text:
Francis Pegahmagabow

Francis Pegahmagabow MM & two bars (March 9, 1891 – August 5, 1952) was an Ojibwe soldier, politician and activist in Canada. He was the most highly decorated Indigenous soldier in Canadian military history and the most effective sniper of the First World War. Three times awarded the Military Medal and seriously wounded, he was an expert marksman and scout, credited with killing 378 Germans and capturing 300 more. Later in life, he served as chief and a councillor for the Wasauksing First Nation, and as an activist and leader in several First Nations organizations. He corresponded with and met other noted aboriginal figures including Fred Loft, Jules Sioui, Andrew Paull and John Tootoosis.

Early life
Francis Pegahmagabow was born on March 9, 1891, on what is now the Shawanaga First Nation reserve in Nobel, Ontario. In Ojibwe his name was Binaaswi ("the wind that blows off"). When Francis was three years old, his father died and his mother subsequently left him to return to her home in the Henvey Inlet First Nation. He was raised by elder Noah Nebimanyquod and grew up in Shawanaga, where he learned traditional skills such as hunting, fishing, and traditional medicine. Pegahmagabow practiced a mix of Catholicism and Anishinaabe spirituality.

In January 1912 Pegahmagabow received financial aid for room and board to complete his public school education with the help of the Parry Sound Crown attorney Walter Lockwood Haight. He had left school at the age of 12 and worked at lumber camps and fishing camps; he eventually became a marine firefighter.

Military career
Following the outbreak of World War I, Pegahmagabow volunteered for service with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in August 1914, despite Canadian government discrimination that initially excluded minorities. He was posted to the 23rd Canadian Regiment (Northern Pioneers). After joining the Canadian force he was based at CFB Valcartier. While there he decorated his army tent with traditional symbols including a Caribou, the symbol of his clan. In early October 1914 he was deployed overseas with the 1st Canadian Infantry Battalion of the 1st Canadian Division—the first contingent of Canadian troops sent to fight in Europe. His companions there nicknamed him "Peggy".

In April 1915, Pegahmagabow fought in the Second Battle of Ypres, where the Germans used chlorine gas for the first time on the Western Front; it was during this battle that he began to establish a reputation as a sniper and scout. Following the battle he was promoted to lance corporal. His battalion took part in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, during which he was wounded in the left leg. He recovered in time to return to the 1st Battalion as they moved to Belgium. He received the Military Medal for carrying messages along the lines during these two battles. Initially, his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Albert Creighton, had nominated him for the Distinguished Conduct Medal, citing his disregard for danger and "faithfulness to duty", but it was downgraded.

On November 6/7, 1917, Pegahmagabow earned a Bar to his Military Medal for his actions in the Second Battle of Passchendaele. During the fighting, Pegahmagabow's battalion was given the task of launching an attack at Passchendaele. By this time, he had been promoted to the rank of corporal and during the battle he was recorded playing an important role as a link between the units on the 1st Battalion's flank. When the battalion's reinforcements became lost, Pegahmagabow was instrumental in guiding them and ensuring that they reached their allocated spot in the line.

On August 30, 1918, during the Battle of the Scarpe, Pegahmagabow was involved in fighting off a German attack at Orix Trench near Upton Wood. His company was almost out of ammunition and in danger of being surrounded. Pegahmagabow braved heavy machine gun and rifle fire by going into no man's land and brought back enough ammunition to enable his post to carry on and assist in repulsing heavy enemy counter-attacks. For these efforts he received a second Bar to his Military Medal, becoming one of only 39 Canadians to receive this honour.

The war ended in November 1918 and in 1919 Pegahmagabow was invalided back to Canada. He had served for almost the whole war, and had built a reputation as a skilled marksman. Using the much-maligned Ross rifle, he was credited with killing 378 Germans and capturing 300 more. By the time of his discharge, he had served in the appointment of sergeant-major and had been awarded the 1914–15 Star, the British War Medal, and the Victory Medal.

Political life

Upon his return to Canada he continued to serve in the Canadian Militia as a member of The Northern Pioneers (known today as the Algonquin Regiment) as a non-permanent active member. Following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps, he was elected chief of the Parry Island Band from February 1921. Once in office he caused a schism in the band after he wrote a letter calling for certain individuals and those of mixed race to be expelled from the reserve. He was re-elected in 1924 and served until he was deposed via an internal power struggle in April 1925. Before the motion could go through, Pegahmagabow resigned. A decade later, he was appointed councillor from 1933 to 1936. In 1933 the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) changed its policies and forbade First Nation chiefs from corresponding with the DIA. They directed that all correspondence, as of the spring of 1933, go through the Indian agent. This gave huge power to the agent, something that grated on Pegahmagabow as he did not get along with his own agent, John Daly. First Nation members who served in the army during World War I were particularly active as political activists. They had travelled the world, earned the respect of the comrades in the trenches, and refused to be sidelined by the newly empowered Indian agent. Historian Paul Williams termed these advocates "returned soldier chiefs", and singled out a few, including Pegahmagabow, as being especially active. This caused intense disagreements with Daly and eventually led to Pegahmagabow being deposed as chief. Daly and other agents who came in contact with Pegahmagabow were incredibly frustrated by his attempts, in his words, to free his people from "white slavery". The Indian agents labelled him a "mental case" and strove to sideline him and his supporters.

In addition to the power struggle between the Indian council and the DIA with which Pegahmagabow took issue, he was a constant agitator over the islands in Georgian Bay of the Huron. The Regional First Nation governments claimed the islands as their own and Pegahmagabow and other chiefs tried in vain to get recognition of their status.

During World War II Pegahmagabow worked as a guard at a munitions plant near Nobel, Ontario, and was a Sergeant-major in the local militia. In 1943, he became the Supreme Chief of the Native Independent Government, an early First Nations organization.

Family
A married father of six children, Pegahmagabow died on the Parry Island reserve in 1952 at the age of 61. He is a member of the Indian Hall of Fame at the Woodland Centre in Brantford, Ontario, and his memory is also commemorated on a plaque honoring him and his regiment on the Rotary and Algonquin Regiment Fitness Trail in Parry Sound. He was honored by the Canadian Forces by naming the 3rd Canadian Ranger Patrol Group HQ Building at CFB Borden after him.

Legacy
Canadian journalist Adrian Hayes wrote a biography of Pegahmagabow titled Pegahmagabow: Legendary Warrior, Forgotten Hero, published in 2003, and another titled Pegahmagabow: Life-Long Warrior, published in 2009. Canadian novelist Joseph Boyden's 2005 novel Three Day Road was inspired in part by Pegahmagabow. The novel's protagonist is a fictional character who, like Pegahmagabow, serves as a military sniper during World War I, although Pegahmagabow also appears as a minor character.

