James' World 2

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Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia, and immediately south of the French island of Corsica.

It is one of the five Italian regions with some degree of domestic autonomy being granted by a special statute. Its official name, Autonomous Region of Sardinia, is bilingual in Italian and Sardinian. It is divided into four provinces and a metropolitan city. The capital of the region of Sardinia — and its largest city — is Cagliari.

Sardinia’s indigenous language and Algherese Catalan are referred to by both the regional and national law as two of Italy’s twelve officially recognized linguistic minorities, albeit gravely endangered, while the regional law provides some measures to recognize and protect the aforementioned as well as the island’s other minority languages (the Corsican-influenced Sassarese and Gallurese, and finally Tabarchino Ligurian).

Owing to the variety of Sardinia’s ecosystems, which include mountains, woods, plains, stretches of largely uninhabited territory, streams, rocky coasts, and long sandy beaches, Sardinia has been metaphorically described as a micro-continent. In the modern era, many travelers and writers have extolled the beauty of its long-untouched landscapes, which retain vestiges of the Nuragic civilization.

The name Sardinia has pre-Latin roots. It comes from the pre-Roman ethnonym *s(a)rd-, later romanised as sardus (feminine sarda). It makes its first appearance on the Nora Stone, where the word ŠRDN, or *Šardana, testifies to the name’s existence when the Phoenician merchants first arrived.

According to Timaeus, one of Plato’s dialogues, Sardinia (referred to by most ancient Greek authors as Sardṓ, Σαρδώ) and its people as well might have been named after a legendary woman going by Sardṓ (Σαρδώ), born in Sardis (Σάρδεις), capital of the ancient Kingdom of Lydia. There has also been speculation that identifies the ancient Nuragic Sards with the Sherden, one of the Sea Peoples. It is suggested that the name had a religious connotation from its use also as the adjective for the ancient Sardinian mythological hero-god Sardus Pater (“Sardinian Father” or “Father of the Sardinians”), as well as being the stem of the adjective “sardonic”. Wikipedia

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An image from Punta Molentis Sardinia

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The muskox also spelled musk ox and musk-ox, plural muskoxen or musk oxen, is a hoofed mammal of the family Bovidae. Native to the Arctic, it is noted for its thick coat and for the strong odor emitted by males during the seasonal rut, from which its name derives. This musky odor has the effect of attracting females during mating season. Its Inuktitut name “umingmak” translates to “the bearded one”. Its Woods Cree names “mâthi-môs” and “mâthi-mostos” translate to “ugly moose” and “ugly bison”, respectively. Muskoxen primarily live in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, with reintroduced populations in the American state of Alaska, the Canadian territory of Yukon, and Siberia, and an introduced population in Norway, part of which emigrated to Sweden, where a small population now lives.

The muskox is in the subtribe Ovibovina (or tribe Ovibovini) in the tribe Caprini (or subfamily Caprinae) of the subfamily Antilopinae in the family Bovidae. It is more closely related to sheep and goats than to oxen; it is placed in its own genus, Ovibos (Latin: “sheep-ox”). It is one of the two largest extant members of the caprines, along with the similarly sized takin. While the takin and muskox were once considered possibly closely related, the takin lacks common ovibovine features, such as the muskox’s specialized horn morphology, and genetic analysis shows that their lineages actually separated early in caprine evolution. Instead, the muskox’s closest living relatives appear to be the gorals of the genus Naemorhedus, nowadays common in many countries of central and east Asia. The vague similarity between takin and muskox is therefore an example of convergent evolution. Wikipedia

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An image of a Muskox

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The Seward Peninsula is a large peninsula on the western coast of the U.S. state of Alaska whose westernmost point is Cape Prince of Wales. The peninsula projects about 200 mi (320 km) into the Bering Sea between Norton Sound, the Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea, and Kotzebue Sound, just below the Arctic Circle. The entire peninsula is about 210 mi (330 km) long and 90–140 mi (145–225 km) wide. Like Seward, Alaska, it was named after William H. Seward, the United States Secretary of State who fought for the U.S. purchase of Alaska.

The Seward Peninsula is a remnant of the Bering land bridge, a roughly thousand-mile-wide swath of land connecting Siberia with mainland Alaska during the Pleistocene Ice Age. This land bridge aided in the migration of humans, as well as plant and animal species, from Asia to North America. Excavations at sites such as the Trail Creek Caves and Cape Espenberg in the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve as well as Cape Denbigh to the south have provided insight into the timeline of prehistorical migrations from Asia to the Seward Peninsula.

Other locations on the Seward Peninsula include the mining towns of Council, Solomon, Candle, Haycock, and Taylor. While still frequented by locals of neighboring communities, there are no longer year-round residents in these locations. There is a United States Coast Guard LORAN station at Port Clarence. The U.S. Air Force operates a radar station at the “Tin City” site, 7 mi (11 km) southeast of Wales. The Seward Peninsula has several distinct geologic features. The Devil Mountain Lakes on the northern portion of the peninsula are the largest maar lakes in the world and part of the Espenberg volcanic field. They were formed over 21,000 years ago as the result of an underground steam explosion. The Killeak Lakes and White Fish Lake are also volcanic maar lakes of notable size on the northern Seward Peninsula. Four mountain ranges line the southern side of the peninsula, the most prominent being the Kigluaik (or Sawtooth) Mountains. The highest point in the range and the peninsula is the peak of 4,714 ft (1,437 m) Mount Osborn. Other mountain ranges on the Seward Peninsula include the Bendeleben Mountains, Darby Mountains, and York Mountains. The Bendeleben Mountains exhibit evidence of recent faulting in the late Cenozoic, with the majority of tectonic deformation and mountain formation occurring in the Cretaceous, which is attributed to regional tectonic block rotation of the Bering plate in the Arctic. The Lost Jim Lava Flow north of Kuzitrin Lake is a lava field formed roughly 1,000 to 2,000 years ago, which covers roughly 88 sq mi (230 km²). Wikipedia

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An image from Seward Peninsula Alaska

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