Misplaced Pages

#474525

123-507: The 2,000 acre estate is surrounded by beech forests. Since 1969, Knuthenborg Safari Park has attracted large numbers of visitors who come to see some 40 species of exotic animals and birds as well as special attractions for children. First mentioned in 1372, Aarsmarke was owned by the Urne family from 1527. Under King Frederick III , Cornelius Pederson Lerche was granted ownership of the estate in 1667. In 1677, his daughter Sister Lerche married

246-489: A temperate climate , tempering winters and summers, on much of the continent. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable producing more continental climates . European culture consists of a range of national and regional cultures, which form the central roots of the wider Western civilisation , and together commonly reference ancient Greece and ancient Rome , particularly through their Christian successors , as crucial and shared roots. Beginning with

369-871: A German naturalist, Peter Simon Pallas , as a valley that once connected the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and subsequently was proposed as a natural boundary between continents. By the mid-19th century, there were three main conventions, one following the Don, the Volga–Don Canal and the Volga, the other following the Kuma–Manych Depression to the Caspian and then the Ural River, and the third abandoning

492-643: A Semitic term for west , this being either Akkadian erebu meaning 'to go down, set' (said of the sun) or Phoenician 'ereb 'evening, west', which is at the origin of Arabic maghreb and Hebrew ma'arav . Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor", while Beekes considers a connection to Semitic languages improbable. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to

615-651: A bitter, astringent, or in some cases, mild and nut-like taste. According to the Roman statesman Pliny the Elder in his work Natural History , beechnut was eaten by the people of Chios when the town was besieged, writing of the fruit: "that of the beech is the sweetest of all; so much so, that, according to Cornelius Alexander, the people of the city of Chios, when besieged, supported themselves wholly on mast". They can also be roasted and pulverized into an adequate coffee substitute . The leaves can be steeped in liquor to give

738-818: A boundary along the Terek and Kuban rivers, so southwards from the Kuma and the Manych, but still with the Caucasus entirely in Asia. However, most geographers in the Soviet Union favoured the boundary along the Caucasus crest, and this became the common convention in the later 20th century, although the Kuma–Manych boundary remained in use in some 20th-century maps. Some view the separation of Eurasia into Asia and Europe as

861-582: A common currency, the euro , and participate in the European single market and a customs union . A large bloc of countries, the Schengen Area , have also abolished internal border and immigration controls. Regular popular elections take place every five years within the EU; they are considered to be the second-largest democratic elections in the world after India's . The EU is the third-largest economy in

984-429: A decorative wood. The timber can be used to build chalets, houses, and log cabins. Beech wood is used for the stocks of military rifles when traditionally preferred woods such as walnut are scarce or unavailable or as a lower-cost alternative. The edible fruit of the beech tree, known as beechnuts or mast, is found in small burrs that drop from the tree in autumn. They are small, roughly triangular, and edible, with

1107-406: A large land mass completely or almost completely surrounded by water at its borders. Prior to the adoption of the current convention that includes mountain divides, the border between Europe and Asia had been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity , but always as a series of rivers, seas and straits that were believed to extend an unknown distance east and north from

1230-399: A letter of the alphabet) is буква ( bukva ), while Serbo-Croatian and Slovene use " bukva " to refer to the tree. The pigment bistre was made from beech wood soot . Beech litter raking as a replacement for straw in animal husbandry was an old non-timber practice in forest management that once occurred in parts of Switzerland in the 17th century. Beech has been listed as one of

1353-459: A light green/yellow liqueur. In antiquity, the bark of the beech tree was used by Indo-European people for writing-related purposes, especially in a religious context. Beech wood tablets were a common writing material in Germanic societies before the development of paper . The Old English bōc has the primary sense of "beech" but also a secondary sense of "book", and it is from bōc that

SECTION 10

#1732800873475

1476-490: A long history of cultivation, Bulgaria for example, do not exhibit this pattern, so how much human activity has influenced the spread of beech trees is as yet unclear. The primeval beech forests of the Carpathians are also an example of a singular, complete, and comprehensive forest dominated by a single tree species - the beech tree. Forest dynamics here were allowed to proceed without interruption or interference since

1599-687: A naturally growing forest tree, beech marks the important border between the European deciduous forest zone and the northern pine forest zone. This border is important for wildlife and fauna. In Denmark and Scania at the southernmost peak of the Scandinavian peninsula, southwest of the natural spruce boundary, it is the most common forest tree. It grows naturally in Denmark and southern Norway and Sweden up to about 57–59°N. The most northern known naturally growing (not planted) beech trees are found in

1722-763: A precise eastern boundary of Europe arises in the Early Modern period, as the eastern extension of Muscovy began to include North Asia . Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 18th century, the traditional division of the landmass of Eurasia into two continents, Europe and Asia, followed Ptolemy, with the boundary following the Turkish Straits , the Black Sea , the Kerch Strait , the Sea of Azov and

1845-711: A residue of Eurocentrism : "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass, not to a single European country. [...]." 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

1968-685: A result, the Reconquista took the greater part of eight hundred years, in which period a long list of Alfonsos, Sanchos, Ordoños, Ramiros, Fernandos, and Bermudos would be fighting their Christian rivals as much as the Muslim invaders. During the Dark Ages, the Western Roman Empire fell under the control of various tribes. The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over Western and Eastern Europe, respectively. Eventually

