Asia (/ˈeɪʒə/ⓘAY-zhə,UK also/ˈeɪʃə/AY-shə) is the largestcontinent[note 1][10][11] in the world by both land area and population.[11] It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres,[note 2] 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 thehuman population,[12] was the site of many of thefirst civilisations. Its 4.7 billion people constitute roughly 60% of the world's population.
Since the concept of Asia derives from the term for the eastern region from a European perspective, Asia is the remaining vast area of Eurasia minus Europe. Therefore, Asia is a region where various independent cultures coexist rather than sharing a single culture, and the boundary between Europe is somewhat arbitrary and has moved since its first conception inclassical antiquity. The division of Eurasia into two continents reflectsEast–West cultural differences, some of which vary on a spectrum.
Asia varies greatly across and withinits 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 deserts in parts ofWest Asia,Central Asia andSouth Asia, temperate areas in the east and the continental centre to vast subarctic and polar areas inNorth Asia.
Etymology
Ptolemy's Asia
The term "Asia" is believed to originate in theBronze Age toponymAssuwa (Hittite:𒀸𒋗𒉿,romanized: aš-šu-wa) which originally referred only to a portion of northwesternAnatolia. The term appears inHittite records recounting how a confederation of Assuwan states includingTroy unsuccessfully rebelled against the Hittite kingTudhaliya I around 1400 BCE.[18][19][20] Roughly contemporaryLinear B documents contain the termaswia (Mycenaean Greek:𐀀𐀯𐀹𐀊,romanized: a-si-wi-ja), seemingly in reference to captives from the same area.[21][22]
Herodotus used the term in reference toAnatolia and the territory of theAchaemenid Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt. He reports that Greeks assumed that Asia was named after the wife ofPrometheus, but thatLydians say it was named afterAsies, son of Cotys, who passed the name on to a tribe atSardis.[23] InGreek mythology, "Asia" (Ἀσία orἈσίη) was the name of a "Nymph orTitan goddess of Lydia".[24] TheIliad (attributed by the ancient Greeks toHomer) mentions two Phrygians in theTrojan War namedAsios (literally 'Asian');[25] and also a marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia asασιος.[26]
The term was later adopted by theRomans, who used it in reference to theprovince of Asia, located in western Anatolia.[27] One of the first writers to use Asia as a name of the whole continent wasPliny.[28]
Definitions used for the boundary between Asia and Europe in different periods of history.Modern definitions mostly fit with linesB andF given.
The threefold division of theOld World into Africa, Asia, and Europe has been in use since the 6th century BCE, due toGreek geographers such asAnaximander andHecataeus.[29] Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along thePhasis River (now the Rioni) inGeorgia of Caucasus (from its mouth byPoti on theBlack Sea coast, through theSurami Pass and along theKura River to the Caspian Sea), a convention still followed byHerodotus in the 5th century BCE.[30] During theHellenistic period,[31] this convention was revised, and the boundary between Europe and Asia was now considered to be theTanais (the modern Don River). This is the convention used by Roman era authors such asPosidonius,[32]Strabo[33] andPtolemy.[34]
The border between Asia and Europe was historically defined by European academics.[35]
In Sweden, five years after Peter's death, in 1730Philip 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 theEmba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until theUral 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.[36] The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed along the crest of theCaucasus Mountains, although it is sometimes placed further north.[35]
Definitions of the boundary between Asia and Oceania
The border between Asia andOceania is usually placed somewhere in theIndonesian Archipelago, specifically inEastern Indonesia. TheWallace Line separates the Asian andWallacea biogeographical realms, a transition zone of deep water straits between the Asian and Australian continental shelves.Weber's Line split the region in two with regard to the balance of fauna between Asian origin or Australo-Papuan origin.[38] Wallacea's eastern boundary withSahul is represented by theLydekker's Line.[39][40] TheMaluku Islands (except the Aru Islands) are often considered to lie on the border of southeast Asia, with theAru Islands andWestern New Guinea, to the east of the Lydekker's Line, being wholly part of Oceania, as both lie on the Australian continental plate.[38] Culturally, the Wallacea region denoted the transition betweenAustronesian andMelanesian people, with varying degrees of intermixing between the two. In general, the further west and coastal a region is, the stronger the Austronesian influences, and the further east and inland a region is, the stronger the Melanesian influences.[41] 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."[42]
TheBering Strait andBering Sea separate the landmasses of Asia andNorth America, as well as forming the international boundary between Russia and the United States. Thisnational and continental boundary separates theDiomede Islands in the Bering Strait, withBig Diomede inRussia andLittle Diomede in theUnited States. TheAleutian Islands are an island chain extending westward from theAlaskan Peninsula toward Russia'sKomandorski Islands andKamchatka Peninsula. Most of them are always associated with North America, except for the westernmostNear Islands group, which is on Asia's continental shelf beyond theNorth Aleutians Basin and on rare occasions could be associated with Asia, which could then allow the United States 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.[43][44][45] This is extremely rare however, due to their non-tropical biogeography, as well as theirinhabitants, who have historically been related to theIndigenous peoples of the Americas.[46][47]
St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea belongs to the US state ofAlaska and may be associated with either continent but is almost always considered part of North America, as with theRat Islands in the Aleutian chain. At their nearest points, Alaska and Russia are separated by only 4 kilometres (2.5 miles).
