Asia came from the word

Asia is the largest and the most densely populated continent in the world. According to studies, Asia has an area of 44,579,000 square kilometers, which roughly covers a large area of the world. Asia is known for its dense population; however, there are many regions in the continent that are barely populated.

Moreover, Asia has both the highest and lowest points on the surface of the Earth and has the longest coastline. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean on its northern side, the great Pacific Ocean on its eastern side, and the Indian Ocean on the southern side.

Asia has a very rich history and is indeed a very interesting continent. However, have you ever wondered where Asia got its name from? Keep on reading to discover how Asia got its name.

Etymology

The word Asia was originally a concept of the Greeks in 440 BC. It is believed that the name may have been driven from the word ‘asu,’ which means east. It was first referred to as Anatolia in Herodotus; however, it was in use long before that too, but not for the entire continent. Anatolia was the name of the land on the east side of the Aegean Sea. The English word comes from Latin literature, where it was referred to as Asia. The ultimate source of this word is, however, still uncertain. According to historical data, Asia, Europe, and Libya are all names of Greek queens.

Most Greeks thought that the name Asia came from Prometheus’s wife, who was the god of fire according to Greek mythology.

In Greek mythology, Asia was known as a nymph or a titan. This is a form of a female deity or a goddess. The concept of Asia originated from the Greeks about 200 years ago. It later spread to the Romans and then to the Europeans. From the Europeans, it spread all across Asia and to the rest of the world.

There is another interesting story about the name ‘Asia.’ Asia and Europe lie in the east and west of Mesopotamia. Thus, according to the Akkadian language of Mesopotamia, the land on the eastern side was named ‘Asia,’ which means sunrise, and the land on the western side was termed ‘Erebu,’ which means sunset. These names instantly gained popularity and spread all across the world.

There are many theories about the origins of the name Asia. There is still very little evidence available to validate the correct theory. The history of most of the continents is full of secrets and mysteries. It is quite fascinating to find out how the name ‘Asia’ was coined for such a massive piece of land.

1519–: Leaving Spain with five ships and 270 men in 1519, the Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan is the first to reach Asia from the East. In 1520, he discovers what is now known as the Strait of Magellan.

How was Asia founded?

Most of those units had coalesced as a continental landmass by about 160 million years ago, when the core of the Indian subcontinent broke off from Africa and began drifting northeastward to collide with the southern flank of Asia about 50 million to 40 million years ago.

When was Asia discovered?

The majority of interesting exploratory missions in Asia (first on land and later on the sea) happened between 4th century BC and 16th century AD.

Who established Asia?

The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of Asia in the 13th century, an area extending from China to Europe. Medieval Asia was the kingdom of the Khans. Never before had any person controlled as much land as Genghis Khan. He built his power unifying separate Mongol tribes before expanding his kingdom south and west.

What is the old name of Asia?

Anatolia
It was first referred to as Anatolia in Herodotus; however, it was in use long before that too, but not for the entire continent. Anatolia was the name of the land on the east side of the Aegean Sea. The English word comes from Latin literature, where it was referred to as Asia.

Who discovered China?

Marco Polo, the famous explorer who familiarized China to Europe in the 13th century CE, referred to the land as ‘Cathay. In Mandarin Chinese, the country is known as ‘Zhongguo’ meaning “central state” or “middle empire”.

Which is oldest country in Asia?

Japan: 15 Million Years Old
Japan became an influential country only during the Meiji Restoration era. This oldest country in Asia is also amongst the oldest countries in the world.

Who founded India?

Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama becomes the first European to reach India via the Atlantic Ocean when he arrives at Calicut on the Malabar Coast. Da Gama sailed from Lisbon, Portugal, in July 1497, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and anchored at Malindi on the east coast of Africa.

What are 5 facts about Asia?

10 Surprising Facts About Asia

• Singapore has a building inspired by a Star Wars robot.
• There are over 1,600 temples in Kyoto, Japan.
• Hong Kong means ‘fragrant harbor’
• China produces 45 billion pairs of chopsticks each year.
• South Korea has a separate Valentine’s Day for single people.

How old is India?

India is home to one of the oldest civilizations in the world. From the traces of hominoid activity discovered in the subcontinent, it is recognized that the area now known as India was inhabited approximately 250,000 years ago.

When was Asia named?

about 440 BCE
The word Asia originated from the Ancient Greek word Ἀσία, first attributed to Herodotus (about 440 BCE) in reference to Anatolia or to the Persian Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt. It originally was just a name for the east bank of the Aegean Sea, an area known to the Hittites as Assuwa.

What did Asia invent?

Many are surprised to realize that modern agriculture, shipping, astronomical observatories, decimal mathematics, paper money, umbrellas, wheelbarrows, multi-stage rockets, brandy and whiskey, the game of chess, and much more, all came from China—in additional to papermaking, printing, and gunpowder.

How many country are in Asia?

There are 48 countries in Asia today, according to the United Nations. The full list is shown in the table below, with current population and subregion (based on the United Nations official statistics).

Who named the 7 continents?

Phoenician sailors may have been responsible for naming Europe and Asia. The rest of the continents — Africa, Asia and Europe — were most likely named by the sailors who frequented their ports on naval and merchant voyages, but no one knows for sure. Asia may have initially been named for the Trojan ruler Asios.

What was Asia before Asia?

What was the ancient name of Asia? Assuwa is considered the Bronze Age origin for the name ‘Asia’ as the Romans later designated the area. It was called, by the Greeks, ‘Anatolia’ (literally, ‘place of the rising sun’, for those lands to the east of Greece).

Who created continents?

In 1912, German scientist Alfred Wegener proposed a theory he called continental drift. According to Wegener’s theory, Earth’s continents once formed a single, giant landmass, which he called Pangaea. Over millions of years, Pangaea slowly broke apart, eventually forming the continents as they are today.

Who named China?

Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata (5th century BCE) and the Laws of Manu (2nd century BCE). In 1655, Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived ultimately from the name of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE).

Who invented tea?

According to legend, tea was first discovered by the Chinese emperor Shennong in 2737 BC. It is said that the emperor liked his drinking water boiled before he drank it. One day, while the servant began boiling water for him, a dead leaf from a wild tea bush fell into the water.

How old is Chinese language?

six thousand years
Written Language. The Chinese language is the oldest written language in the world with at least six thousand years of history. Chinese character inscriptions have been found in turtle shells dating back to the Shang dynasty¹ (1766-1123 BC) proving the written language has existed for more than 3,000 years.

What was the first language?

Tamil is the oldest language still in use today. By order of appearance, the Tamil language (part of the family of Dravidian languages) would be considered the world’s oldest living language as it is over 5,000 years old, with its first grammar book having made its first appearance in 3,000 BC.

What’s the youngest country?

Bougainville is the youngest country on Earth – getting its independence in 2019! Bougainville was declared an independent country officially on December 7^th, 2019.

Asia

Area	44,579,000 km2 (17,212,000 sq mi) (1st)[1]
Population	4,694,576,167 (2021; 1st)[2][3]
Population density	100/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	Hinduism (26.1%) Islam (25.7%) No religion (20.0%) Buddhism (11.3%) Folk religions (8.6%) Christianity (7.2%) Others (1.2%)[7][a]
Demonym	Asian
Countries	49 UN members 1 UN observer 5 other states
Dependencies	List  Akrotiri and Dhekelia  British Indian Ocean Territory  Christmas Island  Cocos (Keeling) Islands  Hong Kong  Macau
Non-UN states	List  Abkhazia  Artsakh  Northern Cyprus  Palestine  South Ossetia  Taiwan
Languages	List of languages
Time zones	UTC+02:00 to UTC+12:00
Internet TLD	.asia
Largest cities	List of metropolitan areas Lists of cities
UN M49 code	142 – Asia 001 – World

Asia (, ) is the largest continent^[b][10][11] in the world by both land area and population.^[11] It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometers,^[c] 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,^[12] was the site of many of the first civilizations. Its 4.7 billion people^[13] constitute roughly 60% of the world’s population, having more people than all other continents combined.^[14]

Asia shares the landmass of Eurasia with Europe and 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.^[15]

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,^[16][17][18] and for many the legendary wealth and prosperity of the ancient culture of India personified Asia,^[19] 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.^[20] 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

Asia–Africa boundary

The boundary between Asia and Africa is the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, and the Suez Canal.^[21] This makes Egypt a transcontinental country, with the Sinai peninsula in Asia and the remainder of the country in Africa.

