*A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice*
From celebrated Yale professor Valerie Hansen, a "vivid" and "astonishingly comprehensive account [that] casts world history in a brilliant new light" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and shows how bold explorations and daring trade missions first connected all of the world's societies at the end of the first millennium.
People often believe that the years immediately prior to AD 1000 were, with just a few exceptions, lacking in any major cultural developments or geopolitical encounters, that the Europeans hadn't yet reached North America, and that the farthest feat of sea travel was the Vikings' invasion of Britain. But how, then, to explain the presence of blond-haired people in Maya temple murals at Chichén Itzá, Mexico? Could it be possible that the Vikings had found their way to the Americas during the height of the Maya empire?
Valerie Hansen, an award-winning historian, argues that the year 1000 was the world's first point of major cultural exchange and exploration. Drawing on nearly thirty years of research, she presents a compelling account of first encounters between disparate societies, which sparked conflict and collaboration eerily reminiscent of our contemporary moment.
For readers of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, The Year 1000 is a "fascinating…highly impressive, deeply researched, lively and imaginative work" (The New York Times Book Review) that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about how the modern world came to be. Valerie Hansen is the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, where she teaches Chinese and world history. An accomplished scholar and author, she traveled to nearly twenty countries to conduct research for The Year 1000. She is also the author of The Silk Road: A New History and The Open Empire. "Sometime around the year 1000, Norsemen (and a few women) crossed from Greenland to what is now Canada. This audiobook marks that achievement as the first time goods and ideas could-at least, theoretically-travel around the world from the Americas to Europe, Africa, and Asia, introducing the possibility of true globalism. International and intercontinental trade routes stretched for thousands of miles, ready for European explorers to connect to them. . . . the material is fascinating to those with an interest in the distant origins of the modern world."
