I don't think people are all that different east / west, we just did different things like sit in saunas and go to church. Going to church is IMO a form of meditation too, you sit still ish for an hour (depending on church), go through repeated rituals, specific kinds of evocative music and speaking, prayer often involves closed eyes and intentional clearing of mind and / or focusing on specific subjects mentally, but most importantly, it's an intentional break from your regular programming.

One thing I've learned through the study of Hermetic magick is that to achieve the Great Work, you really only theoretically need meditation techniques, which have been separately discovered around the world. The premier "western" work on meditation is "The Cloud of Unknowing" by an anonymous 14th century English monk. Most of Hermetic magick is a ritual scaffolding to support people who cannot achieve the Great Work through contemplative prayer alone. In this sense, Hermetic magick is to contemplative prayer as Tibetan Buddhist practice is to Ānāpānasati -- using people's cultural context as a supportive framework for an achievement that is not, itself, fundamentally culturally-bound.