fbpx
Wikipedia

Asia

November 15, 2023

This article is about the continent. For other uses, see Asia (disambiguation).

Asia (/ˈeɪʒə/ ⓘ AY-zhə, UK also /ˈeɪʃə/ AY-shə) is the largest continent[note 2][11][12] in the world by both land area and population.[12] It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometers,[note 3] about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population,[13] was the site of many of the first civilizations. Its 4.7 billion people[14] constitute roughly 60% of the world's population, having more people than all other continents combined.[15]

Asia
Area44,579,000 km2 (17,212,000 sq mi) (1st)[1]
Population4,694,576,167 (2021; 1st)[2][3]
Population density100/km2 (260/sq mi)
GDP (PPP)$72.7 trillion (2022 est; 1st)[4]
GDP (nominal)$39 trillion (2022 est; 1st)[5]
GDP per capita$8,890 (2022 est; 4th)[6]
Religions
DemonymAsian
Countries49 UN members
1 UN observer
5 other states
Dependencies
List
Non-UN states
List
LanguagesList of languages
Time zonesUTC+02:00 to UTC+12:00
Internet TLD.asia
Largest cities
UN M49 code142 – Asia
001 – World
Map of the most populous part of Asia showing physical, political, and population characteristics, as per 2018

Asia shares the landmass of Eurasia with Europe, and of Afro-Eurasia with both Europe and Africa. In general terms, it is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean, and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. The border of Asia with Europe is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. It is somewhat arbitrary and has moved since its first conception in classical antiquity. The division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East–West cultural, linguistic, and ethnic differences, some of which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. A commonly accepted division places Asia to the east of the Suez Canal separating it from Africa; and to the east of the Turkish Straits, the Ural Mountains and Ural River, and to the south of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian and Black seas, separating it from Europe.[16]

China and India alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1,800 CE. China was a major economic power and attracted many to the east,[17][18][19] and for many the legendary wealth and prosperity of the ancient culture of India personified Asia,[20] attracting European commerce, exploration and colonialism. The accidental discovery of a trans-Atlantic route from Europe to America by Columbus while in search for a route to India demonstrates this deep fascination. The Silk Road became the main east–west trading route in the Asian hinterlands while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism (particularly East Asia) as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, but overall population growth has since fallen.[21] Asia was the birthplace of most of the world's mainstream religions including Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, as well as many other religions.

Given its size and diversity, the concept of Asia—a name dating back to classical antiquity—may actually have more to do with human geography than physical geography.[citation needed] Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties and government systems. It also has a mix of many different climates ranging from the equatorial south via the hot desert in the Middle East, temperate areas in the east and the continental centre to vast subarctic and polar areas in Siberia.

Definition and boundaries

Further information on Asian borders: Geography of Asia § Boundary, Boundaries between continents, List of transcontinental countries § Asia and Europe, and Copenhagen criteria

Asia–Africa boundary

The boundary between Asia and Africa is the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, and the Suez Canal.[22] This makes Egypt a transcontinental country, with the Sinai peninsula in Asia and the remainder of the country in Africa.

Asia–Europe boundary

 
Definitions used for the boundary between Europe and Asia in different countries around the world

The threefold division of the Old World into Europe, Asia and Africa has been in use since the 6th century BCE, due to Greek geographers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus.[citation needed] Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni river) in Georgia of Caucasus (from its mouth by Poti on the Black Sea coast, through the Surami Pass and along the Kura River to the Caspian Sea), a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE.[23] During the Hellenistic period,[24] this convention was revised, and the boundary between Europe and Asia was now considered to be the Tanais (the modern Don River). This is the convention used by Roman era authors such as Posidonius,[25] Strabo[26] and Ptolemy.[27]

The border between Asia and Europe was historically defined by European academics.[28] The Don River became unsatisfactory to northern Europeans when Peter the Great, king of the Tsardom of Russia, defeating rival claims of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire to the eastern lands, and armed resistance by the tribes of Siberia, synthesized a new Russian Empire extending to the Ural Mountains and beyond, founded in 1721.[citation needed]

In Sweden, five years after Peter's death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Ural Mountains as the border of Asia. Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg. The latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century. The border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects.[29] The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains, although it is sometimes placed further north.[28]

Asia–Oceania boundary

The border between Asia and the region of Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Indonesia Archipelago. The Maluku Islands are often considered to lie on the border of southeast Asia, with Indonesian New Guinea, to the east of the islands, being wholly part of Oceania. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several vastly different geographic meanings since their inception. The chief factor in determining which islands of the Indonesian Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the colonial possessions of the various empires there (not all European). Lewis and Wigen assert, "The narrowing of 'Southeast Asia' to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process."[30]

Asia–North America boundary

The Bering Strait and Bering Sea separate the landmasses of Asia and North America, as well as forming the international boundary between Russia and the United States. This national and continental boundary separates the Diomede Islands in the Bering Strait, with Big Diomede in Russia and Little Diomede in the United States. The Aleutian Islands are an island chain extending westward from the Alaskan Peninsula toward Russia's Komandorski Islands and Kamchatka Peninsula. Most of them are always associated with North America, except for the westernmost Near Islands group, which is on Asia's continental shelf beyond the North Aleutians Basin and on rare occasions could be associated with Asia, which could then allow the U.S. state of Alaska as well as the United States itself to be considered a transcontinental state. The Aleutian Islands are sometimes associated with Oceania, owing to their status as remote Pacific islands, and their proximity to the Pacific Plate.[31][32][33] This is extremely rare however, due to their non-tropical biogeography, as well as their inhabitants, who have historically been related to Indigenous Americans.[34][35]

St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea belongs to Alaska and may be associated with either continent but is almost always considered part of North America, as with the Rat Islands in the Aleutian chain. At their nearest points, Alaska and Russia are separated by only 4 kilometres (2.5 miles).

Ongoing definition

 
Afro-Eurasia shown in green

Geographical Asia is a cultural artifact of European conceptions of the world, beginning with the Ancient Greeks, being imposed onto other cultures, an imprecise concept causing endemic contention about what it means. Asia does not exactly correspond to the cultural borders of its various types of constituents.[36]

From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system (Europe, Africa, Asia) on the grounds that there is no substantial physical separation between them.[37] For example, Sir Barry Cunliffe, the emeritus professor of European archeology at Oxford, argues that Europe has been geographically and culturally merely "the western excrescence of the continent of Asia".[38]

Geographically, Asia is the major eastern constituent of the continent of Eurasia with Europe being a northwestern peninsula of the landmass. Asia, Europe and Africa make up a single continuous landmass—Afro-Eurasia (except for the Suez Canal)—and share a common continental shelf. Almost all of Europe and a major part of Asia sit atop the Eurasian Plate, adjoined on the south by the Arabian and Indian Plate and with the easternmost part of Siberia (east of the Chersky Range) on the North American Plate.

Etymology

 
Ptolemy's Asia

The term "Asia" is believed to originate in the Bronze Age placename Assuwa (Hittite: 𒀸𒋗𒉿, romanized: aš-šu-wa) which originally referred only to a portion of northwestern Anatolia. The term appears in Hittite records recounting how a confederation of Assuwan states including Troy unsuccessfully rebelled against the Hittite king Tudhaliya I around 1400 BCE.[39][40][41] Roughly contemporary Linear B documents contain the term asiwia (Mycenaean Greek: 𐀀𐀯𐀹𐀊, romanized: a-si-wi-ja), seemingly in reference to captives from the same area.[42][43]

 
The province of Asia highlighted (in red) within the Roman Empire

Herodotus used the term Ἀσία in reference to Anatolia and the territory of the Persian Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt. He reports that Greeks assumed that Asia was named after the wife of Prometheus, but that Lydians say it was named after Asies, son of Cotys, who passed the name on to a tribe at Sardis.[44] In Greek mythology, "Asia" (Ἀσία) or "Asie" (Ἀσίη) was the name of a "Nymph or Titan goddess of Lydia".[45] The Iliad (attributed by the ancient Greeks to Homer) mentions two Phrygians in the Trojan War named Asios (an adjective meaning "Asian");[46] and also a marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia as ασιος.[47] According to many Muslims, the term came from Ancient Egypt's Queen Asiya, the adoptive mother of Moses.[48]

The term was later adopted by the Romans, who used it in reference to the province of Asia, located in western Anatolia.[49] One of the first writers to use Asia as a name of the whole continent was Pliny.[50]

In languages of the Chinese character cultural sphere words related to the character 亜細亜 Yàxìyà are used. This has been criticized as implying an inferiority of the continent as 亜 means inferior. However it is a mere phonetic representation.

History

Main article: History of Asia
 
The Silk Road connected civilizations across Asia.[51]
 
The Mongol Empire at its greatest extent. The gray area is the later Timurid Empire.

The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East (West Asia), linked by the interior mass of the Central Asian steppes. The coastal periphery was home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations, each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and the Yellow River shared many similarities. These civilizations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel. Other innovations, such as writing, seem to have been developed individually in each area. Cities, states and empires developed in these lowlands.

The central steppe region had long been inhabited by horse-mounted nomads who could reach all areas of Asia from the steppes. The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans, who spread their languages into the Middle East, South Asia, and the borders of China, where the Tocharians resided. The northernmost part of Asia, including much of Siberia, was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra. These areas remained very sparsely populated.

The center and the peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karakum and Gobi deserts formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could cross only with difficulty. While the urban city dwellers were more advanced technologically and socially, in many cases they could do little in a military aspect to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However, the lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large horsebound force; for this and other reasons, the nomads who conquered states in China, India, and the Middle East often found themselves adapting to the local, more affluent societies.

The Islamic Caliphate's defeats of the Byzantine and Persian empires led to West Asia and southern parts of Central Asia and western parts of South Asia under its control during its conquests of the 7th century. The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of Asia in the 13th century, an area extending from China to Europe. Before the Mongol invasion, Song dynasty reportedly had approximately 120 million citizens; the 1300 census which followed the invasion reported roughly 60 million people.[52]

The Black Death, one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, is thought to have originated in the arid plains of central Asia, where it then travelled along the Silk Road.[53]

The Russian Empire began to expand into Asia from the 17th century, and would eventually take control of all of Siberia and most of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century. The Ottoman Empire controlled Anatolia, most of the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans from the mid 16th century onwards. In the 17th century, the Manchu conquered China and established the Qing dynasty. The Islamic Mughal Empire and the Hindu Maratha Empire controlled much of India in the 16th and 18th centuries respectively.[54]

Western European colonisation of Asia coincided with the Industrial Revolution in the West and the dethroning of India and China as the world's foremost economies.[55] The British Empire became dominant in South Asia, with large parts of the region first being conquered by British traders before falling under direct British rule; extreme poverty doubled to over 50% during this era.[56] The Middle East was contested and partitioned by the British and French,[57] while Southeast Asia was carved up between the British, Dutch and French.[58] Various Western powers dominated China in what later became known as the "century of humiliation", with the British-supported opium trade and later Opium Wars resulting in China being forced into an unprecedented situation of importing more than it exported.[59][60] Foreign domination of China was furthered by the Empire of Japan, which controlled most of East Asia and much of Southeast Asia, New Guinea and the Pacific islands during this era; Japan's domination was enabled by its rapid rise that had taken place during the Meiji era of the late 19th century, in which it applied industrial knowledge learned from the West and thus overtook the rest of Asia.[61][62]

With the end of World War II in 1945 and the wartime ruination of Europe and imperial Japan, many countries in Asia were able to rapidly free themselves of colonial rule.[63] The independence of India came along with the carving out of a separate nation for the majority of Indian Muslims, which today has become the countries Pakistan and Bangladesh.[64]

Some Arab countries took economic advantage of massive oil deposits that were discovered in their territory, becoming globally influential.[65] East Asian nations (along with Singapore in Southeast Asia) became economically prosperous with high-growth "tiger economies",[66] with China regaining its place among the top two economies of the world by the 21st century.[67] India has grown significantly because of economic liberalisation that started in the 1990s,[68] with extreme poverty now below 20%.[69]

Geography

Main article: Geography of Asia
See also: Category:Biota of Asia
 
The Himalayan range is home to some of the planet's highest peaks.

Asia is the largest continent on Earth. It covers 9% of the Earth's total surface area (or 30% of its land area), and has the longest coastline, at 62,800 kilometres (39,022 mi). Asia is generally defined as comprising the eastern four-fifths of Eurasia. It is located to the east of the Suez Canal and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains (or the Kuma–Manych Depression) and the Caspian and Black Seas.[16][71] It is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. Asia is subdivided into 49 countries, five of them (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkey) are transcontinental countries lying partly in Europe. Geographically, Russia is partly in Asia, but is considered a European nation, both culturally and politically.

The Gobi Desert is in Mongolia and the Arabian Desert stretches across much of the Middle East. The Yangtze River in China is the longest river in the continent. The Himalayas between Nepal and China is the tallest mountain range in the world. Tropical rainforests stretch across much of southern Asia and coniferous and deciduous forests lie farther north.

Main regions

 
Division of Asia into regions by the UNSD
  •   North Asia
  •   Central Asia
  •   West Asia (Near East)
  •   South Asia
  •   East Asia (Far East)
  •   Southeast Asia

There are various approaches to the regional division of Asia. The following subdivision into regions is used, among others, by the UN statistics agency UNSD. This division of Asia into regions by the United Nations is done solely for statistical reasons and does not imply any assumption about political or other affiliations of countries and territories.[72]

Climate

Main article: Climate of Asia
 
Köppen-Geiger climate classification map for Asia[73]

Asia has extremely diverse climate features. Climates range from arctic and subarctic in Siberia to tropical in southern India and Southeast Asia. It is moist across southeast sections, and dry across much of the interior. Some of the largest daily temperature ranges on Earth occur in western sections of Asia. The monsoon circulation dominates across southern and eastern sections, due to the presence of the Himalayas forcing the formation of a thermal low which draws in moisture during the summer. Southwestern sections of the continent are hot. Siberia is one of the coldest places in the Northern Hemisphere, and can act as a source of arctic air masses for North America. The most active place on Earth for tropical cyclone activity lies northeast of the Philippines and south of Japan.

Climate change

Main articles: Climate change in South Asia, Climate change in Southeast Asia, Climate change in Central Asia, Climate change in East Asia, and Climate change in North Asia
Further information: Category:Climate change in Asia

Climate change is having major impacts on many countries in the continent. A survey carried out in 2010 by global risk analysis farm Maplecroft identified 16 countries that are extremely vulnerable to climate change. Each nation's vulnerability was calculated using 42 socio, economic and environmental indicators, which identified the likely climate change impacts during the next 30 years. The Asian countries of Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, China and Sri Lanka were among the 16 countries facing extreme risk from climate change.[74][75][76] Some shifts are already occurring. For example, in tropical parts of India with a semi-arid climate, the temperature increased by 0.4 °C between 1901 and 2003. A 2013 study by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) aimed to find science-based, pro-poor approaches and techniques that would enable Asia's agricultural systems to cope with climate change, while benefitting poor and vulnerable farmers. The study's recommendations ranged from improving the use of climate information in local planning and strengthening weather-based agro-advisory services, to stimulating diversification of rural household incomes and providing incentives to farmers to adopt natural resource conservation measures to enhance forest cover, replenish groundwater and use renewable energy.[77]

The ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the world, however, ASEAN's climate mitigation efforts are not commensurate with the climate threats and risks it faces.[78]

Economy

Main articles: Economy of Asia, List of Asian countries by GDP, List of countries in Asia-Pacific by GDP (nominal), and List of Asian and Pacific countries by GDP (PPP)
 
Singapore has one of the busiest container ports in the world and is the world's fourth largest foreign exchange trading center.

