Human civilization has traversed more than five millennia. If ancient history is any guide, Asians have inhabited this earth for all those years. That makes Asian civilization as old as humanity. For much of this period and up to about 1800 AD preceding the industrial revolution, Asia maintained a dominant political, cultural, and economic position in the globe having wealthy and prosperous empires like China, Japan, India, and Persia, accounting for over one-half the global GDP in those times.