ASIAN PEOPLE

inhabitants of the continent of Asia, including a wide range of races, languages, and religions. Asia, the largest continent, is home to some three-fifths of the world's people. Just as Asia's physical geography encompasses broad extremesthe highest mountains on Earth and sea-level deltas, some of the wettest lands and some of the driestso is its human geography characterized by polaritiesthe greatest concentrations of population and vast sparsely inhabited regions, standard-setting technology and vestiges of the Stone Age, ancient bodies of literature and massive illiteracy. Most of the world's races are represented among the Asian peoples, but the continent is populated overwhelmingly by members of the Asiatic, Indian, and European geographic races. Within these three groups myriad microraces and local races have emerged. Linguistically, Asia embraces most major non-African language families: Indo-European, Ural-Altaic, Sino-Tibetan, Austro-Asiatic (including Munda, or Kolarian), Dravidian, Tai-Kadai, and Malayo-Polynesian. The five major world religionsHinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islamand a great many others originated in Asia and have competed ideologically and politically throughout their history. Shamanism and also localized nature worship of various types underlie the major belief systems. This article provides first an overview of Asian peoplestheir origins and their cultural characteristicsfollowed by a detailed treatment of the continent's traditional culture areas, arranged into six geographic regions. Further discussion of the emergence of Asian peoplesincluding the fossil record, archaeological evidence, and cultural developmentappears in the articles human evolution; Stone Age; and Asia. See also articles on individual countries (e.g., China) for the treatment of modern Asian peoples in national contexts. Additional reading Broad coverage is provided in George B. Cressey, Asia's Lands and Peoples, 3rd ed. (1963); Gordon T. Bowles, The People of Asia (1977); Paul Thomas Welty, The Asians: Their Evolving Heritage, 6th ed. (1984); and Colin E. Tweddell and Linda Amy Kimball, Introduction to the Peoples and Cultures of Asia (1985). National Geographic Society (U.S.), Nomads of the World (1971), includes illustrated essays on nomads in Rajasthan state (India), Arabia, the Philippines, and Iran. The culture and ethnology of peoples in Siberia and in the former Central Asian U.S.S.R. are discussed and illustrated in Robin Milner-Gulland and Nikolai Dejevsky, Cultural Atlas of Russia and the Soviet Union (1989); Ronald Wixman, The Peoples of the USSR: An Ethnographic Handbook (1984); Archie Brown, et al., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union (1982); and Zev Katz (ed.), Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities (1975). Conditions of women in Asia are examined in Robert Orr Whyte and Pauline Whyte, The Women of Rural Asia (1982); and Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie (eds.), Women in the Muslim World (1978). Richard V. Weekes (ed.), Muslim Peoples: A World Ethnographic Survey, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded (1984), is comprehensive and includes bibliographies for each ethnic group. Louis Dupree The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica