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83-692: Burney Mountain last erupted about 230,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch. It is composed of two craters, which open to the east. Burney Mountain is the largest Quaternary dome in the Cascade Volcanic Arc , containing a volume of about 9 km (2.2 cu mi). The eastern side of the mountain was burned in the Eiler Fire in 2014, ultimately destroying 21 structures and injuring 11 people, mostly in Hat Creek . This volcanology article

166-561: A Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered

249-635: A type section , Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP), for the upper Pleistocene/Holocene boundary ( i.e. the upper boundary). The proposed section is the North Greenland Ice Core Project ice core 75° 06' N 42° 18' W. The lower boundary of the Pleistocene Series is formally defined magnetostratigraphically as the base of the Matuyama (C2r) chronozone , isotopic stage 103. Above this point there are notable extinctions of

332-570: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,

415-585: A change from low-amplitude glacial cycles with a dominant periodicity of 41,000 years to asymmetric high-amplitude cycles dominated by a periodicity of 100,000 years. However, a 2020 study concluded that ice age terminations might have been influenced by obliquity since the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, which caused stronger summers in the Northern Hemisphere . Glaciation in the Pleistocene

498-460: A change was finally confirmed in 2009 by the International Union of Geological Sciences , the cutoff of the Pleistocene and the preceding Pliocene was regarded as being 1.806 million years Before Present (BP). Publications from earlier years may use either definition of the period. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of

581-574: A deviation from today's annual mean temperature, taken as zero. This sort of graph is based on another isotope ratio versus time. Ratios are converted to a percentage difference from the ratio found in standard mean ocean water (SMOW). The graph in either form appears as a waveform with overtones . One half of a period is a Marine isotopic stage (MIS). It indicates a glacial (below zero) or an interglacial (above zero). Overtones are stadials or interstadials. According to this evidence, Earth experienced 102 MIS stages beginning at about 2.588 Ma BP in

664-508: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

747-421: A few regions had been studied and the names were relatively few. Today the geologists of different nations are taking more of an interest in Pleistocene glaciology. As a consequence, the number of names is expanding rapidly and will continue to expand. Many of the advances and stadials remain unnamed. Also, the terrestrial evidence for some of them has been erased or obscured by larger ones, but evidence remains from

830-573: A lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and

913-400: A limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in the nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by

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996-453: A mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and a fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes ,

1079-456: A state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in the early 19th century that

1162-568: A team of Russian scientists in collaboration with Princeton University announced that they had brought two female nematodes frozen in permafrost , from around 42,000 years ago, back to life. The two nematodes, at the time, were the oldest confirmed living animals on the planet. The evolution of anatomically modern humans took place during the Pleistocene. At the beginning of the Pleistocene Paranthropus species were still present, as well as early human ancestors, but during

1245-508: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( / ˈ p l aɪ s t ə ˌ s iː n , - s t oʊ -/ PLY -stə-seen, -⁠stoh- ; referred to colloquially as the Ice Age ) is the geological epoch that lasted from c.  2.58 million to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations . Before

1328-717: Is estimated that, at maximum glacial extent, 30% of the Earth's surface was covered by ice. In addition, a zone of permafrost stretched southward from the edge of the glacial sheet, a few hundred kilometres in North America , and several hundred in Eurasia . The mean annual temperature at the edge of the ice was −6 °C (21 °F); at the edge of the permafrost, 0 °C (32 °F). Each glacial advance tied up huge volumes of water in continental ice sheets 1,500 to 3,000 metres (4,900–9,800 ft) thick, resulting in temporary sea-level drops of 100 metres (300 ft) or more over

1411-659: Is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek

1494-454: Is no systematic correspondence between pluvials to glacials, however. Moreover, regional pluvials do not correspond to each other globally. For example, some have used the term "Riss pluvial" in Egyptian contexts. Any coincidence is an accident of regional factors. Only a few of the names for pluvials in restricted regions have been stratigraphically defined. The sum of transient factors acting at

1577-758: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,

1660-611: Is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near the Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in

1743-638: The Alpine ice sheet on the Alps . Scattered domes stretched across Siberia and the Arctic shelf. The northern seas were ice-covered. South of the ice sheets large lakes accumulated because outlets were blocked and the cooler air slowed evaporation. When the Laurentide Ice Sheet retreated, north-central North America was completely covered by Lake Agassiz . Over a hundred basins, now dry or nearly so, were overflowing in

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1826-544: The British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in

