Eurasia

Eurasia is the largest continental area on Earth. It includes all of Europe and Asia. Some models of the world, based on physical features (physio-graphically), treat Eurasia as a single continent.

The idea that Europe and Asia are separate continents dates back to antiquity. This idea is largely cultural, and the borders between them have historically changed over time. For example, the ancient Greeks originally included Africa in Asia, but they saw Europe as separate land.

Eurasia is connected to Africa at the Suez Canal. Sometimes the two continents are combined to describe the largest connected landmass on Earth, called Afro-Eurasia.

For other uses, see Eurasia (disambiguation).

History

Main article: History of Eurasia

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

New connections between the parts of Eurasia emerged from the Age of Discovery onward. The Iberians discovered new sea routes in the 1490s, and the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 opened the way for direct travel through the Indo-Mediterranean. Then came the wave of Western European "New Imperialism" that dominated Africa and Asia until the mid-20th century. The communist presence in Eurasia, mainly driven by the Soviet Union, then dominated much of the continent until the end of the Cold War in 1991.

Geography

Eurasia lies mainly in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres. It stretches from Iceland and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Russian Far East in the east, and from the Russian Far North to Maritime Southeast Asia in the south. Some sources place its southern edge at Weber's line. Eurasia is bordered by Africa to the southwest, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Pacific Ocean to the east, and the Indo-Mediterranean to the south. Europe and Asia are seen as two continents because of a historical social construct, since neither fits the usual definition. So in some parts of the world, Eurasia is counted as the largest of the six, five, or four continents on Earth. It covers about 55 million square kilometres (21 million square miles), around 36.2% of Earth's land, and is home to well over 5 billion people, about 70% of the human population. Humans first settled here from Africa 125,000 years ago. Its coastline has many peninsulas, including the Arabian Peninsula, Korean Peninsula, Indian subcontinent, Anatolia Peninsula, Kamchatka Peninsula, and the Italian Peninsula. Because it is so large and spans many latitude zones, it has all types of climates under the Köppen classification, from extreme heat and cold to very wet and very dry places, and many kinds of ecosystems. Eurasia is considered a supercontinent, part of Afro-Eurasia, or a continent in its own right. In plate tectonics, the Eurasian Plate includes Europe and most of Asia, but not the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian Peninsula, or the part of the Russian Far East east of the Chersky Range. Historically and culturally, it can be loosely divided into Western Eurasia and Eastern Eurasia.

Further information: Laurasia

In geology, Eurasia is often considered a single rigid mega block, though this is debated. It formed between 375 and 325 million years ago when Siberia, Kazakhstania, and Baltica merged. Baltica was then joined to Laurentia (North America) to form Euramerica. The following list shows the longest rivers in Eurasia, all over 3,000 km (1,900 mi). All of the 100 highest mountains on Earth are in Eurasia, in the Himalaya, Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Pamir, Hengduan, and Tian Shan ranges. All peaks above 7,000 metres (23,000 ft) are in these ranges and the Transhimalaya. Other high ranges include the Kunlun, Hindu Raj, and Caucasus Mountains. The Alpide belt stretches 15,000 kilometres (9,300 mi) across southern Eurasia, from Java in Maritime Southeast Asia to the Iberian Peninsula in Western Europe, and includes the Alborz and the Alps. Long ranges outside this belt include the East Siberian, Altai, Scandinavian, Qinling, Western Ghats, Vindhya, Byrranga, and Annamite Ranges. The largest Eurasian islands by area are Borneo, Sumatra, Honshu, Great Britain, Sulawesi, Java, Luzon, Iceland, Mindanao, Ireland, Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Sri Lanka. The five most-populated islands in the world are Java, Honshu, Great Britain, Luzon, and Sumatra. Other islands with large populations include Mindanao, Taiwan, Salsette, Borneo, Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Kyushu, and Hainan. The most densely populated islands are Caubian Gamay Island, Ap Lei Chau, and Navotas Island. In the Arctic Ocean, Severny Island, Nordaustlandet, October Revolution Island, and Bolshevik Island are Eurasia's largest uninhabited islands, while Kotelny Island, Alexandra Land, and Spitsbergen are the least densely populated.

Russian geopolitical ideology

Originally, "Eurasia" is a geographical idea: it is simply the biggest continent, the combined land of Europe and Asia. However, in geopolitics, the word has several meanings that reflect specific geopolitical interests. "Eurasia" is one of the most important geopolitical concepts and appears often in commentaries on the ideas of Halford Mackinder. Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote that how America "manages" Eurasia is critical, because a power that controls Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. About 75 per cent of the world's people live there.

The Russian "Eurasianism" at first matched roughly the land area of Imperial Russia in 1914, including parts of Eastern Europe. One of Russia's main geopolitical interests is growing closer integration with the countries it considers part of "Eurasia." The term also gained a geopolitical reputation as one of the three super-states in 1984, the novel by George Orwell, where constant surveillance and propaganda are key tools of control, introduced as reflexive antagonists within a heterogeneous dispositif of metapolitical constructs used to control and exercise power.

Regional organizations and alliances

Across Eurasia, several single markets have formed, including the Eurasian Economic Space, the European Single Market, the ASEAN Economic Community, and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Many international organizations also work to bring countries across Eurasia closer together, including the groups below:

Every two years since 1996, most Asian and European countries have met as the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM).

Main article: Commonwealth of Independent States

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a group of 10 former Soviet republics in Eurasia. It encourages cooperation in economic, political, and military affairs. Six of its members have also joined the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a military alliance founded in 1992.

See also: Enlargement of the Eurasian Economic Union

The Eurasian Economic Union is an economic union set up in 2015. Its members include Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Moldova, Uzbekistan, and Cuba are observer members. The union is based in Minsk, Belarus, and Moscow, Russia. The Federation of Euro-Asian Stock Exchanges (FEAS), based in Yerevan, brings together the main stock exchanges in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

The Russia – EU Four Common Spaces Initiative is an agreement between the European Union and Russia to work more closely together. Progress stopped after relations worsened following the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was announced in 2001 in Shanghai, China. It is the largest regional organisation in the world by area and population. The Greater Eurasian Partnership, proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2015, aims to build a broad framework for integration across the continent. Unlike Africa, which has the African Union, and Latin America, which has CELAC, Eurasia does not yet have a single organization covering the whole continent.

Use of term

Main article: Boundary between Asia and Europe

Ancient Greeks treated Europe and Asia as separate "lands." Experts still debate where the line between them should be. Some people think the Kuma-Manych Depression forms the southeast boundary, while others prefer the Caucasus Mountains. The choice matters because Mount Elbrus would be part of Europe if the mountains were the boundary, making it Europe's highest mountain instead of Mont Blanc. The boundary most people accept today was defined by Philip Johan von Strahlenberg in the 1700s. Many modern geographers, such as Halford Mackinder, have criticized parts of his line, especially the idea that the Ural Mountains divide the continents.

In the 1800s, Russian philosopher Nikolai Danilevsky described Eurasia as its own region, separate from Europe and Asia. This idea has been influential in Russia and other former Soviet countries. Some people use "Eurasia" to mean the post-Soviet space, especially Russia, the Central Asian countries, and the Transcaucasus countries, and sometimes nearby places such as Turkey and Mongolia. In Kazakhstan, the word is often used to describe the country's location, and many institutions there use it in their names, such as the L. N. Gumilev Eurasian National University. This usage is similar to how Americans use "Western Hemisphere" for groups focused on the Americas, such as the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.