Most European countries have access to the ocean. The continent is bordered by the Arctic Ocean in the north, the Atlantic Ocean in the west, the Caspian Sea in the southeast, and the Mediterranean and Black Seas in the south. Early Europeans learned the river systems of the Volga, Danube, Don, Rhine, and Po, and could successfully travel the length and width of the small continent for trade , communication , or conquest.
European explorers were responsible for colonizing land on every continent except Antarctica. This colonization process had a drastic impact on the economic and political development of those continents, as well as Europe. In the east, the Ural Mountains separate Europe from Asia. The nations of Russia and Kazakhstan straddle both continents.
To the south, the Alps form an arc stretching from Albania to Austria, then across Switzerland and northern Italy into France. A large area of gently rolling plains extends from northern France eastward to the Urals. A climate of warm summers, cold winters, and plentiful rain helps make much of this European farmland very productive. Almost all of Europe sits on the massive Eurasian Plate. Africa Africa, the second-largest continent, covers an area more than three times that of the United States.
From north to south, Africa stretches about 8, kilometers 5, miles. It is connected to Asia by the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt. A series of falls and rapids along the southern part of the river makes navigation difficult. The Nile has played an important role in the history of Africa. In ancient Egyptian civilization , it was a source of life for food, water, and transportation.
The top half of Africa is mostly dry, hot desert. The middle area has savannas, or flat, grassy plains. This region is home to wild animals such as lions, giraffes, elephants, hyenas, cheetahs, and wildebeests. The central and southern areas of Africa are dominated by rainforests. Much of Africa is a high plateau surrounded by narrow strips of coastal lowlands.
Hilly uplands and mountains rise in some areas of the interior. Glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania sit just kilometers from the tropical jungles below. Even though Kilimanjaro is not far from the Equator, snow covers its summit all year long. The rift valley actually starts in southwestern Asia. The Great Rift Valley is a site of major tectonic activity, where the continent of Africa is splitting into two. Geologists have already named the two parts of the African Plate.
The area of central-eastern Africa is important to scientists who study evolution and the earliest origins of humanity. This area is thought to be the place where hominids began to evolve. The entire continent of Africa sits on the African Plate. Asia Asia, the largest continent, stretches from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the western Pacific Ocean. There are more than 40 countries in Asia. Some are among the most-populated countries in the world, including China, India, and Indonesia.
The continent of Asia includes many islands, some of them countries. The plateaus in Central Asia are largely unsuitable for farming and are thinly populated. The continent has a wide range of climate regions, from polar in the Siberian Arctic to tropical in equatorial Indonesia.
Southeast Asia, on the other hand, depends on the annual monsoons, which bring rain and make agriculture possible. Asia is the most mountainous of all the continents.
More than 50 of the highest peaks in the world are in Asia. Mount Everest, which reaches more than 8, meters 29, feet high in the Himalaya range, is the highest point on Earth. These mountains have become major destination spots for adventurous travelers. Plate tectonics continuously push the mountains higher. As the landmass of India pushes northward into the landmass of Eurasia, parts of the Himalayas rise at a rate of about 2. The land there lies more than meters 1, feet below sea level.
Although the Eurasian Plate carries most of Asia, it is not the only one supporting major parts of the large continent. The Indian Plate supports the Indian peninsula, sometimes called the Indian subcontinent.
The Australian Plate carries some islands in Indonesia. Australia In addition to being the smallest continent, Australia is the flattest and the second-driest, after Antarctica. The continent is sometimes called Oceania , to include the thousands of tiny islands of the Central Pacific and South Pacific, most notably Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia including the U.
However, the continent of Australia itself includes only the nation of Australia, the eastern portion of the island of New Guinea the nation of Papua New Guinea and the island nation of New Zealand. Australia covers just less than 8. Its population is about 31 million. It is the most sparsely populated continent, after Antarctica.
Rainfall is light on the plateau, and not many people have settled there. The Great Dividing Range, a long mountain range, rises near the east coast and extends from the northern part of the territory of Queensland through the territories of New South Wales and Victoria.
