Two Continents Named for One Man

I love all these old maps. You have to wonder though how much the cartographers believed in the accuracy of their own maps, and how much of it they just considered “guidelines”. There’s a total lack of consistency between them, but each displays a unique pattern to that individual’s perception of the world they lived on. I also find it amusing that people knew back then the Earth was round, but today we still have the Flat-Earth society who would rather stay clinging to the idea it isn’t.

The Flat Earth Society bases their science on the clear word of the Bible, and no evidence to the contrary can be entertained or perhaps even understood. Just like creationists and evolution.

“Did the Vikings realize the New World wasn’t Asia?”

Excellent question! If I remember correctly, they did not think of the New World as Asia, just more land that they happened across.

(my point about mistaking the Americas for Asia was that it was a brief mistake of some Europeans, and so probably not something the Vikings encountered)

info stolen from wikipedia”

” The origin of the name “America” comes from the Welshman Richard Amerike. The reason it doesn’t seem plausible that Amerigo Vespucci is that it if people had places named after them, it would be their surname, rather than their forename that was used. For example, Magellan Straits (Ferdinand Magellan) and Tasmania. (Abel Tasman)”

Ok, I know this will sound like trolling, but I really want to know this: in south America, it is assumed that “America” is the whole continent, while “south America” is… well, the south part of America. The title of this post, however, implies that “North America” and “South America” are two different continents, which just happen to share a common part in the name. Since it is not the first time I read something like this, I wonder: do people in north America really believe that north and south America are different continents? Or is just a poorly phrased title? And where would Mexico be (I always thought that region was “central America”)?

In the world history class I took in 10th grade, the teacher put us through a thought exercise on defining what should count as a continent, since obviously they aren’t discrete land masses or even necessarily cultures. If so, “Afreurasia” [or something] would be even more accurate than Eurasia, since Africa is actually connected to that whole chunk.