Geography Facts for Kids

Throughout our lives, we happen to live in different homes. The smallest of them is the body and the largest is Earth. However, between these two extremes, there are different other types of homes. We have our houses, neighbourhoods, cities, countries, and continents.

And continents are what we are learning about today.

Earth comprises three main elements: air, water, and land. Water covers up to 71% of the total area of our planet and the rest, only 29%, is land. This mass of land is yet divided into several other continuous masses called continents. All continents are surrounded by water bodies known as oceans.

As of today, there are seven continents on Earth. The largest of them is Asia. Then comes Africa in second place. Then, there is North America, South America, Antarctica, and Europe. The smallest and seventh continent is Australia.

Wait! If a continent is a continuous landmass, what about all the islands scattered in the world’s seas and oceans? 

That is, in fact, a good question.

Islands are areas of land surrounded by water from all sides. When scientists talk about islands, they consider them within the definitions of continents; as parts of them. For instance, Greenland is the largest island on Earth and it belongs to North America. Likewise, the Philippines, which comprises 7,640 islands, is a part of Asia.

Fine. But why are there only seven continents? Why not more? Or less? What makes a continent a continent, to begin with?

Well, let’s see.

What is a continent?

We can simply define a continent as a large mass of land. But considering size only as a continent-determining criterion is not just enough. For instance, Russia is the largest country, way larger than Australia. However, it is not a continent? Why is that?

Well, there are no strict criteria that categorise a mass of land as a continent. That said, a continent just has to be large, extended, and distinctive land. It can be surrounded by water but that is not necessary for the classification. There is also no minimum size for large.

Despite that, it is still confusing to identify a landmass as a continent. Europe and Asia are only separated by a mountain range; meaning they are geographically connected as one massively large landmass. Yet, they are considered two continents, not one.

So, until there are accurate criteria that set continents apart from other landmasses, the definition of a continent will be the result of an agreement more than accurate measurements. In other words, we will just have to accept the current seven-continent model of the world.

Discovery of the continents

Before we take you on some interesting adventures about the continents, we must clarify something.

Since prehistoric times, there have been people living on every continent. They were called native inhabitants and they did live in communities. However, not many of them were aware that other communities in other far-distant lands existed too. Some civilizations did know about other civilizations because they had commercial or political relations with them. Others did not.

As humans developed means of transport first by land and then by sea, they started to explore other nearby and far away regions. And whoever had the technology and the facilities was able to go even further and explore unknown landmasses.

On top of those, as we will see later, were the Europeans, mainly the Dutch, the Italians, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the British. Their expeditions, though having resulted in long-lasting colonisation, somehow influenced the development of the world as a whole and the science of geography in particular.

So in any upcoming context, when we say that a group of European explorers ‘discovered’ some continent, that does not mean the continent did not exist beforehand. It only means they found a land whose existence they were not aware of before.

That said, let’s go on.

The world used to refer to such large landmasses as parts. However, with more continents getting uncovered, the term continent originated from the Latin word terra continent which means continuous land.

Our ancestors were very curious about the world around them. Not just the lands and the waters they were familiar with but also those far, far away. They knew that exploration was the only way to satisfy such curiosity so they saved no effort.

From the dawn of history, humans have been exploring the world around them by moving on land and sailing in the oceans in all directions. Sometimes, they were intended to reach someplace but stumbled upon a completely different and unknown one. Other times they had no plan at all and only sailed in the hopes of finding.. something.

Luckily, all their efforts paid back.

Here is the interesting story of continent discovery

The Old World

In prehistoric times, Ancient Greeks considered the world to be divided into parts that only comprised Europe and Asia. That made sense because these were the only two parts they were very familiar with.

North Africa was also quite well-known to the Greeks and the Romans; but nothing more than that. They even called the entire northern region, excluding Egypt, Libya. Then after thousands of years, the name was changed to Africa—we will see where the names came from later on.

The exploration of Africa started shortly after the Europeans found mainland India in the late 15th-century. At the time, they found out, all of a sudden, how rich India was—and still is. So they raced to take advantage of its abundant resources and open new trade hubs in Asia.

First, they used to travel by land. Trade convoys supposedly crossed Europe, heading east towards the Ural Mountains and then to Asia where they had to go all the way from freezing Russia in the north to India in the south. But that was impossibly difficult, especially after the route had gotten extremely dangerous. As a result, finding a sea route to the Indian land was more of a prerequisite than a luxury.

So the Portuguese volunteered to find such a route. Led by Prince Henry, the Portuguese sailors, followed by many other Europeans in the years to come, started to sail in the Atlantic Ocean, exploring the entire coast of Africa. As they reached the southernmost tip of the continent, they were already in the Indian Ocean across which they sailed east then straight ahead to India.

