This cultural history makes the United States and Canada very similar to each other and very different from other parts of the world.īut what about Mexico? Isn’t Mexico part of North America? Yes, technically, as are many Central American countries, including Belize, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. These settlers went on to build large farms that supported large cities – and for a long time, both the farms and cities were largely supported by slave labor.

However, they were overwhelmed by European settlers who brought slaves from Africa. North America was originally inhabited by numerous tribes of Native Americans, some of which still exist and practice indigenous cultures and traditions. However, even though Greenland is governed by Denmark and was settled by Vikings, it is considered part of North America. Iceland and Greenland are far from mainland Europe, but they were both settled by Nordic peoples from Scandinavia therefore these areas still connect regarding a cultural ancestry with many Europeans. To best understand the seven continents, rather than merely thinking about land, think in terms of geographical features along with shared histories and cultures. This separation is because the cultures on one side of the land mass are substantially different from the cultures on the other side. Even Antarctica has islands!Ĭonsider also that Europe and Asia are part of the same land mass but are deemed to be two separate continents. The continent of Australia has islands like New Zealand and Papua New Guinea Europe has Iceland, Great Britain, Ireland, and Greenland (to name just a few) and Asia is home to Sri Lanka, Japan, and the massive archipelagos of the Philippines and Indonesia. Think about, for example, how all continents have islands that are separate from the main land mass. While this understanding is certainly helpful, there is much more to continents! People tend to think of the seven continents in terms of large land portions.

Seven continents