Europe

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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

Red stands for courage. White represents generosity. Black symbolizes Islamic triumphs. Effective date: 22 January 1991. >>