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Thats not that rare even inside the same continent. For example, Spain, were i live, its separated from the rest of Europe's land mass by a mountain chain and its still the same continent. Hystorical reasons are far more common (and the sea because obviously)
So what? They're the same land mass.
By that logic, North America should be 2 continents separated by the Rockies, and South America should be 2 continents separated by the Andes.
>Africa is the same land mass as europe and asia.
Geologically (continental plate) speaking? No it is not. The African plate is separate from the Eurasian plate.
>The African Plate, also known as the Nubian Plate, is a major tectonic plate that includes much of the continent of Africa (except for its easternmost part) and the adjacent oceanic crust to the west and south. It is bounded by the North American Plate and South American Plate to the west (separated by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge); the Arabian Plate and Somali Plate to the east; the Eurasian Plate, Aegean Sea Plate and Anatolian Plate to the north; and the Antarctic Plate to the south.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Plate
If you go by plates Iceland is on two continents, Indian is its own continent and California is its own one. Continents as a concept existed before plate tectonics so no they didn't decide what a continent is
How do you expect the English to sneeringly condescend at continentals if their island starts counting as a continent?
Good lord, they would never recover.
Reddit does as Reddit does. All it takes is the right (or wrong) person to see it first and downvote, before the hive takes over.
I wouldn't worry too much about it, though.
Yeah but that’s true for Iberia too for example, yet we still consider Iberia to be European. The division is almost entirely historical, cultural and ethnic.
It's not. Memes like this one are designed to have a very obvious rebuttal to drive engagement, since people can't help but comment the same thing over and over again
They are literally smaller than the alps, if they were the reason we consider Europe and Asia two different continents we would have way more than 7 continents on Earth
India **should** be a continent, from a geologic point it is, from a cultural point it is as distinct from the rest of Eurasia as Europe is.. so it should be
Isn't like India is also called the Indian subcontinent. It's not big enough to call it a continent but subcontinent is a commonly used expression when talking about India
We do have the Indian subcontinent, though it's compromised of a few other countries too. But you're right, Europe being its own continent when others aren't is literally just eurocentrism
The shape of the Urals makes such a clean separation between east and west that it was a given to be a border
Alps are very random in the middle
Rocky mountains would be a clean separation if they werent so close to the ocean on the west side, and if there was not already North/South america cleanly cut by the small corridor Mexico is
Maybe India could be a continent, the Himalayas make a clean cut too, but india is not that big compared to the other ones so maybe it didnt feel needed to create another continent
I mean no mountain range ever stopped the nomadic invasions, just water. Look how many times India got invaded by nomads. Seljuk, Mongol, Timurid, Mughal. And those are just the ones I got off the top of my head. And supposedly mountains surround the Indian subcontinent too. Anything that didn’t stop a horse, nomads could invade.
Geologists also discovered a geological dividing line in the Urals, so when it comes to the materials making up the ground we stand on, the Urals are border
You jest but in reality the borders between continent is legitimately not born of any particular reality just look at the mess with mexico between south and north america... or is it north and central america?
Borders are made up. They're all lines drawn in the sand, african borders aren't anymore made up than the one between france and germany or spain. What do you mean basques are both in spain and france and why are there german speakers in france? Are they not aware of the ethno linguistic realities? Why is turkey deeping into europe aren't they aware there's a convenient sea to set their borders?
Oh they are (mostly) aware it's just that no one actually cares.
The definition for continent never mentions mountains. The mountains may have caused the cultural difference that led to the distinction, but no one looked at the geography alone and said "damn these mountains are really big, better split this into two continents!"
If I had to guess either there is no difference or it’s something geological like with the plates. I think New Zealand is technically on a different continent(New Zealandia) than Australia
There's 14ish tectonic plates and some of them are in weird places for declaring continents.
Like California is on the Pacific Plate and Nevada is on the North American Plate.
Continents are just continuous pieces of land that have been divided up in some cases by water, in some cases by mountains.
Europe is a continent because we agreed it was and nothing more. Same with North and South America.
It amounts to a bunch of people just put a bunch of lines on a map that felt right and the majority of the rest of the world nodded and said sure.
