I mean it’s greatly exaggerated on Mercator but it’s definitely not tiny.
It’s bigger than Australia
Fake map north should be pointing away from Antarctica dumbass. Read a book.
That outline is like the entire continental shelf, or all the area where the glaciers are directly over rock (as opposed to having ocean in between), or something like that.
But if the ice weren’t there, not all of it would actually be above sea level:
Might actually be smaller than Australia if the ice were gone, give or take things like sea level rise and isostatic rebound.
TIL that Antarctica is an archipelago.
Does that mean Australia is not the biggest island
Apparently Greenland is considered the largest island. The difference between a continent and island is a little arbitrary.
Are continents islands?
I may be mistaken here, but I think the concept of a “continental shelf” is pretty well defined geologically. That is: Outside a land mass, the ocean floor extends a certain distance before dropping off to the deep ocean floor. An island would be a piece of land that sticks out of the sea from this continental shelf, while the “continent” includes the entire shelf, and all the land masses that stick out of the ocean on that shelf.
Of course, this seems to break down a bit for e.g. the Europe/Asia divide (and probably a lot more), but the concept of “continents” vs. “islands” can make sense geologically, although the “continents” are then different from the geopolitical borders ones we usually talk about.
By definition, a continent and an island are mutually exclusive. Nothing can be both.
Australia isn’t a continent either. It’s in the continent of Oceania, which includes New Zealand.
Antarctica is a continent in its own right. It’s not a country and not a nation.
There is no agreed upon definition or set of continents globally
It might as well be a made up word
All words are made up words…
the just be making up words now
All words are made up
no i’m doesn’t
What will they think of next?
ook
The Australia thing is something we were taught in high school.
I think I remember being told Greenland was the largest island, while Australia was a continent
Something to do with tectonic plates
Continents is a human made construct that’s later rationalized with tectonic plates and other criteria. Basically, people around the Mediterranean Sea divided the Mediterranean Coast into 3 parts and later extended this concept.
Yeah, but so is an island. It’s all human constructs. we see patterns and make up sounds for them.
Yes of cause
If you go by the geological definition, Australia is a continent, as is Zealandia. That’s right, New Zealand has equal geological footing with the entirety of Eurasia.
Probably why they keep getting left off maps, jealousy.
Not all continents, no. Islands are bodies of land surrounded by water on all sides, no? Wouldn’t Antarctica and Australia then qualify by that definition?
I mean every landmass is surrounded on all sides by water though
But most of the land that are considered continents are connected to one or kore other land, and thus couldn’t be defined as an island.
Though, after reading a few other comments, it seems the definition of what makes a continent a continent is apparently subject to debate.
~This is why we can’t have nice things.~
Nice. What did you use for that one?
https://niy.ai/worldmap lets you reproject Mercator to put any landmass you want in the middle by clicking on it, but it doesn’t have that overlay thing.
Hence “most other continents”
Yeah it’s smaller but not tiny
Fun fact, Mercator would in principle be even more distorted than it is, but almost every map that uses it crops at least the top and bottom 5 degrees to hide it. Mercator’s original cropped to 66°S - 80°N, which shifts Europe towards the middle.
Another fun-fact: The Mercator projection was, at its inception, the first map that could be used for long-distance sea navigation over the mediterranean and Atlantic in the sense that axes are scaled such that courses plotted on the map actually match the compass course you need to follow to get somewhere. This also happens to be the reason it became popular, and the reason it was made, rather than the commonly quoted reason of “making Europe big at the expense of things closer to the equator”.
Friendly reminder that Europe is not a continent.
Are we going with Eurasia or an Afro-Eurasia distinction? I feel like if someone were to insist on Afro-Eurasia then they also have to accept The Americas, or I guess it would just be a simple “America” which would get confusing since that’s a pretty common verbal shorthand for USA. Under that sort of definition I think if you still insist on North and South America as regions then you’d have to also accept North and South Afro-Eurasia.
It’d also be pretty funny to try to argue that since North America was connected to Asia within the human timeline it should also be added. Imagine trying to refer to the continents: AfroAmeriEurasia, Australia, and Antarctic, with an optional Oceania thrown in the mix.
For clarity, I usually just go with North/South America, Australia, Antarctica, Africa, and Eurasia as the continental landmasses
Excellent Map Men video about this: https://youtu.be/hrsxRJdwfM0
If Europe isn’t a continent then neither is India!
It gets called The Indian subcontinent for ~exactly that reason~ but not Europe because of colonialism.
How dare you! Oh, wait, I agree!
