Re: OT: Renaming the continents

Tim May Have Written:
> Iran has virtually nothing in common with
> Kamchatka that it does not also have in common with Spain.
(among other things)

Which brings us to an essential point.  What is the definition of a
continent?  If it is a very large area (say, at least the size of Australia)
that shares X amount of the same features (with the X at least being defined
by some examples), then perhaps we ought to break up the world quite
differently.  If we break it up by how history has been and what sort of
interaction these areas have had, Iran and Spain might go together, but
we've got other problems.  It would seem logical to break Africa into
supersaharan and subsaharan parts, but does it make sense to put Tanzania in
the world of Senegal as opposed to Arabia?  Or what about Ethiopia?  And
obviously we can't break up China, so the outlying regions that Chinese
culture affected would include both Tibet and the Philipines, which have
little in common.

So we could use a definition like this "A continent is a body of land at
least the size of Australia and bordered by water on the majority of its
edge."  This seems like an intuitive one to me.  It does arbitrarily limit
the size of a continent, but I don't think that can be helped.  If we don't
limit it anywhere, the definition starts including things like Newfoundland,
Iceland, or even Manhattan as continents.

What would this definition include?  Looking at a map of the world, I think
it would include the following:

Australia (obviously)
South America
North America
Africa
Europe
Asia

But the problem is that it would also include ridiculous areas like:
the Middle East
Russia
the USA
Canada
Latin America
All of Africa south of the Sudan, simply as a topic of invention

So how do we limit it?  If we increase the requisite ratio of coastline to
edge, that might do it.  But what is to guide this decision?  If we are
simply trying to include or exclude Europe, as is mainly the goal of many of
the arguments in this thread, we'd be using the inclusion or exclusion of
Europe to define Europe as included or excluded.  But I think such a thing
would be inevitable.

For the Eurasian supporters, we could have a clause regarding the thickest
neck of land that could be the junction between two continents.  If that
isthmus were to be no more than 100 miles in width, it would eliminate
Europe and Asia as continents.

Perhaps what we need is a more hierarchical system:

Old World
- Eurasia
- - Europe
- - Asia
- Africa
- Australia
New World
- North America
- South America

Just my thoughts...

Joe Fatula