Of course there isn’t. There are 10 billion people on earth. I even disagree with myself on the matter.
PS: TIL too.
Closer to 8 billion
There was a study last year saying that 8 billion could be super underestimating the world population.
https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/ruralPopDisclaimer.php
False. Well, it’s true there was that one study but it wasn’t accurate.
Just wait a few years. ;)
8.3 billion people. But who’s counting?
Europe being on a different continent than Asia always seemed like bullshit. I can forgive the isthmuses, but Eurasia feels like it’s a thing to me.
The Romans divided the world into three equal landmasses before they understood how it was actually laid out and it stuck.
Definitely not the Romans. It may have stuck because of them, but the Greeks divided the world that way long before Rome left Italy.
Same, if they’re different continents then Africa is also more than one continent
But then you run into the issue that the very concept of continent was invented to differentiate Europe and Asia (and Africa).
Eh, words change and sometimes terms outlive their etymology or grow beyond it. We “hang up the phone” but no phone these days is actually hung up. 🤷
That’s literally the same thing, we kept the expression even when we know it isn’t accurate any more, because we still have the need to express the original meaning.
If anything, we should split Asia in more subcontinents.
Yeah, fair enough.
Still seems like, with the way that continent is typically defined, Eurasia should be the continent with subcontients of Europe, Asia, India, and the Middle East.
The difference between Europe and Asia should also apply to Asia and India.
How is India different from Pakistan?
I think both pakistan and India are the subcontinent of India. Wherever the mountains are is the edge of it.
Pakistanis would fume at your comment lmao
Would the pakistanis be subsumed or uplifted by that comment? That’s a geology joke.
Well by that logic then Europe ,Asia and Africa are all one continent. Just because someone dug a fucking suez ditch does not make them any less connected.
Since continent doesn’t have a strict definition, in my book, giving the isthmus of suez (and the isthmus of panama) a pass makes sense. Both of those were historically very difficult to traverse and not viable sustained trade routes compared to just sailing around them. Hell, there’s still not a road that links North and South America through the Darian Gap, which is wild to me considering what seems like should be a vital connection point bottleneck.
I understand “continent” a mercurial word and so people can define Europe and Asia as being different contients, but it does seem like it’s the only continental division that doesn’t make logical sense to me.
Well I guess. But there is a bridge across the suez and by a similar kind of logic you could split europe into 2 ‘continets’ because of the donau-main kanal. Same thing as the panama one as far as I am concerned.
I think of it more as if you were to give a pen to an alien child and said “draw a circle around the main landmasses on this planet” they would probably logically draw circles around North America, South America, Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. They wouldn’t look at the Ural Mountains or any sort of canal systems, just “these are the main blobs on this world map.”
But that’s just the way I think of continents. 🤷♂️
I guess. But in my mind still main landmass would encompass anything connected to it. So if you were to look at the earth before we built all those canals there would be like 4 continents. I don’t personally think small things like a canal would be enough to actually separate 1 continent into 2. It would have to be quite a bit of distance for that to make sense. Like if the entire canal was the width and depth of the gulf of suez then yes, we have made a new continent.
That’s why there’s always the argument that the country should not be called “America”. English speaking countries split North and South America as separate continents, so America the country does not get confused with America the continent. In Spanish (might be regional), it’s all one continent, so someone saying that they are from “America” doesnt narrow it down to a country.
I think it’s fine to just have different conventions in different languages. If you want country names to be 100% unambiguous in all languages, you basically have to change the name of half of the countries out there. E.g., “Deutschland” could refer to all germanic-speaking countries, but everyone recognizes that it just means Germany.
It’s fine enough even all in one language. There’s the US state of Georgia and the county of Georgia. And outside the occasional funny misunderstanding, it’s usually clear from context.
Latin Americans really get upset over it, and I think it’s just irrational. They should let it go.
I’ve encountered the argument for Estadounidense from Mexicans, but it falls apart when you counter that the name of their country is Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
If you’re really feeling like putting the screws to them, point out that while all of the USA is America, Mexico Valley is a very small part of the territory of their country, and is itself named after the Mexica people that inhabit it. So rather than translate Estados Unidos Mexicanos as the United Mexican States, it would more accurately be the United States of the Mexica Empire.
Then you can ask them if they’re Mexica, or from one of the conquered territories.
That’s why there’s always the argument that the country should not be called “America”.
I think, though am not sure, that this comes from the 13 colonies having once been “British America”, which was by default what people meant when they talked about “America” in English, which stuck after independence.
E.g., “Deutschland” could refer to all germanic-speaking countries, but everyone recognizes that it just means Germany.
nowadays anyway; before the German Empire was founded, “Deutschland” was usually understood as the entire German-speaking region (what we call “deutschsprachiger Raum” today), and between 1949 and 1990 “Deutschland” could mean the Federal Republic of Germany (usually including West Berlin), or the Federal Republic of Germany plus German Democratic Republic plus Berlin, or Germany in the borders of 1937, or even just East Germany whose constitution initially started “Deutschland ist eine unteilbare demokratische Republik”.
Isn’t it because Benjamin Franklin (I think) started naming his fellow country men “Americans”, in order to create cohesion?
