A continent is a physical thing and a cultural region is a social or human thing. The continent of Europe is attached to Asia on the east side and sticks into the Atlantic Ocean on the west side. It runs from the high arctic to the Mediterranean Sea in the south. Culturally, Europe is the home of the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome with Slavic peoples in the east, Latin people in the south and Germanic people in the north. European cultural groups used superior technology in the last 500 years to colonize much of the rest of the world.