Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment built on Google Chrome's V8 engine. It allows JavaScript to be run server-side in a fast and scalable way. Node.js achieves high concurrency without threads or processes by using an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that utilizes a single thread to handle multiple concurrent connections through event callbacks instead of threads or processes. This allows Node.js applications to scale vertically on multicore systems to handle many concurrent connections efficiently.