United States of Eurasia
“Why split these states when there can be only one?”
On 2009, Muse released their fifth album, The Resistance. As the name suggests, this album is about, well, resistance. With this album, Muse won Grammy Award for Rock Album in 2011. Of all the 11 songs, there is one song titled United States of Eurasia. What is Eurasia?
Eurasia is a term to describe both Asia and Europe. Although a single land, it is divided by Ural and Caucasus Mountain and Caspian Lake, making two continents, Europe and Asia. Now to the main question, why split these two continents?
Both Europe and Asia, despite being in a single land, has many differences. Europe is 10.18 million km² and Asia is 44.58 million km². These will make Eurasia is the biggest continent on Earth, around one-third of the size of all landmass on Earth. The population is a lot denser in Asia than Europe. Of the top 5 countries with highest population, 4 are from Asia, China, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan. Turkey and Russia are several factors unifying these two continents. Other than Turkey and Russia, there are several countries that span between both Europe and Asia.
There are some ways on how continents are divided. One is geology. It is based on the tectonic plate. This is the easiest and simplest way to divide continents. The other is geography, by using the concept of continental divide.
Eurasia is a single slab of Eurasian tectonic plate. This plate spans from Russia to northern part of Atlantic Ocean. Although India and Arab are separated as a single plate, Indian plate and Arabian plate respectively, and some part of Russia is in North American plate, but still, most of Europe and Asia are a single tectonic plate.
The similar case does not happen in America. Is America a continent, or is it two continents, North America and South America? Well, the answer is the latter. America is divided into two parts according to Tectonic Plate, North America stands on North American Plate and South America stands on South American Plate. The same goes for Africa, Australia, and Antarctica, they have their own tectonic plates.
With that many definitions on dividing continents, there are several models of how many continents on Earth. There is a model with just 4 continents, Australia, Antarctica, America(north and south combined), and Afro-Eurasia(Africa, Europe, and Asia).
Division of Eurasia is more social than physical. It is part of social and historical construct. There are several differences in language, culture, race and so on between Europe and Asia. Eurasia is a geopolitical concept. It is now even become an ideology called Eurasianism. It has become a promising power in dethroning domination from America.
Coming from the band that released songs about black hole, neutron star, thermodynamics, algorithm, and so on, United States of Eurasia doesn’t seems so weird right?
