title: Enter the Dragon

text: Enter the Dragon () is a 1973 martial arts film directed by Robert Clouse and written by Michael Allin. The film stars Bruce Lee, John Saxon and Jim Kelly. It was Lee's final completed film appearance before his death on 20 July 1973 at the age of 32. An American and Hong Kong co-production, it premiered in Los Angeles on 19 August 1973, one month after Lee's death. The film is estimated to have grossed over worldwide (estimated to be the equivalent of over adjusted for inflation ), against a budget of $850,000. Having earned more than 400 times its budget, it is one of the most profitable films of all time as well as the most successful martial arts film.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: "Enter the Dragon" is widely regarded as one of the greatest martial arts films of all time. In 2004, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Among the first films to combine martial arts action with spy film elements and the emerging blaxploitation genre, its success led to a series of similar productions combining the martial arts and blaxploitation genres. Its themes generated scholarly debate about the changes taking place within post-colonial Asian societies following the end of World War II. "Enter the Dragon" is also considered one of the most influential action films of all time, with its success contributing to mainstream worldwide interest in the martial arts as well as inspiring numerous fictional works, including action films, television shows, action games, comic books, manga and anime.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: Lee, a highly proficient martial artist and instructor from Hong Kong, is approached by Braithwaite, a British intelligence agent investigating a suspected crime lord named Han. Lee is persuaded to attend a high-profile martial arts tournament on Han's private island to gather evidence that will prove Han's involvement in drug trafficking and prostitution. Shortly before his departure, Lee also learns that the man responsible for his sister's death, O'Hara, is working as Han's bodyguard on the island. Also fighting in the competition are Roper, an indebted gambling addict, and fellow Vietnam War veteran Williams. At the end of the first day, Han gives strict orders to the competitors not to leave their rooms. Lee makes contact with covert operative Mei Ling and sneaks into Han's underground compound, looking for evidence. He is discovered by several guards, but manages to escape.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: The next morning, Han orders his giant enforcer Bolo to kill the guards in public for failing in their duties. After the execution, the competition resumes with Lee facing O'Hara. Lee beats O'Hara in humiliating fashion, then kills him after he attacks Lee with a pair of broken bottles. Han abruptly ends the day's competition after stating that O'Hara's treachery has disgraced them. Han confronts Williams, who had also left his room the previous night to exercise. Han believes Williams to have knowledge of the intruder and after a destructive brawl, beats Williams to death with his iron prosthetic hand. Han then reveals his drug operation to Roper, hoping that he will join his organisation. Han also implicitly threatens to imprison Roper, along with all the other martial artists who joined Han's tournaments in the past, if Roper will not join his operation. Despite being initially intrigued, Roper refuses after learning of Williams's fate.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: Lee sneaks out again that night and manages to send a message to Braithwaite, but he is captured after a prolonged battle with the guards. The next morning, Han arranges for Roper to fight Lee, but Roper refuses. As a punishment, Roper has to fight Bolo instead, whom he manages to overpower and beat after a grueling battle. Enraged by the unexpected failure, Han commands his remaining men to kill Lee and Roper. Facing insurmountable odds, they are soon aided by the island's prisoners and the other invited martial artists, who had been freed by Mei Ling. Han escapes and is pursued by Lee, who finally corners him in his museum. After a brutal fight, Han runs away into a hidden mirror room. The mirrors initially give Han an advantage, but Lee smashes all the room's mirrors to reveal Han's location and eventually kills him. Lee returns outside to the main battle, which is now over. Bruised and bloodied, Lee and Roper exchange a weary thumbs-up as the military finally arrives to take control of the island.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: Due to the success of his earlier films, Warner Bros began helping Bruce Lee with the film in 1972. They brought in producers Fred Weintraub and Paul Heller. The film was produced on a tight production budget of $850,000. Fighting sequences were staged by Bruce Lee.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: The screenplay title was originally named Blood and Steel. The story features Asian, White and Black heroic protagonists because the producers wanted a film that would appeal to the widest possible international audiences.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: The scene in which Lee states that his style is "Fighting Without Fighting" is based upon a famous anecdote involving the 16th century samurai Tsukahara Bokuden.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: Rod Taylor was first choice for playing the down-on-his-luck martial artist Roper. Director Robert Clouse had already worked with Taylor in the 1970 film "Darker than Amber". However, Taylor was dropped after Bruce Lee deemed him to be too tall for the role.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: John Saxon, who was a black belt in Judo and Shotokan Karate (he studied under grandmaster Hidetaka Nishiyama for three years), became the preferred choice. During contractual negotiations, Saxon's agent told the film's producers that if they wanted him they would have to change the plot so that the character of Williams is killed instead of Roper. They agreed and the script was changed. In a six decade career, the character would become one of Saxon's best known roles.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: Rockne Tarkington was originally cast in the role of Williams. However, he unexpectedly dropped out days before the production was about to begin in Hong Kong. Producer Fred Weintraub knew that karate world champion Jim Kelly had a training dojo in Crenshaw, Los Angeles, so he hastily arranged a meeting. Weintraub was immediately impressed, and Kelly was cast in the film. The success of Kelly's appearance launched his career as a star: after "Enter the Dragon", he signed a three-film deal with Warner Bros and went on to make several martial arts-themed blaxploitation films in the 1970s.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: Jackie Chan has uncredited roles as various guards during the fights with Lee. However, Yuen Wah was Lee's main stunt double for the film, responsible for the gymnastics stunts such as the cartwheels and jumping back flip in the opening fight.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: Sammo Hung also has an uncredited role in the opening fight scene against Lee at the start of the film.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: A rumor surrounding the making of "Enter The Dragon" claims that actor Bob Wall did not like Bruce Lee and that their fight scenes were not choreographed. However, Wall has denied this, stating he and Lee were good friends.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: The film was shot on location in Hong Kong. In keeping with local film-making practices, scenes were filmed without sound: dialogue and sound effects were added or dubbed in during post-production. Bruce Lee, after he had been goaded or challenged, fought several real fights with the film's extras and some set intruders during filming. The scenes on Han's Island were filmed at a residence known as Palm Villa near the coastal town of Stanley. The villa is now demolished and the area heavily redeveloped around Tai Tam Bay where the martial artists were filmed coming ashore.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: Argentinian musician Lalo Schifrin composed the film's musical score. While Schifrin was widely known at the time for his jazz scores, he also incorporated funk and traditional film score elements into the film's soundtrack. He composed the score by sampling sounds from China, Korea, and Japan. The soundtrack has sold over 500,000 copies, earning a gold record.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: "Enter the Dragon" was heavily advertised in the United States before its release. The budget for advertising was over . It was unlike any promotional campaign that had been seen before, and was extremely comprehensive. To advertise the film, the studio offered free Karate classes, produced thousands of illustrated flip books, comic books, posters, photographs, and organised dozens of news releases, interviews, and public appearances for the stars. "Esquire", "The Wall Street Journal", "Time", and "Newsweek" all wrote stories on the film.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: "Enter the Dragon" was one of the most successful films of 1973. Upon release in Hong Kong, the film grossed , which was huge business for the time, but less than Lee's previous 1972 films "Fist of Fury" and "The Way of the Dragon".


title: Enter the Dragon

text: In North America, the film was receiving offers of from American distributors by April 1973 for the distribution rights, several months before release. Upon its limited release in August 1973 in four theaters in New York, the film entered the weekly box office charts at number 17 with a gross of in 3 days. Upon its expansion the following week, it topped the charts for two weeks. Over the next four weeks, it remained in the top 10 while competing with other kung fu films, including "Lady Kung Fu", "The Shanghai Killers" and "Deadly China Doll" which held the top spot for one week each. In October, "Enter the Dragon" regained the top spot in its eighth week. It sold tickets and grossed from its initial US release, making it the year's fourth highest-grossing film in the market. It was repeatedly re-released throughout the 1970s, with each re-release entering the top five in the box office charts. The film's US gross had increased to by 1982, and more than (equivalent to $++ round -1 million adjusted for inflation) by 1998.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: In Europe, the film initially monopolized several London West End cinemas for five weeks, before becoming a sellout success across Britain and the rest of Europe. In Spain, it was the seventh top-grossing film of 1973, selling 2,462,489 tickets. In France, it was one of the top five highest-grossing films of 1974 (above two other Lee films, "Way of the Dragon" at and "Fist of Fury" at ), with 4,444,582 ticket sales. In Germany, it was one of the top 10 highest-grossing films of 1974, with ticket sales. In Greece, the film earned in its first year of release.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: In Japan, it was the second highest-grossing film of 1974 with distributor rental earnings of . In South Korea, the film sold 229,681 tickets in the capital city of Seoul. In India, the movie was released in 1975 and opened to full houses; in one Bombay theater, New Excelsior, it had a packed 32-week run. The film was also a success in Iran, where there was a theater which played it daily up until the 1979 Iranian Revolution.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: Against a tight budget of $850,000, the film grossed upon its initial 1973 worldwide release, making it one of the world's highest-grossing films of all time up until then. The film went on to have multiple re-releases around the world over the next several decades, significantly increasing its worldwide gross. The film went on to gross over internationally by 1981, making it the highest-grossing martial arts film of all time. It was reportedly still among the all-time highest-grossing films in 1990. By 1998, it had grossed more than worldwide. , it has grossed an estimated total of over worldwide, having earned more than 400 times its original budget. The film's cost-to-profit ratio makes it one of the most commercially successful and profitable films of all time. Adjusted for inflation, the film's worldwide gross is estimated to be the equivalent of over .


