title: Porsche 987

text: A revised version of the Porsche Cayman 987 was introduced on 21 February 2009, with a totally new engine (MA1.20/MA1.21). The standard Cayman engine's displacement was increased from 2.7 L to 2.9 L, giving a increase to , while the Cayman S gained direct injection and a increase to . The new engines no longer had the Intermediate Shaft, which proved to be a weak link in pre-2009 engines. Both the Cayman and Cayman S maintained a power advantage over their roadster sibling, the Boxster. The design for the front bumper was also kept distinct for the two models. The front signal lamps are designed differently: while both use LED signal lamps, the Cayman's are arranged like the face of dice while the Boxster has a horizontal row of 4 LEDs. The Porsche Tiptronic S automatic gearbox was replaced by the 7-speed PDK dual clutch transmission for the new model.


title: Porsche 987

text: The Porsche Design Edition 1 is a Cayman S model designed by Porsche Design, commemorating the 35th anniversary of Porsche Design. The all black car has a black leather interior on the seats, dashboard, and door trim, as well as black Alcantara steering wheel, gear lever, handbrake grip, and headliner. The Porsche Design Edition 1 also is fitted standard with the Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM), 19-inch 911 (997) Turbo wheels with 235/35 ZR 19 front and 265/35 ZR 19 rear tyres, Porsche Design script on the instrument dials, stainless steel entry plate engraved with "Porsche Design Edition 1", all-red rear taillights, custom vinyl exterior black-on-black graphics, and a numbered plaque on the glovebox cover. As with all PASM-equipped cars, the body is lowered by . Standard equipment includes a briefcase containing the Flat Six Chronograph, a pocket knife, a pair of sunglasses, a pen, and a key ring – all in black, even the knife blade. A total of 777 vehicles were produced as 2008 models. It went on sale in November 2007 in Germany, followed by the U.S. in January 2008.


title: Porsche 987

text: Porsche also announced the production of a limited edition Cayman S Sport, which was available in October 2008 as a 2009 model. This version of the Cayman S includes PSE (Porsche Sports Exhaust), PASM (Porsche Active Suspension Management), and Sport Chrono.


title: Porsche 987

text: The Cayman S Sport comes in Bright Orange and Signal Green (from the 911 GT3 RS), as well as Carrara White, Speed Yellow, Guards Red, Black, and Arctic Silver (done upon special order at an extra cost). The Cayman S Sport also features short shifter, sports seats, deviated color seatbelts, "Cayman S" striping on the door sides, black Porsche Design 19-inch wheels, various gloss black interior trims, gloss black side mirrors, stainless steel door sills with "Cayman S Sport" script, 5 mm wheel spacers, and Alcantara steering wheel and shift knob from the 997 911 GT3 RS. The instrumentation does not include a hood. The body is lowered by 1 cm due to its PASM feature. A total of 700 were made, with only 100 coming to the US.


title: Porsche 987

text: The Cayman R was introduced in 2011, and is based on the 2009 Cayman S. It features the Porsche OEM aerokit that was first introduced in 2007 as a factory option, 19 inch lightweight wheels shared with the Boxster Spyder, lighter aluminium doors from 997 911 GT3, lighter fiberglass bucket seats with carbon fibre backing from the 997 911 GT2, and with the removal of the radio, storage compartments, air-conditioning, and door handles, the Cayman R weighs in at less than a Cayman S. The Cayman R also received various cosmetic changes similar to ones seen on the earlier Cayman S Sport, such as decals on the doors, instrument cover delete, gloss black painted mirrors, black model designation emblem on the trunk, as well as black painted wheels.


title: Porsche 987

text: With the new passive sports suspensions, the Cayman R was lower than a Cayman S equipped with PASM, or lower than one equipped with standard passive suspension. The powertrain was a direct injection flat-six engine that was rated at at 7,400 rpm and of torque at 4,750 rpm. The standard Cayman R can accelerate from 0– in 5 seconds, and with the optional 7-speed PDK dual clutch transmission and the Sport Chrono package, it can accelerate from 0– in 4.4 seconds. The Cayman R with the manual transmission can reach a top speed of and with the PDK. The Cayman R made its debut at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show on 17 November 2010 and only 1,621 were made.


title: Porsche 987

text: Based on the Cayman R, Porsche also produced the Porsche Cayman S Black Edition with sales starting in July, 2011. The Black Edition is the rarest limited edition Cayman with only 500 built.


title: The unexamined life is not worth living

text: "The unexamined life is not worth living" is a famous dictum supposedly uttered by Socrates at his trial for impiety and corrupting youth, for which he was subsequently sentenced to death. The dictum is recorded in Plato's "Apology" (38a5–6) as ().


title: The unexamined life is not worth living

text: This statement relates to Socrates' understanding and attitude towards death and his commitment to fulfill his goal of investigating and understanding the statement of the Pythia (i.e. that there was no one wiser than Socrates). Socrates understood the Pythia's response to Chaerephon's question as a communication from the god Apollo and this became Socrates's prime directive, his "raison d'etre". For Socrates, to be separated from elenchus by exile (preventing him from investigating the statement) was therefore a fate worse than death. Since Socrates was religious and trusted his religious experiences, such as his guiding daimonic voice, he accordingly preferred to continue to seek the truth to the answer to his question, in the after-life, than live a life not identifying the answer on earth.


title: The unexamined life is not worth living

text: The words were supposedly spoken by Socrates at his trial after he chose death, rather than exile. They represent (in modern terms) the noble choice, that is, the choice of death in the face of an alternative.


title: The unexamined life is not worth living

text: Socrates believed that philosophy"the study of wisdom"was the most important pursuit above all else. For some, he exemplifies more than anyone else in history the pursuit of wisdom through questioning and logical argument, by examining and by thinking. His "examination" of life in this way spilled out into the lives of others, such that they began their own "examination" of life, but he knew they would all die one day, as saying that a life without philosophyan "unexamined" lifewas not worth living.


title: Population history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas

text: Population figures for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to colonization have been difficult to establish. By the end of the 20th century, most scholars gravitated toward an estimate of around 50 million—with some historians arguing for an estimate of 100 million or more.


text: In an effort to circumvent the hold which the Ottoman Empire held on the overland trade routes to East Asia and the hold that the Aeterni regis granted to Portugal on maritime routes via the African coast and the Indian Ocean, of the nascent Spanish Empire decided to fund Columbus' voyage in 1492, which eventually led to the establishment of settler-colonial states and the migration of millions of Europeans to the Americas. The population of African and European peoples in the Americas grew steadily, starting in 1492, and at the same time, the Indigenous population began to plummet. Eurasian diseases such as influenza, pneumonic plagues, and smallpox, in combination with conflict, forced removal, enslavement, imprisonment, and outright warfare with European newcomers reduced populations and disrupted traditional societies. The causes of the decline and the extent of it have been characterized as a genocide by some scholars.


text: Pre-Columbian population figures are difficult to estimate due to the fragmentary nature of the evidence. Estimates range from 8-112 million. Scholars have varied widely on the estimated size of the Indigenous populations prior to colonization and on the effects of European contact. Estimates are made by extrapolations from small bits of data. In 1976, geographer William Denevan used the existing estimates to derive a "consensus count" of about 54 million people. Nonetheless, more recent estimates still range widely. In 1992, Denevan suggested that the total population was approximately 53.9 million and the populations by region were, approximately, 3.8 million for the United States and Canada, 17.2 million for Mexico, 5.6 million for Central America, 3 million for the Caribbean, 15.7 million for the Andes and 8.6 million for lowland South America. A 2020 genetic study suggests that prior estimates for the pre-Columbian Caribbean population may have been at least tenfold too large. Historian David Stannard estimates that the extermination of Indigenous peoples took the lives of 100 million people: "...the total extermination of many American Indian peoples and the near-extermination of others, in numbers that eventually totaled close to 100,000,000." A 2019 study estimates the pre-Columbian population Indigenous population contained more than 60 million people, but dropped to 6 million by 1600, based on a drop in atmospheric CO2 during that period. Other studies have disputed this conclusion.


text: The Indigenous population of the Americas in 1492 was not necessarily at a high point and may actually have already been in decline in some areas. Indigenous populations in most areas of the Americas reached a low point by the early 20th century.


text: Using an estimate of approximately 37 million people in Mexico, Central and South America in 1492 (including 6 million in the Aztec Empire, 5–10 million in the Mayan States, 11 million in what is now Brazil, and 12 million in the Inca Empire), the lowest estimates give a death toll due to disease of 80% by the end of the 17th century (nine million people in 1650). Latin America would match its 15th-century population early in the 19th century; it numbered 17 million in 1800, 30 million in 1850, 61 million in 1900, 105 million in 1930, 218 million in 1960, 361 million in 1980, and 563 million in 2005. In the last three decades of the 16th century, the population of present-day Mexico dropped to about one million people. The Maya population is today estimated at six million, which is about the same as at the end of the 15th century, according to some estimates. In what is now Brazil, the Indigenous population declined from a pre-Columbian high of an estimated four million to some 300,000. Over 60 million Brazilians possess at least one Native South American ancestor, according to a DNA study.


text: While it is difficult to determine exactly how many Natives lived in North America before Columbus, estimates range from 3.8 million, as mentioned above, to 7 million people to a high of 18 million. Scholars vary on the estimated size of the Indigenous population in what is now Canada prior to colonization and on the effects of European contact. During the late 15th century is estimated to have been between 200,000 and two million, with a figure of 500,000 currently accepted by Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Health. Although not without conflict, European Canadians' early interactions with First Nations and Inuit populations were relatively peaceful. However repeated outbreaks of European infectious diseases such as influenza, measles and smallpox (to which they had no natural immunity), combined with other effects of European contact, resulted in a twenty-five percent to eighty percent Indigenous population decrease post-contact. Roland G Robertson suggests that during the late 1630s, smallpox killed over half of the Wyandot (Huron), who controlled most of the early North American fur trade in the area of New France. In 1871 there was an enumeration of the Indigenous population within the limits of Canada at the time, showing a total of only 102,358 individuals. From 2006 to 2016, the Indigenous population has grown by 42.5 percent, four times the national rate. According to the 2011 Canadian Census, Indigenous peoples (First Nations – 851,560, Inuit – 59,445 and Métis – 451,795) numbered at 1,400,685, or 4.3% of the country's total population.


