Eurasia

Eurasia Şablon:IPAc-en is a combined continental landmass of Europe and Asia.<ref> Şablon:Citation "While a few professionals may regard Europe as a mere peninsula of Asia (or Eurasia), most geographers—and almost all nongeographers—continue to treat it not only as a full-fledged continent, but as the archetypal continent."</ref><ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref><ref name="NatlGeo">Şablon:Cite web</ref> The term is a portmanteau of its constituent continents. Located primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and by Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean to the south.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> The division between Europe and Asia as two different continents is a historical and cultural construct, with no clear physical separation between them; thus, in some parts of the world, Eurasia is recognized as the largest of five or six continents.<ref name="NatlGeo"/> In geology, Eurasia is often considered as a single rigid megablock. However, the rigidity of Eurasia is debated based on the paleomagnet data.<ref>Şablon:Cite journal</ref><ref>Şablon:Cite journal</ref>

Eurasia covers around Şablon:Convert, or around 36.2% of the Earth's total land area. The landmass contains around 5.0 billion people, equating to approximately 70% of the human population. Humans first settled in Eurasia between 60,000 and 125,000 years ago. Some major islands, including Great Britain, Iceland, and Ireland, and those of Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia, are included under the popular definition of Eurasia, in spite of being separate from the massive landmass.

Physiographically, Eurasia is a single continent.<ref name="NatlGeo"/> The concepts of Europe and Asia as distinct continents date back to antiquity and their borders are geologically arbitrary. In ancient times the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, along with their associated straits, were seen as separating the continents, but today the Ural and Caucasus ranges are more seen as the main delimiters between the two. Eurasia is connected to Africa at the Suez Canal, and Eurasia is sometimes combined with Africa as the largest contiguous landmass on Earth called Afro-Eurasia.<ref>Şablon:Cite book</ref> Due to the vast landmass and differences in latitude, Eurasia exhibits all types of climate under the Köppen classification, including the harshest types of hot and cold temperatures, high and low precipitation and various types of ecosystems.

History

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

Eurasia has been the host of many ancient civilizations, including those based in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and China. In the Axial Age (mid-first millennium BC), a continuous belt of civilizations stretched through the Eurasian subtropical zone from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This belt became the mainstream of world history for two millennia.

Geopolitics

Originally, “Eurasia” is a geographical notion: in this sense, it is simply the biggest continent; the combined landmass of Europe and Asia. However, geopolitically, the word has several different meanings, reflecting the specific geopolitical interests of each nation.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> “Eurasia” is one of the most important geopolitical concepts; as Zbigniew Brzezinski observed:

At the moment one of the most prominent projects of the European Union (EU) is the Russia - EU Four Common Spaces Initiative. A political and economic union of former Soviet states named the Eurasian Economic Union was established in 2015, similar in concept to the EU.

The Russian concept of “Eurasia” corresponded initially more or less to the land area of Imperial Russia in 1914, including parts of Eastern Europe.<ref>Şablon:Cite book</ref> One of Russia's main geopolitical interests lies in ever closer integration with those countries that it considers part of “Eurasia.”<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref>

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Members of the ASEM

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

Use of term

History of the Europe–Asia division

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

Geography

Located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres, Eurasia is considered a supercontinent, part of the supercontinent of Afro-Eurasia or simply a continent in its own right.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> In plate tectonics, the Eurasian Plate includes Europe and most of Asia but not the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian Peninsula or the area of the Russian Far East east of the Chersky Range.

Post-Soviet countries

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

Nineteenth-century Russian philosopher Nikolai Danilevsky defined Eurasia as an entity separate from Europe and Asia, bounded by the Himalayas, the Caucasus, the Alps, the Arctic, the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, a definition that has been influential in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.<ref>Şablon:Cite journal</ref> Nowadays, partly inspired by this usage, the term Eurasia is sometimes used to refer to the post-Soviet space – in particular Russia, the Central Asian republics, and the Transcaucasian republics – and sometimes also adjacent regions such as Turkey, Mongolia, Afghanistan and Xinjiang. This usage can be seen in the names of Eurasianet,<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> The Journal of Eurasian Studies,<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> and the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies,<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> as well as the titles of numerous academic programmes at US universities.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref><ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref><ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref><ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref><ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> Another prominent example of this usage is in the name of the Eurasian Economic Community, an organization including Kazakhstan, Russia, and some of their neighbors, and headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.

The word "Eurasia" is often used in Kazakhstan to describe its location. Numerous Kazakh institutions have the term in their names, like the L. N. Gumilev Eurasian National University (Şablon:Lang-kk; Şablon:Lang-ru)<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> (Lev Gumilev's Eurasianism ideas having been popularized in Kazakhstan by Olzhas Suleimenov), the Eurasian Media Forum,<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> the Eurasian Cultural Foundation (Şablon:Lang-ru), the Eurasian Development Bank (Şablon:Lang-ru),<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> and the Eurasian Bank.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> In 2007 Kazakhstan's President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, proposed building a "Eurasia Canal" to connect the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea via Russia's Kuma-Manych Depression in order to provide Kazakhstan and other Caspian-basin countries with a more efficient path to the ocean than the existing Volga-Don Canal.<ref>Canal will link Caspian Sea to world (The Times, June 29, 2007)</ref> This usage is comparable to how Americans use "Western Hemisphere" to describe concepts and organizations dealing with the Americas (e.g., Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation).

See also

• Asia-Europe Foundation
• Asia–Europe Meeting
• Afro-Eurasia
• Borders of the continents
• Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations
• Eastern Partnership
• Eurasia (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
• Eurasian (disambiguation)
• Eurasian Economic Community
• Eurasia Tunnel
• Eurasian Union
• European Union
• Intermediate Region
• Laurasia, a geological supercontinent joining Eurasia and North America.
• List of Eurasian countries by population
• List of supercontinents
• Marmaray, railway tunnel links the Europe to Asia.
• Neo-Eurasianism
• Palearctic
• Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
• Turkish Straits
• Vega expedition, the first voyage to circumnavigate Eurasia
• Eurasianism
• United States of Eurasia