Asia has the largest continental economy in the world by both GDP nominal and PPP values, and is the fastest growing economic region.[79] As of 2023, China is by far the largest economy on the continent, making up nearly half of the continent's economy by GDP nominal. It is followed by Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are all ranked amongst the top 20 largest economies both by nominal and PPP values.[80] Based on Global Office Locations 2011, Asia dominated the office locations with 4 of the top 5 being in Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul. Around 68 percent of international firms have an office in Hong Kong.[81]

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economies of China[82] and India grew rapidly, both with an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. Other recent very-high-growth nations in Asia include Israel, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and mineral-rich nations such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman.[citation needed]

According to economic historian Angus Maddison in his book The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, India had the world's largest economy during 0 BCE and 1000 BCE. Historically, India was the largest economy in the world for most of the two millennia from the 1st until 19th century, contributing 25% of the world's industrial output.[83][84][85][86] China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history and shared the mantle with India.[87][18][88] For several decades in the late twentieth century Japan was the largest economy in Asia and second-largest of any single nation in the world, after surpassing the Soviet Union (measured in net material product) in 1990 and Germany in 1968. (NB: A number of supernational economies are larger, such as the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or APEC). This ended in 2010 when China overtook Japan to become the world's second largest economy. It is forecasted that India will overtake Japan in terms of nominal GDP by 2027.[79]

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan's GDP by currency exchange rates was almost as large as that of the rest of Asia combined.[79] In 1995, Japan's economy nearly equaled that of the US as the largest economy in the world for a day, after the Japanese currency reached a record high of 79 yen/US$. Economic growth in Asia since World War II to the 1990s had been concentrated in Japan as well as the four regions of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore located in the Pacific Rim, known as the Asian tigers, which are now all considered developed economies, having amongst the highest GDP per capita in Asia.[89][79]

 
Mumbai is one of the most populous cities on the continent. The city is an infrastructure and tourism hub, and plays a crucial role in the economy of India.

Asia is the largest continent in the world by a considerable margin, and it is rich in natural resources, such as petroleum, forests, fish, water, rice, copper and silver. Manufacturing in Asia has traditionally been strongest in East and Southeast Asia, particularly in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India, the Philippines, and Singapore. Japan and South Korea continue to dominate in the area of multinational corporations, but increasingly the PRC and India are making significant inroads. Many companies from Europe, North America, South Korea and Japan have operations in Asia's developing countries to take advantage of its abundant supply of cheap labour and relatively developed infrastructure.[citation needed]

According to Citigroup in 2011, 9 of 11 Global Growth Generators countries came from Asia driven by population and income growth. They are Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mongolia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.[90] Asia has three main financial centers: Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. Call centers and business process outsourcing (BPOs) are becoming major employers in India and the Philippines due to the availability of a large pool of highly skilled, English-speaking workers. The increased use of outsourcing has assisted the rise of India and the China as financial centers. Due to its large and extremely competitive information technology industry, India has become a major hub for outsourcing.[citation needed]

Trade between Asian countries and countries on other continents is largely carried out on the sea routes that are important for Asia. Individual main routes have emerged from this. The main route leads from the Chinese coast south via Hanoi to Jakarta, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur through the Strait of Malacca via the Sri Lankan Colombo to the southern tip of India via Malé to East Africa Mombasa, from there to Djibouti, then through the Red Sea over the Suez Canal into Mediterranean, there via Haifa, Istanbul and Athens to the upper Adriatic to the northern Italian hub of Trieste with its rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe or further to Barcelona and around Spain and France to the European northern ports. A far smaller part of the goods traffic runs via South Africa to Europe. A particularly significant part of the Asian goods traffic is carried out across the Pacific towards Los Angeles and Long Beach. In contrast to the sea routes, the Silk Road via the land route to Europe is on the one hand still under construction and on the other hand is much smaller in terms of scope. Intra-Asian trade, including sea trade, is growing rapidly.[91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98]

In 2010, Asia had 3.3 million millionaires (people with net worth over US$1 million excluding their homes), slightly below North America with 3.4 million millionaires. Last year Asia had toppled Europe.[99] Citigroup in The Wealth Report 2012 stated that Asian centa-millionaire overtook North America's wealth for the first time as the world's "economic center of gravity" continued moving east. At the end of 2011, there were 18,000 Asian people mainly in Southeast Asia, China and Japan who have at least $100 million in disposable assets, while North America with 17,000 people and Western Europe with 14,000 people.[100]

Rank Country GDP (nominal, Peak Year)
millions of USD 		Peak Year
1   China 17,700,899 2023
2   Japan 4,230,862 2023
3   India 3,732,224 2023
4   Russia 1,862,470 2023
5   South Korea 1,709,232 2021
6   Indonesia 1,417,387 2023
7   Turkey 1,154,600 2023
8   Saudi Arabia 1,069,437 2023
9   Taiwan 751,930 2023
10   Israel 521,688 2023
Rank Country GDP (PPP, Peak Year)
millions of USD 		Peak Year
1   China 32,897,929 2023
2   India 13,119,622 2023
3   Japan 6,495,214 2023
4   Russia[101] 5,326,855 2022
5   Indonesia 4,393,370 2023
6   Turkey 3,613,540 2023
7   South Korea 2,924,189 2023
8   Saudi Arabia 2,246,535 2023
9   Egypt 1,809,425 2023
10   Iran 1,725,874 2023

Tourism

 
Wat Phra Kaew in the Grand Palace is among Bangkok's major tourist attractions.
See also the categories Tourism in Asia and Transport in Asia

With growing Regional Tourism with domination of Chinese visitors, MasterCard has released Global Destination Cities Index 2013 with 10 of 20 are dominated by Asia and Pacific Region Cities and also for the first time a city of a country from Asia (Bangkok) set in the top-ranked with 15.98 million international visitors.[102]

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Asia
See also: List of Asian countries by population and List of Asian countries by life expectancy
Historical populations
YearPop.±% p.a.
1500 243,000,000—    
1700 436,000,000+0.29%
1900 947,000,000+0.39%
1950 1,402,000,000+0.79%
1999 3,634,000,000+1.96%
20164,462,676,731+1.22%
Source: "UN report 2004 data" (PDF).
The figure for 2021 is provided by.the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects[2][3]
 
Graph showing population by continent as a percentage of world population (1750–2005)

East Asia had by far the strongest overall Human Development Index (HDI) improvement of any region in the world, nearly doubling average HDI attainment over the past 40 years, according to the report's analysis of health, education and income data. China, the second highest achiever in the world in terms of HDI improvement since 1970, is the only country on the "Top 10 Movers" list due to income rather than health or education achievements. Its per capita income increased a stunning 21-fold over the last four decades, also lifting hundreds of millions out of income poverty. Yet it was not among the region's top performers in improving school enrollment and life expectancy.[103]
Nepal, a South Asian country, emerges as one of the world's fastest movers since 1970 mainly due to health and education achievements. Its present life expectancy is 25 years longer than in the 1970s. More than four of every five children of school age in Nepal now attend primary school, compared to just one in five 40 years ago.[103]
Hong Kong ranked highest among the countries grouped on the HDI (number 7 in the world, which is in the "very high human development" category), followed by Singapore (9), Japan (19) and South Korea (22). Afghanistan (155) ranked lowest amongst Asian countries out of the 169 countries assessed.[103]

Languages

Main article: Languages of Asia

Asia is home to several language families and many language isolates. Most Asian countries have more than one language that is natively spoken. For instance, according to Ethnologue, more than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia, more than 400 languages spoken in India, and more than 100 are spoken in the Philippines. China has many languages and dialects in different provinces.

Religions

See also: Eastern philosophy, Religion in Asia, and List of Asian mythologies

Many of the world's major religions have their origins in Asia, including the five most practiced in the world (excluding irreligion), which are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion (classified as Confucianism and Taoism), and Buddhism respectively. Asian mythology is complex and diverse. The story of the Great Flood for example, as presented to Jews in the Hebrew Bible in the narrative of Noah—and later to Christians in the Old Testament, and to Muslims in the Quran—is earliest found in Mesopotamian mythology, in the Enûma Eliš and Epic of Gilgamesh. Hindu mythology similarly tells about an avatar of Vishnu in the form of a fish who warned Manu of a terrible flood. Ancient Chinese mythology also tells of a Great Flood spanning generations, one that required the combined efforts of emperors and divinities to control.

Abrahamic

See also: Christianity in Asia and Islam in Asia
 
The Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem
 
The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem
 
Pilgrims in the annual Hajj at the Kaabah in Mecca

The Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Druze faith,[104] and Baháʼí Faith originated in West Asia.[105][106]

Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths, is practiced primarily in Israel, the indigenous homeland and historical birthplace of the Hebrew nation: which today consists both of those Jews who remained in the Middle East and those who returned from diaspora in Europe, North America, and other regions;[107] though various diaspora communities persist worldwide. Jews are the predominant ethnic group in Israel (75.6%) numbering at about 6.1 million,[108] although the levels of adherence to Jewish religion vary. Outside of Israel there are small ancient Jewish communities in Turkey (17,400),[109] Azerbaijan (9,100),[110] Iran (8,756),[111] India (5,000) and Uzbekistan (4,000),[112] among many other places. In total, there are 14.4–17.5 million (2016, est.)[113] Jews alive in the world today, making them one of the smallest Asian minorities, at roughly 0.3 to 0.4 percent of the total population of the continent.

Christianity is a widespread religion in Asia with more than 286 million adherents according to Pew Research Center in 2010,[114] and nearly 364 million according to Britannica Book of the Year 2014.[115] Constituting around 12.6% of the total population of Asia. In the Philippines and East Timor, Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion;[116] it was introduced by the Spaniards and the Portuguese, respectively. In Armenia and Georgia, Eastern Orthodoxy is the predominant religion.[116] In the Middle East, such as in the Levant, Anatolia and Fars, Syriac Christianity (Church of the East) and Oriental Orthodoxy are prevalent minority denominations,[117] which are both Eastern Christian sects mainly adhered to Assyrian people or Syriac Christians. Vibrant indigenous minorities in West Asia are adhering to the Eastern Catholic Churches and Eastern Orthodoxy.[116] Saint Thomas Christians in India trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century.[118] Significant Christian communities also found in Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia.[116]

Islam, which originated in the Hejaz located in modern-day Saudi Arabia, is the second largest and most widely-spread religion in Asia with at least 1 billion Muslims constituting around 23.8% of the total population of Asia.[119] With 12.7% of the world Muslim population, the country currently with the largest Muslim population in the world is Indonesia, followed by Pakistan (11.5%), India (10%), Bangladesh, Iran and Turkey. Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem are the three holiest cities for Islam in all the world. The Hajj and Umrah attract large numbers of Muslim devotees from all over the world to Mecca and Medina. Iran is the largest Shi'a country.

The Druze Faith or Druzism originated in West Asia, is a monotheistic religion based on the teachings of figures like Hamza ibn-'Ali ibn-Ahmad and Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, and Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. The number of Druze people worldwide is around one million, with about 45% to 50% live in Syria, 35% to 40% live in Lebanon, and less than 10% live in Israel, with recently there has been a growing Druze diaspora.[120]

The Baháʼí Faith originated in Asia, in Iran (Persia), and spread from there to the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia, India, and Burma during the lifetime of Bahá'u'lláh. Since the middle of the 20th century, growth has particularly occurred in other Asian countries, because Baháʼí activities in many Muslim countries has been severely suppressed by authorities. Lotus Temple is a big Baháʼí Temple in India.

Indian and East Asian religions

 
The Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple in Delhi, according to the Guinness World Records, is the World's Largest Comprehensive Hindu Temple.[121]

Almost all Asian religions have philosophical character and Asian philosophical traditions cover a large spectrum of philosophical thoughts and writings. Indian philosophy includes Hindu philosophy and Buddhist philosophy. They include elements of nonmaterial pursuits, whereas another school of thought from India, Cārvāka, preached the enjoyment of the material world. The religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated in India, South Asia. In East Asia, particularly in China and Japan, Confucianism, Taoism and Zen Buddhism took shape.

As of 2012, Hinduism has around 1.1 billion adherents. The faith represents around 25% of Asia's population and is the largest religion in Asia. However, it is mostly concentrated in South Asia. Over 80% of the populations of both India and Nepal adhere to Hinduism, alongside significant communities in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bali, Indonesia. Many overseas Indians in countries such as Burma, Singapore and Malaysia also adhere to Hinduism.

 
The Hindu-Buddhist temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the largest religious monument in the world

Buddhism has a great following in mainland Southeast Asia and East Asia. Buddhism is the religion of the majority of the populations of Cambodia (96%),[122] Thailand (95%),[123] Burma (80–89%),[124] Japan (36–96%),[125] Bhutan (75–84%),[126] Sri Lanka (70%),[127] Laos (60–67%)[128] and Mongolia (53–93%).[129] Taiwan (35–93%),[130][131][132][133] South Korea (23–50%),[134] Malaysia (19–21%),[135] Nepal (9–11%),[136] Vietnam (10–75%),[137] China (20–50%),[138] North Korea (2–14%),[139][140][141] and small communities in India and Bangladesh. The Communist-governed countries of China, Vietnam and North Korea are officially atheist, thus the number of Buddhists and other religious adherents may be under-reported.

Jainism is found mainly in India and in overseas Indian communities such as the United States and Malaysia. Sikhism is found in Northern India and amongst overseas Indian communities in other parts of Asia, especially Southeast Asia. Confucianism is found predominantly in Mainland China, South Korea, Taiwan and in overseas Chinese populations. Taoism is found mainly in Mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. In many Chinese communities, Taoism is easily syncretized with Mahayana Buddhism, thus exact religious statistics are difficult to obtain and may be understated or overstated.

Modern conflicts

 
A refugee special train in Ambala, Punjab during the partition of India in 1947
 
US forces drop Napalm on suspected Viet Cong positions in 1965.
 
Wounded civilians arrive at a hospital in Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War, October 2012.
 
Demonstrations in Hong Kong against the Extradition bill began in March 2019 and turned into continuing mass movements, drawing around 2 million protesters by June

Some of the events pivotal in the Asia territory related to the relationship with the outside world in the post-Second World War were:

Culture

Main article: Culture of Asia

The culture of Asia is a diverse blend of customs and traditions that have been practiced by the various ethnic groups of the continent for centuries. The continent is divided into six geographic sub-regions: Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and West Asia.[142] These regions are defined by their cultural similarities, including common religions, languages, and ethnicities. West Asia, also known as Southwest Asia or the Middle East, has cultural roots in the ancient civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia, which gave rise to the Persian, Arab, Ottoman empires, as well as the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.[143] These civilizations, which are located in the Hilly flanks, are among the oldest in the world, with evidence of farming dating back to around 9000 BCE.[144] Despite the challenges posed by the vast size of the continent and the presence of natural barriers such as deserts and mountain ranges, trade and commerce have helped to create a Pan-Asian culture that is shared across the region.[145]

Nobel prizes

 
Indian polymath Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, and became Asia's first Nobel laureate.

The polymath Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet, dramatist, and writer from Santiniketan, now in West Bengal, India, became in 1913 the first Asian Nobel laureate. He won his Nobel Prize in Literature for notable impact his prose works and poetic thought had on English, French, and other national literatures of Europe and the Americas. He is also the writer of the national anthems of Bangladesh and India.

Other Asian writers who won Nobel Prize for literature include Yasunari Kawabata (Japan, 1968), Kenzaburō Ōe (Japan, 1994), Gao Xingjian (China, 2000), Orhan Pamuk (Turkey, 2006), and Mo Yan (China, 2012). Some may consider the American writer, Pearl S. Buck, an honorary Asian Nobel laureate, having spent considerable time in China as the daughter of missionaries, and based many of her novels, namely The Good Earth (1931) and The Mother (1933), as well as the biographies of her parents for their time in China, The Exile and Fighting Angel, all of which earned her the Literature prize in 1938.

Also, Mother Teresa of India and Shirin Ebadi of Iran were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights, especially for the rights of women and children. Ebadi is the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to receive the prize. Another Nobel Peace Prize winner is Aung San Suu Kyi from Burma for her peaceful and non-violent struggle under a military dictatorship in Burma. She is a nonviolent pro-democracy activist and leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma (Myanmar) and a noted prisoner of conscience. She is a Buddhist and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China" on 8 October 2010. He is the first Chinese citizen to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China. In 2014, Kailash Satyarthi from India and Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education".

Sir C.V. Raman is the first Asian to get a Nobel prize in Sciences. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him".

Japan has won the most Nobel Prizes of any Asian nation with 24 followed by India which has won 13.

