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skill from graphic design to cooking to animation, today. 240 million years ago there was one giant
mega-continent called Pangaea. Things were simpler then, you could walk from
South Africa to Greenland and Switzerland had tropical beaches. But then Pangea broke up and things are complicated. Today we have 7 continents or 5 or if you're
really cool 4, it mostly depends on what language you speak and what century it is. Regardless of how many there are, they all
have names. But what is an Africa? What does Asia mean? And is Australia a filthy name thief? Well, Let's Find Out. Asia & Europe The ancient Greeks gave us the words “Europa”
and “Asia”. You see around the 6th century BCE the Greeks
started feeling incontinent. But what continent were they in? Well, to answer that the Greek philosophers
Anaximander and Hecataeus created world maps that used Asia, Europa and Libya as the names
for the 3 continents of their known world. But they didn't invent those names, the Greeks
actually had no idea where those names came from. The fifth century BCE Greek historian Herodotus
said "What puzzles me is why three distinct women’s names should have been given to
what is really a single landmass...Nor can I learn who made the boundaries, or for what
reason they gave the names." So where did those names come from? Well, Asia just pops right into history in
the 8th century BCE in the Iliad, where Asia is said to be near the Kaystros river, which
is here. The Greek Poet Mimnermus also called this
area "lovely Asia'' around 630 BCE. They’re not talking about a continent. They’re talking about this area of Anatolia
in modern-day Turkey. After the Persian Empire conquered this area
in the 6th century BCE ‘Asia’ in the Greek mind expanded to cover all of the Persian
Empire and eventually the entire landmass east of Europe. But what does Asia mean? Well, if we go back 3400 years before today
we find an ancient confederation here in Western Anatolia called the Assuwa. They led some sort of rebellion against the
Hittite Empire and were crushed around 1400 BCE. But the Greeks seemed to have sent soldiers
to help the rebellion. It could be that the Greeks called this area
Assuwa after that confederation and slowly Greekified the name into Asia. But this connection seems pretty weak. Untillllll we jump to the 1950s. When archaeologists deciphered hundreds of
clay tablets from the ruins of the ancient city of Pylos that was destroyed around 1200
BCE. These tablets included hundreds of names written
in an ancient form of Greek writing called Linear B. Some of the writings seem to be receipts for
purchased slaves identified as aswiai, meaning women from aswia. Aswia seems to be here. So the recipts of this horrific practice of
slavery gave us some evidence to show that Assuwa morphed into a more Greek sounding
Aswia and then finally into Asia. Moving from Asia across the Aegean we see
the word Europa pop up around 700 BCE. An Ancient Greek Poem mentions the rich Peloponnesus,
Europa, and the wave-washed isles. This is the Peloponnesus, the islands of the
Aegean are the wave-washed isles, and this here, a small area on the eastern coast of
Greece is Europa. But where does the word Europa come from? Well there are multiple theories. The ancient Greeks had a pretty simple answer. It came from their goddess Europa. One day a Phoencian Princess, Europa, was
relaxing with friends by the seashore. The god Zeus saw her and fell in love immediately,
because Zeus was weird. Zeus changed himself into a white bull, because
ladies love bulls. This actually worked somehow and Europa climbed
on the bull’s back. Then Bull Zeus flew her away to Crete where
Zeus forced himself on Europa and they conceived 3 children. A few things should raise some red flags here. One, Zeus is super creepy, two, bulls are
not to be trusted, and three EUROPA DOESN'T EVEN GO TO EUROPE OR HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH
THE CONTINENT! THIS STORY EXPLAINS NOTHING OTHER THAN THAT
ZEUS IS A CREEP! She's a princess from Asia and she goes to
Crete. The Greeks thought Crete was in Asia. If we go back to Herodotus he says "As to
Europe however, it is unknown from whence it got this name or from whom, unless we shall
say that the land received its name from Europa... She however evidently belongs to Asia and
did not come to Europe, but only from Phoenicia to Crete''. The Europa myth seems to be an explanation
for the name after it was already in use. Ok maybe we can find some answers if we focus
our attention here in the first place called Europa all the way back in the 8th century
BCE. In this region the word Europa pops up a lot. There was a river called Europa and there
