Where in the world is Asia?

Asia is a huge place! It covers an estimated 30% of the world's land area; roughly it is about 44,391,000 square kilometers. It's conventional geographical boundaries are:

On the north: the Arctic Ocean
On the east: the Bering Strait and the Pacific Ocean
On the southwest: the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea
On the west is: the Ural Mountains going south tracing the Ural River until you get to the Caspian Sea and then going west along the Caucasus Mountains until you get to the Black Sea

But that's only half of the story.

There are plenty of countries that belong to the Asian continent, which is why it is also divided into several realms: East Asia, South Asia, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, "Russian"/Central Asia. Which countries are in the Asian continent? To which realm/sub-division does each country belong?

Our study of major asian civilizations will include only the following areas: East Asia (civilization in China, Japan, Korea), South Asia (civilization in India and those that it influenced and those that emerged in south asia), and Southeast Asia

Why? Well, that's one of the tasks i gave you this week. I expect that next meeting you will have an idea of why i chose only those four. Here are a few images to give you clues on how to approach the task.

This is a population density map of the world. The more red you see, the higher the population density.


This is a rainfall map of the world. Again, the deeper the blue, the more rainfall that place gets in a year.

These images should set your minds twirling. What's so distinct about the parts of the Asian continent that we are going to study in relation to these images?



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Reaction to your comments

Overall, this first week of our blogging has been uplifting and encouraging for me (and hopefully for you too). I appreciate so many of your comments. Perhaps the following best summarizes your comments and thoughts about our blogging approach


First, a lot of you are new to blogging and are therefore enthusiastic to learn about it. I am very pleased that you are eager to learn and are actually trying to learn how to blog. As Alan B. puts it in his comment:

an excellent idea for learning..!
something to do with computer orientaion in preparation to see, work, and live in a greener pasture

In some way, that was part of my reason for doing this too. I can't keep on dealing with you in the traditional way, when i myself believe that there is some other way of engaging you better. I hope this it. When you get into the real world, you will have to know a little about these things so you wont have a hard time catching up with the rest of your cohorts around the world.

Second, you are now interested in Asian Civ and hopefully, willing to do all my work for me (bwahahaha). This means you will look at the class learning goals and then work towards accomplishing them yourselves with only a little help from me (I hope no more help from me so i can continue with my lazy ways).

Third, your answers to the "doughnut" question are also interesting. Some are comical, some are serious, some are way off topic. I'm just glad that some of you took time to think up an answer to the question itself (instead of merely poking fun at the question). Flo Adriano merits special mention for her research on doughnut history, although next time if you're going to make that long a comment, post it instead. Comments, i think, ought to be short and concise ... oh well, to each their own.
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