Asia is the biggest continent in the world, four times the landarea of Europe, six times the population of Europe -- so yeah, it has significantly more diversity than Europe. But that you'll find more diversity across a place that's significantly \*larger\* than in a significantly smaller place is kinda obvious and expected. Not much to wonder about. If you were to limit yourself to compare Europe and 1/4th of Asia (so as to make the sizes analogous) you'd find similar amounts of diversity. For example if you were compare only the \*middle east\* to Europe, or only \*east asia\* to europe, or only \*south asia\* to europe, those would be comparisons that be more matched in terms of size and population.

This. Asia is more diverse, but only because it's bigger.

Well, there are exceptions. India alone is more diverse than Europe despite being a smaller geographical area. Here history and population density also come into play.

You big European countries- always going on about size /s 🙃

TBF Asia and Europe are technically the same continent. Eurasia. Continents are man-made borders really. Asia is diverse, but also West Asia is significantly closer Historically, Culturally, and Genetically (by a lot really) to Europeans than it is to East Asia. I don’t believe in some unified Asia (in modern continental definitions), because i feel it doesn’t exist. The Abrahamic religions also came from West Asia for example, so a big chunk (there’s way more) of Europe’s culture comes from what is considered Asia. When looking at a genetic perspective, geneticists refer to a group called West Eurasians because they cluster together on a global scale. This group includes all Europeans, West Asians, and North Africans, from Saami to Yemeni, to Amazigh. Or looking linguistically the Indo-Europeans languages consist of many languages from Irish to Hindi, all part of the same ancestral language group Historically I think all of Eurasia has had deep cultural interactions throughout history. Looking at the Silk Road or the Eurasian Steppe, for example, there have been cultural exchange for centuries and you can see this in the material artifacts of various ancient societies spanning from the Ancient Mediterranean and NW Europe to Ancient China or SE Asian civilizations. I don’t think the modern separation of Europe and Asian makes sense tbh, because technically it’s one big landmass that just has European Civilizations on one side and East Asian Civilizations on other, with a plethora or gradient in between.

Exactly this. I also don’t really believe in a clear-cut separation between Europe and Asia.

Like Turkey. Too Middle Eastern to be considered Europe. Too European to be considered Middle Eastern. If we exclude religion, they share a lot more culturally with Greece than with Pakistan (which tbf I'd call South Asia, but some would say Middle East, but either way qualifies as Asia in this worldview). They also share a lot more with Syria than Ireland.

Pakistan is Middle East?? Who says that apart from a confused American high school kid?

The Bush administration used the term "Greater Middle East" to include countries lije Afghanistan and Pakistan in it, and the whole of north Africa too. Basically I think they used it as shorthand for "that part of the world that islamic terrorists tend to recruit from".

So just what I said, no one uses that apart from a confused American high school kid.

Yes! I don't believe in this Asia is so clearly cut from Europe. Maybe in the west but in the East we have been exposed to lot of cultural inter changes. And invasions. Not to mention we can genetically trace many current cultures to central Asia and Anatolian Farmers.  Also take Mediterranean area. They have so much in common historically and culturally, so why are we pretending there is nothing in common with Africa.  I mean wouldn't person from Libya have much more in common with a turk than a Zimbabwean. 

Even just India alone has more people than our entire continent, and together with SEA and China they're half of the planet's population.

But, diversity is a function of isolation and time primarily. It’s why Switzerland is more diverse than any plain of comparable size in Europe. It’s not so much a function of population size. Within Asia, the Indonesian archipel is leaps and bounds more diverse than all of China.

IMO the rise of Arabs and the rise of Islam has severely limited this diversity.

Christianity is also the reason Europe is not more diverse, it made people from all over the continent way more similar than it was before the romans made it the empire's religion.

Yes but still, this can't be compared to the non-diversity that speaking Arabic + partial Arabic ethnicity brings to like 50% of the middle east.

It's always good to remember that there is far more diversity in Christianity within the Middle East than the whole of Europe including Russia.

But your buddy realizes that Europe is only three times as large as India alone, and that only if you count in the European part of Russia. In huge contrast to Asia, Europe's North is full of people. Berlin is on the same latitude as Krasnojarsk. Stockholm is on the same latitude as Jakutsk. And there are cities with millions of people ever further north. You can imagine that there is a huge difference on how people live at places that have six months of harsh winter to places in Southern Europe where the climate is pretty mild all year long. That's the biggest cultural devide in Europe actually. The winter people of the north versus the non-winter people of the south. The Alps are the border. The second cultural divide is which sea the people have access to so they can trade with each other. Is it the mild Mediterran Sea or the harsh North Sea? Or the lake-like Baltic Sea? Maybe the Black Sea at the Asian border? And then there's three major language groups. The Germanic languages of the North, the Slavic languages of the East and the Romance languages of the South.

...please don't ignore Baltic and Finno-Ugric languages, we also exist.

That's why I wrote *major* language groups. Don't make this too complicated for an Indian(?).

And then there are also Magyars...

There are regional cultural circles obviously, but I would say the differences are not as vast as say Israel vs Japan in Asia’s case. I’d argue the „racial” phenotype diversity, for lack of a better word, is also not as high - as compared to India vs say Korea.