This route was then known as the sea route to India or just Cape Route. It was given this name because it passed by two places named the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Agulhas in what is now South Africa.

But, finding the sea route to India and opening to the Far East was not enough as the Portuguese got more interested and curious about the dark continent. So they began to explore the rest of Africa, precisely the most unknown part south of the Sahara Desert.

For the most part of the 16th-century, the Europeans went on expeditions to explore the land of Africa. They learned about the African countries, crossed the Equator, and even established colonies on the land that was only a complete mystery a few decades earlier.

Now the world back then had expanded to include a new member. As a result, it became three parts: Asia, Europe, and Africa.

The New World

Around the same time when the Portuguese were trying to find the Cape Route to India, one man was determined to make history by some other means. At the end of the 15th-century, Italian Explorer Christopher Columbus was sure there was a western water route from Europe to India instead of the eastern way of Cape Route.

So four times in 1492, 1493, 1498, and 1502, Columbus set sail west from Spain across the Atlantic Ocean, holding his conviction of finding this western route deep down in his heart side by side with the hope not to turn out mistaken.

Nevertheless, Columbus was mistaken. He did not reach India. Instead, he stumbled upon a new land that no one except its own inhabitants knew existed. Christopher Columbus landed on the American coast and brought the Americas to the awareness of the Europeans.

Ironically, Columbus himself was not aware of that. He only thought he had reached Asia.   

Now comes the most important question: Did Columbus really discover both Americas?

Well, that is a good question. In his first expedition in 1492 and after only two months since he cast off, Columbus made a sighting of land—which is now an island in the Bahamas. He set foot on the island and claimed it for Spain, just like when somebody coincidently finds a 10-euro note and decides it belongs to them!

Later on, Columbus sighted and landed on many other islands in the Caribbean Sea. He thought two of them were China and Japan. Then, he collected as many riches from these lands as he could and sailed back to Spain. Upon his return, Columbus was greeted like a victorious hero for finding the eastern continent of Asia which turned out not to be that far from Europe anyway!

However, Columbus knew down in his heart that none of the lands he explored so far was India. So he went on a second expedition and then a third one in the same decade. He explored more lands in the Caribbean Sea, desperately trying to find a passage to India.

The Italian explorer kept roaming the Caribbean Sea, landing on Panama and Jamaica as well as a few other islands. On August 1st, 1498, Columbus reached the northern tip of South America—precisely what is now Venezuela—and made landfall. And that was it.

Columbus did go on a fourth voyage in 1502 to explore more land, hoping in despair to come across the never-to-be-found India. Unfortunately, that never happened. And the bold explorer then passed away in 1506.

Winding up, all Columbus did was explore the Caribbean islands and reach South America. That is no underestimation of his great achievement. However, Columbus has been taking credit for finding both Americas while he never actually made any sightings neither did he ever hear of North America.

It was another explorer who made it to North America.

Finding North America

While Columbus was going back and forth on expeditions between Spain and the Caribbean islands, roaming the Caribbean Sea, thinking he had already reached Asia, and searching in vain for India, somebody else came across North America.

Italian Navigator John Cabot set off from the port of Bristol in England and sailed west on one ship across the Atlantic Ocean. He too was trying to find a shorter route to Asia. Like Columbus, he never made it to Asia. But instead, he reached the east coast of Canada in 1497.

More than twenty-five years later, a third Italian explorer called Giovanni da Verrazzano explored the east coast from what is now Florida in the USA to Newfoundland in Canada in 1524. Later on, more and more voyages from different other European countries took off to explore the new land of North America.

Now that we learned about the navigators who opened the way for the European exploration and later colonisation of both Americas, we can fairly say that if it were not for them, the 35 countries of both Americas might not have come into existence.

That said, there is still an inevitably nagging question. Were those Italian explorers the first people to ever reach the New World?

Well, no. Not really.

Attribution to the Vikings

For some reason, history seems to beat the drum for Columbus for finding the Americas without giving much credit to those who risked their lives for exploring the likely world beyond the Atlantic Ocean. 

But just like Columbus never reached North America, the two Italian explorers we mentioned in the last section were not the first to reach North America.

By the end of the first millennium and around 500 years already before Columbus set off for India, Viking Explorer Leif Eriksson is believed to be the first to have set foot on the North American continent.

Eriksson was born in Iceland in 970. His father, who was also an explorer, was expelled from Iceland when Eriksson was 15 years old for killing his neighbour. The father thereby went to Greenland and established the first European colony there.

Growing up in a family of explorers, Eriksson became an explorer himself. At the age of 30, he sailed from Greenland to Norway where his ancestors had originally come from. On his way back to Greenland, Eriksson made sighting of North America; however, it is how he ended up there that is controversial. Two legends tell different stories.

