Contact Asia

Full Name:	Asia
Date of Birth:	1981
Place of Birth:	Great Britain, United Kingdom
Claim to Fame:	Single Heat of the Moment (1982)

• Asia shares gain but Nikkei hits 4-month low

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Asia extracted from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License

Asia

Area	44,579,000 km2 (17,212,000 sq mi)
Population	3,879,000,000 (1st)1
Pop. density	89/km2 (226/sq mi)
Demonym	Asian
Countries	47 (List of countries)
Dependencies	{{{1}}} Akrotiri and Dhekelia British Indian Ocean Territory Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Unrecognized regions	{{{1}}} Abkhazia Gaza Strip (Palestine) Nagorno-Karabakh South Ossetia Taiwan Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus West Bank (Palestine)
Languages	List of languages
Time Zones	UTC+2 to UTC+12
Internet TLD	.asia
Largest cities	{{{1}}} Tokyo Seoul Mumbai Jakarta Osaka Shanghai Manila Hong Kong Tehran Kolkata Beijing Hanoi Dubai
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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)² and the Caspian and Black Seas.³ 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 entity²⁴ (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, China has the largest economy in Asia and the second largest in the world.

Contents 1 Etymology 1.1 Other alternatives 2 Definition and boundaries 2.1 Physical geography 2.2 Political geography 3 Territories and regions 3.1 Country name changes 4 Economy 4.1 Trade blocs 4.2 Natural resources 4.3 Manufacturing 4.4 Financial and other services 5 Early history 6 Languages and literature 6.1 Nobel prizes 7 Beliefs 7.1 Mythology 7.2 Religions 7.2.1 Abrahamic 7.2.2 Dharmic & Taoist 8 See also 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External links

Etymology

The term Asia is originally a concept exclusively of Western civilization.⁵ The peoples of ancient Asia (Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Persians, Arabs etc.) never conceived the idea of Asia, simply because they did not see themselves collectively. In their perspective, they were vastly varied civilizations, contrary to ancient European belief.⁵

The word Asia originated from the Greek word "Ἀσία", 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 ασιος (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.⁵ Ancient and medieval European maps depict the Asian continent as a "huge amorphous blob" extending eastward.⁵ It was presumed in antiquity to end with India — the Macedonian king Alexander the Great believing he would reach reach the "end of the world" upon his arrival in the East.⁵

T.R. Reid notes that the ancient Greek name must have derived from asu, meaning "east" in Assyrian (ereb for Europe meaning west).⁵ 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.⁵ He further emphasizes that it explains the Western point of view of placing all the peoples and cultures of Asia into a single classification, almost as if there were a need for setting the distinction between Western and Eastern civilizations on the Eurasian continent.⁵ Ogura Kazuo and Tenshin Okakura are two Japanese outspoken figures over the subject.⁵

Other alternatives

Alternatively, the etymology of the term may be from the Akkadian word (w)aṣû(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 erēbu(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.

Some scholars^who? also believe that the word Asia is derived from the Xia Dynasty, which ruled China in the early 2nd millennium BC This would have required ancient contact between China and Greece, which is certainly possible as attested by archaeological finds such as the Tarim mummies.

Definition and boundaries

Physical geography

See also: Geography of Asia, Countries in both Asia and Europe, Geographic criteria for the definition of Europe

Medieval Europeans considered Asia as a continent a distinct landmass. The European concept of the three continents in the Old World goes back to Classical Antiquity, but during the Middle Ages was notably due to Isidore of Sevilla (see T and O map). The demarcation between Asia and Africa (to the southwest) is the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea. The boundary between Asia and Europe is conventionally considered to run through the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, the Caspian Sea, the Ural River to its source and the Ural Mountains to the Kara Sea near Kara, Russia. While this interpretation of tripartite continents (i.e., of Asia, Europe and Africa) remains common in modernity, discovery of the extent of Africa and Asia have made this definition somewhat anachronistic. This is especially true in the case of Asia, which would have several regions that would be considered distinct landmasses if these criteria were used (for example, Southern Asia and Eastern Asia).

