Middle East and West Asia are both terms that can be used kind of interchangeably, it just depends on the context. And yes, Europe is a glorified peninsula of the continent of “Eurasia”. Interestingly, Russia and a few other countries that straddle the boundary of Europe and Asia teach it as one continent.

In my opinion, the idea of “continents” is ambiguous if we define it as no sea in between, Afro-Eurasia is a monster that isn’t helpful to categorise the world. There’s good videos on the topic by CGP Grey and Map Men (previously Jay Foreman), you should go look at that I think!

I would rather divide the world based on the geological definition of continents, about the major tectonic plates! But even that can be difficult since what constitutes as a “major” tectonic plate? It’s still better in my opinion, since it’s something that can be discussed by geologists rather than politicians.

According to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates

Under this definition, the continents are (if we only consider major plates as defined by Wikipedia):

• Eurasia
• Africa
• North America
• South America
• Australia
• Antarctica
• Pacific (mostly ocean)

if we include the some of the larger minor plates (I feel like we should):

• Carribean
• Arabia
• India (subcontinent has levelled up!)
• Somali
• Nazca (again, mostly ocean)
• Philippines (another ocean one)

There are lots of smaller ones but those are mostly ocean too

I think it would be neat if the world was divided to have India, Arabia, the Carribean, and Eastern Africa to have the Europe sort of treatment! India alone has more people than the whole of Europe combined