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Welcome to the first expedition of the Collected Wisdom Explorers Club. Let’s check we have everything we need. Pith helmets? Yes. Cases of gin and tonic? Yes. Maps? Er, hmmm, no. Ah, what the heck, we’ll just wing it.

THE QUESTION: Alex Coney, 11, of Thornhill, Ont., wondered how the dividing line between Europe and Asia was determined.

THE ANSWER: Deborah Cowen of the department of geography at the University of Toronto and geographer Neil Smith from the City University of New York have teamed up to answer this one and say there is no actual consensus about the precise location of this continental border.

They say the distinction between the two continents seems to have first been debated in ancient Greece, but the issue didn’t really emerge in earnest until the 16th century, spurred by an era of European expansionism. However, the debate had to contend with the fact that “there were no obvious features in the geographical landscape – rivers, lakes, mountains, seas etc. – that could demark a border that correlated more or less with the perceived cultural differences between ‘civilized’ Europe and more ‘primitive’ Asia.”

In the 18th century, Swedish military officer Philipp Johann von Strahlenberg proposed that the Ural Mountains be considered the backbone of the border. “It was eagerly supported by the Russian and German empires … which saw such a border as ratifying national and imperial claims to their respective European superiority.”

Profs. Cowen and Smith say that while this solution was contested, it became broadly accepted in the early 19th century in Europe, especially after endorsement by French geographer Conrad Malte-Brun. “Yet such a solution left out several hundred miles of territory between the southern tip of the Urals and either the Caspian or Black seas, and myriad proposals following different rivers – Don, Volga, Ural – quickly surfaced.”

They say that by the late 19th century, the border was, given the expansion of the Russian state and later the Soviet Union, generally located on the north shore of the Caspian Sea, rather than the Black Sea, which raises the question of whether the Caucasus is European or Asian.

They add that, by the late 20th century, there was little debate over the precise delineation of continents as it was increasingly argued that trying to define continental borders definitively was illegitimate, and Europe/Asia was exhibit No. 1.

HELP WANTED

• “Why do we put our hands up to our mouths when we are surprised?” wonders Beverly Dywan of Toronto.
• Ted Holmes of Toronto asks: “Why is the steering wheel in a pleasure boat on the right side, when the steering wheel in a North American car is on the left side?”

Send your questions and answers to wisdom@globeandmail.com. Include your name, location and a daytime phone number.