Eurasia

Eurasia

Eurasia is a geographical and geological term for Europe and Asia as a summary continent. It has an area of 55 million square kilometers, about 4.7 billion people.

The word is an amalgamation of Europe and Asia. The term takes into account that Europe and Asia since the Triassic - since about 250 million years ago - are parts of a contiguous land mass: First part of the supercontinent Pangaea, and later Laurasias today Eurasia. The super continent is geologically from four major tectonic plates, of which the Eurasian Plate is the largest, as well as a number of small plates and cratons.

Concept and meaning

The name of Europe as a separate continent is historically and culturally conditioned and goes back to the world view of ancient Europe. So Europe is not usually regarded as a separate continent of South African schools. Here are the five continents of the Earth Eurasia, Africa, America, Australia and Antarctica. In Eastern European countries Eurasia is considered a continent and to five continents (excluding Antarctica ) one counts instead Americas individually.

In cultural-historical sense Eurasia refers to the prehistoric and early historic cultural area of the Eurasian steppe, which extends from the Altai over Kazakhstan, southern Russia and the Ukraine to the Danube. The Hungarian Puszta is an exclave of the East European Plain.

As Eurasians among others, the Anglo - Indians were referred to descendants of mostly British Europeans and Indian women.

Inner Eurasian border

Border demarcation

In the absence of clear marine limit as for the other continents each boundary between Europe and Asia is a matter of convention. Indeed, there is no international legal definition of this limit.

It is undisputed that the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and the watershed of the Ural as boundaries between Europe and Asia. The north of extending the Uralkette lying Russian Novaya Zemlya islands of the group are classified as belonging to Europe viewed, northeast of the Ural Siberian Islands lying to Asia as counting.

In particular, in the area between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, there is no uniform definition. Some of the about 300 kilometers north of the Caucasus Mountains located Manytsch lowlands is considered as the boundary between the continents, because in their place once had been connected to the current Black Sea, the present Caspian Sea. Similarly, the Caucasus and specifically considered here, the watershed between the northern flank and the southern flank as the boundary between Europe and Asia. In the English-and French-speaking countries, this definition dominates. There the definition of Manytsch lowland is often regarded as Southeast border of Europe as a special interpretation of the Russian tsarist empire ( the Manytsch valley was in the Russian Empire, the northern boundary of the General Caucasia ). Even in the Soviet Union, the border demarcation in the Caucasus was preferred. Depending on which definition is followed, is Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in the Caucasus, in the first case in the Asian part, in the last case in the European part, so he would be the highest mountain in Europe.

No clear distinction is also available in the Aegean. Galt the Aegean Sea with its islands earlier in their entirety as a transition from one continent to another, it is since the 20th century commonly existing in its present form since 1923/47 political border between Greece and Turkey, with the boundary between Europe and Asia equated, although many islands of the coast of Asia Minor are closer than the Greek mainland.

History of the border

For an intra- Eurasian border there are no geographically unique feature. Originally, however, were regarded by the ancient Greeks (see Herodotus ) Bosphorus and the Caucasus as the boundary of Europe, at the time of the Great Migration and the Middle Ages there were Bosphorus and the river Tanais ( Don ) that separated Europe from Asia (see, for example, Jordanes or Snorri Sturluson ). The last officially recognized border is that of Philip Johan von Strahlenberg from the first half of the 18th century; it passes through the Manytsch lowlands north of the Caucasus. The exact delimitation in the area between the Don and the Caucasus, a dispute had previously existed for centuries. After Strahlenberg was tasked with surveying the Russian Czar, his border demarcation in 1730 was recognized by the Tsar house and taken over by science. Furthermore, had it since the modern era - starting with Vasily Tatischtschew, the geographer Peter the Great - naturalized due to different geographical, historical and societal considerations to look at both Urale (mountains and rivers ) as the eastern border of Europe to Asia.