Asia–Europe boundary

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.^[22] During the Hellenistic period,^[23] 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,^[24] Strabo^[25] and Ptolemy.^[26]

The border between Asia and Europe was historically defined by European academics.^[27] 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.^[28] 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.^[27]

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.»^[29]

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.^[30][31][32] This is extremely rare however, due to their non-tropical biogeography, as well as their inhabitants, who have historically been related to Indigenous Americans.^[33][34]

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

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.^[35]

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.^[36] 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».^[37]

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

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.^[38][39][40] 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.^[41][42]

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.^[43] In Greek mythology, «Asia» (Ἀσία) or «Asie» (Ἀσίη) was the name of a «Nymph or Titan goddess of Lydia».^[44] The Iliad (attributed by the ancient Greeks to Homer) mentions two Phrygians in the Trojan War named Asios (an adjective meaning «Asian»);^[45] and also a marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia as ασιος.^[46] According to many Muslims, the term came from Ancient Egypt’s Queen Asiya, the adoptive mother of Moses.^[47]

The term was later adopted by the Romans, who used it in reference to the province of Asia, located in western Anatolia.^[48] One of the first writers to use Asia as a name of the whole continent was Pliny.^[49]

History

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, 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.^[51]

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.^[52]

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.^[53] The Empire of Japan controlled most of East Asia and much of Southeast Asia, New Guinea and the Pacific islands until the end of World War II.

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  Map of western, southern, and central Asia in 1885^[54]

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  The map of Asia in 1796, which also included the continent of Australia (then known as New Holland).

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  1890 map of Asia

Geography

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.^[15][55] 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.

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Main regions

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.^[56]

• North Asia (Siberia)^[d]
• Central Asia (The ‘stans)
• Western 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

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

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.^[58][59][60] 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.^[61]

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.^[62]

Economy

Asia has the largest continental economy by both GDP Nominal and PPP in the world, and is the fastest growing economic region.^[63] As of 2018, the largest economies in Asia are China, Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia and Turkey based on GDP in both nominal and PPP.^[64] 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.^[65]

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economies of China^[66] 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.

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.^{[67][68][69][70]} China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history and shared the mantle with India.^[71][72][73] 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.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan’s GDP was almost as large (current exchange rate method) as that of the rest of Asia combined.^{[citation needed]} 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 have now all received developed country status, having the highest GDP per capita in Asia.^[74]

It is forecasted that India will overtake Japan in terms of nominal GDP by 2025.^[75] By 2027, according to Goldman Sachs, China will have the largest economy in the world. Several trade blocs exist, with the most developed being the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

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.

According to Citigroup 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.^[76] 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.

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.^{[77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84]}

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.^[85]
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.^[86]

Rank	Country	GDP (nominal, Peak Year) millions of USD	Peak Year
1	China	19,373,586	2023
2	Japan	6,272,362	2012
3	India	3,736,882	2023
4	Russia	2,288,428	2013
5	South Korea	1,810,966	2021
6	Indonesia	1,391,778	2023
7	Saudi Arabia	1,108,149	2022
8	Turkey	1,029,303	2023
9	Taiwan	790,728	2023
10	Iran	625,430	2011

Rank	Country	GDP (PPP, Peak Year) millions of USD	Peak Year
1	China	33,014,998	2023
2	India	13,033,443	2023
3	Japan	6,456,527	2023
4	Russia	4,988,829	2023
5	Indonesia	4,398,729	2023
6	Turkey	3,572,551	2023
7	South Korea	2,924,038	2023
8	Saudi Arabia	2,300,967	2023
9	Egypt	1,803,584	2023
10	Taiwan	1,710,399	2023

Tourism

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.^[87]

Demographics

Historical populations

Year	Pop.	±% 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%
2016	4,462,676,731	+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].

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.^[88]

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.^[88]

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.^[88]

Languages

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

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

The Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Druze faith,^[89] and Baháʼí Faith originated in West Asia.^[90][91]

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;^[92] though various diaspora communities persist worldwide. Jews are the predominant ethnic group in Israel (75.6%) numbering at about 6.1 million,^[93] although the levels of adherence to Jewish religion vary. Outside of Israel there are small ancient Jewish communities in Turkey (17,400),^[94] Azerbaijan (9,100),^[95] Iran (8,756),^[96] India (5,000) and Uzbekistan (4,000),^[97] among many other places. In total, there are 14.4–17.5 million (2016, est.)^[98] 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,^[99] and nearly 364 million according to Britannica Book of the Year 2014.^[100] Constituting around 12.6% of the total population of Asia. In the Philippines and East Timor, Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion;^[101] it was introduced by the Spaniards and the Portuguese, respectively. In Armenia and Georgia, Eastern Orthodoxy is the predominant religion.^[101] 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,^[102] which are both Eastern Christian sects mainly adhered to Assyrian people or Syriac Christians. Vibrant indigenous minorities in Western Asia are adhering to the Eastern Catholic Churches and Eastern Orthodoxy.^[101] Saint Thomas Christians in India trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century.^[103] Significant Christian communities also found in Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia.^[101]

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.^[104] 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 Western 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.^[105]

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

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.

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%),^[107] Thailand (95%),^[108] Burma (80–89%),^[109] Japan (36–96%),^[110] Bhutan (75–84%),^[111] Sri Lanka (70%),^[112] Laos (60–67%)^[113] and Mongolia (53–93%).^[114] Taiwan (35–93%),^{[115][116][117][118]} South Korea (23–50%),^[119] Malaysia (19–21%),^[120] Nepal (9–11%),^[121] Vietnam (10–75%),^[122] China (20–50%),^[123] North Korea (2–14%),^{[124][125][126]} 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.

• 

• 

  Hindu festival celebrated by Singapore’s Tamil community

• 

  Buddhist Monks performing traditional Sand mandala made from coloured sand

Modern conflicts

Some 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 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 Bangladesh Liberation War
• The Yom Kippur War
• 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’état
• 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 1999 Pakistani coup d’état
• The War in Afghanistan
• The Iraq War
• The South Thailand insurgency
• The 2006 Thai coup d’état
• 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’état
• 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

Culture

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.^[127] 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 and Islam.^[128] 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.^[129] 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.^[130]

Nobel prizes

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.^[131] 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

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 1]	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 1]	109,262,178	1,001,449	Cairo
		Georgia[note 1]	3,757,980	69,700	Tbilisi
		India	1,407,563,842	3,287,263	New Delhi
		Indonesia[note 1]	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 1]	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	Jerusalem (proclaimed) Ramallah (adm. center)
		Philippines	113,880,328	343,448	Manila
		Qatar	2,688,235	11,586	Doha
		Russia[note 2]	145,102,755	17,098,242	Moscow[note 3]
		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
		Taiwan	23,859,912	36,193	Taipei
		Tajikistan	9,750,064	143,100	Dushanbe
		Thailand	71,601,103	513,120	Bangkok
		Turkey[note 4]	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.; SPC control) Aden (prv. capital of PLC)

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	146,573	11,458	Stepanakert
		Northern Cyprus	326,000	3,355	North Nicosia
		South Ossetia	51,547	3,900	Tskhinvali

See also

References to articles:

• Subregions of Asia

Special 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
• Western Asia
• North Asia
• Fauna of Asia
• Flags of Asia
• Middle East
  • Eastern Mediterranean
  • Levant
  • Near East
• Pan-Asianism

Lists:

• List of cities in Asia
• List of metropolitan areas in Asia by population
• List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia

Projects

• Asian Highway Network
• Trans-Asian Railway

Notes

References

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.
• «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–Castañeda 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

Area	44,579,000 km2 (17,212,000 sq mi)[1]
Population	3,879,000,000 (1st)[2]
Pop. density	87/km2 (225/sq mi)
Demonym	Asian
Countries	48 (list of countries)
Dependencies	List
Unrecognized regions	List
Languages	List of languages
Time Zones	UTC+2 to UTC+12
Internet TLD	.asia
Largest cities	List of cities List

Asia is the world’s largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth’s total surface area (or 30% of its land area) and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world’s current human population. During the 20th century Asia’s population nearly quadrupled.^[3]

Asia is defined according to similar definitions presented by the Encyclopedia Britannica^[4] and the National Geographic Society^[5] as 4/5 of the landmass of Eurasia – with the western portion of the latter occupied by Europe – located to the east of the Suez Canal, east of the Ural Mountains and south of the Caucasus Mountains (or the Kuma-Manych Depression) and the Caspian and Black Seas. 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. Given its size and diversity, Asia – a toponym dating back to classical antiquity – «is more a cultural concept» incorporating diverse regions and peoples than a homogeneous physical entity^[6] Asia differs very widely among and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties and government systems.

Definition and boundaries

Greek three-continent system

The original distinction between Europe and Asia was made by the ancient Greeks. They used the Aegean Sea, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, the Black Sea, the Kerch Strait, and the Sea of Azov as the border between Asia and Europe. The Nile was often used as the border between Asia and Africa (then called Libya), although some Greek geographers suggested the Red Sea would form a better boundary.^[7] Darius’ canal between the Nile and the Red Sea introduced considerable variation in opinion. Under the Roman Empire, the Don River emptying into the Black Sea was the western border of Asia. It was the northernmost navigable point of the European shore.^{[citation needed]} In the 15th century the Red Sea became established as the boundary between Africa and Asia, replacing the Nile. As exploration developed, the border between Asia and Europe had to be redefined, as the borders of the time did not extend to the arctic.^[7]

Asia-Europe boundary

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. The major geographical theorist of the empire was actually a former Swedish prisoner-of-war, taken at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 and assigned to Tobolsk, where he associated with Peter’s Siberian official, Vasily Tatishchev, and was allowed freedom to conduct geographical and anthropological studies in preparation for a future book.^{[citation needed]}

At home in Sweden again, five years after Peter’s death, in 1730 von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Urals as the border of Asia. The Russians were enthusiastic about the concept, which allowed them to keep their European identity in geography as well as other cultural heritage. 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.^[8] In the maps of the period, Transcaucasia was counted as Asian. The incorporation of most of that region into the Soviet Union tended to push views of the border to the south.

Asia-Oceania boundary

The border between Asia and Oceania is placed somewhere in the Malay archipelago. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had vastly different geographic meanings since their inception. Oceania has never been Asia, whatever it may have been defined to be. The chief factor in determining what islands of the Malay 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.»^[7] Currently Malaysia and Indonesia with the western half of New Guinea are in Southeast Asia (although the New Guinea territory of Indonesia is being disputed by the natives).

Ongoing definition

Geographical Asia is a cultural artifact, an imprecise concept causing endemic contention about what it means. In contrast to Europe, Asia is the largest and most culturally diverse of the continents in the seven-continent system.^[9] It does not exactly correspond to the cultural borders of its various types of constituents.^[10]

In addition to its general inherited geographical meaning, to which the entire literate world subscribes, Asia has any number of agency-specific meanings organizationally and operationally of use in more restricted fields of interest. For example, the World University Service of Canada is a volunteer organization dedicated to bringing educational, health and other services to nations that need them the most. The regional divisions most convenient to its operations include, among others, the Middle East and Europe, and South and Southeast Asia, termed just «Asia.»^[11] Its administrative Asia is substantially different from the overall geographic and the same may be said of many hundreds more agencies across the globe that operate in Asia from headquarters elsewhere. Some of the most innovative and perhaps the most transitory uses of «Asia» have been promulgated by the news media reporting on current events. Their classifications must be the most suitable for the news and the sources of it. For example, the BBC News has an Asia-Pacific section, which acquires news from anywhere in Australasia, Oceania or the Pacific side of the Americas.^[12]

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 or is no substantial physical separation between them.^[6] 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.»^[13] Geographically, Asia is the major eastern constituent of the continent of Eurasia with Europe being a northwestern peninsula of the landmass – or of Afro-Eurasia; geologically, Asia, Europe and Africa make up a single continuous landmass (except for the Suez Canal) and share a common continental shelf. Almost all of Europe and most 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 Cherskiy Range) on the North American Plate.

Etymology

Asia was originally a concept of Western civilization.^[14] The place name, «Asia», in various forms in a large number of modern languages is of unknown ultimate provenience. Its etymology and language of origin are uncertain. It appears to be one of the most ancient of recorded names. A number of theories have been published. English Asia can be traced through the formation of English literature to Latin literature, where it has the same form, Asia. Whether all uses and all forms of the name derive also from the Latin of the Roman Empire is much less certain.

Classical antiquity

Latin Asia and Greek Ἀσία appear to be the same word. Roman authors translated Ἀσία as Asia. The Romans named a province Asia, which was in the location of the then Asia. There was an Asia Minor and an Asia Maior (Iraq), of which the name of Minor survived. As the earliest evidence of the name is Greek, it is likely circumstantially that Asia came from Ἀσία, but ancient transitions, due to the lack of literary contexts, are difficult to catch in the act. The most likely vehicles were the ancient geographers and historians, such as Herodotus, who were all Greek. Roman civilization Hellenized extensively. Ancient Greek certainly evidences early and rich uses of the name.^[15]

The first continental use of Asia is attributed to Herodotus (about 440 BC), not because he innovated it, but because his Histories are the earliest surviving prose to describe it in any detail. He defines it carefully,^[16] mentioning the previous geographers whom he had read, but whose works are now missing. By it he means Anatolia and the Persian Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt. Herodotus comments that he is puzzled as to why three women’s names were «given to a tract which is in reality one» (Europa, Asia, and Libya, referring to Africa), stating that most Greeks assumed that Asia was named after the wife of Prometheus (i.e. Hesione), but that the Lydians say it was named after Asies, son of Cotys, who passed the name on to a tribe at Sardis.^[17] In Greek mythology, «Asia» (Ἀσία) or «Asie» (Ἀσίη) was the name of a «Nymph or Titan goddess of Lydia.»^[18]

Herodotus’ geographical puzzlement was perhaps only a form of disagreement, as, having read the earlier Greek poetry along with everyone else literate, he would have known perfectly well why places received female names. Athens, Mycenae, Thebes and many other locations in fact had them. In ancient Greek religion, places were under the care of female divinities, parallel to guardian angels. The poets detailed their doings and generations in allegoric language salted with entertaining stories, which subsequently playwrights transformed into classical Greek drama and became «Greek mythology.»

For example, Hesiod mentions the daughters of Tethys and Ocean, among whom are a «holy company», «who with the Lord Apollo and the Rivers have youths in their keeping.»^[19] Many of these are geographic: Doris, Rhodea, Europa, Asia. Hesiod explains:^[20]

«For there are three-thousand neat-ankled daughters of Ocean who are dispersed far and wide, and in every place alike serve the earth and the deep waters.»

The Iliad (attributed by the ancient Greeks to Homer) mentions two Phrygians (the tribe that replaced the Luvians in Lydia) in the Trojan War named Asios (an adjective meaning «Asian»);^[21] and also a marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia as ασιος.^[22]

Bronze Age

Before Greek poetry, the Aegean Sea area was in a Greek Dark Age, at the beginning of which syllabic writing was lost and alphabetic writing had not begun. Prior to then in the Bronze Age the records of the Assyrian Empire, the Hittite Empire and the various Mycenaean states of Greece mention a region undoubtedly Asia, certainly in Anatolia, including if not identical to Lydia. These records are administrative and do not include poetry.

