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Dyslipidemia From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Not to be confused with lipedemia Dyslipidemia is an abnormal amount of lipids (e.g. cholesterol and/or fat) in the blood. In developed countries, most dyslipidemias are hyperlipidemias; that is, an elevation of lipids in the blood. This is often due to diet and lifestyle. Prolonged elevation of insulin levels can also lead to dyslipidemia. Likewise, increased levels of O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT) may cause dyslipidemia. Classification Physicians and basic researchers classify dyslipidemias in two distinct ways: • Phenotype, or the presentation in the body (including the specific type of lipid that is increased) • Etiology, or the reason for the condition (genetic, or secondary to another condition). This classification can be problematic, because most conditions involve the intersection of genetics and lifestyle issues. However, there are a few well-defined genetic conditions that are usually easy to identify.
A finance lease or capital lease is a type of lease. It is a commercial arrangement where: • the lessee (customer or borrower) will select an asset (equipment, vehicle, software); • the lessor (finance company) will purchase that asset; • the lessee will have use of that asset during the lease; • the lessee will pay a series of rentals or installments for the use of that asset; • the lessor will recover a large part or all of the cost of the asset plus earn interest from the rentals paid by the lessee; • the lessee has the option to acquire ownership of the asset (e.g. paying the last rental, or bargain option purchase price);
The finance company is the legal owner of the asset during duration of the lease. However the lessee has control over the asset providing them the benefits and risks of (economic) ownership Treatment in India Finance lease is one in which risk and rewards incidental to the ownership of the leased asset are transferred to lessee but not the actual ownership. Thus in case of finance lease we can say that notional ownership is passed to the lessee. The amount paid as interest during lease period is shown in P/l DR side of lessee Features • it's not cancel-able • the lessor may or may not bear the cost of insurance, repair, maintenance etc. Usually the lessee has to bear all cost. • the lessor may transfer ownership of the asset to the lessee by the end of the lease term • the lessee has an option to purchase the asset at a price which is expected to be sufficiently lower than the value at the end of the lease period Treatment in the United States Main article: Accounting for leases in the United States Under US accounting standards, a finance (capital) lease is a lease which meets at least one of the following criteria: • ownership of the asset is transferred to the lessee at the end of the lease term; • the lease contains a bargain purchase option to buy the equipment at less than fair market value; • the lease term equals or exceeds 75% of the asset's estimated useful life; • the present value of the lease payments equals or exceeds 90% of the total original cost of the equipment. Following the GAAP accounting point of view, such a lease is classified as essentially equivalent to a purchase by the lessee and is capitalized on the lessee's balance sheet. See Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 13 (FAS 13) for more details of classification and accounting. Special Case: Finance Leases under UCC Article 2A The term sometimes means a special case of lease defined by Article 2A of the Uniform Commercial Code (specifically, Sec. 2A-103(1) (g)). Such a finance lease recognizes that some lessors are financial institutions or other business organizations that lease the goods in question purely as a financial accommodation and do not want to have the warranty and other entanglements that are usually associated with leases by companies that are manufacturers or merchants of such goods. Under a UCC 2A finance lease, the lessee pays the payments to the lessor (and indeed must do so, regardless of any defect in the leased goods – this obligation usually being contained in a "hell or high water" clause), but any claims related to defects in the leased goods may be brought only against the actual supplier of the goods. UCC 2A finance leases are usually easy to identify because they commonly contain a clause specifically declaring that the lease is to be considered a finance lease under UCC 2A. International Financial Reporting Standards In the over 100 countries that govern accounting using International Financial Reporting Standards, the controlling standard is IAS 17, "Leases". While similar in many respects to FAS 13 in the U.S., IAS 17 avoids the "bright line" tests (specifying an exact percentage as a limit) on the lease term and present value of the rents. Instead, IAS 17 has the following five tests. If any of these tests are met, the lease is considered a finance lease: • ownership of the asset is transferred to the lessee at the end of the lease term; • the lease contains a bargain purchase option to buy the equipment at less than fair market value; • the lease term is for the major part of the economic life of the asset even if title is not transferred; • at the inception of the lease the present value of the minimum lease payments amounts to at least substantially all of the fair value of the leased asset. • the leased assets are of a specialised nature such that only the lessee can use them without major modifications being made. IAS 17 is currently undergoing a revision, as a joint project with the U.S. lease accounting standard. Current plans are for the revision to be finalized in late 2014, with implementation expected in 2017. For more details, see Accounting for leases in the United States. Treatment in Australia In Australia the accounting standard pertaining to lease is AASB 117 'Leases'. AASB 117 was released in July 2004. AASB 117 'Leases' applies to accounting for leases other than: (a) leases to explore for or use minerals, oil, natural gas and similar non-regenerative resources; and (b) licensing agreements for such items as motion picture films, video recordings, plays, manuscripts, patents and copyrights. According to AASB 117, paragraph 4, a lease is: an agreement whereby the lessor conveys to the lessee in return for a payment or series of payments the right to use an asset for an agreed period of time. A lease is classified as a finance lease if it "transfers substantially all the risks and rewards incidental to ownership of an asset." (AASB 117, p8) There are no strict guidelines as to what constitutes a finance lease, however guidelines are provided within the standard. Impact on accounting • Since a finance lease is capitalized, both assets and liabilities in the balance sheet increase. As a consequence, working capital decreases, but the debt/equity ratio increases, creating additional leverage. • Finance lease expenses are allocated between interest expense and principal value much like a bond or loan; therefore, in a statement of cash flows, part of the lease payments are reported under operating cash flow but part under financing cash flow. Therefore, operating cash flow increases. • Under operating lease conditions, lease obligations are not recognized; therefore, leverage ratios are understated and ratios of return (ROE and ROA) are overstated. The key IFRS criterion is: If "substantially all the risks and rewards" of ownership are transferred to the lessee then it is a finance lease. If it is not a finance lease then it is an operating lease. The transfer of risk to the lessee may be shown by lease terms such as an option for the lessee to buy the asset at a low price (typically the residual value) at the end of the lease. The nature of the asset (whether it is likely to be used by anyone other than the lessee), the length of the lease term (whether it covers most of the useful life of the asset), and the present value of lease payments (whether they cover the cost of the asset) may also be factors. IFRS does not provide a rigid set of rules for classifying leases and there will always be borderline cases. It is also still sometimes possible to use leases to make balance sheets look better, provided that the lessee can justify treating them as operating leases. The classification of large transactions, such as sale and leasebacks of property, may have a significant effect on the accounts and on measures of financial stability such as gearing. However, it is worth remembering that an improvement in financial gearing may be offset by a worsening of operational gearing and vice versa. Physical properties Mercury is a heavy, silvery-white metal. Compared to other metals, it is a poor conductor of heat, but a fair conductor of electricity.