A life-sized bronze statue of Pegahmagabow was erected in his honour on National Aboriginal Day, June 21, 2016, in Parry Sound, near Georgian Bay. The figure has an eagle on one arm, a Ross rifle slung from its shoulder, and a caribou at its feet, representing the Caribou Clan that Pegahmagabow belonged to. The Eagle was his spirit animal. The artist Tyler Fauvelle spent eight months sculpting the statue, which spent a further year in casting. Fauvelle chose to erect it in Parry Sound rather than Wasauksing to reach a larger public and educate them on the contributions of First Nations people to Canada.

In 2019, the history-themed power metal band Sabaton released a song dedicated to Pegahmagabow, titled  A Ghost in the Trenches", on their album The Great War''.

Binaaswi is one of eight 2020 finalists for the $5 polymer bills in Canada.

Awards

 * He was first awarded the Military Medal while fighting at the second battle of Ypres, Festubert and Givenchy, for courage above fire in getting important messages through to the rear.
 * Earned his first bar to the Military Medal at the Battle of Passchendaele.
 * His second bar to the Military Medal came at the battle of The Scarpe, in 1918. Only 38 other Canadian men received the honour of two bars.
 * The 1914–15 Star
 * The British War Medal
 * The Victory Medal

In 2003 the Pegahmagabow family donated his medals and chief head dress to the Canadian War Museum where they can be seen as of 2010 as part of the World War I display. While researching his 2005 novel Three Day Road, Boyden was asked about why he thought that Pegahmagabow had not received a higher award like the Distinguished Conduct Medal or the Victoria Cross. Boyden speculated it was due to Pegahmagabow being a First Nations soldier, and that there may have been jealousy on the part of some officers who he felt might have been suspicious of the number of Germans Pegahmagabow claimed to have shot because he did not use an observer while sniping.

title: Francis Pegahmagabow


text: User talk:212.219.142.161

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User talk:212.219.142.161


text:
Tang Chinese

Tang Chinese or Tangren and variants may refer to the following:

 * The people of the Tang dynasty of medieval China
 * Middle Chinese, the reconstructed prestige dialect of Tang China
 * Han Chinese people, particularly in southern Chinese dialects like Cantonese, Hakka, and Minnan.
 * Tangren Media, a Chinese media company

title: Tang Chinese


text:
Henkin

Henkin is a Jewish last name and may refer to the following people:

 * Leon Henkin, logician and mathematician
 * Henkin quantifier, a concept he pioneered
 * Gennadi Henkin, mathematician
 * William A. Henkin, psychotherapist and sex therapist
 * Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, Orthodox rabbi
 * Louis Henkin, legal academician and writer
 * Yehudah Herzl Henkin, Orthodox rabbi, nephew of Louis Henkin and grandson of Yosef Eliyahu Henkin
 * Eitam and Na'ama Henkin, American-Israeli couple killed in a terror attack in 2015
 * Hilary Henkin, American screenwriter and producer
 * Evgeny and Yakov Henkin, 1930s street photographers in Berlin and Leningrad (St. Petersburg)
 * Vladimir Ya. Henkin, Russian and Soviet stage and screen actor and comic, People's Artist of the RSFSR
 * Victor Henkin, singer and dramatic actor
 * Kirill V. Henkin, Soviet and dissident public figure, secret agent, writer, journalist and long-term contributor to Radio Liberty
 * Lauren Henkin, visual artist and landscape photographer

title: Henkin


text:
Daqin

Daqin (alternative transliterations include Tachin, Tai-Ch'in) is the ancient Chinese name for the Roman Empire or, depending on context, the Near East, especially Syria. It literally means "Great Qin"; Qin being the name of the founding dynasty of the Chinese Empire. Historian John Foster defined it as "the Roman Empire, or rather that part of it which alone was known to the Chinese, Syria". Its basic facets such as laws, customs, dress, and currency were explained in Chinese sources. Its medieval incarnation was described in histories during the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) onwards as Fulin, which Friedrich Hirth and other scholars have identified as the Byzantine Empire. Daqin was also commonly associated with the Syriac-speaking Nestorian Christians who lived in China during the Tang dynasty.

Chinese sources describe several ancient Roman embassies arriving in China, beginning in 166 AD and lasting into the 3rd century. These early embassies were said to arrive by a maritime route via the South China Sea in the Chinese province of Jiaozhi (now northern Vietnam). Archaeological evidence such as Roman coins points to the presence of Roman commercial activity in Southeast Asia. Later recorded embassies arriving from the Byzantine Empire, lasting from the 7th to 11th centuries, ostensibly took an overland route following the Silk Road, alongside other Europeans in Medieval China. Byzantine Greeks are recorded as being present in the court of Kublai Khan (1260–1294), the Mongol ruler of the Yuan dynasty in Khanbaliq (Beijing), while the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398), founder of the Ming dynasty, sent a letter of correspondence to Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos.

Daqin
The term Daqin (, Middle Chinese: /dɑiH d͡ziɪn/), meaning "Great Qin", is derived from the dynasty founded by Qin Shi Huang, ruler of the State of Qin and China's first emperor who unified China's Warring States by 221 BC. The prefix da (大) or "great" signified that the Roman Empire was on par with the might of the Qin dynasty and was viewed as a utopian land located to the northwest of the Parthian Empire. The title Daqin does not seem to have any phonetic derivation from Latin Roma or Greek Romaikē. On the other hand, it is possible that the Latin term used for China, Serica (derived from Greek Serikon, commonly understood as "Land of Silk", from Chinese si, meaning silk), originated from the name Qin using Early Middle Chinese pronunciation (with the final consonant pronounced with an -r sound).

Fulin
The term Daqin was used from the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) onwards, but by the beginning of the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) a new name emerged in Chinese historical records for distinguishing the Eastern Roman Empire: Fulin. Friedrich Hirth surmised that Fulin may have been based on the accusative form of Konstantinoupolis, the Greek name of Constantinople, or rather its paraphrase hē Pólis ("the City"), giving (in the accusative) (tḕn) Pólin. Using historical phonetic pronunciations of Cantonese and Japanese, Hirth also speculated that Fulin in Middle Chinese was pronounced Butlim or Butlam and thus might have also come from the Syriac pronunciation for Bethlehem. While some scholars of the 20th century believed that Fulin was a transliteration of Ephrem, an ancient word for Israel, Samuel N. C. Lieu highlights how more recent scholarship has deduced that Fulin is most likely derived from the Persianate word for the Roman Empire shared by several contemporaneous Iranian languages (Middle Persian: ; Parthian: ; Sogdian: ; Bactrian: ).

Early descriptions by Gan Ying
Following the opening of the Silk Road in the 2nd century BC, the Chinese thought of the Roman Empire as a civilized counterpart to the Chinese Empire. The Romans occupied one extreme position on the trade route, with the Chinese located on the other.

