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.
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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It's wild how much "basic science" is just some pale bro's wacky idea.
I don't believe in continents. I'm incontinent.
Europe isn't a continent, it's a political entity. A continent is geographic. EurAsia is a continent.
Lol no. The european union is the political entity. Europe is a continent. Asia is a continent. If you want to talk about both of them together you can say eurasia but they are not one continent.
They are one continuous landmass. A continent is one continuous landmass. You can't split a single landmass and call it two separate continents.
What delineates Europe from Asia that shouldn’t also delineate India from Asia?
Not trying to be argumentative, curious. I’ve always heard of India as a subcontinent, and when explained why it seems like Europe fits the same description.
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.
Of course there isn't. There are 10 billion people on earth. I even disagree with myself on the matter.
PS: TIL too.
8.3 billion people. But who's counting?
Closer to 8 billion
There was a study last year saying that 8 billion could be super underestimating the world population.
https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/ruralPopDisclaimer.php
False. Well, it's true there was that one study but it wasn't accurate.
Just wait a few years. ;)
Pluto was always a continent!!!!
The continents are white and gold, Yanny, and Bouba.
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.
Well by that logic then Europe ,Asia and Africa are all one continent. Just because someone dug a fucking suez ditch does not make them any less connected.
Since continent doesn't have a strict definition, in my book, giving the isthmus of suez (and the isthmus of panama) a pass makes sense. Both of those were historically very difficult to traverse and not viable sustained trade routes compared to just sailing around them. Hell, there's still not a road that links North and South America through the Darian Gap, which is wild to me considering what seems like should be a vital connection point bottleneck.
I understand "continent" a mercurial word and so people can define Europe and Asia as being different contients, but it does seem like it's the only continental division that doesn't make logical sense to me.
Well I guess. But there is a bridge across the suez and by a similar kind of logic you could split europe into 2 'continets' because of the donau-main kanal. Same thing as the panama one as far as I am concerned.
I think of it more as if you were to give a pen to an alien child and said "draw a circle around the main landmasses on this planet" they would probably logically draw circles around North America, South America, Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. They wouldn't look at the Ural Mountains or any sort of canal systems, just "these are the main blobs on this world map."
But that's just the way I think of continents. 🤷♂️
I guess. But in my mind still main landmass would encompass anything connected to it. So if you were to look at the earth before we built all those canals there would be like 4 continents. I don't personally think small things like a canal would be enough to actually separate 1 continent into 2. It would have to be quite a bit of distance for that to make sense. Like if the entire canal was the width and depth of the gulf of suez then yes, we have made a new 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.
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. 🤷
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There's one continent, it's called the crust of the Earth. There's some water on top of it in some places.
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
Oceanic crusts are also much denser than continental crusts, and obviously not as thick. When they collide the oceanic crusts subduct back into the mantle due to being denser.
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This comment has been flagged as DEI /s
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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.
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