• lvysaur [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    fun fact, Russia was originally considered to not be part of Europe.

    The reason it was, is because Europe itself is not a continent. So the british geographer guys were searching desperately for ANY sort of justification to keep Europe separate from Asia.

    Finally they found it in the Ural mountains (which are an extremely shallow set of hills, and unknown by the west until the late 1800s). So they had to compromise on Russia in order to find an excuse for European separateness.

      • lvysaur [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        But, at least according to Wikipedia, just saying outright that “The Urals aren’t real” actively erases both Middle-Eastern & Russian history/historiography which do make claims to their existence as early as the 10th Century.

        I said the Urals were unknown to the west, not to everyone.

        There were also geographers who literally and unironically wanted the island of Britain to be its own continent separate from Europe