If continental plates and oceanic plates are moving around aimlessly, why were the continental plates ever all together to begin with? Isn’t that as unlikely as a mixture unmixing?

Question

If continental plates and oceanic plates are moving around aimlessly, why were the continental plates ever all together to begin with? Isn’t that as unlikely as a mixture unmixing?

In: Earth Science

Answer 1

Why would it be unlikely? Earth is a finite surface, completely tiled by the plates. Ignoring things like where these plates originated, the fact that they can’t jump over each other’s etc, any arrangement of plates is equally likely.

Answer 2

They weren’t necessarily altogether to begin with. There was just certain times of which when they did come together ie: Pangaea.

I mean originally the earth was too hot and constantly being bombarded by asteroids and meteors and so coudlnt form an atmosphere or oceans.

Edit: also like the last user said it’s not really that unlikely when you consider the Earth is over 4 billion years old. By contrast human civilization is like 7000 years old max. A fractional amount so small its basically 0%.