Continents: A History

this episode of the history guy brought to you by the podcast echoes of history ragnarok if you're from the united states it's likely that you were taught that there are seven continents on this earth but other parts of the world teach a six continent model either combining europe and asia into eurasia or north and south america into simply america it might surprise you to find out that the five rings of the olympic flag represent a six continent model those five rings represent the five inhabited continents but deliberately exclude antarctica and setting aside the fact that geographers still disagree over how many continents there are the term itself has ancient origins that have long impacted the world politics and science and education and the modern understanding of the term has only coalesced in the surprisingly recent era the continents themselves might be very old but the human understanding and definition of them is swell history that deserves to be remembered recently i was given the opportunity to narrate a fabulous podcast called echoes of history ragnarok it's a historical podcast inspired by the video game assassin's creed valhalla dawn of ragnarok it's the second season of ubisoft's popular podcast echoes of history where there is light there is always a shadow and in the darkness looms something large if you know names like thor loki and odin just wait until you hear the tales of how they came to be and how they came to an end dive into the otherworldly nine realms hear about the fantastic creatures that live in this universe and tag along on the adventures of the gods that rule upon them including of course thor odin and loki whether you love playing assassin's creed or you're simply interested in history this season takes you deeper into the stories of norse mythology from the creation of the universe to the end of the world known as ragnarok you can subscribe to the echoes of history podcast wherever you get your podcasts or using the link in the description you can binge five all new episodes narrated by yours truly today as well as the first season about vikings that's echoes of history subscribe now the term continent and its original social and scientific definition had a lot to do with the part of the world where those ideas were first formulated it was the ancient greeks who would have the greatest influence on the modern conception of continents the term itself comes from a greek word meaning land mass or terra firma it was originally the proper name for the region in the northwest of greece the land of ipyrus early greek mariners sailing the aegean saw their civilization and their trade as the center of the world they essentially divided the world into two parts europe and asia separated by waterways from the aegean sea north through the dardanelles the sea of marmara the bosporus the black sea and north into the sea of azov it was slightly later that the greeks had the third piece of the world to that conception that of libya which we now know as africa the greeks sat in a unique position in this conception and in fact it was not perfectly clear if they existed within the scheme at all some greeks didn't identify themselves as europeans at all instead using that term to refer to non-greek states like thracia another conception suggested that mainland greece was part of europe but not the islands or the peloponneses aristotle went further claiming that the greeks existed outside of the continental concept altogether and that they represented a middle position these initial conceptions were limited at least partially by how little the greeks knew about the inland parts of most of these regions and their use of the term continent generally only referred to the regions near the shore and if anyone thinks that our arguments over whether europe should be regarded as its own continent is a modern disagreement herodotus criticized the idea in the 5th century bc writing that the boundaries of europe are quite unknown and that for my part i cannot conceive why three names should ever been given to attract which in reality is one referring to europe asia and libya later the geographer strabo was also critical of the scheme and wrote that in giving names to the three continents the greeks did not take into consideration the whole habitable earth but merely their own country and the land exactly opposite the true extents of these continents were unknown and in fact the greeks never understood them quite like we do today as knowledge expanded so did the size of the continents exact boundaries were also shifting the boundary between europe and asia was never firmly agreed upon and was alternatively viewed as falling from the black sea along the rione river that flows through georgia as was preferred by herodotus or along the don river to the north as preferred by geographer strebo similarly the boundary between africa and asia was uncertain usually said at the nile river herodotus thought it was ridiculous to divide the country between continents instead suggested that the continental boundary should sit on the western boundary of egypt the romans continued to use the scheme in an informal way and had provinces called asia in modern turkey and africa along the coast of that continent europe as a concept held more meaning exemplified in plenty describing europe as the nursing of the people that conquered all the nations and by far the most beautiful of lands geographical maps like that of claudius ptolemy invented the antecedents to modern latitude and longitude lines his contention that africa and asia were linked by a land enclosing the indian ocean would continue to appear on maps for centuries afterwards the fall of the empire would not bring down the three-continent scheme which especially in europe took on greater scholarly importance the middle ages saw europe work to find the continents within the bible which doesn't mention them at length if at all saint jerome who translated the vulgate bible would write that noah gave each of his sons shem ham and japheth one of the three parts of the world for their inheritance and these were asia africa and europe respectively this was important because it gave this conception of continence a religious significance and additionally allowed contemporaries to explain why asia was larger than the other two continents shem was the eldest son medieval muslim cartographers did not make such distinctions this led to the most common form of medieval european maps t and o maps first described in the 7th century by isidore of seville who wrote that the earth may be divided into three sides europe is divided from africa by the sea and asia is divided from libya with egypt by the nile in medieval cartography the tea was understood to be the mediterranean sea the nile river and the don river and the o represented the encircling ocean reflecting the religious nature of these maps jerusalem was usually depicted at its center with east depicted on the upper portion where modern maps placed north and eden placed at the top of the map nearest to heaven these maps are often difficult to parse sowing in part to the period's profoundly theological view of space they were not especially useful for actually finding one's way unlike some greek geographers the middle ages generally saw it as a gospel that the nile separated africa from asia renaissance and medieval writers turned to the ancients as authorities with 16th century geographer sebastian munster writing of the ancient division of the old world into three regions separated by the dawn mediterranean and the nile it wasn't irrelevant either that christendom seemed to fit neatly into the greek conception of europe increasing secularism and humanism additionally led cultures in that christendom to seek a secular identity in the 15th century how christians of the former western roman empire begin to identify as europeans it isn't surprising that these increasingly foundational conceptions of the continents faced significant disruption on the discovery of the americas it would take time for european authors to even address the issue with a popular 1555 french geographical text omitting any mention of the