title: Enter the Dragon

text: Upon release, the film initially received mixed reviews from several critics, including a favorable review from "Variety" magazine. The film eventually went on to be well-received by most critics, and it is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1973. Critics have referred to "Enter the Dragon" as "a low-rent James Bond thriller", a "remake of "Dr. No"" with elements of Fu Manchu. J.C. Maçek III of PopMatters wrote, "Of course the real showcase here is the obvious star here, Bruce Lee, whose performance as an actor and a fighter are the most enhanced by the perfect sound and video transfer. While Kelly was a famous martial artist and a surprisingly good actor and Saxon was a famous actor and a surprisingly good martial artist, Lee proves to be a master of both fields."


title: Enter the Dragon

text: Many acclaimed newspapers and magazines reviewed the film. "Variety" described it as "rich in the atmosphere", the music score as "a strong asset" and the photography as "interesting". "The New York Times" gave the film a rave review: "The picture is expertly made and well-meshed; it moves like lightning and brims with color. It is also the most savagely murderous and numbing hand-hacker (not a gun in it) you will ever see anywhere."


title: Enter the Dragon

text: The film holds a 95% approval rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes based on 55 reviews, with an average rating of 7.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Badass to the max, "Enter the Dragon" is the ultimate kung-fu movie and fitting (if untimely) Bruce Lee swan song." On Metacritic it has a weighted average score of 83% based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". In 2004, the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: "Enter the Dragon" was selected as the best martial arts film of all time, in a 2013 poll of "The Guardian" and "The Observer" critics. The film also ranks No. 474 on "Empire" magazine's 2008 list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time".


title: Enter the Dragon

text: "Enter the Dragon" has remained one of the most popular martial arts films since its premiere and has been released numerous times worldwide on multiple home video formats. For almost three decades, many theatrical and home video versions were censored for violence, especially in the West. In the U.K. alone, at least four different versions have been released. Since 2001, the film has been released uncut in the U.K. and most other territories. Most DVDs and Blu-rays come with a wide range of extra features in the form of documentaries, interviews, etc. In 2013, a second, remastered HD transfer appeared on Blu-ray, billed as the "40th Anniversary Edition". In 2020, new 2K digital restorations of the theatrical cut and special edition were included as part of the "Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits" box set by The Criterion Collection (under licensed from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment through the physical home media joint venture in US and Canada named Studio Distribution Services, LLC. and Fortune Star Media Limited), which featured all of Lee's films, as well as "Game of Death II".


title: Enter the Dragon

text: The film has been parodied and referenced in places such as the 1976 film "The Pink Panther Strikes Again", the satirical publication "The Onion", the Japanese game-show "Takeshi's Castle", and the 1977 John Landis comedy anthology film "Kentucky Fried Movie" (in its lengthy "A Fistful of Yen" sequence, basically a comedic, note for note remake of "Dragon") and also in the film "Balls of Fury". It was also parodied on television in "That '70s Show" during the episode "Jackie Moves On" with regular character Fez taking on the Bruce Lee role. Several clips from the film are comically used during the theatre scene in "The Last Dragon".


title: Enter the Dragon

text: Lee's martial arts films were broadly lampooned in the recurring "Almost Live!" sketch "Mind Your Manners with" "Billy Quan".


title: Enter the Dragon

text: In August 2007, the now-defunct Warner Independent Pictures announced that television producer Kurt Sutter would be remaking the film as a noir-style thriller entitled "Awaken the Dragon" with Korean singer-actor Rain starring. It was announced in September 2014 that Spike Lee would work on the remake. In March 2015, Brett Ratner revealed that he wanted to make the remake. In July 2018, David Leitch is in early talks to direct the remake.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: "Enter the Dragon" has been cited as one of the most influential action films of all time. Sascha Matuszak of "Vice" called it the most influential kung fu film and said it "is referenced in all manner of media, the plot line and characters continue to influence storytellers today, and the impact was particularly felt in the revolutionizing way the film portrayed African-Americans, Asians and traditional martial arts." Joel Stice of "Uproxx" called it "arguably the most influential Kung Fu movie of all time." Kuan-Hsing Chen and Beng Huat Chua cited its fight scenes as influential as well as its "hybrid form and its mode of address" which pitches "an elemental story of good against evil in such a spectacle-saturated way". Hollywood filmmaker Quentin Tarantino cited "Enter the Dragon" as a formative influence on his career.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: According to Scott Mendelson of "Forbes", "Enter the Dragon" contains spy film elements similar to the "James Bond" franchise. "Enter the Dragon" was the most successful action-spy film to not be part of the "James Bond" franchise; "Enter the Dragon" had an initial global box office comparable to the "James Bond" films of that era, and a lifetime gross surpassing every "James Bond" film up until "GoldenEye" (1995). Mendelson argues that, had Lee lived after "Enter the Dragon" was released, the film had the potential to launch an action-spy film franchise starring Lee that could have rivalled the success of the "James Bond" franchise.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: The film had an impact on mixed martial arts (MMA). In the opening fight sequence, where Lee fights Sammo Hung, Lee demonstrated elements of what would later become known as MMA. Both fighters wore what would later become common mixed martial arts clothing items, including kempo gloves and small shorts, and the fight ends with Lee utilizing an armbar (then used in judo and jiu jitsu) to submit Hung. According to UFC Hall of Fame fighter Urijah Faber, "that was the moment" that MMA was born.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: The "Dragon Ball" manga and anime franchise, debuted in 1984, was inspired by "Enter the Dragon", which "Dragon Ball" creator Akira Toriyama was a fan of. The title "Dragon Ball" was also inspired by "Enter the Dragon", and the piercing eyes of Goku's Super Saiyan transformation was based on Bruce Lee's paralysing glare.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: "Enter the Dragon" inspired early beat 'em up brawler games. It was cited by game designer Yoshihisa Kishimoto as a key inspiration behind Technōs Japan's brawler "Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun" (1986), released as "Renegade" in the West. Its spiritual successor "Double Dragon" (1987) also drew inspiration from "Enter the Dragon", with the game's title being a homage to the film. "Double Dragon" also features two enemies named Roper and Williams, a reference to the two characters Roper and Williams from "Enter the Dragon". The sequel "" (1988) includes opponents named Bolo and Oharra.


title: Enter the Dragon

text: "Enter the Dragon" was the foundation for fighting games. The film's tournament plot inspired numerous fighting games. The "Street Fighter" video game franchise, debuted in 1987, was inspired by "Enter the Dragon", with the gameplay centered around an international fighting tournament, and each character having a unique combination of ethnicity, nationality and fighting style. "Street Fighter" went on to set the template for all fighting games that followed. The little-known 1985 Nintendo arcade game "Arm Wrestling" contains voice leftovers from the film, as well as their original counterparts. The popular fighting game "Mortal Kombat" borrows multiple plot elements from "Enter the Dragon", as does its movie adaptation.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: The United Monarchy () in the Hebrew Bible refers to Israel and Judah under the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon. It is traditionally dated to have lasted between and . According to the biblical account, on the succession of Solomon's son Rehoboam, the United Monarchy would have split into two separate kingdoms: the Kingdom of Israel in the north, containing the cities of Shechem and Samaria; and the Kingdom of Judah in the south, containing the city of Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple. However, whether or not the United Monarchy actually existed is a matter of ongoing academic debate.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: In the 1990s, Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein contested that existing archaeological evidence for the United Monarchy in the 10th century BCE should actually be dated to the 9th century BCE. This model placed the biblical kingdom in Iron Age I, suggesting that it was not functioning as a country under centralized governance but rather as tribal chiefdom over a small polity in Judah, disconnected from the north's Israelite tribes.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: The rival chronology of Israeli archaeologist Amihai Mazar places the relevant period beginning in the early-10th century BCE and ending in the mid-9th century BCE, addressing the problems of the traditional chronology while still aligning pertinent findings with the time of Saul, David, and Solomon. Both Mazar's chronology and the traditional one have received fairly wide acceptance, though there is no current consensus on the topic.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Recent archaeological discoveries by Israeli archaeologists Eilat Mazar and Yosef Garfinkel in Jerusalem and Khirbet Qeiyafa, respectively, seem to support the existence of the United Monarchy, but the dating and identifications are not universally accepted. Scholars remain divided between those who support the historicity of the biblical narrative, those who doubt the existence of the United Monarchy, and those who support its existence while maintaining that the biblical narrative contains theological exaggerations.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: According to standard source criticism, several distinct source texts were spliced together to produce the current Books of Samuel. The most prominent in the early parts of the first book are the pro-monarchical source and the anti-monarchical source. In identifying both sources, two separate accounts can be reconstructed. The anti-monarchical source describes Samuel as having thoroughly routed the Philistines, begrudgingly accepting the people's demand for a ruler and appointing Saul by cleromancy.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: The pro-monarchical source describes the divinely-appointed birth of Saul (a single word being changed by a later editor so that it referred to Samuel) and his leading of an army to victory over the Ammonites, which resulted in the clamouring of the people for him to lead them against the Philistines, when he is appointed king.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Several scholars believe the Books of Samuel exhibit too many anachronisms to have been a contemporary account. For example, there is mention of later armour (1 Samuel 17:4–7, 38–39; 25:13), use of camels (1 Samuel 30:17), cavalry (as distinct from chariotry) (1 Samuel 13:5, 2 Samuel 1:6), and iron picks and axes (as if they were common) (2 Samuel 12:31).