The first is the Icelandic Legend “Saga of Erik the Red”. It claims that Eriksson had lost his way home while returning from Norway. So instead, he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, completely drifting away from Greenland until he saw land which happened to be North America. 

On other hand, the “Saga of the Greenlanders” proposes that Eriksson’s expedition to North America was more deliberate than coincidental. The Viking navigator sailed to North America, which he was sure was there, after he had heard about it from the Norse-Icelandic Explorer Bjarni Herjólfsson. The latter claimed he once sailed across the Atlantic Ocean until he sighted the coast of North America in 986. However, he did not make landfall.

So according to the Saga of the Greenlanders, Bjarni Herjólfsson was technically the first to come across North America.

Regardless of which legend is true, both result in Leif Eriksson sailing to the same new land. He first arrived at what is now likely to be Baffin Island in North Canada. Then his crew and he sailed south, passing by Labrador and then Newfoundland. There, they set up a base and spent the entire winter season which happened to be way milder than the freezing winter of Greenland.

So in short, the European exploration of North and South Americas goes like this. First, Norse Explorer Bjarni Herjólfsson sighted North America in 986 without landing on it. Then, somewhere in the early 11th-century, Viking Explorer Leif Eriksson reached North Canada and made landfall in Newfoundland.

In the late 15th-century, Italian Navigator Christopher Columbus came across and landed on a handful of Caribbean islands. In August 1498, Columbus landed in Venezuela of South America.

In the early 16th-century, the Italians John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano explored the east coast of North America from Florida to Newfoundland.

Having said that, there definitely were tens or maybe hundreds of other European expeditions that explored the two American continents. However, the recently mentioned expeditions were the most remarkable.

The newly discovered lands were subsequently added to the list and the world by then was made of five parts.

Interestingly, Europe, Asia, and Africa were considered the Old World while North and South Americas were referred to as the New World. Such a classification was in use up until the end of the 19th-century.

Then came Australia into global awareness

For long periods during the prehistoric times, the Romans believed there was another mass of land in the south but they knew nothing about it. They did not try to explore it nor had they had the capability of that, to begin with. They called it Terra Australia Incógnita, which in Latin literally means the Unknown Southern Land, and hoped someone in the future would be able to fulfil the quest for it.

Centuries later, one person could prove the Romans true.

Similar to Columbus, the Dutch Explorer Willem Janszoon discovered the already-existing southern land of Australia in 1606 by chance. His story began in the early 17th-century.

Precisely on December 18th, 1603, Willem Janszoon left the Netherlands as the captain of a ship named Duyfken or the Little Dove. It was one of a dozen other ships that sailed to the Dutch East Indies—these were Dutch colonies in the islands and coastlands of Indonesia. At the time, Janszoon was an officer and had already been to the East Indies twice before.

In November 1605, the Little Dove with Captain Janszoon was ordered to sail east in the hopes of finding new trade outlets in the eastern and southern lands, precisely the islands of New Guinea. 

Luckily, Janszoon reached the western coast of New Guinea and then sailed across the Arafura Sea into the Gulf of Carpentaria. He made a sighting of the Australian land, kept sailing around its north coast and made it into the Strait of Torres. Thinking that this new land was just a southern extension of New Guinea in the north, he made landfall on mainland Australia in late February 1606, possibly in what is now Cape York. 

Sadly, the new mistaken land was swampy and the people who lived there were pretty unwelcoming and rather aggressive. They even killed some of Janszoon’s men. So the Dutch explorer left a few months later after naming the land he thought was a part of New Guinea, New Holland.

Time went by and in 1768, the British Admiralty ordered Navy Captain James Cook to sail across the Pacific Ocean to achieve two goals. The first goal was to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun’s disc. Such an observation would help astronomers back then to calculate the distance between the Sun and the Earth.

Secondly, Cook had to search for the Terra Australia Incógnita or the Unknown Southern Land. This was Cook’s first voyage.

Captain Cook could observe the transit of Venus but such a record was unfortunately pretty inaccurate. Not sure whether or not he achieved the first goal, Cook went on anyway to achieve the second goal on his list.

In order to find the unknown land, Cook sailed first to New Zealand—it was already known to the world by this time having been already discovered in 1642. The British captain then moved around its entire coast to draw a map of it. Well, he was a cartographer too.

When Cook was done with the map of New Zealand, he sailed west until he reached the southeastern coast of Australia. He explored the entire eastern coast from south to north then crossed the narrow Strait of Torres which Janszoon arrived at more than a century before.

Cook then drew a map of the entire east coast of Australia and decided it belonged to England, just like any regular coloniser would do.

On April 29th, 1770, Cook and his crew landed on mainland Australia.

Less than twenty years after that, precisely in 1788, the British ships began to arrive, fleet after fleet, starting long-lasting colonisation of the south now-known land of Australia that would take up to 1901 to end.

And the world welcomed a new continental member.

