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(a)Wikipedia.org wrote:
Message: 8
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 16:35:17 +0100
From: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins(a)gmail.com>
On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 06:14:48 -0700, Poor, Edmund W
<edmund.w.poor(a)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]