Misplaced Pages

#803196

75-716: [REDACTED] Look up India Nova in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. New India may refer to: New India (newspaper) , an early 20th-century English-language daily newspaper in India Nava Bharat (New India), a Hindi-language daily newspaper in India India Nova (New India), a name used on early maps to refer to North America New India Assurance , an Indian insurance company New India , an 1885 book by Henry Cotton The New India ,

150-711: A 1948 book by Atul Chandra Chatterjee See also [ edit ] India (disambiguation) Navbharat Times , Hindi-language daily newspaper in India Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title New India . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_India&oldid=1227109525 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Articles containing Latin-language text Short description

225-574: A continent as "a large space of dry land comprehending many countries all joined together, without any separation by water. Thus Europe, Asia, and Africa is one great continent, as America is another." However, the old idea of Europe, Asia and Africa as "parts" of the world ultimately persisted with these being regarded as separate continents. By convention, continents "are understood to be large, continuous, discrete masses of land, ideally separated by expanses of water". In modern schemes with five or more recognized continents, at least one pair of continents

300-520: A continent. This divides the entire land surface of Earth into continents, regions, or quasi-continents. The criterion that each continent is a discrete landmass is commonly relaxed due to historical conventions and practical use. Of the seven most globally recognized continents, only Antarctica and Australia are completely separated from other continents by the ocean. Several continents are defined not as absolutely distinct bodies but as " more or less discrete masses of land". Africa and Asia are joined by

375-615: A discrete landmass is completely disregarded if the continuous landmass of Eurasia is classified as two separate continents (Asia and Europe). Physiographically , Europe and the Indian subcontinent are large peninsulas of the Eurasian landmass. However, Europe is considered a continent with its comparatively large land area of 10,180,000 square kilometres (3,930,000 sq mi), while the Indian subcontinent, with less than half that area,

450-425: A geological continent has been disputed by some geologists. However, a study conducted in 2021 found that part of the submerged continent is indeed Precambrian , twice as old as geologists had previously thought, which is further evidence that supports the idea of Zealandia being a geological continent. All seven geological continents are spatially isolated by geologic features. The term "continent" translates

525-550: A nearby continent to divide all the world's land into geographical 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 the geographical region Oceania . In geology , a continent is defined as "one of Earth's major landmasses, including both dry land and continental shelves ". The geological continents correspond to seven large areas of continental crust that are found on

600-591: A note about Columbus's discovery of the land. Following Waldseemüller, the Swiss scholar Heinrich Glarean included the name America in a 1528 work of geography published in Basel . There, four years later, the German scholar Simon Grinaeus published a map, which Hans Holbein and Sebastian Münster (who had made sketches of Waldseemüller's 1507 map) contributed to; this labelled the continent America Terra Nova (America,

675-712: A notion remained fairly common until World War II. It cannot be coincidental that this idea served American geopolitical designs at the time, which sought both Western Hemispheric domination and disengagement from the "Old World" continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. By the 1950s, however, virtually all American geographers had come to insist that the visually distinct landmasses of North and South America deserved separate designations. This shift did not seem to happen in most other cultural hemispheres on Earth, such as Romance-speaking (including France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Switzerland, Latin America , and

750-468: A part of South America. Apart from the current continents, the scope and meaning of the term continent includes past geological ones. Supercontinents , largely in evidence earlier in the geological record, are landmasses that comprise most of the world's cratons or continental cores. These have included Vaalbara , Kenorland , Columbia , Rodinia , Pannotia , and Pangaea . Over time, these supercontinents broke apart into large landmasses which formed

825-520: A quote from a late 15th-century manuscript (a calendar of Bristol events), the original of which had been lost in an 1860 Bristol fire, that indicated the name America was already known in Bristol in 1497. This year (1497), on St. John the Baptist's day (June 24th), the land of America was found by the merchants of Bristow, in a ship of Bristowe called the 'Mathew,' the which said ship departed from

SECTION 10

#1732776845804

900-691: A recent tradition that names Amerike as principal owner and main funder of the Matthew , Cabot's ship of 1497, academic enquiry does not connect Amerike with the ship. Her ownership at that date remains uncertain. Macdonald asserts that the caravel was specifically built for the Atlantic crossing. Hudd proposed his theory in a paper which was read at the 21 May 1908 meeting of the Clifton Antiquarian Club, and which appeared in Volume 7 of

