East Asia

East Asia or Eastern Asia is the eastern subregion of the Eurasian continent, which can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms. Geographically and geopolitically, it covers about 12,000,000 km² (4,600,000 sq mi), or about 28% of the Asian continent, about 15% bigger than the area of Europe.

More than 1.5 billion people, about 38% of the population of Asia and 22% or over one fifth of all the people in the world, live in East Asia. Although the coastal and rivery areas of the region form one of the world's most populated places, the population in Mongolia and Western China, both landlocked areas, is very sparsely distributed, with Mongolia having the lowest population density of a sovereign state. The overall population density of the region is 133 inhabitants per square kilometre (340/sq mi), about three times the world average of 45/km² (120/sq mi).

Historically, many societies in East Asia have been part of the Chinese cultural sphere, and East Asian vocabulary and scripts are often derived from Classical Chinese and Chinese script. Sometimes Northeast Asia is used to denote Japan and Korea. Major religions include Buddhism (mostly Mahayana), Confucianism or Neo-Confucianism, Taoism, Chinese folk religion, Islam in China and Taiwan, Shinto in Japan, Shamanism in Korea, Mongolia and other indigenous populations of northern East Asia, and recently Christianity in South Korea. The Chinese Calendar is the root from which many other East Asian calendars are derived.

History of East Asia

The history of East Asia covers the people inhabiting of the eastern subregion of the Asian continent known as East Asia from prehistoric times to the present. The best known ancient civilization of prehistoric East Asia was China, which flourished in the central plain region and continued until present day.

Prehistory

Homo erectus ("upright man") is believed to have lived in East and Southeast Asia from 1.8 million to 40,000 years ago. Their regional distinction is classified as Homo erectus sensu stricto.

Fossils representing 40 Homo erectus individuals, known as Peking Man, were found near Beijing at Zhoukoudian that date to about 400,000 years ago. The species was believed to have lived for at least several hundred thousand years in China, and possibly until 200,000 years ago in Indonesia. They may have been the first to use fire and cook food.

Homo sapiens migrated into inland Asia, likely by following herds of bison and mammoth and arrived in southern Siberia by about 43,000 years ago and some people move south or east from there.

East

East is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. East is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of west and is perpendicular to north and south.

Etymology

The word east comes from Middle English est, from Old English ēast, which itself comes from the Proto-Germanic *aus-to- or *austra- "east, toward the sunrise", from Proto-Indo-European *aus- "to shine," or "dawn". This is similar to Old High German *ōstar "to the east", Latin aurora "dawn", and Greek ēōs or heōs.Ēostre, a Germanic goddess of dawn, might have been a personification of both dawn and the cardinal points.

Navigation

By convention, the right hand side of a map is east. This convention has developed from the use of a compass, which places north at the top.

To go east using a compass for navigation, set a bearing or azimuth of 90°.

Cultural

East is the direction toward which the Earth rotates about its axis, and therefore the general direction from which the Sun appears to rise. The practice of praying towards the East is older than Christianity, but has been adopted by this religion as the Orient was thought of as containing mankind's original home. Hence, most Christian churches are oriented towards the east.

Asia

Asia (ⁱ/ˈeɪʒə/ or /ˈeɪʃə/) is the Earth's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometers, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area. It has historically been home to the world's first modern civilizations and has always hosted the bulk of the planet's human population. Asia is notable for not only overall large size and population, but unusually dense and large settlements as well as vast barely populated regions within the continent of 4.4 billion people. The boundaries of Asia are traditionally determined as that of Eurasia, as there is no significant geographical separation between Asia and Europe. The most commonly accepted boundaries place Asia to the east of the Suez Canal, the Ural River, and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains 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.