[4] Mercury has a freezing point of −38.83 °C and a boiling point of 356.73 °C,[5][6][7] both exceptionally low for a metal, and it is the only elemental metal known to melt at a generally low temperature. In addition, mercury's boiling point of 629.88 K (674.11 °F) is the lowest of any metal.[8] A complete explanation of this delves deep into the realm of quantum physics, but it can be summarized as follows: mercury has a unique electron configuration where electrons fill up all the available 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 3d, 4s, 4p, 4d, 4f, 5s, 5p, 5d, and 6s subshells. Because this configuration strongly resists removal of an electron, mercury behaves similarly to noble gases, which form weak bonds and hence melt at low temperatures. The stability of the 6s shell is due to the presence of a filled 4f shell. An f shell poorly screens the nuclear charge that increases the attractive Coulomb interaction of the 6s shell and the nucleus (see lanthanide contraction). The absence of a filled inner f shell is the reason for the somewhat higher melting temperature of cadmium and zinc, although both these metals still melt easily and, in addition, have unusually low boiling points. On the other hand, gold, which is one space to the left of mercury on the periodic table, has atoms with one fewer 6s electron than mercury. Those electrons are more easily removed and are shared between the gold atoms forming relatively strong metallic bonds.[5][6] Chemical properties Mercury does not react with most acids, such as dilute sulfuric acid, although oxidizing acids such as concentrated sulfuric acid and nitric acid or aqua regia dissolve it to give sulfate, nitrate, and chloride salts. Like silver, mercury reacts with atmospheric hydrogen sulfide. Mercury even reacts with solid sulfur flakes, which are used in mercury spill kits to absorb mercury vapors (spill kits also use activated carbon and powdered zinc).[9 Mercury dissolves many other metals such as gold and silver to form amalgams. Iron is an exception, and iron flasks have been traditionally used to trade mercury. Several other first row transition metals with the exception of manganese, copper and zinc are reluctant to form amalgams. Other elements that do not readily form amalgams with mercury include platinum and a few other metals.[10][11] Sodium amalgam is a common reducing agent in organic synthesis, and is also used in high-pressure sodium lamps. Mercury readily combines with aluminium to form a mercury-aluminium amalgam when the two pure metals come into contact. Since the amalgam destroys the aluminium oxide layer which protects metallic aluminium from oxidizing in-depth (as in iron rusting), even small amounts of mercury can seriously corrode aluminium. For this reason, mercury is not allowed aboard an aircraft under most circumstances because of the risk of it forming an amalgam with exposed aluminium parts in the aircraft.[12] Mercury embrittlement is the most common type of liquid metal embrittlement. Civilization (series) Civilization is a series of turn-based strategy, 4X video games, many of them produced by Sid Meier (Sid Meier's Civilization).There are also several traditional Civilization games. All titles in the series share similar gameplay, centered on building a civilization on a macro-scale from prehistory up to the near future. Each turn allows the player to move his or her units on the map, build or improve new cities and units, and initiate negotiations with the computer-controlled players. In between turns, computer players can do the same. The player will also choose technologies to research. These reflect the cultural, intellectual, and technical sophistication of the civilization, and usually allow the player to build new units or to improve their cities with new structures. In most games in the series, one may win by military conquest, achieving a certain level of culture, building an interstellar space ship, or achieving the highest score, among other means. Over the years part of the crew involved in the developing the series became successful in producing their own strategy games, such as Bruce Shelley (Civilization I co-designer) of Age of Empires fame, Brian Reynolds (Civilization II lead designer and programmer) who went on to create Rise of Nations, and more recently Soren Johnson (Civilization III co-designer and Civilization IV lead designer and programmer) with Spore. As of August 2015, the series has reached 31 million total units shipped. History In 1980, Francis Tresham designed the Civilization board game and published it through his company Hartland Trefoil, and in 1981, Avalon Hill obtained from Hartland Trefoil a license to sell the Civilization board game in the United States.[2] MicroProse, founded by Sid Meier and Bill Stealey, published Civilization in 1991,[3] after licensing the right to use the name "Civilization" from Avalon Hill to avoid conflicts over similarities to the board game.[3] Meier was also the game's designer.[3] In 1993, MicroProse was bought by Spectrum Holobyte,[4] but the two companies remained separate. In 1996, MicroProse released the lauded[5] Civilization II, designed by Brian Reynolds.[3] Also in 1996 Spectrum Holobyte consolidated the company under the name MicroProse, but, in reaction to Spectrum Holobyte's decision to fire the majority of MicroProse's staff, Reynolds, Jeff Briggs, and Meier left MicroProse and founded Firaxis.[6] Although Firaxis did not own the rights to the brand name "Civilization", the company still went on to design the acclaimed[7] Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a "space-based Civilization-style game"[8] released in 1999.[9] Alpha Centauri uses a game engine similar to the one used in Civilization II[10] and its storyline continues from where the Civilization franchise ends, namely the colonization of a planet in Alpha Centauri. Litigation over brand name In April 1997, Activision acquired from Avalon Hill the rights to the name "Civilization" on its PC games and seven months later Avalon Hill and Activision sued MicroProse over trademark infringement because of the name "Civilization".[2] In response to the lawsuit, MicroProse bought Hartland Trefoil in December 1997. This move sought to establish "MicroProse as the preeminent holder of worldwide computer game and board game rights under the Civilization brand".[11] In January 1998, Microprose counter-sued Avalon Hill and Activision for false advertising, unfair competition, trademark infringement, and unfair business practices as a result of Activision's decision to develop and publish Civilization computer games.[12] In July, Avalon Hill and Activision settled their case against MicroProse out of court. Under the terms of the settlement, MicroProse kept all the rights to the Civilization brand, Avalon Hill had to pay MicroProse $411,000, and Activision acquired a license from MicroProse to publish Civilization: Call to Power (released in March 1999).[2][13] Avalon Hill accepted the unfavorable settlement because Hasbro was already negotiating the acquisition of both Avalon Hill and MicroProse. Less than one month after the settlement, Hasbro finalized the purchases of both companies[2][14] which consolidated the Civilization franchise under Hasbro. Infogrames and Firaxis In January 2001, the French company Infogrames bought the Hasbro subsidiary Hasbro Interactive for $100 million,[15] which included the rights to the Civilization franchise, the rights to the Atari brand,[16] and Hasbro's Game.com handheld game console.