The continent of Europe covers nearly four million square miles of the Earth′s surface, which is about 6.8 percent of the Earth′s land area and only two percent of the Earth′s total surfer. The only continent smaller than Europe is Oceania with just less than 3.3 million square miles. Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia primarily by the watershed of the Ural Mountains, but also by the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea, and the waterway of the Bosporus Strait. This current continental border between Europe and Asia has seven transcontinental countries along the border including: Russia, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Cyprus.
The continent of Europe is politically divided by about
fifty-one separate state entities, of which Russia is the largest and most populous. Russia encases about thirty-nine percent of land area of the continent.
Europe is located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere, which ends at the prime meridian. The Eastern Hemisphere, used in a cultural or geopolitical sense may also be called the "Old World."
The highest summit in Europe is Mount Elbrus, a dormant volcano with a height of 18,510 feet (5,642 meters). The dormant volcano lies in the Caucasus Mountains in southwestern Russia, near its border with the county of Georgia..
Population
The continent of Europe has a total population of more than 744 million people as estimated by early in 2025 and which is about ten percent of the total world population. This population amount rates Europe as the third-largest populated continent after Asia and Aftrica.
The population of Europe amounts to a land density of around 189 people per square mile (73 people per square kilometer).
The culture of Europe consists of a range of national and regional cultures, which form the central roots of the wider Western civilisation, and together commonly reference ancient Greece and ancient Rome, particularly through their Christian successors, as crucial and shared roots.
Name
The place name Evros was first used by the ancient Greeks to refer to their northernmost province, which today bears name of Bulgaria. The principal river there, the Evros River, which is today called the Maritsa River, flows throughout the fertile valleys of Thrace, which itself was also called Europe, before the term meant the continent.
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