In dry Asia limited vegetation, such as short grasses, will occur even on the edges of the most barren desert areas. Most of these desert plants are xerophytic (drought resistant) and halophytic (salt tolerant). More significant vegetation occurs where ground water is available near the surface.
Separating cold Asia from dry Asia is an extensive band of low grasslands called the steppe. Steppe vegetation predominates in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. North of the steppe land is a narrow transition zone of mixed forest. Farther to the north lies the vast expanse of coniferous forest known as taiga in Russia. The taiga is a rich storehouse of commercially valuable needle leaf softwoods, such as spruce, larch, fir, and pine. Even farther north, lichens, mosses, and occasional dwarf willows manage to survive in the cold tundra.
Animal Life
Arctic animals, although noted for their mobility, are even less diverse than arctic plants. Polar bears, mouse like lemmings, reindeer, and arctic foxes are common animals in the tundra region. The mammals and birds of subarctic Asiatic Russia are of the cold, hardy type. Examples are the Altai elk, brown bear, wolf, ermine, sable, and the erne (a Siberian eagle similar to the bald eagle). Birds are prominent vertebrates in Asian deserts. Animals peculiar to dry Asia include the kuland (Mongolian wild ass), the Bactrian camel, the saiga (an antelope), the Tibetan antelope, the kiang, the yak, the argali (wild sheep), and the markhor (wild goat). In East Asia are found such indigenous animals as the takin, bharal (wild Himalayan sheep), goral (a rock goat), musk deer, sika, Thor-old’s deer, Pere David’s deer, panda, Asiatic black bear, and high-altitude salamanders. Tigers and elephants are still found in some southern parts of the continent.
Mineral Resources
Asia’s coal deposits are the largest in the world. About one-fourth of the world’s total reserves are located in Russia; other coal reserves occur in nearly every province of China, in Indonesia, in India, in Korea, in Kyrgyzstan, and in Uzbekistan. In 1991, China ranked 1st in world coal production and India 5th. Nearly half of the coal extracted in the former USSR, which ranked 3d in world production in 1991, is mined in Russia. Asia also has vast oil deposits, especially in the Persian Gulf area; in the South China and Yellow seas and other parts of the continental shelf off the coasts of East, Southeast, and South Asia; and in Russia, with smaller deposits in Turkmenistan. The former USSR ranked 1st among world crude-oil producers in 1991, Saudi Arabia 2nd, Iran 4th, and China 5th; the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Kuwait, Egypt, Oman, Malaysia, India, Iraq, Syria, and Qatar are also significant producers. Nearly one-third of the world’s natural gas reserves are located in Russia, although marketing difficulties limited production there before the construction of a pipeline in the 1980s that enabled Russia to supply Western Europe as well as to increase domestic supplies.
Iron ore is abundant in China, which ranked 2d in world production in 1989, and in India, which ranked 6th. Tin is widely distributed in Southeast Asia, with Malaysia and Indonesia ranking among the top world producers. Asia also has large deposits of bauxite and a variety of other minerals, including major world deposits of chromium, manganese, mercury, selenium, tellurium, tungsten, zinc, graphite, magnesite, mica, pyrite, and talc. Japan, although it is the industrial giant in Asia, has few of the mineral resources needed for modern industry and must import them.
Water Resources
Irrigation canals crisscross the Indo-Gangetic Plain, Yangtze Valley, and other alluvial lowlands of monsoon Asia. Irrigation during the dry season of the monsoon makes possible a double and triple cropping of land where year-round temperatures are warm enough and has been a major factor in the ability of Asia’s river valleys to support such large population clusters. Irrigation and the availability of ground water for growing crops in oases are also major factors in the settlement and economic development of most of dry Asia in the southwest. Rivers remain the primary means of transportation for most Asian countries outside Japan. Road and rail facilities are generally limited, although India’s network is extensive.
Only a small part of the continent’s vast hydroelectric power potential has been developed, most of it in such fuel-deficient nations as Japan and Bangladesh or as part of a larger program of river improvements as in the Indus and Mekong river basin projects. Rivers with enormous hydroelectric potential are the Yangtze, Ob, Lena, and Yenisei.
Farming
Only about 17% of all Asia excluding the former USSR is planted in crops and only 14% of all Asia including the former USSR. India has the most arable land, with 403,629,000 acres, or 50% of its total area, under cultivation. China ranks second, with 255,070,000 acres, or 11% of its total area, under crops; and Turkey a poor third, with 67,739,000 acres, or 35% of its total area, under crops. Other large arable landholdings are in Iran, which has 50,002,000 acres, or 12% of its total area, under crops; Indonesia, which has 47,938,000 acres, or 10% of its area, cultivated; and Pakistan, which has 42,219,000 acres, or 24% of its total area, planted to crops.
