Questions about continents

I have several questions about continents:

1. Europe, Asia and Africa were European concepts before the discovery of the Americas. Did anyone else (Indians, North Africans, Persians etc) have concepts of 'continents' before adopting the European concept?

2. How would it be possible to have India and East Asia be considered as separate continents from West Asia, the historical definition of Asia to Europeans?

3. Australia was originally thought to be part of Asia by Europeans. How can this misconception be kept in existence?
 
1. Europe and Asia are just one giant landmass, if you look at it from a geological (rocky) perspective.
The dividing line (e.g. Ural Mountains) is just a human convention.
Humans could just as easily have agreed on a dividing line in Poland or Mongolia because modern Europe is only distinct because of its human culture, politics, religions and economy.

As for ancients defining Australia as part of Asia .... Australia was just a huge, unknown land a long way away on the far side of the planet.
 
Actually, the distinction made between Europe and Asia originates, not from Ural, but from sea, probably from semitic names for "West" and "East", as Europe was the western shore, and Asia the eastern one.

Remember that Asia originally named Anatolia.
 
Actually, the distinction made between Europe and Asia originates, not from Ural, but from sea, probably from semitic names for "West" and "East", as Europe was the western shore, and Asia the eastern one.

Remember that Asia originally named Anatolia.
Counting Europe and Asia as separate continents makes a lot more sense if all you know about is the eastern Mediterranean region than when considering the global-scale landmass.
 
Counting Europe and Asia as separate continents makes a lot more sense if all you know about is the eastern Mediterranean region than when considering the global-scale landmass.

I think it's less they didn't know about the wider world, just that using such names was simply convenient.
If you pardon me the anachronism, people used "the south" (when it came to underdevelloped world) had as much lands in the northern hemisphere, not because they weren't aware of the wider world, but because it was way simpler.
 
1. Europe and Asia are just one giant landmass, if you look at it from a geological (rocky) perspective.
The dividing line (e.g. Ural Mountains) is just a human convention.
Humans could just as easily have agreed on a dividing line in Poland or Mongolia because modern Europe is only distinct because of its human culture, politics, religions and economy.

As for ancients defining Australia as part of Asia .... Australia was just a huge, unknown land a long way away on the far side of the planet.

Well yes, Eurasia is one land mass, I do understand that - but the Ancient Greeks invented the concept of Europa, Asia (Anatolia, meaning sunrise) and Africa (Libya).

I didn't mean ancients and Australia, but rather the early European discoveries in the 17th century. It wasn't really until British colonisation that Australia became generally accepted as a continent in its own right, separate from Asia.

Actually, the distinction made between Europe and Asia originates, not from Ural, but from sea, probably from semitic names for "West" and "East", as Europe was the western shore, and Asia the eastern one.

Remember that Asia originally named Anatolia.

Interesting, so the people of the Levant also had the concept of the three continent system?

Counting Europe and Asia as separate continents makes a lot more sense if all you know about is the eastern Mediterranean region than when considering the global-scale landmass.

I'd say that it seems fairly distinct in its own right regardless - but in the same light, so are many other regions we lump together. That was the intent behind the question at hand - I was wondering if it'd be possible to have more 'cultural continents' like Europe, with shared characteristics - India, the Middle East, the Sinosphere etc.
 
I didn't mean ancients and Australia, but rather the early European discoveries in the 17th century. It wasn't really until British colonisation that Australia became generally accepted as a continent in its own right, separate from Asia.
To be perfectly honest, the only occurence of an identification with Asia I can think of is the Grande Jave (Great Java) of french geographers in the XVIIth century, which had little posterity and badly identifiable with Australia.

What I tought was more common was the identification with a fantasmed Terra Australis, a continent that supposedly covered the southern part of Earth to balance the Pacific sea.

Can I ask where you found about these identification with Asia? Looks interesting.

Interesting, so the people of the Levant also had the concept of the three continent system?
Probably less continent as we concieve them than main landmasses and more preciselty their coasts.

For long, you had discussion about Africa, not unlike you had far more recently with Europe : was it an Asioafrican landmass or not?

