How many continents are there?

[The Last Conformist]

Well, the Europe~Asia dichotomy did tolerable sense back when no-one really cared what went on north of the Black Sea.

 

[EdwardTking]

Well, the Europe~Asia dichotomy did tolerable sense back when no-one really cared what went on north of the Black Sea.

Understood

 

[Perfection]

Greenland's "geological indopendence" was mentioned. Huge as it is, it's simply a shelf island in the style of Great Britain.

I tend to agree with that, however I wonder if the mediterranian sea could fall under that catagory

Does it matter how many continents there are?

Not really, but it leads to some pretty interesting conversations about geography and geology. (I'm tempted to create a follow up of "how many Oceans are there")

 

[The Last Conformist]

I tend to agree with that, however I wonder if the mediterranian sea could fall under that catagory

Um, well, the Mediterranean is cross-crossed with fault lines and have a bunch of mini-plates around it. I don't offhand remember if there's any true oceanic crust left from the good ol' Tethys.

 

[Perfection]

Um, well, the Mediterranean is cross-crossed with fault lines and have a bunch of mini-plates around it. I don't offhand remember if there's any true oceanic crust left from the good ol' Tethys.

Well looking it up its deepest point we find it to be the pit of Oinoussai is 4,850 meters deep so there must be some left. I wonder if this is just a remaining pocket or if there is oceanic crust along the entirity of the sea. Remember if faultlines are the marking of continents then siberia arabia and india should all be recognized as continents

 

[The Last Conformist]

Not India, actually - it's connected to Australia!

 

[Perfection]

Not India, actually - it's connected to Australia!

Not according to this map http://geology.er.usgs.gov/eastern/plates.html

 

[The Last Conformist]

Odd. Googling for the Indo-Australian Plate gives plenty of hits, incl this Wikipedia article.

 

[The Last Conformist]

From another page:

 

[Yom]

How are Europe and Asia on one plate if, millions of years ago, they weren't connected?

 

[The Last Conformist]

The plates will have amalgamated.

Hm, if memory serves, they were separated really long ago. Like, deep into pre-Cambrium.

 

[Perfection]

Odd. Googling for the Indo-Australian Plate gives plenty of hits, incl this Wikipedia article.

Hmmm, Indian plate gives much more, of course many are probobly bogus, so a "google off" wouldn't be an adequate way of resolving it.

From another page:

http://www.extremescience.com/
Well, I'm not sure that is the best source. Mine was taken from the USGS

Hm, if memory serves, they were separated really long ago. Like, deep into pre-Cambrium.

Not that long ago, but still pretty old, it was joined in the Carboniferous about three hundred million years ago, Europe joined Asia much before other parts of asia were assembled, other joinings are much more recent.

Here's an excellent site

http://www.scotese.com/earth.htm

 

[Cheetah]

Well, my definition of continents would be relatively (based on the size of the planet and the rest of the landmass) large land areas divided by relatively large bodies of water, as seen from the air/space. Teutonic plates and so on is the plates, not the continents.

 

[Chairman Meow]

Cultural and historical sound interesting, it occurs to me then that America could be divvied up into "English" and "Latin" America.

This is kind of off-topic to this discussion, but I've always wondered why Latin America is called "Latin America" when the people there speak Spanish, not Latin. It seems a more logical name would have been "Spanish America."

 

[Oruc]

brazilians speak portuguese, spanish and portuguese are latin based languages ( or is that latin derived languages ) somthing like that anyway

 

[Perfection]

Also there's quite a few french speakers (Haiti, French Guyana) which is another Romance Language.

 

[Morgasshk]

7 continents

Antartica
Australia (def not oceania)
N America
S America
Asia
Europe
Africa


Loosely based upon tectonic plates - not an exact science... Island like japan,nz, britain etc are associated with the closest continent but not part of...

Picture of the plates in the last page is incorrect - Australian and Indian tectonic plates are seperate - not by much and the australian tectonic plate will actually start to go under the indian one in the next 25,000 years... I'll move before then...

India has it's own plate - and is often considered a sub-continent because of this. If we didn't take this loosely then the west coast of the USA would not be considered a part of a continent as that is the reason for the san andreas faultline... the n american plate ends there...

No basis is made from cultural or language differences - is def from pagaen times when the worlds landmass was one huge supuercontinent...

time for bed,

late

Morgasshk

 

[sysyphus]

In terms of plate tectonics, there are actually 15:

Eurasia
Hellenic
Arabia
Iran
Africa
Indo-Australia
Phillipine
Pacific
North America
South America
Caribbean
Cocos
Nazca
Scotia
Antartica

 

[Rossiya]

REVIVED!

I believe there are six.

Close the other thread now.

 

[Love]

There are 10 ones

Europe, North America, Central America, South America, Asia, Africa, Oceania, Atlantis and Gotland