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Where Is Europe?

Most continents have a pretty obvious land mass, but Europe’s a bit different. Because Europe’s part of the same land mass as Asia, you could make a case for saying that, geographically, it’s not really a separate continent at all. The border between Europe and Asia is usually taken as the Ural mountains in Russia, but that line is a bit arbitrary.

The border becomes even more arbitrary in the Mediterranean region. The city of Istanbul sits officially at the meeting point between Europe and Asia, with just a narrow waterway, the Bosphorus, between them. But if you’re expecting to find yourself in a different world as soon as you step off the ferry, you may be disappointed. Much of Turkey looks pretty similar to much of Greece, which is not surprising because they were both part of the same culture.

Cyprus is part of ‘Europe’, but it has a lot more in common with ‘Asian’ Turkey than it has with other European islands, such as Iceland, Ireland, or the islands of the Baltic. In fact, for much of Europe’s history, the Mediterranean world has operated as a single unit, with trading ships going back and forth from one coast to another and mighty empires seeking to rule the whole area, without anyone making too much of the fact that, strictly speaking, three separate continents exist there.