In the far northeast of Asia, Siberia is separated from North America by the Bering Strait. Asia is bounded on the south by the Indian Ocean (specifically, from west to east, the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal), on the east by the waters of the Pacific Ocean (including, counterclockwise, the South China Sea, East China Sea, Yellow Sea, Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk and Bering Sea) and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. Australia (or Oceania) is to the southeast.

Some geographers do not consider Asia and Europe to be separate continents,⁶ as there is no logical physical separation between them.⁴ For example, Sir Barry 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.”⁷ Geographically, Asia is the major eastern constituent of the continent of Eurasia with Europe being a northwestern peninsula of the landmass – or of Afro-Eurasia: geologically, Asia, Europe and Africa comprise a single continuous landmass (save the Suez Canal) and share a common continental shelf. Almost all of Europe and most of Asia sit atop the Eurasian Plate, adjoined on the south by the Arabian and Indian Plate and with the easternmost part of Siberia (east of the Cherskiy Range) on the North American Plate.

In geography, there are two schools of thought. One school follows historical convention and treats Europe and Asia as different continents, categorizing subregions within them for more detailed analysis. The other school equates the word "continent" with a geographical region when referring to Europe, and use the term "region" to describe Asia in terms of physiography. Since, in linguistic terms, "continent" implies a distinct landmass, it is becoming increasingly common to substitute the term "region" for "continent" to avoid the problem of disambiguation altogether.

Given the scope and diversity of the landmass, it is sometimes not even clear exactly what "Asia" consists of. Some definitions exclude Turkey, the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia while only considering the Far East, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent to compose Asia,⁸⁹ especially in the United States after World War II.¹⁰ The term is sometimes used more strictly in reference to the Asia-Pacific region, which does not include the Middle East or Russia,¹¹ but does include islands in the Pacific Ocean—a number of which may also be considered part of Australasia or Oceania, although Pacific Islanders are not considered Asian.¹²

Political geography

Territories and regions

Geographical Subregions of Asia:

UN geoscheme subregions of Asia:

Name of region13 and territory, with flag	Area (km²)	Population (1 July 2008 est.)	Population density (per km²)	Capital
Central Asia:
Kazakhstan14	2,724,927	15,666,533	5.7	Astana
Kyrgyzstan	198,500	5,356,869	24.3	Bishkek
Tajikistan	143,100	7,211,884	47.0	Dushanbe
Turkmenistan	488,100	5,179,573	9.6	Ashgabat
Uzbekistan	447,400	28,268,441	57.1	Tashkent
Eastern Asia:
China15	9,584,492	1,322,044,605	134.0	Beijing
Hong Kong16	1,092	7,008,30017	6,417.9	—
Macau18	25	460,823	18,473.3	—
Japan	377,835	127,288,628	336.1	Tokyo
Taiwan19	35,980	22,920,946	626.7	Taipei
North Korea	120,540	23,479,095	184.4	Pyongyang
South Korea	98,480	49,232,844	490.7	Seoul
Mongolia	1,565,000	2,996,082	1.7	Ulaan Baatar
Northern Asia:
Russia20	17,075,400	142,200,000	26.8	Moscow
Southeastern Asia:21
Brunei	5,770	381,371	66.1	Bandar Seri Begawan
Burma (Myanmar)	676,578	47,758,224	70.3	Naypyidaw22
Cambodia23	181,035	13,388,910	74	Phnom Penh
East Timor (Timor-Leste)24	15,007	1,108,777	73.8	Dili
Indonesia25	1,919,440	230,512,000	120.1	Jakarta
Laos	236,800	6,677,534	28.2	Vientiane
Malaysia	329,847	27,780,000	84.2	Kuala Lumpur
Philippines	300,000	92,681,453	308.9	Manila
Singapore	704	4,608,167	6,545.7	Singapore
Thailand	514,000	65,493,298	127.4	Bangkok(Krung Thep Mahanakhon)
Vietnam	331,690	86,116,559	259.6	Hanoi
Southern Asia:
Afghanistan	647,500	32,738,775	42.9	Kabul
Bangladesh	147,570	153,546,901	1040.5	Dhaka
Bhutan	38,394	682,321	17.8	Thimphu
India26	3,287,263	1,147,995,226	349.2	New Delhi
Maldives	300	379,174	1,263.3	Malé
Nepal	147,181	29,519,114	200.5	Kathmandu
Pakistan	803,940	167,762,049	208.7	Islamabad
Sri Lanka	65,610	21,128,773	322.0	Sri Jayawardenapura-Kotte
Western Asia:
Armenia27				Yerevan
Azerbaijan28	46,870	3,845,127	82.0	Baku
Bahrain	665	718,306	987.1	Manama
Cyprus29	9,250	792,604	83.9	Nicosia
Georgia30				Tbilisi
Iraq	437,072	28,221,181	54.9	Baghdad
Iran	1,648,195	70,472,846	42.8	Tehran
Israel	20,770	7,112,359	290.3	Jerusalem31
Jordan	92,300	6,198,677	57.5	Amman
Kuwait	17,820	2,596,561	118.5	Kuwait City
Lebanon	10,452	3,971,941	353.6	Beirut
Oman	212,460	3,311,640	12.8	Muscat
Palestine	6,257	4,277,000	683.5	Ramallah
Qatar	11,437	928,635	69.4	Doha
Saudi Arabia	1,960,582	23,513,330	12.0	Riyadh
Syria	185,180	19,747,586	92.6	Damascus
Turkey32				Ankara
United Arab Emirates	82,880	4,621,399	29.5	Abu Dhabi
Yemen	527,970	23,013,376	35.4	Sanaá
Total	43,810,582	4,162,966,086	89.07

Note: Part of Egypt (Sinai Peninsula) is geographically in Western Asia

Country name changes

Various Asian countries have undergone name changes during the previous century as the result of consolidations, secessions, territories gaining sovereignty and regime changes.

Previous Name	Year	Current Name
Dominion of India, formerly British India	1950	Republic of India
East Bengal province	1905-1911 and 1947-1955 1955-1971 1971	East Pakistan state Bangladesh, People's Republic of
Democratic Kampuchea	1975	Cambodia, Kingdom of
Empire of Great Qing of China	1912 1949	China, Republic of China, People's Republic of
Portuguese Timor	1975 2002	Timor Timur (province of Indonesia) East Timor, Democratic Republic of
Dutch East Indies	1949	Indonesia, Republic of
Persia	1935 1979	Iran, Iran, Islamic Republic of
Transjordan	1946	Jordan, Kingdom of
Kirghiz SSR (USSR)	1991	Kyrgyzstan, Republic
Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore	1963 1965	Malaysia (including Singapore) Malaysia and Singapore
Burma	1989	Myanmar, Union of
Muscat	1971	Oman, Sultanate of
Dominion of Pakistan	1947-1956 1956-1970 1971	West Pakistan, Islamic State of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of
Islas de San Lorenzo, Spanish East Indies, Philippine Islands and Las Islas Filipinas	1965	Philippines, Republic of the
Hejaz-Nejd, The Kingdom of	1932	Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of
Aden	1970	South Yemen, People's Republic of
Ceylon	1972	Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of
Tajik SSR (USSR)	1991	Tajikistan, Republic of
Siam	1939	Thailand, Kingdom of
Ottoman Empire	1923	Turkey, Republic of
Turkmen SSR (USSR)	1991	Turkmenistan
Trucial Oman and Trucial States	1971	United Arab Emirates
French Indo-China	1949	Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam
Yemen, People's Democratic and Southern Yemen	1990	Yemen, Republic of

