My first introduction to how ludicrous this all is was as a child encountering people who seriously called people who live on the same tectonic plate as us, who used to be directly connected to us with a land bridge only a few 10kA ago, and who have no continental slope or suchlike between us, "the continent".

If you thought that the Map Men were the only people challenging the Anglophones on this, with so much YouTube educational content in English rather parrotting the 7 continents dogma, be prepared for a YouTube channel that is actually called "Well ... actually" having got there years before. (-:

* https://youtube.com/watch?v=dwPuEPjX36E

> people who seriously called people who live on the same tectonic plate as us, who used to be directly connected to us with a land bridge only a few 10kA ago, and who have no continental slope or suchlike between us, "the continent".

It’s more surprising to me that there are Brits who consider themselves European. From my point of view, there’ve been deep distinctions between Great Britain and the Continent for centuries. Britain seems distinct from the European nations that, for example, Burgundy or the Hanseatic League, or modern Germany, are not. Part of that, of course, is just that I’m an Anglophone. And certainly the Scandinavian countries are in some regards equally different from ‘Europe.’

Scandinavia was for a long time functionally an island - its connections to Europe were by sea, not land. So it's not surprising that it might be similar to Britain in that way.

I've generally thought that the 6 continent Eurasian model made the most sense. While reading this article, I've decided to start calling Europe a or the sub-continent now.

In UK English, the continent refers to mainland Europe and the subcontinent refers to the Indian subcontinent. Let's not make it more complicated!

In France they teach 5 continents. Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia.

I was a language learner there and explained the US 7 continent system. The South Americans in my class said we were racist for splitting North and South America. I told them as far as I knew the split was between Venezuela and Columbia, had something to do with tectonic plates, and that and North America included lots of Spanish speaking countries.

I guess they decided we weren't racist after all. At least not because of that.

"incontinent" also has a pretty loose definition.

Tectonic shifts of masses ...

Good question.

Probably nobody knows.

I figure it's been stable for quite a long time, and if number 8 were to show up any time soon it would be a major Earth-shaking event :)

> 6 continents (Russia/ Eastern Europe): Africa, Eurasia, Europe, North America, South America, Antartica, Australia

Should the article delete Europe from that list?

good catch. Should be updated in ~5min

Also Antartica → Antarctica

There are a variety of definitions, and for a number of definitions my country hints at claiming an entire “continent” [1] Not actually pressing a claim diplomatically but also not dismissing the idea of a claim.

Of course there is zero chance New Zealand would ever challenge Australia or France for territory, and little chance we could ever claim economic rights.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealandia

Europe is a continent because Europeans invented continents.

The definitions are loose enough, I'm kind of surprised nobody has tried making an end run on the whole thing and getting Pluto declared a continent.

The list of cratons on Wikipedia includes entries for Antarctica and Australia while omitting Greenland. I couldn't find a technical definition of a craton, but to geologists a continent must contain at least one craton to qualify.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shields_and_cratons

It looks like the "North American Craton" reaches all the way up to Greenland if you look at the image.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:North_america_craton_np...

I wonder what would happen if you told this to Trump.

they have probably looked at it but as they end up loosing both coasts and alaska,it would not be a good place to build land claims from. Overall we are lucky that "craton/continents" is such a low low key thing, or we would have to endure a whole academic broohaha,look what happened to Pluto. MPAPA "make pluto a planet again"

Good article.

But it begs the question, are "continents" even a useful category? What value do we get from acknowledging the concept?

Same reason there are still 5 senses, because it's easier to teach than the truth