Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties, and government systems.

[25] 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.

[38] 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 the continent of Asia".

[40][41][42] 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.

The northernmost part of Asia, including much of Siberia, was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra.

However, 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.

[54] The Black Death, one of 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.

[58] Western imperialism in Asia from the 18th to 20th centuries coincided with the Industrial Revolution in the West and the dethroning of India and China as the world's foremost economies.

[67] 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.

[71] Some Arab countries took economic advantage of massive oil deposits that were discovered in their territory, becoming globally influential,[72] though stability in the Middle East has been affected since 1948 by the Arab–Israeli conflict and American-led interventions.

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.

[88]: 1459  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.

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.

[100][15][101] 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 the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or APEC).

[102][92] 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.

Japan and South Korea continue to dominate in the area of multinational corporations, but increasingly the PRC and India are making significant inroads.

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 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 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.

[122] Hong Kong ranked highest among the countries grouped on the HDI (number 7 in the world, which is in the "very high human development" category), followed by Singapore (9), Japan (19) and South Korea (22).

The story of the Great Flood for example, as presented to Jews in 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.

Ancient Chinese mythology also tells of a Great Flood spanning generations, one that required the combined efforts of emperors and divinities to control.

The Druze originated in West Asia, is a monotheistic religion based on the teachings of figures like Hamza ibn Ali and al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, and Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.

Over 80% of the populations of both India and Nepal adhere to Hinduism, alongside significant communities in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bali, Indonesia.

In many Chinese communities, Taoism is easily syncretised with Mahayana Buddhism, thus exact religious statistics are difficult to obtain and may be understated or overstated.

[163] Despite the challenges posed by the vast size of the continent and the presence of natural barriers such as deserts and mountain ranges, trade and commerce have helped to create a Pan-Asian culture that is shared across the region.

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China" on 8 October 2010.

Other Asian Nobel Prize winners include Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Abdus Salam, Robert Aumann, Menachem Begin, Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko, Daniel Kahneman, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Ada Yonath, Yasser Arafat, José Ramos-Horta and Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo of Timor Leste, Kim Dae-jung, and 13 Japanese scientists.

Most of the said awardees are from Japan and Israel except for Chandrasekhar and Raman (India), Abdus Salam (Pakistan), Arafat (Palestinian Territories), Kim (South Korea), and Horta and Belo (Timor Leste).

None of them are members of the UN, however Palestine has observer state status: The most democratic countries in Asia are Japan, Taiwan and Israel according to the V-Dem Democracy indices in 2024.