americas at all professor walter magnolio argues that the spanish denied the americans continental status even longer the castilian notion of the indies remained in place up to the end of the colonial empire america began to be employed only toward the end of the 18th century this was despite the fact that the universalis cosmographia in 1507 showed america separate from asia the cosmographia is also the first to apply the name america to that land amerigo vespucci wrote in 1502 or 1503 that i have discovered a continent in those southern regions it wasn't until the 17th century that virtually all global geographies acknowledged the americas as one of the four quarters or four corners of the world america in the west asia in the east europe in the north and africa in the south the first modern atlas the theater of the world appeared in 1570. the author abraham ortelius was the first person known to suggest that the continents had once been connected before drifting apart greater accuracy and new ideas led to a reconsideration of what actually constituted a continent it was only in the early modern period that the modern separation of africa and asia the suez isthmus came to dominate this also began the ongoing issue of separating asia and europe the don river clearly didn't reach anywhere close to the arctic region some scholars extended the division along other rivers like the volga but it was the 18th century that saw swedish military officer philippe johann von stallenburg argue that the ural mountains were the logical barrier a theory reinforced by the russians who were ideologically attempting to tie themselves to europe and not asia the separation of siberia was again a key part of the ideological puzzle along with the russians began calling the great tartary of the eastern land to be suitable for colonial rule argument remained but by the 19th century the euro boundary became the standard interpretation although issues remain because the mountains did not form a complete boundary forcing some maps to combine the boundary with pieces of the volga or don river or by arbitrarily drawing a line from the end of the urals to take a turn at the caucasus mountains issues of continental definitions continued using other criteria as well english geographer and politician hartford mckinder extended europe to the sahara on a racial basis as in his words it is the desert land that divides the black man from the white the 1963 edition of encyclopedia britannica refers to the region of pakistan as a region bordering on europe and asia which would place all of afghanistan within europe the previous uses of continent however ignored that those audiences had a very different conception of the world than a modern audience in 1599 one writer called the west indies the islands of the caribbean a large and fruitful continent definitions of continent formed slowly the english word is derived from the term continent land latin terra continence but wasn't understood in the modern sense instead referring only to a connected or continuous tract of land and was applied to areas much smaller than modern readers would expect in the 16th century writers spoke of the continents of the isle of man ireland and wales and even sumatra in the mid 17th century one geographical writer wrote that a continent is a great quantity of land not separated by any sea from the rest of the world in 1727 the cyclopedia of ephraim chambers wrote that the world is ordinarily divided into two grand continents the old and the new in 1752 cartographer emmanuel bowen defined 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 many geographers worried about the conception of the three old world continents in 1680 the english atlas complained that the division seems not so rational while many others argued that europe was only an extension of asia by the end of the 1800s however the oxford english dictionary recounted that formerly two continents were reckoned the old and the new now it is usual to reckon four or five including north and south america australia gets only a brief mention as sometimes reckoned as another riders of the increasingly modern period divided the continents on more than physical barriers with 19th century writer carl ritter claiming that each continent was so planned informed as to have its own special function in the progress of human culture and to claim each continent had its own race these writers found reasons to argue for an empirical separation of the continent australia posed its own issues discovered in 1606 18th and 19th century atlases disagreed about whether it was a part of asia or its own continent in the 18th century the conception of an oceania was posted including not just australia and minor pacific islands but also polynesia and the philippines in the myth of continents the authors write that it was only in the 1950s that australia began to be firmly described as a continent and it was world war ii that forged the consensus that indonesia and other islands nearby should be considered asian similarly before world war ii it was common for american atlases to consider the americas as a single continent and only after 1950 did it become common for american atlases to separate north and south america as early as 1849 an atlas labeled antarctica as a continent but the myth of continence authors found that distinction was rare until after world war ii despite the fact that many of these concepts appear to have a eurocentric bias they were applied largely uncritically in other parts of the world japan accepted the fourfold continent division in the 1700s cartographers in the islamic world of the middle ages generally accepted continents as they found them defined in earlier greek texts that isn't to say that other regions didn't have their own forms of centrism maps made in india tended to have central asia as their center and at least one labeled a far-off marginal section as england france and other hat-wearing islands of course it was colonization that spread the european conception of continents furthest other reasons to embrace the scheme have come directly from resistance to europe which helped japanese leaders identify with an asian identity in the 19th century perhaps similarly latin american countries usually teach of a single american continent that latin culture spans it's valuable to remember that the scientific notion of plate tectonics often used to argue for particular continental schemes wasn't conceptualized until well after social definitions of the continents were alfred wegener first suggested his conception of continental drift only in 1912 and the theory received significant resistance and argument between drifters and fixests plate tectonics wasn't fully described and generally accepted until the 1960s the geological and scientific concept of the number of continents canon should be left up to experts in the field but it's clear that the definition of continent was first and foremost a social definition that until very recently didn't even consider a scientific viewpoint even scientific definition however struggles to use the term without contradiction with plates creightons and other concepts failing to simplify the matter while much of the world's education now conforms to the system of seven continents others still teach six and some even argue for as few as four continents perhaps the most important lesson that we can learn from the history of trying to define the continents is that humans have constantly tried to define the space around us but no matter what method we've used the round peg of reality has refused to fit comfortably into the square hole of human convention i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history god check out our community on the historyguyguild.locals.com our webpage at thehistoryguy.com and our merchandise at teespring.com or book a special message from the history guy on cameo and if you'd like more episodes of forgotten history all you have to do is subscribe [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 80,606

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy, geography

Id: jmeg0lfF1IY

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 13 2022