91-402: Pinus cembra , also known as Swiss pine , Swiss stone pine , Arolla pine , Austrian stone pine , or just stone pine , is a species of pine tree in the subgenus Strobus . The Swiss pine is a member of the white pine group, Pinus subgenus Strobus , and like all members of that group, the leaves ('needles') are in fascicles (bundles) of five, with a deciduous sheath. The mature size
182-507: A South Asian country, emerges as one of the world's fastest movers since 1970 mainly due to health and education achievements. Its present life expectancy is 25 years longer than in the 1970s. More than four of every five children of school age in Nepal now attend primary school, compared to just one in five 40 years ago. Hong Kong ranked highest among the countries grouped on the HDI (number 7 in
273-602: A faster growth rate and needles with three resin canals instead of two as in the Swiss pine. The Swiss pine grows in the Alps and Carpathian Mountains of central Europe , in Poland ( Tatra Mountains ), Switzerland , France , Italy , Austria , Germany , Slovenia , Slovakia ( Tatra Mountains ), Ukraine and Romania . It typically grows at 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) to 2,300 metres (7,500 ft) altitude. It often reaches
364-676: A major hub for outsourcing. Trade between Asian countries and countries on other continents is largely carried out on the sea routes that are important for Asia. Individual main routes have emerged from this. The main route leads from the Chinese coast south via Hanoi to Jakarta, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur through the Strait of Malacca via the Sri Lankan Colombo to the southern tip of India via Malé to East Africa Mombasa (see also: Indo-Pacific ), from there to Djibouti , then through
455-575: A marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia as ασιος . The term was later adopted by the Romans , who used it in reference to the province of Asia , located in western Anatolia. One of the first writers to use Asia as a name of the whole continent was Pliny . The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Asia , South Asia , Southeast Asia , Central Asia , and West Asia . The coastal periphery
546-564: A means to evaluate soil fertility and vigour of the trees. The bark of most pines is thick and scaly, but some species have thin, flaky bark. The branches are produced in "pseudo whorls", actually a very tight spiral but appearing like a ring of branches arising from the same point. Many pines are uninodal, producing just one such whorl of branches each year, from buds at the tip of the year's new shoot , but others are multinodal, producing two or more whorls of branches per year. Pines have four types of leaf : Pines are monoecious , having
637-527: A vestigial wing and are dispersed by spotted nutcrackers . The species is long-lasting and can reach an age between 500 and 1000 years. In its natural environment, this tree usually reaches reproductive maturity at the age of 50 years (even 80 years, if the conditions are more extreme). The very similar Siberian pine ( Pinus sibirica ) is treated as a variety or subspecies of Swiss pine by some botanists. The Siberian pine differs in having slightly larger cones, being more massive (taller, wider trunk), having
728-399: Is a region where various independent cultures coexist rather than sharing a single culture, and the boundary between Europe is somewhat arbitrary and has moved since its first conception in classical antiquity . The division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East–West cultural differences, some of which vary on a spectrum. China and India traded places as the largest economies in
819-541: Is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus Pinus ( / ˈ p aɪ n ə s / ) of the family Pinaceae . Pinus is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae . World Flora Online accepts 187 species names of pines as current, with additional synonyms, making it the largest family among the conifers. The American Conifer Society (ACS) and the Royal Horticultural Society accept 121 species. The highest species diversity of pines
910-802: Is found in Mexico. Pines are widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere ; they occupy large areas of boreal forest , but are found in many habitats, including the Mediterranean Basin . The timber from pine trees is called "pine"; it is one of the most extensively used types of timber. There are currently 818 named cultivars (or trinomials ) recognized by the ACS. It is a well-known type of Christmas tree . Pine trees are evergreen , coniferous resinous trees (or, rarely, shrubs ) growing 3–80 metres (10–260 feet) tall, with
1001-1112: Is generally defined as comprising the eastern four-fifths of Eurasia. It is located to the east of the Suez Canal and the Ural Mountains , and south of the Caucasus Mountains (or the Kuma–Manych Depression ) 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. Asia is subdivided into 49 countries, five of them ( Georgia , Azerbaijan , Russia , Kazakhstan and Turkey ) are transcontinental countries lying partly in Europe . Geographically, Russia
