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Cronos · 12-agosto-2009, 11:38

Civilizaciones en perspectiva histórica...

Civilizaciones en perspectiva histórica

La perspectiva histórica utilizada para clasificar a una civilización (más que a un país) como una unidad, es de origen relativamente reciente. A partir de la Edad Media, la mayor parte de los historiadores adoptaron un punto de vista religioso o nacional. El punto de vista religioso prevaleció hasta el siglo XVIII entre los historiadores europeos, que consideraban la revelación cristiana como el suceso histórico más importante, tomándolo como referencia para su clasificación. Los primeros historiadores europeos no estudiaron otras culturas más que como curiosidades o como áreas potenciales de actividad misionera.

El punto de vista nacional, a diferencia del religioso, se desarrolló a principios del siglo XVI a partir de la filosofía política del estadista e historiador italiano Nicolás Maquiavelo, quien sostenía que el objeto adecuado de estudio histórico era el Estado. El español Francisco de Vitoria, fundador del Derecho internacional, abordó el tema de los derechos de la Corona de España en la conquista de América. Sin embargo, los múltiples historiadores que más tarde realizaron la crónica de los estados nacionales de Europa y América sólo estudiaron las sociedades al margen de la cultura europea, para describir su sumisión a las potencias europeas, a su entender más progresistas. Caso aparte es el de los misioneros y teólogos españoles que profundizaron en el conocimiento y análisis de las civilizaciones recién descubiertas, a veces de difícil caracterización.

Civilizaciones históricas Civilización Estados
1-Sumeria-Caldea-Semita Sumer, Babilonia, Asiria, Fenicia, Reino de Israel.
2-Egipcia Antiguo Egipto
3-Valle del Indo Harappa
4-Egea (Cicládica- Minoica- Micénica) y Helénica Thera, Creta; Micenas, Tirinto; poleis griegas, Imperio de Alejandro Magno y reinos helenísticos (Egipto ptolemaico, Pérgamo, Siria, Macedonia, etc.)
5-Carpato-danubiana Dacia, Tracia
6-Hitita Hititas
7-China Imperio chino, sometido durante milenios a un repetido ciclo dinástico (que terminó con la Dinastía Ming y la Dinastía Qing), y desde el siglo XX, la República de China y la República Popular China
Hindú Imperio Maurya, Gupta
8-Austronesia Champa
9-Celta Europa danubiana, méditerranea, Anatolia, islas británicas
10-Persa Imperio persa
11-Romana Roma Antigua, Imperio Romano
12-Camboyana Imperio Jemer
13-Arabe-islámica Islam, Califato Omeya, Califato Abbasí, Al Andalus, Imperio otomano. En la actualidad Mundo árabe, Turquía, Irán, Pakistán, Indonesia, Asia Central...
14-Mesoamericana Olmeca, Tolteca, Azteca, Antiguos mayas
15-Andina Imperio inca, Nazca, Wari, Tiahuanaco, Aymara, Chimú, Chavín
16-Japonesa Historia de Japón, Shogunato Tokugawa y Era Meiji (converge con la Occidental)
17-Africana Imperio Kanem-Bornu, Benín, Ashanti, Zulú
Mongol Imperio Mongol
18-Occidental (Edad Media), en formación desde la Antigüedad tardía por fusión de elementos greco-romanos, germánicos y judeo-cristianos Imperio Bizantino, pueblos germánicos, Imperio Carolingio, Papado, monarquías feudales, monarquías autoritarias
Magiar (difícilmente separable de la occidental, con la que confluye) Magiares
Vikinga (difícilmente separable de la occidental, con la que confluye) Vikingo
19-Eslava (difícilmente separable de la occidental, con la que confluye) Pueblos eslavos, Imperio búlgaro, Reino de Polonia, República de las Dos Naciones, Historia de Serbia,

Historia de Rusia, Imperio Ruso, URSS, Federación rusa
20-Occidental (Edad Moderna) Imperio Portugués, Imperio Español, Imperio Francés, Imperio Británico, monarquía absoluta
21-Occidental (Edad Contemporánea) Revolución Francesa, Unificación alemana, Unificación italiana
22-Occidental (desde mediados del siglo XX) Estados Unidos, Unión Europea, Japón, bloque soviético, países emergentes, subdesarrollo, globalización

Véase también

* Historia de las civilizaciones

* Civilizaciones antiguas

* Civilizaciones mediterráneas
* Civilizaciones asiáticas
* Civilizaciones americanas
* Primeras civilizaciones metalúrgicas del sureste de Europa

* Civilizaciones medievales
* Civilizaciones modernas

* Modernidad
* Sistema mundo

* Civilizaciones contemporáneas

* Globalización
* Choque de civilizaciones
* Alianza de civilizaciones

* Vulgarización y barbarización
* Buen salvaje
* Cultura

* Cultura primitiva
* Pluricultural
* Multiculturalismo
* Relativismo cultural

* Raza
* Etnia
* Etnocentrismo
* Pueblo
* Nación
* Sociedad

* Sociedad preindustrial
* Sociedad industrial
* Sociedad de consumo
* Sociedad posindustrial

* Estado
* Imperio
* Religión

Referencias

Enlaces externos

* Fernando Savater: La civilización y Lady Mary
* José Álvarez Junco: ¿Qué es civilización? en webislam (cita como fuente la Fundación Atman), 23/06/2006
* José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero: Alianza de civilizaciones, 21 de septiembre de 2004
* José María Aznar: Alianza de los civilizados, 3 de noviembre de 2008

Notas

1. ↑
Tainter en su estudio sobre el colapso de las sociedades complejas, define una civilización como el sistema cultural de una sociedad compleja, y por ello sostiene que la civilización emerge con la complejidad, existe por ella y desaparece cuando ésta se reduce Lo cual le lleva a decir que el estudio del incremento y de la pérdida de la complejidad de una sociedad sirve como monitorización del fenómeno denominado civilización.
Citado por Josep Antequera El potencial de sostenibilidad de los asentamientos humanos, en eumed.net
2. ↑ Savater, Álvarez Junco, Aznar, Rodríguez Zapatero op. cit.
3. ↑ Juan Luis Cebrián, Barbarie, religión y progreso, El País, 17/09/2006
4. ↑ Dos obras de gran impacto sobre el tema son las de Vere Gordon Childe (Los orígenes de la civilización) y Samuel Noah Kramer (La historia empieza en Sumer).

Cronos · 12-agosto-2009, 11:59

Re: Palabras encadenadas en ingles.

Cultural identity/Civilization

"Civilization" can also describe the culture of a complex society, not just the society itself. Every society, civilization or not, has a specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of items and arts, that make it unique. Civilizations have even more intricate cultures, including literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion, and complex customs associated with the elite.
Civilization is such in nature that it seeks to spread, to have more, to expand, and the means by which to do this.

Nevertheless, some tribes or people remained uncivilized even to this day (2009). These cultures are called by some "primitive," a term that is regarded by others as pejorative.
"Primitive" implies in some way that a culture is "first" (Latin = primus), and as all cultures are contemporaries today's so called primitive cultures are in no way antecedent to those we consider civilized.
Many anthropologists use the term "non-literate" to describe these peoples. In the USA and Canada, where people of such cultures were the original inhabitants before being displaced by European settlers, they use the term "First Nations." Generally, the First Nations of North America had hierarchical governments, religion, and a barter system, and oral transmission of their traditions, cultures, laws, etc. Respect for the wisdom of elders and for their natural environment (7th Generation decision-making) sustained these cultures for over 10,000 years.

The civilized world has been spread by invasion, religious conversion the extension of bureaucratic control and trade, and by introducing agriculture, and writing to non-literate peoples. Some non-civilized people may willingly adapt to civilized behaviour.
But civilization is also spread by force: if a non-literate group does not wish to use agriculture or accept a certain religion it is often forced to do so by the civilized people, and they usually succeed due to their more advanced technology, and higher population densities.
Civilizations often use religion to justify its actions, claiming for example that the uncivilized are "primitive," savages, barbarians or the like, which should be subjugated by civilization.

The intricate culture associated with civilization has a tendency to spread to and influence other cultures, sometimes assimilating them into the civilization (a classic example being Chinese civilization and its influence on Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and other nearby countries. Many civilizations are actually large cultural spheres containing many nations and regions. The civilization in which someone lives is that person's broadest cultural identity.

Whereas the etiology of civilization is Latin or Roman, defined above as the application of justice by "civil" means, one may also examine and reflect upon Jewish or Hebrew civilization.
A Hebrew "civilization" is defined not as an expression or extension of the subjective trappings of culture and society, but rather as a human society and/or culture being an expression of ~~~~~~ive moral and ethical moorings as they are known, understood and applied in accordance with the Mosaic Covenant.
A "human" civilization, in Hebrew terms for instance, may contrast sharply with conventional notions about "civilization." A "human" civilization, therein, would be an expression and extension of the two most basic pillars of human "civilization." These two pillars are, honest standardized weights and measures and a moral and healthy constitution. Everything else, whether technology, science, art, music, etc., is by this definition considered as commentary. Indeed, to the degree the surface terrain of a human society, i.e., culture is "civilized," is to the degree the internal terrain (characteristics, personality or substance) of the people and leadership must also have been inoculated by, and inculcated with a moral foundation.
The Biblically described Sodom, for instance, while being a society of people with a culture, would by Jewish or Biblical standards of "civility" have been uncivilized. And while the Roman sentiment is largely focused upon how justice must "appear" to be done in a "civil" manner, the Hebrew or Biblical approach to justice, in principle, is never limited to subjective pretenses or appearance, but more importantly, justice must be predicated upon ~~~~~~ive principles. Ultimately, there is no true or lasting "civility" for any man in the absence of moral composure.