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Most scholars believe that Samuel was compiled in the 8th century BCE, rather than the 10th century, when most of the events described took place, based on both historical and legendary sources. It served primarily to fill the gap in Israelite history after the events that had been described in Deuteronomy.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: In 1995 and 1996, Israel Finkelstein (Tel Aviv University) published two papers where he proposed a Low Chronology for the stratigraphy of Iron Age Israel. Finkelstein's model would push stratigraphic dates assigned by the conventional chronology by up to a century later, and consequently, Finkelstein concluded that much of the monumental architecture characterizing Israel in the 10th century BCE that has been traditionally associated with the biblical United Monarchy instead belongs to the 9th century. Finkelstein wrote that "Accepting the Low Chronology means stripping the United Monarchy of monumental buildings, including ashlar masonry and proto-Ionic capitals" According to Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, the authors of "The Bible Unearthed", ideas of a united monarchy are not accurate history but "creative expressions of a powerful religious reform movement" that are possibly "based on certain historical kernels." Finkelstein and Silberman accept that David and Solomon were real kings of Judah around the 10th century BCE, but they cite the fact that the earliest independent reference to the Kingdom of Israel dates to about 890 BCE and that to the Kingdom of Judah dates to about 750 BCE. Some see the united monarchy as fabricated during the Babylonian Exile transforming David and Solomon from local folk heroes into rulers of international status. Finkelstein has posited a potential United Monarchy under Jeroboam II in the 8th century BC, whereas the former one was potentially invented during the reign of Josiah to justify his territorial expansion.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Finkelstein's views have been strongly criticized by Amihai Mazar (Hebrew University of Jerusalem); in response, Mazar proposed the Modified Conventional Chronology which places the beginning of the Iron IIA period in the early 10th century and its end in the mid-9th century, solving the problems of the High Chronology while still dating the archeological discoveries to the 10th century BCE. Finkelstein's Low Chronology and views about the monarchy have received strong criticism from other scholars, including Amnon Ben-Tor, William G. Dever, Kenneth Kitchen, Doron Ben-Ami, Raz Kletter and Lawrence Stager.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Amélie Kuhrt (University College London) acknowledges that "there are no royal inscriptions from the time of the united monarchy (indeed very little written material altogether), and not a single contemporary reference to either David or Solomon," but she concludes, "Against this must be set the evidence for substantial development and growth at several sites, which is plausibly related to the tenth century." Kenneth Kitchen (University of Liverpool) reaches a similar conclusion, arguing that "the physical archaeology of tenth-century Canaan is consistent with the former existence of a unified state on its terrain."


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: On August 4, 2005, archaeologist Eilat Mazar announced that she had discovered in Jerusalem what may have been the palace of King David. Now referred to as the "Large Stone" structure, Mazar's discovery consists of a public building she dated from the 10th century BCE, a copper scroll, pottery from the same period, and a clay bulla, or inscribed seal, of Jehucal, son of Shelemiah, son of Shevi, an official mentioned at least twice in the Book of Jeremiah. In July 2008, she also found a second bulla, belonging to Gedaliah ben Pashhur, who is mentioned together with Jehucal in Jeremiah 38:1. Amihai Mazar called the find "something of a miracle". He has said that he believes that the building may be the Fortress of Zion that David is said to have captured. Other scholars are skeptical that the foundation walls are from David's palace. Garfinkel also claimed to have discovered David's palace in 2013, 25 kilometers away.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, an Iron Age site in Judah, found an urbanized settlement radiocarbon dated well before scholars such as Finklestein suggest that urbanization had begun in Judah, which supports the existence of an urbanised kingdom in the 10th century BCE. The Israel Antiquities Authority stated, "The excavations at Khirbat Qeiyafa clearly reveal an urban society that existed in Judah already in the late eleventh century BCE. It can no longer be argued that the Kingdom of Judah developed only in the late eighth century BCE or at some other later date." The techniques and interpretations to reach some conclusions related to Khirbet Qeiyafa have been criticized by some scholars, such as Finkelstein and Alexander Fantalkin of Tel Aviv University.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: In 2010, archaeologist Eilat Mazar announced the discovery of part of the ancient city walls around the City of David which she believes date to the tenth century BCE. According to Mazar, "It's the most significant construction we have from First Temple days in Israel" and "It means that at that time, the 10th century, in Jerusalem there was a regime capable of carrying out such construction." The 10th century is the period the Bible describes as the reign of King Solomon. Not all archaeologists agree with Mazar and archaeologist Aren Maeir is dubious about such claims and about Mazar's dating.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: In the "Jewish Study Bible" (2014), Oded Lipschits states the concept of United Monarchy should be abandoned, while Aren Maeir believes there is insufficient evidence in support of the United Monarchy. In August 2015, Israeli archaeologists discovered massive fortifications in the ruins of the ancient city of Gath, supposed birthplace of Goliath. The size of the fortifications show that Gath was a very large city in the 10th century BCE, perhaps the largest in Canaan at the time. The professor leading the dig, Aren Maeir, estimated that Gath was as much as four times the size of contemporary Jerusalem, which cast doubt that David's kingdom could have been as powerful as described in the Bible.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: In his book, "The Forgotten Kingdom" (2016), Israel Finkelstein considered that Saul, originally from the Benjamin territory had gained power in his natal Gibeon region around the 10th century BCE, and that he conquered Jerusalem in the south and Shechem to the north, creating a polity dangerous to Egypt's geopolitical intentions. So, Shoshenq I, from Egypt, invaded the territory and destroyed this new polity, and installed David of Bethlehem in Jerusalem (Judah) and Jeroboam I in Shechem (Israel) as small local rulers which were vassals of Egypt. Finkelstein concludes that the memory of a united monarchy was inspired by the Saul's conquered territory serving first the ideal of a great united monarchy ruled by a northern king in the times of Jeroboam II, and next to the ideal of a united monarchy ruled from Jerusalem.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: In an article on the "Biblical Archaeology Review," William G. Dever (Lycoming College) strongly criticized Finkelstein's theory, calling it as full of "numerous errors, misrepresentations, over-simplifications and contradictions". Dever noted that Finkelstein is proposing that Saul ruled a polity extending as far north as Jezreel and as far south as Hebron and reaching a border with Gath, whereas a capital was located in Gibeon rather than Jerusalem: according to Dever, such a polity is a united monarchy in its own right, ironically confirming the biblical tradition. In addition, he rejected the notion that Gibeon was the capital of such polity, since there is "no clear archaeological evidence of occupation in the tenth century, much less monumental architecture." Dever went as far as to dismiss Finkelstein's theory as "a product of his fantasy, stemmed by his obsession to prove that Saul, David and Solomon were not real kings and that the United Monarchy is an invention of a Judahite biased biblical writer". Dever concluded by stating that "Finkelstein has not discovered a forgotten kingdom, he has invented it. The careful reader will nevertheless gain some insights into Israel—Israel Finkelstein, that is."


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Another, more moderate, review was written on the same magazine by Aaron Burke, (University of California): Burke described Finkelstein's book as "ambitious" and praised its literary style, but did not accept his conclusions: according to Burke, Finkelstein's thesis is mainly based on his proposed Low Chronology, ignoring the criticism that it has received by scholars like Amihai Mazar, Christopher Bronk Ramsey and others, and engages in several speculations that cannot be proved by archeology, biblical and extra-biblical sources. He also criticized him for persistently trying to downgrade the role of David in the development of ancient Israel.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: In his books, "Beyond the Texts" (2018) and "Has Archeology Buried the Bible?" (2020), William G. Dever has defended the historicity of the United Monarchy, maintaining that the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon are "reasonably well attested". Similar arguments were advanced by Amihai Mazar in two essays written in 2010 and 2013, which point toward archaeological evidence emerged from excavation sites in Jerusalem by Eilat Mazar and in Khirbet Qeiyafa by Yosef Garfinkel.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: In 2018, archaeologist Avraham Faust (Bar-Ilan University) announced that his excavations at Tel 'Eton (believed to be the biblical Eglon) had uncovered an elite house (which he referred to as "the governor's residency"), whose foundations were dated by Carbon-14 analysis in the late 11th–10th century BCE, the time usually ascribed to Saul, David and Solomon. Such dating would strengthen the thesis that a centralized state was already existing in the time of David.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: According to the Book of Judges, before the rise of the united monarchy the Israelite tribes lived as a confederation under "ad hoc" charismatic leaders, called judges. Abimelech, the first judge to be declared king by the men of Shechem and the house of Millo (Bet Millo), reigned over Israel for three years until he was killed during the Battle of Thebez.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: According to the biblical account, the united monarchy was formed by a large popular expression in favour of introducing a king to rule over the decentralised Israelite confederacy. Increasing pressure from the Philistines and other neighboring peoples is said to have forced the Israelites to unite as a state after the anointing of Saul by Samuel. The notion of kingship is treated as having been anathema and viewed as the placing of one man in a position of reverence and power that ought to be reserved for God.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: According to the Second Book of Samuel, Saul's disobedience prompts God to curtail his reign and to hand his kingdom over to another dynasty, leading to Saul's death in battle against the Philistines. His heir, Eshbaal, rules for only two years before being assassinated. David was king of Judah only but ends the conspiracy and is appointed king of Israel in Eshbaal's place. Some textual critics and biblical scholars suggest that David was actually responsible for the assassination and that his innocence was a later invention to legitimise his actions.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Israel rebels against David and appoints David's son Absalom king. David is forced into exile east of the Jordan but eventually launches a successful counterattack, which results in the loss of Absalom. Having retaken Judah and asserted control over Israel, David returns west of the Jordan.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Prior to the ascension of Saul, the city of Shiloh is seen as the national capital, at least in the religious sense. From an archaeological standpoint, the claim is considered to be plausible. Throughout the monarchy of Saul, the capital is in Gibeah. After Saul's death, Eshbaal rules over the Kingdom of Israel from Mahanaim, and David establishes the capital of the Kingdom of Judah in Hebron.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: After the civil war with Saul, David forges a strong and unified Israelite monarchy, rules from c. 1000 to 961 BCE. Some modern archaeologists, however, believe that the two distinct cultures and geographic entities of Judah and Israel continued uninterrupted, and if a political union between them existed, it might have had no practical effect on their relationship.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: In the biblical account, David embarks on successful military campaigns against the enemies of Judah and Israel and defeats such regional entities as the Philistines to secure his borders. Israel grows from kingdom to empire, its military and political sphere of influence expanding to control the weaker client states of Philistia, Moab, Edom and Ammon, with Aramaean city-states Aram-Zobah and Aram-Damascus becoming vassal states.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: David is succeeded by his son Solomon, who obtains the throne in a somewhat-disreputable manner from the rival claimant Adonijah, his elder brother. Like David's Palace, Solomon's temple is designed and built with the assistance of Tyrian architects, master craftsmen, skilled labourers, money, jewels, cedar and other goods obtained in exchange for land ceded to Tyre.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Solomon goes on to rebuild numerous major cities, including Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer. Some scholars have attributed aspects of archaeological remains excavated from this sites, including six-chambered gates and ashlar palaces, to the building programme. However, Israel Finkelstein's Low Chronology would propose to down-date them to the 9th century BCE. Yigael Yadin later concluded that the stables that had been believed to have served Solomon's vast collection of horses were actually built by King Ahab in the 9th century BCE.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Following Solomon's death in c. 926 BCE, tensions between the northern part of Israel, containing the ten northern tribes, and the southern section, dominated by Jerusalem and the southern tribes, reached a boiling point. When Solomon's son and successor, Rehoboam, dealt tactlessly with economic complaints of the northern tribes, in about 930 BCE (there are differences of opinion as to the actual year) the Kingdom of Israel and Judah split into two kingdoms: the northern Kingdom of Israel, which included the cities of Shechem and Samaria, and the southern Kingdom of Judah, which contained Jerusalem.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: The Kingdom of Israel (or the Northern Kingdom or Samaria) existed as an independent state until 722 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Kingdom of Judah (or the Southern Kingdom) existed as an independent state until 586 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Many alternative chronologies have been suggested, and there is no ultimate consensus between the different factions and scholarly disciplines concerned with the period as to when it is depicted as having begun or when it ended.


