![]() ![]() There is no standard of measuring what ‘large’ represents in the definition of continents. However,if you look at the definition more closely, the word ‘large’ in it will continue to create further troubles still. Until now, Australia and Antarctica have appeared to perfectly fit into the definition of continents, as they are both discrete land masses separated by the sea. ![]() Large landmasses? What is meant by large? If the Suez Canal did not exist, and the 'sea demarcation theory' was strictly adhered to, we would have had 4 continents, with Africa, Europe and Asia huddled together as Afro-Eurasia, and the remaining three continents being the Americas, Australia and Antarctica. The same can be said about Africa and the Suez Canal. Perhaps this is the reason why schools in Latin America teach their children about the existence of a world of six continents, where North and South America are designated collectively as the ‘Americas’. If President Roosevelt did not commission the completion of the Panama canal to facilitate the passage of goods quickly and cheaply between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, dividing North and South America by an artificially created water passage, there was no water body dividing these two land masses. The case of North America and South America being designated as two separate continents, however, is also a unique one itself. Those who propagate the six continent theory, however, appear to take the strict definition of continents more seriously, and merge Europe and Asia into the continent of Eurasia. If cultural differences were indeed the basis to define continents, then is it not also quite appropriate to consider the Middle East and India, with their largely distinct cultural repertoires, as separate continents as well? Then we would end up having nine continents instead of seven, with possibilities for further increases of this figure based on cultural differences in different regions of the world. Why then do the ‘seven continent’ theorists consider them as separate continents? Some argue that it is the prodigious cultural differences between the inhabitants of these two regions that has led to the demarkation of Asia and Europe as separate continents, even though the sea has no role to play in this distinction. However, there appears to be no ‘sea’ separating the ‘large landmasses’ of Asia and Europe. The definition claims that continents are ‘large, land masses’ separated by the ‘sea’. The uncertainty regarding continents lies in the misleading definition of the term. The interesting question of whether there are seven or six continents on our planet further intensifies when we carefully consider our traditional definition of continents. Less often, peoples' classifications have North and South America merged together as the continent of the Americas. ![]() However, some of us have also grown up learning that there are six continents, where Europe and Asia are unified together as a single continent, namely Eurasia. ![]() Namely, these have traditionally been listed as Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, North America, South America, and Antarctica. Most of us began our Geography lessons learning that there are seven continents in the world. According to the Cambridge dictionary, a continent is defined as “one of the seven large land masses on the earth's surface, surrounded, or mainly surrounded, by sea, and usually consisting of various countries”. ![]()
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