Why are Europe and Asia considered two continents?

Question

Why isn't it just considered one continent? Australia and Antarctica are well defined (i.e not connected to any other continent), even North and South America are hardly connected, as well as Africa (pretty much). I've heard it's due to Greek and Roman influence, as well as tectonic plates, but tectonic plates haven't been known for that long, and there could be more continents considering this theory. Anybody know more?

Answer 1

Good question, and good comments. We hear of "the Americas" and the "Eurasian landmass", but the continents are separately described. The Europe/Asia/Africa divide may well be ancient, and there are geographical/geological boundaries that are probably buttressed by some racial/cultural divides too.

First, there's the somewhat obvious boundary around Africa -- the Mediterranean Sea (from Europe) and the Red Sea/Sinai (from Asia Minor). (And the Red Sea, of course, is a spreading plate boundary.) Racially and culturally, the Sahara is also a boundary, and sub-Saharan Africa is a lot different than the Maghreb and Egypt. But still, Africa is easy to identify as a continent.

Now to your question. There is a well-defined waterway -- not just a river -- separating Greece and the Balkans from Turkey. The Bosporus, Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles really form a strait connecting the Black Sea and the Aegean/Mediterranean pretty much like the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, and the Detroit River connect Lakes Huron and Erie. That is, these waterways are not the same as rivers.

In ancient times, this divide was very important. Troy (Iliad & Odyssey) was on the Asian side. The Persian Wars (Herodotus) were fought across that divide also. The Greeks were in Europe, and the Persians were in Asia (although there were many Greek cities along the Asian littoral).

The continental boundary leaves the Black Sea by following the high mountains of the Caucasus (hence, Caucasians), the Caspian Sea, and finally north along the ridge of the Urals. All of these form physical barriers, and, in the case of the mountain ranges, represent plate boundaries.

The Urals in particular are very old mountains, similar to the Appalachians in the eastern United States. Both the Urals and the Appalachians were formed by continental crust collisions far back in geologic time ... much earlier, say, than the Alps, Rockies, Sierra Nevada, or Himalaya.

The Greeks and Romans, of course, didn't know all that. But I suspect that there's an additional factor at work here. Historically, what we now know as Russia formed west of the Urals. They're a Slavic people, and, along with the Ukranians, Hungarians, and other Slavic peoples, looked toward, or identified with, the rest of the Europeans more so than with the Asians -- Mongols and Chinese -- who lived east of those mountains. So there's a racial and cultural element, in my opinion, that factors into your boundary question.

One last thing ... nobody could speak definitively about continents until good maps became available. And that didn't happen until sometime after Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus. By that time, Russia was Orthodox Christian. So maybe the final definition of the continents didn't happen until sometime after 1500.

At least that's what I think.

Answer 2

Europe And Asia One Continent

Answer 3

Eurasia.
Eurasia is the landmass composed of Europe and Asia. Mostly in the eastern and northern hemispheres, Eurasia can be considered a supercontinent, part of a supercontinent of Africa-Eurasia, or simply a continent. In plate tectonics, the Eurasian Plate includes Europe and most of Asia, but not the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent, and the area east of the Cherskiy Range in Sakha. Eurasia is also used in international politics as a neutral way to refer to organizations of or affairs concerning the post-Soviet states, in particular Russia, the Central Asian republics, and the Transcaucasian republics.

Traditionally Europe and Asia has been considered to be separate continents, with the dividing line placed along the Aegean Sea, Dardanelles, Bosphorus, Black Sea, Caucasus Mountains, Caspian Sea, Ural River, and Ural Mountains, even though Asia contains multiple regions and cultures as large and populous as Europe, and as different and geographically separated from each other as they are from Europe.

Answer 4

You have to go back to when Asia, Europe, and Africa were named as continents - or major parts of the world. The world for this purpose consisted of the Mediterranean and the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Greece, and the Phoenicians. If you look at the eastern end of this area you will find obvious divisions between Europe, north of the Bosporus, Asia, south of it and north of the Red Sea and Africa stretching off to the west and for far travelers separated from Europe by Gibraltar. To get to Europe from Asia by land requires going around the Black Sea, a trip of over 1800 miles (per Google Earth) when most of the Asia trade routes ran east and south east.

