Continent Europe and Asia together as a single continent, dubbed "Eurasia". In this model, the world is divided into six continents, with North America and South America considered separate continents. Geologists use the term "continent" in a different manner from geographers. In geology a continent is defined by continental crust: a platform of metamorphic and igneous rock, largely of granitic composition. Some geologists restrict the term 'continent' to portions of the crust built around stable Precambrian "shield", typically 1.5 to 3.8 billion years old, called a craton. The craton itself is an accretionary complex of ancient mobile belts (mountain belts) from
Middle-earth Middle-earth Middle-earth is the fictional setting of much of British writer J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. The term is equivalent to the term "Midgard" of Norse mythology, describing the human-inhabited world, that is, the central continent of the Earth in Tolkien's imagined mythological past. Tolkien's most widely read works, "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", take place entirely in Middle-earth, and "Middle-earth" has also become a short-hand to refer to the legendarium and Tolkien's fictional take on the world. Within his stories, Tolkien translated the name "Middle-earth" as "Endor" (or sometimes "Endórë") and "Ennor" in the Elvish languages