[16][17] Following the sale, Hasbro Interactive was renamed Infogrames Interactive, Inc[18] and Civilization III (developed by Firaxis with Jeff Briggs as game designer) was released in October 2001 by the new company. In May 2003, Infogrames changed the name of Infogrames Interactive to Atari Interactive Civilization A civilization (US) or civilisation (UK) is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification, symbolic communication forms (typically, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Civilizations are intimately associated with and often further defined by other socio-politico-economic characteristics, including centralization, the domestication of both humans and other organisms, specialization of labor, culturally ingrained ideologies of progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon agriculture, and expansionism.[2][3][5][7][8] Historically, a civilization was an "advanced" culture in contrast to more supposedly barbarian, savage, or primitive cultures.[1][3][5][9] In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized feudal or tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists or hunter-gatherers. As an uncountable noun, civilization also refers to the process of a society developing into a centralized, urbanized, stratified structure. Civilizations are organized in densely populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings.[10] The earliest emergence of civilizations is generally associated with the final stages of the Neolithic Revolution, culminating in the relatively rapid process of state formation, a political development associated with the appearance of a governing elite. This neolithic technology and lifestyle was established first in the Middle East (for example at Göbekli Tepe, from about 9,130 BCE), and later in the Yangtze and Yellow river basins in China (for example the Pengtoushan culture from 7,500 BCE), and later spread. But similar "revolutions" also began independently from 7,000 BCE in such places as the Norte Chico civilization in Peru[11] and Mesoamerica at the Balsas River. These were among the six civilizations worldwide that arose independently.[12] The Neolithic Revolution in turn was dependent upon the development of sedentarism, the domestication of grains and animals and the development lifestyles which allowed economies of scale and the accumulation of surplus production by certain social sectors. The transition from "complex cultures" to "civilisations", while still disputed, seems to be associated with the development of state structures, in which power was further monopolised by an elite ruling class.[13] Towards the end of the Neolithic period, various Chalcolithic civilizations began to rise in various "cradles" from around 3300 BCE. Chalcolithic Civilizations, as defined above, also developed in Pre-Columbian Americas and, despite an early start in Egypt, Axum and Kush, much later in Iron Age sub-Saharan Africa. The Bronze Age collapse was followed by the Iron Age around 1200 BCE, during which a number of new civilizations emerged, culminating in the Axial Age transition to Classical civilization. A major technological and cultural transition to modernity began approximately 1500 CE in western Europe, and from this beginning new approaches to science and law spread rapidly around the world.[14] History of the concept The English word civilization comes from the 16th-century French civilisé (civilized), from Latin civilis (civil), related to civis (citizen) and civitas (city).[15] The fundamental treatise is Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process (1939), which traces social mores from medieval courtly society to the Early Modern period.[16] In The Philosophy of Civilization (1923), Albert Schweitzer outlines two opinions: one purely material and the other material and ethical. He said that the world crisis was from humanity losing the ethical idea of civilization, "the sum total of all progress made by man in every sphere of action and from every point of view in so far as the progress helps towards the spiritual perfecting of individuals as the progress of all progress."[page needed] Adjectives like civility developed in the mid-16th century. The abstract noun civilisation, meaning "civilized condition," came in the 1760s, again from French. The first known use in French is in 1757, by Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, and the first use in English is attributed to Adam Ferguson, who in his 1767 Essay on the History of Civil Society wrote, "Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation."[17]" The word was therefore opposed to barbarism or rudeness, in the active pursuit of progress characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, during the French revolution, civilization was said singular, never plural, and meant the progress of humanity as a whole. This is still the case in French.[18] The use of civilizations as a countable noun was in occasional use in the 19th century,[19] but has become much more common in the later 20th century, sometimes just meaning culture (itself in origin an uncountable noun, made countable in the context of ethnography).[20] Only in this generalized sense does it become possible to speak of a "medieval civilization," which in Elias's sense would have been an oxymoron. Already in the 18th century, civilization was not always seen as an improvement. One historically important distinction between culture and civilization is from the writings of Rousseau, particularly his work about education, Emile. Here, civilization, being more rational and socially driven, is not fully in accord with human nature, and "human wholeness is achievable only through the recovery of or approximation to an original prediscursive or prerational natural unity" (see noble savage). From this, a new approach was developed, especially in Germany, first by Johann Gottfried Herder, and later by philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. This sees cultures as natural organisms, not defined by "conscious, rational, deliberative acts" but a kind of pre-rational "folk spirit." Civilization, in contrast, though more rational and more successful in material progress, is unnatural and leads to "vices of social life" such as guile, hypocrisy, envy, and avarice.[18] In World War II, Leo Strauss, having fled Germany, argued in New York that this opinion of civilization was behind Nazism and German militarism and nihilism.[2 Characteristics
"No one in the history of civilization has shaped our understanding of science and natural philosophy more than the great Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle (384–322 BCE), who exerted a profound and pervasive influence for more than two thousand years" —Gary B. Ferngren[22] Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society.[23] Civilizations have been distinguished by their means of subsistence, types of livelihood, settlement patterns, forms of government, social stratification, economic systems, literacy, and other cultural traits. All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence. Grain farms can result in accumulated storage and a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as artificial fertilisation, irrigation and crop rotation. It is possible but more difficult to accumulate horticultural production, and so civilisations based on horticultural gardening have been very rare.[24] Grain surpluses have been especially important because they can be stored for a long time. A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides produce food for a living: early civilizations included soldiers, artisans, priests and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labor and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations. However, in some places hunter-gatherers have had access to food surpluses, such as among some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and perhaps during the Mesolithic Natufian culture. It is possible that food surpluses and relatively large scale social organization and division of labor predates plant and animal domestication.[25] Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word civilization is sometime Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the state.[27] State societies are more stratified[28] than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. The ruling class, normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or bureaucracy. Morton Fried, a conflict theorist, and Elman Service, an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems and social inequality. This system of classification contains four categories[29] • Hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally egalitarian.