Americas

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For other uses, see America (disambiguation).
The Americas
Americas (orthographic projection).svg
Area 42,549,000 km2 (16,428,000 mi2)
Population 1,001,559,000 (2016 estimate)
GDP (nominal) $24.6 trillion (2016 estimate)
GDP per capita $25,229 (2015)[1]
HDI 0.736[2]
Demonym American,[3] New Worlder[4] (see usage)
Countries 35
Largest cities
Largest metropolitan areas
Largest cities

List[show]

CIA political map of the Americas in Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection

The Americas (also collectively called America)[5][6][7] comprise the totality of
the continents of North and South America.[8][9][10] Together, they make up most of
the land in Earth's western hemisphere[11][12][13][14][15][16] and comprise the New
World.

Along with their associated islands, they cover 8% of Earth's total surface area
and 28.4% of its land area. The topography is dominated by the American Cordillera,
a long chain of mountains that runs the length of the west coast. The flatter
eastern side of the Americas is dominated by large river basins, such as the
Amazon, St. Lawrence River Great Lakes basin, Mississippi, and La Plata. Since the
Americas extend 14,000 km (8,700 mi) from north to south, the climate and ecology
vary widely, from the arctic tundra of Northern Canada, Greenland, and Alaska, to
the tropical rain forests in Central America and South America.

Humans first settled the Americas from Asia between 42,000 and 17,000 years ago. A
second migration of Na-Dene speakers followed later from Asia. The subsequent
migration of the Inuit into the neoarctic around 3500 BCE completed what is
generally regarded as the settlement by the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

The first known European settlement in the Americas was by the Norse explorer Leif
Ericson.[17] However, the colonization never became permanent and was later
abandoned. The voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492 to 1502 resulted in
permanent contact with European (and subsequently, other Old World) powers, which
led to the Columbian exchange. Diseases introduced from Europe and West Africa
devastated the indigenous peoples, and the European powers colonized the Americas.
[18] Mass emigration from Europe, including large numbers of indentured servants,
and importation of African slaves largely replaced the indigenous peoples.

Decolonization of the Americas began with the American Revolution in 1776 and
Haitian Revolution in 1791. Currently, almost all of the population of the Americas
resides in independent countries; however, the legacy of the colonization and
settlement by Europeans is that the Americas share many common cultural traits,
most notably Christianity and the use of Indo-European languages primarily Spanish,
English, Portuguese, French, and to a lesser extent Dutch.

The population is over 1 billion, with over 65% of them living in one of the three
most populous countries (the United States, Brazil, and Mexico). As of the
beginning of the 2010s, the most populous urban agglomerations are Mexico City
(Mexico), New York (U.S.), Sao Paulo (Brazil), Los Angeles (U.S.), Buenos Aires
(Argentina) and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), all of them megacities (metropolitan areas
with ten million inhabitants or more).

Contents [hide]
1 Etymology and naming
2 History
2.1 Settlement
2.2 Pre-Columbian era
2.3 European colonization
3 Geography
3.1 Extent
3.2 Geology
3.3 Topography
3.4 Climate
3.5 Hydrology
3.6 Ecology
4 Countries and territories
5 Demography
5.1 Population
5.2 Largest urban centers
5.3 Ethnology
5.4 Religion
5.5 Languages
6 Terminology
6.1 English
6.2 Spanish
6.3 Portuguese
6.4 French
6.5 Dutch
7 Multinational organizations
8 Economy
9 See also
10 Notes
11 References
12 Further reading
13 External links
Etymology and naming[edit]
Main article Naming of the Americas

America is named after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.[19]

The name America was first recorded in 1507 (together with the related term
Amerigen) in the Cosmographiae Introductio, apparently written by Matthias
Ringmann, in reference to South America.[20] It was first applied to both North and
South America by Gerardus Mercator in 1538. America derives from Americus, the
Latin version of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci's first name. America accorded
with the feminine names of Asia, Africa, and Europa.[21]

In modern English, North and South America are generally considered separate
continents, and taken together are called the Americas in the plural, parallel to
similar situations such as the Carolinas. When conceived as a unitary continent,
the form is generally the continent of America in the singular. However, without a
clarifying context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United
States of America.[7]

In some countries of the world (including France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania,
Greece, and the countries of Latin America), America is considered a continent
encompassing the North America and South America subcontinents,[22][23] as well as
Central America.[24][25][26][27][28]