WEBVTT - How Many Continents Are There?

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.160
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,

0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:12.720
<v Speaker 1>Lauren Vogelbaum. Here in elementary school, we learn some indisputable

0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:16.920
<v Speaker 1>fundamental facts. Two plus two equals four. The world's round.

0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:21.400
<v Speaker 1>There are seven continents on Earth, but that last one

0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:24.479
<v Speaker 1>isn't quite so cut and dried. Here in the United States,

0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:30.400
<v Speaker 1>students learned that there are seven continents North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia,

0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:34.280
<v Speaker 1>and Antarctica. But that's hardly the last word on the matter.

0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:37.120
<v Speaker 1>And much of Europe students learned that there are six

0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:43.879
<v Speaker 1>continents Africa, America, Antarctica, Asia, Australia's slash Oceania, and Europe.

0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:48.400
<v Speaker 1>There's a five continent model which lists Africa, Europe, Asia, America,

0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:51.920
<v Speaker 1>and Oceanica slash Australia. And that's, by the way, why

0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:55.319
<v Speaker 1>there are five rings on the Olympic flag. And some

0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:57.960
<v Speaker 1>experts think that four is the way to go, using

0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:01.240
<v Speaker 1>as their criteria land masses now truly separated by water

0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:06.800
<v Speaker 1>rather than man made canals, so Afro, Eurasia, America, Antarctica,

0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:11.400
<v Speaker 1>and Australia. As recently as the eighteen hundreds, some people

0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.120
<v Speaker 1>said that there were just two continents, the old including Europe, Africa,

0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:19.200
<v Speaker 1>and Asia, and the new encompassing North and South America.

0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:24.200
<v Speaker 1>So what really makes a continent a continent? We spoke

0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:27.280
<v Speaker 1>via email with Dan Montello, a geography professor at the

0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:32.160
<v Speaker 1>University of California, Santa Barbara. He said, nothing really determines

0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:36.240
<v Speaker 1>a continent except historical convention, a bit of an overstatement

0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:39.760
<v Speaker 1>but mostly valid. Certain factors make a landmass more or

0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:42.199
<v Speaker 1>less likely to be called a continent at various times

0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.200
<v Speaker 1>in history by various people, but nothing can be said

0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:51.160
<v Speaker 1>to determine continentality in a completely principled, non arbitrary way. Take,

0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:54.280
<v Speaker 1>for example, the vast country of Russia six point six

0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:58.320
<v Speaker 1>million square miles or seventeen million square kilometers. Why has

0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:00.480
<v Speaker 1>it often been counted as part of you up rather

0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:04.920
<v Speaker 1>than Asia? Montello explained. The Ural Mountains are taken to

0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:08.560
<v Speaker 1>separate Asia and Europe, but only because Russians wanted their

0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:12.080
<v Speaker 1>great city of Moscow to be European, so the Urals

0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:16.399
<v Speaker 1>were a convenient marker for that arbitrary decision. Continents are

0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:20.640
<v Speaker 1>mostly spatially contiguous collections of land masses larger than countries

0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:24.560
<v Speaker 1>but smaller than hemispheres. Of course, continents do not necessarily

0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:27.840
<v Speaker 1>fit entirely within single Earth hemispheres and thus cannot be

0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:32.520
<v Speaker 1>defined by ranges of latitude or longitude. Okay, so how

0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:36.000
<v Speaker 1>about plate tectonics. If certain land masses are constrained to

0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:39.280
<v Speaker 1>one of those massive shifting hulks, can we safely call

0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:44.320
<v Speaker 1>it a continent? Montello says, no quote. Plate tectonics has

0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:46.880
<v Speaker 1>nothing to do with it historically, and it certainly could

0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:50.400
<v Speaker 1>not provide a principal basis for continents. Now, nearly every

0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:54.520
<v Speaker 1>continent includes parts of multiple plates, the same those for climate.

0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:59.280
<v Speaker 1>After all, continents contain multiple climates, as evidenced by Alaska's

0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:02.920
<v Speaker 1>arctic chill compared with Florida's humid heat. They're both part

0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:07.040
<v Speaker 1>of North America. Mountain ranges and coastlines are useless too,

0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:13.120
<v Speaker 1>as our culture and politics, Montella said. Neither ethnicity, race, culture,

0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:17.120
<v Speaker 1>nor politics has ever defined continents, except by conventional theories

0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:20.560
<v Speaker 1>that were largely mythical, such as old and fallacious ideas

0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:25.680
<v Speaker 1>about correspondences between races and continents. Politically, Hawaii is part

0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:28.560
<v Speaker 1>of the US, but is in Oceania rather than North America.

0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:31.880
<v Speaker 1>Greenland is controlled by Denmark for now, but is considered

0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:36.000
<v Speaker 1>part of the North American continent. So really it boils

0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:40.240
<v Speaker 1>down to whom and when you ask, Montello said, no

0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:42.880
<v Speaker 1>one can say, as a matter of principled fact, how

0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:46.360
<v Speaker 1>many continents there are, because the decisions are largely based

0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:48.880
<v Speaker 1>on convention, and convention that goes in and out of

0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:53.400
<v Speaker 1>fashion over time and is still debated today. He concedes

0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.400
<v Speaker 1>that these days many geographers would opt for a list

0:03:56.440 --> 0:04:01.760
<v Speaker 1>of seven continents Africa, Antarctica, Asia, You're up, North America, Oceania,

0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:05.320
<v Speaker 1>and South America, but he added that some of them

0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:09.400
<v Speaker 1>would combine Asia and Europe into Eurasia, identify Oceania in

0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:13.360
<v Speaker 1>other ways, or combine North and South America into the America's.

0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:17.920
<v Speaker 1>He said, there is simply no BZAR or CEO of

0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:21.919
<v Speaker 1>continents or any other ultimate authority, so it's pretentious for

0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:25.839
<v Speaker 1>anyone to claim that they have the authoritative answer. But

0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:28.680
<v Speaker 1>don't worry if you can't handle that kind of definition.

0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:31.720
<v Speaker 1>It's all changing. The continents are drifting at a rate

0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:34.440
<v Speaker 1>of about an inch or two point five centimeters per year.

0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:41.919
<v Speaker 1>Today's episode was written by Nathan Chandler and produced by

0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:44.400
<v Speaker 1>Tyler Clang. For more in this lots of other topics.

0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:47.120
<v Speaker 1>Visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production

0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:49.400
<v Speaker 1>of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,

0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:52.159
<v Speaker 1>visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:53.400
<v Speaker 1>listen to your favorite shows.