title: Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

text: Most biblical scholars follow either of the older chronologies established by American archaeologists William F. Albright and Edwin R. Thiele, or alternatively the newer chronology of Israeli historian Gershon Galil. Thiele's chronology generally corresponds with Galil's chronology below, with a difference of one year at most.


title: Week

text: A week is a unit of time equal to seven days. It is the standard time period used for short cycles of days in most parts of the world. The days are often used to indicate common work days and rest days, as well as days of worship. Weeks are often mapped against yearly calendars, but are typically not the basis for them, as weeks are not based on astronomy.


title: Week

text: The modern seven-day week can be traced back to the Babylonians, who used it within their calendar. Other ancient cultures had different week lengths, including ten in Egypt and an eight-day week for Etruscans. The Etruscan week was adopted by the Ancient Romans, but they later moved to a seven-day week, which had spread across Western Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean. In 321 AD, Emperor Constantine officially decreed a seven-day week in the Roman Empire, including making Sunday a public holiday. This later spread across Europe, then the rest of the world.


title: Week

text: In English, the names of the days of the week are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. In many languages, the days of the week are named after gods or planets visible to the eye. Such a week may be called a "planetary week". Certain weeks within a year may be designated for a particular purpose, such as Holy Week in Christianity, Golden Week in China, and National Family Week in Canada. More informally, certain groups may advocate awareness weeks, which are designed to draw attention to a certain subject or cause. The term "week" may also be used to refer to a sub-section of the week, such as the workweek and weekend.


title: Week

text: Cultures vary in which days of the week are designated the first and the last, though virtually all have Saturday, Sunday or Monday as the first day. The Geneva-based ISO standards organization uses Monday as the first day of the week in its ISO week date system through the international ISO 8601 standard. Most of Europe and China consider Monday the first day of the week, most of North America and South Asia consider Sunday the first day, while Saturday is judged as the first day of the week in much of the Middle East and North Africa. Other regions are mixed, but typically observe either Sunday or Monday as the first day. The Christian and Jewish weeks begin on Sunday (a day of worship) and end with a sabbath day, both following the interpretation in the Hebrew Bible in which God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.


title: Week

text: The English word "week" comes from the Old English "wice", ultimately from a Common Germanic ', from a root ' "turn, move, change". The Germanic word probably had a wider meaning prior to the adoption of the Roman calendar, perhaps "succession series", as suggested by Gothic "wikō" translating "taxis" "order" in Luke 1:8.


title: Week

text: The seven-day week is named in many languages by a word derived from "seven". The archaism sennight ("seven-night") preserves the old Germanic practice of reckoning time by nights, as in the more common "fortnight" ("fourteen-night"). Hebdomad and hebdomadal week both derive from the Greek "hebdomás" (, "a seven"). Septimana is cognate with the Romance terms derived from Latin "septimana" ("a seven").


title: Week

text: Slavic has a formation "*tъ(žь)dьnь" (Serbian , Croatian tjedan, Ukrainian , Czech "týden", Polish "tydzień"), from "*tъ" "this" + "*dьnь" "day". Chinese has 星期, as it were "planetary time unit".


title: Week

text: A week is defined as an interval of exactly seven days, so that, except when passing through daylight saving time transitions or leap seconds,


title: Week

text: In a Gregorian mean year, there are 365.2425 days, and thus exactly or 52.1775 weeks (unlike the Julian year of 365.25 days or ≈ 52.1786 weeks, which cannot be represented by a finite decimal expansion). There are exactly 20,871 weeks in 400 Gregorian years, so 28 1622 was a just as was 28 2022.


title: Week

text: Relative to the path of the Moon, a week is 23.659% of an average lunation or 94.637% of an average quarter lunation.


title: Week

text: Historically, the system of dominical letters (letters A to G identifying the weekday of the first day of a given year) has been used to facilitate calculation of the day of week.


title: Week

text: The day of the week can be easily calculated given a date's Julian day number (JD, i.e. the integer value at noon UT):


title: Week

text: Adding one to the remainder after dividing the Julian day number by seven (JD "modulo" 7 + 1) yields that date's ISO 8601 day of the week. For example, the Julian day number of 28 2022 is 0. Calculating yields 1, corresponding to . In 1973, John Conway deviced the Doomsday rule for mental calculation of the weekday of any date in any year.


title: Week

text: The days of the week were named for the classical planets. This naming system persisted alongside an "ecclesiastical" tradition of numbering the days in ecclesiastical Latin beginning with "Dominica" (the Lord's Day) as the first day. The Greco-Roman gods associated with the classical planets were rendered in their "interpretatio germanica" at some point during the late Roman Empire, yielding the Germanic tradition of names based on indigenous deities.


title: Week

text: The ordering of the weekday names is not the classical order of the planets (by distance in the planetary spheres model, nor, equivalently, by their apparent speed of movement in the night sky). Instead, the planetary hours systems resulted in succeeding days being named for planets that are three places apart in their traditional listing. This characteristic was apparently discussed in Plutarch in a treatise written in c. AD 100, which is reported to have addressed the question of "Why are the days named after the planets reckoned in a different order from the actual order?" (the text of Plutarch's treatise has been lost).


title: Week

text: An ecclesiastical, non-astrological, system of numbering the days of the week was adopted in Late Antiquity. This model also seems to have influenced (presumably via Gothic) the designation of Wednesday as "mid-week" in Old High German () and Old Church Slavonic (). Old Church Slavonic may have also modeled the name of Monday, , after the Latin . The ecclesiastical system became prevalent in Eastern Christianity, but in the Latin West it remains extant only in modern Icelandic, Galician, and Portuguese.


title: Week

text: The earliest evidence of an astrological significance of a seven-day period is connected to Gudea, the priest-king of Lagash in Sumer during the Gutian dynasty (about 2100 BCE), who built a seven-room temple, which he dedicated with a seven-day festival. In the flood story of the Assyro-Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, the storm lasts for seven days, the dove is sent out after seven days, and the Noah-like character of Utnapishtim leaves the ark seven days after it reaches the firm ground.


title: Week

text: Counting from the new moon, the Babylonians celebrated the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th as "holy days", also called "evil days" (meaning inauspicious for certain activities). On these days, officials were prohibited from various activities and common men were forbidden to "make a wish", and at least the 28th was known as a "rest day".


title: Week

text: A continuous seven-day cycle that runs throughout history without reference to the phases of the moon was first practiced in Judaism, dated to the 6th century BC at the latest.


title: Week

text: Friedrich Delitzsch and others suggested that the seven-day week being approximately a quarter of a lunation is the implicit astronomical origin of the seven-day week, and indeed the Babylonian calendar used intercalary days to synchronize the last week of a month with the new moon. According to this theory, the Jewish week was adopted from the Babylonians while removing the moon-dependency.


title: Week

text: George Aaron Barton speculated that the seven-day creation account of Genesis is connected to the Babylonian creation epic, Enûma Eliš, which is recorded on seven tablets.


title: Week

text: In a frequently-quoted suggestion going back to the early 20th century, the Hebrew "Sabbath" is compared to the Sumerian "sa-bat" "mid-rest", a term for the full moon. The Sumerian term has been reconstructed as rendered "Sapattu" or "Sabattu" in Babylonian, possibly present in the lost fifth tablet of the Enûma Eliš, tentatively reconstructed "[Sa]bbath shalt thou then encounter, mid[month]ly".