text: The population debate has often had ideological underpinnings. Low estimates were sometimes reflective of European notions of cultural and racial superiority. Historian Francis Jennings argued, "Scholarly wisdom long held that Indians were so inferior in mind and works that they could not possibly have created or sustained large populations." In 1998, Africanist Historian David Henige said many population estimates are the result of arbitrary formulas applied from unreliable sources.


text: Population size for Native American tribes is difficult to state definitively, but at least one writer has made estimates, often based on an assumed proportion of the number of warriors to total population for the tribe. Typical proportions were 5 people per one warrior and at least 1 up to 5 warriors (therefore at least 5-25 people) per lodge, cabin or house.


text: The total peak population size only for the tribes listed in this table is 3,210,215 in the USA and Canada (including 327,600 in Canada).


text: Genetic diversity and population structure in the American land mass using DNA micro-satellite markers (genotype) sampled from North, Central, and South America have been analyzed against similar data available from other Indigenous populations worldwide. The Amerindian populations show a lower genetic diversity than populations from other continental regions. Decreasing genetic diversity with increasing geographic distance from the Bering Strait can be seen, as well as a decreasing genetic similarity to Siberian populations from Alaska (genetic entry point). A higher level of diversity and lower level of population structure in western South America compared to eastern South America is observed. A relative lack of differentiation between Mesoamerican and Andean populations is a scenario that implies coastal routes were easier than inland routes for migrating peoples (Paleo-Indians) to traverse. The overall pattern that is emerging suggests that the Americas were recently colonized by a small number of individuals (effective size of about 70–250), and then they grew by a factor of 10 over 800–1,000 years. The data also show that there have been genetic exchanges between Asia, the Arctic and Greenland since the initial peopling of the Americas. A new study in early 2018 suggests that the effective population size of the original founding population of Native Americans was about 250 people.


text: Early explanations for the population decline of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas include the brutal practices of the Spanish conquistadores, as recorded by the Spaniards themselves, such as the encomienda system, which was ostensibly set up to protect people from warring tribes as well as to teach them the Spanish language and the Catholic religion, but in practice was tantamount to serfdom and slavery. The most notable account was that of the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, whose writings vividly depict Spanish atrocities committed in particular against the Taínos. The second European explanation was a perceived divine approval, in which God removed the natives as part of His "divine plan" to make way for a new Christian civilization. Many Native Americans viewed their troubles in a religious framework within their own belief systems.


text: According to later academics such as Noble David Cook, a community of scholars began "quietly accumulating piece by piece data on early epidemics in the Americas and their relation to the subjugation of native peoples." Scholars like Cook believe that widespread epidemic disease, to which the natives had no prior exposure or resistance, was the primary cause of the massive population decline of the Native Americans. One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, yellow fever and pertussis, which were chronic in Eurasia.


text: However, recently scholars have studied the link between physical colonial violence such as warfare, displacement, and enslavement, and the proliferation of disease among Native populations. For example, according to Coquille scholar Dina Gilio-Whitaker, "In recent decades, however, researchers challenge the idea that disease is solely responsible for the rapid Indigenous population decline. The research identifies other aspects of European contact that had profoundly negative impacts on Native peoples' ability to survive foreign invasion: war, massacres, enslavement, overwork, deportation, the loss of will to live or reproduce, malnutrition and starvation from the breakdown of trade networks, and the loss of subsistence food production due to land loss."


text: Further, Andrés Reséndez of the University of California, Davis points out that, even though the Spanish were aware of deadly diseases such as smallpox, there is no mention of them in the New World until 1519, implying that, until that date, epidemic disease played no significant part in the depopulation of the Antilles. The practices of forced labor, brutal punishment, and inadequate necessities of life, were the initial and major reasons for depopulation. Jason Hickel estimates that a third of Arawak workers died every six months from forced labor in these mines. In this way, "slavery has emerged as a major killer" of the indigenous populations of the Caribbean between 1492 and 1550, as it set the conditions for diseases such as smallpox, influenza and malaria to flourish. Unlike the populations of Europe who rebounded following the Black Death, no such rebound occurred for the Indigenous populations.


text: Similarly, historian Jeffrey Ostler at The University of Oregon has argued that population collapses in North America throughout colonization were not mainly due to lack of Native immunity to European disease. Instead, he claims that "When severe epidemics did hit, it was often less because Native bodies lacked immunity than because European colonialism disrupted Native communities and damaged their resources, making them more vulnerable to pathogens." In specific regard to Spanish colonization of northern Florida and southeastern Georgia, Native peoples there "were subject to forced labor and, because of poor living conditions and malnutrition, succumbed to wave after wave of unidentifiable diseases." Further, in relation to British colonization in the Northeast, Algonquian speaking tribes in Virginia and Maryland "suffered from a variety of diseases, including malaria, typhus, and possibly smallpox." These diseases were not solely a case of Native susceptibility, however, because "as colonists took their resources, Native communities were subject to malnutrition, starvation, and social stress, all making people more vulnerable to pathogens. Repeated epidemics created additional trauma and population loss, which in turn disrupted the provision of healthcare." Such conditions would continue, alongside rampant disease in Native communities, throughout colonization, the formation of the United States, and multiple forced removals, as Ostler explains that many scholars "have yet to come to grips with how U.S. expansion created conditions that made Native communities acutely vulnerable to pathogens and how severely disease impacted them. ... Historians continue to ignore the catastrophic impact of disease and its relationship to U.S. policy and action even when it is right before their eyes."


text: Historian David Stannard says that by "focusing almost entirely on disease ... contemporary authors increasingly have created the impression that the eradication of those tens of millions of people was inadvertent—a sad, but both inevitable and "unintended consequence" of human migration and progress," and asserts that their destruction "was neither inadvertent nor inevitable," but the result of microbial pestilence and purposeful genocide working in tandem. He also wrote:


text: In contrast, historian Russel Thornton has pointed out that there were disastrous epidemics and population losses during the first half of the sixteenth century “resulting from incidental contact, or even without direct contact, as disease spread from one American Indian tribe to another.” Thornton has also challenged higher Indigenous population estimates, which are based on the Malthusian assumption that “populations tend to increase to, and beyond, the limits of the food available to them at any particular level of technology."


text: The European colonization of the Americas resulted in the deaths of so many people it contributed to climatic change and temporary global cooling, according to scientists from University College London. A century after the arrival of Christopher Columbus, some 90% of Indigenous Americans had perished from "wave after wave of disease", along with mass slavery and war, in what researchers have described as the "great dying". Other studies dispute the mAccording to one of the researchers, UCL Geography Professor Mark Maslin, the large death toll also boosted the economies of Europe: "the depopulation of the Americas may have inadvertently allowed the Europeans to dominate the world. It also allowed for the Industrial Revolution and for Europeans to continue that domination."


text: When Old World diseases were first carried to the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century, they spread throughout the southern and northern hemispheres, leaving the Indigenous populations in near ruins. No evidence has been discovered that the earliest Spanish colonists and missionaries deliberately attempted to infect the American natives, and some efforts were made to limit the devastating effects of disease before it killed off what remained of their labor force (compelled to work under the encomienda system). The cattle introduced by the Spanish contaminated various water reserves which Native Americans dug in the fields to accumulate rainwater. In response, the Franciscans and Dominicans created public fountains and aqueducts to guarantee access to drinking water. But when the Franciscans lost their privileges in 1572, many of these fountains were no longer guarded and so deliberate well poisoning may have happened. Although no proof of such poisoning has been found, some historians believe the decrease of the population correlates with the end of religious orders' control of the water.


text: In the centuries that followed, accusations and discussions of biological warfare were common. Well-documented accounts of incidents involving both threats and acts of deliberate infection are very rare, but may have occurred more frequently than scholars have previously acknowledged. Many of the instances likely went unreported, and it is possible that documents relating to such acts were deliberately destroyed, or sanitized. By the middle of the 18th century, colonists had the knowledge and technology to attempt biological warfare with the smallpox virus. They well understood the concept of quarantine, and that contact with the sick could infect the healthy with smallpox, and those who survived the illness would not be infected again. Whether the threats were carried out, or how effective individual attempts were, is uncertain.


text: One such threat was delivered by fur trader James McDougall, who is quoted as saying to a gathering of local chiefs, "You know the smallpox. Listen: I am the smallpox chief. In this bottle I have it confined. All I have to do is to pull the cork, send it forth among you, and you are dead men. But this is for my enemies and not my friends." Likewise, another fur trader threatened Pawnee Indians that if they didn't agree to certain conditions, "he would let the smallpox out of a bottle and destroy them." The Reverend Isaac McCoy was quoted in his "History of Baptist Indian Missions" as saying that the white men had deliberately spread smallpox among the Indians of the southwest, including the Pawnee tribe, and the havoc it made was reported to General Clark and the Secretary of War. Artist and writer George Catlin observed that Native Americans were also suspicious of vaccination, "They see white men urging the operation so earnestly they decide that it must be some new mode or trick of the pale face by which they hope to gain some new advantage over them." So great was the distrust of the settlers that the Mandan chief Four Bears denounced the white man, whom he had previously treated as brothers, for deliberately bringing the disease to his people.


text: During the siege of British-held Fort Pitt in the Seven Years' War, Colonel Henry Bouquet ordered his men to take smallpox-infested blankets from their hospital and gave them as gifts to two neutral Lenape Indian dignitaries during a peace settlement negotiation, according to the entry in the Captain's ledger, "To convey the Smallpox to the Indians". In the following weeks, Sir Jeffrey Amherst conspired with Bouquet to "Extirpate this Execreble Race" of Native Americans, writing, "Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them." His Colonel agreed to try.


