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Eurasia

Area	54,759,000 km2
Population	4,620,000,000 (2010)
Pop. density	84/km2
Demonym	Eurasian
Countries	93 (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 the combined continental landmass of Europe and Asia,^[1][2] with the term being a portmanteau of its two constituents. Located primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, Eurasia stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. In the north, Russia and Scandinavia abut the Arctic Ocean; its southern boundaries are Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean.^[3] The division between Europe and Asia as two different continents is a historical and cultural construct, with no clear physical separation between them; thus, in some parts of the world, Eurasia is considered the largest of five or six continents.^[2]

Eurasia covers around 52,990,000 square kilometres (20,460,000 sq mi), or around 36.2% of the Earth's total land area. The landmass contains around 4.6 billion people, equating to 72.5% of the human population. Humans first settled in Eurasia from Africa, between 60,000 and 125,000 years ago.^[4][5]

Overview [edit]

Physiographically, Eurasia is a single continent.^[2] 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.^[6]

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 [edit]

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 [edit]

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

Politics [edit]

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 [edit]

History of the Europe and Asia division [edit]

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 [edit]

In modern usage, the term Eurasian usually means "of or relating to Eurasia", or "a native or inhabitant of Eurasia".^[7]

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.^[8]

Geography [edit]

Located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres, Eurasia is considered a supercontinent, part of the supercontinent of Afro-Eurasia or simply a continent in its own right.^[9] 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 [edit]

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 of Kazakhstan.

The word "Eurasia" is often used to describe the location of territories that straddle both Europe and Asia, namely Kazakhstan. Numerous Kazakh institutions have the term in their names, like the L. N. Gumilev Eurasian National University (Kazakh: Л. Н. Гумилёв атындағы Еуразия Ұлттық университеті; Russian: Евразийский Национальный университет имени Л. Н. Гумилёва)^[10] (Lev Gumilev's Eurasianism ideas having been popularized in Kazakhstan by Olzhas Suleimenov), the Eurasian Media Forum,^[11] the Eurasian Culture Foundation (Russian: Евразийский фонд культуры), the Eurasian Development Bank (Russian: Евразийский банк развития),^[12] and the Eurasian Bank.^[13] 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.^[14] 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 [edit]

	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
• Vega expedition, the first voyage to circumnavigate Eurasia

References [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Eurasia

Look up eurasia in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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