so from what google is giving me, this is what i’ve gathered and some of it is contradictory hence why im posting here. i need this to be explained to me like i’m a five year old or i’ll never understand.
– oceania is a continent
– australia is a continent
– oceania is also australia
– but oceania isn’t a continent anymore it’s an area of the earth
– but just kidding australia is a continent inside of the continent known as oceania
W H A T ?
In: 11
Are you studying this in school? Then follow what the textbook says.
If Oceania is a continent, then Australia is NOT a continent – it can be described as the landmass within Oceania.
If the textbook claims Australia as a continent, then Oceania is probably just a name given to a region that encompasses Australia and the nearby islands.
The problem is, textbooks are split on this. AFAIK the older textbooks consider Australia a continent. There may be some that fudge this and call the continent Australia/Oceania (which is unhelpful) Unfortunately things like defining continents don’t have strict rules. So there may be differences of opinion.
So the simple thing is that there is no absolutely “CORRECT” answer. The world is like that most of the time.
There are a lot of definitions of continent (and country for that matter)
There is the strict geological sense – e.g. the actual tectonic plates that places sit on. In this case the country of Australia (my home) is its own continent, with New Zealand being on its own subcontinent.
There’s also the definition that’s based on geopolitics, cultural ties and just how things look on a map. Australasia is often considered to be New Zealand, Australia and Papua New Guinea. Oceania expands on that to a lot of Pacific Island nations in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.
Humans like to fit things into neat little categories but the world doesn’t really work like that, so there are multiple definitions.
From a personal perspective, if I wanted to count all the continents I’ve visited, I like the Oceania-as-a-continent model – so if I’d been to Fiji or Australia, I’ve visited “Oceania”. I count Oceania as the 7th continent and was taught that in school.
Some places teach a 3 continent model where “AfroEurasia” is one continent because Africa, Europe and Asia are part of one contiguous land mass, even though they are culturally very different and sit on different tectonic plates. So different definitions.
Continents are kind of a made-up concept with no universally agreed upon definition.
[Here is a video with more info.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrsxRJdwfM0)
They don’t work. They’re made-up terms used for human convenience, to help describe the world. Europe and Asia should really be one continent, but it’s more convenient to describe them separately.
It’s easy to feel that there’s an ‘official’ definition of what a continent is, bit there isn’t. It’s just to do with context and convention. Likewise countries, and many other things that arose over time. It’s true to say that Scotland or Catalonia or Kosovo is a country, it’s also true, in some contexts, to say it isn’t.
Continents have inconsistent definitions. Sometimes they are “Continguous (connected) areas of land above a certain arbitrary size”, sometimes they’re related to the tectonic plates, sometimes they’re just useful groupings of countries that are close together, and sometimes they’re what people learned from playing Risk.
Here’s a video that goes through it.
This is fundamentally a matter of semantics. Continent does not have a rigorous scientific definition, so there is some debate about what does and does not constitute a continent.
Oceana makes infinitely more sense as a continent. Like it’s not even debatable, which is why it’s popping up more. You can’t conclude both Australia and oceana are continents tho
The definition of a continent is a single large body of land surrounded by water but continents are also divided by cultural differences like Europe and Asia and it’s even more blurry in practice. Oceania is composed of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and all the other island nations in the Pacific. Oceania is many times reduced to be just the country of Australia because it makes such a large part of Oceania.
The definition for ‘continent’ is a bit vague and this is an edge case that has substantial support by both sides. Depending on who you ask, Australia is a continent within the region of Oceania, or Oceania is a continent with Australia being one of the landmasses within.
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