Europe in the context of Rajput architecture

Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous mainland of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by some, simply as the Continent. When Eurasia is regarded as a single continent, Europe is treated both as a continent and subcontinent.

Western culture, also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, Western society, or simply the West, is the internally diverse culture of the Western world. The term "Western" encompasses the social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, artifacts and technologies primarily rooted in European and Mediterranean histories. A broad concept, "Western culture" does not relate to a region with fixed members or geographical confines. It generally refers to the classical era cultures of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and their Christian successors that expanded across the Mediterranean basin and Europe, and later circulated around the world predominantly through colonization and globalization.

Historically, scholars have closely associated the idea of Western culture with the classical era of Greco-Roman antiquity. However, scholars also acknowledge that other cultures, like Ancient Egypt, the Phoenician city-states, and several Near-Eastern cultures stimulated and influenced it. The Hellenistic period also promoted syncretism, blending Greek, Roman, and Jewish cultures. Major advances in literature, engineering, and science shaped the Hellenistic Jewish culture from which the earliest Christians and the Greek New Testament emerged. The eventual Christianization of Europe in late-antiquity would ensure that Christianity, particularly the Catholic Church, remained a dominant force in Western culture for many centuries to follow.

A department (French: département, Spanish: departamento) is an administrative or political division in several countries. Departments are the first-level divisions of 11 countries, nine in the Americas and two in Africa. An additional 10 countries use departments as second-level divisions, eight in Africa, and one each in the Americas and Europe.

As a territorial entity, "department" was first used by the French Revolutionary governments, apparently to emphasize that each territory was simply an administrative sub-division of the united sovereign nation. (The term "department", in other contexts, means an administrative sub-division of a larger organization.) This attempt to de-emphasize local political identity contrasts strongly with countries divided into "states" (implying local sovereignty).

The Balkans (/ˈbɔːlkənz/ BAWL-kənz, /ˈbɒlkənz/ BOL-kənz), corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria. The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea in the northwest, the Ionian Sea in the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south, the Turkish straits in the east, and the Black Sea in the northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined. The highest point of the Balkans is Musala, 2,925 metres (9,596 ft), in the Rila mountain range, Bulgaria.

The concept of the Balkan Peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of southeastern Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. In the 19th century the term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for Rumelia, the parts of Europe that were provinces of the Ottoman Empire at the time. It had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition, which was further promoted during the creation of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century. The definition of the Balkan Peninsula's natural borders does not coincide with the technical definition of a peninsula; hence modern geographers reject the idea of a Balkan Peninsula, while historical scholars usually discuss the Balkans as a region. The term has acquired a stigmatized and pejorative meaning related to the process of Balkanization. The region may alternatively be referred to as Southeast Europe.

The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some 215,000 km (83,000 sq mi). In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn connects to the Black Sea, by the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, respectively. The Aegean Islands are located within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes. The sea reaches a maximum depth of 2,639 m (8,658 ft) to the west of Karpathos. The Thracian Sea and the Sea of Crete are main subdivisions of the Aegean Sea.

The Aegean Islands can be divided into several island groups, including the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, the Sporades, the Saronic islands and the North Aegean Islands, as well as Crete and its surrounding islands. The Dodecanese, located to the southeast, includes the islands of Rhodes, Kos, and Patmos; the islands of Delos and Naxos are within the Cyclades to the south of the sea. Lesbos is part of the North Aegean Islands. Euboea, the second-largest island in Greece, is located in the Aegean, despite being administered as part of Central Greece. Nine out of twelve of the Administrative regions of Greece border the sea, along with the Turkish provinces of Edirne, Çanakkale, Balıkesir, İzmir, Aydın and Muğla to the east of the sea. Various Turkish islands in the sea are Imbros, Tenedos, Cunda Island, and the Foça Islands.

The Mediterranean Sea (/ˌmɛdɪtəˈreɪniən/ MED-ih-tə-RAY-nee-ən) is an intercontinental sea situated between Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Europe, and on the south by North Africa. To its west it is connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Gibraltar that separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa by only 14 km (9 mi); additionally, it is connected to the Black Sea through the Bosporus strait that intersects Turkey in the northeast and the Red Sea via the Suez Canal in the southeast.

