Asia (/ˈeɪʒə/ⓘAY-zhə, UK also /ˈeɪʃə/AY-shə) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, 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 the human population, was the site of many of the first civilisations. Its estimated 4.8billion people in 2025 constituted approximately 59% 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 its boundary with Europe is somewhat arbitrary and has moved since its first conception in classical antiquity. The division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East–West cultural differences, some of which vary on a spectrum.
China and India traded places as the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 CE. The Silk Road became the main east–west trading route in the Asian hinterlands, while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, but overall population growth has since fallen. Asia was the birthplace of most of the world's mainstream religions, including Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and many other religions.
Asia varies greatly across and within its 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 of West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and East Asia and tropical jungles in Southeast Asia, temperate areas in the east and the continental centre to vast subarctic and polar areas in North Asia.
Etymology
Ptolemy's Asia
The term "Asia" is believed to originate in the Bronze Age toponym Assuwa (Hittite: 𒀸𒋗𒉿, romanized:aš-šu-wa) which originally referred only to a portion of northwestern Anatolia. The term appears in Hittite records recounting how a confederation of Assuwan states including Troy unsuccessfully rebelled against the Hittite king Tudhaliya I around 1400BCE. Roughly contemporary Linear B documents contain the term aswia (Mycenaean Greek: 𐀀𐀯𐀹𐀊, romanized:a-si-wi-ja), seemingly in reference to captives from the same area.
Herodotus used the term in reference to Anatolia and the territory of the Achaemenid Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt. He reports that Greeks assumed that Asia was named after the wife of Prometheus, but that Lydians say it was named after Asies, son of Cotys, who passed the name on to a tribe at Sardis. In Greek mythology, "Asia" (Ἀσία or Ἀσίη) was the name of a "Nymph or Titan goddess of Lydia". The Iliad (attributed by the ancient Greeks to Homer) mentions two Phrygians in the Trojan War named Asios (literally 'Asian'), and also a marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia as ασιος.
The term was later adopted by the Romans, who used it in reference to the province of Asia, located in western Anatolia. One of the first writers to use Asia as a name for the whole continent was Pliny.
Definitions used for the boundary between Asia and Europe in different periods of history. Modern definitions mostly fit with lines B and F given.
The threefold division of the Old World into Africa, Asia, and Europe has been in use since the 6th centuryBCE, due to Greek geographers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus. Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (now the Rioni) in Georgia of the Caucasus – from its mouth by Poti on the Black Sea coast, through the Surami Pass and along the Kura River to the Caspian Sea. Herodotus still followed this convention in the 5th centuryBCE. During the Hellenistic period, this convention was revised, and the boundary between Europe and Asia was now considered to be the Tanais (the modern Don River). This is the convention used by Roman-era authors such as Posidonius, Strabo and Ptolemy.
The border between Asia and Europe was later redefined by European academics. In 1730, five years after the death of Peter the Great, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published in Sweden a new atlas proposing the Ural Mountains as the border of Asia. Vasily Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg. The latter had suggested the Emba River as the southern part of this boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century. The border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea (the Romans' definition) to the Caspian Sea into which the Emba and Ural rivers project. Between the Black Sea and the Caspian, the border is often placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains, although it is sometimes placed further north, on the Kuma–Manych Depression.
Definitions of the boundary between Asia and Oceania
The border between Asia and Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Indonesian Archipelago, specifically in Eastern Indonesia. The Wallace Line separates the Asian and Wallacea biogeographical realms, a transition zone of deep water straits between the Asian and Australian continental shelves. Weber's Line splits the region in two with regard to the balance of fauna between Asian origin and Australo-Papuan origin. Wallacea's eastern boundary with Sahul is represented by the Lydekker's Line. The Maluku Islands (except the Aru Islands) are often considered to lie on the border of southeast Asia, with the Aru Islands and Western New Guinea, to the east of the Lydekker's Line, being wholly part of Oceania, as both lie on the Australian continental plate. Culturally, the Wallacea region denoted the transition between Austronesian and Melanesian 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. 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."
