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u/caelankelley (of Atlas Pro fame) released just today a wonderful video talking about if Australia is an island or not. He goes deep in the biogeography of Australia, Sahul and Australasia as a whole.
Here you go
That's exactly what I was going to do. high five
came here to say the same thing. my favorite geography related youtuber for quite some time now
This is a new discovery for me and I watched his two most recent videos and I’m hooked!! What info
Oh bro. He's a great youtuber.
Why there are NO penguins in the artic might be one of my favourite videos he's made.
The paleobiogeography one is amazing
Get Jack to react to this on geography channel
The real answer is to google Zealandia. New Zealand sits upon a different submerged section of continental crust.
Just to add to land mass context. Australia is ostensibly Sahul that incorporates its northern neighbours. The Wallace line is an interesting point of demarcation.
Whilst Zealandia incorporates as a submerged land mass parallel to the Australian east coast right up to New Caledonia. Hey France has a claim, Croissants in Wellington.
Croissants are better than cheese scones!
Sacrilege!
Was scrolling to make sure someone mentioned this
☝️
What about New Guinea, Coral Sea Islands, Ashmore and Cartier Islands, other Islands of Australia (minus Macquarie Island))?
But that not necessary make it a continent. There are plenty of definitions.
Anything under the ocean does not classify as a continent, Australia is bigger than what a classification of an island is and NZ is a small island of Australian continent, just like how Madagascar is to Africa continent and Japan to Asia.
Come on people!
Idk why people downvoted this, I assume it's salty Americans mad their country isn't a continent
I believe the logic used by Britannica goes as follows " since Australia is the biggest land mass of Oceania it therefore qualifies as continent." We apply the same logic with other big Island like Greenland and Madagascar. Since they are smaller then there "assigned continent" they are Island. But Australia is the biggest Island so it is used a the "reference" for a continent so it is excluded from the Island category.
But why can't it be an island of Asia?
Australia is way too large. Almost as large as contiguous US.
Besides, it has its own unique flora (eucalyptuses) and fauna (marsupials). Very different from Asia's biodiversity. Australia is its "own thing".
And Asia is already way too fucking big
Yes, I would divide Asia into India, Turan and Mecca.
The continent of India would be India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. India would share name with its continent as America does.
Turan would be China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Russia east of the Ural and Central Asia.
Mecca would be a continent that would include the arabian peninsula, Iraq, Iran and Afghanista.
I would also make Africa North of the Sahara desert, Anatolia and Syria part of Europe.
I was unable to come up with better names for the continents
Best explanation here
I too watch Atlas pro
Yeah, size is not the only criterion.
So why isn't madagscar a continent? it also has its very distinct flora and fauna
It could, if there were a consensus. The definition of continent is very arbitrary.
The definition of island is arbitrary. Brittanica and Webster's agree that they are non-continental, but the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language and the United States Geological Survey do NOT include any "non-continental" verbiage in their definition. Therefore, according to OEL (and USGS), Australia IS an island.
Sure, these are all definitions based on agreement. Island seems less debatable than continent, however.
But if “entirely surrounded by water” is the requirement, then most continents are islands: the Americas, Antartica, Africa. 🤷
I mean, culturally, environmentally, and logistically.
Entirety of Oceania is separated from asia itself, there is a wallace line or something i forgot the name that separate Biological species between Borneo and Sulawesi, and Java from lesser Sunda island chain.
While Polynesian and malays may originate from same common ancestor, they are inherently different.
It could be, but someone decided long ago to call it a continent, so here we are.
Australia is by most objective criteria (that is to say based on its properties) a continent. It has continental crust, it dominates its tectonic plate in terms of mass. It has separate animals and cultures. The island definition is the subjective one, though even then it is by any definition that doesn't exclude it by virtue of it being a continent.
Because Asia is a separate continent.
Because it has its own system of continental plates
For the same reason that North and South America are not considered one large island.
Because it's a separate tectonic plate.
Australia isn't an island for the same reason that north and South America aren't an island.
so the sandwich islands are also a continent because they are their own tectonic plate?
Separate tectonic plates. If that were the case then africa could be considered part of Asia. Likewise why north and south America are different continents even if they are connected by land.
we already play in the Asian champions league, is that not good enough
Also Eurovision!
You mean afro-eurasia
Because continent is a concept invented by humans, and is just a very fuzzy concept.
Same reason the “Americas” isn’t considered a HUGE island
Or Antartica. Or Africa.
Well Antarctica is a bunch of islands if you take the ice away.
Do glaciers count as part of the landmass?
Antartica is a continent.
So we count frozen water as land?
