North Asia

Area	13,100,000 km2 (5,100,000 sq mi)
Population	37 million (2021 census)
Population density	2.6 per km2 (7.4 per mi2)
GDP (nominal)	$480 billion (2021)[1]
GDP per capita	$13,000 (2021)
Ethnic groups	Majority Slavic Minority Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic peoples
Religions	Majority Orthodox Christian
Demonym	Siberian, North Asian
Countries	Russia
Languages	Official languages Russian Other languages Ainu Chukotko-Kamchatkan Eskimo–Aleut Mongolic Tungusic Turkic Uralic Yeniseian Yukaghir Others
Time zones	8 time zones UTC+5 / MSK+2 UTC+6 / MSK+3 UTC+7 / MSK+4 UTC+8 / MSK+5 UTC+9 / MSK+6 UTC+10 / MSK+7 UTC+11 / MSK+8 UTC+12 / MSK+9
Internet TLD	.ru
Calling code	Zone 7
Largest cities	List Barnaul Chelyabinsk Irkutsk Kemerovo Khabarovsk Krasnoyarsk Novokuznetsk Novosibirsk (largest) Omsk Tomsk Tyumen Vladivostok Yakutsk Yekaterinburg Chita
UN M49 code	151 – Eastern Europe 150 – Europe 001 – World

North Asia or Northern Asia, also referred to as Siberia, is the northern region of Asia, which is defined in geographical terms and is coextensive with the Asian part of Russia, and consists of three federal districts of Russia: Ural, Siberian, and the Far Eastern. North Asia is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to its north; by Eastern Europe to its west; by Central and East Asia to its south; and by the Pacific Ocean and North America to its east. It covers an area of 13,100,000 square kilometres (5,100,000 sq mi), or 8.8% of Earth's total land area; and is the largest subregion of Asia by area, but is also the least populated, with a population of around 37 million, accounting for merely 0.74% of Asia's population.

Topographically, the region is dominated by the Eurasian Plate, except for its eastern part, which lies on the North American, Amurian, and Okhotsk Plates. It is divided by three major plains: the West Siberian Plain, Central Siberian Plateau, and Verhoyansk-Chukotka collision zone. The Uralian orogeny in the west raised Ural Mountains, the informal boundary between Asia and Europe. Tectonic and volcanic activities are frequently occurred in the eastern part of the region as part of the Ring of Fire, evidenced by the formation of island arcs such as the Kuril Islands and ultra-prominent peaks such as Klyuchevskaya Sopka, Kronotsky, and Koryaksky. The central part of North Asia is a large igneous province called the Siberian Traps, formed by a massive eruption occurred 250 million years ago. The formation of the traps coincided with the Permian–Triassic extinction event.

North Asia, geographically, is a subregion of Asia. However, because it was colonised and incorporated into Russia, some international organisations either consider or classify North Asia as part of Eastern Europe along with European Russia. European cultural influences, specifically Russian, are predominant in the entire region, due to it experiencing Russian emigration from Europe starting from the 16th century.^[2] Slavs and other Indo-Europeans make up the vast majority of North Asia's population, and over 85% of the region's population is of European descent.^[3][4]

History

Map of Northern Asia in 1921

The region was first populated by hominins in the Late Pleistocene, approximately 100,000 years ago,^[5] and modern humans are confirmed to arrived in the region by 45,000 years ago^[6][7] with the first humans in the region having West Eurasian origins.^[8] Its Neolithic culture is characterized by characteristic stone production techniques and the presence of pottery of eastern origin.^[8] The Bronze Age began during the 3rd millennium BCE,^[9] with influences of Indo-Iranian cultures as evidenced by the Andronovo culture. During the 1st millennium BCE, polities such as the Scythians and Xiongnus emerged in the region, who often clashed with its Persian and Chinese neighbors in the south. The Göktürks dominated southern Siberia during the 1st millennium CE, while in the early 2nd millennium, the Mongol Empire and its successor states ruled the region. The Khanate of Sibir was one of the last independent Turkic states in North Asia before its conquest by the Tsardom of Russia in the 16th century. Russia would then gradually annex the region into its territory until the Convention of Peking was signed in 1860. After the October Revolution in 1917, the region was contested between the Bolsheviks and Whites until the Soviet Union asserted full control in 1923. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left Russia as the administrator of the region.

Geography

Putorana Plateau

Kamchatka Peninsula

For geographic and statistical reasons, the UN geoscheme and various other classification schemes will not subdivide countries, and thus place all of Russia in the Europe or Eastern Europe subregion.

