title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Although not mutually exclusive, which factor was more important remains contested. Where humans appeared on the scene, megafauna went extinct; but at the same time, the climate was also warming. Large body size is an adaptation to colder climes, so a warming climate would have provided a stressor for these large animals; however, many fauna simply evolved a smaller body size over time. There is overwhelming archaeological evidence that humans did indeed hunt some or many of the now extinct species, such as the mammoth in North America; while evidence of hunting is necessary for the overhunting hypothesis, it is not sufficient to prove that human hunting drove the extinctions. The primary cause of Pleistocene megafauna extinctions may vary among regions and species (see below).


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: While North America was most notably impacted by the Pleistocene Megafaunal extinction, Eurasia, Africa and the Insular regions were also affected and experienced some extinction towards the end of the Pleistocene period. Megafaunal losses are poorly understood on continental Africa during both the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene periods. During the late Pleistocene and early Holocene period an estimated breadth of 24 large mammal species, of greater than 45 kg, were lost from continental Africa. These losses are best understood to have occurred between 13,000 and 6,000 years ago. The species of megafauna which were lost in continental Africa are best understood to have been grazers who lived on grasslands. However, other sources report that over 27 species were lost in the last million years. Sources vary in the breadth of the issue, however it is clear that significant biodiversity loss occurred in Africa.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: At sites in Africa such as Olduvai, Olorgesailie, Kariandusi, Hopefield, Islmilia, and the Vaal River gravels most genera found were found in stratigraphic association with hand tools wielded by early human ancestors. These artifacts were from Acheulean origins. Acheulean tools include handaxes made from stone. These hand tools were made with a distinctly pear shaped morphology. Homo erectus was thought to wield these hand tools for a variety of purposes. Hand axes could be used to butcher and skin game, cut, chop, scrape, cut other instruments, digging in soil, cutting wood, cutting plant material. These tools were first discovered in 1847. These handaxes have been discovered on multiple continents including Southern Africa, Northern Europe, Western Europe and the Indian sub-continent. These Acheulean tools were found to have been being produced and utilized for roughly a million years. The earliest Acheulean artifacts were discovered in Africa to have existed for over 1.6 million years ago whereas the earliest Archulean tools are thought to have existed in Europe as early as 800,000 years ago. These hand axes measure 12–20 cm long. There is notable difference in the size, quality and efficacy of these tools depending on the workmanship of the crafter.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Arguments have existed regarding whether these early humans could have contributed significantly to megafauna extinction in Africa, Eurasia, and North America utilizing stone tools such as the Archulean hand tools which have been discussed. It is important to note that these analyses are considered incomplete by many contemporary scholars. However, despite the lack of scientific consensus surrounding this theory, this is being applied to contemporary biodiversity losses.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: ""A growing body of literature proposes that our ancestors contributed to large mammal extinctions in Africa long before the appearance of Homo sapiens, with some arguing that premodern hominins (e.g., Homo erectus) triggered the demise of Africa's largest herbivores and the loss of carnivoran diversity. Though such arguments have been around for decades, they are now increasingly accepted by those concerned with biodiversity decline in the present-day, despite the near complete absence of critical discussion or debate. To facilitate that process, here we review ancient anthropogenic extinction hypotheses and critically examine the data underpinning them. Broadly speaking, we show that arguments made in favor of ancient anthropogenic extinctions are based on problematic data analysis and interpretation, and are substantially weakened when extinctions are considered in the context of long-term evolutionary, ecological, and environmental changes."" At the present moment - according to this source, there is no definitive empirical evidence to suggest that hominins have had widespread impact on the biodiversity of Pleistocene Africa.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Other sources propose alternate hypotheses: ""To our knowledge, the earliest proposal of ancient hominin impacts in Africa can be traced to J. Desmond Clark's (1959) overview of southern African prehistory. Referring to a handful of large herbivores whose last appearances in southern Africa are now known to range in age from ∼1 Ma to the onset of the Holocene (Brink et al., 2012; Faith, 2014; Klein et al., 2007), including Stylohipparion (= Eurygnathohippus cornelianus), Griquatherium (= Sivatherium maurusium), and Homoioceras (= Syncerus antiquus), Clark (1959:57) suggested that "[t]heir final extinction may well have been due to man's improved methods of hunting these overspecialized and probably clumsy beasts." Clark did not specify which hominin species was to blame, but from the evidence available to him at the time, it was clear that at least some of these extinct taxa (e.g., Stylohipparion and Griquatherium) disappeared long before the Pleistocene-Holocene transition (Clark, 1959:54) and were associated with hominins that preceded the emergence of H. sapiens, including H. heidelbergensis (Drennan, 1953)"". This discussion of Megafaunal losses in Africa during the Pleistocene period would suggest that anthropogenic influence could have been a significant impetus for extinction.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Another hypothesis suggests a more environmentally focused cause for the megafaunal extinction in Pleistocene Africa, ""The current lack of evidence (for hominin attributed extinction)" "does not preclude it from being produced in the future, though we are not optimistic that it will be. Looking to the last ∼100,000 years-a time interval encompassing massive demographic and technological change among human populations-it is clear that African megafaunal extinctions are readily explained by environmental changes (Faith, 2014). In particular, grassland herbivores disappeared following alterations in the structure, distribution, or productivity of their habitats (Faith, 2014), consistent with broader changes in herbivore community composition spanning the last 1 Myr (Faith et al., 2019)"". Environmental factors implicated in this explanation include structure, distribution and biological productivity of the environment. This explanation minimizes human impact and emphasizes environmental factors.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Megafauna from Africa that had gone extinct during the Pleistocene included "Dinopithecus", "Gorgopithecus", "Parapapio", "Australopithecus", "Paranthropus", machairodonts such as "Homotherium" and "Megantereon", "Makapania", "Megalotragus" and "Pelorovis".


