Geography is weird. We’re taught in grade school that there are seven continents, a nice, neat number that fits perfectly on a classroom poster. But if you actually look at a map—honestly look at it—the border between Europe and Asia feels like a total lie. There’s no ocean. No massive rift in the earth. Just a single, massive landmass comprising two continents that geographers have been arguing about for literally centuries. We call it Eurasia.
It’s huge. It’s roughly 21 million square miles of solid ground.
If you stood on the edge of the Ural Mountains in Russia, you wouldn’t see a magical line where the "European" air starts and the "Asian" air ends. It’s a continuum. This landmass comprising two continents contains over 70% of the world's population and most of its recorded history, yet we insist on splitting it down the middle because of ancient Greeks who didn't even know how big the world actually was.
The Myth of the Great Divide
Most people think continents are defined by water. North America is separated from South America by a tiny neck of land (and now a canal), and Africa is nearly its own island. But Eurasia? It's one giant tectonic slab. The Eurasian Plate is the bedrock of everything from the fjords of Norway to the tropical coasts of Vietnam.
So why the split?
History. Pure, messy history. Ancient Greek mariners, like those who informed the writings of Herodotus, used the waterways they knew—the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea, and the Don River—to categorize the world into three parts: Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa). To them, it made sense because they were looking at the world from the deck of a boat. They saw water, so they assumed a boundary. They had no idea that if you kept walking east from the Don River, you’d eventually hit the Pacific Ocean without ever getting your feet wet.
Even today, we use the Ural Mountains as the "official" border. But let’s be real: the Urals aren’t exactly the Himalayas. They’re old, weathered, and quite easy to cross. They don't represent a biological or even a significant climatic shift. They're a convenient line on a map that helps us organize our messy geopolitical thoughts, but they aren't a physical wall.
Tectonic Reality vs. Mental Maps
Geology doesn't care about our borders. If we define a continent as a large landmass on its own tectonic plate, then Europe and Asia are definitely one thing. They share the Eurasian Plate.
Interestingly, the landmass comprising two continents isn't even perfectly "Eurasian" in a geological sense. Parts of India are on their own plate, crashing into the rest of the landmass and creating the Himalayas. Eastern Russia actually sits on the North American Plate. So, if we went strictly by geology, our maps would look like a shattered mirror.
Why the distinction still exists
It’s mostly about culture and power. For a long time, European thinkers wanted to distinguish themselves from the "East." By defining Europe as its own continent, it gave a sense of exceptionalism. It wasn't just a peninsula of Asia; it was its own "world." This wasn't based on rocks or rivers—it was based on who lived there and how they lived.
Dr. Lewis and Dr. Wigen explore this beautifully in The Myth of Continents. They argue that our traditional continent model is a "metageography"—a set of spatial structures through which people order their knowledge of the world. It’s not "fact" in the same way gravity is a fact. It’s a consensus. A very old, very stubborn consensus.
The Geopolitical Power of Eurasia
When you start viewing the landmass comprising two continents as a single unit, the world’s power dynamics shift. Halford Mackinder, a founder of modern geopolitics, called this the "World-Island." He famously theorized that whoever controls the "Heartland" (the center of Eurasia) controls the world.
Think about the Silk Road. It wasn't a bridge between two worlds; it was a nervous system for a single body. Ideas, silk, spices, and unfortunately, the bubonic plague, flowed across this landmass as if the border didn't exist. Because, physically, it didn't.
Today, we see this again with the "Belt and Road Initiative." It’s an attempt to stitch the landmass comprising two continents back together with high-speed rail and fiber-optic cables. When a train travels from Yiwu, China, to Madrid, Spain, it’s traveling across one continuous piece of earth. It’s only the customs agents and the gauge of the tracks that remind you that you’ve "switched continents."
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Common Misconceptions About the "Border"
People always ask where the line is. If you go to the city of Yekaterinburg in Russia, you can literally stand with one foot in "Europe" and one in "Asia." It’s a great photo op. But it’s totally arbitrary.
- The Bosphorus Strait: Many people point to the narrow waterway in Istanbul as the divider. It’s poetic. You cross a bridge and you're in a "new continent." But the city is one organism. The culture doesn't abruptly stop at the water's edge.
- The Caucasus Mountains: This is another "official" border. But if you ask someone in Georgia or Armenia if they are European or Asian, you’ll get a very complex, hour-long answer involving history, religion, and wine.
- The Tectonic Argument: Some people try to use plate tectonics to defend the split, but as we’ve seen, that actually makes the case for a single continent even stronger.
How This Impacts Your Worldview
Why does any of this matter? Because how we categorize the world changes how we treat it. If we see Europe and Asia as separate, we tend to ignore the deep, ancient ties that bind them. We view "Asian problems" or "European problems" as isolated events.
When you see the landmass comprising two continents as a whole, you start to understand why Russian politics are so inextricably linked to both Beijing and Berlin. You see why a conflict in the Middle East—the "crossroads" of this landmass—radiates outward in every direction.
It’s about scale. Eurasia is the centerpiece of the human story.
Practical Steps for Understanding the "Eurasian" Perspective
If you want to move past the grade-school "seven continents" model and see the world like a geographer or a geopolitical strategist, start here:
Study the Steppe.
The Great Eurasian Steppe is a massive highway of grassland that stretches from Hungary to Mongolia. This is the real "connective tissue." Understanding how nomadic empires like the Mongols or the Scythians moved across this space will shatter your idea of Europe and Asia being separate entities.
Follow the Infrastructure.
Look up the "Trans-Asian Railway" or the "New Silk Road" maps. These projects aren't just about trade; they are literally re-shaping the landmass comprising two continents into a single economic zone. Seeing how a port in Greece (Piraeus) is now a major hub for Chinese goods gives you a much better sense of "Eurasia" than any textbook.
Deconstruct your "West" vs "East" bias.
Next time you read news about Turkey, Kazakhstan, or Russia, stop labeling them as "on the edge" of Europe or Asia. Start thinking of them as the "Center of Eurasia." It changes the way you perceive their strategic importance.
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The landmass comprising two continents is too big and too complex for a single label, but "Eurasia" is a lot closer to the truth than the fiction of a divided world. Stop looking for the line in the dirt. It isn't there.