1909-637: The European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek

1992-510: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as

2075-531: The Paleolithic age used in archaeology . The name is a combination of Ancient Greek πλεῖστος ( pleîstos ) 'most' and καινός ( kainós ; Latinized as cænus ) 'new'. At the end of the preceding Pliocene, the previously isolated North and South American continents were joined by the Isthmus of Panama , causing a faunal interchange between the two regions and changing ocean circulation patterns, with

2158-635: The Ruwenzori Range in east and central Africa were larger. Glaciers existed in the mountains of Ethiopia and to the west in the Atlas Mountains . In the northern hemisphere, many glaciers fused into one. The Cordilleran Ice Sheet covered the North American northwest; the east was covered by the Laurentide . The Fenno-Scandian ice sheet rested on northern Europe , including much of Great Britain;

2241-633: The United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout the Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to

2324-437: The calcareous nannofossils : Discoaster pentaradiatus and Discoaster surculus . The Pleistocene covers the recent period of repeated glaciations. The name Plio-Pleistocene has, in the past, been used to mean the last ice age. Formerly, the boundary between the two epochs was drawn at the time when the foraminiferal species Hyalinea baltica first appeared in the marine section at La Castella, Calabria, Italy. However,

2407-468: The genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in the ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in

2490-477: The last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. Over 11 major glacial events have been identified, as well as many minor glacial events. A major glacial event is a general glacial excursion, termed a "glacial." Glacials are separated by "interglacials". During a glacial, the glacier experiences minor advances and retreats. The minor excursion is a "stadial"; times between stadials are "interstadials". These events are defined differently in different regions of

2573-417: The syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow the noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However,

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2656-588: The woolly rhinoceros , various giraffids , such as the Sivatherium ; ground sloths , Irish elk , cave lions , cave bears , Gomphotheres , American lions , dire wolves , and short-faced bears , began late in the Pleistocene and continued into the Holocene. Neanderthals also became extinct during this period. At the end of the last ice age, cold-blooded animals, smaller mammals like wood mice , migratory birds, and swifter animals like whitetail deer had replaced

2739-640: The "Tarantian"). In addition to these international subdivisions, various regional subdivisions are often used. In 2009 the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) confirmed a change in time period for the Pleistocene, changing the start date from 1.806 to 2.588 million years BP, and accepted the base of the Gelasian as the base of the Pleistocene, namely the base of the Monte San Nicola GSSP . The start date has now been rounded down to 2.580 million years BP. The IUGS has yet to approve

2822-566: The 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

2905-558: The Early Pleistocene Gelasian . Early Pleistocene stages were shallow and frequent. The latest were the most intense and most widely spaced. By convention, stages are numbered from the Holocene, which is MIS1. Glacials receive an even number and interglacials receive an odd number. The first major glacial was MIS2-4 at about 85–11 ka BP. The largest glacials were 2, 6, 12, and 16. The warmest interglacials were 1, 5, 9 and 11. For matching of MIS numbers to named stages, see under

2988-409: The Earth's surface is cyclical: climate, ocean currents and other movements, wind currents, temperature, etc. The waveform response comes from the underlying cyclical motions of the planet, which eventually drag all the transients into harmony with them. The repeated glaciations of the Pleistocene were caused by the same factors. The Mid-Pleistocene Transition , approximately one million years ago, saw

3071-538: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

3154-540: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

3237-479: The North American west. Lake Bonneville , for example, stood where Great Salt Lake now does. In Eurasia, large lakes developed as a result of the runoff from the glaciers. Rivers were larger, had a more copious flow, and were braided . African lakes were fuller, apparently from decreased evaporation. Deserts, on the other hand, were drier and more extensive. Rainfall was lower because of the decreases in oceanic and other evaporation. It has been estimated that during

3320-490: The Pleistocene's overall climate could be characterised as a continuous El Niño with trade winds in the south Pacific weakening or heading east, warm air rising near Peru , warm water spreading from the west Pacific and the Indian Ocean to the east Pacific, and other El Niño markers. Pleistocene climate was marked by repeated glacial cycles in which continental glaciers pushed to the 40th parallel in some places. It

3403-782: The Pleistocene, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet thinned by at least 500 meters, and that thinning since the Last Glacial Maximum is less than 50 meters and probably started after ca 14 ka. During the 2.5 million years of the Pleistocene, numerous cold phases called glacials ( Quaternary ice age ), or significant advances of continental ice sheets, in Europe and North America, occurred at intervals of approximately 40,000 to 100,000 years. The long glacial periods were separated by more temperate and shorter interglacials which lasted about 10,000–15,000 years. The last cold episode of