Amartya Sen, (born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members.

Other Asian Nobel Prize winners include Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Abdus Salam, Malala Yousafzai, Robert Aumann, Menachem Begin, Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko, Daniel Kahneman, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Ada Yonath, Yasser Arafat, José Ramos-Horta and Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo of Timor Leste, Kim Dae-jung, and 13 Japanese scientists. Most of the said awardees are from Japan and Israel except for Chandrasekhar and Raman (India), Abdus Salam and Malala Yousafzai, (Pakistan), Arafat (Palestinian Territories), Kim (South Korea), and Horta and Belo (Timor Leste).

In 2006, Dr. Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the establishment of Grameen Bank, a community development bank that lends money to poor people, especially women in Bangladesh. Dr. Yunus received his PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University, United States. He is internationally known for the concept of micro credit which allows poor and destitute people with little or no collateral to borrow money. The borrowers typically pay back money within the specified period and the incidence of default is very low.

The Dalai Lama has received approximately eighty-four awards over his spiritual and political career.[146] On 22 June 2006, he became one of only four people ever to be recognized with Honorary Citizenship by the Governor General of Canada. On 28 May 2005, he received the Christmas Humphreys Award from the Buddhist Society in the United Kingdom. Most notable was the Nobel Peace Prize, presented in Oslo, Norway on 10 December 1989.

Political geography

Main article: Politics of Asia
See also: List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia
Symbol Flag Name Population[2][3]
(2021) 		Area
(km2) 		Capital
    Afghanistan 40,099,462 652,864 Kabul
    Armenia 2,790,974 29,743 Yerevan
    Azerbaijan[note 5] 10,312,992 86,600 Baku
    Bahrain 1,463,265 760 Manama
    Bangladesh 169,356,251 147,570 Dhaka
    Bhutan 777,486 38,394 Thimphu
    Brunei 445,373 5,765 Bandar Seri Begawan
    Cambodia 16,589,023 181,035 Phnom Penh
    China (PRC) 1,425,893,465 9,596,961 Beijing
    Cyprus 1,244,188 9,251 Nicosia
    East Timor 1,320,942 14,874 Dili
    Egypt[note 5] 109,262,178 1,001,449 Cairo
    Georgia[note 5] 3,757,980 69,700 Tbilisi
    India 1,407,563,842 3,287,263 New Delhi
    Indonesia[note 5] 273,753,191 1,904,569 Jakarta
    Iran 87,923,432 1,648,195 Tehran
    Iraq 43,533,592 438,317 Baghdad
    Israel 8,900,059 20,770 Jerusalem (disputed)
    Japan 124,612,530 377,915 Tokyo
    Jordan 11,148,278 89,342 Amman
    Kazakhstan[note 5] 19,196,465 2,724,900 Astana
    Kuwait 4,250,114 17,818 Kuwait City
    Kyrgyzstan 6,527,743 199,951 Bishkek
    Laos 7,425,057 236,800 Vientiane
  Lebanon 5,592,631 10,400 Beirut
    Malaysia 33,573,874 329,847 Kuala Lumpur
    Maldives 521,457 298 Malé
    Mongolia 3,347,782 1,564,116 Ulaanbaatar
    Myanmar 53,798,084 676,578 Naypyidaw
    Nepal 30,034,989 147,181 Kathmandu
    North Korea 25,971,909 120,538 Pyongyang
    Oman 4,520,471 309,500 Muscat
    Pakistan 211,103,000 881,913 Islamabad
    Palestine 5,133,392 6,220
    Philippines 113,880,328 343,448 Manila
    Qatar 2,688,235 11,586 Doha
    Russia[note 6] 145,102,755 17,098,242 Moscow[note 7]
    Saudi Arabia 35,950,396 2,149,690 Riyadh
    Singapore 5,941,060 697 Singapore
    South Korea 51,830,139 100,210 Seoul
    Sri Lanka 21,773,441 65,610 Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte
    Syria 21,324,367 185,180 Damascus
    Tajikistan 9,750,064 143,100 Dushanbe
    Thailand 71,601,103 513,120 Bangkok
  Turkey[note 8] 84,775,404 783,562 Ankara
    Turkmenistan 6,341,855 488,100 Ashgabat
    United Arab Emirates 9,365,145 83,600 Abu Dhabi
    Uzbekistan 34,081,449 447,400 Tashkent
    Vietnam 97,468,029 331,212 Hanoi
    Yemen 32,981,641 527,968
  • Sana'a (const.; SPCTooltip Supreme Political Council control)
  • Aden (prv. capital of PLCTooltip Presidential Leadership Council)

Within the above-mentioned states are several partially recognized countries with limited to no international recognition. None of them are members of the UN:

Symbol Flag Name Population
 Area
(km2) 		Capital
    Abkhazia 242,862 8,660 Sukhumi
    Artsakh[note 1] 146,573 11,458 Stepanakert
    Northern Cyprus 326,000 3,355 North Nicosia
    South Ossetia 51,547 3,900 Tskhinvali
    Taiwan (ROC) 23,859,912 36,193 Taipei

See also

Main articles: Outline of Asia and Index of Asia-related articles

References to articles:

Special topics:

Lists:

Projects

Notes

  1. ^ a b Artsakh has announced its intention to dissolve all state institutions and cease to exist by 1 January 2024.[8]
  2. ^ Asia is normally considered its own continent in the English speaking world, which uses the seven continent model.[9][10] Other models consider Asia as part of a Eurasian or Afro-Eurasian continent (see Continent#Number for more information).
  3. ^ 44,579,000 square kilometres (17,212,000 square miles)
  4. ^ Siberia lies in Asia geographically, but is considered a part of Europe culturally and politically.
  5. ^ a b c d e Transcontinental country
  6. ^ Russia is a transcontinental country located in Eastern Europe and North Asia, but is considered European historically, culturally, ethnically, and politically, and the vast majority of its population (78%) lives within its European part.
  7. ^ Moscow is located in Europe.
  8. ^ Turkey is a transcontinental country located mainly in West Asia with a smaller portion in Southeastern Europe.

