Earth’s Oceans’ and Continents’ Relative Surface Areas, Analyzed, with Two Pie Charts

I’ll start this analysis with a simple land/water breakdown for Earth’s surface:

land and water

The two figures in the chart above are familiar figures for many — but how does “land” break down into continents, and how does “water” break down into oceans, as fractions of Earth’s total surface area? That’s what this second chart shows.

continents and oceans

With continents, I placed them on the chart to make it easier to see physically-connected continents as sets of adjacent wedges of similar color, separated only by thin lines. The most obvious example of this is Europe and Asia, which are considered separate continents in the first place only for historical reasons, not geographical ones. Combine them, into Eurasia, and it has 36.3% of Earth’s total land area, which is (36.3%)(0.292) = 10.6% of Eath’s total surface area. Even then, Earth’s three largest oceans (the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans) are each larger than Eurasia.

There are other naturally-connected continents, albeit with much smaller land connections — narrow enough for humans to have altered this fact, only a “blip” ago on geographical time-scales, by building the Suez and Panama Canals. In the case of the Suez, its construction severed, artificially, the naturally-occurring land connection between Eurasia and Africa, and the term “Afro-Eurasia” has been used for the combination of all three traditionally-defined continents. Afro-Eurasia has 56.7% of Earth’s land, but that’s only (56.7%)(0.292) = 16.6% of Earth’s total surface area. That’s larger than the Indian Ocean, at (19.5%)(0.708) = 13.8% of Earth surface area. However, both the Atlantic Ocean, at (23.5%)(0.708) = 16.6% of Earth’s surface area, and the Pacific Ocean, at (46.6%)(0.708) = 33.0% of Earth’s surface area, are still larger than Afro-Eurasia.

The Pacific Ocean alone, in fact, has a greater surface area than all of Earth’s land — combined.

The other case that can be made for continent-unification involves North and South America, since their natural land connection was severed, only about a century ago, by the construction of the Panama Canal. Combine the two, and simply call the combination “the Americas,” and that’s 28.5% of earth’s land, which is (28.5%)(0.292) = 8.3% of Earth’s surface area. (I didn’t simply call this combination “America” to avoid confusion with the USA.) The Americas, even in combination, are not only smaller than each of Earth’s three largest oceans (the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific), but also smaller than Afro-Eurasia, or Eurasia — or even Asia alone, by a narrow margin.

By the way, there are lots of things that don’t show up on the second chart above: islands, inland seas, lakes, rivers, etc., and there’s a good reason for that: on the scale of even the larger pie chart above, all these things are so small, compared to the oceans and continents, that they simply aren’t large enough to be visible.

On the Geography of Eurasia, and Its Major Divisions

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On the Geography of Eurasia, and Its Major Divisions

By any reasonable non-political definition, Eurasia is a single continent. Its area is 54,759,000 km², which is over one-third the earth’s total land area.

The politics of history have created, however, the “continents” of Europe, with an area of 10,180,000 km² (18.59% of Eurasia), and Asia, with an area of 44,579,000 km² (81.41% of Eurasia). These figures for Asia’s land area include that of the “subcontinent,” India, which has an area of 4,400,000 km². (Note: the subcontinent of India is a geographical term, and does not match the borders of the nation of India perfectly. The major reason for this is that India the subcontinent includes the nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh, in addition to the politically-defined nation of India.)  The subcontinent’s area is 8.04 % that of Eurasia, and 9.87% that of Asia.

Europe is a large peninsula, a part of Eurasia with a sizeable portion of its area. So is the Indian subcontinent. So, for that matter, are the Southern portions of both South America and Africa, yet no one calls them separate continents, nor even subcontinents.

Giving India a special designation of “subcontinent” makes no sense, nor does the designation of Europe as a separate continent. Both are simply parts of Eurasia.