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3486-411: The Pleistocene, the plates upon which they sit probably having moved no more than 100 km (62 mi) relative to each other since the beginning of the period. In glacial periods, the sea level would drop by up to 120 m (390 ft) lower than today during peak glaciation, exposing large areas of the present continental shelf as dry land. According to Mark Lynas (through collected data),

3569-620: The Pleistocene. The climate was strongly variable depending on the glacial cycle, with the sea levels being up to 120 metres (390 ft) lower than present at peak glaciation, allowing the connection of Asia and North America via Beringia and the covering of most of northern North America by the Laurentide Ice Sheet . Charles Lyell introduced the term "Pleistocene" in 1839 to describe strata in Sicily that had at least 70% of their molluscan fauna still living today. This distinguished it from

3652-525: The Younger Dryas is the official start of the current Holocene Epoch . Although it is considered an epoch, the Holocene is not significantly different from previous interglacial intervals within the Pleistocene. In the ICS timescale, the Pleistocene is divided into four stages or ages , the Gelasian , Calabrian , Chibanian (previously the unofficial "Middle Pleistocene"), and Upper Pleistocene (unofficially

3735-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),

3818-687: The appearance of Homo sapiens about 300,000 years ago. Artifacts associated with modern human behavior are unambiguously attested starting 40,000–50,000 years ago. According to mitochondrial timing techniques, modern humans migrated from Africa after the Riss glaciation in the Middle Palaeolithic during the Eemian Stage , spreading all over the ice-free world during the late Pleistocene. A 2005 study posits that humans in this migration interbred with archaic human forms already outside of Africa by

3901-474: The arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During the older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from

3984-515: The articles for those names. Both marine and continental faunas were essentially modern but with many more large land mammals such as Mammoths , Mastodons , Diprotodons , Smilodons , tigers , lions , Aurochs , short-faced bears , giant sloths , species within Gigantopithecus and others. Isolated landmasses such as Australia , Madagascar , New Zealand and islands in the Pacific saw

4067-527: The climate variation more extreme. The Late Pleistocene witnessed the spread of modern humans outside of Africa as well as the extinction of all other human species. Humans also spread to the Australian continent and the Americas for the first time, co-incident with the extinction of most large-bodied animals in these regions. The aridification and cooling trends of the preceding Neogene were continued in

4150-765: The country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine ,

4233-441: The dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before

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4316-528: The earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of the Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of

4399-606: The entire surface of the Earth. During interglacial times, such as at present, drowned coastlines were common, mitigated by isostatic or other emergent motion of some regions. The effects of glaciation were global. Antarctica was ice-bound throughout the Pleistocene as well as the preceding Pliocene. The Andes were covered in the south by the Patagonian ice cap. There were glaciers in New Zealand and Tasmania . The current decaying glaciers of Mount Kenya , Mount Kilimanjaro , and

4482-772: The evolution of large birds and even reptiles such as the Elephant bird , moa , Haast's eagle , Quinkana , Megalania and Meiolania . The severe climatic changes during the Ice Age had major impacts on the fauna and flora. With each advance of the ice, large areas of the continents became depopulated, and plants and animals retreating southwards in front of the advancing glacier faced tremendous stress. The most severe stress resulted from drastic climatic changes, reduced living space, and curtailed food supply. A major extinction event of large mammals ( megafauna ), which included mammoths , mastodons , saber-toothed cats , glyptodons ,

4565-412: The extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English

4648-414: The glacial range, which have their own glacial history depending on latitude, terrain and climate. There is a general correspondence between glacials in different regions. Investigators often interchange the names if the glacial geology of a region is in the process of being defined. However, it is generally incorrect to apply the name of a glacial in one region to another. For most of the 20th century, only

4731-450: The historical terminology was established. Corresponding to the terms glacial and interglacial, the terms pluvial and interpluvial are in use (Latin: pluvia , rain). A pluvial is a warmer period of increased rainfall; an interpluvial is of decreased rainfall. Formerly a pluvial was thought to correspond to a glacial in regions not iced, and in some cases it does. Rainfall is cyclical also. Pluvials and interpluvials are widespread. There

4814-449: The language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to the modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows

4897-613: The large amounts of material moved about by glaciers. Less common are cave deposits, travertines and volcanic deposits (lavas, ashes). Pleistocene marine deposits are found primarily in shallow marine basins mostly (but with important exceptions) in areas within a few tens of kilometres of the modern shoreline. In a few geologically active areas such as the Southern California coast, Pleistocene marine deposits may be found at elevations of several hundred metres. The modern continents were essentially at their present positions during

4980-463: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

5063-432: The late Pleistocene, incorporating archaic human genetic material into the modern human gene pool. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It