References

  1. ^ National Geographic Family Reference Atlas of the World. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society (U.S.). 2006. p. 264.
  2. ^ a b c "World Population Prospects 2022". population.un.org. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Retrieved 17 July 2022.
  3. ^ a b c "World Population Prospects 2022: Demographic indicators by region, subregion and country, annually for 1950-2100" (XSLX). population.un.org ("Total Population, as of 1 July (thousands)"). United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Retrieved 17 July 2022.
  4. ^ "GDP PPP, current prices". International Monetary Fund. 2022. from the original on 22 January 2021. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  5. ^ "GDP Nominal, current prices". International Monetary Fund. 2022. from the original on 25 February 2017. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  6. ^ "Nominal GDP per capita". International Monetary Fund. 2022. from the original on 11 January 2020. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  7. ^ Johnson, Todd M.; Crossing, Peter F. (14 October 2022). "Religions by Continent". Journal of Religion and Demography. 9 (1–2): 91–110. doi:10.1163/2589742x-bja10013. ISSN 2589-7411.
  8. ^ Sauer, Pjotr (28 September 2023). "Nagorno-Karabakh's breakaway government says it will dissolve itself". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 September 2023.
  9. ^ "Asia noun". Oxford Learner's Dictionaries. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  10. ^ "Asia Definition & Meaning". Merriam Webster. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  11. ^ "Asia: The largest continent on Earth". BBC.
  12. ^ a b "Asia: Physical Geography | National Geographic Society". education.nationalgeographic.org. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  13. ^ "The World at Six Billion". UN Population Division. from the original on 5 March 2016., (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 January 2016.
  14. ^ "Asia Population 2022 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs)". worldpopulationreview.com. from the original on 21 February 2022. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
  15. ^ "Population of Asia. 2019 demographics: density, ratios, growth rate, clock, rate of men to women". populationof.net. from the original on 14 July 2019. Retrieved 2 June 2019.
  16. ^ a b National Geographic Atlas of the World (7th ed.). Washington, D.C.: National Geographic. 1999. ISBN 978-0-7922-7528-2. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and Europe is formed by the Ural Mountains, Ural River, Caspian Sea, Caucasus Mountains, and the Black Sea with its outlets, the Bosporus and Dardanelles."
  17. ^ Nalapat, M. D. . Archived from the original on 10 January 2010. Retrieved 22 January 2016.
  18. ^ a b Dahlman, Carl J; Aubert, Jean-Eric. China and the Knowledge Economy: Seizing the 21st century. WBI Development Studies. World Bank Publications. Accessed 30 January 2008. Eric.ed.gov. 2000. ISBN 978-0-8213-5005-8. from the original on 4 March 2008. Retrieved 1 June 2010.
  19. ^ "The Real Great Leap Forward". The Economist. 30 September 2004. from the original on 27 December 2016.
  20. ^ [1] 20 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  21. ^ "Like herrings in a barrel". The Economist. No. Millennium issue: Population. 23 December 1999. from the original on 4 January 2010.
  22. ^ "Suez Canal: 1250 to 1920: Middle East". Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, & Africa: An Encyclopedia. Sage Publications, Inc. 2012. doi:10.4135/9781452218458.n112. ISBN 978-1-4129-8176-7. S2CID 126449508.
  23. ^ Histories 4.38. C.f. James Rennell, The Geographical System of Herodotus Examined and Explained, Volume 1, Rivington 1830, p. 244
  24. ^ according to Strabo (Geographica 11.7.4) even at the time of Alexander, "it was agreed by all that the Tanais river separated Asia from Europe" (ὡμολόγητο ἐκ πάντων ὅτι διείργει τὴν Ἀσίαν ἀπὸ τῆς Εὐρώπης ὁ Τάναϊς ποταμός; c.f. Duane W. Roller, Eratosthenes' Geography, Princeton University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-691-14267-8, Eratosthenes (24 January 2010). p. 57. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14267-8. from the original on 26 March 2022. Retrieved 21 January 2020.)
  25. ^ W. Theiler, Posidonios. Die Fragmente, vol. 1. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982, fragm. 47a.
  26. ^ I. G. Kidd (ed.), Posidonius: The commentary, Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-60443-7, Posidonius (1989). p. 738. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-60443-7. from the original on 1 August 2020. Retrieved 21 January 2020.
  27. ^ Geographia 7.5.6 (ed. Nobbe 1845, Ptolomeo, Claudio (1845). "vol. 2". from the original on 24 May 2020. Retrieved 21 January 2020., p. 178) Καὶ τῇ Εὐρώπῃ δὲ συνάπτει διὰ τοῦ μεταξὺ αὐχένος τῆς τε Μαιώτιδος λίμνης καὶ τοῦ Σαρματικοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς διαβάσεως τοῦ Τανάϊδος ποταμοῦ. "And [Asia] is connected to Europe by the land-strait between Lake Maiotis and the Sarmatian Ocean where the river Tanais crosses through."
  28. ^ a b Lineback, Neal (9 July 2013). . National Geographic. Archived from the original on 8 May 2016. Retrieved 9 June 2016.
  29. ^ Lewis & Wigen 1997, pp. 27–28
  30. ^ Lewis & Wigen 1997, pp. 170–173
  31. ^ Danver, Steven L. (2015). Native Peoples of the World: An Encyclopedia of Groups, Cultures and Contemporary Issues. Taylor & Francis. p. 185. ISBN 978-1317464006. Retrieved 23 April 2022.
  32. ^ Wallace, Alfred Russel (1879). Australasia. The University of Michigan. p. 2. Retrieved 12 March 2022. Oceania is the word often used by continental geographers to describe the great world of islands we are now entering upon [...] This boundless watery domain, which extends northwards of Behring Straits and southward to the Antarctic barrier of ice, is studded with many island groups, which are, however, very irregularly distributed over its surface. The more northerly section, lying between Japan and California and between the Aleutian and Hawaiian Archipelagos is relived by nothing but a few solitary reefs and rocks at enormously distant intervals.
  33. ^ Kohlhoff, Dean (2002). Amchitka and the Bomb: Nuclear Testing in Alaska. University of Washington Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-0295800509. Retrieved 12 March 2022. The regional name of the Pacific Islands is appropriate: Oceania, a sea of islands, including those of Alaska and Hawaii. The Pacific Basin is not insignificant or remote. It covers one third of the globe's surface. Its northern boundary is the Aleutian Islands chain. Oceania virtually touches all of the Western Hemisphere.
  34. ^ Flick, Alexander Clarence (1926). Modern World History, 1776-1926: A Survey of the Origins and Development of Contemporary Civilization. A.A. Knopf. p. 492. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  35. ^ Henderson, John William (1971). Area Handbook for Oceania. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 5. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  36. ^ Lewis & Wigen 1997, pp. 7–9
  37. ^ . AccessScience. McGraw-Hill. Archived from the original on 27 November 2011. Retrieved 26 July 2011.
  38. ^ Schwartz, Benjamin (December 2008). "Geography Is Destiny". The Atlantic. from the original on 30 September 2009.
  39. ^ McMahon, Gregory (2011). "The Land and Peoples of Anatolia through Ancient Eyes". In Steadman, Sharon; McMahon, Gregory (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia. Oxford University Press. p. 21. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195376142.013.0002.
  40. ^ Bossert, Helmut T., Asia, Istanbul, 1946.
  41. ^ Rose, Charles Brian (2013). The Archaeology of Greek and Roman Troy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 108–109. ISBN 978-0-521-76207-6.
  42. ^ Ventris & Chadwick 1973, pp. 410, 536
  43. ^ Collins, Billie Jean; Bachvarova, Mary R.; Rutherford, Ian (28 March 2010). Anatolian Interfaces: Hittites, Greeks and their Neighbours. Oxbow Books. p. 120. ISBN 978-1-78297-475-8. assuwa pylos "aswia" = Linear B A-si-wi-ja
  44. ^ Book IV, Article 45.
  45. ^ "Asie". Encyclopedia: Greek Gods, Spirits, Monsters. Theoi Greek Mythology, Exploring Mythology in Classical Literature and Art. 2000–2011. from the original on 4 June 2010.
  46. ^ Μ95, Π717.
  47. ^ Β461.
  48. ^ Muhmmad al-Bukhari. Sahih Al-Bukhari Translated into English Prose by Muhammad Muhsin Khan. Hadith 7.329
  49. ^ Henry George Liddell; Robert Scott; Henry Stuart Jones; Roderick McKenzie (2007) [1940]. "Ἀσία". A Greek-English Lexicon. Medford: Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University. from the original on 27 April 2011.
  50. ^ "Asia – Origin and meaning of Asia by Online Etymology Dictionary". Etymonline.com. from the original on 25 May 2017. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
  51. ^ Silkroad Foundation, Adela C.Y. Lee. "Ancient Silk Road Travellers". Silk-road.com. from the original on 8 November 2017. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
  52. ^ Ping-ti Ho. "An Estimate of the Total Population of Sung-Chin China", in Études Song, Series 1, No 1, (1970). pp. 33–53.
  53. ^ "History – Black Death". BBC. 17 February 2011. from the original on 5 June 2012.
  54. ^ Sen, Sailendra Nath (2010). An Advanced History of Modern India. Macmillan India. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-230-32885-3. from the original on 22 April 2020.
  55. ^ "How India's Economy Will Overtake the U.S.'s". Time. 28 July 2023. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  56. ^ Sullivan, Dylan; Hickel, Jason. "How British colonialism killed 100 million Indians in 40 years". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 4 September 2023.
  57. ^ Yakoubi, Myriam (4 January 2022). "The French, the British and their Middle Eastern Mandates (1918-1939): Two Political Strategies". Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique. French Journal of British Studies. XXVII (1). doi:10.4000/rfcb.8787. ISSN 0248-9015. S2CID 246524226.
  58. ^ "Southeast Asia, 1800–1900 A.D. | Chronology | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art". The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  59. ^ "Milestones: 1830–1860 - Office of the Historian". history.state.gov. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  60. ^ "Opinion | For China, the history that matters is its 'century of humiliation'". South China Morning Post. 28 September 2021. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  61. ^ "Introduction: Race and Empire in Meiji Japan". The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  62. ^ Huffman, James L. (2019). The Rise and Evolution of Meiji Japan. Amsterdam University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctvzgb64z. ISBN 978-1-898823-94-0. JSTOR j.ctvzgb64z. S2CID 216630259.
  63. ^ "Global war's colonial consequences". academic.oup.com. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  64. ^ Dalrymple, William (22 June 2015). "The Mutual Genocide of Indian Partition". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  65. ^ "Oil Discovered in Saudi Arabia". education.nationalgeographic.org. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  66. ^ "Economic Issues 1 -- Growth in East Asia". imf.org. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  67. ^ Saul, Derek. "China And India Will Overtake U.S. Economically By 2075, Goldman Sachs Economists Say". Forbes. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  68. ^ "25 years of liberalisation: A glimpse of India's growth in 14 charts-Business News". Firstpost. 7 July 2016. Retrieved 4 September 2023.
  69. ^ Kumar, Manoj (17 July 2023). "One-tenth of India's population escaped poverty in 5 years - government report". Reuters. Retrieved 4 September 2023.
  70. ^ "A Map of the Countries between Constantinople and Calcutta: Including Turkey in Asia, Persia, Afghanistan and Turkestan". Wdl.org. 1885. from the original on 17 October 2017. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
  71. ^ "Asia". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 2006. from the original on 18 November 2008.
  72. ^ "Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use (M49 Standard)". UN Statistica Division. from the original on 30 August 2017. Retrieved 2 May 2020. "Geographic Regions" anklicken Zitat: "The assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories by the United Nations."
  73. ^ Beck, Hylke E.; Zimmermann, Niklaus E.; McVicar, Tim R.; Vergopolan, Noemi; Berg, Alexis; Wood, Eric F. (30 October 2018). "Present and future Köppen-Geiger climate classification maps at 1-km resolution". Scientific Data. 5: 180214. Bibcode:2018NatSD...580214B. doi:10.1038/sdata.2018.214. PMC 6207062. PMID 30375988.
  74. ^ "Asia tops climate change's 'most vulnerable' list". New Scientist. from the original on 13 April 2021. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
  75. ^ "Which countries are most threatened by and vulnerable to climate change?". Iberdrola. from the original on 27 November 2020. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
  76. ^ "Global Climate Risk Index 2020 – World". ReliefWeb. 5 December 2019. from the original on 27 November 2020. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
  77. ^ Vulnerability to Climate Change: Adaptation Strategies and layers of Resilience 26 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine, ICRISAT, Policy Brief No. 23, February 2013
  78. ^ Overland, Indra; Sagbakken, Haakon Fossum; Chan, Hoy-Yen; Merdekawati, Monika; Suryadi, Beni; Utama, Nuki Agya; Vakulchuk, Roman (December 2021). "The ASEAN climate and energy paradox". Energy and Climate Change. 2: 100019. doi:10.1016/j.egycc.2020.100019. hdl:11250/2734506.
  79. ^ a b c d International Monetary Fund. "World Economic Outlook Database, April 2023". International Monetary Fund.
  80. ^ "Largest_Economies_in_Asia". Aneki.com. from the original on 30 July 2022. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
  81. ^ . CFO innovation ASIA. Archived from the original on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 21 July 2011.
  82. ^ Farah, Paolo Davide (4 August 2006), Five Years of China WTO Membership: EU and US Perspectives About China's Compliance With Transparency Commitments and the Transitional Review Mechanism, SSRN 916768
  83. ^ Maddison, Angus (20 September 2007). Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-164758-1. from the original on 24 September 2020. Retrieved 30 May 2021.
  84. ^ Angus, Maddison (2003). Development Centre Studies the World Economy Historical Statistics: Historical Statistics. OECD. ISBN 978-9264104143. from the original on 14 April 2021. Retrieved 30 May 2021.
  85. ^ Bairoch, Paul (1995). Economics and world history : Myths and paradoxes. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-03463-8.
  86. ^ "Table B–18. World GDP, 20 Countries and Regional Totals, 0–1998 A.D." (PDF). theworldeconomy.org. (PDF) from the original on 22 July 2013. Retrieved 20 September 2021.
  87. ^ Professor M.D. Nalapat (11 September 2001). . Bharat-rakshak.com. Archived from the original on 10 January 2010. Retrieved 1 June 2010.
  88. ^ "The Real Great Leap Forward". The Economist. 30 September 2004. from the original on 27 December 2016. Retrieved 1 June 2010.
  89. ^ . emergingdragon.com. Archived from the original on 22 April 2010. Retrieved 1 June 2010.
  90. ^ . sme.com.ph. 24 February 2011. Archived from the original on 24 April 2011. Retrieved 1 March 2011.
  91. ^ "Estimated containerized cargo flows on major container trade routes in 2020, by trade route". from the original on 9 January 2021. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
  92. ^ "Global Marine Trends 2030 Report" (PDF). (PDF) from the original on 12 April 2021. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
  93. ^ "Maritime Trade". from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
  94. ^ Harry G. Broadman "Afrika's Silk Road" (2007), pp 59.
  95. ^ Harry de Wilt: Is One Belt, One Road a China crisis for North Sea main ports? in World Cargo News, 17. December 2019.
  96. ^ Bernhard Simon: Can The New Silk Road Compete With The Maritime Silk Road? in The Maritime Executive, 1 January 2020.
  97. ^ Jean-Marc F. Blanchard "China's Maritime Silk Road Initiative and South Asia" (2018).
  98. ^ "INTRA-ASIA". from the original on 26 January 2021. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
  99. ^ . Toronto. Archived from the original on 25 June 2011.
  100. ^ Vallikappen, Sanat (28 March 2012). "Citigroup Study Shows Asian Rich Topping North American". Bloomberg L.P. from the original on 14 January 2015.
  101. ^ World Bank's GDP (PPP) Data for Russia
  102. ^ . Italianavenue.com. 28 May 2013. Archived from the original on 17 October 2017. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
  103. ^ a b c "2010 Human Development Report: Asian countries lead development progress over 40 years" (PDF). UNDP. (PDF) from the original on 21 November 2010. Retrieved 22 December 2010.
  104. ^ Obeid, Anis (2006). The Druze & Their Faith in Tawhid. Syracuse University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-8156-5257-1.
  105. ^ MacQueen, Benjamin (2013). An Introduction to Middle East Politics: Continuity, Change, Conflict and Co-operation. SAGE. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-4462-8976-1. The Middle East is the cradle of the three monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
  106. ^ Takacs, Sarolta (2015). The Modern World: Civilizations of Africa, Civilizations of Europe, Civilizations of the Americas, Civilizations of the Middle East and Southwest Asia, Civilizations of Asia and the Pacific. Routledge. p. 552. ISBN 978-1-317-45572-1.
  107. ^ "The Jewish Population of the World". Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. from the original on 21 June 2010. Retrieved 1 June 2010.
  108. ^ Ettinger, Yoram (5 April 2013). "Defying demographic projections". Israel Hayom. from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 29 October 2013.
  109. ^ "Turkey Virtual Jewish History Tour | Jewish Virtual Library". jewishvirtuallibrary.org. from the original on 11 October 2014. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
  110. ^ "Ethnic composition of Azerbaijan 2009". Pop-stat.mashke.org. 7 April 1971. from the original on 7 February 2012. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
  111. ^ "Jewish woman brutally murdered in Iran over property dispute". The Times of Israel. 28 November 2012. from the original on 19 August 2014. Retrieved 16 August 2014. A government census published earlier this year indicated there were a mere 8,756 Jews left in Iran See Persian Jews#Iran
  112. ^ (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 March 2009. Retrieved 18 July 2015., American Jewish Yearbook, vol. 107 (2007), p. 592.
  113. ^ "World Jewish Population 2016 (DellaPergola, AJYB) | Berman Jewish DataBank". jewishdatabank.org. from the original on 30 September 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
  114. ^ "Christians". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. 18 December 2012. from the original on 10 March 2015. Retrieved 13 March 2015.
  115. ^ Britannica Book of the Year 2014. Encyclopedia Britannica. 2014. ISBN 978-1-62513-171-3. from the original on 29 April 2016. Retrieved 13 March 2015.
  116. ^ a b c d "Global Christianity – A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population" (PDF). Pew Research Center. (PDF) from the original on 9 August 2021. Retrieved 16 February 2022.
  117. ^ Hindson, Edward E.; Mitchell, Daniel R. (1 August 2013). The Popular Encyclopedia of Church History. Harvest House Publishers. p. 225. ISBN 978-0-7369-4807-4.
  118. ^ The Encyclopedia of Christianity, Volume 5 by Erwin Fahlbusch. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. 2008, p. 285. ISBN 978-0-8028-2417-2.
  119. ^ "Region: Asia-Pacific". Pewforum.org. 27 January 2011. from the original on 10 October 2017. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
  120. ^ C. Held, Colbert (2008). Middle East Patterns: Places, People, and Politics. Routledge. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-429-96200-4. Worldwide, they number 1 million or so, with about 45 to 50 percent in Syria, 35 to 40 percent in Lebanon, and less than 10 percent in Israel. Recently there has been a growing Druze diaspora.
  121. ^ Jha, Preeti (26 December 2007). . The Indian Express. Archived from the original on 28 December 2007. Retrieved 2 January 2008.
  122. ^ "Cambodia". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 20 December 2010. (Archived 2010 edition)
  123. ^ "Thailand". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 20 December 2010. (Archived 2010 edition)
  124. ^ "burma". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 20 December 2010. (Archived 2010 edition)
  125. ^ "Japan". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 20 December 2010. (Archived 2010 edition)
  126. ^ "Bhutan". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 20 December 2010. (Archived 2010 edition)
  127. ^ "The Census of Population and Housing of Sri Lanka-2011". Department of Census and Statistics. from the original on 24 July 2013. Retrieved 29 July 2013.
  128. ^ "Laos". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 20 December 2010. (Archived 2010 edition)
  129. ^ "Mongolia". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 20 December 2010. (Archived 2010 edition)
  130. ^ "Taiwan". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 20 December 2010. (Archived 2010 edition)
  131. ^ "China (includes Taiwan only): International Religious Freedom Report 2005". US Department of State: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. 8 November 2005. from the original on 26 December 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2008.
  132. ^ "China (includes Taiwan only): International Religious Freedom Report 2006". US Department of State: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. 15 September 2006. from the original on 17 September 2020. Retrieved 24 February 2008.
  133. ^ "China (includes Taiwan only): International Religious Freedom Report 2007". US Department of State: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. 15 September 2006. from the original on 25 June 2020. Retrieved 24 February 2008.
  134. ^ "South Korea". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 20 December 2010. (Archived 2010 edition)
  135. ^ "Malaysia". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 20 December 2010. (Archived 2010 edition)
  136. ^ "Nepal". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 20 December 2010. (Archived 2010 edition)
  137. ^ "vietnam". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 20 December 2010. (Archived 2010 edition)
  138. ^ "Chinese Han Nationality: Language, Religion, Customs". Travelchinaguide.com. from the original on 17 October 2017. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
  139. ^ "Culture of North Korea – Alternative name, History and ethnic relations". Countries and Their Cultures. Advameg Inc. from the original on 5 August 2009. Retrieved 4 July 2009.
  140. ^ "North Korea". The World Factbook (2023 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 9 November 2017. (Archived 2017 edition)
  141. ^ Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (2009). "Background Note: North Korea". U.S. State Department. from the original on 18 August 2020. Retrieved 4 July 2009.
  142. ^ "Geographic Regions". United Nations. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  143. ^ Collon, Dominique. "BBC - History - Ancient History in depth: Mesopotamia". Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  144. ^ Morris, Ian (2011). Why the West rules - for now : the patterns of history, and what they reveal about the future. Profile. ISBN 978-1846682087. OCLC 751789199.
  145. ^ Lockard, Craig A. (19 June 2014). Societies, Networks, and Transitions, Volume I: To 1500: A Global History. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-1285783086. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  146. ^ His Holiness's Teachings at TCV. "A Brief Biography – The Office of His Holiness The Dalai Lama". Dalailama.com. from the original on 25 May 2010. Retrieved 1 June 2010.

Bibliography

  • Lewis, Martin W.; Wigen, Kären (1997). The myth of continents: a critique of metageography. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-20743-1.
  • Ventris, Michael; Chadwick, John (1973). Documents in Mycenaean Greek (2nd ed.). Cambridge: University Press.

Further reading

  • Embree, Ainslie T., ed. Encyclopedia of Asian history (1988)
    • vol. 1 online; vol 2 online; vol 3 online; vol 4 online
  • Higham, Charles. Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations. Facts on File library of world history. New York: Facts On File, 2004.
  • Kamal, Niraj. "Arise Asia: Respond to White Peril". New Delhi: Wordsmith, 2002, ISBN 978-81-87412-08-3
  • Kapadia, Feroz, and Mandira Mukherjee. Encyclopaedia of Asian Culture and Society. New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1999.
  • Levinson, David, and Karen Christensen, eds. Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. (6 vol. Charles Scribner's Sons, 2002).

External links

  • Asia web resources provided by GovPubs at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries
  • Asia at the Encyclopædia Britannica
  • Asia: Human Geography at the National Geographic Society
  • Asia at Curlie
  • Asian Reading Room from the United States Library of Congress
  • "Asia" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 2 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 320–358.
  • . The Soil Maps of Asia. European Digital Archive of Soil Maps – EuDASM. Archived from the original on 12 August 2011. Retrieved 26 July 2011.
  • "Asia Maps". Perry–Castañeda Library Map Collection. University of Texas Libraries. from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 20 July 2011.
  • . Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library. Archived from the original on 29 September 2011. Retrieved 26 July 2011.
  • Bowring, Philip (12 February 1987). . Eastern Economic Review. 135 (7). Archived from the original on 28 July 2011. Retrieved 22 April 2009.

