The Seven Continents of the World

 

There are seven continents, or large land masses, on the planet Earth.  While they are separated by ocean today, 200 million years ago there was one supercontinent called Pangae in which all seven land masses were connected.  Pangaea started to break up into two smaller supercontinents, called Laurasia and Gondwanaland, during the Jurassic period. By the end of the Cretaceous period, the continents were separating into land masses that look like our modern-day continents.  The seven continents are:  Africa, Asia, Antarctica, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America.

 

 

 

Africa

 

Africa’s land mass crosses the equator and is bordered by the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.  Its highest point is Mt. Kilimanjaro at 19,340 feet and its lowest point is Lake Assal at 512 feet below sea level.  It is home to about 778,000,000 people and consists of 53 countries, the most of any continent.  This picture shows an African Elephant, the largest mammal on earth

 

http://geography.about.com/od/lists/a/whichcontinent.htm

On which continent is Egypt?

Egypt is mostly part of Africa although the Sinai Peninsula in northeastern Egypt is part of Asia.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt

Egypt (Egyptian: Kemet; Coptic: Ⲭⲏⲙⲓ Kīmi; Arabic: مصر Mir ; Egyptian Arabic: r), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country in North Africa that includes the Sinai Peninsula, a land bridge to Asia. Covering an area of about 1,001,450 square kilometers (386,660 sq mi), Egypt borders Libya to the west, Sudan to the south, and the Gaza Strip and Israel to the east. The northern coast borders the Mediterranean Sea and the island of Cyprus; the eastern coast borders the Red Sea.

Egypt is one of the most populous countries in Africa. The great majority of its estimated 78 million people (2007) live near the banks of the Nile River in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi) where the only arable agricultural land is found. The large areas of the Sahara Desert are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with the majority spread across the densely populated centers of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.

Egypt is famous for its ancient civilization and some of the world's most famous monuments, including the Giza pyramid complex and the Great Sphinx. The southern city of Luxor contains numerous ancient artifacts, such as the Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings. Egypt is widely regarded as an important political and cultural nation of the Middle East.

egypt

 

AFRICA:
"The name Africa came into Western use through the Romans, who used the name Africa terra "land of the Afri" (plural, or "Afer" singular) for the northern part of the continent, as the province of Africa with its capital Carthage, corresponding to modern-day Tunisia.

The origin of Afer may either come from:

the Phoenician `afar, dust;
the Afri, a tribepossibly Berberwho dwelt in North Africa in the Carthage area;
the Greek word aphrike, meaning without cold (see also List of traditional Greek place names);
or the Latin word aprica, meaning sunny.
The historian Leo Africanus (1495-1554) attributed the origin to the Greek word phrike (meaning "cold and horror"), combined with the negating prefix a-, so meaning a land free of cold and horror. But the change of sound from ph to f in Greek is datable to about the first century, so this cannot really be the origin of the name.

Egypt was considered part of Asia by the ancients, and first assigned to Africa by the geographer Ptolemy (85 - 165 AD), who accepted Alexandria as Prime Meridian and made the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between Asia and Africa. As Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of Africa expanded with their knowledge."

ASIA:
"The word Asia entered English via Latin from Ancient Greek, first attested in Herodotus, where it refers to Asia Minor, or for the purposes of the Persian Wars, to the Persian Empire as opposed to Greece and Egypt. Homer knows a Trojan ally named Asios, son of Hyrtacus, a ruler over several towns, and also describes a marsh as 461).

The Greek term was likely from Assuwa, a 14th century BC confederation of states in ancient Anatolia. Hittite assu- "good" is a likely element in that name. Elamites numeous in the east called themselves As, and at least one Aryan people on the central Eurasian steppes called themselves Asi. Alternatively, the ultimate etymology of the term may be from the Akkadian word asu, which means "to go out" or "to rise", referring to the direction of the sun at sunrise in the Middle East. Compare to this the suggestion for the etymology of Europe from Semitic erebu "to set". The motives for the names of Asia and Europe would thus mirror each other, much like the terms orient and occident (the names Anatolia and Levant likewise signify "sunrise"). This suggestion is widely quoted, but it suffers from the fact that Anatolia from an Akkadian or generally Semitic perspective does not lie in the east."

 

Name of region[38] and
territory, with flag

Area
(km²)

Population
(1 July 2002 est.)

Population density
(per km²)

Capital

 

Northern Africa:

 

Flag of AlgeriaAlgeria

2,381,740

32,277,942

13.6

Algiers

Flag of EgyptEgypt[39]

1,001,450

70,712,345

70.6

Cairo

Flag of LibyaLibya

1,759,540

5,368,585

3.1

Tripoli

Flag of MoroccoMorocco

446,550

31,167,783

69.8

Rabat

Flag of SudanSudan

2,505,810

37,090,298

14.8

Khartoum

Flag of TunisiaTunisia

163,610

9,815,644

60.0

Tunis

Flag of Western SaharaWestern Sahara[40]

266,000

256,177

1.0

El Aaiún

European dependencies in Northern Africa:

 

Flag of Canary IslandsCanary Islands (Spain)[41]

7,492

1,694,477

226.2

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria,
Santa Cruz de Tenerife

 

Flag of CeutaCeuta (Spain)[42]

20

71,505

3,575.2

 

Flag of MadeiraMadeira Islands (Portugal)[43]

797

245,000

307.4

Funchal

 

Flag of MelillaMelilla (Spain)[44]

12

66,411

5,534.2

 

                   

 

Ethiopia Information and History

Ethiopia is a landlocked country in the northeast African region known as the Horn of Africa. The country has a high central plateau, with some mountains reaching more than 4,000 meters (13,000 feet). The Great Rift Valley splits the plateau diagonally. The western highlands get summer rainfall; the lowlands and eastern highlands are hot and dry. Most people reside in the western highlands as does the capital, Addis Ababa—the highest capital city in Africa at 2,400 meters (8,000 feet). The population is almost evenly split between Christians, living in the highlands, and Muslims inhabiting the lowlands. The Oromo, Amhara, and Tigreans are the largest ethnic groups.

Hunger and war plague this nation, whose history spans 2,000 years. During the first millennium A.D. the Ethiopian Orthodox Church held t

 

 

Asia

 

Asia is in the Northern Hemisphere and is attached to Europe.  The highest point, Mt. Everest at 29,028 feet, is in Tibet and Nepal, which are located in Asia.  The lowest point is the Dead Sea at 1341 feet below sea level.  Asia has the largest population of any other continent and has 47 countries.  This is a picture of The Great Wall of China, built in the 7th and 8th centuries B.C., stretches for 4,163 miles.