What are continents?

If you look at a map of the world, you see big chunks of land with blue water all around them. Those huge pieces of land have a special name: continents.

Seven big pieces of land

Earth’s land is split into seven continents. Their names are Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. Some are very big and some are smaller, but each one is a giant piece of land surrounded by oceans. The salty oceans fill the spaces in between.

They used to be joined together

Here is something surprising. A very, very long time ago, all the continents were stuck together in one giant piece of land. There were no separate continents at all — just one enormous chunk!

Slowly drifting apart

So what happened? The ground under the continents is always moving, but super slowly — slower than your fingernails grow. Over millions of years, the giant land split apart and the pieces drifted away from each other, carried along slowly like crackers riding on top of a moving bowl of soup. That is how we ended up with the seven continents we have today.

Wonder fact: The continents are still moving! Each year they creep a few centimetres, so the world map of the far future will look a little different.