[30] • Horticultural/pastoral societies in which there are generally two inherited social classes; chief and commoner. • Highly stratified structures, or chiefdoms, with several inherited social classes: king, noble, freemen, serf and slave. • Civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments.[31] Economically, civilizations display more complex patterns of ownership and exchange than less organized societies. Living in one place allows people to accumulate more personal possessions than nomadic people. Some people also acquire landed property, or private ownership of the land. Because a percentage of people in civilizations do not grow their own food, they must trade their goods and services for food in a market system, or receive food through the levy of tribute, redistributive taxation, tariffs or tithes from the food producing segment of the population. Early human cultures functioned through a gift economy supplemented by limited barter systems. By the early Iron Age contemporary civilizations developed money as a medium of exchange for increasingly complex transactions. To oversimplify, in a village the potter makes a pot for the brewer and the brewer compensates the potter by giving him a certain amount of beer. In a city, the potter may need a new roof, the roofer may need new shoes, the cobbler may need new horseshoes, the blacksmith may need a new coat, and the tanner may need a new pot. These people may not be personally acquainted with one another and their needs may not occur all at the same time. A monetary system is a way of organizing these obligations to ensure that they are fulfilled. From the days of the earliest monetarised civilisations, monopolistic controls of monetary systems have benefited the social and political elites. Writing, developed first by people in Sumer, is considered a hallmark of civilization and "appears to accompany the rise of complex administrative bureaucracies or the conquest state."[32] Traders and bureaucrats relied on writing to keep accurate records. Like money, writing was necessitated by the size of the population of a city and the complexity of its commerce among people who are not all personally acquainted with each other. However, writing is not always necessary for civilization. The Inca civilization of the Andes did not use writing at all but it uses a complex recording system consisting of cords and nodes instead: the "Quipus", and it still functioned as a society. Aided by their division of labor and central government planning, civilizations have developed many other diverse cultural traits. These include organized religion, development in the arts, and countless new advances in science and technology. Through history, successful civilizations have spread, taking over more and more territory, and assimilating more and more previously-uncivilized people. Nevertheless, some tribes or people remain uncivilized even to this day. These cultures are called by some "primitive," a term that is regarded by others as pejorative. "Primitive" implies in some way that a culture is "first" (Latin = primus), that it has not changed since the dawn of humanity, though this has been demonstrated not to be true. Specifically, as all of today's cultures are contemporaries, today's so-called primitive cultures are in no way antecedent to those we consider civilized. Anthropologists today use the term "non-literate" to describe these peoples. Civilization has been spread by colonization, invasion, religious conversion, the extension of bureaucratic control and trade, and by introducing agriculture and writing to non-literate peoples. Some non-civilized people may willingly adapt to civilized behaviour. But civilization is also spread by the technical, material and social dominance that civilization engenders. Assessments of what level of civilization a polity has reached are based on comparisons of the relative importance of agricultural as opposed to trade or manufacturing capacities, the territorial extensions of its power, the complexity of its division of labor, and the carrying capacity of its urban centres. Secondary elements include a developed transportation system, writing, standardized measurement, currency, contractual and tort-based legal systems, art, architecture, mathematics, scientific understanding, metallurgy, political structures, and organized religion. Traditionally, polities that managed to achieve notable military, ideological and economic power defined themselves as "civilized" as opposed to other societies or human grouping which lay outside their sphere of influence, calling the latter barbarians, savages, and primitives, while in a modern-day context, "civilized people" have been contrasted with indigenous people or tribal societies. Cultural identity "Civilization" can also refer to the culture of a complex society, not just the society itself. Every society, civilization or not, has a specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of manufactures and arts that make it unique. Civilizations tend to develop intricate cultures, including a state-based decision making apparatus, a literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion, and complex customs of education, coercion and control associated with maintaining the elite.
Modern world civilizations according to Huntington The intricate culture associated with civilization has a tendency to spread to and influence other cultures, sometimes assimilating them into the civilization (a classic example being Chinese civilization and its influence on nearby civilizations such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam). Many civilizations are actually large cultural spheres containing many nations and regions. The civilization in which someone lives is that person's broadest cultural identity. Many historians have focused on these broad cultural spheres and have treated civilizations as discrete units. Early twentieth-century philosopher Oswald Spengler,[33] uses the German word "Kultur," "culture," for what many call a "civilization". Spengler believes a civilization's coherence is based on a single primary cultural symbol. Cultures experience cycles of birth, life, decline, and death, often supplanted by a potent new culture, formed around a compelling new cultural symbol. Spengler states civilization is the beginning of the decline of a culture as, "...the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable."[33] This "unified culture" concept of civilization also influenced the theories of historian Arnold J. Toynbee in the mid-twentieth century. Toynbee explored civilization processes in his multi-volume A Study of History, which traced the rise and, in most cases, the decline of 21 civilizations and five "arrested civilizations." Civilizations generally declined and fell, according to Toynbee, because of the failure of a "creative minority", through moral or religious decline, to meet some important challenge, rather than mere economic or environmental causes. Samuel P. Huntington defines civilization as "the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species." Huntington's theories about civilizations are discussed below Complex systems Another group of theorists, making use of systems theory, looks at a civilization as a complex system, i.e., a framework by which a group of objects can be analyzed that work in concert to produce some result. Civilizations can be seen as networks of cities that emerge from pre-urban cultures, and are defined by the economic, political, military, diplomatic, social, and cultural interactions among them. Any organization is a complex social system, and a civilization is a large organization. Systems theory helps guard against superficial but misleading analogies in the study and description of civilizations. Systems theorists look at many types of relations between cities, including economic relations, cultural exchanges, and political/diplomatic/military relations. These spheres often occur on different scales. For example, trade networks were, until the nineteenth century, much larger than either cultural spheres or political spheres. Extensive trade routes, including the Silk Road through Central Asia and Indian Ocean sea routes linking the Roman Empire, Persian Empire, India, and China, were well established 2000 years ago, when these civilizations scarcely shared any political, diplomatic, military, or cultural relations. The first evidence of such long distance trade is in the ancient world. During the Uruk period Guillermo Algaze has argued that trade relations connected Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran and Afghanistan.