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#17327936833011092-514: Is growing rapidly. In 2010, Asia had 3.3 million millionaires (people with net worth over US$ 1 million excluding their homes), slightly below North America with 3.4 million millionaires. In 2011, Asia topped Europe in number of millionaires. Citigroup in The Wealth Report 2012 stated that Asian centa-millionaire overtook North America's wealth for the first time as the world's "economic center of gravity" continued moving east. At
1183-467: Is moist across southeast sections, and dry across much of the interior. Some of the largest daily temperature ranges on Earth occur in western sections of Asia. The monsoon circulation dominates across southern and eastern sections, due to the presence of the Himalayas forcing the formation of a thermal low which draws in moisture during the summer. Southwestern sections of the continent are hot. Siberia
1274-449: Is now restricted to fir ( Abies ) and Douglas-fir ( Pseudotsuga ). Pines are gymnosperms . The genus is divided into two subgenera based on the number of fibrovascular bundles in the needle. The subgenera can be distinguished by cone, seed, and leaf characters: Phylogenetic evidence indicates that both subgenera have a very ancient divergence from one another. Each subgenus is further divided into sections and subsections. Many of
1365-801: Is one of the world's oldest living organisms at around 4,800 years old. This tree can be found in the White Mountains of California. An older tree, now cut down, was dated at 4,900 years old. It was discovered in a grove beneath Wheeler Peak and it is now known as " Prometheus " after the Greek immortal . The spiral growth of branches, needles, and cones scales are arranged in Fibonacci number ratios. The new spring shoots are sometimes called "candles"; they are covered in brown or whitish bud scales and point upward at first, then later turn green and spread outward. These "candles" offer foresters
1456-518: Is one of the coldest places in the Northern Hemisphere , and can act as a source of arctic air masses for North America. The most active place on Earth for tropical cyclone activity lies northeast of the Philippines and south of Japan. Climate change is particularly important in Asia, as the continent accounts for the majority of the human population. Warming since the 20th century is increasing
1547-721: Is partly in Asia, but is considered a European nation , both culturally and politically. The Gobi Desert is in Mongolia and the Arabian Desert stretches across much of the Middle East. The Yangtze in China is the longest river in the continent. The Himalayas between Nepal and China is the tallest mountain range in the world. Tropical rainforests stretch across much of southern Asia and coniferous and deciduous forests lie farther north. There are various approaches to
1638-493: Is projected to move to third place, behind China and India. While nearly half of the world's new renewable energy capacity is built in Asia, this is not yet sufficient in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement . They imply that the renewables would account for 35% of total energy consumption in Asia by 2030. Asia has the largest continental economy in the world by both GDP nominal and PPP values, and
1729-429: Is the fastest growing economic region. As of 2023 , China is by far the largest economy on the continent, making up nearly half of the continent's economy by GDP nominal. It is followed by Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are all ranked among the top 20 largest economies both by nominal and PPP values. Based on Global Office Locations 2011, Asia dominated the office locations with 4 of
1820-403: Is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometers, about 30% of Earth 's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population , was the site of many of the first civilizations . Its 4.7 billion people constitute roughly 60% of
1911-652: Is the largest genus of the Pinaceae , the pine family, which first appeared in the Jurassic period. Based on recent Transcriptome analysis, Pinus is most closely related to the genus Cathaya , which in turn is closely related to spruces . These genera, with firs and larches , form the pinoid clade of the Pinaceae. Pines first appeared during the Early Cretaceous, with the oldest verified fossil of
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#17327936833012002-709: Is the most used for carvings in Val Gardena since the 17th century. The cone of the Swiss pine was the field sign of the Roman legion stationed in Rhaetia in 15 BC, and hence it is used as the heraldic charge (known as Zirbelnuss in German) in the coat of arms of the city of Augsburg , the site of the Roman fort Augusta Vindelicorum . It is also a species that is often used in bonsai. Pinus cembra can be found in
2093-513: Is typically between 25 metres (82 ft) and 35 metres (115 ft) in height, and the trunk diameter can be up to 1.5 metres (4.9 ft). However, it grows very slowly and it may take 30 years for the tree to reach 1.3 metres (4.3 ft). The cones , which contain the seeds (or nuts), of the Swiss pine are 4 centimetres (1.6 in) to 8 centimetres (3.1 in) long. Cones take 2 years (24 months) to mature. The 8 millimetres (0.31 in) to 12 millimetres (0.47 in) long seeds have only