The Bering Strait and Bering Sea separate the landmasses of Asia and North America, as well as forming the international boundary between Russia and the United States. This national and continental boundary separates the Diomede Islands in the Bering Strait, with Big Diomede in Russia and Little Diomede in the United States. The Aleutian Islands are an island chain extending westward from the Alaskan Peninsula toward Russia's Komandorski Islands and Kamchatka Peninsula. Most of them are always associated with North America, except for the westernmost Near Islands group, which is on Asia's continental shelf beyond the North 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. This is extremely rare, however, due to their non-tropical biogeography, as well as their inhabitants, who have historically been related to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea belongs to the US state of Alaska and may be associated with either continent but is almost always considered part of North America, as with the Rat 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 the Ancient 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.
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. 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".
Geographically, Asia is the major eastern constituent of the continent of Eurasia, with Europe being a northwestern peninsula of the landmass. Asia, Europe and Africa make up a single continuous landmass – Afro-Eurasia – and share a common continental shelf. Almost all of Europe and a major part 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 Chersky Range) on the North American Plate.
About 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus left the African continent. This species is believed to have lived in East and Southeast Asia from 1.8 million to 110,000 years ago."Homo erectus". The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. 3 January 2024. Retrieved 14 September 2026.
Researchers believe that the modern human, or Homo sapiens, migrated about 60,000 years ago to South Asia along the Indian Ocean. Modern humans interbred with an archaic human species called Denisovans in Southeast Asia. Before the arrival of modern humans, Flores was occupied by Homo floresiensis, a small archaic human.
Ancestors of East Eurasians split from Ancient West Eurasians about 46,000 years ago, migrating out of the hub in the Iranian Plateau. Evidence from full genomic studies suggests that the first people in the Americas diverged from Ancient East Asians about 36,000 years ago and expanded northwards into Siberia, where they encountered and interacted with a different Paleolithic Siberian population (known as Ancient North Eurasians), giving rise to both Paleosiberian peoples and Ancient Native Americans.
The Silk Road connected civilisations across Asia.
The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and West 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 in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and the Yellow River shared many similarities. These civilisations 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 West Asia, 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 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 Islamic Caliphate's defeats of the Byzantine and Persian empires led to West Asia and southern parts of Central Asia and western parts of South Asia under its control during its conquests of the 7th century; Islam also spread over centuries to the southern regions of India and Southeast Asia through trade along the Maritime Silk Road. The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of Asia in the 13th century, an area extending from China to Europe. Before the Mongol invasion, the Song dynasty reportedly had approximately 120 million citizens; the 1300 census that followed the invasion reported roughly 60 million people.
The Black Death, one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, is thought to have originated in the arid plains of central Asia, where it then travelled along the Silk Road.
European involvement in Asia became more significant from the Age of Discovery onward, with Iberian-sponsored sailors such as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama paving the way for new routes from Atlantic Europe to Pacific Asia and the Indian Ocean, respectively, in the late 15th century. The Russian 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, the Ottoman Empire controlled Anatolia, most of the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans from the mid-16th century onward, while in the 17th century, the Manchu conquered China and established the Qing dynasty. The Islamic Mughal Empire (preceded by the Delhi Sultanate of the 13th to early 16th century) and the Hindu Maratha Empire controlled much of India in the 16th and 18th centuries, respectively.
The aftermath of the 1757 Battle of Plassey, which eventually led to British India
Western imperialism in Asia from the 18th to 20th centuries coincided with the Industrial Revolution in the West and the dethroning of India and China as the world's foremost economies. The British Empire first became dominant in South Asia, with most of the region being conquered by British traders in the late 18th and early 19th centuries before falling under direct British rule after a failed 1857 revolt; the 1869 completion of the Suez Canal, which increased British access to India, went on to further European influence over Africa and Asia. Around this time, Western powers started to dominate China in what later became known as the century of humiliation, with the British-supported opium trade and later Opium Wars resulting in China being forced into an unprecedented situation of importing more than it exported.
