North America, third greatest of the world’s land masses, lying for the most part between the Arctic Circle and the Tropic of Cancer. It connects for more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km) to within 500 miles (800 km) of both the North Pole and the Equator and has an east-west level of 5,000 miles. It covers a space of 9,355,000 square miles (24,230,000 square km).
North America has the northern piece of the landmass overall insinuated as the New World, the Western Hemisphere, or simply the Americas. Focal region North America is shaped commonly like a triangle, with its base in the north and its culmination in the south; related with the central area is Greenland, the greatest island on earth, and such offshore social occasions as the Arctic Archipelago, the West Indies, Haida Gwaii (prior the Queen Charlotte Islands), and the Aleutian Islands.
North America is restricted on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific Ocean. Close to the upper east Greenland is detached from Iceland by the Denmark Strait, and toward the northwest Alaska is disconnected from the Asian focal region by the much more modest Bering Strait. North America’s simple land affiliation is to South America at the confined Isthmus of Panama. Denali (Mount McKinley) in Alaska, rising 20,310 feet (6,190 meters) above sea level, is the central area’s most raised point, and Death Valley in California, at 282 feet (86 meters) underneath sea level, is its least. North America’s coastline of roughly 37,000 miles (60,000 km)— the second longest of the landmasses after Asia—is conspicuous for the exceptional number of spaces, particularly in the northern half.
The name America is derived from that of the Italian seller and pilot Amerigo Vespucci, one of the earliest European pioneers to visit the New World. In spite of the way that at first the term America was applied particularly toward the southern piece of the central area, the task in a little while was applied to the entire landmass. Those sections that stretched out north of the Isthmus of Panama became known as North America, and those that extended toward the south became known as South America. As demonstrated by specific trained professionals, North America begins not at the Isthmus of Panama but instead at the waterway of Tehuantepec, with the intervening region called Central America. Under such a definition, a piece of Mexico ought to be associated with Central America, though that country lies generally in North America. To overcome this irregularity, the whole of Mexico, alongside Central and South American countries, furthermore may be gathered under the name Latin America, with the United States and Canada being implied as Anglo-America. This social division is an irrefutable one, yet Mexico and Central America (checking the Caribbean) are bound to the rest of North America by strong ties of real geography. Greenland similarly is socially isolated from, yet truly close, North America. A couple of geographers depict the area for the most part from the southern limit of the United States toward the northern line of Colombia as Middle America, which differs from Central America since it consolidates Mexico. A couple of implications of Middle America in like manner fuse the West Indies.
North America contains likely the most settled shakes on Earth. Its geologic development is worked around a consistent establishment of Precambrian rock called the Canadian (Laurentian) Shield. Around the southeast of the preserve rose the obsolete Appalachian Mountains; and toward the west rose the more young and altogether taller Cordilleras, which include practically 33% of the central area’s property. In these two mountain belts are the all things considered level spaces of the Great Plains in the west and the Central Lowlands in the east.
The landmass is extravagantly contributed with standard resources, including unimaginable mineral wealth, immense forest areas, enormous measures of new water, and a piece of the world’s most productive soils. These have allowed North America to turn out to be perhaps the most financially made locale on earth, and its inhabitants participate in a raised prerequisite of living. North America has the most imperative typical compensation per individual of any central area and an ordinary food confirmation for each person that is generally more unmistakable than that of various landmasses. Notwithstanding the way that it is home to under 10% of the all out people, its per capita usage of energy is practically on different occasions as inconceivable as the world typical.
North America’s first inhabitants are acknowledged to have been out of date Asiatic social classes who moved from Siberia to North America eventually during the last cold turn of events, known as the Wisconsin Glacial Stage, the most recent huge division of the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2.6 million to 11,700 years earlier). The family members of these social classes, the distinctive Native American and Eskimo (Inuit) get-togethers, by and large have been uprooted by social classes from the Old World. People of European families contain the greatest get-together, followed by those of African and of Asian heredity; in addition there is a huge get-together of Latin Americans, who are of mixed European and Native American parentage.
This article treats the physical and human geography of North America. For discussion of individual countries of the central area, see the articles Canada, Mexico, and United States of America. See furthermore consideration of North American districts under the titles West Indies and the individual countries of Central America. For discussion of huge metropolitan networks of the central area, see express articles by name—e.g., Mexico City, New York City, and Toronto. For discussion of the local social classes of the landmass, see the articles Native American and pre-Columbian human progressions. The vital treatment of North American true and social improvement is contained in the articles referred to above and in the article Latin America, history of. For extra discussion of articulations and composing, see the articles American composition, Native American articulations, Canadian composition, and Latin American composition.