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: The summary of mammalian megafaunal extinction and survival can be discussed by comparing Africa and North America. Living genera (50 kg+) in Africa include 40 and 14 in the North America. Later Pleistocene extinction genera include 26+ in Africa and 35 in the US and Canada. Earlier Pleistocene extinction genera include 19 in Africa and 13 in the US and Canada. Later Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinction Intensity was 39% for Africa, and 71% for the US and Canada. It is evident through this analysis that North America underwent a more intense later Pleistocene megafaunal extinction.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: The rate of extinction in the Pleistocene period between Africa and North America shows striking differences. In America, an estimated 35 genera of large mammals disappeared at the end of the Rancholabrean period. Most of these animals were lost within the last 12,000 years. However, in the preceding one to two million years before the end of the Rancholabrean period, an estimated 13 genera of megafauna were lost. This may be attributed to a poor understanding of fauna that existed before to this period. To compare this rate of megafaunal loss with Africa, the differences between the earlier, middle and later Pleistocene faunal losses are less drastic to compare. In the first 1.5 million years 19 megafaunal genera were lost. Within the last 100,000 years 26 or more genera were lost. This rate of megafaunal extinction in Africa in the last 100,000 years was an estimated 20 times greater in magnitude as the losses that occurred within the preceding 1.5 million years.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Sub-Saharan Africa is the region of the world with the highest amount of Pleistocene megafauna surviving to the present day. These surviving species include the African bush elephant, African forest elephant, black rhinoceros, white rhinoceros and the hippopotamus. All of these species maintained populations in sub-Saharan Africa even after many of them were extirpated from Eurasia during the early Holocene. This means that all of the largest herbivore genera present in Pleistocene Africa are still present today. Overall, estimates as to the proportion of Africa’s Quaternary megafauna which went extinct range from 5% to 18%, much lower than for all the other continents.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Multiple reasons have been suggested by scientists as to why Africa apparently had a much milder experience during the Quaternary extinction. First, some have suggested that the Late Quaternary extinction has been comparatively less studied in Africa than in other regions. As a result of this lack of studying, there is little evidence that paleontologists are able to draw upon when trying to develop a timeline of extinctions in Sub-Saharan Africa. This hypothesis therefore also argues that further investigation into sites with Late Quaternary fossils in Sub-Saharan Africa will reveal previously-undiscovered extinct taxa of African megafauna.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Other scientists have suggested an explanation for the relative lack of extinction among Africa’s Pleistocene megafauna which follows the overkill hypothesis as the cause of the Quaternary extinction. According to this hypothesis, many of the extinctions during this time period were due to overhunting by humans who had recently migrated to their continents. In sub-Saharan Africa, the megafauna species had evolved alongside the different species of hominids present in Quaternary Africa. As a result, these species had adapted to withstand the predation pressure from humans. This meant that both humans and megafauna were able to coexist, and the high levels of extinction seen in the Americas and Australasia were not seen in Africa.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: While one of the popular explanations for the Quaternary extinction is due to the changing climate of the time period, the climate of Africa has not been suggested as a potential cause. This is because of the high level of megafaunal extinction in South America during this time period. Since Sub-Saharan Africa has about the same types of climate as South America, but South America had many more extinctions of megafauna taxa, climate was not deemed by these scientists to be a sufficient cause to explain the relative lack of extinctions in Africa.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Despite the high level of continuity present in Africa’s megafauna community from the Quaternary to the Holocene period, there were several species of megafauna which did go extinct during this time period. One such species was "Syncerus antiquus". This species of buffalo is theorized to either have gone extinct due to climate change, overhunting by humans, or both. It was extirpated from Sub-Saharan Africa about 12,000 years ago and became entirely extinct about 4,000 years before present. Another was the giant antelope that was very similar to a hartebeest or a wildebeest known as "Megalotragus priscus". M. priscus was the last of its genus, and it died out approximately 7,500 years ago. Similarly, there was an extinct species of zebra known as the Cape zebra. The Cape zebra lived throughout Africa during the Quaternary period but went extinct by its end. The bluebuck had its range restricted changing habitats during the early Holocene period, so that by the time European settlers arrived, they were restricted to one lone population. This population was then wiped out in 1800 by habitat loss and hunting.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: During the American megafaunal extinction event, around 12,700 years ago, North America lost 70% of its megafauna species. 90 genera of mammals weighing over 44 kilograms became extinct. The Late Pleistocene fauna in North America included several species of ground sloths, short-faced bears, several species of tapirs, peccaries (including the long-nosed and flat-headed peccaries), the American lion, giant tortoises, "Miracinonyx", the saber-toothed cat "Smilodon" and the scimitar-toothed cat "Homotherium", dire wolves, saiga antelope, camelids such as two species of now-extinct llamas and "Camelops", at least two species of bison, the stag-moose, the shrub-ox and Harlan's muskox, 14 species of pronghorn (of which 13 are now extinct), horses, mammoths and mastodons, the beautiful armadillo and the giant armadillo-like "Glyptotherium", and giant beavers, as well as birds like giant condors and teratorns.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: The reasons for the extinction event are still debated, but it has largely been attributed to both climate change and human-driven extinction. Humans arrived in North America between 12 and 30 thousand years ago. There are various human impacts that could have put pressure on different megafauna species, including direct hunting and cascading trophic interactions. Some researchers attribute the extinction of megafauna to the presence of Clovis hunting, along with significant human population increases which would have increased hunting intensity and frequency, around 13,000 years ago. Contemporaneously, around 12,000 years ago, a global cooling event called the Younger Dryas (YD) occurred, which would have dramatically effected habitat area and food sources for many megafaunal species.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: The role of humans, climate change, and other factors in driving megafauna extinction in North America is debated, with some scholars arguing in favor of climate change as the primary driver and others suggesting the possibility of direct and indirect human impacts. However, it can be difficult to generalize an extinction event for the continent as a whole when the climate and human impacts varied spatially, temporally, and seasonally so it is hard to generalize what triggered the event for the entire continent. Thus, it is important to consider that the causes can significantly vary for different species and different regions of North America. The extinction of megafauna and first appearance of humans did not completely correlate across North America, meaning that each area needs to be separately considered when attempting to determine the cause of extinction. Radiocarbon dating suggests that while extinctions followed human arrival in some areas (consistent with extinction due to hunting), in other regions megafauna species disappeared before humans arrived or persisted for as long as 3000 years in the presence of humans, suggesting factors other than humans drove extinctions. Similarly, a comparison of human vs megafauna population trends, again inferred from radiocarbon dating, found that extinctions were likely due to hunting for 3 species, from climate change for 5 species, and from a combination of hunting and climate change in one case.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Megafauna extinctions that are most consistent with human activity in North America are of the Columbian mammoth, horses and saber-toothed cat. Humans directly impacted mammoth and horse species by overhunting, while Smilodon was pushed to extinction indirectly by humans overhunting of their prey. There are two species of megafauna whose extinctions appear to have no link to human hunting, they are the Shasta ground sloth and mastodon.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Alaska is situated in the northwesternmost part of North America. Megafauna disappeared from these higher latitudes generally earlier than the rest of North America. This means that the megafauna in the region either went extinct locally or migrated south as a result of the YD cooling event. Megafauna species disappeared from Alaska approximately 1000 to 4000 years before there was significant human presence in Alaska, indicating that their demise likely resulted from climate change.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Megafauna species disappeared from Great Lakes Region considerably more recently than in higher latitudes, like Alaska. Additionally, the first appearances of humans were considerably earlier for this region compared to other regions in North America. Due to the overlaps of these two appearances, it has been suggested from the fossil record that humans and megafauna overlapped in the region for 7000 years. However, the presence of humans does not mean that the megafauna extinction event in the region was solely attributed to human impacts. There has been significant evidence into the cause of extinction in this area being related to the fact that both climate change and human impacts hit simultaneously.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: The Pacific Coast was one of the region where early indigenous peoples first migrated. This is due to the fact that humans may have migrated further south from Alaska through a pathway that went along the Pacific Coast. However, there appears to have been little overlap between humans and megafauna species in these regions. One potential for this could be due to poor sampling due to sea-level rise that could have “obscured older coastal sites”.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Indigenous knowledge of Pleistocene megafauna has survived via oral tradition and representations such as petroglyphs.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: The Cayuse people of the Pacific Northwest has oral traditions and a dance centered around a story of mammoths migrating into their land. On the Umatilla Indian Reservation, where the Cayuse people lived historically and today, two mammoth teeth were discovered during construction of a golf course.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: An Osage tradition tells about a battle between mastodons and mammoths in the Great Plains region. This battle left many animals dead and after the battle was over the Osage burned the dead animals. Later, after the Osage were forceable moved to a reservation, white settlers found mastodon and mammoth bones at this site.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Throughout western North America, there are many stories of large, black-winged birds, known as thunderbirds, which interacted with indigenous people in both positive and negative ways. These stories of thunderbirds share similarities with species from the genus "Teratornis", which are found throughout fossil record of the west coast.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: About 10,000 years ago, the landscape of South America contained numerous species of megafauna, many of which have no modern species for comparison. South America was home to bears, saber-toothed cats, large capybaras and llamas. Additionally, there were huge terrestrial sloths, armored glyptodonts (similar to an armadillo, but the size of a hippo), and animals similar to camels and rhinos (macrauchenids and toxodonts). These animals went extinct during the Quaternary Period and all South American mammal species larger than 100 kg were lost. The explanation for their extinction has not been definitively answered, and is a topic of debate among scientists. Some suggest that human hunting may have been the dominant driver of megafaunal decline in South America.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: The continent of South America was isolated for millions of years during the Cenozoic Period, which had a significant impact on its wildlife. This isolation helped foster species that were not found anywhere else on Earth. Approximately 3 million years ago, the Great American Biotic Interchange occurred due to the Isthmus of Panama, which allowed for the mixing of North and South American faunas. The mixing of faunas created new opportunities for expansion, competition, and replacement of species. South American wildlife in the Pleistocene varied greatly; an example is the giant ground sloth, "Megatherium". The continent also had quite a few grazers and mixed feeders such as the camel-like litoptern "Macrauchenia", "Cuvieronius", "Notiomastodon", "Doedicurus", "Glyptodon", "Hippidion" and "Toxodon". The main predators of the region were "Arctotherium" and "Smilodon".


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: As with South America, some elements of the Eurasian megafauna were similar to those of North America. Among the most recognizable Eurasian species are the woolly mammoth, steppe mammoth, straight-tusked elephant, European hippopotamuses, aurochs, steppe bison, cave lion, cave bear, cave hyena, "Homotherium", Irish elk, giant polar bears, woolly rhinoceros, Merck's rhinoceros, narrow-nosed rhinoceros, and "Elasmotherium". In contrast, today the largest European land mammal is the European bison or wisent.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: By the advent and proliferation of modern humans ("Homo sapiens") circa 315,000 BP, the most common species of the genus "Homo" in Eurasia were the Denisovans and Neanderthals (fellow "H. heidelbergensis" descendants), and "Homo erectus" in Eastern Asia. "Homo sapiens" is the only species of the genus "Homo" that remains extant.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Two major events towards the end of the Pleistocene era had ultimately impacted the species that were inhabiting Eurasia; the last glacial period and the introduction of Homo Sapiens from Old World Africa. These two events were responsible for the vastly selective and intense extinctions of the Eurasian large mammal species mentioned previously. The megafauna extinctions that occurred towards the end of the Pleistocene is believed to be largely due to human hunting and overkill. Overkill models that incorporate prey availability for Homo Sapiens have provided solid backing to that theory.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Hunters of the Upper Paleolithic had crafted tools and projectile weapons that were able to bring down prey as large as Mammoths. With the population of humans rapidly increasing, the consumption and hunting of meat grew just as rapidly.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: In addition to the growing numbers of human hunters, large terrestrial mammals in Eurasia had to combat detrimental climatic changes. Northern Eurasia during the Middle and Upper Pleistocene (ca. 700000–10000 BP) was continuously facing a changing climate. The landscape and habitats of mammals saw phases ranging from extensive glaciation and cold stages to temperate climates and interglacials.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: A majority of extinctions occurred during the Late glacial (ca. 15000–10000 BP) periods. This period was characterized by a major reformation of vegetation, mainly the replacement of open vegetation by forests. These changes were more profound than earlier in the Last Cold Stage and are believed to have played a critical role in the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: The most recent Ice Age occurred during the Pleistocene, and caused lower global sea levels. The lower sea level revealed the entire Sahul Shelf, connecting Australia with New Guinea and Tasmania. Most literature about Australian megafauna during the Pleistocene refers to the entirety of Sahul.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Australia was characterized by marsupials, monotremes, crocodilians, testudines, monitors and numerous large flightless birds. Pleistocene Australia also supported the giant short-faced kangaroo ("Procoptodon goliah"), "Diprotodon" (a giant wombat relative), the marsupial lion ("Thylacoleo carnifex"), the flightless bird "Genyornis", the five-meter long snake "Wonambi" and the giant monitor lizard "Megalania". Since 450 Ka, 88 Australian megafauna species have gone extinct.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: There are several hypotheses that attempt to explain why Pleistocene Australian megafauna went extinct. Most studies point to either climate change or human activity as reasons for the die off, but there is not yet a consensus among scientists about which factor had a larger impact. A scarcity of reliably dated megafaunal bone deposits has made it difficult to construct timelines for megafaunal extinctions in certain areas, leading to a divide among researches about when and how megafaunal species went extinct.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Several studies provide evidence that climate change caused megafaunal extinction during the Pleistocene in Australia. One group of researchers analyzed fossilized teeth found at Cuddie Springs in southeastern Australia. By analyzing oxygen isotopes, they measured aridity, and by analyzing carbon isotopes and dental microwear texture analysis, they assessed megafaunal diets and vegetation. During the middle Pleistocene, southeastern Australia was dominated by browsers, including fauna that consumed C4 plants. By the late Pleistocene, the C4 plant dietary component had decreased considerably. This shift may have been caused by increasingly arid conditions, which may have caused dietary restrictions. Other isotopic analyses of eggshells and wombat teeth also point to a decline of C4 vegetation after 45 Ka. This decline in C4 vegetation is coincident with increasing aridity. Increasingly arid conditions in southeastern Australia during the late Pleistocene may have stressed megafauna, and contributed to their decline.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Human activity may have caused Australian megafaunal extinction during the Pleistocene, although this idea is hotly debated. To determine whether humans caused an extinction, three criteria must be met: (1) if megafauna species went extinct before a significant climate event but after human colonization, researchers can infer that the extinction was probably caused by humans; (2) if climate change during the studied epoch was not more significant than climate change during previous epochs, then any extinctions during that time were probably not caused by climate change; and (3) if all or most megafauna was still extant when humans arrived, then it is possible that human activity caused the extinction.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Some researchers believe that humans were probably not responsible for the megafaunal extinctions in Sahul. They contribute the extinctions to climate change, and argue that most megafaunal species do not appear in the fossil record within 95 Ka of human arrival. Additionally, they claim that long-term aridification of the continent resulted in staggered losses beginning by 130 Ka, and continued range contractions and extinctions throughout the rest of the Pleistocene. Researchers who do not believe that human actions were the primary cause of Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions in Australia do not exclude anthropogenic influence entirely. One article cites evidence of human interactions with megafauna at Cuddie Springs, but further explains that humans can only be held accountable for declines in the populations of the 13% of species that can be placed at that location. They argue that it will remain futile to determine the primary cause of megafaunal extinctions. Other researchers argue that, for most species, archaeological evidence of human hunting activity is rare and questionable. The major exception to this is the giant bird, "Genyornis." Between 54 and 47 Ka, distinct charring patterns on "Genyornis" eggshells indicate that humans heated the eggs over campfires. This time period also corresponds to the decline and extinction of "Genyornis". Similar charring patterns were found on emu eggs from widespread locations, also dating to this time period. These widespread charred eggshells indicate the arrival and fast spread of humans in Sahul. Despite the evidence of interactions between humans and "Genyornis", there is not much evidence to indicate that there were significant interactions between humans and other megafaunal species. Many scientists interpret this lack of evidence of interaction as evidence that humans did not cause most megafaunal extinctions in Australia.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Other researchers disagree, and argue that there is sufficient evidence to determine that human activity was the primary cause for many of the megafaunal extinctions. They argue that the lack of evidence of hunting does not indicate that hunting during the Pleistocene was negligible. Rather, archaeological evidence of hunting of animals that went extinct soon after human arrival "should" be negligible, even if that hunting had an ecological impact. Because humans arrived on the continent so early, the period of interaction between humans and megafauna is very small relative to the entire archaeological record of Sahul. Furthermore, hunting rates would have been highest soon after the arrival of humans, when megafaunal populations were very large. Human populations would have been small during this time, and as a result, would not be as visible in the archaeological record. Researchers who believe that human activity was the primary cause of megafaunal extinction in Australia argue that the lack of evidence should not rule out human-megafauna interactions.