Ongoing definition
Afro-Eurasia
Geographical Asia is a cultural artifact of European conceptions of the world, beginning with theAncient 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.[48]
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.[49] For example, SirBarry 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".[50]
Geographically, Asia is the major eastern constituent of the continent ofEurasia with Europe being a northwesternpeninsula of the landmass. Asia, Europe and Africa make up a single continuous landmass—Afro-Eurasia—and share a commoncontinental shelf. Almost all of Europe and a major part of Asia sit atop theEurasian Plate, adjoined on the south by theArabian andIndian Plate and with the easternmost part of Siberia (east of theChersky Range) on theNorth American Plate.
TheSilk Road connected civilisations across Asia[51]
The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions:East Asia,South Asia,Southeast Asia,Central Asia, andWest Asia. The coastal periphery was home to some of the world's earliest known civilisations, each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilisations inMesopotamia, theIndus Valley and theYellow River shared many similarities. These civilisations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such asmathematics and thewheel. 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 thesteppes. The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of theIndo-Europeans, who spread their languages into West Asia, South Asia, and the borders of China, where theTocharians resided. The northernmost part of Asia, including much ofSiberia, was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate andtundra. These areas remained very sparsely populated.
The center and the peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts. TheCaucasus andHimalaya mountains and theKarakum andGobi 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 equestrian 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 IslamicCaliphate's defeats of theByzantine and Persian empires led to West Asia and southern parts ofCentral Asia andwestern parts of South Asia under its control duringits conquests of the 7th century; Islam alsospread over centuries to the southern regions of India and Southeast Asia through trade along theMaritime Silk Road.[52][53] TheMongol 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.[54]
TheBlack Death, one of the most devastatingpandemics in human history, is thought to have originated in the arid plains of central Asia, where it then travelled along theSilk Road.[55]
European involvement in Asia became more significant from theAge of Discovery onward, with Iberian-sponsored sailors such asChristopher Columbus andVasco da Gama paving the way for new routes fromAtlantic Europe toPacific Asia and the Indian Ocean respectively in the late 15th century.[56] TheRussian Empire also began to expand into northwestern 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.
Among non-European empires, theOttoman Empire controlled Anatolia, most of the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans from the mid 16th century onward, while in the 17th century, theManchu conquered China and established theQing dynasty. The IslamicMughal Empire (preceded by theDelhi Sultanate of the 13th to early 16th century)[57] and the HinduMaratha Empire controlled much of India in the 16th and 18th centuries respectively.[58]
The aftermath of the 1757Battle of Plassey, which eventually led to British India.