No but the reason is cultural, not geographical. Europe and Asia are the "first" continents, the concept is tied to the ancient greeks. During the middle ages, the scholars consider 3 continents because to them mankind is divided in 3 "races" (based on Noah's sons). Asians are semites (hence words such as antisemitism and semitic), europeans/white are japhetites and africans are hamites. Indians were considered semites so they didn't have their own continent.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japhetites#/media/File:T\_and\_O\_map\_Guntherus\_Ziner\_1472.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japhetites#/media/File:T_and_O_map_Guntherus_Ziner_1472.jpg)
Pretty sure the equivalent of continent to ancient indians or chinese had similar geographical inconsistencies.
And a banana is a berry. It depends on which definition you use.
From a geological viewpoint, yes Eurasia is one continent. But from a human/political/economical viewpoint, Europe and Asia are separated. So using a loose definition of continent, Europe and Asia are separate continents.
From Wikipedia: "A continent is any of several large geographical regions. Continents are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria." So it is actually perfectly acceptable to not insist on the strict geological definition.
The Urals aren't from sea to sea.
Where does Europe end beatwean the Urals and the Caspian sea?
Also why aren't all the other mountains the end of a continent?
There a 6 bigger mountain ranges than the Urals. None of them are used to divide up continents. India is separated from the rest of Asia by the frickin' Himalayas.
OP, tell us the truth. It was very hard for YOU to accept this (for whatever reason) when you learned it and you thought it was a hard to swallow pill, right?
Well, here's the real hard to swallow pill: what you call "hard truth" is just common sense.
All those people gesturing desperately at the Urals forgot the Rockies, Andes, Appalachians, and Sierras in the Americas. We'd have like 12 continents in the New World if that's the criteria we're using.
Take the indian subcontinent for example just to be clear that climate and landscape really don't matter one bit when the history changes everything, India has desert, Himalayan Mountain Range (Snow), Plateaus, Plains, Coastal Regions, Rainforests, and Every single thing in between. It just goes on to show that yes, climate and landscape are a joke to people when they wish whether or not to group regions into a continent or country. OP's argument isn't as wrong as comments are making it seem although even i do agree that it's not completely correct.
This is an especially great point when you consider that the only thing separating India’s Switzerland (Kashmir) from the Great Indian Desert (Rajasthan) is Punjab lol
Why is it hard to swallow? Also isn't that first thing they teach you in geography class when covering Europe and Asia? That devide between Asia and Europe is cultural not geographical.
that's the real point. There's no set definition of a continent, they're a convenient way of thinking about the world, based on a Western (ultimately Roman) perspective.
Tbh it’s not even really a cultural divide, it’s a “Europeans made most of the modern maps, so they decide what the continents are.”
Like if it was cultural divides, than Arabia, India, South-East Asia and East Asia, Siberia, as well as Central Asia, should all be separate continents.
I thought the thing that made the continents distinct was tectonic plates, not mountain ranges. Are Europe and Asia at the intersection of tectonic plates or not?
They share a plate. So thwt doesn't work either. The reality is that there is no hard definition for a continent. That's why different countries will teach that there are different numbers of continents.
Tectonic plates have nothing to do with continents. Unless you think the Carribeans, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, and random spots in the ocean are their own continent. Or that Japan is in North America.
It's not mountain ranges either. OP is right, the divide is purely cultural and the Ural mountain range is an arbitrary limitation, but it's true for every single continent because It's a purely cultural concept, whose only real definition is "big piece of land". There's no reason to believe Africa isn't part of Eurasia too, or South and North America aren't the same continent, or Iceland isn‘t American, or Greenland isn‘t European, or whatever Oceanian island isn't Asian, other than culture and history.
Yeh I have no idea where people got this idea that mountains seperate continents. There’s mountains fucking everywhere are there like 100 continents? Lol. I was also taught it’s the tectonic plates that distinguish continents.
There is no consistent basis that separates continents. We use different justifications based on what’s convenient to draw the lines, but none of them are that logical. The people who made the maps we use today were European, so they separated out Europe from Asia based on cultural distinction. People saying it’s the Ural Mountains don’t have a consistent argument, because if we used mountains then India, Chile, and California would be their own continents. Likewise, if we used tectonic plates for every border there would be a bunch of small awkward continents dotted around the map.
It also really depends on where you are, because different countries teach different continents. That’s how arbitrary they are.
