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Europe

The second-smallest continent, occupying 8% of the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the south by the Mediterranean Sea; its eastern border conventionally runs along the Ural Mountains and Ural River, swinging south to include the trans-Caucasian republics. Europe can be divided into six composite regions, which are not all equally homogeneous: Scandinavia, Western Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Mediterranean Europe, and the Balkans.

Area

10,400,000 sq km/4,000,000 sq mi

Population

(2000 est) 728 million (excluding European Turkey); annual growth rate −0.1% (2000–2005); projected population of 705 million by the year 2020. Of the continents, Europe ranks third in total population and first in population density.

Language

mostly Indo-European, with a few exceptions, including Finno-Ugric (Finnish and Hungarian), Basque, and Altaic (Turkish); apart from a fringe of Celtic, the northwest is Germanic; Letto-Lithuanian languages separate the Germanic from the Slavonic tongues of Eastern Europe; Romance languages spread east–west from Romania through Italy and France to Spain and Portugal

Religion

Christian (Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox), Muslim (Turkey, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria), Jewish

Largest cities

(population over 1.5 million) Ankara, Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Birmingham, Bucharest, Budapest, Hamburg, Istanbul, Kharkov, Kiev, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Manchester, Milan, Minsk, Moscow, Paris, Rome, St Petersburg, Vienna, Warsaw

Features

Mount Elbrus 5,642 m/18,517 ft in the Caucasus Mountains is the highest peak in Europe; Mont Blanc 4,807 m/15,772 ft is the highest peak in the Alps; lakes (over 5,100 sq km/2,000 sq mi) include Ladoga, Onega, Vänern; rivers (over 800 km/500 mi) include the Volga, Danube, Dnieper Ural, Don, Pechora, Dniester, Rhine, Loire, Tagus, Vistula, Elbe, Weser, Ebro, Oder, Prut, Rhône

Physical

conventionally occupying that part of Eurasia to the west of the Ural Mountains, north of the Caucasus Mountains, and north of the Sea of Marmara, Europe lies entirely in the northern hemisphere between 36° N and the Arctic Ocean. About two-thirds of the continent is a great plain which covers the whole of European Russia and spreads westwards through Poland to the Low Countries and the Bay of Biscay. To the north lie the Scandinavian highlands, rising to 2,472 m/8,110 ft at Glittertind in the Jotenheim range of Norway. To the south, a series of mountain ranges stretch east–west (Caucasus, Balkans, Carpathians, Apennines, Alps, Pyrenees, and Sierra Nevada). The most westerly point of the mainland is Cape Roca in Portugal; the most southerly location is Tarifa Point in Spain; the most northerly point on the mainland is Nordkynn in Norway

A line from the Baltic to the Black Sea divides Europe between an eastern continental region and a western region characterized by a series of peninsulas that include Scandinavia (Norway and Sweden), Jutland (mainland Denmark and a small part of Germany), Iberia (Spain and Portugal), and Italy and the Balkans (Greece, Albania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and European Turkey). Because of the large number of bays, inlets, and peninsulas, the coastline is longer in proportion to its size than that of any other continent. The largest islands adjacent to continental Europe are the British Isles, Novaya Zemlya, Sicily, Sardinia, Crete, Corsica, Gotland (in the Baltic Sea), and the Balearic Islands; more distant islands associated with Europe include Iceland, Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Madeira, the Azores, and the Canary Islands. There are three main groups of lakes: (1) the Alpine lakes with Geneva, Constance, Lucerne, and Neuchatel in Switzerland; Maggiore, Garda, and Como in Italy; Balaton in Hungary; (2) the Scandinavian group with Vänern, Vättern, and Mälaren in Sweden and Mjøsa and Randsfjord in Norway; and (3) the lakes of the central plain, Ladoga, Onega, Peipus, and Ilmen in Russia; Saimaa and others in Finland.

Climate The greater part of Europe falls within the northern temperate zone, which is modified by the Gulf Stream in the northwest. There are four main climatic zones: the northwest region (stretching from northern Spain through France to Norway), the Mediterranean zone, central Europe, and eastern Europe. The northwestern region has mild winters, cool summers, and cloud and rain all the year round with a maximum in the autumn. The Mediterranean zone has very mild winters, hot, dry summers, and abundant sunshine; most of the rain falls in the spring and autumn. In central Europe winters are cold and the summers warm, with the maximum rainfall in summer. Eastern Europe has extremely cold winters.

Economy Europe was the home of the Industrial Revolution and is still highly industrialized. There are two major axes of industrial concentration, running from Britain to northern Italy and from Belgium to the Ukraine. Manufacturing has long focused on the production of basic commodities such as iron and steel, fabricated metals, textiles, clothing, ships, motor vehicles, and rolling stock. A wide variety of other products are also manufactured, and there has also been a great deal of growth since the 1950s in the production of chemicals, electronic equipment, and items related to telecommunications and information technology. The mineral wealth of Europe is considerable; deposits of coal, iron ore, sulphur, bauxite, and chemical salts are abundant. Oil and natural gas are found in eastern Europe and beneath the North Sea. The intensity of agriculture is high in most parts of the continent but declines towards the east. Forestry (in northern Europe) and fishing (in the Baltic Sea, North Sea, and along the Atlantic coast) are generally significant if less important economic activities. Tourism plays a vital role in the European economy. The transportation network is dense and efficient in western and central Europe, but less so in eastern and southern Europe. Europe's heavy engagement in foreign trade is attested by many of its ports, which number among the world's greatest – Rotterdam, London, Hamburg, Marseilles, Antwerp, Le Havre, Genoa, and Barcelona, are the leaders in tonnage of goods handled. During the 20th century Europe suffered a severe economic decline as a result of two catastrophic world wars followed by an initially uneasy peace (the Cold War). However, economic recovery rapidly followed in Western Europe, sparked first by US aid and later by the development of European institutions such as the EEC, or Common Market (later EU), the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom).