> > Now that I've gotten going on this stuff, I might as well follow through on the thought. Has anyone else ever wondered about the arbitrary labelling of "The West" and "The East"? I mean, they're basically on opposite sides of the world, so why does the Pacific Ocean get the pleasure of being "The Impassable Barrier" at which we split the plant apart when making our flat maps?
>
> The division between the lands we know as "The West" and the lands we know as "The East" is cultural. [...]
>
> So that's why we have this vague notion of two halves of the world. Why they were called "The West" and "The East" is, I think, twofold: one, the international date line, running through the Pacific, clearly defines what is "West" and what is "East." Two, the means by which the discovery of Earth's lands came to be known to everyone by an east-to-west direction of exploration, and so the New Lands were always thought of as "west of here." (With all due respect to the American Indians, who came to America from Asia before the Europeans did; the difference is that they didn't go back and tell everybody about the New World.)
>
> I asked Brunnen-G (from New Zealand, for those of you who don't know) about this once. I asked her if she thought of herself as living in "The West" or "The East," given that New Zealand is as eastern as it gets, [Brunnen-G] said that, yes, she considers herself part of "The West," even though exotic places like Japan and Thailand are just a bit to her northwest. I would assume Australia would think of themselves in a similar manner.
>

As Sam says, the arbitrary division between the lands we know as "The West" and the lands called "The East" is cultural... for historical reasons. This distinction far pre-dates the establishment of the International Date Line at Greenwich Meridian (which came into existence only in 1884). Anyway, I think this has just become an extended history review, so please bear with me.

Our concept of 'western' civilization, and its idealistic views of natural philosophy and justice and law for the common man, is a concept that dates from the Greeks, and from the Romans -- all leading to a Eurocentric view of the world. From that *western* standpoint in time, our planet was then officially explored in an east-to-west direction. Historically, however, the great voyages were undertaken with the intention of exploring west-to-east, instead. In the middle ages, trade was brought west to Europe through the arabian-controlled Silk Road. Through it, Europe was vaguely aware of unknown lands to the "Far East" -- the source of silk, fine wootz (the legendary Damascus steel), and highly sought-after exotic spices, rich and mysterious. So when Marco Polo brought back fantastic tales of his travels to China (1271-95), he opened up a new world to the European imagination. Many people in medieval times considered Polo's travelogue to be mere fables. However, the geographical details in them were sufficient to convince Cristoforo Colombo, two centuries later, that it was worthwhile to attempt reaching the "Far East" in 1492 by sailing in the opposite direction (i.e., directly to the West), instead of running the standard route to China, which was attained by sailing south-east around the Horn of Africa. History records that Colombo inconveniently found a continent-wide landmass blocking the way :-)

Also, a note about the Middle East. Centuries before Marco Polo's day, "the East" were the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, extending all the way to south and east of the Persian Gulf. The Near East included Turkey with the then-crown city of Constantinople; Egypt in North Africa; Palestine, to the head of the Arabian Peninsula; and via the expedience of the Silk Road, it also included Persia (Iran) going beyond to Afghanistan and Pakistan and Uighur (Turkistan China). The arabic-speaking lands around the eastern end of the Mediterrean were collectively known as the Levant -- they were the end-destination of trading goods brought by the Silk Road.

The trade goods gave the muslims of Levant great power. The Moorish muslim princes already had a powerful presence in Europe in Córdoba and Granada in Spain. They had treasures of astronomy, medicine, engineering and mathematics (from whence our arabic numeral system is derived), which were much more advanced than their relatively barbarian European counterparts. Their architecture and gardens were more magnificent than anything the Europeans would imagine for centuries. Learning and literacy were valued, and during the Dark Ages it was Islamic scholars who preserved important texts from Greek and Roman times. Thus did the arabic world gain ascendancy away from the Romans, and for a while, the Levant were not just part of "the East," but for centuries were the de facto center of the world. So what happened to their empire, and how far did it fall? That is a story for another day, which I will be happy to tell anyone who hasn't fallen asleep by this point. Needless to say, the Levant world fell far enough that it lost the ability even to name its section of the world. As Robert Fulford explains, in 1902 the American naval historian A.T. Mahan called the called the area between Europe and East Asia "the Middle East," a term that could have been invented only by someone who thought Europe the world's core. Through much of this century, the Middle East has been the common term all over the globe, even inside the region itself. And so it goes.

Wolf "If not for the arrows and slings of history, we'd all be muslims" spirit