text: Most scholars have asserted that the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic was "started among the tribes of the upper Missouri River by failure to quarantine steamboats on the river", and Captain Pratt of the "St. Peter" "was guilty of contributing to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. The law calls his offense criminal negligence. Yet in light of all the deaths, the almost complete annihilation of the Mandans, and the terrible suffering the region endured, the label criminal negligence is benign, hardly befitting an action that had such horrendous consequences." However, some sources attribute the 1836–40 epidemic to the deliberate communication of smallpox to Native Americans, with historian Ann F. Ramenofsky writing, ""Variola Major" can be transmitted through contaminated articles such as clothing or blankets. In the nineteenth century, the U. S. Army sent contaminated blankets to Native Americans, especially Plains groups, to control the Indian problem." In Brazil, well into the 20th century, deliberate infection attacks continued as Brazilian settlers and miners transported infections intentionally to the native groups whose lands they coveted.


text: After Edward Jenner's 1796 demonstration that the smallpox vaccination worked, the technique became better known and smallpox became less deadly in the United States and elsewhere. Many colonists and natives were vaccinated, although, in some cases, officials tried to vaccinate natives only to discover that the disease was too widespread to stop. At other times, trade demands led to broken quarantines. In other cases, natives refused vaccination because of suspicion of whites. The first international healthcare expedition in history was the Balmis expedition which had the aim of vaccinating Indigenous peoples against smallpox all along the Spanish Empire in 1803. In 1831, government officials vaccinated the Yankton Sioux at Sioux Agency. The Santee Sioux refused vaccination and many died.


text: While epidemic disease was a leading factor of the population decline of the American Indigenous peoples after 1492, there were other contributing factors, all of them related to European contact and colonization. One of these factors was warfare. According to demographer Russell Thornton, although many lives were lost in wars over the centuries, and war sometimes contributed to the near extinction of certain tribes, warfare and death by other violent means was a comparatively minor cause of overall native population decline.


text: From the U.S. Bureau of the Census in 1894, wars between the government and the Indigenous peoples ranged over 40 in number over the previous 100 years. These wars cost the lives of approximately 19,000 white people, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians, including men, women, and children. They safely estimated that the amount of Native people who were killed or wounded was actually around fifty percent more than what was recorded.


text: There is some disagreement among scholars about how widespread warfare was in pre-Columbian America, but there is general agreement that war became deadlier after the arrival of the Europeans and their firearms. The South or Central American infrastructure allowed for thousands of European conquistadors and tens of thousands of their Indian auxiliaries to attack the dominant Indigenous civilization. Empires such as the Incas depended on a highly centralized administration for the distribution of resources. Disruption caused by the war and the colonization hampered the traditional economy, and possibly led to shortages of food and materials. Across the western hemisphere, war with various Native American civilizations constituted alliances based out of both necessity or economic prosperity and, resulted in mass-scale intertribal warfare. European colonization in the North American continent also contributed to a number of wars between Native Americans, who fought over which of them should have first access to new technology and weaponry—like in the Beaver Wars.


text: Some Spaniards objected to the encomienda system of labor, notably Bartolomé de las Casas, who insisted that the Indigenous people were humans with souls and rights. Due to many revolts and military encounters, Emperor Charles V helped relieve the strain on both the native laborers and the Spanish vanguards probing the Caribana for military and diplomatic purposes. Later on New Laws were promulgated in Spain in 1542 to protect isolated natives, but the abuses in the Americas were never entirely or permanently abolished. The Spanish also employed the pre-Columbian draft system called the "mita", and treated their subjects as something between slaves and serfs. Serfs stayed to work the land; slaves were exported to the mines, where large numbers of them died. In other areas the Spaniards replaced the ruling Aztecs and Incas and divided the conquered lands among themselves ruling as the new feudal lords with often, but unsuccessful lobbying to the viceroys of the Spanish crown to pay Tlaxcalan war demnities. The infamous Bandeirantes from São Paulo, adventurers mostly of mixed Portuguese and native ancestry, penetrated steadily westward in their search for Indian slaves. Serfdom existed as such in parts of Latin America well into the 19th century, past independence. Historian Andrés Reséndez argues that even though the Spanish were aware of the spread of smallpox, they made no mention of it until 1519, a quarter century after Columbus arrived in Hispaniola. Instead he contends that enslavement in gold and silver mines was the primary reason why the Native American population of Hispaniola dropped so significantly. and that even though disease was a factor, the native population would have rebounded the same way Europeans did following the Black Death if it were not for the constant enslavement they were subject to. He further contends that enslavement of Native Americans was in fact the primary cause of their depopulation in Spanish territories; that the majority of Indians enslaved were women and children compared to the enslavement of Africans which mostly targeted adult males and in turn they were sold at a 50% to 60% higher price, and that 2,462,000 to 4,985,000 Amerindians were enslaved between Columbus's arrival and 1900.


text: Throughout history, Indigenous people have been subjected to the repeated and forced removal from their land. Beginning in the 1830s, there was the relocation of an estimated 100,000 Indigenous people in the United States called the “Trail of Tears". The tribes affected by this specific removal were the Five Civilized Tribes: The Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole. The treaty of New Echota, was enacted, which stated that the United States “would give Cherokee land west of the Mississippi in exchange for $5,000,000”. According to Jeffrey Ostler, "Of the 80,000 Native people who were forced west from 1830 into the 1850s, between 12,000 and 17,000 perished." Ostler states that "the large majority died of interrelated factors of starvation, exposure and disease".


text: In addition to the removal of the Southern Tribes, there were multiple other removals of Northern Tribes also known as "Trails of Tears." For example, "In the free labor states of the North, federal and state officials, supported by farmers, speculators and business interests, evicted Shawnees, Delawares, Senecas, Potawatomis, Miamis, Wyandots, Ho-Chunks, Ojibwes, Sauks and Meskwakis." These Nations were moved West of the Mississippi into what is now known as Eastern Kansas, and numbered 17,000 on arrival. According to Ostler, "by 1860, their numbers had been cut in half" due to low fertility, high infant mortality, and increased disease caused by conditions such as polluted drinking water, few resources, and social stress.


text: Ostler also writes that the areas that Northern tribes were removed to were already inhabited: "The areas west of the Mississippi River were home to other Indigenous nations— Osages, Kanzas, Omahas, Ioways, Otoes and Missourias. To make room for thousands of people from the East, the government dispossessed these nations of much their lands." Ostler writes that in 1840, when Northern Nations were moved onto their land, "The combined population of these western nations was 9,000 ... 20 years later, it had fallen to 6,000."


text: On 8 September 2000, the head of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) formally apologized for the agency's participation in the ethnic cleansing of Western tribes.


text: In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the "California Genocide." Newsom said, "That’s what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books."


title: Vespertine

text: Vespertine is the fourth studio album by Icelandic recording artist Björk. It was released on 27 August 2001 in the United Kingdom by One Little Indian Records and in the United States by Elektra Entertainment. Production on the album began during the filming of "Dancer in the Dark". With "Vespertine", Björk aspired to create an album with an intimate and domestic feeling, deviating from the brash sonority of her previous studio album "Homogenic" (1997).


title: Vespertine

text: The musical style of the album reflected Björk's newly found interest in the minimal and intricate electronic music of producers such as Opiate, Console and the duo Matmos, who were all enlisted for the album. With the rising popularity of Napster and music downloads, she also composed arrangements with thin, "icy" sounding instruments whose quality would not be compromised when downloaded and played on a computer, including the harp, the celesta, clavichord, strings and custom music boxes. Assisted by Matmos, Björk created "microbeats" from various commonplace sounds, such as that of shuffling cards and ice being cracked. Lyrically, the album revolves around sex and love—sometimes explicitly—inspired by her at the time new relationship with Matthew Barney; other lyrical sources include the poetry of E. E. Cummings and British playwright Sarah Kane's "Crave".


title: Vespertine

text: "Vespertine" peaked at number 19 on the US "Billboard" 200 and at number 8 on the UK Albums Chart. It was widely acclaimed by critics, with praise centred on its erotic, intimate mood and sonic experimentation. The album appeared on several publications' lists of the best albums of 2001 and of the decade, and has often been considered Björk's best album to date. It was certified gold in Canada, France, and the United Kingdom. Three singles were released from "Vespertine": "Hidden Place", "Pagan Poetry", and "Cocoon". In 2001, she enlisted Zeena Parkins, Matmos, and a choir of Inuit women to embark on the Vespertine World Tour, which took place at theatres and small venues, in favor of acoustics over audience numbers. "Björk", a self-titled coffee table book containing photographs of the artist throughout her career, was released simultaneously with the album.


title: Vespertine

text: Björk had released her previous studio album, "Homogenic", in 1997. The album's style differed from her previous two releases, described by her as "very emotionally confrontational and [...] very dramatic". She also described "All Is Full of Love"—"Homogenic"s closing track—as the first song on "Vespertine", as it opposed the rest of the album's "aggressive, macho" aesthetic. In 2000, she starred in Lars von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark", and composed its soundtrack, "Selmasongs". Her performance was praised: the film was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and she received the Best Actress award. On 25 March 2001, Björk attended the 73rd Academy Awards—as "I've Seen It All" was nominated for Best Original Song—wearing a swan dress designed by Marjan Pejoski that caused a media frenzy and was widely criticised.


title: Vespertine

text: While she worked on the film, she also began producing her next album, writing new music, and teaming with new collaborators. She has said ""Selmasongs" was the day job and "Vespertine" was the hobby". The earliest sessions took place in Spain with programmer Jake Davies. Her new relationship with artist Matthew Barney, and the tension while filming "Dancer in the Dark", have been referred to as the two major forces that shaped what would become "Vespertine". As the process of filming demanded that she be extroverted, the new music she was creating became hushed and tranquil as a way to escape. Björk commissioned Valgeir Sigurðsson to relocate some of his studio equipment from Iceland to Denmark where "Dancer in the Dark" was being filmed. While living in Copenhagen, she also contacted the electronic musician Thomas Knak (also known as Opiate), after having enjoyed his 1999 album "Objects for an Ideal Home". Björk's musical taste shifted from the "clang and clatter" and "thumping techno" that characterised "Homogenic", as she grew tired of "big beats".