This is a misconception. Antarctica is definitely a continent, being almost twice the size of Australia. Yes, some parts of it sit lower than the current sea level and when the ice goes away they will sit even lower due to sea level rising. But that too will be a very temporary condition. Continental shelves get depressed under thick glaciers due to the massive weight of all the ice. Once the ice is gone the continental shelves bounce back and start to rise again. This is happening in other areas that were recently under ice sheets, like northern Europe and Canada. It is very fast in Scandinavia right now (in geological terms): the coast line in the Baltic Sea is receding by rates of up to 11 mm each year! Villages have had to relocate their harbors, places further inland have names that show they were once on the coast, etc.
The Americas have land borders though
Land borders with which other continent?
I think by land borders they mean political land borders. Like if a body of land has land borders its a continent and if it doesn't its and island.
Its not perfect reasoning because New Guinea and Hispaniola are islands that have a land border, and political borders are particularly arbitrary (although Europe is also an arbitrarily defined continent)
In Latin America we consider it to be a single continent
Australians just don’t worry about this. We call it an island, a continent and an island continent. We call our geopolitical region “the Asia Pacific” or the “Indo-Pacific” and our immediate neighbours are “the Pacific” so we hardly ever use “Oceania”.
But it’s all just semantics — depending on fine definitions but not actually meaning much.
From what I learned at school, Australia is just part of the continent of Oceania
Which is a good definition in my opinion….
But I grew up with the teaching of Australia as the continent and Oceania as a general area of the world. Similar to how the Caribbean gets treated by North America I guess? Caribbean is more technically a part of North America though so that’s a tough one. But sometimes people will say “North America and the Caribbean”
I'm Australian and I've always been taught that Australia is both a continent and an island found in the Oceania area. The surrounding islands are our neighbours but aren't apart of our continent.
Geologically most of them aren't. The only islands that are physically on the australian continental shelf are the island of paupua new guinea and the surrounding islands. The rest are mostly volcanic islands or part of the submerged co tinent of zealandia.
Exactly. But it seems that in some countries they don't teach the division of continents like that based on some comments we have read here.
America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and Antarctica are the 6 continents based on what is taught in my country's schools.
Yeah that's wrong lol
Public school education, Oceania is a REGION, it takes countries from many CONTINENTS and lumps them together to create a section of earth for INTERNET BASED CONNECTIONS. I'm pretty sure no one says Brazil is a continent
It depends on definitions.
Do you consider continents to simply be subdivisions of the world based loosely on geography and culture? If so, you'd probably consider NZ and Australia to be in the same continent.
If you consider a continent to be a large landmass, then you would not consider any island (including NZ's islands) to be a part of any continent. Of course, with this definition you would also have to figure out how large is large enough to be considered a continent. The line is generally drawn between Greenland (island) and Australia (continent), but it doesn't have to be.
Greenland should be a continent consisting of Greenland, Iceland, Jan Mayen and Canada (Canadian part of Hans Island), if Australia is considerd one
I think there's a question of what "any island" means. Consider the Île de la Cité in the heart of Paris - is it part of Europe? Seems plausible, because even though it's an island, it's in a river. What about Manhattan - is it part of North America? This one's a bit harder, but it's very natural to think of it as an island within the Hudson river, even though part of it is on New York Harbor. What about Long Island? The Supreme Court once declared that Long Island is not an island but part of the mainland. I think for the purposes you are talking about, we would count Long Island as part of North America, and probably also barrier islands like Fire Island and the islands of the North Carolina Outer Banks. The harder questions would begin with things like the Florida Keys and Vancouver Island and Newfoundland.
Aren't all continents islands?
Is Europe surrounded by water?
Is Asia surrounded by water?
Is Kazakhstan surrounded by water?
Is Lesotho surrounded by water?
Is my house surrounded by water?!?
Is someone claiming Kazakhstan is a continent?
Because both Europe and Asia are considered continents.
Afro-Eurasia is surrounded by water.
Or Eurasia, because we dug a trench....
Europe, Asia, and Africa are surrounded by water. Boom. It's a big ol island.
No and no
But Eurasia is...
If you want to make the argument that Eurasiafrica is the largest island on earth, and that these non-continentalists ought to get stuffed...I am on board.
Technically an island but categorically a continent?
It depends on who you ask, in my experience Latins (from Europe and the Americas), Aussies, and Kiwis tend to consider Australia and NZ to be on the same continent, i.e. Oceania, where Australia is the continental mainland and New Zealand is located on islands off the mainland, the same way Japan and China are on the same continent but only China is on the continental mainland. But to many people, Australia is the continent and New Zealand just doesn't belong to any continent.
