Britain
Great Britain is an island located in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of mainland Europe. It is the largest island in the archipelago of the British Isles. Its surface area is 209,331 km², making it the largest island in Europe, the ninth largest in the world, and - after Java (Indonesia) and Honshu (Japan) - the third largest. populated on the planet. The territory of Great Britain is made up of three nations: England, Wales and Scotland, which are part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The island owes its name to the province of the Roman Empire called Britannia, inhabited by the Celtic people of the Britons. The crisis caused by the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Great Britain caused many Roman-British to flee and settle in nearby regions, such as present-day French Brittany.
Toponymy
The name of the island in Spanish is Great Britain. In English it is Great Britain, in Scottish Great Breetain, in Welsh Prydain Fawr; in Scottish Gaelic Breatainn Mhòr and in Cornish Breten Veur.
The name "Great Britain" comes from Britannia, a Latin term used by the Romans to describe a province that roughly corresponded to present-day England, Wales, and southern Scotland. The etymology of this term has been controversial, but it is generally thought to be probably a derivative of the Celtic word britani ('painted'), as the inhabitants of these islands they painted their skin.
The use of the term British in reference to the United Kingdom is similar. In Spanish, the use of Britania is limited to the name of the ancient Roman province.
This archipelago has been given a single name for more than 2,000 years: the term "British Isles" derives from the terms used by classical geographers to describe this group of islands. Around the year 50 a. In the 12th century, Greek geographers used equivalents of Prettanikē as a collective name for the British Isles. However, with the Roman conquest of Britain, the Latin term Britannia was used for the island of Great Britain and, later, British-occupied Britain. Romans south of Caledonia.
The oldest known name of Great Britain is Albion (Greek: Ἀλβιών) or insula Albionum, both from the Latin albus meaning "white" (possibly referring to the white cliffs of Dover, the first view of Britain from the mainland) as from the "island of the Albiones". The earliest mention of terms relating to Britain was made by Aristotle. (384-322 BC), or possibly by Pseudo-Aristotle, in his text On the Universe, Vol. III. Citing his work, "there are two very large islands in it, called the British Isles, Albion and Ierne."
The first known written use of the word Great Britain was an ancient Greek transliteration of the original Celtic term in a work on the voyages and discoveries of Pytheas that has not survived. The first records that exist of the word are quotations from the journey of later authors, such as those of Strabo's Geography, Pliny the Elder's Natural History and the Historical Library by Diodorus Siculus. Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79) in his Natural History speaks of Great Britain: "Her former name was Albion; but at a later period all the islands, of which brief mention will now be made, were included under the name of 'Britanniæ'"
The name Great Britain descends from the Latin name for Great Britain, Britannia or Brittānia, the land of the Britons. Old French Bretaigne (hence also Modern French Bretagne) and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne. The French form replaced Old English Breoton, Breoten, Bryten, Breten (also Breoton-lond, Breten-lond). Britannia was used by the Romans from the I century BCE. C. for the whole of the British Isles. It comes from the travel writings of Pytheas around the year 320 BC. C., which described several islands in the North Atlantic as far north as Thule (probably Norway).
The peoples of these Prettanike islands were called the Πρεττανοί, Priteni or Pretani. Priteni is the source of the Welsh term Prydain, Great Britain, which has the same origin as the Goidelic term Cruithne used to refer to the first inhabitants British-speaking people from Ireland. The latter were later called Picts or Caledonians by the Romans. Greek historians Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo preserved variants of Prettanike from the work of the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia, who traveled from his home in Hellenistic southern Gaul to Britain in the IV a. C. The term used by Pytheas may derive from a Celtic word meaning "the painted ones" or "the tattooed" in reference to bodily decorations. According to Strabo, Pytheas referred to Great Britain as Bretannikē, which is a feminine noun. Martian of Heracleia, in his Periplus maris exteri, described the group of islands as αἱ Πρετανικαὶ νῆσοι (the Pretanic Islands).
Political definition
Great Britain is the largest island in the United Kingdom. Politically it has an extremely complex organization. Great Britain refers to all the constituent nations of England, Scotland and Wales combined, but does not include Northern Ireland, located on the island of Ireland; Basically, it also includes several minor islands, such as the Isle of Wight, Anglesey, the Isles of Scilly, the Hebrides, and the Orkney and Shetland island groups. It does not include the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, which are dependent self-governing territories.
The political union that integrated the kingdoms of England and Scotland happened in 1707, when the Act of Union ratified the Union Treaty of 1706 and merged the parliaments of the two countries, to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, that covered the whole island. Prior to this, a personal and informal union had existed between these two countries since 1603, the Union of the Crowns, by virtue of the unifying reign of James I of England and VI of Scotland.
Geological origin
The geology of Great Britain is quite similar to that of adjacent areas on the European continent. Recent studies, published in July 2007, indicate that the current island of Great Britain until 200,000 years ago was a large peninsula of continental Europe, a peninsula linked to the rest of the European macro geographical unit (MUG) by an isthmus called "Risco Weald -Artois». Until that date, in the middle of the Riss or Illinois glaciation, to the north of the isthmus was a large saltwater lake, occupying the southern part of the North Sea.