The Mycenaean states were destroyed about 1200 BC by unknown agents although one school of thought assigns the Dorian invasion to this time. The burning of the palaces baked clay diurnal administrative records written in a Greek syllabic script called Linear B, deciphered by a number of interested parties, most notably by a young World War II cryptographer, Michael Ventris, subsequently assisted by the scholar, John Chadwick. A major cache discovered by Carl Blegen at the site of ancient Pylos included hundreds of male and female names formed by different methods.

Some of these are of women held in servitude (as study of the society implied by the content reveals). They were used in trades, such as cloth-making, and usually came with children. The epithet, lawiaiai, «captives,» associated with some of them identifies their origin. Some are ethnic names. One in particular, aswiai, identifies «women of Asia.»^[23] Perhaps they were captured in Asia, but some others, Milatiai, appear to have been of Miletus, a Greek colony, which would not have been raided for slaves by Greeks. Chadwick suggests that the names record the locations where these foreign women were purchased.^[24] The name is also in the singular, Aswia, which refers both to the name of a country and to a female of it. There is a masculine form, aswios. This Aswia appears to have been a remnant of a region known to the Hittites as Assuwa, centered on Lydia, or «Roman Asia.»

Alternatively, the etymology of the term may be from the Akkadian word (w)aṣû(m), which means ‘to go outside’ or ‘to ascend’, referring to the direction of the sun at sunrise in the Middle East and also likely connected with the Phoenician word asa meaning east. This may be contrasted to a similar etymology proposed for Europe, as being from Akkadian erēbu(m) ‘to enter’ or ‘set’ (of the sun).

T.R. Reid supports this alternative etymology, noting that the ancient Greek name must have derived from asu, meaning ‘east’ in Assyrian (ereb for Europe meaning ‘west’).^[14] The ideas of Occidental (form Latin Occidens ‘setting’) and Oriental (from Latin Oriens for ‘rising’) are also European invention, synonymous with Western and Eastern.^[14] Reid further emphasizes that it explains the Western point of view of placing all the peoples and cultures of Asia into a single classification, almost as if there were a need for setting the distinction between Western and Eastern civilizations on the Eurasian continent.^[14] Ogura Kazuo and Tenshin Okakura are two outspoken Japanese figures on the subject.^[14]

Also, Assuwa has been suggested as the origin for the name of the continent «Asia».^[25] The Assuwa league was a confederation of states in western Anatolia, defeated by the Hittites under Tudhaliya I around 1400 BC.

History

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, 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 Huanghe 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 took over the Middle East and Central Asia during the Muslim 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.

Geography

Geography in Asia is rather complicated, while Asia is the largest continent on Earth, and Asia is neighboring with Europe, Africa and Oceania. While neighboring with Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean. It contains 48 countries^[27] in its region, with 2 of them(Russia and Turkey) having part of their land in Europe, and also see Geography of Asia for further information.

Economy

Asia has the second largest nominal GDP of all continents, after Europe, but the largest when measured in purchasing power parity. As of 2010, the largest economies in Asia are the People’s Republic of China, Japan, India, South Korea and Indonesia. Based on Global Office Locations 2011, Asia dominated the office locations with 4 of top 5 were in Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, London and Shanghai. Around 68 percent of international firms have office in Hong Kong.^[28]

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economies of the PRC^[29] and India have been growing rapidly, both with an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. Other recent very high growth nations in Asia include Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Cyprus and the Philippines, and mineral-rich nations such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Brunei, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman.

According to economic historian Angus Maddison in his book The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, India had the world’s largest economy from the first to the 18th century, with a 32.9% share of world GDP in the 1st century to 28.9% in 1000 AD, and in 1700 AD with 24.4%.^[30][31] China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history,^{[32][33][34][35]} until the British Empire (excluding India) overtook it in the mid 19th century. Japan has had for only several decades after WW2 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 1986 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).

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan’s GDP was almost as large (current exchange rate method) as that of the rest of Asia combined.^{[citation needed]} In 1995, Japan’s economy nearly equaled that of the USA 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 have now all received developed country status, having the highest GDP per capita in Asia.^[36]

It is forecasted that India will overtake Japan in terms of nominal GDP by 2020.^[37] In terms of GDP per capita, both nominal and PPP-adjusted, South Korea will become the second wealthiest country in Asia by 2025, overtaking Germany, the United Kingdom and France. According to IMF statistics for the year 2010, the mostly unrecognized Republic of China PPP-adjusted GDP per capita, at USD 34,743, is already higher than that of Finland, France, or Japan.^{[citation needed]} By 2027, according to Goldman Sachs, China will have the largest economy in the world. Several trade blocs exist, with the most developed being the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

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 the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India, 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.

According to Citigroup 9 of 11 Global Growth Generators countries came from Asia driven by population and income growth. They are Bangladesh, the People’s Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mongolia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.^[38] Asia has four main financial centres: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. Call centres 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 centres. Due to its large and extremely competitive information technology industry, India has become a major hub for outsourcing.

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.^[39]

Demographics

Historical populations
Year	Pop.	±%
1500	243,000,000	—
1700	436,000,000	+79.4%
1900	947,000,000	+117.2%
1950	1,402,000,000	+48.0%
1999	3,634,000,000	+159.2%
Source: «UN report 2004 data» (PDF).

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. The People’s Republic of 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 enrolment and life expectancy.^[40]
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.^[40]
Japan and South Korea ranked highest among the countries grouped on the HDI (number 11 and 12 in the world, which are in the “very high human development” category), followed by Hong Kong (SAR)(21) and Singapore (27). Afghanistan (155) ranked lowest amongst Asian countries out of the 169 countries assessed.^[40]

Languages

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 600 languages are spoken in Indonesia, more than 800 languages spoken in India, and more than 100 are spoken in the Philippines. China has many languages and dialects in different provinces.

Religions

Asian mythology is complex and diverse. The story of the Great Flood for example, as presented to Christians in the Old Testament, is first found in Mesopotamian mythology, in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Hindu mythology tells about an Avatar of the God Vishnu in the form of a fish who warned Manu of a terrible flood. In ancient Chinese mythology, Shan Hai Jing, the Chinese ruler Da Yu, had to spend 10 years to control a deluge which swept out most of ancient China and was aided by the goddess Nüwa who literally fixed the broken sky through which huge rains were pouring.

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 material world. Christianity is also present in most Asian countries.

Abrahamic

The Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Baha’i Faith originated in West Asia. Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths, is practiced primarily in Israel (which has the world’s largest Jewish population),^[41] though small communities exist in other countries, such as the Bene Israel in India. In the Philippines and East Timor, Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion; it was introduced by the Spaniards and the Portuguese, respectively. In Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia and Russia, Eastern Orthodoxy is the predominant religion. Various Christian denominations have adherents in portions of the Middle East, as well as China and India. The world’s largest Muslim community (within the bounds of one nation) is in Indonesia. South Asia (mainly Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) holds 30% of Muslims. There are also significant Muslim populations in China, Iran, Malaysia, southern Philippines (Mindanao), Russia and most of West Asia and Central Asia. The Bahá’í 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 the Bahá’í Faith’s activities in many Muslim countries has been severely suppressed by authorities.

Dharmic and Taoist

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.

Over 80% of the populations of both India and Nepal adhere to Hinduism, alongside significant communities in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bali. Many overseas Indians in countries such as Burma, Singapore and Malaysia also adhere to Hinduism.

