Europe

Europe with more than,731,000,000 inhabitants (11% of world's population) and,10,180,000 sq km (6,8% of world's land area) is,the third most populous continent after Asia and Africa, but with,the highest density after Asia.

Europe, located in the northern hemisphere, is a, peninsular sub-continent of the geographic continent Eurasia. Joined to Asia at the southeast by the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea, and at east by the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea.

Europe, is also a highly divided: with a large number of sovereign states (about 50), as well as many semi-recognized states and independent regions. And also includes extremly different countries like parts of Russia (world's largest country) and the Vatican (world's smallest country).

Etimology of Europe

The name Europe is derived from "eur" (that means broad) and "op(eye), but there are also reference to the Semitic word erebu (that means to go down).

History of Europe

The history of Europe begins with the Homo georgicus, who lived 1.8 million years ago in Georgia (the oldest hominid of Europe).Other hominids dissapeared until the modern humans ( Cro-Magnons), who appeared around 40,000 years ago and built many megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge.

Europe was inhabited first by nomadic bands and tribal cultures. The first city-states and states appeared at the Fertile Crescent around 5000 BC.

Ancient Greece is the base of Western civilization's idea of democracy and individualistic culture , and also in it's science development on mathematics and physics.

The Roman Empire had also a major influence on law, language, engineering, architecture, and government.

One of the darkest event at Europe was the Black Death, the most deadly pandemic, which killed about 50 million people (a third of it's population)in the mid-14th century.

The Renaissance (14th-16th centuries) marked the start of the Age of Discovery; in wich great exploration, invention, and scientific development were made, like: the discrover of America by Christopher Columbus and the colonization of large areas in Africa and Asia.

Finally, World War I and World War II brought the dominance in world affairs to the United States and Soviet Union.

Languages in Europe

Mostly european languages are based on the Romance languages (derived from Latin), the Germanic languages (that comes from Scandinavian culture) and the Slavic languages. In the south-western Europe predominate Romance languages, in the north-western Europe the Germanic languages, and Slavic languages predominate in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.

But there are also other languages in Europe with a different origin like Latvian and Lithuanian (with Baltic origin); Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Breton (Celtic); Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian (Uralic); and others like Basque, Georgian, Azerbaijani note based on Indo-European languages.

Cities in Europe