Many historians have focused on these broad cultural spheres and have treated civilizations as single units. One example is early twentieth-century philosopher Oswald Spengler,[11] even though he uses the German word "Kultur," "culture," for what we here call a "civilization." He said that a civilization's coherence is based around a single primary cultural symbol. Civilizations experience cycles of birth, life, decline and death, often supplanted by a new civilization with a potent new culture, formed around a compelling new cultural symbol.

This "unified culture" concept of civilization also influenced the theories of historian Arnold J. Toynbee in the mid-twentieth century. Toynbee explored civilization processes in his multi-volume A Study of History, which traced the rise and, in most cases, the decline of 21 civilizations and five "arrested civilizations." Civilizations generally declined and fell, according to Toynbee, because of the failure of a "creative minority", through moral or religious decline, to meet some important challenge, rather than mere economic or environmental causes.

Samuel P. Huntington similarly defines a civilization as "the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species." Besides giving a definition of a civilization, Huntington has also proposed several theories about civilizations, discussed below.

Complex systems

Another group of theorists, making use of systems theory, looks at a civilization as a complex system, i.e., a framework by which a group of ~~~~~~s can be analyzed that work in concert to produce some result. Civilizations can be seen as networks of cities that emerge from pre-urban cultures, and are defined by the economic, political, military, diplomatic, and cultural interactions among them.
Any organization is a complex social system, and a civilization is a large organization.
Systems theory helps guard against superficial but misleading analogies in the study and description of civilizations.

For example, urbanist Jane Jacobs defines cities as the economic engines that work to create large networks of people. The main process that creates these city networks, she says, is "import replacement". Import replacement is the process by which peripheral cities begin to replace goods and services that were formerly imported from more advanced cities. Successful import replacement creates economic growth in these peripheral cities, and allows these cities to then export their goods to less developed cities in their own hinterlands, creating new economic networks. So Jacobs explores economic development across wide networks instead of treating each society as an isolated cultural sphere.

Systems theorists look at many types of relations between cities, including economic relations, cultural exchanges, and political/diplomatic/military relations. These spheres often occur on different scales. For example, trade networks were, until the nineteenth century, much larger than either cultural spheres or political spheres. Extensive trade routes, including the Silk Road through Central Asia and Indian Ocean sea routes linking the Roman Empire, Persian Empire, India, and China, were well established 2000 years ago, when these civilizations scarcely shared any political, diplomatic, military, or cultural relations.
The first evidence of such long distance trade is in the ancient world. During the Uruk phase Guillermo Algaze has argued that trade relations connected Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran and Afghanistan.[12] Resin found later in the Royal Tombs of Ur it is suggested was traded northwards from Mozambique.

Many theorists argue that the entire world has already become integrated into a single "world system", a process known as globalization.
Different civilizations and societies all over the globe are economically, politically, and even culturally interdependent in many ways. There is debate over when this integration began, and what sort of integration – cultural, technological, economic, political, or military-diplomatic – is the key indicator in determining the extent of a civilization.
David Wilkinson has proposed that economic and military-diplomatic integration of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations resulted in the creation of what he calls the "Central Civilization" around 1500 BC.[13] Central Civilization later expanded to include the entire Middle East and Europe, and then expanded to a global scale with European colonization, integrating the Americas, Australia, China and Japan by the nineteenth century. According to Wilkinson, civilizations can be culturally heterogeneous, like the Central Civilization, or relatively homogeneous, like the Japanese civilization. What Huntington calls the "clash of civilizations" might be characterized by Wilkinson as a clash of cultural spheres within a single global civilization. Others point to the Crusades as the first step in globalization. The more conventional viewpoint is that networks of societies have expanded and shrunk since ancient times, and that the current globalized economy and culture is a product of recent European colonialism.

Cronos · 12-agosto-2009, 12:16

Re: ~~Juguemos Bilingüe~~

Future

Risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth

Political scientist Samuel Huntington[14] has argued that the defining characteristic of the 21st century will be a clash of civilizations.
According to Huntington, conflicts between civilizations will supplant the conflicts between nation-states and ideologies that characterized the 19th and 20th centuries. These views have been strongly challenged by others like Edward Said and Mohammed Asudi.[15] Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have argued that the "true clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and the West is caused by the Muslim rejection of the West's more liberal sexual values, rather than a difference in political ideology.[16]

Currently, world civilization is in a stage that has created what may be characterized as an industrial society, superseding the agrarian society that preceded it. Some futurists believe that civilization is undergoing another transformation, and that world society will become a so-called informational society.

Some environmental scientists see the world entering a Planetary Phase of Civilization, characterized by a shift away from independent, disconnected nation-states to a world of increased global connectivity with worldwide institutions, environmental challenges, economic systems, and consciousness.[17][18] In an attempt to better understand what a Planetary Phase of Civilization might look like in the current context of declining natural resources and increasing consumption, the Global scenario group used scenario analysis to arrive at three archetypal futures: Barbarization, in which increasing conflicts result in either a fortress world or complete societal breakdown; Conventional Worlds, in which market forces or Policy reform slowly precipitate more sustainable practices; and a Great Transition, in which either the sum of fragmented Eco-Communalism movements add up to a sustainable world or globally coordinated efforts and initiatives result in a new sustainability paradigm.[19]

The Kardashev scale classifies civilizations based on their level of technological advancement, specifically measured by the amount of energy a civilization is able to harness. The Kardashev scale makes provisions for civilizations far more technologically advanced than any currently known to exist (see also: Civilizations and the Future, Space civilization).

The fall of civilizations

Societal collapse

There have been many explanations put forward for the collapse of civilization.

Edward Gibbon's work "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" began an interest in the Fall of Civilizations, that had begun with the historical divisions of Petrarch[20] between the Classical period of Ancient Greece and Rome, the succeeding Medieval Ages, and the Renaissance. For Gibbon:-

"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long."[Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed., vol. 4, ed. by J. B. Bury (London, 1909), pp. 173–174.] Gibbon suggested the final act of the collapse of Rome was the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 AD.

* Theodor Mommsen in his "History of Rome", suggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and he also tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis," "growth," "senescence," "collapse" and "decay."
* Oswald Spengler, in his "Decline of the West" rejected Petrarch's chronological division, and suggested that there had been only eight "mature civilizations." Growing cultures, he argued, tend to develop into imperialistic civilizations which expand and ultimately collapse, with democratic forms of government ushering in plutocracy and ultimately imperialism.
* Arnold J. Toynbee in his "A Study of History" suggested that there had been a much larger number of civilizations, including a small number of arrested civilizations, and that all civilizations tended to go through the cycle identified by Mommsen. The cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when a cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal and external proletariats.
* Joseph Tainter in "The Collapse of Complex Societies" suggested that there were diminishing returns to complexity, due to which, as states achieved a maximum permissible complexity, they would decline when further increases actually produced a negative return. Tainter suggested that Rome achieved this figure in the 2nd Century AD.
* Jared Diamond in his recent book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" suggests five major reasons for the collapse of 41 studied cultures: environmental damage, such as deforestation and soil erosion; climate change; dependence upon long-distance trade for needed resources; increasing levels of internal and external violence, such as war or invasion; and societal responses to internal and environmental problems.
* Peter Turchin in his Historical Dynamics and Andrey Korotayev et al. in their Introduction to Social Macrodynamics, Secular Cycles, and Millennial Trends suggest a number of mathematical models describing collapse of agrarian civilizations. For example, the basic logic of Turchin's "fiscal-demographic" model can be outlined as follows: during the initial phase of a sociodemographic cycle we observe relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption, which leads not only to relatively high population growth rates, but also to relatively high rates of surplus production. As a result, during this phase the population can afford to pay taxes without great problems, the taxes are quite easily collectible, and the population growth is accompanied by the growth of state revenues. During the intermediate phase, the increasing overpopulation leads to the decrease of per capita production and consumption levels, it becomes more and more difficult to collect taxes, and state revenues stop growing, whereas the state expenditures grow due to the growth of the population controlled by the state. As a result, during this phase the state starts experiencing considerable fiscal problems. During the final pre-collapse phases the overpopulation leads to further decrease of per capita production, the surplus production further decreases, state revenues shrink, but the state needs more and more resources to control the growing (though with lower and lower rates) population. Eventually this leads to famines, epidemics, state breakdown, and demographic and civilization collapse (Peter Turchin. Historical Dynamics. Princeton University Press, 2003:121–127).
* Peter Heather argues in his book The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians[21] that this civilization did not end for moral or economic reasons, but because centuries of contact with barbarians across the frontier generated its own nemesis by making them a much more sophisticated and dangerous adversary. The fact that Rome needed to generate ever greater revenues to equip and re-equip armies that were for the first time repeatedly defeated in the field, led to the dismemberment of the Empire. Although this argument is specific to Rome, it can also be applied to the Asiatic Empire of the Egyptians, to the Han and Tang dynasties of China, to the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate, and others.
* Bryan Ward-Perkins, in his book The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization[22] shows the real horrors associated with the collapse of a civilization for the people who suffer its effects, unlike many revisionist historians who downplay this. The collapse of complex society meant that even basic plumbing disappeared from the continent for 1,000 years. Similar Dark Age collapses are seen with the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of the Maya, on Easter Island and elsewhere.
* Arthur Demarest argues in Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization[23], using a holistic perspective to the most recent evidence from archaeology, paleoecology, and epigraphy, that no one explanation is sufficient but that a series of erratic, complex events, including loss of soil fertility, drought and rising levels of internal and external violence led to the disintegration of the courts of Mayan kingdoms which began a spiral of decline and decay. He argues that the collapse of the Maya has lessons for civilization today.
* Jeffrey A. McNeely has recently suggested that "A review of historical evidence shows that past civilizations have tended to over-exploit their forests, and that such abuse of important resources has been a significant factor in the decline of the over-exploiting society."[24]
* Thomas Homer-Dixon in "The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization", considers that the fall in the energy return on investments; the energy expended to energy yield ratio, is central to limiting the survival of civilizations. The degree of social complexity is associated strongly, he suggests, with the amount of disposable energy environmental, economic and technological systems allow. When this amount decreases civilizations either have to access new energy sources or they will collapse...

