Ka-pi96 said:
Wasn't the word Asia literally invented to refer to the middle east region though? |
I actually know this one! Encountered it while studying the Hittites lol
Anyway, something akin to "asia" has been used for ages. The Greeks believed the world consisted of Europe, Asia, and Africa, but the name "Asia" used to primarily refer to western Anatolia (Turkey) near the Aegean Coast. In fact, the Romans had a province there that they named "Asia".
What's interesting is that this may date back over a thousand years longer to the Bronze Age, as a region the Hittites referred to as "Assuwa" was also described as being on the western coast of Turkey.
Given the western world pretty much has its origins in the Greeks, it should come as little surprise that everything east of their Aegean came to be called "Asia" as that was the neighboring region they were most familiar with (and actually living in) initially, and it gradually became both specific to one area and utilized as a blanket term for everything to the east. The Greeks viewed the world as being composed of three continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa), so everything east of the Bosporus/Black Sea/Red Sea & Sinai Peninsula came to be covered by that blanket term.
Anyway, in the modern world when people speak simply of "Asians", they almost always are referring to everything east of India/Bangladesh and South of Russia, which is further subdivided between China and Southeast Asia (formerly called Indochina). It has, in a sense, come to replace the older word "Oriental" that has come to be viewed as being offensive, as "Asians" covers far too many populations to be used to refer to any specific group.
For everything "middle east", english speaking people generally refer either to the Levant region (All those countries along the eastern Mediterranean coast) and the "Middle East", which generally encompasses everything between the Levant and India but south of the Himalayas as well as the entire Arabian Peninsula. Finally, those nations east of the Caspian Sea but north(ish) of the Himalayas are usually called "Central Asia".
Finally, Russia is.... uhh.... no one has really figured that one out yet :)