title: Week

text: However, Niels-Erik Andreasen, Jeffrey H. Tigay, and others claim that the Biblical Sabbath is mentioned as a day of rest in some of the earliest layers of the Pentateuch dated to the 9th century BC at the latest, centuries before the Babylonian exile of Judah. They also find the resemblance between the Biblical Sabbath and the Babylonian system to be weak. Therefore, they suggest that the seven-day week may reflect an independent Israelite tradition. Tigay writes:


title: Week

text: It is clear that among neighboring nations that were in position to have an influence over Israel – and in fact which did influence it in various matters – there is no precise parallel to the Israelite Sabbatical week. This leads to the conclusion that the Sabbatical week, which is as unique to Israel as the Sabbath from which it flows, is an independent Israelite creation.


title: Week

text: The seven-day week seems to have been adopted, at different stages, by the Persian Empire, in Hellenistic astrology, and (via Greek transmission) in Gupta India and Tang China.


title: Week

text: The Babylonian system was received by the Greeks in the 4th century BC (notably via Eudoxus of Cnidus). However, the designation of the seven days of the week to the seven planets is an innovation introduced in the time of Augustus. The astrological concept of planetary hours is rather an original innovation of Hellenistic astrology, probably first conceived in the 2nd century BC.


title: Week

text: The seven-day week was widely known throughout the Roman Empire by the 1st century AD, along with references to the Jewish Sabbath by Roman authors such as Seneca and Ovid. When the seven-day week came into use in Rome during the early imperial period, it did not immediately replace the older eight-day nundinal system. The nundinal system had probably fallen out of use by the time Emperor Constantine adopted the seven-day week for official use in CE 321, making the Day of the Sun () a legal holiday.


title: Week

text: The Zoroastrian calendar follows the Babylonian in relating the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th of the month to Ahura Mazda.


title: Week

text: The forerunner of all modern Zoroastrian calendars is the system used to determine dates in the Persian Empire, adopted from the Babylonian calendar by the 4th century BC.


title: Week

text: Frank C. Senn in his book "Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical" points to data suggesting evidence of an early continuous use of a seven-day week; referring to the Jews during the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BC, after the destruction of the Temple of Solomon.


title: Week

text: While the seven-day week in Judaism is tied to Creation account in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible (where God creates the heavens and the earth in six days and rests on the seventh; Genesis 1:1-2:3, in the Book of Exodus, the fourth of the Ten Commandments is to rest on the seventh day, "Shabbat", which can be seen as implying a socially instituted seven-day week), it is not clear whether the Genesis narrative predates the Babylonian captivity of the Jews in the 6th century BC. At least since the Second Temple period under Persian rule, Judaism relied on the seven-day cycle of recurring Sabbaths.


title: Week

text: Tablets from the Achaemenid period indicate that the lunation of 29 or 30 days basically contained three seven-day weeks, and a final week of eight or nine days inclusive, breaking the continuous seven-day cycle.


title: Week

text: The Babylonians additionally celebrated the 19th as a special "evil day", the "day of anger", because it was roughly the 49th day of the (preceding) month, completing a "week of weeks", also with sacrifices and prohibitions.


title: Week

text: Difficulties with Friedrich Delitzsch's origin theory connecting Hebrew "Shabbat" with the Babylonian lunar cycle include reconciling the differences between an unbroken week and a lunar week, and explaining the absence of texts naming the lunar week as "Shabbat" in any language.


title: Week

text: In Jewish sources by the time of the Septuagint, the term "Sabbath" (Greek "Sabbaton") by synecdoche also came to refer to an entire seven-day week, the interval between two weekly Sabbaths.


title: Week

text: Jesus's parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18:12) describes the Pharisee as fasting "twice in the week" (Greek ).


title: Week

text: Days of the week are called "days of the sabbath" in the Hebrew language. In the account of the women finding the tomb empty, they are described as coming there , though modern translations often substitute "week" for "sabbath".


title: Week

text: The ancient Romans traditionally used the eight-day nundinum but, after the Julian calendar had come into effect in 45 BC, the seven-day week came into increasing use. For a while, the week and the nundinal cycle coexisted, but by the time the week was officially adopted by Constantine in AD 321, the nundinal cycle had fallen out of use. The association of the days of the week with the Sun, the Moon and the five planets visible to the naked eye dates to the Roman era (2nd century).


title: Week

text: The continuous seven-day cycle of the days of the week can be traced back to the reign of Augustus; the first identifiable date cited complete with day of the week is 6 February AD 60, identified as a "Sunday" (as "eighth day before the ides of February, day of the Sun") in a Pompeiian graffito. According to the (contemporary) Julian calendar, 6 February 60 was, however, a Wednesday. This is explained by the existence of two conventions of naming days of the weeks based on the planetary hours system: 6 February was a "Sunday" based on the sunset naming convention, and a "Wednesday" based on the sunrise naming convention.


title: Week

text: According to Islamic beliefs, the seven-day a week concept started with the creation of the universe by Allah. Abu Huraira reported that Muhammad said: Allah, the Exalted and Glorious, created the clay on Saturday and He created the mountains on Sunday and He created the trees on Monday and He created the things entailing labour on Tuesday and created light on Wednesday and He caused the animals to spread on Thursday and created Adam after 'Asr on Friday; the last creation at the last hour of the hours of Friday, i. e. between afternoon and night.


title: Week

text: The earliest known reference in Chinese writings to a seven-day week is attributed to Fan Ning, who lived in the late 4th century in the Jin Dynasty, while diffusions from the Manichaeans are documented with the writings of the Chinese Buddhist monk Yi Jing and the Ceylonese or Central Asian Buddhist monk Bu Kong of the 7th century (Tang Dynasty).


title: Week

text: The Chinese variant of the planetary system was brought to Japan by the Japanese monk Kūkai (9th century). Surviving diaries of the Japanese statesman Fujiwara Michinaga show the seven-day system in use in Heian Period Japan as early as 1007. In Japan, the seven-day system was kept in use for astrological purposes until its promotion to a full-fledged Western-style calendrical basis during the Meiji Period (1868–1912).


title: Week

text: The seven-day week was known in India by the 6th century, referenced in the Pañcasiddhāntikā. Shashi (2000) mentions the Garga Samhita, which he places in the 1st century BC or AD, as a possible earlier reference to a seven-day week in India. He concludes "the above references furnish a terminus ad quem (viz. 1st century) The terminus a quo cannot be stated with certainty".


title: Week

text: The seven-day weekly cycle has remained unbroken in Christendom, and hence in Western history, for almost two millennia, despite changes to the Coptic, Julian, and Gregorian calendars, demonstrated by the date of Easter Sunday having been traced back through numerous computistic tables to an Ethiopic copy of an early Alexandrian table beginning with the Easter of AD 311.


title: Week

text: A tradition of divinations arranged for the days of the week on which certain feast days occur develops in the Early Medieval period. There are many later variants of this, including the German and the versions of "Erra Pater" published in 16th to 17th century England, mocked in Samuel Butler's "Hudibras". South and East Slavic versions are known as "koliadniki" (from "koliada", a loan of Latin ), with Bulgarian copies dating from the 13th century, and Serbian versions from the 14th century.


title: Week

text: Medieval Christian traditions associated with the lucky or unlucky nature of certain days of the week survived into the modern period. This concerns primarily Friday, associated with the crucifixion of Jesus. Sunday, sometimes personified as Saint Anastasia, was itself an object of worship in Russia, a practice denounced in a sermon extant in copies going back to the 14th century.


title: Week

text: Sunday, in the ecclesiastical numbering system also counted as the or the first day of the week; yet, at the same time, figures as the "eighth day", and has occasionally been so called in Christian liturgy.


title: Week

text: Justin Martyr wrote: "the first day after the Sabbath, remaining the first of all the days, is called, however, the eighth, according to the number of all the days of the cycle, and [yet] remains the first."


title: Week

text: A period of eight days, usually (but not always, mainly because of Christmas Day) starting and ending on a Sunday, is called an octave, particularly in Roman Catholic liturgy. In German, the phrase (literally "today in eight days") can also mean one week from today (i.e. on the same weekday). The same is true of the Italian phrase (literally "today eight") and the French .


title: Week

text: Weeks in a Gregorian calendar year can be numbered for each year. This style of numbering is often used in European and Asian countries. It is less common in the U.S. and elsewhere.


title: Week

text: The system for numbering weeks is the ISO week date system, which is included in ISO 8601. This system dictates that each week begins on a Monday and is associated with the year that contains that week's Thursday.


title: Week

text: It is also possible to determine if the last week of the previous year was Week 52 or Week 53 as follows:


title: Week

text: In some countries, though, the numbering system is different from the ISO standard. At least six numberings are in use:


title: Week

text: Because the week starts on either Saturday, Sunday, or Monday in all these systems, the days in a workweek, Monday through Friday, will always have the same week number within a calendar week system. Quite often, these systems will agree on the week number for each day in a workweek:


title: Week

text: Note that this agreement occurs only for the week number of each day in a work week, not for the day number within the week, nor the week number of the weekends.


title: Week

text: The epidemiological week begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday. The first epidemiological week of the year ends on the first Saturday of January, provided that it falls at least four or more days into the month. Therefore, the first epidemiological week may actually begin in December of the previous year.


title: Week

text: The semiconductor package date code is often a 4 digit date code YYWW where the first two digits YY are the last 2 digits of the calendar year and the last two digits WW are the two-digit week number.


title: Week

text: The tire date code mandated by the US DOT is a 4 digit date code WWYY with two digits of the week number WW followed by the last two digits of the calendar year YY.


title: Week

text: The term "week" is sometimes expanded to refer to other time units comprising a few days. Such "weeks" of between four and ten days have been used historically in various places. Intervals longer than 10 days are not usually termed "weeks" as they are closer in length to the fortnight or the month than to the seven-day week.


