Geography????

The Ancient Greeks said Asia AKA the Orient started at the Hellespont. They also said that all of Asia plus all of Africa were much smaller than Europe. This is because they knew a lot of European cities, but only a few African and Asian cities, and extrapolated from this rather limited information (India was small, just Westernmost India, and China did not exist).

Actually, they calculated the size of Africa by noting that, as one goes further south, it gets hotter, so, as one travels south in Africa, it soon becomes too hot for humans to survive, and then too hot for matter to exist, and that is where the Equator is located (they figured the Earth must be a hemisphere). 

Not clear how they knew where Asia ended, but Alexander spread his Ragtime to Persia and then further east to Westernmost India, and then he died, and the Persians and Indians gave up on Greek music. The Greeks knew that people had gone East from Persia where they saw giant anthills, which one can see in places like White Sands National Park in the US, or in the Arabian and Taklamakan deserts. I've seen those anthills, but the ants were all inside when I was there, which is good, since, according to the ancient Greeks, they're the size of dogs and very fierce and attack and kill the humans who disturb them. In any case, the Greeks knew that a very few of those who managed to go to those anthills came back with lots of gold that they somehow managed to get from the anthills without disturbing the ants (but most of those who went into those deserts never came back alive).

Of course, some would say that the travellers were not altogether honest about their travels, which meant bringing Western goods all the way to India, maybe all the way to the Chinese Empire over the old Emperor's Silk Belt and Road Initiative, selling them those Western goods, using the proceeds to buy silk and maybe some tea, selling the silk and tea for gold, and finally coming back to where they started with lots of gold, but I trust those travellers and I've seen those giant anthills, so I figure they somehow managed to evade the ants and got the gold that way.

In  any case, the Ancient Greeks were the World Hegemon a long time ago. More recently, it was the British, who set 0º Longitude at Greenwich, the obvious Centre of the World when Britain was the World Hegemon. The British figured all of Europe was the West, as did the Ancient Greeks, so the Orient AKA Asia started at the Hellespont, and the westernmost bit of Asia was the Near East.

Then the US became World Hegemon, and figured the UK and Europe were Nearest East, West Asia was Middle East, and, when I was a boy, East Asia was called the Orient in the US. As I recall from geography class, India was just India back then (the Brits broke up India before I was born, but we used old textbooks), but now, of course, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh et al. are South Asia.

So names and geography have changed over the years.

Not clear if the US will ever allow another Hegemon to replace them, since they have nukes, and some, maybe a lot of them, figure having no world at all would be much better than having a world with some nation other than the US as World Hegemon.

One thing I heard about was that, around 1937, Germany had videos to be shown during the News Feature that used to be a standard part of watching a movie, videos that appeared to show a huge German military, and the UK and France said it was just a camera trick, the tiny German Army was just marching in circles with the camera only showing the soldiers and tanks and artillery as they marched past and past and past, so it looked like a huge military when it was only a very few men and tanks and artillery pieces, nothing that could challenge the UK and France, or even just the UK or France.

And one thing I've seen on TV was the Chinese military parade on 3 September 2025, which looked like a huge military, but all the Western experts assure me it was just the Chinese marching their tiny military in circles past the camera: the PRC have absolutely nothing that could possibly challenge the US military.