title: Vespertine

text: Björk then set about making a record with a domestic mood featuring "everyday moods and everyday noises translating into melodies and beats", hence its working title "Domestika". Marius de Vries told "Sound on Sound" that the project was driven by an "overriding aesthetic of being homely and comfortable", which had "all to do with Björk wanting to make a record as a reaction to the wanderings and the pain she experienced making "Dancer in the Dark", and how much that had taken out of her, to make a record about the place you come back to after you've wandered." During this time, she also began to use her new laptop to write music, and "Vespertine" has been retrospectively referred to as "her laptop album". In 2022, she recalled the impact this technology had on the record:


title: Vespertine

text: It was [...] the time when I got my first laptop, in '99, and I had total freedom from the studio, which is kind of a huge moment for me and also for women, because [as an author] you can always write wherever you are, but musicians couldn't really do this, you know. If you wanted to have more than just you and your accordion or piano or acoustic guitar, you had to go in a studio and that's very expensive. And then you had to also go into the patriarchy system and work with the engineers, the producers... [...] What was amazing for me was to get the laptop and realize that I could do it all [with it]. Now we have forgotten what this feeling is like, but it was like somebody had come with a space shuttle and delivered you all the tools you wanted when you were a 5-year-old.


title: Vespertine

text: For the string and music box arrangements, she used Sibelius scorewriter software. In Iceland, programmers Jake Davies and Marius de Vries joined Björk for a writing session, laying down more tracks, in addition to nine already mixed. Then, she "set up camp [...] during summer" in a New York City loft, and began to work with harpist Zeena Parkins. Much of "Vespertine" was "composed, crafted and edited" in that loft, in what has been called the ""Domestika" sessions". Some tracks were recorded as an overdub "on top of a slave mixdown" of the Spanish sessions. As she wanted to write her own songs on music boxes, Björk contacted a music box company requesting transparent acrylic boxes because she wanted the sound to be "as hard as possible, like it was frozen". Björk decided to use instruments whose sound would not be compromised when downloaded from sites such as Napster. She explained:


title: Vespertine

text: I use micro-beats, a lot of whispery vocals, which I think sound amazing when they're downloaded because of the secrecy of the medium. The only acoustic instruments I would use would be those that sound good after they've been downloaded, so the harp, the music box, celeste and clavichord. They're plucky sounds. [...] And the strings [...] ended up being more panoramic textures in the background. It's all about being in a little house, on your own. [...] The strings would be like white mountains outside.


title: Vespertine

text: On "Homogenic", every track was built around a loud beat, but in "Vespertine" Björk wanted to make a "microcosmos of thirty or forty beats interacting". To do this, she recorded noises around her house to make beats out of them. Once the songs were almost finished, Björk contacted the duo Matmos, who she considered "virtuosos" in the field, and sent them various songs to work with. They added beats made from the noise of crushing ice and shuffling cards, among others. In her documentary "Minuscule", Björk explained that this process consisted of "taking something very tiny and magnifying it up to big", intending to convey the "sensation that you've been told a secret", that is also present in micrographs. Marius de Vries and Björk did a lot of the sound design on "Vespertine" with a text-based synthesizer called Supercollider. Although he described it as "horrendous and impenetrable once you first get it", de Vries admitted: "There is something about typing commands in and hearing the noises come out which is very different from tweaking knobs and it really does take you in surprising directions. It's a way of disrupting the normal circuitry between you and the sound-making machinery."


title: Vespertine

text: Her relationship with Barney influenced her lyrics, which were now more intimate, detailed, and revealing as opposed to those of her past works. A particular example is "Cocoon", which is sexually explicit. The eventual title change of the record reveals its changing nature. Writer and critic Mark Pytlik notes that, "where ["Domestika"] signified a focus of extracting magic from the platitudes of everyday life, ["Vespertine"] [...] suggested a creation of magic through much more powerful forces. In fine style, Björk had set out to write an album about making sandwiches. She'd ended up with an album about making love". A stylistic antecedent was her poem "Techno Prayer", published in "Details" magazine in July 1996, which would later be used as part of the lyrics of "All Neon Like". It featured thematic ideas such as cocooning and thread-weaving that she would later explore on "Vespertine".


title: Vespertine

text: "Heirloom" was based on an existing instrumental track from electronic musician Console's album "Rocket in the Pocket" (1998), titled "Crabcraft" (which itself samples Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's "Sacred Heart"). Björk contacted Console in early 2000 and they met in London; she then added her vocals on top. "Undo" was written during a two-week session with Knak that January in Reykjavík. Björk recorded her vocals on top of Knak's minimalist rhythmic backbone, and months later she had added a full choir and string section. "Cocoon", also produced by Knak, was one of the last songs to be written for the album; its melody came to Björk in a sudden rush and she contacted him. Knak took it as a chance to make a more minimal track, similar to his own releases. His original treatment of "Cocoon", made with an Ensoniq ASR-10, appeared relatively intact in the final version. Björk also worked with Bogdan Raczynski on the song "Who Is It", but the track did not follow the direction of the record and was subsequently included on the album "Medúlla".


title: Vespertine

text: In a 2015 interview with "The Pitchfork Review", Björk expressed frustration over to the lack of recognition for all of her work on "Vespertine" and her other albums. She said:I did 80% of the beats on "Vespertine" and it took me "three years" to work on that album, because it was all microbeats – it was like doing a huge embroidery piece. Matmos came in the last two weeks and added percussion on top of the songs, but they didn't do any of the main parts, and they are credited "everywhere" as having done the whole album. [Matmos'] Drew [Daniel] is a close friend of mine, and in every single interview he did, he corrected it. And they don't even listen to him. It really is strange.


title: Vespertine

text: Björk has stated that she wanted the album to sound like "modern chamber music", referring to the times where "the most ideal music situation was in the home, where people would play harps for each other". She argued that with the popularity of festivals like Woodstock, the situation became "the opposite", and that with the advent of Napster, the Internet, music downloading and DVD, "we've come full circle and the most ideal musical situation now, [...] is back to the home". She also considers "Vespertine" to be the opposite of her previous studio album "Homogenic", the former being an introverted, quiet, winter record; the latter a loud, dramatic, summer record. Writer and critic Mark Pytlik writes, "Her appetite for thumping techno had been, temporarily at least, subsumed by a desire for stark melodies and minimalist production".


title: Vespertine

text: Although generally considered an electronica album, as with other Björk releases, it has been difficult for critics to classify "Vespertine" within a musical genre. The album—and Björk's body of work in general—is considered art pop. The "Orlando Weekly" wrote that with the album, Björk "[took] her modernist art-pop further into the abstract". Music journalists have noted the experimental nature of the record. According to Joseph Hale of "Tiny Mix Tapes", "Vespertine"'s music "finally made good on its dubious 'trip-hop' label", and described it as a combination of "psychedelic techno, chamber music, and chorale together into modal constructions that swelled and receded like emotions (or psylocibin)". The music was also considered psychedelia by "The Dallas Morning News" and American critic Jim DeRogatis. David Fricke of "Rolling Stone" wrote ""Vespertine" is the closest any pop-vocal album has come to the luxuriant Zen of the new minimalist techno". Björk has also described the album as "more electronic folk music", and Jason Killingsworth of "Paste" referred to the album as a "folktronica gem". "Vespertine"s music has also been categorised as ambient, and glitch pop, with Björk's performance described as that of an "art-rock torch singer.


title: Vespertine

text: Stylistically, "Vespertine" incorporates elements of both art and dance music. For example, the instrumentation of choir, strings, and harp is suggestive of Romantic art music, while the "synthesised keyboard sonorities, filtering effects and complex percussive sounds" are elements characteristic of dance-based pop. According to Nicola Dibben: ...the way in which classical and dance-based elements are made to sit alongside one another as part of the same texture mediates the relationship between the two: the spiritual and the sensual are shown to be compatible, perhaps even suggesting that the sensual is spiritual, and that it can facilitate transcendence and hence grant access to a utopian world. "Vespertine" is also characterised by "the obsession with sonic traces of analog technology – that is, the pervasive use of loops, static and white noise – despite the obviously digital orientation of twenty-first-century electronics." Unlike previous albums like "Debut" and "Post", "electronic sounds are the norm, and the acoustic sounds become the interjections." Influenced by the 1999 album "New Ancient Strings", a recording of kora duets by Toumani Diabaté with Ballaké Sissoko, Björk said she "messed up the sound of too angelic instruments, like the harp or the glockenspiel" on "Vespertine".


title: Vespertine

text: Björk's voice is used as a supplement to "the complex electronic textures". Her vocals often appear to be recorded close to the microphone and with little treatment, and sung in a sometimes "unstable whisper", conveying a sense of close proximity and reduced space suitable for the intimate lyrics.


title: Vespertine

text: The album opens with "Hidden Place", which features a soprano section and strings, "over the top of a warm, intimate melody". Michael Hubbard of "musicOMH" felt the track was reminiscent of "Homogenic"'s "Hunter", but less focused on the beats. "NME" called it progressive folk, while "Drowned in Sound" wrote it was electro. Björk sings about "how two people can create a paradise just by uniting", as she intones: "I'm so close to tears/And so close to/Simply calling you up/And simply suggesting/We go to that hidden place". "Cocoon" is "based around an exploratory bassline and beats that sound like fingertips on skin". Discussing the glitch nature of the track, Björk said, "when you take technology and use the areas where it breaks, where it's faulty, you're entering a mystery zone where you can't control it". Lyrically revolving around making love, the song alternates between metaphors like "Who would have known/That a boy like him/Would have entered me lightly/Restoring my blisses", and explicit lines such as "He slides inside/Half awake, half asleep" and "Gorgeousness/He's still inside me". According to Michael Cragg of "The Guardian", the song "best represents the album's sense of heavy-lidded, post-coital hibernation". Björk sings a breathy, "whispered, near-cracking falsetto" on the track.