Buddhism has a great following in mainland Southeast Asia and East Asia. Buddhism is the religion of the majority of the populations of Cambodia (98%),^[42] Thailand (95%),^[43] Burma (89%),^[44] Japan (84–96%),^[45] Bhutan (75%),^[46] Sri Lanka (69%),^[47] Laos (67%–98%)^[48] and Mongolia (50%).^[49] Large Buddhist populations also exist in Singapore (42.5%),^[50] Taiwan (35.1%–93%),^{[51][52][53][54]} South Korea (23.2%),^[55] Malaysia(19.2%),^[56] Nepal (10.7%),^[57] Vietnam (9.3–80%),^[58] People’s Republic of China(8–80%),^[59] North Korea (4.5%–60%),^[60][61][62] Indonesia (<2%);^[63] and small communities in India and Bangladesh. In many Chinese communities, Mahayana Buddhism is easily syncretized with Taoism, thus exact religious statistics is difficult to obtain and may be understated or overstated. 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 oversea Indian communities such as India 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. Taoism is easily syncretized with Mahayana Buddhism for many Chinese, thus exact religious statistics is difficult to obtain and may be understated or overstated.

Culture

Nobel prizes

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 Prizes include Yasunari Kawabata (Japan, 1966), Kenzaburō Ōe (Japan, 1994), Gao Xingjian (People’s Republic of China, 2000) and Orhan Pamuk (Turkey, 2006).

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. Most recently, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for «his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.» He is the first Chinese citizen to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China.

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».

Other Asian Nobel Prize winners include Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Abdus Salam, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Robert Aumann, Menachem Begin, Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko, Daniel Kahneman, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Ada Yonath, Yaser 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), Salam (Pakistan), Arafat (Palestinian Territories) Kim (South Korea), 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.^[64] 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.

See also

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

References

Bibliography

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

Further reading

• 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. Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2002.

External links

• «Display Maps». The Soil Maps of Asia. European Digital Archive of Soil Maps – EuDASM. http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/esdb_archive/EuDASM/asia/indexes/idx_country.htm. Retrieved 26 July 2011.
• «Asia Maps». Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. University of Texas Libraries. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/asia.html. Retrieved 20 July 2011.
• «Asia». Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library. http://maps.bpl.org/search_advanced/?mtid=786. Retrieved 26 July 2011.
• Bowring, Philp (12 February 1987). «What is Asia?». Eastern Economic Review (Columbia University Asia For Educators) 135 (7). http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/geography/geo_whatis.html.

Asia , part of Eurasia , is the largest continent in terms of area with around 44.6 million square kilometers, about a third of the total land mass . With over four billion people, more than half of the world’s population , this part of the world is also the most populous. There are 47 internationally recognized states in Asia .

Asia played an important role early on in human history. Already around 900 BC originated here. With the New Assyrian Empire or 500 BC With the even larger Achaemenid Empire the first great empires .

etymology

The word «Asia» goes back to the Latin Asia in Greek Ἀσία ( Asía ). To this day one can only speculate about the further origin. Mostly it is assumed that it comes from the Assyrian assu «sunrise, east». The name Asía would therefore designate an eastern region that lies in the direction of sunrise, and would correspond to the Latin word Orient or the German “ Morgenland ”. The early Greeks initially only called the land mass of Asia Minor Asia , which later gave rise to the name of the Roman province of Asia . From Pliny the Elder ( Naturalis historia , around 77 AD) the name was then also related to the larger continent. In the long term, the old Asia became Asia minor .

In Greek mythology , Asia was the name of an Oceanid (or mother of such in Hesiod ), after which the geographical region should have been named. According to Aeschylus ( Promētheús desmṓtēs , around 470 BC) she is also the wife of the titan Iapetus and mother of Prometheus , according to Herodotus ( Historien , 5th century BC) his wife.

In today’s common usage, the terms Asian and Asians refer primarily to things and people of East or Southeast Asian origin, for example in relation to cuisine , philosophy or architecture, sometimes including India , while the terms only very rarely refer to the Refer to countries west of India. While West Asia has been in close contact with Europe since ancient times, this was not the case with East Asia, so that this region in Europe represented the epitome of foreignness for centuries, also because countries like China and Japan separated themselves from the outside world and only had limited interest showed in exchange (see Sinocentrism , closure of Japan ).

geography

Asia is the largest continent on earth. With an area of ​​around 44.6 million square kilometers (excluding Russia 31.7 million square kilometers), it comprises around a third of the total land mass. Together with Europe , Asia is also seen as part of the greater continent of Eurasia .

The continental landmass lies entirely in the eastern hemisphere and north of the equator with the exception of the southeasternmost islands in the Malay Archipelago , which are located in the southern hemisphere of the earth. The Chukchi Peninsula in eastern Siberia is located east of the 180th parallel, but the eastern time + 12h applies.

expansion

Asia is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Indian Ocean to the south .

In the west, Asia has no clear geographical or geological boundary with Europe . The most common definition of the border with Europe from north to south: the Ural Mountains , the Ural River , the Caspian Sea , the Caucasus or the Manytn lowlands , the southern coast of the Black Sea as well as the Bosphorus , the Sea of ​​Marmara and the Dardanelles . From the Barents Sea to the Black Sea, this border is around 2700 km long.

With Africa Asia north of the Red Sea on the peninsula Sinai (Isthmus of Suez , 145 km wide) connected.

In the northeast, the mainland masses of Asia and North America are a little more than 80 km apart on the Bering Strait . In the southeast the Malay Archipelago forms the connection to Australia . The southernmost point is the Indonesian island of Pamana .

The northernmost mainland point of Asia and the world is Cape Chelyuskin on the Taimyr Peninsula (77 ° 43 ′ 21 ″ N), the easternmost point Cape Deschnjow on the Chukchi Peninsula (169 ° 39 ′ 7 ″ W). From there to the westernmost point of Asia, Cape Baba in Asia Minor (26 ° 3 ′ 50 ″ E), it is 8,223 km as the crow flies. The southernmost mainland point of the Asian continent is Cape Tanjung Piai on the Malay Peninsula (1 ° 15 ′ 57 ″ N).

structure

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

• North asia
• Central Asia
• Middle East (West Asia)
• South asia
• East asia
• South East Asia

In some publications, these limits are varied depending on the objective, subject, and background for which a split is used. Afghanistan was previously assigned to Central Asia, now to South Asia. There are also alternative or additional subdivisions or overlaps, for example for Northeast Asia .

Flora and fauna

The main vegetation zones or eco-zones (from north to south):

• Treeless tundra north of the Arctic Circle. The most important animals for the nomadic inhabitants like those of the Nenets are the reindeer .
• Forests of the temperate zone , including the boreal coniferous forest (taiga) in Siberia between the Arctic Circle and the course of the Trans-Siberian Railway and deciduous forests in the Far East and in the area of ​​the Caspian Sea. The diverse fauna has (historical) importance for hunting, in addition to agriculture and cattle breeding, the use of wood is also important. Here live z. B. the rare Amur tigers and Amur leopards , as well as deer, wild boar, lynx and bears.
• Continental grasslands or steppes . The animal species that naturally inhabit these steppes include wild horses, saiga antelopes , Mongolian gazelles , wolves and ground squirrels .
• Low vegetation, rocky mountain landscapes and desert landscapes . Highland climate with large daytime temperature fluctuations and lots of sunshine. The mountains are populated by numerous mountain grazing animals such as ibex, gorals , serau and wild sheep. The most important predator of the Central Asian mountains is the snow leopard. The desert areas are home to half-donkeys, wild camels, cheetahs and gazelles.
• Tropical savannah areas and dry forests, preferably on the Indian subcontinent, but also in Southeast Asia. Characteristic large animals are lions, stag goat antelopes, Nilgau antelopes and various deer.
• Tropical rainforests . After clearing, the next step in destruction is often the cultivation of monocultures such as palm oil plantations, e.g. B. in Sabah (Malaysia) on Borneo .
• Tropical monsoon areas such as the Mekong Delta : Rice cultivation dominates here and poultry and pigs as farm animals as well as fishing.