Foreign domination of China was furthered by theJapanese colonial empire, which controlled some of East Asia and briefly much of Southeast Asia (which had earlier beentaken over by the British, Dutch and French in the late 19th century),[63]New Guinea and thePacific islands; Japan's domination was enabled by its rapid rise that had taken place during theMeiji era of the late 19th century, in which it applied industrial knowledge learned from the West and thus overtook the rest of Asia.[64][65] One significant influence on Japan had been the United States, which had begun projecting influence across the Pacific after its early-to-mid-19th centurywestward expansion.[66] Thebreakup of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century led to the Middle East also beingcontested and partitioned by the British and French.[67]
Contemporary era
The Soviet Union (in red) and China (yellow) controlled most of Asia in the late 20th century
Some Arab countries took economic advantage of massive oil deposits that were discovered in their territory, becoming globally influential,[72] though stability in the Middle East has been affected since 1948 by theArab–Israeli conflict and American-ledinterventions.[73][74] East Asian nations (along with Singapore in Southeast Asia) became economically prosperous with high-growth "tiger economies";[75] China, having undergonemarket-driven reforms underDeng Xiaoping,[76] regained its place among the top two economies of the world by the 21st century.[77] India has also grown significantly because ofeconomic liberalisation that started in the 1990s,[78] with extreme poverty now below 20%;[79] India and China's rise has coincided with growing tensions between the two, with theIndo-Pacific now an actively contested area between China and counterbalancing forces.[80][81]
TheHimalayan range is home to some of the planet's highest peaks
Asia is the largest continent on Earth. It covers 9% of the Earth's total surface area (or 30% of its land area), and has the longest coastline, at 62,800 kilometres (39,022 mi). Asia is generally defined as comprising the eastern four-fifths of Eurasia. It is located to the east of theSuez Canal and theUral Mountains, and south of theCaucasus Mountains (or theKuma–Manych Depression) and theCaspian andBlack Seas.[13][83] It is bounded on the east by thePacific 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 andTurkey) aretranscontinental countries lying partly in Europe. Geographically, Russia is partly in Asia, but is considered aEuropean nation, bothculturally and politically.
TheGobi Desert is in Mongolia and theArabian Desert stretches across much of the Middle East. TheYangtze 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 anddeciduous forests lie farther north.
There are various approaches to the regional division of Asia. The following subdivision into regions is used, among others, by theUnited Nations Statistics Division (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.[84]
Asia has extremely diverse climate features. Climates range fromArctic andsubarctic 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. Themonsoon 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 theNorthern Hemisphere, and can act as a source of arctic air masses for North America. The most active place on Earth fortropical cyclone activity lies northeast of thePhilippines and south of Japan.
Climate change is particularly important in Asia, as the continent accounts for the majority of the human population. Warming since the 20th century is increasing the threat ofheatwaves across the entire continent.[88]: 1459 Heatwaves lead to increased mortality, and the demand forair conditioning is rapidly accelerating as the result. By 2080, around 1 billion people in the cities ofSouth andSoutheast Asia are expected to experience around a month of extreme heat every year.[88]: 1460 Theimpacts on water cycle are more complicated: already arid regions, primarily located inWest Asia andCentral Asia, will see moredroughts, while areas ofEast, Southeast and South Asia which are already wet due to themonsoons will experience more flooding.[88]: 1459
The waters around Asia are subjected to the sameimpacts as elsewhere, such as the increased warming andocean acidification.[88]: 1465 There are manycoral reefs in the region, and they are highly vulnerable to climate change,[88]: 1459 to the point practically all of them will be lost if the warming exceeds 1.5 °C (2.7 °F).[89][90] Asia's distinctivemangrove ecosystems are also highly vulnerable tosea level rise.[88]: 1459 Asia also has more countries with large coastal populations than any other continent, which would cause large economic impacts from sea level rise.[88]: 1459 Water supplies in theHindu Kush region will become more unstable as its enormousglaciers, known as the "Asian water towers", gradually melt.[88]: 1459 These changes to water cycle also affect vector-borne disease distribution, with malaria and dengue fever expected to become more prominent in the tropical and subtropical regions.[88]: 1459 Food security will become more uneven, and South Asian countries could experience significant impacts from global food price volatility.[88]: 1494
Climate change is expected to exacerbateheat stress over at theNorth China Plain, which is particularly vulnerable as widespreadirrigation results in very moist air. There is a risk that agricultural labourers will be physically unable to work outdoors on hot summer days at the end of the century, particularly under the scenario of greatest emissions and warming.[91]
Historical emissions from Asia are lower than those from Europe and North America. However, China has been the single largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the 21st century, while India is the third-largest. As a whole, Asia currently accounts for 36% of world's primaryenergy consumption, which is expected to increase to 48% by 2050. By 2040, it is also expected to account for 80% of the world'scoal and 26% of the world'snatural gas consumption.[88]: 1468 While theUnited States remains the world's largestoil consumer, by 2050 it is projected to move to third place, behind China and India.[88]: 1470 While nearly half of the world's newrenewable energy capacity is built in Asia,[88]: 1470 this is not yet sufficient in order to meet the goals of theParis Agreement. They imply that the renewables would account for 35% of total energy consumption in Asia by 2030.[88]: 1471
