[WikiEN-l] ABOUT LATITUDE.

Thu Sep 9 16:53:29 UTC 2004

In Europe, we were taught in school that Australia ''was'' a continent. 
Thus:

North America
South America
Europe
Africa
Asia
Australia
Antarctica

So that's 7 continents -- which, incidentally, is the number of Olympic 
rings (they represent the 7 continents). Commonly, New Zealand and 
sometimes all of the Pacific Ocean islands were seen as being part of 
Australia. Then again, as far as the "Pacific islands problem" is 
concerned, maybe they don't ''have'' to be grouped with any continent 
at all: The word "continent", after all, derives from Latin ''(terra) 
continens'', meaning a combined land mass (as opposed to islands). Thus 
(some) island can happily be regarded as not being part of any 
continent.

It was actually quite a surprise to me to see that there appear to be 
different definitions in the U.S. I thought the above was universal and 
I had never heard of "Austalasia". Then again, in the end of the day 
it's a matter of arbitrary definition isn't it?

Luckily, [[Continent]] already appears to have the gist of this info. :)

As long as we can all contain ourselves there should be continental 
consensus.

-- Jens

On 9 Sep 2004, at 18:05, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 8
> Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 16:35:17 +0100
> From: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com>
>
> On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 06:14:48 -0700, Poor, Edmund W 
> <edmund.w.poor at abc.com> wrote:
>> There are seven traditional continents in geography. In no particular
>> order, they are:
>>
> ...
>> * Australia (the "island continent")
> ...
>> This leaves two issues:
>> 1. Where do the various islands go?
>
> I think, generally, they go with the nearest continent, with special
> treatment given to Australia and its surroundings: since there isn't
> really a 'continent' nearby (in pedantic terms), but Australia is the
> largest land mass, the term "Australasia"
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australasia] is sometimes used to group
> these as a "continent". In other contexts, "Oceania" is used, although
> according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania these two terms are
> sometimes more or less the complement of each other, one including
> only Australia and New Zealand, while the other includes the lesser
> islands between there and Asia.
>
> In other words, Australia isn't generally treated as a continent, but
> part of an imaginary continent that mops up the islands that aren't
> near enough a real continent to belong. I think everything else is
> just about near enough to 'belong', although how 'American' some of
> the more distant mid-oceanic islands would consider themselves, I'm
> not sure!
>
> -- 
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]