# Western route to Asia if no Americas **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 5, 2023, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-route-to-asia-if-no-americas/991156 "2023-10-05T18:43:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2023, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-route-to-asia-if-no-americas/991156/122 "2023-12-08T18:24:37Z")
Of course, the goal at first was getting to the Indies. The Spanish might have been distracted on the way, if Panama was open, by Inca gold. But the big fight would then be who controls the opening and route. I suspect North America might have been an afterthought. “Buenos Dias! We have the mountain of gold here!” “Bon jour! We 'ave le beaver. Plenty of…” ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-route-to-asia-if-no-americas/991156/123 "2023-12-09T14:29:07Z")
But had poutine been invented a few centuries earlier, all the colonial action would have been up North. 😁 ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2023, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-route-to-asia-if-no-americas/991156/124 "2023-12-10T12:25:48Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Generally continents are inherently big blobs. Unlike asteroids, they do not coalesce from legions of tiny islands; instead they are born as large solid plates of above-sea-level crust. So a super-Indonesia of e.g. 100K islands in a cloud / archipelago where the Americas are now is stupidly unlikely. Not really. In fact, that was more-or-less the situation [at times in the past](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#Past_plate_motions). Not just because of tectonics, but also because sea level may have been higher - continental _crust_ doesn’t have to mean dry land. Continents do, indeed, form [from the accretion of smaller bits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accretion_(geology)#Continent_building). Large parts of the interiors of the current continents are larger stable bits (cratons) but there are plenty of microplates as well, and not just in the oceans. That, at least, is the current thinking (and by “current”, I mean in [work published this year](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_New_Glocal_Tectonic_Map_-_Hemisphere_Projections.jpg).) ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2023, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-route-to-asia-if-no-americas/991156/125 "2023-12-10T13:13:31Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Generally continents are inherently big blobs. Unlike asteroids, they do not coalesce from legions of tiny islands; instead they are born as large solid plates of above-sea-level crust. So a super-Indonesia of e.g. 100K islands in a cloud / archipelago where the Americas are now is stupidly unlikely. You could postulate the existence of a continent where North America is, but one that is low-lying, so that only the tops of mountains of that continent are above sea level and form a massive archipelago. Kind of like New Zealand is a high-lying plateau of a submerged continent. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-route-to-asia-if-no-americas/991156.md?page=6)