2184-598: The European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or APEC ). This ended in 2010 when China overtook Japan to become the world's second largest economy. It is forecasted that India will overtake Japan in terms of nominal GDP by 2027. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan's GDP by currency exchange rates was almost as large as that of the rest of Asia combined. In 1995, Japan's economy nearly equaled that of
2275-731: The Hebrew Bible in the narrative of Noah —and later to Christians in the Old Testament , and to Muslims in the Quran —is earliest found in Mesopotamian mythology , in the Enûma Eliš and Epic of Gilgamesh . Hindu mythology similarly tells about an avatar of Vishnu in the form of a fish who warned Manu of a terrible flood. Ancient Chinese mythology also tells of a Great Flood spanning generations, one that required
2366-621: The Hindu Kush region will become more unstable as its enormous glaciers , known as the "Asian water towers", gradually melt. These changes to water cycle also affect vector-borne disease distribution, with malaria and dengue fever expected to become more prominent in the tropical and subtropical regions. Food security will become more uneven, and South Asian countries could experience significant impacts from global food price volatility. Historical emissions from Asia are lower than those from Europe and North America. However, China has been
2457-722: The Surami Pass and along the Kura River to the Caspian Sea), a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE. During the Hellenistic period , this convention was revised, and the boundary between Europe and Asia was now considered to be the Tanais (the modern Don River). This is the convention used by Roman era authors such as Posidonius , Strabo and Ptolemy . The border between Asia and Europe
2548-915: The Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century. The border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects. The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains , although it is sometimes placed further north. The border between Asia and Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Indonesia Archipelago , specifically in Eastern Indonesia . The Wallace Line separates
2639-621: The alpine tree line in this area. Swiss pine associates with numerous species of mycorrhizal fungi from a young age, usually from the genus Suillus . This symbiosis improves the tree's growth and survival rate. Swiss pine is a popular ornamental tree in parks and large gardens , giving steady though not fast growth on a wide range of sites where the climate is cold. It is very tolerant of severe winter cold, hardy down to at least −50 °C (−58 °F), and also of wind exposure. The seeds are also harvested and sold as pine nuts . When cultivated, it will likely start producing cones after
2730-596: The century of humiliation , with the British-supported opium trade and later Opium Wars resulting in China being forced into an unprecedented situation of importing more than it exported. Foreign domination of China was furthered by the Japanese colonial empire , which controlled some of East Asia and briefly much of Southeast Asia (which had earlier been taken over by the British, Dutch and French in
2821-638: The monsoons will experience more flooding. The waters around Asia are subjected to the same impacts as elsewhere, such as the increased warming and ocean acidification . There are many coral reefs in the region, and they are highly vulnerable to climate change, to the point practically all of them will be lost if the warming exceeds 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). Asia's distinctive mangrove ecosystems are also highly vulnerable to sea level rise . Asia also has more countries with large coastal populations than any other continent, which would cause large economic impacts from sea level rise. Water supplies in
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2912-553: The steppes . The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans , who spread their languages into West Asia, South Asia, and the borders of China, where the Tocharians resided. The northernmost part of Asia, including much of Siberia , was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra . These areas remained very sparsely populated. The center and
3003-767: The 17th century, the Manchu conquered China and established the Qing dynasty . The Islamic Mughal Empire (preceded by the Delhi Sultanate of the 13th to early 16th century) and the Hindu Maratha Empire controlled much of India in the 16th and 18th centuries respectively. Western imperialism in Asia from the 18th to 20th centuries coincided with the Industrial Revolution in the West and
3094-528: The 1990s, with extreme poverty now below 20%; India and China's rise has coincided with growing tension between the two, with the Indo-Pacific now an actively contested area between China and counterbalancing forces. Asia is the largest continent on Earth. It covers 9% of the Earth's total surface area (or 30% of its land area), and has the longest coastline, at 62,800 kilometres (39,022 mi). Asia