Cronos · 12-agosto-2009, 12:24

El final de las civilizaciones!..La globalización y/o el colapso!

Future

Risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth

Political scientist Samuel Huntington[14] has argued that the defining characteristic of the 21st century will be a clash of civilizations.
According to Huntington, conflicts between civilizations will supplant the conflicts between nation-states and ideologies that characterized the 19th and 20th centuries. These views have been strongly challenged by others like Edward Said and Mohammed Asudi.[15] Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have argued that the "true clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and the West is caused by the Muslim rejection of the West's more liberal sexual values, rather than a difference in political ideology.[16]

Currently, world civilization is in a stage that has created what may be characterized as an industrial society, superseding the agrarian society that preceded it. Some futurists believe that civilization is undergoing another transformation, and that world society will become a so-called informational society.

Some environmental scientists see the world entering a Planetary Phase of Civilization, characterized by a shift away from independent, disconnected nation-states to a world of increased global connectivity with worldwide institutions, environmental challenges, economic systems, and consciousness.[17][18] In an attempt to better understand what a Planetary Phase of Civilization might look like in the current context of declining natural resources and increasing consumption, the Global scenario group used scenario analysis to arrive at three archetypal futures: Barbarization, in which increasing conflicts result in either a fortress world or complete societal breakdown; Conventional Worlds, in which market forces or Policy reform slowly precipitate more sustainable practices; and a Great Transition, in which either the sum of fragmented Eco-Communalism movements add up to a sustainable world or globally coordinated efforts and initiatives result in a new sustainability paradigm.[19]

The Kardashev scale classifies civilizations based on their level of technological advancement, specifically measured by the amount of energy a civilization is able to harness.
The Kardashev scale makes provisions for civilizations far more technologically advanced than any currently known to exist (see also: Civilizations and the Future, Space civilization).

The fall of civilizations

Societal collapse

There have been many explanations put forward for the collapse of civilization.

Edward Gibbon's work "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" began an interest in the Fall of Civilizations, that had begun with the historical divisions of Petrarch[20] between the Classical period of Ancient Greece and Rome, the succeeding Medieval Ages, and the Renaissance. For Gibbon:-

"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long."[Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed., vol. 4, ed. by J. B. Bury (London, 1909), pp. 173–174.] Gibbon suggested the final act of the collapse of Rome was the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 AD.

* Theodor Mommsen in his "History of Rome", suggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and he also tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis," "growth," "senescence," "collapse" and "decay."
* Oswald Spengler, in his "Decline of the West" rejected Petrarch's chronological division, and suggested that there had been only eight "mature civilizations." Growing cultures, he argued, tend to develop into imperialistic civilizations which expand and ultimately collapse, with democratic forms of government ushering in plutocracy and ultimately imperialism.
* Arnold J. Toynbee in his "A Study of History" suggested that there had been a much larger number of civilizations, including a small number of arrested civilizations, and that all civilizations tended to go through the cycle identified by Mommsen. The cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when a cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal and external proletariats.
* Joseph Tainter in "The Collapse of Complex Societies" suggested that there were diminishing returns to complexity, due to which, as states achieved a maximum permissible complexity, they would decline when further increases actually produced a negative return. Tainter suggested that Rome achieved this figure in the 2nd Century AD.
* Jared Diamond in his recent book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" suggests five major reasons for the collapse of 41 studied cultures: environmental damage, such as deforestation and soil erosion; climate change; dependence upon long-distance trade for needed resources; increasing levels of internal and external violence, such as war or invasion; and societal responses to internal and environmental problems.
* Peter Turchin in his Historical Dynamics and Andrey Korotayev et al. in their Introduction to Social Macrodynamics, Secular Cycles, and Millennial Trends suggest a number of mathematical models describing collapse of agrarian civilizations. For example, the basic logic of Turchin's "fiscal-demographic" model can be outlined as follows: during the initial phase of a sociodemographic cycle we observe relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption, which leads not only to relatively high population growth rates, but also to relatively high rates of surplus production. As a result, during this phase the population can afford to pay taxes without great problems, the taxes are quite easily collectible, and the population growth is accompanied by the growth of state revenues. During the intermediate phase, the increasing overpopulation leads to the decrease of per capita production and consumption levels, it becomes more and more difficult to collect taxes, and state revenues stop growing, whereas the state expenditures grow due to the growth of the population controlled by the state. As a result, during this phase the state starts experiencing considerable fiscal problems. During the final pre-collapse phases the overpopulation leads to further decrease of per capita production, the surplus production further decreases, state revenues shrink, but the state needs more and more resources to control the growing (though with lower and lower rates) population. Eventually this leads to famines, epidemics, state breakdown, and demographic and civilization collapse (Peter Turchin. Historical Dynamics. Princeton University Press, 2003:121–127).
* Peter Heather argues in his book The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians[21] that this civilization did not end for moral or economic reasons, but because centuries of contact with barbarians across the frontier generated its own nemesis by making them a much more sophisticated and dangerous adversary. The fact that Rome needed to generate ever greater revenues to equip and re-equip armies that were for the first time repeatedly defeated in the field, led to the dismemberment of the Empire. Although this argument is specific to Rome, it can also be applied to the Asiatic Empire of the Egyptians, to the Han and Tang dynasties of China, to the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate, and others.
* Bryan Ward-Perkins, in his book The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization[22] shows the real horrors associated with the collapse of a civilization for the people who suffer its effects, unlike many revisionist historians who downplay this. The collapse of complex society meant that even basic plumbing disappeared from the continent for 1,000 years. Similar Dark Age collapses are seen with the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of the Maya, on Easter Island and elsewhere.
* Arthur Demarest argues in Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization[23], using a holistic perspective to the most recent evidence from archaeology, paleoecology, and epigraphy, that no one explanation is sufficient but that a series of erratic, complex events, including loss of soil fertility, drought and rising levels of internal and external violence led to the disintegration of the courts of Mayan kingdoms which began a spiral of decline and decay. He argues that the collapse of the Maya has lessons for civilization today.
* Jeffrey A. McNeely has recently suggested that "A review of historical evidence shows that past civilizations have tended to over-exploit their forests, and that such abuse of important resources has been a significant factor in the decline of the over-exploiting society."[24]
* Thomas Homer-Dixon in "The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization", considers that the fall in the energy return on investments; the energy expended to energy yield ratio, is central to limiting the survival of civilizations. The degree of social complexity is associated strongly, he suggests, with the amount of disposable energy environmental, economic and technological systems allow. When this amount decreases civilizations either have to access new energy sources or they will collapse...

Cronos · 12-agosto-2009, 12:29

Que,quien, cuando se va a acabar el mundo

Future

Risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth

Political scientist Samuel Huntington[14] has argued that the defining characteristic of the 21st century will be a clash of civilizations.
According to Huntington, conflicts between civilizations will supplant the conflicts between nation-states and ideologies that characterized the 19th and 20th centuries. These views have been strongly challenged by others like Edward Said and Mohammed Asudi.[15] Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have argued that the "true clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and the West is caused by the Muslim rejection of the West's more liberal sexual values, rather than a difference in political ideology.[16]

Currently, world civilization is in a stage that has created what may be characterized as an industrial society, superseding the agrarian society that preceded it. Some futurists believe that civilization is undergoing another transformation, and that world society will become a so-called informational society.

Some environmental scientists see the world entering a Planetary Phase of Civilization, characterized by a shift away from independent, disconnected nation-states to a world of increased global connectivity with worldwide institutions, environmental challenges, economic systems, and consciousness.[17][18] In an attempt to better understand what a Planetary Phase of Civilization might look like in the current context of declining natural resources and increasing consumption, the Global scenario group used scenario analysis to arrive at three archetypal futures: Barbarization, in which increasing conflicts result in either a fortress world or complete societal breakdown; Conventional Worlds, in which market forces or Policy reform slowly precipitate more sustainable practices; and a Great Transition, in which either the sum of fragmented Eco-Communalism movements add up to a sustainable world or globally coordinated efforts and initiatives result in a new sustainability paradigm.[19]

The Kardashev scale classifies civilizations based on their level of technological advancement, specifically measured by the amount of energy a civilization is able to harness. The Kardashev scale makes provisions for civilizations far more technologically advanced than any currently known to exist (see also: Civilizations and the Future, Space civilization).

