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Europe is not a continent

2011-07-26 12:30:35

Europe is not a continent

I’m now living in Asia for more than 4 years. A new life in a new cultural environment with different languages and traditions, on a very different continent. Wait! Different continent? I was in many different places before. Since I am half African, I have traveled there several times and I have been to north America before. Those times I have been to different continents, because geographically I could not just walk home to Elmshorn Germany. Here in Asia it's different. I could walk home. It would be a long trip, but I could also drive a car from shanghai to lets say Paris. Without using any ship ferry or whatever extra vehicle. So why then Europe is a continent. I began looking up the map. There is no existing border in between. You can leave Germany to Poland and then Russia. There are some mountains in the Ural area. But the region is not insurmountable. The mountains there have less height than the Rocky Mountains and compared to the height of the Himalayas they really fall short. Hence, we call Europe a continent and India a subcontinent and consider India as Asia. So i looked deeper. Maybe I am wrong and Europe has it's own continental plate. However, it doesn't. It's called the Eurasian continental plate. The largest ongoing landmass on earth. But can you call Europe at least a subcontinent? It is false as well. Compared to Europe India has it's own continental plate. It just crashed into Asia many hundred million years ago. This is why the classification as a subcontinent is correct.

So what is Europe then? It's not a continent. And not a subcontinent. In the encyclopedia, we find the term Eurasia. The given name for our continental plate. It just still shows both names. As if we had a division here. Logically it would be the following analysis. Since it is a single continent it should be only one name. Therefore, we should use either Europe or Asia. Here Asia sticks out as the considerably larger size. So I see Asia as the dominant land mass and as the larger share of the continental plate. So here, I come to the following conclusion. The correct name for Europe is west Asia. The reason why this has not been taken into consideration is, that west Asians like to stick to their traditions. For centuries, European monarchs have been maintaining their lineage in power by stressing the fear of an eastern invasion. Namely the Russians, the Mongolians and the Ottomans. In all west Asian languages there are phrases of a possible eastern invasion. Likely the yellow threat or the Russians are coming. Actually, it happened a couple of times. The Mongol conquest lead by Genghis khan, the Hun invasion and the ottoman expansion that was stopped in Vienna. Those were quite some. But western Asian conquest going eastwards were a few more. Especially in the second half of the past millennia. After a good 500 years of only fighting each other and the re-discovery of the American continents by western Asians. Expansions eastwards like the crusades; Napoleon's warring into Russia, colonialism or world war 1 and 2 where the Germans tried twice to win against Russia. Technically, whenever there was a war from either side a leader tried to unite one side of the continent to win the other. However, since Russia has its extraordinary frosty climate it has always been the buffer in between. Shattering the hopes of a quick win. So far so good for a history lesson, but here again. It were neither the insurmountable hills in the Ural region. Nor a big water mass that had to be crossed. It was the cold winters in Russia that ended nearly all warlords' ambitions. So again one continent, different regional climate as any other continent also has. So the last argument would be different people.

Well it is evident that there are differences in physical appearance between tribal Germans and tribal Mongolians. But who do we count as Asian? Chinese, Indian, Thais, Russians? And typical Europeans are tribal Germans, Celtics and roman, Greek? Isn't the ratio between north and south of western Asia as different as between east and west? Isn’t it that all tribes of west Asia are ethnically originating from India and Caucasia, which are located in south and central Asia? If you Can follow me up to here. Why can't we just scrap all this bullshit and be honest with ourselves. The continent is Asia. We call its western part Europe and carry on with it because we have gained a certain level of wealth, which we would not like to share with our far neighbors. So we create a small buffer in eastern Europe so we can clear or bad conscience, let a few easterners immigrate and keep calling ourselves Europe the continent of the wealthy, that does not want to be put into the same boat as it's dense populated and poor neighbors.



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