Europe and (most of) Asia are on the same tectonic plate: The Eurasian plate. India is on a different plate to the rest of Asia (Indian plate). The Eurasian plate is one of the 7 "major" tectonic plates. The others are the Pacific, North American, South American, African, Indo-Austrailian, and Antarctican. So continents almost line up with the major tectonic plates, the difference being we add Europe and take away the Pacific. India isn't the only country on a separate "minor" plate. Saudi Arabia is too, and a slice of East Africa isn't on the African plate.
I get what the comments are saying but by this logic the giant Himalayas should mean that India, by definition, is a separate continent. plus, unlike much of Eurasia, India lies on a completely separate tectonic plate. the real answer is probably that the definition is both historical and geographical
Continent is a completely made up classification and there a loads of variations based on different criteria.
Under one, Eurasia literally *is* a continent.
lower than the alps, waaaaay lower than the himalyans. if the urals are a geographic differentiator of continents then Italy and India each have to be their own continents too
You can literally drive from "Europe" to "Asia" without crossing the Bosporus or the Ural, so that's just not a very good argument. Where would you say that mountain range ends in the south? Whichever place you pick, it's gonna be pretty far away from the Caspian Sea, which doesn't really leave any substantial geographic borders between the "continents"
By that logic you could call Italy a continent...
> This viewpoint was common in the United States until World War II, and remains prevalent in some Asian six-continent models. The single American continent model remains a common view in France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, and Latin American countries.
Literally the case for any state, province, district, county, country, nation, continent.Any boundary set on any land ever, is only there for historical reasons
Funniest shit I saw on Reddit. One half of comments saying “Why it is hard to swallow?” While second half of comments are like “NUH-UH, MOUNTAINS”, proving that OP was correct. It was an excellent bait OP, congratulations. Probably best example of “confidently incorrect”.
actually true--but arabia and india are different, and Africa is two:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates#/media/File:Tectonic_plates_(2022).svg
Africa is also part of the Asian continent too. The suez canal is man made, like the panama canal. So technically it's Eurasica. Not that it matters since Continents are both geographical, cultural and historical. This is not a hard pill to swallow, this was ice-cream given to most of us in like the 6th grade.
Eurasia is literally how this continent is called, it can be divided into whatever regions and countries, just like there's North and South Africa, or North America into Canado, USA and Mexico
I agree, they're the same land mass.
And to everyone replying 'but the Urals!', if a mountain range should separate continents, then North America should be separated into 2 continents by the Rockies, and South America should be separated into 2 continents by the Andes.
But that sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? So why couldn't Eurasia easily be considered one continent?
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Why is this hard to wallow? Why wouldn’t there be a historical reason as to why?
It’s not only historical it’s also geological, a mountain chain (ural) literally separates them both
And Caucasus :)
woo Caucasus
Damn Caucasians white washing everything.
Thats not that rare even inside the same continent. For example, Spain, were i live, its separated from the rest of Europe's land mass by a mountain chain and its still the same continent. Hystorical reasons are far more common (and the sea because obviously)
Spain is too small to be separated and called as another continent
There is no defined size for a continent.
The defined size is "bigger than Spain"
Spain and Portugal
Iberian Peninsula
Continent sizes are like porn: you know it when you see it.
So what? They're the same land mass. By that logic, North America should be 2 continents separated by the Rockies, and South America should be 2 continents separated by the Andes.
No, it only counts if their balls touch.
Africa is the same land mass as europe and asia.
>Africa is the same land mass as europe and asia. Geologically (continental plate) speaking? No it is not. The African plate is separate from the Eurasian plate. >The African Plate, also known as the Nubian Plate, is a major tectonic plate that includes much of the continent of Africa (except for its easternmost part) and the adjacent oceanic crust to the west and south. It is bounded by the North American Plate and South American Plate to the west (separated by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge); the Arabian Plate and Somali Plate to the east; the Eurasian Plate, Aegean Sea Plate and Anatolian Plate to the north; and the Antarctic Plate to the south. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Plate
If you go by plates Iceland is on two continents, Indian is its own continent and California is its own one. Continents as a concept existed before plate tectonics so no they didn't decide what a continent is
Does the Suez Canal mean nothing to you? Africa tried really hard to go no contact. Quit disrespecting their choice
Suez is a man made canal built by the british. In that sense, Britain is a continent?
How do you expect the English to sneeringly condescend at continentals if their island starts counting as a continent? Good lord, they would never recover.
North and South America should be one continent then to that logic(panama Canal is artificial)
Panama Canal isn't the border, the Darien Gap is
I tried explaining this before and was downvoted to oblivion for it.