The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about 2,500,000 km (970,000 sq mi), representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface; it includes fifteen marginal seas, including the Aegean, Adriatic, Tyrrhenian, and Marmara. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago.

The Black Sea is a marginal sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The Black Sea is supplied by major rivers, principally the Danube, Dnieper and Dniester. Consequently, while six countries have a coastline on the sea, its drainage basin includes parts of 24 countries in Europe.

The Black Sea, not including the Sea of Azov, covers 436,400 km (168,500 sq mi), has a maximum depth of 2,212 m (7,257 ft), and a volume of 547,000 km (131,000 cu mi).Most of its coasts ascend rapidly.These rises are the Pontic Mountains to the south, bar the southwest-facing peninsulas, the Caucasus Mountains to the east, and the Crimean Mountains to the mid-north.In the west, the coast is generally small floodplains below foothills such as the Strandzha; Cape Emine, a dwindling of the east end of the Balkan Mountains; and the Dobruja Plateau considerably farther north. The longest east–west extent is about 1,175 km (730 mi). Important cities along the coast include (clockwise from the Bosporus) the northern suburbs of Istanbul, Burgas, Varna, Constanța, Odesa, Yalta, Kerch, Yevpatoria, Sevastopol, Novorossiysk, Sochi, Poti, Batumi, Rize, Trabzon, Ordu, Simferopol, Samsun and Zonguldak.

Historical regions (or historical areas) are geographical regions which, at some point in history, had a cultural, ethnic, linguistic or political basis, regardless of latter-day borders. There are some historical regions that can be considered as "active", for example: Moravia, which is held by the Czech Republic, is both a recognized part of the country as well as a historical region. They are used as delimitations for studying and analysing social development of period-specific cultures without any reference to contemporary political, economic or social organisations.

Definitions of regions vary, and regions can include macroregions such as Europe, territories of traditional sovereign states or smaller microregional areas. Geographic proximity is generally the required precondition for the emergence of a regional identity. In Europe, regional identities are often derived from the Migration Period but for the contemporary era are also often related to the territorial transformations that followed World War I and those that followed the Cold War.

Eurasia (/jʊəˈreɪʒə/ yoor-AY-zhə, also UK: /-ʃə/ -⁠shə) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some models of the world, physio-graphically, Eurasia is a single continent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents dates back to antiquity, but their borders have historically been subject to change. For example, the ancient Greeks originally included Africa in Asia but classified Europe as separate land. Eurasia is connected to Africa at the Suez Canal, and the two are sometimes combined to describe the largest contiguous landmass on Earth, Afro-Eurasia.

A continent is any of several large terrestrial geographical regions. Continents are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria. A continent could be a single large landmass, a landmass and nearby islands either on or beyond its continental shelf, or a part of a larger landmass, as in the case of Asia and Europe within Eurasia. Due to these varying definitions, the number of continents varies, up to seven or as few as four. Most English-speaking countries recognize seven continents. In order from largest to smallest in area, these seven are Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia (or sometimes Oceania or Australasia). Different variations with fewer continents merge some of these regions; examples of this are merging Asia and Europe into Eurasia, North America and South America into the Americas (or simply America), and Africa, Asia, and Europe into Afro-Eurasia.

Oceanic islands are occasionally grouped with a nearby continent to divide all the world's land into geographical regions. Under this scheme, most of the island countries and territories in the Pacific Ocean are grouped together with the continent of Australia to form the geographical region of Oceania.

The Caucasus (/ˈkɔːkəsəs/) or Caucasia (/kɔːˈkeɪʒə/) is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have conventionally been considered as a natural barrier between Europe and Asia, bisecting the Eurasian landmass. Mount Elbrus, Europe's highest mountain, is situated in the Western Caucasus area of Russia. On the southern side, the Lesser Caucasus includes the Javakheti Plateau and the Armenian highlands.

The Caucasus is divided into the North Caucasus and South Caucasus, although the Western Caucasus also exists as a distinct geographic space within the North Caucasus. The Greater Caucasus mountain range in the north is mostly shared by Russia and Georgia as well as the northernmost parts of Azerbaijan. The Lesser Caucasus mountain range in the south is mostly located on the territory of southern Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The region is known for its linguistic diversity: aside from Indo-European and Turkic languages, the Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian, and Northeast Caucasian language families are indigenous to the area.

