Among the continents, Europe is an anomaly. Larger only than Australia, it is a small appendage of the great landmass.... europ european

Among the continents, Europe is an anomaly. All the continents are conceptual constructs, but only Europe was not first perceived and named by outsiders. Traders and travelers reported that Europe possessed distinctive physical units, with mountain systems and lowland river basins much larger than those familiar to inhabitants of the Mediterranean region. Yet it was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that modern science was able to draw with some precision the geologic and geographic lineaments of the European continent, the peoples of which had meanwhile achieved domination overand set in motion vast countervailing movements amongthe inhabitants of much of the rest of the globe. As to the territorial limits of Europe, while these seem clear on its three seaward flanks, they have been uncertain and hence much debated on the east, where the continent merges, without sundering physical limits, with parts of western Asia. Further, the Mediterranean coastlands of North Africa! and southwestern Asia also exhibit some European physical and cultural affinities, and Turkey and Cyprus, while geologically Asian, possess elements of European culture and may, perhaps, be regarded as parts of Europe. This civilization is distinguished from the rest of Europe by legacies of a medieval Mongol-Tatar domination that precluded sharing many of the innovations and developments of European Western civilization; and it became further distinctive during the relative isolation of the Soviet period. In partitioning the globe into meaningful large geographic units, therefore, most modern geographers treated the former Soviet Union as a distinct territorial entity, comparable to a continent, that was separate from Europe to the west and from the rest of Asia to the south and east; this distinction undoubtedly will be maintained for Russia, which occupied three-fourths of the Soviet Union. The following discussion of Europe focuses primarily upon the territories and pe! oples lying west of the Russian border, although note is taken! of physical and cultural features shared by the European portion of Russia with the rest of the continent. Whatever its indebtedness, Europe has always shown its own powers of creativity and leadership: although wracked and exhausted by continued internal conflict, it has nevertheless advanced sufficiently to leave as its heritage the exploration, colonization, and development of other peoples and regions of the globe, if not always to the benefit of the other peoples and regions. The principal articles discussing the historical and cultural development of the continent include ; European exploration; colonialism; ; ancient Greek civilization; ancient Rome; ; and . europ european