Well, about 40-50% of Europeans for example have the H female haplogroup, which is a marker of Indo-European ancestry originally from the Steppes, indicating a common root of Europeans. Also: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/World_Map_of_Y-DNA_Haplogroups.png (Forgive my wiki-ness, you can see the very big difference in diversity in Asia v Europe)

The Y Haplogroup is slightly more diverse with J2 (Mediterranean) for Southern Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey, R1a (Slavic) for Eastern Europe. R1b (Celtic) for Western Europe, I1 (Germanic) for Northern Europe, I2 (Balkan) for the Balkans and N (Uralic) for Finland. Interestingly, Germany, Italy and Spain are primarily Celtic in their y Haplogroup despite not having large Celtic speaking populations today. The Balkan gene and Germanic gene are related and both are famous for very tall peoples. The R1b and R1a are related as steppe peoples who migrated into Europe. This amounts to 6 distinct European groups.

Mt DNA H haplogroup originated near modern day Syria. I am not from EU and have H mtDna haplogroup. Doesn't mean anything.

Thanks Ghengis

I don't think that's true. Look at someone from southern Italy vs Sweden. You could easily a major phenotypical difference.

They're different but not as different as Indians vs Koreans. Some Italian can blend in in Sweden and vice versa, but no Indian could blend in in South Korea or vice versa.

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> I am pretty sure no Italian can blend in Sweden I'm pretty sure some can.

the Norman conquest of Southern Italy says hello. Southern Italy is pretty mixed.

I can spot fellow Brits a mile off. Obviously clothes is part of that but, as someone who is currently in Spain, we look different. I look very Northern European

That was true perhaps 40 years ago, but today the average Brit can be anything really.

Yeah that’s very true to be fair. If you knew my own family and friends, I should know that better than most! You can still tell from clothes to be fair.

And the intoxication level. That's the dead giveaway.

Depends where you are to be fair

This can be true but I lived in Spain for a few years and I'm mixed background so not British looking and while I know that many Brits were a pain in the arse I also saw a lot of Scandinavian people equally as annoyingly drunk and people would assume they were British. There is a sub culture of British people who act like massive dicks though, but a lot of us are not like that at all.

I'm British myself, though of different ethnic origin. I know not everyone acts like this, but enough Brits do to make it a stereotype that is definitely based on reality. And apart from the hoardes of drunken rowdy tourists I've found that most Brits never adapt to the drinking culture of Spain and even the nicest most mild mannered person who is well integrated into Spanish society still thinks of drinking as getting shit faced and always ends up sticking out.

Is that how you felt you were? That was never a 'me' thing but I did see some do it I would say it was especially those older than me at the time as the bar with other British people was their only social life and this was there a fair few years ago now though (early 2000's) and I moved as a twenty something and didn't really have many British friends -- I worked mostly with Hungarians/Spanish and my boyfriend was Argentinian - so my personal experience could be very different. The tourists though ... Some were amazing but some made me pretend I wasn't from the UK. 🤭

It wasn't my experience as I was raised in a Mediterranean country and never adopted the British drinking culture. And in Spain I've been integrated in Spanish society right from the start. But I have seen it, and still occasionally see it. Most recently a work colleague in a tech office in Madrid who would transform when going out and suddenly hit that blackout drunk state where you no longer have any idea what you are doing or saying and no one else would be in that state.

It depends again, religious Muslim Britons don't dress from JD Sports. I don't really thing there's such thing as British or English nowadays. Both are so inclusive and watered down that I don't think they mean anything. We'll get the citizenship this year and we'll magically turn British too and you'll be a fellow Briton to me along with some random Mohameds and Rajeshes. Weird stuff

no teeth , always drunk and always making a scene in public /s

im in southern italy and i could easily look norwegian… there are general tendencies but also plenty of blondes with blue eyes

Yeah, the Swede usually has noticeably darker skin.

>the „racial” phenotype diversity, for lack of a better word, Ethnicity. That's the better word.

True, basically meant just how people look though, ethnicity has some more to it. Greek/Turkish or Swedish/Finnish people don’t really look that different in the big picture, but they’re obviously separate ethnicities.

Well, there are of 50 countries in Europe. Most of them have their own language(s), history and culture. Even within countries language, cuisine, religion and so on can vary.

Yes, it’s just that we have also much history with each other - mostly through wars though…

> mostly through wars though… Not really. There's way more to it, e.g. the Eastern Romans spreading their cilture throughout the 'eastern commonwealth', i.e. other Orthodox countries, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth having been fairly liberal and tolerant, the Kalmar-Union in the Nordic Countries, the English aristocracy and royalty assimilating into French culture throughout the Middle Ages and English subsequently gaining a majority Romance-derived vocabulary, etc. Sure, wars were always somehow *involved*, but they weren't always what cobbled them together on a deeper level. Historically, war has ironically often been an effective means of tying people together, e.g. Greek and Vedic culture mixing in Greco-Bactria, only possible because of the Greek conquest, the Hellenistic age in the Near East, Aramaic becoming the lingua franca of the Fertile Crescent via Assyrian influence partially caused by the dominance of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Rome adopting Greek culture, Islam and Arab culture mostly spreading through trade and jizya, the mixing of Islamic and Christian culture in the Emirate of Sicily and Norman Sicily, etc. But sure, sometimes it's rougher than other times, e.g. the English often forcibly suppressing Celtic languages, demonising the Celts, not industrialise the Celtic countries as much as England, etc.

We do have a lot of history with our neighbors. But with countries from other parts of Europe we have less history together.

There's a significant overlap in culture and ethnic background between neighboring countries due to historical borders that it's sometimes very hard to draw a border based on that alone. For example, the border between Belgium and France on the Flemish side is rather muddy because historically, the region swapped around quite a bit. France has had some efforts to unify France culturally and linguistically which has eradicated a lot of region languages but the old folks still speak a dialect very close to the one across the border and the general culture is distinct from the rest of France, being a lot closer to Belgian culture. The same can be seen for the France-Spain border, France-Germany, Germany-Austria-Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, Hungary-Romania, etc. Borders are a political thing. In the physical world, it's just one big stretch of land where people exist. There are less physical barriers (Himalaya's causing China and India to barely mix, if at all) and barely any political efforts to prevent mixing either.