Climate change adaptation is already a reality for many Asian countries, with a wide range of strategies attempted across the continent.[88]: 1534 Important examples include the growing implementation ofclimate-smart agriculture in certain countries or the "sponge city" planning principles in China.[88]: 1534 While some countries have drawn up extensive frameworks such as the Bangladesh Delta Plan or Japan's Climate Adaptation Act,[88]: 1508 others still rely on localized actions that are not effectively scaled up.[88]: 1534
Asia has thelargest continental economy in the world by bothGDP nominal andPPP values, and is the fastest growing economic region.[93] As of 2023[update],China is by far the largest economy on the continent, making up nearly half of the continent's economy by GDP nominal. It is followed by Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are all ranked among the top 20 largest economies both by nominal and PPP values.[94] Based on Global Office Locations 2011, Asia dominated the office locations with 4 of the top 5 being in Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore,Tokyo andSeoul. Around 68% of international firms have an office in Hong Kong.[95]
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economy of China[96] had an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. According to economic historianAngus Maddison, India had the world's largest economy for much of the past three millennia prior to the 19th century, accounting for 25% of the world's industrial output.[97][98][99][100] China was thelargest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history and shared the mantle with India.[101][15][102] 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 theSoviet Union (measured in net material product) in 1990 and Germany in 1968. (NB: A number of supernational economies are larger, such as theEuropean Union (EU), theNorth American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) orAPEC). This ended in 2010 when China overtook Japan to become the world's second largest economy. It is forecasted that India will overtake Japan in terms of nominal GDP by 2027.[93]
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan's GDP by currency exchange rates was almost as large as that of the rest of Asia combined.[93] 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 79yen/US$. Economic growth in Asia sinceWorld 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 thePacific Rim, known as theFour Asian Tigers, which are now all considered developed economies, having among the highest GDP per capita in Asia.[103][93]
Mumbai is one of the most populous cities in Asia, as well as an economic and tourism hub
Asia is the largest continent in the world by a considerable margin, and it is rich in natural resources, such aspetroleum,forests,fish,water,rice,copper andsilver. 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 ofmultinational 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.[104][105]
According toCitigroup in 2011, 9 of 11Global 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.[106] Asia has three main financial centers: Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore.Call centers andbusiness 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.[107]
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 theStrait of Malacca via the Sri Lankan Colombo to the southern tip of India via Malé to East AfricaMombasa (see also:Indo-Pacific), from there toDjibouti, then through the Red Sea over theSuez Canal into Mediterranean (see also:Indo-Mediterranean), there via Haifa, Istanbul andAthens to the upper Adriatic to the northern Italian hub ofTrieste with its rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe or further toBarcelona and around Spain and France to the European northern ports. A far smaller part of the goods traffic runs viaSouth Africa to Europe. A particularly significant part of the Asian goods traffic is carried out on thePacific Rim, towardLos Angeles andLong Beach. The melting of the Arctic is also paving the way fornew shipping routes from Northeast Asia to Europe and North America.[108] The land route to Europe are the subject of construction projects, comparatively smaller in scope. smaller in terms of scope. Intra-Asian trade, including sea trade, is growing rapidly.[109][110][111][112][113][114][115]
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. In 2011, Asia topped Europe in number of millionaires.[116]Citigroup in The Wealth Report 2012 stated that the total wealth of people in Asia with over $100 million in assets exceeded that of their North American counterparts 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.[117]
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.[122]
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found onPhabricator and onMediaWiki.org.
East Asia had by far the strongest overallHuman 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.[123] Nepal, a South Asian country, emerges as one of the world's fastest movers since 1970 mainly due to health and education achievements. Its presentlife 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.[123] 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.[123]
Asia is home to severallanguage families and manylanguage isolates. Most Asian countries have more than one language that is natively spoken. For instance, according toEthnologue, 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.
Many of the world'smajor religions have their origins in Asia, including the five most practiced in the world (excludingirreligion), which are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion (classified as Confucianism and Taoism), and Buddhism. Asian mythology is complex and diverse. The story of theGreat Flood for example, as presented to Jews in theHebrew Bible in the narrative ofNoah—and later to Christians in theOld Testament, and to Muslims in theQuran—is earliest found inMesopotamian mythology, in theEnûma Eliš andEpic of Gilgamesh.Hindu mythology similarly tells about anavatar ofVishnu in the form of afish who warnedManu of a terrible flood. AncientChinese mythology also tells of aGreat Flood spanning generations, one that required the combined efforts of emperors and divinities to control.
Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths, is practiced primarily inIsrael, the indigenous homeland and historical birthplace of theHebrew nation: which today consists both of thoseJews who remained inthe Middle East and those who returned fromdiaspora in Europe, North America, and other regions;[127] though various diaspora communities persist worldwide. Jews are the predominant ethnic group inIsrael (75.6%) numbering at about 6.1 million,[128] although the levels of adherence to Jewish religion vary. Outside of Israel there are small ancient Jewish communities inTurkey (17,400),[129]Azerbaijan (9,100),[130] Iran (8,756),[131] India (5,000) andUzbekistan (4,000),[132] among many other places. As of 2016, there are am estimated 14.4–17.5 million (2016, est.)[133] Jews alive in the world today, making them one of the smallest Asian minorities, at roughly 0.3–0.4& of the total population of the continent.
Islam, which originated in theHejaz 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.[139] 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 andJerusalem are the three holiest cities for Islam in all the world. TheHajj andUmrah attract large numbers of Muslim devotees from all over the world to Mecca and Medina. Iran is the largestShia country.
TheDruze originated in West Asia, is a monotheistic religion based on the teachings of figures likeHamza ibn Ali andal-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, and Greekphilosophers such asPlato andAristotle. The number ofDruze people worldwide is around one million. Around 45–50% live inSyria, 35% to 40% live inLebanon, and less than 10% live inIsrael. Recently there has been a growing Druze diaspora.[140]
TheBaháʼí Faith originated in Asia, in Iran (Persia), and spread from there to the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia, India, and Burma during the lifetime ofBahá'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 beenseverely suppressed by authorities.Lotus Temple is a bigBaháʼí temple in India.
Almost all Asian religions have philosophical character and Asian philosophical traditions cover a large spectrum of philosophical thoughts and writings.Indian philosophy includesHindu philosophy andBuddhist philosophy. They include elements of nonmaterial pursuits, whereas another school of thought from India,Cārvāka, preached the enjoyment of the material world. The religions ofHinduism,Buddhism,Jainism andSikhism originated in India, South Asia. In East Asia, particularly in China and Japan,Confucianism,Taoism andZen Buddhism took shape.
As of 2012[update], Hinduism has around 1.1 billion adherents. The faith represents around 25% of Asia's population and is the largest religion in Asia. However, it is mostly concentrated in South Asia. Over 80% of the populations of both India and Nepal adhere to Hinduism, alongside significant communities in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka andBali, Indonesia. Many overseas Indians in countries such as Burma, Singapore and Malaysia also adhere to Hinduism.
The Angkor Wat in Cambodia, a Hindu-Buddhist temple and the largest religious monument in the world
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 syncretised withMahayana Buddhism, thus exact religious statistics are difficult to obtain and may be understated or overstated.
Theculture 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, andWest Asia.[162] These regions are defined by their cultural similarities, including common religions, languages, and ethnicities. West Asia, also known as Southwest Asia or theMiddle East, has cultural roots in the ancient civilisations of theFertile Crescent andMesopotamia, which gave rise to thePersian,Arab,Ottoman empires, as well as the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.[163] These civilisations, which are located in theHilly flanks, are among the oldest in the world, with evidence of farming dating back to around 9000 BCE.[164] 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 aPan-Asian culture that is shared across the region.[165]
Rabindranath Tagore, aBengali dramatist and author fromSantiniketan (now inWest Bengal, India), won theNobel Prize in Literature in 1913, becoming the first AsianNobel laureate. The prize was awarded for Tagore's prose works and poetry, which had a significant additional impact on national literatures throughout the Western world. Tagore also authored both the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems.
Other Asian writers who won Nobel Prize for literature includeYasunari Kawabata (Japan, 1968),Kenzaburō Ōe (Japan, 1994),Gao Xingjian (China, 2000),Orhan Pamuk (Turkey, 2006), andMo 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, namelyThe Good Earth (1931) andThe Mother (1933), as well as the biographies of her parents for their time in China,The Exile andFighting Angel, all of which earned her the Literature prize in 1938.
Mother Teresa of India andShirin Ebadi of Iran were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their significant and pioneering efforts fordemocracy 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 isAung San Suu Kyi fromBurma 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 aBuddhist and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Chinese dissidentLiu 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 andMalala 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".
Japan has won the most Nobel Prizes of any Asian nation with 24 followed by India which has won 13.[needs update]
Amartya Sen (b. 1933) is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics andsocial choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members.