975-523: A separate land. In 1507 Martin Waldseemüller published a world map, Universalis Cosmographia , which was the first to show North and South America as separate from Asia and surrounded by water. A small inset map above the main map explicitly showed for the first time the Americas being east of Asia and separated from Asia by an ocean, as opposed to just placing the Americas on the left end of

1050-738: A single landmass or a part of a very large landmass, as in the case of Asia or Europe. Due to this, the number of continents varies; up to seven or as few as four geographical regions are commonly regarded as continents. Most English-speaking countries recognize seven regions as continents. In order from largest to smallest in area, these seven regions are Asia , Africa , North America , South America , Antarctica , Europe , and Australia . Different variations with fewer continents merge some of these regions; examples of this are merging North America and South America into America , Asia and Europe into Eurasia , and Africa, Asia, and Europe into Afro-Eurasia . Oceanic islands are occasionally grouped with

1125-821: 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

1200-502: A very large peninsula on the fringe of a continent. Where the Americas are viewed as a single continent (America), it is divided into two subcontinents ( North America and South America ) or three ( Central America being the third). When Eurasia is regarded as a single continent, Asia and Europe are treated as subcontinents. Some areas of continental crust are largely covered by the ocean and may be considered submerged continents . Notable examples are Zealandia , emerging from

1275-451: Is considered a subcontinent. The alternative view—in geology and geography—that Eurasia is a single continent results in a six-continent view of the world. Some view the separation of Eurasia into Asia and Europe as a residue of Eurocentrism : "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass, not to a single European country. [...]." However, for historical and cultural reasons,

1350-524: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages India Nova In contemporary English, North and South America are generally considered separate continents, and taken together are called the Americas in the plural. When conceived as a unitary continent, the form is generally the continent of America in the singular. However, without a clarifying context, singular America in English commonly refers to

1425-435: Is divided into several principal oceanic components by the continents and various geographic criteria. The geological definition of a continent has four criteria: high elevation relative to the ocean floor; a wide range of igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks rich in silica; a crust thicker than the surrounding oceanic crust; and well-defined limits around a large enough area. The most restricted meaning of continent

1500-486: Is freed from the charge of violating the long-established and virtually inviolable ancient European tradition of using only the first name of royal individuals as opposed to the last name of commoners (such as Vespucci) in bestowing names to lands. Bristol antiquarian Alfred Hudd suggested in 1908 that the name was derived from the surname "Amerike" or "ap Meryk" and was used on early British maps that have since been lost. Richard ap Meryk, anglicised to Richard Amerike

1575-507: Is inhabited by more numerous people and animals than our Europe, or Asia or Africa", the first known explicit identification of part of the Americas as a continent like the other three. Within a few years, the name "New World" began appearing as a name for South America on world maps, such as the Oliveriana (Pesaro) map of around 1504–1505. Maps of this time, though, still showed North America connected to Asia and showed South America as

SECTION 20

#1732776845804

1650-430: Is joined by land in some fashion. The criterion "large" leads to arbitrary classification: Greenland , with a surface area of 2,166,086 square kilometres (836,330 sq mi), is only considered the world's largest island, while Australia , at 7,617,930 square kilometres (2,941,300 sq mi), is deemed the smallest continent. Earth's major landmasses all have coasts on a single, continuous World Ocean , which

1725-586: Is no strong evidence to substantiate his theory that Cabot named America after Richard Ameryk. Moreover, because Amerike's coat of arms was similar to the flag later adopted by the independent United States, a legend grew that the North American continent had been named for him rather than for Amerigo Vespucci. It is not widely accepted - the origin is usually attributed to the flag of the British East India Company . In 1977,

1800-612: Is that of a continuous area of land or mainland, with the coastline and any land boundaries forming the edge of the continent. In this sense, the term continental Europe (sometimes referred to in Britain as "the Continent") is used to refer to mainland Europe, excluding islands such as Great Britain , Iceland , Ireland , and Malta , while the term continent of Australia may refer to the mainland of Australia , excluding New Guinea , Tasmania , and other nearby islands. Similarly,