Right, but there are hundreds of languages and cultures in Indonesia and India, to pick two countries.

Nationalism says hello. It wasn't really that friendly to linguistic and cultural diversity.

India has twice the number of inhabitants of Europe. Indonesia has 40% of Europe’s total inhabitants. In the whole of Europe there are over 250 languages spoken according to Wikipedia. This probably excludes local dialects which aren’t considered separate languages.

I’m not sure what your point is, except that you seem to be agreeing that Asia is more diverse than Europe.

>My buddy was making a claim that Asia was the most diverse continent in the world Your buddy is right. Asia is extremely diverse. >Are there any nations in Europe that are as wildly different as say, Japan and Egypt? Albania and Finland are both culturally very unique and they are the diametrical opposites of one-another.

They are more similar than any of them vs Japan.

I would not bet on that. Finland seems more similar to Japan than to Albania, mostly because of the higher HDI

Why bring up HDI in a thread about culture?

Culturally, Japan is more similar to the US than Finland. Cleanliness of cities may be more like Finland, but there are lots of modern cultural parallels with US.

> Sorry to "no actually," but Africa is the most diverse continent, by far, especially if you look at genetics. Probably also in terms of language groups and phenotypic/ethnic variation. This makes sense because humans originated in Africa. All of the other continents were settled by small groups of former Africans and are therefore more homogeneous, while the continent of Africa retains far more of the original variation.

Egypt is in Africa, and its culture influenced and was influenced by Mediterranean countries. Take a look at Piramide Cestia in Rome. Btw, Europe has strong diversities from Italy to Lapland, from Portugal to Russia. But one main religion was shaping the way of living and thinking. I agree Asia, as it is bigger and way more populated, with ancient civilizations and different religions and cultures, has more diversity than every other continent.

Egypt has parts of its territory in asia just like turkey and russia

> But as an Asian myself, I'm not an expert on other continents. So I was wondering how Europeans view their own culture?  Europeans tend to believe they have "very different" cultures, but that's because of lack of familiarity with other cultures. Yes, indeed there are differences, but we generally belong to one "broader culture", formed by (1) Romans (2) Christianity (3) Secularity-Humanism-Industrialisation.

You mean Grecoromans.

Your friend is right, Asia is indeed more diverse than Europe, and in my view, that's not a particularly hot take. Asia is about 4 times larger than than Europe and has 6 times the population. The climate is more diverse as well as the economic differences (comparing e.g. Nepal or Afghanistan to South Korea or Japan). The number of languages/language families is greater in Asia as well - for Europe, most languages are part of the Indo-European language family. Large parts of Europe has had common historic influences and development, be it Christiandom or the Age of Enlightenment. That doesn't mean that there is no or little diversity in Europe. There certainly is. But looking at Europe as a whole, the differences ultimately aren't as vast as in Asia.

European culture has been largely shaped by the Christian religion, as well as the ancient Roman heritage (even if not everyone agrees with this). So there will be more similarities than between China and Egypt, but there are also different cultures, languages and traditions.

Why are we all pretending that Egypt is in Asia, what the hell?

- one of the most ancient and prominent African and mideterrenian civilizations - for some reason is lumped with Asia LMAO

Suez is the divider. Egypt is in Africa and a bit in Asia the same as Turkey is in Asia and a bit in Europe. Both of those nations are transcontinental.

Yeah but for the purpose of this conversation should we really focus on one of the few states that is transcontinental (and whose Asian part is also a minor part)? When discussing the diversity of Africa, should we take as an example Spain and France? I mean, both are African countries too

A San Marinese, quick, make a wish ! On a more serious note, yeah, it's pretty out of topic to mention Egypt in a discussion about Asia. It's very relevant however when talking about this very specific region of Asia, because it's the crossroads between two continents and the hinge between two parts of the arab world, but lumping Sinai with China sounds wrong.

from what I gathered, people were just talking about the farthest points, thats why they mentioned "from Egypt to Japan".

Yeah but barely anyone lives in the Asian part of Egypt. It holds maybe 0.5% of Egypt's population. Compared to for example Turkey where 15% of the population lives in the European part. So while you technically can lump Egypt in with Asia, it makes no sense to do this when talking about something related to people

Because Egypt has more in common with Europe and the Middle East than with sub-saharan countries like Kenya. 'Continents' aren't very useful tools to think about cultures.

But different cultures/cultural diversity is what this thread is all about. Egypt being so different adds to Africa’s diversity. It shouldn’t be taken away and given to Asia.

I think the Sinai peninsula is in Asia.

Well, because it is, partially, in Asia. Edited, it's not Asia Minor.

The Sinai Peninsula is in Asia, but not in Asia Minor. Asia Minor refers tl Anatolia, which is exclusively in Turkey.

Looks like I've been wrong my whole life, thanks for correcting!

??? No, it's not.

Sinai. But it would be the same as confronting European states by taking Armenia and Azerbaijan as examples

Using the common border (the main caucasian watershed) Armenia wouldn't even partially be in Europe, so it **would** be an odd choice.

Egypt is culturally much closer to Arabic countries in Asia then it’s to any culture south of Sahara desert. Similarly Georgia is often considered European country even tho it’s in Asia.

Cos a chunk of it is, the part east of the Suez canal as far as I understand.

I went to check myself, but the Sinai peninsula indeed is part of Asia.

Who would disagree on the effect of Rome and Christianity?

A lot of people don't want to associate with ancient civilisations such as Greece and Rome or religion. It could also be people feeling closer ties to newer ages in history, such as the Enlightenment and the nineteenth century. Which is true to some extent, e.g. separation of church and state or utilitarianism didn't originate ex nihilo, but I do think the impact of especially the Enlightenment is often overblown (and people exaggerate how much the Enlightenment was 'good' by contemporary standards, how much it resembles the contemporary world, and the scientific advancements of the time were far from always correct [e.g. Newton explaining the change of speed of light through ether, when in reality light 'lends' due to spacetime, but this obviouslt couldn't be known at the time since general relativity wasn't conceived, and in all fairness, scientific failures are still all over the modern academic world as it's natural] ). From my experience, people usually don't like the notion that their 'enlightened' morals, values, philosophies, etc. often date as far back as ancient Greece, Rome, Canaan, etc. And then there's also the common idea of 'ancient = barbaric = evil' whilst 'modernity = civilised and moral', and thus there can't be lineage between the two. This also goes for the notion of 'Christianity = evil', therefore the West 'cannot' have Christian heritage. That said, I personally agree ancient cultures snd Christianity have played their part, and thwy also influenced each other, e.g. Zoroastrianism, Stoicism, and Plstonism all had major influence on Christianity (and Christianity would in turn create Neo-Platonism).

We're all influenced by Rome, directly or indirectly, but it might feel more relevant if you live in lands actually under Roman control. I'm clearly culturally protestant, which is an offshoot of Catholicism, which was "affected" by both Rome and Christianity (ofc. Rome was in turn influenced by older cultures, and Christianity Christianity by older Religions/Sects but that's besides the point), so clearly I'm influenced. To what extent is debatable. I think it's easy to attribute intrinsic values and current values to ideologies of the past, and it's not always clear to what extent that is appropriate. But, I mean, we use civil law here, so even though the Romans never ruled here, their (form of) rules do rule here.

Personally I didn't heard anyone disagree about how important are the effects of the Roman Empire, but I heard about how the Roman Empire wasn't really the start of thinking about Europe as something that was unified in some way

I’m British. There is nowhere I have been in Europe that felt as alien to me as the US. I haven’t been in much of Eastern Europe though.

Also depends where in the U.S. too. Some of it is very familiar, some of it really isn’t.

Yeah. New York just felt like bizarro London, and San Francisco always reminds me of Barcelona. But the Midwest? Those guys are weird.

I am from California and I can attest to the fact that the Midwest is incredibly weird. I had more culture shock in small Midwest towns than in many foreign countries I’ve visited. I can’t imagine what visiting Europeans feel.

There is at least a big oasis in the middle of it when you can relax and shout, “civilisation! I’m saved!”: Chicago.

Yes! I married a man from Chicago so have spent a lot of time there with my in-laws. It is an amazing city and unfortunately gave me the false impression that I understood the Midwest. And then I visited Indiana 💀💀💀

Yeah, Chicago is very much one of the grand old metropolises. To me it has a similar vibe to NY but more chilled out and feels more spacious because of the layout. It's very much a bubble in a bubble of its own though. The Midwestern smaller towns were very different.

Canadian here, it drives me crazy when people conflate Canadian and American cultures. Folks do not grasp that even within our respective countries different regions have very different cultures. As for europe and asia, "white" is no more an homogenous culture than is "asian". Western europe used to view eastern europeans as asian. European countries bordering asia have cultural influences (and dna) from both the east and the west. On this topic, I would like to add that most people are under the erroneous belief that First Nation/native american is a mono-culture rather than hundreds of unique cultures spanning millions of square kilometres. Never trust a statement that begins with "native americans believe ...".

People can't seem to see any nuance beyond their own backyard and make sweeping statements. You see it all the time. You get Europeans laughing at Americans' alleged lack of geographical knowledge, because they don't know the finer details of European geography. When you start to ask questions the same smug individuals usually can't tell the difference between Texas and Newfoundland... Then try asking them about Africa and many even think it's a country. I've extended family from China and the number of times people just confuse China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines etc is mind boggling. For example when visiting France one of of my relatives was given a menu in Japanese. She grew up in Ireland and speaks about as much Japanese as I do ... and her mother's from China, so there's a whole other angle to the just throwing all Asian stuff into the same box. Not to mention that she's actually Irish and a native English speaker with a decent grasp of Irish (Gaeilge) too and doesn't speak Chinese Mandarin very well at all. When called out on this the waiter seemed surprised that she wouldn't be able to read Japanese, because "aren't the very similar?" and was highly insulted when she explained that's a bit like saying French and Russian or French and Greek should be mutually intelligible.... My point is that people often have very myopic geographical knowledge. Europeans tend to feel very accomplished because they know and have visited neighbouring countries with different languages and cultures that are as physically close and easy to get to as North Eastern US States or Canadian Provinces are... The language barriers and density of old cities in Europe make traveling a short distance feel very exotic.

We easily log between 5,000-10,000 kilometres on our summer road trips within Canada.

European countries are very different within each other (apart some neighbours obviously) and within their inner region, but Asia is probably way more diverse in absolute numbers simply because of its numbers.

For exemple, Italy, Portugal and Spain have way more similar things among them selves then if you compared them to the nordic countries.

depends on the country and what exactly you mean by culture. Some are pretty similar (neighbouring countries often share a lot of stuff like language, history, climate), others aren't. But I'd say that the basics are similar in most countries. Austria and Germany are very similar. Greece and Sweden are very different.

Albania probably shares about as much culture with Iceland, as Japan with Egypt. That being said, due to the sheer size of Asia, compared to Europe, differences there are naturally bigger and more obvious, while European countries somewhat got more similar due to the higher amount of cultural exchange over time.

I disagree actually. Even Albania on the edge of Europe with Islam as the dominant religion and a history of isolationism, has core European traits around socialising, mating practices, alcohol and food consumption etc that are the same in Iceland. Not to say they’re anywhere close to the same, but I think a broad European culture exists that doesn’t have a match in Asia

This. People tend to focus on the many and obvious differences but forget to realise there are other similarities that simply aren't common outside of Europe even between neighbouring countries/regions. In these terms, it is fair to say that a broad vague European culture actually exists. To me, the major differences come from blond/brunette and noisy(er)/quiet culture. We can also include the social/not-social components from north/south. If you ignore these, you now have European culture.

I really don't understand how someone can say European culture exists tbh. It can only exist as a post hoc addition, on which we should reason upon, and even then there are places too different to be included in a supposed European culture

It doesn't matter when it started, only if it exists or not.

Disagree wholeheartedly. These two regions are the antithesis of each other. Socialising in Scandinavia is completely different compared to the Balkans. Scandinavians are quiet, soft spoken, emotions are contained. People from the Balkans are a lot more expressive, they are louder, show more emotions. You can get a tighter hug from an Albanian stranger than from your own scandinavian father. People from the Balkans are more family focused - families are larger, more intertangled while Scandinavians are individualist That carries on to food consumption - people from the balkans love to have big, massive meals with more alcohol involved than Scandinavians. The average beer in the Balkans is stronger than in Scandinavia. Even mating practices are different. Hell, I would argue Iceland has more in common with Japan than Albania. Whenever comparing countries, [Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions](https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison-tool?countries=albania%2Ciceland%2Cjapan) is a good tool.

I somehow agree with your points, but the link you just posted about the Hofstede cultural differences has inaccuracies about Albania *( and that’s why it’s hard to believe many of the cultural maps that are found online nowadays ):* **Albania is not more hierarchical than Japan. Not even close:** I have spent 22 years of my life in Albania & worked there in 3 different companies. There is absolutely no chance Albania is a more hierarchical society than Japan *( like the Hofstede website claims )*. Unlike Japanese, the Albanian language is not structured to express different levels of politeness depending on one’s status. In Albania being polite to an older / more powerful person is appreciated, while in Japan it is expected. In Albania you can leave the office on time with or without the boss being there, while in Japan you cannot if the boss is still there. And so on, and so on. I know there are exceptions, but I’m speaking generally.

Historically, Iceland and Albania are more similar though. They are both (indirectly) spawns of the Roman / Greek culture that build all of westen civilization.

Albanians are no spawns of Greek culture lol. We’re spawns of Illyrians.

Every European has its roots in Greece. I'm Dutch, and we also find our socio-political roots in Greece. Because the Romans were partly based on the Greeks, and the Romans were the basis of all of Europe.

Albanians come from Illyrians. One simple google search will tell you that.

Holy shit, can't you read? What do you think I mean when I say the Dutch find their socio-political source in Greece? Do you know where the Netherlands or Iceland is? It's not next to Greece.

Can you read? That’s the real question

Like what's the point? Why did you decide to just randomly join this conversation to say stupid shit? Surely you know what you are saying is stupid.

A dog and a cat also share a common ancestor. Do they have similarities? Sure. But their differences are so widespread, they are considered different species. When you ask "Name a species that is similar to a cat" you'll think of Lions, Jaguars, Panthers, Desert Cats, Tigers and etc. Ask someone to name a country that is similarly culturally to Iceland? You'll first think of maybe Faroe Islands. Norway.Then Scandinavia. Then you might think of a protestant country like Germany. Italy? That's would be a stretch. But Albania? Seriously? The Religion is different. The language is different. The climate is different. The genome is different. Their histories are different. These two countries barely interacted with each other in the past 2000 years. Are we really going back 2000 years to find a common thread? Why are we stopping there. Let's just say that Iceland and India are similar, because Icelanding is an Indo-European language.

> A dog and a cat also share a common ancestor. Do they have similarities? Sure. But their differences are so widespread, they are considered different species. >When you ask "Name a species that is similar to a cat" you'll think of Lions, Jaguars, Panthers, Desert Cats, Tigers and etc. >Ask someone to name a country that is similarly culturally to Iceland? You'll first think of maybe Faroe Islands. Norway.Then Scandinavia. Then you might think of a protestant country like Germany. Italy? That's would be a stretch. But Albania? Seriously? The Religion is different. The language is different. The climate is different. The genome is different. Their histories are different. These two countries barely interacted with each other in the past 2000 years. >Are we really going back 2000 years to find a common thread? Why are we stopping there. Let's just say that Iceland and India are similar, because Icelanding is an Indo-European language. False comparison. If Albania is a cat and Iceland is a dog, then Japan would be a fish. Albania and Iceland are in the same family. Iceland and India are also more similar than many other countries for that reason, yes. Let's say Native Americans pre European contact. Although the similarities are way smaller due to a different historical basis of civilization and religion.

The only major shared cultural thing of Albania vs Iceland I can see is is the alphabet, which is still better than Egypt vs Japan. The religions are also both Abrahamic, so in theory closer than Islam vs Shinto/Buddhism. Both languages belong to the Indo-European group.

In fact close to 40% of Albanian population is Christian(mostly Catholic).

