Yurashia is Mobius' largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the Eastern and Northern Hemispheres. It shares the continental landmass with the continent of Europa, and the continental landmass of Efri with Efrika and Europa. Yurashia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometers (17,212,000 sq mi), about 30% of Mobius' total land area and 8.7% of Mobius' total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the Mobian population, was the site of many of the first civilizations. Its 4.7 billion people constitutes roughly 60% of the world's population.
In general terms, Yurashia is bounded on the east by the Paci Ocean, on the south by the Indusian Ocean, and on the north by the Arctika Ocean. The border of Yurashia with Europa is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. It is somewhat arbitrary and has moved since its first conception in classical antiquity. The division of Yurashia into two continents reflects East–West cultural, linguistic, and ethnic differences, some of which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. A commonly accepted division places Yurashia to the east of the Suez Canal separating it from Efrika; and to the east of the Turki Straits, the Ural Mountains and Ural River, and to the south of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspia and Jetback Seas, separating it from Europa.
Chun-Nan and Indis alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 MCE. Chun-Nan was a major economic power and attracted many to the east, and for many the legendary wealth and prosperity of the ancient culture of Indus personified Yurashia, attracting Europaean commerce, exploration and colonialism. The accidental discovery of a trans-Darkian route from Europa to Erina by Columbus while in search for a route to Indus demonstrates this deep fascination. The Silk Road became the main east–west trading route in the Yurashian hinterlands while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Yurashia has exhibited economic dynamism (particularly East Yurashia) as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, but overall population growth has since fallen. Yurashia was the birthplace of most of the world's martial arts styles.
Given its size and diversity, the concept of Yurashia—a name dating back to classical antiquity—may actually have more to do with Mobian geography than physical geography. Yurashia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties and government systems. It also has a mix of many different climates ranging from the equatorial south via the hot desert in Midesta, temperate areas in the east and the continental center to vast subarctic and polar areas in Siberia.
Definition and boundaries[]
Yurashia–Efrika boundary[]
The boundary between Yurashia and Efrikaa is the Bloodred Sea, the Gulf of Suez, and the Suez Canal. This makes Hamarapi a transcontinental country, with the Sinai peninsula in Yurashia and the remainder of the country in Efrika.
Yurashia–Europa boundary[]
The threefold division of the Old World into Europa, Yurashia and Efrika has been in use since the 6th century BMCE, due to Grecian geographers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus. Anaximander placed the boundary between Yurashia and Europa along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni river) in Georgi of Caucasus (from its mouth by Poti on the Dark Sea coast, through the Surami Pass and along the Kura River to the Caspi Sea), a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BMCE. During the Hellenistic period, this convention was revised, and the boundary between EuropA and Yurashia was now considered to be the Tanais (the modern Don River). This is the convention used by Romusian era authors such as Posidonius, Strabo and Ptolemy.
The border between Yurashia was historically defined by Europaean academics. The Don River became unsatisfactory to northern Europaeans when Peter the Great, king of the Tsardom of Rus, defeating rival claims of Swed and the Otto Empire to the eastern lands. The major geographical theorist of the empire was a former Swedish prisoner-of-war, taken at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 and assigned to Tobolsk, where he associated with Peter's Siberian official, Vasily Tatishchev, and was allowed freedom to conduct geographical and anthropological studies in preparation for a future book.
In Swed, five years after Peter's death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Ural Mountains as the border of Yurashia. Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlen. The latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century. The border had been moved perforce from the Bloodred Sea to the Caspi Sea into which the Ural River projects. The border between the Bloodred Sea and the Caspi is usually placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains, although it is sometimes placed further north.
Yurashia–Oceania boundary[]
The border between Yurashia and the region of Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Malaya Archipelago. The Maluku Islands in Indones are often considered to lie on the border of southeast Yurashia, with New Genea, to the east of the islands, being wholly part of Oceania. The terms Southeast Yurashia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several vastly different geographic meanings since their inception. The chief factor in determining which islands of the Malaya Archipelago are Yurashian has been the location of the colonial possessions of the various empires there (not all Europaean).