China never managed to reach the Roman Empire directly in antiquity, although general Ban Chao sent Gan Ying as an envoy to "Daqin" in 97 AD. Gan Ying did not reach Daqin: he stopped at the coast of a large sea, because "sailor(s) of the Parthian west border" told him that the voyage to cross the sea might take a long time and be dangerous. Gan Ying left a detailed account of the Roman Empire, but it is generally considered to have been based on second-hand information from Parthians: "「大秦國一名犂鞬，以在海西，亦云海西國. 地方數千里，有四百餘城. 小國役屬者數十. 以石為城郭. 列置郵亭，皆堊塈之. 有松柏諸木百草. 」

The Kingdom of Da Qin (the Roman Empire) is also called Lijian. As it is found to the west of the sea, it is also called the Kingdom of Haixi ('West of the Sea'). The territory extends for several thousands of li. It has more than four hundred walled towns. There are several tens of smaller dependent kingdoms. The walls of the towns are made of stone. They have established postal relays at intervals, which are all plastered and whitewashed. There are pines and cypresses, as well as trees and plants of all kinds."

Gan Ying gives a very idealistic view of Roman governance which is likely the result of some story he was told while visiting the Persian Gulf in 97 AD. He also described, less fancifully, Roman products: "「其王無有常人，皆簡立賢者. 國中災異及風雨不時，輒廢而更立，受放者甘黜不怨. 其人民皆長大平正，有類中國，故謂之大秦......土多金銀奇寶，有夜光璧、明月珠、駭雞犀、珊瑚、虎魄、琉璃、琅玕、朱丹、青碧. 刺金縷繡，織成金縷罽、雜色綾. 作黃金塗、火浣布. 」

Their kings are not permanent. They select and appoint the most worthy man. If there are unexpected calamities in the kingdom, such as frequent extraordinary winds or rains, he is unceremoniously rejected and replaced. The one who has been dismissed quietly accepts his demotion, and is not angry. The people of this country are all tall and honest. They resemble the people of the Middle Kingdom and that is why this kingdom is called Da Qin. This country produces plenty of gold [and] silver, [and of] rare and precious they have luminous jade, 'bright moon pearls', Haiji rhinoceroses, coral, yellow amber, opaque glass, whitish chalcedony [i.e., langgan], red cinnabar, green gemstones, gold-thread embroideries, woven gold-threaded net, delicate polychrome silks painted with gold, and asbestos cloth.

「又有細布，或言水羊毳，野蠶繭所作也. 合會諸香，煎其汁以為蘇合. 凡外國諸珍異皆出焉. 以金銀為錢，銀錢十當金錢一. 與安息、天竺交巿於海中，利有十倍. [...]其王常欲通使於漢，而安息欲以漢繒綵與之交市，故遮閡不得自達. 」

They also have a fine cloth which some people say is made from the down of 'water sheep', but which is made, in fact, from the cocoons of wild silkworms. They blend all sorts of fragrances, and by boiling the juice, make a compound perfume. [They have] all the precious and rare things that come from the various foreign kingdoms. They make gold and silver coins. Ten silver coins are worth one gold coin. They trade with Anxi and Tianzhu by sea. The profit margin is ten to one. ... The king of this country always wanted to send envoys to the Han, but Anxi, wishing to control the trade in multi-coloured Chinese silks, blocked the route to prevent [the Romans] getting through [to China]."

Geographical descriptions in the Weilüe
In the Weilüe written by Yu Huan (c. 239–265), a text that is preserved in the Records of the Three Kingdoms by Pei Songzhi (published in 429), a more detailed description of the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire is given, particularly the province of Roman Egypt. The 19th-century sinologist Friedrich Hirth translated the passages and identified the places named in them, which have been edited by Jerome S. Arkenberg in 2000 (with Wade-Giles spelling):

"Formerly T'iao-chih was wrongly believed to be in the west of Ta-ts'in; now its real position is known to be east. [...] Formerly it was, further, wrongly believed that the Jo-shui was in the west of T'iao-chih; now the Jo-shui is believed to be in the west of Ta-ts'in. Formerly it was wrongly believed that, going over two hundred days west of T'iao-chih, one came near the place where the sun sets; now, one comes near the place where the sun sets by going west of Ta-ts'in. The country of Ta-ts'in, also called Li-kan, is on the west of the great sea [the Indian Ocean] west of Ar-hsi and T'iao-chih. From the city of Ar-ku, on the boundary of Ar-hsi one takes passage in a ship and, traversing the west of the sea, with favorable winds arrives [at Aelana, modern Elat, on the Gulf of Aqaba] in two months; with slow winds, the passage may last a year, and with no wind at all, perhaps three years. This country is on the west of the sea whence it is commonly called Hai-hsi. There is a river [the Nile] coming out from the west of this country, and there is another great sea [the Mediterranean]. In the west of the sea there is the city of Ali-san. Before one arrives in the country one goes straight north from the city of U-tan. In the south-west one further travels by a river which on board ship one crosses in one day [again the Nile]; and again south-west one travels by a river which is crossed in one day [still the Nile]. There are three great divisions of the country [i. e., Delta, Heptanomis, Thebaid]. From the city of Ar-ku one goes by land due north to the north of the sea; and again one goes due west to the west of the sea; and again you go due south to arrive there. At the city of Ali-san, you travel by river on board ship one day, then make a round at sea, and after six days' passage on the great sea [the Mediterranean], arrive in this country. There are in the country in all over four hundred smaller cities; its size is several thousand li in all directions of the compass. The residence of their king lies on the banks of a river estuary [Antioch-on-the-Orontes]. They use stone in making city walls. In this country there are the trees sung [pine], po [cypress], huai [sophora?], tzu [a kind of euphorbia?]; bamboos, rushes, poplars, willows, the wu-t'ung tree, and all kinds of other plants. The people are given to planting on the fields all kinds of grain. Their domestic animals are: the horse, the donkey, the mule, the camel, and the mulberry silk-worm. There are many jugglers who can issue fire from their mouths, bind and release themselves, and dance on twenty balls. In this country they have no permanent rulers, but when an extraordinary calamity visits the country, they elect as king a worthier man, while discharging the old king, who does not even dare to feel angry at this decision. The people are tall, and upright in their dealings, like the Han [Chinese], but wear foreign dress; they call their country another 'Middle Kingdom' [probably from 'Mediterranean' or 'Middle of the Land']."

The Weilüe also noted that the Daqin had small "dependent" vassal states, too many to list as the text claims, yet it mentions some as being the Alexandria-Euphrates or Charax Spasinu ("Ala-san"), Nikephorium ("Lu-fen"), Palmyra ("Ch'ieh-lan"), Damascus ("Hsien-tu"), Emesa ("Si-fu"), and Hira ("Ho-lat"). Perhaps some of these are in reference to certain states that were temporarily conquered during the Roman–Parthian Wars (66 BC – 217 AD) when, for instance, the army of Roman Emperor Trajan reached the Persian Gulf and captured Characene, the capital of which was Charax Spasinu. The Weilüe provides the traveling directions and approximate distances between each of these cities, counted in ancient Chinese miles (li), and along with the Book of Later Han even mentions the pontoon bridge ("flying bridge") across the Euphrates at the Roman city of Zeugma, Commagene (in modern-day Turkey).