2091-789: A separate family, the Nothofagaceae (which remains a member of the order Fagales ). They are found throughout the Southern Hemisphere in Australia , New Zealand , New Guinea , New Caledonia , as well as Argentina and Chile (principally Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego ). Species treated in Denk et al. (2024) and listed in Plants of the World Online (POWO) : Erroneously synonymized by some authors (e.g. POWO) with

2214-560: A small grove north of Bergen on the west coast of Norway. Near the city of Larvik is the largest naturally occurring beech forest in Norway, Bøkeskogen . Some research suggests that early agriculture patterns supported the spread of beech in continental Europe. Research has linked the establishment of beech stands in Scandinavia and Germany with cultivation and fire disturbance, i.e. early agricultural practices. Other areas which have

2337-578: A substantially different nucleome (nuclear DNA) , especially in noncoding, highly variable gene regions such as the spacers of the nuclear-encoded ribosomal RNA genes (ribosomal DNA) . Further differentiating characteristics include the whitish bloom on the underside of the leaves, the visible tertiary leaf veins, and a long, smooth cupule-peduncle. Originally proposed but not formalized by botanist Chung-Fu Shen in 1992, this group comprised two Japanese species, F. japonica and F. okamotoi, and one Chinese species, F. engleriana . While

2460-440: A tone between those of maple and birch , the two most popular drum woods. The textile modal is a kind of rayon often made wholly from reconstituted cellulose of pulped beech wood. The European species Fagus sylvatica yields a tough, utility timber. It weighs about 720 kg per cubic metre and is widely used for furniture construction, flooring, and engineering purposes, in plywood and household items, but rarely as

2583-524: A utility timber used for furniture construction, flooring and engineering purposes, in plywood, and household items. The timber can be used to build homes. Beechwood makes excellent firewood . Slats of washed beech wood are spread around the bottom of fermentation tanks for Budweiser beer. Beech logs are burned to dry the malt used in some German smoked beers . Beech is also used to smoke Westphalian ham , andouille sausage, and some cheeses. Beeches are monoecious , bearing both male and female flowers on

SECTION 20

#1732800873475

2706-795: A variety of spine- to scale-like appendages, the character of which is, in addition to leaf shape, one of the primary ways beeches are differentiated. The nuts are called beechnuts or beech mast and have a bitter taste (though not nearly as bitter as acorns ) and a high tannin content. The most recent classification system of the genus recognizes 14 species in two distinct subgenera, subgenus Englerianae and Fagus . Beech species can be diagnosed by phenotypical and/or genotypical traits. Species of subgenus Engleriana are found only in East Asia, and are notably distinct from species of subgenus Fagus in that these beeches are low-branching trees, often made up of several major trunks with yellowish bark and

2829-674: A wall of granite, 7.2 kilometres (4.5 mi) in length, and 6.5 feet (2.0 m) in height. There are full records of the owners of Knuthenborg since the 14th century: 54°49′41″N 11°29′19″E  /  54.82806°N 11.48861°E  / 54.82806; 11.48861 Beech See text Beech ( Fagus ) is a genus of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae , native to subtropical (accessory forest element) and temperate (as dominant element of mesophytic forests) Eurasia and North America . There are 14 accepted species in two distinct subgenera, Englerianae Denk & G.W.Grimm and Fagus . The subgenus Englerianae

2952-401: Is also evidence that Homo sapiens arrived in Europe around 54,000 years ago, some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. The earliest sites in Europe dated 48,000 years ago are Riparo Mochi (Italy), Geissenklösterle (Germany) and Isturitz (France). The European Neolithic period—marked by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock, increased numbers of settlements and

3075-488: Is closest to Anatolia (or Asia Minor), but is considered part of Europe politically and it is a member state of the EU. Malta was considered an island of North-western Africa for centuries, but now it is considered to be part of Europe as well. "Europe", as used specifically in British English , may also refer to Continental Europe exclusively. The term "continent" usually implies the physical geography of

3198-756: Is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains , the Ural River , the Caspian Sea , the Greater Caucasus , the Black Sea , and the waterway of the Bosporus Strait . Europe covers about 10.18 million km (3.93 million sq mi), or 2% of Earth's surface (6.8% of land area), making it the second-smallest continent (using the seven-continent model ). Politically, Europe

3321-478: Is divided into about fifty sovereign states , of which Russia is the largest and most populous , spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 745 million (about 10% of the world population ) in 2021; the third-largest after Asia and Africa. The European climate is affected by warm Atlantic currents, such as the Gulf Stream , which produce

3444-415: Is found only in East Asia, distinctive for its low branches, often made up of several major trunks with yellowish bark. The better known species of subgenus Fagus are native to Europe , western and eastern Asia and eastern North America. They are high-branching trees with tall, stout trunks and smooth silver-grey bark. The European beech Fagus sylvatica is the most commonly cultivated species, yielding

3567-562: Is generally considered a transcontinental country divided entirely by water, while Russia and Kazakhstan are only partly divided by waterways. France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain are also transcontinental (or more properly, intercontinental, when oceans or large seas are involved) in that their main land areas are in Europe while pockets of their territories are located on other continents separated from Europe by large bodies of water. Spain, for example, has territories south of

