Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Continents

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

How many continents are there? That sounds like a really easy question. After all, there are only so many giant landmasses on the planet and we can easily count them with our fingers. Yet, for something seemingly so simple, the answer to the question can be surprisingly complicated. Learn more about the continents on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How many continents are there? That sounds like a really easy question. After all, there are only so many giant land masses on the planet, and we can easily count them with their fingers. Yet for something seemingly so simple, the answer to this question can be surprisingly complicated. Learn more about the continents on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok.

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and using coupon code Everything Everywhere, all one word, at checkout. There are seven continents. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James, blah, blah, hold it. It can't be that easy, right? I mean, my podcast episodes are pretty short, but it can't be as simple as just saying there are seven continents. No, it's not that easy. The standard list of continents, which most people learn, is as follows.

Asia, Europe, Africa, North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica. Before we get into the weeds of that list, however, we should define what a continent is. The standard definition of a continent is, continents are large land masses with clearly defined boundaries and separated by oceans. Okay, that's a fine working day-to-day definition. But certainly scientists must have something better than that. that, and they do. The Geological Society of America defines a continent as follows. Quote, The Glossary of Geology defines a continent as one of Earth's major land masses, including both dry land and continental shells. It is generally agreed that continents have all

the following attributes. One, high elevation relative to regions Florida of oceanic crust. Two, a broad range of salacious, igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. three, thicker crust and lower seismic velocity structure than oceanic crustal regions, and four, well-defined limits around a large enough area to be considered a continent rather than a microcontinent or continental fragment, end quote. Okay, that's a bit of a help, but it leaves a lot of unanswered questions. For starters, how in any of these definitions are Asia and Europe separate continents? Asia and Europe are part of one big Eurasian landmass. There is nothing that separates the two.

The traditional division of the continents is the Ural Mountains, but to be honest, that was selected by Russia a long time ago so they could say that Moscow was a European capital. The divisions between Europe and Asia are mostly cultural, not geologic or geographic. You can take a train from London to Singapore and never cross an ocean or a sea. By any strict definition you want to use, there isn't much of an excuse for separating Europe and Asia. So there should be six continents, not seven, right? Well, if we do that, then we should apply the same standard to the Americas. North and South America are connected. There are one contiguous landmass with a northern and southern lobe.

Sure, it gets narrow in the middle down near Panama, but why should that matter? There are no roads or railways directly connecting North and South America because of the Darien Gap in southern Panama. But that's more an issue of policy and budgeting for the nation of Panama, not an insurmount barrier. Moreover, the Americas can't even really make a claim to cultural differences like Europe and Asia can. So maybe North and South America are really one continent too. But if we can't let a skinny piece of land and a canal get in the way of a continent, then we also have to address the small fact that Eurasia is connected to Africa. Over on the Sinai Peninsula, millions of humans migrated over that

strip of land as people walked in and out of Africa. It's all one massive connected, landmass. So maybe Afro-Eurasia should be one giant continent as well. That would give us four continents. But what about Australia? Australia isn't anywhere close in size to Afro-Eurasia or the Americas. Remember, our definition up top says, large enough area to be considered a continent rather than a microcontinent. Why wouldn't Australia just be a microcontinent, whatever that is? After all, if we count Australia, then maybe we need to do the same for Greenland or Madagascar. Well, if we don't include Australia, then we'd have just three continents. Afro-Eurasia, the Americas, and Antarctica.

Save for Antarctica, which was unknown at the time, this is what most people thought several hundred years ago. There were two large continents, which could roughly be thought of as the old world and the new world. And speaking of Antarctica, well, nothing. Antarctica, you're cool. Don't worry. You're a continent. It's all good. But maybe this whole approach isn't the right way to be looking at it. This is mostly just looking at a map. Since the age of exploration, science has come a long way, especially geology. We know much more about how the Earth works and we're now aware of something called plate tectonics. We know that hundreds of millions of years ago, all of the continents were once smushed

together into a supercontinent called Pangaea. Maybe the answer is in collecting all of the pieces of Pangaea. Geology also has something else for us. There is a very distinct difference between the rocks found on continents and the rocks found at the bottom of the sea. Continental crust is on average 2.7 grams per cubic centimeter. Oceanic crust is about 3 grams per cubic centimeter. This is helpful because we can weed out the islands that are made out of oceanic crust. Hawaii is a good example. Hawaii isn't made out of continental crust. Its composition is closer to the seafloor, but it just happens to be sticking out of the surface of the ocean. For now, give it a few million years. So if we use this approach, where are we at?

Eurasia is still out of luck. Europe and Asia are still one giant tectonic plate using this approach. North and South America are not, however. In fact, there's a small plate between the two, the Caribbean plate, which includes Nicaragua, Haiti, and Puerto Rico. North America would actually include all of Greenland, half of Iceland, where it borders the Eurasian plate, and the other border with the Eurasian plate would be in eastern Siberia, which is also technically part of the North American plate. Africa is once again separate, but then so is the Arabian Peninsula, which has its own tectonic plate.

Likewise, most of South Asia, south of the Himalayas, is part of the Indian plate, which would be a continent too. Australia is back in the club, and it's bringing the island of New Guinea with it, along with parts of New Zealand. Using this definition of tectonic plates, we now have nine continents. However, this is only looking at major tectonic plates. We could further divide Africa by splitting off the Somali plate, which takes most of East Africa with it, as well as Madagascar.

Southeast Asia can be split off with the Sunda plate, which is most of Southeast Asia, and the Philippines plate, which is most of the Philippines. At this rate, it would be difficult to even come up with a number. Some plates might only have a tiny section of land, and it doesn't even stick on a map as being a separate thing. You need to look at geologic maps, and no one really does that. We could have almost two dozen continents by this approach, which would be very confusing and wouldn't really help anyone.

At this point, I look to Dan Montello, a geography professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who noted, quote, No one can say as a matter of principled fact how many continents there are, because the decisions are largely based on convention, and convention goes in and out of fashion over time. There is simply no czar or CEO of continents or any other ultimate authority, so it's pretentious for anyone to claim that they have an authoritative answer. answer." Well, then, maybe it's just easier to go back to what I said at the start of the episode. There are seven continents. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James McAlla. Please remember to support the show over at patreon.com, where you can get exclusive merchandise

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