3185-587: The 7th century; Islam also spread over centuries to the southern regions of India and Southeast Asia through trade along the Maritime Silk Road . The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of Asia in the 13th century, an area extending from China to Europe. Before the Mongol invasion, Song dynasty reportedly had approximately 120 million citizens; the 1300 census which followed the invasion reported roughly 60 million people. The Black Death , one of
3276-461: The American native white pines in many areas, notably, Western white pine and the closely related whitebark pine . Swiss pine is of great value for research into hybridization to develop rust resistance in these species. Pine See List of Pinus species for complete taxonomy to species level. See list of pines by region for list of species by geographic distribution . A pine
3367-594: The Asian and Wallacea biogeographical realms, a transition zone of deep water straits between the Asian and Australian continental shelves. Weber's Line split the region in two with regard to the balance of fauna between Asian origin or Australo-Papuan origin. Wallacea's eastern boundary with Sahul is represented by the Lydekker's Line . The Maluku Islands (except the Aru Islands) are often considered to lie on
3458-606: The Asian goods traffic is carried out across the Pacific towards Los Angeles and Long Beach . The melting of the Arctic is also paving the way for new shipping routes from Northeast Asia to Europe and North America. In contrast to the sea routes, the Silk Road via the land route to Europe is on the one hand still under construction and on the other hand is much smaller in terms of scope. Intra-Asian trade, including sea trade,
3549-818: The Bering Strait, with Big Diomede in Russia and Little Diomede in the United States . The Aleutian Islands are an island chain extending westward from the Alaskan Peninsula toward Russia's Komandorski Islands and Kamchatka Peninsula . Most of them are always associated with North America, except for the westernmost Near Islands group, which is on Asia's continental shelf beyond the North Aleutians Basin and on rare occasions could be associated with Asia, which could then allow
3640-539: The Hittite king Tudhaliya I around 1400 BCE. Roughly contemporary Linear B documents contain the term aswia ( Mycenaean Greek : 𐀀𐀯𐀹𐀊 , romanized: a-si-wi-ja ), seemingly in reference to captives from the same area. Herodotus used the term in reference to Anatolia and the territory of the Achaemenid Empire , in contrast to Greece and Egypt. He reports that Greeks assumed that Asia
3731-542: The Indian Ocean respectively in the late 15th century. The Russian Empire also began to expand into northwestern Asia from the 17th century, and would eventually take control of all of Siberia and most of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century. Among non-European empires, the Ottoman Empire controlled Anatolia, most of the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans from the mid 16th century onward, while in
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3822-665: The Indo-European base *pīt- ‘resin’ (source of English pituitary ). Before the 19th century, pines were often referred to as firs (from Old Norse fura , by way of Middle English firre ). In some European languages, Germanic cognates of the Old Norse name are still in use for pines — in Danish fyr , in Norwegian fura/fure/furu , Swedish fura/furu , Dutch vuren , and German Föhre — but in modern English, fir
3913-482: The Middle East has been affected since 1948 by the Arab–Israeli conflict and American-led interventions . East Asian nations (along with Singapore in Southeast Asia) became economically prosperous with high-growth " tiger economies "; China, having undergone capitalistic reforms under Deng Xiaoping , regained its place among the top two economies of the world by the 21st century. India has also grown significantly because of economic liberalisation that started in
4004-400: The Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century led to the Middle East also being contested and partitioned by the British and French. With the end of World War II in 1945 and the wartime ruination of Europe and imperial Japan, many countries in Asia were able to rapidly free themselves of colonial rule. The independence of India came along with the carving out of a separate nation for
4095-504: The Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Asia has three main financial centers: Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. Call centers and business process outsourcing (BPOs) are becoming major employers in India and the Philippines due to the availability of a large pool of highly skilled, English-speaking workers. The increased use of outsourcing has assisted the rise of India and the China as financial centers. Due to its large and extremely competitive information technology industry, India has become