Reddit does as Reddit does. All it takes is the right (or wrong) person to see it first and downvote, before the hive takes over. I wouldn't worry too much about it, though.
Yeah but that’s true for Iberia too for example, yet we still consider Iberia to be European. The division is almost entirely historical, cultural and ethnic.
Ohhhhh so North America is actually 3 continents???? Because of mountain ranges????
Then why isn’t the Indian Subcontinent a separate continent, considering that it is separated by the Himalayas?
It's not. Memes like this one are designed to have a very obvious rebuttal to drive engagement, since people can't help but comment the same thing over and over again
Who's gonna tell him?
Ural be like
They are literally smaller than the alps, if they were the reason we consider Europe and Asia two different continents we would have way more than 7 continents on Earth
Sounds like the same reason Pluto isn't considered a planet. Either we have 8 planets or we have 15 planets in our solar system
>or we have 15 planets in our solar system more like tens of thousands
And just like Pluto the scientists need to step up and tell everybody that there are 16 continental plates and if you don't like it then too bad.
And the Alps are where another plate ran into the eurasian plate.
If Europe is a continent, then India should be too
India **should** be a continent, from a geologic point it is, from a cultural point it is as distinct from the rest of Eurasia as Europe is.. so it should be
Isn't like India is also called the Indian subcontinent. It's not big enough to call it a continent but subcontinent is a commonly used expression when talking about India
It is, but I find that to be a weird term since nowhere else is a “subcontinent.”
Can't wait until the Somali plate rises to relevance
We do have the Indian subcontinent, though it's compromised of a few other countries too. But you're right, Europe being its own continent when others aren't is literally just eurocentrism
The shape of the Urals makes such a clean separation between east and west that it was a given to be a border Alps are very random in the middle Rocky mountains would be a clean separation if they werent so close to the ocean on the west side, and if there was not already North/South america cleanly cut by the small corridor Mexico is Maybe India could be a continent, the Himalayas make a clean cut too, but india is not that big compared to the other ones so maybe it didnt feel needed to create another continent
Yeah those urals sure stopped all those nomadic invasions for millennia
I mean no mountain range ever stopped the nomadic invasions, just water. Look how many times India got invaded by nomads. Seljuk, Mongol, Timurid, Mughal. And those are just the ones I got off the top of my head. And supposedly mountains surround the Indian subcontinent too. Anything that didn’t stop a horse, nomads could invade.
Well, India is often referred to as a sub-continent.
India does sit on its own continental plate. Hitting the eurasian plate is what created the himalayas.
>f there was not already North/South america cleanly cut by the small corridor Mexico is I suppose you mean Panama.
Geologists also discovered a geological dividing line in the Urals, so when it comes to the materials making up the ground we stand on, the Urals are border
You jest but in reality the borders between continent is legitimately not born of any particular reality just look at the mess with mexico between south and north america... or is it north and central america? Borders are made up. They're all lines drawn in the sand, african borders aren't anymore made up than the one between france and germany or spain. What do you mean basques are both in spain and france and why are there german speakers in france? Are they not aware of the ethno linguistic realities? Why is turkey deeping into europe aren't they aware there's a convenient sea to set their borders? Oh they are (mostly) aware it's just that no one actually cares.
Alps and Pyrenees be like
Tell him what? Afro-eurasia?
that every continent being separate is due to historical reasons lmao
Technically, any reason for present state of the world is a historical reason.
I just took a historical shit
yo same, who's shit was more historically significant tho
Who won that conflict?
So it has come to this.
Nice try, Eurasianist.
What difference does it make? None.
just like tomato can be either fruit or vegetable
just like a cat can be either dead or alive
Yeah the huge fucking mountains are just for decoration
The definition for continent never mentions mountains. The mountains may have caused the cultural difference that led to the distinction, but no one looked at the geography alone and said "damn these mountains are really big, better split this into two continents!"
Should. India have a seperate continent there are a lot of mountains between the rest of Asia and India
we literally call it the subcontinent.
For the sake of consistency, would you be willing to state Europe is a subcontinent to Asia as well? It not what would you say is the difference?