[35] Resin found later in the Royal Tombs of Ur it is suggested was traded northwards from Mozambique. Many theorists argue that the entire world has already become integrated into a single "world system", a process known as globalization. Different civilizations and societies all over the globe are economically, politically, and even culturally interdependent in many ways. There is debate over when this integration began, and what sort of integration – cultural, technological, economic, political, or military-diplomatic – is the key indicator in determining the extent of a civilization. David Wilkinson has proposed that economic and military-diplomatic integration of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations resulted in the creation of what he calls the "Central Civilization" around 1500 BCE.[36] Central Civilization later expanded to include the entire Middle East and Europe, and then expanded to a global scale with European colonization, integrating the Americas, Australia, China and Japan by the nineteenth century. According to Wilkinson, civilizations can be culturally heterogeneous, like the Central Civilization, or homogeneous, like the Japanese civilization. What Huntington calls the "clash of civilizations" might be characterized by Wilkinson as a clash of cultural spheres within a single global civilization. Others point to the Crusades as the first step in globalization. The more conventional viewpoint is that networks of societies have expanded and shrunk since ancient times, and that the current globalized economy and culture is a product of recent European colonialism. The Neolithic Era Main article: Neolithic The process of sedentarization is first thought to have occurred around 12,000 BCE in the Levant region of southwest Asia though other regions around the world soon followed. The emergence of civilization is generally associated with the Neolithic, or Agricultural Revolution, which occurred in various locations between 8,000 and 5,000 BCE, specifically in southwestern/southern Asia, northern/central Africa and Central America.[40] At first the Neolithic was associated with shifting subsistence cultivation, where continuous farming led to the depletion of soil fertility resulting in the requirement to cultivate fields further and further removed from the settlement, eventually compelling the settlement itself to move. In major semi-arid river valleys, annual flooding renewed soil fertility to be renewed yearly, with the result that population densities could rise significantly. This encouraged a "secondary products revolution" where domesticated animals became useful for more than meat production; being used also for milk, wool, and animal traction of ploughs and carts. The 8.2 Kiloyear Arid Event and the 5.9 Kiloyear Interpluvial saw the drying out of semiarid regions and a major spread of deserts.[41] This climate change shifted the cost-benefit ratio of endemic violence between communities, which saw the abandonment of unwalled village communities and the appearance of walled cities, associated with the first civilisations. This "urban revolution" marked the beginning of stable agriculture and animal domestication which enabled economies and cities to develop. It was associated with the state monopoly and violence, the appearance of a soldier class and endemic warfare, rapid development of hierarchies and a fall in the status of women.[citation needed] Statue of Liberty The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, in the United States. The copper statue, designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, a French sculptor, was built by Gustave Eiffel and dedicated on October 28, 1886. It was a gift to the United States from the people of France. The statue is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tablet evoking the law) upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue is an icon of freedom and of the United States, and was a welcoming sight to immigrants arriving from abroad. Bartholdi was inspired by French law professor and politician Édouard René de Laboulaye, who is said to have commented in 1865 that any monument raised to American independence would properly be a joint project of the French and American peoples. He may have been minded to honor the Union victory in the American Civil War and the end of slavery. Due to the troubled political situation in France, work on the statue did not commence until the early 1870s. In 1875, Laboulaye proposed that the French finance the statue and the Americans provide the site and build the pedestal. Bartholdi completed the head and the torch-bearing arm before the statue was fully designed, and these pieces were exhibited for publicity at international expositions. The torch-bearing arm was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and in Madison Square Park in Manhattan from 1876 to 1882. Fundraising proved difficult, especially for the Americans, and by 1885 work on the pedestal was threatened due to lack of funds. Publisher Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World started a drive for donations to complete the project that attracted more than 120,000 contributors, most of whom gave less than a dollar. The statue was constructed in France, shipped overseas in crates, and assembled on the completed pedestal on what was then called Bedloe's Island. The statue's completion was marked by New York's first ticker-tape parade and a dedication ceremony presided over by President Grover Cleveland. The statue was administered by the United States Lighthouse Board until 1901 and then by the Department of War; since 1933 it has been maintained by the National Park Service. The statue was closed for renovation for much of 1938. In the early 1980s, it was found to have deteriorated to such an extent that a major restoration was required. While the statue was closed from 1984 to 1986, the torch and a large part of the internal structure were replaced. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, it was closed for reasons of safety and security; the pedestal reopened in 2004 and the statue in 2009, with limits on the number of visitors allowed to ascend to the crown. The statue, including the pedestal and base, was closed for a year until October 28, 2012, so that a secondary staircase and other safety features could be installed; Liberty Island remained open. However, one day after the reopening, Liberty Island closed due to the effects of Hurricane Sandy in New York; the statue and island opened again on July 4, 2013. Public access to the balcony surrounding the torch has been barred for safety reasons since 1916. Design and construction process Origin According to the National Park Service, the idea for the Statue of Liberty was first proposed by Edouard de Laboulaye the president of the French Anti-Slavery Society and a prominent and important political thinker of his time. The project is traced to a conversation between Édouard René de Laboulaye, a staunch abolitionist and Frédéric Bartholdi, a sculptor in mid-1865. In after-dinner conversation at his home near Versailles, Laboulaye, an ardent supporter of the Union in the American Civil War, is supposed to have said: "If a monument should rise in the United States, as a memorial to their independence, I should think it only natural if it were built by united effort—a common work of both our nations."[7] The National Park Service, in a 2000 report, however, deemed this a legend traced to an 1885 fundraising pamphlet, and that the statue was most likely conceived in 1870.[8] In another essay on their website, the Park Service suggested that Laboulaye was minded to honor the Union victory and its consequences, "With the abolition of slavery and the Union's victory in the Civil War in 1865, Laboulaye's wishes of freedom and democracy were turning into a reality in the United States. In order to honor these achievements, Laboulaye proposed that a gift be built for the United States on behalf of France. Laboulaye hoped that by calling attention to the recent achievements of the United States, the French people would be inspired to call for their own democracy in the face of a repressive According to sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, who later recounted the story, Laboulaye's comment was not intended as a proposal, but it inspired Bartholdi.