The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China is not a continuous wall but is a collection of short walls that often follow the crest of hills on the southern edge of the Mongolian plain. The Great Wall of China extends about 8,850 kilometers. A first set of walls, designed to keep Mongol nomads out of China, were built of earth and stones in wood frames during the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC).

Some additions and modifications were made to these simple walls over the next millennium but the major construction of the "modern" walls began in the Ming Dynasty (1388-1644 AD).

The Ming fortifications were established in new areas from the Qin walls. They were up to 7.6 m high, 4.6 to 9.1 m wide at the base, and from 2.7 to 3.7 m wide at the top (wide enough for marching troops or wagons). At regular intervals, guard stations and watch towers were established.

Since the Great Wall was discontinuous, Mongol invaders had no trouble breaching the wall by going around it, so the wall proved unsuccessful and was eventually abandoned. Additionally, a policy of mollification during the subsequent Ching Dynasty that sought to pacify the Mongol leaders through religious conversion also helped to limit the need for the wall.

Through Western contact with China from the 17th to 20th centuries, the legend of the Great Wall of China grew along with tourism to the wall. Restoration and rebuilding took place in the 20th century and in 1987 the Great Wall of China was made a World Heritage Site.

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu ("Old Peak") is a pre-Columbian 15th-century Inca site located 2,430 metres above sea level. Machu Picchu is located in the Cusco Region of Peru, South America. It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru. Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", it is perhaps the most familiar icon of the Inca World.

The Incas started building the "estate" around AD 1400, but abandoned it as an official site for the Inca rulers a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham. Since then, Machu Picchu has become an important tourist attraction. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of what the structures originally looked like. By 1976, thirty percent of Machu Picchu had been restored. Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the Intihuatana (Hitching post of the Sun), the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. These are located in what is known by archaeologists as the Sacred District of Machu Picchu.

Since the site was never known to the Spanish during their conquest, it is highly significant as a relatively intact cultural site. Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.

Mohenjodaro

The ruins of the huge city of Moenjodaro – built entirely of unbaked brick in the 3rd millennium B.C. – lie in the Indus valley. The acropolis, set on high embankments, the ramparts, and the lower town, which is laid out according to strict rules, provide evidence of an early system of town planning.

Mohenjodaro is the most ancient and best-preserved urban ruin on the Indian subcontinent, dating back to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, and exercised a considerable influence on the subsequent development of urbanization on the Indian peninsula.

The archaeological site is located on the right bank of the Indus River, 400 km from Karachi, in Pakistan's Sind Province. It flourished for about 800 years during the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. Centre of the Indus Civilization, one of the largest in the Old World, this 5,000-year-old city is the earliest manifestation of urbanization in South Asia. Its urban planning surpasses that of many other sites of the oriental civilizations that were to follow.

Mohenjodaro comprises two sectors: a stupa mound that rises in the western sector and, to the east, the lower city ruins spread out along the banks of the Indus. The acropolis, set on high embankments, the ramparts, and the lower town, which is laid out according to strict rules, provide evidence of an early system of town planning.

The stupa mound, built on a massive platform of mud brick, is composed of the ruins of several major structures - Great Bath, Great Granary, College Square and Pillared Hall - as well as a number of private homes. The extensive lower city is a complex of private and public houses, wells, shops and commercial buildings. These buildings are laid out along streets intersecting each other at right angles, in a highly orderly form of city planning that also incorporated important systems of sanitation and drainage.

Of this vast urban ruin of Moenjodaro, only about one-third has been reveal by excavation since 1922. The foundations of the site are threatened by saline action due to a rise of the water table of the Indus River. This was the subject of a UNESCO international campaign in the 1970s, which partially mitigated the attack on the prehistoric mud-brick buildings.

The Noun

A noun is a word used to refer to people, animals, objects, substances, states, events and feelings. Nouns can be a subject or an object of a verb, can be modified by an adjective and can take an article or determiner.

Types of Nouns

Proper nouns are the names of specific things, people, or places, such as John, France. They usually begin with a capital letter.

Common nouns are general names such as person, mansion, and book. They can be either concrete or abstract.

Concrete nouns refer to things which you can sense such as clock and telephone.

Abstract nouns refer to ideas or qualities such as liberty and truth.

Countable nouns refer to things which can be counted (can be singular or plural)

Uncountable nouns refer to some groups of countable nouns, substances, feelings and types of activity (can only be singular)

Noun Plurals

1.The general rule is to add "-s" to the noun in singular.

For example: book – books, house – houses, chair – chairs.

2.When the singular noun ends in -sh, -ch, -s, -ss, -x, -o we form their plural form by adding "-es".

For example: sandwich – sandwiches, brush – brushes, bus – buses, box – boxes, potato – potatoes.

3.When the singular noun ends in "y", we change the "y" for "i" and then add "-es" to form the plural form. But do not change the "y" for "ies" to form the plural when the singular noun ends in "y" preceded by a vowel.

For example: nappy – nappies, day – days, toy – toys.

4.When the singular noun ends in "f", we change the "f" for "v" and then add "-es" to form the plural form.

For example: thief – thieves, wife – wives, shelf – shelves.

5.There are many Irregular Nouns which do not form the plural in this way:

For example: woman – women, child – children, sheep – sheep, man – men, mouse – mice, tooth – teeth, goose – geese, foot – feet, ox – oxen.

6.These nouns have irregular plural forms. They often make their plurals according to the rules of the language they were taken from (e.g. Latin or Greek). Sometimes there is more than one plural form possible or these forms have different meanings.

For example: analysis – analyses, appendix – appendixes/appendices, axis – axes, basis – bases, cactus – cactuses/cacti, criterion – criteria, datum – data, diagnosis – diagnoses, index – indexes/indices, medium – mediums/media, oasis – oases, octopus – octopuses/octopi, phenomenon – phenomena, syllabus – syllabuses/syllabi, thesis – theses.

Possessive case

Nouns may take an " 's "("apostrophe s")or"Genitive marker"to indicate possession. If the noun already has an -s ending to mark the plural, then the genitive marker appears only as an apostrophe after the plural form.

For example: my girlfriend's brother, John's house, the Browns' house, the boys' pens.

Compound Nouns

A compound noun is a noun that is made with two or more words. Each compound noun acts as a single unit and can be modified by adjectives and other nouns. There are three forms for compound nouns: open or spaced – space between words (tennis shoe); hyphenated – hyphen between words (six-pack); closed or solid – no space or hyphen between words (bedroom).

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 1117