Talk:History of Eurasia

China with Europe-WestAsia-NorthAfrica ?
It is certainly artificial to make the Mediteranian the division between the fundamental regions but I follow Colin McEvedy in seeing China as havving a quite distinct history. Dejvid 23:52, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No merge
This articles information should be merged into Europe and Asia not Asia into this. Falphin 4 July 2005 14:40 (UTC)

There is a role for overviews and I think there is room for an Asia overview as well as an Eurasian. To see China Europe and India as having ''in some senses' a linked history is an unusual one but an interesting one. Dejvid 5 July 2005 11:08 (UTC)
 * I agree, there will be some overlap, but also important differences. Somewhat similar to the history of England and history of Britain pages. - SimonP July 5, 2005 12:31 (UTC)

The content in this article seems more related to Geopolitics, Hydraulic empire, etc. than to detailed histories you would expect in a History of X page. Perhaps the page should have a more specific name.

If defined by ease of transport and contact, and similar crops, economies, and epidemiology, it makes sense to consider Eurasia plus North Africa as an area. However, I don't know of a better way to refer to this area.

Guns, Germs and Steel should certainly be mentioned, as now linked from the Eurasia article.--JWB 5 July 2005 21:09 (UTC)

The unit of early civilization and its offshoots before the great ages of European and east Asian exploration beginning around AD 1450 certainly includes north Africa. "Eurasia" could more properly be described as a unit of history to include "all the lands north of the Indian Ocean and the Sahara", but could any single word describe such a land area without some contradiction? "Eurasia" fits better than any other with the caveat that Egypt and the Maghreb (center of ancient Carthage) fit better in Eurasia than in sub-Saharan Africa.

Population movements, trade, and conquest have generally been east-west, and not north-south. Alexander's conquests were from Greece to Sind -- not Greece to Scandinavia or Ethiopia. The Mongols reached Poland and Korea and could have gone farther west (perhaps as far as Britain) and east (Japan) except for some fortuitous events. Even the Vikings seem to have gone east-west at the first opportunity.

Someone needs to explain why Europe north of the Alps and Asia from the Eurasian Steppes from Romania to China, and Siberia were so late to achieve civilization, and then from elsewhere. Its not for a lack of rivers; the Danube, Rhine, Elbe, Vistula, Dnieper, Don, Volga, Ob, Lena, and Amur are quite formidable. Could it be that the riparian/hydraulic civilizations could not emerge except where a large river ensured that only such a culture could emerge until Grece and Rome? That could explain why the Indus was a site of early civilization, and the Ganges and Mekong weren't, or that the Euphrates was a site of early civilization and the Rhine and Danube weren't. But why not the Volga, whose lowest courses are in desert terrain?

...As for "Geopolitics", the word has strongly negative connotations due to the nazi abuse of the word as Geopolitik. Use "applied geography" instead; economics and politics have little to do with much ogf history. Many conquests have been accidents more than design, a skirmish or raid that bares the weaknesses of a decadent empire. Much of history is accident.

--66.231.41.57 11:36, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Expansion request
If this article is to be kept, it needs to add a lot of information from History of Europe and History of Asia. -- Beland 19:53, 4 September 2006 (UTC) Agreed. Something similar to History of the Americas first chapters should be here too. The trouble is that there is quite little known about the prehistorical times, Eemian interglacial before the last ice age, especially. Probably there were modern look-a-like people living somewhere in the middle east as early as 70000 years back, even earlier, but the timing of the subsequent events is difficult, to say the least. Should the article include prehistoric species such as Homo erectus, is another matter that should be solved before a rewrite. There is quite a lot of data concerning these issues in Wikipedia, see f.e. Paleolithic. After, say, 1 CE, the article could continue as History of Asia and History of Europe (or the area mentioned in Tacitus's writing, what ever). These is my thoughts about this 91.155.155.68 14:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC) History of West Eurasia sounds artificial, but it is currently in better shape and tells mainly about the period between Roman empire and Renaissance.


 * Finished on my part (the prehistory). Note that I'm no historian (rather, a natural scientist), and some of the links on cultures may be on wrong places. 91.153.56.195 07:08, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Lede
The lede is very bad. In particular: Iapetus (talk) 16:44, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
 * "The history of x is the collective history of a continental area with several distinct peripheral coastal regions". You could say that about the history of any continent - except you wouldn't (certainly not as the first line of the lede) as it is so vague.
 * "North Africa has historically been integrated into Eurasian history". Has it?  Does this mean "North Africa influenced parts of Eurasia"?  Or that "Eurasian History", as an academic study, has traditionally included North African history?  Or something else?
 * "Perhaps beginning with early Silk Road trade, the Eurasian view of history seeks establishing genetic, cultural, and linguistic links between European, African and Asian cultures of antiquity." As written, this seems to imply that the development of the Silk Road led to a pan-Eurasian interest in the genetic, cultural and linguistic links between Europe, Asia and Africa.  I presume what is actually intended is that the histiography of Eurasia is concerned with determining the various links between places that began with the Silk Road.
 * In fact, while the article is about the history of Eurasia, the lede seems mainly about histiography.