There are no mountain chains in Northern Asia to prevent air currents from the Arctic flowing down over the plains of Siberia and Turkestan.^[10]

The plateau and plains of Northern Asia comprise the West Siberian lowlands; the Angara Shield, with the Taimyr Peninsula, the coastal lowlands (North Siberian Lowland and East Siberian Lowland), the Central Siberian Plateau, (Putorana Plateau, Lena Plateau, Anabar Plateau, Tunguska Plateau, Vilyuy Plateau, and the Lena-Angara Plateau); and the Lena–Vilyuy Lowland.^[11] Western Siberia is usually regarded as the Northwest Asia, Kazakhstan also sometimes included there. However, Northwest Asia sometimes refers to Caucasus or nearby provinces.

Geomorphology

Further information: Geology of Asia and Geology of Russia

The geomorphology of Northern Asia in general is imperfectly known, although the deposits and mountain ranges are well known.^[11]

To compensate for new sea floor having been created in the Siberian basin, the whole of the Eurasian Plate has pivoted about a point in the New Siberian Islands, causing compression in the Verkhoyansk mountains, which were formed along the eastern margin of the Angara Shield by tectonic uplift during the Mesozoic Era. There is a southern boundary to this across the northern margin of the Alpine folds of Afghanistan, India, Nepal, and Bhutan, which at the east of Brahmaputra turns to run south towards the Bay of Bengal along the line of the Naga Hills and the Arakan Yoma, continues around Indonesia, and follows the edge of the continental shelf along the eastern seaboard of China. The Eurasian Plate and the North American Plate meet across the neck of Alaska, following the line of the Aleutian Trench, rather than meeting at the Bering Straits.^[11]

Northern Asia is built around the Angara Shield, which lies between the Yenisey River and the Lena River. It developed from fragments of Laurasia, whose rocks were mainly Precambrian crystalline rocks, gneisses, and schists, and Gondwana. These rocks can be found in the Angara Shield, Inner Mongolian-Korean Shield, Ordes Shield, and Southeast Asia Shield. The fragments have been subject to orogenesis around their margins, giving a complex of plateaux and mountain ranges. One can find outcrops of these rocks in unfolded sections of the Shields. Their presence has been confirmed below Mesozoic and later sediments.^[11]

There are three main periods of mountain building in Northern Asia, although it has occurred many times. The outer fold mountains that are on the margins of the Shields and that only affected Asia north of the line of the Himalayas, are attributed to the Caledonian and Hercynian orogenies of the late Palaeozoic Era. The Alpine orogeny caused extensive folding and faulting of Mesozoic and early Tertiary sediments from the Tethys geosyncline. The Tibetan and Mongolian plateaux, and the structural basins of Tarim, Qaidam, and Junggar, are delimited by major east–west lithospheric faults that were probably the results of stresses caused by the impact of the Indian Plate against Laurasia. Erosion of the mountains caused by this orogeny has created a large amount of sediment, which has been transported southwards to produce the alluvial plains of India, China, and Cambodia, and which has also been deposited in large amounts in the Tarim and Dzungarian basins.^[11]

Gulf of Ob Novaya Zemlya Kara Sea Yenisey Ob	Taymyr Peninsula Severnaya Zemlya Arctic Ocean Central Siberian Plateau Siberian Federal District	Lena Sakha Republic Laptev Sea New Siberian Islands Kolyma Verkhoyansk Range
Urals Federal District Kazakhstan Ob Irtysh Altai Tian Shan Syr Darya Taklamakan Himalayas Pamir Hindukush Tibetan	Lake Baikal Mongolia Gobi North China Plain Yangtze Plain Plateau	Stanovoy Range Manchuria Korea Sakhalin Amur Sea of Okhotsk Japan Pacific Ocean
Physical map of Northern Asia (the map also contains parts of Central and East Asia).

Northern Asia was glaciated in the Pleistocene, but this played a less significant part in the geology of the area compared to the part that it played in North America and Europe. The Scandinavian ice sheet extended to the east of the Urals, covering the northern two thirds of the Ob Basin and extending onto the Angara Shield between the Yenisei River and the Lena River. There are legacies of mountain glaciation to be found on the east Siberian mountains, on the mountains of the Kamchatka Peninsula, on the Altai, on Tian Shan, and on other small areas of mountains, ice caps remain on the islands of Severnaya Zemlya and Novaya Zemlya, and several Central Asian mountains still have individual glaciers. North Asia itself has permafrost, ranging in depths from 30 to 600 metres and covering an area of 9.6 million km².^[11]

