The continent of Europe owes its existence and name to the Ancient Greeks. The Greeks were the first to develop the concept of continents. Living on both shores of the Aegean Sea, they created the cultural distinction between Europe (present-day Greece) and Asia (Ionian Greece, or what is now Asiatic Turkey). Peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean followed the seafaring Phoenicians in recognizing Asu (sunrise) and Ereb (sunset). For the Greeks, this logically translated into the lands that lay on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea, where the sun rose, being called Asia and those on the west, on the Greek Peninsula, where the sun set, being called Europe.