To actually answer your question: yes and no. If Europe is a continent, then India definitely is. Both are only separated from the rest of Eurasia by a collision boundary, and Europe’s collision boundary isn’t even active anymore, IIRC.
Realistically, if you’re counting tectonic separation, then the afar triangle is its own continent, as there’s an active divergent triple boundary splitting it off from the rest of Africa. The coast of California is a different continent than the rest of north america, because it’s split by a transform boundary due to the subducting remnants of the farallon plate (now the Juan De fuca and cocos plates). New Zealand has been accepted to be its own continent for quite some time, since there’s a gigantic slab of continental crust underwater to NZ’s Northwest. Even still, the southeastern portion would be counted as separate by this hypothetical “boundaries-only” definition, because the transform boundary which has created the South Island Alps splits the south island. Madagascar is its own continental crust, as is Greenland.
Really, if you want to understand the geological boundaries and origins among the areas of the world, I’d recommend considering all of the following five types of data:
Cratons (the really old chunks of continental crust that have just been floating and moving around, making up the continental cores, for the last 3.5+ billion years
Active Tectonic Boundaries (really useful for understanding why there are mountains, trenches, volcanoes and earthquakes where we observe them)
what you can see on a map, like rivers, mountains, isthmuses, and continental shelves (the only thing that our current definition of “continent” actually cares about)
anomalous hotspot volcanism (currently hypothesised to be caused by mantle plumes)
historical terranes and plates (such as avalonia and the flat-slab subduction of the farallon plate)
If you’re really interested in the tectonic boundaries of earth, check out the Concord Consortium’s “Seismic Explorer” online tool. Super fun.
So, TL;DR: the idea of a continent is bullshit, and purely cultural, just like our definition of a planet (see minute physics’ videos explaining why the moon should be a planet, and the IAU are bad at definitions)
Isn’t it tectonic separation? Like the plates? 🤔
To actually answer your question: yes and no. If Europe is a continent, then India definitely is. Both are only separated from the rest of Eurasia by a collision boundary, and Europe’s collision boundary isn’t even active anymore, IIRC.
Realistically, if you’re counting tectonic separation, then the afar triangle is its own continent, as there’s an active divergent triple boundary splitting it off from the rest of Africa. The coast of California is a different continent than the rest of north america, because it’s split by a transform boundary due to the subducting remnants of the farallon plate (now the Juan De fuca and cocos plates). New Zealand has been accepted to be its own continent for quite some time, since there’s a gigantic slab of continental crust underwater to NZ’s Northwest. Even still, the southeastern portion would be counted as separate by this hypothetical “boundaries-only” definition, because the transform boundary which has created the South Island Alps splits the south island. Madagascar is its own continental crust, as is Greenland.
Really, if you want to understand the geological boundaries and origins among the areas of the world, I’d recommend considering all of the following five types of data:
If you’re really interested in the tectonic boundaries of earth, check out the Concord Consortium’s “Seismic Explorer” online tool. Super fun.
So, TL;DR: the idea of a continent is bullshit, and purely cultural, just like our definition of a planet (see minute physics’ videos explaining why the moon should be a planet, and the IAU are bad at definitions)
Yes. Except for the exceptions, which are the exceptions.