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This is the true size of Africa
(mstdn.social)
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this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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In which Asia's and Africa's claim to "continent" status looks suddenly shaky, and Europe's completely laughable.
except that continents quite plainly aren't just about landmasses, they're defined by culture as well. Hence why most people these days consider "oceania" a continent, and why india and the middle east don't really fit smoothly into any standard continent.
There seems to be a better name for what you are talking about. Fair point about Oceania though, that's as uncontinental as Europe.
If Africa was the same continent as Asia, it should be easy to walk across.
But you literally can't. The only connections are a freeway bridge (currently closed), a railway bridge, a road tunnel and ferries. And geologically, an ocean is in the process of opening up in between.
As for Europe, it doesn't even have its own continental plate.
It's less of a continent than India.
India is only not often counted as a continent because it decided to bum rush Asia, creating work for generations of sherpas dragging half-dead white men up excitingly tall mountains in the process.
They literally had to dig the Suez channel to separate both.
Hardly. Africa is converging with Europe and the Med is being crushed. It's only moving away from Arabia.
Maybe the oceanbuilding process between Africa and Asia stopped after I finished my MSc in Geoscience 10 years ago, but I doubt it.
Never said it would move away from anything else.
This snarky argument from authority is redundant given that the facts are extremely easy to understand and outlined in the Wikipedia article I cited.
The biggest gap between Africa and Eurasia (PS; we agree that Europe is not a continent) is the Mediterranean sea, and it is getting smaller. That does seem relevant.
The Red Sea is what’s becoming an ocean, technically speaking.