Lastly, Antarctica

The early discovery of Antarctica is believed to have been made while Cook was already searching for Australia.

After Cook claimed the Australian east coast to the British Crown, he went back to England and brought his maps along. He deeply believed the charts of the eastern coast stood as strong evidence of the existence of the Unknown Southern Land since such a coast was large enough to be of a continent.

Nevertheless, geographers at the Royal Society did not consider this large coast as being of the southern land they were looking for; that what Cook explored was not the Unknown Southern Land. They argued that it still lied more to the south.

Consequently, James Cook was sent on a second voyage to sail more to the south and find the mysterious land which he had already found. The captain; thus, sailed to the southernmost point man could ever reach at the time. That resulted in him entering the Antarctic Circle.

In January 1773, Cook came as close as 120 km to the coast of Antarctica. However, he was compelled to sail back when he was faced with a field of ice that could have blocked his ship. After crossing the Antarctic Circle twice more in the same year, Cook was convinced a southern continent existed. He believed he had seen parts of it—almost referring to the ice fields—as stated in his very own journal.

No expeditions to explore the polar continent were recorded until almost 50 years later. Yet, many other expeditions that were mainly hunting seals—called sealers—did reach closer points to Antarctica than that reached by Cook.

That said, there is a dispute over who made the first sighting of Antarctica. Some state that Russian Captain Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen from the Imperial Russian Navy could see the Antarctic ice shelf on January 27, 1820, during the expedition he was already leading to find Antarctica. 

On the other hand, it has been widely believed for a long time that it was British Captain Edward Bransfield who first saw the continent on January 30, 1820, already three days after the Russian captain made sighting of the ice shelf. Conversely, an American sealing expedition was in those waters at about the same time and may have also been the first to see the continent.

Exploration expeditions which had been cast off from France, the USA, and Great Britain continued and many claims of sighting and landing were made. However, the first confirmed landing on Antarctica was made in 1895 by a Swedish-Norwegian ship called the Antarctic which was originally built to hunt whales.

A Stop at New Zealand

Now that we learned how the continents were discovered, there is a point we must clarify.

As we previously mentioned, explorers were already familiar with New Zealand at the time they were searching for Australia. Thanks to the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, New Zealand was first introduced to the Europeans in 1642. It was also named after Zeeland which is a province in the southwest of the Netherlands.

Besides New Zealand, there were other islands in the Pacific Oceans such as New Guinea, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands which explorers were also familiar with before coming across Australia. 

The question here is: which continent do all those islands belong to? Given that Australia in and of itself is an independent continent, could they fit with it? Or are they a part of Asia?

Well, not exactly.

Oceania

Here is another moment when the rules of geography do not quite apply, resulting in a good deal of confusion.

To split the dispute about where New Zealand and the other Pacific islands belong to, the concept of Oceania came up. Oceania is the geographical region which includes Australia, New Zealand, and thousands of neighbouring islands. The total area of such a region is 8,525,989 km² and it comprises 14 countries.

So technically, New Zealand does not belong to any continent, though it is a part of Oceania.

Some people and resources like to refer to Oceania as a continent but that does not make it the eighth continent. Since it still includes Australia, it kind of takes Australia’s place in the continental model, being the seventh. 

How did the continents get their names?

Previously on learningmole.com, we learned that the planets were named after Roman gods and goddesses except for Earth which only means land. Every name was chosen based on a certain common criterion between the god and the planet.

For instance, Mercury was the fastest messenger among gods. So Mercury became the name of the fastest planet in the Solar System to complete one revolution around the Sun—Mercury’s year is only 88 Earth days.

So is it the same case with continents? 

Well, let’s see.

Europe

To say it straight, it is not really known how Europe got its name, but there are multiple theories anyway.

Theory one suggests that the name Europe came from the Greek goddess Europa. However, in what way Europe, the continent, resembles Europa, the goddess is a question still unanswered.

Theory two claims that the name Europe originated from the word erebu in the now-extinct Akkadian language that was spoken in western Asia from the third to the first millennium BCE. Erebu means ‘sunset’. And from the Asian perspective, the Sun descended on Europe. Makes sense.

A third, more common theory, however, proposes the name Europe is a combination between the Greek words eurys and ops which mean wide and eye respectively. Thus, Europe would mean something like wide-gazing which properly described the broad shoreline of Europe seen by the Greek sailors from their shipboards.

Asia

We mentioned before that the Greeks were the first to think of the world as parts primarily comprising Europe and Asia. In the same way as Europe might mean sunset being to the west, Asia also had a similar naming theory.

The name Asia is believed to come from the word asu in the same Akkadian language meaning sunrise. With Asia being to the east of Greece, it is where the Sun rises. Though making sense, it is still just a theory.