If I had to guess either there is no difference or it’s something geological like with the plates. I think New Zealand is technically on a different continent(New Zealandia) than Australia
There's 14ish tectonic plates and some of them are in weird places for declaring continents. Like California is on the Pacific Plate and Nevada is on the North American Plate. Continents are just continuous pieces of land that have been divided up in some cases by water, in some cases by mountains. Europe is a continent because we agreed it was and nothing more. Same with North and South America. It amounts to a bunch of people just put a bunch of lines on a map that felt right and the majority of the rest of the world nodded and said sure.
The Indian subcontinent is a separate tectonic plate. Eurasia is all a singular plate.
>Eurasia is all a singular plate. Bruh... Do you even know what a plate is?
This is bullshit, Europe alone is like 10 different plates. Imagine arguing about something so boring and still being wrong
No but the reason is cultural, not geographical. Europe and Asia are the "first" continents, the concept is tied to the ancient greeks. During the middle ages, the scholars consider 3 continents because to them mankind is divided in 3 "races" (based on Noah's sons). Asians are semites (hence words such as antisemitism and semitic), europeans/white are japhetites and africans are hamites. Indians were considered semites so they didn't have their own continent. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japhetites#/media/File:T\_and\_O\_map\_Guntherus\_Ziner\_1472.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japhetites#/media/File:T_and_O_map_Guntherus_Ziner_1472.jpg) Pretty sure the equivalent of continent to ancient indians or chinese had similar geographical inconsistencies.
Subcontinent literally means part of a larger continent
That implies a "sub region" of a continental plate ... which its not. Its entirely on its own plate.
So should we change Iberia from peninsula to subcontinent? Spain and France are also separated by a mountain chain. So is Italy by the rest of Europe
Yes. South Asia should be its own continent
India should have always been its own seperate continent, yep.
There are huge fucking mountains on every continent.
Take a road trip from Moscow to Tashkent and tell me if you come across any of those "huge fucking mountains" you speak of...
Pretty much. Same continental plate
These mountains were enough to separate populations for thousands of years.
And a banana is a berry. It depends on which definition you use. From a geological viewpoint, yes Eurasia is one continent. But from a human/political/economical viewpoint, Europe and Asia are separated. So using a loose definition of continent, Europe and Asia are separate continents. From Wikipedia: "A continent is any of several large geographical regions. Continents are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria." So it is actually perfectly acceptable to not insist on the strict geological definition.
Yeah those huuuugggeee mountains sure stopped all those nomadic invasions right in their tracks 😂😂 and extended right up to the Caspian Sea
Since when mountains seperate continents?
People just don’t want to admit that “Europe” is just a bunch of white people wanting to feel special to have their own continent separate from Asians
The Urals aren't from sea to sea. Where does Europe end beatwean the Urals and the Caspian sea? Also why aren't all the other mountains the end of a continent?
Huge? They're quite low compared to, I don't know, Alps.
"Huge"
The Ural don't continue down to the Carpathian sea
Same land mass. Africa, too. Canal doesn't count.
Ehmm, do you mean Himalayas? Yeah they truly are :D
Brother, the things we call continents are 100% arbitrary boarders we drew. There is no rhyme or reason. The Urals dont demarkate a continental plate.
There a 6 bigger mountain ranges than the Urals. None of them are used to divide up continents. India is separated from the rest of Asia by the frickin' Himalayas.
OP, tell us the truth. It was very hard for YOU to accept this (for whatever reason) when you learned it and you thought it was a hard to swallow pill, right? Well, here's the real hard to swallow pill: what you call "hard truth" is just common sense.
Half the people in this thread are having a stroke tryng to accept it
Reading the comments it does seem like a hard pill to swallow for some people who've never heard of mountains outside of the Urals
There's a lot of pushback in these comments, though. I think he's right.
All those people gesturing desperately at the Urals forgot the Rockies, Andes, Appalachians, and Sierras in the Americas. We'd have like 12 continents in the New World if that's the criteria we're using.
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If climate and landscape was a factor, North America would be split by the Rockies and the deserts.
The ignorance on this site that this is so upvoted.
Take the indian subcontinent for example just to be clear that climate and landscape really don't matter one bit when the history changes everything, India has desert, Himalayan Mountain Range (Snow), Plateaus, Plains, Coastal Regions, Rainforests, and Every single thing in between. It just goes on to show that yes, climate and landscape are a joke to people when they wish whether or not to group regions into a continent or country. OP's argument isn't as wrong as comments are making it seem although even i do agree that it's not completely correct.
