[4] The concepts of Europe and Asia as distinct continents date back to antiquity, but their borders have historically been subject to change.

The Alpide belt stretches 15,000 km across southern Eurasia, from Java in Maritime Southeast Asia to the Iberian Peninsula in Western Europe, including the ranges of the Himalayas, Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Alborz, Caucasus, and the Alps.

The largest Eurasian islands by area are Borneo, Sumatra, Honshu, Great Britain, Sulawesi, Java, Luzon, Iceland, Mindanao, Ireland, Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Sri Lanka.

Other Eurasian islands with large populations include Mindanao, Taiwan, Salsette, Borneo, Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Kyushu, and Hainan.

In the Axial Age (mid-first millennium BCE), a continuous belt of civilizations stretched through the Eurasian subtropical zone from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

New connections emerged between the subregions of Eurasia from the Age of Discovery onwards, with the Iberians discovering new maritime routes in the 1490s,[16] and the 1869 completion of the Suez Canal having paved the way for direct passage through the Indo-Mediterranean and the wave of Western European "New Imperialism" that dominated Africa and Asia until the mid-20th century.

[17] The communist presence in Eurasia (primarily driven by the Soviet Union) then dominated much of the continent until the end of the Cold War in 1991.

[18] Originally, "Eurasia" is a geographical notion: in this sense, it is simply the biggest continent; the combined landmass of Europe and Asia.

A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over 'Eurasia' would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent.

"[20]The Russian "Eurasianism" corresponded initially more or less to the land area of Imperial Russia in 1914, including parts of Eastern Europe.

"[22] The term Eurasia gained geopolitical reputation as one of the three superstates in 1984,[23] George Orwell's[24] novel where constant surveillance and propaganda are strategic elements (introduced as reflexive antagonists) of the heterogeneous dispositif such metapolitical constructs used to control and exercise power.

However, at least part of this definition has been subject to criticism by many modern analytical geographers like Halford Mackinder, who saw little validity in the Ural Mountains as a boundary between continents.