Feb 08 2009
Australia Island : The Great Debate
“Australia is the largest island and the smallest continent in the world.
Sound familiar? You may have heard it in geography class growing up. But what does it really mean to be the largest island?
What is an Island?
- any piece of land that is surrounded by water in two dimensions, above high tide, and isolated from other significant landmasses - wikipedia.org
Continent or Island?
As devil’s advocate I could argue that North & South America combined or Europe,Africa & Asia would be the largest significant landmass because they meet the criteria above. But let’s indulge a little common sense and only consider things our gut tells us are islands, Greenland, Antarctica? and … Australia??
PubQuizHelp.com helps us out with a list of the top 20 largest islands of the world.
Australia and Antarctica both have a claim to be in this island list however, for geological, political and cultural reasons they are described as continental land masses and so are not included in the list.
Why distinguish between an island an a continental land mass? Is a continent just an island all grown up? Joshua Calder offers the following in a continent vs. island discussion.
- Australia is separated from all other continents by young oceanic crust. Greenland is geologically part of North America.
- Australia is considerably larger than Greenland. If separation is key, then Antarctica should also be considered an island (making Australia second largest).
- Everyone agrees that everything smaller than Australia is an island. Australians themselves are divided, and often claim that Australia is both the world’s largest island and the world’s smallest continent.
So, there are good reasons to assert that Australia is a continent and not an island.
I consider this enough of a challenge to Australia’s claim that it is the world’s smallest island that it should be taught as theory and not fact. The Australian people deserve to know the truth!
The plot thickens when Calder then challenges Australia’s other claim to fame that it is the smallest continent.
However, it has to be conceded that there can be no definitive answer. The questions only grow more complex when you look at the details: By scientific criteria, Madagascar and several other islands are continents.
I look forward to the day when geographers of the world can unite and solve this once and for all. Until then, there is the comments thread… Let’s hear what you think.
2 responses so far
To be honest, I had never thought of Greenland or Antarctica as islands, the latter of which is pretty massive anyways, too massive to be an island if we’re putting size restrictions on it. How many Europes could fit into an Antarctica? Speaking of Europe and citing the list you provided, Great Britain is barely an island at all. In fact, in the grand scheme of history it has been only a VERY short period since that North Atlantic Archipelago was separated from mainland Europe. The English Channel used to be a land bridge (albeit often marshy) between that place and France, and Ireland used to be walkable by land as well from the West of GB. They’re more like moats, people swim across the Channel on a regular basis (it’s greater purpose is hindering the pesky French).
Australia’s a country anyways, not a continent; the question is moot as there is only one option to pick from (island). The physical geography and geology demands that Tazmania and New Guinea are included as part of that continent, and oft-times New Zealand (another archipelago) and other islands are lumped in as well, creating the greater Australasia or Oceanic continent.
In a global game of dick measuring, the Aussies exclaimed that they were the largest island in the world. Great Britain, not about to be bested by their convict cast-offs but still smarting from the loss of 1/3 of the globe, attempted the ineffectual and childish retort of “oh ya, well my continent is bigger than yours” before researching too heavily in ocean tectonics. With Europe being pretty small, this meant to say that Australia may have the bigger dick but a thin pecker never did anyone any good. And to this day, the argument continues.
The internet web-based question answering systems appear to question Australia’s claim as well.
http://start.csail.mit.edu/startfarm.cgi?QUERY=what%20is%20the%20largest%20island%3F&SERVER=ailab&ACTION=askstart&MACHINE=production&FARM=malta.csail.mit.edu