The fall of civilizations

Societal collapse

There have been many explanations put forward for the collapse of civilization.

Edward Gibbon's work "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" began an interest in the Fall of Civilizations, that had begun with the historical divisions of Petrarch[20] between the Classical period of Ancient Greece and Rome, the succeeding Medieval Ages, and the Renaissance. For Gibbon:-

"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long."[Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed., vol. 4, ed. by J. B. Bury (London, 1909), pp. 173–174.] Gibbon suggested the final act of the collapse of Rome was the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 AD.

* Theodor Mommsen in his "History of Rome", suggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and he also tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis," "growth," "senescence," "collapse" and "decay."
* Oswald Spengler, in his "Decline of the West" rejected Petrarch's chronological division, and suggested that there had been only eight "mature civilizations." Growing cultures, he argued, tend to develop into imperialistic civilizations which expand and ultimately collapse, with democratic forms of government ushering in plutocracy and ultimately imperialism.
* Arnold J. Toynbee in his "A Study of History" suggested that there had been a much larger number of civilizations, including a small number of arrested civilizations, and that all civilizations tended to go through the cycle identified by Mommsen. The cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when a cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal and external proletariats.
* Joseph Tainter in "The Collapse of Complex Societies" suggested that there were diminishing returns to complexity, due to which, as states achieved a maximum permissible complexity, they would decline when further increases actually produced a negative return. Tainter suggested that Rome achieved this figure in the 2nd Century AD.
* Jared Diamond in his recent book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" suggests five major reasons for the collapse of 41 studied cultures: environmental damage, such as deforestation and soil erosion; climate change; dependence upon long-distance trade for needed resources; increasing levels of internal and external violence, such as war or invasion; and societal responses to internal and environmental problems.
* Peter Turchin in his Historical Dynamics and Andrey Korotayev et al. in their Introduction to Social Macrodynamics, Secular Cycles, and Millennial Trends suggest a number of mathematical models describing collapse of agrarian civilizations. For example, the basic logic of Turchin's "fiscal-demographic" model can be outlined as follows: during the initial phase of a sociodemographic cycle we observe relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption, which leads not only to relatively high population growth rates, but also to relatively high rates of surplus production. As a result, during this phase the population can afford to pay taxes without great problems, the taxes are quite easily collectible, and the population growth is accompanied by the growth of state revenues. During the intermediate phase, the increasing overpopulation leads to the decrease of per capita production and consumption levels, it becomes more and more difficult to collect taxes, and state revenues stop growing, whereas the state expenditures grow due to the growth of the population controlled by the state. As a result, during this phase the state starts experiencing considerable fiscal problems. During the final pre-collapse phases the overpopulation leads to further decrease of per capita production, the surplus production further decreases, state revenues shrink, but the state needs more and more resources to control the growing (though with lower and lower rates) population. Eventually this leads to famines, epidemics, state breakdown, and demographic and civilization collapse (Peter Turchin. Historical Dynamics. Princeton University Press, 2003:121–127).
* Peter Heather argues in his book The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians[21] that this civilization did not end for moral or economic reasons, but because centuries of contact with barbarians across the frontier generated its own nemesis by making them a much more sophisticated and dangerous adversary. The fact that Rome needed to generate ever greater revenues to equip and re-equip armies that were for the first time repeatedly defeated in the field, led to the dismemberment of the Empire. Although this argument is specific to Rome, it can also be applied to the Asiatic Empire of the Egyptians, to the Han and Tang dynasties of China, to the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate, and others.
* Bryan Ward-Perkins, in his book The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization[22] shows the real horrors associated with the collapse of a civilization for the people who suffer its effects, unlike many revisionist historians who downplay this. The collapse of complex society meant that even basic plumbing disappeared from the continent for 1,000 years. Similar Dark Age collapses are seen with the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of the Maya, on Easter Island and elsewhere.
* Arthur Demarest argues in Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization[23], using a holistic perspective to the most recent evidence from archaeology, paleoecology, and epigraphy, that no one explanation is sufficient but that a series of erratic, complex events, including loss of soil fertility, drought and rising levels of internal and external violence led to the disintegration of the courts of Mayan kingdoms which began a spiral of decline and decay. He argues that the collapse of the Maya has lessons for civilization today.
* Jeffrey A. McNeely has recently suggested that "A review of historical evidence shows that past civilizations have tended to over-exploit their forests, and that such abuse of important resources has been a significant factor in the decline of the over-exploiting society."[24]
* Thomas Homer-Dixon in "The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization", considers that the fall in the energy return on investments; the energy expended to energy yield ratio, is central to limiting the survival of civilizations. The degree of social complexity is associated strongly, he suggests, with the amount of disposable energy environmental, economic and technological systems allow. When this amount decreases civilizations either have to access new energy sources or they will collapse.

Cronos · 12-agosto-2009, 13:36

Investigación y desarrollo sobre materiales/ UNAM,en Michoacan...

Quedaría listo este año el proyecto de clúster de materiales en Tres Marías/Michoacan

La Secretaría de Desarrollo Económico (Sedeco) anunció que este año podría quedar concluido el proyecto del Clúster de Materiales-Parque Tecnológico Ciudad Tres Marías, en cuya primera etapa se invertirían alrededor de 20 millones de pesos, que vendrían de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

“El estado de Michoacán aportaría recursos en especie, como el terreno o alguna obra de cabecera. El proyecto representaría generación de empleos a nivel de investigadores y la derrama que esto conlleva. Además, significaría apoyo a empresas instaladas en Michoacán y sería un atractivo para otras nuevas, sería una sinergia en el desarrollo económico”, manifestó el titular de Sedeco, Isidoro Ruiz Argáiz, en el marco de la inauguración del primer Foro Universidad-Industria, que organiza el Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales de la UNAM, como parte de la V Escuela de Ciencia de Materiales y Nanotecnología.

Dicho proyecto está diseñado para que también participen varias instancias, como el gobierno del estado, el Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Conacyt), la Secretaría de Economía (SE) y el sector privado.

La trascendencia del proyecto también radica en el desfase actual entre ciencia y ciencia aplicada, que podría ser potenciado. De acuerdo con los datos expuestos por el representante del Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Industrial (IMPI) en el evento, Antonio Camacho Vargas, apenas el cinco por ciento de las solicitudes de patentes que reciben corresponde a patentes nacionales.

“Anualmente, en promedio en el país recibimos hasta 16 mil solicitudes y de éstas el 95 por ciento es a titulares de Estados Unidos, Alemania, Francia, Italia y Asia, quienes protegen las patentes en el país para poder hacer negocio aquí”, señaló Camacho Vargas.

Asimismo, dijo que el IMPI está desarrollando unidades de asesoría para patentes en las cámaras de industriales, así como en centros de investigación.

Sobre el Foro Universidad-Industria, el secretario de Desarrollo Económico enfatizó que México cuenta con un rezago enorme en materia de ciencia y tecnología, pero más aún en la vinculación entre la ciencia y la ciencia aplicada, por ello la importancia de realizar este tipo de foros, lo que significa que “nuestras universidades están trabajando para crear valor agregado y generar mejores ingresos para los trabajadores”.

Cronos · 12-agosto-2009, 22:47

Re: ~~Juguemos Bilingüe~~

Cinema or Film encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry.
Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects.

Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them.
Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating — or indoctrinating — citizens.
The visual elements of cinema gives motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue.

Traditional films are made up of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot see the flickering between frames due to an effect known as persistence of vision, whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Viewers perceive motion due to a psychological effect called beta movement.

The origin of the name "film" comes from the fact that photographic film (also called film stock) had historically been the primary medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion picture, including picture, picture show, photo-play, flick. A common name for film in the United States is movie, while the Europeans prefer cinema. Additional terms for the field in general include the big screen, the silver screen, the cinema and the movies.

* History of film

Preceding film by many years, plays and dances had elements common to film: scripts, sets, costumes, production, direction, actors, audiences, storyboards, and scores. Much terminology later used in film theory and criticism applied, such as mise en scene (roughly, the entire visual picture at any one time). Moving visual and aural images were not recorded for replaying as in film.

The camera obscura was pioneered by Alhazen in his Book of Optics (1021),[1][2][3] and later near the year 1600, it was perfected by Giambattista della Porta. Light is inverted through a small hole or lens from outside, and projected onto a surface or screen, creating a moving image, but it is not preserved in a recording.

In the 1860s, mechanisms for producing two-dimensional drawings in motion were demonstrated with devices such as the zoetrope, mutoscope and praxinoscope. These machines were outgrowths of simple optical devices (such as magic lanterns) and would display sequences of still pictures at sufficient speed for the images on the pictures to appear to be moving, a phenomenon called persistence of vision. Naturally the images needed to be carefully designed to achieve the desired effect, and the underlying principle became the basis for the development of film animation.