Hirth and Arkenberg identified Si-fu (Chinese: 汜復) with Emesa. However, John E. Hill provides evidence that it was most likely Petra (in the Nabataean Kingdom), given the directions and distance from "Yuluo" (i.e. Al Karak) and the fact that it fell under Roman dominion in 106 AD when it was annexed by Trajan. Even more convincing for Hill is the fact that Si-fu in Chinese means "an arm of a river which rejoins the main stream" or more aptly "rejoined water courses". He believes this is directly related to the reservoir and cistern flood-control system harnessing the many streams running through the settlement and nearby canyons, or wadis, such as the Wadi Musa ("Valley of Moses").

Christianity

In later eras, starting in AD 550, as Syriac Christians settled along the Silk Road and founded mission churches, Daqin or Tai-Ch'in is also used to refer to these Christian populations rather than to Rome or the Roman church. So, for example, when the Taoist Emperor Wuzong of Tang closed Christian monasteries in the mid-9th century, the imperial edict commanded: "As for the Tai-Ch'in (Syrian Christian) and Muh-hu (Zoroastrian) forms of worship, since Buddhism has already been cast out, these heresies alone must not be allowed to survive."

The name "Daqin" for Rome was used on Chinese maps as late as the 16th century, such as the Sihai Huayi Zongtu. The identification of "Daqin" with the Western Roman Empire, Eastern Roman Empire, or the Church of the East varies with the era and context of the document. The Nestorian Stele erected in 781 in the Tang capital Chang'an contains an inscription that briefly summarizes the knowledge about Daqin in the Chinese histories written up to that point and notes how only the "luminous" religion (i.e. Christianity) was practiced there.

Capital cities
In the Hou Hanshu and the Weilüe, the chief city of Daqin is said to be more than 100 li around. It is described as being located near a river and having five palaces, with the king travelling to one of these palaces each day. Some scholars have identified in this description the city of Rome, the Tiber river and the Imperial residences of the Palatine hill. However, other scholars, including Hirth and Hoppál, identify it with Antioch. It has also been suggested that the capital of Daqin described in those works is a conflation of multiple cities, chiefly Rome, Antioch and Alexandria.

In Gan Ying's report the capital of Daqin is "An-tu", Antioch. However, the Old Book of Tang and New Book of Tang, which identified Daqin and "Fulin" (拂菻; i.e. Primus, the Byzantine Empire) as the same countries, noted a different capital city (Constantinople), one that had walls of "enormous height" and was eventually besieged by the commander "Móyì" (Chinese: 摩拽伐之; Pinyin: Móyì fá zhī) of the Da shi (大食; i.e. the Arabs). Friedrich Hirth identifies this commander as Mu'awiyah I, who was first governor of Syria before becoming caliph and founder of the Umayyad Caliphate.

Characteristics attributed from the Book of Jin to the Romans
The encyclopedic part of the Book of Jin classified the appearance of the Romans as being genuinely Xirong, a barbaric people who lived west of the Zhou dynasty, however, the characteristics attributed to Daqin tend to be more positive than the others, saying that their people when they reached adulthood looked like the Chinese, they used glass on the walls of their houses (considered a luxury item in the Tang dynasty), their tiles were covered with coral, their "king" had 5 palaces, all huge, and all far from each other, just as what was heard in one palace took time to reach another and so on.

Embassies
Starting in the 1st century BC with Virgil, Horace, and Strabo, Roman histories offer only vague accounts of China and the silk-producing Seres of the distant east. The 2nd-century historian Florus seems to have conflated the Seres with peoples of India, or at least noted that their skin complexions proved that they both lived "beneath another sky" than the Romans. The 1st-century geographer Pomponius Mela noted that their lands formed the center of the coast of an eastern ocean, flanked by India to the south and the Scythians of the northern steppe, while the historian Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 330 – c. 400) wrote that the land of the Seres was enclosed by great natural walls around a river called Bautis, perhaps the Yellow River. In his Geography, Ptolemy also provided a rough sketch of the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea, with a port city called Cattigara lying beyond the Golden Chersonese (i.e. Malay Peninsula) visited by a Greek sailor named Alexander. Among the proposed sites for Ptolemy's Cattigara are Oc Eo, Vietnam, where Roman artefacts have been found.

In contrast, Chinese histories offer an abundance of source material about their interactions with alleged Roman embassies and descriptions of their country. The first of these embassies is recorded in the Book of Later Han as having arrived by sea in 166 AD and came by way of Jiaozhou, later known as Annam (northern Vietnam), as would later embassies. Its members claimed to be representatives of the Daqin ruler "Andun" (安敦), either Antoninus Pius or more likely his co-emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and offered gifts to the court of Emperor Huan of Han. Other embassies arrived sporadically afterwards. The Book of Liang mentions a Daqin embassy to Sun Quan of Eastern Wu in 226, while the Book of Jin records a Daqin embassy to Emperor Wu of Jin in 284.

Although Emperor Yang of Sui (r. 604–618) had desired to send an embassy to Daqin, this never came to fruition. Instead, an embassy from a country that was now called Fulin (拂菻, i.e. the Byzantine Empire), which the Old Book of Tang and New Book of Tang identified as being the same as Daqin, arrived in 643 at the court of Emperor Taizong of Tang and claimed to represent their king Bo duoli (波多力; i.e. Kōnstantinos Pogonatos, "Constantine the Bearded", the nickname of Constans II). Several other Fulin (i.e. Byzantium) embassies during the Tang dynasty are mentioned for the years 667, 701, and 719.

The Wenxian Tongkao written by Ma Duanlin (1245–1322) and the History of Song record that the Byzantine emperor Michael VII Parapinakēs Caesar (Mie li sha ling kai sa 滅力沙靈改撒) of Fulin (i.e. Byzantium) sent an embassy to China that arrived in 1081, during the reign of Emperor Shenzong of Song (r. 1067–1085). During the subsequent Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), an unprecedented number of Europeans started to visit and live in China, such as Marco Polo and Katarina Vilioni, and papal missionaries such as John of Montecorvino and Giovanni de Marignolli. The History of Yuan recounts how a man of Fulin named Ai-sie (transliteration of either Joshua or Joseph), initially in the service of Güyük Khan, was well-versed in Western languages and had expertise in the fields of medicine and astronomy. This convinced Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty, to offer him a position as the director of medical and astronomical boards, eventually honoring him with the title of Prince of Fulin (Chinese: 拂菻王; Fú lǐn wáng). His biography in the History of Yuan lists his children by their Chinese names, which are similar to the Christian names Elias (Ye-li-ah), Luke (Lu-ko), and Antony (An-tun), with a daughter named A-na-si-sz.

The History of Ming explains how the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the Hongwu Emperor, sent a merchant of Fulin named "Nieh-ku-lun" (捏古倫) back to his home country with a letter announcing the founding of a new dynasty. It is speculated that this "merchant" was actually a former bishop of Khanbaliq named Nicolaus de Bentra. The History of Ming goes on to explain that contacts between China and Fulin ceased thereafter, whereas an envoy of the great western sea (i.e. the Mediterranean Sea) did not arrive again until the 16th century, with the Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci.