title: Vespertine

text: "It's Not Up to You" has been described as a "dizzying ballad" and a song that lifts the album upward. Michael Paoletta of "Billboard" described the track as "melancholy". Its lyrics are about "love for the unknown devices that culminate in 'perfect days'", and "pleas to find beauty in unlikely places". The "caressing lyrics" of "Undo" assure that: "It's not meant to be a strife/It's not meant to be a struggle uphill". Biographer Mark Pytlik writes, "Undo" is a held hand, a reassuring reminder that anything can happen once you let it. If you are in pain, undo it, Björk suggests, no hint of disingenuousness in her voice, over climbing strings and a rising choir". "Pagan Poetry" is a "harp-splashed" song that concerns unrequited love. The track builds slowly, "with Björk wailing over swelling keyboard crescendos", until, at the four-minute mark, "all the music drops away, leaving Björk utterly exposed" as she sings "I love him, I love him/I love him, I love him/I love him, I love him". The song also features "a flotilla of music boxes with an Asian-teahouse touch". The instrumental interlude "Frosti" has been described as "metallic tundra". Its sound stems from a music box, creating an intimate, fairy tale-like effect.


title: Vespertine

text: "Frosti" fades into "Aurora", while "a warm, faintly crunchy sound" is heard. These are samples of footsteps in the snow—the work of Matmos—re-appropriated as the song's "subtly shifting beat". "Aurora" has been described as "something that appeals to a child-like imagination", and having a "magical and airy quality". In the lyrics, she addresses a Nature goddess, and sings about "literally dissolving with pleasure" as she "prays to become one with the pure color of the northern lights". One of Björk's broodiest compositions, "An Echo, a Stain" is underpinned by a creeping choir line and nibbling clicks, and features an "unresolved, ominous tension" that is atypical of her writing style. Most of the song's lyrics speak directly to incidents in Sarah Kane's 1998 dark-themed play "Crave", so much so that it was titled "Crave" up to the last minute. "Sun in My Mouth" is an adaptation of E. E. Cummings' poem "I will wade out/Till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers", with an emphasis on the vocal and accompaniment provided by a string orchestra, a harp, and soft electronica. The track's lyrics have been considered a "startling allusion to masturbation", positioned "within the fantasy-like imagery of burning flowers, sea-girls, darkness and the sun". This track, and the album in general, have a "resounding message of sexual liberation" that reinforces Björk's "resistance to the socially constructed categories of gender", which has generated analysis associating it with Donna Haraway's 1983 essay, "A Cyborg Manifesto".


title: Vespertine

text: "Heirloom" alters "between what sounds like a samba preset on a vintage Wurlitzer organ and skittering breakbeats, and is decorated with inverted synthtones and analog keyboards". The song's lyrics tell a "fuzzy story" about a recurring dream, while "[likening] the art of singing to swallowing and exhaling 'glowing lights'" as Björk sings: "During the night/They do a trapeze walk/Until they're in the sky/Right above my bed". Film director Harmony Korine wrote "Harm of Will"'s lyrics. The "Slate" album review noted the minimalist nature of the track, pointing out a lack of hook, beat and melody. It is a slow song, as is the closing track, "Unison". The latter "[contains] a refrain directly inspired by [Björk's] experience in "Dancer in the Dark" and a healthy dollop of self-effacing humor evoked to counter the balance". It "brings beats and strings together in a final crescendo that also manages to incorporate a little jungle".


title: Vespertine

text: Once the album was finished, Björk wrote a manifesto describing a very introverted fictional character, "the character who did "Vespertine"", and sent it to M/M Paris, Nick Knight and Eiko Ishioka. They directed the music videos for "Hidden Place", "Pagan Poetry", and "Cocoon" respectively. It was the threesome's directorial debut. She said:


title: Vespertine

text: "Vespertine" is an album made by a character who's very . And it's about the universe inside every person. This time around, I wanted to make sure that the scenery of the songs is not like a mountain or a city or outside, it's inside, so it's very internal. So I guess all three videos are very internal. [...] Sort of how you communicate with the world in a very intimate, personal way.


title: Vespertine

text: The music video for "Hidden Place" was directed by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin and co-directed by M/M (Paris). It was shot in London over four days in February 2001. It was originally planned for a song from "Selmasongs", but Björk felt the project was more appropriate for "Vespertine". The video consists of close-up shots panning around Björk's face, as fluids flow in and out of her facial orifices. M/M (Paris) explained the concept behind the video:We always wanted to get as close to her as we could, as we all felt she had never been portrayed as the "real" and beautiful woman she is. This is somehow taboo, to observe a pop star with no makeup from a distance of half an inch. Then the idea of the liquid works as a visualization of all possible emotions pulsating and circulating in her very busy brain. The loop idea was a main point for us as well, trying to extend the usual time frame of pop video super-fast editing, to make it hypnotising, mesmerising and irritating, like an eternally burning fireplace.


title: Vespertine

text: Nick Knight, who had previously shot the cover art for "Homogenic", directed the music video for "Pagan Poetry". It is about a woman preparing herself for marriage and for her lover, as she sews a wedding dress onto her skin. As she had asked him to make a video about her love life, Knight gave Björk a camcorder and asked her to shoot her own private scenes. Shots of skin being pierced were also recorded with this camera; the people being pierced were five women who "were into subculture and piercings" and Björk herself, who only pierced her ear. This first two-thirds of the video contains a great deal of post-production by Peter Marin, who gave the image its abstract watercolor-like effect. The shots of Björk with her Alexander McQueen topless wedding dress were filmed in super 35 format. The main idea behind the music video was: "to do something with the moving image that was a mirror of what was happening musically". Although the music video has been well received by critics, it was highly controversial and banned from MTV in 2001.


title: Vespertine

text: The music video for "Cocoon" was directed by Eiko Ishioka and was shot in April 2001 in New York City. One of Björk's most avant-garde music videos, it: "plays with minimalist white for both costume and bleached eyebrows, treating Björk as a geisha whose makeup extends over her entire nude body". Red threads emerge from her nipples and circulate between her breasts and nose, finally enveloping her in a cocoon. Björk actually wore a very close-fitting body suit. Although not as controversial as the "Pagan Poetry" music video, it was still banned from MTV. The three music videos were included in the DVDs "Volumen Plus" (2002) and "Greatest Hits – Volumen 1993–2003" (2002).


title: Vespertine

text: The album's ethereal artwork mirrors its "delicacy and introverted romance". The cover art, shot by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin in Los Angeles, California, is a black and white photograph of Björk lying down on the patterned ground next to a swimming pool, covering her eyes from the sun and wearing her Marjan Pejoski swan dress that caused a stir at the 73rd Academy Awards. The duo M/M (Paris), known for applying and integrating their work on photographs (so called "dessin dans l'image", or "drawings in the picture"), illustrated the cover, featuring a swan and the album's title with feathers. Björk thought swans embodied "Vespertine"s music, describing them as "a white, sort of winter bird" and "very romantic". "Vespertine" came with a booklet of M/M (Paris) artwork.


title: Vespertine

text: Michael Hubbard of "musicOMH" commented positively on it, writing "the spine of the CD is entirely white, while the rest of the sleeve features innovative photography and artwork, preparing the listener before they even hear the album for something very special". Jason Killingsworth of "Paste" wrote: "When I see the swan, my eye drifts past its beak to those pillowy white feathers, recalling the plushness and warmth of a down comforter. Feathers so white they evoke the purity of freshly fallen snow blanketing the ground outside while you sip a coffee by the fire, both hands curled around the mug's warm ceramic finish".


title: Vespertine

text: Academic Nicola Dibben has likened "Vespertine"'s artwork and promotion to representations of the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, emphazising the erotic overtones of both. She stated:


title: Vespertine

text: The cover art to "Vespertine" [...] explores the theme of personal identity through visual means: hence Björk is featured in black and white, shading her eyes, lips slightly parted in an unmistakably erotic pose. For the first time in this context, however, she does not meet the viewer's gaze directly. Instead, the superimposed image of a swan provides a protective shield between Björk and the viewer. Both this photograph and Björk's subsequent appearances at promotional events dressed as a swan metonymically evokes not only the mythic figure of Leda, but more particularly the familiar legend in which she exchanges her husband, the Spartan king Tyndareus, for the God Zeus when he approaches her in disguised form. As in other visual representations of this myth, the entwined bodies of Leda and the swan permit a representation of erotic intimacy that would prove unacceptable if realised in a more literal fashion.


title: Vespertine

text: "Vespertine" was released later than One Little Indian Records had intended. Originally, the album's release was scheduled for May, but by March it had been put back to August, so as to enable Björk to work on the album's promotion. On 22 May 2001, Björk premiered six songs off the new album in an intimate concert at the Riverside Church in New York City, accompanied by Matmos and Zeena Parkins. On 6 August, "Hidden Place" was released as the album's lead single, its music video having premiered in July. It was released as two CDs and a DVD, featuring B-sides "Generous Palmstroke", "Foot Soldier", "Mother Heroic" and "Verandi". "Vespertine" was released on 27 August, as a double 12" record, CD and compact cassette. To coincide with the release of the album, Björk also released an eponymously titled coffee table book, created by her and edited and designed by M/M (Paris). A second single, "Pagan Poetry", was released on 5 November 2001 as two CDs and a DVD, featuring a remix by Matthew Herbert, "Domestica", "Batabid", an Opiate remix of "Aurora", and a music video directed by Nick Knight. Towards the end of 2001, "Vespertine" was released as a DVD-Audio. "Cocoon", the album's third single, was released on 11 March 2002. Its music video had premiered in February. Once again, the single was released as two separate CDs and a DVD, with "Pagan Poetry", "Sun in My Mouth" and "Amphibian" as B-sides.


