Continent with other islands in the Pacific into one continent called Oceania. This divides the entire land surface of Earth into continents or quasi-continents. The ideal criterion that each continent is a discrete landmass is commonly relaxed due to historical conventions. Of the seven most globally recognized continents, only Antarctica and Australia are completely separated from other continents by the ocean. Several continents are defined not as absolutely distinct bodies but as ""more or less" discrete masses of land". Asia and Africa are joined by the Isthmus of Suez, and North and South America by the Isthmus of Panama. In both
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