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Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the earth's total surface area (or 29.9% of its land area) and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population.
Asia is traditionally defined as part 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)["Asia". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.] and the Caspian and Black Seas.[edition=7th "Europe" (pp. 68-9); "Asia" (pp. 90-1): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and Europe ... is formed by the Ural Mountains, Ural River, Caspian Sea, Caucasus Mountains, and the Black Sea with its outlets, the Bosporus and Dardanelles."] 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 a number of regions and peoples than a homogeneous physical entity["Asia". McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. 2006
. New York: McGraw-Hill Inc.] (see Subregions of Asia, Asian people).
The wealth of Asia differs very widely among and within its regions, due to its vast size and huge range of different cultures, environments, historical ties and government systems. In terms of nominal GDP, Japan has the largest economy on the continent and the second largest in the world. In purchasing power parity terms, however, the People's Republic of China has the largest economy in Asia and the second largest in the world.
EtymologyThe term Asia is originally a concept exclusively of Western civilization.
The word Asia originated from the Greek word "?s?a", first attributed to Herodotus (ca. 440 BC) in reference to Anatolia or — in describing the Persian Wars — to the Persian Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt. Herodotus comments that he is puzzled as to why three women's names are used to describe one enormous and substantial land mass (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 Asias, son of Cotys, who passed the name on to a tribe in Sardis.
Even before Herodotus, Homer knew of two figures in the Trojan War named Asios; and elsewhere he describes a marsh as as??? (Iliad 2, 461). The Greek term may be derived from Assuwa, a 14th century BC confederation of states in Western Anatolia. Hittite assu-—"good" is probably an element in that name.
Usage of the term soon became common in ancient Greece, and subsequently by the ancient Romans.
T.R. Reid notes that the ancient Greek name must have derived from asu, meaning "east" in Assyrian (ereb for Europe meaning west).[Reid, T.R. Confucius Lives Next Door: What living in the East teaches us about living in the west Vintage Books(1999).] The terms/ideas of occidental (form Latin Occidens "setting") and oriental (from Latin Oriens for "rising") are also European invention, synonymous with Western and Eastern.
Other alternativesAlternatively, the etymology of the term may be from the Akkadian word Unicode (w)a?û(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 erebu(m) "to enter" or "set" (of the sun). However, this etymology is considered doubtful, because it does not explain how the term "Asia" first came to be associated with Anatolia, which is west of the Semitic-speaking areas, unless they refer to the viewpoint of a Phoenician sailor sailing through the straits between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.
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