Subject: What is a continent?<br/>
Date: Nov 16, 2004 @ 07:51<br/>
Author: Wolfgang Schaub (&quot;Wolfgang Schaub&quot; &lt;Wolfgang.Schaub@...&gt;)<br/>
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<div id="ygrps-yiv-331406410">Before we discuss borders of continents we should better decide - once and<br/>
forever - what a continent really is. I have checked encyclopedias,<br/>
beginning with one from 1830, to modern ages, and none has been able to give<br/>
a scientific definition. All is arbitrary. Especially when it came to the<br/>
question whether Australia was a continent or a large island, rather, there<br/>
was question marks.<br/>
<br/>
If seashores are boundaries of continents, this seems to me obsolete. Sea is<br/>
not an obstacle to modern man any longer. Montain ranges can still be. So<br/>
couldn&#39;t we be revolutionary and suggest to any National Geographic Society<br/>
that we wish to see continents re-defined as landmasses separated by water<br/>
divides?<br/>
<br/>
America would then have to be 2 continents, both reaching from Alaska to<br/>
Fireland, but divided by the Rockies and Andes. The western American<br/>
continent I would suggest we call Chilifornia, to amalgamate names of its<br/>
most prominent countries Chile and California; the larger, eastern American<br/>
continent I would call Buenayork, likewise from Buenos Aires and New York.<br/>
<br/>
We should give our group a creative push that revolutionizes man&#39;s thinking.<br/>
<br/>
Wolfgang</div>