3690-428: Is not planted much as an ornamental due to slower growth and less resistance to urban pollution. It most commonly occurs as an overstory component in the northern part of its range with sugar maple, transitioning to other forest types further south such as beech-magnolia. American beech is rarely encountered in developed areas except as a remnant of a forest that was cut down for land development. The dead brown leaves of

3813-550: Is sometimes considered to mark the end of antiquity; alternatively antiquity is considered to end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE; the closure of the pagan Platonic Academy of Athens in 529 CE; or the rise of Islam in the early 7th century CE. During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe. During

Knuthenborg - Misplaced Pages Continue

3936-422: Is somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent compared to any clear-cut definition of the term "continent". The current division of Eurasia into two continents now reflects East-West cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border between Europe and Asia does not follow any state boundaries and now only follows a few bodies of water. Turkey

4059-559: Is the most commonly cultivated, although few important differences are seen between species aside from detail elements such as leaf shape. The leaves of beech trees are entire or sparsely toothed, from 5–15 centimetres (2–6 inches) long and 4–10 cm (2–4 in) broad. The bark is smooth and light gray. The fruit is a small, sharply three-angled nut 10–15 mm ( 3 ⁄ 8 – 5 ⁄ 8  in) long, borne singly or in pairs in soft-spined husks 1.5–2.5 cm ( 5 ⁄ 8 –1 in) long, known as cupules. The husk can have

4182-459: Is the most elaborate building with many fireplaces and chimneys true to the English tradition. The imposing Godsforvalterboligen (Forest Superintendent's Residence) is accessed through the corner tower. Sibbern also built Maglemerporten, the majestic main gatehouse and porter's residence while Vilhelm Tvede (1826–1891) added the gatehouses at Snapind. It was Eggert Knuth (1838–1874) who called upon

4305-845: The Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century. From that time, the term designated the sphere of influence of the Western Church , as opposed to both the Eastern Orthodox churches and to the Islamic world . A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century, signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and Christian-Latin culture, defined partly in contrast with Byzantium and Islam , and limited to northern Iberia ,

4428-517: The Don (ancient Tanais ). But maps produced during the 16th to 18th centuries tended to differ in how to continue the boundary beyond the Don bend at Kalach-na-Donu (where it is closest to the Volga, now joined with it by the Volga–Don Canal ), into territory not described in any detail by the ancient geographers. Around 1715, Herman Moll produced a map showing the northern part of the Ob River and

4551-573: The European population at the time. The plague had a devastating effect on Europe's social structure; it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353). It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and led to increased persecution of Jews , beggars and lepers . The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until

4674-512: The Greeks and Phoenicians gave rise to early Mediterranean cities. Early Iron Age Italy and Greece from around the 8th century BCE gradually gave rise to historical Classical antiquity, whose beginning is sometimes dated to 776 BCE, the year of the first Olympic Games . Ancient Greece was the founding culture of Western civilisation. Western democratic and rationalist culture are often attributed to Ancient Greece. The Greek city-state,

4797-636: The Inquisition against heretics. In the Iberian Peninsula , the Reconquista concluded with the fall of Granada in 1492 , ending over seven centuries of Islamic rule in the south-western peninsula. In the east, a resurgent Byzantine Empire recaptured Crete and Cyprus from the Muslims, and reconquered the Balkans. Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe from the 9th to

4920-801: The Iron Curtain , with NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East . This divide ended with the Revolutions of 1989 , the fall of the Berlin Wall , and the dissolution of the Soviet Union , which allowed European integration to advance significantly. European integration is being advanced institutionally since 1948 with the founding of the Council of Europe , and significantly through

5043-733: The Irtysh River , a major tributary of the Ob, as components of a series of partly-joined waterways taking the boundary between Europe and Asia from the Turkish Straits, and the Don River all the way to the Arctic Ocean. In 1721, he produced a more up to date map that was easier to read. However, his proposal to adhere to major rivers as the line of demarcation was never taken up by other geographers who were beginning to move away from

Knuthenborg - Misplaced Pages Continue

5166-546: The Mediterranean Sea —namely, Ceuta and Melilla —which are parts of Africa and share a border with Morocco. According to the current convention, Georgia and Azerbaijan are transcontinental countries where waterways have been completely replaced by mountains as the divide between continents. The first recorded usage of Eurṓpē as a geographic term is in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo , in reference to

5289-708: The Megalithic Temples of Malta and Stonehenge , were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe. The modern native populations of Europe largely descend from three distinct lineages: Mesolithic hunter-gatherers , descended from populations associated with the Paleolithic Epigravettian culture; Neolithic Early European Farmers who migrated from Anatolia during the Neolithic Revolution 9,000 years ago; and Yamnaya Steppe herders who expanded into Europe from

5412-607: The Neandertal valley in Germany ) appeared in Europe 150,000 years ago (115,000 years ago it is found already in the territory of present-day Poland ) and disappeared from the fossil record about 40,000 years ago, with their final refuge being the Iberian Peninsula. The Neanderthals were supplanted by modern humans ( Cro-Magnons ), who seem to have appeared in Europe around 43,000 to 40,000 years ago. However, there

5535-655: The Pechenegs and the Cuman-Kipchaks , caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, and temporarily halted the expansion of the Rus' state to the south and east. Like many other parts of Eurasia , these territories were overrun by the Mongols . The invaders, who became known as Tatars , were mostly Turkic-speaking peoples under Mongol suzerainty. They established

5658-693: The Pontic–Caspian steppe of Ukraine and southern Russia in the context of Indo-European migrations 5,000 years ago. The European Bronze Age began c. 3200 BCE in Greece with the Minoan civilisation on Crete , the first advanced civilisation in Europe. The Minoans were followed by the Myceneans , who collapsed suddenly around 1200 BCE, ushering the European Iron Age . Iron Age colonisation by

5781-406: The Serbian Principality (later Kingdom and Empire ), and the Duchy of Croatia (later Kingdom of Croatia ). To the east, Kievan Rus' expanded from its capital in Kiev to become the largest state in Europe by the 10th century. In 988, Vladimir the Great adopted Orthodox Christianity as the religion of state. Further east, Volga Bulgaria became an Islamic state in the 10th century, but

5904-589: The cryptic sister species F. hayatae and F. pashanica ) , two pseudo-cryptic species in eastern North America ( F. grandifolia , F. mexicana ), and a species complex of at least four species ( F. caspica , F. hohenackeriana , F. orientalis , F. sylvatica ) in Western Eurasia . Their genetics are highly complex and include both species-unique alleles as well as alleles and ribosomal DNA spacers that are shared between two or more species. The western Eurasian species are characterized by morphological and genetical gradients. Research suggests that

6027-426: The decline of the Roman Empire , Europe entered a long period of change arising from what historians call the " Age of Migrations ". There were numerous invasions and migrations amongst the Ostrogoths , Visigoths , Goths , Vandals , Huns , Franks , Angles , Saxons , Slavs , Avars , Bulgars , Vikings , Pechenegs , Cumans , and Magyars . Renaissance thinkers such as Petrarch would later refer to this as

6150-465: The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, Christian consolidation of Europe in the wake of the Migration Period marked the European post-classical Middle Ages . The Italian Renaissance spread in the continent a new humanist interest in art and science which led to the modern era . Since the Age of Discovery , led by Spain and Portugal , Europe played a predominant role in global affairs with multiple explorations and conquests around

6273-432: The last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. Earth is currently in an interglacial period of the Quaternary, called the Holocene . Homo erectus georgicus , which lived roughly 1.8 million years ago in Georgia , is the earliest hominin to have been discovered in Europe. Other hominin remains, dating back roughly 1 million years, have been discovered in Atapuerca , Spain . Neanderthal man (named after

SECTION 50

#1732800873475

6396-517: The polis , was the fundamental political unit of classical Greece. In 508 BCE, Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens . The Greek political ideals were rediscovered in the late 18th century by European philosophers and idealists. Greece also generated many cultural contributions: in philosophy , humanism and rationalism under Aristotle , Socrates and Plato ; in history with Herodotus and Thucydides ; in dramatic and narrative verse, starting with

6519-402: The "Dark Ages". Isolated monastic communities were the only places to safeguard and compile written knowledge accumulated previously; apart from this, very few written records survive. Much literature, philosophy, mathematics, and other thinking from the classical period disappeared from Western Europe, though they were preserved in the east, in the Byzantine Empire. While the Roman empire in

6642-461: The 12th centuries, with a population of approximately 400,000. The Empire was weakened following the defeat at Manzikert , and was weakened considerably by the sack of Constantinople in 1204 , during the Fourth Crusade . Although it would recover Constantinople in 1261, Byzantium fell in 1453 when Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Empire . In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as

6765-401: The 12th to the 15th centuries, the Grand Duchy of Moscow grew from a small principality under Mongol rule to the largest state in Europe, overthrowing the Mongols in 1480, and eventually becoming the Tsardom of Russia . The state was consolidated under Ivan III the Great and Ivan the Terrible , steadily expanding to the east and south over the next centuries. The Great Famine of 1315–1317

6888-444: The 18th century. During this period, more than 100 plague epidemics swept across Europe. The Renaissance was a period of cultural change originating in Florence , and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The rise of a new humanism was accompanied by the recovery of forgotten classical Greek and Arabic knowledge from monastic libraries, often translated from Arabic into Latin . The Renaissance spread across Europe between

7011-468: The 38 plants whose flowers are used to prepare Bach flower remedies . Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere . It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east. Europe shares the landmass of Eurasia with Asia, and of Afro-Eurasia with both Asia and Africa . Europe

7134-400: The 50 years of peace that followed are known as Golden Age of Athens , the seminal period of ancient Greece that laid many of the foundations of Western civilisation. Greece was followed by Rome , which left its mark on law , politics , language , engineering , architecture , government , and many more key aspects in western civilisation. By 200 BCE, Rome had conquered Italy and over

7257-525: The American beech remain on the branches until well into the following spring, when the new buds finally push them off. East Asia is home to eight species of Fagus , only one of which ( F. crenata ) is occasionally planted in Western countries. Smaller than F. sylvatica and F. grandifolia , this beech is one of the most common hardwoods in its native range. Beech grows on a wide range of soil types, acidic or basic, provided they are not waterlogged. The tree canopy casts dense shade and thickens

7380-421: The British Isles, France, Christianised western Germany, the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy. The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian Renaissance : Europa often figures in the letters of Charlemagne's court scholar, Alcuin . The transition of Europe to being a cultural term as well as a geographic one led to the borders of Europe being affected by cultural considerations in

7503-448: The Crimean F. × taurica, from which it differs morphologically and genetically. Numerous species have been named globally from the fossil record spanning from the Cretaceous to the Pleistocene . Fossil species formerly placed in Fagus include: The name of the tree in Latin, fagus (from whence the generic epithet ), is cognate with English "beech" and of Indo-European origin, and played an important role in early debates on

SECTION 60

#1732800873475

7626-448: The Don altogether, following the Greater Caucasus watershed to the Caspian. The question was still treated as a "controversy" in geographical literature of the 1860s, with Douglas Freshfield advocating the Caucasus crest boundary as the "best possible", citing support from various "modern geographers". In Russia and the Soviet Union , the boundary along the Kuma–Manych Depression was the most commonly used as early as 1906. In 1958,

7749-427: The Early Middle Ages, and soon spread throughout Europe. A struggle for influence between the nobility and the monarchy in England led to the writing of Magna Carta and the establishment of a parliament . The primary source of culture in this period came from the Roman Catholic Church . Through monasteries and cathedral schools , the Church was responsible for education in much of Europe. The Papacy reached

7872-452: The East, especially relating to areas under Byzantine, Ottoman, and Russian influence. Such questions were affected by the positive connotations associated with the term Europe by its users. Such cultural considerations were not applied to the Americas, despite their conquest and settlement by European states. Instead, the concept of "Western civilization" emerged as a way of grouping together Europe and these colonies. The question of defining

7995-414: The English landscape architect Edward Milner to lay out the park in the late 1860s, creating artificial lakes fed by streams running through the estate. During his travels to England, Knuth visited nurseries where he purchased rare trees, plants and seeds which he sent back to his estate. Nils Stenson was then working as the Chief Landscape Gardener to the Count of Kunthenborg. His son, Herman Stenson , who

8118-421: The Frankish tribes were united under Clovis I . Charlemagne , a Frankish king of the Carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed " Holy Roman Emperor " by the Pope in 800. This led in 962 to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire , which eventually became centred in the German principalities of central Europe. East Central Europe saw the creation of the first Slavic states and

8241-404: The Great 's efforts to make Russia more European, ignored the whole boundary question with his claim that neither Russia, Scandinavia, northern Germany, nor Poland were fully part of Europe. Since then, many modern analytical geographers like Halford Mackinder have declared that they see little validity in the Ural Mountains as a boundary between continents. The mapmakers continued to differ on

8364-427: The Levant and North Africa and making inroads into Asia Minor . In the mid-7th century, following the Muslim conquest of Persia , Islam penetrated into the Caucasus region. Over the next centuries Muslim forces took Cyprus , Malta , Crete , Sicily , and parts of southern Italy . Between 711 and 720, most of the lands of the Visigothic Kingdom of Iberia were brought under Muslim rule—save for small areas in

8487-455: The Mecklenburg nobleman Christoffer von Knuth who, on inheriting Aarsmarke, did much to improve it through extensions and increased prosperity. In 1714, their son Adam Christoffer von Knuth was elevated to the status of a count under Frederick IV which resulted in the change of name of the estate to Knuthenborg. An older residence was still standing when the current structure was under construction. Today's manor house, also known as Enkesædet,

8610-414: The Mediterranean Sea without the inclusion of any mountain ranges. Cartographer Herman Moll suggested in 1715 Europe was bounded by a series of partly-joined waterways directed towards the Turkish straits, and the Irtysh River draining into the upper part of the Ob River and the Arctic Ocean . In contrast, the present eastern boundary of Europe partially adheres to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, which

8733-433: The Soviet Geographical Society formally recommended that the boundary between the Europe and Asia be drawn in textbooks from Baydaratskaya Bay , on the Kara Sea , along the eastern foot of Ural Mountains, then following the Ural River until the Mugodzhar Hills , and then the Emba River ; and Kuma–Manych Depression, thus placing the Caucasus entirely in Asia and the Urals entirely in Europe. The Flora Europaea adopted

8856-509: The Tanais (the modern Don River) as the boundary. The Roman Empire did not attach a strong identity to the concept of continental divisions. However, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire , the culture that developed in its place , linked to Latin and the Catholic church, began to associate itself with the concept of "Europe". The term "Europe" is first used for a cultural sphere in

8979-496: The adoption of Christianity ( c. 1000 CE) . The powerful West Slavic state of Great Moravia spread its territory all the way south to the Balkans, reaching its largest territorial extent under Svatopluk I and causing a series of armed conflicts with East Francia . Further south, the first South Slavic states emerged in the late 7th and 8th century and adopted Christianity : the First Bulgarian Empire ,

9102-648: The basis of many modern legal systems, funded the construction of the Hagia Sophia and brought the Christian church under state control. From the 7th century onwards, as the Byzantines and neighbouring Sasanid Persians were severely weakened due to the protracted, centuries-lasting and frequent Byzantine–Sasanian wars , the Muslim Arabs began to make inroads into historically Roman territory, taking

9225-521: The bottom of fermentation tanks for Budweiser beer. This provides a complex surface on which the yeast can settle, so that it does not pile up, preventing yeast autolysis which would contribute off-flavours to the beer. Beech logs are burned to dry the malt used in German smoked beers . Beech is also used to smoke Westphalian ham , traditional andouille (an offal sausage) from Normandy, and some cheeses. Some drums are made from beech, which has