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5146-466: The lower Palaeolithic they disappeared, and the only hominin species found in fossilic records is Homo erectus for much of the Pleistocene. Acheulean lithics appear along with Homo erectus , some 1.8 million years ago, replacing the more primitive Oldowan industry used by A. garhi and by the earliest species of Homo . The Middle Paleolithic saw more varied speciation within Homo , including

5229-448: The many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is

5312-478: The megafauna and migrated north. Late Pleistocene bighorn sheep were more slender and had longer legs than their descendants today. Scientists believe that the change in predator fauna after the late Pleistocene extinctions resulted in a change of body shape as the species adapted for increased power rather than speed. The extinctions hardly affected Africa but were especially severe in North America where native horses and camels were wiped out. In July 2018,

5395-465: The morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks the infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of

5478-530: The older Pliocene Epoch , which Lyell had originally thought to be the youngest fossil rock layer. He constructed the name "Pleistocene" ('most new' or 'newest') from the Greek πλεῖστος ( pleīstos ) 'most' and καινός ( kainós ( Latinized as cænus ) 'new'). This contrasts with the immediately preceding Pliocene ("newer", from πλείων ( pleíōn , "more") and kainós ) and the immediately subsequent Holocene ("wholly new" or "entirely new", from ὅλος ( hólos , "whole") and kainós ) epoch , which extends to

5561-668: The onset of glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere occurring around 2.7 million years ago. During the Early Pleistocene (2.58–0.8 Ma), archaic humans of the genus Homo originated in Africa and spread throughout Afro-Eurasia . The end of the Early Pleistocene is marked by the Mid-Pleistocene Transition , with the cyclicity of glacial cycles changing from 41,000-year cycles to asymmetric 100,000-year cycles, making

5644-458: The present time. The Pleistocene has been dated from 2.580 million (±0.005) to 11,700 years BP with the end date expressed in radiocarbon years as 10,000 carbon-14 years BP. It covers most of the latest period of repeated glaciation , up to and including the Younger Dryas cold spell. The end of the Younger Dryas has been dated to about 9700 BCE (11,700 calendar years BP). The end of

5727-417: The ratio of O to O (two isotopes of oxygen ) by mass (measured by a mass spectrometer ) present in the calcite of oceanic core samples is used as a diagnostic of ancient ocean temperature change and therefore of climate change. Cold oceans are richer in O , which is included in the tests of the microorganisms ( foraminifera ) contributing the calcite. A more recent version of

5810-622: The regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of

5893-512: The revised definition of the Quaternary , by pushing back the start date of the Pleistocene to 2.58 Ma, results in the inclusion of all the recent repeated glaciations within the Pleistocene. Radiocarbon dating is considered to be inaccurate beyond around 50,000 years ago. Marine isotope stages (MIS) derived from Oxygen isotopes are often used for giving approximate dates. Pleistocene non-marine sediments are found primarily in fluvial deposits , lakebeds, slope and loess deposits as well as in

5976-407: The sampling process makes use of modern glacial ice cores. Although less rich in O than seawater, the snow that fell on the glacier year by year nevertheless contained O and O in a ratio that depended on the mean annual temperature. Temperature and climate change are cyclical when plotted on a graph of temperature versus time. Temperature coordinates are given in the form of

6059-632: The sole factor responsible for the variations in climate since they explain neither the long-term cooling trend over the Plio-Pleistocene nor the millennial variations in the Greenland Ice Cores known as Dansgaard-Oeschger events and Heinrich events. Milankovitch pacing seems to best explain glaciation events with periodicity of 100,000, 40,000, and 20,000 years. Such a pattern seems to fit the information on climate change found in oxygen isotope cores. In oxygen isotope ratio analysis, variations in

6142-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of

6225-421: The study of cyclical climate changes. The glacials in the following tables show historical usages, are a simplification of a much more complex cycle of variation in climate and terrain, and are generally no longer used. These names have been abandoned in favour of numeric data because many of the correlations were found to be either inexact or incorrect and more than four major glacials have been recognised since

6308-568: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or

6391-543: Was a series of glacials and interglacials, stadials and interstadials, mirroring periodic climate changes. The main factor at work in climate cycling is now believed to be Milankovitch cycles . These are periodic variations in regional and planetary solar radiation reaching the Earth caused by several repeating changes in the Earth's motion. The effects of Milankovitch cycles were enhanced by various positive feedbacks related to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and Earth's albedo. Milankovitch cycles cannot be

6474-546: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe

6557-541: Was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and

6640-480: Was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in

6723-566: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect

6806-637: Was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to

6889-653: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

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