title: Pleistocene megafauna

text: Many islands had a unique megafauna that became extinct upon the arrival of humans more recently (over the last few millennia and continuing into recent centuries). These included dwarf woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island, St. Paul Island and the Channel Islands of California; giant birds in New Zealand such as the moas and "Hieraaetus moorei" (a giant eagle); numerous species in Madagascar: giant ground-dwelling lemurs, including "Megaladapis", "Palaeopropithecus" and the gorilla-sized "Archaeoindris", three species of hippopotamuses, two species of giant tortoises, the "Voay"-crocodile and the giant bird "Aepyornis"; five species of giant tortoises from the Mascarenes; a dwarf "Stegodon" on Flores and a number of other islands; land turtles and crocodiles in New Caledonia; giant flightless owls and dwarf ground sloths in the Caribbean; giant flightless geese and moa-nalo (giant flightless ducks) in Hawaii; and dwarf elephants and dwarf hippos from the Mediterranean islands. The Canary Islands were also inhabited by an endemic megafauna which are now extinct: giant lizards ("Gallotia goliath"), giant rats ("Canariomys bravoi" and "Canariomys tamarani") and giant tortoises ("Geochelone burchardi" and "Geochelone vulcanica"), among others. On the California Channel Islands, it is unclear whether humans caused the extinction of pygmy mammoths ("Mammuthus exilis)", the only species of megafauna which inhabited the area. Mammoth populations were in decline on the Channel Islands at the time of human arrival.


title: Enforcement Directorate

text: The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) is a law enforcement agency and economic intelligence agency responsible for enforcing economic laws and fighting economic crime in India. It is part of the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, Government Of India. It is composed of officers from the Indian Revenue Service, Indian Police Service and the Indian Administrative Service as well as promoted officers from its own cadre.


title: Enforcement Directorate

text: The origin of the ED goes back to 1 May 1956, when an ‘Enforcement Unit’ was formed, within the Department of Economic Affairs, for handling Exchange Control Laws violations under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1947. In 1957, the unit was renamed as the ‘Enforcement Directorate’.


title: Enforcement Directorate

text: Sanjay Kumar Mishra former Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, New Delhi was appointed as ED chief in the rank of Secretary to Government of India, from October 2018.


title: Enforcement Directorate

text: The prime objective of the Enforcement Directorate is the enforcement of two key Acts of the Government of India namely, the Foreign Exchange Management Act 1999 (FEMA) and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002 (PMLA) and The Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018 (FEOA).


title: Enforcement Directorate

text: The Enforcement Directorate official website enlists its other objectives which are primarily linked to checking money laundering in India.


title: Enforcement Directorate

text: The Directorate of Enforcement, with its headquarters at New Delhi, is headed by the director of enforcement. There are five regional offices at Mumbai, Chennai, Chandigarh, Kolkata and Delhi headed by special directors of enforcement.


title: Enforcement Directorate

text: Zonal offices of the directorate are at Pune, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Kochi, Delhi, Panaji, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jalandhar, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Patna and Srinagar. These are headed by a joint director.


title: Enforcement Directorate

text: The directorate has sub-zonal offices at Mangaluru, Bhubaneshwar, Kozhikode, Indore, Madurai, Nagpur, Allahabad, Raipur, Dehradun, Ranchi, Surat, Shimla, Vishakhapatnam and Jammu which are headed by a deputy director.


title: Enforcement Directorate

text: For the trial of an offence punishable under section 4 of PMLA, the Central Government (in consultation with the chief justice of the High Court), designates one or more Sessions Court as Special Court(s). The court is also called "PMLA Court". Any appeal against any order passed by PMLA court can directly be filed in the High Court for that jurisdiction.


title: Enforcement Directorate

text: In July 2022, according to data shared by the union government in Parliament, only 23 people have been convicted in 5,422 cases registered under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the 17 years after the law was passed, which is a conviction rate of less than 0.5%. The cases by ED have gone up six times in Modi's second term, which led to accusations by opposition parties stating that ED is being misused by the BJP for their political ends.


title: Chrono Cross

text: The story of "Chrono Cross" focuses on a teenage boy named Serge and a theme of parallel worlds. Faced with an alternate reality in which he died as a child, Serge endeavors to discover the truth of the two worlds' divergence. The flashy thief Kid and many other characters assist him in his travels around the tropical archipelago El Nido. Struggling to uncover his past and find the mysterious Frozen Flame, Serge is chiefly challenged by Lynx, a shadowy antagonist working to apprehend him.


title: Chrono Cross

text: Upon its release in Japan in 1999 and North America in 2000, "Chrono Cross" received critical acclaim, earning a perfect 10.0 score from "GameSpot". The game shipped copies worldwide by 2003, leading to a Greatest Hits re-release and continued life in Japan as part of the Ultimate Hits series. "Chrono Cross" was later re-released for the PlayStation Network in Japan in July 2011, and in North America four months later. A remaster of the game, titled was released on April 7, 2022, for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.


title: Chrono Cross

text: "Chrono Cross" features standard role-playing video game gameplay with some differences. Players advance the game by controlling the protagonist Serge through the game's world, primarily by foot and boat. Navigation between areas is conducted via an overworld map, much like "Chrono Trigger's", depicting the landscape from a scaled-down overhead view. Around the island world are villages, outdoor areas, and dungeons, through which the player moves in three dimensions. Locations such as cities and forests are represented by more realistically scaled field maps, in which players can converse with locals to procure items and services, solve puzzles and challenges, or encounter enemies. Like "Chrono Trigger", the game features no random encounters; enemies are openly visible on field maps or lie in wait to ambush the party. Touching the monster switches perspectives to a battle screen, in which players can physically attack, use "Elements", defend, or run away from the enemy. Battles are turn-based, allowing the player unlimited time to select an action from the available menu. For both the playable characters and the computer-controlled enemies, each attack reduces their number of hit points (a numerically based life bar), which can be restored through some Elements. When a playable character loses all hit points, he or she faints. If all the player's characters fall in battle, the game ends and must be restored from a previously saved chapter—except for specific storyline-related battles that allow the player to lose. "Chrono Cross"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s developers aimed to break new ground in the genre, and the game features several innovations. For example, players can run away from all conflicts, including boss fights and the final battle.