With the development of celluloid film for still photography, it became possible to directly capture ~~~~~~s in motion in real time. An 1878 experiment by Eadweard Muybridge in the United States using 24 cameras produced a series of stereoscopic images of a galloping horse, arguably the first "motion picture," though it was not called by this name. This technology required a person to look into a viewing machine to see the pictures which were separate paper prints attached to a drum turned by a handcrank. The pictures were shown at a variable speed of about 5 to 10 pictures per second, depending on how rapidly the crank was turned. Commercial versions of these machines were coin operated.

By the 1880s the development of the motion picture camera allowed the individual component images to be captured and stored on a single reel, and led quickly to the development of a motion picture projector to shine light through the processed and printed film and magnify these "moving picture shows" onto a screen for an entire audience. These reels, so exhibited, came to be known as "motion pictures". Early motion pictures were static shots that showed an event or action with no editing or other cinematic techniques.

Ignoring ~~~~son's early sound experiments (1894), commercial motion pictures were purely visual art through the late 19th century, but these innovative silent films had gained a hold on the public imagination.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, films began developing a narrative structure by stringing scenes together to tell narratives. The scenes were later broken up into multiple shots of varying sizes and angles. Other techniques such as camera movement were realized as effective ways to portray a story on film. Rather than leave the audience in silence, theater owners would hire a pianist or organist or a full orchestra to play music fitting the mood of the film at any given moment. By the early 1920s, most films came with a prepared list of sheet music for this purpose, with complete film scores being composed for major productions.

The rise of European cinema was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I when the film industry in United States flourished with the rise of Hollywood, typified most prominently by the great innovative work of D.W. Griffith in The Birth of a Nation (1914) and Intolerance (1916) .
However in the 1920s, European filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, F. W. Murnau, and Fritz Lang,in many ways inspired by the meteoric war-time progress of film through Griffith, along with the contributions of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and others, quickly caught up with American film-making and continued to further advance the medium.
In the 1920s, new technology allowed filmmakers to attach to each film a soundtrack of speech, music and sound effects synchronized with the action on the screen. These sound films were initially distinguished by calling them "talking pictures", or talkies.

The next major step in the development of cinema was the introduction of so-called "natural" color. While the addition of sound quickly eclipsed silent film and theater musicians, color was adopted more gradually as methods evolved making it more practical and cost effective to produce "natural color" films. The public was relatively indifferent to color photography as opposed to black-and-white, but as color processes improved and became as affordable as black-and-white film, more and more movies were filmed in color after the end of World War II, as the industry in America came to view color as essential to attracting audiences in its competition with television, which remained a black-and-white medium until the mid-1960s. By the end of the 1960s, color had become the norm for film makers.

Since the decline of the studio system in the 1960s, the succeeding decades saw changes in the production and style of film. Various New ~~~e movements (including the French New ~~~e, Indian New ~~~e, Japanese New ~~~e and New Hollywood) and the rise of film school educated independent filmmakers were all part of the changes the medium experienced in the latter half of the 20th century. Digital technology has been the driving force in change throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century...

Cronos · 13-agosto-2009, 06:41

-Agua para DF por faltantes en Sistema Cutzamala;falta de lluvias!

Amplían la reducción del suministro de agua a la Ciudad de México por escasez

México, 12 ago (EFE).- Las autoridades mexicanas acordaron hoy reducir en un 30% el suministro diario de agua del Sistema Cutzamala, un conjunto de presas de las que la Ciudad de México obtiene el 20% de su líquido potable, debido a la escasez de lluvias y a los niveles mínimos de los embalses.

La reducción del suministro, que se realizará todos los días de la semana y por alrededor de 10 meses, fue decidido por la gubernamental Comisión Nacional del Agua (Conagua), el Sistema de Aguas del Distrito Federal y la Comisión del Agua del Estado de México, ante la crítica situación de las siete presas que abastecen al Sistema Cutzamala.

Desde el pasado 21 de julio, las autoridades pusieron en marcha un programa de reducción de abasto de agua por los efectos del fenómeno de "El Niño".

La reducción en la presión del agua en la capital era hasta hoy del 17,8% en promedio a la semana: de jueves a domingo se disminuía el suministro un 10%, los viernes un 25% y los sábados un 50%.

Sin embargo, esta reducción escalonada, resultó "inoperante" pues no permitió la recuperación de los niveles que el Sistema Cutzamala requiere para su funcionamiento, señaló en conferencia de prensa el director general de la Conagua, José Luis Luege.

El directivo explicó que durante la actual temporada de lluvias no se ha logrado la recuperación de los almacenamientos en las presas de ese sistema, "ya que julio, ha sido calificado por el Servicio Meteorológico Nacional como el segundo mes de julio más seco de todos los registros en los últimos 68 años".

Además, durante el mes de agosto, que era en el que se esperaban más lluvias, "prácticamente no se han registrado precipitaciones", indicó el funcionario.

"Esto ha llevado a una situación muy seria en la cual el promedio de almacenamiento al día de hoy de todo el Sistema Cutzamala está al 41,9%" del total, precisó Luege.

La nueva reducción de presión en un 30% diario implica una disminución promedio de 4,41 metros cúbicos por segundo, lo cual representa un ahorro anual del orden de los 139 millones de metros cúbicos de agua.

Las autoridades mexicanas lanzaron hoy además el llamado "Grado Ecológico" para aparatos ahorradores de agua, que se entregará a empresas que diseñen y vendan en el mercado nacional duchas e inodoros de bajo consumo de líquido.

Las duchas recibirán el distintivo cuando su gasto mínimo sea menor a 3,8 litros por minuto y los inodoros cuando empleen menos de 5 litros por descarga.

Además, Conagua iniciará una campaña de ahorro de agua a nivel nacional, particularmente en Ciudad de México y área metropolitana, que promueva entre la población el uso eficiente del recurso hídrico.

Cronos · 13-agosto-2009, 06:58

Pihuamo,en loscerros y sierras de'bajos de Jalisco'

Pihuamo es un pueblo y municipio montañoso de la Región Sureste del estado de Jalisco, México.

Toponimia

Pihuamo proviene de la voz tarasca "Peguamo" o "Pilhua"; y significa: "lugar de grandes señores" o "lugar de truque".

Historia

Esta región perteneció al señorío de Tzapotlán, sus pobladores fueron de diverso origen: toltecas, zapotecas y purépechas, tribu que llegó a la región en 1480; estuvieron dominando algunos años, pero antes de la conquista fueron derrotados en la llamada Guerra del Salitre.

Este territorio fue descubierto y conquistado por el capitán Cristóbal de Olid en unión de Juan Rodríguez de Villafuerte a principios de 1522 al ser enviados por Hernán Cortés a explorar la región de occidente. En 1598 el pueblo de Santiago de Pivámoc estaba en la ribera de un río, en un valle entre cerros altos. Lo habitaban siete aborígenes casados. Hablaban la lengua mexicana y la popoloca y estaban sujetos a Tuxpan. Xilollancini era un pueblito que estaba en un valle muy hondo. Mala suerte corrió al poblado, pues lo destruyó una tromba que duró varias horas y dividió a su vez el cerro de la Cajita. El lugar se llama hoy Pueblo Viejo. Esto motivó el cambio del pueblo a su actual sitio; dicho lugar, llamado Las Lomas, era propiedad de un tal Pío a quien sus trabajadores le llamaban amo, palabras que al devenir del tiempo degeneraron en el nombre actual de Pihuamo.

Durante la Independencia, en 1821, se quemó el archivo parroquial. El párroco Antonio Cañas se vio precisado a huir ya que frecuentemente desde el púlpito, condenaba el movimiento insurgente. El Dr. Atl proyectó en Pihuamo la quimérica ciudad de la Cultura Universal con el nombre de "Olinka", palabra náhuatl que significa: "lugar donde se genera el movimiento". En ella pretendía que radicaran los sabios y artistas de todo el mundo.

En 1825 poseía ayuntamiento; desde esta fecha perteneció al 4° cantón de Sayula hasta 1890 en que pasó a depender del 9° de Ciudad Guzmán. El 7 de abril de 1891 por decreto número 172 se erige en municipio y se fijan sus límites respectivos.

Descripción geográfica

Ubicación

Pihuamo se localiza al sur del estado de Jalisco, entre las coordenadas 18° 57' 30" a 19º 23' 30" de latitud norte y 103° 10' 00" a 103º 32' 05" de longitud oeste; a una altura de 773 metros sobre el nivel del mar.

El municipio colinda al norte con los municipios de Tuxpan y Tecalitlán; al este con el municipio de Tecalitlán y el estado de Michoacán; al sur con los estados de Michoacán y Colima; al oeste con el estado de Colima y el municipio de Tuxpan.

Orografía

La mayor parte de su municipio está conformada por zonas accidentadas (62%), el suelo es bastante quebrado, tomando como base la cabecera municipal, sobresalen las formaciones montañosas de Los Huizaches, los cerros: La Mina de la Plomosa, de La Higuera y Montelongo; barranca del Calabozo, Sierra del Limón: cerros de la Relumbrosa y Belén al norte; al sur, los cerros de La Cofradía y El Encino, Filo de la Piedra, Imán y del Cacao; al este, La Nogalera, El Rincón Verde, La Cajita, del Raguño de las Piedras, del Pochote, Ferrería y Acaladero, y al oeste, Santa Cruz, EL Picacho de Talayote, de las Palmas, EL Saucito, Las Lomas de la Oera y de la Cruz. También hay zonas planas (20%) y semiplanas (18%).