title: Vespertine

text: Together, Elektra, and New York-based independent marketing firm Drill Team, created the Björk Vespertine Syndicate (BVS), a group of 30-plus websites that had exclusive access to non-album tracks, music videos, and concert/rehearsal footage. To promote the album, Björk appeared in various magazines in mid-2001, including: "The Fader", "Q", "Pulse", "URB", "USA Today", "InStyle", "Vibe", "Us", "Nylon", "Index", "CMJ New Music Monthly" and, "Spin". Magazines "Dazed & Confused" and "Les Inrockuptibles" featured a special issue with texts, photographs, and different CDs issued randomly, each with a different song from the album. "The Times" issued a Björk special, featuring videos, music, photographs, and a competition to see Björk perform. She also appeared on several TV shows, including: "The Rosie O'Donnell Show", "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", "Space Ghost Coast to Coast", "The David Letterman Show" and, "Charlie Rose", among others.


title: Vespertine

text: In early August 2001, Björk confirmed the first set of dates for the Vespertine World Tour which would take place at opera houses, theatres, and small venues, with favourable acoustics for the concerts. She enlisted Matmos, Zeena Parkins, a choir of Inuit girls from Greenland, and conductor Simon Lee; the tour opened at the Grand Rex in Paris on 18 August. While in Paris, she held a press conference to discuss the album but gave no individual interviews saying that: "she'd rather do music than talk about it." While in France she also received the National Order of Merit at the Ministry of National Education in Paris. Another press conference was held in Barcelona on 3 November 2001 while touring in Spain. A 16 December 2001 performance at the Royal Opera House in London was released as the DVD "Live at Royal Opera House" in 2002. A DVD release featuring a behind-the-scenes look at the tour, titled "Minuscule", was released at the end of 2003. "Vespertine Live", a live album consisting of songs recorded during the Vespertine World Tour, was included in the 2003 box set "Live Box"; it also includes a live version of "All Is Full of Love", a song from "Homogenic" and "Overture" from "Selmasongs".


title: Vespertine

text: By September 2001, the album had reached number 19 on the "Billboard" 200 and the top spot on the Top Electronic Albums chart, with One Little Indian head Derek Birket declaring that the album had sold over 1.2 million copies in Europe alone. That month, the album also became number one on the album charts in Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Norway, and the European Top 100 Albums chart. In addition, "Vespertine" charted in the top 10 of Canada, Italy, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Finland, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Australia. The album has been certified Gold in Canada, France, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.


title: Vespertine

text: Lead single "Hidden Place" reached the top spot of the singles charts in Spain, also charting in the top 40 in the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Belgium and France. Following release "Pagan Poetry" also performed well in Spain, while entering the French chart at number 49 and the UK chart at number 38. "Cocoon" performed more poorly, charting at number 61 in France and number 35 in the United Kingdom.


title: Vespertine

text: Upon release, "Vespertine" received universal acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 88, based on 28 reviews. Heather Phares from AllMusic called it "an album singing the praises of peace and quiet", praising it for proving that "intimacy can be just as compelling as louder emotions". Anthony Carew from About.com gave the album the highest rating and said it was "quite possibly the best album of the '00s". He considered the album to be self-aware of "the digital epoch [that] had just dawned upon the realm of recorded music" in the early 2000s, noting that it is "not just a product of this brave new non-world, but wholly informed by that." "The A.V. Club"s Keith Phipps found it to be: "an album both timeless and of the moment, an avant-garde electronic-pop exploration of classic themes". David Fricke of "Rolling Stone" felt that "Vespertine" was: "the sound and sentiment of a woman exulting in the power and possibility of her gift, one who has finally figured out how to grow up without growing old." In a later review for "The New Rolling Stone Album Guide", Douglas Wolk described the album as "a banquet in the hall of Björk's personal erotics" and stated that "it's not the stuff of radio hits, but the music is spectacular".


title: Vespertine

text: An enthusiastic review came from "The Wire", which felt that: "In the end, "Vespertine" commits its magic by daring to go places more obvious and more human than one would have ever expected." Calling it "one of the most impressive and cohesive" albums of the year, "Tiny Mix Tapes" found "Vespertine" to be Björk's most effective use of the studio as an instrument. Simon Reynolds, praised it in "Uncut" saying [It was] "Her best yet, it reminds me of the jackfrost wonderland of Cocteau Twins circa "In the Gold Dust Rush", of the bejewelled coldness of Siouxsie and the Banshees circa "A Kiss in the Dreamhouse". The glittering sound fits the album's idea of inner riches, the treasure people keep hidden inside." Katy Widder, writer for "PopMatters", believed the album was a masterpiece, stating that it challenged the predominant theories of rock music and gender, particularly a statement made by Simon Reynolds and Joy Press in the acclaimed book, "The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion, and Rock 'n' Roll": "Women have seized rock 'n' roll and usurped it for their own expressive purposes, but we've yet to see a radical feminization of rock itself." Chris Smith of "Stylus Magazine" praised the album for its nuance and delicacy, describing its sonic palette as "a breath of fresh air." Noting that "Vespertine" showed a more mature side of her, "musicOMH"'s Michael Hubbard wrote that "It sounds like Björk has grown up [...]; while that would be a pity, it is also fascinating for anyone who loves her music. She is a legend in her time."


title: Vespertine

text: "Billboard"s Michael Paoletta applauded "Vespertine" for its "positive [introversion]", feeling some of the tracks "have the strength to bring tears (of joy and pain) to the eyes." "Q" also praised the album, stating that it "quietly proves that cutting-edge production and human contact aren't mutually exclusive." American music journalist Robert Christgau enjoyed the album's central theme of sex and wrote: "when she gets all soprano on your ass you could accuse her of spirituality". A more lukewarm review came from "Pitchfork"s Ryan Schreiber, who felt that: "while undeniably beautiful, "Vespertine" fails to give electronic music the forward push it received on Björk's preceding albums". However, "Pitchfork" later named Vespertine the 92nd best album of the 2000s. David Browne of "Entertainment Weekly" said "her lyrics occasionally dive into the deep end" and "her voice is at times stiff", although he also wrote "when it all comes together, [...] Björk and her electronica collaborators create moving interplanetary chorals". "Almost Cool" wrote: "if there's one question to be raised with the album, it's that it's all simply so lush and nice that on some levels it fails to excite". Various reviews named "Vespertine" Björk's best album to date, including "The A.V. Club", "Rolling Stone", About.com, and "PopMatters".


title: Vespertine

text: In 2002, "Vespertine" was nominated for the Shortlist Music Prize, though the award went to "In Search of..." by N.E.R.D. The same year, the album received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Alternative Album, losing to Coldplay's "Parachutes". In addition, Björk was nominated for Best International Female Solo Artist at the Brit Awards, and Best International Female Artist at the Italian Music Awards, while "Vespertine" was nominated for Album of the Year at the Icelandic Music Awards.


title: Vespertine

text: The information regarding lists including "Vespertine" is adapted from Acclaimed Music, except where otherwise noted.


title: Gram flour

text: Gram flour or kadala maavu is a pulse flour made from a variety of ground chickpea called Bengal gram or "kaala chana". It is a staple ingredient in the cuisine of the Indian subcontinent, including in Indian, Bangladeshi, Burmese, Nepali, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and Caribbean cuisines.


title: Gram flour

text: Gram flour contains a high proportion of carbohydrates, higher fiber relative to other flours, no gluten, and a higher proportion of protein than other flours.


title: Gram flour

text: Gram flour is in popular use in the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean, where it is used to make the following:


title: Gram flour

text: In Andhra Pradesh, it is used in a curry with gram flour cakes called Senaga Pindi Kura () and is eaten with Chapati or Puri, mostly during winter for breakfast. Chila (or chilla), a pancake made with gram flour batter, is a popular street food in India.


title: Gram flour

text: Gram flour, which is called "pe hmont" (ပဲမှုန့်, lit. 'bean flour') in Burmese, is commonly used in Burmese cuisine. Roasted gram flour is commonly added to season Burmese salads, and is the principal ingredient of Burmese tofu. Roasted gram flour is also used to thicken several noodle soup dishes, including mohinga and ohn no khao swè.


title: Gram flour

text: Along the coast of the Ligurian Sea, flour made from garbanzo beans, which are a different variety of chickpea closely related to Bengal gram, is used to make a thin pancake that is baked in the oven. This popular street food is called "farinata" in Italian cuisine, "fainâ" in Genoa, and is known as "socca" or "cade" in French cuisine. It is used to make panelle, a fritter in Sicilian cuisine. In Spanish cuisine, gram flour is an ingredient for tortillitas de camarones.


title: Gram flour

text: Also in Cyprus and Greece, it is used as a garnishing ingredient for the funeral ritual food Koliva, blessed and eaten during Orthodox Memorial services. In the cuisine of Antakya in Turkey, it is used in the preparation of hummus.


title: Gram flour

text: Popular in Algeria and East of Morocco , they make a dish called "karan" from gram flour and eggs, which is baked in the oven. A similar famous dish is prepared in Algeria called "Garantita" or "Karantita" (originated from the Spanish term "Calentica", which means hot).


title: Vine

text: A vine (Latin "vīnea" "grapevine", "vineyard", from "vīnum" "wine") is any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent (that is, climbing) stems, lianas or runners. The word "vine" can also refer to such stems or runners themselves, for instance, when used in wicker work.


title: Vine

text: In parts of the world, including the British Isles, the term "vine" usually applies exclusively to grapevines ("Vitis"), while the term "climber" is used for all climbing plants.


title: Vine

text: Certain plants always grow as vines, while a few grow as vines only part of the time. For instance, poison ivy and bittersweet can grow as low shrubs when support is not available, but will become vines when support is available.


title: Vine

text: A vine displays a growth form based on very long stems. This has two purposes. A vine may use rock exposures, other plants, or other supports for growth rather than investing energy in a lot of supportive tissue, enabling the plant to reach sunlight with a minimum investment of energy. This has been a highly successful growth form for plants such as kudzu and Japanese honeysuckle, both of which are invasive exotics in parts of North America. There are some tropical vines that develop skototropism, and grow away from the light, a type of negative phototropism. Growth away from light allows the vine to reach a tree trunk, which it can then climb to brighter regions.