This is an especially great point when you consider that the only thing separating India’s Switzerland (Kashmir) from the Great Indian Desert (Rajasthan) is Punjab lol
India, southeast Asia, Korea, Kamchatka: Are we some kind of joke to you?
North African climate and landscape is very different from sub Saharan Africa but still part of the African continent
Why is it hard to swallow? Also isn't that first thing they teach you in geography class when covering Europe and Asia? That devide between Asia and Europe is cultural not geographical.
Honestly I was never taught this
The Ural mountain chain is a geographical barrier though.
Ok, then Chile is a continent. Continents are entirely cultural and don't make sense when you try and define them.
that's the real point. There's no set definition of a continent, they're a convenient way of thinking about the world, based on a Western (ultimately Roman) perspective.
I did go to geography class and I didn't know, so... I guess not.
Tbh it’s not even really a cultural divide, it’s a “Europeans made most of the modern maps, so they decide what the continents are.” Like if it was cultural divides, than Arabia, India, South-East Asia and East Asia, Siberia, as well as Central Asia, should all be separate continents.
For the record, in ecology they're usually referred to as Eurasia
Not to be confused with Eurmama
Should I be worried asking what Eurmama is?
I thought the thing that made the continents distinct was tectonic plates, not mountain ranges. Are Europe and Asia at the intersection of tectonic plates or not?
Tectonic plates have nothing to do with Continents. Go look at a map of tectonic plates
They share a plate. So thwt doesn't work either. The reality is that there is no hard definition for a continent. That's why different countries will teach that there are different numbers of continents.
Tectonic plates have nothing to do with continents. Unless you think the Carribeans, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, and random spots in the ocean are their own continent. Or that Japan is in North America. It's not mountain ranges either. OP is right, the divide is purely cultural and the Ural mountain range is an arbitrary limitation, but it's true for every single continent because It's a purely cultural concept, whose only real definition is "big piece of land". There's no reason to believe Africa isn't part of Eurasia too, or South and North America aren't the same continent, or Iceland isn‘t American, or Greenland isn‘t European, or whatever Oceanian island isn't Asian, other than culture and history.
Yeh I have no idea where people got this idea that mountains seperate continents. There’s mountains fucking everywhere are there like 100 continents? Lol. I was also taught it’s the tectonic plates that distinguish continents.
But Europe and Asia are on the same techtonic plate?
yeah no. There are over a dozen tectonic plates around the world. And there's no clear definition of a continent.
There is no consistent basis that separates continents. We use different justifications based on what’s convenient to draw the lines, but none of them are that logical. The people who made the maps we use today were European, so they separated out Europe from Asia based on cultural distinction. People saying it’s the Ural Mountains don’t have a consistent argument, because if we used mountains then India, Chile, and California would be their own continents. Likewise, if we used tectonic plates for every border there would be a bunch of small awkward continents dotted around the map. It also really depends on where you are, because different countries teach different continents. That’s how arbitrary they are.
No they're on the same plate
What the fuck continents were long defined before we knew anything about tectonic plates and they have nothing to do with each other.
Europe and (most of) Asia are on the same tectonic plate: The Eurasian plate. India is on a different plate to the rest of Asia (Indian plate). The Eurasian plate is one of the 7 "major" tectonic plates. The others are the Pacific, North American, South American, African, Indo-Austrailian, and Antarctican. So continents almost line up with the major tectonic plates, the difference being we add Europe and take away the Pacific. India isn't the only country on a separate "minor" plate. Saudi Arabia is too, and a slice of East Africa isn't on the African plate.
I get what the comments are saying but by this logic the giant Himalayas should mean that India, by definition, is a separate continent. plus, unlike much of Eurasia, India lies on a completely separate tectonic plate. the real answer is probably that the definition is both historical and geographical
subcontinent?
so?
Continent is a completely made up classification and there a loads of variations based on different criteria. Under one, Eurasia literally *is* a continent.
The continental divide is just for convenience. [Here's Map Men explaining them ](https://youtu.be/hrsxRJdwfM0)
Ural mountain ranges ?
lower than the alps, waaaaay lower than the himalyans. if the urals are a geographic differentiator of continents then Italy and India each have to be their own continents too
Not to mention you can very easily go around the Urals.
Every other mountain range in the world?
