“Europe * Asia * Africa * America
The four continents might seem to fit into the ancient sacred categories of 4 very neatly, but the concept is comparatively recent. Before the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the fundamental concept was of three continents–Asia, Europe and Africa–knitted together by such lynch-pins of the world as Jerusalem and Constantinople, Antioch or Alexandria.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Mark's Text Terminal 