Where Does Europe End and Asia Begin? 

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simple, Europe doesn't end, it encompasses the whole world. With the exception of Ethiopia, parts of china, Siam, Liberia ect

Now I'd like to have a big globe-spanning poll, in which we ask every person on earth, what continent they think they belong to. :D It would be ridiculous, expensive and unnecessary, but I'd love to see a map, made from those answers.

Asia is actually probably the worst area definition of all time. it like encompasses a mindnumbingly large and diverse groups of people. belgians are very different from the vietnamese but no more different than a turk from both.

This division will always be highly arbitrary, as there is no geographical reason to divide Eurasia into two continents

So basically Europe is a peninsula of asia

It depends on who you ask. Some say that Europe’s borders end at Western Asia and Central Asia. However, some people in Turkey, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan identity more as European due to their relationship with the Council of Europe.

We're trying to find categorisation that encompasses multiple factors (culture, tectonic plates, bodies of water, mountain ranges, biogeography) so it's always going to be messy if we keep doing that. I think it's more useful to make categorisations for each individual purpose. Also, for some things, the borders may be a bit fuzzy, it's not surprising if certain things near the border might have some elements of both of the zones they're between. There can also be larger categories with smaller subcategories. E.g. there's a certain amount of cultural commonality between various European countries, but you can also still divide those up further into regions within Europe. But some things might also be different than we categorise now; North Africa tends to have more cultural similarity to the Middle East and even to some extent Mediteranian Europe than it does to Sub-Saharan Africa.

The argument for Armenia, Georgia, and Cyprus doesn't really make sense because there is no such thing as "Asian culture" or even "Asian history" on the other side. There are Asian cultures and Asian histories, but they are identified specifically. "Ottoman", "Mongol", and "Meiji", for example, are all Asian histories, but they are so disparate that it makes no sense using "Asian" as a term to describe any of them in general.

No wonder in Russia and most ex-soviet states there is no "Asia" and "Europe", but Eurasian Continent. Because if cultural differences makes a different continent, Middle East and India also have a different culture and ethnicity compare to China, Korea, and Japan.

Your videos are very helpful I learned a lot in a short time. Keep up the awesome videos

South America is weird because technically the Panama Canal is the dividing line with North America but popularly the entire country of Panama is considered North American, not even the southern portion is considered South American. To me America is just one continent though, with 3 main subregions. And Europe+Asia is one continent, Eurasia, it makes more sense and it looks nicer, the name is dope too.

I have heard a bit about the peculiarities of the European-Asian border, but I didn't know just _how_ weird the idea was! From the Aegean Islands being without a continent, to placing the border at the Yenisei River (4:42), this ever-changing human-made line is quite odd! Thanks for the video! Also, nice pronunciation of "Azov" at 3:18. Furthermore, nice comedic moments at 3:19-3:23, 3:28-3:33, 4:29-4:35, and 4:52-4:58!

Kento Bento has covered these borders in more detail than sometimes seems necessary, but I enjoy his style. Khanubis dove more into the history.

If we are going to use culture as a reason to separate Europe from Asia, shouldn't we also consider India as a separate continent, actually it makes more sense for India to be considered a separate continent, since it's on its own separate tectonic plate unlike Europe on the Eurasian plate, the same like India goes for the Arabian peninsula.

Yeah, I think the Caucasus is just a mess. The 3 countries could be considered both continents.

Separating Asia from Europe doesn't make sense geographically. It's a one land.

Geographically : Marmara Sea, Gibraltar Strait, Ural Mountains and the Greater Caucasus Culturally : Debatable regions which would consist of transitions rather than clear borders

~6:22 This graphic shows the country of Australia, not the continent of Australia; the Continent of Australia includes Papua/New Guinea. I have a video on my channel about the different borders of "Australia" if anyone is interested (there are actually three different geographical entities called Australia).