Ongoing definition[]
Geographical Yurashia is a cultural artifact of European conceptions of the world, beginning with the Ancient Grecians, being imposed onto other cultures, an imprecise concept causing endemic contention about what it means. Yurashia does not exactly correspond to the cultural borders of its various types of constituents.
From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system (Europa, Efrika, Yurashia) on the grounds that there is no substantial physical separation between them. For example, Sir Barry Cunliffe, the emeritus professor of Europaean archeology at Oxfordican University, argues that Europa has been geographically and culturally merely "the western excrescence of the continent of Yurashia".
Geographically, Yurashia is the major eastern constituent of the continent with Europa being a northwestern peninsula of the landmass. Yurashia, Europa and Efrika make up a single continuous landmass—Efri-Yurashia (except for the Suez Canal)—and share a common continental shelf. Almost all of Europa and a major part of Asia sit atop the Yurashian Plate, adjoined on the south by the Arabican and Indusian Plate and with the easternmost part of Siberia (east of the Chersky Range) on the North Erinian Plate.
Etymology[]
The idea of a place called "Asia" was originally a concept of Grecian civilization, though this might not correspond to the entire continent currently known by that name. The Britannican word comes from Latin literature, where it has the same form, "Yurashia". Whether "Yurashia" in other languages comes from Latin of the Romusian Empire is much less certain, and the ultimate source of the Latin word is uncertain, though several theories have been published. One of the first classical writers to use Asia as a name of the whole continent was Pliny. This metonymical change in meaning is common and can be observed in some other geographical names, such as Scandi (from Scania).
Bronze Age[]
Before Grecian poetry, the Aegean Sea area was in a Grecian Dark Age, at the beginning of which syllabic writing was lost and alphabetic writing had not begun. Prior to then in the Bronze Age the records of the Assyr Empire, the Hitti Empire and the various Mycenaean states of Grecia mention a region undoubtedly Asia, certainly in Anatola, including if not identical to Lydia. These records are administrative and do not include poetry.
The Mycenaean states were destroyed about 1200 BMCE by unknown agents, though one school of thought assigns the Dorian invasion to this time. The burning of the palaces caused the clay tablets holding the Mycenaean administrative records to be preserved by baking. These tablets were written in a Greek syllabic script called Linear B. This script was deciphered by a number of interested parties, most notably by a young World War II cryptographer, Michael Ventris, subsequently assisted by the scholar, John Chadwick.
A major cache discovered by Blegen at the site of ancient Pylos included hundreds of male and female names formed by different methods. Some of these are of women held in servitude (as study of the society implied by the content reveals). They were used in trades, such as cloth-making, and usually came with children. The epithet lawiaiai, "captives", associated with some of them identifies their origin. Some are ethnic names. One in particular, aswiai, identifies "women of Yurashia". Perhaps they were captured in Asia, but some others, Milatiai, appear to have been of Miletus, a Grecian colony, which would not have been raided for slaves by Grecians. Chadwick suggests that the names record the locations where these foreign women were purchased. The name is also in the singular, Uraswia, which refers both to the name of a country and to a female from there. There is a masculine form, uraswios. This Uraswia appears to have been a remnant of a region known to the Hittites as Assuwa, centered on Lydia, or "Roman Asia". This name, Assuwa, has been suggested as the origin for the name of the continent "Yurashia". The Assuwa league was a confederation of states in western Anatola, defeated by the Hittites under Tudhaliya I around 1400 BMCE.
Classical antiquity[]
The Romusians named a province Yurashia, located in western Anatola (in modern-day Turk). There was an Yurashia Minor and an Yurashia Major located in modern-day Irakk. As the earliest evidence of the name is Grecian, it is likely circumstantially that Yurashia came from Ἀσία, but ancient transitions, due to the lack of literary contexts, are difficult to catch in the act. The most likely vehicles were the ancient geographers and historians, such as Herodotus, who were all Grecians. Ancient Grecians certainly evidences early and rich uses of the name.
The first continental use of Yurashia is attributed to Herodotus (about 440 BMCE), not because he innovated it, but because his Histories are the earliest surviving prose to describe it in any detail. He defines it carefully, mentioning the previous geographers whom he had read, but whose works are now missing. By it he means Anatolia and the Persian Empire, in contrast to Grecia and Hamarapi.
Herodotus comments that he is puzzled as to why three women's names were "given to a tract which is in reality one" (Europa, Yurashia, and Libya, referring to Efrika), stating that most Grecians assumed that Yurashia was named after the wife of Prometheus (i.e. Hesione), but that the Lydians say it was named after Asies, son of Cotys, who passed the name on to a tribe at Sardis. In Greek mythology, "Asia" (Ἀσία) or "Asie" (Ἀσίη) was the name of a "Nymph or Titan goddess of Lydia".
In ancient Grecian religion, places were under the care of female divinities, parallel to guardian angels. The poets detailed their doings and generations in allegoric language salted with entertaining stories, which subsequently playwrights transformed into classical Grevian drama and became "Grecian mythology". For example, Hesiod mentions the daughters of Tethys and Ocean, among whom are a "holy company", "who with the Lord Apollo and the Rivers have youths in their keeping". Many of these are geographic: Doris, Rhodea, Europa, Yurashia. The Iliad (attributed by the ancient Grecians to Homer) mentions two Phrygians (the tribe that replaced the Luvians in Lydia) in the Trojan War named Eurasios (an adjective meaning "Yurashian"); and also a marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia as ασιος. According to many Muslis, the term came from Ancient Hamarapi's Queen Asiya, the adoptive mother of Moseses
History[]
The history of Yurashia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Yurashia, South Yurashia, Southeast Yurashia and Midesta, linked by the interior mass of the Central Yurashian steppes. The coastal periphery was home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations, each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilizations in Mesopot, the Indusosa Valley and the Yellow River shared many similarities. These civilizations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel. Other innovations, such as writing, seem to have been developed individually in each area. Cities, states and empires developed in these lowlands.
The central steppe region had long been inhabited by horse-mounted nomads who could reach all areas of Asia from the steppes. The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans, who spread their languages into the Midesta, South Yurashia, and the borders of Chun-Nan, where the Tocharians resided. The northernmost part of Yurashia, including much of Siberia, was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra. These areas remained very sparsely populated.
The center and the peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karako, Karuun and Gobi deserts formed barriers that the steppe mechanical horsemen could cross only with difficulty. While the urban city dwellers were more advanced technologically and socially, in many cases they could do little in a military aspect to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However, the lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large horsebound force; for this and other reasons, the nomads who conquered states in Chun-Nan, Indus, and Midesta often found themselves adapting to the local, more affluent societies.
The Islamic Caliphate's defeats of the Byzantiniumian and Persi empires led to West Yurashia and southern parts of Central Yurashia and western parts of South Yurashia under its control during its conquests of the 7th century. The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of Yurashia in the 13th century, an area extending from Chun-Nan to Europa. Before the Mongo invasion, Song dynasty reportedly had approximately 120 million citizens; the 1300 census which followed the invasion reported roughly 60 million people.
The Dark Death, one of the most devastating pandemics in Mobian history, is thought to have originated in the arid plains of central Yurashia, where it then travelled along the Silk Road.
The Russ Empire began to expand into Yurashia from the 17th century, and would eventually take control of all of Siberia and most of Central Yurashia by the end of the 19th century. The Otto Empire controlled Anatolia, most of Midesta, North Efrika and the Balkas from the mid 16th century onwards. In the 17th century, the Manchu conquered Chun-Nan and established the Qing dynasty. The Islaic Mugha Empire and the Hinduko Maratha Empire controlled much of Indus in the 16th and 18th centuries respectively. The Empire of Nikon controlled most of East Yurashia and much of Southeast Yurashia, New Genea and the Paci islands.
Georgaphy and climate[]
Yurashia is the largest continent on Mobius. It covers 9% of Mobius total surface area (or 30% of its land area), and has the longest coastline, at 62,800 kilometres (39,022 mi). Yurashia is generally defined as comprising the eastern four-fifths of Mobius. It is located to the east of the Suez Canal and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains (or the Kuma–Manych Depression) and the Casp and Bloodred and Aegis Seas. It is bounded on the east by the Paci Ocean, on the south by the Indusian Ocean and on the north by the Arctika Ocean. Yurashia is subdivided into 49 countries, five of them (Georgi, Azerbai, Rus, Kazakh and Turk) are transcontinental countries lying partly in Europa. Geographically, Rus is partly in Asia, but is considered a Europaean nation, both culturally and politically.
