Afro-Eurasia

Afro-Eurasia

Area	84,980,532 km2 (32,811,166 sq mi)
Population	6,151,810,000 (2013)
Demonym	Afro-Eurasian, Afroeurasian, Eurafrasian, Old Worlder
Countries	147
Dependencies	17
Languages	4,725
Time zones	UTC-1 (Cap-Vert) UTC+12 (Russia)

Afro-Eurasia, Afroeurasia, or Eurafrasia, known in antiquity as the Ecumene and most commonly known since the Age of Exploration as the Old World, is the largest landmass on Earth, primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres. The term is a portmanteau of its constituent parts: Africa and Eurasia, the latter divided into Europe and Asia. Afro-Eurasia encompasses 84,980,532 square kilometers (32,811,166 sq mi) and has a population of approximately 6 billion people which is roughly 85% of the world population. In geopolitical contexts, it is sometimes known as the World Island, a term coined by H.J. Mackinder.

Geology

Main articles: Eurasian Plate, African Plate, Indo-Australian Plate, and Arabian Plate

Afro-Eurasia is typically considered to comprise two or three separate continents but is not a proper supercontinent. Instead, it is the largest present part of the supercontinent cycle.

The oldest part of Afro-Eurasia is probably the Kaapvaal Craton, which together with Madagascar and parts of India and western Australia formed part of the first supercontinent Vaalbara or Ur around 3 billion years ago. It has made up parts of every supercontinent since. At the breakup of Pangaea around 200 million years ago, the North American and Eurasian Plates together formed Laurasia while the African Plate remained in Gondwana, from which the Indian Plate split off. This impacted southern Asia around 50 million years ago and began the formation of the Himalayas. (Around the same time, it also fused with the Australian Plate.) The Arabian Plate broke off of Africa around 30 million years ago and impacted the Iranian Plate between 19 and 12 million years ago, ultimately forming the Alborz and Zagros chains of Iranian Plate. After this initial connection of Afro-Eurasia, the Betic corridor along the Gibraltar Arc closed a little less than 6 million years ago, fusing Northwest Africa and Iberia together. This led to the nearly-complete desiccation of the Mediterranean Basin, the Messinian salinity crisis. Eurasia and Africa were then again separated: the Zanclean Flood around 5.33 million years ago refilled the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar and the Red Sea and Gulf of Suez Rifts further divided Africa from the Arabian Plate.

Today, Africa is now joined to Asia only by a narrow land bridge (which has been canalized) at the Isthmus of Suez and remains separated from Europe by the Straits of Gibraltar and Sicily. Paleogeologist Ronald Blakey has described the next 15 to 100 million years of tectonic development as fairly settled and predictable. In that time, Africa is expected to continue drifting northward. It will close the Strait of Gibraltar around 600,000 years from now, closing and quickly evaporating the Mediterranean Sea. No supercontinent will form within the settled time frame, however, and the geologic record is full of unexpected shifts in tectonic activity that make further projections "very, very speculative". Three possibilities are known as Novopangaea, Amasia, and Pangaea Ultima. In the first two, the Pacific closes and Africa remains fused to Eurasia, but Eurasia itself splits as Africa and Europe spin towards the west; in the last, the trio spin eastward together as the Atlantic closes.

History

Humans evolved in Africa and spread from there throughout Europe and Asia before sailing to Oceania and crossing the Bering land bridge during the last glacial period to the Americas. On average, present-day Africans exhibit lower levels of DNA from archaic humans than Europeans and Asians, suggesting interbreeding with Neanderthals 50-60,000 years ago. The long expanse of temperate climate in Eurasia and North Africa saw the birth of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, eventually leading to domesticated livestock and metallurgy. (Similar developments occurred independently in the Americas, but several millennia later.) By the late Chalcolithic, city-states had arisen in Sumeria and were followed by civilizations in other locations such as China's Yellow and Yangtze Rivers and the Subcontinent's Indus River. Major empires have included the Roman, Arabian, Mongolian, Ottoman, Russian, Japanese, and British Empires, as well as the many empires of China. The European Age of Discovery, with its attendant Columbian Exchange and colonization, began the globalization of the world's cultures. It was the cradle of the first and second Industrial Revolutions, as well as the setting of the bloodiest wars in history. The First and Second World Wars led to decolonization and Communist revolutions around the world, although the Revolutions of 1989 ended the Cold War in a victory for the Capitalist Bloc. 8 of the 9 states with nuclear weapons lie in Eurasia and current major powers include China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.

Today, Afro-Eurasia includes the vast majority of the world's peoples and cultures, as well as a majority of the world's economy. Its languages are the most- and most widely-spoken in the world, with most humans speaking either an Indo-European or Sino-Tibetan language. It was the birthplace of most religions, including the four major faiths of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, as well as empirical science, humanism, and secularism.

Divisions

Another projection of the Old World

Normally Afro-Eurasia is divided at the Suez Canal into Africa and Eurasia, the latter of which can be subdivided into Europe and Asia. It has also been divided into Eurasia-North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa for cultural and historical reasons.

Geographical areas

Africa:

• North Africa
  • Maghreb
  • Sahara
  • Sahel
• Sub-Saharan Africa
  • Central Africa
    • Congo Basin
  • East Africa
    • Horn of Africa
  • Southern Africa
  • West Africa
    • Sudan (region)

Eurasia:

• Europe
  • Central Europe
  • Eastern Europe
  • Northern Europe
  • Southern Europe
  • Western Europe
• Asia
  • Far East
    • East Asia
    • Southeast Asia
  • Greater Middle East
    • Central Asia
    • Western Asia
      • Fertile Crescent
      • Hilly Flanks
      • Middle East
      • Near East
  • North Asia
    • Siberia
  • South Asia
    • Indian subcontinent

See also

• Geography
• Intermediate Region