4186-445: The Philippines. China has many languages and dialects in different provinces. Many of the world's major religions have their origins in Asia, including the five most practiced in the world (excluding irreligion ), which are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion (classified as Confucianism and Taoism), and Buddhism. Asian mythology is complex and diverse. The story of the Great Flood for example, as presented to Jews in
4277-440: The Red Sea over the Suez Canal into Mediterranean (see also: Indo-Mediterranean ), there via Haifa, Istanbul and Athens to the upper Adriatic to the northern Italian hub of Trieste with its rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe or further to Barcelona and around Spain and France to the European northern ports. A far smaller part of the goods traffic runs via South Africa to Europe . A particularly significant part of
4368-454: The U.S. state of Alaska as well as the United States itself to be considered a transcontinental state. The Aleutian Islands are sometimes associated with Oceania, owing to their status as remote Pacific islands, and their proximity to the Pacific Plate. This is extremely rare however, due to their non-tropical biogeography, as well as their inhabitants , who have historically been related to Indigenous Americans . St. Lawrence Island in
4459-407: The US as the largest economy in the world for a day, after the Japanese currency reached a record high of 79 yen /US$ . Economic growth in Asia since World War II to the 1990s had been concentrated in Japan as well as the four regions of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore located in the Pacific Rim , known as the Asian tigers , which are now all considered developed economies, having among
4550-446: The age of 12 years, much faster than in the wild. This depends on the climate, soil type, mycorrhizal fungi etc. To make the tree bear cones faster, the tree can be inoculated with ectomycorrhizal fungi, such as Suillus luteus , Suillus americanus , Suillus placidus etc. These are the most effective. Pine cones cut into slices are used to flavor schnapps , which is then sold as "Zirbenschnaps" or "Zirbeler" schnapps. The wood
4641-518: The area of multinational corporations , but increasingly the PRC and India are making significant inroads. Many companies from Europe, North America, South Korea and Japan have operations in Asia's developing countries to take advantage of its abundant supply of cheap labour and relatively developed infrastructure. According to Citigroup in 2011, 9 of 11 Global Growth Generators countries came from Asia driven by population and income growth. They are Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mongolia,
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#17327936833014732-404: The border of southeast Asia, with the Aru Islands and Western New Guinea , to the east of the Lydekker's Line, being wholly part of Oceania, as both lie on the Australian continental plate. Culturally, the Wallacea region denoted the transition between Austronesian and Melanesian people , with varying degrees of intermixing between the two. In general, the further west and coastal a region is,
4823-432: The continent of Asia". Geographically, Asia is the major eastern constituent of the continent of Eurasia with Europe being a northwestern peninsula of the landmass. Asia, Europe and Africa make up a single continuous landmass— Afro-Eurasia —and share a common continental shelf . Almost all of Europe and a major part of Asia sit atop the Eurasian Plate , adjoined on the south by the Arabian and Indian Plate and with
4914-443: The cultural borders of its various types of constituents. From the time of Herodotus, a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system (Europe, Africa, Asia) on the grounds that there is no substantial physical separation between them. For example, Sir Barry Cunliffe , the emeritus professor of European archeology at Oxford, argues that Europe has been geographically and culturally merely "the western excrescence of
5005-537: The dethroning of India and China as the world's foremost economies. The British Empire first became dominant in South Asia, with most of the region being conquered by British traders in the late 18th and early 19th centuries before falling under direct British rule after a failed 1857 revolt ; the 1869 completion of the Suez Canal , which increased British access to India, went on to further European influence over Africa and Asia. Around this time, Western powers started to dominate China in what later became known as
5096-420: The east of the Suez Canal separating it from Africa; and to the east of the Turkish straits , the Ural Mountains and Ural River , and to the south of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian and Black seas, separating it from Europe. Since the concept of Asia derives from the term for the eastern region from a European perspective, Asia is the remaining vast area of Eurasia minus Europe. Therefore, Asia
5187-439: The easternmost part of Siberia (east of the Chersky Range ) on the North American Plate . The term "Asia" is believed to originate in the Bronze Age toponym Assuwa ( Hittite : 𒀸𒋗𒉿 , romanized: aš-šu-wa ) which originally referred only to a portion of northwestern Anatolia . The term appears in Hittite records recounting how a confederation of Assuwan states including Troy unsuccessfully rebelled against
