What are the continents of the world?

What is a continent?

A little over one-fourth of the Earth’s surface is land. A large body of land is called a landmass, and a large continuous expanse of land is called a continent. The Northern Hemisphere holds more of this land than the Southern Hemisphere.

The seven continents

The most widely used list has seven continents: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. This rough sketch shows where they lie and which oceans surround them.

Four, five, six or seven?

Counting continents is not as simple as it looks. Depending on our choice, there can be anywhere from four to seven:

• North America and South America are usually two continents, but seen as one landmass they are one, America.
• Europe and Asia form a single landmass. For historical and cultural reasons they are usually counted as two, but geologists often treat them as one continent, Eurasia.
• Africa and Eurasia are usually two, but sometimes one.

Count	Continents (alphabetical)
Four	Africa-Eurasia, America, Antarctica, Australia
Five	Africa, America, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia
Six	Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, North America, South America
Seven	Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America

The five Olympic rings stand for five inhabited continents: Africa, America, Asia, Australia and Europe.

The continents by size

The book compares the continents with a diagram of small squares that shows their relative sizes, not their shapes. Counting the squares gives this order:

• Largest: Asia. Smallest: Australia.
• North America is larger than South America.
• Africa is larger than North America.
• Antarctica is larger than Australia.
• Eurasia (Europe plus Asia) is more than three times as large as South America.

From the smallest to the largest: Australia, Europe, Antarctica, South America, North America, Africa, Asia. India is part of Asia, the largest continent, and so of Eurasia.

Antarctica, the cold continent

Antarctica, around the South Pole, is the coldest continent, mostly covered with ice and with a harsh environment. Since 1981, the Indian Antarctica Programme has explored it. India set up its first scientific base there, Dakshin Gangotri, in 1983 and two more bases later. About 40 teams of Indian scientists have studied how its climate and environment have changed, and their settlement even has a library and a post office.

Islands

Continents do not include all land. Smaller pieces of land surrounded by water on all sides are islands. Continents are also surrounded by water, but they are so large that they are not called islands. There are lakhs of islands of very different sizes:

• Greenland is the largest island in the world; you would have to add the areas of the 10 largest States of India to reach its size.
• India has more than 1,300 small islands, including two major groups: the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and the Lakshadweep Islands in the Arabian Sea.

Try it yourself

Without looking at a map, draw the continents freehand and colour them, then compare your drawing with a world map in an atlas. Next, on an outline map of the world, label all seven continents and five oceans. Read about the water around them in oceans of the world, or see the whole chapter in the Chapter 2 notes.