Europe Abbreviations

EU is the abbreviation for Europe. There are 51 countries in Europe. Among them, the 10 largest countries are Russia (Population: 145,969,098), Germany (Population: 83,792,998), Turkey (Population: 84,200,862), France (Population: 65,227,368), United Kingdom (Population: 67,803,461), Italy (Population: 60,496,093), Spain (Population: 46,767,554), Poland (Population: 37,864,120), Ukraine (Population: 43,817,744), and Romania (Population: 19,266,090).

Europe Overview

Europe, the world’s smallest continent after Oceania, constituting 1/5 of the continent of Eurasia; 10.6 million km² (about 7 percent of the earth’s surface), 745.6 million residents (2019).From the northernmost point (Nordkinn in Norway, 71 ° northern latitude) on mainland Europe to the southernmost (Punta Marroquí in Spain, 36 ° northern latitude) it is approximately 4,250 km. The east-west extent, from the northern part of the Ural Mountains (66 ° east longitude) to Cape Roca (9 ° west longitude) in Portugal, is 5,500 km.

Europe consists of 43 independent states, to which the European parts of the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan and Turkey, Gibraltar (belonging to the United Kingdom) and several islands and groups with limited autonomy: the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man (United Kingdom), the Faroe Islands (Denmark), Svalbard (Norway) and Åland (Finland). The border between Europe and Asia is usually considered to pass by the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus (in some older works, Manytjsänkan is mentioned north of the Caucasus), the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, Lake Marmara and the Dardanelles. Furthermore, the Aegean islands are counted with Crete to Europe.

The continent has a long coast in relation to the land area due to many peninsulas, e.g. The Balkan Peninsula, the Kola Peninsula, the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jutland and the Pyrenees Peninsula and the Apennine Peninsula. The largest islands are the British main island, Iceland, Ireland, Novaja Zemlja’s north island, Spetsbergen, Novaja Zemlja’s south east, Sicily, Sardinia, the north-east country and Corsica.

The name (Greek Eurōʹpē) is debated, possibly of Semitic origin and then with the meaning ‘the land of the sunset’.

Europe Facts

• Area: 10.6 million km²
• Extension (mainland): 5,500 km (east-west), 4 250 km (north-south)
• Population: 745.6 million residents (2019)
• Population growth: –0.1% per year
• Highest mountain: Elbrus (5,642 m and 5,621 m above sea level), Dychtau (5,204 m above sea level), Shchara (5,201 m above sea level), Djangitau (5,059 m above sea level), Kazbek (5,033 m asl), Mont Blanc (4 807 m asl), Ushba (4 695 m asl), Uilpata (4 638 m asl), Dufour peak (4 634 m. Matterhorn (4,478 m.)
• Longest rivers: Volga (3,700 km), Danube (2,860 km), Dnieper (2 280 km), Don (1,980 km), Rhine (1,320 km), Elbe (1,165 km)
• Largest lakes: Ladoga (18,400 km²), Onega (9,720 km²), Vänern (5,585 km²), Saimen (4,400 km²), Vättern (1,912 km²)

States and territories

Prehistory

The interpretations of the vast prehistoric material from all parts of Europe have until recently been dominated by the notion that the essential advances in the history of humanity originated in the Ancient Orient and Greece. A decisive change in attitude came in the 1970s, when calibrated carbon-14 dates showed that during the Neolithic period there was a technologically advanced and independent development in various parts of Europe outside the Eastern Mediterranean, including in the case of megalithic tombs and metal crafts. On the other hand, it remains that southern impulses also played a role, such as in the spiritual world of imagination, and the interaction between internal and external factors in development is now one of the most important problem areas in archaeological research in Europe.

Paleolithic

The oldest archaeologically known settlement in Europe is a cave settlement at Atapuerca in northern Spain, which can be over 800,000 years old, and a slightly more than 700,000 year old tuffed settlement at Isernia southeast of Rome. The oldest, hard-to-find, finds of the human bone may belong to Homo antecessor, closely related to Homo erectus. Only during the latter part of the paleolithic do skeletal finds become more numerous; they then belong to the Neanderthal, who existed some 300,000-35,000 years ago. The modern man, Homo sapiens, is believed to have migrated into Europe from Africa 35,000-40,000 years ago.

The archaeologically richest period is the younger Paleolithic period, some 35,000–10,000 years before today, which falls during the last ice age, when Northern Europe and the alpine area were covered with ice. The beginning of the period is characterized by a new technique of beating flint, the chip technology, which provided more efficient tools and weapons than one had before. Likewise, more advanced bone and horn objects were manufactured. The oldest find of arrowheads for arrow and bow has been made at an approximately 18,000 year old residence in Spain.

Graves have been found in some places, sometimes with rich graves such as at Sungir south of Moscow. The skeleton can be determined as Homo sapiens. Another sign of a more developed spiritual and social life is the cave paintings in France and northern Spain. The spread of the characteristic small Venus figurines, often carved in ivory from mammoth or in stone, clearly shows that shared values ​​and probably a network of social connections bound most of ice-free Europe together during the younger Paleolithic period. This is the earliest symbol common to all of Europe.

Mesolithic

After some fluctuations in the climate, the cohesive inland ice disappeared around 8000 BC, and animal and plant worlds changed. In the archaeological material is a new technology, which works with very small beaten flint, microliter. The old hunter culture was adapted to the new natural conditions with new forms of objects, which can be divided into many groups spread over different regions. A distinctive and widespread Mesolithic group is the Northern European Maglean culture, which is known from England to eastern Poland during the period around 7500-6000 BC. with a related group in the Baltics (customer culture). In Northern and Western Europe, Mesolithic forms of life still prevailed, while the population of southeastern and central Europe switched to cultivation.