9348-563: The boundary between the lower Don and Samara well into the 19th century. The 1745 atlas published by the Russian Academy of Sciences has the boundary follow the Don beyond Kalach as far as Serafimovich before cutting north towards Arkhangelsk , while other 18th- to 19th-century mapmakers such as John Cary followed Strahlenberg's prescription. To the south, the Kuma–Manych Depression was identified c.  1773 by

9471-468: The continent The prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the east and north-east are usually taken to be the Ural Mountains , the Ural River , and the Caspian Sea ; to the south-east, the Caucasus Mountains , the Black Sea , and

9594-573: The continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu ( 歐洲 / 欧洲 ), which is an abbreviation of the transliterated name Ōuluóbā zhōu ( 歐羅巴洲 ) ( zhōu means "continent"); a similar Chinese-derived term Ōshū ( 欧州 ) is also sometimes used in Japanese such as in the Japanese name of the European Union, Ōshū Rengō ( 欧州連合 ) , despite the katakana Yōroppa ( ヨーロッパ ) being more commonly used. In some Turkic languages,

9717-640: The continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons; Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar , separating it from Northwest Africa , to the Don, separating it from Asia. The convention received by the Middle Ages and surviving into modern usage is that of the Roman era used by Roman-era authors such as Posidonius , Strabo , and Ptolemy , who took

9840-584: The development of major commercial routes along the coast of the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas . The growing wealth and independence acquired by some coastal cities gave the Maritime Republics a leading role in the European scene. The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two upper echelons of the social structure: the nobility and the clergy. Feudalism developed in France in

9963-578: The disease has become widespread in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and in portions of coastal New Hampshire and coastal and central Maine. The beech most commonly grown as an ornamental tree is the European beech ( Fagus sylvatica ), widely cultivated in North America as well as its native Europe. Many varieties are in cultivation, notably the weeping beech F. sylvatica 'Pendula', several varieties of copper or purple beech,

10086-821: The eastern United States and southeastern Canada, with a disjunct sister species in Mexico ( F. mexicana ). There are the only extant (surviving) Fagus species in the Western Hemisphere. Before the Pleistocene Ice Age, it is believed to have spanned the entire width of the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific but now is confined to the east of the Great Plains. F. grandifolia tolerates hotter climates than European species but

10209-718: The end of the 18th century, gave rise to radical economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe and eventually the wider world. Both world wars began and were fought to a great extent in Europe, contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence and competed over dominance in Europe and globally. The resulting Cold War divided Europe along

10332-590: The epic poems of Homer ; in drama with Sophocles and Euripides ; in medicine with Hippocrates and Galen ; and in science with Pythagoras , Euclid , and Archimedes . In the course of the 5th century BCE, several of the Greek city states would ultimately check the Achaemenid Persian advance in Europe through the Greco-Persian Wars , considered a pivotal moment in world history, as

10455-662: The exception of the Western Eurasian and North American species. Fagus is the first diverging lineage in the evolution of the Fagaceae family, which also includes oaks and chestnuts . The oldest fossils that can be assigned to the beech lineage are 81–82 million years old pollen from the Late Cretaceous of Wyoming , United States. The southern beeches (genus Nothofagus ) historically thought closely related to beeches, are treated as members of

10578-399: The fanciful ruin near the main entrance, typical of the follies in English gardens of the times. In 1926, the park was the first of its kind to be listed. As a result, it was opened to visitors and further developed, especially, with large displays of rhododendrons . In addition to beech, there are oak, poplar , and coniferous trees, and a Sequoia gigantea . The property is encircled by

10701-728: The fern-leaved beech F. sylvatica 'Asplenifolia', and the tricolour beech F. sylvatica 'Roseomarginata'. The columnar Dawyck beech ( F. sylvatica 'Dawyck') occurs in green, gold, and purple forms, named after Dawyck Botanic Garden in the Scottish Borders, one of the four garden sites of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh . Beech wood is an excellent firewood , easily split and burning for many hours with bright but calm flames. Slats of beech wood are washed in caustic soda to leach out any flavour or aroma characteristics and are spread around

10824-759: The first representatives of the modern-day genus were already present in the Paleocene of Arctic North America (western Greenland ) and quickly radiated across the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere , with a first diversity peak in the Miocene of northeastern Asia . The contemporary species are the product of past, repeated reticulate evolutionary processes ( outbreeding , introgression , hybridization ). As far as studied, heterozygosity and intragenomic variation are common in beech species, and their chloroplast genomes are nonspecific with

10947-584: The following two centuries it conquered Greece , Hispania ( Spain and Portugal ), the North African coast, much of the Middle East , Gaul ( France and Belgium ), and Britannia ( England and Wales ). Expanding from their base in central Italy beginning in the third century BCE, the Romans gradually expanded to eventually rule the entire Mediterranean basin and Western Europe by the turn of

11070-491: The geographical origins of the Indo-European people , the beech argument . Greek φηγός (figós) is from the same root, but the word was transferred to the oak tree (e.g. Iliad 16.767) as a result of the absence of beech trees in southern Greece . Fagus sylvatica was a late entrant to Great Britain after the last glaciation, and may have been restricted to basic soils in the south of England. Some suggest that it

11193-479: The ground with leaf litter . In North America, they can form beech-maple climax forests by partnering with the sugar maple . The beech blight aphid ( Grylloprociphilus imbricator ) is a common pest of American beech trees. Beeches are also used as food plants by some species of Lepidoptera . Beech bark is extremely thin and scars easily. Since the beech tree has such delicate bark, carvings, such as lovers' initials and other forms of graffiti, remain because

11316-651: The height of its power during the High Middle Ages. An East-West Schism in 1054 split the former Roman Empire religiously, with the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Catholic Church in the former Western Roman Empire. In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade against Muslims occupying Jerusalem and the Holy Land . In Europe itself, the Church organised

11439-509: The idea of water boundaries as the only legitimate divides between Europe and Asia. Four years later, in 1725, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg was the first to depart from the classical Don boundary. He drew a new line along the Volga , following the Volga north until the Samara Bend , along Obshchy Syrt (the drainage divide between the Volga and Ural Rivers ), then north and east along

11562-519: The last ice age. Nowadays, they are amongst the last pure beech forests in Europe to document the undisturbed postglacial repopulation of the species, which also includes the unbroken existence of typical animals and plants. These virgin beech forests and similar forests across 12 countries in continental Europe were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007. The American beech ( Fagus grandifolia ) occurs across much of

11685-596: The latter waterway to its source in the Ural Mountains . At this point he proposed that mountain ranges could be included as boundaries between continents as alternatives to nearby waterways. Accordingly, he drew the new boundary north along Ural Mountains rather than the nearby and parallel running Ob and Irtysh rivers. This was endorsed by the Russian Empire and introduced the convention that would eventually become commonly accepted. However, this did not come without criticism. Voltaire , writing in 1760 about Peter

11808-577: The millennium. The Roman Republic ended in 27 BCE, when Augustus proclaimed the Roman Empire . The two centuries that followed are known as the pax romana , a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity and political stability in most of Europe. The empire continued to expand under emperors such as Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius , who spent time on the Empire's northern border fighting Germanic , Pictish and Scottish tribes. Christianity

11931-429: The modern word derives. In modern German, the word for "book" is Buch, with Buche meaning "beech tree". In modern Dutch, the word for "book" is boek, with beuk meaning "beech tree". In Swedish, these words are the same, bok meaning both "beech tree" and "book". There is a similar relationship in some Slavic languages. In Russian and Bulgarian , the word for beech is бук ( buk ), while that for "letter" (as in

12054-710: The northwest ( Asturias ) and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees . This territory, under the Arabic name Al-Andalus , became part of the expanding Umayyad Caliphate . The unsuccessful second siege of Constantinople (717) weakened the Umayyad dynasty and reduced their prestige. The Umayyads were then defeated by the Frankish leader Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732, which ended their northward advance. In

12177-483: The originally Persian name Frangistan ("land of the Franks ") is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa . Clickable map of Europe, showing one of the most commonly used continental boundaries Key: blue : states which straddle the border between Europe and Asia ; green : countries not geographically in Europe, but closely associated with

12300-444: The poetry devoted to it. An alternative view is that of Robert Beekes , who has argued in favour of a pre-Indo-European origin for the name, explaining that a derivation from eurus would yield a different toponym than Europa. Beekes has located toponyms related to that of Europa in the territory of ancient Greece, and localities such as that of Europos in ancient Macedonia . There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to

12423-480: The realisation of the European Union (EU), which represents today the majority of Europe. The European Union is a supranational political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation and is based on a system of European treaties . The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. A majority of its members have adopted

12546-507: The remote regions of north-western Iberia and the middle Pyrenees the power of the Muslims in the south was scarcely felt. It was here that the foundations of the Christian kingdoms of Asturias , Leon , and Galicia were laid and from where the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula would start. However, no coordinated attempt would be made to drive the Moors out. The Christian kingdoms were mainly focused on their own internal power struggles. As

12669-455: The same plant. The small flowers are unisexual, the female flowers borne in pairs, the male flowers wind-pollinating catkins . They are produced in spring shortly after the new leaves appear. The fruit of the beech tree, known as beechnuts or mast, is found in small burrs that drop from the tree in autumn. They are small, roughly triangular, and edible, with a bitter, astringent, or mild and nut-like taste. The European beech ( Fagus sylvatica )

12792-535: The state of the Golden Horde with headquarters in Crimea, which later adopted Islam as a religion, and ruled over modern-day southern and central Russia for more than three centuries. After the collapse of Mongol dominions, the first Romanian states (principalities) emerged in the 14th century: Moldavia and Walachia . Previously, these territories were under the successive control of Pechenegs and Cumans. From

12915-745: The status of F. okamotoi remains uncertain, the most recent systematic treatment based on morphological and genetic data confirmed a third species, F. multinervis, endemic to Ulleungdo , a South Korean island in the Sea of Japan . The beeches of Ulleungdo have been traditionally treated as a subspecies of F. engleriana, to which they are phenotypically identical, or as a variety of F. japonica. The differ from their siblings by their unique nuclear and plastid genotypes. The better known subgenus Fagus beeches are high-branching with tall, stout trunks and smooth silver-gray bark. This group includes five extant species in continental and insular East Asia ( F. crenata , F. longipetiolata , F. lucida , and