1875-407: Is usually considered an island of Africa, but its divergent evolution has caused it to be referred to as "the eighth continent" from a biological perspective. Geologists use four key attributes to define a continent: With the addition of Zealandia in 2017, Earth currently has seven recognized geological continents: Due to a seeming lack of Precambrian cratonic rocks, Zealandia's status as

1950-458: The continental United States refers to "the 49 States (including Alaska but excluding Hawaii ) located on the continent of North America, and the District of Columbia ." From the perspective of geology or physical geography , continent may be extended beyond the confines of continuous dry land to include the shallow, submerged adjacent area (the continental shelf ) and the islands on

2025-773: The Amerrisque Mountains in present-day Nicaragua . The next year, Jules Marcou suggested a derivation of the continent's name from this mountain range. Marcou corresponded with Augustus Le Plongeon , who wrote: "The name AMERICA or AMERRIQUE in the Mayan language means, a country of perpetually strong wind, or the Land of the Wind, and ... the [suffixes] can mean ... a spirit that breathes, life itself." In this view, native speakers shared this indigenous word with Columbus and members of his crew, and Columbus made landfall in

2100-666: 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

2175-603: The Cosmographiae Introductio has commonly been read as argument, in which the author said that he was naming the newly discovered continent in honor of Vespucci and saw no reason for objections. But, as etymologist Joy Rea has suggested, it could also be read as an explanation, in which he indicates that he has heard the New World was called America, and the only explanation lay in Vespucci's name. Among

2250-613: The Isthmus of Suez , and North America and South America by the Isthmus of Panama . In both cases, there is no complete separation of these landmasses by water (disregarding the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal , which are both narrow and shallow, as well as human-made). Both of these isthmuses are very narrow compared to the bulk of the landmasses they unite. North America and South America are treated as separate continents in

2325-701: The New World , the continent also bears the inscription: America ab inuentore nuncupata (America, named after its discoverer). Mercator on his map called North America "America or New India" ( America sive India Nova ). Americus Vesputius was the Latinized version of the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci 's name, the forename being an old Italianization (compare modern Italian Enrico ) of Medieval Latin Emericus (see Saint Emeric of Hungary ), from

New India - Misplaced Pages Continue

2400-456: The Pacific Ocean , as well as the continent of Australia . Zealandia (a submerged continent ) has been called the eighth continent. The following table provides areas given by Encyclopædia Britannica for each continent in accordance with the seven-continent model, including Australasia along with Melanesia , Micronesia , and Polynesia as parts of Oceania. It also provides populations of continents according to 2021 estimates by

2475-584: The Pleistocene ice ages , greater areas of the continental shelf were exposed as dry land, forming land bridges between Tasmania and the Australian mainland . At those times, Australia and New Guinea were a single, continuous continent known as Sahul . Likewise, Afro-Eurasia and the Americas were joined by the Bering Land Bridge . Other islands, such as Great Britain , were joined to

2550-782: The United Nations Statistics Division based on the United Nations geoscheme , which includes all of Egypt (including the Isthmus of Suez and the Sinai Peninsula ) as a part of Africa, all of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Georgia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey (including East Thrace ) as parts of Asia, all of Russia (including Siberia ) as a part of Europe, all of Panama and the United States (including Hawaii ) as parts of North America, and all of Chile (including Easter Island ) as

2625-589: The United States of America . Historically, in the English-speaking world, the term America could refer to a single continent until the 1950s (as in Van Loon 's Geography of 1937): According to historians Kären Wigen and Martin W. Lewis, While it might seem surprising to find North and South America still joined into a single continent in a book published in the United States in 1937, such

2700-558: The postcolonial Romance-speaking countries of Africa), Germanic (but excluding English) speaking (including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands) , and elsewhere , where America is still considered a continent encompassing the North America and South America subcontinents , as well as Central America . The earliest known use of

