everyday needs," Saddick said. "It might take a little bit of humility to take those kinds of cases. Impact work is very important ... but what was the good of getting the law changed if no one is there to help the individual?" Before the San Gabriel program was subsumed by Dudovitz's group, it offered to merge with the Legal Aid Society of Orange County. The boards of both organizations eschewed impact litigation in favor of the 1960s model of providing direct client services. Supported by resolutions from the Pasadena, San Gabriel, Eastern and Foothill bar associations, the two programs drew up plans to merge and submitted them to the Legal Services Corp. Dudovitz won Iwasaki's backing to oppose the deal, and Legal Services Corp., the national funding source, overruled the proposed San Gabriel-Pomona Valley/Orange County merger. On Jan. 27, 2001, the federal agency awarded the San Gabriel-Pomona Valley service area to Dudovitz under the umbrella of an expanded San Fernando program, citing the location of both programs in Los Angeles, which would allow "better coordinated and more effective advocacy on county government policies." The San Gabriel-Pomona Valley program sued Legal Services Corp. to stop the takeover, claiming the federal program based the decision on favoritism for the politically active Dudovitz and the politically powerful Iwasaki. Though the federal suit accomplished little, it effectively suspended the end of the old program and the start of the new one for nearly a year.

Question: "It was thought that it would be difficult to bridge the gap between the ideologies of which two organizations?"

Answer: "San Gabriel-Ponoma Valley program and Legal Aid Society of Orange County"

Response:
no