Europe Europe is one of the seven traditional continents of the Earth. Physically and geologically, Europe is the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, west of Asia. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea, and to the southeast by the waterways adjoining the Mediterranean to and including the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains. On the east, Europe is divided from Asia by the water divide of the Ural Mountains and by the Caspian Sea. Europe is the world's second-smallest continent in terms of area, covering about 10,400,000 square kilometres (4,010,000 sq mi) or 2.0% of the Earth's surface. The only continent smaller than Europe is Australia. In terms of population, it is the third-largest continent (after Asia and Africa) with a population of some 710,000,000 or about 11% of the world's population. However, the term continent can refer to a cultural and political distinction or a physiographic one, leading to various perspectives about Europe's precise borders, area, and population.
This section holds a short summary of the history of the area of present-day Europe, illustrated with maps, including historical maps of former countries and empires that included present-day Europe.
Celts in Europe. This is a rough estimate from several sources. Blue: extent of Celtic influence 1500 BCE - 1000 BCE. Purple: extent of Celtic influence 400 BCE
La Tène Culture area, Celts' urheimat, V century BC
Celts spread in III century BC, according to Francisco Villar's Los Indoeuropeos y los origenes de Europa, Italian version, p. 446
Celts in Europe 800 - 400 BC. The green area suggests a possible extent of (proto-)Celtic influence around 1000 BC
Celts in Europe
Celts in Europe
Celts: Hallstatt (yellow) and La Tène (green) cultures
The Germanic migrations of the fifth century were triggered by the destruction of the Gothic kingdoms by the Huns in 372-375. The city of Rome was captured and looted by the Visigoths in 410 and by the Vandals in 455.
Europe in 400
Europe in 450
The Huns Empire. By the end of 454, it will have collapsed.
Vandals in 455
Europe in 476
Middle Ages
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Europe in 526
Europe in 526-600
Austrasia and Neustria
The Frankish Empire
The Mediterranean in 800
The growth of Frankish power, 481–814, showing Francia as it originally was after the crumbling of the Western Roman Empire
Until his death in 814, Charlemagne ruled an empire which included modern Catalonia, France, western Germany, the Low Countries, and northern Italy.
Map showing Scandinavian settlement in the eighth (dark red), ninth (red), tenth (orange) and eleventh (yellow) centuries. Areas denoted in green are those affected by frequent viking incursions but with little or no Scandinavian settlement.
The WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Atlas of the World is an organized and commented collection of geographical, political and historical maps available at Wikimedia Commons. The main page is therefore the portal to maps and cartography on Wikimedia. That page contains links to entries by country, continent and by topic as well as general notes and references.
Every entry has an introduction section in English. If other languages are native and/or official in an entity, introductions in other languages are added in separate sections. The text of the introduction(s) is based on the content of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. For sources of the introduction see therefore the Wikipedia entries linked to. The same goes for the texts in the history sections.
Historical maps are included in the continent, country and dependency entries.
The status of various entities is disputed. See the content for the entities concerned.
The maps of former countries that are more or less continued by a present-day country or had a territory included in only one or two countries are included in the atlas of the present-day country. For example the Ottoman Empire can be found in the Atlas of Turkey.
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