Not that the same distinctions were used, of course : Nile river was widely used as the border between Asia and Africa, for instance (now, you had critics of this concept even then, as Herodotus calling everyone idiot)

I was wondering if it'd be possible to have more 'cultural continents' like Europe, with shared characteristics - India, the Middle East, the Sinosphere etc.
I don't think so : it required a far more important knowledge of the region that was avaible then, in Antiquity or Christian Middle Ages.
After all "Europe" is essentially a social construction from Europeans : why bother at whatever weird concept foreigners we barely knew that they exist? (I'm exagerating a bit, of course, all continent is at least partially a social construct, but it's clearly obvious with Europe, rather than being even less of a continent)

Arabo-Islamic civilisation had probably the most chances to see a more sub-continental approach, that said.
But even there, the bad geographical knowledge of Africa and Far East is a problem : takes the wonder of medieval carthography that is the Tabula Rogeriana. It's damn good for mediterranean basin (you'd notice the über-Arabia, which certainly have nothing to do with cultural bias; not unlike Europe on XVIIIth/XIXth projections) but really less precise outside.

So, have a more knowledgable Arabo-Islamic carthography, with a distinction made for India, and you may end with more sub-continents, enough for that they are more widely used scientifically and culturally.
 

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I was wondering if it'd be possible to have more 'cultural continents' like Europe, with shared characteristics - India, the Middle East, the Sinosphere etc.
Well yeah, then the term essentially takes on the meaning of "region" and we'll invent a new word for continent, with maybe a slight redefinition
 
The idea of continents originated with the Greeks and was adopted by the Romans, and through them reached the Middle East and North Africa, so it wasn't just a European concept in pre-modern times. The division makes sense when you look at ancient maps of the Mediterranean World, where there was a clear division by sea between the Balkans and west (Europe), Anatolia and east (Asia), and Egypt and south (Africa or Libya).

Chinese, Indians, and Sub-Saharan Africans didn't come up with such ideas because of their geographic orientation in the middle of a big landmass rather than at the crossroads of three.
 
Actually, the distinction made between Europe and Asia originates, not from Ural, but from sea, probably from semitic names for "West" and "East", as Europe was the western shore, and Asia the eastern one.

Remember that Asia originally named Anatolia.

Also they once assumed that the Caspian Sea would be linked with the 'Northern Ocean' which would have made the Europe/Asia distinction more clear.
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And here the actual link should the image link again fail to provide.
 
There is an Iranian distinction of seven "continents" (keshvarha in Modern Persian). In Medieval tradition, widespread view counted Africa, Arabia, India, China, Turan (Central and Northern Asia) and Russia, surrounding the central Iran. This list, as shown here is remarkable for its lack of mention of either Byzantium or Western Europe; some authors counted it (as "Rum") and kept the number to seven by not separating Arabia from Iran (that is, SW Asia).
It could be called a geopolitical notion rather than merely geographical.
In Islamic later authors, this vision merged with the Greek "clime" theory, that of course posited seven abstract stripes across the globe, not landmasses.
 
To be fair, even the modern definition of a continent isn't consistent across just European/European-descended cultures alone. Whether the Americas are one continent or two; whether Antarctica counts; where the boundaries of Europe and Asia are - all of these vary pretty widely among just those cultures alone.

Given that there isn't even a consistent geological definition of a continent today, I think it's pretty safe to say that any reasonably large landmass/grouping of landmasses could be given a similar concept, so long as the cultural (or perceived cultural) differences and changes in time period were there.
 
I have several questions about continents:

1. Europe, Asia and Africa were European concepts before the discovery of the Americas. Did anyone else (Indians, North Africans, Persians etc) have concepts of 'continents' before adopting the European concept?

2. How would it be possible to have India and East Asia be considered as separate continents from West Asia, the historical definition of Asia to Europeans?

3. Australia was originally thought to be part of Asia by Europeans. How can this misconception be kept in existence?

In Hindu mythology and belief, there were 7 dvipas which were considered to be the equivalent of continents.

I don't remember the names for the rest, but the Indian sub-continent was called jambudvipa.
 
China didn't have a concept of 'continents' per se - they thought the whole world was one compact landmass surrounded by sea and their forays into the vastness of Central Asia pretty much confirmed that in their eyes.

Ancient China pretty much thought of their geographic position in concentric circles - at the center were the lands controlled by the King/Emperor, with the level of 'civilization' decreasing as you went further out (lords, tributary peoples, non-tributary peoples) until you arrived at just 'marsh' where nobody (or nobody relevant, anyway) lived.

There is a mention of the 'nine continents' (jiuzhou) in Chinese historiography, but that's generally considered to be a division of Xia dynasty territory rather than as a way of conceiving the entire world.
 
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