Foreign domination of China was furthered by the Japanese colonial empire, which controlled some of East Asia and briefly much of Southeast Asia (which had earlier been taken over by the British, Dutch and French in the late 19th century), New Guinea and the Pacific islands; Japan's domination was enabled by its rapid rise that had taken place during the Meiji era of the late 19th century, in which it applied industrial knowledge learned from the West and thus overtook the rest of Asia. One significant influence on Japan had been the United States, which had begun projecting influence across the Pacific after its early-to-mid-19th century westward expansion. The breakup of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century led to the Middle East also being contested and partitioned by the British and French.
Asia was a major theatre of World War II. The Second Sino-Japanese War, which began in 1937, expanded into the wider Pacific War after Japan attacked American and British territories in December 1941 and occupied large parts of Southeast Asia. The conflict caused widespread destruction and civilian casualties, including mass killings during the Japanese occupation of China and other occupied territories. Japan's surrender in 1945 ended its overseas empire and helped accelerate movements against European colonial rule across Asia.
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, though stability in the Middle East has been affected since 1948 by the Arab–Israeli conflict and American-led interventions. East Asian nations (along with Singapore in Southeast Asia) became economically prosperous with high-growth "tiger economies"; The 1997 Asian financial crisis began in July 1997 when Thailand abandoned the Thai baht's peg to the United States dollar. The crisis spread to other economies, including Indonesia and South Korea, causing severe economic contractions and prompting reforms to financial regulation and exchange-rate policies in affected countries. China, having undergone the reform and opening up under Deng Xiaoping, regained its place among the top two economies of the world by the 21st century. India has also grown significantly because of economic liberalisation that started in the 1990s, with extreme poverty now below 20%; India and China's rise has coincided with growing tensions between the two, with the Indo-Pacific now an actively contested area between China and counterbalancing forces.
The Himalayan 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 (39,022mi). Asia is generally defined as comprising the eastern four-fifths of Eurasia. It is located to the east of the Suez Canal and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains (or the Kuma–Manych Depression) and the Caspian and Black Seas. 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. Asia is subdivided into 49 countries; five of them (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkey) are transcontinental countries lying partly in Europe.
Asia's physical landscape includes extensive plains, plateaus, deserts and mountain ranges. The West Siberian Plain occupies a large area of northern Asia, while the Tibetan Plateau is one of the world's highest and largest plateaus. The Himalayas extend across parts of Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan and China and contain Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain above sea level. The Yangtze in China is Asia's longest river; other major rivers include the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Tigris and Euphrates. Tropical rainforests stretch across much of southern Asia and coniferous and deciduous forests lie farther north. Between 1990 and 2000, the area of primary forest in Asia decreased by 1.06 million hectares per year; between 2000 and 2015, it decreased by 280,000 ha per year.
There are various approaches to the regional division of Asia. One geographical scheme divides the continent into six regions, including North Asia, which encompasses Siberia. The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), by contrast, uses five Asian subregions for statistical purposes: Central Asia, Eastern Asia, South-eastern Asia, Southern Asia and Western Asia. The UNSD does not recognize North Asia as a separate statistical subregion; instead, it classifies Russia, including Siberia, under Eastern Europe. The United Nations states that its regional groupings are for statistical convenience and do not imply any political or other affiliation.
Asia has extremely diverse climate features. Climates range from Arctic and subarctic 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. The monsoon 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 the Northern Hemisphere, and it can act as a source of Arctic air masses for North America. The most active place on Earth for tropical cyclone activity lies northeast of the Philippines 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 of heatwaves across the entire continent.:1459 Heatwaves lead to increased mortality, and the demand for air conditioning is rapidly accelerating as a result. By 2080, around 1 billion people in the cities of South and Southeast Asia are expected to experience around a month of extreme heat every year.:1460 The impacts on the water cycle are more complicated: already arid regions, primarily located in West Asia and Central Asia, will see more droughts, while areas of East, Southeast and South Asia which are already wet due to the monsoons will experience more flooding.:1459
The waters around Asia are subjected to the same impacts as elsewhere, such as increased warming and ocean acidification.:1465 There are many coral reefs in the region, and they are highly vulnerable to climate change,:1459 to the point that practically all of them will be lost if the warming exceeds 1.5°C (2.7°F). Asia's distinctive mangrove ecosystems are also highly vulnerable to sea level rise.:1459 Asia also has more countries with large coastal populations than any other continent, which would cause large economic impacts from sea level rise.:1459 Water supplies in the Hindu Kush region will become more unstable as its enormous glaciers, known as the "Asian water towers", gradually melt.:1459 These changes to the water cycle also affect vector-borne disease distribution, with malaria and dengue fever expected to become more prominent in the tropical and subtropical regions.:1459Food security will become more uneven, and South Asian countries could experience significant impacts from global food price volatility.:1494
Climate change is expected to exacerbate heat stress over the North China Plain, which is particularly vulnerable as widespread irrigation 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.
