How many continents are there, really?

How many continents are there? Most people answer without hesitating, and that is exactly the problem: the answer depends on where you went to school. Seven, six or five, all the models exist side by side and roughly mean the same thing.

The seven-continent model

In most English-speaking countries you learn seven continents: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe and Australia or Oceania. It is probably the best-known model internationally and the one many quiz questions quietly assume. Germany and Austria also commonly teach seven, which is why many people are surprised there is any debate at all. Asia is by far the largest of them, while Antarctica is the coldest and most thinly populated.

The six-continent models

Across much of Europe and Latin America, by contrast, people count six. There are two versions that differ in what gets combined:

• Eurasia: Europe and Asia are treated as one continent because they form a single landmass geologically.
• America: North and South America are joined into a single continent, common in the Spanish-speaking world.

Five continents and the Olympic rings

The five-continent model counts only the inhabited landmasses and at the same time merges Europe with Asia and the two Americas. That leaves Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania. This is precisely the idea behind the five Olympic rings, which stand for the inhabited continents.

Zealandia, the submerged special case

And then there is a geological curiosity: Zealandia, often called the eighth continent. The region around New Zealand and New Caledonia sits on its own crust, about 94 percent of which lies underwater. Geologically it meets many of the criteria for a continent: its own clearly bounded crust, an elevation above the surrounding seafloor and well-defined edges. Yet no geographic authority has formally adopted it as the eighth one. Above all it shows one thing: continent is not a term with a hard edge, but a matter of definition.

Why it depends on your schooling

Which model you treat as obvious is almost pure habit from geography class. In the USA and the UK seven continents are the norm, in Russia and parts of Eastern Europe Eurasia is counted as one, and in Spain and Latin America America is often a single continent. None of these models is wrong, they just draw the lines differently. That is exactly why people end up arguing when the question comes up: they are talking with different maps in their heads and only notice late.

So there really is no single correct number, only different conventions. In CountryRush the focus is on the level beneath all this anyway: individual countries, their outlines and flags. Whichever continent model you learned, the Daily Trip takes you right across the whole globe.