HIDTORY OF THE CONCRPT

History of the concept

Early concepts of the Old World continents

The Ancient Greek geographer Strabo holding a globe showing Europa 

and Asia

Medieval T and O map showing the three continents as domains of the sons of Noah - Sem (Shem), Iafeth (Japheth) and Cham (Ham)

The first distinction between continents was made by ancient Greek mariners who 

gave the names Europe and Asia to the lands on either side of the waterways of the Aegean Sea, the Dardanelles strait, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus strait and the Black Sea.^[29] The names were first applied just to lands near the coast and only later extended to include the hinterlands.^[30] But the division was only carried through to the end of navigable waterways and "... beyond that point the Hellenic geographers never succeeded in laying their finger on any inland feature in the physical landscape that could offer any convincing line for partitioning an indivisible Eurasia ..."^[29]

Ancient Greek thinkers subsequently debated whether Africa (then called Libya) 

should be considered part of Asia or a third part of the world. Division into three parts eventually came to predominate.^[31] From the Greek viewpoint, the Aegean Sea was the center of the world; Asia lay to the east, Europe to the west and north and Africa to the south.^[32] The boundaries between the continents were not fixed. Early on, the Europe-Asia boundary was taken to run from the Black Sea along the Rioni River (known then as the Phasis) in Georgia. 

Later it was viewed as running from the Black Sea through Kerch Strait, the Sea of Azov and along the Don River (known then as the Tanais) in Russia.^[33] The boundary between Asia and Africa was generally taken to be the Nile River. Herodotus^[34] in the fifth century BC, however, objected to the unity of Egypt being split into Asia and Africa ("Libya") and took the boundary to lie along the western border of Egypt, regarding Egypt as part of Asia. He also questioned the division into three of what is really a single landmass,^[35] a debate that continues nearly two and a half millennia later.

Eratosthenes, in the third century BC, noted that some geographers divided the 

continents by rivers (the Nile and the Don), thus considering them "islands". Others divided the continents by isthmuses, calling the continents "peninsulas". These latter geographers set the border between Europe and Asia at the isthmus between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and the border between Asia and Africa at the isthmus between the Red Sea and the mouth of Lake Bardawil on the Mediterranean Sea.^[36]

Through the Roman period and the Middle Ages, a few writers took the Isthmus of 

Suez as the boundary between Asia and Africa, but most writers continued to take it to be the Nile or the western border of Egypt (Gibbon). In the Middle Ages the world was portrayed on T and O maps, with the T representing the waters dividing the three continents. By the middle of the eighteenth century, "the fashion of dividing Asia and Africa at the Nile, or at the Great Catabathmus [the boundary between Egypt and Libya] farther west, had even then scarcely passed away".^[37]

European discovery of the Americas

Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to the West Indies in 1492, 

sparking a period of European exploration of the Americas. But despite four voyages to the Americas, Columbus never believed he had reached a new continent – he always thought it was part of Asia.

In 1501, Amerigo Vespucci and Gonçalo Coelho attempted to sail around the southern end of the Asian mainland into the Indian Ocean, through the Matsackson islands. On reaching the coast of Brazil, they sailed a long way south along the coast of South America, confirming that this was a land of continental proportions and that it extended much further south than Asia was known to.[38] On return to Europe, an account of the voyage, called Mundus Novus ("New World"), was published under Vespucci’s 

name in 1502 or 1503,^[39] although it seems that it had additions or alterations by another writer.^[40] Regardless of who penned the words, Mundus Novus attributed Vespucci with saying, "I have discovered a continent in those southern regions that is inhabited by more numerous people and animals than our Europe, or Asia or Africa",^[41] the first known explicit identification of part of the Americas as a continent like the other three.

