  This review will be concerned with our knowledge of extended matter under the
governance of strong interaction, in short: QCD matter. Strictly speaking, the
hadrons are representing the first layer of extended QCD architecture. In fact
we encounter the characteristic phenomena of confinement as distances grow to
the scale of 1 fm (i.e. hadron size): loss of the chiral symmetry property of
the elementary QCD Lagrangian via non-perturbative generation of "massive"
quark and gluon condensates, that replace the bare QCD vacuum. However, given
such first experiences of transition from short range perturbative QCD
phenomena (jet physics etc.), toward extended, non perturbative QCD hadron
structure, we shall proceed here to systems with dimensions far exceeding the
force range: matter in the interior of heavy nuclei, or in neutron stars, and
primordial matter in the cosmological era from electro-weak decoupling (10^-12
s) to hadron formation (0.5 10^-5 s). This primordial matter, prior to
hadronization, should be deconfined in its QCD sector, forming a plasma (i.e.
color conducting) state of quarks and gluons: the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP).