Answer 5

"East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet." That's the reason in a nutshell. Hardly a 19th century construct; the idea that Eurasia should be divided dates back to the ancients.

First of all, geography in years past was never the exact science we know today. The western boundary of "The East", that is, the dividing line between east and west, until as late as the 19th century, was often considered to be the Nile River (although other boundaries, such as Russia's Don River, had their adherents), lumping Egyptian culture and history in with what they were coming to define as "Asian" traits. It was ultimately these traits that really formed the notion of the separation between Europe and Asia (and eventually Africa was considered separate from Europe), with the three known continents defined not by geographical boundaries, but as the domains of the white, black, and yellow people.

The notion goes back (in European history) at least to Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Herodotus, that there were different peoples occupying the different shores of the Mediterranean; sail south and hit Egypt or Libya, sail east and meet Turks and Syrians, sail west and say hi to Italy and France. Only rarely going south into the African continent, the BCE Europeans concluded that the most fundamental difference between the people they encountered was from the east and west, ascribing all kinds of fantastic behaviors and philosophies to the Asians about whom they knew next to nothing, and concluded that if there was any rational way of splitting the world into the largest possible pieces, it was an east-west divide. Aristotle wrote:

"Those who live in a cold climate and in Europe are full of spirit, but wanting in intelligence and skill; and therefore they retain comparative freedom, but have no political organisation, and are incapable of ruling over others. Whereas the natives of Asia are intelligent and inventive, but they are wanting in spirit, and therefore they are always in a state of subjection and slavery."

The notion continued into the Roman era, and the Christian era. By the middle ages, Africa was often being included as a continent separate from Europe or Asia, and writers of that time considered inhabitants of the various continents the descendants of Noah's sons; Asia was occupied by Semites, Africa by Hamites, and Europe by Japhethites. Augustine wrote:

"... altogether there are Asia, Europe, and Africa: which they do not make by an equal division. For the part which is called Asia extends from the south through the east to the north; Europe, from the north to the west; and Africa thence from the west to the south. Whence two parts are seen to occupy half the world, Europe and Africa, whereas the other half, Asia alone. But the reason the former are made into two parts is that between them some of the Ocean's waters wash in, making our [Mediterranean] sea. -Therefore if you divide the world into two parts, east and west, Asia will be in one and Europe and Africa in the other."

Of course, the West's concept of the East has always been based solely on the people they encountered, Syrians, Turks, Persians, and later Indians and Huns. China, what we Americans now think of as the most definitively "Asian" people, hardly entered into the picture at all, until the current millennium. At the extreme Orient, descriptions of China took on fabulous qualities. Go west, across the sea, and you discover Atlantis. Go east, and you discover China. It was hardly surprising that these folks considered Asia a different continent; to them, it was practically a different world.

Answer 6

That's actually a very good question. I'm on your side, it should be one since there is no actual break in the land mass. You have the Himalayas sort of splitting the continent, and as the first person said, you basically have Orientals to the east and Caucasians to the west. I'm afraid I don't have a definitive answer for you. Sorry.

Answer 7

Even the dictionary and encyclopedias refer to the '6 or 7' land masses.

I believe seperating Europe and Asia is a political thing, not a geological one.

Answer 8

I've puzzled over this since I was a kid, for much the same reasons as you. I've heard lots of lame answers over my lifetime (I continue to ask), but none of them is really satisfactory. I suspect others have felt the same way as we do, which is why we often hear of the Eurasian continent.

Answer 9

i was told they are separated by mountains most all the way so the populations stayed more separate for loooong time. today its easy to get from east to west, vice versa. nobody ever said they can only be separated by water.

Answer 10

because the ppl look different lol that is a chance they look very different and there religion is different