Information about Eurasia

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Eurasia
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Eurasia
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African-Eurasian aspect of Earth


Eurasia is an immense landmass covering about 53,990,000 km² (or about 10.6%) of the Earth's surface. Often reckoned as a single continent, Eurasia comprises the traditional continents of Europe and Asia, concepts which date back to classical antiquity and the borders for which are somewhat arbitrary. Eurasia, in turn, is part of the yet larger landmass of Africa-Eurasia, whereby Asia is joined to Africa at the Isthmus of Suez.

Eurasia has in excess of 4.61 billion people, more than 71% of the world's human population.

History and culture

Jared Diamond, in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, credits Eurasia's dominance in world history to the east-west extent of Eurasia and its climate zones, and the availability of Eurasian animals and plants suitable for domestication.

The Silk Road symbolizes trade and cultural exchange linking Eurasian cultures through history and has been an increasingly popular topic. Over recent decades the idea of a greater Eurasian history has developed with the aim of investigating the genetic, cultural and linguistic relationships between European and Asian cultures of antiquity. These had long been considered distinct.

Eurasia was first circumnavigated by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld in 1878-79.

Geology

Main article: Laurasia
Eurasia formed 325 to 375 million years ago. It formed when Siberia (once an independent continent), Kazakhstania, and Baltica (which was joined to Laurentia (now North America) to form Euramerica) joined. Chinese cratons collided with Siberia's southern coast.

Use of term

In modern usage, the term "Eurasian" generally refers to a person of both European and Asian parentage, especially in new world countries such as the United States and Canada.

Located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres, Eurasia is considered a supercontinent, part of the supercontinent of Africa-Eurasia or simply 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 area of the Russian Far East east of the Chersky Range. Eurasia is also sometimes used in geopolitics as a neutral way to refer to organizations of or affairs concerning the post-Soviet states, in particular Russia, the Central Asian republics, and the Transcaucasian republics.

Europeans traditionally considered Europe and Asia to be separate continents, with the dividing line placed along the Aegean Sea, Dardanelles, Sea of Marmara, Bosporus, Black Sea, Caucasus Mountains, Caspian Sea, Ural River, and Ural Mountains, and this terminology has spread to the rest of the world, even though Asia contains multiple regions and cultures as large and populous as Europe, and as different and geographically separated from each other as they are from Europe. From a modern perspective in scientific circles people generally prefer to subsume Europe and Asia into Eurasia.

Use in fiction

Eurasia is a fictional country, state or supranational entity appearing in several works of fantasy, literature and science fiction, including books, movies, television series and video games:
  • A Eurasia comprising approximately the same land area as the real-life landmass appears in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. This superstate excludes Britain and Ireland (both controlled by Oceania) and Eastasia, the latter of which was formed after a 'decade of confused fighting' by an alliance of the states of the real-life East Asia region, the most important two being China and Japan. India was a contested border zone between Eurasia and Oceania and was the most famous state involved.
  • Robert A. Heinlein's story Solution Unsatisfactory, written in 1940, describes a future 1945 (now to be considered an alternate history) in which the Soviet Union is transformed into the 'Eurasian Union'.
  • In S. M. Stirling's dystopian Draka alternative history series, the analogue to World War II is known as "The Eurasian War". Somewhat similar in its geography to Orwell's scenario, the war ends with most of Eurasia—excluding the British Isles, India and southeast Asia—being conquered by the extremely oppressive Draka who literally enslave everybody else.
  • In the universe of the Earth game series (Earth 2140, Earth 2150, Earth 2160), one of the major factions is the Eurasian Dynasty.
  • Eurasia is a large and powerful terrestrial state and member of the Earth Alliance in the Cosmic Era series of the epic anime franchise Mobile Suit Gundam SEED.
  • Eurasia is also used as the name of the fictional space colony that Mega Man and Zero must stop from colliding with Earth in the video game Mega Man X5.
  • The fictional character of Butler, from the Artemis Fowl series of novels by author Eoin Colfer, is a large Eurasian bodyguard.

See also

External links


Regions of the World
Africa: Central Africa | East Africa | Great Lakes | Guinea | Horn of Africa | North Africa | Maghreb / Northwest Africa | Sahel | Southern Africa | Sub-Saharan Africa | Sudan | West Africa
Americas: Andean states | Caribbean | Central America | Great Lakes | Great Plains | Guianas | Latin America | North America | Patagonia | South America | Southern Cone
Asia: Central Asia | East Asia | East Indies | Far East | Indian subcontinent | North Asia | Southeast Asia | Southwest Asia (Middle East / Near East, Levant, Anatolia, Arabia)
Europe: Balkans | Baltic region | Benelux | British Isles | Central Europe | Eastern Europe | Northern Europe | Scandinavia | Southern Europe | Western Europe
Eurasia: Caucasus | Mediterranean | Post-Soviet states
Oceania:Australasia | Melanesia | Micronesia | Polynesia | Aleutian Islands | Pacific Rim
Polar:Arctic | Antarctic
Not to be confused with land mass.
A landmass is a large continuous area of land. Although it may be most often written as one word to distinguish it from the usage 'land mass' to mean the measure of a land area, it is also used as two words.
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Square kilometre (U.S. spelling: square kilometer), symbol km², is a decimal multiple of the SI unit of surface area, the square metre, one of the SI derived units. 1 km² is equal to:
  • 1,000,000 m²
  • 100 ha (hectare)
Conversely:
  • 1 m² = 0.

