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What if you could create a new, maybe even better continent?
Cambridge Dictionary defines a continent as “one of the seven large land masses on the
Earth’s surface, surrounded or mainly surrounded by sea.”
Generally, most people are taught that there are 7 continents - Europe, Asia, Africa, Antarctica,
North America, South America and Australia.
Not all cultures agree on what defines a continent.
And surprisingly, scientists don’t either.
Even NASA says that there’s no single, agreed upon, scientific classification for what makes
a land mass a continent.
There’s no set square milage, no required population, nothing.
With the definition of a continent being super murky, building a hypothetical landmass and
getting it classified as a continent could be a struggle and may eventually come down
to convincing governing geographical bodies and society.
If Greenland, at almost 1 million sq miles, isn’t a continent, your landmass would probably
need to be huge.
But what about actually constructing this continent?
How on earth would that work?
First things first, you would need to find a spot to build in international waters, meaning
that part of the world is not claimed by anyone else.
You’d need to be at least 200 miles from any existing country’s territorial sea baseline,
outside their Exclusive Economic Zones.
It should come as no surprise that you’d want to pick a fairly shallow spot since you’d
have to fill down to the ocean floor.
Once you found your spot, you’d need materials and a ship ton of money.
Pun intended.
The project to build the World Islands in Dubai required over $25 billion before the
project was even finished.
And those islands only total 20 square miles and are right on the shallow shoreline!
In the middle of the ocean, with more square milage, your hypothetical continent would
cost a lot more.
Using those rates, it’d cost quadrillions and quadrillions of dollars.
You’d need to start construction by creating the base of your landmass, piling sand directly
onto the seafloor or even a reef.
This sand could either be brought in on a ship or you could use a sea dredging ship
to dig up sand from the sea floor and reuse that.
Then a super thick layer of rocks would be laid on top of that sand.
And finally, cement would be added to top it all off.
There you have it!
Your very own island!
Now the real battle to become more than just a measly island begins; getting it recognized
as a continent with geographers, the scientific community and the public.
With such a vague definition, this part may be tough but having a large landmass that
stands out from other continents should help your case.
While humans haven’t yet built their own continent, they have created artificial islands,
like Dubai’s World Islands and Palm Islands.[16] Another amazing human feat is
the island of Flevopolder in the Netherlands.
It was created by sectioning off an area of a bay and draining the water out over the
course of decades, revealing open land to build on.
Small artificial islands are nothing new.
They’re created all over for uses like military bases, airports and even bird sanctuaries.
But they’re often built in shallow water already owned by a territory, which is what
makes these builds quite a bit easier.
Building your own continent sounds insanely expensive, very labor intensive and could
start a huge cultural debate, but we believe in you.
We’d support your hypothetical continent.
What part of the world would you want to build your continent?
Let us know in the comments.