Pirates me hearties, pirates!

[kandrathe]

Well, I don't think I would come up with either of Pete's definitions, but then, I think "the West" is a bit of a silly concept anyway. "The East" is even worse, and between the two, there are gigantic chunks of the world left poorly defined.

Historically, if you were living around the Mediterranean 2000 years ago you were in the center of the Western civilized world. They also knew about and traded with India and China, but as far as I can tell, everything east of Greece is considered the Middle East or East. That is, with the exception of those northern regions that become associated more with the west, like Poland and Russia. It is also reflected in the designation of empires and Catholic orthodoxy from the time of Constantine.

What is Latin America?

The New World.

What is Africa?

South of the Sahara, it was mostly tribal and left alone until the colonial period. Our ideas of Western and Eastern are based on a history that dates to the Roman empire. Vast areas of the world far removed from the Mediterranean Sea were simply tribal, primitive and ignored. My own tribal people were not "civilized" until between 1000 and 1400 AD. The New World was not discovered until after East and West had been firmly rooted in European thought.