title: Vine

text: The vine growth form may also enable plants to colonize large areas quickly, even without climbing high. This is the case with periwinkle and ground ivy. It is also an adaptation to life in areas where small patches of fertile soil are adjacent to exposed areas with more sunlight but little or no soil. A vine can root in the soil but have most of its leaves in the brighter, exposed area, getting the best of both environments.


title: Vine

text: The evolution of a climbing habit has been implicated as a key innovation associated with the evolutionary success and diversification of a number of taxonomic groups of plants. It has evolved independently in several plant families, using many different climbing methods, such as:


title: Vine

text: The climbing fetterbush ("Pieris phillyreifolia") is a woody shrub-vine which climbs without clinging roots, tendrils, or thorns. It directs its stem into a crevice in the bark of fibrous barked trees (such as bald cypress) where the stem adopts a flattened profile and grows up the tree underneath the host tree's outer bark. The fetterbush then sends out branches that emerge near the top of the tree.


title: Vine

text: Most vines are flowering plants. These may be divided into woody vines or lianas, such as wisteria, kiwifruit, and common ivy, and herbaceous (nonwoody) vines, such as morning glory.


title: Vine

text: One odd group of vining plants is the fern genus "Lygodium", called climbing ferns. The stem does not climb, but rather the fronds (leaves) do. The fronds unroll from the tip, and theoretically never stop growing; they can form thickets as they unroll over other plants, rockfaces, and fences.


title: Vine

text: A twining vine, also known as a bine, is one that climbs by its shoots growing in a helix, in contrast to vines that climb using tendrils or suckers. Many bines have rough stems or downward-pointing bristles to aid their grip. Hops (used in flavoring beer) are a commercially important example of a bine.


title: Vine

text: The direction of rotation of the shoot tip during climbing is autonomous and does not (as sometimes imagined) derive from the shoot's following the sun around the sky – the direction of twist does not therefore depend upon which side of the equator the plant is growing on. This is shown by the fact that some bines always twine clockwise, including runner bean ("Phaseolus coccineus") and bindweed ("Convolvulus" species), while others twine anticlockwise, including French bean ("Phaseolus vulgaris") and climbing honeysuckles ("Lonicera" species). The contrasting rotations of bindweed and honeysuckle was the theme of the satirical song "Misalliance", written and sung by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann.


title: Vine

text: The term "vine" also applies to cucurbitaceae like cucumbers where botanists refer to creeping vines; in commercial agriculture the natural tendency of coiling tendrils to attach themselves to pre-existing structures or espaliers is optimized by the installation of trellis netting.


title: Vine

text: Gardeners can use the tendency of climbing plants to grow quickly. If a plant display is wanted quickly, a climber can achieve this. Climbers can be trained over walls, pergolas, fences, etc. Climbers can be grown over other plants to provide additional attraction. Artificial support can also be provided. Some climbers climb by themselves; others need work, such as tying them in and training them.


title: Vine

text: Vines widely differ in size, form and evolutionary origin. Darwin classified climbing groups based on their climbing method. He classified five classes of vines – twining plants, leaf climbers, tendril bearers, root climbers and hook climbers.


title: Vine

text: Vines are unique in that they have multiple evolutionary origins. They usually reside in tropical locations and have the unique ability to climb. Vines are able to grow in both deep shade and full sun due to their uniquely wide range of phenotypic plasticity. This climbing action prevents shading by neighbors and allows the vine to grow out of reach of herbivores. The environment where a vine can grow successfully is determined by the climbing mechanism of a vine and how far it can spread across supports. There are many theories supporting the idea that photosynthetic responses are closely related to climbing mechanisms.


title: Vine

text: Temperate twining vines, which twist tightly around supports, are typically poorly adapted for climbing beneath closed canopies due to their smaller support diameter and shade intolerance. In contrast, tendril vines usually grow on the forest floor and onto trees until they reach the surface of the canopy, suggesting that they have greater physiological plasticity. It has also been suggested that twining vines' revolving growth is mediated by changes in turgor pressure mediated by volume changes in the epidermal cells of the bending zone.


title: Vine

text: Climbing vines can take on many unique characteristics in response to changes in their environments. Climbing vines can induce chemical defenses and modify their biomass allocation in response to herbivores. In particular, the twisting vine "Convolvulus arvensis" increases its twining in response to herbivore-associated leaf damage, which may lead to reduced future herbivory. Additionally, the tendrils of perennial vine "Cayratia japonica" are more likely to coil around nearby plants of another species than nearby plants of the same species in natural and experimental settings. This ability, which has only been previously documented in roots, demonstrates the vine's ability to distinguish whether another plant is of the same species as itself or a different one.


title: Vine

text: In tendrilled vines, the tendrils are highly sensitive to touch and the coiling action is mediated by the hormones octadecanoids, jasmonates and indole-3-acetic acid. The touch stimulus and hormones may interact via volatile compounds or internal oscillation patterns. Research has found the presence of ion translocating ATPases in the "Bryonia dioica" species of plants, which has implications for a possible ion mediation tendril curling mechanism. In response to a touch stimulus, vanadate sensitive K+, Mg2+ ATPase and a Ca2+ translocating ATPase rapidly increase their activity. This increases transmembrane ion fluxes that appear to be involved in the early stages of tendril coiling.


title: Batoidea

text: Batoidea is a superorder of cartilaginous fishes, commonly known as rays. They and their close relatives, the sharks, comprise the subclass Elasmobranchii. Rays are the largest group of cartilaginous fishes, with well over 600 species in 26 families. Rays are distinguished by their flattened bodies, enlarged pectoral fins that are fused to the head, and gill slits that are placed on their ventral surfaces.


title: Batoidea

text: Batoids are flat-bodied, and, like sharks, are cartilaginous fish, meaning they have a boneless skeleton made of a tough, elastic cartilage. Most batoids have five ventral slot-like body openings called gill slits that lead from the gills, but the Hexatrygonidae have six. Batoid gill slits lie under the pectoral fins on the underside, whereas a shark's are on the sides of the head. Most batoids have a flat, disk-like body, with the exception of the guitarfishes and sawfishes, while most sharks have a spindle-shaped body. Many species of batoid have developed their pectoral fins into broad flat wing-like appendages. The anal fin is absent. The eyes and spiracles are located on top of the head. Batoids have a ventrally located mouth and can considerably protrude their upper jaw (palatoquadrate cartilage) away from the cranium to capture prey. The jaws have euhyostylic type suspension, which relies completely on the hyomandibular cartilages for support. Bottom-dwelling batoids breathe by taking water in through the spiracles, rather than through the mouth as most fish do, and passing it outward through the gills.


title: Batoidea

text: Batoids reproduce in a number of ways. As is characteristic of elasmobranchs, batoids undergo internal fertilization. Internal fertilization is advantageous to batoids as it conserves sperm, does not expose eggs to consumption by predators, and ensures that all the energy involved in reproduction is retained and not lost to the environment. All skates and some rays are oviparous (egg laying) while other rays are ovoviviparous, meaning that they give birth to young which develop in a womb but without involvement of a placenta.


title: Batoidea

text: The eggs of oviparous skates are laid in leathery egg cases that are commonly known as mermaid's purses and which often wash up empty on beaches in areas where skates are common.


title: Batoidea

text: Capture-induced premature birth and abortion (collectively called capture-induced parturition) occurs frequently in sharks and rays when fished. Capture-induced parturition is rarely considered in fisheries management despite being shown to occur in at least 12% of live bearing sharks and rays (88 species to date).


title: Batoidea

text: Most species live on the sea floor, in a variety of geographical regions – mainly in coastal waters, although some live in deep waters to at least . Most batoids have a cosmopolitan distribution, preferring tropical and subtropical marine environments, although there are temperate and cold-water species. Only a few species, like manta rays, live in the open sea, and only a few live in freshwater, while some batoids can live in brackish bays and estuaries.


title: Batoidea

text: Most batoids have developed heavy, rounded teeth for crushing the shells of bottom-dwelling species such as snails, clams, oysters, crustaceans, and some fish, depending on the species. Manta rays feed on plankton.


title: Batoidea

text: Batoids belong to the ancient lineage of cartilaginous fishes. Fossil denticles (tooth-like scales in the skin) resembling those of today's chondrichthyans date at least as far back as the Ordovician, with the oldest unambiguous fossils of cartilaginous fish dating from the middle Devonian. A clade within this diverse family, the Neoselachii, emerged by the Triassic, with the best-understood neoselachian fossils dating from the Jurassic. The oldest confirmed ray is "Antiquaobatis", from the Pliensbachian of Germany. The clade is represented today by sharks, sawfish, rays and skates.


title: Batoidea

text: The classification of batoids is currently undergoing revision; however, molecular evidence refutes the hypothesis that skates and rays are derived sharks. Nelson's 2006 "Fishes of the World" recognizes four orders. The Mesozoic Sclerorhynchoidea are basal or "incertae sedis"; they show features of the Rajiformes but have snouts resembling those of sawfishes. However, evidence indicates they are probably the sister group to sawfishes.


title: Batoidea

text: According to a 2021 study in "Nature", the number of oceanic sharks and rays has declined globally by 71% over the preceding 50 years, jeopardising "the health of entire ocean ecosystems as well as food security for some of the world's poorest countries". Overfishing has increased the global extinction risk of these species to the point where three-quarters are now threatened with extinction. This is notably the case in the Mediterranean Sea - most impacted by unregulated fishing - where a recent international survey concluded that only 38 species of rays and skates still subsisted.


title: Batoidea

text: All sharks and rays are cartilaginous fishes, contrasting with bony fishes. Many rays are adapted for feeding on the bottom. Guitarfishes are somewhat between sharks and rays, displaying characteristics of both (though they are classified as rays).


title: Kim Hye-eun

text: Kim Hye-eun ( born March 1, 1973) is a South Korean actress. Kim began working as an announcer for the MBC network in 1997, first at a local affiliate in Cheongju, then later as a weathercaster of the main news desk in Seoul. After eight years, she resigned from MBC in 2004. Kim pursued acting in earnest in 2007, and has since starred in films and television series, notably "" (2012) and "Secret Love Affair" (2014).


