Morgan told us recently that when he was a kid in school, he watched a teacher struggle with a map to figure out where Europe ended and Asia began. 

This reminded me of what I read in Isaac Asimov’s The Greeks. (Asimov wrote a bunch of nonfiction history books in addition to everything else.) The Greeks named the landmass on the West side of the Aegean Sea “Europe” and the landmass on the East side “Asia”. The Greeks didn’t know that these landmasses joined up on the other side of the Black Sea.

To figure out where the division between Europe and Asia was, Morgan’s teacher should have used a history book, not a map.

While preparing this post, I did some googling to check my memory. As usual, this led me through a few rabbit holes. It appears that some folks, without the benefit of the above information, have spent an awful lot energy and have said some very rude words while trying to figure out exactly where to paint that dotted line that divides Europe and Asia.