Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, north of the Timor Sea. It is divided between the independent state of East Timor, and West Timor, belonging to the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. The island's surface is 30,777 square kilometres. The name is a variant of timur, Malay for "east"; it is so called because it is at the eastern end of Lesser Sunda Islands.

Similar to nearby islands, most Timorese are Melanesian^{[dubious – discuss]} and anthropologists identify eleven distinct ethno-linguistic groups in Timor. The largest are the Atoni of western Timor, and the Tetum of central and eastern Timor. Most Timor indigenous Timorese languages belong to the Austronesian group of languages spoken through the Indonesian archipelago. The non-Austronesian languages are related to languages spoken in the Halmahera in the Maluku Islands and Western New Guinea.

The official languages of East Timor are Tetum and Portuguese, while in West Timor it is Indonesian. Indonesian is also widely spoken and understood in East Timor.

A sea generally refers to a large body of salt water, but the term is used in other contexts as well. Most commonly, it means a large expanse of saline water connected with an ocean, and is commonly used as a synonym for ocean. It is also used sometimes to describe a large saline lake that lacks a natural outlet, such as the Caspian Sea.

Arctic (belonging to the Arctic Ocean) and Antarctic (Southern Ocean) seas, as well as some other seas freeze in winter. This occurs below the freezing point of pure water, at about -1.8 °C (28.8 °F). Frozen salt water becomes sea ice.

Humans navigated seas from antiquity. Ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians navigated the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Hannu was the first see explorer of whom there is any information. He sailed along the Red Sea and further to the Arabian Peninsula and the African Coast around 2750 BC. In the 1st millennium BC, Phoenicians and Greeks established colonies all over the Mediterranean, including its outlets like the Black Sea. The seas along the eastern and the southern Asian coast were used by Arabs and Chinese for navigation, and the North Sea and the Baltic Sea were known to Europeans in Roman times. Other seas were not used for navigation in the antiquity and were actually discovered.