title: Chrono Cross

text: The Element system of "Chrono Cross" handles all magic, consumable items, and character-specific abilities. Elements unleash magic effects upon the enemy or party and must be equipped for use, much like the materia of 1997's "Final Fantasy VII". Elements can be purchased from shops or found in treasure chests littered throughout areas. Once acquired, they are allocated to a grid whose size and shape are unique to each character. They are ranked according to eight tiers; certain high level Elements can only be assigned on equivalent tiers in a character's grid. As the game progresses, the grid expands, allowing more Elements to be equipped and higher tiers to be accessed. Elements are divided into six paired oppositional types, or "colors," each with a natural effect. Red (fire/magma) opposes Blue (water/ice), Green (wind/flora) opposes Yellow (earth/lightning), and White (light/cosmos) opposes Black (darkness/gravity). Each character and enemy has an innate color, enhancing the power of using same-color Elements while also making them weak against elements of the opposite color. "Chrono Cross" also features a "field effect", which keeps track of Element color used in the upper corner of the battle screen. If the field is purely one color, characters are able to unleash a powerful summon element at the cost of one of the player's stars. The field will also enhance the power of Elements of the colors present, while weakening Elements of the opposite colors. Characters also innately learn some special techniques ("Techs") that are unique to each character but otherwise act like Elements. Like "Chrono Trigger", characters can combine certain Techs to make more powerful Double or Triple Techs. Consumable Elements may be used to restore hit points or heal status ailments during or after battle.


title: Chrono Cross

text: Another innovative aspect of "Chrono Cross" is its stamina bar. At the beginning of a battle, each character has seven points of stamina. When a character attacks or uses an Element, stamina is decreased proportionally to the potency of the attack. Stamina slowly recovers when the character defends or when other characters perform actions in battle. Characters with stamina below one point must wait to take action. Use of an Element reduces the user's stamina bar by seven stamina points; this often means that the user's stamina gauge falls into the negative and the character must wait longer than usual to recover. With each battle, players can enhance statistics such as strength and defense. However, no system of experience points exists; after four or five upgrades, statistics remain static until players defeat a boss. This adds a star to a running count shown on the status screen, which allows for another few rounds of statistical increases. Players can equip characters with weapons, armor, helmets, and accessories for use in battle; for example, the "Power Seal" upgrades attack power. Items and equipment may be purchased or found on field maps, often in treasure chests. Unlike Elements, weapons and armor cannot merely be purchased with money; instead, the player must obtain base materials—such as copper, bronze, or bone—for a blacksmith to forge for a fee. The items can later be disassembled into their original components at no cost.


title: Chrono Cross

text: The existence of two major parallel dimensions, like time periods in "Chrono Trigger", plays a significant role in the game. Players must go back and forth between the worlds to recruit party members, obtain items, and advance the plot. Much of the population of either world have counterparts in the other; some party members can even visit their other versions. The player must often search for items or places found exclusively in one world. Events in one dimension sometimes have an impact in the other—for instance, cooling scorched ground on an island in one world allows vegetation to grow in the other world. This system assists the presentation of certain themes, including the questioning of the importance of one's past decisions and humanity's role in destroying the environment. Rounding out the notable facets of "Chrono Cross"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s gameplay are the New Game+ option and multiple endings. As in "Chrono Trigger", players who have completed the game may choose to start the game over using data from the previous session. Character levels, learned techniques, equipment, and items gathered copy over, while acquired money and some story-related items are discarded. On a New Game+, players can access twelve endings. Scenes viewed depend on players' progress in the game before the final battle, which can be fought at any time in a New Game+ file.


title: Chrono Cross

text: "Chrono Cross" features a diverse cast of 45 party members. Each character is outfitted with an innate Element affinity and three unique special abilities that are learned over time. If taken to the world opposite their own, characters react to their counterparts (if available). Many characters tie in to crucial plot events. Since it is impossible to obtain all 45 characters in one playthrough, players must replay the game to witness everything. Through use of the New Game+ feature, players can ultimately obtain all characters on one save file.


title: Chrono Cross

text: Serge, the game's protagonist, is a 17-year-old boy with blue hair who lives in the fishing village of Arni. One day, he slips into an alternate world in which he drowned ten years before. Determined to find the truth behind the incident, he follows a predestined course that leads him to save the world. He is assisted by Kid, a feisty, skilled thief who seeks the mythical Frozen Flame. Portrayed as willful and tomboyish due to her rough, thieving past, she helps Serge sneak into Viper Manor in order to obtain the Frozen Flame. Kid vows to find and defeat Lynx, an anthropomorphic panther who burned down her adopted mother's orphanage.


title: Chrono Cross

text: Lynx, a cruel agent of the supercomputer FATE, is bent on finding Serge and using his body as part of a greater plan involving the Frozen Flame. Lynx travels with Harle, a mysterious, playful girl dressed like a harlequin. Harle was sent by the Dragon God to shadow Lynx and one day steal the Frozen Flame from Chronopolis, a task she painfully fulfills despite being smitten with Serge.


title: Chrono Cross

text: To accomplish this goal, Harle helps Lynx manipulate the Acacia Dragoons, the powerful militia governing the islands of El Nido. As the Dragoons maintain order, they contend with Fargo, a former Dragoon turned pirate captain who holds a grudge against their leader, General Viper. Though tussling with Serge initially, the Acacia Dragoons—whose ranks include the fierce warriors Karsh, Zoah, Marcy, and Glenn—later assist him when the militaristic nation of Porre invades the archipelago. The invasion brings Norris and Grobyc to the islands, a heartful commander of an elite force and a prototype cyborg soldier, respectively, as they too seek the Frozen Flame.


title: Chrono Cross

text: The game begins with Serge located in El Nido, a tropical archipelago inhabited by ancient natives, mainland colonists, and beings called Demi-humans. Serge slips into an alternate dimension in which he drowned on the beach ten years prior, and meets the thief, "Kid". As his adventure proceeds from here, Serge is able to recruit a multitude of allies to his cause. While assisting Kid in a heist at Viper Manor to steal the Frozen Flame, he learns that ten years before the present, the universe split into two dimensions—one in which Serge lived, and one in which he perished. Through Kid's Astral Amulet charm, Serge travels between the dimensions. At Fort Dragonia, with the use of a Dragonian artifact called the Dragon Tear, Lynx switches bodies with Serge. Unaware of the switch, Kid confides in Lynx, who stabs her as the real Serge helplessly watches. Lynx boasts of his victory and banishes Serge to a strange realm called the Temporal Vortex. He takes Kid under his wing, brainwashing her to believe the real Serge (in Lynx's body) is her enemy. Serge escapes with help from Harle, although his new body turns him into a stranger in his own world, with all the allies he had gained up to that point abandoning him due to his new appearance. Discovering that his new body prevents him from traveling across the dimensions, he sets out to regain his former body and learn more of the universal split that occurred ten years earlier, gaining a new band of allies along the way. He travels to a forbidden lagoon known as the Dead Sea—a wasteland frozen in time, dotted with futuristic ruins. At the center, he locates a man named Miguel and presumably "Home" world's Frozen Flame. Charged with guarding the Dead Sea by an entity named FATE, Miguel and three visions of Crono, Marle, and Lucca from "Chrono Trigger" explain that Serge's existence dooms "Home" world's future to destruction at the hands of Lavos. To prevent Serge from obtaining the Frozen Flame, FATE destroys the Dead Sea.


title: Chrono Cross

text: Able to return to "Another" world, Serge allies with the Acacia Dragoons against Porre and locates that dimension's Dragon Tear, allowing him to return to his human form. He then enters the Sea of Eden, "Another" world's physical equivalent of the Dead Sea, finding a temporal research facility from the distant future called Chronopolis. Lynx and Kid are inside; Serge defeats Lynx and the supercomputer FATE, allowing the six Dragons of El Nido to steal the Frozen Flame and retire to Terra Tower, a massive structure raised from the sea floor. Kid falls into a coma, and Harle bids the party goodbye to fly with the Dragons. Serge regroups his party and tends to Kid, who remains comatose. Continuing his adventure, he obtains and cleanses the corrupted Masamune sword from "Chrono Trigger". He then uses the Dragon relics and shards of the Dragon Tears to create the mythic Element Chrono Cross. The spiritual power of the Masamune later allows him to lift Kid from her coma. At Terra Tower, the prophet of time, revealed to be Belthasar from "Chrono Trigger", visits him with visions of Crono, Marle, and Lucca. Serge learns that the time research facility Chronopolis created El Nido thousands of years ago after a catastrophic experimental failure drew it to the past. The introduction of a temporally foreign object in history caused the planet to pull in a counterbalance from a different dimension. This was Dinopolis, a city of Dragonians—parallel universe descendants of "Chrono Trigger"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Reptites. The institutions warred and Chronopolis subjugated the Dragonians. Humans captured their chief creation—the Dragon God, an entity capable of controlling nature.


title: Chrono Cross

text: Chronopolis divided this entity into six pieces and created an Elements system. FATE then terraformed an archipelago, erased the memories of most of Chronopolis's staff, and sent them to inhabit and populate its new paradise. Thousands of years later, a panther demon attacked a three-year-old Serge. His father took him to find assistance at Marbule, but Serge's boat blew off course due to a raging magnetic storm caused by Schala. Schala, the princess of the Kingdom of Zeal, had long ago accidentally fallen to a place known as the Darkness Beyond Time and began merging with Lavos, the chief antagonist of "Chrono Trigger". Schala's storm nullified Chronopolis's defenses and allowed Serge to contact the Frozen Flame; approaching it healed Serge but corrupted his father, turning him into Lynx. A circuit in Chronopolis then designated Serge "Arbiter", simultaneously preventing FATE from using the Frozen Flame by extension. The Dragons were aware of this situation, creating a seventh Dragon under the storm's cover named Harle, who manipulated Lynx to steal the Frozen Flame for the Dragons.


title: Chrono Cross

text: After Serge returned home, FATE sent Lynx to kill Serge, hoping that it would release the Arbiter lock. Ten years after Serge drowned, the thief Kid—presumably on Belthasar's orders—went back in time to save Serge and split the dimensions. FATE, locked out of the Frozen Flame again, knew that Serge would one day cross to "Another" world and prepared to apprehend him. Lynx switched bodies with Serge to dupe the biological check of Chronopolis on the Frozen Flame. Belthasar then reveals that these events were part of a plan he had orchestrated named Project Kid. Serge continues to the top of Terra Tower and defeats the Dragon God. Continuing to the beach where the split in dimensions had occurred, Serge finds apparitions of Crono, Marle, and Lucca once more. They reveal that Belthasar's plan was to empower Serge to free Schala from melding with Lavos, lest they evolve into the "Time Devourer", a creature capable of destroying spacetime. Lucca explains that Kid is Schala's clone, sent to the modern age to take part in Project Kid. Serge uses a Time Egg—given to him by Belthasar—to enter the Darkness Beyond Time and vanquish the Time Devourer, separating Schala from Lavos and restoring the dimensions to one. Thankful, Schala muses on evolution and the struggle of life and returns Serge to his home, noting that he will forget the entire adventure. She then seemingly records the experience in her diary, noting she will always be searching for Serge in this life and beyond, signing the entry as Schala "Kid" Zeal, implying that she and Kid have merged and became whole again. A wedding photo of Kid and an obscured male sits on the diary's desk. Scenes then depict a real-life Kid searching for someone in a modern city, intending to make players entertain the possibility that their own Kid is searching for them. The ambiguous ending leaves the events of the characters' lives following the game up to interpretation.


title: Chrono Cross

text: "Chrono Cross" employs story arcs, characters, and themes from "", a Satellaview side story to "Chrono Trigger" released in Japan. "Radical Dreamers" is an illustrated text adventure which was created to wrap up an unresolved plot line of "Chrono Trigger". Though it borrows from "Radical Dreamers" in its exposition, "Chrono Cross" is not a remake of "Radical Dreamers", but a larger effort to fulfill that game's purpose; the plots of the games are irreconcilable. To resolve continuity issues and acknowledge "Radical Dreamers", the developers of "Chrono Cross" suggested the game happened in a parallel dimension. A notable difference between the two games is that Magus—present in "Radical Dreamers" as Gil—is absent from "Chrono Cross". Director Masato Kato originally planned for Magus to appear in disguise as Guile, but scrapped the idea due to plot difficulties. Kato specifically felt that the game's large number of characters, as well as the difficult production schedule, did not allow him to develop the relationship between Magus and Kid. In the DS version of "Chrono Trigger", Kato teases the possibility of an amnesiac Magus.


title: Chrono Cross

text: Square began planning "Chrono Cross" immediately after the release of "Xenogears" in 1998 (which itself was originally conceived as a sequel to the SNES game). "Chrono Trigger"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s scenario director Masato Kato had brainstormed ideas for a sequel as early as 1996, following the release of "". Square's managers selected a team, appointed Hiromichi Tanaka producer, and asked Kato to direct and develop a new "Chrono" game in the spirit of "Radical Dreamers". Kato thought "Dreamers" was released in a "half-finished state", and wanted to continue the story of the character Kid. Kato and Tanaka decided to produce an indirect sequel. They acknowledged that Square would soon re-release "Chrono Trigger" as part of "Final Fantasy Chronicles", which would give players a chance to catch up on the story of "Trigger" before playing "Cross". Kato thought that using a different setting and cast for "Chrono Cross" would allow players unfamiliar with "Chrono Trigger" to play "Cross" without becoming confused. The "Chrono Cross" team decided against integrating heavy use of time travel into the game, as they thought it would be "rehashing and cranking up the volume of the last game". Masato Kato cited the belief, "there's no use in making something similar to before ", and noted, "we're not so weak nor cheap as to try to make something exactly the same as "Trigger" ... Accordingly, "Chrono Cross" is not "Chrono Trigger 2". It doesn't simply follow on from "Trigger", but is another, different "Chrono" that interlaces with "Trigger"." Kato and Tanaka further explained their intentions after the game's release:


title: Chrono Cross

text: Full production began on "Chrono Cross" in mid-1998. The "Chrono Cross" team reached 80 members at its peak, with additional personnel of 10–20 cut-scene artists and 100 quality assurance testers. The team felt pressure to live up to the work of "Chrono Trigger"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s "Dream Team" development group, which included famous Japanese manga artist Akira Toriyama. Kato and Tanaka hired Nobuteru Yūki for character design and Yasuyuki Honne for art direction and concept art. The event team originally envisioned a short game, and planned a system by which players would befriend any person in a town for alliance in battle. Developers brainstormed traits and archetypes during the character-creation process, originally planning 64 characters with unique endings that could vary in three different ways per character. Kato described the character creation process: "Take Pierre, for example: we started off by saying we wanted a wacko fake hero like Tata from "Trigger". We also said things like 'we need at least one powerful mom', 'no way we're gonna go without a twisted brat', and so on so forth."


title: Chrono Cross

text: As production continued, the length of "Cross" increased, leading the event team to reduce the number of characters to 45 and scrap most of the alternate endings. Developers humorously named the character Pip "Tsumaru" in Japanese (which means "packed") as a pun on their attempts to pack as much content into the game as possible. To avoid the burden of writing unique, accented dialogue for several characters, team member Kiyoshi Yoshii coded a system that produces accents by modifying basic text for certain characters. Art director Nobuteru Yuuki initially wanted the characters to appear in a more "chibi" format with diminutive proportions. The game world's fusion of high technology and ethnic, tribal atmospheres proved challenging at first. He later recalled striving to harmonize the time period's level of technology, especially as reflected in characters' garb. The demands of the art style led to Square merging the "Final Fantasy VIII" team into that of "Chrono Cross" two months before the Japanese release.


title: Chrono Cross

text: The "Chrono Cross" team devised an original battle system using a stamina bar and Elements. Kato planned the system around allowing players to avoid repetitive gameplay (also known as "grinding") to gain combat experience. Elements were developed while planning the final battle (during which a sequence of specific Elements must be triggered), and then applied in reverse to the rest of the game. Hiromichi Tanaka likened the Elements system to card games, hoping players would feel a sense of complete control in battle. The team programmed each battle motion manually instead of performing motion capture. Developers strove to include tongue-in-cheek humor in the battle system's techniques and animations to distance the game from the "Final Fantasy" franchise. Masato Kato planned for the game's setting to feature a small archipelago, for fear that players would become confused traveling in large areas with respect to parallel worlds. He hoped El Nido would still impart a sense of grand scale, and the development team pushed hardware limitations in creating the game's world. To create field maps, the team modeled locations in 3D, then chose the best angle for 2D rendering. The programmers of "Chrono Cross" did not use any existing Square programs or routines to code the game, instead writing new, proprietary systems. Other innovations included variable-frame rate code for fast-forward and slow-motion gameplay (awarded as a bonus for completing the game) and a "CD-read swap" system to allow quick data retrieval.


title: Chrono Cross

text: Masato Kato directed and wrote the main story, leaving sub-plots and minor character events to other staff. The event team sometimes struggled to mesh their work on the plot due to the complexity of the parallel worlds concept. Masato Kato confirmed that "Cross" featured a central theme of parallel worlds, as well as the fate of Schala, which he was previously unable to expound upon in "Chrono Trigger". Concerning the ending sequences showing Kid searching for someone in a modern city, he hoped to make players realize that alternate futures and possibilities may exist in their own lives, and that this realization would "not ... stop with the game". He later added, "Paraphrasing one novelist's favorite words, what's important is not the message or theme, but how it is portrayed as a game. Even in Cross, it was intentionally made so that the most important question was left unanswered." Kato described the finished story as "ole' boy-meets-girl type of story" with sometimes-shocking twists. Kato rode his motorcycle to relieve the stress of the game's release schedule. He continued refining event data during the final stages of development while the rest of the team undertook debugging and quality control work. Square advertised the game by releasing a short demo of the first chapter with purchases of "Legend of Mana". The North American version of "Cross" required three months of translation and two months of debugging before release. Richard Honeywood translated, working with Kato to rewrite certain dialogue for ease of comprehension in English. He also added instances of wordplay and alliteration to compensate for difficult Japanese jokes. To streamline translation for all 45 playable characters, Honeywood created his own version of the accent generator which needed to be more robust than the simple verbal tics of the Japanese cast. Although the trademark "Chrono Cross" was registered in the European Union, the game was not released in Europe.


title: Chrono Cross

text: After the game was done, the team was merged with those behind "Parasite Eve II", "Brave Fencer Musashi" and "Mana" to make "Final Fantasy XI". The programming for the game endured as the basis for the engine of "Final Fantasy XI".


title: Chrono Cross

text: "Chrono Cross" was scored by freelance video game music composer Yasunori Mitsuda, who previously worked on "Chrono Trigger". Director Masato Kato personally commissioned Mitsuda's involvement, citing a need for the "Chrono sound". Kato envisioned a "Southeast Asian feel, mixed with the foreign tastes and the tones of countries such as Greece"; Mitsuda centered his work around old world cultural influences, including Mediterranean, Fado, Celtic, and percussive African music. Mitsuda cited visual inspiration for songs: "All of my subjects are taken from scenery. I love artwork." To complement the theme of parallel worlds, he gave "Another" and "Home" respectively dark and bright moods, and hoped players would feel the emotions of "'burning soul,' 'lonely world,' and 'unforgettable memories'". Mitsuda and Kato planned music samples and sound effects with the philosophy of "a few sounds with a lot of content".


