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America is a double continent, it extends over a length of 15,000 km from the Arctic in the north almost to the latitude of the Antarctic in the south and includes all climatic zones of the earth.
Subdivision
The double continent is usually divided into two parts
- North America with the states United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean as well as the Central American states and
- South America.
However, the geological structure shows that these two parts are distributed over three continental plates:
- the North American plate, which also includes the island Greenland belongs,
- the South American plate and
- the intervening smaller Caribbean plate, whose landmass is also called Central America referred to as. Central America is usually considered to be part of the North American continent.
The states are located on the North American continent Canada, Mexico and the United States of America, briefly referred to as United States or even just as America. On the Mexican peninsula Yucatan begins Central America, the states between the Pacific and Atlantic are also covered by the term Central America in summary, the island world is called Caribbean designated. South of the Panama Canal is the continent of South America.
Discovery of America
but only here and there
Not everyone who goes to India
discovers America
Erich Kaestner
The discovery of America is usually dated to 1492 and attributed to Christopher Columbus, even if he never set foot on the American mainland. He believed that he had found a sea route to India, consequently the islands he discovered were called west indies and their inhabitants as Indians designated. The American mainland was probably the first modern European to set foot on the Italian seafarer Giovanni Caboto. The name America goes back to Amerigo Vespucci, who first described the country as an independent continent in 1507.
However, there are also numerous references to earlier European explorers, see Wikipedia: Discovery of America, and the first discoverers are likely to have been the people who acted as Paleo Indians set foot on American soil at the end of the last ice age.
