Europe is not a continent

[Roses2]

After all these years, I am just now learning this. I was watching a lecture by Dr. Joy Degruy and she had everyone define the textbook definition of a continent and then she showed how Europe doesnt fit that definition, yet, the point is those who brutally conquered the world are able to just get everyone to accept something that goes right against what our own eyes see.

We accept Europe as a continent because the dominant whites/Europeans told us to. It's a great example of brainwashing and proof of how history, science, society, psychology etc is written as exaggeration or lies by the conquerors.

So now, when I ask students to name the continents, I have to explain this.

 

[ameteurhistorian]

I'll bite.

How is Europe not a continent?

 

[sparky]

.
Australia is not a continent , America is two continents , Asia is not a continent ...etc ..etc



some common convention are just not worth setting aside , they are not truths just cmental conveniences

one could speak of river basins or mountain ranges as geographical realities

 

[pugsville]

Language and usage has evolved overs years. retro fitting logic over everything is very time consuming and confusing.

why is this one so important?


When people say Europe everyone knows what you are talking about. Why does continental status matter?

 

[Pruitt]

Some people count Europe and Asia as one big continent, Eurasia.


Pruitt

 

[At Each Kilometer]

For the most educated ppl from the western hemisphere Europe is England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Italy, for some knowledgeable probably Austria and Hungary, because of House of Habsburg /AH. EDIT: Forgot Russia, because of the cold war. They dont know and dont care about the history of the rest of the continent. This geographic term evolved greatly btw. During clasical Greece it was used to denote the western shore of the aegean sea, opposite to the eastern asian one.

EDIT2: Note most of these were bloody imperialist great powers in the past, oppressors of the worldwide proletariat with history of exploitation, slavery, misery and cruelty in their former colonies, the so called european 'western' world of today.

 

[ameteurhistorian]

For the most educated ppl from the western hemisphere Europe is England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Italy, for some knowledgeable probably Austria and Hungary, because of House of Habsburg /AH. EDIT: Forgot Russia, because of cold war. They dont know and dont care about the history of the rest of the continent. This geographic term evolved greatly btw. During clasical Greece it was used to denote the western shore of the aegean sea, opposite to the eastern asian one.

Russia is European.

Maybe not necessarily "Western", but ethnic Russians as well as Eastern Slavs in general are European.

 

[At Each Kilometer]

Russia is European.

Maybe not necessarily "Western", but ethnic Russians as well as Eastern Slavs in general are European.

Geographically great chunk of Europe is Russia indeed, but still again geographically the Asian portion of Russia is around 3/4 of this country territory though much less populous that the European part. I am gonna use Pruitt's term, Eurasian.

 

[ameteurhistorian]

Geographically great chunk of Europe is Russia indeed, but still again geographically the Asian portion of Russia is around 3/4 of this country territory though much less populous that the European part. I am gonna use Pruitt's term, Eurasian.

That doesn't change the fact that Ethnic Russians have more history with Europe, namely the Byzantine Greeks, Germans, Poles, and Scandinavians, than Asia.

Sure the physical landmass of Russia is Eurasian but the cultural paradigm of Russia is still European, if not, again, conventionally Western.

 

[At Each Kilometer]

That doesn't change the fact that Ethnic Russians have more history with Europe, namely the Byzantine Greeks, Germans, Poles, and Scandinavians, than Asia.

Sure the physical landmass of Russia is Eurasian but the cultural paradigm of Russia is still European, if not, again, conventionally Western.

I see you are talking about eastern slavic ethnic group and not the nationality. I agree.

 

[AlpinLuke]

Tectonic plates ...

Some people count Europe and Asia as one big continent, Eurasia.


Pruitt

This is probably the most correct viewpoint ... if we consider geology. The question is simple: how can we define a continent?



The historical answer is ... by convention. As usual. Reality is that the only rational way to detect a continent is to consider the tectonic plates. Anyway also considering them we should state a further convention: which is the dimension of a tectonic plate that allows us to define it a continent?


