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A continent is a large geographical region defined by the continental shelves and the cultures on the continent. [1] In the modern day, there are seven continents. However, there have been more continents throughout history. Vaalbara was the first supercontinent. [2] Europe is the newest continent. [3]
That continent began to exert political and cultural dominance over human societies around the world, a time known as the Colonial era (also see Age of Discovery). [195]: 295–299 In the 18th century a cultural movement known as the Age of Enlightenment further shaped the mentality of Europe and contributed to its secularization. [citation needed]
But when Australia split from the southern continent around 45 Ma, the warm equatorial currents were deflected away from Antarctica, and an isolated cold water channel developed between the two continents. The Antarctic region cooled down, and the ocean surrounding Antarctica began to freeze, sending cold water and ice floes north, reinforcing ...
The model displayed remnants of submerged plates located under oceans and in the middle of continents, which—according to our current understanding of the plate tectonic cycle—are all too far ...
An 1849 atlas labelled Antarctica as a continent but few atlases did so until after World War II. [114] Over time, the western concept of dividing the world into continents spread globally, replacing conceptions in other areas of the world. The idea of continents continued to become imbued with cultural and political meaning.
"Our research suggests they likely originated in the low-latitude regions of Gondwana near the equator, an area that today includes northern South America and northern Africa," Heath added.
Around 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus migrated out of Africa via the Levantine corridor and Horn of Africa to Eurasia. This migration has been proposed as being related to the operation of the Saharan pump, around 1.9 million years ago. [citation needed] Homo erectus dispersed throughout most of the Old World, reaching as far as Southeast ...
The concept that the continents once formed a contiguous land mass was hypothesised, with corroborating evidence, by Alfred Wegener, the originator of the scientific theory of continental drift, in three 1912 academic journal articles written in German titled Die Entstehung der Kontinente (The Origin of Continents). [11]