13038-678: The tree is unable to heal itself. Beech bark disease is a fungal infection that attacks the American beech through damage caused by scale insects. Infection can lead to the death of the tree. Beech leaf disease is a disease that affects American beeches spread by the newly discovered nematode, Litylenchus crenatae mccannii . This disease was first discovered in Lake County, Ohio, in 2012 and has now spread to over 41 counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, Canada. As of 2024,

13161-407: The waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea . Islands are generally grouped with the nearest continental landmass, hence Iceland is considered to be part of Europe, while the nearby island of Greenland is usually assigned to North America , although politically belonging to Denmark. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural differences. Cyprus

13284-562: The west and the north, transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artifacts. In Western Europe the Neolithic period was characterised not by large agricultural settlements but by field monuments, such as causewayed enclosures , burial mounds and megalithic tombs . The Corded Ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic . During this period giant megalithic monuments, such as

13407-483: The west continued to decline, Roman traditions and the Roman state remained strong in the predominantly Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire , also known as the Byzantine Empire . During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. Emperor Justinian I presided over Constantinople's first golden age: he established a legal code that forms

13530-518: The western shore of the Aegean Sea . As a name for a part of the known world, it is first used in the 6th century BCE by Anaximander and Hecataeus . Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni River on the territory of Georgia ) in the Caucasus, a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE. Herodotus mentioned that

13653-739: The widespread use of pottery—began around 7000 BCE in Greece and the Balkans , probably influenced by earlier farming practices in Anatolia and the Near East . It spread from the Balkans along the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine ( Linear Pottery culture ), and along the Mediterranean coast ( Cardial culture ). Between 4500 and 3000 BCE, these central European neolithic cultures developed further to

13776-583: The world (according to Guinness World Records ) is the Meikleour Beech Hedge in Meikleour , Perth and Kinross , Scotland. Fagus sylvatica is one of the most common hardwood trees in north-central Europe, in France constituting alone about 15% of all nonconifers. The Balkans are also home to the lesser-known oriental beech ( F. orientalis ) and Crimean beech ( F. taurica ). As

13899-627: The world had been divided by unknown persons into three parts—Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa)—with the Nile and the Phasis forming their boundaries—though he also states that some considered the River Don , rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia. Europe's eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographer Strabo at the River Don. The Book of Jubilees described

14022-410: The world. The place name Evros was first used by the ancient Greeks to refer to their northernmost province, which bears the same name today. The principal river there – Evros (today's Maritsa ) – flows through the fertile valleys of Thrace , which itself was also called Europe, before the term meant the continent. In classical Greek mythology , Europa ( Ancient Greek : Εὐρώπη , Eurṓpē )

14145-700: The world. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers colonised at various times the Americas , almost all of Africa and Oceania , and the majority of Asia. The Age of Enlightenment , the French Revolution , and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally, politically, and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution , which began in Great Britain at

14268-422: Was legalised by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution . Constantine also permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the city of Byzantium (modern-day Istanbul ) which was renamed Constantinople in his honour in 330 CE. Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE, and in 391–392 CE the emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions. This

14391-461: Was a Phoenician princess. One view is that her name derives from the Ancient Greek elements εὐρύς ( eurús ) 'wide, broad', and ὤψ ( ōps , gen. ὠπός , ōpós ) 'eye, face, countenance', hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean 'wide-gazing' or 'broad of aspect'. Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and

14514-541: Was assisting his father as a young boy and grew up in the estate's Hunting pavilion, had also made very lovely drawings of the Kunthenborg palace and the garden. Eggert Knuth died in 1870 at the young age of 36, when the basic layout had been completed as can be seen from a relatively simple map dated 1881. Many of the finer details from Milner's original design were missing but today's garden nevertheless reflects his general concept. Adam V. Knuth who succeeded Eggert added

14637-688: Was built by the architect Henrik Steffens Sibbern in 1866 in the Victorian style and was extended in 1886. A tower of French design with a pointed spire crowns one of its corners. Several other interesting buildings on the estate were built by Sibbern in the 1860s and 1870s, all with distinct appearances and features. Egehuset (the Oak House) in the Swiss style looks a little like a Tyrolean chalet. Flinterhuset (the Flint House), built literally in flint,

14760-513: Was designated for its beech woodlands, which are believed to be on the western edge of their natural range in this steep limestone gorge. Beech is not native to Ireland; however, it was widely planted in the 18th century and can become a problem shading out the native woodland understory. Beech is widely planted for hedging and in deciduous woodlands, and mature, regenerating stands occur throughout mainland Britain at elevations below about 650 m (2,100 ft). The tallest and longest hedge in

14883-619: Was eventually absorbed into Russia several centuries later. The period between the year 1000 and 1250 is known as the High Middle Ages , followed by the Late Middle Ages until c. 1500. During the High Middle Ages the population of Europe experienced significant growth, culminating in the Renaissance of the 12th century . Economic growth, together with the lack of safety on the mainland trading routes, made possible

15006-403: Was introduced by Neolithic tribes who planted the trees for their edible nuts. The beech is classified as a native in the south of England and as a non-native in the north where it is often removed from 'native' woods. Large areas of the Chilterns are covered with beech woods, which are habitat to the common bluebell and other flora. The Cwm Clydach National Nature Reserve in southeast Wales

15129-495: Was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages. The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. The population of France was reduced by half. Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines, and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the same period. Europe was devastated in the mid-14th century by the Black Death , one of the most deadly pandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone—a third of

#474525