November 15, 2023
asia, this, article, about, continent, other, uses, disambiguation, zhə, also, shə, largest, continent, note, world, both, land, area, population, covers, area, more, than, million, square, kilometers, note, about, earth, total, land, area, earth, total, surfa. This article is about the continent For other uses see Asia disambiguation Asia ˈ eɪ ʒ e AY zhe UK also ˈ eɪ ʃ e AY she is the largest continent note 2 11 12 in the world by both land area and population 12 It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometers note 3 about 30 of Earth s total land area and 8 of Earth s total surface area The continent which has long been home to the majority of the human population 13 was the site of many of the first civilizations Its 4 7 billion people 14 constitute roughly 60 of the world s population having more people than all other continents combined 15 AsiaArea44 579 000 km2 17 212 000 sq mi 1st 1 Population4 694 576 167 2021 1st 2 3 Population density100 km2 260 sq mi GDP PPP 72 7 trillion 2022 est 1st 4 GDP nominal 39 trillion 2022 est 1st 5 GDP per capita 8 890 2022 est 4th 6 ReligionsIslam 28 0 Hinduism 22 8 No religion 13 9 Buddhism 11 1 Chinese folk religion 9 7 Christianity 8 4 Ethnic religions 3 5 New religions 1 3 Others 1 3 7 DemonymAsianCountries49 UN members1 UN observer5 other statesDependenciesList Akrotiri and Dhekelia British Indian Ocean Territory Christmas Island Cocos Keeling Islands Hong Kong MacauNon UN statesList Abkhazia Artsakh note 1 Northern Cyprus Palestine South Ossetia TaiwanLanguagesList of languagesTime zonesUTC 02 00 to UTC 12 00Internet TLD asiaLargest citiesList of metropolitan areas Lists of citiesUN M49 code142 Asia001 WorldMap of the most populous part of Asia showing physical political and population characteristics as per 2018Asia shares the landmass of Eurasia with Europe and of Afro Eurasia with both Europe and Africa In general terms it is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Arctic Ocean The border of Asia with Europe is a historical and cultural construct as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them It is somewhat arbitrary and has moved since its first conception in classical antiquity The division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East West cultural linguistic and ethnic differences some of which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line A commonly accepted division places Asia to the east of the Suez Canal separating it from Africa and to the east of the Turkish Straits the Ural Mountains and Ural River and to the south of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian and Black seas separating it from Europe 16 China and India alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1 800 CE China was a major economic power and attracted many to the east 17 18 19 and for many the legendary wealth and prosperity of the ancient culture of India personified Asia 20 attracting European commerce exploration and colonialism The accidental discovery of a trans Atlantic route from Europe to America by Columbus while in search for a route to India demonstrates this deep fascination The Silk Road became the main east west trading route in the Asian hinterlands while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route Asia has exhibited economic dynamism particularly East Asia as well as robust population growth during the 20th century but overall population growth has since fallen 21 Asia was the birthplace of most of the world s mainstream religions including Hinduism Zoroastrianism Judaism Jainism Buddhism Confucianism Taoism Christianity Islam Sikhism as well as many other religions Given its size and diversity the concept of Asia a name dating back to classical antiquity may actually have more to do with human geography than physical geography citation needed Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups cultures environments economics historical ties and government systems It also has a mix of many different climates ranging from the equatorial south via the hot desert in the Middle East temperate areas in the east and the continental centre to vast subarctic and polar areas in Siberia Contents 1 Definition and boundaries 1 1 Asia Africa boundary 1 2 Asia Europe boundary 1 3 Asia Oceania boundary 1 4 Asia North America boundary 1 5 Ongoing definition 2 Etymology 3 History 4 Geography 4 1 Main regions 4 2 Climate 4 2 1 Climate change 5 Economy 6 Tourism 7 Demographics 7 1 Languages 7 2 Religions 7 2 1 Abrahamic 7 2 2 Indian and East Asian religions 8 Modern conflicts 9 Culture 9 1 Nobel prizes 10 Political geography 11 See also 12 Notes 13 References 14 Bibliography 15 Further reading 16 External linksDefinition and boundariesFurther information on Asian borders Geography of Asia Boundary Boundaries between continents List of transcontinental countries Asia and Europe and Copenhagen criteria Asia Africa boundary The boundary between Asia and Africa is the Red Sea the Gulf of Suez and the Suez Canal 22 This makes Egypt a transcontinental country with the Sinai peninsula in Asia and the remainder of the country in Africa Asia Europe boundary nbsp Definitions used for the boundary between Europe and Asia in different countries around the worldThe threefold division of the Old World into Europe Asia and Africa has been in use since the 6th century BCE due to Greek geographers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus citation needed Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River the modern Rioni river in Georgia of Caucasus from its mouth by Poti on the Black Sea coast through the Surami Pass and along the Kura River to the Caspian Sea a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE 23 During the Hellenistic period 24 this convention was revised and the boundary between Europe and Asia was now considered to be the Tanais the modern Don River This is the convention used by Roman era authors such as Posidonius 25 Strabo 26 and Ptolemy 27 The border between Asia and Europe was historically defined by European academics 28 The Don River became unsatisfactory to northern Europeans when Peter the Great king of the Tsardom of Russia defeating rival claims of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire to the eastern lands and armed resistance by the tribes of Siberia synthesized a new Russian Empire extending to the Ural Mountains and beyond founded in 1721 citation needed In Sweden five years after Peter s death in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Ural Mountains as the border of Asia Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg The latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid 19th century The border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects 29 The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains although it is sometimes placed further north 28 Asia Oceania boundary The border between Asia and the region of Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Indonesia Archipelago The Maluku Islands are often considered to lie on the border of southeast Asia with Indonesian New Guinea to the east of the islands being wholly part of Oceania The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania devised in the 19th century have had several vastly different geographic meanings since their inception The chief factor in determining which islands of the Indonesian Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the colonial possessions of the various empires there not all European Lewis and Wigen assert The narrowing of Southeast Asia to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process 30 Asia North America boundary The Bering Strait and Bering Sea separate the landmasses of Asia and North America as well as forming the international boundary between Russia and the United States This national and continental boundary separates the Diomede Islands in the Bering Strait with Big Diomede in Russia and Little Diomede in the United States The Aleutian Islands are an island chain extending westward from the Alaskan Peninsula toward Russia s Komandorski Islands and Kamchatka Peninsula Most of them are always associated with North America except for the westernmost Near Islands group which is on Asia s continental shelf beyond the North Aleutians Basin and on rare occasions could be associated with Asia which could then allow the U S state of Alaska as well as the United States itself to be considered a transcontinental state The Aleutian Islands are sometimes associated with Oceania owing to their status as remote Pacific islands and their proximity to the Pacific Plate 31 32 33 This is extremely rare however due to their non tropical biogeography as well as their inhabitants who have historically been related to Indigenous Americans 34 35 St Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea belongs to Alaska and may be associated with either continent but is almost always considered part of North America as with the Rat Islands in the Aleutian chain At their nearest points Alaska and Russia are separated by only 4 kilometres 2 5 miles Ongoing definition nbsp Afro Eurasia shown in greenGeographical Asia is a cultural artifact of European conceptions of the world beginning with the Ancient Greeks being imposed onto other cultures an imprecise concept causing endemic contention about what it means Asia does not exactly correspond to the cultural borders of its various types of constituents 36 From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three continent system Europe Africa Asia on the grounds that there is no substantial physical separation between them 37 For example Sir Barry Cunliffe the emeritus professor of European archeology at Oxford argues that Europe has been geographically and culturally merely the western excrescence of the continent of Asia 38 Geographically Asia is the major eastern constituent of the continent of Eurasia with Europe being a northwestern peninsula of the landmass Asia Europe and Africa make up a single continuous landmass Afro Eurasia except for the Suez Canal and share a common continental shelf Almost all of Europe and a major part of Asia sit atop the Eurasian Plate adjoined on the south by the Arabian and Indian Plate and with the easternmost part of Siberia east of the Chersky Range on the North American Plate Etymology nbsp Ptolemy s AsiaThe term Asia is believed to originate in the Bronze Age placename Assuwa Hittite 𒀸𒋗𒉿 romanized as su wa which originally referred only to a portion of northwestern Anatolia The term appears in Hittite records recounting how a confederation of Assuwan states including Troy unsuccessfully rebelled against the Hittite king Tudhaliya I around 1400 BCE 39 40 41 Roughly contemporary Linear B documents contain the term asiwia Mycenaean Greek 𐀀𐀯𐀹𐀊 romanized a si wi ja seemingly in reference to captives from the same area 42 43 nbsp The province of Asia highlighted in red within the Roman EmpireHerodotus used the term Ἀsia in reference to Anatolia and the territory of the Persian Empire in contrast to Greece and Egypt He reports that Greeks assumed that Asia was named after the wife of Prometheus but that Lydians say it was named after Asies son of Cotys who passed the name on to a tribe at Sardis 44 In Greek mythology Asia Ἀsia or Asie Ἀsih was the name of a Nymph or Titan goddess of Lydia 45 The Iliad attributed by the ancient Greeks to Homer mentions two Phrygians in the Trojan War named Asios an adjective meaning Asian 46 and also a marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia as asios 47 According to many Muslims the term came from Ancient Egypt s Queen Asiya the adoptive mother of Moses 48 The term was later adopted by the Romans who used it in reference to the province of Asia located in western Anatolia 49 One of the first writers to use Asia as a name of the whole continent was Pliny 50 In languages of the Chinese character cultural sphere words related to the character 亜細亜 Yaxiya are used This has been criticized as implying an inferiority of the continent as 亜 means inferior However it is a mere phonetic representation HistoryMain article History of Asia nbsp The Silk Road connected civilizations across Asia 51 nbsp The Mongol Empire at its greatest extent The gray area is the later Timurid Empire The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions East Asia South Asia Southeast Asia and the Middle East West Asia linked by the interior mass of the Central Asian steppes The coastal periphery was home to some of the world s earliest known civilizations each of them developing around fertile river valleys The civilizations in Mesopotamia the Indus Valley and the Yellow River shared many similarities These civilizations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel Other innovations such as writing seem to have been developed individually in each area Cities states and empires developed in these lowlands The central steppe region had long been inhabited by horse mounted nomads who could reach all areas of Asia from the steppes The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo Europeans who spread their languages into the Middle East South Asia and the borders of China where the Tocharians resided The northernmost part of Asia including much of Siberia was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads owing to the dense forests climate and tundra These areas remained very sparsely populated The center and the peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karakum and Gobi deserts formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could cross only with difficulty While the urban city dwellers were more advanced technologically and socially in many cases they could do little in a military aspect to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe However the lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large horsebound force for this and other reasons the nomads who conquered states in China India and the Middle East often found themselves adapting to the local more affluent societies The Islamic Caliphate s defeats of the Byzantine and Persian empires led to West Asia and southern parts of Central Asia and western parts of South Asia under its control during its conquests of the 7th century The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of Asia in the 13th century an area extending from China to Europe Before the Mongol invasion Song dynasty reportedly had approximately 120 million citizens the 1300 census which followed the invasion reported roughly 60 million people 52 The Black Death one of the most devastating pandemics in human history is thought to have originated in the arid plains of central Asia where it then travelled along the Silk Road 53 The Russian Empire began to expand into Asia from the 17th century and would eventually take control of all of Siberia and most of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century The Ottoman Empire controlled Anatolia most of the Middle East North Africa and the Balkans from the mid 16th century onwards In the 17th century the Manchu conquered China and established the Qing dynasty The Islamic Mughal Empire and the Hindu Maratha Empire controlled much of India in the 16th and 18th centuries respectively 54 Western European colonisation of Asia coincided with the Industrial Revolution in the West and the dethroning of India and China as the world s foremost economies 55 The British Empire became dominant in South Asia with large parts of the region first being conquered by British traders before falling under direct British rule extreme poverty doubled to over 50 during this era 56 The Middle East was contested and partitioned by the British and French 57 while Southeast Asia was carved up between the British Dutch and French 58 Various Western powers dominated China in what later became known as the century of humiliation with the British supported opium trade and later Opium Wars resulting in China being forced into an unprecedented situation of importing more than it exported 59 60 Foreign domination of China was furthered by the Empire of Japan which controlled most of East Asia and much of Southeast Asia New Guinea and the Pacific islands during this era Japan s domination was enabled by its rapid rise that had taken place during the Meiji era of the late 19th century in which it applied industrial knowledge learned from the West and thus overtook the rest of Asia 61 62 With the end of World War II in 1945 and the wartime ruination of Europe and imperial Japan many countries in Asia were able to rapidly free themselves of colonial rule 63 The independence of India came along with the carving out of a separate nation for the majority of Indian Muslims which today has become the countries Pakistan and Bangladesh 64 Some Arab countries took economic advantage of massive oil deposits that were discovered in their territory becoming globally influential 65 East Asian nations along with Singapore in Southeast Asia became economically prosperous with high growth tiger economies 66 with China regaining its place among the top two economies of the world by the 21st century 67 India has grown significantly because of economic liberalisation that started in the 1990s 68 with extreme poverty now below 20 69 nbsp The threefold division of the Old World into Europe Asia and Africa has been in use since the 6th century BCE due to Greek geographers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus nbsp 1825 map of Asia by Sidney Edwards Morse nbsp Map of western southern and central Asia in 1885 70 nbsp The map of Asia in 1796 which also included the continent of Australia then known as New Holland nbsp 1890 map of AsiaGeographyMain article Geography of Asia See also Category Biota of Asia nbsp The Himalayan range is home to some of the planet s highest peaks Asia is the largest continent on Earth It covers 9 of the Earth s total surface area or 30 of its land area and has the longest coastline at 62 800 kilometres 39 022 mi Asia is generally defined as comprising the eastern four fifths of Eurasia It is located to the east of the Suez Canal and the Ural Mountains and south of the Caucasus Mountains or the Kuma Manych Depression and the Caspian and Black Seas 16 71 It is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Arctic Ocean Asia is subdivided into 49 countries five of them Georgia Azerbaijan Russia Kazakhstan and Turkey are transcontinental countries lying partly in Europe Geographically Russia is partly in Asia but is considered a European nation both culturally and politically The Gobi Desert is in Mongolia and the Arabian Desert stretches across much of the Middle East The Yangtze River in China is the longest river in the continent The Himalayas between Nepal and China is the tallest mountain range in the world Tropical rainforests stretch across much of southern Asia and coniferous and deciduous forests lie farther north nbsp Siberian tundra nbsp Rainforest in Borneo nbsp Kerala backwaters nbsp Mongolian steppe nbsp South China Karst nbsp Taman Negara Peninsular