title: Week

text: Calendars unrelated to the Chaldean, Hellenistic, Christian, or Jewish traditions often have time cycles between the day and the month of varying lengths, sometimes also called "weeks".


title: Week

text: An eight-day week was used in Ancient Rome and possibly in the pre-Christian Celtic calendar. Traces of a nine-day week are found in Baltic languages and in Welsh. The ancient Chinese calendar had a ten-day week, as did the ancient Egyptian calendar (and, incidentally, the French Republican Calendar, dividing its 30-day months into thirds).


title: Week

text: A six-day week is found in the Akan Calendar and Kabiye culture until 1981. Several cultures used a five-day week, including the 10th century Icelandic calendar, the Javanese calendar, and the traditional cycle of market days in Korea. The Igbo have a "market week" of four days. Evidence of a "three-day week" has been derived from the names of the days of the week in Guipuscoan Basque.


title: Week

text: The Aztecs and Mayas used the Mesoamerican calendars. The most important of these calendars divided a ritual cycle of 260 days (known as "Tonalpohualli" in Nahuatl and "Tzolk'in" in Yucatec Maya) into 20 weeks of 13 days (known in Spanish as trecenas). They also divided the solar year into 18 periods ("winal") of 20 days and five nameless days ("wayebʼ"), creating a 20-day month divided into four five-day weeks. The end of each five-day week was a market day.


title: Week

text: The Balinese Pawukon is a 210-day calendar consisting of 10 different simultaneously running weeks of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 days, of which the weeks of 4, 8, and 9 days are interrupted to fit into the 210-day cycle.


title: Week

text: The International Fixed Calendar (also known as the "Eastman plan") kept a 7 day week while defining a year of 13 months with 28 days each (364 days). Every calendar date was always on the same weekday. It was the official calendar of the Eastman Kodak Company for decades.


title: Week

text: A 10 day week, called a "décade", was used in France for nine and a half years from October 1793 to April 1802; furthermore, the Paris Commune adopted the Revolutionary Calendar for 18 days in 1871.


title: Week

text: The Bahá'í calendar features a 19 day period which some classify as a month and others classify as a week.


title: Week

text: In the Soviet Union between 1929 and 1940, most factory and enterprise workers, but not collective farm workers, used five and six day work weeks while the country as a whole continued to use the traditional seven day week.


title: Week

text: From 1929 to 1951, five national holidays were days of rest (, , ). From autumn 1929 to summer 1931, the remaining 360 days of the year were subdivided into 72 five day work weeks beginning on . Workers were assigned any one of the five days as their day off, even if their spouse or friends might be assigned a different day off. Peak use of the five day work week occurred on at 72% of industrial workers. From summer 1931 until , each Gregorian month was subdivided into five six day work weeks, more-or-less, beginning with the first day of each month. The sixth day of each six day work week was a uniform day of rest. On 74.2% of industrial workers were on non-continuous schedules, mostly six day work weeks, while 25.8% were still on continuous schedules, mostly five day work weeks. The Gregorian calendar with its irregular month lengths and the traditional seven day week were used in the Soviet Union during its entire existence, including 1929–1940; for example, in the masthead of Pravda, the official Communist newspaper, and in both Soviet calendars displayed here. The traditional names of the seven day week continued to be used, including "Resurrection" (Воскресенье) for Sunday and "Sabbath" (Суббота) for Saturday, despite the government's official atheism.


title: Week

text: The "Hermetic Lunar Week Calendar" is a strictly lunar calendar, apparently proposed to illustrate the complications of astronomically-based calendars. Its unique feature is irregular-length "weeks" which average approximately  days each. The weeks are fixed by the astronomical phases of the moon; the last day of the week fixed to coincide with a new-moon, first quarter-moon, full-moon, or third quarter-moon. Although typical months have three weeks of 7 days and one week of 8 days (29 day month) or two weeks of 7 days and two weeks of 8 days (30 day month), due to variations in the moon's orbit, the weeks in the Hermetic calendar range 6–9 days.


title: RuPaul's Drag Race (season 9)

text: The ninth season of "RuPaul's Drag Race" began airing on March 24, 2017, on VH1. The returning judges included RuPaul, Michelle Visage, Ross Mathews and Carson Kressley. Fourteen drag queens (including one returnee) competed for the title of "America's Next Drag Superstar". The prizes for the winner are a one-year supply of Anastasia Beverly Hills cosmetics, a cash prize of $100,000, and a crown and scepter provided by Shandar. The full list of contestants was revealed on February 2, 2017. This season saw the return of season eight contestant Cynthia Lee Fontaine, who finished the competition in 10th place.


title: RuPaul's Drag Race (season 9)

text: The winner of the ninth season of "RuPaul's Drag Race" was Sasha Velour, with Peppermint being the runner-up and Valentina winning Miss Congeniality.


title: RuPaul's Drag Race (season 9)

text: Bob the Drag Queen revealed on her "Sibling Watchery" podcast that season 9 started filming one week after the season 8 finale.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: "Mr. Brightside" is the first single released by American rock band the Killers. It was the band's debut single and is from their debut studio album, "Hot Fuss" (2004). Written by band members Brandon Flowers and Dave Keuning, it was one of the first songs the Killers ever wrote. Two music videos were made for the song: the first one was shot in black and white and features the band performing in an empty room. The second one, based on the 2001 film "Moulin Rouge!", was filmed for the song's re-release.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: The song was first released on September 29, 2003. It became more popular upon its re-release in 2004, peaking at number 10 in both the United States and the United Kingdom. It is the Killers' best-selling song in the US, where it has sold over 3.5 million copies. In the United Kingdom it has also sold over 3.52 million copies and is the longest-charting single on the UK Singles Chart Top 100, having spent 342 weeks (6 years, 6 months) on the chart as of December 2022 and is the most streamed track released prior to 2010. It is also one of the top fifteen most downloaded rock tracks ever in the United Kingdom.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: "Mr. Brightside" was named "Song of the Decade" by UK radio stations Absolute Radio and XFM, and in April 2010 Last.fm revealed that it was the most-listened-to track since the launch of the online music service, with the track being played over 7.66 million times. In October 2010, it was voted ninth in the Greatest Guitar Riffs of the 21st Century so far by "Total Guitar" magazine. Additionally, in 2010 "Rolling Stone" listed "Mr. Brightside" as the 48th-best song of the 21st century, also, in 2021, it was ranked number 378 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".


title: Mr. Brightside

text: Lyrically, "Mr. Brightside" depicts a true story of Flowers' jealousy and paranoia when he walked into a bar in Las Vegas and found his girlfriend cheating on him. "I was asleep and I knew something was wrong," he said. "I have these instincts. I went to the Crown and Anchor, a bar in Vegas, and my girlfriend was there with another guy."


title: Mr. Brightside

text: Guitarist Dave Keuning composed the music before meeting Flowers. Flowers then wrote lyrics and composed the chorus after hearing Keuning's ideas. Flowers credits the speed of the song's creation to its having only one verse. He says, "We went in and made demos pretty quickly after that, and it took a ton of time. That's also why there's not a second verse... I just didn't have any other lines, and it ended up sticking." Drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. is credited with creating the fast-paced drum beat in the first twenty-two seconds. The "calling a cab" section of the song has both a musical and textual similarity to the middle section of the song "Queen Bitch" from David Bowie's album "Hunky Dory" (1971). "Mr. Brightside" is written in the atypical key of D major.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: The song was mixed for its inclusion on "Hot Fuss" by Mark Needham, along with business partners Braden Merrick and Jeff Saltzman. The song was first created as a reference mix in just over half an hour "on an 8 input console, with no automation" according to Needham. Despite several subsequent remixes, the members of the Killers preferred the original one, which then made it onto the record. In recording the vocal effects, Saltzman used Echo Farm, sticking with the default vocal effects setting. Needham says it "overdrives the vocal a bit and sets an 84 ms delay."


title: Mr. Brightside

text: In their first performance together as the Killers, Flowers and Keuning played "Mr. Brightside" as part of a two-song open-mic night set at Las Vegas' Cafe Roma. Of the performance, Flowers says "It was terrible, awful." In November 2001, the group had recorded "Mr. Brightside" along with three other demos including "Desperate", "Replaceable", and "Under the Gun" at Mike Sak's Kill the Messenger Studio in Henderson, Nevada. They handed out a demo of the song for free during their shows in 2002. After signing with UK indie label Lizard King Records, the track was sent to radio as a buzz single and it received frequent spins by BBC Radio 1 DJ's Zane Lowe and Steve Lamacq as well as being play-listed by XFM. Just one week after its April release, MTV2 secured a deal to air the song for a week.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: The Killers performed the song live on the rooftop of Caesars Palace during halftime of the Las Vegas Raiders' first-ever home game at Allegiant Stadium on September 21, 2020; the halftime show was broadcast on U.S. television on ESPN & ABC's simulcast coverage of "Monday Night Football".