The whole cultural argument used to divide Europe and Asia never made much sense to me, as I a West Asian Lebanese man has very little in common with an East Asian Vietnamese. In fact culturally I'm closer to European Greeks than I am to East Asians. A Russian man in Vladivostok is geographically Asian, yet culturally he has little in common with his Chinese neighbours in Manchuria. Does this mean he's not Asian?

What is ridiculous is that people consider Europe and Asia two continents and the very same people will argue North and South America are one continent.

Whenever I play Halo and see those huge landmasses all over the Halo rings, I wonder how civilizations would have interacted with each other on a world with so much land, with different geography, and with the fact that since it is a ring, a civilization on a certain point wouldn't know barely anything about the one right above them, as they would have to travel dozens of Earth's worth of land and sea to reach them. That is thinking it from a Greek / Medieval time perioid, if it was today's technology, stuff like the internet would make it easier for these civilizations to know each other, tho actually getting there would still be a pain, even with planes, it would require hundreds of scales and months of travel, maybe civilizations here would develop teleportation and make it a reality much sooner than we would probably do here due to strict necessity, or I don't know. Fun to think about tho.

We separate by oceans which are essentially deserts. We need to separate continents (divisions of culture) based on deserts and isolated areas.

Europe and Asia is really one continuous landmass. Africa has mountains, deserts and all kind of geographical barriers and isn't separated into two continents. Look at a huge country like Russia. Is that really Europe? To me, all these markers are purely cultural.

With continents being about culture as much as actual geography, I think the middle east and India should be considered separate continents from Asia aswell.

about the caucasus border i have to point out that the more common arguements nowdays are about which caucasus mountains to use, greater or lesser (greater excludes georgia,armenia, azerbaijan) while the lesser caucasus mountains include them, another is to use political borders of the 3 countries instead of geographic which also seems to be gaining some traction for simplicity sake , i havent heard much discussion about puttin the border above the greater mountains for a while.

As an Aegean islander, I just found out my family's island is technically in Asia, thank you @KhAnubis, you truly are the king of kings.

Hey @KhAnubis: is your moniker a somewhat veiled reference to the funny green leaf? If so: loved it. Clever.

Europe ends where Islam starts.

Fun fact: If we follow the Asia-Europe boundary definition used in this video, Siberia (Northern Asia) is not the only part of Russia which is geographically a part of Asia. Other than Siberia, Asian Russia also includes a small coastal strip from Novorossiysk to Sochi (which is located south of the Greater Caucasus watershed and geographically a part of Western Asia) and the southern portion of Orenburg Oblast (which is located south of the Ural River and geographically a part of Central Asia).

europe is not continent. dont know why people are so thick headed about it, they clump up asia as one continent even tho many part of asia have separate tectonic plate, culture, and history.

Great video.

I mean the video was good and I was going to like it but man, that commercial was great!

It seems to me like we should make the distinction between geographic continents and cultural continents.

Can everyone in these comments stop saying “it should be a peninsula of Asia” no. It is called Eurasia, not Asia, I am not Asian I am Eurasian.

Again a nice video

I remember being taught that Australia was a one country continent. It makes sense in a way, the rest of Oceania are just islands. It’s just leaves the islands with out a label

1:49 woa... I've never seen that map before! If this is the first map of the world ever known to the greeks why wasn't it shown in my history textbooks!? This is REALLY important to how ancient greeks saw the world and humbling for someone living in our time period.

In the 1970s in my birth country - - Sweden - the entire caucuses was included in maps of Europe. Asia started in Turkey and Iran. Probably cuz of the Soviet Union?

In a way, Asia Europe and Africa are all one landmass.

Ever since I was a kid, the geographical division between Europe and Asia never made any sense to me. The two "continents" share the same ginormic landmass, by a significant margin, so why do we waste so much brain power trying to separate the two?? That's why there is really only one continent, between the two: EURASIA! This word is already used to denote both landmasses collectively. Why can't it become the standard by which we define this half of our planet?

