Where Does Europe End and Asia Begin?

Europe and Asia are considered separate continents, and yet they're connected by land, so where do we mark the boundary between the two continents? And how did we decide where to put them at all? In fact why are they even separate at all? What is even going on?! Someone help, reality is a lie!

MUSIC:
“Epic Voyage” by Dream Cave
“Caravan Trails” by Sight of Wonders
“When Warriors Align” by Zauana
“Dusty Wheels” by Kikoru
“Clearer Views” by From Now On
(All via EpidemicSound)

📖 SOURCES:

Adri Cortesia, Anonymous Freak, Nif Lindsay, Rebanics, Robert Siska, ImNotDonaldTrump, Larry Burch, Tobi Burch-Rates

[runiccurse]

simple, Europe doesn't end, it encompasses the whole world. With the exception of Ethiopia, parts of china, Siam, Liberia ect

[LucasBenderChannel]

Now I'd like to have a big globe-spanning poll, in which we ask every person on earth, what continent they think they belong to. :D
It would be ridiculous, expensive and unnecessary, but I'd love to see a map, made from those answers.

[weatherreport]

So basically Europe is a peninsula of asia

[janboreczek]

This division will always be highly arbitrary, as there is no geographical reason to divide Eurasia into two continents

[dulljumbo]

Asia is actually probably the worst area definition of all time. it like encompasses a mindnumbingly large and diverse groups of people. belgians are very different from the vietnamese but no more different than a turk from both.

[ericp]

It depends on who you ask. Some say that Europe’s borders end at Western Asia and Central Asia. However, some people in Turkey, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan identity more as European due to their relationship with the Council of Europe.

[nienke]

We're trying to find categorisation that encompasses multiple factors (culture, tectonic plates, bodies of water, mountain ranges, biogeography) so it's always going to be messy if we keep doing that.

I think it's more useful to make categorisations for each individual purpose.
Also, for some things, the borders may be a bit fuzzy, it's not surprising if certain things near the border might have some elements of both of the zones they're between.
There can also be larger categories with smaller subcategories. E.g. there's a certain amount of cultural commonality between various European countries, but you can also still divide those up further into regions within Europe.
But some things might also be different than we categorise now; North Africa tends to have more cultural similarity to the Middle East and even to some extent Mediteranian Europe than it does to Sub-Saharan Africa.

[mapache-ehcapam]

South America is weird because technically the Panama Canal is the dividing line with North America but popularly the entire country of Panama is considered North American, not even the southern portion is considered South American.

To me America is just one continent though, with 3 main subregions.

And Europe+Asia is one continent, Eurasia, it makes more sense and it looks nicer, the name is dope too.

[chrisg]

The argument for Armenia, Georgia, and Cyprus doesn't really make sense because there is no such thing as "Asian culture" or even "Asian history" on the other side. There are Asian cultures and Asian histories, but they are identified specifically. "Ottoman", "Mongol", and "Meiji", for example, are all Asian histories, but they are so disparate that it makes no sense using "Asian" as a term to describe any of them in general.

[Hand-in-Shot_Productions]

I have heard a bit about the peculiarities of the European-Asian border, but I didn't know just _how_ weird the idea was! From the Aegean Islands being without a continent, to placing the border at the Yenisei River (4:42), this ever-changing human-made line is quite odd! Thanks for the video!

Also, nice pronunciation of "Azov" at 3:18. Furthermore, nice comedic moments at 3:19-3:23, 3:28-3:33, 4:29-4:35, and 4:52-4:58!

[qwertyTRiG]

Kento Bento has covered these borders in more detail than sometimes seems necessary, but I enjoy his style. Khanubis dove more into the history.

[ErnestJay]

No wonder in Russia and most ex-soviet states there is no "Asia" and "Europe", but Eurasian Continent.

Because if cultural differences makes a different continent, Middle East and India also have a different culture and ethnicity compare to China, Korea, and Japan.

[ikerloop]

If we are going to use culture as a reason to separate Europe from Asia, shouldn't we also consider India as a separate continent, actually it makes more sense for India to be considered a separate continent, since it's on its own separate tectonic plate unlike Europe on the Eurasian plate, the same like India goes for the Arabian peninsula.

[HarisCountrys]

Yeah, I think the Caucasus is just a mess. The 3 countries could be considered both continents.

[SomasAcademy]

~6:22 This graphic shows the country of Australia, not the continent of Australia; the Continent of Australia includes Papua/New Guinea. I have a video on my channel about the different borders of "Australia" if anyone is interested (there are actually three different geographical entities called Australia).

[nenenindonu]

Geographically : Marmara Sea, Gibraltar Strait, Ural Mountains and the Greater Caucasus
Culturally : Debatable regions which would consist of transitions rather than clear borders

[discipline]

europe is not continent.
dont know why people are so thick headed about it, they clump up asia as one continent even tho many part of asia have separate tectonic plate, culture, and history.

[TheRagingPlatypus]

What is ridiculous is that people consider Europe and Asia two continents and the very same people will argue North and South America are one continent.

[mahmoodabbasi]

If Cyprus, Armenia, Georgia are more European than Asian ...then Egypt, Libya are more Middle-Eastern than African, all of Mediterranean is closer to one another rather than Greece being close to Scandinavia by virtue of being Europe or Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) being close to Sub Sharan Africa like Congo only because of being part of the African landmass or Lebanon being closer to Japan instead of Tunisia or Europe.

All of these divisions are vague and must not instill emotions among people or dictate geo-politics...People should have an identity on shared values and not shared geography and other things.

But then identity itself is a human construct.

[mondoman]

It seems to me like we should make the distinction between geographic continents and cultural continents.