Africa

As we previously discussed, the Greeks were familiar with North Africa but did not quite know anything about the rest of the continent. They considered Egypt, east of the River Nile, a part of Asia and named the rest of the northern region Libya.

The name Libya came from the ancient Egyptian word Lebu or Lbou which was then used to refer to the Berber tribes who lived in that region. So the Greeks adopted the name and called the Berbers ‘Libyans’. 

Besides Libya, the African continent was also called Guinea, Sudan, or Aethiopia over the past two millennia. Nowadays, all these names refer to African countries.

Still, where did the term Africa come from?

Like with the names of Europe and Asia, the origin of and the reason for calling the third continent Africa is still uncertain. The most acceptable theory claims that it was the Romans who came up with the name Africa. 

When the Romans crossed the Mediterranean Sea and came across what is now Tunisia, it was inhabited by a Berber tribe called ‘Afri’. So they used the term Africa to refer to the land of the Afri. 

That said, all such names were only given to North Africa. However, how the name was later given to the entire continent is also still unknown.

The Americas

The continents of the New World did have different names given to them by their native inhabitants who had lived there for thousands of years. Some called North America ‘Turtle Island’. People who lived in Colombia referred to the Americas as ‘Abya Yala’ which means the Continent of Life.

Then after the arrival of Columbus and later the Europeans, many of those native names were either lost or discarded. And then both lands were called America.

So where did this name come from?

Well, that does make an interestingly strange story. It might make sense to say that Columbus was the one who named the land he discovered. But he was not. Instead, it was the German Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller.

When Waldseemüller drew the map of the new continents, he decided, for some reason, to name them after the Italian Merchant Amerigo Vespucci. No one knows for sure what was so special about that merchant that the New World would be named after him. After all, he was just one of the thousands of Europeans who travelled to the newly discovered land in the early 16th-century.

Maybe there is more into the story than the Internet told me. Who knows!

Australia

Unlike all the cases with the previously mentioned continents, it is quite certain where the name Australia originated from and why it was given to the land in the south.

After Dutch Explorer Willem Janszoon discovered mainland Australia, it was given the name ‘New Holland’ in the same way as the British named the now-famous city on the American east coast ‘New York’.

Then after British Explorer James Cook claimed the Australian east coast to the British Crown, he named it New South Wales. In the early 19th-century, another explorer from England called Mathew Flinders suggested renaming the eastern coast ‘Australia’, meaning the land in the south. Later on, the name was given to the entire landmass.

Interestingly, the name Australia somehow proposes that there is no other land in the south but Australia. Little did they know.

Antarctica

Antarctica is the region that surrounds the south pole. Similarly, the Arctic surrounds the north pole. Besides both being opposite to one another, their names are also very expressive of their nature.

The Arctic is a term derived from the Greek word arktos which means bear—as in the animal. The name was chosen for the north pole for two reasons. First, in the north pole, there is a group of stars that form a recognizable bear shape and it is always visible in the sky. This is called the Ursa Major constellation.

Second, the north pole is home to the polar bear. 

Now, Antarctica means the exact opposite for the exact same reason. The word ‘Antarctica’ literally means no bears. And the southernmost polar continent has no bears, not in the sky, not on land.

But it has penguins. Lots of them.

How did continents form?

Now that we know how continents were discovered and where they got their names, it is time to learn how they actually came into existence.

To understand how continents formed, we need to go as far back as the formation of the Earth itself. We learned before on learningmole.com that the Solar System formed after a collapse of a giant molecular cloud made of hydrogen and helium. Such a collapse left behind enormous amounts of gas and dust that were attracted to each other and formed the planets, billions of asteroids, and other space objects. 

And hence Earth, our rocky home, was born.

In the beginning, the Earth was very hot. As the heat was escaping into space, the planet started to gradually cool down. The surface of the Earth was the first to cool down and hence solidified, forming the crust. That is the thin outermost layer of the Earth. The levels beneath the crust were less cool and less rigid. The deeper it gets, the hotter and less solid/more fluid the Earth becomes.

According to those different levels of rigidness and hotness, the Earth developed three different layers. The core, classified into inner and outer, is the hottest and the most fluid layer. The temperature of that boiling core ranges between 4,400°C and 6000°C. That is the same temperature as the surface of the Sun! All the material in the core is moving and pushing out just like steam in a boiling teapot.

Above the core is the mantle which is almost rigid and bulky. The mantle is floating on the hot moving core and has a thickness of 2,900 km. On top of the mantle is the crust which is the thinnest, most solid, and the coolest layer of them all. The crust, often referred to as the lithosphere, is 25-100 km deep and is made of rocks and minerals.

The lithosphere itself is not one big, thin shell. It is cracked into pieces exactly like a cracked boiled egg. Each piece is called a plate. There are different types of boundaries between these plates. Sometimes they are called ridges, as in narrow hilltops, or trenches if they are narrow ditches.

