The General Geography thread

Papua and West Papua, which are provinces of Indonesia, are technically in Oceania, are shown in the Wikimedia map for Oceania, and they are connected to Papua New Guinea, a Oceanian country, so can Indonesia be considered a transcontinental country in both Asia and Oceania? Quite a few places seem to put Indonesia completely in Asia, so I am curious about this.

Edit: Seeing as I and presumably many other tropers here are interested in Geography and discussion about it and there isn't a topic about it, I have decided to turn this thread into a General Geography thread. Discussions could include continents, the classifications of regions and countries in each continent, unique environments found in each country, World Heritage Sites, and anything in general to do with Geography.

edited 27th May '16 12:02:43 AM by Bat178

Oceania is often tied together with Asia anyway, so until and unless the two regions become absolutely seperate (as Europe and Asia are despite sharing Eurasia) in common discourse, it will be both, with those who prefer one or the other referring to it by that region's name.

On that argument, you could also consider the United States to be transcontinental because of Hawaii. Same with Denmark vis a vis Greenland. It's ultimately based on how you divide up the Earth's lamdmasses - not everyone around the world counts seven continents. In Latin America, for example, many do not consider North and South America to be separate continents.

I know about the different perspectives on continents. While Hawaii is in Oceania, it isn't connected to any other country from there like Indonesia and transcontinental countries that have territory in both Europe and Asia (And Africa in the case of Egypt) are like Egypt, Russia, Turkey, etc. are, so I don't consider the US a transcontinental country.

edited 26th May '16 2:31:51 PM by Bat178

I'd assume that you wouldn't consider France one either then? Even though France has territories that elect members to the French Parliment and are treated the same as Metropolitan France legally. What about Spain with its African territory?

Also as you've been poking a bunch of geography subjects in politics thread do we want to consider making this a general geography thread instead of something for one specific question? That way we'd also be able to talk about the regions of say Europe are defined or similar.

edited 26th May '16 10:10:16 PM by Silasw

A General Geography Thread would actually be nice. If there is a mod here, can you change the title to that?

Aren't continents mostly randomly determined by vague human biasses with no real basis in reality?

I've hollered a mod, if they approve we may get a name change.

Yep, thus why under the UN definition Indonesia isn't transcontinental, because the continental border with Oceania is draw at the Indonesian border despite it being a land border on a single landmass.

There is some reality basis with tectonic plates, but largly it's made up and based on what kinda makes sense. Africa works easily as one continent, Europe does to if you just kinda write "here be dragons" in eastern Russia, South and North America also both work. Oceania is probably the most arbitrary one.

edited 27th May '16 3:23:39 AM by Silasw

Thank ye, o holy Mod.

I certainly wouldn't say there's no basis in reality - continents are mainly visual ways of organizing and subdividing the world into sections.

Though I would argue that Asia is the more hodge-podge-ish in terms of who gets lumped into there. The term "Asian" refers to two different 1 billion+ people groups depending on whether you're in America or the UK.

Side note - anyone here a regular follower of Geography Now?

I was not aware that he had a trope page but I am happy that he does.

Oh yeah, I love Geography Now. It's really nice to learn about all sorts of obscure countries from him.