2775-422: The tectonic plates , but exclude small continental fragments such as Madagascar that are generally referred to as microcontinents . Continental crust is only known to exist on Earth. The idea of continental drift gained recognition in the 20th century. It postulates that the current continents formed from the breaking up of a supercontinent ( Pangaea ) that formed hundreds of millions of years ago. From

2850-492: The "subcontinents" concerned are on different tectonic plates from the rest of the continent, providing a geological justification for the terminology. Greenland , generally considered the world's largest island on the northeastern periphery of the North American Plate , is sometimes referred to as a subcontinent. This is a significant departure from the more conventional view of a subcontinent as comprising

2925-583: The 16th century the English noun continent was derived from the term continent land , meaning continuous or connected land and translated from the Latin terra continens . The noun was used to mean "a connected or continuous tract of land" or mainland . It was not applied only to very large areas of land—in the 17th century, references were made to the continents (or mainlands) of the Isle of Man , Ireland and Wales and in 1745 to Sumatra . The word continent

3000-533: The Americas, Columbus never believed he had reached a new continent—he always thought it was part of Asia. In 1501, Amerigo Vespucci and Gonçalo Coelho attempted to sail around what they considered the southern end of the Asian mainland into the Indian Ocean , passing through Fernando de Noronha . After reaching the coast of Brazil , they sailed along the coast of South America much farther south than Asia

3075-697: 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 . The Roman author Pliny the Elder , writing in the 1st century CE, stated that "The whole globe is divided into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Africa", adding: I shall first then speak of Europe, the foster-mother of that people which has conquered all other nations, and itself by far

New India - Misplaced Pages Continue

3150-691: The Catholic church, began to associate itself with the concept of Europe. 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

3225-498: The Earth, the text claims that the Earth has seven continents and Lord Vishnu Measured the entire universe from his first foot from the land of Earth which has 7 continents. ato devā avantu no yato viṣṇurvicakrame | pṛthivyāḥ saptadhāmabhiḥ || idaṃ viṣṇurvi cakrame tredhā ni dadhe padam | samūḷhamasya pāṃsure || trīṇi padā vi cakrame viṣṇurghopā adābhyaḥ | ato dharmāṇi dhārayan || The Gods be gracious unto us even from

3300-619: The Greek word ἤπειρος , meaning "landmass, terra firma", the proper name of Epirus and later especially used for 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

3375-458: The New Land). In 1534, Joachim von Watt labelled it simply America. Gerardus Mercator applied the names North and South America on his influential 1538 world map; by this point, the naming was irrevocable. Acceptance may have been aided by the "natural poetic counterpart" that the name America made with Asia, Africa, and Europa . In 1874, Thomas Belt published the indigenous name of

3450-519: The Old High German name Emmerich , which may have been a merger of several Germanic names – Amalric , Ermanaric and Old High German Haimirich , from Proto-Germanic *amala- ('vigor, bravery'), *ermuna- ('great; whole') or *haima- ('home') + *rīk- ('ruler') (compare *Haimarīks ). Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1454 – February 22, 1512) was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer who may have been

3525-548: The South American mainland], after Americus who discovered it and who is a man of intelligence, Amerigen, that is, the Land of Americus, or America: since both Europa and Asia got their names from women". America is also inscribed on the Paris Green Globe (or Globe vert ) which has been attributed to Waldseemüller and dated to 1506–07: as well as the single name inscribed on the northern and southern parts of

3600-579: The World Council of Indigenous Peoples (Consejo Mundial de Pueblos Indígenas) proposed using the term Abya Yala instead of "America" when referring to the continent. There are also names in other indigenous languages such as Ixachitlan and Runa Pacha. Some scholars have adopted the term as an objection to colonialism. Subcontinent A continent is any of several large geographical regions. Continents are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria. A continent could be

3675-458: The club's Proceedings . In "Richard Ameryk and the name America," Hudd discussed the 1497 discovery of North America by John Cabot , an Italian who had sailed on behalf of England. Upon his return to England after his first (1497) and second (1498–1499) voyages, Cabot received two pension payments from Henry VII . Of the two customs officials at the Port of Bristol who were responsible for delivering

