The word Asia entered English, via Latin, from Ancient Greek Asia. This name is first attested in Herodotus (about 440 BC), where it refers to Anatolia; or, for the purposes of describing the Persian Wars, to the Persian Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt. Herodotus comments that he is puzzled as to why three women's names are used to describe one land mass (Europa, Asia and Libya, referring to Africa), stating that most Greeks assumed that Asia was named after the wife of Prometheus but that the Lydians say it was named after Asias, son of Cotys who passed the name on to a tribe in Sardis.

Even before Herodotus, Homer knew of a Trojan ally named Asios, son of Hyrtacus, a ruler over several towns, and elsewhere he describes a marsh (Iliad 2, 461). The Greek term may be derived from Assuwa, a 14th century BC confederation of states in Western Anatolia. Hittite assu- = "good" is probably an element in that name.

Alternatively, the ultimate etymology of the term may be from the Akkadian word "(w)asu(m)", which means "to go out" or "to ascend", referring to the direction of the sun at sunrise in the Middle East, and also likely connected with the Phoenician word asa meaning east. This may be contrasted to a similar etymology proposed for Europe, as being from Semitic erebu "to enter" or "set" (of the sun). However, this etymology is considered doubtful, because it does not explain how the term "Asia" first came to be associated with Anatolia, which is west of the Semitic-speaking areas, unless they refer to the viewpoint of a Phoenician sailor sailing through the straits between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.

The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Asia, South 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 Yangtze 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, India, 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.

The story of Great Floods find reference in most of the regions of Asia. The story is first found in Mesopotamian mythology, in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Hindu mythology tells about an avatar of God Vishnu in the form of a fish who warned Manu of a terrible flood. In ancient Chinese mythology, Shan Hai Jing, the Chinese ruler Da Yu, had to spend 10 years to control a deluge which swept out most of ancient China and was aided by the goddess Nüwa who "fixed" the "broken" sky through which huge rains were pouring. The story is also found in the Tanakh, Bible and Qur'an.

List of mythologies native to Asia:

* Arabian mythology
* Balinese mythology
* Buddhist mythology
* Chinese mythology
* Hindu mythology
* Vedic mythology
* Japanese mythology
* Shinto
* Oomoto
* Korean mythology
* Mesopotamian mythology
* Babylonian and Assyrian religion
* Babylonian mythology
* Chaldean mythology
* Canaanite mythology
* Canaanite religion
* Hittite mythology
* Sumerian mythology
* Persian mythology
* Yezidis (Modified indigenous Kurdish belief)
* Zoroastrianism
* Philippine mythology
* Anito
* Gabâ
* Kulam
* Turkic mythology
* Tatar mythology
* Tengriism (Indigenous Mongol, Tartar & Kazakh belief)

The Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Bahá'í Faith originated in West Asia. The Dharmic religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated in South Asia. In East Asia, particularly in China and Japan, Confucianism, Taoism, Zen Buddhism and Shinto took shape. Other religions of Asia include the Zoroastrianism, Shamanism practiced in Iran and Siberia respectively, and Animism practiced in the eastern parts of the Indian subcontinent and in Southeast Asia.

Today 30% of Muslims live in the South Asian regions of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The world's largest single Muslim community (within the bounds of one nation) is in Indonesia. Next, India constitutes the world's second highest number of Muslims. There are also significant Muslim populations in China, Iran, Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia and most of West Asia and Central Asia.

In the Philippines and East Timor, Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion; it was introduced by the Spaniards and the Portuguese, respectively. In Armenia, Eastern Orthodoxy is the predominant religion. Various Christian denominations have adherents in portions of the Middle East, as well as China and India.

A large majority of people in the world who practice a religious faith practice one founded in Asia.

Religions founded in Asia and with a majority of their contemporary adherents in Asia include:

* Ahmadi: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan.
* Animism: Eastern India, Japan, tribal Philippines.
* Bahá'í Faith: slightly more than half of all adherents are in Asia.
* Bön: Tibet.
* Buddhism: Tibet, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, parts of India and parts of central and eastern Russia (Siberia).
* Mahayana Buddhism: Bhutan, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, parts of the Philippines.
* Theravada Buddhism: Cambodia, parts of China, Chittagong Hill Tracts, West Bengal, Laos, mainly northern parts of Malaysia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, as well as parts of Vietnam.
* Vajrayana Buddhism: Parts of China, Mongolia, Tibet, parts of northern and eastern India, parts of central, eastern Russia and Siberia.
* Daoism: China, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam.
* Hinduism: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indonesia Bali, India, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Singapore and South Asian immigrants in West Asia.
* Islam: Central Asia, South Asia, and South