Boundaries between the continents

The remaining boundaries concern the association of islands and archipelagos with specific continents, notably: Historically in Greco-Roman geography, "Africa" meant Ancient Libya, and its eastern extent was taken to be around Marmarica, at the Catabathmus Magnus.

On the other hand, as early as 1670 John Ogilby under the title Africa published "an accurate Description of the Regions of Egypt, Barbary, Libya, and Billedulgerid, the Land of Negroes, Guinea, Æthiopia, and the Abyssines, with all the adjacent Islands, either in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Southern, or Oriental Seas, belonging thereunto".

Less than 2% of the Egyptian population live on the Sinai Peninsula, and hence Egypt, even though technically transcontinental, is usually considered an African country entirely and not partly Asian.

[11] In his 1895 book Africa: Volume 2, author Augustus Henry Keane remarked, "In the North Atlantic there are four insular groups — Madeira, the Canaries, Cape Verde and Azores — which are usually assigned to Africa, although the Canaries and Cape Verde alone belong geographically to that continent, the Azores are lost, so to say, in mid-Atlantic.

The two other Spanish territories are the exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, which are two populated coastal cities located directly on the African mainland, both bordering only Morocco.

[4][19] The final territory is the Scattered Islands in the Indian Ocean, administratively a part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands.

This French territory consists of a range of minor uninhabited atolls in the Indian Ocean, located in the deep sea surrounding Madagascar.

[28] There was a violent war between Argentina and the United Kingdom regarding ownership of the islands in 1982, and the residents of the Falklands do not currently wish to be associated with South America, despite their geographical proximity.

[42] Epeli Hauʻofa, a scholar of Tongan and Fijian descent, considered the Malay Archipelago separate from Oceania for this very reason.

[53] The islands are geologically and historically linked with Asia, and are excluded from most definitions of Oceania, along with the similarly non-oceanic Japanese archipelago, which is not associated with Austronesians.

[55] Australia has a more developed economy than neighboring Pacific Island nations, and is occasionally associated with mainland Asia as a result of this, despite being geologically distinct and having no cultural links to it prior to European discovery.

In the 19th century, many geographers divided up Oceania into mostly racially-based subdivisions; Australasia, Malaysia (encompassing the Malay Archipelago), Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.

Guam and Northern Mariana Islands have had similar histories to the rest of Micronesia, and are biogeographically and geologically distinct from mainland Asia.

[64] In 2010, Australian historian Bronwen Douglas claimed in The Journal of Pacific History that "a strong case could be made for extending Oceania to at least Taiwan, the homeland of the Austronesian language family whose speakers colonized significant parts of the region about 6,000 years ago.

Asia and Europe are considered separate continents for historical reasons; the division between the two goes back to the early Greek geographers.

[68] The threefold division of the Old World into Africa, Asia, and Europe has been in use since the 6th century BC by early Greek geographers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus.

[68] Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni in Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains), from Rioni mouth in Poti on the Black Sea coast, through the Surami Pass and along the Kura River to the Caspian Sea, a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BC.

[71][72] As geographic knowledge of the Greeks increased during the Hellenistic period,[73] this archaic convention was revised, and the boundary between Asia and Europe was now considered to be the Tanais (the modern Don River).

But maps produced during the 16th to 18th centuries tended to differ in how to continue the boundary beyond the Don bend at Kalach-na-Donu (where it is closest to the Volga, now joined with it by the Volga–Don Canal), into territory not described in any detail by the ancient geographers.

Similarly, according to this one particular definition, Azerbaijan is a transcontinental country with some northern portions (e.g. Khachmaz, Quba, Qusar, Shabran, and Siazan) located north of the Greater Caucasus Watershed and thus geographically in Europe, whereas the rest arguably falls under Asia.

[91][92][93] The international geographic community has never reached a universal agreement on continental borders, especially with regard to the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian seas.

[99] This Ural River delineation is the only segment not to follow a major mountain range or wide water body, both of which often truly separate populations.

The Ural River bridges in Atyrau and Orenburg are even labeled with permanent monuments carved with the word "Europe" on one side, "Asia" on the other.

[105][106] The Council of Europe and the European Political Community includes transcontinental or Eurasian states, such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Georgia, and Turkey as members.

Additionally, they lie at some distance to the east of the rest of the Dodecanese group in the direction of Cyprus and the Turkish city of Antalya.

Russia's Vaygach Island and Novaya Zemlya extend northward from the northern end of the Ural Mountains and are a continuation of that chain into the Arctic Ocean.

Some definitions of the Europe – America continental boundary place it on (the northern half of) the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which would make Iceland a transcontinental country.

Politically, however, it is more associated with Europe as it is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, although it has extensive home rule and EU law no longer applies there.

On the other hand, the Venezuelan Isla Aves and the Colombian San Andrés and Providencia lie on the North American shelf.

[134][135] Easter Island, also known by its endonym Rapa Nui, is a territory located on the Nazca Plate, and is roughly 3,500 km off the Chilean coast.