NCERT Solutions for Class 6th Social Science Chapter 2 Continents — In-text Questions
Book page 34 Updated on2026-09-19
Q1.
Continents are visible on the map (Fig. 2.3). How many can you count? (The answer is not so simple, as they can be counted in several ways.)
Fig. 2.3, page 32 — a world map showing the five oceans, their conventional boundaries, and the continents. Redrawn; not to scale.
Answer
Anything from four to seven — and every one of those counts is defensible. It depends on how strictly you insist that a continent must be one separate piece of land.
Count
The continents (in alphabetical order)
Four
Africa-Eurasia, America, Antarctica, Australia
Five
Africa, America, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia
Six
Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, North America, South America
Seven
Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America — the count used in Fig. 2.3, and the one most widely adopted
Why the counts differ:
North and South America are usually counted as two, but they are joined by the narrow neck of Central America — so they can be seen as one landmass, ‘America’.
Europe and Asia are clearly a single landmass on the map. They are counted separately for historical and cultural reasons, because Europe's history took a very different course from Asia's. Geologists usually treat them as one continent, Eurasia.
Africa and Eurasia are normally two, but they touch at Egypt's Sinai, so they are sometimes counted as one, ‘Africa-Eurasia’.
Did you know? The five Olympic rings were chosen to stand for the five inhabited continents — Africa, America, Asia, Australia and Europe. Antarctica has no permanent population, so it is not among them.
The lesson hidden in this question: a “fact” in geography can depend on a human decision. Where a continent ends is partly nature and partly agreement — just like the boundaries between the oceans on page 31.