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 the world's primary energy consumption, which is expected to increase to 48% by 2050. By 2040, it is also expected to account for 80% of the world's coal and 26% of the world's natural gas consumption.:1468 While the United States remains the world's largest oil consumer, by 2050 it is projected to move to third place, behind China and India.:1470 While nearly half of the world's new renewable energy capacity is built in Asia,:1470 this is not yet sufficient in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. They imply that the renewables would account for 35% of total energy consumption in Asia by 2030.:1471
Climate change adaptation is already a reality for many Asian countries, with a wide range of strategies attempted across the continent.:1534 Important examples include the growing implementation of climate-smart agriculture in certain countries or the "sponge city" planning principles in China.:1534 While some countries have drawn up extensive frameworks such as the Bangladesh Delta Plan or Japan's Climate Adaptation Act,:1508 others still rely on localized actions that are not effectively scaled up.:1534
Regional organisations provide forums for political, economic and security cooperation among Asian countries. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) promotes political and security cooperation in Southeast Asia, while the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) supports economic, social and cultural cooperation in South Asia. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) facilitates cooperation on regional security, political and economic matters across Eurasia, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) coordinates policies and promotes integration among six Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
The population and area figures in the following table refer to entire countries, including territory outside Asia in the case of transcontinental countries. For example, the figures for Russia include its European territory, while those for Egypt include its predominantly African territory. Consequently, the figures cannot be added together to calculate Asia's total population or area.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economy of China had an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. According to economic historian Angus 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. China was the largest and most advanced economy on Earth for much of recorded history and shared the mantle with India. For several decades in the late twentieth century, Japan was the largest economy in Asia and second-largest in the world, after surpassing the Soviet Union (measured in net material product) in 1990 and Germany in 1968. This ended in 2010, when China overtook Japan to become the world's second-largest economy. In 2025, India overtook Japan in terms of nominal GDP to become the world's 4th largest and Asia's 2nd largest economy.
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. 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 79 yen/US$. Economic growth in Asia from World War II to the 1990s had been concentrated in Japan as well as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, known as the Four Asian Tigers, which are now all considered developed economies, having among the highest GDP per capita in Asia.[failed verification]
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 as petroleum, forests, fish, water, rice, copper and silver. 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 of multinational corporations, though increasingly 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 their abundant supply of cheap labour and relatively developed infrastructure.
Call centers and business process outsourcing firms (BPOs) are becoming major employers in India and the Philippines due to the availability of a large pool of highly skilled, English-speaking workers. Due to its large and extremely competitive information technology industry, India has become a major hub for outsourcing.
Trade between Asian countries and countries on other continents is largely carried out via sea routes. The main route leads from the Chinese coast south via Hanoi to Jakarta, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur, through the Strait of Malacca via Colombo to the southern tip of India, then via Malé to Mombasa in East Africa (see also Indo-Pacific), from there to Djibouti, then through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean (see also: Indo-Mediterranean), then via Haifa, Istanbul, and Athens to the northern Italian hub of Trieste, with its rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe, or further to Barcelona and around Spain and France to northern European ports. A far smaller part of the goods traffic runs via South Africa to Europe. A particularly significant part of Asian goods traffic is carried out on the Pacific Rim, toward Los Angeles and Long Beach. The melting of the Arctic is also paving the way for new shipping routes from Northeast Asia to Europe and North America. The land route to Europe is also the subject of construction projects, comparatively smaller in scope. Intra-Asian trade, including sea trade, is growing rapidly.