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: Freestyle wrestling is a style of wrestling originated from Great Britain and the United States. Along with Greco-Roman, it is one of the two styles of wrestling contested in the Olympic Games. American high school and men's college wrestling is conducted under different rules and is termed scholastic and collegiate wrestling. American collegiate women's wrestling is conducted under freestyle rules.


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: Freestyle wrestling, like collegiate wrestling, has its greatest origins in catch-as-catch-can wrestling. In both styles the ultimate goal is to throw and pin the opponent to the mat, which results in an immediate win. Unlike Greco-Roman, freestyle and collegiate wrestling allow the use of the wrestler's or the opponent's legs in offense and defense. Freestyle wrestling brings together traditional wrestling, judo, and sambo techniques.


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: According to wrestling's world governing body, United World Wrestling (UWW), freestyle wrestling is one of the six main forms of amateur competitive wrestling practiced internationally today. The other five forms are Greco-Roman wrestling, grappling/submission wrestling, beach wrestling, pankration athlima, alysh/belt wrestling and traditional/folk wrestling. The Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommended dropping wrestling as a sport from the 2020 Olympic Games, but the decision was later reversed by the IOC.


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: Modern freestyle wrestling, according to UWW (formerly FILA), is said to have originated in Great Britain and the United States by the name of "catch-as-catch-can" wrestling. "Catch-as-catch-can" wrestling had a particular following in Great Britain and the variant developed in Lancashire had a particular effect on freestyle wrestling. "Catch-as-catch-can" wrestling gained great popularity in fairs and festivals during the 19th century. In catch-as-catch-can wrestling, both contestants started out standing and then a wrestler sought to hold his opponent's shoulder to the ground (known as a fall). If no fall was scored, both wrestlers continued grappling on the ground, and almost all holds and techniques were allowable. A Scottish variant of Lancashire wrestling also became popular, which began with both wrestlers standing chest to chest, grasping each other with locked arms around the body and, if no fall was made, with the match continuing on the ground. In addition, there was the Irish collar-and-elbow style, where wrestlers started out on their feet with both wrestlers grasping each other by the collar with one hand and by the elbow with the other. If neither wrestler then achieved a fall, the contestants would continue both standing and on the ground until a fall was made. Irish immigrants later brought this style of wrestling to the United States, where it soon became widespread, especially because of the success of the wrestling champion of the Army of the Potomac, George William Flagg from Vermont. Catch-as-catch can was the style performed by at least a half dozen U.S. presidents, including George Washington, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Theodore Roosevelt.


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: Because of the widespread interest in and esteem of professional Greco-Roman wrestling and its popularity in many international meets in nineteenth century Europe, freestyle wrestling (and wrestling as an amateur sport in general) had a tough time gaining ground on the continent. The 1896 Olympic Games had only one wrestling bout, a heavyweight Greco-Roman match. Freestyle wrestling first emerged as an Olympic sport in the St. Louis Olympics of 1904. All 40 wrestlers who participated in the 1904 Olympics were American. The 1904 Olympics sanctioned the rules commonly used for catch-as-catch-can, but imposed some restrictions on dangerous holds. Wrestling by seven weight classes—47.6 kg (104.9 lb), 52.2 kg (115.1 lb), 56.7 kg (125.0 lb), 61.2 kg (134.9 lb), 65.3 kg (143.9 lb), 71.7 kg (156.7 lb), and greater than —was an important innovation in the Summer Olympics.


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: Since 1921, the body now known as United World Wrestling (UWW), which has its headquarters near Lausanne, Switzerland, has set the "Rules of the Game", with regulations for scoring and procedures that govern tournaments such as the World Games and the competition at the Summer Olympics. These were later adopted by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) for its freestyle matches. Freestyle wrestling gained great popularity in the United States after the Civil War. By the 1880s, tournaments drew hundreds of wrestlers. The rise of cities, increased industrialization, and the closing of the frontier provided the affable environment for amateur wrestling, along with boxing, to increase in esteem and popularity. Amateur wrestling teams soon emerged, such as the wrestling team of the New York Athletic Club, which had its first tournament in 1878. Professional wrestling also developed, and by the 1870s, professional championship matches offered allowances of up to $1,000.


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: Nineteenth century wrestling matches were particularly long, and especially Greco-Roman bouts (where holds below the waist and the use of the legs are not allowed) could last as many as eight to nine hours, and even then, it was only decided by a draw. In the 20th century, time limits were set for matches. For more than forty years into the twentieth century, freestyle and its American counterpart, collegiate wrestling, did not have a scoring system that decided matches in the absence of a fall. The introduction of a point system by Oklahoma State University wrestling coach Art Griffith gained acceptance in 1941 and influenced the international styles as well. By the 1960s international wrestling matches in Greco-Roman and freestyle were scored by a panel of three judges in secret, who made the final decision by raising colored paddles at the match's end. Dr. Albert de Ferrari from San Francisco who became vice president of FILA (now UWW), lobbied for a visible scoring system and a rule for "controlled fall", which would recognize a fall only when the offensive wrestler had done something to cause it. These were soon adopted internationally in Greco-Roman and freestyle. By 1996, before a major overhaul of FILA rules, an international freestyle match consisted of two three-minute periods, with a one-minute rest between periods. Today, wrestlers from post-Soviet states, Iran, the United States, Bulgaria, Cuba, Turkey, and Japan have had the strongest showings. Alexander Medved of Belarus won 10 world championships and three Olympic gold medals from 1964 to 1972. Many collegiate wrestlers have moved on to freestyle competition, particularly internationally with great success.


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: In the spring of 2013, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted wrestling out of the core sports for the summer Olympics beginning in 2020 As a result of this news the wrestling community started a massive campaign in order to reinstate the sport. A largely online group called 2020 vision lead the movement. They had several campaigns as well as Facebook and Twitter pages that spread awareness and gathered support for the cause of wrestling's return to the Olympics. They had a mission of gaining 2,000,020 signatures (online and offline) in support of wrestling's return to the Olympic Games. In September 2013 the IOC voted to allow wrestling back into the Olympics for 2020 and 2024 as a probationary sport. In order to achieve this, UWW made several changes to the rules as well as changes to the weight classes. There are also discussions about uniform changes as well as changes to the competition mat.


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: Currently, international men's freestyle wrestling is divided into six main age categories: schoolboys, cadets, novice, juvenile, juniors, and seniors. Schoolboys (boys ages 14–15; or age 13 with a medical certificate and parental authorization) wrestle in 10 weight classes ranging from . Cadets (young boys ages 16–17; or age 15 with a medical certificate and parental authorization) wrestle in 10 weight classes ranging from . Juniors (young boys ages 18 to 20; or age 17 with a medical certificate and parental authorization) wrestle in eight weight classes ranging from . Seniors (men ages 20 and up) wrestle in seven weight classes ranging from . For men, there is also a special category for some freestyle competitions, "Veterans", for men ages 35 and older, presumably featuring the same weight classes as seniors. Also, all of the men's age categories and weight classes can be applied to Greco-Roman wrestling.


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: Women currently compete in freestyle wrestling in one of four age categories on an international level: schoolgirls, cadets, juniors, and seniors. Schoolgirls (young women ages 14–15; or age 13 with a medical certificate and parental authorization) wrestle in 10 weight classes ranging from . Cadets (young women ages 16–17; or age 15 with a medical certificate and parental authorization) wrestle in 10 weight classes ranging from . Juniors (young women ages 18 to 20; or age 17 with a medical certificate and parental authorization) wrestle in eight weight classes ranging from . Seniors (women ages 20 and up) wrestle in seven weight classes ranging from . Wrestlers after weigh-in may only wrestle in their own weight class. Wrestlers in the senior age category may wrestle up a weight class except for the heavyweight division (which starts at a weight more than for the men and more than for the women). Different nations may have different weight classes and different age categories for their levels of freestyle competition.


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: The match takes place on a thick rubber mat that is shock-absorbing to ensure safety. For the Olympic Games, all World Championships, and World Cups, the mat has to be new. The main wrestling area has a nine-meter diameter and is surrounded by a border of the same thickness known as the protection area. Inside the nine meter in diameter circle is a red band of one meter (3 ft 3 in) in width that is on the outer edge of the circle and is known as the red zone. The red zone is used to help indicate passivity on the part of a wrestler; thus, it is also known as the passivity zone. Inside the red zone is the central wrestling area which is seven meters in diameter. In the middle of the central surface of wrestling is the central circle, which is one meter in diameter. The central circle is surrounded by a band 10 centimeters (4 in) wide and is divided in half by a red line eight centimeters (3  in) in width. The diagonally opposite corners of the mat are marked with the wrestlers' colors, red and blue or in some areas, Red and Green.


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: For competition in the Olympic Games, the World Championships, and the Continental Championships, the mat is installed on a platform no greater than in height. If the mat lies on a podium and the protection margin (covering and free space around the mat) does not reach two meters (6 ft 6 in), the sides of the podium are covered with 45° (degree) inclined panels. In all cases, the color of the protection area is different from the color of the mat.


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: A match is a competition between two individual wrestlers of the same weight class. In freestyle wrestling, a jury (or team) of three officials (referees) is used. The referee controls the action in the center, blowing the whistle to start and stop the action, and supervises the scoring of holds and infractions. The judge sits at the side of the mat, keeps score, and occasionally gives his approval when needed by the referee for various decisions. The mat chairman sits at the scoring table, keeps time, is responsible for declaring technical superiority, and supervises the work of the referee and judge. To call a fall, two of the three officials must agree (usually, the referee and either the judge or the mat chairman).


title: Freestyle wrestling

text: In Greco-Roman and freestyle, the format is two three-minute sessions. Before each match, each wrestler's name is called, and the wrestler takes his place at the corner of the mat assigned to his color. The referee then calls both of them to his side at the center of the mat, shakes hands with them, inspects their apparel, and checks for any perspiration, oily or greasy substances, and any other infractions. The two wrestlers then greet each other, shake hands, and the referee blows his whistle to start the session.