I have to straighten up something in the first post.
In the swedish school, we were taught both of världsdelar - world regions, as well as continents. Your dutch friends might have had a similar division, but mixed up the terms. World regions are divided in culture more than geography, and continents are purely geographical, where you can choose either Europe and Asia or Eurasa depending on the subject, while as world regions, Europe and Asia are seperate.
Oceania would connect all the cultures of Australia as the mainland with surrounding cultures.
We did, however, seperate south and north America regarding both continents and world regions. Your Dutch friends seem to be alone in sharing this perception.
Question though: you haven’t brought up Arctica. If it’s not a continent of its own, to which continent does it belong? I always took for granted it was a continent on its own, as the opposite to Antarctica, but it seems I am mistaken?
There was no Permian Era, but a Permian Period, which fell in the Paleozoic Era, which is what I meant. Sorry.
Plate tectonics is the theory formulated in the 1960s to explain the phenomena of continental drift and seafloor spreading, and the formations of the major physical features of the earth’s surface. Tectonic plates are made up of two types of crustal material: oceanic crust and continental crust, both of which are underlain by a solid layer of mantle. Dense oceanic crust lies beneath the earth’s oceans and consists largely of basalt. Continental crust, which underlies the continents and their continental shelves, is thicker, less dense, and consists of rocks rich in silica and aluminum. There are seven continental tectonic plates, which form the seven continents.
With all due respeck, by whose definition of the southern Europe/Asia boundary include the Ural river and thus part of Kazakhstan?.
I’m not trying to be contentious about it, but that’s a question I had thought about posting at various times, “What is considered the southern boundary between Europe and Asia?” I can see the accepted northern boundary of the Ural mountains, and that probably the Caspian sea enters into it, but then it gets a little murky when you go over to the Trans-Caucasian republics.
Europe might qualify as a “continent” to the most parochial, provincial, and ethnocentric of people, but it’s really just a western appendage to Eurasia.
Okay, you’re going to have to defend this one with a cite, because I cannot find any evidence at all that
A) There are seven tectonic plates, or,
B) Europe is on a different plate than Asia.
According to the USGS, there are about a dozen plates, EIGHT of which lie underneath land - and Europe and Asia are on the same tectonic plate. The eight plates under major landmasses are North America, South America, Eurasia, India, Arabia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica:
EVERY other resource I can find defends this one. Can you please explain where you’re coming from with this “Europe and Asia are on different tectonic plates and so are different continents” thing?
If you don’t put the boundary between Europe and Asia at the Ural River, then where do you draw it between the southern end of the Ural Mountains and the Caspian? Of course, the whole thing is totally arbitrary since there’s only one real continent there, Eurasia. The desperate attempt to keep Europe separate from Asia is motivated by racism. Keep those gooks out of Europe. By putting Kazakhstan partly in Europe, it gives a shudder to Jean-Marie Le Pen to realize that those swarthy slanty-eyed Kazakhs have taken over part of his White Man’s “continent”. Only if you define Europe as a separate continent.
This becomes a significant issue with Turkey’s application to join the European Union. Turkey can claim European membership because 3% of its territory is in Europe. The racists in Europe will never accept this. Never until Hell freezes over. That doesn’t deter Turkey from trying again and again.
Nothing murky there. The boundary between Europe and Asia is clearly recognized as the Caucasus Mountains. This places Chechnya and North Ossetia in “Europe”, and Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan in Asia. The only place there’s a question mark is in Dagestan where the mountains don’t quite reach the Caspian shore. I suppose the political boundary between Dagestan and Azerbaijan can be taken as the (totally arbitrary) boundary between Europe and Asia. Mountains and rivers have always been used as boundaries since ancient times. They have the advantage of being obvious to see, and harder to cross than plains. Thus the convenience of the Ural Mountains and Ural River. If they weren’t there, what would the Europe separatists do?
Claiming membership? Like the Turks think they have rights to claim or something?
I’m sorry but opposition to Turkish membership has far more to do with the terrible human right record vis a vis the Kurds than any racism. So long as Turkey keep brushing off there is a problem to address then things will stay that way.
Frankly I am not at all sure I *ever * want to be part of a future potentially Federal structure which will include Turkey and then which will border Iraq, Iran, Georgia, Syria or Lebannon…
Not for any other reasons than those border regions are unstable politically and I do not see it as in the interests of “old” Europe.
According to the USGS, there are about a dozen plates, EIGHT of which lie underneath land - and Europe and Asia are on the same tectonic plate. The eight plates under major landmasses are North America, South America, Eurasia, India, Arabia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica:
QUOTE]
And that’s a conservative interpretation. You could also divide out the Anatolian Plate and the Somali Plate.
The idea of continents goes back to the Greeks. They divided the world into Europe, Asia, and Africa. Since they didn’t have a firm idea of the extent of the Black Sea, anything east of Suez and southeast of the Black Sea was Asia. The origional “Asia” was what we would call Asia Minor, the Levant, Mesopotamia and Persia.
The idea that Europe and Asia are separate continents makes sense if the north end of the Black Sea is pretty much Terra Incognito. So the idea and names stuck even after it became clear that there was no clear dividing line between them. See: Pluto, planetary status of.
I’ll have to cite * Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia *, fifth edition (1976) (which does not exactly support my statement, and which statement must be, unfortunately, altered :). It does state that there are "10-25 plates, but
Fig. 3 shows 8 major plates: Australian Plate, Pacific Plate, North American Plate, Mazda Plate, South American Plate, Eurasion Plate, African Plate, and Antarctic Plate, so continents are not coterminous with the major plates, but there is a close relationship. The Pacific Plate and the Mazda Plate are oceanic plates, Mazda being in the South Pacific, off South America. Europe and Asia are shown on one plate. Other plates exist, but according to this source, are not “major” plates.
