Continents

Noun The book provides information on hotels in Britain and on the Continent. Europe and Asia are sometimes considered together to be one continent. Adjective Most children are continent by age three. a religious sect that expects its unmarried members to be completely celibate and its married adherents to maintain continent relationships Noun Their ancient ancestors dispersed across the planet’s continents and learned to live in tropical, temperate, and colder climates. — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 1 June 2023 Spanning decades and continents, vignettes of a teenage Minh's life in 1960s Vietnam add vibrant strokes to a searing portrait of mothers and daughters. — Ew Staff, EW.com, 10 May 2023 While the legend of the Stone of Scone traveling across continents was widely believed for many years, geologists who have studied the stone have disproven many of the surrounding beliefs. — Cara Lynn Shultz, Peoplemag, 1 May 2023 The largest and most active Shinto shrine in the mainland United States, and arguably the North American continent, is not in Seattle. — oregonlive, 30 Apr. 2023 Selected in the international competition in Nyon, the documentary was pre-sold to Canal+ International for a broadcast on the African continent. — Trinidad Barleycorn, Variety, 25 Apr. 2023 The question of who helms strategic companies ranging from energy to defense has taken on more significance given the backdrop of rapidly realigning priorities in gas supply and military rearmament as war ra...

A continent is one of Earth’s seven main divisions of land. The continents are, from largest to smallest: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Ant arctica, Europe, and Australia. When geographers identify a continent, they usually include all the islands associated with it. Japan, for instance, is part of the continent of Asia. Greenland and all the islands in the Caribbean Sea are usually considered part of North America. Together, the continents add up to about 148 million square kilometers (57 million square miles) of land. Continents make up most—but not all—of Earth’s land surface. A very small portion of the total land area is made up of islands that are not considered physical parts of continents. The ocean covers almost three-fourths of Earth. The area of the ocean is more than double the area of all the continents combined. All continents border at least one ocean. Asia, the largest continent, has the longest series of coastlines. Coastlines, however, do not indicate the actual boundaries of the continents. Continents are defined by their continental shelves. A continental shelf is a gently sloping area that extends outward from the beach far into the ocean. A continental shelf is part of the ocean, but also part of the continent. To geographers, continents are also culturally distinct. The continents of Europe and Asia, for example, are actually part of a single, enormous piece of land called Eurasia. But linguistically and ethnically, the areas of Asia an...

• North America (which includes Central America and the Caribbean) • South America • Europe • Asia (the most populous continent) • Africa • Australia • Antarctica Going by that standard, continents make up the vast majority of land surface area on the planet, or about 57 million square miles (148 million square kilometers). But that's hardly the last word on the matter. For example, in Europe, students usually learn that there are actually naturally separated by water, rather than manmade canals (AfroEurasia, America, Antarctica and Australia). Heck, as recently as the 1800s, some people says there were "Nothing, really, determines a continent, except historical convention," says Dan Montello, a geography professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, via email. "A bit of an overstatement but mostly valid. Certain factors make a landmass more or less likely to be called a continent at various times in history, by various people, but nothing can be said to determine continentality in a completely principled, nonarbitrary way." Take for example, the vast country of Russia, 6.6 million square miles (17 million square kilometers). Why is it part of Europe rather than Asia? "The Ural Mountains are taken to separate Asia and Europe but only because Russians wanted their great city of Moscow to be European, so the Urals were a convenient marker for that arbitrary decision," says Montello. "Continents are (mostly) spatially contiguous collections of landmasses larger th...

A continent is typically defined as a very large landmass, surrounded on all sides (or nearly so) by water and containing a number of nation-states. However, when it comes to the number of continents on Earth, experts don't always agree. Depending on the criteria used, there may be five, six, or seven continents. Sounds confusing, right? Here's how it all sorts out. • Areas of land that are elevated in relation to the surrounding ocean floor • A variety of rock formations, including igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary • A crust that is thicker than those of the surrounding oceanic crusts. For example, the continental crust may vary in thickness from about 18 to 28 miles in depth, whereas oceanic crust is usually about 4 miles thick • Clearly-defined boundaries How Many Continents Are There? If you went to school in the United States, chances are you were taught that there are seven continents: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. But using the criteria defined above, many geologists say there are six continents: Africa, Antarctica, Australia, North and South America, and Why the difference? From a geological perspective, Europe and Asia are one large landmass. Dividing them into two separate continents is more of a geopolitical consideration because Russia occupies so much of the Asian continent and historically has been politically isolated from the powers of Western Europe, such as Great Britain, Germany, and France. You can al...

What actually is a continent, and how many are there? What does the dictionary say? Continent, noun, [ˈkɒn.tɪ.nənt] one of the seven large landmasses on the Earth's surface, surrounded, or mainly surrounded, by sea and usually consisting of various countries. [ The Continents Africa, the Americas, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, together with Oceania, and Europe are considered to be continents. The word continent is used to differentiate between various large land areas of Earth into which all the land surface of the planet is divided. The term refers to the 'mountain top' regions of the Earth not flooded by water, dry land. The level of the surrounding water ultimately defines the shape and borders of continents. More water implies less land and different outlines. Even more water, like that stored away as ice in the poles and glaciers, and you might live on a water planet, no continents. The landmasses of the Earth are unequally distributed, two-thirds of the continental landmass is located in the Northern Hemisphere (the upper half of the globe, north of the equator). Why is that? This might be just a feature of our current point in geological time because some million years ago, the bulk of the planet's landmass was in the Southern Hemisphere. ( Africa The African states, with population figures. Alphabetical list of the capitals of Africa. The national flags of the countries of Africa. List of African Languages by Countries. The map shows the 54 independent states of Afr...