It might not be known for sure why the lithosphere cracked into plates. Some scientists theorise that after the crust cooled down and solidified, it heated up again for some reason. This caused it to expand so much to the point it broke down.

In short, the Earth’s lithosphere is now a division of seven major plates separated from other 14 minor plates.

Nevertheless, the world as we know it now is not just a smooth thin crust. There are hills, mountains, islands, and many others. Where did all those come from?

Well, this takes us to an interesting concept of geology: supercontinents.

Supercontinents

We have just mentioned that Earth has three layers: core, mantle, and crust. The surface of the mantle that is the closest to the crust has a temperature of 1000°C. On the other hand, the deepest layer which is the closest to the boiling core has a much higher temperature; 3,600°C.

This very layer then heats up, causing the rocks to melt and get lighter. Lighter rocks go up in the mantle while cooler rocks sink. Then the molten, lighter rocks now at the top cool down while the cooler rocks that sank, melt. As a result, they replace each other; cool rocks go down, and hot, molten rocks go up. This continuous movement of the mantle is a process called convection currents.

Convection currents exert a huge driving force on the plates—the cracked crust—causing them to drift and move. The moving plates are called tectonic plates.

Scientists believe that the Earth was completely covered with water around four billion years ago. While tectonic plates under the water moved and collided, the collision force made them go beneath one another. This is a geological process known as subduction.

As the tectonic plates subducted, making one edge of a plate go deeper into the Earth to the hot mantle, it melted and turned into magma. Magma is superhot liquid rock that is beneath the surface of the Earth. And since magma is lighter than rocks, it rose through the upper plates and burst out of the crust as lava. 

When the lava cooled down, it became solid rocks. Scientists refer to such solid rocks as igneous rocks.

The igneous rocks piled up and rose above the water forming islands. Such volcanic activity lasted for millions of years as we have previously explained when we covered the atmosphere of the Earth.

Eventually, islands enlarged and joined forming larger masses of land. As the tectonic activity continued, the moving plates beneath the islands caused them to move too, allowing more and more landmasses to join them.

As a result, one huge, super-large continent, a supercontinent, was formed. 

Geologists came to this conclusion after studying the geological records of the Earth. They even proposed that there had been not one but a total of seven supercontinents that joined and fragmented by the tectonic activity over millions of years.

According to scientists, the first supercontinent, referred to as Vaalbara, formed 3.6 billion years ago and broke apart 2.8 billion years ago.

Six more supercontinents formed and fragmented over a period of 3.3 billion years. Scientists called them Ur, Kenoraland, Columbia or Nuna, Rodinia, Pannotia, and Pangaea, being born and dying all in chronological order from 2.8 billion years ago to 336 million years ago.

The last supercontinent, Pangaea, was formed 336 million years ago. It stayed as one super large landmass for 161 million years then started to separate into the seven continents that we are familiar with today.

It is worth mentioning here that up until the early 20th-century, geologists were not aware of all that. They knew very little, if not nothing at all, about the tectonic plates and how continents were formed.

It was all thanks to German Scientist Alfred Wegener who started to research that field. Ultimately, he paved the way for the discovery of the tectonic plates which only happened in the 1950s.

Here is his full story.

Continental Drift 

How the seven continents of today came into existence had been a curiosity-triggering as well as an agonising question for geologists and scientists. But in an academic paper presented in 1912, German Scientist and Geophysicist Alfred Wegener proposed a theory called Continental Drift that explains how continents formed.

Wegener was the first to suggest that all the continents of today were once only one large landmass, a supercontinent. He called it Pangaea which is a Greek word that means all land. At some point in Pangaea’s existence, the massive landmass started to drift and break apart into smaller and smaller landmasses.

Such a claim sparked a debate in the scientific community so Wegener provided evidence that supported his theory. He examined fossils of prehistoric animals and plants from different continents and what he revealed was irrefutable.

The first piece of evidence Wegener provided was a fossil of a prehistoric reptile called mesosaurus which looks like a modern-day crocodile. It was exclusively found in both South America and South Africa. And since the animal was found to live in freshwater only, Wegener concluded that there was no way for the mesosaurus to travel through the Atlantic Ocean from one continent to another.

As a result, the mesosaurus must have lived in only one habitat with sources of freshwater like rivers and lakes available around. In other words, Africa and South America must have been one mass of land at some time of Earth’s early history.

What also firmly supported that conclusion is how South America and Africa fit together like pieces of a puzzle. Wegener even found out that both continents almost have the same geology. In addition, Asia is technically connected to Europe and only separated from Africa by the narrow extension of the Red Sea. 

Besides the study of animal fossils, the German scientist examined plant fossils, one of which may be considered the most important among all the pieces of evidence he provided. The fossil he found was of a plant named Glossopteris which is a woody tree that used to grow to a height of 30 metres.

Such a fossil was found in all the southern continents: Australia, Antarctica, South Africa, and South America. Due to the bulkiness and the large size of the tree, it would have been impossible for it to have existed in four different lands as far as these continents from one another. That, again, suggested that all these four regions were joined once before.

In addition, Wegener provided many other pieces of evidence about geological and biological similarities the he found between different places in the world.

All such pieces of evidence were correct. However, the only weakness in Wegener’s theory of Continental Drift was that he never explained why Pangaea, the supercontinent, drifted and fragmented in the first place. At the time, no one knew anything about the moving tectonic plates, not even Wegener himself.

That made most scientists of Wegener’s time reluctant to accept his theory. He proposed that the rotation of the Earth might be the reason for land separation but that did not turn out to be correct. 

Despite those who opposed the theory, other scientists were in favour of it. So they tried hard to find the driving force that caused the one giant landmass to drift and separate. For almost half a century, those scientists studied and explored the geology of the Earth. 

In the 1950s, geologists could finally conclude the existence of tectonic plates. As a result of subduction, the plates moved beneath the crust and pulled the land above them apart. In a nutshell, tectonic plates fragmented large landmasses.

Wegener’s Continental Drift theory was widely accepted in 1960. Sadly, the German scientist could not witness such a victory moment for he had already died 30 years before that.

Scientists then used the same tectonic plate movement theory to propose how Pangaea and other older supercontinents formed in the first place, which we explained a section ago.

Tectonic plates drift at a speed of a few centimetres every year. Maybe that is why it took millions and millions of years for supercontinents to form and then break apart. Nowadays, tectonic plates move at an average speed of 10 cm/year. In some areas, the plates are faster and in others, they are slower.

That means tectonic plates can move 100 km in one million years.

OK. That proposes a question. If tectonic plates are still moving, does that not suggest all the seven continents of today may join again in the far, far future?

Well, yes. That is possible. Some scientists even predict that continents are going to come together once again in the course of 200-250 million years to come. While we can never be sure whether or not the Earth will survive for that long anyway, one cannot help but wonder what this prospective supercontinent may look like.

Continental models

As we had explained earlier, it is commonly accepted that there are seven continents in the world. We have also tackled the criteria based on which a landmass may be agreed on as a continent.

That said, the seven-continent model is not totally, widely accepted. While the majority of countries including the USA, the UK, China, and India already acknowledge it and teach it at schools, others do not.

Some countries like Japan, Russia, and those in Eastern Europe accept the six-continent model in which Asia and Europe are combined in one giant continent called Eurasia. On the other hand, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and even Canada in addition to Greece, Indonesia, and many other countries observe another six-continent model in which North and South Americas are combined into only one large America.

Interestingly, in all the three models mentioned, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica are independently acknowledged.

Now it is time to look into each continent separately. 

Asia

The largest and most populated continent on the planet.

Asia seems to comprise the majority of the diversity there is in the world. It is home to some of the world’s oldest and most distinct civilizations. One example is the Mesopotamian Civilization which is estimated to have flourished in what is now Iraq for around 3000 years from around 4500 to 1500 BCE.

In addition, there was Ancient China, Ancient India, and the Babylonian Civilization which had such a great influence on the world throughout history.

Asia is also where the three Semitic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, were born. As of today, more than 56% of the world population believe in and practise them. 

And despite the Asian elephant not being the largest mammal on Earth—the African elephant is—Asia enjoys incredibly diverse wildlife and extraordinary unmatched nature in addition to a super-wide range of spoken languages, unique cultures, strong economies, and mouth-watering cuisines. 

So, let’s now break down the marvels of Asia.

Geography

Asia is located in the northern hemisphere. In other words, the entire continent resides above the Equator. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Pacific Ocean to the east, and the Indian Ocean to the south. It has an area of 44,579,000 km². This is around one-third of the total land area and 8.7% of the total area of the Earth.

Unlike the Americas which float independently between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, Asia is connected to both Europe and Africa by land and separated from them by waterways.

The Ural Mountain Range, the Ural River, and some tiny other straits stand between Asia and Europe. However, some countries do not actually accept those to be real boundaries. As we mentioned earlier, one of the two six-continent models proposes that Asia and Europe are already one continent called Eurasia.

Asia was connected to Africa by the Peninsula of Sinai in Egypt. Yet, both were separated after the construction of the Suez Canal which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.

In addition, the largest continent comprises tens, if not hundreds, of distinctive seas and gulfs.

One of such seas is the Caspian Sea in Iran. It is not actually a sea but rather a lake. It is not connected to any other sea or ocean and is surrounded by land from all sides. Another example is the Dead Sea which lies in Jordan, in the west of Asia.

