The Seven Continents

Earth's land is divided into seven huge areas called continents: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania (Australia), and South America. A continent is simply a very large, continuous piece of land. If you spun a globe and pressed your finger down, you would almost always land on one of these seven, or on the ocean in between.

The continents are very different sizes. Asia is so large that more than half of all the people on Earth live there. North America and South America are joined by a thin strip of land in the middle, but we count them as two separate continents. Europe and Asia are actually joined together in one giant landmass, yet because their history and cultures are so different, we treat them as two.

Each continent has its own special animals, landscapes, and weather. Together they are home to billions of people speaking thousands of different languages. Africa has scorching deserts and vast grasslands roamed by elephants and lions. Asia has the world's highest mountains. South America has the steamy Amazon Rainforest, and Antarctica has nothing but ice, penguins, and a few brave scientists.

People sometimes muddle up a continent and a country. A country is a single nation with its own government, like France or Japan. A continent is far bigger and usually holds many countries inside it. Africa, for example, contains 54 different countries. Australia is unusual because it is both a country and (as part of Oceania) almost a whole continent on its own.

Continents are slowly moving! They ride on giant pieces of the Earth's surface called tectonic plates, drifting a few centimetres each year — about as fast as your fingernails grow. You will never feel it, but over millions of years it adds up to thousands of kilometres.

Because the continents were once joined and have drifted apart, we find matching rocks and fossils on coastlines that are now separated by whole oceans. The eastern coast of South America fits neatly against the western coast of Africa, almost like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that once belonged together.