Europe being on a different continent than Asia always seemed like bullshit. I can forgive the isthmuses, but Eurasia feels like it's a thing to me.
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
289 points (97.4% liked)
Today I Learned
29013 readers
741 users here now
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
But then you run into the issue that the very concept of continent was invented to differentiate Europe and Asia (and Africa).
Eh, words change and sometimes terms outlive their etymology or grow beyond it. We "hang up the phone" but no phone these days is actually hung up. 🤷
That's literally the same thing, we kept the expression even when we know it isn't accurate any more, because we still have the need to express the original meaning.
If anything, we should split Asia in more subcontinents.
load more comments
(2 replies)
The difference between Europe and Asia should also apply to Asia and India.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Same, if they're different continents then Africa is also more than one continent
The Romans divided the world into three equal landmasses before they understood how it was actually laid out and it stuck.
Definitely not the Romans. It may have stuck because of them, but the Greeks divided the world that way long before Rome left Italy.
load more comments
(6 replies)
There's one continent, it's called the crust of the Earth. There's some water on top of it in some places.
This comment has been flagged as DEI /s
Continental crusts are an observable and measurable thing
They contain higher concentrations of aluminum whereas you find higher concentrations of magnesium outside of those crusts.
They are geological features and should be categorized accordingly. Eurasia makes way more sense than Europe being its own special thing... Except Europe, historically, likes to pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist in their concepts and as such always considers itself special
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Stop doing maps. Years of cartography and this is what they want you believe? /s -ish.
Cartography always has a hidden set of assumptions and goals and because political geography as infrastructure isn't exactly a consensus topic either, shenanigans like this are pretty much expectable in geography.
Honestly, the biggest two problems I've encountered are:
- "Oceania" is not a continent. It's like seven smaller continental plates. Zealandia is more of a continent than Europe is. Similarly, Greenland is also more of a continent than Europe is.
- if you're going to count Europe, you also have to count India, and in reality, we should probably just talk about cratons and plates, not "continents".
Okay, new scheme: Every continental shield is a continent. Everything not on one is terra incognita. Continental platforms are just delusional sea floor.
Certainly that classification won't lead to any confusion.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I don't believe in continents. I'm incontinent.
Of course there isn't. There are 10 billion people on earth. I even disagree with myself on the matter.
PS: TIL too.
Closer to 8 billion
There was a study last year saying that 8 billion could be super underestimating the world population.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
There's between 3 and 500. Since it's statistically unlikely that the correct number would be at either extreme, the most likely correct number of continents would be somewhere around 250, with a margin of error of approximately 245.
load more comments
(1 replies)
imo europe is a colonialist excuse, not a continent
In the great words of Atlas Pro after going into excruciating detail on why no answer is more correct He said:
So gow many continents are there?
"Obviously six"
No further clarification was given.
I always assumed North America was Canada, America was the USA/Mexico and South America was Brazil/Venezuela.
If you accept the 7 continent model, there are 23 countries in North America.
load more comments
(7 replies)
Europe isn't a continent, it's a political entity. A continent is geographic. EurAsia is a continent.
load more comments
(10 replies)
Isn't it tectonic separation? Like the plates? 🤔
Yes. Except for the exceptions, which are the exceptions.
load more comments
(1 replies)
It's wild how much "basic science" is just some pale bro's wacky idea.
view more: next ›