were towns called Europos in Macedonia, Thessaly, and Almopia. Alexander the Great had a sister called Europa
and Ancient Macedonian rulers like Philip II were referred to as ‘rulers of Europa’
and they ruled this area. Anyway, that's a lot of Europa in such a small
area. So the word Europa has to come from here,
but what does the word mean. Well ehhh that's kind of hard to figure out. Some Linguists and historians think that the
word Europa comes from the ancient Greek words εὐρύς (eurús), "wide or broad" and
ὤψ (ōps) "eye or face". So it would mean "broad-faced" “wide-eyed”
or “far-seeing”. Greeks lived on both sides of the Aegean Sea. Maybe ancient Greeks sailing across the Aegean
and up to the Black Sea, might have considered the shoreline across from Asia to be broad-faced
and so called it Europa. Or Greeks living on the small islands of the
Aegean saw Europa as a kind of broad "mainland". The Greek poet Pindar writes "Turn around
the ship... to the mainland of Europa". Another possibility is that the people here
in Europa worshipped an ancient Earth-Goddess. Broad-faced or cow-faced is actually a common
name for Earth-goddesses in ancient Indo-European mythology. Now before you say anything Cow-faced was
a compliment back then. Indo-European is the language family Greek
descends from. All the way over in India we see in the Rigveda
"Mother Earth, the wide-extending Broad One'' Pṛthivīṃ means broad here and Prithvi
is still a Goddess in Hinduism who's name means Broad One. The Rigveda is written in Sanskrit, an Indo-European
language, so it has a connection with ancient Greek. Other Indo-European cultures like the Celts
had Litavi, another earth-goddess called the Broad One. We find mentions of an Earth-mother called
Demeter-Europa in Boethia, Demeter is a totally Greek goddess so maybe combining her name
with Europa’s might mean Europa is pre-Greek. So maybe just maybe there was an ancient earth-goddess
known as the Broad-Faced or Europa worshipped in Greece and this area was named after her. How she got moved to Phoenicia and Crete is
unknown. But the problem with this theory is that if
Europa came from Eurus+Ops then the second u should have been preserved. Greek actually has the word euruopa meaning
"far-seeing". So Europa should be euruopa if it actually
meant “broad-faced”. But maybe it wasn't preserved for some reason,
we don’t know. I did some digging and found the name of a
King of Sicyon, which was here, called Europs from before 1000 BCE which means the name
could be super ancient and some historians believe it could come from the language spoken
here before Greek and might have nothing to do with being broad-faced at all and it might
just be a coincidence that other earth-goddesses were called broad-faced. Unfortunately we'll probably never have a
confident answer on where the word Europa comes from. All we know is that it originally came from
here. Eventually the name Europa extended from this
region to cover all of Greece and then all of Europe. Probably because Greeks sailors in the Aegean
kept using Europa as a kind of slang for the "mainland". Africa Ok so Europe was a mess, thankfully Africa
is really nice and is going to give us a straightforward answer. Thanks Africa! The Greeks actually called Africa Libya after
a Berber tribe that lived west of Egypt. But after the Romans wrecked Carthage in the
Punic Wars and then covered the land in salt so nothing would ever grow there again...which
was pretty messed up, who even thinks of that...salt is for food. They then turned this region into the Roman
province of Africa. It seems that when the Romans landed here
they met a local Berber group called the Ifri. The Ifri seemed to have lived around here
in caves near the ancient city of Carthage. The Berber historian Ibn Khaldun said the
Berber word 'ifri' means 'a cave". " And the same word can still be found in
the name of the city of Ifrane in Morocco and in the name of the Berber tribe known
as the Banu Ifran. Ifri became "Afri" in Latin and the Romans
just started using Afer as a general name for people from Africa. The name Libya fell out of use and Africa
terra, the land of the Afri, took over. As more of Africa was mapped the name extended
to the whole continent. Americas Depending on what language you speak this
is either one or two continents but either way it's called America. You’ve probably heard that the name comes
from Amerigo Vespucci. A 16th century explorer from Florence. But Amerigo Vespucci didn't introduce America
to Europe, Columbus did. So why isn't this place called Columbia? Well Columbus up until the day he died claimed
he landed in Asia or the “Indies” and thought he hadn't found anything new. So to Europeans Columbus had actually made
