Pannonian Plain

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The Pannonian Plain is a large plain in central/south-eastern Europe that remained when the Pliocene Pannonian Sea (see below) dried out.

The river Danube divides the plain roughly in half. The Pannonian Plain is a geomorphological subsystem of the Alps-Himalaya system.

Image:Pannonian plain01.jpg

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Characteristics

The plain is roughly bounded by the Carpathian mountains, the Alps, the Dinaric Alps and the Balkan mountains. Because of the long Carpathian border, it can also be referred to as the Carpathian Basin (especially in Hungarian texts). It consists mainly of the Great Alföld (in the south and east) and the Little Alföld (in the northwest). The former Hungarian Kingdom was centered around the plain and included almost all of it. The basin forms a topographically discrete unit set in the European landscape, surrounded by imposing geographic boundaries that have created a fairly unified cultural area that looks more towards the south and east than to the north and west.

Although the rain is not plentiful, it usually falls when necessary and the plain is a major agricultural area; it is sometimes said that these fields of rich loamy loess soil could feed the whole of Europe. For its early settlers, the plain offered few sources of metals or stone. Thus when archaeologists come upon objects of obsidian or chert, copper or gold, they have almost unparalleled opportunities to interpret ancient pathways of trade.

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Countries

Today the plain is divided among Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Ukraine. The peripannonian lands, areas around this plain but not elevated like the surrounding mountains, also spread into Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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Division

Pannonian plain is divided into two parts along the Transdanubian Medium Mountains (Hungarian: Dunántúli-középhegység), which is sometimes considered part of it. The northwestern part is called Western Pannonian plain (or province) and the southeastern part Eastern Pannonian plain (or province). They build up from the following sections:

Note: The Transylvanian Plateau and the Lučenec-Košice Depression (both parts of the Carpathians) and some other lowlands are sometimes also included in the Pannonian Plain in non-geomorphological or older divisions.

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Regions

Large areas of the plain that do not necessarily correspond to national borders include:

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Pannonian Sea

The precursor to the present plain was a shallow sea that reached its greatest extent during the Pliocene, when three to four kilometres of sediments were deposited.

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See also

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External links

eo:Karpat-baseno fr:Plaine de Pannonie hu:Kárpát-medence nl:Pannonische vlakte ja:パンノニア平原 no:Den pannoniske slette pl:Kotlina Panońska sk:Panónska panva

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