Continental Drift

The movement of the Earth's crust is called 'continental drift'.
More than 200 years ago the continents were joined together, now continents are far from each other because of the movement of crust.
Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other by appearing to drift across the ocean bed. The speculation that continents might have 'drifted' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596. The concept was independently (and more fully) developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912. The theory of continental drift was superseded by the theory of plate tectonics, which builds upon and better explains why the continents move.