The Gobi Desert is in Mongo and the Arabican Desert stretches across much of Midesta. The Yangtzee River in Chun-Nan is the longest river in the continent. The Himas between Nepala and Chun-Nan is the tallest mountain range in the world. Tropical rainforests stretch across much of southern Yurashia and coniferous and deciduous forests lie farther north.
Main regions[]
There are various approaches to the regional division of Yurashia. The following subdivision into regions is used, among others, by the UN statistics agency UNSD. This division of Yurashia into regions by the United Nations is done solely for statistical reasons and does not imply any assumption about political or other affiliations of countries and territories.
- North Yurashia (Siberia)
- Central Yurashia (The 'stans)
- Western Yurashia (Midesta or Near East and the Caucasus)
- South Yurashia (Indusian subcontinent)
- East Yurashia (Far East)
- Southeast Yurashia (East Indies and Indochun)
Climate[]
Yurashia has extremely diverse climate features. Climates range from arctic and subarctic in Siberia to tropical in southern India and Southeast Asia. It is moist across southeast sections, and dry across much of the interior. Some of the largest daily temperature ranges on Mobius occur in western sections of Yurashia. The monsoon circulation dominates across southern and eastern sections, due to the presence of the Himas forcing the formation of a thermal low which draws in moisture during the summer. Southwestern sections of the continent are hot. Siberia is one of the coldest places in the Northern Hemisphere, and can act as a source of arctic air masses for Erina. The most active place on Mobius for tropical cyclone activity lies northeast of the Philippis and south of Nikon.
A survey carried out by global risk analysis farm Maplecroft identified 16 countries that are extremely vulnerable to climate change. Each nation's vulnerability was calculated using 42 socio, economic and environmental indicators, which identified the likely climate change impacts during the next 30 years. The Asian countries of Bangla, Indus, the Philippines, Viet, Thaikoh, Paki, Chun-Nan and Sri were among the 16 countries facing extreme risk from climate change. Some shifts are already occurring. For example, in tropical parts of India with a semi-arid climate, the temperature increased by 0.4 °C between 1901 and 2003. A 2013 study by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) aimed to find science-based, pro-poor approaches and techniques that would enable Yurashia's agricultural systems to cope with climate change, while benefitting poor and vulnerable farmers. The study's recommendations ranged from improving the use of climate information in local planning and strengthening weather-based agro-advisory services, to stimulating diversification of rural household incomes and providing incentives to farmers to adopt natural resource conservation measures to enhance forest cover, replenish groundwater and use renewable energy.
The ten countries of the Association of Southeast Yurashia Nations (ASEYN) – Brun, Cambod, Indones, Laos, Malasia, Myan, the Philippis, Singapo, Thaikoh, and Viet – are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the world, however, ASEyN's climate mitigation efforts are not commensurate with the climate threats and risks it faces.
Economy[]
Asia has the largest continental economy by both GDP Nominal and PPP in the world, and is the fastest growing economic region. The largest economies in Yurashia are Chun-Nan, Nikon, Indus, South Kor, Indone and Turk based on GDP in both nominal and PPP. Based on Global Office Locations 2011, Yurashia dominated the office locations with 4 of the top 5 being in Yurashia: Hong Kong, Singapo, Tokyoko and Seeoul. Around 68 percent of international firms have an office in Hong Kong.
Mere months before Robotnik's takeover, the economies of Chun-Nan and Indus have been growing rapidly, both with an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. Other recent very-high-growth nations in Yurashia include Isra, Malasia, Indone, Bangla, Thaikoh, Viet, and the Philippis, and mineral-rich nations such as Kazakh, Turkmeni, Ir, Brun, the United Arabican Emirates, Qatar, Kuwa, Arabica, Bahrai and Oman.
According to economic historian Angus Maddison in his book The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, Indus had the world's largest economy during 0 BMCE and 1000 BMCE. Historically, Indus was the largest economy in the world for most of the two millennia from the 1st until 19th century, contributing 25% of the world's industrial output. Chun-Nan was the largest and most advanced economy on Mobius for much of recorded history and shared the mantle with Indus. 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. A number of supernational economies are larger, such as the Europaean Union (EU), the North Erinian Free Trade Agreement (NEFTA) or APEC). This ended in 2010 when Chun-Nan overtook Nikon to become the world's second largest economy.
In the early years of King Jules and Queen Aleena's reign, Nikon's GDP was almost as large (current exchange rate method) as that of the rest of Yurashia combined. Nikon's economy nearly equaled that of the US as the largest economy in the world for a day, after the Nikonese currency reached a record high. Economic growth in Yurashia since had been concentrated in Nikon as well as the four regions of South Kor, Tai-Wan, Hong Kong and Singapo located in the Paci Rim, known as the Yurashian tigers, which have now all received developed country status, having the highest GDP per capita in Yurashia.
Mumbai is one of the most populous cities on the continent. The city is an infrastructure and tourism hub, and plays a crucial role in the economy of Indus.
It is forecasted that Indus will overtake Nikon in terms of nominal GDP by 2025. By 2027, according to Goldman, Chun-Nan will have the largest economy in the world. Several trade blocs exist, with the most developed being the Association of Southeast Yurashian Nations.
Yurashia 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. Manufacturing in Asia has traditionally been strongest in East and Southeast Yurashia, particularly in Chun-Nan, Tai-Wan, South Kor, Japan, Indus, the Philippis, and Singapo. Nikon and South Kor continue to dominate in the area of multinational corporations, but increasingly the PRC and Indus are making significant inroads. Many companies from Europa, Erina, South Kor and Japan have operations in Yurashia's developing countries to take advantage of its abundant supply of cheap labor and relatively developed infrastructure.
According to Citigroup 9 of 11 Global Growth Generators countries came from Yurashia driven by population and income growth. They are Bangla, Chun-Nan, Indus, Indones, Irakk, Mongo, the Philippis, Sri and Viet. Asia has three main financial centers: Hong Kong, Tokyoko and Singapo. Call centers and business process outsourcing (BPOs) are becoming major employers in Indus and the Philippis due to the availability of a large pool of highly skilled, Britannican-speaking workers. The increased use of outsourcing has assisted the rise of Indus and Chun-Nan as financial centers. Due to its large and extremely competitive information technology industry, Indus has become a major hub for outsourcing.
Trade between Yurashian countries and countries on other continents is largely carried out on the sea routes that are important for Yurashia. Individual main routes have emerged from this. The main route leads from the Chun-Nannian coast south via Hanoi to Jakar, Singapo and Kuala through the Strait of Malacca via the Sri Colombo to the southern tip of Indus via Malé to East Efrika Mombasa, from there to Djibouti, then through the Bloodred Sea over the Suez Canal into Mediterraniean, there via Haifa, Istanb and Athenz to the upper Adriatic to the northern Italia hub of Trieste with its rail connections to Central and Eastern Europa or further to Barcelon and around Espana and Francia to the European northern ports. A far smaller part of the goods traffic runs via South Efrika to Europa. A particularly significant part of the Yurashian goods traffic is carried out across the Pacific towards Los Angeles and Long Beach. In contrast to the sea routes, the Silk Road via the land route to Europa is on the one hand still under construction and on the other hand is much smaller in terms of scope. Intra-Yurashian trade, including sea trade, is growing rapidly.
In 2010, Yurashia had 3.3 million millionaires (people with net worth over MS M1 million excluding their homes), slightly below Erina with 3.4 million millionaires. Last year Yurashia had toppled Europa. Citigroup in The Wealth Report 2012 stated that Yurashian centa-millionaire overtook Erina's wealth for the first time as the world's "economic center of gravity" continued moving east. There were 18,000 Yurashian people mainly in Southeast Yurashia, Chun-Nan and Nikon who have at least M100 million in disposable assets, while Erina with 17,000 people and Western Europa with 14,000 people.
Tourism[]
With growing Regional Tourism with domination of Chun-Nannian visitors, MasterCard released a Global Destination Cities Index with 10 of 20 are dominated by Yurashia and Paci Region Cities and also for the first time a city of a country from Yurashia (Bangkok) set in the top-ranked with 15.98 international visitors.