Suelos. El municipio está conformado por terrenos que pertenecen al periodo cuaternario. La composición de los suelos es de tipos predominantes Regosol Etrico, Feozem con Lubisol Crómico y además Cambisol Eutrico y Crómico. El municipio tiene una superficie territorial de 100,785 hectáreas, de las cuales 24,097 son utilizadas con fines agrícolas, 31,865 en la actividad pecuaria, 2,918 son de uso forestal, 165 son suelo urbano y 41,740 hectáreas tienen otro uso. En lo que a la propiedad se refiere, una extensión de 56,008 hectáreas es privada y otra de 44,777 es ejidal; no existiendo propiedad comunal.

Hidrografía

Sus recursos hidrológicos son proporcionados por los ríos: Tuxpan, El Naranjo, Tula, Pihuamo, Jilotlancillo, Barreras, El Cañón y Ahuijullo; por los arroyos: La Tapachera, Colomos, El Frayle, Guadalupe y Encantado, además de otros de menor importancia; por la presa de La Estancia y Los Bordos, así como La Estrella y La Suiza.

Clima

El clima es semiseco, con otoño y primavera secos, y semicálido, sin cambio térmico invernal bien definido. La temperatura media anual es de 22°C, con máxima de 30.2°C y mínima de 13.5°C. Cuenta con una precipitación media de 695.9 milímetros.

Flora y fauna

Su vegetación se compone básicamente de especies maderables como: pino, encino, roble, sangualela, pozo de fierro, garrapato, culebro, nogal, coral, granadillo, alejo, fresno, tepehuaje, parotilla, campisirian, guayabillo, caoba, parota, papelillo, palo blanco, cedro rojo, rosa morada y primavera. También hay árboles como mamey, mango, guayabo, arrayán o guayabillo, lima, limón, ciruelo y nances, entre otros.

La fauna es muy numerosa: coyote, zorra, tejón, tlacuache, mapache, liebre, conejo, venado, zorrillo, jabalí, tigrillo, mococuan, candingo, loro, cotorro, guacamaya, canario, cenzontle, chachalaca, codorniz, lechuza, tecolote, garza blanca, pato, paloma, iguana, escorpión, tortuga de río, gran variedad de ofidios y arácnidos, peces como: carpa, trucha, lobina, tilapia, chiquilín y abundan los chacales.

Economía

Ganadería: Se cría ganado bovino, ovino, caprino y porcino. Además de aves y colmenas.

Agricultura: Destacan el maíz, sorgo y caña de azúcar

Comercio: Predominan los establecimientos dedicados a la venta de productos de primera necesidad y los comercios mixtos que venden artículos diversos.

Servicios: Se ofrecen servicios financieros, profesionales, técnicos, comunales, sociales, personales, turísticos y de mantenimiento.

Industria: Las principales ramas industriales son: fabricación de muebles, curtiduría y herrería.

Minería: Cuenta con yacimientos de oro, plata, plomo, cobre, zinc, mercurio, níquel y manganeso; y de los minerales no metálicos: yacimientos de barita, asbesto, talco, calcita, yeso y cal.

Explotación forestal: Se explota el pino, encino, roble, nogal, fresno, tepehuaje, caoba, parota, palo blanco, cedro rojo, rosa morada y primavera.

Pesca: Se captura carpa, trucha, lobina, tilapia y chacal.

Turismo

Artesanías

* Elaboración de: chinas (hechas de palma) para proteger de la lluvia, sillas de montar y huaraches.

Parques y reservas

* Las Moras.
* Ferrerías.
* Cerro Naranjo.
* Cerro Belén.

Ríos y presas

* Presa La Estancia.
* Río de Pihuamo.
* Bordo la Estrella.

Fiestas

Fiestas civiles

* Fiestas Patrias. En septiembre.

Fiestas religiosas

* Guadalupana. 12 de diciembre.

Referencias

*
1. ↑ Altitud en la cabecera municipal.

* ↑ Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (ed.): «Principales resultados por localidad 2005 (ITER)» (2005).

Cronos · 13-agosto-2009, 07:39

Re: Palabras encadenadas en ingles.

A hot spring is a spring that is produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater from the Earth's crust. There are hot springs all over the earth, on every continent and even under the oceans and seas.

There is no universally accepted definition of a hot spring. For example, one can find the phrase hot spring defined as

* any geothermal spring[1]
* a spring with water temperatures above its surroundings[2]
* a natural spring with water temperature above body temperature – normally between 36.5 °C (97.7 °F) and 37.5 °C (99.5 °F)[3]
* a natural spring with warm water above body temperature[4]
* a thermal spring with water warmer than 36.7 °C (98.1 °F)[5][6]
* a natural spring of water greater than 21.1 °C (70.0 °F) (synonymous with thermal spring)[7][8][9][10]
* a natural discharge of groundwater with elevated temperatures[11]
* a type of thermal spring in which hot water is brought to the surface. The water temperature of a hot spring is usually 6.5 °C (11.7 °F) or more above mean air temperature.[12][13] Note that by this definition, "thermal spring" is not synonymous with the term "hot spring"
* a spring whose hot water is brought to the surface (synonymous with a thermal spring). The water temperature of the spring is usually 8.3 °C (14.9 °F) or more above the mean air temperature.[14]
* a spring with water above the core human body temperature – 36.7 °C (98.1 °F).[15]
* a spring with water above average ambient ground temperature,[16] a definition favored by some
* a spring with water temperatures above 50 °C (122 °F)[17]

The related term "warm spring" is defined as a spring with water temperature less than a hot spring by many sources, although Pentecost et al. (2003) suggest that the phrase "warm spring" is not useful and should be avoided.[15] The US NOAA Geophysical Data Center defines a "warm spring" as a spring with water between 20 °C (68 °F) and 50 °C (122 °F). In Japan, the ♨ symbol is commonly used on maps to denote a hot spring.

Sources of heat

The water issuing from a hot spring is heated by geothermal heat, i.e., heat from the Earth's interior. In general, the temperature of rocks within the earth increases with depth. The rate of temperature increase with depth is known as the geothermal gradient. If water percolates deeply enough into the crust, it will be heated as it comes into contact with hot rocks. The water from hot springs in non-volcanic areas is heated in this manner.

In active volcanic zones such as Yellowstone National Park, water may be heated by coming into contact with magma (molten rock). The high temperature gradient near magma may cause water to be heated enough that it boils or becomes superheated. If the water becomes so hot that it builds steam pressure and erupts in a jet above the surface of the Earth, it is called a geyser. If the water only reaches the surface in the form of steam, it is called a fumarole. If the water is mixed with mud and clay, it is called a mud pot.

Note that hot springs in volcanic areas are often at or near the boiling point. People have been seriously burned and even killed by accidentally or intentionally entering these springs.

Warm springs are sometimes the result of hot and cold springs mixing but may also occur outside of volcanic areas, such as Warm Springs, Georgia (frequented for its therapeutic effects by paraplegic U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who built the Little White House there).

Flow rates

Hot springs range in flow rate from the tiniest "seeps" to veritable rivers of hot water. Sometimes there is enough pressure that the water shoots upward in a geyser, or fountain.

A very low flow rate hot spring fed the closed resort, Fales Hot Ditch, which is north of Bridgeport, California. There is a huge subterranean lake below Tonopah, Arizona, which provides natural hot mineral waters to several hot springs. These hot springs were used by the seven or more hot spring spas that once operated in Tonopah. The ruins of two such spas are still visible in Tonopah.

High flow hot springs

There are many claims in the literature about the flow rates of hot springs. Some of the hot springs with high flow rates and high claimed flow rates. It should be noted that there are many more very high flow nonthermal springs than geothermal springs. For example, there are 33 recognized "magnitude one springs" (having a flow in excess of 2,800 liters/second) in Florida alone. Silver Springs, Florida has a flow of more than 21,000 liters/second. Springs with high flow rates include:

* The combined flow of the 47 hot springs in Hot Springs, Arkansas is 35 liters/second.
* The combined flow of the hot springs complex in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico is estimated at 99 liters/second.[18]
* Lava Hot Springs in Idaho has a flow of 130 liters/second.
* Glenwood Springs in Colorado has a flow of 143 liters/second.
* Elizabeth Springs in western Queensland, Australia might have had a flow of 158 liters/second in the late 1800s, but now has a flow of about 5 liters/second.
* Deildartunguhver in Iceland has a flow of 180 liters/second.
* The hot springs of Brazil's Caldas Novas ("Hot River" in Portuguese) are tapped by 86 wells, from which 333 liters/second are pumped for 14 hours per day. This corresponds to a peak average flow rate of 3.89 liters/second per well.
* The 2,850 hot springs of Beppu in Japan are the highest flow hot spring complex in Japan. Together the Beppu hot springs produce about 1,592 liters/second, or corresponding to an average hot spring flow of 0.56 liters/second.
* The 303 hot springs of Kokonoe in Japan produce 1,028 liters/second, which gives the average hot spring a flow of 3.39 liters/second.
* The Oita Prefecture has 4,762 hot springs, with a total flow of 4,437 liters/second, so the average hot spring flow is 0.93 liters/second.
* The highest flow rate hot spring in Japan is the Tamagawa Hot Spring in Akita Prefecture, which has a flow rate of 150 liters/second. The Tamagawa Hot Spring feeds a 3 m (9.8 ft) wide stream with a temperature of 98 °C (208 °F).
* There are at least three hot springs in the Nage region 8 km (5.0 mi) south west of Bajawa City in Indonesia that collectively produce more than 453.6 liters/second.
* There are another three large hot springs (Mengeruda, Wae Bana and Piga) 18 km (11 mi) north east of Bajawa City, Indonesia that together produce more than 450 liters/second of hot water.
* The Dalhousie Springs complex in Australia had a peak total flow of more than 23,000 liters/second in 1915, giving the average spring in the complex an output of more than 325 liters/second. This has been reduced now to a peak total fow of 17,370 liters/second so the average spring has a peak output of about 250 liters/second.[19]