Currency and coinage

Although the ancient Romans imported Han Chinese silk while the Han-dynasty Chinese imported Roman glasswares as discovered in their tombs, Valerie Hansen (2012) claimed that no Roman coins from the Roman Republic (507–27 BC) or the Principate (27 BC–284 AD) era of the Roman Empire have been found in China. Yet this assumption has been overturned; Warwick Ball (2016) notes the discovery of sixteen Roman coins found at Xi'an, China (site of the Han capital Chang'an) minted during the reign of various emperors from Tiberius (14–37 AD) to Aurelian (270–275 AD). The earliest gold solidus coins from the Eastern Roman Empire found in China date to the reign of Byzantine emperor Theodosius II (r. 408–450) and altogether only forty-eight of them have been found (compared to thirteen hundred silver coins) in Xinjiang and the rest of China. However, Roman golden medallions from the reign of Antoninus Pius, and possibly his successor Marcus Aurelius, have been discovered at Óc Eo in southern Vietnam, which was then part of the Kingdom of Funan bordering the Chinese province of Jiaozhi in northern Vietnam. This was the same region where Chinese historical texts claim the Romans first landed before venturing further into China to conduct diplomacy.

Chinese histories offer descriptions of Byzantine coins. In discussing trade with India, the Parthian Empire and the Roman Empire, the Book of Jin, as well as the later Wenxian Tongkao, noted how ten ancient Roman silver coins were worth one Roman gold coin. With fluctuations, the Roman golden aureus was worth about twenty-five silver denarii. The History of Song notes how the Byzantines made coins of either silver or gold, without holes in the middle yet with an inscription of the king's name.

Law and order

The History of Song described forms of punishment in criminal law as they were carried out in Daqin (Roman Empire) and Fulin (Byzantine Empire). It states that they made a distinction between minor and major offenses, with 200 strikes from a bamboo rod being reserved for major crimes. It described their form of capital punishment as having the guilty person being stuffed into a "feather bag" and thrown into the sea. This seems to correspond with the Romano-Byzantine punishment of poena cullei (from Latin "punishment of the sack"), where those who committed parricide (i.e. murder of a father or mother) were sewn up into a sack, sometimes with wild animals, and thrown into either a river or sea. The History of Song also mentioned how it was forbidden by law to counterfeit the coins minted by Fulin. These descriptions from the History of Song are also found in the Wenxian Tongkao.

Naming conventions
In the Chinese histories, the names of Romans and Byzantines were often transliterated into Chinese as they were heard, yet occasionally the surname stemmed from their country of origin, Daqin (大秦). For instance, the Roman merchant Qin Lun (秦論), who visited the Eastern Wu court of Sun Quan in 226 AD, bears the surname derived from the name for his homeland, while having a given name that is perhaps derived from the Greek name Leon (e.g. Leon of Sparta). In the Han-era stage of the spoken language intermediate between Old Chinese and Middle Chinese, the pronunciation for his given name "Lun" (論) would have sounded quite different from modern spoken Mandarin: K. 470b *li̯wən / li̯uĕn or *lwən / luən; EMC lwən or lwənh.

Granting Roman individuals the surname "Qin" followed a common Chinese naming convention for foreign peoples. For instance, people from the Parthian Empire of ancient Persia such as An Shigao were often given the surname "An" (安) derived from Anxi (安息), the Arsacid dynasty. The Sogdians, an Eastern Iranian people from Central Asia, were also frequently given the surname "An" (e.g. An Chongzhang), especially those from Bukhara, while Sogdians from Samarkand were surnamed "Kang" (康; e.g. Kang Senghui), derived from Kangju, the Chinese term for Transoxiana. The name given for either Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius Antoninus in the Chinese histories was "An Dun" (安敦).

title: Daqin


text:
Xi'an Stele

The Xi'an Stele or the Jingjiao Stele, sometimes translated as the "Nestorian Stele," is a Tang Chinese stele erected in 781 that documents 150 years of early Christianity in China. It is a limestone block 279 cm high with text in both Chinese and Syriac describing the existence of Christian communities in several cities in northern China. It reveals that the initial Church of the East had met recognition by the Tang Emperor Taizong, due to efforts of the Christian missionary Alopen in 635. According to the stele, Alopen and his fellow Syriac missionaries came to China from Daqin (the Eastern Roman Empire) in the ninth year of Emperor Taizong (Tai Tsung) (635), bringing sacred books and images. The Church of the East monk Adam (Jingjing in Chinese) composed the text on the stele. Buried in 845, probably during religious suppression, the stele was not rediscovered until 1625. It is now in the Stele Forest in Xi'an.

Discovery
The stele is thought to have been buried in 845, during a campaign of anti-Buddhist persecution, which also affected these Christians.

The stele was unearthed in the late Ming dynasty (between 1623 and 1625) beside Chongren Temple (崇仁寺) outside of Xi'an. According to the account by the Jesuit Alvaro Semedo, the workers who found the stele immediately reported the find to the governor, who soon visited the monument, and had it installed on a pedestal, under a protective roof, requesting the nearby Buddhist monastery to care for it.

The newly discovered stele attracted attention of local intellectuals. It was Zhang Gengyou (Wade-Giles: Chang Keng-yu) who first identified the text as Christian in content. Zhang, who had been aware of Christianity through Matteo Ricci, and who himself may have been Christian, sent a copy of the stele's Chinese text to his Christian friend, Leon Li Zhizao in Hangzhou, who in his turn published the text and told the locally based Jesuits about it.

Alvaro Semedo was the first European to visit the stele (some time between 1625 and 1628). Nicolas Trigault's Latin translation of the monument's inscription soon made its way in Europe, and was apparently first published in a French translation, in 1628. Portuguese and Italian translations, and a Latin re-translation, were soon published as well. Semedo's account of the monument's discovery was published in 1641, in his Imperio de la China.

Early Jesuits attempted to claim that the stele was erected by a historical community of Roman Catholics in China, called Nestorianism a heresy, and claimed that it was Catholics who first brought Christianity to China. But later historians and writers admitted that it was indeed from the Church of the East and not Roman Catholic.

The first publication of the original Chinese and Syriac text of the inscription in Europe is attributed to Athanasius Kircher. China Illustrata edited by Kircher (1667) included a reproduction of the original inscription in Chinese characters, romanization of the text, and a Latin translation. This was perhaps the first sizeable Chinese text made available in its original form to the European public. A sophisticated romanization system, reflecting Chinese tones, used to transcribe the text, was the one developed earlier by Matteo Ricci's collaborator Lazzaro Cattaneo (1560–1640).

The work of the transcription and translation was carried out by Michał Boym and two young Chinese Christians who visited Rome in the 1650s and 1660s: Boym's traveling companion Andreas Zheng (郑安德勒) and, later, another person who signed in Latin as "Matthaeus Sina". D.E. Mungello suggests that Matthaeus Sina may have been the person who traveled overland from China to Europe with Johann Grueber.

