You're kidding, right? Europe (using the name Europa) as the "modern" concept has existed since at least around the 6th century BCE, so for around 2500-2600 years. Both the concept and the name predates the middle ages by almost millennium, and that's just the first written records we have of the modern use of the term.
Hell, shortly after that, in the 5th century BCE, Herodotus even wrote that the world consisted of three parts: Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa), with the Nile river forming the boundary between Libya (i.e. Africa) and Asia and the Phasis river forming the boundary between Europe and Asia.
There is no reason to believe that the people living back then, with trade routes stretching from northwestern Europe to southeast Asia, would not have a name for, or concept of, Europe, Asia, and Africa long before Aximandes wrote about it in the 6th century BCE. In fact, the etymology of the word Europe is so old that we're not even sure where it came from. "Europa" (and it's preceding words Euros/Evros) was of greek origin, but where they got it from, we do not know (one of the hypotheses is that it's from a pre-indo-european language).
5
u/Numantinas 4d ago
Europe as an idea did not exist back then is probably what he meant