The Dead Sea is the saltiest sea in the world. One can easily float without having to tread the water. And because of such a high level of salinity, neither fish nor plants live in the Dead Sea. That is why it is described as ‘dead’.

Speaking of freshwater, there are 127 rivers in Asia only! The longest one of them is the Yangtze River which flows through China and has a length of 6,300 km, followed by the Yellow River with a length of 5,464 km which also passes through China.

Well, at least 26 more rivers out of the 127 in all of Asia flow through China. China is a master of all!

Countries

There are 49 recognised countries. That means they are members of the United Nations. There are also some other partially recognised and unrecognised states. Russia is the largest country in Asia with an area of 17.1 million km² followed by China with 9.6 million km² and then India whose area is 3.287 million km². 

That said, the smallest country is the alluring Maldives which is only 297.8 km². To make it easier to picture how small the Maldives is, consider it like this: 57,421 Maldives would fit into Russia!

In those 49 Asian countries, 4,717,314,718 people are living, making up 60% of the world population. Interestingly, 60.5% of Asia’s population lives in China and India only!

Climate

Coming to climate, Asia does comprise multiple extremely different climates due to its large area. They range from super-hot, moderately hot, warm, mild, cool, cold, and freezing.

For instance, the climate in Siberia in the north of Asia which is also in the south of the Arctic is incredibly freezing with temperatures ranging from -20°C to -30°C in different areas in winter.

On the other hand in the south of Asia, the very southern tip of India observes a tropical climate since it is the nearest to the Equator. Contrary to Siberia, the temperature in south India in summer exceeds 40°C and sometimes reaches 45°C.

Asia shares a massive tectonic plate with Europe called the Eurasian Plate. Its area is 67,800,000 km². In addition to that, Asia also lies on a number of other minor plates such as the American Plate in eastern Asia, the Sunda Plate, and the Burma Plate in Southeast Asia, in addition to the Okhotsk Plate, Arabian Plate, and the Yangtze Plate.

Subregions

Only for statistical reasons, Asia is subdivided by the United Nations into six main regions. The first is North Asia which is also referred to as Siberia, Russia. Interestingly, North Asia is abundant in fossil fuels in terms of natural gas, coal, and oil.

Unlike North Asia which comprises only one country, the subregion of Central Asia is occupied by nine countries, only five of which are recognized by the UN. Such an area proposes more diversity especially in culture and cuisine despite the obvious mutual influence.

Western Asia is that region bordered by the Red Sea to the west, the Arabian Ocean to the south, and is partially split by the Arabian/Persian Gulf. It is also known as the Middle East or the Near East. The Middle East comprises 21 countries, some of which are only partially located in the region.

More than half of those 21 countries, however, are Arab countries with Saudi Arabia being the largest and Qatar, where the 2022 World Cup is hosted, being the smallest with an area of only 11,571 km.

Like with the Maldives and Russia, almost 186 Qatars would fit in one Saudi Arabia!

The term Indian subcontinent is often used to refer to the South Asia subregion. Such a region includes eight countries. India is the largest of them all and the reason why the entire region is also called a subcontinent.

The Far East is another term for the subregion of East Asia. This is where China, Japan, Taiwan, Mongolia, and the Koreas reside. Over the years, there have been a lot of political tensions among those countries. That is why some of them do not actually recognise the others. That said, Japan, Taiwan, China, and South Korea have four of the strongest and most prosperous economies in the world.

Last but not least, the subregion of Southeast Asia. This section of the continent comprises 11 nations: Malaysia, Brunei, Myanmar, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Interestingly, until some point in the 20th-century, such nations as well as some parts of South Asia were referred to by the Europeans as the East Indies.

Time zones

Before getting to the time zones of Asia, we must stop at another interesting concept of geography: longitudes and latitudes.

Longitudes and latitudes are imaginary lines that divide the globe vertically and horizontally, resulting in a grid covering the Earth. Such a concept was invented to help specify the location of any point on the surface of the planet.

The Earth is divided by 180 horizontal latitude lines. The Equator is the latitude that goes right in the middle of the globe horizontally. Above it is the northern hemisphere divided by 90 lines and below is the southern hemisphere with another 90 lines. So technically, there are 181 latitudes, including the Equator.

Likewise, there are 180 longitude lines dividing the Earth vertically. The Prime Meridian is the longitude running in the middle of the globe. On both sides of the Prime Meridian are the eastern and southern hemispheres, each including 90 longitudes.

The Prime Meridian was found to run through Greenwich, a small town in southeast London, UK. When the Sun is at its highest point exactly above the Prime Meridian, the time is noon or 12:00 pm in Greenwich. This is midday.

GMT or the Greenwich Mean Time has been used as a reference whenever talking about the time in other areas of the world. If the time in one country is GMT+2, it means the time in that country, at any given moment of the day, is two hours before/earlier than the time at the s