What is a continent and its characteristics

Our planet is mainly divided into three elements, air, water, and landThe first being one that is around us and that we cannot touch and the other two being the surfaces that exist on our planet. Although the Earth is known as the blue planet due to its high water content, we must not forget that there are also large areas of land, being the so-called continents. That is why in this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to talk about what is a continent and its characteristics.

We denominate continent to each of the great tracts of land on our planet that are divided across the many oceans. We must differentiate them from the islands, since they are much smaller in size, so only large land areas are called continents.

The term continent comes from the Latin word "continent", which means "to hold together", referring to a large mass of land that remains totally united. Even so, the term does not fully serve to define the continents, since some elements such as culture or history They can make us differentiate one continent from another, even if they are not separated by areas of water, examples of this being Europe and Asia.

It should be noted that due to the complicated definition of continent there is no single global model of continentsThis being the reason why, depending on the country or culture, there are a greater or lesser number of continents. The most common numbers are usually the formulas of 5, 6 or 7 continents, depending on many factors, such as the division of the continents into several or using the population to differentiate the continents.

We must also bear in mind that we associate the continents with all those islands that are close to their coasts, although generally those that are quite far from the continents are usually excluded.

To continue with this lesson about what a continent is and its characteristics, we must talk on the main characteristics of the continents, to understand what we mean by they. Some of its most important elements are the following:

• There is no exact number of continents, since it depends a lot on the culture or the determining elements in which we think, although the general system usually speaks of 6 continents.
• Millions of years ago all the continents were united forming a kind of supercontinent, the so-called Pangea. It was with the passing of the years and the movement of the tectonic plates that this continent was divided into all those that we know today.
• The continents occupy most of the earth's surface, although it must be taken into account that on our planet there is a much greater number of water than of land.
• The sum of the land area of ​​all the continents gives a value of about 149,440,850 km2, occupying a 29% of the surface of our planet, the rest being what we call oceans and seas.

Depending on the different existing theories in geography we can talk about a number or another of continents. As a general rule they are three main theories about continents that we can talk about, being the following:

• 5 continents: It is the theory that says that the continents of our planet are Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Oceania. Since it only speaks of the continents that are populated by a fixed number of people, forgetting Antarctica for its minimal number of inhabitants.
• 6 continents: The most accepted, adding Antarctica to the rest of the aforementioned continents, since it accepts all portions of the land as a continent, regardless of the number of inhabitants it has.
• 7 continents: On certain occasions, America tends to be divided into North and South, although as a general rule it tends to be considered that the entire territory is a huge continent.

The names of the continents of the world

Finally we must talk a little about the continents of the world and see its main features. For this we will follow the system of the 6 continents, since it is the most accepted. The 6 continents of our planet are the following:

• America: The second largest continent, occupying most of the Western Hemisphere. Sometimes it is divided into different subcontinents, these being North America, South America and Central America.
• Asia: The continent with the largest number of inhabitants, and at the same time the one with the largest land area. Sometimes it is named next to Europe, forming the so-called Eurasia.
• Europe: The center of Western culture is the second smallest continent. In terms of population, it is still one of the smallest, although it has large cities like London or Moscow.
• Africa: The third largest continent and also the third in terms of population.
• Oceania: A somewhat strange continent, since it is made up of islands, both large and small. Even joining all the islands it is still the smallest continent, its largest island being Australia.
• Antarctica: The only continent without a fixed population, which is why it is not usually considered as its own continent. Even so, the sources that speak of the continents as large areas of land, regardless of their population, if they name it as a continent.