3750-477: The concept of a continent may go beyond the continental shelf to include oceanic islands and continental fragments. In this way, Iceland is considered a part of Europe, and Madagascar a part of Africa. Extrapolating the concept to its extreme, some geographers group the Australian continental landmass with other islands in the Pacific Ocean into Oceania , which is usually considered a region rather than

3825-405: The division into three of what is really a single landmass, a debate that continues nearly two and a half millennia later. Herodotus believed Europe to be larger (at least in width) than the other two continents: I wonder, then, at those who have mapped out and divided the world into Libya, Asia, and Europe; for the difference between them is great, seeing that in length Europe stretches along both

SECTION 50

#1732776845804

3900-594: The first to assert that the West Indies and corresponding mainland were not part of Asia's eastern outskirts as initially conjectured from Columbus's voyages , but instead constituted an entirely separate landmass hitherto unknown to the Europeans. Vespucci was apparently unaware of the use of his name to refer to the new landmass, as Waldseemüller's maps did not reach Spain until a few years after his death. Ringmann may have been misled into crediting Vespucci by

3975-423: The mainlands of their continents. At that time, there were just three discrete landmasses in the world: Africa - Eurasia - America , Antarctica , and Australia - New Guinea ( Sahul ). There are several ways of distinguishing the continents: In the English-speaking countries, geographers often use the term Oceania to denote a geographical region which includes most of the island countries and territories in

4050-429: The map and Asia on the right end. In the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio , Waldseemüller noted that the earth is divided into four parts, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the fourth part, which he named "America" after Amerigo Vespucci's first name. On the map, the word "America" was placed on part of South America. The Sanskrit text Rig Veda often dated 1500 BCE has the earliest mention of seven continents in

4125-549: The mid-17th century, Peter Heylin wrote in his Cosmographie that "A Continent is a great quantity of Land, not separated by any Sea from the rest of the World, as the whole Continent of Europe, Asia, Africa." In 1727, Ephraim Chambers wrote in his Cyclopædia, "The world is ordinarily divided into two grand continents: the Old and the New ." And in his 1752 atlas, Emanuel Bowen defined

4200-521: The money to Cabot, the more senior was Richard Ameryk ( High Sheriff of Bristol in 1503). Hudd postulated that Cabot named the land that he had discovered after Ameryk, from whom he received the pension conferred by the king. He stated that Cabot had a reputation for being free with gifts to his friends, such that his expression of gratitude to the official would not be unexpected. Hudd also thought it unlikely that America would have been named after Vespucci's given name rather than his family name. Hudd used

4275-543: The most beauteous portion of the earth. Indeed, many persons have, not without reason, considered it, not as a third part only of the earth, but as equal to all the rest, looking upon the whole of our globe as divided into two parts only, by a line drawn from the river Tanais to the Straits of Gades. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire , the culture that developed in its place , linked to Latin and

4350-752: The name America dates to April 25, 1507, when it was applied to what is now known as South America. It appears on a small globe map with twelve time zones, together with the largest wall map made to date, both created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in France. These were the first maps to show the Americas as a land mass separate from Asia. An accompanying book, Cosmographiae Introductio , anonymous but apparently written by Waldseemüller's collaborator Matthias Ringmann , states, "I do not see what right any one would have to object to calling this part [that is,

4425-475: The ocean primarily in New Zealand and New Caledonia , and the almost completely submerged Kerguelen Plateau in the southern Indian Ocean . Some islands lie on sections of continental crust that have rifted and drifted apart from a main continental landmass. While not considered continents because of their relatively small size, they may be considered microcontinents . Madagascar, the largest example,

4500-455: The others together, and it appears to me to be wider beyond all comparison. Eratosthenes , in the 3rd century BCE, 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

4575-479: The place whence Vishnu strode Through the seven regions of the earth! Through all this world strode Vishnu; thrice his foot he planted, and the whole Was gathered in his footstep's dust. Vishnu, the Guardian, he whom none deceiveth , made three steps; thenceforth Establishing his high decrees. In regard to the above-quoted verses, it is commonly accepted that there are Seven Continents or 'regions of

