But it makes no sense to use them as topological area boundaries. It's a globe, nothing is "in the west". Things can just be "west of something" which really just is shorthand for "you'll get there faster going west than east".
Plenty of people genuinely believed that if you were to navigate to the West of Europe you would fall off the border of the world (well, some still do).
An outright majority of the world’s population was, and still is, in Asia, so I'm not sure what this split between is supposed to refer to. If you mean Europe was #2 behind Asi, that was true until the 1980s if the Americas are counted as one continent, otherwise the 1990s when Africa took the #2 spot, not “a couple centuries ago”.
What about Africa? North and South America?
> Plenty of people genuinely believed that if you were to navigate to the West of Europe you would fall off the border of the world (well, some still do).
Did they? Who in particular are you referencing here? Are you perhaps falling for the myth of the flat earth[1]?