Content

The heading on the stone, Chinese for Memorial of the Propagation in China of the Luminous Religion from Daqin (大秦景教流行中國碑, abbreviated 大秦景教碑). An even more abbreviated version of the title, 景教碑 (Jǐngjiào bēi, "The Stele of the Luminous Religion"), in its Wade-Giles form, Ching-chiao-pei or Chingchiaopei, was used by some Western writers to refer to the stele as well.

The name of the stele can also be translated as A Monument Commemorating the Propagation of the Ta-Chin Luminous Religion in the Middle Kingdom (the church referred to itself as "The Luminous Religion of Daqin", Daqin being the Chinese language term for the Roman Empire in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, and in later eras also used to refer to the Syriac Christian churches).

Authorship
The stele was erected on January 7, 781 ("Year of the Greeks 1092" in the inscription), at the imperial capital city of Chang'an (modern-day Xi'an), or at nearby Zhouzhi County. The calligraphy was by Lü Xiuyan (呂秀巖), and the content was composed by the Church of the East monk Jingjing in the four- and six-character euphemistic style (大秦寺僧㬌淨述, "Related by Jingjing, monk of the Daqin Temple"). A gloss in Syriac identifies Jingjing with "Adam, priest, chorepiscopus and papash of Sinistan" (ܐܕܡ ܩܫܝܫܐ ܘܟܘܪܐܦܝܣܩܘܦܐ ܘܦܐܦܫܝ ܕܨܝܢܝܣܬܐܢ, Adam qshisha w'kurapisqupa w'papash d'Sinistan). Although the term papash (literally "pope") is unusual and the normal Syriac name for China is Beth Sinaye, not Sinistan, there is no reason to doubt that Adam was the metropolitan of the Church of the East ecclesiastical province of Beth Sinaye, created a half-century earlier during the reign of Patriarch Sliba-zkha (714–28). A Syriac dating formula refers to the Church of the East patriarch Hnanishoʿ II (773–780), news of whose death several months earlier had evidently not yet reached the Church of the East of Chang'an. In fact, the reigning Church of the East patriarch in January 781 was Timothy I (780–823), who had been consecrated in Baghdad on 7 May 780. The names of several higher clergy (one bishop, two chorepiscopi and two archdeacons) and around seventy monks or priests are listed. The names of the higher clergy appear on the front of the stone while those of the priests and monks are inscribed in rows along the narrow sides of the stone, in both Syriac and Chinese. In some cases, the Chinese names are phonetically close to the Syriac originals, but in many other cases, they bear little resemblance to them. Some of the Church of the East monks had distinctive Persian names (such as Isadsafas, Gushnasap), suggesting that they might have come from Fars or elsewhere in Persia, but most of them had common Christian names or the kind of compound Syriac name (such as ʿAbdishoʿ, 'servant of Jesus') much in vogue among all Church of the East Christians. In such cases, it is impossible to guess at their place of origin.

Content
On top of the tablet, there is a cross. Below this headpiece is a long Chinese inscription, consisting of around 1,900 Chinese characters, sometimes glossed in Syriac (several sentences amounting to about 50 Syriac words). Calling God "Veritable Majesty", the text refers to Genesis, the cross, and baptism. It also pays tribute to missionaries and benefactors of the church, who are known to have arrived in China by 640. The text contains the name of an early missionary, Alopen. The tablet describes the "Illustrious Religion" and emphasizes the Trinity and the Incarnation, but there is nothing about Christ's crucifixion or resurrection. Other Chinese elements referred to include a wooden bell, beard, tonsure, and renunciation. The Syriac proper names for God, Christ and Satan (Allaha, Mshiha and Satana) were rendered phonetically into Chinese. Chinese transliterations were also made of one or two words of Sanskrit origin such as Sphatica and Dasa. There is also a Persian word denoting Sunday.

Yazedbuzid (Yisi in Chinese) helped the Tang dynasty general Guo Ziyi militarily crush the Sogdian-Turk led An Lushan rebellion, with Yisi personally acting as a military commander and Yisi and the Church of the East were rewarded by the Tang dynasty with titles and positions as described in the Xi'an Stele.

Debate
The Xi'an Stele attracted the attention of some anti-Christian, Protestant anti-Catholic, or Catholic anti-Jesuit groups in the 17th century, who argued that the stone was a fake or that the inscriptions had been modified by the Jesuits who served in the Ming Court. The three most prominent early skeptics were the German-Dutch Presbyterian scholar Georg Horn (born 1620) (De originibus Americanis, 1652), the German historian Gottlieb Spitzel (1639–1691) (De re literaria Sinensium commentarius, 1660), and the Dominican missionary Domingo Navarrete (1618–1686) (Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China, 1676). Later, Navarrete's point of view was taken up by French Jansenists and Voltaire.

By the 19th century, the debate had become less sectarian and more scholarly. Notable skeptics included Karl Friedrich Neumann, Stanislas Julien, Edward E. Salisbury and Charles Wall. Ernest Renan initially had "grave doubts", but eventually changed his mind in the light of later scholarship, in favor of the stele's genuineness. The defenders included some non-Jesuit scholars, such as Alexander Wylie, James Legge, and Jean-Pierre-Guillaume Pauthier, although the most substantive work in defense of the stele's authenticity – the three-volume La stèle chrétienne de Si-ngan-fou (1895 to 1902) was authored by the Jesuit scholar Henri Havret (1848–1902).

Paul Pelliot (1878–1945) did an extensive amount of research on the stele, which, however, was only published posthumously, in 1984 (a second edition, revised by Forte was then published in 1996). His and Havret's works are still regarded as the two "standard books" on the subject.

Modern location, and replicas
Since the late 19th century a number of European scholars opined in favor of somehow getting the stele out of China and into the British Museum or some other "suitable" location (e.g., Frederic H. Balfour in his letter published in The Times in early 1886 ). The Danish scholar and adventurer Frits Holm came to Xi'an in 1907 planning to take the monument for himself to Europe. Local authorities prevented him and moved the stele, complete with its tortoise, from its location near Chongren Temple to Xi'an's Beilin Museum (Forest of Steles Museum).

Holm had an exact copy of the stele made for him and had the replica stele shipped to New York, planning to sell it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum's director Caspar Purdon Clarke, however, was less than enthusiastic about purchasing "so large a stone ... of no artistic value". Nonetheless, the replica stele was exhibited in the museum ("on loan" from Mr. Holm) for about 10 years. Eventually, in 1917 some Mrs. George Leary, a wealthy New Yorker, purchased the replica stele from Holm and sent it to Rome, as a gift to the Pope. Another full-sized replica cast from that replica, gifted by Mrs. George Leary in 1919, is on permanent display in the Bunn Intercultural Center on the campus of Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.).

The original Xi'an Stele remains in the Forest of Steles. It is now exhibited in the museum's Room Number 2, and is the first stele on the left after the entry. When the official list of Chinese cultural relics forbidden to be exhibited abroad was promulgated in 2003, the stele was included into this short list of particularly valuable and important items.

Other copies of the stele and its tortoise can be found near Xi'an Daqin Pagoda, on Mount Kōya in Japan, and, in Tianhe Church, Guangzhou.