SECTION 60

#1732776845804

4650-443: The port of Bristowe the 2nd of May and came home again the 6th August following. Hudd reasoned that the scholars of the 1507 Cosmographiae Introductio , unfamiliar with Richard Ameryk, assumed that the name America, which he claimed had been in use for ten years, was based on Amerigo Vespucci and, therefore, mistakenly transferred the honour from Ameryk to Vespucci. While Hudd's speculation has found support from some authors, there

4725-433: The present continents. Certain parts of continents are recognized as subcontinents, especially the large peninsulas separated from the main continental landmass by geographical features. The most widely recognized example is the Indian subcontinent . The Arabian Peninsula , Southern Africa , the Southern Cone of South America, and Alaska in North America might be considered further examples. In many of these cases,

4800-436: The reasons which proponents give in adopting this theory include the recognition of, in Cohen's words, "the simple fact that place names usually originate informally in the spoken word and first circulate that way, not in the printed word". In addition, Waldseemüller not only is exonerated from the charge of having arrogated to himself the privilege of naming lands, which privilege was reserved to monarchs and explorers, but also

4875-440: The seven-continent model. However, they may also be viewed as a single continent known as America . This viewpoint was common in the United States until World War II , and remains prevalent in some Asian six-continent models. The single American continent model remains a common view in European countries like France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Latin American countries and some Asian countries. The criterion of

4950-415: The shelf ( continental islands ), as they are structurally part of the continent. From this perspective, the edge of the continental shelf is the true edge of the continent, as shorelines vary with changes in sea level. In this sense the islands of Great Britain and Ireland are part of Europe, while Australia and the island of New Guinea together form a continent. Taken to its limit, this view could support

5025-410: 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". Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean in 1492, sparking a period of European exploration of the Americas . But despite four voyages to

5100-409: The vicinity of these mountains on his fourth voyage. The name America then spread via oral means throughout Europe relatively quickly even reaching Waldseemüller, who was preparing a map of newly reported lands for publication in 1507. Waldseemüller's work in the area of denomination takes on a different aspect in this view. Jonathan Cohen of Stony Brook University writes: The baptismal passage in

5175-479: The view of Europe as a separate continent continues in almost all categorizations. If continents are defined strictly as discrete landmasses, embracing all the contiguous land of a body, then Africa, Asia, and Europe form a single continent which may be referred to as Afro-Eurasia . Combined with the consolidation of the Americas, this would produce a four-continent model consisting of Afro-Eurasia, America, Antarctica, and Australia. When sea levels were lower during

5250-412: The view that there are only three continents: Antarctica, Australia-New Guinea, and a single mega-continent which joins Afro-Eurasia and America via the contiguous continental shelf in and around the Bering Sea. The vast size of the latter compared to the first two might even lead some to say it is the only continent, the others being more comparable to Greenland or New Zealand. As a cultural construct ,

5325-514: The widely published Soderini Letter, a sensationalized version of one of Vespucci's actual letters reporting on the mapping of the South American coast, which glamorized his discoveries and implied that he had recognized that South America was a continent separate from Asia. Spain officially refused to accept the name America for two centuries, saying that Columbus should get credit, and Waldseemüller's later maps, after Ringmann's death, did not include it; in 1513 he labelled it " Terra Incognita " with

5400-486: Was a wealthy Anglo-Welsh merchant, royal customs officer and sheriff of Bristol. According to some writers, he was the principal owner of the Matthew , the ship sailed by John Cabot during his voyage of exploration to North America in 1497. The idea that Richard Amerike was a 'principal supporter' of Cabot has gained popular currency in the 21st century. There is no evidence to support this. Similarly, and contrary to

5475-438: Was known to extend, confirming that this was a land of continental proportions. On return to Europe, an account of the voyage, called Mundus Novus ("New World"), was published under Vespucci's name in 1502 or 1503, although it seems that it had additions or alterations by another writer. Regardless of who penned the words, Mundus Novus credited Vespucci with saying, "I have discovered a continent in those southern regions that

5550-417: Was used in translating Greek and Latin writings about the three "parts" of the world, although in the original languages no word of exactly the same meaning as continent was used. While continent was used on the one hand for relatively small areas of continuous land, on the other hand geographers again raised Herodotus's query about why a single large landmass should be divided into separate continents. In

5625-685: 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 BCE 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

#803196