Superlatives

Asia has a number of global geographic superlatives:

• Most populous country: China
• the largest share of the world’s largest country in terms of area: Russia . This share of Russia itself is larger than the world’s second largest country Canada.
• the highest mountain range : Himalayas , all mountains over 8000 meters high
• the deepest and oldest lake: the Baikal
• the largest inland lake: the Caspian Sea
• the deepest water: the Dead Sea

It is the continent with the most diverse vegetation, alternating from the permafrost soil of Siberia to the jungle of Southeast Asia . In addition to the extreme tundra , desert and tropical rainforest , all other vegetation zones on earth can also be found in Asia.

Another special feature are most of the world’s intercontinental states, with both Asian parts of the country and territories in other parts of the world. These include Russia , Kazakhstan , Indonesia , Japan , Egypt and Turkey .

history

Asia is the cradle of numerous cultures , for example in China , Japan , India , Iran as well as Babylonia and Assyria in the Middle East . All so-called world religions originated in Asia.

Asia and Europe are linked by a long tradition of wars (e.g. Alexander the Great , the Persian Wars , the Crusades , the invasions of the Huns and the Turks ) and voyages of discovery (e.g. Sven Hedin ), but also many important trade connections, such as the Silk Road .

Asia has always been shaped by great empires and is not as fragmented as Europe. The Chinese culture has in the world, but especially in East Asia , its mark (paper, printing, compass, silk , porcelain u. V. M.). From India , the has Buddhism spread. North Asia (especially Siberia ) remained almost unpopulated for a long time, only when the Russian Empire continued to expand, larger cities were founded there. Central Asia was traditionally the home of steppe peoples ( equestrian peoples ), (for example the Mongols ), who in earlier times represented a threat to Europe. The Middle East has been shaped by Islam since the 7th century and has had a strong impact on North Africa .

population

Development of the population of Asia (in billions; excluding Russia, including Turkey)

Around four billion people live in Asia, which corresponds to around 60% of the world’s population. Both India and the People’s Republic of China each have over a billion people. While Russia and Mongolia in particular are very sparsely populated, other countries are struggling with the effects of their population explosion .

Health and life expectancy correlate with the wealth of nations. A higher standard of living also means more resources for our own health as well as for public health.

The residents of Macau, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan have the highest average age among Asians. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Brunei, China, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia are around the world average in terms of life expectancy. The shortest life expectancy in Asia is found in India, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Bhutan and Afghanistan.

Malaria is common in South Asia and Southeast Asia. There is still no effective vaccine against malaria. By insect sprays the disclosure of which might be somewhat curbed, but these are too expensive for large sections of the population affected.

AIDS is widespread. The HI virus is particularly common in Russia, India, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Malaysia. In contrast, in Japan, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and in the Middle East, only relatively few people have AIDS. These figures should be viewed with caution, however, as the HIV infection rate is an average for the entire country, but occurs more frequently in large cities.

languages

Hundreds of individual languages ​​are spoken in Asia. The important language families and language groups include (selection):

See also section Eurasia: Europe and Mainland Asia in the article Language families of the world .

economy

The breakdown into North Asia ( Russia ), West Asia (W), Central Asia (Z), South Asia (S), Southeast Asia (SO) and East Asia (O) results in the following picture:

• After Africa, Asia has the most developing countries . These include Vietnam (SO), Cambodia (SO), Laos (SO), Myanmar (SO), Bangladesh (S), Bhutan (S), Nepal (S), Pakistan (S), Afghanistan (S), Tajikistan (Z ), Uzbekistan (Z), Kyrgyzstan (Z), Georgia (W), Armenia (W), Azerbaijan (W), Yemen (W), Mongolia (O) and (still) the People’s Republic of China (O) and India ( S).
• The countries «bought» into the industrial age include the oil producing countries Iran (S), Iraq (W), Kuwait (W), Saudi Arabia (W) and the United Arab Emirates (W) (and perhaps soon the oil-rich areas too the former Soviet Union).
• The industrialized nations are Japan (O), Singapore (SO), the Republic of China (Taiwan) (O), South Korea (O), Israel (W), and the two colonies Hong Kong and Macau that have been returned to the People’s Republic of China (O) . These countries are now among the world’s leading countries in the fields of high technology . Even Malaysia (SO) is making successful efforts to catch up to the top.
• The richest country in the world, Qatar (W), is in Asia.

Industrial nations

In terms of both exchange rate-based gross domestic product and purchasing power parity, China is the largest economy in Asia and the second largest in the world. In Asia, Japan, India and South Korea follow. The economy of Japan was the fastest growing economy in Asia for decades. While Japan’s economic situation has worsened since the 1990s, China and India show above-average economic growth of more than 10 and 7 percent per year, respectively , in the global comparison . Japan handed over the role of Asia’s leading economic nation to China in 2010. Nevertheless, it is the leading industrial nation in Asia and (besides Russia, which is largely part of Europe) the only country on the continent that is a member of the group of eight leading industrialized countries. In terms of purchasing power parity, India also has a larger GDP than Japan today (2015).

Tiger states

After the Second World War , and intensified from the 1960s onwards, economic growth was initially concentrated on the countries and areas along the Pacific coast, from which Japan, South Korea and Taiwan as well as the former British colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore, which closely followed the United States economy tied. In the 1980s, several states in East and Southeast Asia developed from emerging economies to industrialized countries with rapid economic growth : the so-called » tiger states » Hong Kong (at that time still a crown colony of the United Kingdom ), Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. In 1997/98 the rapid boom in many of these countries came to an end with the Asian crisis , which — starting in Thailand — was primarily a financial and currency crisis. Since then, the economies of these countries have continued to grow, but the very high growth of up to ten percent has weakened to five to six percent.

Developing countries

Large parts of Asia are still dominated by agriculture , with rice cultivation and fishing being of particular importance.

Countries with few raw materials or countries that have been thrown back by war and corrupt governments such as Afghanistan , Bangladesh , Myanmar , Laos , Cambodia , Vietnam and the former Soviet republics in Central Asia are still characterized by agriculture according to their topography.

Most of today’s Central and North Asian states were part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1990/91 and were thus organized according to a planned economy . The economies of these countries are largely determined by agriculture and heavy industry .

The wealth of raw materials in some regions, such as oil and gas in the Caspian Sea region or those in the tundra of Siberia, is gaining importance in the global struggle for these resources, whereby the curse and blessing for the inhabitants are often close together (environmental pollution, corruption and wars).

Gulf States

In Southwest Asia, oil production is the main industry. The world’s largest known reserves are located on the Arabian Peninsula and in the surrounding regions on the Persian Gulf, with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia having the most extensive oil fields. Other important producing countries are Iran and Iraq. The emirates of Kuwait and Qatar, which are small in terms of area, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain are among the richest countries in the world due to the sale of crude oil with a relatively small population.

Religion, mythology and philosophy

Several regions of Asia, including Mesopotamia , the valley of the Indus (see Indus culture ), Iran and China , are considered to be the » cradles of civilization «. With the development of civilizations and the early advanced civilizations in these areas, the development of religions went hand in hand. All religions generally referred to as “ world religions ” have their origins in Asia. With over 1 billion followers, Islam is the largest religion in Asia and comprises more than a quarter of all inhabitants of the continent. Muslims make up the majority of the population in more than half of all countries in Asia.

Middle East

The facility in Göbekli Tepe in today’s Turkey is one of the earliest monuments of human religious sentiment . Originated around 9000 BC BC, although the origins are likely to go back much further than the Neolithic Revolution and with it the beginning of agriculture and cattle breeding, Göbekli Tepe is considered the oldest known temple complex in the world. Finds in Nevalı Çori on the Euphrates in what is now the Turkish province of Şanlıurfa date from around the same time , where comparable sculptural works, such as anthropomorphic figures and depictions of animals that indicate religious use, have been found.

