There was a question in my 7th grade science class on a test or homework or something about listing the continents. Why the instructor thought anyone in 7th grade would ever call Europe and Asia the same continent unless told specifically otherwise I don’t know. It always comes back to me when this sort of discussion comes up.
However, the definition of continent as “a land mass larger than an island that’s surrounded by water” is entirely vague and inaccurate compared to most people’s perception of what continents are. Aside from the question of Australia vs. Greenland, there’s also the fact that pre-canals, North and South America were the same continent by that definition, as were Eurasia and Africa. Thus it stands to reason that it’s a terrible definition, and thus it’s perfectly reasonable to call Europe a continent.
Now I admit that the roughly 1200km (that’s an extremely rough estimate) between the Baltic and Black seas is far longer in comparison than the isthmuses of Panama (the eponymous canal is 80km), and Suez (192km), especially when considering the size of the land mass cut off and the average distance between the seas surrounding the peninsula thus formed. However, thus sort of reasoning is still using some sort of enumeration; if there was an isthmus of middling size, how would we say when it determines a new continent or not? Or does no one care since it’s irrelevant when studying Earth’s continents?
You left out the word “mostly” in your description of a continent, and that’s what separates North and South America.
However, the most important reason why Europe and Asia are still considered separate continents is clearly that gameplay in RISK would be significantly affected if they were considered one continent :-).
The odds are that the really ancient Greeks simply didn’t know that you could go around the Black Sea to get from Europe to Asia. To them, “Asia” meant Anatolia, which until quite recently (it seems to have vanished since the 50s) was also called “Asia Minor”.
If by arbitrary you mean “based on irrelevant plate techtonics,” then yes. The Ural mountains are much more eastward than most people imagine to be the bounds of Europe. But you have to admit they separate the white people from all the chinky-eyed ones, don’t they? Of course, the boundary of Europe that most people believe in is Russia.
But that’s funny, ain’t it? We have these two supposed continents, but few can really agree where one starts and ends.
I don’t think so. While most of the continents seem to sit mostly on their own plates, Asia alone is rather broken up: most of it sits on the Eurasian plate, but there’s also the Indian plate and the Arabian plate, and eastern Russian is actually on the North American plate. Most of Europe and Asia are on the same plate, though.
“Continent” is entirely a human-created term, so we get to define it however we want to. If we decide Greenland is a continent, then it is; if we decide Australia is an island, not a continent, then Oz gets a downgrade in status
I was told when I was a small lad that a large portion of Western history and culture happened in that large peninsula on the western side of the Asian continent. Therefore because so much had happened they decided it could be it’s own continent.
If we were to combine them it’d have to be named Eurasia because we’ve always been at war with Eurasia.
Europe as a region extends well past the Baltic to the Urals, & includes the Scandinavian peninsula, north of the Baltic. So there’s not a good comparison to the Suez area.
Europe is a region. Regions don’t necessarily correspond exactly to continents & seas, but “continent” is still a useful term, used properly.
“Region.” Or in specific contexts, we have terms like “biogeographical zone” (or region). I’m sure there’s a good linguistics term I’m not recalling, as well.
If it’s unbroken bodies of water that count, I’ve always considered that the Saint-Laurent (St. Lawrence to you folks) + Richelieu + Lake Champlain + Hudson sequence outlines a continent separate from the rest of North America. (Which means my house and the nearest grocery store are on separate continents!) And there are probably countless other examples…
Well apparently in another thread we discovered that all of Spanish-speaking Western-hemisphere countries consider North and South America to be a single continent. Weiirdos.
Lake Champlain and the Hudson River are not connected, unless you count man-made waterways, in which case there are a lot of little “continents” all over the place.
Power to the [Asian] People!