Asia: The monsoon continent

Asia counts as its own continent mainly by convention, not strict geology. It shares one unbroken landmass with Europe called Eurasia, with no ocean or clear physical line dividing them, but ancient Greek geographers drew a cultural boundary there long ago, and mapmakers have kept it ever since.

Asia holds more people than any other continent mainly because it also holds the most land, and it has been continuously farmed and settled for longer than almost anywhere else on Earth. Fertile river valleys in places like China and India supported large populations long before industrialization caught up elsewhere.

The leading theory traces the name to the ancient Greeks, who used it for lands east of their own territory, likely borrowing from an older Akkadian or Semitic word meaning east or sunrise. The exact root is still debated among historians, but that eastward meaning has stuck for centuries.

Asia spans eleven time zones, more than any other continent, running from UTC+2 in the west to UTC+12 in the east. That range exists simply because the continent stretches so far from west to east, covering a huge share of the planet within one unbroken landmass.

Yes. Mount Everest, the world's tallest mountain, and the Dead Sea, the lowest point of dry land on Earth, both sit within Asia. That gap exists because the same collision of tectonic plates that pushed the Himalayas skyward also dragged the Dead Sea basin down below sea level.