title: Chrono Cross

text: "Xenogears" contributor Tomohiko Kira played guitar on the beginning and ending themes. Noriko Mitose, as selected by Masato Kato, sang the ending song—"Radical Dreamers – The Unstolen Jewel". Ryo Yamazaki, a synthesizer programmer for Square Enix, helped Mitsuda transfer his ideas to the PlayStation's sound capabilities; Mitsuda was happy to accomplish even half of what he envisioned. Certain songs were ported from the score of "", such as "Gale", "Frozen Flame", and "Viper Mansion". Other entries in the soundtrack contain leitmotifs from "Chrono Trigger" and "Radical Dreamers". The melody of "Far Promise ~ Dream Shore" features prominently in "The Dream That Time Dreams" and "Voyage ~ Another World." Masato Kato faced internal opposition in hiring Noriko Mitose:


title: Chrono Cross

text: Production required six months of work. After wrapping, Mitsuda and Kato played "Chrono Cross" to record their impressions and observe how the tracks intermingled with scenes; the ending theme brought Kato to tears. Players who preordered the game received a sampler disc of five songs, and Square released a three-CD official soundtrack in Japan after the game's debut. The soundtrack won the Gold Prize for the PlayStation Awards of 2000. In 2005, Square Enix reissued the soundtrack due to popular demand. Earlier that year, Mitsuda announced a new arranged "Chrono Cross" album, scheduled for release in July 2005. Mitsuda's contract with Square gave him ownership and full rights to the soundtrack of "Chrono Cross". It was delayed, and at a Play! A Video Game Symphony concert in May 2006, he revealed it would feature acoustic music and would be "out within the year", later backtracking and alleging a 2007 release date. Mitsuda posted a streaming sample of a finished track on his personal website in January 2009, and has stated the album will be released to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Japanese debut of "Cross". Music from "Chrono Cross" has been featured in the September 2009 "Symphonic Fantasies" concerts, part of the Symphonic Game Music Concert series conducted by Arnie Roth. The track "Dimension Break" was remixed by Mitsuda for inclusion on the charity album "Play For Japan" in 2011. That same year, the "Chrono Cross" theme "Time's Scar" was voted first place in Hardcore Gaming 101's "Best Video Game Music of All Time" poll. "Time's Scar" was also featured in 2012 by NPR in a program about classically arranged video game scores.


title: Chrono Cross

text: "Chrono Cross" shipped 850,000 units in Japan and 650,000 abroad by 2003. It was re-released once in the United States as a Sony Greatest Hits title and again as part of the Japanese Ultimate Hits series. "Chrono Cross" was also released on the PlayStation Network in Japan on July 6, 2011, and in North America on November 8, 2011, but a PAL region release has not been announced. Critics praised the game's complex plot, innovative battle system, varied characters, moving score, vibrant graphics, and success in breaking convention with its predecessor. "Electronic Gaming Monthly" gave "Chrono Cross" a Gold Award, scoring it 10/10/9.5 in their three reviewer format with the first review declaring the game to be "a masterpiece, plain and simple". GameSpot awarded the game a perfect 10, one of only sixteen games in the 40,000 games listed on Gamespot to have been given the score, and its Console Game of the Year Award for 2000. It also received the annual Best Role-Playing Game, Best Game Music and Best PlayStation Game awards, and nominations for Best Game Story and Best Graphics, Artistic. IGN gave the game a score of 9.7, and "Cross" appeared 89th in its 2008 Top 100 games list. "Famitsu" rated the game 36 out of 40 from four reviewers.


title: Chrono Cross

text: Fan reaction was largely positive, though certain fans complained that the game was a far departure from its predecessor, "Chrono Trigger"; "Chrono Cross" broke convention by featuring more characters, fewer double and triple techs, fewer instances of time travel, and few appearances of "Trigger" characters and locations. Producer Hiromichi Tanaka and director Masato Kato were aware of the changes in development, specifically intending to provide an experience different from "Chrono Trigger". Kato anticipated and rebuffed this discontent before the game's release, wondering what the "Chrono" title meant to these fans and whether his messages ever "really got through to them". He continued, ""Cross" is undoubtedly the highest quality "Chrono" that we can create right now. (I won't say the 'best' "Chrono", but) If you can't accept that, then I'm sorry to say this but I guess your "Chrono" and my "Chrono" have taken totally different paths. But I would like to say, thank you for falling in love with "Trigger" so much." Tanaka added, "Of course, the fans of the original are very important, but what innovation can come about when you're bound to the past? I believe that gameplay should evolve with the hardware." Kato later acknowledged that he could have "shown more empathy to the player" by making the story less complex, and acknowledged fans who felt the game was a departure from "Chrono Trigger", noting that one can still "equally enjoy the game." He later reflected in 2015 that "the bashing was terrible" in reference to fans' push-back on featuring so many playable characters, acknowledging the complaint that recruiting all characters required several playthroughs.


title: Chrono Cross

text: On December 9, 2021, a cross-over event between "Chrono Cross" and the free-to-play RPG "Another Eden" was released. A collaborative effort between "Chrono" writer Kato and composer Mitsuda, the game features elements similar to the "Chrono" series, such as talking frog protagonists and time-travel elements. Titled "Complex Dream", the event introduces several "Chrono Cross" characters, including Serge, Kid, and Harle, as well as gameplay elements from the series such as element magic and combo techs.


title: Chrono Cross

text: Publications began discussion of a possible remastered version of "Chrono Cross" in September 2021, when a security flaw allowed for a web developer to see an internal listing of current and upcoming video games in Nvidia's GeForce Now database, which included a never-announced "Chrono Cross Remastered". Nvidia later confirmed that the list was real, but that the games listed were speculative, and may or may not end up getting a final release. A second Nvidia leak occurred the following November, which again listed "Chrono Cross Remastered", this time with a December 2021 release date. Further comments on the game's existence also arose in November; Video Games Chronicle reported Nick Baker of the XboxEra podcast could confirm prior reports of its existence, and game website "Gematsu" separately confirmed the game's existence. On December 4, 2021, Square Enix announced a cross over event between "Chrono Cross" and mobile game "Another Eden"; the announcement spurred more discussion on a remaster, considering Square was reviving the game for the first time in 20 years, and writer Masato Kato worked on both games.


title: Chrono Cross

text: A remaster of the game, titled "Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition," was announced on February 9, 2022 during a Nintendo Direct presentation, being slated for release on April 7, 2022 for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The remaster of the title includes quality-of-life updates such as the ability to disable encounters, in addition to an enhanced OST. The remaster is also bundled with the text adventure game "Radical Dreamers", previously only available to Japanese players through the Satellaview peripheral for the Super Famicom. Masato Kato, Yasunori Mitsuda, Nobuteru Yuuki, and Hiromichi Tanaka were brought in to lightly polish the game's dialogue, music, character art, and mechanics, respectively. Tanaka revealed that the game's assets, stored on magnetic tape after development ceased in 1999, were lost in the intervening years, causing him to rely on a personal backup he had maintained for certain aspects of his polishing work. Producer Koichiro Sakamoto further explained that creating the remaster required teams to painstakingly upscale the game's original location art and remap each 3D field map, sometimes relying on AI to improve the resolution. The work demanded close scrutiny to ensure no original details were missed.


title: Chrono Cross

text: While "Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition" was received well by critics, it received a negative reaction from players in part due to how it performed as compared to its PlayStation 1 counterpart. Analysis showed that the remastered version had its frame rate dropping quite frequently, and was also unable to cross the threshold of 30 FPS. This issue has been noticed across all the platforms it was released on.


title: Chrono Cross

text: In 2001, Hironobu Sakaguchi revealed the company's staff wanted to develop a new game and were discussing script ideas. Although Kato was interested in a new title, the project had not been greenlighted. Square then registered a trademark for "Chrono Break" worldwide, causing speculation concerning a new sequel. Nothing materialized, and the trademark was dropped in the United States on November 13, 2003, though it still stands in Japan and the European Union. Kato later returned to Square Enix as a freelancer to work on "Children of Mana" and "Dawn of Mana". Mitsuda also expressed interest in scoring a new "Chrono" series game. In 2005, Kato and Mitsuda teamed up to do a game called "Deep Labyrinth", and again in 2008 for "Sands of Destruction", both for the Nintendo DS. The February 2008 issue of "Game Informer" ranked the "Chrono" series eighth among the "Top Ten Sequels in Demand", naming the games "steadfast legacies in the Square Enix catalogue" and asking "what's the damn holdup?!" In "Electronic Gaming Monthly"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s June 2008 "Retro Issue", writer Jeremy Parish cited "Chrono" as the franchise video game fans would be most thrilled to see a sequel to. In the May 1, 2009, issue of "Famitsu", "Chrono Trigger" placed 14th out of 50 in a vote of most-wanted sequels by the magazine's readers. At E3 2009, SE Senior Vice President Shinji Hashimoto remarked, "If people want a sequel, they should buy more!"


title: Spider web

text: A spider web, spiderweb, spider's web, or cobweb (from the archaic word "", meaning "spider") is a structure created by a spider out of proteinaceous spider silk extruded from its spinnerets, generally meant to catch its prey.


title: Spider web

text: Spider webs have existed for at least 100 million years, as witnessed in a rare find of Early Cretaceous amber from Sussex, in southern England.


title: Spider web

text: Many spiders build webs specifically to trap and catch insects to eat. However, not all spiders catch their prey in webs, and some do not build webs at all. "Spider web" is typically used to refer to a web that is apparently still in use (i.e. clean), whereas "cobweb" refers to abandoned (i.e. dusty) webs. However, the word "cobweb" is also used by biologists to describe the tangled three-dimensional web of some spiders of the family Theridiidae. While this large family is known as the cobweb spiders, they actually have a huge range of web architectures; other names for this spider family include tangle-web spiders and comb-footed spiders.


