page_title: Continent
section_title: Early concepts of the Old World continents
hierarchical_section_title: Continent / History of the concept / Early concepts of the Old World continents
caption_attribution_description: T and O style mappa mundi (map of the known world) from the first printed version of Isidorus' Etymologiae (Kraus 13). The book was written in 623 and first printed in 1472 at Augsburg by one Günther Zainer (Guntherus Ziner), Isidor's sketch thus becoming the oldest printed map of the occident. Note: T-O-maps are typically displayed "East-up", show Jerusalem at the center and the paradise at the outmost East, balanced by the pillars of Hercules at the outmost West.
context_page_description: A continent is one of several very large landmasses. Generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, up to seven regions are commonly regarded as continents. Ordered from largest in area to smallest, these seven regions are: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Variations with fewer continents may merge some of these, for example some systems include Eurasia or America as single continents.
  Geologically, the continents correspond to areas of continental crust that are found on the continental plates, but include continental fragments such as Madagascar that are not commonly referred to as continents. Some geological continents are largely covered with water, such as Zealandia. Continental crust is only known to exist on Earth.
  Oceanic islands are frequently grouped with a neighbouring continent to divide all the world's land into regions. Under this scheme, most of the island countries and territories in the Pacific Ocean are grouped together with the continent of Australia to form a region called Oceania.
context_section_description: The term "continent" translates Greek ἤπειρος, properly   "landmass, terra firma", the proper name of Epirus and later especially used of Asia (i.e. Asia Minor),
  The first distinction between continents was made by ancient Greek mariners who gave the names Europe and Asia to the lands on either side of the waterways of the Aegean Sea, the Dardanelles strait, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus strait and the Black Sea. The names were first applied just to lands near the coast and only later extended to include the hinterlands. But the division was only carried through to the end of navigable waterways and "... beyond that point the Hellenic geographers never succeeded in laying their finger on any inland feature in the physical landscape that could offer any convincing line for partitioning an indivisible Eurasia ..."
  Ancient Greek thinkers subsequently debated whether Africa (then called Libya) should be considered part of Asia or a third part of the world. Division into three parts eventually came to predominate. From the Greek viewpoint, the Aegean Sea was the center of the world; Asia lay to the east, Europe to the north and west, and Africa to the south. The boundaries between the continents were not fixed. Early on, the Europe–Asia boundary was taken to run from the Black Sea along the Rioni River (known then as the Phasis) in Georgia. Later it was viewed as running from the Black Sea through Kerch Strait, the Sea of Azov and along the Don River (known then as the Tanais) in Russia. The boundary between Asia and Africa was generally taken to be the Nile River. Herodotus in the 5th century BC objected to the whole of Egypt being split between Asia and Africa ("Libya") and took the boundary to lie along the western border of Egypt, regarding Egypt as part of Asia. He also questioned the division into three of what is really a single landmass, a debate that continues nearly two and a half millennia later.
  Eratosthenes, in the 3rd century BC, noted that some geographers divided the continents by rivers (the Nile and the Don), thus considering them "islands". Others divided the continents by isthmuses, calling the continents "peninsulas". These latter geographers set the border between Europe and Asia at the isthmus between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and the border between Asia and Africa at the isthmus between the Red Sea and the mouth of Lake Bardawil on the Mediterranean Sea.
  Through the Roman period and the Middle Ages, a few writers took the Isthmus of Suez as the boundary between Asia and Africa, but most writers continued to consider it the Nile or the western border of Egypt (Gibbon). In the Middle Ages, the world was usually portrayed on T and O maps, with the T representing the waters dividing the three continents. By the middle of the 18th century, "the fashion of dividing Asia and Africa at the Nile, or at the Great Catabathmus [the boundary between Egypt and Libya] farther west, had even then scarcely passed away".
caption: Medieval T and O map showing the three continents as domains of the sons of Noah—Asia to Sem (Shem), Europe to Iafeth (Japheth), and Africa to Cham (Ham).
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