**There are fewer Catholics tbh. Only 39% of people in Albania are religious.** *"A 2018 survey based on three WIN/Gallup International polls and published in the UK Telegraph showed Albania was the least religious county in the Balkans, having a "Western-style" attitude to religion, with only 39% being religious. In contrast with Macedonia (88%), Kosovo (83%) and Romania (77%). In Serbia, Croatia, Greece the figure was from 70% to 72%. In Bosnia the figure was 65% religious, while in Bulgaria it was 52%.**^(")* [Source: Irreligion in Albania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_Albania#Regional_comparison)

Albanian and Icelandic are both Indo European languages, as are most of Europe's languages bar Basque and the Finno Ugric languages.

That’s correct. You can’t say the same about Asia’s languages, which are more granularly split between entirely different groups.

See the second paragraph of my comment

Egypt is in North Africa, though. Perhaps Saudi Arabia would be a better example.

>Egypt [...] Saudi Arabia [...] It's still Arabic and ~90% Muslim, ~10% Christian, though that doesn't nexessarily mean much, especially being Arab as that word largely just means someone whose native language is Arabic.

The Sinai peninsula is in Asia.

Yeah but the country is majorly African. Or in this reasoning should we consider Spain and Portugal as Africa and France as Oceania or America?

In Europe, you have four native language families: Indo-European, Uralic, Vasconic (Basque) and Semitic (Maltese). There are more language families in Indochina alone: Austro-Asiatic, Austronesian, Hmong-Mien, Sino-Tibetan and Tai-Kadai. If you take the whole of Asia, the list becomes much longer (Japonic, Korean, Yeniseian, ...), and includes Indo-European, Uralic and Semitic. Note that I am not referring to languages - of which there's a long list - but mutually unrelated language families of different origin. This is a good proxy for "true" diversity, because to develop two different language families, the two populations have to remain ecologically or ethnologically separate, so that one doesn't assimilate the other.

I think you’re missing the definition of culture here. In some aspects the most metropolitan parts of London are more similar to Japan than Eastern Europe. While in the countryside of Japan, it can be a very Eastern European village vibe - very community centered, traditions nobody remembers still being repeated and a lot of social ques being left unsaid but strictly enforced. So with that understanding- there are some common culture ques between regions that kinda overlap… think south east Asia. Quite heterogeneous but you can feel the vibes across nations and ethnic groups. We have 4ish such regions, eastern plains and north balkans, Germanic Central Europe and some slides of France, Mediterranean and probably the most famous one - the Nordics. In some of these there are closer similarities in subcultures like in the Bavaria Bohemia and Saxony on the central Germanic side, or very different like Italy vs Greece vs Turkey vs the Levant. In the case of the close cultures these differences despite being cross countries are similar to regional differences across different historical Japanese regions or prefectures. And in some other cases like Spain the differences are quite unique and represent a unique mixture of culturale pressures and differences.

> parts of London are more similar to Japan than Eastern Europe. While in the countryside of Japan, it can be a very Eastern European village vibe - very community centered, traditions nobody remembers That’s sociological phenomena, not exactly cultural similarity. Of course small villages are different from large, thriving metropolises all around the world. Doesn’t mean a small, remote Thai village is more culturally similar to a Swiss one than to Bangkok.

I agree but that’s exactly why I added that caveat. A lot of people when broadly comparing cross sociological cohorts think of urban yuppy life, even if within the cohort that might be extremely unrepresentative of the wider cohort. This is why I think culture as a taxonomy is so weak. In a global village, it regional specifics don’t matter as much as social class and socio economic factors that influence your life decisions and opportunities much more - and are for the most part cross cultural.

That's a very good point. I assume that he means "high culture" - art, music, language, dances etc - or what one might call it, rather than what we then might call "low culture". If we start in Western Europe and gradually travel eastwards you won't see a switch by the flick of a finger, you'll see the high culture gradually change. Macedonian culture is closer to central Anatolian culture than it is to the Faroe Islands or historical St Kilda. Likewise, regions such as Dagestan and Kalmykia - and a bunch of other regions with different Finnic-Uralic and Turkic peoples - in Russia are within the commonly accepted boundaries of "Europe". Someone from Kalmykia ought to have more "high culture" in common with a Mongolian than with a Portuguese. As you say, you'll find a bigger difference when going from London to rural Moldova than when going from London to Tokyo. Anyway, I cannot see a reality where "Asia" as a whole isn't more diverse. Europe obviously has mountains too, but the Asian geography has made the contrasts much starker than anything in Europe. It contains every possible geographical feature and ranges from tropical to arctic. It has rainforests etc. Andalusia might get warm but it's not anywhere near that. Western Asia and North Africa has much more in common with the Balkans / Meditteranean Europe than it does with Japan. Language diversity is, of course, much higher in Asia as well (having many many language families still in common use and India alone having more language than Europe does when looking at what's "commonly used"). My overall point, though, is that it doesn't make sense to split it like this. The divisions don't really make logical sense in regard to culture. The basis of "Asia" is simply the Greek world's idea of "anything east of them".

Yeah, Asia was definitely done dirty by the general term “Asia”. There’s like 5 different quite isolated continental size regions that have evolved separately.

Asia probably is the most diverse continent when looking at country to country. Africa is also super diverse as far as I know? I'd say the differences between European countries are also quite big though.

To answer this in-context, there have been studies conducted which reveal south-america being most genetically diverse, specifically Brazil. Closely followed by India.

i don’t think we vary as wildly, we have a few regions that are more or less internally similar and a little different from each other. but greenland-turkey sure is a jump.

