Asian
countries have one of the world's oldest people and continuous
civilizations, consisting of states and cultures dating back more than
six millennia. For example, it has the world's longest continuously used
written language system, and is the source of such major inventions as
what the British scholar and biochemist Joseph Needham called the "four
great inventions of Ancient China": paper, the compass, gunpowder, and
printing. Historically China's cultural sphere has been very influential
in East Asia as a whole, with Chinese religion, customs, and writing
system being adopted, to varying degrees, by its neighbors Japan, Korea,
and Vietnam.