Europe

Europe

Europe

Europe, second smallest of the world’s continents, composed of the westward-projecting peninsulas of Eurasia (the great landmass that it shares with Asia) and occupying nearly one-fifteenth of the world’s total land area.

Europe countries

 It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the south (west to east) by the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Kuma-Manych Depression, and the Caspian Sea. The continent’s eastern boundary (north to south) runs along the Ural Mountains and then roughly southwest along the Emba (Zhem) River, terminating at the northern Caspian coast.

Europe Map

Norway Noresund, 

Europe’s largest islands and archipelagoes include Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Svalbard, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the British Isles, the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Crete, and Cyprus. Its major peninsulas include Jutlandand the Scandinavian, Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas. Indented by numerous bays, fjords, and seas, continental Europe’s highly irregular coastline is about 24,000 miles (38,000 km) long.

Sveti Stefan Sveti Stefan, Montenegro

Faroe Islands: Tórshavn Harbour of Tórshavn, capital of the Faroe Islands, Denmark

Among the continents, Europe is an anomaly. Larger only than Australia, it is a small appendage of Eurasia. Yet the peninsular and insular western extremity of the continent, thrusting toward the North Atlantic Ocean, provides—thanks to its latitude and its physical geography—a relatively genial human habitat, and the long processes of human history came to mark off the region as the home of a distinctive civilization. In spite of its internal diversity, Europe has thus functioned, from the time it first emerged in the human consciousness, as a world apart, concentrating—to borrow a phrase from Christopher Marlowe—“infinite riches in a little room.”

Artistic Map of Europe

As a conceptual construct, Europa, as the more learned of the ancient Greeks first conceived it, stood in sharp contrast to both Asia and Libya, the name then applied to the known northern part of Africa. Literally, Europa is now thought to have meant “Mainland,” rather than the earlier interpretation, “Sunset.” It appears to have suggested itself to the Greeks, in their maritime world, as an appropriate designation for the extensive northerly lands that lay beyond, lands with characteristics vaguely known yet clearly different from those inherent in the concepts of Asia and Libya—both of which, relatively prosperous and civilized, were associated closely with the culture of the Greeks and their predecessors.

 From the Greek perspective then, Europa was culturally backward and scantily settled. It was a barbarian world—that is, a non-Greek one, with its inhabitants making “bar-bar” noises in unintelligible tongues. Traders and travelers also reported that the Europe beyond Greece possessed distinctive physical units, with mountain systems and lowland river basins much larger than those familiar to inhabitants of the Mediterranean region. It was clear as well that a succession of climates, markedly different from those of the Mediterranean borderlands, were to be experienced as Europe was penetrated from the south. The spacious eastern steppes and, to the west and north, primeval forests as yet only marginally touched by human occupancy further underlined environmental contrasts.


Athens: Acropolis The Acropolis and surrounding area, Athens

The empire of ancient Rome, at its greatest extent in the 2nd century ce, revealed, and imprinted its culture on, much of the face of the continent. Trade relations beyond its frontiers also drew the remoter regions into its sphere. 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 over—and set in motion vast countervailing movements among—the inhabitants of much of the rest of the globe (see Western colonialism).


France: Roman aqueduct Pont du Gard, an ancient Roman aqueduct in Nîmes, France

As to the territorial limits of Europe, they may seem relatively clear on its seaward flanks, but many island groups far to the north and west—Svalbard, the Faroes, Iceland, and the Madeiraand Canary islands—are considered European, while Greenland (though tied politically to Denmark) is conventionally allocated to North America. Furthermore, the Mediterranean coastlands of North Africa and southwestern Asia also exhibit some European physical and cultural affinities. Turkey and Cyprus in particular, while geologically Asian, possess elements of European culture and may be regarded as parts of Europe. Indeed, Turkey has sought membership in the European Union (EU), and the Republic of Cyprus joined the organization in 2004.


La Palma La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain

Europe’s boundaries have been especially uncertain, and hence much debated, on the east, where the continent merges, without sundering physical boundaries, with parts of western Asia. The eastward limits now adopted by most geographers exclude the Caucasus region and encompass a small portion of Kazakhstan, where the European boundary formed by the northern Caspian coast is connected to that of the Urals by Kazakhstan’s Emba River and Mughalzhar (Mugodzhar) Hills, themselves a southern extension of the Urals.