In Mesopotamia ( Mesopotamia ;. See » Fertile Crescent «) is the fourth millennium, developed from around v. The Sumerian religion . It is one of the oldest known religions and had a decisive influence on the later developing belief systems of the Canaanites (forerunners of the Hebrews ), Akkadians , Babylonians , Assyrians , Hittites , Hurrites , Ugarites and Aramaeans . In addition to a number of the main and original gods, the Sumerians worshiped city gods at a time when some of the first cities such as Ur and Byblos arose there (see list of historical city foundations ) and thus already had a pantheon of gods. The Gilgamesh epic , one of the earliest written records of mankind, has its origins in this era and tells of the encounters between King Gilgamesh and the gods and his search for immortality. The Enūma eliš (written around the 12th century BC) is again one of the most original creation myths . Sumerian myths, such as the story of the Flood , also found their way into Judeo-Christian traditions.

Probably in Bactria originated between 1800 BC. BC and 700 BC Chr. Of Zoroastrianism , one of the oldest, though originally dualistic , monotheistic ( Ahura Mazda ) religions, which has survived to this day.

The judges (approx. 1250 BC) and the patriarchs , who are considered the earliest traditions in Jewish history, had their origins in Mesopotamia, where the ancestors of the Hebrews lived as a nomadic people. Abraham , the progenitor of Israel, is said to have come from Ur himself. The Jewish religion is traditionally recorded in the Torah as a written and an oral teaching ( Talmud and others).

With Jesus of Nazareth (cf. Jesus Christ ) about 7 to 4 BC The founder of Christianity , who himself is in the tradition of the Jewish religion, was born in Palestine . After his death, the teaching of his disciples was first spread in the Middle East and, within the Roman Empire , in southern Europe. Various traditions of the Christian Orient developed in Asia, some of which, such as Nestorianism , penetrated as far as Central Asia and China. Starting from the Byzantine Empire , the ancient oriental churches spread to the Near East and India, as well as the Orthodox churches that still predominate in large parts of North Asia .

The history of Islam began in the 6th century with the work of Muhammad on the Arabian Peninsula . According to the teaching of Islam recorded in the Koran , he is considered the last prophet in human history and the perfecter of biblical prophecy . In Asia, Islam spread in the course of Islamic expansion in the Middle East and in large parts of Central and South Asia to the Malay Archipelago in the southeast.

South and East Asia

Hinduism , which still predominates in India today, emerged towards the end of the Indus culture around 2000 BC. The teachings are based on the Vedas , holy scriptures, the oldest of which, the Rigveda , from around 1200 to 1000 BC. Was put together. Hinduism encompasses a large number of sometimes very different schools of faith and views. There is neither a common creed nor institutions that have equal authority for all believers. Unifying features are the central deities Brahma , Shiva and Vishnu ( Trimurti ) — which, however , are viewed very differently in the teaching traditions such as Shivaism , Vishnuism or Shaktism — and the belief in the constantly repeating cycle of life ( samsara ) and reincarnation . Like Indian philosophy , Hinduism had an early formative influence on those countries that were under the influence of Indian culture and found its way into the worlds of belief in South and Southeast Asia.

At the turn of the sixth to the fifth century BC, Siddhartha Gautama lived in northern India , who, according to tradition, attained enlightenment at the age of 35 and thus became a Buddha («awakened», «enlightened»). Coming from the Vedic tradition and leaving it behind, he became the founder of Buddhism . At around the same time Mahavira founded the doctrine of Jainism in India .

Buddhism first became known on the Indian subcontinent , Sri Lanka and Central Asia . Southern Buddhism ( Theravada ) spread to the countries of Southeast Asia. Northern Buddhism ( Mahayana ) reached Central and East Asia via the Silk Road , as well as the countries of the Himalayan region from northern India, where, in interaction with the already widespread belief systems such as Bon , further traditions developed; for example Vajrayana (Tibet), Chan (China) or Zen (Japan) and Amitabha Buddhism (East Asia).

In China, the philosophers Laozi (also Lao Tse , Lao-tzu ; 6th century BC, whether it actually existed is not definitively clarified) and Confucius (also Kong Tse , Kǒng Fū Zǐ ; approx. 551 BC). BC to 479 BC) established the teaching traditions of Daoism and Confucianism , which still have a formative influence on the world of thought and society in East Asia and also influenced the development of Buddhism in these regions (cf. Buddhism in China ).

The religion in Japan was characterized early on by the syncretism of different belief systems. To date, Shinto and Buddhism (Zen, Amidism), which reached Japan in the 5th or 6th century, are the most widespread religions. Contents of the Chinese teachings Daoism and Confucianism were taken up and integrated by Shinto and Buddhism. Since the end of the Second World War, there has been a particularly high level of religious tolerance in Japan, which has led to a strong growth in new religious groups.

At the turn of the 15th to the 16th century , Guru Nanak founded Sikhism in Punjab , in northwest India . Often referred to as the secession or reform movement of Hinduism or as syncretism between Hinduism and Islam, Sikhs describe their faith as a cross-religious path of life that is not based on dogmatic boundaries, but on lived wisdom.

Officially founded on September 7, 1926 in southern Vietnam , Caodaism ( Đạo Cao Đài ) is now the third largest religion in the country after Buddhism and Catholicism. The founder of the religion was Ngô Văn Chiêu , who received the teachings of this religion, which includes various contents from several Asian religions and Christianity, through spiritualistic sessions.

In the 20th century, personalities as diverse as the Indian Mahatma Gandhi , with his doctrine of non-violence ( ahimsa ) derived from Indian philosophy , and the Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong , with his communism- based Maoism , had a decisive influence on the politics of both largest countries in the world according to their population and beyond.

Countries of Asia by region

country	Capital	Area (km²)	Population 2016
North asia
Russia * (without European part)	Moscow	13,122,850 (Asian part only)	around 38 million (only Asian part)
East asia
People’s Republic of China	Beijing	9,572,419	1,380,000,000
Republic of China (Taiwan)	Taipei	35,980	23,500,000
Japan	Tokyo	377.835	126,900,000
Mongolia	Ulaanbaatar	1,565,500	3,000,000
North Korea	Pyongyang	122,762	25,000,000
South Korea	Seoul	99,392	50,700,000
South asia
Afghanistan	Kabul	647,500	32,200,000
Bangladesh	Dhaka	144,000	160,400,000
Bhutan	Thimphu	47,000	800,000
India	New Delhi	3,287,590	1,314,100,000
Maldives	Times	298	300,000
Nepal	Kathmandu	147.181	28,000,000
Pakistan	Islamabad	803.940	199,000,000
Sri Lanka	Colombo	65,610	20,900,000
South East Asia
Brunei	Bandar Seri Begawan	5,770	400,000
Indonesia	Jakarta	1,912,988	255,700,000
Cambodia	Phnom Penh	181.040	15,400,000
Laos	Vientiane	236,800	6,900,000
Malaysia	Kuala Lumpur	329,750	30,800,000
Myanmar	Naypyidaw	676,600	52,100,000
Philippines	Manila	300,000	103,000,000
Singapore	Singapore	682	5,500,000
Thailand	Bangkok	513.115	65,100,000
East Timor	Dili	15.007	1,200,000
Vietnam	Hanoi	331,690	91,700,000
Middle East
Egypt ( Sinai Peninsula only )	Cairo	60,000 (only the Sinai)	≈1,300,000 (only on Sinai)
Armenia	Yerevan	29,800	3,000,000
Azerbaijan	Baku	86,600	9,700,000
Bahrain	Manama	711	1,400,000
Georgia	Tbilisi	69,700	3,800,000
Iraq	Baghdad	437.072	37,100,000
Iran	Tehran	1,648,195	78,500,000
Israel	Jerusalem	22,380	8,400,000
Yemen	Sanaa	527.970	26,700,000
Jordan	Amman	89,342	8,100,000
Qatar	Doha	11,437	2,400,000
Kuwait	Kuwait City	17,820	3,800,000
Lebanon	Beirut	10,452	6,200,000
Oman	Muscat	309,500	4,200,000
Palestine **	Ramallah	6.220	4,500,000
Saudi Arabia	Riad	2,240,000	31,600,000
Syria	Damascus	185.180	17,100,000
Turkey (excluding European Eastern Thrace )	Ankara	779.452	67,000,000
United Arab Emirates	Abu Dhabi	83,600	9,600,000
Cyprus *	Nicosia	9,251	775.927
Central Asia
Kazakhstan (excluding the European part)	Nur-Sultan	2,717,300	17,500,000
Kyrgyzstan	Bishkek	198,500	6,000,000
Tajikistan	Dushanbe	143,100	8,500,000
Turkmenistan	Ashgabat	488.100	5,400,000
Uzbekistan	Tashkent	447,400	31,300,000

* is politically and culturally assigned to Europe

** contested state

Since 2008, Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been recognized as two other states by Russia and four non-Asian states, but the remaining states continue to regard them as part of Georgia. The Turkish-occupied Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is only recognized by Turkey. Nagorno-Karabakh , which was split off from Azerbaijan with Armenian help , is not recognized by Armenia itself, but it is recognized by Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq originally aspired to independence, but has agreed on autonomy within Iraq in a basic agreement with the central government in Baghdad. The state of Palestine , which emerged from the Palestinian Autonomous Territories, is an observer state in the UN, but not a UN member state. As early as 1988, the founding of the Palestinian state was recognized by over 100 states (including the GDR and the Vatican) with which Palestine maintains diplomatic relations. The Islamic State , which has been spreading across large parts of Iraq and Syria since 2014 at the latest and which calls into question the state structure of Western Asia that emerged in the 20th century, is not internationally recognized .

Economic and political alliances and organizations

The Arab League was founded as an association of Arab states on March 22, 1945 in Cairo, where it is also based. It consists of 22 member states: 21 nation states in Africa and Asia as well as Palestine. The main objective of the Arab League is to promote relations between the member states in the political, cultural, social and economic fields. The independence and sovereignty of the member states and Arab external interests should be preserved and disputes within the league should be settled. Decisions of the league are only binding on those states that have approved them. Member states from Asia are: Bahrain, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. Within the league, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman form the Gulf Cooperation Council .

In September 1960, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the South American state Venezuela founded the OPEC ( Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ) in Baghdad , which later also the oil producing countries Qatar (1961), Indonesia (1962) and the United Arab Emirates (1967 ) joined. The OPEC member states from Asia, Africa and South America together produce around 40% of global oil production and have around three quarters of the world’s oil reserves. The goals of OPEC are a common oil policy in order to protect itself against a fall in prices and at the same time secure global oil supplies. Petroleum production is regulated by setting production quotas for the individual OPEC members. In addition to OPEC, a number of countries are also represented in the OAPEC ( Organization of Arab Oil Exporting States ), which was created in 1968 by Kuwait, Libya and Saudi Arabia as an amalgamation of politically conservative Arab countries in Asia and North Africa and an antipole to OPEC. Other members from Asia today are Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Syria and the United Arab Emirates.

The ASEAN ( Association of Southeast Asian Nations ) was established on August 8, 1967 as a political, economic and cultural Association of Southeast Asian Nations Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore. The aim was and is to work together to promote economic recovery, social progress and political stability in the region. Founded in the time of the “ Cold War ”, the alliance was capitalist- market economy and geared towards cooperation with the western industrialized nations from the beginning and was in competition with the communist- planned economy People’s Republic of China. The Sultanate of Brunei joined ASEAN in 1984, Vietnam in 1995, Myanmar and Laos in 1997 and Cambodia in 1999. Papua New Guinea has observer status. On January 1, 2003, with the establishment of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), a free trade area was created to which all member states of ASEAN belong. Australia and New Zealand are in negotiations to join this free trade agreement . ASEAN plus Drei refers to the joint conference of the ASEAN countries with China, Japan and South Korea. In Thailand, the Chiang Mai Initiative was founded in 2000, which stipulates close cooperation between ASEAN plus three countries in the financial sector.

Iran, Pakistan and Turkey founded the Organization for Economic Cooperation (ECO) in 1985 , from which a free trade area should emerge. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have also joined the cooperation alliance. It is of international importance primarily due to the wealth of mineral resources in some member countries and the strategic location as a transit corridor for these goods both to Europe and to China.

On the initiative of the USA, Japan and Australia, the Asia-Pacific Economic Community (APEC) was created in 1989 , the aim of which is to establish a free trade area encompassing all Pacific countries in two steps: the free trade agreements are to apply to the industrialized nations of the regions from 2010 and from 2020 also for developing countries. The Asian members of the APEC are Brunei, the People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) provides advice and multilateral discussions between Europe and Asia on cooperation in business, politics, education and culture. The proposal for this meeting came from the then Prime Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong and was implemented in March 1996. Members from Asia are: Brunei, the People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, Japan, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.

In 1997 the group of eight developing countries (D-8) was founded, which includes Egypt and Nigeria as well as the Asian states of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkey. The aim of the D-8 is to improve its position in the world economy, to diversify trade relations and to create new trade relations, to increase participation in decisions at international level and thus to ensure better living conditions for people in developing countries .

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO; also: Shanghai Organization for Cooperation , SOZ) emerged in 2001 from the Shanghai Five Group , which was primarily intended to serve the military cooperation of the member countries and the reduction of the military presence at the common borders. Uzbekistan was added to the original member states of the People’s Republic of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan when the SCO was founded. Mongolia, India, Pakistan and Iran are in observer status. India in particular is encouraged to become a full member. In addition to improving political stability in the region, for which an anti-terror network ( Regional Antiterrorism Structure , RATS) was set up, a common foreign policy and the creation of a free trade area are sought in the long term.

In the run-up to the fifth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Cancún ( Mexico ), the G20 (at times also G21 , G22 or G20 + ) was created on August 20, 2003 as a common platform for developing and emerging countries and a counterweight to the USA and the EU . Along with Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and India are the leading forces in this. Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand are also members.

Since 2002, 30 Asian countries from all regions have been cooperating in the Asian Cooperation Dialogue . Annual meetings of the foreign, finance and economic ministers in particular are intended to contribute to increased cooperation.

Other major Asian organizations are: the Organization of the Islamic Conference , the Asian Development Bank ( Asia Development Bank , ADB) and the Asian Human Rights Commission .

See also

• Asian highway project
• Eurasisches Magazin — online magazine with the topic of Europe and Asia.
• Transnational pollution in East Asia
• List of Asian TV channels in Europe
• List of geographical records by continent # Asia

Web links

Wiktionary: Asia  — explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Database of literature on the social, political and economic situation in Asia
• Asia House Foundation in Cologne , an association of non-governmental organizations working on Asia, offers a wide range of information on different countries and regions with a focus on social developments, human rights and the environment.
• Federal Agency for Civic Education: Focus on Asia
• Jochen Buchsteiner: New forces in Asia — repercussions for Europe. Discussion paper for the Salzburg Trilogue 2006 on the economic, political and cultural consequences of the “Pacific Century”. Bertelsmann Foundation, Gütersloh, August 2006 (PDF; 912 kB)
• Culture in Asia: art, religion, cult, festivals, calendar, architecture, history (by Dr. Bernhard Peter) (a broad information forum about various Asian countries that combines essays, photo galleries and travel reports)
• ZNet’s Resource on Asia ( Memento from July 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
• Extensive map collection of Asia
• Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection: Historical Maps of Asia (University of Texas, Austin)
• a resource of the Asia Society (Engl.)
• Asian expatriates resources (Engl.)
• Many pictures from Asia from Dubai to Vietnam

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry «Asia» in the Online Etymology Dictionary .
2. 
   ↑ Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use (M49 Standard). UN Statistica Division, accessed on May 2, 2020 (click on «Geographic Regions»). Quote: «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.»
   
3. ↑ United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs: World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision , data available online
4. ↑ Statistics life expectancies
5. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 8, 2013, pages 6–7: Die Welttreligionen
6. ^ Time Almanac (powered by Encyclopaedia Britannia) 2010, page 508. Chicago 2010
7. ↑ DSW data report 2016. (PDF) World Population Foundation, accessed on October 29, 2017 .