5278-428: The end of 2011, there were 18,000 Asian people mainly in Southeast Asia, China and Japan who have at least $ 100 million in disposable assets, while North America with 17,000 people and Western Europe with 14,000 people. With growing Regional Tourism with domination of Chinese visitors, MasterCard has released Global Destination Cities Index 2013 with 10 of 20 are dominated by Asia and Pacific Region Cities and also for
5369-413: The equatorial south via the hot deserts in parts of West Asia , Central Asia and South Asia , temperate areas in the east and the continental centre to vast subarctic and polar areas in North Asia . The boundary between Asia and Africa is the Suez Canal , the Gulf of Suez , the Red Sea , and the Bab-el-Mandeb . This makes Egypt a transcontinental country , with the Sinai peninsula in Asia and
5460-414: The first time a city of a country from Asia ( Bangkok ) set in the top-ranked with 15.98 million international visitors. East Asia had by far the strongest overall Human Development Index (HDI) improvement of any region in the world, nearly doubling average HDI attainment over the past 40 years, according to the report's analysis of health, education and income data. China, the second highest achiever in
5551-443: The genus being Pinus yorkshirensis from the Hauterivian - Barremian boundary (~130-125 million years ago) from the Speeton Clay , England. The evolutionary history of the genus Pinus has been complicated by hybridization . Pines are prone to inter-specific breeding. Wind pollination, long life spans, overlapping generations, large population size, and weak reproductive isolation make breeding across species more likely. As
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#17327936833015642-446: The highest GDP per capita in Asia. Asia is the largest continent in the world by a considerable margin, and it is rich in natural resources, such as petroleum , forests , fish , water , rice , copper and silver . Manufacturing in Asia has traditionally been strongest in East and Southeast Asia, particularly in China, Taiwan , South Korea, Japan, India, the Philippines, and Singapore. Japan and South Korea continue to dominate in
5733-478: The late 19th century), New Guinea and the Pacific islands ; Japan's domination was enabled by its rapid rise that had taken place during the Meiji era of the late 19th century, in which it applied industrial knowledge learned from the West and thus overtook the rest of Asia. One significant influence on Japan had been the United States, which had begun projecting influence across the Pacific after its early-to-mid-19th century westward expansion . The breakup of
5824-460: The lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large equestrian force; for this and other reasons, the nomads who conquered states in China, India, and the Middle East often found themselves adapting to the local, more affluent societies. The Islamic Caliphate 's defeats of the Byzantine and Persian empires led to West Asia and southern parts of Central Asia and western parts of South Asia under its control during its conquests of
5915-551: The majority of South Asian Muslims , which in 1971 further split into the countries Pakistan and Bangladesh ; Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union strained relations between India and Pakistan and affected Asia more generally. The end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union by 1991 saw the independence of the five modern Central Asian countries. Some Arab countries took economic advantage of massive oil deposits that were discovered in their territory, becoming globally influential, though stability in
6006-453: The majority of species reaching 15–45 m (50–150 ft) tall. The smallest are Siberian dwarf pine and Potosi pinyon , and the tallest is an 83.45 m (273.8 ft) tall sugar pine located in Yosemite National Park . Pines are long lived and typically reach ages of 100–1,000 years, some even more. The longest-lived is the Great Basin bristlecone pine ( P. longaeva ). One individual of this species, dubbed " Methuselah ",
6097-507: The male and female cones on the same tree. The male cones are small, typically 1–5 cm long, and only present for a short period (usually in spring, though autumn in a few pines), falling as soon as they have shed their pollen . The female cones take 1.5–3 years (depending on species) to mature after pollination , with actual fertilization delayed one year. At maturity the female cones are 3–60 cm long. Each cone has numerous spirally arranged scales, with two seeds on each fertile scale;
6188-412: The most devastating pandemics in human history, is thought to have originated in the arid plains of central Asia, where it then travelled along the Silk Road . European involvement in Asia became more significant from the Age of Discovery onward, with Iberian-sponsored sailors such as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama paving the way for new routes from Atlantic Europe to Pacific Asia and
