Karte von Asien……

Title

Karte von Asien……

Description

Map shows total Asia with inset map of the peninsula Tschuktschen

dated 1795

Artist

Reilly (1766-1820)

Franz Johann Joseph von Reilly (1766 - 1820) Vienna. He was an Austrian and produced over 830 maps for his great atlas project, -Schauplatz der funf Theile der Welt- between the years 1789 and 1806. Of these 830 maps published over this time span of seventeen years, he 'showcased' but one part of the world, Europe. Maps of the other four continents remained unpublished. The maps of the Schauplatz ...were drawn to a uniform criteria. Reilly's Grosser deutscher Atlas was also notable as the first completely 'Austrian' atlas. This large world atlas, containing relatively few maps, was issued between 1794 and the end of 1796. Reilly may have used Franz Anton Schraembl's work as his model, at least in part.

Historical Description

Asia is Earth's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the Eastern and Northern Hemispheres. The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, linked by the interior mass of the Central Asian steppes. The coastal periphery was home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations, each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and the Yellow River shared many similarities. These civilizations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel. Other innovations, such as writing, seem to have been developed individually in each area. Cities, states and empires developed in these lowlands. The central steppe region had long been inhabited by horse-mounted nomads who could reach all areas of Asia from the steppes. The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans, who spread their languages into the Middle East, South Asia, and the borders of China, where the Tocharians resided. The northernmost part of Asia, including much of Siberia, was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra. These areas remained very sparsely populated. The center and the peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karakum and Gobi deserts formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could cross only with difficulty. While the urban city dwellers were more advanced technologically and socially, in many cases they could do little in a military aspect to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However, the lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large horsebound force; for this and other reasons, the nomads who conquered states in China, India, and the Middle East often found themselves adapting to the local, more affluent societies.