In Greece all of the Aegean Islands are considered as part of Europe except of Kastelorizo in some sources. Greece isn't actually thought to be a transcontinental country that much.

Oh, I have visited this border in Urals and there is even a border sign there.

Not often I comment, nor actually have this reaction, but I genuinely spluttered at "...who was also dead".

Love it.

if europe is a continent because of culture, middle east north africa, south asia, central asia and east asia should be a continent too

"We have collectively decided..." False. Some influential people sees it as..., and this is taught in places such as... Maps of Europe in Europe vary a lot, and depending on the year and on the place, they include or exclude Russia as a whole, just some western parts, or what is shown here as "established". Bonus points: every European knows Cyprus is in Europe.

as a Syrian living in the Emirates, I consider the middle east to also be a continent in it's own right for the same reasons Europe is considered a continent. 1. our culture is nothing like Asian culture. 2. it is separated from the rest of Asia by mountains. 3. it is from the first person perspective of a middle eastern, me.

6:49 sweet stache man

We should consider Cyprus apart of Europe and help Greece conquer the whole island.

It's not about anything other than a group of people NOT wanting to be associated with another group of people. The divide is there to satisfy an "-ism" and nothing more.

Really nailed that reporter pause.

Let's be honest, Europe and Asia are one in the same.

From what heard was Europe & Asia was more political & racial thing as that is technically one continent.

It's interesting how europeans created the concept of "europe" to describe that they are not asian and justify it saying that it reflects culture when places like India, Iran, Kazakhistan, China or Camboya had nothing in common culturally

On the basis that continents are either completely separate landmasses, or at most joined to each other by a narrow isthmus, the continents would be Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica and Australia.

Funny topic, but people are overstating it unnecessarily. But maybe I see it that way because I am Czech and the Czech language handled the problem elegantly, only the translation is a bit scratchy because Czech distinguishes between Kontinenty=continents and Světadíly (literally parts of the world)=continents. There are 5 officially recognized Kontinenty/continents (but even 4 are taken as good thanks to Afro-Eurasia) and 7 světadíly/continents (it even recognizes the 8 if you divide Astralia and Oceania). We also have 1 subcontinent, India, though I don't understand why, but that's beside the point.

In our class we learn Cotinents like Asia, Africa, Europa, etc and Tectonic plates like North & South American plates, African plate, India plate, Eurasian plate, etc. And yes Siberia part of russian federation is North Asia while the so called Middle East and Levant are West Asia.

I wish people would just say "Eurasia". It's a single continent.

Europe is the West part of continent Eurasia. Asia is the Eastern part... there is only one continent: Eurasia. Obsolete dividde to two continents is just "cultural" not geographical or by geology.

According to definition technically Europe is not a continent, it's actually the extreme western part of Asia. America is not a country yet two continents, one each in the Northern & Southern hemispheres, with a combination of 35 separate countries.

For the sake of the current border crisis in Europe I believe it is important to observe Europe including just the Northern Caucasus as part of Europe and those nations there as unlike the Moscovy who are now sitting around looking at this post saying, "Gee, I wish the Caucasus would stop including everyone as European?" I think that would end the problem there. The Moscovy are not Kievan and not Circassian (for example).

as someone born and raised in istanbul, the europe-asia divide has never, at any point in time, made any sense to me

The eastern aegean islands are assigned to Europe in most maps.

Haha Taipei Main Station as the backdrop for the ad 🇹🇼

Europe is geologically a peninsula of Asia. Asia is just a Greek word for east where the sun come up. Anatolia (today mostly turkey) was named Micra Asia if I remember well.

It is wherever europeans feels like the rest is not europeans

okay, your ad read was creative and genuinely made me laugh. good job !!

if europe can be a continent simply by culture and history then asia should be divided into different continent too.

Notice how everyone mentioned to be involved in deciding this border is from Europe

Europe and Asia are one continent. Enough of the arbitrary borders

The border should be where the plate boundaries meet

nice

There are 2 continents: Afro-Eurasia and America. Australia is a large island and Antarctica is an archipelago covered in ice to make it look like a single landmass. Alternatively, they're are 7 continents: Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Oceania, and Indo-Australia. Why "Indo-Australia"? Blame geologists.

I think it doesn't make sense that the North Caucasus is considered Asian and the South Caucasus European when culturally speaking, the mostly Christian South Caucasus (georgia, armenia) is closer to Europe than the more Muslim, multiethnic and weird North Caucasus (Chechnya, Circassia, Kalmykia)

Personally I like the idea of continents being defined as, well, landmasses. Plate tectonics don't give a shit about what we desire to be true borders, theirs are true for as long they exist. Of course that would put a whole lot of continents under water, but so be it. The ocean floor is still a mass of land divided into neat little plates ready to ruin our day.

This does does not take consideration of other lost continents that has the tectonic divides. There is a new continent discovered called Balkanatolia. It stretches from Caucasus, Anatolia, Balkans to Austria and Northern Italy. This continents tectonic lines still exist. Turkish straights formed just a few thousand years ago. There was lake there. The lake was Marmara Sea. The two edges of the this lake collapsed. It united with Aegean and Black Sea. Black Sea was a lake as well. It turned into a sea after that. Turkish straights are brand new in geographical sense. They CAN NOT be a continental divide factor. Turkish Anatolian peninsula is totally connected with Balkan peninsula.

I say we should consider Europe as a subcontinent. Then we got three neat spheres, Indian subcontinent, East Asia and Europe, Idk what to do with the Middle east and central asia though.

(0:05) I've crossed many European borders without a passport

If the plates are moving in different directions, it should be easy to tell. If they aren't moving in relation to each other, they are the same plate, so there really is no geological boundary.

Neat

Europe is a part of asia

It ends where I say it does

I mean, yeah, Belgium and Vietnam aren't very much alike at all, but it's not like Panama and Nunavut are that similar and no one says they're on different continents.

Does it really matter ? Will it affect anything or your trip/understanding ?

Europe is not a continent,it’s a extension of Western Asia,also there’s no Middle East that is part of North Eastern Africa.

The boundaries of Europe are the following: -the Ural mountains -the strait of Gibraltar -the Caucasus Plus excluding: -the European side of turkey -the parts of Kazakhstan west of the Ural mountains -georgia and armenia And including Cyprus since Iceland is counted as Europe while being in the middle of the Atlantic and all the Aegean islands and Malta are part of Europe too

its pretty hard to draw continents especially when its cultural sense. Europe is mainly white, but asia compasses of not just chinese but arabian peninsular, indian subcontinent and malay archipelago as well as the the rest of austronesian which are totally different breed of people from east asian just like how white are distinct from chinese. Best way to divide land to me is probably the tectonic plate.

Interesting that it was determined quite earlier on. It just makes sense.

If Cyprus, Armenia, Georgia are more European than Asian ...then Egypt, Libya are more Middle-Eastern than African, all of Mediterranean is closer to one another rather than Greece being close to Scandinavia by virtue of being Europe or Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) being close to Sub Sharan Africa like Congo only because of being part of the African landmass or Lebanon being closer to Japan instead of Tunisia or Europe. All of these divisions are vague and must not instill emotions among people or dictate geo-politics...People should have an identity on shared values and not shared geography and other things. But then identity itself is a human construct.

