WTF Are Continents? 🌍

Morning Continentals!

What are continents???

Well… usually people say something like:

“Continents are large land masses separated by oceans”

Which is fine… until you think about it for more than a millisecond.

It seems easy, right?

7 continents…

But there’s a problem with this map.

Zoom in on the Europe-Asia border.

Does that red dotted line look like an ocean to you?

The argument is that there's no way Europe should be a part of Asia because their cultures are sooo different.

But there are many places across the globe that are “sooo different”

Why then is India not a separate continent, or the middle east? Then you would have 9 continents.

Some countries just scrap the whole cultural thing altogether and stick with the original definition.

Making Europe a part of Asia… Aka Eurasia.

Meaning there’s 6 continents.

Ok, (some people say) if all continuous landmasses count as one continent, then what about North America and South America?.

They technically are connected.

The Panama canal does NOT count.

It's like 150 feet wide and you can just walk across it.

So that means North America and South America, by definition, should be one American continent.

That brings us down to 5.

Hold on, if the Panama canal doesn’t count as an “ocean” then surely the Suez canal between Africa and Asia also doesn't count…

Which makes Europe, Asia and now Africa all connected into one CHUNKY continent.

Known as: Afro-Eurasia!

Home to about 83% of all of humanity.

So, how do you do, fellow Afro-Eurasians?

This brings the number down to 4.

Now we’ve got 2 pretty small continents (Antarctica and Australasia) and then one massive continent (America) and one SUPER massive continent (Afro-Eurasia).

This isn't very helpful.

Maybe science can help us out?

Science splits the globe up into multiple tectonic plates.

Like the Eurasian plate, the African plate, the North American plate, the South American plate and the Antarctic plate.

They are all pretty good.

But if you look closer, there’s actually a whole LOAD of other much smaller plates.

The Nazca plate, the Caribbean plate, the Middle Eastern plate, the Indian plate, the Pacific plate, the Scotia plate.

Yikes, I don’t think they ALL deserve continent-hood…

So, what actually are continents???

The answer is: We don't know it's all made up lol.

Stay Cute,
Reece, Henry & Dylan 🌈

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