Forest and Fish Resources
Forests cover about one-third of Russia and 20% of the rest of Asia. Russia has the largest reserves of commercial softwoods in the world (mostly east of the Urals) and leads the world in timber production. Deciduous forests are extensive in southern Asia, especially in the tropical and subtropical parts of monsoon Asia. Indonesia and India together account for half of all Asian woods cut from deciduous forests. In the wake of industrialization, however, deforestation is occurring in South and Southeast Asia, as it had earlier in China.
Japan and Russia are the world’s two top-ranking fish producers, and both maintain large oceangoing fishing fleets. China is the third-ranking fish producer, and India is fourth. In keeping with the intensive cultivation of land in Asia, fish are also raised in flooded rice fields.
PEOPLE
Traditional Culture Areas
Asia has a long cultural heritage of great diversity. Sedentary agriculture and the beginnings of urban life and civilization developed before 4000 BC in Mesopotamia (southwestern Asia), about 3000 BC at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley, now in Pakistan , and about 2000 BC in the unrelated development of Chinese culture in the loess lands of China’s middle Huang He valley . These three areas of early civilization served as “culture hearths,” or centers from which major cultural traditions, modified by later differences in religion, nationalism, and historical circumstance, were transferred outward and adopted over wide areas of Asia (and sometimes beyond).
Six major cultural regions are recognized in Asia. The three dominant ones are Southwest (or Islamic) Asia, South (or Indic) Asia, and East (or Sinic) Asia, which developed from the three original culture hearths. The fourth is Southeast Asia. Set between China and India, this region is what political and cultural geographers call a “shatter zone,” or culture area dominated by two or more strong neighboring cultures. The remaining two culture areas are Northern (or Russian) Asia and Central (or Interior) Asia, both sparsely populated and peripherally located in terms of the major culture hearths.
Southwest (or Islamic) Asia roughly coincides with the dry belt of desert and semidesert lands that extend eastward from the eastern Mediterranean (Levant) shores as far as Afghanistan. This area is customarily linked with North Africa under the labels Near or Middle East or Arab World; the latter is misleading, however, because non-Arabs constitute a majority of the population in Iran, Israel, and Turkey. The Southwest Asian culture area saw the development of early agriculture in Mesopotamia and the rise and fall of numerous ancient kingdoms and empires. It was unified by Islam in the 7th century, but important concentrations of non-Islamic peoples remain, including Christians in Syria, Armenia, and Lebanon, and Jews, mainly in Israel.
South (or Indic) Asia is located on the Indian subcontinent and dominated by India. The culture dates from about 1500 BC when Aryans invaded northern India. Their Vedic religion merged with indigenous customs and beliefs to produce Hinduism, which continues to play a major role in social organization and structure; it remains an important influence even in northern areas where Islam now prevails. Buddhism, founded in India in the 6th century BC, had its main cultural impact elsewhere.
The nations included in East (or Sinic) Asia share a common culture developed by the ancient Chinese in the Huang He loesslands and unified during the Shang dynasty about 1500 BC. Periodically invaded by nomads from the northern steppes, the East Asian culture region included most of modern China by about 100 BC, began to move southward into Vietnam about the same time, and reached out to Korea and Japan about AD 400. Social organization and structure within the region are strongly influenced by ancient Chinese concepts of familial duty and ancestor worship that were articulated in Confucianism and Japanese Shinto, and to a lesser degree in Daoism (Taoism) and Chinese Buddhism.
Southeast Asia embraces the peninsulas and islands located between India and China. The indigenous peoples of this region were pushed from the lowlands into isolated hill areas by migrants from China and the rest of Asia in a process beginning 2,500 years ago. Buddhism became the dominant religion, but Islamic influences, brought by Arab traders after the 12th century AD, and colonial penetrations by the British, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Americans after the 17th century brought much cultural diversification.
North Asia (Asiatic Russia) borders on Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China to the south and extends northward across Siberia to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. The Russians brought European influences into North Asia and the steppe regions to their south from the 17th century on.
Central (or Inner) Asia is made up of five former Soviet republics–Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan–plus Mongolia and three autonomous regions of China–Tibet, Xinjiang-Uygur, and Inner Mongolia. Isolated by high mountains or broad deserts, Central Asia was for centuries the domain of nomadic herders and various indigenous peoples, including Mongols, Tatars, Tungus, and Yakuts. Central Asia was long feared by the Chinese as the homeland from which invaders repeatedly entered the settled lands of eastern China. Chinese settlement and influence in much of this region has greatly increased in recent years. Islamic influences have gained strength in much of former Soviet Central Asia since 1991.
Racial and Ethnic Groups
Asia has a great diversity of ethnic groups, with two-thirds of all Asian peoples belonging to the Mongoloid group. The largest ethnic group is the Han Chinese, who constitute about 94% of the total population of China and dominate the eastern half of that nation. The remaining 6% of that nation’s population includes Mongols, Uygurs, Huis, Zhuangs, Tibetans, and other groups. The second largest Asian group is the Japanese, who except for a few thousand Ainu on the northern island of Hokkaido, constitute a single ethnic group in Japan. India, by contrast, is ethnically