Other early Christian monuments in China
Numerous Christian gravestones have also been found in China in the Xinjiang region, Quanzhou and elsewhere from a somewhat later period. There are also two much later stelae (from 960 and 1365) presenting a curious mix of Christian and Buddhist aspects, which are preserved at the site of the former Monastery of the Cross in the Fangshan District, near Beijing.

In 2006, a mortuary stone pillar with Church of the East inscriptions was discovered in Luoyang, the Nestorian pillar of Luoyang. Erected and engraved in 815, the inscriptions give partial details surrounding the background of a Sogdian Christian community living in Luoyang.

In popular culture

 * In the 20th episode of The Longest Day in Chang'an, the Monk Jingde (Volker Helfrich) hands a missionary leaflet to Tan Qi (Rayzha Alimjan), which contains text taken from the inscription of the Xi'an Stele.

title: Xi'an Stele


text:
Genetic variation

Genetic variation is the difference in DNA among individuals or the differences between populations among the same species. The multiple sources of genetic variation include mutation and genetic recombination. Mutations are the ultimate sources of genetic variation, but other mechanisms, such as genetic drift, contribute to it, as well.

Among individuals within a population
Genetic variation can be identified at many levels. Identifying genetic variation is possible from observations of phenotypic variation in either quantitative traits (traits that vary continuously and are coded for by many genes, e.g., leg length in dogs) or discrete traits (traits that fall into discrete categories and are coded for by one or a few genes, e.g., white, pink, or red petal color in certain flowers).

Genetic variation can also be identified by examining variation at the level of enzymes using the process of protein electrophoresis. Polymorphic genes have more than one allele at each locus. Half of the genes that code for enzymes in insects and plants may be polymorphic, whereas polymorphisms are less common among vertebrates.

Ultimately, genetic variation is caused by variation in the order of bases in the nucleotides in genes. New technology now allows scientists to directly sequence DNA, which has identified even more genetic variation than was previously detected by protein electrophoresis. Examination of DNA has shown genetic variation in both coding regions and in the noncoding intron region of genes.

Genetic variation will result in phenotypic variation if variation in the order of nucleotides in the DNA sequence results in a difference in the order of amino acids in proteins coded by that DNA sequence, and if the resultant differences in amino-acid sequence influence the shape, and thus the function of the enzyme.

Between populations
Differences between populations resulting from geographic separation is known as geographic variation. Natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow can all contribute to geographic variation.

Measurement
Genetic variation within a population is commonly measured as the percentage of polymorphic gene loci or the percentage of gene loci in heterozygous individuals. The results can be very useful in understanding the process of adaption to the environment of each individual in the population.

Forms
Genetic variation can be divided into different forms according to the size and type of genomic variation underpinning genetic change. Small-scale sequence variation (<1 kilobase, kb) includes base-pair substitution and indels. Large-scale structural variation (>1 kb) can be either copy number variation (loss or gain), or chromosomal rearrangement (translocation, inversion, or Segmental acquired uniparental disomy). Genetic variation and recombination by transposable elements and endogenous retroviruses sometimes is supplemented by a variety of persistent viruses and their defectives which generate genetic novelty in host genomes. Numerical variation in whole chromosomes or genomes can be either polyploidy or aneuploidy.

Maintenance in populations
A variety of factors maintain genetic variation in populations. Potentially harmful recessive alleles can be hidden from selection in the heterozygous individuals in populations of diploid organisms (recessive alleles are only expressed in the less common homozygous individuals). Natural selection can also maintain genetic variation in balanced polymorphisms. Balanced polymorphisms may occur when heterozygotes are favored or when selection is frequency dependent.

RNA viruses
A high mutation rate caused by the lack of a proofreading mechanism appears to be a major source of the genetic variation that contributes to RNA virus evolution. Genetic recombination also has been shown to play a key role in generating the genetic variation that underlies RNA virus evolution. Numerous RNA viruses are capable of genetic recombination when at least two viral genomes are present in the same host cell. RNA recombination appears to be a major driving force in determining genome architecture and the course of viral evolution among Picornaviridae ((+)ssRNA) (e.g. poliovirus). In the Retroviridae ((+)ssRNA)(e.g. HIV), damage in the RNA genome appears to be avoided during reverse transcription by strand switching, a form of genetic recombination. Recombination also occurs in the Coronaviridae ((+)ssRNA) (e.g. SARS). Recombination in RNA viruses appears to be an adaptation for coping with genome damage. Recombination can occur infrequently between animal viruses of the same species but of divergent lineages. The resulting recombinant viruses may sometimes cause an outbreak of infection in humans.

History of genetic variation
Evolutionary biologists are often concerned with genetic variation, a term which in modern times has come to refer to differences in DNA sequences among individuals. However, quantifying and understanding genetic variation has been a central aim of those interested in understanding the varied life on earth since long before the sequencing of the first full genome, and even before the discovery of DNA as the molecule responsible for heredity.

While today's definition of genetic variation relies on contemporary molecular genetics, the idea of heritable variation was of central importance to those interested in the substance and development of life even before the writings of Charles Darwin. The concept of heritable variation—the presence of innate differences between life forms that are passed from parents to offspring, especially within categories such as species—does not rely on modern ideas of genetics, which were unavailable to 18th- and 19th-century minds.

Pre-Darwinian concepts of heritable variation
In the mid-1700s, Pierre Louis Maupertuis, a French scholar now known primarily for his work in mathematics and physics, posited that while species have a true, original form, accidents during the development of nascent offspring could introduce variations that could accumulate over time. In his 1750 Essaie de Cosmologie, he proposed that the species we see today are only a small fraction of the many variations produced by "a blind destiny", and that many of these variations did not "conform" to their needs, thus did not survive. In fact, some historians even suggest that his ideas anticipated the laws of inheritance further developed by Gregor Mendel.

Simultaneously, French philosopher Denis Diderot proposed a different framework for the generation of heritable variation. Diderot borrowed Maupertuis' idea that variation could be introduced during reproduction and the subsequent growth of offspring, and thought that production of a "normal" organism was no more probable than production of a "monstrous" one. However, Diderot also believed that matter itself had lifelike properties and could self-assemble into structures with the potential for life. Diderot's ideas on biological transformation, introduced in his 1749 work Letter on the Blind, were thus focused on variability of spontaneously generated forms, not variability within existing species.

Both Maupertuis and Diderot built on the ideas of Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, who wrote in De rerum natura that all the universe was created by random chance, and only the beings that were not self-contradictory survived. Maupertuis' work is distinguished from the work of both Lucretius and Diderot in his use of the concept of conformity in explaining differential survival of beings, a new idea among those who believed that life changed over time.

Like Diderot, two other influential minds of the 18th century—Erasmus Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck—believed that only very simple organisms could be generated by spontaneous generation, so another mechanism was necessary to generate the great variability of complex life observed on earth. Erasmus Darwin proposed that changes acquired during an animal's life could be passed to its offspring, and that these changes seemed to be produced by the animal's endeavors to meet its basic needs. Similarly, Lamarck's theory of the variability among living things was rooted in patterns of use and disuse, which he believed led to heritable physiological changes. Both Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck believed that variation, whether it arose during development or during the animal's life, was heritable, a key step in theories of change over time extending from individuals to populations.

In the subsequent century, William Herschel's telescopic observations of diverse nebulae across the night sky suggested to him that different nebulae could each be in different stages in the process of condensation. This idea, which came to be known as the nebular hypothesis, suggested that natural processes could both create order out of matter and introduce variation, and that these processes could be observed over time. While it may seem to the modern reader that astronomical theories are irrelevant to theories of organic variation, these ideas became significantly conflated with ideas of biological transformation—what we now know as evolution—in the mid-19th century, laying important groundwork for the work of subsequent thinkers such as Charles Darwin.

Darwin's concept of heritable variation
Charles Darwin's ideas of heritable variation were shaped by both his own scientific work and the ideas of his contemporaries and predecessors. Darwin ascribed heritable variation to many factors, but particularly emphasized environmental forces acting on the body. His theory of inheritance was rooted in the (now disproven) idea of gemmules - small, hypothetical particles, which capture the essence of an organism and travel from all over the body to the reproductive organs, from which they are passed to offspring. Darwin believed that the causal relationship between the environment and the body was so complex that the variation this relationship produced was inherently unpredictable. However, like Lamarck, he acknowledged that variability could also be introduced by patterns of use and disuse of organs. Darwin was fascinated by variation in both natural and domesticated populations, and his realization that individuals in a population exhibited seemingly purposeless variation was largely driven by his experiences working with animal breeders. Darwin believed that species changed gradually, through the accumulation of small, continuous variations, a concept that would remain hotly contested into the 20th century.

Post-Darwinian concepts of heritable variation
In the 20th century, a field that came to be known as population genetics developed. This field seeks to understand and quantify genetic variation. The section below consists of a timeline of selected developments in population genetics, with a focus on methods for quantifying genetic variation.

 * 1866 - Heterozygosity: Gregor Mendel's hybridization experiments introduced the concept that in the 1950s came to be recognized as heterozygosity. In a diploid species, one that contains two copies of DNA within each cell (one from each parent), an individual is said to be a heterozygote at a particular location in the genome if its two copies of DNA differ at that site. Heterozygosity, the average frequency of heterozygotes in a population, became a fundamental measure of the genetic variation in a population by the mid-20th century. If the heterozygosity of a population is zero, every individual is homozygous; that is, every individual has two copies of the same allele at the locus of interest and no genetic variation exists.
 * 1918 - Variance: In a seminal paper entitled "The correlation between relatives on the supposition of Mendelian inheritance", R.A. Fisher introduced the statistical concept of variance; the average of squared deviations of a collection of observations from their mean ($\sigma^2=\frac{1}{I}\sum_{i=1}^I(x_i-\mu)^2$ ), where $$\sigma^2$$ is the variance and $$\mu$$ is the mean of the population from which the observations $$x_i$$ are drawn). R.A. Fisher's work in population genetics was not just important to population genetics; these ideas would also form the foundations of modern statistics.
 * 1918, 1921 - Additive and dominant genetic variance: R.A. Fisher subsequently subdivided his general definition of variance into two components relevant to population genetics: additive and dominant genetic variance. An additive genetic model assumes that genes do not interact if the number of the genes affecting the phenotype is small and that a trait value can be estimated simply by summing the effect of each gene on the trait. Under Fisher's model, the total genetic variance is the sum of the additive genetic variance (the variance in a trait due to these additive effects) and the dominant genetic variance (which accounts for interactions between genes).
 * 1948 - Entropy: Unlike variance, which was developed with the purpose of quantifying genetic variance, Claude Shannon's measure of diversity, now known as Shannon entropy, was developed as part of his work in communication theory as a way to quantify the amount of information contained in a message. However, the method quickly found use in population genetics, and was the central method used to quantify genetic diversity in a seminal paper by Richard Lewontin, "The Apportionment of Human Genetic Diversity".
 * 1951 - F-statistics: F-statistics, also known as fixation indices, were developed by population geneticist Sewall Wright to quantify differences in genetic variation within and between populations. The most common of these statistics, FST, considers in its simplest definition two different versions of a gene, or alleles, and two populations that contain one or both of these two alleles. FST quantifies the genetic variability among these two populations by computing the average frequency of heterozygotes across the two populations relative to the frequency of heterozygotes if the two populations were pooled. F-statistics introduced the idea of quantifying hierarchical concepts of variance and would become the foundation of many important population genetic methods, including a set of methods that tests for evidence of natural selection in the genome.

title: Genetic variation


text:
Archimedes (disambiguation)

Archimedes was a celebrated mathematician and engineer of ancient Greece.

Archimedes may also refer to:

Given name

 * Archimedes of Tralles, ancient Greek writer
 * Arquimedes Caminero (born 1987), Dominican baseball player
 * Archimedes Patti (1913–1998), American intelligence officer
 * Archimedes Robb (1814–1875), American politician from Pennsylvania
 * Archimedes Russell (1840–1915), American architect
 * Archimedes Trajano (1956–1977), Filipino torture victim
 * Arquimedez Pozo (born 1973), Dominican baseball player

Other usages

 * Alfred Thomas Archimedes Torbert (1833–1880), Union general officer during the American Civil War
 * Pseudo-Archimedes, pseudo-anonymous writers of the Islamic Golden Age

Places

 * Archimedes (crater), an impact crater on the Moon
 * Archimedes Ridge, a ridge in Alaska, United States
 * Montes Archimedes, a mountain range on the Moon
 * 3600 Archimedes, an asteroid

Organizations

 * Archimedes, Inc., an American healthcare modeling company
 * Archimedes Foundation, an independent body established by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research
 * Archimedes Group, an Israeli intelligence agency

Entertainment and media

 * Archimedes, Merlin's owl in T. H. White's 1958 novel The Once and Future King and Disney's 1963 film The Sword in the Stone
 * Archimedes, a character in the TV series The Little Mermaid
 * Archimedes, the Medic's dove from Team Fortress 2

Science and technology

 * Archimedes (CAD), an open-source computer-aided design project
 * Archimedes Geo3D, a software package for dynamic geometry in three dimensions
 * Acorn Archimedes, a home computer
 * Claw of Archimedes, an ancient weapon devised by Archimedes
 * GNU Archimedes, the GNU package for Monte Carlo semiconductor devices simulations

Transportation

 * Archimedes (1797), a ship built in Britain
 * SS Archimedes, a steamship built in Britain in 1839
 * Archimedes (ship)
 * Archimedes (rocket engine)

Other uses

 * Archimedes (bryozoan), an extinct genus of fenestrate bryozoan
 * Archimedes pyrg, a species of mollusc in the family Hydrobiidae
 * Crambus archimedes, a moth in the family Crambidae
 * Garden of Archimedes, a museum of mathematics in Florence, Italy

title: Archimedes (disambiguation)