If submerged land can be called continents, where’s the line between what is and isn’t a continent?
Geographical continents and geological continents aren’t quite the same thing.
That Civilization 6 uses geological continents when the ‘continent’ key word is used where every other game in the series uses geographical continents for that key word still bugs me.
That’s a debate that transcends culture. Some cultures say there are seven, some say six, and yet others say five.
Seven is wrong no matter your definition of continent, unless you count New Zealand or “because racism.”
Depending on your definition there are between four and nine continents, but the definition that includes Europe to make a total of seven necessitates India being its own continent without racism being the primary reason why Europe is a continent and India is not.
(Also if it transcended culture it wouldn’t depend on culture for the answer)
(Also some people do say there are seven, because India is a continent with a land barrier and a tectonic plate and Europe is not)
Isn’t all of Asia and Europe and Africa connected? I count 4.
And that’s valid, if your definition is just continuous land masses. However, some definitions incorporate ideas of notable narrowings such as the African and Central American connections and continental plates, or even projected drift.
For example, some day the Americas and Africa/Eurasia will separate from continental drift. Some even argue the Americas already are separated thanks to the Panana Canal, humans just hurried the process along.
I think the reason Zealandia is called a “submerged continent” is because it is made of continental crust rather than oceanic crust.
But IMO the best geologic definition of continents is by tectonic plates, which mostly matches up with the cultural definitions of the continents.
For the major continents, we have these plates:
- North American
- South American
- Eurasian
- African
- Australian
- Antarctic
There are several smaller plates too, like the Caribbean, Indian, and Arabian plates. IMO, we should consider these independent continents.
There is also a dedicated Pacific plate. The ring of fire is the border of this plate.
New Zealand / Zealandia is on the ring of fire. Half on the Australian plate, half on the Pacific plate. You can actually see the border of the two plates when you look at the topographical map of Zealandia.
Fault lines? Thats all I got
Oceanic crust is heavier, denser, and composed of different rocks than continental crust.
It’s just this, just simple geology.
The water level is actually irrelevant.
The OP states it was part of Gondwana, maybe that’s what makes it different.
If you click through to the microcontinent link that seems to support the idea of microcontinents being pieces broken off a bigger one. But with everything coming from Gondwana then that means all the existing ones are fragments, and the only reason other fragments aren’t considered continents is size (e.g. Madigascar).
Zealandia seems to be the Pluto of continents. Too small to be a continent but much larger than the largest microcontinent.
It’s why there are a lot of cool dinosaurs found only in New Zealand btw
I live in New Zealand and haven’t found any dinosaurs. I think they all died.
You should double check just to make sure.
Did you check the other island? There’s lots man
I didn’t! But I’ll be sure to check the other ones next time I visit.
I hereby promise to give you back your dinosaurs, starting with a clone of the T-Rex.
Nope, they’re all around you and me and everyone else. They just evolved into things that (usually) have wings. In terms of phylogeny, they’re dinosaurs.
Well, maybe in theory. NZ has many unique birds not found anywhere else, but they are generally threatened or endangered. If you want to see them in the wild, generally you have to go to a very specific location.
If I look outside, almost certainly all I’ll see are European dinosaurs.
So maybe I should correct my statement to say they almost all died out.
Mannnnnn, I wanna live on a billion year old, largely submerged continent. Shit looks dope af. And they seemed to kind win at Pandemic. Great share, thanks!
Just give it a few years. The continent you are currently on will be largely submerged soon enough.
Lol 5,000 meter mountains submerged? The ocean is rising a few meters. Its bad for islands and costal cities.
There’s no risk of whole continents getting submerged
80% of the US population is in the East. The high plateus of the US and the rockies are extremely sparsely populated
I said meters.
And I didn’t say feet?
I don’t live in north america
neither do I
wtf it looks like a fat New Zealand. is there an even slimmer version inside NZ?
Zealandia shall rise again!
*Glomar explores harder*
Wait until you hear about Doggerland.
Just wait until you hear about how they discovered Doggerland once had people on it!
(That said, Doggerland wasn’t a continent.)
During the early Holocene, the exposed land area of Doggerland stretched across the region between what is now the east coast of Great Britain, the Netherlands, the western coast of Germany and the Danish peninsula of Jutland.
So, it was a bit bigger.
Btw, UK and europe were all connected, until the big glacial seas from thawing ice broke loose.
The cool thing about Doggerland (to me) is we know it was inhabited by humans.
And we’ll never get it back at the rate we’re going. Come on ice age 2!
With rising sea levels it might end up as No Zealand
Old Zealand gang
Here’s me hoping the next cataclysm drains the oceans by a few hundred feet so we can establish New Old Zealand 🇳🇿
Hear ye Nozzies!
That’s in Frisia/whatever fake country controls it for now
Friesland is a province, smh
Worldbuilding enthusiasts start heavy breathing
Isn’t it called Oceania? Or are they different?
Oceania tends to refer to the region, including both Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia, and the many small island nations.
Sometimes, we are “collectivly” treated as a continent, despite being almost all island nations with no land boarders.
Well we don’t call you landiania
All this time we’ve been keeping our true power hidden.
Also, if you mention Zealandia in New Zealand, people will look at you blankly and say “The bird sanctuary?”
Try pointing to New Zealand on a map. I dare you
Ok.
*Points at the part with land.*
You sonofa
Map map map men men.
See. It’s not there
I mean it’s next to Australia, pretty easy to spot ngl
That’s actually Tasmania.
Whoosh, but that’s ok
Oohhhh damn it
My favourite map without NZ, was a map that included the southern island but not the northern island. So the country was unrecognisable.
Excellent!
Any undiscovered cave entrances from the surfaced part?
So NZ is technically a mountaintop. Cool!
All land above water is a mountain top, at a certain scale.
And all continents are islands at a certain scale.
Slightly off topic, but this film can be enjoyed as:
Oh, yes. That’s how I originally saw it.
I originally saw the unriffed version and I still really like it. It sucks that Universal executives made them chop down the movie to shorter than the length of a TV episode (along with all the other stupid changes they forced). It makes it look like a much worse movie than it actually is. Not that it is a bad movie for MST3K, just that it was made unnecessarily much worse than it actually was, which was about what you could expect for “good” 1950s sci-fi.
I believe Atlas Pro did a video on it one time. I’ll go check.
Edit: Yep