Universalis Cosmographia, Waldseemüller's 1507 world map which was the first to 

show the Americas separate from Asia

Within a few years the name "New World" began appearing as a name for South America on world maps, such as the Oliveriana (Pesaro) map of around 1504–1505. Maps of this time though still showed North America connected to Asia and showed South America as a separate land.[40]

In 1507 Martin Waldseemüller published a world map, Universalis Cosmographia, 

which was the first to show North and South America as separate from Asia and surrounded by water. A small inset map above the main map explicitly showed for the first time the Americas being east of Asia and separated from Asia by an ocean, as opposed to just placing the Americas on the left end of the map and Asia on the right end. In the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio, Waldseemüller noted that the earth is divided into four parts, Europe, Asia, Africa and the fourth part which he named "America" after Amerigo Vespucci's first name.^[42] On the map, the word "America" was placed on part of South America.

The word  continent

From the 1500s the English noun continent was derived from the term continent land, meaning continuous or connected land[43] and translated from the Latin terra continens.[44] The noun was used to mean "a connected or continuous tract of land" or mainland.[43] It was not applied only to very large areas of land — in the 1600s, references were made to the continents (or mainlands) of Kent, Ireland and Wales and in 1745 to Sumatra.[43] The word continent was used in translating Greek and Latin writings 

about the three "parts" of the world, although in the original languages no word of exactly the same meaning as continent was used.^[45]

While continent was used on the one hand for relatively small areas of continuous 

land, on the other hand geographers again raised Herodotus’s query about why a single large landmass should be divided into separate continents. In the mid 1600s Peter Heylin wrote in his Cosmographie that "A Continent is a great quantity of Land, not separated by any Sea from the rest of the World, as the whole Continent of Europe, Asia, Africa." 

In 1727 Ephraim Chambers wrote in his Cyclopædia, "The world is ordinarily divided into two grand continents: the old and the new." And in his 1752 atlas, Emanuel Bowen defined a continent as "a large space of dry land comprehending many countries all joined together, without any separation by water. Thus Europe, Asia, and Africa is one great continent, as America is another."^[46] However, the old idea of Europe, Asia and Africa as "parts" of the world ultimately persisted with these being regarded as separate continents.

Beyond four continents

From the late 18th century some geographers started to regard North America and 

South America as two parts of the world, making five parts in total. Overall though the fourfold division prevailed well into the 19th century.^[47]

Europeans discovered Australia in 1606 but for some time it was taken as part of Asia. By the late 18th century some geographers considered it a continent in its own right, making it the sixth (or fifth for those still taking America as a single continent).[47] In 1813 Samuel Butler wrote of Australia as "New Holland, an immense island, which 

some geographers dignify with the appellation of another continent" and the Oxford English Dictionary was just as equivocal some decades later.^[48]

Antarctica was sighted in 1820 and described as a continent by Charles Wilkes on the United States Exploring Expedition in 1838, the last continent to be identified, 

although a great "Antarctic" (antipodean) landmass had been anticipated for millennia. An 1849 atlas labelled Antarctica as a continent but few atlases did so until after World War II.^[49]

From the mid-19th century, United States atlases more commonly treated North and 

South America as separate continents, while atlases published in Europe usually considered them one continent. However, it was still not uncommon for United States atlases to treat them as one continent up until World War II.^[50] The Olympic flag, devised in 1913, has five rings representing the five inhabited, participating continents, with America being treated as one continent and Antarctica not included.^[22]

From the 1950s, most United States geographers divided America in two[50] — consistent with modern understanding of geology and plate tectonics. With the addition of Antarctica, this made the seven-continent model. However, this division of America 

never appealed to Latin America, which saw itself spanning an America that was a single landmass, and there the conception of six continents remains, as it does in scattered other countries.

However, in recent years, there has been a push for Europe and Asia—traditionally 

considered two continents—to be considered one single continent, dubbed "Eurasia" - consistent with modern understanding of geology and plate tectonics. In this model, the world is divided into six continents (if North America and South America are considered separate continents) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Penulis : Drs.Simon Arnold Julian Jacob