WI different continents?

IOTL, the border between Europe and Asia is set almost randomly - the Ural mountains are nice as a border, but the two continents could easily be considered a single one, and this raises a question.
in a different timeline, could we see radically different division of earth into continents? how would this be achieved?
 
This belongs in ASB. See stickied post at top of this subforum.

But to answer your question, it is kind of unknowable what would happen. It is unlikely that humans would even evolve.
 
tectonicsmap.svg

Have to be very very very early in earth history
 

Skallagrim

Banned
I think the OP is talking about different human identifications of what constitutes a certain continent, and not about the continents being physically different.

In any event, the Greeks called North Africa 'Libya' and the Romans called that region 'Africa', whereas sub-Saharan Africa was more commonly 'Aithiopia'/'Aethiopia'. They didn't always consider 'Asians' and 'Indians' to be one people. Their understanding of the further east was often hazy, but a definition of 'Asia' that stops at the Indus is absolutely plausible. 'India' could then be its own continent, and East Asia can very plausibly come to be considered a separate continent/geographic region. Meanwhile, the Greeks saw the far north of what we call Asia (the steppe, essentially) as distinct from Asia. Older sources (e.g. Homer) refer to the 'Cimmerian Steppe', but later on, 'Scythia' is of course also very possible. 'Europe', meanwhile, was north of the Med and west of Asia, but had no defined northern border (in paractice, the Greeks seemed to vaguely have the Alps in mind). This means that Northern Europe could conceivably get a name/identity of its own, distinct from 'Europe'. These definitions are completely cultural and have little to do with actualy continental plates, but could easily become deeply ingrained before plate tectonics are ever discovered, and thus remain the norm in cultural parlance.

The possibilities outside Eurasia are of course very broad, if we consider such an early divergence.
 
This is not a geologic POD. The OP was asking if the concept of "Europe" as a separate continent never was widely accepted, or accepted but the border between "Europe" and "Asia" was some place other than the Urals. A POD could simply be the Persians dominating the Greek peninsula as the did Ionia.

That said, I don't think much would change, since OTL Russia has been barely thought of as European.
 
This is not a geologic POD. The OP was asking if the concept of "Europe" as a separate continent never was widely accepted, or accepted but the border between "Europe" and "Asia" was some place other than the Urals. A POD could simply be the Persians dominating the Greek peninsula as the did Ionia.

That said, I don't think much would change, since OTL Russia has been barely thought of as European.

Oh, I completely misread it. Real sorry about that.

To answer that question, you could perhaps eliminate Christianity, or have it be widespread outside of Europe, as it contributed to the cultural concept of Europe as opposed to the rest of Afro-Eurasia. Preventing the rise of Islam would perhaps help. Especially if the Mediterranean world is Christian, and northern Europe is Pagan. Eliminating the Roman Empire altogether could also help, as 45% of the Roman population lived in Europe and Roman culture and civic institutions came to define Europe.
 
Meanwhile, the Greeks saw the far north of what we call Asia (the steppe, essentially) as distinct from Asia.

Herodotus, at least, considered the steppe part of Europe.

To answer that question, you could perhaps eliminate Christianity, or have it be widespread outside of Europe, as it contributed to the cultural concept of Europe as opposed to the rest of Afro-Eurasia.

I'm not sure about that, since the concept of Europe vs. Asia went back at least as far as the Greeks (cf. Herodotus again). Maybe having a more successful and widespread Greek colonisation of Asia Minor, so that the sphere of Greek control/culture extends significantly further east, would be best. I suspect (though I can't prove) that the near-coincidence of the cultural boundary between Greece and barbarians with the geographic boundary of the Aegean was the main reason why the Greeks came to consider Europe and Asia two separate continents, so changing the cultural boundary enough might be sufficient to avoid any sense of separation between the two continents.
 
IMO, you're likely to get something like the same divisions, for physical barrier reasons: Urals, Caucasus, Pyrenees. There's also the Panama forest/jungle, which effectively divided North & South American into the 20th Century. So, too, the Bosporus/Dardanelles.

(I'm so sad this isn't about continents moving the other direction.:oops::oops: )
 
IOTL, the border between Europe and Asia is set almost randomly - the Ural mountains are nice as a border, but the two continents could easily be considered a single one, and this raises a question.
in a different timeline, could we see radically different division of earth into continents? how would this be achieved?