[7] Given the repressive nature of the regime of Napoleon III, Bartholdi took no immediate action on the idea except to discuss it with Laboulaye. Bartholdi was in any event busy with other possible projects; in the late 1860s, he approached Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, with a plan to build a huge lighthouse in the form of an ancient Egyptian female fellah or peasant, robed and holding a torch aloft, at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal in Port Said. Sketches and models were made of the proposed work, though it was never erected. There was a classical precedent for the Suez proposal, the Colossus of Rhodes: an ancient bronze statue of the Greek god of the sun, Helios. This statue is believed to have been over 100 feet (30 m) high, and it similarly stood at a harbor entrance and carried a light to guide ships.[10] Any large project was further delayed by the Franco-Prussian War, in which Bartholdi served as a major of militia. In the war, Napoleon III was captured and deposed. Bartholdi's home province of Alsace was lost to the Prussians, and a more liberal republic was installed in France.[7] As Bartholdi had been planning a trip to the United States, he and Laboulaye decided the time was right to discuss the idea with influential Americans.[11] In June 1871, Bartholdi crossed the Atlantic, with letters of introduction signed by Laboulaye.[12] Arriving at New York Harbor, Bartholdi focused on Bedloe's Island as a site for the statue, struck by the fact that vessels arriving in New York had to sail past it. He was delighted to learn that the island was owned by the United States government—it had been ceded by the New York State Legislature in 1800 for harbor defense. It was thus, as he put it in a letter to Laboulaye: "land common to all the states."[13] As well as meeting many influential New Yorkers, Bartholdi visited President Ulysses S. Grant, who assured him that it would not be difficult to obtain the site for the statue.[14] Bartholdi crossed the United States twice by rail, and met many Americans he felt would be sympathetic to the project.[12] But he remained concerned that popular opinion on both sides of the Atlantic was insufficiently supportive of the proposal, and he and Laboulaye decided to wait before mounting a public campaign.[15] Bartholdi had made a first model of his concept in 1870.[16] The son of a friend of Bartholdi's, American artist John LaFarge, later maintained that Bartholdi made the first sketches for the statue during his U.S. visit at La Farge's Rhode Island studio. Bartholdi continued to develop the concept following his return to France.[16] He also worked on a number of sculptures designed to bolster French patriotism after the defeat by the Prussians. One of these was the Lion of Belfort, a monumental sculpture carved in sandstone below the fortress of Belfort, which during the war had resisted a Prussian siege for over three months. The defiant lion, 73 feet (22 m) long and half that in height, displays an emotional quality characteristic of Romanticism, which Bartholdi would later bring to the Statue of Liberty. Bartholdi and Laboulaye considered how best to express the idea of American liberty.[18] In early American history, two female figures were frequently used as cultural symbols of the nation.[19] One of these symbols, the personified Columbia, was seen as an embodiment of the United States in the manner that Britannia was identified with the United Kingdom and Marianne came to represent France. Columbia had supplanted the earlier figure of an Indian princess, which had come to be regarded as uncivilized and derogatory toward Americans.[19] The other significant female icon in American culture was a representation of Liberty, derived from Libertas, the goddess of freedom widely worshipped in ancient Rome, especially among emancipated slaves. A Liberty figure adorned most American coins of the time,[18] and representations of Liberty appeared in popular and civic art, including Thomas Crawford's Statue of Freedom (1863) atop the dome of the United States Capitol Building.[18] Artists of the 18th and 19th centuries striving to evoke republican ideals commonly used representations of Libertas as an allegorical symbol.[18] A figure of Liberty was also depicted on the Great Seal of France.[18] However, Bartholdi and Laboulaye avoided an image of revolutionary liberty such as that depicted in Eugène Delacroix's famed Liberty Leading the People (1830). In this painting, which commemorates France's Revolution of 1830, a half-clothed Liberty leads an armed mob over the bodies of the fallen.[19] Laboulaye had no sympathy for revolution, and so Bartholdi's figure would be fully dressed in flowing robes.[19] Instead of the impression of violence in the Delacroix work, Bartholdi wished to give the statue a peaceful appearance and chose a torch, representing progress, for the figure to hold.[20] Crawford's statue was designed in the early 1850s. It was originally to be crowned with a pileus, the cap given to emancipated slaves in ancient Rome. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, a Southerner who would later serve as President of the Confederate States of America, was concerned that the pileus would be taken as an abolitionist symbol. He ordered that it be changed to a helmet.[21] Delacroix's figure wears a pileus,[19] and Bartholdi at first considered placing one on his figure as well. Instead, he used a diadem, or crown, to top its head.[22] In so doing, he avoided a reference to Marianne, who invariably wears a pileus.[23] The seven rays form a halo or aureole.[24] They evoke the sun, the seven seas, and the seven continents,[25] and represent another means, besides the torch, whereby Liberty enlightens the world.[20] Bartholdi's early models were all similar in concept: a female figure in neoclassical style representing liberty, wearing a stola and pella (gown and cloak, common in depictions of Roman goddesses) and holding a torch aloft. According to popular accounts, the face was modeled after that of Charlotte Beysser Bartholdi, the sculptor's mother,[26] but Regis Huber, the curator of the Bartholdi Museum is on record as saying that this, as well as other similar speculations, have no basis in fact.[27] He designed the figure with a strong, uncomplicated silhouette, which would be set off well by its dramatic harbor placement and allow passengers on vessels entering New York Bay to experience a changing perspective on the statue as they proceeded toward Manhattan. He gave it bold classical contours and applied simplified modeling, reflecting the huge scale of the project and its solemn purpose.[20] Bartholdi wrote of his technique: The surfaces should be broad and simple, defined by a bold and clear design, accentuated in the important places. The enlargement of the details or their multiplicity is to be feared. By exaggerating the forms, in order to render them more clearly visible, or by enriching them with details, we would destroy the proportion of the work. Finally, the model, like the design, should have a summarized character, such as one would give to a rapid sketch. Only it is necessary that this character should be the product of volition and study, and that the artist, concentrating his knowledge, should find the form and the line in its greatest simplicity.[28] Bartholdi made alterations in the design as the project evolved. Bartholdi considered having Liberty hold a broken chain, but decided this would be too divisive in the days after the Civil War. The erected statue does rise over a broken chain, half-hidden by her robes and difficult to see from the ground.[22] Bartholdi was initially uncertain of what to place in Liberty's left hand; he settled on a tabula ansata, a keystone-shaped tablet[29] used to evoke the concept of law.[30] Though Bartholdi greatly admired the United States Constitution, he chose to inscribe "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" on the tablet, thus associating the date of the country's Declaration of Independence with the concept of liberty.[29] Bartholdi interested his friend and mentor, architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, in the project.