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In the context of archaeology and world history, the term "Old World" includes those parts of the world which were in (indirect) cultural contact from the Bronze Age onwards, resulting in the parallel development of the early civilizations, mostly in the temperate zone between roughly the 45th and 25th parallels north, in the area of the Mediterranean, including North Africa.
Founded in 1496, the city is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the New World. Cumaná, Venezuela. Founded in 1510, it is the oldest continuously inhabited European city in the continental Americas. There were at least a dozen European countries involved in the colonization of the Americas.
European exploration initiated the Columbian exchange between the Old World (Europe, Asia, and Africa) and the New World (the Americas and Australia). This exchange involved the transfer of plants, animals, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and culture across the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
Vespucci, following his four voyages exploring the coastlines of Venezuela and Brazil, first developed the idea that the newly discovered western land was in fact a continent. The German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller created the earliest known map showing the name America, which he applied to the South American continent only.
Besides Brazil, Cuba was the only country with a predominantly tropical climate to attract many European immigrants during that period. [5] Between 1882 and 1930, more than a million Spaniards immigrated to Cuba, many of them to work in the country's sugar factories. [29] [30]
Asia and Europe are considered separate continents for historical reasons; the division between the two goes back to the early Greek geographers. In the modern sense of the term "continent", Eurasia is more readily identifiable as a "continent", and Europe has occasionally been described as a subcontinent of Eurasia. [68]
Afro-Eurasia (also Afroeurasia and Eurafrasia) is a landmass comprising the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia. [1] [2] The terms are compound words of the names of its constituent parts. Afro-Eurasia has also been called the "Old World", in contrast to the "New World" referring to the Americas.
This realization expanded the geographical horizon of earlier European geographers, who had thought that the world only included Afro-Eurasian lands. Africa, Asia, and Europe became collectively called the "Old World" of the Eastern Hemisphere, while the Americas were then referred to as "the fourth part of the world", or the "New World". [3]