Kantor said:
Europe's existence is largely political/cultural. It's made up of everything from the eastmost colonising country of the 1700s to the Atlantic Ocean. The use of the term "Europe" has developed gradually throughout history.[7][8] In antiquity, the Greek historian Herodotus mentioned that the world had been divided by unknown persons into the three continents of Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa), with the Nile and the river Phasis forming their boundaries—though he also states that some considered the River Don, rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia.[9] Flavius Josephus and the Book of Jubilees described the continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons; Europe was defined as between the Pillars of Hercules at Cadiz, separating it from Africa, and the Don, separating it from Asia.[10] This division—as much cultural as geographical—was used until the Late Middle Ages, when it was challenged by the Age of Discovery.[11][12] The problem of redefining Europe was finally resolved in 1730 when, instead of waterways, the Swedish geographer and cartographer von Strahlenberg proposed the Ural Mountains as the most significant eastern boundary, a suggestion that found favour in Russia and throughout Europe.[13] Europe is now generally defined by geographers as the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, with its boundaries marked by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the far east are usually taken to be the Urals, the Ural River, and the Caspian Sea; to the southeast, the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.[14] |
Politics and culture seperation really doesn't fly. India and the Middle East are closer in culture to Europe then the rest of asia, yet they get "sub continent status" rather then full continent despite fitting more of the geographical needs to be a continent.