Kiwi here, I don't consider NZ and Aus to be on the same continent, and I don't know anyone else that does. I wasn't taught about "Oceania" as a continent, nor even an "Australasian" continent. Both are simply geographic regions that include both Australia and New Zealand, but the continent is simply "Australia". You might include Papua as an "island" that is part of the continent of Australia, as they are part of the same continental mass, but New Zealand is part of a completely separate continental fragment, and far enough away from Australia that comparing it to Japan or Britain doesn't quite work. One could say it's on its own subcontinent or micro continent, but it's probably easiest to just say it's not part of a continent, just like the rest of Polynesia.
Pretty much all Spanish speakers view Oceania as a continent that contains both Australia and New Zealand as well as all the other Pacific islands. What defines a continent is very much based on what language you speak
Maybe? There's obviously no concensus among English speaking countries, let alone the people within a single country, but for me a continent specifically refers to a geological landmass, the largest contiguous part of a continental shelf. What you refer to as Oceania is a "region", in my mind, just as Europe is a region of the continent of Eurasia. There is nothing geologically connecting Australia to the Pacific Islands or New Zealand, no continental shelf underneath them all, and even completely different tectonic plates underneath them. So to call them a single continent feels unnatural.
not really.
I'm Australian and I was always taught that Australia is both a continent and an island found in the Oceania area. The surrounding islands are our neighbours but not apart of the continent. The only people who seem to disagree are foreigners.
I think the distinction for the occidental world is more British Isles and its subsequent colonies vs continental Europe and their subsequent colonies. Also America is considered only one continent for us. I have no idea what the standard is for the arab world and Asia...
Anyway it is just a matter of convention, the definition of continent in itself is too wide to consider that one is right and the others are not.
Australian here who was definitely never taught that we are on a continent called Oceania. To me Oceania is a vague name for our region just used by people outside Australia like the people who run the soccer World Cup. The word is rarely seen in the Australian news for example — they say the Pacific or something
The most straightforward thing I can think of is that there is not really such a thing as a continent. A landmass surrounded on all sides by water is an island. Therefore Australia is an island. Any talk of continents depends on your perception (Eurasia, Americas, Oceania, etc).
As a new zealander i was always taught that oceania is the geographical area while the continent is australia, australia lies on a different plate of continental crust than new zealand
The real problem is that "continent" is a poorly defined term. The definition used for continents is as much based on historical and cultural criteria as it is by geographical and geological ones. For example in some cultures, the Americas are regarded as one continent, in others as two. In some cultures, Europe and Asia are regarded as a single continent, in others two. It's similar to the way the definition of planet has evolved, and the resultant creation of the definition of dwarf planet to resolve the issue. Perhaps something like a "dwarf continent" could be adopted for places like New Zealand that are geologically continents (in terms fo being composed of geological crust), but not meeting the conventional definition of continents.
There's no official definition for a "continent". The general understanding is that it is a single landmass surrounded by water. However, this definition easily breaks down when we consider the "conventional" use of the term to separate Europe, Asia and Africa, and North & South America.
Australia & NZ are more clear-cut though: New Zealand isn't joined to Australia, while the other continents are joined to each other.
Australia & NZ can be considered to be part of the same geopolitical region, which is often referred to as Australasia, or more widely as Oceania (including Pacific Islands), but this is definitely not the same as a continent.
Australia is surround by Islands.....New Zealand being one of them.
And while NZ is politically connected to OZ there is no physical connection above water (we are all connected below water)
Oceania is a region not a continent
con·ti·nent1
/ˈkänt(ə)nənt/
any of the world's main continuous expanses of land (Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America).
Of Course Asia and Europe might be considered one continent
It is still treated as a continent by the United Nations and most other places. For example, Papua New Guinea compete in the "Oceania Football Confederation" rather than the "Australian Football Confederation."
Continents are vaguely defined social constructs for the most part. You could say Cocos Island off the coast of Costa Rica is its own continent since its the only landmass on the Cocos Plate, or that Isabela Island in the Galapagos is a continent since its the largest landmass on the Nazca Plate. It's all arbitrary and there will never be complete agreement over whether or not Zealandia is a continent, whether Greenland/Australia are islands or whether the Americas, Afro-Eurasia and Eurasia are single continents. When most people say the word continent they're referring to major world regions rather than geological continents, which is where the heated disagreement arises from. Geologists should just come up with an new way to describe continental landmasses.
I live in Australia and view it as an island country not a continent. A mostly empty desert with a few coastal cities near the Pacific ocean isn't the same as South America or Africa to me.
Political lines, social lines and geographical lines are often different
So, in which continent is New Zealand?
Zealandia