In all honesty, when you look at things from a scientific/geological perspective, Europe and Asia are not even separate continents; they are all just one continent, Eurasia. The arbitrary division of Eurasia into two different "continents" is a Eurocentric idiosyncrasy.
 
In all honesty, when you look at things from a scientific/geological perspective, Europe and Asia are not even separate continents; they are all just one continent, Eurasia. The arbitrary division of Eurasia into two different "continents" is a Eurocentric idiosyncrasy.
The division existed even before anyone thought itself as "European" so your thesis is not true, also continents were never something based on geological, plate tectonics or anything like that, it's based on human geography and inherently subjective viewpoints.
 
The Indian Subcontinent could be a continent, and the Arabian Peninsula combined with the Fertile Crescent could be a continent, based on plate tectonics and cultural history.

The extensive deserts and mountains in eastern Central Asia could be a continental boundary and were a historically important boundary for Turkic/Altaic migrations, and the western boundaries of China.

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I always thought if there are going to be different continents, it would be because the Lithosphere acted differently between the Plate Tectonic cracks. However, this will only change the continents placement and shape.
 
Even OTL there is disagreement over the number of continents. Europeans generally consider the Americas to be one continent while in the US they are considered two.
 
IOTL, the border between Europe and Asia is set almost randomly - the Ural mountains are nice as a border, but the two continents could easily be considered a single one, and this raises a question.
in a different timeline, could we see radically different division of earth into continents? how would this be achieved?
If uralic peoples somehow drove the Germanic peoples out of Scandinavia and resisted Christianization (or some equivalent cultural force from mainland Europe) longer than OTL, Fennoscandia could possibly be viewed as a continent/subcontinent distinct from Europe.
 
The dominant region of Eurasia might differentiate itself (which in case in OTL is Europe.) from the rest. So you could possibly see India and Europe in the same continent, but not with East Asia, or perhaps the Indian (sub) continent becoming its own continent.
 
In many pre-1991 atlases and statistics, the Soviet Union was treated as if it was a continent on its own. Which is even more arbitrary.
 
Even OTL there is disagreement over the number of continents. Europeans generallyconsider the Americas to be one continent while in the US they are considered two.
Well to be completly fair Most of the Americans( in the same usage than European) consider América as one continent and The division between two continents(The Américas) as a distinct USA céntric world visión, 750 Non-USA Americans vs 350 USA Americans, in fact The wikipedia in English use a completly diferent definition of The Continent ( The Américas plural ) than The Spanish and Portuguese wikipedia pages(América singular)
 
I always thought if there are going to be different continents, it would be because the Lithosphere acted differently between the Plate Tectonic cracks. However, this will only change the continents placement and shape.
I've wondered (indeed, started a thread on it) why, or what happens, if the existing plates had moved the opposite direction from OTL. Impossible?
Well to be completly fair Most of the Americans( in the same usage than European) consider América as one continent and The division between two continents(The Américas) as a distinct USA céntric world visión, 750 Non-USA Americans vs 350 USA Americans, in fact The wikipedia in English use a completly diferent definition of The Continent ( The Américas plural ) than The Spanish and Portuguese wikipedia pages(América singular)
Geologically, the North American usage is correct; before about the Ice Age, the two were separate. It was closing the "Panama Channel" that changed the ocean circulation & created the Arctic icecap.
 
I always thought the idea of a "Greater Oceanian" continent would be interesting - tacking the Malay Archipelago onto the existing concept of Oceania. Could probably be achieved if most of Indonesia goes uncolonized (several Indonesian cultures already had contact with northern Australia), or if the Dutch colonize Australia/British colonize Indonesia.
 
If we didn't follow the ancient Greek practice, which was focused around ancient Greeks and where they lived, the division would go something like this:

Dominant continent:

Eurasia or Asia


Medium continents:

North America
South America
Africa
Australia/ Oceana
Antartica


Then because Eurasia has half the world's land and most of its population, it could be divided into sub-continents: West (Europe), Southwest (Middle East), South (India), North (Russia), East (China/ Japan) and Southeast.

My old National Geographic Atlas/ Gazateer of the world had Papua New Guinea listed under Asia. Current atlases included it with Australia, and geology and plate tectonics indicates that it should always have been included with Australia.
 
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