Malaysia nbsp Altai Mountains nbsp Hunza Valley nbsp Atolls of the Maldives nbsp Wadi Rum in JordanMain regions nbsp Division of Asia into regions by the UNSD North Asia Central Asia West Asia Near East South Asia East Asia Far East Southeast AsiaThere are various approaches to the regional division of Asia The following subdivision into regions is used among others by the UN statistics agency UNSD This division of Asia into regions by the United Nations is done solely for statistical reasons and does not imply any assumption about political or other affiliations of countries and territories 72 North Asia Siberia note 4 Central Asia The stans West Asia The Middle East or Near East and the Caucasus South Asia Indian subcontinent East Asia Far East Southeast Asia East Indies and Indochina Climate Main article Climate of Asia nbsp Koppen Geiger climate classification map for Asia 73 Asia has extremely diverse climate features Climates range from arctic and subarctic in Siberia to tropical in southern India and Southeast Asia It is moist across southeast sections and dry across much of the interior Some of the largest daily temperature ranges on Earth occur in western sections of Asia The monsoon circulation dominates across southern and eastern sections due to the presence of the Himalayas forcing the formation of a thermal low which draws in moisture during the summer Southwestern sections of the continent are hot Siberia is one of the coldest places in the Northern Hemisphere and can act as a source of arctic air masses for North America The most active place on Earth for tropical cyclone activity lies northeast of the Philippines and south of Japan Climate change Main articles Climate change in South Asia Climate change in Southeast Asia Climate change in Central Asia Climate change in East Asia and Climate change in North Asia Further information Category Climate change in Asia Climate change is having major impacts on many countries in the continent A survey carried out in 2010 by global risk analysis farm Maplecroft identified 16 countries that are extremely vulnerable to climate change Each nation s vulnerability was calculated using 42 socio economic and environmental indicators which identified the likely climate change impacts during the next 30 years The Asian countries of Bangladesh India the Philippines Vietnam Thailand Pakistan China and Sri Lanka were among the 16 countries facing extreme risk from climate change 74 75 76 Some shifts are already occurring For example in tropical parts of India with a semi arid climate the temperature increased by 0 4 C between 1901 and 2003 A 2013 study by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics ICRISAT aimed to find science based pro poor approaches and techniques that would enable Asia s agricultural systems to cope with climate change while benefitting poor and vulnerable farmers The study s recommendations ranged from improving the use of climate information in local planning and strengthening weather based agro advisory services to stimulating diversification of rural household incomes and providing incentives to farmers to adopt natural resource conservation measures to enhance forest cover replenish groundwater and use renewable energy 77 The ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN Brunei Cambodia Indonesia Laos Malaysia Myanmar the Philippines Singapore Thailand and Vietnam are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the world however ASEAN s climate mitigation efforts are not commensurate with the climate threats and risks it faces 78 EconomyMain articles Economy of Asia List of Asian countries by GDP List of countries in Asia Pacific by GDP nominal and List of Asian and Pacific countries by GDP PPP nbsp Singapore has one of the busiest container ports in the world and is the world s fourth largest foreign exchange trading center Asia has the largest continental economy in the world by both GDP nominal and PPP values and is the fastest growing economic region 79 As of 2023 update China is by far the largest economy on the continent making up nearly half of the continent s economy by GDP nominal It is followed by Japan India South Korea Indonesia Saudi Arabia and Turkey which are all ranked amongst the top 20 largest economies both by nominal and PPP values 80 Based on Global Office Locations 2011 Asia dominated the office locations with 4 of the top 5 being in Asia Hong Kong Singapore Tokyo and Seoul Around 68 percent of international firms have an office in Hong Kong 81 In the late 1990s and early 2000s the economies of China 82 and India grew rapidly both with an average annual growth rate of more than 8 Other recent very high growth nations in Asia include Israel Malaysia Indonesia Bangladesh Thailand Vietnam and the Philippines and mineral rich nations such as Kazakhstan Turkmenistan Iran Brunei the United Arab Emirates Qatar Kuwait Saudi Arabia Bahrain and Oman citation needed According to economic historian Angus Maddison in his book The World Economy A Millennial Perspective India had the world s largest economy during 0 BCE and 1000 BCE Historically India was the largest economy in the world for most of the two millennia from the 1st until 19th century contributing 25 of the world s industrial output 83 84 85 86 China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history and shared the mantle with India 87 18 88 For several decades in the late twentieth century Japan was the largest economy in Asia and second largest of any single nation in the world after surpassing the Soviet Union measured in net material product in 1990 and Germany in 1968 NB A number of supernational economies are larger such as the European Union EU the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA or APEC This ended in 2010 when China overtook Japan to become the world s second largest economy It is forecasted that India will overtake Japan in terms of nominal GDP by 2027 79 In the late 1980s and early 1990s Japan s GDP by currency exchange rates was almost as large as that of the rest of Asia combined 79 In 1995 Japan s economy nearly equaled that of the US as the largest economy in the world for a day after the Japanese currency reached a record high of 79 yen US Economic growth in Asia since World War II to the 1990s had been concentrated in Japan as well as the four regions of South Korea Taiwan Hong Kong and Singapore located in the Pacific Rim known as the Asian tigers which are now all considered developed economies having amongst the highest GDP per capita in Asia 89 79 nbsp Mumbai is one of the most populous cities on the continent The city is an infrastructure and tourism hub and plays a crucial role in the economy of India Asia is the largest continent in the world by a considerable margin and it is rich in natural resources such as petroleum forests fish water rice copper and silver Manufacturing in Asia has traditionally been strongest in East and Southeast Asia particularly in China Taiwan South Korea Japan India the Philippines and Singapore Japan and South Korea continue to dominate in the area of multinational corporations but increasingly the PRC and India are making significant inroads Many companies from Europe North America South Korea and Japan have operations in Asia s developing countries to take advantage of its abundant supply of cheap labour and relatively developed infrastructure citation needed According to Citigroup in 2011 9 of 11 Global Growth Generators countries came from Asia driven by population and income growth They are Bangladesh China India Indonesia Iraq Mongolia the Philippines Sri Lanka and Vietnam 90 Asia has three main financial centers Hong Kong Tokyo and Singapore Call centers and business process outsourcing BPOs are becoming major employers in India and the Philippines due to the availability of a large pool of highly skilled English speaking workers The increased use of outsourcing has assisted the rise of India and the China as financial centers Due to its large and extremely competitive information technology industry India has become a major hub for outsourcing citation needed Trade between Asian countries and countries on other continents is largely carried out on the sea routes that are important for Asia Individual main routes have emerged from this The main route leads from the Chinese coast south via Hanoi to Jakarta Singapore and Kuala Lumpur through the Strait of Malacca via the Sri Lankan Colombo to the southern tip of India via Male to East Africa Mombasa from there to Djibouti then through the Red Sea over the Suez Canal into Mediterranean there via Haifa Istanbul and Athens to the upper Adriatic to the northern Italian hub of Trieste with its rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe or further to Barcelona and around Spain and France to the European northern ports A far smaller part of the goods traffic runs via South Africa to Europe A particularly significant part of the Asian goods traffic is carried out across the Pacific towards Los Angeles and Long Beach In contrast to the sea routes the Silk Road via the land route to Europe is on the one hand still under construction and on the other hand is much smaller in terms of scope Intra Asian trade including sea trade is growing rapidly 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 In 2010 Asia had 3 3 million millionaires people with net worth over US 1 million excluding their homes slightly below North America with 3 4 million millionaires Last year Asia had toppled Europe 99 Citigroup in The Wealth Report 2012 stated that Asian centa millionaire overtook North America s wealth for the first time as the world s economic center of gravity continued moving east At the end of 2011 there were 18 000 Asian people mainly in Southeast Asia China and Japan who have at least 100 million in disposable assets while North America with 17 000 people and Western Europe with 14 000 people 100 Rank Country GDP nominal Peak Year millions of USD Peak Year1 nbsp China 17 700 899 20232 nbsp Japan 4 230 862 20233 nbsp India 3 732 224 20234 nbsp Russia 1 862 470 20235 nbsp South Korea 1 709 232 20216 nbsp Indonesia 1 417 387 20237 nbsp Turkey 1 154 600 20238 nbsp Saudi Arabia 1 069 437 20239 nbsp Taiwan 751 930 202310 nbsp Israel 521 688 2023Rank Country GDP PPP Peak Year millions of USD Peak Year1 nbsp China 32 897 929 20232 nbsp India 13 119 622 20233 nbsp Japan 6 495 214 20234 nbsp Russia 101 5 326 855 20225 nbsp Indonesia 4 393 370 20236 nbsp Turkey 3 613 540 20237 nbsp South Korea 2 924 189 20238 nbsp Saudi Arabia 2 246 535 20239 nbsp Egypt 1 809 425 202310 nbsp Iran 1 725 874 2023Tourism nbsp Wat Phra Kaew in the Grand Palace is among Bangkok s major tourist attractions See also the categories Tourism in Asia and Transport in Asia With growing Regional Tourism with domination of Chinese visitors MasterCard has released Global Destination Cities Index 2013 with 10 of 20 are dominated by Asia and Pacific Region Cities and also for the first time a city of a country from Asia Bangkok set in the top ranked with 15 98 million international visitors 102 DemographicsMain article Demographics of Asia See also List of Asian countries by population and List of Asian countries by life expectancy Historical populationsYearPop p a 1500243 000 000 1700436 000 000 0 29 1900947 000 000 0 39 19501 402 000 000 0 79 19993 634 000 000 1 96 20164 462 676 731 1 22 Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues Source UN report 2004 data PDF The figure for 2021 is provided by the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects 2 3 nbsp Graph showing population by continent as a percentage of world population 1750 2005 East Asia had by far the strongest overall Human Development Index HDI improvement of any region in the world nearly doubling average HDI attainment over the past 40 years according to the report s analysis of health education and income data China the second highest achiever in the world in terms of HDI improvement since 1970 is the only country on the Top 10 Movers list due to income rather than health or education achievements Its per capita income increased a stunning 21 fold over the last four decades also lifting hundreds of millions out of income poverty Yet it was not among the region s top performers in improving school enrollment and life expectancy 103 Nepal a South Asian country emerges as one of the world s fastest movers since 1970 mainly due to health and education achievements Its present life expectancy is 25 years longer than in the 1970s More than four of every five children of school age in Nepal now attend primary school compared to just one in five 40 years ago 103 Hong Kong ranked highest among the countries grouped on the HDI number 7 in the world which is in the very high human development category followed by Singapore 9 Japan 19 and South Korea 22 Afghanistan 155 ranked lowest amongst Asian countries out of the 169 countries assessed 103 Languages Main article Languages of Asia Asia is home to several language families and many language isolates Most Asian countries have more than one language that is natively spoken For instance according to Ethnologue more than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia more than 400 languages spoken in India and more than 100 are spoken in the Philippines China has many languages and dialects in different provinces Religions See also Eastern philosophy Religion in Asia and List of Asian mythologies Many of the world s major religions have their origins in Asia including the five most practiced in the world excluding irreligion which are Christianity Islam Hinduism Chinese folk religion classified as Confucianism and Taoism and Buddhism respectively Asian mythology is complex and diverse The story of the Great Flood for example as presented to Jews in the Hebrew Bible in the narrative of Noah and later to Christians in the Old Testament and to Muslims in the Quran is earliest found in Mesopotamian mythology in the Enuma Elis and Epic of Gilgamesh Hindu mythology similarly tells about an avatar of Vishnu in the form of a fish who warned Manu of a terrible flood Ancient Chinese mythology also tells of a Great Flood spanning generations one that required the combined efforts of emperors and divinities to control Abrahamic See also Christianity in Asia and Islam in Asia nbsp The Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock Jerusalem nbsp The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem nbsp Pilgrims in the annual Hajj at the Kaabah in MeccaThe Abrahamic religions including Judaism Christianity Islam Druze faith 104 and Bahaʼi Faith originated in West Asia 105 106 Judaism the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths is practiced primarily in Israel the indigenous homeland and historical birthplace of the Hebrew nation which today consists both of those Jews who remained in the Middle East and those who returned from diaspora in Europe North America and other regions 107 though various diaspora communities persist worldwide Jews are the predominant ethnic group in Israel 75 6 numbering at about 6 1 million 108 although the levels of adherence to Jewish religion vary Outside of Israel there are small ancient Jewish communities in Turkey 17 400 109 Azerbaijan 9 100 110 Iran 8 756 111 India 5 000 and Uzbekistan 4 000 112 among many other places In total there are 14 4 17 5 million 2016 est 113 Jews alive in the world today making them one of the smallest Asian minorities at roughly 0 3 to 0 4 percent of the total population of the continent Christianity is a widespread religion in Asia with more than 286 million adherents according to Pew Research Center in 2010 114 and nearly 364 million according to Britannica Book of the Year 2014 115 Constituting around 12 6 of the total population of Asia In the Philippines and East Timor Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion 116 it was introduced by the Spaniards and the Portuguese respectively In Armenia and Georgia Eastern Orthodoxy is the predominant religion 116 In the Middle East such as in the Levant Anatolia and Fars Syriac Christianity Church of the East and Oriental Orthodoxy are prevalent minority denominations 117 which are both Eastern Christian sects mainly adhered to Assyrian people or Syriac Christians Vibrant indigenous minorities in West Asia are adhering to the Eastern Catholic Churches and Eastern Orthodoxy 116 Saint Thomas Christians in India trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century 118 Significant Christian communities also found in Central Asia South Asia Southeast Asia and East Asia 116 Islam which originated in the Hejaz located in modern day Saudi Arabia is the second largest and most widely spread religion in Asia with at least 1 billion Muslims constituting around 23 8 of the total population of Asia 119 With 12 7 of the world Muslim population the country currently with the largest Muslim population in the world is Indonesia followed by Pakistan 11 5 India 10 Bangladesh Iran and Turkey Mecca Medina and Jerusalem are the three holiest cities for Islam in all the world The Hajj and Umrah attract large numbers of Muslim devotees from all over the world to Mecca and Medina Iran is the largest Shi a country The Druze Faith or Druzism originated in West Asia is a monotheistic religion based on the teachings of figures like Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad and Al Hakim bi Amr Allah and Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle The number of Druze people worldwide is around one million with about 45 to 50 live in Syria 35 to 40 live in Lebanon and less than 10 live in Israel with recently there has been a growing Druze diaspora 120 The Bahaʼi Faith originated in Asia in Iran Persia and spread from there to the Ottoman Empire Central Asia India and Burma during the lifetime of Baha u llah Since the middle of the 20th century growth has particularly occurred in other Asian countries because Bahaʼi activities in many Muslim countries has been severely suppressed by authorities Lotus Temple is a big Bahaʼi Temple in India Indian and East Asian religions nbsp The Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple in Delhi according to the Guinness World Records is the World s Largest Comprehensive Hindu Temple 121 Almost all Asian religions have philosophical character and Asian philosophical traditions cover a large spectrum of philosophical thoughts and writings Indian philosophy includes Hindu philosophy and Buddhist philosophy They include elements of nonmaterial pursuits whereas another school of thought from India Carvaka preached the enjoyment of the material world The religions of Hinduism Buddhism Jainism and Sikhism originated in India South Asia In East Asia particularly in China and Japan Confucianism Taoism and Zen Buddhism took shape As of 2012 update Hinduism has around 1 1 billion adherents The faith represents around 25 of Asia s population and is the largest religion in Asia However it is mostly concentrated in South Asia Over 80 of the populations of both India and Nepal adhere to