Economy

This section may need to be updated. Please update this section to reflect recent events or newly available information, and remove this template when finished. Please see the talk page for more information. (September 2009)

Economy of Asia
During 2003 unless otherwise stated

Population:	3,958,768,100 (2006 Estimate)
GDP (PPP):	US$18.077 trillion
GDP (Currency):	$8.782 trillion
GDP/capita (PPP):	$4,518
GDP/capita (Currency):	$2,143
Millionaires:	2.0 million (0.05%)
Most numbers are from the UNDP from 2002, some numbers exclude certain countries for lack of information.
See also: Economy of the world – Economy of Africa – Economy of Asia – Economy of Europe – Economy of North America – Economy of Oceania – Economy of South America

Asia has the third largest nominal GDP of all continents, after North America and Europe, but the largest when measured in PPP. As of 2007, the largest national economy within Asia, in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), is that of China followed by that of Japan, India, South Korea and Indonesia. However, in nominal (exchange value) terms, they rank as follows: Japan, China, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Indonesia. Since the 1960s, South Korea had maintained the highest economic growth rate in Asia, nicknamed as an Asian tiger, becoming a newly industrialized country in the 1980s and a developed country by the 21st century. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economies of the PRC³³ and India have been growing rapidly, both with an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. Other recent very high growth nations in Asia include Malaysia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Vietnam, Mongolia, Uzbekistan and mineral-rich nations such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Brunei, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman.

China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history,^34353637 until the British Empire (excluding India) overtook it in the mid 19th century. Japan has had for only several dacades after WW2 the largest economy in Asia and second-largest of any single nation in the world, after surpassing the Soviet Union (measured in net material product) in 1986 and Germany in 1968. (NB: A number of supernational economies are larger, such as the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or APEC). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan's GDP was almost as large (current exchange rate method) as that of the rest of Asia combined. In 1995, Japan's economy nearly equalled that of the USA to tie as the largest economy in the world for a day, after the Japanese currency reached a record high of 79 yen/dollar. Economic growth in Asia since World 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 the Pacific Rim, known as the Asian tigers, which have now all received developed country status, having the highest GDP per capita in Asia.³⁸

It is forecasted that the People's Republic of China will surpass Japan to have the largest nominal and PPP-adjusted GDP in Asia within a decade. India is also forecast to overtake Japan in terms of Nominal GDP by 2020.³⁹ In terms of GDP per capita, both nominal and PPP-adjusted, South Korea will become the second wealthiest country in Asia by 2025, overtaking Germany, the United Kingdom and France. By 2050, according to a 2006 report by Price Waterhouse Cooper, China will have the largest economy in the world (43% greater than the United States when PPP adjusted, although perhaps smaller than the United States in nominal terms).⁴⁰

Trade blocs

• Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
• Asia-Europe Economic Meeting
• Association of Southeast Asian Nations
• Gulf Cooperation Council
• Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement
• Commonwealth of Independent States
• South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation

Natural resources

Asia is the largest continent in the world by a considerable margin, and it is rich in natural resources, such as petroleum, forests, fish, water, rice, copper and silver.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing in Asia has traditionally been strongest in East and Southeast Asia, particularly in mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India , Philippines and Singapore. Japan and South Korea continue to dominate in the area of multinational corporations, but increasingly mainland China, 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.

Financial and other services

Asia has four main financial centres: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. Call centres and business 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 centres. Due to its large and extremely competitive information technology industry, India has become a major hub for outsourcing.

Early history

The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, linked by the interior mass of the Central Asian steppes.

The coastal periphery was home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations, each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and the Huanghe shared many similarities. These civilizations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel. 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 the steppes. The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans, who spread their languages into the Middle East, South Asia, and the borders of China, where the Tocharians resided. The northernmost part of Asia, including much of Siberia, was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra. These areas remained very sparsely populated.

The center and the peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karakum and Gobi 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 horsebound 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.

