Brian Lear on WNC.

And now we will revisit one of the questions

from the science topics pledge drive quiz

we did back on May 17th.

We had asked a question about how many continents there were and we

figured that was a low-hanging fruit kind of question but it may have been more

complicated than the answer we gave. So we're following up thorough and

accurate we hope and also because this is really interesting.

The question was this, true or false.

There are eight continents on earth, and the answer that we had as the correct answer was true.

The seven quote unquote obvious continents that most people grew up learning about Asia,

Africa, North and South America, Australia, or Oceania,

Antarctica and Europe, plus something called, more recently discovered, Zelandia, number

eight, that was documented just last year as a new quote

continent. So we framed it as a science question, but after a lot of back and

forth about it,

it looks like we were actually wrong,

or at least wrong to frame such a simple question

about what turns out to be a complicated topic.

Complicated because those seven obvious continents are really only obvious to those who learn geography here in the United States.

In other places in the world, they treat North and South America as one continent because they're one landmass, the

human-made Panama Canal notwithstanding.

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