Africa almost is surrounded by water, and same is true for north and south america,so if we need to have continents, Eurasia,africa and north and south america would make sense

Apart from the definition in antiquity, with the word Europe what was meant long have been what today we call Western Europe, not even including the Iberian peninsula. Balkans and Western Turkey were Near East, Eastern Turkey and Persia were Middle East. Europe , as we define it today, is actually a cultural definition which already has quite racist undertones, the lands of the White Men ( definitely of Christian faith) and the land of the others was Asia. It has nothing to do with geology at all. Even New Zealand or the Seychelles are more of a continent than Europe, geologically speaking. I am from Istanbul, the city where Asia and Europe meet, and where one subway station is in Europe and the next station is in Asia, you know. The same rock formations continue across the Asian and European sides of Istanbul and the Bosphorus, the strait separating Europe from Asia was just another river bed approximately ten thousand years ago, not a real border of two geological plates at all. This would be another discussion point, of course but to me, what we should understand from a continent should be an island too huge to be defined as an island, not a peninsula where people have similar skin colours or have similar religious and cultural backgrounds. The term Europe as a continent is really problematic, I think.

"Europe" is Western Asia the same way California is Western North America. There is no need to divide it up.

I find it weird how on the Eurasian landmass only Europeans gets to have and use a unique name whole the rest of the people on the landmass are called "Asians" even though there are many unique regions people. Technically we can call Europeans "far western Asians". But I'm sure many Europeans would not like being called that as they think there different and rest are "Asians", maybe a term used to refer to non-Europeans as an "other". Of course this "other" idea was used to justify colonialism on the rest of Eurasia. I think it would be interesting of each region of the Eurasia was not just lumped together with one word and had their own unique name for each distinct region.

Georgia also happens to be trans continental :V as Kazbegi and part of Tusheti regions are on northen side of Caucasus :V

Então a Califórnia está em outro continente que não é o Norte-Americano, já que fica a oeste das montanhas rochosas? E a América do Sul, são dois continentes também, divididos pelos Andes?

In the end Its Eurasia.. but they don't want it to be

I have a *friend* from the Russian Republic of *Bashkortostan* who is definitely *equally "mixed"* in his heritage: you *can't tell if he is European or Asian* just be looking at him, as *he simply "looks Russian".* And *you can't "tell"* where he is from *by his name* either either, as *his last name is Ukrainian.* His *Bashkir friends* look even more Asian than him, and - as a Vietnamese - could easily mistake them for *upper-class Vietnamese mandarins.*

Let’s stop calling Europe its own continent and instead consider it a subcontinent of Asia, like India

The Culture Argument for continent boundaries makes no sense. If we separated Asia into several continents (or at least, subcontinents) there would LITERALLY BE NO ASIA. The Levant, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula are literally FULL OF ARABS. Should they be a continent in the Middle East? Iran and Afghanistan would turn into a continent because they are historically and culturally related since they were both ruled by ancient Persian empires (both were also collectively referred to as "the Land of Aryans"). Armenia was also ruled by ancient Persians in the past, should they be a part of that hypothetical continent too? Plus, all 3 countries officially speak Indo-European languages (Persian/Farsi, Pashto/Afghani and Armenian/Hayeren). Southeast Asia would also be divided into 2 continents. Mainland Southeast Asia and Maritime Southeast Asia since the ethnic groups of both places are culturally unrelated to each other. Mainland SEA cultures are more influenced by Chinese culture and a lot of them are also Buddhist. Plus, many people from Mainland SEA looky very Mongoloid in appearance. Meanwhile, Maritime SEA cultures are Austronesian in origin and the majority of them are influenced by Indian cultures and Hinduism. People from Maritime SEA also tend to look like Pacific Islanders. Central Asia, North Asia/Siberia and the country of Mongolia would also be one continent because they have a connected history (Mongol Empire) and their cultures are related because they are mixed between Mongolic tribes and Turkic tribes. Turkey and Azerbaijan should also be considered one continent because both officially speak Turkic languages (Turkish and Azeri) and therefore, their cultures and histories are similar. China, Korea and Japan should also be a continent because all their modern cultures were descended from Confucianism and their languages are similar (and they also use similar writing systems). The people living in these countries also look very similar and their histories are very interconnected. You see why the Culture Boundary Argument doesn't make any sense? Look at all that shit that I just wrote and tell me: *Where do you see a unified continent, let alone ASIA, in all that?*