Geography · Rung 3 of 12

Continents and oceans

Six or seven continents depending on who is counting: Spain and Latin America teach six (the Americas are one), the English-speaking world seven. There have been five oceans since the Southern was recognised in 2000, and really there is only one, all connected. Asia is the largest by far, 44 million km², a third of all land; Oceania the smallest. The line between Europe and Asia is not geographical but historical: the Urals, the Ural river, the Caspian and the Caucasus, an eighteenth-century agreement. The highest point is Everest at 8,849 m and the lowest on dry land is the shore of the Dead Sea, 430 m below sea level.

Where this sits

Comes after
The map from here
Opens up
Europe, Flags

Exercises from this rung

Generated by the app, from easiest to hardest

  1. Which continent is lit up?

    • Africa
    • South America
    • Oceania
    • Asia

    Why Africa is the only continent crossed by both the equator and both tropics, which is why its climates are laid out almost as a mirror: rainforest in the middle, savanna, desert (the Sahara above and the Kalahari below) and Mediterranean climate at both tips.

    easier

  2. What separates Europe from Asia?

    • The Urals, the Ural river, the Caspian and the Caucasus, by agreement
    • The Volga river
    • Nothing: it is one continent with no line
    • The Black Sea alone

    Why The line was proposed by the geographer Von Strahlenberg in the eighteenth century and accepted by habit. There is no physical reason: Eurasia is one uninterrupted landmass. That is why some countries straddle it, like Russia, Türkiye and Kazakhstan, and why Elbrus, in the Caucasus, counts as Europe's summit.

    in between

  3. On a Mercator map this looks the size of Africa. How many times does it really fit inside it?

    • Fourteen
    • Two
    • They are the same
    • Five

    Why Greenland is 2.2 million km² and Africa 30.4: it fits fourteen times over. Mercator preserves angles, which is what a ship needed, and in exchange it inflates everything far from the equator. Here, on a dotted world map with no Mercator projection, it is seen at its real size.

    harder