Eurasia

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Eurasia

Area	54,759,000 km2
Population	4,620,000,000 (2010)
Pop. density	84/km2
Demonym	Eurasian
Countries	92 (list)
Dependencies	9
Unrecognized regions	8
Time Zones	UTC to UTC+12

Eurasia with surrounding areas of Africa and Australasia visible

Afro-Eurasian aspect of Earth

Eurasia is a single continental landmass,^[1] the largest and most populous of any.^[2] It is located primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemisphere and stretches from the Atlantic Ocean on the west with bordering countries Portugal and Spain to Russia's easternmost point, the Bering Strait, which is situated between the Arctic Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The northern borders of the continent are Russia and Scandinavia with the neighboring Arctic Ocean, the southern boundaries are Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean. Countries of the southern edges include Spain, Yemen, India, continental Malaysia.^[3] The division between Europe and Asia as two different continents is a historical and cultural construct, and physically they are the same landmass.^[4]

Humans first settled in Eurasia from Africa, between 125,000 and 60,000 years ago.^[5][6] Eurasia covers 36.2% (about 52,990,000 km² (20,846,000 mi²)) of the Earth's total land area and contains about 72.5% of the human population (about 4.6 billion people).

Overview

Physiographically, Eurasia is a single continent.^[7] The concepts of Europe and Asia as distinct continents date back to antiquity and their borders are geologically arbitrary, with the Ural and Caucasus ranges being the main delimiters between the two. Eurasia is connected to Africa at the Suez Canal, and Eurasia is sometimes combined with Africa as the supercontinent Afro-Eurasia.^[8][9]

Eurasia is inhabited by almost 5 billion people, more than 72.5% of the world's population: 60% in Asia and 12.5% in Europe.

History

Eurasia has been the host of many modern civilizations, including those based in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

Jared Diamond, in his book Guns, Germs and Steel, credits Eurasia's dominance in world history to the unique east-west extent of Eurasia and the availability of Eurasian animals and plants suitable for domestication. He included North Africa in his definition of Eurasia, due to it having a similar climate and peoples.

The Silk Road symbolizes trade and cultural exchange linking Eurasian cultures through history and has been an increasingly popular topic. Over recent decades the idea of a greater Eurasian history has developed with the aim of investigating the genetic, cultural and linguistic relationships between European and Asian cultures of antiquity. These had long been considered distinct.

Geology

Eurasia formed 325 to 375 million years ago when Siberia (once an independent continent), Kazakhstania, and Baltica, which was joined to Laurentia, now North America, to form Euramerica, joined. Chinese cratons collided with Siberia's southern coast.

Politics

Every two years since 1996 a meeting of most Asian and European countries is organised as the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).

Members of the ASEM

Use of term

History of the Europe and Asia division

In ancient times, the Greeks classified Europe (derived from the mythological Phoenician princess Europa) and Asia (derived from Asia, a woman in Greek mythology) as separate "lands". Where to draw the dividing line between the two regions is still a matter of discussion. Especially whether the Kuma-Manych Depression or the Caucasus Mountains form the southeast boundary is disputed, since Mount Elbrus would be part of Europe in the latter case, making it (and not Mont Blanc) Europe's highest mountain. Most accepted is probably the boundary as defined by Philip Johan von Strahlenberg in the 18th century. He defined the dividing line along the Aegean Sea, Dardanelles, Sea of Marmara, Bosporus, Black Sea, Kuma–Manych Depression, Caspian Sea, Ural River, and Ural Mountains. This distinction between Europe and Asia has spread to the rest of the world, even though Asia contains multiple regions and cultures as large and populous as Europe, and as different and geographically separated from each other as they are from Europe.

Anthropology and genetics

In modern usage, the term Eurasian usually means "of or relating to Eurasia", or "a native or inhabitant of Eurasia".^[10]

West or western Eurasia is a loose geographic definition used in some disciplines, such as genetics or anthropology, to refer to the region inhabited by the relatively homogeneous population of West Asia, Europe and related areas, especially North Africa. The people of this region are often described collectively as West or Western Eurasians.^[11]

Geography

Located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres, Eurasia is considered a supercontinent, part of the supercontinent of Afro-Eurasia or simply a continent its own right.^[12] In plate tectonics, the Eurasian Plate includes Europe and most of Asia but not the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian Peninsula or the area of the Russian Far East east of the Chersky Range.

Post-Soviet countries

Eurasian world for eurasianist political movement

Single markets in European and post Soviet countries; European Economic Area and Common Economic Space

Eurasia is also sometimes used in geopolitics to refer to organizations of or affairs concerning the post-Soviet states, in particular, Russia, the Central Asian republics, and the Transcaucasian republics.^{[citation needed]} A prominent example of this usage is in the name of the Eurasian Economic Community, the organization including Kazakhstan, Russia, and some of their neighbors, and headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and Astana, the capital Kazakhstan.

The word "Eurasia" is often used in Kazakhstan to describe its general location. Numerous Kazakh institutions the term in their names, e.g., L. N. Gumilev Eurasian National University (Kazakh: Л. Н. Гумилёв атындағы Еуразия Ұлттық университеті; Russian: Евразийский Национальный университет имени Л. Н. Гумилёва)^[13] (Lev Gumilev's Eurasianism ideas having been popularized in Kazakhstan by Olzhas Suleimenov), the Eurasian Media Forum,^[14] the Eurasian Culture Foundation (Russian: Евразийский фонд культуры), the Eurasian Development Bank (Russian: Евразийский банк развития),^[15] the Eurasian Bank.^[16] In 2007 Kazakhstan's President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, proposed building a "Eurasia Canal" to connect the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea via Russia's Kuma-Manych Depression in order to provide Kazakhstan and other Caspian-basin countries with a more efficient path to the ocean than the existing Volga-Don Canal.^[17] This usage is comparable to how Americans use "Western Hemisphere" to describe concepts and organizations dealing with the Americas (e.g., Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation).

See also

	Geography portal
	Asia portal
	Europe portal

• List of Eurasian countries by population
• Asia-Europe Foundation
• Asia–Europe Meeting
• Borders of the continents
• Eurasia (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
• Eurasian (disambiguation)
• Eurasian Economic Community
• Eurasian Union
• Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
• Intermediate Region
• Laurasia, a geological supercontinent joining Eurasia and North America.
• List of supercontinents
• Neo-Eurasianism
• Palearctic

References

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