El año 1000

People believe that the years immediately before 1000 AD they lacked major cultural developments or geopolitical encounters, that Europeans had not yet reached North America, and that the most important maritime feat was the Viking invasion of Britain. But how to explain the presence of blond people in the murals of the Mayan temples of Chichén Itzá, Mexico? Could it be possible that the Vikings had come to America during the height of the Mayan empire? When did globalization start? Valerie Hansen, an award-winning historian and professor at Yale University, shows that in the year 1000 new trade routes linked the entire world for the first time, ushering in what she calls the big bang of globalization and ushering in a new era of exploration and trade that paved the way for Europeans after Columbus arrived on the continent. Drawing on new historical and archaeological sources, Hansen exposes the contacts between Europe, the Islamic world, Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific and the Mayan world much earlier than historians had established and convincingly demonstrates how these encounters set the stage for the globalization that would dominate the world for centuries to come.