Europe’s conventional eastern boundary, however, is not a cultural, political, or economic discontinuity on the land comparable, for example, to the insulating significance of the Himalayas, which clearly mark a northern limit to South Asian civilization. Inhabited plains, with only the minor interruption of the worn-down Urals, extend from central Europe to the Yenisey River in central Siberia. Slavic-based civilization dominates much of the territory occupied by the former Soviet Union from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean. That civilization is distinguished from the rest of Europe by legaciesof a medieval Mongol-Tatar domination that precluded the sharing of many of the innovations and developments of European “Western civilization”; 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 somewhat separate from Europe to the west and from Asia to the south and east; that distinction has been maintained for Russia, which constituted three-fourths of the Soviet Union.

Europe occupies some 4 million square miles (10 million square km) within the conventional borders assigned to it. That broad territory reveals no simple unity of geologic structure, landform, relief, or climate. Rocks of all geologic periods are exposed, and the operation of geologic forces during an immense succession of eras has contributed to the molding of the landscapes of mountain, plateau, and lowland and has bequeathed a variety of mineral reserves. Glaciation too has left its mark over wide areas, and the processes of erosion and deposition have created a highly variegated and compartmentalized countryside. Climatically, Europe benefits by having only a small proportion of its surface either too cold or too hot and dry for effective settlement and use. Regional climatic contrasts nevertheless exist: oceanic, Mediterranean, and continental types occur widely, as do gradations from one to the other. Associated vegetation and soil forms also show continual variety, but only portions of the dominant woodland that clothed most of the continent when humans first appeared now remain.

Travel Europe Guide

All in all, Europe enjoys a considerable and long-exploited resource base of soil, forest, sea, and minerals (notably coal), but its people are increasingly its principal resource. The continent, excluding Russia, contains less than one-tenth of the total population of the world, but in general its people are well educated and highly skilled. Europe also supports high densities of population, concentrated in urban-industrial regions. A growing percentage of people in urban areas are employed in a wide range of service activities, which have come to dominate the economies of most countries. Nonetheless, in manufacturing and agriculture Europe still occupies an eminent, if no longer necessarily predominant, position. The creation of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the EU in 1993 greatly enhanced economic cooperation between many of the continent’s countries. Europe’s continuing economic achievements are evidenced by its high standard of living and its successes in science, technology, and the arts.

European Parliament European Parliament building, Strasbourg, France

EU: history An overview of the European Union's history

This article treats the physical and human geography of Europe. For discussion of individual countries of the continent, see specific articles by name—e.g., Italy, Poland, and United Kingdom. For discussion of major cities of the continent, seespecific articles by name—e.g., Rome, Warsaw, and London. The principal articles discussing the historical and cultural development of the continent include history of Europe; European exploration; Western colonialism; Aegean civilizations; ancient Greek civilization; ancient Rome; Byzantine Empire; and Holy Roman Empire. Related topics are discussed in such articles as those on religion (e.g., Judaism and Roman Catholicism) and literature (e.g., Greek literature; Dutch literature; and Spanish literature).

Geologic history

The geologic record of the continent of Europe is a classic example of how a continent has grown through time. The Precambrian rocks in Europe range in age from about 3.8 billion to 541 million years. They are succeeded by rocks of the Paleozoic Era, which continued to about 252 million years ago; of the Mesozoic Era, which lasted until about 66 million years ago; and of the Cenozoic Era (i.e., the past 66 million years). The present shape of Europe did not finally emerge until about 5 million years ago. The types of rocks, tectonic landforms, and sedimentary basins that developed throughout the geologic history of Europe strongly influence human activities today.


geologic time The stratigraphic chart of geologic time

The largest area of oldest rocks in the continent is the Baltic Shield, which has been eroded down to a low relief. The youngest rocks occur in the Alpine system, which still survives as high mountains. Between those belts are basins of sedimentary rocks that form rolling hills, as in the Paris Basinand southeastern England, or extensive plains, as in the Russian Platform. The North Sea is a submarine sedimentary basin on the shallow-water continental margin of the Atlantic Ocean. Iceland is a unique occurrence in Europe: it is a volcanic island situated on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge within the still-opening Atlantic Ocean.