Energy
Asia's electricity demand has quadrupled since 2000 (rising from 4,199 TWh to over 16,000 TWh in 2024). This growth, driven largely by China and increasingly by India, Indonesia, and Viet Nam, makes Asia the fastest-growing region for electricity demand globally, at about 5% per year. The region now accounts for about 36% of global primary energy consumption, a share projected to approach 50% by 2050.: 1468Fossil fuels remain central in Asia: 66% of its energy is generated from fossil fuels, and Asia makes up 83% of the world's coal generation. However, coal is slowly being phased out, and natural gas is displacing oil and oil products in various sectors, supported by policies and regulations. Natural gas demand in emerging market and developing economies in Asia expanded by around 6% in 2024, accounting for nearly 40% of incremental global gas demand. By 2040, Asia is expected to account for the majority of global coal use and over a quarter of natural gas consumption.: 1468
At the same time, Asia is the global leader in renewable energy expansion. It is currently the only region on track to meet the goal of tripling renewable capacity by 2030, largely due to China, the leading nation in renewable energy generation. China's wind and solar capacity has surged in recent years, together overtaking that of coal, while in 2024 India became the world's third-largest generator of electricity from wind and solar. Nearly half of the world's new renewable energy capacity is built in Asia.: 1470
Tourism in Asia encompasses travel to cultural and religious sites, major cities, coastal destinations and natural landscapes. Domestic tourism also contributes to the economies of many Asian countries, alongside international travel.
According to UN Tourism, its Asia and the Pacific region recorded approximately 331 million international tourist arrivals in 2025, an increase of 6% from 2024, although arrivals remained 9% below their 2019 level. Northeast Asia recorded particularly strong growth, with arrivals increasing by 13% from 2024. UN Tourism's Asia and the Pacific region includes Oceania and does not cover all of geographical Asia; its statistics therefore should not be interpreted as totals for the Asian continent.
Demographic trends vary considerably across Asia. According to the United Nations' World Population Prospects 2024, the populations of China and Japan had already peaked by 2024, while those of Iran and Vietnam were projected to peak between 2025 and 2054. By contrast, the populations of India, Indonesia and Pakistan were projected to continue growing through at least 2054.
Population ageing and declining fertility rates are particularly prominent in parts of East Asia and Southeast Asia, although demographic conditions differ substantially between countries. Levels of human development also vary across the continent. The Human Development Index (HDI), published by the United Nations Development Programme, measures countries' achievements in life expectancy, education and gross national income per capita.
Linguistic diversity also exists within individual countries. Indonesia has more than 700 living languages, while India has more than 400, according to figures compiled by Ethnologue and reported in a UNESCO regional review.
Many of the world's major religions have their origins in Asia, including the five most practiced in the world (excluding irreligion), which are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion (classified as Confucianism and Taoism), and Buddhism. Asian mythology is complex and diverse. Flood narratives appear in several Asian religious traditions. In ancient Mesopotamian mythology, they are found in the Atrahasis epic and the Epic of Gilgamesh, which share significant similarities with the biblical account of Noah in the Book of Genesis. The Quran also recounts the story of Noah and the flood. Hindu mythology similarly tells about an avatar of Vishnu in the form of a fish who warned Manu of a terrible flood. Ancient Chinese mythology also tells of a Great 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 in Israel, the indigenous homeland and historical birthplace of the Hebrew nation; this today consists both of those Jews who remained in the Middle East and those who returned from the diaspora in Europe, North America, Ethiopia, India, and other regions, though various Israelite diaspora communities still exist worldwide. Jews are the predominant ethnic group in Israel (75.6%), numbering about 6.1million. Levels of Jewish religious observance vary within the Jewish State. Outside of Israel, there are small ancient Jewish communities in Turkey (17,400), Azerbaijan (9,100), Iran (8,756), India (5,000) and Uzbekistan (4,000), among many other places.
Islam originated in the Hejaz region of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century and is widely practiced across West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia. According to estimates published by the Pew Research Center in 2025, Indonesia had approximately 240 million Muslims in 2020, the largest Muslim population of any country. Indonesia, Pakistan and India together accounted for approximately one-third of the world's Muslim population. Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem are the three holiest cities for Islam in the world. The Hajj and Umrah attract large numbers of Muslim devotees from all over the world to Mecca and Medina. Iran is the largest Shia country.
The Druze originated in West Asia, is a monotheistic religion based on the teachings of figures like Hamza ibn Ali and al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, and Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. The number of Druze people worldwide is around one million. Around 45–50% live in Syria, 35% to 40% live in Lebanon, and less than 10% live in Israel. Recently, there has been a growing Druze diaspora.
The Baháʼí Faith originated in Asia, in Iran (Persia), and spread from there to the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia, India, and Burma during the lifetime of Bahá'u'lláh. Since the middle of the 20th century, growth has particularly occurred in other Asian countries, because Baháʼí activities in many Muslim countries have been severely suppressed by authorities. Lotus Temple is a big Baháʼí temple in India.
Almost all Asian religions have a 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 the material world. 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.
According to estimates published by the Pew Research Center in 2025, approximately 1.2 billion people worldwide identified as Hindus in 2020, with about 95% living in India. Hinduism is concentrated primarily in South Asia, where it is the majority religion in India and Nepal. Hindus accounted for approximately 79% of India's population and 81% of Nepal's population in 2020. Hindu communities are also present in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and parts of Southeast Asia, including Bali, Indonesia.
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 with Mahayana Buddhism, thus exact religious statistics are difficult to obtain and may be understated or overstated.
The culture 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, and West Asia. These regions are defined by their cultural similarities, including common religions, languages, and ethnicities. West Asia, also known as Southwest Asia or the Middle East, has cultural roots in the ancient civilisations of the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia, which gave rise to the Persian, Arab, and Ottoman empires, as well as the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These civilisations, which are located in the Hilly flanks, are among the oldest in the world, with evidence of farming dating back to around 9000BCE. 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 a Pan-Asian culture that is shared across the region.
Cultural traditions have also been shaped by exchanges between different parts of Asia and neighbouring regions. The overland and maritime Silk Roads facilitated the transmission of artistic practices, literature, religious beliefs and technologies between societies. Asian literary traditions have also gained international recognition in the modern era; the Bengali poet and writer Rabindranath Tagore received the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature.
↑Asia is normally considered its own continent in the English-speaking world, which uses the seven-continent model. Other models consider Asia as part of a Eurasian or Afro-Eurasian continent (see Continent §Number).
↑Georgia is a transcontinental country, with a small northern portion lying in Europe. Despite being primarily located in Asia, Georgia leans strongly towards European culture and has closer ties with the UN and NATO.
↑Johnson, Todd M.; Crossing, Peter F. (14 October 2022). "Religions by Continent". Journal of Religion and Demography. 9 (1–2): 91–110. doi:10.1163/2589742x-bja10013. ISSN2589-7411.
↑"Asia". Oxford Learner's Dictionaries. Oxford University Press.
123Boudreau, Diane; McDaniel, Melissa; Sprout, Erin; Turgeon, Andrew. Evers, Jeannie; West, Kara (eds.). "Asia: Physical Geography". National Geographic Society. Crooks, Mary; Gunther, Tim; Wynne, Nancy. Archived from the original on 30 June 2022. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
12National Geographic Atlas of the World (7thed.). Washington, D.C.: National Geographic. 1999. ISBN978-0-7922-7528-2. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "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."
↑McMahon, Gregory (2011). "The Land and Peoples of Anatolia through Ancient Eyes". In Steadman, Sharon; McMahon, Gregory (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia. Oxford University Press. p.21. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195376142.013.0002.
↑"Asie". Encyclopedia: Greek Gods, Spirits, Monsters. Theoi Greek Mythology, Exploring Mythology in Classical Literature and Art. 2000–2011. Archived from the original on 4 June 2010.
↑Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart; McKenzie, Roderick (2007) [1940]. "Ἀσία". A Greek-English Lexicon. Medford: Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University. Archived from the original on 27 April 2011.
↑"Asia". Etymonline.com. Archived from the original on 25 May 2017. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
↑Slomp, Hans (2011). Europe, A Political Profile: An American Companion to European Politics (Illustrated, reviseded.). ABC-CLIO. ISBN978-0313391828.
