Old World

The "Old World" (Latin: Mundus vetus) is a term for Afro-Eurasia coined by Europeans after 1493, when they became aware of the existence of the Americas.

[1] It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia in the Eastern Hemisphere, previously thought of by the Europeans as comprising the entire world, with the "New World", a term for the newly encountered lands of the Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas.

It also included Mesopotamia, the Persian plateau, the Indian subcontinent, China, and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.

In cultural terms, the Iron Age was accompanied by the so-called Axial Age, referring to cultural, philosophical and religious developments eventually leading to the emergence of the historical Western (Hellenism, "classical"), Near Eastern (Zoroastrian and Abrahamic) and Far Eastern (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Taoism) cultural spheres.

The term may have been coined by Sir Halford John Mackinder in The Geographical Pivot of History.

Old World
Map of the "Old World" (the 2nd-century Ptolemy world map in a 15th-century copy)
This T and O map , from the first printed version of Isidore 's Etymologiae ( Augsburg , 1472), identifies the three known continents ( Asia , Europe and Africa ) as respectively populated by descendants of Sem ( Shem ), Iafeth ( Japheth ) and Cham ( Ham ).