title: Spider web

text: When spiders moved from the water to the land in the Early Devonian period, they started making silk to protect their bodies and their eggs. Spiders gradually started using silk for hunting purposes, first as guide lines and signal lines, then as ground or bush webs, and eventually as the aerial webs that are familiar today.


title: Spider web

text: Spiders produce silk from their spinneret glands located at the tip of their abdomen. Each gland produces a thread for a special purpose – for example a trailed safety line, sticky silk for trapping prey or fine silk for wrapping it. Spiders use different gland types to produce different silks, and some spiders are capable of producing up to eight different silks during their lifetime.


title: Spider web

text: Most spiders have three pairs of spinnerets, each having its own function – there are also spiders with just one pair and others with as many as four pairs.


title: Spider web

text: Webs allow a spider to catch prey without having to expend energy by running it down, making it an efficient method of gathering food. However these energy savings are somewhat offset by the fact that constructing the web is in itself energetically costly, due to the large amount of protein required in the form of silk. In addition, after a time the silk will lose its stickiness and thus become inefficient at capturing prey. It is common for spiders to eat their own web daily to recoup some of the energy used in spinning. Through ingestion and digestion, the silk proteins are thus recycled.


title: Spider web

text: There are a few types of spider webs found in the wild, and many spiders are classified by the webs they weave. Different types of spider webs include:


title: Spider web

text: Several different types of silk may be used in web construction, including a "sticky" capture silk and "fluffy" capture silk, depending on the type of spider. Webs may be in a vertical plane (most orb webs), a horizontal plane (sheet webs), or at any angle in between. It is hypothesized that these types of aerial webs co-evolved with the evolution of winged insects. As insects are spiders' main prey, it is likely that they would impose strong selectional forces on the foraging behavior of spiders. Most commonly found in the sheet-web spider families, some webs will have loose, irregular tangles of silk above them. These tangled obstacle courses serve to disorient and knock down flying insects, making them more vulnerable to being trapped on the web below. They may also help to protect the spider from predators such as birds and wasps. It is reported that several "Nephila pilipes" individuals can collectively construct an aggregated web system to counter bird predation from all directions.


title: Spider web

text: Most orb weavers construct webs in a vertical plane, although there are exceptions, such as "Uloborus diversus", which builds a horizontal web. During the process of making an orb web, the spider will use its own body for measurements. There is variation in web construction among orb-weaving spiders, in particular, the species "Zygiella x-notata" is known for its characteristic missing sector web crossed by a single signal thread.


title: Spider web

text: Many webs span gaps between objects which the spider could not cross by crawling. This is done by first producing a fine adhesive thread to drift on a faint breeze across a gap. When it sticks to a surface at the far end, the spider feels the change in the vibration. The spider reels in and tightens the first strand, then carefully walks along it and strengthens it with a second thread. This process is repeated until the thread is strong enough to support the rest of the web.


title: Spider web

text: After strengthening the first thread, the spider continues to make a Y-shaped netting. The first three radials of the web are now constructed. More radials are added, making sure that the distance between each radial and the next is small enough to cross. This means that the number of radials in a web directly depends on the size of the spider plus the size of the web. It is common for a web to be about 20 times the size of the spider building it.


title: Spider web

text: After the radials are complete, the spider fortifies the center of the web with about five circular threads. It makes a spiral of non-sticky, widely spaced threads to enable it to move easily around its own web during construction, working from the inside outward. Then, beginning from the outside and moving inward, the spider methodically replaces this spiral with a more closely spaced one made of adhesive threads. It uses the initial radiating lines as well as the non-sticky spirals as guide lines. The spaces between each spiral and the next are directly proportional to the distance from the tip of its back legs to its spinners. This is one way the spider uses its own body as a measuring/spacing device. While the sticky spirals are formed, the non-adhesive spirals are removed as there is no need for them any more.


title: Spider web

text: After the spider has completed its web, it chews off the initial three center spiral threads then sits and waits, usually with the head facing downwards. If the web is broken without any structural damage during the construction, the spider does not make any initial attempts to rectify the problem.


title: Spider web

text: The spider, after spinning its web, then waits on or near the web for a prey animal to become trapped. The spider senses the impact and struggle of a prey animal by vibrations transmitted through the web. A spider positioned in the middle of the web makes for a highly visible prey for birds and other predators, even without web decorations; many day-hunting orb-web spinners reduce this risk by hiding at the edge of the web with one foot on a signal line from the hub or by appearing to be inedible or unappetizing.


title: Spider web

text: Spiders do not usually adhere to their own webs, because they are able to spin both sticky and non-sticky types of silk, and are careful to travel across only non-sticky portions of the web. However, they are not immune to their own glue. Some of the strands of the web are sticky, and others are not. For example, if a spider has chosen to wait along the outer edges of its web, it may spin a non-sticky prey or signal line to the web hub to monitor web movement. However, in the course of spinning sticky strands, spiders have to touch these sticky strands. They do this without sticking by using careful movements, dense hairs and nonstick coatings on their feet to prevent adhesion.


title: Spider web

text: Some spiders use their webs for hearing, where the giant webs function as extended and reconfigurable auditory sensors.


title: Spider web

text: Some species of spider do not use webs for capturing prey directly, instead pouncing from concealment (e.g. trapdoor spiders) or running them down in open chase (e.g. wolf spiders). The net-casting spider balances the two methods of running and web spinning in its feeding habits. This spider weaves a small net which it attaches to its front legs. It then lurks in wait for potential prey and, when such prey arrives, lunges forward to wrap its victim in the net, bite and paralyze it. Hence, this spider expends less energy catching prey than a primitive hunter such as the wolf spider. It also avoids the energy loss of weaving a large orb web.


title: Spider web

text: Some spiders manage to use the signaling-snare technique of a web without spinning a web at all. Several types of water-dwelling spiders rest their feet on the water's surface in much the same manner as an orb-web user. When an insect falls onto the water and is ensnared by surface tension, the spider can detect the vibrations and run out to capture the prey.


title: Spider web

text: Cobweb paintings, which began during the 16th century in a remote valley of the Austrian Tyrolean Alps, were created on fabrics consisting of layered and wound cobwebs, stretched over cardboard to make a mat, and strengthened by brushing with milk diluted in water. A small brush was then used to apply watercolor to the cobwebs, or custom tools to create engravings. Fewer than a hundred cobweb paintings survive today, most of which are held in private collections.


title: Spider web

text: In traditional European medicine, cobwebs were used on wounds and cuts to reduce bleeding and aid healing. This use was recorded in ancient Greece and Rome, and was mentioned in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Spider webs have been shown to significantly reduce wound healing times. They are rich in vitamin K, which is essential in blood clotting, and their large surface area is also thought to help coagulation.


title: Spider web

text: In northeastern Nigeria, cow horn resonators in traditional xylophones often have holes covered with spider webs to create a buzzing sound.


title: Spider web

text: Development of technologies to mass-produce spider silk has led to the manufacturing of prototype military protection, wound dressings and other medical devices, and consumer goods.


title: Spider web

text: The stickiness of spiders' webs is due to droplets of glue suspended on the silk threads. These glue balls are multifunctional – that is, their behavior depends on how quickly something touching a glue ball attempts to withdraw. At high velocities, they function as an elastic solid, resembling rubber; at lower velocities, they simply act as a sticky glue. This allows them to retain a grip on attached food particles.


title: Spider web

text: The web is electrically conductive which causes the silk threads to spring out to trap their quarry, as flying insects tend to gain a static charge which attracts the silk.


title: Spider web

text: Neurotoxins have been detected in the glue balls of some spider webs. Presumably these toxins help immobilize prey, but their function could also be antimicrobial, or protection from ants or other animals that steal from the webs or might attack the spider.


title: Spider web

text: Spider silk has greater tensile strength than the same weight of steel and much greater elasticity. Its microstructure is under investigation for potential applications in industry, including bullet-proof vests and artificial tendons. Researchers have used genetically modified mammals and bacteria to produce the proteins needed to make this material.


title: Spider web

text: Massive flooding in Pakistan during the 2010 monsoon drove spiders above the waterline, into trees. The result was trees covered with spider webs.


title: Spider web

text: One such web, reported in 2007 at Lake Tawakoni State Park in Texas, measured across. Entomologists believe it may be the result of social cobweb spiders or of spiders building webs to spread out from one another. There is no consensus on how common this occurrence is.


title: Spider web

text: In Brazil, there have been two instances of a phenomenon that became known as "raining spiders"; communal webs made by "social" spiders that cover such wide gaps and which strings are so difficult to see that hundreds of spiders seem to be floating in the air. The first occurred in Santo Antônio da Platina, Paraná, in 2013, and involved "Anelosimus eximius" individuals; the second was registered in Espírito Santo do Dourado, Minas Gerais, in January 2019, and involved "Parawixia bistriata" individuals.


title: Spider web

text: It has been observed that being in Earth's orbit has an effect on the structure of spider webs in space.


title: Spider web

text: Spider webs were spun in low Earth orbit in 1973 aboard Skylab, involving two female European garden spiders (cross spiders) called Arabella and Anita, as part of an experiment on the Skylab 3 mission. The aim of the experiment was to test whether the two spiders would spin webs in space, and, if so, whether these webs would be the same as those that spiders produced on Earth. The experiment was a student project of Judy Miles of Lexington, Massachusetts.


title: Spider web

text: After the launch on July 28, 1973, and entering Skylab, the spiders were released by astronaut Owen Garriott into a box that resembled a window frame. The spiders proceeded to construct their web while a camera took photographs and examined the spiders' behavior in a zero-gravity environment. Both spiders took a long time to adapt to their weightless existence. However, after a day, Arabella spun the first web in the experimental cage, although it was initially incomplete.


