Started an argument with my much smarter wife because she said North and South America are not two separate continents. She was right, because continents are only defined by convention.
Regardless of which definition you go with, someone saying North and South America are one continent but Europe and Asia are two separate continents are at the very least being inconsistent
There isn’t really a natural barrier between North and South America, though. Asia has the Urals.
North and South America have the Darién Mountains/Darién Gap
The Urals don’t even stretch all the way across the continental boundary
Again: inconsistent.
Hmmm… You’re right. It does feel a lot more arbitrary when you put it that way.
Shall we make California its own continent because of the Rockies?
They’d have to post a sign at the border warning that continents and mountains may cause cancer…
Okay, that was actually pretty funny
You know what? You actually do have a point.
Oceania is the best continent
Always at war with Eastasia.
There is a useful way to do it: By looking at Tectonic Plates and their boundaries.
According to the image on Wikipedia depicting the plates, there would then be 17 continents, although some of those 17 would be entirely ocean, or only small islands
Half of Japan would be North American? I didn’t expect that.
They do like to play baseball.
I’m really surprised this is the first time I’ve seen Africa as two continents. The Great Rift Valley is well known but I just hadn’t heard going the next logical step
These are not continents. The image is more of an illustration of why tectonic plates are not a good way to redefine continents not be arbitrary.
I remember many years ago I was playing WoW and the conversation in guild chat was about continents so I said that in my country America is a single continent. That moment an American in guild flipped the fuck out and got really mad at me even suggesting that his great country could be in the same continent as mine (Brazil) going as far as saying “that’s so fucking dumb, next you will say Europe and Asia are the same continent?!” which is funny cause eurasia is a thing, what a dumbass.
Mexico is in North America, but try telling that the common trump supporting gringo.
There also isn’t a strict definition of when a pond becomes a lake
Some states do indeed codify this in law, but the definition varies by state. Michigan and Minnesota for two if I’m remembering correctly.
If Minnesota ever went down to 9,999 lakes, they’d redefine it.
Huh. In my language the difference is that a pond is artificial (generally for farming fish), but apparently that’s a fishpond in English and pond can be natural. TIL.
Yes, I personally love 4 continents. Americas, Afro-Eurasia, Oceania, Antarctica
If you’re gonna group them like that, there’s no Americas, it’s America.
Eurasia and Oceania sure, quibble all you like that makes sense to me. But combining the Americas and pushing Africa in with Asia makes no sense to me.
Same. I think having a tiny land bridge shouldn’t be enough when the idea of a continent is to identify the largest masses of land separated by oceans, especially when disconnected land can still be a part of a contenent.
My list would be:
- North America
- South America
- Eurasia
- Africa
- Oceania
- Antarctica
I can see the combined Americas and Africa combined with Eurasia if the idea is land masses that separate oceans, but oceans are as arbitrary as continents so I don’t think that is a useful definition.