In 2006, the BangladeshiMuhammad Yunus of was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the establishment ofGrameen Bank, a community development bank that lends money to poor people, especially women. He is known for the concept of micro credit which, allows poor and destitute people to borrow money. The borrowers pay back money within the specified period and defaulting is very low. Yunus also became the leader of aninterim government after the2024 Bangladesh quota reform movement.[166] TheDalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize, inOslo, Norway in 1989.[167]
^Asia is normally considered its own continent in the English speaking world, which uses the seven continent model.[8][9] Other models consider Asia as part of a Eurasian or Afro-Eurasian continent (seeContinent § Number).
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^W. Theiler,Posidonios. Die Fragmente, vol. 1. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982, fragm. 47a.
^I. G. Kidd (ed.),Posidonius: The commentary, Cambridge University Press, 2004,ISBN978-0-521-60443-7,Posidonius (1989).p. 738. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-60443-7.Archived from the original on 1 August 2020. Retrieved21 January 2020.
^Geographia 7.5.6 (ed. Nobbe 1845,Ptolomy, Claudio (1845).Geographia. Vol. 2.Archived from the original on 24 May 2020. Retrieved21 January 2020., p. 178).Καὶ τῇ Εὐρώπῃ δὲ συνάπτει διὰ τοῦ μεταξὺ αὐχένος τῆς τε Μαιώτιδος λίμνης καὶ τοῦ Σαρματικοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς διαβάσεως τοῦ Τανάϊδος ποταμοῦ."And [Asia] is connected to Europe by the land-strait between Lake Maiotis and the Sarmatian Ocean where the river Tanais crosses through."
^abSimpson, George Gaylord (1977). "Too Many Lines; The Limits of the Oriental and Australian Zoogeographic Regions".Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.121 (2). American Philosophical Society:107–120.ISSN0003-049X.JSTOR986523.
^Wallace, Alfred Russel (1879).Australasia. University of Michigan. p. 2.Archived from the original on 30 July 2022. Retrieved12 March 2022.The more northerly section, lying between Japan and California and between the Aleutian and Hawaiian Archipelagos is relived by nothing but a few solitary reefs and rocks at enormously distant intervals.
^Kohlhoff, Dean (2002).Amchitka and the Bomb: Nuclear Testing in Alaska. University of Washington Press. p. 6.ISBN978-0295800509.Archived from the original on 17 May 2023. Retrieved12 March 2022.The regional name of the Pacific Islands is appropriate: Oceania, a sea of islands, including those of Alaska and Hawaii. The Pacific Basin is not insignificant or remote. It covers one third of the globe's surface. Its northern boundary is the Aleutian Islands chain.
^Henderson, John William (1971).Area Handbook for Oceania. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 5.Archived from the original on 6 April 2023. Retrieved11 March 2022.
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^abcdefghijklmnopqrShaw, R., Y. Luo, T. S. Cheong, S. Abdul Halim, S. Chaturvedi, M. Hashizume, G. E. Insarov, Y. Ishikawa, M. Jafari, A. Kitoh, J. Pulhin, C. Singh, K. Vasant, and Z. Zhang, 2022:Chapter 10: Asia. InClimate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability [H.-O. Pörtner, D. C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E. S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, New York, US, pp. 1457–1579 |doi=10.1017/9781009325844.012.
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^MacQueen, Benjamin (2013).An Introduction to Middle East Politics: Continuity, Change, Conflict and Co-operation. SAGE. p. 5.ISBN978-1-4462-8976-1.The Middle East is the cradle of the three monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
^Takacs, Sarolta (2015).The Modern World: Civilizations of Africa, Civilizations of Europe, Civilizations of the Americas, Civilizations of the Middle East and Southwest Asia, Civilizations of Asia and the Pacific. Routledge. p. 552.ISBN978-1-317-45572-1.
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Further reading
Embree, Ainslie T., ed.Encyclopedia of Asian history (1988)
"Display Maps".The Soil Maps of Asia. European Digital Archive of Soil Maps – EuDASM. Archived fromthe original on 12 August 2011. Retrieved26 July 2011.
"Asia Maps".Perry–Castañeda Library Map Collection. University of Texas Libraries.Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved20 July 2011.
"Asia". Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library. Archived fromthe original on 29 September 2011. Retrieved26 July 2011.
Bowring, Philip (12 February 1987)."What is Asia?".Eastern Economic Review.135 (7). Archived fromthe original on 28 July 2011. Retrieved22 April 2009.
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