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| 1472 - Guyana's map and national symbols |
Posted on 04.03.2014 and 28.02.2015
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the name "Guyana" comes from an Amerindian word meaning "land of waters". Anyway, historically speaking, The Guianas (Las Guayanas in spanish) refers to a region in South America, north of the Amazon River and east of the Orinoco River, which includes French Guiana (an overseas department of France), Guyana (former British Guiana), Suriname (former Dutch Guiana), the Guayana Region in Venezuela (former Spanish Guyana), and Brazilian State of Amapá (former Portuguese Guiana). Guyana, officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, was originally colonized by the Netherlands, but became a British colony and remained so for over 200 years until it achieved independence in 1966, to become a republic in 1970.
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| 1022 - Guyana's flag |
It is the third-smallest independent state on the mainland of South America (after Uruguay and Suriname), and has a population of approximately 770,000 inhabitants, of which 90% reside on the narrow coastal strip. Racially and ethnically heterogeneous, with ethnic groups originating from India, Africa, Europe, and China, as well as indigenous or aboriginal peoples, its present population shares two common languages: English and Creole. The country can be divided into five natural regions: a narrow and fertile marshy plain along the Atlantic coast, a white sand belt more inland, the dense rain forests, the desert savannah, and the smallest interior lowlands. More than 80% of it is covered by forests, from dry evergreen and seasonal forests to montane and lowland evergreen rain forests. It has also one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world. The capital and largest city of Guyana is Georgetown, "Garden City of the Caribbean", founded in the 18th century on the Atlantic Ocean coast, at the mouth of the Demerara River.
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