Is Europe a continent or merely a region?

[NomineMalum]

Originally Posted by callmemaybe

There's no justification for the Ural Mountains as a boundary between Europe and Asia. How is Novisibirsk any more 'Asian' than Perm, or Perm any more European than Novisibirsk? They seem pretty much the same to me, equally Russian.

I believe the Ural mountains are often considered the boundary between Europe and Asia because Siberia was actually first settled by Russians at about the same time as the Americas were first being settled by Europeans in general (16th and 17th centuries) and, by that time, that cultural view of the continents which sees Europe as a separate continent, with the Ural mountains as its eastern boundary, had already become firmly entrenched in people's minds.

[Mac15]

Europe is a continent. Its hard to define its boundaries though, alot of people say us in the British Isles are in Europe but we aren't we are a subregion of europe. To define continental Europe I would say that it runs from Portugal to its eastern edge at Russia. I would say that the Azores, British Isles and Iceland are subregions of europe.

[dunno what to put here]

Geographically it should not be a continent, but culturally it is so different from anywhere east of the Urals.