For discussion of physical and human geography, along with the history of individual countries in the region, see Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Turkey. The Balkans since 1453. Retrieved 9 November 2015. Balkan chat city Balkans have been responsible since the and are the route by which farming from the spread to during the 7th millennium BC. Metal ores are more usual than other raw materials. The participation of Greece in the war three years later, in 1918, on the part of the Entente finally altered the solo between the opponents leading to the collapse of the common German-Bulgarian front there, which caused the exit of Bulgaria from the war, and in turn the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ending the First World War. Germany and the 2nd World War. All of the aforementioned caballeros from the present and from the past belong to the wider language family, with the exception of the Turkic languages e. The Balkans: A Short History.
The Balkan states according to The Balkan Peninsula using the —— border. Political communities that are usually included in the Balkans. The northern border of the is variously defined. The highest point of the Balkans is , 2,925 metres 9,596 ft , in the mountain range. Etymology The word Balkan comes from balkan 'chain of wooded mountains'; related words are also found in other Turkic languages. The origin of the Turkic word is obscure; it may be related to bālk 'mud', and the Turkish suffix an 'swampy forest' or Persian balā-khāna 'big high house'. Historical names Classical antiquity and the early Middle Ages From through the , the Balkan Mountains were called by the local name. According to Greek mythology, the king was turned into a mountain by as a punishment and the mountain has remained with his name. A reverse name scheme has also been suggested. Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhon's blood fell on the mountains, from which they got their name. Late Middle Ages and Ottoman period The earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, in which the are referred to as Balkan. The first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, although other Turkic tribes had already settled in or were passing through the Peninsula. There is also a claim about an earlier Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion. The word was used by the Ottomans in in its general meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, and Ungurus-Balkani̊, but especially it was applied to the Haemus mountain. The name is still preserved in with the Balkan Mountains and the of. English traveler introduced this term into the English literature at the end of the 18th-century, and other authors started applying the name to the wider area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term. Zeune's goal was to have a geographical parallel term to the and , and seemingly nothing more. The gradually acquired political connotations are newer and, to a large extent, due to oscillating political circumstances. A initiative of 1999 is called the , and the online newspaper Balkan Times renamed itself in 2003. Its northern boundary is often given as the , and Rivers. It is more or less identical to the region known as. From 1920 until , Italy included and some areas like Zara, today's that are within the general definition of the Balkan peninsula. The current territory of Italy includes only the small area around inside the Balkan Peninsula. However, the regions of Trieste and Istria are not usually considered part of the Balkans by Italian geographers, due to their definition of the Balkans that limits its western border to the Kupa River. The Balkans are usually said to comprise , , , , , the , , , and , while and are often excluded. Its total area is usually given as 666,700 square km 257,400 square miles and the population as 59,297,000 est. The term is also used for the region, with various definitions. Individual Balkan states are also considered to be part of other regions, including and. Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia are also sometimes considered part of. Turkey, often including its European territory, is also included in or. Western Balkans Western Balkan countries — , , , , , and. The partially recognized is also demarcated. Croatia joined the EU in 2013. Western Balkans is a neologism coined to refer to Albania and the territory of the former Yugoslavia less Slovenia. Each of these countries aims to be part of the and reach democracy and transmission scores but, until then, they will be strongly connected with the pre-EU waiting program. Croatia, considered part of the Western Balkans, joined the EU in July 2013. The main ranges are the , running from the coast in to its border with , the in southern Bulgaria and northern , the in , and , the massif which spreads from to , and the range, spanning from southern Albania into central Greece and the. The highest mountain of the region is in Bulgaria, with at 2925 m, in Greece, being second at 2917 m and in Bulgaria being the third at 2914 m. The field or is a common feature of the landscape. On the and coasts the climate is , on the Black Sea coast the climate is and , and inland it is. In the northern part of the peninsula and on the mountains, winters are frosty and snowy, while summers are hot and dry. In the southern part winters are milder. The humid continental climate is predominant in Bosnia and Herzegovina, northern Croatia, Bulgaria, , Macedonia, northern Montenegro, the interior of Albania and , while the other, less common climates, the humid subtropical a
