The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World―and Globalization Began

“My Silk Road book ends around the year 1000. In the book, I write about an oasis called Khotan, in the northwest corner of China, that fell to Islamic armies just after the year 1000. The region, which had been Buddhist up until then, was conquered by Muslim rulers. I knew that the Vikings touched down in Canada around the year 1000. And that the Chinese signed a treaty with Northern people called the Liao around 1000 which set up conditions for change. I started wondering if these momentous changes were connected in any way. So, I embarked on a five year investigation into that question. The answer is yes.

Around the year 1000, people around the globe started to realize for the first time that they could leave home, travel to other places, find out about their neighbors and adopt new approaches. A wave of Islam came to Northwest China as part of that movement. People embarked on ocean travel, who hadn’t strayed far previously. The Vikings cross from Greenland to what is today Canada. New routes linked the continents together. The Silk Road was an early harbinger which showed the promise of exchange with neighbors in the centuries before 1000. In the year 1000, we start to see trade across great distances, despite the fact that nobody had sophisticated transportation technology. Boat building was improved, but those great distances were traversed on land, wind, and animal power alone. The book is about people building new pathways in the year 1000, discovering that they share the globe with other cultures, that their homes are just one part of a much larger picture.”

Valerie Hansen, Five Books interview, May 23rd, 2020