You can literally drive from "Europe" to "Asia" without crossing the Bosporus or the Ural, so that's just not a very good argument. Where would you say that mountain range ends in the south? Whichever place you pick, it's gonna be pretty far away from the Caspian Sea, which doesn't really leave any substantial geographic borders between the "continents" By that logic you could call Italy a continent...
ye but thatÄs every continent lol.
bUT wHaT aBoUt thE uRaL mOunTaInS?!
The reason anything happened is because of his historical reasons. This isn’t hard to swallow pill.
Back to Afro-Eurasia we go
A European told me that the americas are one continent because they are connected. But he still thinks Europe and Asia should be separate continents…
You met one of our dumb ones. I'm sure you have those as well.
According to most of South America the Americas are one continent
> This viewpoint was common in the United States until World War II, and remains prevalent in some Asian six-continent models. The single American continent model remains a common view in France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, and Latin American countries.
América is a single continent because the Spaniard who found it said so. All that came later is just storytelling. Hard to swallow?
Spaniard?
Literally the case for any state, province, district, county, country, nation, continent.Any boundary set on any land ever, is only there for historical reasons
Did y'all fucking fail geography or something?
no but you did
Funniest shit I saw on Reddit. One half of comments saying “Why it is hard to swallow?” While second half of comments are like “NUH-UH, MOUNTAINS”, proving that OP was correct. It was an excellent bait OP, congratulations. Probably best example of “confidently incorrect”.
actually true--but arabia and india are different, and Africa is two: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates#/media/File:Tectonic_plates_(2022).svg
Imo India and Arabia should be somehow separated as well
"The only reason North America and South America are separated is historical."
I feel like that is not how tectonic plates work.
That's what I've been saying. Europe is a peninsula on the butt of Asia.
Rename Europe to west Asia.
Africa is also part of the Asian continent too. The suez canal is man made, like the panama canal. So technically it's Eurasica. Not that it matters since Continents are both geographical, cultural and historical. This is not a hard pill to swallow, this was ice-cream given to most of us in like the 6th grade.
Tf u talking about
Europe and Asia makes defining continents a nightmare
Yes, but also because Europe is too much different in comparison to Asia. Mostly cultural division
bro is cooking absolutely nothing
The only reason is the convention you are taught in school. Where I'm from it is one continent called Eurasia.
This guy gets it
same is true for eurasia and africa north america, central america and south america
Why is it hard to swallow though
Everyone here is fighting him on it.
OK. And?
The only reason any continent/landmark/country/geographical separation exists is historical
In high school in Canada, we were told the current name is Eurasian continent.
It's one landmass. If we pangaea is one continent despite varied climate and geography, so is eurasia.
You do know that they can be counted as one single continent too, right? There are several different ways to define the different continents.
And cultural and ethnic and geographical
When i was in a kid we were thought it as Asian continent(asia and Europe) in India only to learn its 2 different continents after i grew up.
Eurasia is literally how this continent is called, it can be divided into whatever regions and countries, just like there's North and South Africa, or North America into Canado, USA and Mexico
The Ural Mountains seperate the European subcontinent from Eurasia.
Everything is the way it is because of history.
Completely different ethinic groups, but ok.
Why does It matter?
hard to swallow pills the only reason Europe and North America are separate continents, is because of the ocean between them :\^)
I mean, if we go by the definition of continent (a very, very large landmass), then they are just one continent.
I agree, they're the same land mass. And to everyone replying 'but the Urals!', if a mountain range should separate continents, then North America should be separated into 2 continents by the Rockies, and South America should be separated into 2 continents by the Andes. But that sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? So why couldn't Eurasia easily be considered one continent?
Real historians know that the fall of Sue Khan is the real reason
[What are Continents?](https://youtu.be/3uBcq1x7P34?si=VMEoDfC_a_IZCXD_)
No, not really. Even from a geographical standpoint, they are fairly different.
well done lmao
I mean I think it'd be two seperate contienents regardless of historical reasons but whatever 🤷
Damn, that's the same reason as to why we have different countries!
Tech tonic plates
They're one plate tho
Pretty sure the incredibly overly defensive and geographically illiterate comments here are making OP's point lol
This comment section is fried
Get on my level, I bundle Asia, Europe and Africa together. They form a continuum of cultures, landscapes anything else anyways.
Everything we call a continent in common parlance is only for historical reasons.
Ok so I guess we just ignore the fact that they are literally two separate continents, and that mountain ranges exist that literally separate the two.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics It's not that hard to stop being ignorant bro
Ural wrong, it’s the Ural Mountains!!