Structural features of Europe

General considerations

Tectonic framework

Precambrian rocks occur in three basic tectonic environments. The first is in shields, like the Baltic Shield, which are large areas of stable Precambrian rocks usually surrounded by later orogenic (mountain-forming) belts. The second is as basement to younger coverings of Phanerozoic sediments (i.e., deposits that have been laid down since the beginning of the Paleozoic). For example, the sediments of the Russian Platform are underlain by Precambrian basement, which extends from the Baltic Shield to the Ural Mountains, and Precambrian rocks underlie the Phanerozoic sediments in southeastern England. The Ukrainian Massif is an uplifted block of Precambrian basement that rises above the surrounding plain of younger sediments. The third environment occurs as relicts (residual landforms) in younger orogenic belts. For example, there are Precambrian rocks in the Bohemian Massif that are 1 billion years old and rocks in the Channel Islands in the English Channel that are 1.6 billion years old, both of which are remnants from the Middle Proterozoic Era within the late Paleozoic Hercynian belt. In the Hercynian belt in Bavaria, detrital zircons have been dated to 3.84 billion years ago, but the source of those rocks is not known.

Paleozoic sedimentary rocks occur either in sedimentary basins like the Russian Platform—which has never been affected by any periods of mountain formation and thus has sediments that are still flat-lying and fossiliferous—or within orogenic belts such as the Caledonian and Hercynian, where they commonly have been deformed by folding and thrusting, partly recrystallized, and subjected to intrusion by granites. Mesozoic-Cenozoic sediments occur either in a well-preserved state in sedimentary basins unaffected by orogenesis, as within the Russian Platform and under the North Sea, or in a highly deformed and metamorphosed state, as in the Alpine system.

Chronological summary

The geologic development of Europe may be summarized as follows. Archean rocks (those more than 2.5 billion years old) are the oldest of the Precambrian and crop out in the northern Baltic Shield, Ukraine, and northwestern Scotland. Two major Proterozoic (i.e., from about 2.5 billion to 541 million years ago) orogenic belts extend across the central and southern Baltic Shield. Thus, the shield has a composite origin, containing remnants of several Precambrian orogenic belts.

About 540 to 500 million years ago a series of new oceans opened, and their eventual closure gave rise to the Caledonian, Hercynian, and Uralian orogenic belts. There is considerable evidence suggesting that those belts developed by plate-tectonicprocesses, and they each have a history that lasted hundreds of millions of years. Formation of the belts gave rise to the supercontinent of Pangea; its fragmentation, beginning about 200 million years ago, gave rise to a new ocean, the Tethys Sea. Closure of that ocean about 50 million years ago, by subductionand plate-tectonic processes, led to the Alpine orogeny—e.g., the formation of the Alpine orogenic system, which extends from the Atlantic Ocean to Turkey and contains many separate orogenic belts (which remain as mountain chains), including the Pyrenees, the Baetic Cordillera, the Atlas Mountains, the Swiss-Austrian Alps, the Apennine Range, the Carpathian Mountains, the Dinaric Alps, and the Taurus and Ponticmountains. During the time that the Tethys was opening (about 180 million years ago), the Atlantic Ocean also began to open.


Paleogeography and paleoceanography of (top) Early Permian and (bottom) early Late Permian times. Adapted from C.A. Ross and J.R.P. Ross, Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research, Special Publication 24

The Atlantic is still opening along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge under the ocean, with Iceland constituting an area of the ridge that is raised above sea level. The youngest tectonic activity in Europe is represented by the present-day volcanic eruptions in Iceland; by volcanoes such as Etna and Vesuvius; and by earthquakes, as in the Aegean region and in the Alpine system, which result from current stresses between the Eurasian and African plates.


The principal tectonic plates that make up Earth's lithosphere. Also located are several dozen hot spots where plumes of hot mantle material are upwelling beneath the plates.