title: Mr. Brightside

text: In one of the song's first reviews, "The Washington Post" stated, "dashing through the tune as if it were a power ballad on speed, Flowers and company had the capacity crowd pulsing along with glee." "Mr. Brightside" became a popular song within the Las Vegas music scene with one reviewer calling it a "feel-good anthem that ranks as one of the best local tracks in a long time". In positive reviews, "NME" said the song was filled with "ambition, sex, and noise" while "Rolling Stone" described the song as having "swelled with anthemic majesty". "The Guardian" considered "Mr. Brightside" to be the most overplayed song, and noted that it has been played "on the radio. In the supermarket. In the pub. The office. In a cab. Thrumming through your neighbours' wall. [...] Blasted out at every party or wedding you’ll attend for the rest of your life." In 2020, "Paste" ranked the song number three on their list of the 20 greatest Killers songs, and in 2021, "American Songwriter" ranked the song number one on their list of the 10 greatest Killers songs.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: "Mr. Brightside" entered the "Billboard" Hot 100 at No. 40 on February 12, 2005, and peaked at No. 10 on June 11, thus making it a sleeper hit. The song reached 3.5 million in sales in 2016.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: In 2005, "Mr. Brightside" was the sixth most downloaded song on iTunes. To this day "Mr. Brightside" still has the highest popularity rating that iTunes offers, even after being available for purchase for over ten years. Additionally, sales of "Hot Fuss" album reached over 5 million sales by 2006. The online music streaming service Last.fm reported in 2010 that "Mr. Brightside" was the most downloaded song on the website. By July 2014, the song sold more than 820,000 copies in the United Kingdom, making it the UK's No. 12 most downloaded rock track of all time.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: As of April 2021, "Mr. Brightside" has spent 260 non-consecutive weeks, or five years, on the UK Singles Chart, the most out of any song. , it had charted on the UK Singles Chart in 11 of the last 13 years, including a 35-week run peaking at number 49 in 2016–2017. It was the UK's most streamed pre-2010 song, until it was surpassed by Oasis' "Wonderwall" in late 2018, and continued to be purchased for download hundreds of times a week by 2017. In March 2018, the song reached the milestone of staying in the Top 100 of the UK Singles Chart for 200 weeks. Explanations have included the song's popularity at parties, its popularity on streaming services, and the continued presence of the Killers as a popular live band in the UK. According to the Official Charts Company, the song has been streamed 281 million times in the UK and has sold 3,520,000 copies there as of April 2021.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: There are two videos for this song: the first version (also known as the UK version) was filmed in Staten Island, New York, and was directed by Brad and Brian Palmer under their studio Surround. Later on in the year the label decided to create a more mainstream video for the US market: the second video (also known as the US version) was filmed in Los Angeles, California. Directed by Sophie Muller, the video stars Flowers, Izabella Miko, and Eric Roberts in a love triangle, occurring within the context of a burlesque show.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: The US version won an MTV VMA in 2005 for Best New Artist in a Video, beating other nominees such as John Legend, Ciara, The Game, and My Chemical Romance.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: The photos featured on the inner sleeve of the album "Hot Fuss" were shot on set during the filming of the UK version music video and were inspired by the black and white look of that video.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: In 2005, Stuart Price released a remix of the song under his pseudonym Jacques Lu Cont. Reviewers were generally negative: for example, Michael Paoletta said this version "depletes the song of its energy and intensity". That same year, this song as well as two others by the Killers ("Smile Like You Mean It" and "Somebody Told Me") reached the "Billboard" Top 20 single chart. An extended version of the Stuart Price remix of the song was featured on the Killers' 2007 B-side and rarities compilation, "Sawdust". During the tour for Brandon Flowers's solo record, he performed the remix version with Stuart Price during his show at Brixton Academy and has since performed it on his tour as the show closer, again in the remix form.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: An early demo of the song featured Dave Keuning on bass and Matt Norcross on drums, before Mark Stoermer and Ronnie Vannucci were members of the band. The original demo was officially released on the 2013 compilation album "Direct Hits". On the Killers' 2012 album "Battle Born", they released "Miss Atomic Bomb", which is considered a companion song to "Mr. Brightside" lyrically.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: The song has been covered in a swing/jazz style by Paul Anka on his 2007 covers album "Classic Songs, My Way". Crossover rock-jazz artist ELEW created a piano version for his 2010 "ELEW Rockjazz Vol. 1". English pop-punk band McFly covered the song as a B-side to their 2005 single "I Wanna Hold You". Texan artist Playradioplay! covered the song on his 2007 EP "The Frequency" as well. An acoustic bluegrass cover was recorded for CMH Records' "Bluegrass Tribute to The Killers". Abi Sampa from "The Voice UK" recorded a mashup of "Mr. Brightside" and M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes". Many other artists have performed live covers of the song, including American rock band Fall Out Boy, Chris Daughtry at "The Masked Singer USA", Isa Raja on "X Factor Indonesia" and Scottish singer-songwriter Amy Macdonald.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: The song has also been covered by the Vitamin String Quartet, Boyce Avenue and on the UK television show "Orange Unsigned Act" by contestant Tommy Reilly. Additionally, "a cappella" versions have been produced by groups including Wheaton College's Gentlemen Callers, MIT's Resonance and Boston-based Overboard. Flowers performed the song during his solo tour in 2010. Indonesian hardcore band Thirteen also covered this song. The Wanted covered the song as part of a medley of the Killers songs during their summer 2013 live shows. Kelly Clarkson covered the version live on The Kelly Clarkson Show.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: "Mr. Brightside" appears on the soundtrack for the 2006 film "The Holiday". The song is played on a CD player by character Amanda Woods, portrayed by Cameron Diaz, in order to relieve stress and forget about her boyfriend's infidelity. The song is also briefly featured in the 2013 film "About Time" and "Rabbit Without Ears".


title: Mr. Brightside

text: The song has become a crowd favorite among Michigan Wolverines football fans at Michigan Stadium, where fans in excess of 100,000 sing along to the tune when it is played in the fourth quarter. The 2017 football season saw the song being sung in unison by the student SuperFans at Alumni Stadium during Boston College Eagles football games, and has become the unofficial go-to song for Boston College fans during sporting events. It was also a memorable feature of the 2017 AFL premiership celebrations by Jack Riewoldt of the Richmond Tigers, who sang the song in its entirety live alongside the Killers.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: British singer James Blunt has said that "Mr. Brightside" is his favorite song of all time. In 2008, it was released as downloadable content (DLC) for the "Rock Band" series. It is one of the all-time highest selling DLC songs for the game.


title: Mr. Brightside

text: The song was nominated for a Grammy in 2006 for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, but lost to a live version of "This Love" by Maroon 5.


title: Historical materialism

text: Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborator, Friedrich Engels, the ultimate cause and moving power of historical events are to be found in the economic development of society and the social and political upheavals wrought by changes to the mode of production. Historical materialism provides a challenge to the view that historical processes have come to a close and that capitalism is the end of history. Although Marx never brought together a formal or comprehensive description of historical materialism in one published work, his key ideas are woven into a variety of works from the 1840s onward. Since Marx's time, the theory has been modified and expanded. It now has many Marxist and non-Marxist variants.


title: Historical materialism

text: Marx's view of history is shaped by his engagement with the intellectual and philosophical movement known as the Age of Enlightenment and the profound scientific, political, economic and social transformations that took place in Britain and other parts of Europe in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.


title: Historical materialism

text: Enlightenment thinkers responded to the worldly transformations by promoting individual liberty and attacking religious dogmas and the divine right of kings. A swathe of thinkers including Hobbes (1588–1679), Montesquieu (1689–1755), Voltaire (1694–1778), Smith (1723–1790), Turgot (1727–1781) and Condorcet (1743–1794) detached from the ecclesiastical interpretation of the world and offered new scientific studies of human nature, history, economics and society. Some philosophers, for example, Vico (1668–1744), Herder (1744–1803) and Hegel (1770–1831), sought to discover an organizing theme, meaning, or direction in human history. For many Enlightenment philosophers, the power of ideas became the mainspring for understanding historical change and the rise and fall of civilizations. History was the gradual advance of the ‘spirit of liberty’ or the growth of nationalism or democracy, rationality and law. This view of history remains popular to this day.


title: Historical materialism

text: Marx rejected the enlightenment view that ideas alone were the driving force in society or that the underlying cause for the rise and fall of kingdoms, empires and states, was due to the actions of people at the top of society: kings, queens, emperors, generals, or religious leaders. The 'great man' and occasionally 'great woman' view of historical change was popularized by the 19th century Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) who wrote ‘the history of the world is nothing but the biography of great men’. According to Marx, this conception of history amounted to nothing more than a collection of 'high-sounding dramas of princes and states'.


title: Historical materialism

text: Inspired by Enlightenment thinkers, especially Condorcet, the Utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) formulated his own materialist interpretation of history, similar to those later used in Marxism, analyzing historical epochs based on their level of technology and organization and dividing them between eras of slavery, serfdom, and finally wage labor. According to the socialist leader Jean Jaurès, the French writer Antoine Barnave was the first to develop the theory that economic forces were the driving factors in history.


title: Historical materialism

text: While studying at the University of Berlin, Marx encountered the philosophy of Hegel (1770–1831) which had a profound and lasting influence on his thinking. One of Hegel’s key critiques of enlightenment philosophy was that while thinkers were often able to describe what made societies from one epoch to the next different, they struggled to account for why they changed.


title: Historical materialism

text: Classical economists presented a model of civil society based on a universal and unchanging human nature. Hegel challenged this view and argued that human nature as well as the formulations of art, science and the institutions of the state and its codes, laws and norms were all defined by their history and could only be understood by examining their historical development. Hegel historicised philosophical thought and saw it as an expression of a specific culture rather than an eternal truth. Thus: ‘Philosophy is its own age comprehended in thought’.


title: Historical materialism

text: In each society, humans were 'free by nature' but constrained by their 'brutal recklessness of passion' and 'untamed natural impulses' which led to injustice and violence. It was only through wider society and the state, which was expressed in each historical epoch, by a ‘spirit of the age’, collective consciousness or Geist, that 'Freedom' could be realized. For Hegel, history was the working through of a process where humans become ever more conscious of the rational principles that govern social development.