[27] As chief engineer,[27] Viollet-le-Duc designed a brick pier within the statue, to which the skin would be anchored.[31] After consultations with the metalwork foundry Gaget, Gauthier & Co., Viollet-le-Duc chose the metal which would be used for the skin, copper sheets, and the method used to shape it, repoussé, in which the sheets were heated and then struck with wooden hammers.[27][32] An advantage of this choice was that the entire statue would be light for its volume, as the copper need be only .094 inches (2.4 mm) thick. Bartholdi had decided on a height of just over 151 feet (46 m) for the statue, double that of Italy's Sancarlone and the German statue of Arminius, both made with the same method.[33] Announcement and early work By 1875, France was enjoying improved political stability and a recovering postwar economy. Growing interest in the upcoming Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia led Laboulaye to decide it was time to seek public support.[34] In September 1875, he announced the project and the formation of the Franco-American Union as its fundraising arm. With the announcement, the statue was given a name, Liberty Enlightening the World.[35] The French would finance the statue; Americans would be expected to pay for the pedestal.[36] The announcement provoked a generally favorable reaction in France, though many Frenchmen resented the United States for not coming to their aid during the war with Prussia.[35] French monarchists opposed the statue, if for no other reason than it was proposed by the liberal Laboulaye, who had recently been elected a senator for life.[36] Laboulaye arranged events designed to appeal to the rich and powerful, including a special performance at the Paris Opera on April 25, 1876, that featured a new cantata by composer Charles Gounod. The piece was titled La Liberté éclairant le monde, the French version of the statue's announced name.[35] Despite its initial focus on the elites, the Union was successful in raising funds from across French society. Schoolchildren and ordinary citizens gave, as did 181 French municipalities. Laboulaye's political allies supported the call, as did descendants of the French contingent in the American Revolutionary War. Less idealistically, contributions came from those who hoped for American support in the French attempt to build the Panama Canal. The copper may have come from multiple sources and some of it is said to have come from a mine in Visnes, Norway,[37] though this has not been conclusively determined after testing samples.[38] According to Cara Sutherland in her book on the statue for the Museum of the City of New York, 90,800 kilos (200,000 pounds) was needed to build the statue, and the French copper industrialist Eugène Secrétan donated 58,100 kilos (128,000 pounds) of copper.[39] Historian Yasmin Khan, in her 2010 book about the statue, states that the firm of Japy Frères, copper merchants, donated copper valued at 64,000 francs (about $16,000 at the time or the equivalent of US$ 354,000 in 2015).[40][41] Although plans for the statue had not been finalized, Bartholdi moved forward with fabrication of the right arm, bearing the torch, and the head. Work began at the Gaget, Gauthier & Co. workshop.[42] In May 1876, Bartholdi traveled to the United States as a member of a French delegation to the Centennial Exhibition,[43] and arranged for a huge painting of the statue to be shown in New York as part of the Centennial festivities.[44] The arm did not arrive in Philadelphia until August; because of its late arrival, it was not listed in the exhibition catalogue, and while some reports correctly identified the work, others called it the "Colossal Arm" or "Bartholdi Electric Light". The exhibition grounds contained a number of monumental artworks to compete for fairgoers' interest, including an outsized fountain designed by Bartholdi.[45] Nevertheless, the arm proved popular in the exhibition's waning days, and visitors would climb up to the balcony of the torch to view the fairgrounds.[46] After the exhibition closed, the arm was transported to New York, where it remained on display in Madison Square Park for several years before it was returned to France to join the rest of the statue.[46] During his second trip to the United States, Bartholdi addressed a number of groups about the project, and urged the formation of American committees of the Franco-American Union.[47] Committees to raise money to pay for the foundation and pedestal were formed in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.[48] The New York group eventually took on most of the responsibility for American fundraising and is often referred to as the "American Committee".[49] One of its members was 19-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, the future governor of New York and president of the United States.[47] On March 3, 1877, on his final full day in office, President Grant signed a joint resolution that authorized the President to accept the statue when it was presented by France and to select a site for it. President Rutherford B. Hayes, who took office the following day, selected the Bedloe's Island site that Bartholdi had proposed.[50] Eiffel's design made the statue one of the earliest examples of curtain wall construction, in which the exterior of the structure is not load bearing, but is instead supported by an interior framework. He included two interior spiral staircases, to make it easier for visitors to reach the observation point in the crown.[56] Access to an observation platform surrounding the torch was also provided, but the narrowness of the arm allowed for only a single ladder, 40 feet (12 m) long.[57] As the pylon tower arose, Eiffel and Bartholdi coordinated their work carefully so that completed segments of skin would fit exactly on the support structure.[58] The components of the pylon tower were built in the Eiffel factory in the nearby Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret.[59] The change in structural material from masonry to iron allowed Bartholdi to change his plans for the statue's assembly. He had originally expected to assemble the skin on-site as the masonry pier was built; instead he decided to build the statue in France and have it disassembled and transported to the United States for reassembly in place on Bedloe's Island.[60] In a symbolic act, the first rivet placed into the skin, fixing a copper plate onto the statue's big toe, was driven by United States Ambassador to France Levi P. Morton.[61] The skin was not, however, crafted in exact sequence from low to high; work proceeded on a number of segments simultaneously in a manner often confusing to visitors.[62] Some work was performed by contractors—one of the fingers was made to Bartholdi's exacting specifications by a coppersmith in the southern French town of Montauban.[63] By 1882, the statue was complete up to the waist, an event Barthodi celebrated by inviting reporters to lunch on a platform built within the statue.[64] Laboulaye died in 1883. He was succeeded as chairman of the French committee by Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal. The completed statue was formally presented to Ambassador Morton at a ceremony in Paris on July 4, 1884, and de Lesseps announced that the French government had agreed to pay for its transport to New York.[65] The statue remained intact in Paris pending sufficient progress on the pedestal; by January 1885, this had occurred and the statue was disassembled and crated for its ocean voyage. The committees in the United States faced great difficulties in obtaining funds for the construction of the pedestal. The Panic of 1873 had led to an economic depression that persisted through much of the decade. The Liberty statue project was not the only such undertaking that had difficulty raising money: construction of the obelisk later known as the Washington Monument sometimes stalled for years; it would ultimately take over three-and-a-half decades to complete.[67] There was criticism both of Bartholdi's statue and of the fact that the gift required Americans to foot the bill for the pedestal. In the years following the Civil War, most Americans preferred realistic artworks depicting heroes and events from the nation's history, rather than allegorical works like the Liberty statue.