Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Asia and Europe are considered separate continents for historical reasons; the division between the two goes back to the early Greek geographers. In the modern sense of the term "continent", Eurasia is more readily identifiable as a "continent", and Europe has occasionally been described as a subcontinent of Eurasia. [68]
The concepts of Europe and Asia as distinct continents date back to antiquity, but their borders have historically been subject to change. For example, to the ancient Greeks , Asia originally included Africa but they classified Europe [ 5 ] as separate land.
The geography of the continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean was the first evidence suggesting the existence of Pangaea. The seemingly close fit of the coastlines of North and South America with Europe and Africa was remarked on almost as soon as these coasts were charted.
[21] However, for historical and cultural reasons, the view of Europe as a separate continent continues in almost all categorizations. If continents are defined strictly as discrete landmasses, embracing all the contiguous land of a body, then Africa, Asia, and Europe form a single continent which may be referred to as Afro-Eurasia. [22]
Like most breakups, the separation of continents is not a quick and painless process.. Take the supercontinent Gondwana, for example. Some 180 million years ago, the landmass separated from what ...
Historia antipodum oder newe Welt, or History of the New World, by Matthäus Merian the Elder, published in 1631. The Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci is usually credited for coming up with the term "New World" (Mundus Novus) for the Americas in his 1503 letter, giving it its popular cachet, although similar terms had been used and applied before him.
Europe covers approx. 10,186,000 square kilometres (3,933,000 sq mi), or 2% of Earth's surface (6.8% of Earth's land area), making it the second-smallest continent (using the seven-continent model). Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states , of which Russia is the largest and most populous , spanning 39% of the continent ...
As modern-day Europe (Eurasian Plate) and North America (North American Plate) separated during the final breakup of Pangea in the early Cenozoic Era, [1] they formed the North Atlantic Ocean. Geologists believe the breakup occurred either due to primary processes of the Iceland plume or secondary processes of lithospheric extension from plate ...