Languages and literature

Asia is home to several language families and many language isolates. Most Asian countries have more than one language that is natively spoken. For instance, according to Ethnologue, more than 600 languages are spoken in Indonesia, more than 800 languages spoken in India and more than 100 are spoken in the Philippines. China has many languages and dialects in different provinces.

Nobel prizes

The polymath Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet, dramatist, and writer from Santiniketan, now in West Bengal, India, became in 1913 the first Asian Nobel laureate. He won his Nobel Prize in Literature for notable impact his prose works and poetic thought had on English, French, and other national literatures of Europe and the Americas. He is also the writer of the national anthems of Bangladesh and India.

Tagore is said to have named another Bengali Indian Nobel prize winner, the 1998 laureate in Economics, Amartya Sen. Sen's work has centered around global issues including famine, welfare, and third-world development. Amartya Sen was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge University, UK, from 1998-2004, becoming the first Asian to head an 'Oxbridge' College.

Other Asian writers who won Nobel Prizes include Yasunari Kawabata (Japan, 1966), Kenzaburō Ōe (Japan, 1994), Gao Xingjian (People's Republic of China, 2000) and Orhan Pamuk (Turkey, 2006).

Also, Mother Teresa of India and Shirin Ebadi of Iran were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their significant and pioneering efforts for democracy 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 is Aung San Suu Kyi from Burma 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 a Buddhist and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

Sir C.V.Raman is the first Asian to get a Nobel prize in Sciences. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him".

Other Asian Nobel Prize winners include Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Abdus Salam, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Robert Aumann, Menachem Begin, Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko, Daniel Kahneman, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Yaser Arafat, Jose Ramos Horta and Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo of Timor Leste, Kim Dae-jung, and thirteen Japanese scientists. Most of the said awardees are from Japan and Israel except for Chandrasekhar and Raman (India), Salam (Pakistan), Arafat (Palestinian Territories) and Kim (South Korea).

In 2006, Dr. Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the establishment of Grameen Bank, a community development bank that lends money to poor people, especially women in Bangladesh. Dr. Yunus received his Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt University, United States. He is internationally known for the concept of micro credit which allows poor and destitutes with little or no collateral to borrow money. The borrowers typically pay back money within the specified period and the incidence of default is very low.

The Dalai Lama has received numerous awards over his spiritual and political career.[129] On 22 June 2006, he became one of only four people ever to be recognized with Honorary Citizenship by the Governor General of Canada. On 28 May 2005, he received the Christmas Humphreys Award from the Buddhist Society in the United Kingdom. Most notable was the Nobel Peace Prize, presented in Oslo on 10 December 1989

Beliefs

Mythology

Asian mythology is complex and diverse. The story of the Great Flood for example, as presented to Christians in the Old Testament, is first found in Mesopotamian mythology, in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Hindu mythology tells about an avatar of the God Vishnu in the form of a fish who warned Manu of a terrible flood. In ancient Chinese mythology, Shan Hai Jing, the Chinese ruler Da Yu, had to spend 10 years to control a deluge which swept out most of ancient China and was aided by the goddess Nüwa who literally fixed the broken sky through which huge rains were pouring.

Religions

Almost all Asian religions have philosophical character and Asian philosophical traditions cover a large spectrum of philosophical thoughts and writings. Indian philosophy includes Hindu philosophy and Buddhist philosophy. They include elements of nonmaterial pursuits, whereas another school of thought from India, Cārvāka, preached the enjoyment of material world. Christianity is also present in most Asian countries.

Abrahamic

The Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam originated in West Asia. Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths, is practiced primarily in Israel (which has the world's largest Jewish population)^{citation needed}, though small communities exist in other countries, such as the Bene Israel in India. In the Philippines and East Timor, Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion; it was introduced by the Spaniards and the Portuguese, respectively. In Armenia, Georgia and Russia Eastern Orthodoxy is the predominant religion. Various Christian denominations have adherents in portions of the Middle East, as well as China and India. The world's largest Muslim community (within the bounds of one nation) is in Indonesia. South Asia (mainly Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) holds 30% of Muslims. There are also significant Muslim populations in China, Iran, Malaysia, southern Philippines (Mindanao), Russia and most of West Asia and Central Asia.

Dharmic & Taoist

The religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated in India, South Asia. In East Asia, particularly in China and Japan, Confucianism, Taoism and Zen Buddhism took shape.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Asia

References

• "Asia". The Columbia Gazetteer of the World Online. 2005. New York: Columbia University Press.
• World Conflicts: Asia and the Middle East [2]. Edited by Carl L. Bankston III. New York: Salem Press.

Further reading

Reference works

• Higham, Charles. Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations. Facts on File library of world history. New York: Facts On File, 2004.
• Kapadia, Feroz, and Mandira Mukherjee. Encyclopaedia of Asian Culture and Society. New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1999.
• Levinson, David, and Karen Christensen. Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2002.
• Kamal,Niraj. "Arise Asia: Respond to White Peril". New Delhi:Wordsmith,2002, ISBN 81-87412-08-9

External links

• (European Digital Archive on the Soil Maps of the World - EuDASM)
• Map Asia
• Maps of Asia from the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library
• Philp Bowring, "What is Asia?" (Columbia University Asia For Educators), [3]
• Niraj Kumar, 'Asia's Swan song"[www.ariseasia.blogspot.com]

Articles Related to Asia v • d • e Asia topics Culture · Demographics · Economy · Geography · History · Politics v • d • e Countries of Asia Afghanistan · Armenia · Azerbaijan1 · Bahrain · Bangladesh · Bhutan · Brunei · Burma · Cambodia · People's Republic of China · Republic of China (Taiwan)2 · Cyprus · Egypt3 · Georgia1 · India · Indonesia4 · Iran · Iraq · Israel · Japan · Jordan · Kazakhstan1 · North Korea · South Korea · Kuwait · Kyrgyzstan · Laos · Lebanon · Malaysia · Maldives · Mongolia · Nepal · Oman · Pakistan · Philippines · Qatar · Russia1 · Saudi Arabia · Singapore · Sri Lanka · Syria · Tajikistan · Thailand · East Timor (Timor-Leste)4 · Turkey1 · Turkmenistan · United Arab Emirates · Uzbekistan · Vietnam · Yemen3 For dependent and other territories, see Dependent territory. 1 Partly or significantly in Europe.  2 The Republic of China (Taiwan) is not officially recognized by the United Nations; see Political status of Taiwan. 3 Partly or significantly in Africa.  4 Partly or wholly reckoned in Oceania. v • d • e Continents of the world     Africa Antarctica Asia Oceania Europe N. America S. America     Afro-Eurasia Americas Eurasia Oceania     Geological supercontinents Gondwana · Laurasia · Pangaea · Pannotia · Rodinia · Columbia · Kenorland · Nena · Ur · Vaalbara Historical continents Arctica · Asiamerica · Atlantica · Avalonia · Baltica · Cimmeria · Congo craton · Euramerica · Kalaharia · Kazakhstania · Laurentia · Siberia · South China · Ur     Submerged continents Kerguelen Plateau · Zealandia Possible future supercontinents Pangaea Ultima · Amasia Mythical and theorized continents Atlantis · Lemuria · Meropis · Mu · Terra Australis See also Regions of the world v • d • e Regions of the world Africa Northern (Maghreb) · Sub-Sahara (Central · Southern · Western · Eastern (Horn)) Oceania Australasia · Melanesia · Micronesia · Polynesia Americas North (Northern • Middle • Central • Caribbean) · South (Southern Cone) · Anglo · Latin Polar Arctic · Antarctic Asia Central · Eastern · Northern · Southeastern · Southern · Western Oceans World · Arctic · Atlantic · Indian · Pacific · Southern Europe Central · Eastern · Northern · Southeastern · Southern · Western See also Continents of the world