the world smaller by proving Asia and Europe were only separated by a small ocean. Then in 1501, Amerigo Vespucci and Gonçalo
Coelho attempted to sail around what they thought was South-East Asia into the Indian
Ocean. After sailing further and further south along
the coast of Brazil Vespucci realised that Asia as he knew it didn't go down this far
south. After he returned to Lisbon in 1502, Vespucci
announced the discovery of a new land which he “observed to be a continent.” His letters about this New World circulated
through Europe in a document called Mundus Novus. These letters fell into the hands of a German
cartographer, Martin Waldseemüller. Who then created a new world map that embraced
this new continent. This Waldseemüller Map was the first to show
America as separate from Asia. And right here as the name of this new continent
we see the name America used for the first time. In the introduction to his new map printed
in April, 1507, these words appeared: "Europe, Asia and Africa have been extensively explored
and a fourth part has been discovered by Americus Vespuccius...I do not see what right any one
would have to object to calling this part after Americus, who discovered it...and so
to name it...America, since both Europa and Asia got their names from women.". That's the usually accepted story for how
America got its name. But there's just one problem with this...IT'S
FALSE! IT'S FALSE! IT'S FALSE! IT'S FICTION! WE MADE IT UP Well okay maybe not false but there are some
holes in it. You Waldseemüller's words tend to get read
as an argument. Like we should name this continent America
after the man that discovered it was a continent, Amerigo. But you could read them as an explanation. Like "I do not see what right any one would
have to object to calling this part after Americus". Maybe Waldseemüller had already heard the
name America. And to him the only explanation lay in the
feminine version of Vespucci's first name and he saw no reason to object to that. But there are a lot of reasons to object to
it. It had been tradition in Europe to name new
lands using the last names of explorers and the first names of royalty & saints. Louisiana, Georgia, the Philippines, and Victoria
were all named using the first names of royals. The Straits of Magellan, the Seychelles, Bermuda,
Vancouver's Island, Tasmania, all use the surnames of non-royalty. Only America breaks the pattern. Colombia isn't called Cristoforia, it's Colombia
after Christopher Columbus' surname. According to this tradition, America should
be Vespuccia. Waldseemüller was a mapmaker, he knew this
tradition. By breaking it it seems he was trying to force
Amerigo's name to fit with the already popular name America. Which still didn't work because Vespucci signed
his letters as Albericus Vespucius, which was his Latin name. Using Americus instead of Albericus makes
it look like Waldseemüller wanted a Latinization that fit the name America, even though it
wasn’t the one Amerigo used. So if it was actually named after the Latinised
feminne version of Amerigo the continent should be called Alberica not America. So if it didn’t come from Amerigo's name
where the Vespucchi did it come from. Well, all the way back in 1874 the English
geologist Thomas Belt noted in his book The Naturalist in Nicaragua that the name America
might possibly come from the Amerrique mountain range in Nicaragua. In 1875 the French geologist Jules Marcou
made the same conclusion. The name Amerrique was used by the indigenous
people living there for centuries and the area was filled with gold. And we know that Columbus landed nearby. Maybe when Columbus started demanding gold
from the natives, which he loved to do, they pointed him in the direction of Amerrique. When Columbus and his companions returned
to Europe, the name Amerrique spread around as the place to head to if you wanted gold. This name quickly spread from ports into mainland
Europe. Waldseemüller thought this word Amerrique
must have come from Amerigo. And so he wrote the name America on his map
and it stuck. Waldseemüller more like Wrongseemuller, am
I right. Had this mistake happened in Spain or Portugal
where Vespucci and Columbus were still living, maybe it would have been corrected. But it happened in Germany and wouldn't reach
Spain until after Vespucci and Columbus were dead. Vespucci never found out that the continent
was named after him. The name started to pop up on maps across
Europe. Waldseemüller himself actually tried to reverse
this trend and removed the word America from his future maps. In 1513 he labelled it "Terra Incognita" with
a note about how Columbus not Vespucci discovered it. So, in conclusion America is called America