Hinduism alongside significant communities in Bangladesh Pakistan Bhutan Sri Lanka and Bali Indonesia Many overseas Indians in countries such as Burma Singapore and Malaysia also adhere to Hinduism nbsp The Hindu Buddhist temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia the largest religious monument in the worldBuddhism has a great following in mainland Southeast Asia and East Asia Buddhism is the religion of the majority of the populations of Cambodia 96 122 Thailand 95 123 Burma 80 89 124 Japan 36 96 125 Bhutan 75 84 126 Sri Lanka 70 127 Laos 60 67 128 and Mongolia 53 93 129 Taiwan 35 93 130 131 132 133 South Korea 23 50 134 Malaysia 19 21 135 Nepal 9 11 136 Vietnam 10 75 137 China 20 50 138 North Korea 2 14 139 140 141 and small communities in India and Bangladesh The Communist governed countries of China Vietnam and North Korea are officially atheist thus the number of Buddhists and other religious adherents may be under reported Jainism is found mainly in India and in overseas Indian communities such as the United States and Malaysia Sikhism is found in Northern India and amongst overseas Indian communities in other parts of Asia especially Southeast Asia Confucianism is found predominantly in Mainland China South Korea Taiwan and in overseas Chinese populations Taoism is found mainly in Mainland China Taiwan Malaysia and Singapore In many Chinese communities Taoism is easily syncretized with Mahayana Buddhism thus exact religious statistics are difficult to obtain and may be understated or overstated nbsp Japanese wedding at the Meiji Shrine nbsp Hindu festival celebrated by Singapore s Tamil community nbsp Bar mitzvah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem nbsp Catholic procession of the Black Nazarene in Manila nbsp Druze dignitaries celebrating the Ziyarat al Nabi Shu ayb festival at the tomb of the prophet in Hittin nbsp Christian Armenians praying at the Etchmiadzin Cathedral in Vagharshapat nbsp Muslim men praying at the Ortakoy Mosque in Istanbul nbsp Buddhist Monks performing traditional Sand mandala made from coloured sandModern conflicts nbsp A refugee special train in Ambala Punjab during the partition of India in 1947 nbsp US forces drop Napalm on suspected Viet Cong positions in 1965 nbsp Wounded civilians arrive at a hospital in Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War October 2012 nbsp Demonstrations in Hong Kong against the Extradition bill began in March 2019 and turned into continuing mass movements drawing around 2 million protesters by JuneSome of the events pivotal in the Asia territory related to the relationship with the outside world in the post Second World War were The Partition of India The Indo Pakistani War of 1947 1948 The Chinese Civil War The Kashmir conflict The Balochistan Conflict The Naxalite Maoist insurgency in India The Korean War The French Indochina War The Vietnam War The Indonesia Malaysia confrontation The 1959 Tibetan uprising The Sino Vietnamese War The Indo Pakistani War of 1971 The Bangladesh Liberation War The Yom Kippur War The Indo Pakistani war of 1965 The Xinjiang conflict The Iranian Revolution The Soviet Afghan War The Iran Iraq War The Cambodian Killing Fields The Insurgency in Laos The Lebanese Civil War The Sri Lankan Civil War The 1988 Maldives coup d etat The Dissolution of the Soviet Union The Gulf War The Nepalese Civil War The Indo Pakistani wars and conflicts The West Papua conflict The First Nagorno Karabakh War The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests The Indonesian occupation of East Timor The Kargil War The 1999 Pakistani coup d etat The War in Afghanistan The Iraq War The South Thailand insurgency The 2006 Thai coup d etat The Burmese Civil War The Saffron Revolution The Kurdish Turkish conflict The Arab Spring The Israeli Palestinian conflict The Arab Israeli conflict The Syrian Civil War The Sino Indian War The 2014 Thai coup d etat The Moro conflict in the Philippines The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant The Turkish invasion of Syria The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar The Saudi Arabian led intervention in Yemen The Hong Kong protests The 2020 China India skirmishes The Sino Indian border disputeCultureMain article Culture of Asia The culture of Asia is a diverse blend of customs and traditions that have been practiced by the various ethnic groups of the continent for centuries The continent is divided into six geographic sub regions Central Asia East Asia North Asia South Asia Southeast Asia and West Asia 142 These regions are defined by their cultural similarities including common religions languages and ethnicities West Asia also known as Southwest Asia or the Middle East has cultural roots in the ancient civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia which gave rise to the Persian Arab Ottoman empires as well as the Abrahamic religions of Judaism Christianity and Islam 143 These civilizations which are located in the Hilly flanks are among the oldest in the world with evidence of farming dating back to around 9000 BCE 144 Despite the challenges posed by the vast size of the continent and the presence of natural barriers such as deserts and mountain ranges trade and commerce have helped to create a Pan Asian culture that is shared across the region 145 Nobel prizes nbsp Indian polymath Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 and became Asia s first Nobel laureate The polymath Rabindranath Tagore a Bengali poet dramatist and writer from Santiniketan now in West Bengal India became in 1913 the first Asian Nobel laureate He won his Nobel Prize in Literature for notable impact his prose works and poetic thought had on English French and other national literatures of Europe and the Americas He is also the writer of the national anthems of Bangladesh and India Other Asian writers who won Nobel Prize for literature include Yasunari Kawabata Japan 1968 Kenzaburō Ōe Japan 1994 Gao Xingjian China 2000 Orhan Pamuk Turkey 2006 and Mo Yan China 2012 Some may consider the American writer Pearl S Buck an honorary Asian Nobel laureate having spent considerable time in China as the daughter of missionaries and based many of her novels namely The Good Earth 1931 and The Mother 1933 as well as the biographies of her parents for their time in China The Exile and Fighting Angel all of which earned her the Literature prize in 1938 Also Mother Teresa of India and Shirin Ebadi of Iran were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights especially for the rights of women and children Ebadi is the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to receive the prize Another Nobel Peace Prize winner is Aung San Suu Kyi from Burma for her peaceful and non violent struggle under a military dictatorship in Burma She is a nonviolent pro democracy activist and leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma Myanmar and a noted prisoner of conscience She is a Buddhist and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his long and non violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China on 8 October 2010 He is the first Chinese citizen to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China In 2014 Kailash Satyarthi from India and Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education Sir C V Raman is the first Asian to get a Nobel prize in Sciences He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him Japan has won the most Nobel Prizes of any Asian nation with 24 followed by India which has won 13 Amartya Sen born 3 November 1933 is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory and for his interest in the problems of society s poorest members Other Asian Nobel Prize winners include Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Abdus Salam Malala Yousafzai Robert Aumann Menachem Begin Aaron Ciechanover Avram Hershko Daniel Kahneman Shimon Peres Yitzhak Rabin Ada Yonath Yasser Arafat Jose Ramos Horta and Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo of Timor Leste Kim Dae jung and 13 Japanese scientists Most of the said awardees are from Japan and Israel except for Chandrasekhar and Raman India Abdus Salam and Malala Yousafzai Pakistan Arafat Palestinian Territories Kim South Korea and Horta and Belo Timor Leste In 2006 Dr Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the establishment of Grameen Bank a community development bank that lends money to poor people especially women in Bangladesh Dr Yunus received his PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University United States He is internationally known for the concept of micro credit which allows poor and destitute people with little or no collateral to borrow money The borrowers typically pay back money within the specified period and the incidence of default is very low The Dalai Lama has received approximately eighty four awards over his spiritual and political career 146 On 22 June 2006 he became one of only four people ever to be recognized with Honorary Citizenship by the Governor General of Canada On 28 May 2005 he received the Christmas Humphreys Award from the Buddhist Society in the United Kingdom Most notable was the Nobel Peace Prize presented in Oslo Norway on 10 December 1989 Political geographyMain article Politics of Asia See also List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia nbsp Iran China SaudiArabia Japan Kazakhstan India Mongolia Indonesia Malaysia Philippines Vietnam Singapore South Korea North Korea Afghanistan Pakistan Thailand Laos Cambodia East Timor Brunei Myanmar Bhutan Bangladesh Nepal Taiwan Uzbekistan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Turkmenistan Oman Yemen UAE Qat Bah Kuw Iraq Jordan Israel Syria Turkey Georgia Azer Armenia Cyp Egypt Maldives Sri Lanka Russia H K Macau Symbol Flag Name Population 2 3 2021 Area km2 Capital nbsp nbsp Afghanistan 40 099 462 652 864 Kabul nbsp nbsp Armenia 2 790 974 29 743 Yerevan nbsp nbsp Azerbaijan note 5 10 312 992 86 600 Baku nbsp nbsp Bahrain 1 463 265 760 Manama nbsp nbsp Bangladesh 169 356 251 147 570 Dhaka nbsp nbsp Bhutan 777 486 38 394 Thimphu nbsp nbsp Brunei 445 373 5 765 Bandar Seri Begawan nbsp nbsp Cambodia 16 589 023 181 035 Phnom Penh nbsp nbsp China PRC 1 425 893 465 9 596 961 Beijing nbsp nbsp Cyprus 1 244 188 9 251 Nicosia nbsp nbsp East Timor 1 320 942 14 874 Dili nbsp nbsp Egypt note 5 109 262 178 1 001 449 Cairo nbsp nbsp Georgia note 5 3 757 980 69 700 Tbilisi nbsp nbsp India 1 407 563 842 3 287 263 New Delhi nbsp nbsp Indonesia note 5 273 753 191 1 904 569 Jakarta nbsp nbsp Iran 87 923 432 1 648 195 Tehran nbsp nbsp Iraq 43 533 592 438 317 Baghdad nbsp nbsp Israel 8 900 059 20 770 Jerusalem disputed nbsp nbsp Japan 124 612 530 377 915 Tokyo nbsp nbsp Jordan 11 148 278 89 342 Amman nbsp nbsp Kazakhstan note 5 19 196 465 2 724 900 Astana nbsp nbsp Kuwait 4 250 114 17 818 Kuwait City nbsp nbsp Kyrgyzstan 6 527 743 199 951 Bishkek nbsp nbsp Laos 7 425 057 236 800 Vientiane nbsp Lebanon 5 592 631 10 400 Beirut nbsp nbsp Malaysia 33 573 874 329 847 Kuala Lumpur nbsp nbsp Maldives 521 457 298 Male nbsp nbsp Mongolia 3 347 782 1 564 116 Ulaanbaatar nbsp nbsp Myanmar 53 798 084 676 578 Naypyidaw nbsp nbsp Nepal 30 034 989 147 181 Kathmandu nbsp nbsp North Korea 25 971 909 120 538 Pyongyang nbsp nbsp Oman 4 520 471 309 500 Muscat nbsp nbsp Pakistan 211 103 000 881 913 Islamabad nbsp nbsp Palestine 5 133 392 6 220 Jerusalem proclaimed Ramallah adm center nbsp nbsp Philippines 113 880 328 343 448 Manila nbsp nbsp Qatar 2 688 235 11 586 Doha nbsp nbsp Russia note 6 145 102 755 17 098 242 Moscow note 7 nbsp nbsp Saudi Arabia 35 950 396 2 149 690 Riyadh nbsp nbsp Singapore 5 941 060 697 Singapore nbsp nbsp South Korea 51 830 139 100 210 Seoul nbsp nbsp Sri Lanka 21 773 441 65 610 Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte nbsp nbsp Syria 21 324 367 185 180 Damascus nbsp nbsp Tajikistan 9 750 064 143 100 Dushanbe nbsp nbsp Thailand 71 601 103 513 120 Bangkok nbsp Turkey note 8 84 775 404 783 562 Ankara nbsp nbsp Turkmenistan 6 341 855 488 100 Ashgabat nbsp nbsp United Arab Emirates 9 365 145 83 600 Abu Dhabi nbsp nbsp Uzbekistan 34 081 449 447 400 Tashkent nbsp nbsp Vietnam 97 468 029 331 212 Hanoi nbsp nbsp Yemen 32 981 641 527 968 Sana a const SPCTooltip Supreme Political Council control Aden prv capital of PLCTooltip Presidential Leadership Council Within the above mentioned states are several partially recognized countries with limited to no international recognition None of them are members of the UN Symbol Flag Name Population Area km2 Capital nbsp nbsp Abkhazia 242 862 8 660 Sukhumi nbsp nbsp Artsakh note 1 146 573 11 458 Stepanakert nbsp nbsp Northern Cyprus 326 000 3 355 North Nicosia nbsp nbsp South Ossetia 51 547 3 900 Tskhinvali nbsp nbsp Taiwan ROC 23 859 912 36 193 TaipeiSee alsoMain articles Outline of Asia and Index of Asia related articles References to articles Subregions of AsiaSpecial topics Asian Century Asian cuisine Asian furniture Asian Games Asia Pacific Asian Para Games Asian Monetary Unit Asian people Eastern world Eurasia Far East East Asia Southeast Asia South Asia Central Asia West Asia North Asia Fauna of Asia Flags of Asia Middle East Eastern Mediterranean Levant Near East Pan AsianismLists List of cities in Asia List of metropolitan areas in Asia by population List of sovereign states and dependent territories in AsiaProjects Asian Highway Network Trans Asian RailwayNotes a b Artsakh has announced its intention to dissolve all state institutions and cease to exist by 1 January 2024 8 Asia is normally considered its own continent in the English speaking world which uses the seven continent model 9 10 Other models consider Asia as part of a Eurasian or Afro Eurasian continent see Continent Number for more information 44 579 000 square kilometres 17 212 000 square miles Siberia lies in Asia geographically but is considered a part of Europe culturally and politically a b c d e Transcontinental country Russia is a transcontinental country located in Eastern Europe and North Asia but is considered European historically culturally ethnically and politically and the vast majority of its population 78 lives within its European part Moscow is located in Europe Turkey is a transcontinental country located mainly in West Asia with a smaller portion in Southeastern Europe References National Geographic Family Reference Atlas of the World Washington DC National Geographic Society U S 2006 p 264 a b c World Population Prospects 2022 population un org United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division Retrieved 17 July 2022 a b c World Population Prospects 2022 Demographic indicators by region subregion and country annually for 1950 2100 XSLX population un org Total Population as of 1 July thousands United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division Retrieved 17 July 2022 GDP PPP current prices International Monetary Fund 2022 Archived from the original on 22 January 2021 Retrieved 16 January 2022 GDP Nominal current prices International Monetary Fund 2022 Archived from the original on 25 February 2017 Retrieved 16 January 2022 Nominal GDP per capita International Monetary Fund 2022 Archived from the original on 11 January 2020 Retrieved 16 January 2022 Johnson Todd M Crossing Peter F 14 October 2022 Religions by Continent Journal of Religion and Demography 9 1 2 91 110 doi 10 1163 2589742x bja10013 ISSN 2589 7411 Sauer Pjotr 28 September 2023 Nagorno Karabakh s breakaway government says it will dissolve itself The Guardian Retrieved 28 September 2023 Asia noun Oxford Learner s Dictionaries Retrieved 16 February 2023 Asia Definition amp Meaning Merriam Webster Retrieved 16 February 2023 Asia The largest continent on Earth BBC a b Asia Physical Geography National Geographic Society education nationalgeographic org Retrieved 4 February 2023 The World at Six Billion UN Population Division Archived from the original on 5 March 2016 Table 2 PDF Archived from the original PDF on 1 January 2016 Asia Population 2022 Demographics Maps Graphs worldpopulationreview com Archived from the original on 21 February 2022 Retrieved 21 February 2022 Population of Asia 2019 demographics density ratios growth rate clock rate of men to women populationof net Archived from the original on 14 July 2019 Retrieved 2 June 2019 a b National Geographic Atlas of the World 7th ed Washington D C National Geographic 1999 ISBN 978 0 7922 7528 2 Europe pp 68 69 Asia pp 90 91 A commonly accepted division between Asia and Europe is formed by the Ural Mountains Ural River Caspian Sea Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea with its outlets the Bosporus and Dardanelles Nalapat M D Ensuring China s Peaceful Rise Archived from the original on 10 January 2010 Retrieved 22 January 2016 a b Dahlman Carl J Aubert Jean Eric China and the Knowledge Economy Seizing the 21st century WBI Development Studies World Bank Publications Accessed 30 January 2008 Eric ed gov 2000 ISBN 978 0 8213 5005 8 Archived from the original on 4 March 2008 Retrieved 1 June 2010 The Real Great Leap Forward The Economist 30 September 2004 Archived from the original on 27 December 2016 1 Archived 20 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine Like herrings in a barrel The Economist No Millennium issue Population 23 December 1999 Archived from the original on 4 January 2010 Suez Canal 1250 to 1920 Middle East Cultural Sociology of the Middle East Asia amp Africa An Encyclopedia Sage Publications Inc 2012 doi 10 4135 9781452218458 n112 ISBN 978 1 4129 8176 7 S2CID 126449508 Histories 4 38 C f James Rennell The Geographical System of Herodotus Examined and Explained Volume 1 Rivington 1830 p 244 according to Strabo Geographica 11 7 4 even at the time of Alexander it was agreed by all that the Tanais river separated Asia from Europe ὡmologhto ἐk pantwn ὅti dieirgei tὴn Ἀsian ἀpὸ tῆs Eὐrwphs ὁ Tanais potamos c f Duane W Roller Eratosthenes Geography Princeton University Press 2010 ISBN 978 0 691 14267 8 Eratosthenes 24 January 2010 p 57 Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 14267 8 Archived from the original on 26 March 2022 Retrieved 21 January 2020 W Theiler Posidonios Die Fragmente vol 1 Berlin De Gruyter 1982 fragm 47a I G Kidd ed Posidonius The commentary Cambridge University Press 2004 ISBN 978 0 521 60443 7 Posidonius 1989 p 738 Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 60443 7 Archived from the original on 1 August 2020 Retrieved 21 January 2020 Geographia 7 5 6 ed Nobbe 1845 Ptolomeo Claudio 1845 vol 2 Archived from the original on 24 May 2020 Retrieved 21 January 2020 p 178 Kaὶ tῇ Eὐrwpῃ dὲ synaptei diὰ toῦ meta3ὺ aὐxenos tῆs te Maiwtidos limnhs kaὶ toῦ Sarmatikoῦ Ὠkeanoῦ ἐpὶ tῆs diabasews toῦ Tanaidos potamoῦ And Asia is connected to Europe by the land strait between Lake Maiotis and the Sarmatian Ocean where the river Tanais crosses through a b Lineback Neal 9 July 2013 Geography in the News Eurasia s Boundaries National Geographic Archived from the original on 8 May 2016 Retrieved 9 June 2016 Lewis amp Wigen 1997 pp 27 28 Lewis amp Wigen 1997 pp 170 173 Danver Steven L 