I always thought it had something to do with continental drift.
Ok in what works is Antarctica not a continent???
Honestly, the biggest two problems I’ve encountered are:
- “Oceania” is not a continent. It’s like seven smaller continental plates. Zealandia is more of a continent than Europe is. Similarly, Greenland is also more of a continent than Europe is.
- if you’re going to count Europe, you also have to count India, and in reality, we should probably just talk about cratons and plates, not “continents”.
Okay, new scheme: Every continental shield is a continent. Everything not on one is terra incognita. Continental platforms are just delusional sea floor.
Certainly that classification won’t lead to any confusion.
You seem to be assuming that continents are defined based on plate tectonics? Which they definitely aren’t since they predate our understanding of plate tectonics by centuries.
Yes it’s a flawed system. In particular it’s Europe-centric and kind of breaks down with Asia’s borders with Europe and Oceania being relatively arbitrary. But trying to retroactively make it fit some kind of “objective” definition is IMO the wrong approach. We don’t need the 5-ish continents to be “fixed” because their definition is unserious and of little consequence. As long as we’re cognizant we can just move on with our lives and use more precise descriptors (e.g. “The Middle East”) when needed.
There can be only ONE Pangea gang 4L
There’s anywhere between 2 and 7:
- Afroeurasia (inc australia , antartica counts as an ocean)
- Americas
or
- Europe
- Asia
- Africa
- North America
- South America
- Oceania
- Antartic
There’s no way Australia counts as the same continent as Afroeurasia, and Antarctica is a landmass (unlike the Arctic ice). 4 continents minimum.
So you’re saying pi continents is possible?
I’m sold.
Why is antarctica considered an ocean? It’s a land mass. Granted, the vast majority of it is covered in ice, but it is still above sea level.
Isn’t it tectonic separation? Like the plates? 🤔
Yes. Except for the exceptions, which are the exceptions.
To actually answer your question: yes and no. If Europe is a continent, then India definitely is. Both are only separated from the rest of Eurasia by a collision boundary, and Europe’s collision boundary isn’t even active anymore, IIRC.
Realistically, if you’re counting tectonic separation, then the afar triangle is its own continent, as there’s an active divergent triple boundary splitting it off from the rest of Africa. The coast of California is a different continent than the rest of north america, because it’s split by a transform boundary due to the subducting remnants of the farallon plate (now the Juan De fuca and cocos plates). New Zealand has been accepted to be its own continent for quite some time, since there’s a gigantic slab of continental crust underwater to NZ’s Northwest. Even still, the southeastern portion would be counted as separate by this hypothetical “boundaries-only” definition, because the transform boundary which has created the South Island Alps splits the south island. Madagascar is its own continental crust, as is Greenland.
Really, if you want to understand the geological boundaries and origins among the areas of the world, I’d recommend considering all of the following five types of data:
- Cratons (the really old chunks of continental crust that have just been floating and moving around, making up the continental cores, for the last 3.5+ billion years
- Active Tectonic Boundaries (really useful for understanding why there are mountains, trenches, volcanoes and earthquakes where we observe them)
- what you can see on a map, like rivers, mountains, isthmuses, and continental shelves (the only thing that our current definition of “continent” actually cares about)
- anomalous hotspot volcanism (currently hypothesised to be caused by mantle plumes)
- historical terranes and plates (such as avalonia and the flat-slab subduction of the farallon plate)
If you’re really interested in the tectonic boundaries of earth, check out the Concord Consortium’s “Seismic Explorer” online tool. Super fun.
So, TL;DR: the idea of a continent is bullshit, and purely cultural, just like our definition of a planet (see minute physics’ videos explaining why the moon should be a planet, and the IAU are bad at definitions)
Stop doing maps. Years of cartography and this is what they want you believe? /s -ish.
Cartography always has a hidden set of assumptions and goals and because political geography as infrastructure isn’t exactly a consensus topic either, shenanigans like this are pretty much expectable in geography.
People can’t even agree on whether the earth is flat or not.
Curios to know if you got it from here: https://lemmy.world/post/44478819/22754825
Could well be a coincidence, but I think it would be fun if I helped in the genesis of this thread :)
Nope. I just saw the Olympic rings, one ring for every continent that participates. They are America, Europe, Oceana, Asia, and Africa.
I don’t believe in continents. I’m incontinent.
One of my first arguments on here was over what constitutes a continent. I feel vindicated.
There’s one continent, it’s called the crust of the Earth. There’s some water on top of it in some places.
Continental crusts are an observable and measurable thing
They contain higher concentrations of aluminum whereas you find higher concentrations of magnesium outside of those crusts.
They are geological features and should be categorized accordingly. Eurasia makes way more sense than Europe being its own special thing… Except Europe, historically, likes to pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist in their concepts and as such always considers itself special
Oceanic crusts are also much denser than continental crusts, and obviously not as thick. When they collide the oceanic crusts subduct back into the mantle due to being denser.
Seems like stamp collecting to me
This comment has been flagged as DEI /s
The oceans are just a big lake.
The big salty lake I call it.