[67] There was also a feeling that Americans should design American public works—the selection of Italian-born Constantino Brumidi to decorate the Capitol had provoked intense criticism, even though he was a naturalized U.S. citizen.[68] Harper's Weekly declared its wish that "M. Bartholdi and our French cousins had 'gone the whole figure' while they were about it, and given us statue and pedestal at once."[69] The New York Times stated that "no true patriot can countenance any such expenditures for bronze females in the present state of our finances."[70] Faced with these criticisms, the American committees took little action for several years.[70] Design The foundation of Bartholdi's statue was to be laid inside Fort Wood, a disused army base on Bedloe's Island constructed between 1807 and 1811. Since 1823, it had rarely been used, though during the Civil War, it had served as a recruiting station.[71] The fortifications of the structure were in the shape of an eleven-point star. The statue's foundation and pedestal were aligned so that it would face southeast, greeting ships entering the harbor from the Atlantic Ocean.[72] In 1881, the New York committee commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to design the pedestal. Within months, Hunt submitted a detailed plan, indicating that he expected construction to take about nine months.[73] He proposed a pedestal 114 feet (35 m) in height; faced with money problems, the committee reduced that to 89 feet (27 m).[74] Hunt's pedestal design contains elements of classical architecture, including Doric portals, as well as some elements influenced by Aztec architecture.[27] The large mass is fragmented with architectural detail, in order to focus attention on the statue.[74] In form, it is a truncated pyramid, 62 feet (19 m) square at the base and 39.4 feet (12.0 m) at the top. The four sides are identical in appearance. Above the door on each side, there are ten disks upon which Bartholdi proposed to place the coats of arms of the states (between 1876 and 1889, there were 38 U.S. states), although this was not done. Above that, a balcony was placed on each side, framed by pillars. Bartholdi placed an observation platform near the top of the pedestal, above which the statue itself rises.[75] According to author Louis Auchincloss, the pedestal "craggily evokes the power of an ancient Europe over which rises the dominating figure of the Statue of Liberty".[74] The committee hired former army General Charles Pomeroy Stone to oversee the construction work.[76] Construction on the 15-foot-deep (4.6 m) foundation began in 1883, and the pedestal's cornerstone was laid in 1884.[73] In Hunt's original conception, the pedestal was to have been made of solid granite. Financial concerns again forced him to revise his plans; the final design called for poured concrete walls, up to 20 feet (6.1 m) thick, faced with granite blocks.[77][78] This Stony Creek granite came from the Beattie Quarry in Branford, Connecticut.[79] The concrete mass was the largest poured to that time.[78] Norwegian immigrant civil engineer Joachim Goschen Giæver designed the structural framework for the Statue of Liberty. His work involved design computations, detailed fabrication and construction drawings, and oversight of construction. In completing his engineering for the statue’s frame, Giæver worked from drawings and sketches produced by Gustave Eiffel.[80][80] Fundraising Fundraising for the statue had begun in 1882. The committee organized a large number of money-raising events.[81] As part of one such effort, an auction of art and manuscripts, poet Emma Lazarus was asked to donate an original work. She initially declined, stating she could not write a poem about a statue. At the time, she was also involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled anti-Semitic pogroms in eastern Europe. These refugees were forced to live in conditions that the wealthy Lazarus had never experienced. She saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue.[82] The resulting sonnet, "The New Colossus", including the iconic lines "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", is uniquely identified with the Statue of Liberty and is inscribed on a plaque in the museum in its base.[83] Even with these efforts, fundraising lagged. Grover Cleveland, the governor of New York, vetoed a bill to provide $50,000 for the statue project in 1884. An attempt the next year to have Congress provide $100,000, sufficient to complete the project, also failed. The New York committee, with only $3,000 in the bank, suspended work on the pedestal. With the project in jeopardy, groups from other American cities, including Boston and Philadelphia, offered to pay the full cost of erecting the statue in return for relocating it.[84] Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, a New York newspaper, announced a drive to raise $100,000 – the equivalent of $2.3 million today.[40] Pulitzer pledged to print the name of every contributor, no matter how small the amount given.[85] The drive captured the imagination of New Yorkers, especially when Pulitzer began publishing the notes he received from contributors. "A young girl alone in the world" donated "60 cents, the result of self denial."[86] One donor gave "five cents as a poor office boy's mite toward the Pedestal Fund." A group of children sent a dollar as "the money we saved to go to the circus with."[87] Another dollar was given by a "lonely and very aged woman."[86] Residents of a home for alcoholics in New York's rival city of Brooklyn – the cities would not merge until 1898 – donated $15; other drinkers helped out through donation boxes in bars and saloons.[88] A kindergarten class in Davenport, Iowa, mailed the World a gift of $1.35.[86] As the donations flooded in, the committee resumed work on the pedestal.[89] Construction On June 17, 1885, the French steamer Isère, laden with the Statue of Liberty, reached the New York port safely. New Yorkers displayed their new-found enthusiasm for the statue, as the French vessel arrived with the crates holding the disassembled statue on board. Two hundred thousand people lined the docks and hundreds of boats put to sea to welcome the Isère.[90] [91] After five months of daily calls to donate to the statue fund, on August 11, 1885, the World announced that $102,000 had been raised from 120,000 donors, and that 80 percent of the total had been received in sums of less than one dollar.[92] Even with the success of the fund drive, the pedestal was not completed until April 1886. Immediately thereafter, reassembly of the statue began. Eiffel's iron framework was anchored to steel I-beams within the concrete pedestal and assembled.[93] Once this was done, the sections of skin were carefully attached.[94] Due to the width of the pedestal, it was not possible to erect scaffolding, and workers dangled from ropes while installing the skin sections. Nevertheless, no one died during the construction.[95] Bartholdi had planned to put floodlights on the torch's balcony to illuminate it; a week before the dedication, the Army Corps of Engineers vetoed the proposal, fearing that ships' pilots passing the statue would be blinded. Instead, Bartholdi cut portholes in the torch – which was covered with gold leaf – and placed the lights inside them.[96] A power plant was installed on the island to light the torch and for other electrical needs.[97] After the skin was completed, renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, co-designer of New York's Central Park and Brooklyn's Prospect Park, supervised a cleanup of Bedloe's Island in anticipation of the dedication.[98] Statue of Liberty The Statue of Liberty,[1] officially named Liberty Enlightening the World, is a monument symbolizing the United States. The statue is placed near the entrance to New York City harbor. The statue commemorates the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence. It was given to the United States by the people of France, to represent the friendship between the two countries established during the American Revolution.[2] It represents a woman wearing a stola, a crown and sandals, trampling a broken chain, and with a torch in her raised right hand and a tabula ansata, where the date of the Declaration of Independence JULY IV [3] is written, in her left hand. The statue is on Liberty Island in New York Harbor,[4] and it welcomes visitors, immigrants, and returning
.