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Asia (/ ˈ eɪ ʒ ə / ⓘ AY-zhə, UK also / ˈ eɪ ʃ ə / AY-shə) is the largest continent [note 1] [10] [11] in the world by both land area and population. [11] It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, [note 2] about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area.
Apart from Maritime Southeast Asia (the Malay Archipelago), the maritime region of the subcontinent (littoral South Asia) is the only subregion of Asia that lies partly within the Southern Hemisphere: the British Indian Ocean Territory [citation needed] two of the 26 atolls of the Maldives lie entirely within the Southern Hemisphere.
These varying definitions are not generally reflected in the map of Asia as a whole; for example, Egypt is typically included in the Middle East, but not in Asia, even though the bulk of the Middle East is in Asia. The demarcation between Asia and Africa is the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Suez, the Red Sea, and the Bab-el-Mandeb.
In 1507 Martin Waldseemüller published a world map, Universalis Cosmographia, which was the first to show North and South America as separate from Asia and surrounded by water. A small inset map above the main map explicitly showed for the first time the Americas being east of Asia and separated from Asia by an ocean, as opposed to just ...
In medieval T and O maps, Asia makes for half the world's landmass, with Africa and Europe accounting for a quarter each. With the High Middle Ages, Southwest and Central Asia receive better resolution in Muslim geography, and the 11th century map by Mahmud al-Kashgari is the first world map drawn from a Central Asian point of view.
Blue = Central Asia; Yellow = East Asia (China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan) Brown = West Asia/Middle East; Green = South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan) Red = South East Asia (10 ASEAN countries + East Timor) Date: 5 May 2007 (original upload date) Source: Own work based on the blank world map: Author
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area (or 30% of its land area) and with approximately 4.655 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population .
Maps are also available as part of the Wikimedia Atlas of the World project in the Atlas of Asia Wikimedia Commons has media related to Maps of Asia . Subcategories