Europe is one of the seven continents of the world. Including adjacent islands, it is approximately 4,200,000 square miles (10,900,000 square kilometers) ranking as the second smallest continent after Australia. In population, however, it ranks as the third largest, after Asia and Africa. Europe's population was approximately 732,000,000 in 2006 including the entire population of Russia but excluding the Asian portion of Turkey.
Geographers do not always agree on the boundary between Europe and Asia. But most consider it to run from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east and the north shore of the Caspian Sea, then along the Caucasus Mountains to the Black Sea, and southward through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. The Urals also divide the giant nation of Russia into European and Asian areas. With this boundary it includes all or part of 49 countries.
For such a relatively small region, Europe has many different ethnic groups and ethnic divisions exist even within a single country. The arrival of peoples from former European colonies has added to Europe's cultural mix and these include Indonesians in the Netherlands; Algerians in France; and Jamaicans, Pakistanis, and Indians in the United Kingdom.
Europe has three major language groups; Germanic, Romance, and Slavic. Other language groups include Greek and Albanian. Celtic languages, once spoken widely in Europe, are now used by a relatively few people in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland and by the Bretons in the French province of Brittany.
Most Europeans are Christians and the three chief religious groups are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant.
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