Asia is the largest and most populous continent or region, depending on the definition. It covers 8.7 percent of the Earth's total surface area, or 29.8 percent of its land area, and it contains more than 60 percent of the world's human population.
Asia is traditionally defined as part of the landmass of Africa-Eurasia – with the western portion of the latter occupied by Europe – lying east of the Suez Canal, east of the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian and Black Seas.
Etymology
The word
Asia entered English, via
Latin, from
Ancient Greek Ασία (
Asia; see also
List of traditional Greek place names). This name is first attested in
Herodotus (about 440 BC), where it refers to
Asia Minor; or, for the purposes of describing the
Persian Wars, to the
Persian Empire, in contrast to
Greece and
Egypt. Herodotus comments that he is puzzled as to why three different women's names are used to describe a single land mass (
Europa, Asia and
Libya, referring to Africa), stating that most Greeks assumed that Asia was named after the wife of
Prometheus but that the
Lydians say it was named after
Asias, son of
Cotys who passed the name on to a tribe in
Sardis.
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