6279-538: The northern Bering Sea belongs to Alaska and may be associated with either continent but is almost always considered part of North America, as with the Rat Islands in the Aleutian chain. At their nearest points, Alaska and Russia are separated by only 4 kilometres (2.5 miles). Geographical Asia is a cultural artifact of European conceptions of the world, beginning with the Ancient Greeks , being imposed onto other cultures, an imprecise concept causing endemic contention about what it means. Asia does not exactly correspond to
6370-416: The peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karakum and Gobi deserts formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could cross only with difficulty. While the urban city dwellers were more advanced technologically and socially, in many cases they could do little in a military aspect to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However,
6461-854: The pines have diversified, gene transfer between different species has created a complex history of genetic relatedness. P. nelsonii P. aristata P. balfouriana P. longaeva P. pinceana P. maximartinezii P. rzedowskii P. quadrifolia P. monophylla P. culminicola P. discolor P. remota P. edulis P. cembroides P. bungeana P. squamata P. gerardiana P. krempfii P. peuce P. lambertiana P. strobus P. chiapensis P. monticola P. flexilis P. strobiformis P. ayacahuite P. albicaulis P. koraiensis P. sibirica P. cembra P. parviflora P. wallichiana Asia Asia ( / ˈ eɪ ʒ ə / AY -zhə , UK also / ˈ eɪ ʃ ə / AY -shə )
6552-708: The regional division of Asia. The following subdivision into regions is used, among others, by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD). This division of Asia into regions by the United Nations is done solely for statistical reasons and does not imply any assumption about political or other affiliations of countries and territories. Asia has extremely diverse climate features. Climates range from Arctic and subarctic in Siberia to tropical in southern India and Southeast Asia. It
6643-693: The remainder of the country in Africa. The threefold division of the Old World into Africa, Asia, and Europe has been in use since the 6th century BCE, due to Greek geographers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus . Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni river) in Georgia of Caucasus (from its mouth by Poti on the Black Sea coast, through
6734-453: The scales at the base and tip of the cone are small and sterile, without seeds. The seeds are mostly small and winged, and are anemophilous (wind-dispersed), but some are larger and have only a vestigial wing, and are bird -dispersed. Female cones are woody and sometimes armed to protect developing seeds from foragers. At maturity, the cones usually open to release the seeds. In some of the bird-dispersed species, for example whitebark pine ,
6825-469: The seeds are only released by the bird breaking the cones open. In others, the seeds are stored in closed cones for many years until an environmental cue triggers the cones to open, releasing the seeds. This is called serotiny . The most common form of serotiny is pyriscence, in which a resin binds the cones shut until melted by a forest fire, for example in P. rigida . The modern English name "pine" derives from Latin pinus , which some have traced to
6916-435: The single largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the 21st century, while India is the third-largest. As a whole, Asia currently accounts for 36% of world's primary energy consumption, which is expected to increase to 48% by 2050. By 2040, it is also expected to account for 80% of the world's coal and 26% of the world's natural gas consumption. While the United States remains the world's largest oil consumer, by 2050 it
7007-422: The smaller groups of Pinus are composed of closely related species with recent divergence and history of hybridization. This results in low morphological and genetic differences. This, coupled with low sampling and underdeveloped genetic techniques, has made taxonomy difficult to determine. Recent research using large genetic datasets has clarified these relationships into the groupings we recognize today. Pinus
7098-605: The stronger the Austronesian influences, and the further east and inland a region is, the stronger the Melanesian influences. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several vastly different geographic meanings since their inception. The chief factor in determining which islands of the Indonesian Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the colonial possessions of
7189-608: The threat of heatwaves across the entire continent. Heatwaves lead to increased mortality, and the demand for air conditioning is rapidly accelerating as the result. By 2080, around 1 billion people in the cities of South and Southeast Asia are expected to experience around a month of extreme heat every year. The impacts on water cycle are more complicated: already arid regions, primarily located in West Asia and Central Asia , will see more droughts , while areas of East , Southeast and South Asia which are already wet due to
7280-541: The top 5 being in Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul . Around 68 percent of international firms have an office in Hong Kong. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economy of China had an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. According to economic historian Angus Maddison , India had the world's largest economy during 1000 BCE and 1 CE. India was the largest economy in the world for most of
7371-593: The two millennia from the 1st until 19th century, contributing 25% of the world's industrial output. China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history and shared the mantle with India. For several decades in the late twentieth century Japan was the largest economy in Asia and second-largest of any single nation in the world, after surpassing the Soviet Union (measured in net material product) in 1990 and Germany in 1968. (NB: A number of supernational economies are larger, such as
7462-458: The uppermost forest belt where it helps to minimize the risk of avalanches and soil erosion. Due to this ability, the tree is valued as a stabilizing factor for afforestation projects at high elevations. Like other European and Asian white pines, Swiss pine is very resistant to white pine blister rust ( Cronartium ribicola ). This fungal disease was accidentally introduced from Europe into North America , where it has caused severe mortality in
7553-539: The various empires there (not all European). Lewis and Wigen assert, "The narrowing of 'Southeast Asia' to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process." The Bering Strait and Bering Sea separate the landmasses of Asia and North America , as well as forming the international boundary between Russia and the United States. This national and continental boundary separates the Diomede Islands in
7644-489: The world from 1 to 1800 CE. China was a major economic power for much of recorded history, with the highest GDP per capita until 1500. The Silk Road became the main east–west trading route in the Asian hinterlands while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, but overall population growth has since fallen. Asia
7735-408: The world in terms of HDI improvement since 1970, is the only country on the "Top 10 Movers" list due to income rather than health or education achievements. Its per capita income increased a stunning 21-fold over the last four decades, also lifting hundreds of millions out of income poverty. Yet it was not among the region's top performers in improving school enrollment and life expectancy. Nepal ,
7826-587: The world's population. Asia shares the landmass of Eurasia with Europe , and of Afro-Eurasia with both Europe and Africa . In general terms, 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 . The border of Asia with Europe is a historical and cultural construct , as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. A commonly accepted division places Asia to
7917-643: The world, which is in the "very high human development" category), followed by Singapore (9), Japan (19) and South Korea (22). Afghanistan (155) ranked lowest amongst Asian countries out of the 169 countries assessed. Asia is home to several language families and many language isolates . Most Asian countries have more than one language that is natively spoken. For instance, according to Ethnologue , more than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia, more than 400 languages spoken in India, and more than 100 are spoken in
8008-522: Was historically defined by European academics. In Sweden, five years after Peter's death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Ural Mountains as the border of Asia. Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg. The latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until
8099-766: Was home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations, each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilizations in Mesopotamia , the Indus Valley and the Yellow River shared many similarities. These civilizations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel . Other innovations, such as writing, seem to have been developed individually in each area. Cities, states and empires developed in these lowlands. The central steppe region had long been inhabited by horse-mounted nomads who could reach all areas of Asia from
8190-477: Was named after the wife of Prometheus , but that Lydians say it was named after Asies , son of Cotys, who passed the name on to a tribe at Sardis . In Greek mythology , "Asia" ( Ἀσία or Ἀσίη ) was the name of a " Nymph or Titan goddess of Lydia". The Iliad (attributed by the ancient Greeks to Homer ) mentions two Phrygians in the Trojan War named Asios (an adjective meaning "Asian"); and also
8281-442: Was the birthplace of most of the world's mainstream religions including Hinduism , Zoroastrianism , Judaism , Jainism , Buddhism , Confucianism , Taoism , Christianity , Islam , Sikhism , and many other religions. Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties, and government systems. It also has a mix of many different climates ranging from
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