Mainland Australia is known for the Outback , a desert area in the interior. This area is so dry, hot, and barren that few people live there. In addition to the hot plateaus and deserts in mainland Australia, the continent also features lush equatorial rainforests on the island of New Guinea, tropical beaches, and high mountain peaks and glaciers in New Zealand.
Biologists who study animals consider Australia a living laboratory. When the continent began to break away from Antarctica more than 60 million years ago, it carried a cargo of animals with it. Isolated from life on other continents, the animals developed into creatures unique to Australia, such as the koala, the platypus, and the Tasmanian devil.
The reef itself is 1, kilometers 1, miles of living coral communities. Most of Australia sits on the Australian Plate. Antarctica Antarctica is the windiest, driest, and iciest place on Earth. Antarctica is larger than Europe or Australia, but unlike those continents, it has no permanent human population. People who work there are scientific researchers and support staff, such as pilots and cooks. The climate of Antarctica makes it impossible to support agriculture or a permanent civilization.
Temperatures in Antarctica, much lower than Arctic temperatures, plunge lower than degrees Celsius degrees Fahrenheit. Scientific bases and laboratories have been established in Antarctica for studies in fields that include geology , oceanography , and meteorology.
Antarctica is also an ideal place for discovering meteorites, or stony objects that have impacted Earth from space. The dark meteorites, often made of metals like iron , stand out from the white landscape of most of the continent. Antarctica is almost completely covered with ice, sometimes as thick as 3.
Like all other continents, Antarctica has volcanic activity. The most active volcano is Mount Erebus, which is less than 1, kilometers miles from the South Pole. Antarctica does not have any countries. However, scientific groups from different countries inhabit the research stations. A multinational treaty negotiated in and reviewed in states that research in Antarctica can only be used for peaceful purposes.
Vostok Station, where the coldest temperature on Earth was recorded, is operated by Russia. All of Antarctica sits on the Antarctic Plate. Microcontinents In addition to the seven major continents, Earth is home to microcontinents, or pieces of land that are not geologically identified with a continent.
Major microcontinents include:. Also called cosmic dust or space dust. Gas molecules are in constant, random motion. Also called the Somali Peninsula. The last ice age peaked about 20, years ago.
Also called glacial age. Monsoon usually refers to the winds of the Indian Ocean and South Asia, which often bring heavy rains. Regions are the basic units of geography. Sea level is determined by measurements taken over a year cycle.
Also called lithospheric plate. For example, the diversity between the Yupik peoples of Alaska and the inhabitants of New Orleans, even though they are on the same continent, are probably greater than the differences between the Yupik and the Ainu peoples of Japan.
So keep in mind that studying continents requires thinking in broad, general terms that may not apply to everyone on the continent. After Asia , Africa is the largest and most populous of the seven continents. It is perhaps the most diverse in terms of cultures, languages, and people groups, some of which are still untouched by Westernization and modernity. Paleoanthropologists believe that humans originated in Africa and that from there, they migrated throughout the rest of the world.
Africa has historically been the home of many great civilizations, such as those of Ancient Egypt , Timbuktu, and Abyssinia. Today, there are 55 sovereign states in Africa, though there are thousands of people groups, many of which speak their own languages, have their own traditions and cultures, and consider themselves to be nations. Today, Africa is best understood as being divided into two regions. North Africa is north of the Sahara desert; its countries are predominantly Muslim, and most of the people speak Arabic.
Sub-Saharan Africa lies south of the Sahara desert, and while it includes many Muslim populations, it also has significant communities of Christians and other religions. Of all the seven continents, Africa suffered the worst effects of colonization. The slave trade led to many Africans being kidnapped and sent to North America to work on plantations. Countries like Belgium , France , the Netherlands , and the United Kingdom governed countries in such a way that the people were forced into servitude.
The colonial governments created countries whose borders were so arbitrary that people groups became separated from each other. The effects on traditional, indigenous culture were disastrous. Many of the long-standing conflicts in Africa today, such as the wars in the Congo, are the legacy of colonialism.
The governments of many African countries are notoriously corrupt, and sadly, genocides, such as those in Rwanda and Sudan , continue to occur. However, one success story is that of South Africa. Following the end of Dutch colonial rule, a policy of apartheid ensured that black Africans had few rights and that whites who lived there enjoyed lifestyles of privilege and prestige.
Thankfully, the fall of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela showed that African countries could heal from the ravages of colonialism. Today in South Africa, though, there are still significant disparities between whites and blacks, and many blacks remain in dire poverty.
Today, countries in Africa have some of the lowest human development indexes HDIs in the world. Nearly all of the 30 countries with the lowest HDIs, as reported by the United Nations, are in Africa; missing from the list is Somalia , in the horn of Africa, which is considered to be a failed state and is one of the most impoverished and dangerous places in the world.
However, Africa is abundant in natural resources and hard-working people; what is holding the continent back is the corrupt governments and longstanding conflicts that came to dominate the scene following the withdrawal of colonial governments. Africa is not poor but rather poorly managed. The Nile River is possibly the longest river in the world though some believe that the Amazon may actually be longer , and it provides water to the countries of Sudan and Egypt. Africa has vast savannahs and woodlands, but the continent is being deforested at twice the global average.
Giant land animals, such as elephants, giraffes, and rhinoceroses, are endangered because of poaching. Given that much of the continent is impoverished and under corrupt governments, addressing the environmental crisis in Africa requires international action. The African Union, which formed in and includes all 55 African countries, can be seen as a corollary to the European Union.
It has strengthened relations among nations in Africa and hopes to work to decrease poverty and end human rights violations. One notable sign of success in Africa is that during the civil war in the Congo, neighboring African countries, rather than Western countries, have been intervening and attempting to promote peace and reconciliation.
With assistance from international organizations, countries all across Africa will become even more empowered to lift themselves out of poverty and address the environmental crisis. It is connected to the main land mass of Europe , with the border defined somewhat by the Ural Mountains that run through Russia and the Bosphorus that cuts through Turkey. Two countries are split between Europe and Asia: Turkey and Russia.
There are many large regions inside of Asia. The Middle East stretches from Turkey through Saudi Arabia and is dominated by Sunni Islam and the Arabic language, although a significant number of Christians, Jews, and followers of other religions and speakers of other languages live there, as well. Central Asia goes from Iran to the border of India. India is considered a region in and of itself, but it has similarities, as well as conflicts, with its neighboring countries that were carved out of it — Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Southeast Asia includes many coastal and island nations, such as Myanmar , Thailand , the Philippines , and Indonesia. In other words, Asia was the part of the world that was not European, and the idea of a European identity was based on the idea that Europeans were not Asian. The conflicts between Pakistan and India today, as well as many other conflicts in Asia, are the legacies of European colonization in Asia.
That said, before colonization, Asia had some of the earliest civilizations and greatest empires in the world. Asia has some of the most extreme geography on the planet. The Himalayas are the largest mountain range in the world, and the Gobi desert is one of the largest deserts in the world. Monsoons in India and nearby countries bring periodic floods, and temperature swings in some locations can be extremely volatile.
In addition to having varied geography, of all the continents, Asia is experiencing perhaps the most devastating effects of climate change. Asia has historically been very poor, primarily due to the effects of European colonization, but today, many of its countries — notably South Korea, Indonesia, China, and India — have rapidly-growing economies. Of all the seven continents, Europe has the second-smallest landmass after Australia , but its people and culture have done more to shape the entire world than those from any other continent.
It has about 50 sovereign states, though two of them Russia and Turkey are located in both Europe and Asia ; Armenia , though a party to many European agreements, is actually in Asia. The smallest country is Luxembourg , measuring at just 11 miles across, whereas Russia is the largest, which crosses 11 time zones! Originally the term "continent" was applied to any area of land, of any size, not separated by water, including islands.
Concurrently, ever since the times of ancient Greek mariners and philosophers, the world was separated into "parts. Only in the late nineteenth century such parts of the earth came to be explicitly defined as continents. Today, continents are understood to be large, continuous, distinct masses of land , ideally but not necessarily separated by expanses of water.
No required minimum size to qualify as "large" or "very large" has been defined, nor the requisite degree of physical separation. Continents are therefore defined by convention rather than a strict criteria. The criteria used can be of geographical, historical, cultural, anthropological, political, or even of philosophical nature.
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