Why is greenland an island and not a continent

Cite this Article Format. Rosenberg, Matt. Greenland and Australia: Continents or Not? The 7 Continents Ranked by Size and Population.

Biography of Alfred Wegener, German Scientist. Australia's Massive Feral Rabbit Problem. Discover Oceania's 14 Countries by Area. Commonly Asked Questions About Continents.

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I Accept Show Purposes. If Australia is an island so would be Antartica. The fact that reference materials classify one of the places as an island and the other as a continent without any clearcut definitional justification was the whole point of the article. ALL complete land masses on the globe are surrounded by water.

So Greenland has a small population but so does Antarctica. Can you even say that Antarctica has a population? It is the smallest continent. America North and South is a piece of land several times larger than Australia. Africa-Eurasia is even larger. Of course Australia is going to be more Western in ideology if they were ruled by Britain and ended up having thousands of immigrants come over and discriminating on the aboriginals.

That is the only reason it be more unique in culture because they do not have the Pacific Polynesian type of culture and making English official. So that I think is the worst reason why it is a continent and not just considered an island of Asia for example.

If Denmark had killed off the Inuits and only Danish were living, would it be considered part of Europe then? I assume its kind of Western in ideology too for being part of Denmark. An extremely well written, obviously well researched, and enjoyable article. My compliments to Emily Upton. I am a 60 year young public school teacher of 36 years and I have wondered about this many times; you thoroughly explained it.

The reason why australia is a continent is also becos it has a varied climatic zone…. I find these distortions interesting. While the Queen is head of the Commonwealth this gives her no legal standing in Commonwealth countries. In some Commonwealth countries eg Australia the Queen is head of state, in some eg India , not. Most Commonwealth countries were once British colonies, but others were not.

In theory any country can join the Commonwealth. Why is Greenland not a continent? Because most of it is under water…. Continent s are areas above water, the term was devisef to denote mainland as opposed to Island areas. Continental Shelves are not part of continents, they their own discreet area. Australia is part of Asia. English people want to hide the history that they brutally killed the native people and occupied Australia, so they created it as a continent as they had the power and influence to do so.

The native Australian people were genetically same as Asians. If it is part of Asia then it will be a ever raising question how the the whites ended up living ASIA so a new continent is created.

Its simply a scientific assessment of what makes a continent, Australia sits on its own tectonic plate. Therefore its a continent.

Yes before the continental drift millions of years ago, Australia was part of gondwana land, along with new zealand and the antarctic and south america.

And migrations of people from India and papua new guinea and indonesia were able to cross low seas to settle in Australia over years ago…but if Europeans had not settled here, the Indonesians, chinese or some other stronger, more populous and technologically advanced country would have. And they would likely have been just as brutal if not more so, as unfortunately every overtaking culture has been on this planet.

And they still would have described it as the Australian continent. Calling it part of asia would not bestow something less racist or more noble on its history. These areas have mountain glaciers although shrinking , so the Australian continent in terms of tectonic boundaries does in fact have glaciers.

Also, if you look at the political entity known as Australia, it includes Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean which also has glaciers. They may be similar to the original inhabitants of Asia, such as the Anu of Japan and other pre-Asian cultures of the Philippines, Indonesia, and other south-east Asian areas, as well as some South Pacific islands, but they are more similar to Africans than the current Asian population.

Neolithic cultures throughout the world, from North and South America to Australia and the South Pacific, and Africa, have been conquered and pretty much destroyed by more advanced cultures from Europe and, to some degree, from Asia. This is the way of the world. This is the nature of the human animal. The strong and better equipped take over those people who are not so strong and less technologically developed.

This has happened throughout the history of modern humans possibly causing the extinction of the Neanderthals and other humanoid species in Asia and the rest of the world. And if not the Europeans, then the Chinese or Japanese would have eventually gone down to Australia and taken over the continent.

This is how the world works. Only in the last hundred years have the Europeans had the sense and decency to acknowledge the existence of other cultures that they have colonised, and the detrimental effects that colonisation has had on these cultures. There no truths to your comments but God did not intend for humans to destroy his creations cultures and create there own greedy, self absorbed, unhuman like behavior out of seeking power to fuel their need for animalistic behavior….

Call it for what it is and not Sweeten it up to justify the animalistic behaviors. Even the writers and producers of Star Trek understood the need to leave a culture and group of people unchanged during their explorations! Stick to the topic at hand. Greenland is covered in ice, which comes from millennia of snow falls and some rain. That is fresh water from precipitation, i. That has nothing to do with determining whether a land mass in a continent or an island.

So Greenland IS an island, even though it is covered in frozen water. All that frozen water is above sea level as glaciers flowing into the sea. Glaciers can be seen as rivers of ice slowly flowing into the sea. As for continental shelves not being part of continents, just wait for the next ice age, which will occur regardless of the global warming currently plaguing the planet, when sea levels drop significantly as much or metres or more.

This could see the British Isles and Ireland again becoming part of the European mainland, Australia and New Guinea and Tasmania becoming one land mass above sea level, and probably many other areas, once separated by the sea, having a land bridge between them. ALL current Commonwealth countries were once British colonies, regardless of their current political standing. ALL countries within the Commonwealth were once British colonies, even if they are independent countries now.

Australia is not a continent as it is part of the Oceania Continent. In reality, these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics.

There are no official specific conditions based on which continents are defined, but many scientists believe that the unique tectonic plate is the deciding factor, which explains why there are so many different models of thinking when it comes to how many continents there are. However, there are several largely accepted factors that classify different regions of the world as continents. Greenland resides on the North American tectonic plate. It is not geologically separate from Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

Continents are classified to be on their own tectonic plate with their own unique flora and fauna, and unique culture. Australia was on their own tectonic plate and with some unique species of life in it gains the continental status.