I believe that China is the middle kingdom in more a Tolkien way; above there are the gods, below the other mortals.
The greeks didn't really care much of east or west. They weren't much an empire, in fact a "marathon" runner could cross the country in a matter of a few days without sweating much. Such problems appeared with Roman empire, and the distances did indeed matter.
The east/west arbitrary but generally accepted division I believe originated during the renaissance. Anything east of Europe (that meaning the balkans) was east, anything west of british islands was west. The precise 0 longitude came much later (and the french lost)
Originally
posted by
martian:
If the earth rotated in the other direction then we would be arguing north south. Actually we would have bigger problems in that case:P
If you mean if the earth rotated like Uranus does (virtually in ecliptic plane) then there were noone on earth worring about east/west/north/south and it would have been such a waste of good 4 weekly bonus points for posting on earth empire forums...