----- Original Message -----
From: "Lowell G. McManus" <mcmanus71496@...>
To: <BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2004 6:14 PM
Subject: Re: [BoundaryPoint] The easternmost point in Europe

>
> While the NGS has often furnished its maps of Europe and Asia with a green
> line
> separating the two, I have never seen them do the same for the two
> Americas or
> for Asia and Africa.
>
> I would suggest that the COPA political boundary is an unacceptable limit
> between the Americas for at least the following reasons:
>
> 1. Were there not two Americas prior to the 1903 independence of Panamá
> from
> Colombia?
>
> 2. Nowhere does the NGS's Europe-Asia boundary follow a political
> boundary.
>
> I would, rather, suggest the narrowest part of the isthmus. That would be
> even
> with the Golfo de San Blas.
>
> However, an excellent argument can be made that the continental limit
> should be
> across the lowest part of the cordillera that runs the length of the
> isthmus.
> That is, indeed, where the Americas would become two separate land masses
> if sea
> level were to rise sufficiently. (This thinking is influenced by the
> actual
> experience at the Bering Strait between Asia and North America at the end
> of the
> most recent ice age, and perhaps at the Strait of Gibraltar, the
> Dardanelles,
> and the Bosporus at various times in prehistory.) This lowest part of
> Panamá is
> the approximate location of the canal.

What about the Caribbean-South America plate boundary?