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EARTH was a short-lived Japanese vocal trio which released 6 singles and 1 album between 2000 and 2001. Their greatest hit, their debut single "time after time", peaked at #13 in the Oricon singles chart.
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continent is one of several large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, but seven areas are commonly regarded as continents – they are (from largest in size to smallest): Asia, Africa, North America, South America,
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Europe is one of the seven traditional continents of the Earth. Physically and geologically, Europe is the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, west of Asia. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea,
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Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area (or 29.4% of its land area) and, with almost 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population.
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Classical antiquity (also the classical era or classical period) is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
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Eurasiafrica, Eufrasia, Eurafrasia, Eurasica, Africa-Eurasia, or Afro-Eurasia are terms used to describe Eurasia and Africa as one continent. The constituent landmasses contain around 85% of the world population (around 5.7 billion people).
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Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30,221,532 km² (11,668,545 sq mi) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area, and 20.4% of the total land area.
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Jared Diamond

Born: 10 September 1937 (1937--) (age 70)
Boston
Occupation: Nonfiction writer, Professor of Geography at UCLA
Nationality: American
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Guns, Germs, and Steel

Paperback cover
Author Jared Diamond
Country United States
Language English
Subject(s)
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Climate is the average and variations of weather over long periods of time. Climate zones can be defined using parameters such as temperature and rainfall.
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Domestication refers to the process whereby a population of animals or plants becomes accustomed to human provision and control. Humans have brought these populations under their care for a wide range of reasons: to produce food or valuable commodities (such as wool, cotton, or
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Silk Road, or Silk Route, is an interconnected series of ancient trade routes through various regions of the Asian continent, mainly connecting Chang'an (today's Xi'an) in China, with Asia Minor and the Mediterranean. It extends over 8,000 km (5,000 miles) on land and sea.
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The history of Eurasia is the collective history of several distinct peripheral coastal regions: the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe, linked by the interior mass of the Eurasian steppe of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
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Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. Someone who engages in this study is called a linguist.
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circumnavigate a place, such as an island, a continent, or the Earth, is to travel all the way around it by boat or ship. More recently, the term has also been used to cover aerial round-the-world flights.
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(Nils) Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld [IPA: ['nuːrdenʃɶld]], also known as A. E. Nordenskioeld (November 18, 1832, Helsinki, Finland) — August 12, 1901, Dalby, Skåne, Sweden) was a geologist, mineralogist and arctic explorer and a member of the prominent
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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1840s  1850s  1860s  - 1870s -  1880s  1890s  1900s
1875 1876 1877 - 1878 - 1879 1880 1881

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Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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8th century - 9th century - 10th century
850s  860s  870s  - 880s -  890s  900s  910s
885 886 887 - 888 - 889 890 891

:
Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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Laurasia (IPA: /lɔˈreɪʃiə, lɔˈreɪʃiʒə/[1]) was a supercontinent that most recently existed as a part of the split of the Pangaean supercontinent in the late
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Siberia is the craton located in the heart of the region of Siberia. Siberia or "Angaraland" (or simply Angara) is today the Central Siberian Plateau. It is an extremely ancient craton that formed an independent continent before the Permian

Partial


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Kazakhstania, also known as the Kazakhstan Block, is a small continental region in the interior of Asia. It consists of that area north and east of the Aral Sea, south of the Siberian craton and west of the Altai Mountains and Lake Balkhash.
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Baltica is a Late Proterozoic-Early Palaeozoic continent that now includes the East European craton of northwestern Eurasia. Baltica was created as an entity not earlier than 1.8 Ga.
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Laurentia (also known as the North American craton), like all craton land, was created as continents moved about the surface of the Earth, bumping into other continents and drifting away.
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Euramerica (also known as Laurussia or Old Red Continent) was a minor supercontinent created in the Devonian as the result of a collision between the Laurentian and Baltica cratons (Caledonian orogeny).
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Motto
"In God We Trust"   (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum"   ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
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This page is currently protected from editing until disputes have been resolved.
Protection is not an endorsement of the current [ version] ([ protection log]).
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Eastern Hemisphere, also Eastern hemisphere[1] or eastern hemisphere,[2] is a geographical term for the half of the Earth that is east of the Prime Meridian (which crosses Greenwich, England, United Kingdom) and west of the International Date
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Northern Hemisphere or northern hemisphere[1] is the half of a planet that is north of the equator—the word hemisphere literally means 'half ball'. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator.
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