because of Amerigo Vespucchi but maybe not for the reason you thought it was. Australia Australia the King of Islands and the smallest
continent. The name Australia means "Southern Land" in
Latin. All the way back to Roman times cartographers
assumed that a giant continent the Terra Australis Incognita ("Unknown Southern Land") existed
somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere long before Australia or Antarctica were discovered
and often added this unknown continent to their maps. Look, you can see it here, here, and here. They believed nature loved balance and since
there was so much land in the Northern Hemisphere there had to be an equal amount in the Southern
one, they just hadn't found it yet. So when the Dutch bumped into Australia in
the 1600s they called it New Holland and not Terra Australis because they still assumed
a much larger Terra Australis was still out there waiting to be found. By the 1800s people were starting to think
the probability of discovering another southern landmass equal in size to New Holland was
unlikely. In 1814, Matthew Flinders completed the first
circumnavigation of New Holland proving it was an isolated continent and published the
book A Voyage to Terra Australis. Flinders assumed a larger Terra Australis
did not exist, so he wanted the name “Australia” applied to New Holland because that was the
next best thing. Flinders popularised the name Australia which
was adopted as the new name of the land a few years later. Antarctica Cold, desolate, harsh, and devoid of life,
no I'm not describing your mandatory office parties, I'm talking about Antarctica. This continent was only discovered in 1820
by a Russian expedition and so being the last continent discovered it was also the last
one named. The annoying thing for geographers was that
this continent had been named for over a thousand years but then Australia went ahead and stole
it. So they had to settle for the name Antarctica. Which comes from the Greek anti (ἀντί)
and arktikos. Literally "opposite to the Arctic ''. Arktikos
is the Greek name for the constellation of the Great Bear Ursa Major. which can mostly only be seen in the Northern
Hemisphere. Arktikos comes from Arktos ἄρκτος (Greek:
[ˈarktos]), which means "bear". So this landmass that is where people thought
Terra Australis was isn't called Terra Australis. It's named instead after a constellation not
really visible in it's hemisphere which is in turn named after an animal not found anywhere
near Antarctica. The place is full of PENGUINS!!! And I see no reason to object to calling this
place Penguinia after the Penguins that discover it. The only way to make my dream of Pinguinua
become a reality is by making my own world map just like Wrongseemuller. But I have no idea how to draw cool maps like
him. I’ll just head over to Skillshare and watch
Ira Marcks’ class Fantasy Maps: The Art of Exploring Imaginary Worlds! This class doesn’t just teach you how to
draw incredible maps but also the historical context behind map-making and all the symbols
that pop up on them through history, it was super fun. Skillshare is an online learning community
with thousands of inspiring classes for creators. Members get unlimited access to all classes
so you can explore new skills, deepen existing passions, and get lost in an almost infinite
number of new things to learn. If you’ve ever wondered how I learned to
animate these videos then Skillshare is the answer. The class Animating With Ease by Jake Bartlett
pushed my animation skills lightyears ahead of where they were. The great thing about this class is that the
files and assets are free for you to download and learn from at your own pace! On Skillshare Mike Boyd can teach you how
to learn any skill, Ali Abdaal can teach you how to be a productivity master, dozens of
people can teach you how to cook, draw, animate, garden, build a business and much much more. In less than an hour you could pick up a new
creative skill. Skillshare is designed specifically for learning,
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and follow wherever your creativity takes you. The first 1,000 of my subscribers to click
the link in the description will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare so you can start
exploring your creativity today!. Thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video! I hope you enjoyed this video. This was simply about the names of the continents. The validity and history of the idea of continents
is a whole other video that we’ll make someday. But if you’d like to know more you can find
all the sources used in the description. If you are interested in supporting the channel,
there are links for Patreon and my merch store also in the description. Thanks a lot for watching, bye. g
