Are Europe and Asia different continents?

[Mr Daniel F. O'Leary]

Or are they just one massive continent, Eurasia? Given the existence of the Eurasian plate.

If you think they are different continents, where would you say Europe ends and Asia starts?

[Scotty]

I consider everything west of Russia and Turkey to be Europe.
Everything from Turkey to Afghanistan to be the Middle East.
Everything east of Afghanistan to be Asia.

I was never really sure what continent Russia sat into.

I would certainly say that Europe and Asia are different continents but there is some crossover.

[Del.Monte]

I consider everything east of Poland down to Greece as Europe and excluding no hopers like the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine etc. That's from a political viewpoint but but from a geographical viewpoint it's tricker but Ukraine is out on both counts.

[Hodors Appletart]

"no hopers"

you really can't help yourself can you

[Del.Monte]

"no hopers"

you really can't help yourself can you

It is called not being afraid to have an opinion on things - I thought that's what discussion is supposed to be about or should there be a set of 'woke' rules that we all have to abide by?

[Mr Daniel F. O'Leary]

Where would the Caucasus countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) fit in?

[Peregrinus]

It is called not being afraid to have an opinion on things - I thought that's what discussion is supposed to be about or should there be a set of 'woke' rules that we all have to abide by?

There should perhaps be a more basic set of rules about what's relevant and what's not. "Continent" is a geographic term to do with physical landmasses and their physical bounds and divisions. Your judgments about merits or demerits of the societies and cultures that develop in different places and your sensitivity about "wokeness" don't really have any bearing on the question.

So far as the OP is concerned, whether you regard the Eurasian land mass as containing one continent or two depend on whether you think a continent has to be delimited largely or entirely by oceans (in which case it's one continent) or whether it can be delimited by mountain ranges (in which case it can be two). In the latter case the division is the Ural Mountains, which run pretty much from the Artic Ocean in the north to the Aral Sea in the south. And the answer to Scotty's question about which continent Russia is in is that it's partly in Europe and partly in Asia.

[Banshee Bones]

Western Europe is as much cultural as it is geographic, Greece is Western Europe but Bulgaria is not

[Peregrinus]

"Western Europe" as a cultural entity is obviously different from "Western Europe as a geographical entity. Neither of them is a continent, though, which is what the OP is asking about.

[CelticRambler]

Western Europe is as much cultural as it is geographic, Greece is Western Europe but Bulgaria is not

Given that there's next to no crossover between Greek culture (music, language, religion, architecture, ...) and that of the countries in the geographical west of Europe (but a heck of a lot in common with the culture of the extreme eastern end of the Mediterranean) I can't see how that argument makes sense.

[Peregrinus]

Given that there's next to no crossover between Greek culture (music, language, religion, architecture, ...) and that of the countries in the geographical west of Europe (but a heck of a lot in common with the culture of the extreme eastern end of the Mediterranean) I can't see how that argument makes sense.

There's a historic link in the whole Classical Greece > Classical Rome > Roman Empire > Latin Christianity > Western Europe chain of influence.

But, yeah, by most measures modern Greece shares a lot more culturally with Bulgaria than it does with, say France - Orthodox Christianity, linked aphabets, a legal and administrative culture shaped by centuries of inclusion first in the Byzantine Empire and then in Ottoman, etc. The notion that Greece is part of Western Europe, even culturally, is historically very anachronistic. For most of history, the term "Greek" was in fact the default term used to distinguish the people and culture of eastern Europe from those of the West - Greek versus Latin Christianity, for example.

Romania, by contrast, speaks a romance language, uses the Latin alphabet, was largely long included in the Austrian empire, and has other cultural connections to Western Europe the Greece lacks, but is one of the "no hopers" that Del.Monte considers to be not European. So I'm not sure that this proposed delimitation of "Europe" is going to stand up to much scrutiny, whether understood geographically or culturally.

[Hodors Appletart]

It is called not being afraid to have an opinion on things - I thought that's what discussion is supposed to be about or should there be a set of 'woke' rules that we all have to abide by?

yeah and it's my opinion that your opinion on other cultures is outdated and snobbish, you've form here too.

your beautiful land of brexit will be joining the list of so-called no-hopers soon enough

[Del.Monte]

yeah and it's my opinion that your opinion on other cultures is outdated and snobbish, you've form here too.

your beautiful land of brexit will be joining the list of so-called no-hopers soon enough

And it's my opinion that you're unduly concerned with my opinions about various things and until such time as you become a Mod here you can go take a running jump at yourself. Come to think of it you remind of a Mod from the other place that had me singled out for personal attention - is it you?

[Hodors Appletart]

you can see my name is verified

so no, it's not me

I've never heard of you before here, and your arrogance toward various different people