Europe

Europe is one of the seven traditional continents of the Earth. Physically and geologically, Europe is the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, west of Asia. more...

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Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea, to the southeast by the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. To the east, Europe is generally divided from Asia by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, and by the Caspian Sea.

Europe is the world's second-smallest continent in terms of area, covering about 10,180,000 square kilometres (3,930,000 sq mi) or 2.0% of the Earth's surface. The only continent smaller than Europe is Australia. It is the third most populous continent (after Asia and Africa) with a population of 710,000,000 or about 11% of the world's population. However, the term continent can refer to a cultural and political distinction or a physiographic one, leading to various perspectives about Europe's precise borders, area and population. Of Europe's 48 countries, Russia is its largest by area and population, while the Vatican is the smallest.

All European countries except Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Vatican City are members of the Council of Europe, an international organisation founded in 1949 and recognised by the United Nations, that sets uniform standards for human rights in member countries and operates the European Court of Human Rights.

A separate organisation, the European Union (EU), emerged in 1957 from various agreements on customs and tariffs between countries in Western Europe, and attained its current form in 1993. The EU is an economic, social, and political union which makes laws that are implemented in every member state with the primary purpose of enforcing the free movement of goods and people between its twenty-seven member states.

Etymology

In ancient Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess who was abducted by Zeus in bull form and taken to the island of Crete, where she gave birth to Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon. For Homer, Europe (Greek: Εὐρώπη Eurṓpē; see also List of traditional Greek place names) was this mythological queen of Crete, not a geographical designation. Later Europa stood for mainland Greece, and by 500 BC its meaning had been extended to lands to the north.

In etymology one theory suggests the name Europe is derived from the Greek words meaning broad (eurys) and face (opsis)—broad having been an epithet of Earth itself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion; see Prithvi (Plataia). A minority, however, suggest this Greek popular etymology is really based on a Semitic word such as the Akkadian erebu meaning "to go down, set", cognate to Phoenician 'ereb "evening; west" and Arabic Maghreb, Hebrew ma'ariv. (see also Erebus).

Read more at Wikipedia.org