While we’re at it, we may as well make it 4 continents: Afro-Eurasia, the Americas, Australia, and Antarctica. I think there’s even an argument for combining Afro-Eurasia and the Americas too, since it’s just one big contiguous landmass during ice ages. This has important biological consequences for the historic exchange of humans and other animals via Beringia. It also makes it easier to understand the close linguistic and genetic relationships between Siberian peoples and Native Americans. I hope you have enjoyed this argument for why a 3 continent world mental model is good, actually
Why stop there? After we rule 85% of the world’s land area to belong to just one continent, why split the remaining 15% of Earth’s land in two? That seems awfully imbalanced to me. So I rule that we should just merge Oceania and Antarctica together into the great continent of “Antherest” — after all, the Maori were quite likely the first people to discover Antarctica; Antarctica itself is just an archipelago with the appearance of a contiguous landmass due to its ice (which might not last); and there aren’t really any people on Antarctica to object to being merged with Oceania.
While we’re at it, we may as well make it 4 continents: Afro-Eurasia, the Americas, Australia, and Antarctica. I think there’s even an argument for combining Afro-Eurasia and the Americas too, since it’s just one big contiguous landmass during ice ages. This has important biological consequences for the historic exchange of humans and other animals via Beringia. It also makes it easier to understand the close linguistic and genetic relationships between Siberian peoples and Native Americans. I hope you have enjoyed this argument for why a 3 continent world mental model is good, actually
Why stop there? After we rule 85% of the world’s land area to belong to just one continent, why split the remaining 15% of Earth’s land in two? That seems awfully imbalanced to me. So I rule that we should just merge Oceania and Antarctica together into the great continent of “Antherest” — after all, the Maori were quite likely the first people to discover Antarctica; Antarctica itself is just an archipelago with the appearance of a contiguous landmass due to its ice (which might not last); and there aren’t really any people on Antarctica to object to being merged with Oceania.