Spain is a country located in southwestern Europe occupying most (about 82 percent) of the Iberian Peninsula. It also includes a small exclave inside France called Llívia, as well as the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean 108 km (67 mi) off northwest Africa, and five places of sovereignty (plazas de soberanía) on and off the coast of North Africa: Ceuta, Melilla, Islas Chafarinas, Peñón de Alhucemas, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera.

The Spanish mainland is bordered to the south and east almost entirely by the Mediterranean Sea (except for the small British territory of Gibraltar); to the north by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west by the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal. With a land area of 504,782 square kilometres (194,897 sq mi) in the Iberian Peninsula, Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe, the second largest country in Western Europe (behind France), and the fourth largest country in the European continent (behind Russia, Ukraine, and France). It has an average altitude of 650 m.

Classical antiquity, also known as the classical era, classical period, classical age, or simply antiquity, is the period of cultural European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD. It comprises the interwoven civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, known together as the Greco-Roman world, which played a major role in shaping the culture of the Mediterranean basin. It is the period during which ancient Greece and Rome flourished and had major influence throughout much of Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. Classical antiquity was succeeded by Late antiquity.

Conventionally, it is often considered to begin with the earliest recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th centuries BC) and end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. Such a wide span of history and territory covers many disparate cultures and periods. Classical antiquity may also refer to an idealized vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe's words, "the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome".

The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason) was a period in the history of Europe and Western civilization during which the Enlightenment, an intellectual and cultural movement, flourished, emerging in the late 17th century in Western Europe and reaching its peak in the 18th century, as its ideas spread more widely across Europe and into the European colonies, in the Americas and Oceania. Characterized by an emphasis on reason, empirical evidence, and scientific method, the Enlightenment promoted ideals of individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress, and natural rights. Its thinkers advocated for constitutional government, the separation of church and state, and the application of rational principles to social and political reform.

The Enlightenment emerged from and built upon the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, which had established new methods of empirical inquiry through the work of figures such as Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton. Philosophical foundations were laid by thinkers including René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, and John Locke, whose ideas about reason, natural rights, and empirical knowledge became central to Enlightenment thought. The dating of the period of the beginning of the Enlightenment can be attributed to the publication of Descartes' Discourse on the Method in 1637, with his method of systematically disbelieving everything unless there was a well-founded reason for accepting it, and featuring his dictum, Cogito, ergo sum ('I think, therefore I am'). Others cite the publication of Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution and the beginning of the Enlightenment. European historians traditionally dated its beginning with the death of Louis XIV of France in 1715 and its end with the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Many historians now date the end of the Enlightenment as the start of the 19th century, with the latest proposed year being the death of Immanuel Kant in 1804.

The Roman people was the ethnicity and the body of Roman citizens(Latin: Rōmānī; Ancient Greek: Ῥωμαῖοι Rhōmaîoi) during the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire. This concept underwent considerable changes throughout the long history of the Roman civilisation, as its borders expanded and contracted. Originally only including the ethnic Latins from Rome itself, Roman citizenship was extended to the rest of the Italic peoples by the 1st century BC and to nearly every subject of the Roman empire in late antiquity. At their peak, the Romans ruled large parts of Europe, the Near East, and North Africa through conquests made during the Roman Republic and the subsequent Roman Empire. Although defined primarily as a citizenship, "Roman-ness" has also and variously been described as a cultural identity, a nationality, or a multi-ethnicity that eventually encompassed a vast regional diversity.

Citizenship grants, demographic growth, and settler and military colonies rapidly increased the number of Roman citizens. The increase achieved its peak with Emperor Caracalla's AD 212 Antonine Constitution, which extended citizenship rights to all free inhabitants of the empire. Roman identity provided a larger sense of common identity and became important when distinguishing from non-Romans, such as barbarian settlers and invaders. Roman culture was far from homogeneous; though there was a common cultural idiom, one of the strengths of the Roman Empire was also its ability to incorporate traditions from other cultures, notably but not exclusively Greece.