- Asia, the biggest of six continents. With islands situated in the suburb, Asia covers a surface estimated at 44 936 000 km2, what corresponds to about a third(third party) of the total surface of the Earth. The three second years of secondary school of the world population live in the Asiatic continent, which counted more than 3 billions four hundred million inhabitants at the beginning of 1990's. India and China regroup about 2 billion inhabitants, or more than third(third party) of the world population.
Situated almost completely in the hemisphere the North, Asia is lined in the North by the ocean Arctic, in the East by the Bering Strait and the Pacific Ocean, in the South by the Indian Ocean and in the southwest by the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. On the West, border between Europe and Asia is situated by agreement in the mountains of Ural, which continue southward along the river Ural up to the Caspian Sea, and go on then towards the mountains of the Caucasus up to the Black Sea. The mass of lands formed by Europe and Asia forms a single continent, called Eurasia.
Asia extends since the Southern extremity of the Malay peninsula (to see Malacca, peninsula of) until the cap Tchéliouskine, in Siberia. The point most on the West is situated in the cap Baba, in the northwest of Turkey, and its point most in the East is in the cap Dejnev, in the northeast of Siberia. The biggest width of the continent of is in the West is about 8 500 km. It is in Asia that are the highest point and the the lowest point of the Earth (the Mount Everest, 8 846 m over the sea level and the Dead Sea, 395 m below the sea level).
In the southeast of the continent, archipelagoes and islands succeed one another eastward until Oceania. They are the islands of the Philippines(Filipinos) and Indonesia (Sumatra, Java, Celebes (Sulawesi), Borneo and the New Guinea). Taiwan, the islands of Japan and Sakhalin are situated in the northeast of Asia. Sri Lanka and strings of islands smaller as the Maldive Islands, the islands Andaman and Nicobar are in the Indian Ocean.
One often divides Asia into five big regions. It is about Asia of ancient(former) Soviet Union, which understands(includes) Siberia, Occidental Central Asia and the Caucasus!; of Asia of the East (or oriental Asia), which consists of China, the Tibet, Mongolia, North Korea, Soutth Korea and Japan; of the Southeast Asia (or Southeast Asia), which includes) Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, the republic of Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines(Filipinos); of Asia of the South (or Southern Asia), which is formed by India, by Bangladesh, by Pakistan, by Sri Lanka, by Nepal and by Bhutan!; of Asia of the Southwest, with Afghanistan and countries of Near East (Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Al Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, as well as the other countries of the peninsula of Arabia).
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