Therapeutic uses

Because heated water can hold more dissolved solids, warm and especially hot springs also often have a very high mineral content, containing everything from simple calcium to lithium, and even radium. Because of both the folklore and the claimed medical value some of these springs have, they are often popular tourist destinations, and locations for rehabilitation clinics for those with disabilities.[20][21]

Infections from hot springs

Unfortunately, hot springs can create ideal conditions to spread infections. For example:

* Naegleria fowleri, an amoeba, lives in warm waters and soils worldwide and can be a cause of meningitis.[22][23] Several deaths have been attributed to this amoeba, which enters the brain through the nasal passages.[24][25]

* Acanthamoeba also can spread through hot springs, according to the US Centers for Disease Control.[26]

* Legionella bacteria have been spread through hot springs.[27][28]

* A bather may have been infected by the herpes simplex virus in his toe from a hot spring in Japan.[29]

* Viruses have been collected from very extreme environments, for example, a hot spring with a temperature of 87 °C (189 °F) to 93 °C (199 °F) and an incredibly acidic pH of 1.5 in Pozzuoli, Italy. These viruses were observed to infect cells in the laboratory.[30]

Cronos · 13-agosto-2009, 07:55

Re: Lo relacionado con........

Un balneario (< latín balneae -arum "baños" o balineae -arum "establecimiento de baños") es un área de baños públicos; ya sea de piscina, río o mar.
En otros casos, es un lugar dedicado al reposo y la curación a través de la utilización de las aguas, sobre todo las termales y minerales, con un edificio para el hospedaje.

Algunas de las técnicas que se utilizan en los balnearios además de las piscinas termales son baños con algas, baños con fango, baños de piel de pomelo, inhalación de vapores, hidromasaje, chorros de agua, circuitos a contracorriente, etc.
En el caso de los balnearios marinos, el conjunto de técnicas hidrosaludables utilizadas se conoce como talasoterapia.

En cuanto a los balnearios y centros spa que emplean el método ayurvédico, los tratamientos aplicados en estos centros tienen como fuente principal el Ayurveda [1], uno de los más antiguos y completos sistemas médicos.

Las instalaciones se completan con otros servicios para el cuidado de la salud como masajes diversos, saunas (turca, finlandesa, vaporarium, etc.), rayos uva, solarium, gimnasio, camas de agua, tratamientos de belleza, etc.

Cuando no es posible que esté en lugares donde los cuerpos de agua natural termal existan, se utilizan albercas llenas con agua calentada en calderas a gas u otro combustible.

A efectos de entretenimiento, comúnmente se encuentran en estos lugares toboganes (o acuatubos), chapoteaderos, lagos artificiales para remo, albercas con olas artificiales y ríos de diferentes corrientes generadas también de manera artificial.

Se puede denominar balneario a lugares de descanso y esparcimiento no necesariamente cercanos al mar.

Cronos · 13-agosto-2009, 08:01

Re: 777 cosas que me valen madre....

712-El sexo facil y sin complicaciones...

Cronos · 13-agosto-2009, 12:01

La nueva Refinería de PEMEX se construirá en Tula,Hidalgo!!

-Es la opción técnica y económica más viable, coinciden titulares de ambas instituciones

-La nueva refinería se construirá en Tula, Hidalgo: Pemex y SRA

-El financiamiento se integrará por la colocación de bonos y certificados, más recursos de la petrolera

-La construcción costará 673 mdd menos que si se hiciera en Salamanca, calculan

Ayer terminó la competencia por la nueva refinería que requiere el país, luego de que Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) y la Secretaría de la Reforma Agraria (SRA) anunciaron que se construirá en Tula, Hidalgo, porque es la opción técnica y económica más viable.

En ausencia de los gobernadores de Hidalgo y Guanajuato, el director de Pemex, Jesús Reyes Heroles, y el secretario de la Reforma Agraria, Abelardo Escobar, declararon que existen suficientes elementos para dar certidumbre jurídica sobre la propiedad de la tierra en la que se construirá la obra de infraestructura más importante que ha desarrollado la paraestatal en 30 años.

Abelardo Escobar dijo que el anuncio no se hizo de manera adelantada, debido a que ayer mismo por la tarde se emitió el último título por parte del Registro Agrario Nacional y se inscribieron en el Registro Público de la Propiedad las 807 parcelas que integran el polígono. Esto fue avalado por el presidente de la Asociación Nacional del Notariado Mexicano, Heriberto Castillo Villanueva, quien aseguró que a más tardar en dos meses Pemex tendrá el título que la acredite como propietaria del polígono en el que se asentará la nueva refinería Bicentenario.

Los funcionarios indicaron que los terrenos pertenecen al municipio de Atitalaquia: 501 parcelas corresponden a Atitalaquia; 202 a San Bartolomé de Otsey; 83 a Tlacoacan, y 21 a Tula de Allende. "Son 647 hectáreas más 48 de infraestructura y 20 de propiedad privada que también compró el gobierno estatal", señalaron.

Coincidieron en que la decisión adoptada responde sólo a criterios técnicos y económicos, y aclararon que la Secretaría de Gobernación intervino para que "en esta última etapa no se dieran señalamientos y descalificaciones contra los dos gobiernos por parte de grupos de interés. Se buscó que se diera como un proceso de madurez política".

Reyes Heroles señaló que a pesar de la difícil situación económica y financiera que previó el secretario de Hacienda, Agustín Carstens, para el año próximo, "y en el supuesto de que Pemex tuviera que modificar su presupuesto, la refinería Bicentenario seguirá siendo la prioridad para la empresa".

Explicó que durante 2010 y 2011 los trabajos se centrarán en las obras de ingeniería que requieren inversiones menores, por lo que para cuando se necesiten los recursos para el desarrollo de la infraestructura, las condiciones económicas y financieras ya habrán cambiado.

Abundó al señalar que el financiamiento de la refinería Bicentenario se integrará por la colocación de bonos y certificados, más recursos propios de la empresa, y aunque no se han hecho los estudios correspondientes, dijo que hay empresas que trabajan con apalancamientos hasta de 40 por ciento, "pero Pemex no acostumbra recurrir a montos tan altos".
Foto
El director de Pemex, Jesús Reyes HerolesFoto José Antonio López

Detalló que además de que Hidalgo cumplió primero con el requisito de dar seguridad absoluta sobre la propiedad de la tierra, en los análisis técnico-económicos realizados se documentó que la zona con mayor demanda de petrolíferos es el centro del país, y dotarlo de combustible es más barato si se hace desde Tula. El desarrollo de ductos desde la región sureste economiza 400 millones de dólares más, y la construcción de la refinería en Tula costará 673 millones de dólares menos que si se hiciera en Salamanca.

Aun así el gobierno de Guanajuato no se va con las manos vacías, ya que, anunció Reyes Heroles, Pemex impulsará los trabajos de reconfiguración de la refinería de Salamanca, a la que se dedicará una inversión de 3 mil 76 millones de dólares. La selección de tecnologías para tal fin se tendrá lista en dos meses y entonces se procederá a contratar las ingenierías para acelerar el proyecto, pero además la paraestatal estará abierta a los proyectos que proponga el gobierno estatal.

Reyes Heroles detalló que otras ventajas de construir la refinería en Hidalgo y no en Guanajuato consisten en que en Tula es posible aprovechar de mejor manera los residuales que se producen, lo que agregará valor y rentabilidad al proyecto, ya que en esa localidad se producen 70 mil barriles diarios de residuales y en Salamanca 50 mil.

El desarrollo de ductos desde Tabasco hasta Salamanca para transportar el crudo que se va a procesar tendría un costo de mil 28 millones de dólares, contra 859 millones que se dedicarán para el desarrollo de esa infraestructura con destino en Tula.

Reyes Heroles, Abelardo Escobar y el notario Heriberto Castillo insistieron en que todo el proceso de regularización de la tierra que se hizo con los ejidatarios de Hidalgo fue en pleno cumplimiento con la ley agraria.

"El proceso de definición de los terrenos para la nueva refinería permitió que el cambio de régimen de las tierras, de propiedad ejidal a propiedad privada, se realizara con estricto cumplimiento de los requisitos que establece la ley agraria, lo que le da certidumbre a Pemex sobre la correcta realización de todos los actos jurídicos", aseguró...