title: Historical materialism

text: Hegel’s dialectical method presents the world as a complex totality. This means that all parts of society, for example, science, art, law, labor and the economy, the state and the family etc, are all interconnected and mutually influential and therefore cannot be properly understood or analysed in isolation. Institutions and bodies are never static - they undergo a constant process of modification and development over time. According to Hegel, at any particular point in time, society is an amalgam of contesting forces – some promoting stability and others striving for change. It is not just external factors that bring about transformation but internal contradictions. The unceasing drive of this dynamic is played out by real people struggling to achieve their aims. The outcome is that ideas, institutions and bodies of society are reconfigured into new forms expressing new characteristics. At certain decisive moments in history, during periods of great conflict, the actions of ‘great historical men’ can align with the ‘spirit of the age’ to bring about a fundamental advance in freedom.


title: Historical materialism

text: The implication of Hegel's philosophy was incendiary - every social order, no matter how powerful and secure will eventually wither away. These ideas were inspirational to Marx and the Young Hegelians who sought to develop a radical critique of the Prussian authorities and lambasted the failure to introduce constitutional change or reform social institutions. However, Hegel’s contention, in Marx’s view, that ideas or the ‘spirit of the age’ drive history was mistaken. 'Hegel', wrote Marx, ‘fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought …’ On the contrary, Marx contended, the engine of history was to be found in a materialist understanding of society - the productive process and the way humans labored to meet their needs. Marx and Engels first set out their materialist conception of history in "The German Ideology", written in 1845. The book is a lengthy polemic against Marx and Engels' fellow Young Hegelians and contemporaries Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and Max Stirner.


title: Historical materialism

text: Marx underpins his theory of history by drawing attention to a fundamental reality of human existence - the necessity to labor to ensure our physical survival. Only once this is guaranteed may mankind pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc. Human labor, therefore, forms the materialist basis for society and is at the heart of Marx's account of history. Thus, throughout history, in all societies and in all modes of production, from the earliest paleolithic hunter gatherers, through to feudal societies and to modern capitalist economies, there is an ‘everlasting Nature-imposed condition of human existence’ which compels humans to join together socially to produce their means of subsistence. The first historical act, Marx writes in the German Ideology, is the production of means to satisfy our material needs: This is a: 'fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life'.


title: Historical materialism

text: Marx identified two mutually interdependent structures to describe how humans interacted with nature, and in the process of producing their subsistence, created ever more complex rules and institutions to manage their interaction between each other and with the environment. These are the "forces" and "relations of production".


title: Historical materialism

text: The "forces of production" are everything that humans use to make the things that society needs. They include human labor and the raw materials, land, tools, instruments and knowledge required for production. The flint sharpened spears and harpoons developed by early humans in the late Palaeolithic Age are all forces of production. Over time, the forces of production "tend" to develop and expand as new skills, knowledge and technology (for example wooden scratch plows then heavier iron plows) are put to use to meet human needs. From one generation to the next, technical skills, evolving traditions of practice and mechanical innovations are reproduced and disseminated. Today, the productive forces available to humanity are vast and continue to develop and expand.


title: Historical materialism

text: Marx then extended this premise by asserting the importance of the fact that, in order to carry out production and exchange, people have to enter into very definite social relations, or more specifically, "relations of production". However, production does not get carried out in the abstract, or by entering into arbitrary or random relations chosen at will, but instead are determined by the development of the existing forces of production.


title: Historical materialism

text: The relations of production are determined by the level and character of these productive forces present at any given time in history. In all societies, human beings collectively work on nature but, especially in class societies, do not do the same work. In such societies, there is a division of labor in which people not only carry out different kinds of labor but occupy different social positions on the basis of those differences. The most important such division is that between manual and intellectual labor whereby one class produces a given society's wealth while another is able to monopolize control of the means of production. In this way, both govern that society and live off of the wealth generated by the laboring classes.


title: Historical materialism

text: Marx identified society's relations of production (arising on the basis of given productive forces) as the economic base of society. He also explained that on the foundation of the economic base, there arise certain political institutions, laws, customs, culture, etc., and ideas, ways of thinking, morality, etc. These constitute the political/ideological "superstructure" of society. This superstructure not only has its origin in the economic base, but its features also ultimately correspond to the character and development of that economic base, i.e. the way people organize society, its relations of production, and its mode of production. G.A. Cohen argues in "" that a society's superstructure stabilizes or entrenches its economic structure, but that the economic base is primary and the superstructure secondary. That said, it is precisely because the superstructure strongly affects the base that the base selects that superstructure. As Charles Taylor puts it, "These two directions of influence are so far from being rivals that they are actually complementary. The functional explanation requires that the secondary factor tend to have a causal effect on the primary, for this dispositional fact is the key feature of the explanation." It is because the influences in the two directions are not symmetrical that it makes sense to speak of primary and secondary factors, even where one is giving a non-reductionist, "holistic" account of social interaction.


title: Historical materialism

text: Many writers note that historical materialism represented a revolution in human thought, and a break from previous ways of understanding the underlying basis of change within various human societies. As Marx puts it, "a coherence arises in human history" because each generation inherits the productive forces developed previously and in turn further develops them before passing them on to the next generation. Further, this coherence increasingly involves more of humanity the more the productive forces develop and expand to bind people together in production and exchange.


title: Historical materialism

text: This understanding counters the notion that human history is simply a series of accidents, either without any underlying cause or caused by supernatural beings or forces exerting their will on society. Historical materialism posits that history is made as a result of struggle between different social classes rooted in the underlying economic base. According to G.A. Cohen, author of "", the level of development of society's productive forces (i.e., society's technological powers, including tools, machinery, raw materials, and labour power) determines society's economic structure, in the sense that it selects a structure of economic relations that tends best to facilitate further technological growth. In historical explanation, the overall primacy of the productive forces can be understood in terms of two key theses:


title: Historical materialism

text: In saying that productive forces have a universal "tendency" to develop, Cohen's reading of Marx is not claiming that productive forces always develop or that they never decline. Their development may be temporarily blocked, but because human beings have a rational interest in developing their capacities to control their interactions with external nature in order to satisfy their wants, the historical tendency is strongly toward further development of these capacities.


title: Historical materialism

text: Broadly, the importance of the study of history lies in the ability of history to explain the present. John Bellamy Foster asserts that historical materialism is important in explaining history from a scientific perspective, by following the scientific method, as opposed to belief-system theories like creationism and intelligent design, which do not base their beliefs on verifiable facts and hypotheses.


title: Historical materialism

text: The main modes of production that Marx identified generally include primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, mercantilism, and capitalism. In each of these social stages, people interacted with nature and production in different ways. Any surplus from that production was distributed differently as well. To Marx, ancient societies (e.g. Rome and Greece) were based on a ruling class of citizens and a class of slaves, feudalism was based on nobles and serfs, and capitalism is based on the capitalist class (bourgeoisie) and the working class (proletariat).


title: Historical materialism

text: To historical materialists, hunter-gatherer societies, also known as primitive communist societies, were structured so that economic forces and political forces were one and the same. Societies generally did not have a state, property, money, nor social classes. Due to their limited means of production (hunting and gathering) each individual was only able to produce enough to sustain themselves, thus without any surplus there is nothing to exploit. A slave at this point would only be an extra mouth to feed. This inherently makes them communist in social relations although primitive in productive forces.


title: Historical materialism

text: Slave societies, the ancient mode of production, were formed as productive forces advanced, namely due to agriculture and its ensuing abundance which led to the abandonment of nomadic society. Slave societies were marked by their use of slavery and minor private property; production for use was the primary form of production. Slave society is considered by historical materialists to be the first-class society formed of citizens and slaves. Surplus from agriculture was distributed to the citizens, which exploited the slaves who worked the fields.


title: Historical materialism

text: The feudal mode of production emerged from slave society (e.g. in Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire), coinciding with the further advance of productive forces. Feudal society's class relations were marked by an entrenched nobility and serfdom. Simple commodity production existed in the form of artisans and merchants. This merchant class would grow in size and eventually form the bourgeoisie. However, production was still largely for use.


title: Historical materialism

text: The capitalist mode of production materialized when the rising bourgeois class grew large enough to institute a shift in the productive forces. The bourgeoisie's primary form of production was in the form of commodities, i.e. they produced with the purpose of exchanging their products. As this commodity production grew, the old feudal systems came into conflict with the new capitalist ones; feudalism was then eschewed as capitalism emerged. The bourgeoisie's influence expanded until commodity production became fully generalized:


title: Historical materialism

text: The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.


title: Historical materialism

text: With the rise of the bourgeoisie came the concepts of nation-states and nationalism. Marx argued that capitalism completely separated the economic and political forces. Marx took the state to be a sign of this separation—it existed to manage the massive conflicts of interest which arose between the proletariat and bourgeoisie in capitalist society. Marx observed that nations arose at the time of the appearance of capitalism on the basis of community of economic life, territory, language, certain features of psychology, and traditions of everyday life and culture. In "The Communist Manifesto" Marx and Engels explained that the coming into existence of nation-states was the result of class struggle, specifically of the capitalist class's attempts to overthrow the institutions of the former ruling class. Prior to capitalism, nations were not the primary political form. Vladimir Lenin shared a similar view on nation-states. There were two opposite tendencies in the development of nations under capitalism. One of them was expressed in the activation of national life and national movements against the oppressors. The other was expressed in the expansion of links among nations, the breaking down of barriers between them, the establishment of a unified economy and of a world market (globalization); the first is a characteristic of lower-stage capitalism and the second a more advanced form, furthering the unity of the international proletariat. Alongside this development was the forced removal of the serfdom from the countryside to the city, forming a new proletarian class. This caused the countryside to become reliant on large cities. Subsequently, the new capitalist mode of production also began expanding into other societies that had not yet developed a capitalist system (e.g. the scramble for Africa). "The Communist Manifesto" stated:


title: Historical materialism

text: National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.