↑Histories 4.38. Cf. James Rennell, The Geographical System of Herodotus Examined and Explained, Volume 1, Rivington 1830, p. 244.
↑according to Strabo (Geographica 11.7.4) even at the time of Alexander, "it was agreed by all that the Tanais river separated Asia from Europe" (ὡμολόγητο ἐκ πάντων ὅτι διείργει τὴν Ἀσίαν ἀπὸ
τῆς Εὐρώπης ὁ Τάναϊς ποταμός; cf. Duane W. Roller, Eratosthenes' Geography, Princeton University Press, 2010, ISBN978-0-691-14267-8, Eratosthenes (24 January 2010). Geography. Princeton University Press. p.57. ISBN978-0-691-14267-8. Archived from the original on 26 March 2022. Retrieved 21 January 2020.)
↑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. Retrieved 21 January 2020.
↑Geographia 7.5.6 (ed. Nobbe 1845, Ptolemy, Claudio (1845). Geographia. Vol.2. Archived from the original on 24 May 2020. Retrieved 21 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."
12Simpson, 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. Retrieved 12 March 2022. The more northerly section, lying between Japan and California and between the Aleutian and Hawaiian Archipelagoes is relieved 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. Retrieved 12 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. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
↑Rizal, Y.; Westaway, K. E.; Zaim, Y.; van den Bergh; Bettis III, E. A.; Morwood, M. J.; Huffman, O. F.; Grün, R.; Joannes-Boyau, R.; Bailey, R. M.; Sidarto; Westaway, M. C.; Kurniawan, I.; Moore, M. W.; Storey, M.; Aziz, F.; Suminto; Zhao, J.; Aswan; Sipola, M. E.; Larick, R.; Zonneveld, J.-P.; Scott, R.; Putt, S.; Ciochon, R. L. (2020). "Last appearance of Homo erectus at Ngandong, Java, 117,000–108,000 years ago". Nature. 577 (7790): 381–385. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1863-2. hdl:10072/397335. ISSN0028-0836. PMID31853068. S2CID209410644.
↑Lee, Adela C. Y. "Ancient Silk Road Travellers". Silk-road.com. Silkroad Foundation. Archived from the original on 8 November 2017. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
↑Hu-DeHart, Evelyn; López, Kathleen (2008). "Asian Diasporas in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Historical Overview". Afro-Hispanic Review. 27 (1): 9–21. ISSN0278-8969. JSTOR23055220.
↑"Southeast Asia, 1800–1900 A.D."The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 31 August 2023. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
↑Farah, Paolo Davide (4 August 2006). Five Years of China WTO Membership: EU and US Perspectives About China's Compliance With Transparency Commitments and the Transitional Review Mechanism. SSRN916768.
↑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.
↑Colbert, C. Held (2008). Middle East Patterns: Places, People, and Politics. Routledge. p.109. ISBN978-0-429-96200-4. Worldwide, they number 1 million or so, with about 45 to 50 percent in Syria, 35 to 40 percent in Lebanon, and less than 10 percent in Israel. Recently there has been a growing Druze diaspora.
↑Hackett, Conrad; Marcin Stonawski; Yunping Tong; Stephanie Kramer; Anne Shi; Dalia Fahmy (9 June 2025). "5. Hindu population change". Pew Research Center. Retrieved 9 October 2026.
↑Morris, Ian (2011). Why the West rules – for now: the patterns of history, and what they reveal about the future. Profile. ISBN978-1846682087. OCLC751789199.
Lewis, Martin W.; Wigen, Kären (1997). The myth of continents: a critique of metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN978-0-520-20743-1.
Ventris, Michael; Chadwick, John (1973). Documents in Mycenaean Greek (2nded.). Cambridge University Press.
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 from the original on 12 August 2011. Retrieved 26 July 2011.
"Asia Maps". Perry–Castañeda Library Map Collection. University of Texas Libraries. Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 20 July 2011.
"Asia". Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library. Archived from the original on 29 September 2011. Retrieved 26 July 2011.
Bowring, Philip (12 February 1987). "What is Asia?". Eastern Economic Review. 135 (7). Archived from the original on 28 July 2011. Retrieved 22 April 2009.
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