Cronos · 13-agosto-2009, 12:24

ENGLISH:The language of the empire!

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries and of the United States since the mid 20th century,[7][8][9][10] it has become the lingua franca in many parts of the world.[11][12] It is used extensively as a second language and as an official language in Commonwealth countries and many international organizations.

Historically, English originated from several dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers beginning in the 5th century. The language was influenced by the Old Norse language of Viking invaders. After the Norman conquest, Old English developed into Middle English, borrowing heavily from the Norman (Anglo-French) vocabulary and spelling conventions. The etymology of the word "English" is a derivation from 12th century Old English: englisc or Engle, and plural form Angles; definition of, relating to, or characteristic of England. [3] Modern English developed from there notably with the Great Vowel Shift that began in 15th-century England, and continues to adopt foreign words from a variety of languages, as well as coining new words.
A significant number of English words, especially technical words, have been constructed based on roots from Latin and ancient Greek.

* 1- Significance

Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca,[13][14] is the dominant international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy.[15]
Its spread beyond the British Isles began with the growth of the British Empire, and by the late nineteenth century its reach was truly global.[16] Following British colonization in North America, it is the dominant language in the United States, whose growing economic and cultural influence and status as a global superpower since World War II have significantly accelerated the language's adoption across the planet.[14]

A working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of fields, occupations and professions such as medicine and computing; as a consequence over a billion people speak English to at least a basic level (see English language learning and teaching). It is also one of six official languages of the United Nations.

History of the English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian and Lower Saxon dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers and Roman auxiliary troops from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands[citation needed] in the 5th century. One of these Germanic tribes was the Angles,[19] who may have come from Angeln, and Bede wrote that their whole nation came to Britain,[20] leaving their former land empty. The names 'England' (or 'Aenglaland') and English are derived from the name of this tribe.
The Anglo-Saxons began invading around 449 AD from the regions of Denmark and Jutland.[21][22] Before the Anglo-Saxons arrived in England the native population spoke Brythonic, a Celtic language.[23] Although the most significant changes in dialect occurred after the Norman invasion of 1066, the language retained its name and the pre-Norman invasion dialect is now known as Old English.[24]

Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Great Britain.[25] One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate. One of the most prevalent forces in the evolution of the English language was the Roman Catholic Church. Beginning with the Rule of St Benedict in 530 and continuing until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, the Roman Catholic Church instructed monasteries and Catholic officials like Augustine of Canterbury to preserve intellectual culture within their schools, scriptoria, and libraries. During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had a monopoly on intellectual property in British society; in which they used to exert great influence on the English language. Catholic monks mainly wrote or copied text in Latin, the prevalent Medieval lingua franca of Europe. [26] When monks occasionally wrote in the vernacular, it was common to substitute or derive English-like words from Latin to describe or refer to things in which there was no English word.
Extensive vocabulary, a derivative of Latin vocabularium, in the English language is largely comprised from Latin word derivatives. It is believed that the intellectual elite in British society over the years perpetuated vocabulary that Catholic monks contributed to English; furthermore, they continued the custom of deriving new words from Latin long after the waning of Catholic Church.
Old English vernacular was also influenced by two ~~~es of invasion. The first was by language speakers of the North Germanic branch of the Germanic family; they conquered and colonized parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries. The second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman. (Over the centuries, this lost the specifically Norman element under the influence of Parisian French and, later, of English, eventually turning into a distinctive dialect of Anglo-French.) These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it was never a truly mixed language in the strict linguistic sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication).

Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a lexical supplementation of the Anglo-Frisian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and a huge vocabulary.

With the emergence and spread of the British Empire, the English language was adopted in regions around the world, such as North America, India, Africa, and Australia. The emergence of the United States as a superpower has also helped the spread of English.

Classification and related languages

The English language belongs to the western sub-branch of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The closest living relative of English is either Scots, spoken primarily in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland, or Frisian. As Scots is viewed by linguists either as a separate language or else as a group of dialects of English, Frisian rather than Scots is often said to be the next closest. After those are other Germanic languages which are more distantly related, namely the West Germanic languages (Dutch, Afrikaans, Low German, High German), and the North Germanic languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese). With the exception of Scots none of these languages is mutually intelligible with English, because of divergences in lexis, syntax, semantics, and phonology.

Lexical differences with the other Germanic languages arise predominantly because of the heavy usage in English of words taken from Latin (for example, "exit", vs. Dutch uitgang) (literally "out-gang" with "gang" as in "gangway") and French ("change" vs. German Änderung, "movement" vs. German Bewegung (literally "othering" and "be-way-ing" ("proceeding along the way")). The syntax of German and Dutch is also significantly different from that of English, with different rules for setting up sentences (for example, German Ich habe noch nie etwas auf dem Platz gesehen, vs. English "I have still never seen anything in the square"). Semantic differences cause a number of false friends between English and its relatives. Phonology differences obscure words which actually are genetically related ("enough" vs. German genug), and sometimes both semantics and phonology are different (German Zeit, "time", is related to English "tide", but the English word has come to mean gravitational effects on the ocean by the moon).[citation needed]

Finally, English has been forming compound words and affixing existing words separately from the other Germanic languages for over 1500 years and has different habits in that regard. For instance, abstract nouns in English may be formed from native words by the suffixes "‑hood", "-ship", "-dom" and "-ness". All of these have cognate suffixes in most or all other Germanic languages, but their usage patterns have diverged, as German "Freiheit" vs. English "freedom" (the suffix "-heit" being cognate of English "-hood", while English "-dom" is cognate with German "-tum").

Many written French words are also intelligible to an English speaker (though pronunciations are often quite different) because English absorbed a large vocabulary from Norman and French, via Anglo-Norman after the Norman Conquest and directly from French in subsequent centuries. As a result, a large portion of English vocabulary is derived from French, with some minor spelling differences (word endings, use of old French spellings, etc.), as well as occasional divergences in meaning of so-called false friends. The pronunciation of most French loanwords in English (with exceptions such as mirage or phrases like coup d’état) has become completely anglicised and follows a typically English pattern of stress.[citation needed] Some North Germanic words also entered English because of the Danish invasion shortly before then (see Danelaw); these include words such as "sky", "window", "egg", and even "they" (and its forms) and "are" (the present plural form of "to be")...

Cronos · 13-agosto-2009, 12:35

Re: ~~Juguemos Bilingüe~~

England (en-us-England.ogg /ˈɪŋɡlənd/ (help·info)) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom.[5][6][7] Its mainland is located in the southern and central part of the island of Great Britain in the North Atlantic. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; and adjoins the Irish Sea to the north-west, the Celtic Sea to the south-west, the North Sea to the east, and the English Channel separating it from continental Europe to the south.
In addition to the mainland, England consists of over 100 smaller islands, including the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
The population of England is about 51 million, making up around 84% of the United Kingdom total.

England became a unified state in the year 927 and takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled Great Britain during the 5th and 6th centuries. England has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world[8] being the place of origin of the English language, the Church of England and English law, which forms the basis of the common law legal systems of countries around the world. It formed the world's oldest parliamentary system[9] and consequently the innovations that came from it have been widely adopted by other nations. During the 18th century England gave birth to the Industrial Revolution and became the first country in the world to industrialise.[10] It is home to the Royal Society, which laid the foundations of modern experimental science.[11]

England is a predominantly lowland country, although there are upland regions in the north (including the Lake District, Pennines and Yorkshire Moors) and in the south and south west (including Dartmoor, the Cotswolds, and the North and South Downs). The area has been settled by humans who have adopted various cultures for over 29,000 years.[12] London, England's capital, is the largest metropolian area in the United Kingdom and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures.[note 1] The population of England is concentrated in London and the South East, as well as conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East and Yorkshire, all of which developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century.

The Kingdom of England (including Wales) remained a sovereign state until 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union, putting into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulted in political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the united Kingdom of Great Britain.[13] In 1800, Great Britain was united with Ireland through another Act of Union 1800 to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State was established as a separate dominion, but the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act in 1927 reincorporated into the kingdom six Irish counties to officially create the current United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

* 1 Etymology

The country's name is derived from the Old English word Englaland, which literally translates as "land of the Angles". The Angles were one of the Germanic ruling elites who inserted monarchies in the area during the Early Middle Ages and created various petty kingdoms. The Angles in particular came from the Angeln peninsula, flanked on either side by the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.[14] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known usage of "England" referring to the southern part of the island of Great Britain was in 897, with the modern spelling first used in 1538.[15] The earliest attested mention of the term in general, is by Tacitus in his 1st century work Germania, where the Latin word Anglii is used.[16] The etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars; it has been suggested it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape.[17]

Alternatively, in a more poetic capacity the name Albion has been applied to England,[18] though originally it was used to denote the entire island of Great Britain. The oldest mention of it is found in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically De Mundo from the 4th century.[19] Within the work it states, "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth. In it are two very large islands called Britannia; these are Albion and Ierne".[19] The word Albion (Ἀλβίων) or insula Albionum has two possible origins. It either derives from the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover, which is the first view of Britain from the European Continent.[20] An alternative origin is suggested by the ancient merchant's handbook Massaliote Periplus which mentions an "island of the Albiones".[21] Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh Lloegr and used in Arthurian legend...

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