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Asia is the largest and most populous continent or region,
depending on the definition. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total
surface area, or 29.4% of its land area, and it contains more
than 60% 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.
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
women's names are used to describe one 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.
Even before Herodotus, Homer knew of a Trojan ally named Asios,
son of Hyrtacus, a ruler over several towns, 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.
Alternatively, the ultimate etymology of the term may be from
the Akkadian word (w)aṣû(m), which means "to go out" 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 Semitic erēbu "to enter" or
"set" (of the sun). |
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