In contrast, the present eastern boundary of Europe partially adheres to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, which is somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent compared to any clear-cut definition of the term “continent”.
The current division of Eurasia into two continents now reflects East-West cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line.
There’s really no physical reasoning for it. You can read on in that article for the historical basis if you want (basically, Homer and other Greeks coined it, and it just kind of stuck), but it’s really quite arbitrary where scientists actually draw the line.
My bad, should clarify I was referring to this specifically:
In geology, a continent is defined as “one of Earth’s major landmasses, including both dry land and continental shelves”. The geological continents correspond to seven large areas of continental crust that are found on the tectonic plates, but exclude small continental fragments such as Madagascar that are generally referred to as microcontinents. Continental crust is only known to exist on Earth.
Honestly, that would be a much more satisfactory definition than the current one, which seems to be “large landmass bigger than Greenland with logical separations when they’re too big.” What I really don’t understand is when people say Europe and Asia are separate, but N. America and S. America are combined, that’s logically inconsistent.
it really doesn’t:
There’s really no physical reasoning for it. You can read on in that article for the historical basis if you want (basically, Homer and other Greeks coined it, and it just kind of stuck), but it’s really quite arbitrary where scientists actually draw the line.
My bad, should clarify I was referring to this specifically:
In geology, a continent is defined as “one of Earth’s major landmasses, including both dry land and continental shelves”. The geological continents correspond to seven large areas of continental crust that are found on the tectonic plates, but exclude small continental fragments such as Madagascar that are generally referred to as microcontinents. Continental crust is only known to exist on Earth.
If we’re talking about tectonic plates, then:
We’d end up with the following continents:
Image.
Honestly, that would be a much more satisfactory definition than the current one, which seems to be “large landmass bigger than Greenland with logical separations when they’re too big.” What I really don’t understand is when people say Europe and Asia are separate, but N. America and S. America are combined, that’s logically inconsistent.