Europe

Europe lies at the western end of Eurasia. Many Europeans have deemed this peninsula a continent unto itself, but this has little to do with geography, and much more to do with the fact that the people making the claim descended from Europeans who, for centuries, knew of only the northern-most parts of Africa and the nearest parts of Eurasia, leading them to accord their landmass with greater distinctiveness than it truly deserves. At nearly 4 million square miles, Europe certainly does count as a particularly large peninsula, just a little bit smaller than the Indian subcontinent. It counts as a peninsula, rather than a subcontinent like India, because it does not have its own tectonic plate. Rather, it sits on the same Eurasian plate as most of the rest of Eurasia.

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