Europe: The land of contrasts

No - the split is cultural and historical, not geological, since Europe and Asia sit on the same landmass and the same tectonic plate. Ancient Greek geographers first drew the line between them, and later mapmakers kept it, using features like the Ural Mountains as a rough marker.

Europe packs dozens of separate countries into a small landmass mainly because its geography works against unity - peninsulas and mountain ranges split the land into separate pockets, and its rivers rarely connect into one shared network. Centuries of independent kingdoms that never merged only deepened that divide.

Russia sits in both. Its western regions, including Moscow and most of its population, lie in Europe, while the much larger eastern stretch, known as Siberia, lies in Asia. The conventional dividing line runs along the Ural Mountains, a boundary geographers settled on rather than one nature drew cleanly.

The name traces back to Europa, a princess in Greek mythology who was carried off to Crete by Zeus disguised as a bull. Ancient Greek writers eventually applied her name to the lands north of the Aegean, and it later expanded to cover the whole continent as mapmakers pushed the boundary further north and east.