If we look at a map with the main tectonic plates we could detect not a few continents around. For example the Americas show 4 tectonic plates [North, South and two in the middle]. Arabia and India are not part of Eurasia [which is one giant tectonic plate]. A curiosity is that part of Southern Europe [a good part of Italy, just to say] is actually on the African plate. So I live really near Africa ...

 

[JeanDukeofAlecon]

We accept Europe as a continent because the dominant whites/Europeans told us to. It's a great example of brainwashing and proof of how history, science, society, psychology etc is written as exaggeration or lies by the conquerors.

The basic conception of "Europe", "Africa", and "Asia" as the three fundamental divisions of the world arose long, long before any meaningful sense of "whiteness" or European solidarity. It has its origins in the ancient Greeks, who straddled the edges of Europe and Asia, and by the end of the Hellenistic period mostly lived in Asia and Africa. There was no racial or cultural charge to this formula, everyone who spoke Greek, European or not, was civilized, and everyone who didn't, including the vast majority of Europe, wasn't - it was a purely geographical term essentially based on what was north-west vs east vs south of Greece proper. The Romans later adopted it from the Greeks, and the Arabs adopted it from the Romans, etc. A true sense of pan-European culture and identity only really started to develop in the high-late medieval period on the basis of a shared religion, shared social structures, shared attitudes, shared institutions, and many shared cultural aspects which could only or mainly be found in that region, thousands of years after the term had first been coined.

In any case, Europe is a "continent" because it is accepted as such, what counts as a continent being a matter of custom and convention, not objective observation. It's connected to Asia, sure, but so was Africa before the 19th century; that's not a good reason to make up or discard terminology.

 

[Shtajerc]

OP seems to suffer of several complexes and hate towards Europeans and wypipo in general. I would call racism on that, I'm probably too privileged to do so. Afterall kangz can't be racist, right?

Europe isn't a continent yet it is a continent. Geographically it's part of Eurasia. Culturally and historically it is separate and gets to be its own continent. Everyone who got a basic education and read a book or two knows this, I don't see how this is suddenly an issue. By the same token Africa isn't a continent either since it's connected to Eurasia with a strip of land. Grow up people and take some responsibility instead of blaming others for your failures.

 

[johnincornwall]

A debate for a site called 'Geographum' surely?

 

[janossyjanos]

Some lower class British don't consider Britain as part of Europe, but most of the British educated classes consider Britain as an island of Europe, like Japanese islands are islands of Asia.

 

[authun]

The basic conception of "Europe", "Africa", and "Asia" as the three fundamental divisions of the world arose long, long before any meaningful sense of "whiteness" or European solidarity. It has its origins in the ancient Greeks, who straddled the edges of Europe and Asia, and by the end of the Hellenistic period mostly lived in Asia and Africa.

The Anaximander Map, circa 600BC

 

[janossyjanos]

The Anaximander Map, circa 600BC

So Rioni river (aka Phasis) is the border of Europe according to ancient Greeks. Than Moscow is not Europe, because it is located in the north-east direction from that river.

 

[janossyjanos]

I think culturally, the Easternmost borders of Europe are the eastern borders of Transylvania, the historic Eastern Polish borders and Voivodina in the South, the barriers of Western (Catholic-Protestant) civilization.

The orthodox civilization is Eurasian civilization, a cultural transition between Europe and Asia.

 

[AlpinLuke]

The Eastern border ...



That the Ural mountains are the "natural border" of Europe and that they divide "European Russia" from "Asian Russia" is a mere geographical convention. And I don't know how much diffused and shared.

 

[janossyjanos]

The Eastern border ...



That the Ural mountains are the "natural border" of Europe and that they divide "European Russia" from "Asian Russia" is a mere geographical convention. And I don't know how much diffused and shared.

Until the Cold war era, the traditional Western Word view considered Orthodox countries as non-Western civilizations.

The traditional Western concept of the West: