> Until just a few centuries ago most of the world population was split between Europe (West) and East Asia (East).

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”.

Your parent post meant that a few centuries ago, the american continent was not known, so the known world could be split between east and west.