Neolithic

The cultivation began to spread from the Ancient Orient to the Balkans about 7000 BC. This may have happened by the cultivator moving to the northwest, a colonization, but also by the knowledge and seed being somehow passed on without the relocation of people. In the former case, the people also brought new customs and customs and their language. So, in southeastern Europe, a clear connection to the Ancient Orient is evident in the settlement form with villages lying on hills of settlement residues, so-called settlements, and also in the ceramics and the small women figures in clay. In Central Europe, the band ceramic culture dominated with numerous villages or lonely farms on loose lands from Slovakia to the Netherlands. The variation in material culture and ideology was large, and even greater during the younger part of the Neolithic, with, among other things, different forms of funnel culture in Northern Europe.

Copper handling was developed in southern Europe, which is why part of the period is often called copper stone age. Copper metallurgy existed in the Balkans as early as the 4000s and in the Iberian Peninsula most recently during the 3000s BC. Probably, metallurgy developed independently in both areas as well as in the 4000s in the Ancient Orient. One of Europe’s richest tombs with a variety of copper and gold objects has been investigated at Varna in Bulgaria by the Black Sea.

The strange rock temples in Malta and the stone chamber tombs in the southern Iberian Peninsula, in Brittany and in Ireland have long been regarded as the offshoots of a building tradition from the eastern Mediterranean. However, a number of carbon-14 dates have shown that the early buildings are from the 3000s BC. and thus older than its predecessors. Early and local developments in the megalithic tombs are also in England, Northern Germany and southern Scandinavia.

During the Copper Stone Age, in the Nordic Middle Politics, there were groups of battle ax culture (also called lace ceramic culture) in northern, eastern and central Europe, while groups of bell-cup culture spread in southwestern, western and central Europe. Both cultures are largely characterized by special forms of ceramics and by objects with symbolic meaning as well as by very regular burials. The battle ax culture is one of the cultures that has been considered to have spread the Indo-European languages ​​across Europe through migrations from the southeast. A new hypothesis is that the Indo-European languages ​​spread with the cultivation of the Ancient Orient.

The Bronze age

The transition to the Bronze Age in the third millennium BC is based on the significant social development, population growth and technological development of the younger Stone Age and the Copper Stone Age, all noticeable in e.g. the Henge monuments in southern England such as Avebury and Stonehenge. The role of internal factors appears to be crucial in Western, Central and Eastern Europe during the early Bronze Age. Although the influence of the high cultures of the Ancient Orient is felt in the Aegean world, the highly independent Minoan and Mycenaean cultures develop during the Bronze Age. In southern Scandinavia, on the other hand, external impulses are noticeable, although Late Politics and the Early Bronze Age have their own distinctive character. The increasing use of bronze throughout Europe, when in addition to the prestige objects, utensils were also extensively manufactured; led to closer connections between areas with and areas without bronze production. Examples of large and rich burial sites in the north, which indicate emerging power and social differentiation also there, are the Kiviksröset in southeastern Skåne from the older Bronze Age, Hågahögen at Uppsala, Lusehøj on southwestern Funen and the graveyard at Seddin near Berlin, all from the younger Bronze Age, since iron implements have already been used in parts of southeastern and eastern Europe.

In the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, c. 800–500 BC, the hall state culture in Central Europe was from France in the west to Hungary in the east. Principal tombs, such as at Hohmichele and Hochdorf, and scenes on bronze span testify to a socially divided society, which hardly stood long after the contemporary Etruscan and Greek in the expressions of social life. The population of the Hallstatt culture has probably to a large extent been Celtic. Another example of a long-standing social organization from the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age are the large, fortified and regularly built villages in Poland, eg. The hive, some of which may have had over a thousand residents.

THE Iron Age

Celtic Latin culture prevailed during the centuries before BC. the area from the British Isles to the Carpathians. In Central and Western Europe, from the beginning of the twentieth century BC urban-like societies which may be extensive, e.g. Manching in Bavaria. Trade was important, and the coin was picked up after Greek models. Many Celtic tribes are known through Roman written sources. When the Roman Empire came into being, Roman power and culture came to play a significant role even outside the borders of the kingdom, which in Northern Europe is archaeologically marked by the term “Roman Iron Age” for the time from Kr.f. to 400 AD The traces of the Germanic tribes are numerous, and the transition from tribe to state can now be followed archeologically well, among other things. Franks, Thuringians and Bajuvers in the South, Danes and Swans in the North, as well as with Austro and Visigoths from the Black Sea to Spain.

Intensive archaeological research in the present Slavic states has produced several theories about the origin and spread of the Slavic peoples. Among the strangest efforts are the discovery of the remnants of the Grand Moorish Empire, mainly at Mikulčice from the 8th century. Research has also been conducted on the rise of the tribes in the Finno-Ugric parts of Europe. In Finland, a strong continuity from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages is expected, with usually strong connections to the southeast and to the Baltic, weaker to Scandinavia.

For the archaeologist, Europe is not a unit. The notion that certain areas have always or for a long time been a “cradle of culture” may give way to a new knowledge of societies with a significant and varied cultural and material development during different times and in different parts of Europe. Diversity is the characteristic, not the unity.

List of Europe Acronyms

The most commonly used abbreviations about Europe are EU which stands for Europe. In the following table, you can see all acronyms related to Europe, including abbreviations for associations, airlines, funds, non-profit organizations, and etc.