We're reaching a point where I am questioning the ratio of quantity versus quality in OP's posts. I still appreciate how active they are, and they have a large number of good posts
Continent are fairly subjective. Some favor strictly connected lands (joining Eurasia). Others do it by the tectonic plates. Other by culture barriers drawing a line between Europe and Asia.
For the purposes of the post I simply meant to convey that the NA v SA distinction is widely accepted to be at the thinnest point between them. Which would include Central America w/ NA.
Zealandia (pronounced /ziːˈlændiə/), also known as Te Riu-a-Māui (Māori)[2] or Tasmantis (from Tasman Sea),[3][4] is an almost entirely submerged mass of continental crust in Oceania that subsided after breaking away from Gondwana 83–79 million years ago.[5] It has been described variously as a submerged continent, continental fragment, and microcontinent.[6] The name and concept for Zealandia was proposed by Bruce Luyendyk in 1995,[7] and satellite imagery shows it to be almost the size of Australia.[8] A 2021 study suggests Zealandia is over a billion years old, about twice as old as geologists previously thought.[9][10]
I blame that crack.com article that came out like 15 or 20 years ago or whatever it was. One of the worst and most poorly research articles I've ever read and yet it's spawned a legion of terrible responses.
I’m most fascinated by the route map: it explains why he never set for on the continent. He took the long way. I suppose there was no reason to expect a great circle route but that so engrained that I couldnt picture him getting to the Caribbean without going down the east coast
Especially if you consider Columbus’ voyages together with Eric the Red, a great circle route just seems automatic
Put that together with safe flying rules where you don’t want to go too far from land, depending on your plane, so naturally follow the coast, then cross the ocean where it’s narrower and there are places to land. Why wouldn’t an old sailing ship also want to stay near land?