• Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    What you are depicting is called Eurasia. Which is the single landmass that make up Europe and Asia.
    But you are right that Europe and Asia are considered separate for cultural reasons, and are not really geographic continents but subcontinents of Eurasia.

    It is no more correct to cal Europe west Asia than it would be to call Asia east Europe.

    • Rothe@piefed.social
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      6 days ago

      The entire concept of continents is entirely cultural. The number of continents taught in schools varies greatly from country to country (specifically because the Americas can be 1-3 continents in different systems).

      So yeah, there is no objective correct about continents, it really depends on which cultural tradition you were brought up in.

      • Ostfriesentee@feddit.org
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        6 days ago

        I mean, couldn’t you just work with the tectonic plates? They roughly align with the traditional “continents”.

        • SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          It’s a good idea but it opens a whole other can of worms, like by the tectonic plate definition, India is its own continent.

        • SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works
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          6 days ago

          Americans are going to love having to learn the name of the continent that split their west coast cities.

          They will wish it would drop into the sea or something. 😂

      • Melchior@feddit.org
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        6 days ago

        specifically because the Americas can be 1-3 continents in different systems

        I know North and South America and it being a single continent, but three? Or are you talking about Afro-Eurasia?

          • Melchior@feddit.org
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            6 days ago

            Really? Who considers Central America a continent? Not a region, but a continent. I always understood it as something similar to say North Africa.

            • inari@piefed.zip
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              6 days ago

              In Brazil I was taught in terms of North, Central, and South America. I suspect it may be similar in other Latin American countries.

              • igmelonh@feddit.online
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                6 days ago

                Most LatAm I’ve spoken to online (including Brazilians) insisted that it’s one continent and that North, Central, and South America are subcontinents. Several of them have ranted at me about how it’s immoral for the US to monopolize “American” because of it.

                fwiw in the US I was taught that North and South America are two continents and that Central America and the Caribbean are subcontinents of NA; the Panama-Colombia border demarcates the continents.

                Only other one that really ever gets brought up is Australia vs Oceania as a continent. Don’t think I ever heard of Oceania until after graduating.

    • join@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      Yes, to the people that created the distinction based on “cultural” reasons, India, the middle east, Japan, the Urals, Mongolia and China have much more in common with each other than Europa has with any of them.