North America runs from the Arctic ice of Greenland and northern Canada to the rainforests of Panama, where the continent narrows to just 50 kilometres between two oceans. Its twelve countries and territories cover about 24 million square kilometres and are home to some 560 million people. Three giants dominate: Canada, the largest by area; the United States, the most populous and wealthiest; and Mexico, home to the region's biggest city. Below them lie the seven small, mountainous republics of Central America, a land bridge rich in volcanoes, coffee and ancient Maya cities.

Nature works on a grand scale here. Denali in Alaska rises 6,190 metres, while Death Valley's Badwater Basin sinks 86 metres below sea level. The Missouri and Mississippi rivers drain about 40 percent of the lower 48 states, the Great Lakes hold a fifth of the world's surface fresh water, and the St. Lawrence carries it to the Atlantic through an estuary 145 kilometres wide.

Long before Europeans arrived, Indigenous nations built cities such as Tenochtitlan, today's Mexico City, and Cahokia on the Mississippi. Colonisation, slavery and waves of immigration from every continent then shaped modern societies of remarkable diversity. The result is an economic powerhouse producing more than 33 trillion dollars a year, nearly a third of the world's output, and a cultural force that gave the world jazz, the Moon landing and Frida Kahlo. For many Caribbean families, North America, from New York and Toronto to Miami and Montreal, has also become a second home.

Africa is the cradle of humankind. The oldest fossils of our species have been found here, and every person alive today can trace their ancestry to this continent. It is also vast: about 30 million square kilometres, large enough to hold the United States, China, India and most of Europe combined. Its 62 countries and territories are home to some 1.5 billion people, the youngest and fastest-growing population on Earth.

The land ranges from the Sahara, the world's largest hot desert, to the rainforests of the Congo Basin and the savannas of the east, where great herds still migrate. Mount Kilimanjaro rises 5,895 metres above the plains of Tanzania, while Lake Assal in Djibouti lies 155 metres below sea level. The Nile, traditionally counted as the world's longest river, flows 6,650 kilometres to the Mediterranean, and the mighty Congo spreads up to 16 kilometres wide.

Africa's history includes the pharaohs of Egypt, the scholars of Timbuktu and the gold-rich empire of Mansa Musa. It also includes the transatlantic slave trade, which carried millions of West and Central Africans to the Americas, the ancestors of most Caribbean people today. After colonial rule, a wave of independence beginning in the 1950s, led by figures such as Kwame Nkrumah and later Nelson Mandela, created the modern map. Today cities such as Cairo, Kinshasa and Lagos are among the largest in the world, and Africa's economies, led by South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria, together produce nearly three trillion dollars a year.

South America is a continent of superlatives. The Andes, the longest mountain range on Earth, run 7,000 kilometres down its western edge and rise to 6,961 metres at Aconcagua in Argentina, the highest point outside Asia. East of the mountains spreads the Amazon, the largest rainforest in the world, threaded by a river that carries more water than the next seven largest rivers combined. Farther south lie the grasslands of the Pampas, the glaciers of Patagonia and, at Laguna del Carbón, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere.

The region's fourteen countries and territories cover about 17.8 million square kilometres and are home to some 435 million people. Brazil alone holds half of both, along with half the region's economic output. Most South Americans speak Spanish or Portuguese, the legacy of three centuries of colonial rule, though Quechua, Guaraní and dozens of other Indigenous languages endure. On the northern coast, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana share a distinctly Caribbean heritage of English, Dutch and French influence and large African and Indian communities.

Life is overwhelmingly urban: São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá and Lima are among the great cities of the world. Their combined economies produce more than four trillion dollars a year, built on farming, mining, oil and growing industry. South America has given the world the Inca roads of Machu Picchu, the liberator Simón Bolívar, the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, the samba and the tango, the first pope from the Americas, and Pelé, the only footballer to win three World Cups.