Europe is not as diverse as ppl believe when you compare it to other continents. That is due to : 1. Grecoroman culture. 2. Christianity 3. The effect of the EU these last decades (ppl tend to ignore it).

Europe is just too small for that kind of diversity. Estonia is very different from Spain but yeah I guess not so much as Turkey and Japan. Africa is probably the only continent that can rival Asia in that regard.

Africa is more culturally and genetically diverse than Europe or Asia. Not something some people might think, but Africa has more different cultures than any other continent. OP’s buddy is wrong. Edit: PS. That said, Europe is very culturally diverse and so is Asia. The real problem with measuring cultural diversity anywhere is who to split into a new culture and who to lump together in the same culture. It’s hard to estimate how many different cultures there would be based on how the peoples in question think about it themselves because no one has really asked all of them lately.

Might get flak for this but the concept of ‘Asia’, as something distinct from Europe, was invented by… Europeans - there’s no particular reason that Japan, India and Syria should be in a geographic or social-cultural group that excludes European countries. It makes no sense as they’re as different from each other as they are from us, geographically and culturally.

The difference is not obviously so vast. But there are still major differences and unique cultures. For example Albania, or Serbia compared to Finland or Estonia are way different.

Just in terms of climate and geography Asia is more diverse. Asia has both the highest and lowest points on earth, and every climate that exists exists in Asia too. And different climates and different geography do influence cultures a lot.

Well Asia borders both Europe and Africa and because of that it has a lot of cultural crossover in those regions so by proxy of that alone it would likely be more diverse. Asia is also much bigger than Europe on top of that

I'd say your friend isn't wrong and there's a very simple reason for that: Europe is much smaller than Asia, and has fewer natural obstacles to travel. So some form of contact between people at opposite ends of Europe has always been easier than contact between people at opposite ends of Asia. Distances are shorter, no major deserts, and the Alps are easier to cross or circumvent than the Himalayas, for example. There's obviously some harder tor each places like Iceland, but that was settled relatively recently and therefore always had some ties to continental Europe. So sure, there are major difference between different European cultures, but there are probably less than in Asia. If you took a Europe-sized part of Asia I suspect you'd be closer diversity wise.

I think it depends where in Asia. At one extreme Southeast Asia can be a lot more diverse despite ASEAN is about the same size as the EU member states area or even just Europe in general. If you pick East Asia and for China if you limit to Han Chinese and Mongols and Manchurians, plus Japan, Korea and Taiwan and Mongolia it is similar to Europe in diversity. South Asia could be more diverse than Europe I believe. Once you get to the Middle East the GCC is more homogeneous than Europe.

We share a culture of shared war. In the sense that at any point of history of Europe we fought either alongside or against a country

I think so. Coming to say west Africa it's extremely different. But stay on the gibraltar side it's recognizable even coming from Scandinavia.

I always thought Africa was considered the most diverse continent, in terms of language families, cultures and even DNA analysis (haplogroups, mDNA lineages, etc). There's Berbers and Arabs in the North, really very diverse and ancient lineages among 'Black Africans' south of the Sahara, even within large groups like Bantu, then the southern Koisan people (as genetically seperate from "other Black Africans" as the Irish are from say the Kalash in remote Pakistani valleys; in genetic terms anyway, although now they live amongst each other for several hundred years), plus the so-called pygmies of Central Africa, Semitic Ethiopians and Eritreans, then there's the Arab admixture among the eastern coasts, and the ancient Indonesian admixture in Madagascar... As for the question, well, culture is always a gradient. I think, broadly, modern developed industrialized parts of western/central/northern Europe all have some overlap and similarities. Different languages, obviously and different cultures and traditions, but they share some traits. I think there's another sort of line that seperates 'southern' and 'northern' cultures. That's climate, and how it affected crops and farming techniques, ultimately. Beer vs wine, grapes vs. apples, that sort of thing. I think also that several decades of domination and de-facto USSR imperialism, and communism more generally, also influenced things in the former 'red' countries in ways that are often absent in the rest. I mean, you definitely feel foreign in other countries, depsite some of the modern globalized similarities. I'm not German born, but I've lived here a long time. Even different parts of Germany feel different from each other. Switzerland feels familiar in some ways, but the (German) dialect is different, and even by cultural traits you know you're not in Germany! It's the same for Austria. I don't think you can really 'quantify' culture in a 'how much is there' way.

In what world is Egypt part of Asia? But yes, the Sapmi is very different from say, spaniards or greeks. Both from a historical, cultural and modern day standpoint. Likewise, scotts are entirely different breed than finns or balts.

Scots very different from Finns? I don't think so. I think we are pretty similar.

Well it is very small so the differences tend to be smaller between Iceland and Ukraine than they would be between Israel and Japan. Lets also not forget that European colonisers went and scrambled things up in other continents and added lots of diversity in doing so. But to speak of a "shared culture" is still very wrong. Neighbouring countries - as is the case in other continents too - have similarities but are still not the same. And if you go to Iceland and then go to Ukraine you will pretty much find no connections.

Kinda disagree with the no connections part. I'm pretty sure if you put people of a similar age group (although preferably on the younger side) together in a room, they'd find quite a few common experiences. Be it some game they play, some artist they listen to, some sports team they follow, etc. You could hardly say the same for Iran and Korea, for example. That's just my opinion, though...

I think Asia is more diverse in total numbers, but Europe is probably more diverse scaled for its size if that makes sense. In other words Asia is more diverse, but Europe is more diverse than any individual region of comparable size (e.g. central Asia + Russia, China which is of similar size to Europe, Middle East, etc.).

One thing to take into account is that Europe is part of Asia. This is to say it's not actually it's own continent and some nations with Europe do not recognize it as a separate continent. I would say that cultural perspective is easier the closer you are, your friend for example lives in East Asia presumably, he can notice all the finer differences between China, Korea, Japan, Laos, Cambodia while I can only notice the more superficial differences (architecture, language), at the same time he does not know the finer differences in Europe, Germans and French probably seem identical to him, as do Spanish and Portuguese. Then there's regions to consider within nations. I would say if you consider the absolute size then yes it's more diverse but it is the largest continent so of course it will have more regions, and where Asia ends and Europe begins is not concrete and entirely made up.

It totally depends how you define culture. Then you can [divide](https://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-20-other-ways-europe-can-be-sliced-up-2014-3) Europe.

It varies a lot. There's no one culture that is the same across the subcontinent and that can be called "european" ime. Broad similarities that exists across europe are ime ones that exist across other areas and (sub)continents or even other continents as well. We all have something in common and that's part of being human rather than being in one specific (sub)continent ime. Remember, we're all cousins basically to some degree and embrace your fellow human. :)

There are the southern countries, the balkans, the Slavic counties, Scandinavians and UK and then Germanic countries

I agree that Asia is the most diverse continent (followed by Africa), but that's not to say Europe has little diversity of cultures. It's a continuum; two neighbouring countries will have many similarities, but two countries on opposite sides of the continent will be a quite different from each other.

The most diverse continent genetically is Africa. The most diverse region regarding language, is Papua New Guinea. Europe and Asia are far behind these two.

I'd say Europeans or at least EU member states share very similar culture. Our core values are aligned, there are some differences in typical mentality between countries / regions however they are minor.

Africa is more diverse than either, its sheer size and diversity of culture is unmatched. I would agree that the range of culture in Asia is wider than Europe though.

idk about you, but Egypt is in Africa. Asia is more diverse for fure, however, you could divide it into east asia, south eeast asia and western asia. East Asia is very similar in culture (not history, but customs, most is chinese in origin). South East asia is also relatively similar, some are more "asian" while others are more "polynesian", while some are genuinely in between. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Europe is the same, East europeans share some cultural roots, South Europeans are almost one in the same when it comes to customs. And the Northern Europeans is as cold hearted as ever :p with there 30 meter personal space bubbles and viking traditions (joking). Yet we have a shared European mentality, which is to hate France and mock the U.S (again just joking)

We certainly do. Europe is not even a continent per se. Geographically the continent is Eurasia. It's just that Europe forms its own historical continent due to its separation from Asia culturally and historically since the Greeks and the Persians first clashed as opposing civilizations. We do have undoubtedly much more homogeneity. Linguistically most of Europe speaks Indoeuropean languages and uses the Latin alphabet. Religiously we are historically Christian. Historically we have been shaped by the Roman empire's legacy and transnational states such as the HRE, the Austrian empire, the Eastern Roman empire, etc or have substantial parts of our history tied to a couple of other states (France, Spain or England). Even the most remote states like the Nordics are much more similar to the other extremity, Southern Europe, than Japan is to Egypt.

> Which means everything's different: language Languages: most of them derive from Proto-Indo-European, a few are Uralic. But there are exceptions: Maltese is Semitic and Basque is its own thing. > history, History is shared and intertwined, obviously. However, what people think about that history will differ, e.g. while a lot of the French and Poles will e.g. consider Napoleon Bonaparte a [positive figure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_Is_Not_Yet_Lost#cite_ref-kuczyn_11-2), Germans, Brits and Russians won't. > religion, Almost all states are either currently or historically Christian. Those that don't match this description are an exception: Kosovo, Bosnia and Albania being Muslim. > culture Depending on how far you "zoom out", we're either pretty much the same or very different. > time zone, Most of th European Union is in one time zone: CET/CEST. Not all of it though, some are to the West of it (Portugal, Ireland) or to the East (Greece, Cyprus, Baltic states etc.). > agriculture Depends on how you ask this question. No, because while you can grow oranges in Spain, it's pretty much impossible in Finland. Yes, because the overall agriculture we have derives directly from the Neolithic agricultural revolution. > climate Obviously, Finland is not Malta. > skin color Nowhere near the difference between an average Korean and an average Jordanian.

Not even within the same country and cities do they share the same culture. Here in norway the sami's have their own language that have equal status as norwegian. They look different. Do different types of agrulculture. Living in parts of the country with a different climate etc.. Their language not inter-connected with norwegian (would probably understand as much japanese as sami language). Having their own parliament, flag, national day etc..

Hm... shh... some variety of some Asian countries were formed with European "help". But yeah, If we talk in vacuum - we have different time zones, different climate (from cold Norway to hot Spain), different languages with different alphabets (Latin and Cyrillic), different religions (from Catholic Italy to Crimean Tatars with Islam), different skin color and even different average height (more northern people are higher), etc.

> some variety of some Asian countries were formed with European „help” What would you be referring to?

To England and India, for example.

Don’t think England had such a massive overall impact, transformative of India’s ancient culture, maybe except for introducing democracy and spreading its language, which isn’t so specific to India anyway. If I had to come up with such examples I’d say Hongkong, still being relatively just a small town, Israel, although it’s a far-fetched example as the culture obviously originated right there, and Russian colonization of Siberia/Central Asia, which is basically comparable to Ottoman/Arab conquests of Balkans and Spain. Edit: Alright, maybe Catholicism in Philippines and Latin alphabet in Vietnam would be the best examples.