Several of the mountainous regions are volcanic, with both the Koryak Mountains and the Kamchatka Peninsula having active volcanoes. The Anadyr Plateau is formed from igneous rocks. The Mongolian Plateau has an area of basaltic lavas and volcanic cones.^[11]

The Angara Shield also underlies the lowlands of the Ob River, but to the south and east in the Central Asian mountains and in the East Siberian Mountains there are folded and faulted mountains of Lower Palaeozoic rocks.^[11]

Demographics

Russians in Vladivostok, on Russia's Pacific Coast

Most estimates are that there are around 33 million Russian citizens living east of the Ural Mountains, a widely recognized but informal geographical divide between Europe and Asia. Of these Russian citizens of Siberia, most are Slavic-origin Russians and russified Ukrainians.^[12] The Turkic peoples who are native to some parts of Siberia and native Tungusic and Mongolic peoples are now a minority in North Asia due to the Russification process during the last three centuries. Russian census records indicate they make up only an estimated 10% of the region's population, with the largest being the Buryats numbering at 445,175, and the Yakuts at 443,852. According to the 2002 census, there are 500,000 Tatars in Siberia, but 300,000 of them are Volga Tatars who settled in Siberia during periods of colonization.^[13] Other ethnic groups that live in the region and make a significant portion include ethnic Germans numbering about 400,000.^[14]

In 1875, Chambers reported the population of Northern Asia to be 8 million.^[10] Between 1801 and 1914, an estimated 7 million settlers moved from European Russia to Siberia, 85% during the quarter-century before World War I.^[15]

Largest cities or towns in North Asia [16][17]
	Rank		Region	Pop.
Novosibirsk Yekaterinburg	1	Novosibirsk	Siberia	1,602,915	Chelyabinsk Omsk
	2	Yekaterinburg	Ural (region)	1,455,514
	3	Chelyabinsk	Ural (region)	1,198,858
	4	Omsk	Siberia	1,178,391
	5	Krasnoyarsk	Siberia	1,082,933
	6	Tyumen	Ural (region)	744,554
	7	Barnaul	Siberia	633,301
	8	Irkutsk	Siberia	623,736
	9	Khabarovsk	Russian Far East	616,242
	10	Vladivostok	Russian Far East	606,589

Administration

Subdivisions of Asian Russia (Siberia)

Federal Subjects	Capital	Area km2	Population 2010
Kurgan Oblast	Kurgan	71,000	910,807
Sverdlovsk Oblast	Yekaterinburg	194,800	4,297,747
Tyumen Oblast	Tyumen	143,520	3,395,755
Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (Yugra)	Khanty-Mansiysk	534,800	1,532,243
Chelyabinsk Oblast	Chelyabinsk	87,900	3,476,217
Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug	Salekhard	750,300	522,904
Ural Federal District	Yekaterinburg	1,818,500	12,080,526
Altai Republic	Gorno-Altaysk	92,900	206,168
Altai Krai	Barnaul	168,000	2,419,755
Irkutsk Oblast	Irkutsk	774,800	2,248,750
Kemerovo Oblast	Kemerovo	95,700	2,763,135
Krasnoyarsk Krai	Krasnoyarsk	2,366,800	2,828,187
Novosibirsk Oblast	Novosibirsk	177,800	2,665,911
Omsk Oblast	Omsk	141,100	1,977,665
Tomsk Oblast	Tomsk	314,400	1,047,394
Tuva Republic	Kyzyl	168,600	307,930
Republic of Khakassia	Abakan	61,600	532,403
Siberian Federal District	Novosibirsk	4,361,800	17,178,298
Amur Oblast	Blagoveshchensk	361,900	830,103
Republic of Buryatia	Ulan-Ude	351,300	971,021
Jewish Autonomous Oblast	Birobidzhan	36,300	176,558
Zabaykalsky Krai	Chita	431,900	1,107,107
Kamchatka Krai	Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky	464,300	322,079
Magadan Oblast	Magadan	462,500	156,996
Primorsky Krai	Vladivostok	164,700	1,956,497
Sakha Republic	Yakutsk	3,083,500	958,528
Sakhalin Oblast	Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk	87,100	497,973
Khabarovsk Krai	Khabarovsk	787,600	1,343,869
Chukotka Autonomous Okrug	Anadyr	721,500	50,526
Far Eastern Federal District	Vladivostok	6,952,600	8,371,257
North Asia	–	13,132,900	37,630,081

See also

• Arctic Region
• Far North
• European Russia
• Asia
• Geography of Asia
• Northeast Asia
• Russian Far East
• Ural region
• Siberian High, a semipermament anticyclone

References

External links

• Media related to North Asia at Wikimedia Commons