To the south and east of the mountain range are various fertile regions, watered by great rivers flowing from the mountains. By contrast, north of the mountain range is a continuous strip of less fertile grasslands - the steppes, on which a horseman can ride almost without interruption from Mongolia to Moscow.
This unbroken stretch of land north of the mountains, reaching from the Pacific in the east to the Atlantic in the west, means that the boundary between Asia and Europe is a somewhat vague concept. Indeed Europe is really the western peninsula of the much larger mass of Asia.
In the south there is a natural barrier, long accepted as a dividing line - formed by the waters of the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. North from here the boundary is notional. In recent times it has been accepted as passing east from the Black Sea to the Caspian and then stretching north from the Caspian along the eastern slopes of the Ural mountains.
The first Europeans: 500,000 - 10,000 years ago
Early man - of the speciesHomo erectus - penetrates to the western extremity of Europe by about 500,000 years ago. Fossil remains from this time are known as far west as England.
Modern man - anatomically similar to humans today - arrives relatively late in Europe. But the continent does provide the most extensive evidence of the early culture of our own species ofHomo sapiens.
From villages to towns in Europe: 7000 - 2000 BC
This slow rate of progress may partly reflect a reluctance of the hunter-gatherers to settle down to the hard labour of agriculture. But it is due also to the fact that here the labour is indeed hard. Europe, unlike the Middle East, is heavily forested. Clearing the ground for crops, with stone tools, is a massive undertaking.
In the Atlantic coastal regions, the transition to neolithic village settlement is marked by the world's most striking tradition of prehistoric architecture.
Indo-Europeans: from 2000 BC
Over the coming centuries they steadily infiltrate the more appealing regions to the south and west - occasionally in something akin to open warfare, and invariably no doubt with violence. But the process is much more gradual than our modern notions of an invading force.
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