2015 Native Peoples of the World An Encyclopedia of Groups Cultures and Contemporary Issues Taylor amp Francis p 185 ISBN 978 1317464006 Retrieved 23 April 2022 Wallace Alfred Russel 1879 Australasia The University of Michigan p 2 Retrieved 12 March 2022 Oceania is the word often used by continental geographers to describe the great world of islands we are now entering upon This boundless watery domain which extends northwards of Behring Straits and southward to the Antarctic barrier of ice is studded with many island groups which are however very irregularly distributed over its surface The more northerly section lying between Japan and California and between the Aleutian and Hawaiian Archipelagos is relived by nothing but a few solitary reefs and rocks at enormously distant intervals Kohlhoff Dean 2002 Amchitka and the Bomb Nuclear Testing in Alaska University of Washington Press p 6 ISBN 978 0295800509 Retrieved 12 March 2022 The regional name of the Pacific Islands is appropriate Oceania a sea of islands including those of Alaska and Hawaii The Pacific Basin is not insignificant or remote It covers one third of the globe s surface Its northern boundary is the Aleutian Islands chain Oceania virtually touches all of the Western Hemisphere Flick Alexander Clarence 1926 Modern World History 1776 1926 A Survey of the Origins and Development of Contemporary Civilization A A Knopf p 492 Retrieved 10 July 2022 Henderson John William 1971 Area Handbook for Oceania U S Government Printing Office p 5 Retrieved 11 March 2022 Lewis amp Wigen 1997 pp 7 9 Asia AccessScience McGraw Hill Archived from the original on 27 November 2011 Retrieved 26 July 2011 Schwartz Benjamin December 2008 Geography Is Destiny The Atlantic Archived from the original on 30 September 2009 McMahon Gregory 2011 The Land and Peoples of Anatolia through Ancient Eyes In Steadman Sharon McMahon Gregory eds The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia Oxford University Press p 21 doi 10 1093 oxfordhb 9780195376142 013 0002 Bossert Helmut T Asia Istanbul 1946 Rose Charles Brian 2013 The Archaeology of Greek and Roman Troy Cambridge University Press pp 108 109 ISBN 978 0 521 76207 6 Ventris amp Chadwick 1973 pp 410 536 Collins Billie Jean Bachvarova Mary R Rutherford Ian 28 March 2010 Anatolian Interfaces Hittites Greeks and their Neighbours Oxbow Books p 120 ISBN 978 1 78297 475 8 assuwa pylos aswia Linear B A si wi ja Book IV Article 45 Asie Encyclopedia Greek Gods Spirits Monsters Theoi Greek Mythology Exploring Mythology in Classical Literature and Art 2000 2011 Archived from the original on 4 June 2010 M95 P717 B461 Muhmmad al Bukhari Sahih Al Bukhari Translated into English Prose by Muhammad Muhsin Khan Hadith 7 329 Henry George Liddell Robert Scott Henry Stuart Jones Roderick McKenzie 2007 1940 Ἀsia A Greek English Lexicon Medford Perseus Digital Library Tufts University Archived from the original on 27 April 2011 Asia Origin and meaning of Asia by Online Etymology Dictionary Etymonline com Archived from the original on 25 May 2017 Retrieved 9 November 2017 Silkroad Foundation Adela C Y Lee Ancient Silk Road Travellers Silk road com Archived from the original on 8 November 2017 Retrieved 9 November 2017 Ping ti Ho An Estimate of the Total Population of Sung Chin China in Etudes Song Series 1 No 1 1970 pp 33 53 History Black Death BBC 17 February 2011 Archived from the original on 5 June 2012 Sen Sailendra Nath 2010 An Advanced History of Modern India Macmillan India p 11 ISBN 978 0 230 32885 3 Archived from the original on 22 April 2020 How India s Economy Will Overtake the U S s Time 28 July 2023 Retrieved 31 August 2023 Sullivan Dylan Hickel Jason How British colonialism killed 100 million Indians in 40 years Al Jazeera Retrieved 4 September 2023 Yakoubi Myriam 4 January 2022 The French the British and their Middle Eastern Mandates 1918 1939 Two Political Strategies Revue Francaise de Civilisation Britannique French Journal of British Studies XXVII 1 doi 10 4000 rfcb 8787 ISSN 0248 9015 S2CID 246524226 Southeast Asia 1800 1900 A D Chronology Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Met s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Retrieved 31 August 2023 Milestones 1830 1860 Office of the Historian history state gov Retrieved 31 August 2023 Opinion For China the history that matters is its century of humiliation South China Morning Post 28 September 2021 Retrieved 31 August 2023 Introduction Race and Empire in Meiji Japan The Asia Pacific Journal Japan Focus Retrieved 31 August 2023 Huffman James L 2019 The Rise and Evolution of Meiji Japan Amsterdam University Press doi 10 2307 j ctvzgb64z ISBN 978 1 898823 94 0 JSTOR j ctvzgb64z S2CID 216630259 Global war s colonial consequences academic oup com Retrieved 31 August 2023 Dalrymple William 22 June 2015 The Mutual Genocide of Indian Partition The New Yorker ISSN 0028 792X Retrieved 31 August 2023 Oil Discovered in Saudi Arabia education nationalgeographic org Retrieved 31 August 2023 Economic Issues 1 Growth in East Asia imf org Retrieved 31 August 2023 Saul Derek China And India Will Overtake U S Economically By 2075 Goldman Sachs Economists Say Forbes Retrieved 31 August 2023 25 years of liberalisation A glimpse of India s growth in 14 charts Business News Firstpost 7 July 2016 Retrieved 4 September 2023 Kumar Manoj 17 July 2023 One tenth of India s population escaped poverty in 5 years government report Reuters Retrieved 4 September 2023 A Map of the Countries between Constantinople and Calcutta Including Turkey in Asia Persia Afghanistan and Turkestan Wdl org 1885 Archived from the original on 17 October 2017 Retrieved 9 November 2017 Asia Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Chicago Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc 2006 Archived from the original on 18 November 2008 Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use M49 Standard UN Statistica Division Archived from the original on 30 August 2017 Retrieved 2 May 2020 Geographic Regions anklicken Zitat The assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories by the United Nations Beck Hylke E Zimmermann Niklaus E McVicar Tim R Vergopolan Noemi Berg Alexis Wood Eric F 30 October 2018 Present and future Koppen Geiger climate classification maps at 1 km resolution Scientific Data 5 180214 Bibcode 2018NatSD 580214B doi 10 1038 sdata 2018 214 PMC 6207062 PMID 30375988 Asia tops climate change s most vulnerable list New Scientist Archived from the original on 13 April 2021 Retrieved 17 December 2020 Which countries are most threatened by and vulnerable to climate change Iberdrola Archived from the original on 27 November 2020 Retrieved 17 December 2020 Global Climate Risk Index 2020 World ReliefWeb 5 December 2019 Archived from the original on 27 November 2020 Retrieved 17 December 2020 Vulnerability to Climate Change Adaptation Strategies and layers of Resilience Archived 26 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine ICRISAT Policy Brief No 23 February 2013 Overland Indra Sagbakken Haakon Fossum Chan Hoy Yen Merdekawati Monika Suryadi Beni Utama Nuki Agya Vakulchuk Roman December 2021 The ASEAN climate and energy paradox Energy and Climate Change 2 100019 doi 10 1016 j egycc 2020 100019 hdl 11250 2734506 a b c d International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook Database April 2023 International Monetary Fund Largest Economies in Asia Aneki com Archived from the original on 30 July 2022 Retrieved 9 November 2017 Hong Kong Singapore Tokyo World s Top Office Destinations CFO innovation ASIA Archived from the original on 7 August 2011 Retrieved 21 July 2011 Farah Paolo Davide 4 August 2006 Five Years of China WTO Membership EU and US Perspectives About China s Compliance With Transparency Commitments and the Transitional Review Mechanism SSRN 916768 Maddison Angus 20 September 2007 Contours of the World Economy 1 2030 AD Essays in Macro Economic History OUP Oxford ISBN 978 0 19 164758 1 Archived from the original on 24 September 2020 Retrieved 30 May 2021 Angus Maddison 2003 Development Centre Studies the World Economy Historical Statistics Historical Statistics OECD ISBN 978 9264104143 Archived from the original on 14 April 2021 Retrieved 30 May 2021 Bairoch Paul 1995 Economics and world history Myths and paradoxes University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 03463 8 Table B 18 World GDP 20 Countries and Regional Totals 0 1998 A D PDF theworldeconomy org Archived PDF from the original on 22 July 2013 Retrieved 20 September 2021 Professor M D Nalapat 11 September 2001 Ensuring China s Peaceful Rise Bharat rakshak com Archived from the original on 10 January 2010 Retrieved 1 June 2010 The Real Great Leap Forward The Economist 30 September 2004 Archived from the original on 27 December 2016 Retrieved 1 June 2010 Rise of Japan and 4 Asian Tigers from emergingdragon com Archived from the original on 22 April 2010 Retrieved 1 June 2010 Philippine potential cited sme com ph 24 February 2011 Archived from the original on 24 April 2011 Retrieved 1 March 2011 Estimated containerized cargo flows on major container trade routes in 2020 by trade route Archived from the original on 9 January 2021 Retrieved 26 January 2021 Global Marine Trends 2030 Report PDF Archived PDF from the original on 12 April 2021 Retrieved 26 January 2021 Maritime Trade Archived from the original on 19 March 2021 Retrieved 26 January 2021 Harry G Broadman Afrika s Silk Road 2007 pp 59 Harry de Wilt Is One Belt One Road a China crisis for North Sea main ports in World Cargo News 17 December 2019 Bernhard Simon Can The New Silk Road Compete With The Maritime Silk Road in The Maritime Executive 1 January 2020 Jean Marc F Blanchard China s Maritime Silk Road Initiative and South Asia 2018 INTRA ASIA Archived from the original on 26 January 2021 Retrieved 26 January 2021 Asia has more millionaires than Europe Toronto Archived from the original on 25 June 2011 Vallikappen Sanat 28 March 2012 Citigroup Study Shows Asian Rich Topping North American Bloomberg L P Archived from the original on 14 January 2015 World Bank s GDP PPP Data for Russia Milan and Rome named among the most widely visited cities in the world in the Mastercard Global Destination Cities Index report Italianavenue com 28 May 2013 Archived from the original on 17 October 2017 Retrieved 9 November 2017 a b c 2010 Human Development Report Asian countries lead development progress over 40 years PDF UNDP Archived PDF from the original on 21 November 2010 Retrieved 22 December 2010 Obeid Anis 2006 The Druze amp Their Faith in Tawhid Syracuse University Press p 1 ISBN 978 0 8156 5257 1 MacQueen Benjamin 2013 An Introduction to Middle East Politics Continuity Change Conflict and Co operation SAGE p 5 ISBN 978 1 4462 8976 1 The Middle East is the cradle of the three monotheistic faiths of Judaism Christianity and Islam Takacs Sarolta 2015 The Modern World Civilizations of Africa Civilizations of Europe Civilizations of the Americas Civilizations of the Middle East and Southwest Asia Civilizations of Asia and the Pacific Routledge p 552 ISBN 978 1 317 45572 1 The Jewish Population of the World Jewishvirtuallibrary org Archived from the original on 21 June 2010 Retrieved 1 June 2010 Ettinger Yoram 5 April 2013 Defying demographic projections Israel Hayom Archived from the original on 29 October 2013 Retrieved 29 October 2013 Turkey Virtual Jewish History Tour Jewish Virtual Library jewishvirtuallibrary org Archived from the original on 11 October 2014 Retrieved 15 December 2014 Ethnic composition of Azerbaijan 2009 Pop stat mashke org 7 April 1971 Archived from the original on 7 February 2012 Retrieved 22 December 2012 Jewish woman brutally murdered in Iran over property dispute The Times of Israel 28 November 2012 Archived from the original on 19 August 2014 Retrieved 16 August 2014 A government census published earlier this year indicated there were a mere 8 756 Jews left in Iran See Persian Jews Iran World Jewish Population 2007 PDF Archived from the original PDF on 26 March 2009 Retrieved 18 July 2015 American Jewish Yearbook vol 107 2007 p 592 World Jewish Population 2016 DellaPergola AJYB Berman Jewish DataBank jewishdatabank org Archived from the original on 30 September 2017 Retrieved 24 March 2018 Christians Pew Research Center s Religion amp Public Life Project 18 December 2012 Archived from the original on 10 March 2015 Retrieved 13 March 2015 Britannica Book of the Year 2014 Encyclopedia Britannica 2014 ISBN 978 1 62513 171 3 Archived from the original on 29 April 2016 Retrieved 13 March 2015 a b c d Global Christianity A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World s Christian Population PDF Pew Research Center Archived PDF from the original on 9 August 2021 Retrieved 16 February 2022 Hindson Edward E Mitchell Daniel R 1 August 2013 The Popular Encyclopedia of Church History Harvest House Publishers p 225 ISBN 978 0 7369 4807 4 The Encyclopedia of Christianity Volume 5 by Erwin Fahlbusch Wm B Eerdmans Publishing 2008 p 285 ISBN 978 0 8028 2417 2 Region Asia Pacific Pewforum org 27 January 2011 Archived from the original on 10 October 2017 Retrieved 9 November 2017 C Held Colbert 2008 Middle East Patterns Places People and Politics Routledge p 109 ISBN 978 0 429 96200 4 Worldwide they number 1 million or so with about 45 to 50 percent in Syria 35 to 40 percent in Lebanon and less than 10 percent in Israel Recently there has been a growing Druze diaspora Jha Preeti 26 December 2007 Guinness comes to east Delhi Akshardham world s largest Hindu temple The Indian Express Archived from the original on 28 December 2007 Retrieved 2 January 2008 Cambodia The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 20 December 2010 Archived 2010 edition Thailand The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 20 December 2010 Archived 2010 edition burma The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 20 December 2010 Archived 2010 edition Japan The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 20 December 2010 Archived 2010 edition Bhutan The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 20 December 2010 Archived 2010 edition The Census of Population and Housing of Sri Lanka 2011 Department of Census and Statistics Archived from the original on 24 July 2013 Retrieved 29 July 2013 Laos The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 20 December 2010 Archived 2010 edition Mongolia The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 20 December 2010 Archived 2010 edition Taiwan The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 20 December 2010 Archived 2010 edition China includes Taiwan only International Religious Freedom Report 2005 US Department of State Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Labor 8 November 2005 Archived from the original on 26 December 2020 Retrieved 24 January 2008 China includes Taiwan only International Religious Freedom Report 2006 US Department of State Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Labor 15 September 2006 Archived from the original on 17 September 2020 Retrieved 24 February 2008 China includes Taiwan only International Religious Freedom Report 2007 US Department of State Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Labor 15 September 2006 Archived from the original on 25 June 2020 Retrieved 24 February 2008 South Korea The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 20 December 2010 Archived 2010 edition Malaysia The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 20 December 2010 Archived 2010 edition Nepal The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 20 December 2010 Archived 2010 edition vietnam The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 20 December 2010 Archived 2010 edition Chinese Han Nationality Language Religion Customs Travelchinaguide com Archived from the original on 17 October 2017 Retrieved 9 November 2017 Culture of North Korea Alternative name History and ethnic relations Countries and Their Cultures Advameg Inc Archived from the original on 5 August 2009 Retrieved 4 July 2009 North Korea The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 9 November 2017 Archived 2017 edition Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs 2009 Background Note North Korea U S State Department Archived from the original on 18 August 2020 Retrieved 4 July 2009 Geographic Regions United Nations Retrieved 31 March 2018 Collon Dominique BBC History Ancient History in depth Mesopotamia Retrieved 31 March 2018 Morris Ian 2011 Why the West rules for now the patterns of history and what they reveal about the future Profile ISBN 978 1846682087 OCLC 751789199 Lockard Craig A 19 June 2014 Societies Networks and Transitions Volume I To 1500 A Global History Cengage Learning ISBN 978 1285783086 Retrieved 31 March 2018 His Holiness s Teachings at TCV A Brief Biography The Office of His Holiness The Dalai Lama Dalailama com Archived from the original on 25 May 2010 Retrieved 1 June 2010 BibliographyLewis Martin W Wigen Karen 1997 The myth of continents a critique of metageography Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 20743 1 Ventris Michael Chadwick John 1973 Documents in Mycenaean Greek 2nd ed Cambridge University Press Further readingEmbree Ainslie T ed Encyclopedia of Asian history 1988 vol 1 online vol 2 online vol 3 online vol 4 online Higham Charles Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations Facts on File library of world history New York Facts On File 2004 Kamal Niraj Arise Asia Respond to White Peril New Delhi Wordsmith 2002 ISBN 978 81 87412 08 3 Kapadia Feroz and Mandira Mukherjee Encyclopaedia of Asian Culture and Society New Delhi Anmol Publications 1999 Levinson David and Karen Christensen eds Encyclopedia of Modern Asia 6 vol Charles Scribner s Sons 2002 External linksAsia web resources provided by GovPubs at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries Asia at the Encyclopaedia Britannica Asia Human Geography at the National Geographic Society Asia at Curlie Asian Reading Room from the United States Library of Congress Asia Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 2 11th ed 1911 pp 320 358 Display Maps The Soil Maps of Asia European Digital Archive of Soil Maps EuDASM Archived from the original on 12 August 2011 Retrieved 26 July 2011 Asia Maps Perry Castaneda Library Map Collection University of Texas Libraries Archived from the original on 18 July 2011 Retrieved 20 July 2011 Asia Norman B Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library Archived from the original on 29 September 2011 Retrieved 26 July 2011 Bowring Philip 12 February 1987 What is Asia Eastern Economic Review 135 7 Archived from the original on 28 July 2011 Retrieved 22 April 2009 Asia at Wikipedia s sister projects nbsp Media from Commons nbsp News from Wikinews nbsp Quotations from Wikiquote nbsp Textbooks from Wikibooks nbsp Travel guides from Wikivoyage Portals nbsp Asia nbsp Geography Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Asia amp oldid 1185031409 Climate change, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.