title: Spider web

text: The web was completed the following day. The crew members were prompted to expand the initial protocol. They fed and watered the spiders, giving them a house fly. The first web was removed on August 13 to allow the spider to construct a second web. At first, the spider failed to construct a new web. When given more water, it built a second web. This time, it was more elaborate than the first. Both spiders died during the mission, possibly from dehydration.


title: Spider web

text: When scientists were given the opportunity to study the webs, they discovered that the space webs were finer than normal Earth webs, and although the patterns of the web were not totally dissimilar, variations were spotted, and there was a definite difference in the characteristics of the web. Additionally, while the webs were finer overall, the space web had variations in thickness in places: some places were slightly thinner, and others slightly thicker. This was unusual, because Earth webs have been observed to have uniform thickness.


title: Spider web

text: Later experiments indicated that having access to a light source could orient the spiders and enable them to build their normal asymmetric webs when gravity was not a factor.


title: Spider web

text: Spider webs play a crucial role in the 1952 children's novel "Charlotte's Web". Webs are also featured in many other cultural depictions of spiders. In films, illustration, and other visual arts, spider webs may be used to readily suggest a "spooky" atmosphere, or imply neglect or the passage of time. Artificial "spider webs" are a common element of Halloween decorations. Spider webs are a common image in tattoo art, often symbolizing long periods of time spent in prison, or used simply to fill gaps between other images.


title: Spider web

text: Some observers believe that a small spider is depicted on the United States one-dollar bill, in the upper-right corner of the front side (obverse), perched on the shield surrounding the number "1". This perception is enhanced by the resemblance of the background image of intertwining fine lines to a stylized spider web. However, other observers believe the figure is an owl.


title: Spider web

text: The World Wide Web is thus named because of its tangled and interlaced structure, said to resemble that of a spider web.


title: Spider web

text: Artificial spider webs are used by the superhero Spider-Man to restrain enemies and to make ropes on which to swing between buildings as quick transportation. Some incarnations of the character, such as the version in the Sam Raimi film trilogy and Spider-Man 2099, are shown to be able to produce organic webs.


title: Spider web

text: The notable tensile strength of spider webs is often exaggerated in science fiction, often as a plot device to justify the presence of artificially giant spiders.


title: Spider web

text: Posters were used by the women at Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, and often featured the symbol of a spider web, meant to symbolise the fragility and perseverance of the Greenham women.


title: Company town

text: A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schools, markets and recreation facilities. They are usually bigger than a model village ("model" in the sense of an ideal to be emulated).


title: Company town

text: Some company towns have had high ideals, but many have been regarded as controlling and/or exploitative. Others developed more or less in unplanned fashion, such as Summit Hill, Pennsylvania, United States, one of the oldest, which began as a Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company mining camp and mine site nine miles (14.5 km) from the nearest outside road.


title: Company town

text: Traditional settings for company towns were where extractive industries – coal, metal mines, lumber – had established a monopoly franchise. Dam sites and war-industry camps founded other company towns. Since company stores often had a monopoly in company towns, it was often possible to pay in scrip through a truck system, although not all company towns engaged in this particular practice. In the Soviet Union there were several cities of nuclear scientists ("atomics") known as atomgrad; particularly in Ukraine those were Pripyat, Varash, Yuzhnoukrainsk among others.


title: Company town

text: Typically, a company town is isolated from neighbors and centered on a large production factory, such as a lumber or steel mill or an automobile plant, and the citizens of the town either work in the factory, in one of the smaller businesses, or are a family member of someone who does. The company may also donate a church building to a local congregation, operate parks, host cultural events such as concerts, and so on.


title: Company town

text: A town that existed prior to the establishment of a primary business may not officially be a company town, but if the majority of citizens are employed by a single company, similar conditions may exist (especially in regard to the town's economy). Similar dependencies may exist in specific neighborhoods or areas within larger cities.


title: Company town

text: Company towns often become regular public cities and towns as they grow and attract other settlement, business enterprises, and public transportation and services infrastructure. However, if the primary company experiences hardship or fails outright, or the industry fades in importance – such as when anthracite mining declined due to dependence on steam locomotives to spur demand – the economic effect on the company town can be devastating. Without a source of employment, the communities lose property value and population as people leave to find work elsewhere.


title: Company town

text: Paternalism, a subtle form of social engineering, refers to the control of workers by their employers who sought to force middle-class ideals upon their working-class employees. Paternalism was considered by many nineteenth-century businessmen as a moral responsibility, or often a religious obligation, which would advance society whilst furthering their own business interests. Accordingly, the company town offered a unique opportunity to achieve such ends.


title: Company town

text: Although many prominent examples of company towns portray their founders as "capitalists with a conscience", for example, George Cadbury's Bournville, if viewed cynically, the company town was often an economically viable ploy to attract and retain workers. Additionally, for-profit shops within company towns were usually owned by the company, which were unavoidable to its isolated workers, thus resulting in a monopoly for the owners.


title: Company town

text: Although economically successful, company towns sometimes failed politically due to a lack of elected officials and municipally owned services. Accordingly, workers often had no say in local affairs, and therefore felt dictated to. Ultimately, this political climate caused resentment amongst workers and resulted in many residents eventually losing long-term affection for their towns; such was the case at Pullman.


title: Company town

text: Although many small company towns existed in mining areas of Pennsylvania before the American Civil War, one of the largest, and most substantial early company towns in the United States was Pullman, developed in the 1880s just outside the Chicago city limits. The town, entirely company-owned, provided housing, markets, a library, churches and entertainment for the 6,000 company employees and an equal number of dependents. Employees were not required to live in Pullman, although workers tended to get better treatment if they chose to live in the town.


title: Company town

text: The town operated successfully until the economic panic of 1893, when demand for the company's products declined, and Pullman lowered employee wages and hours to offset the decrease in demand. Despite this, the company refused to lower rents in the town or the price of goods at its shops, thus resulting in the Pullman Strike of 1894. A national commission formed to investigate the causes of the strikes found that Pullman's paternalism was partly to blame and labelled it "Un-American". The report condemned Pullman for refusing to negotiate and for the economic hardships he created for workers in the town of Pullman. "The aesthetic features are admired by visitors, but have little money value to employees, especially when they lack bread." The State of Illinois filed suit, and in 1898 the Supreme Court of Illinois forced the Pullman Company to divest ownership in the town, which was annexed to Chicago.


title: Company town

text: However, government observers maintained that Pullman's principles were accurate, in that he provided his employees with a quality of life otherwise unattainable to them, but recognized that his excessive paternalism was inappropriate for a large-scale corporate economy and thus caused the town's downfall. Accordingly, government observers and social reformers alike saw the need for a balance between control and well-designed towns, concluding that a model company town would only succeed if independent professionals, acting as a buffer between employers and employees, took a role in conception, planning, and management of these towns.


title: Company town

text: Historian Linda Carlson argues that the managers of corporate towns in the early 20th century believed they could avoid the mistakes made by George Pullman in the 1880s. She says they:


title: Company town

text: Thus, the Pullman Strike did not kill the concept of a company town but rather initiated a new chapter in their existence. Over the next thirty years, the old model of paternalism was abandoned in favour of new professionally designed company towns with architects, landscape architects, and planners translating "new concepts of industrial relations and social welfare into new physical forms". This suited capitalists of the day who were obviously keen to avoid the experiences of Pullman. The first real example of this occurred at Indian Hill-North Village, Massachusetts, in 1915.


title: Company town

text: By the 1920s, the need for company towns had declined significantly due to increased national affluence. Despite income inequalities and a relatively low standard of living conditions amongst factory laborers, the prosperity of the 1920s saw workers’ material well-being improve significantly. A strong post-war American economy meant installment buying was accessible to low-wage earners who could now purchase previously unattainable goods like automobiles and radios. Moreover, workers were no longer dependent on employers for healthcare and education.


title: Company town

text: By the 1920s the widespread nature of the automobile meant workers no longer needed to live near their work places and now had access to more employment opportunities. A combination of the freedom that came with private transport and the mass communication of radio saw the isolation of company towns lessen and the social basis of the company town become less necessary.


title: Company town

text: Furthermore, the accessibility of the working class to private transport also marked a step of equality as they had previously only been accessible to the wealthy. As access to surrounding municipalities increased, residents of company towns gained access to an increasing amount of government-funded public resources such as schools, libraries, and parks. Accordingly, there was no longer a need for the amenities of company towns which, prior to welfare capitalism, had previously been unattainable to the working class.


title: Company town

text: This new-found freedom saw a change in the mindset of workers who began to look on welfare capitalism as demeaning rather than an incentive. Accordingly, many employees began to request additional pay in lieu of welfare programs. This was well received by some employers as the idea of ‘laissez-faire’ individualism, which promoted entrepreneurial virtues of hard-work being rewarded rather than direct charity, began to shape new-age paternalism.


title: Company town

text: Modernization and the increase in material well-being had also lessened the perceived need for paternalism and moral reform. Consequently, the economic downturn of the early 1930s saw some businesses do away with employee welfare schemes to reduce costs. However, the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal dealt the final blow to end American company towns by raising minimum wages, encouraging industrial self-governance, and pushing for the owners of company towns to "consider the question of plans for eventual employee ownership of homes". To a lesser extent the New Deal also reduced the need for employee housing by transforming housing finance to a lower-interest, lower-deposit system making home ownership more accessible to the working class.


title: Company town

text: During the late nineteenth century, model company towns materialised, as enlightened industrialists recognised that many poor workers were living in appalling conditions. These industrialists wished to combat the unsanitary and congested conditions common to working class districts in order to create better living conditions for workers. Model company towns such as Port Sunlight (1888) and Bournville (1895) were influential in regards to their building and planning innovation. The ideas generated from these model towns are regarded as having a significant influence on the Garden City movement.