A subtler watershed
If, then, the events around 1500 were as much the culmination of other convergent forces as the beginning of a new phase of history, the larger watershed out of which the Iberian voyages emerged needs to be placed several centuries earlier.
Is the quest for antecedents never-ending? After all, as the ancients said, history does not make leaps. Each event is connected to others in long historical strings. Andre Gunder Frank has provocatively argued that world systems can be traced back 5,000 years.[169] Beginnings, however, are different from watersheds. Geographic watersheds may be dramatic mountain ranges, but often they are barely perceptible rises in the landscape. The historical watershed between the age dominated by divergent forces and the new age in which convergent forces moved to the fore is of the latter sort. It would not have been obvious to those living at the time, and only slowly did it dawn on some that they were living in a new age.Even though nothing dramatic happened that year, 1000 ce seems about the point when the forces for divergence were overtaken by ones promoting convergence. HistorianJohn Man suggests a salient fact about that year: “it was possible for the first time... to pass an object, or a message, right around the world.” The Pacific was still a formidable barrier, but the Vikings' transAtlantic link reconnected the Americas to the three Old World continents. That link stayed open until about a century before Columbus' voyages, but, as Man admits, the potential was unrealized: no object, idea, or individual did indeed make a global circuit.[170] If 1000 was a watershed, the more visible steps to the present came somewhat later as the Great Convergence gained speed.
Underlying this intensification of contacts (and conflicts) was a growing human population, which had risen from an estimated 5 million in 5000 bce to 50 million in 1000 bce and to some 265 million in 1000 ce.
Despite the devastation caused by the Black Death, world population doubled by the late 1500s. After a pause, the number of humans doubled and redoubled at ever- shorter intervals, recently passing 6,000 million.[171] Whatever the causes of this growth, the effect was to promote human contact and interaction. Language again provides a convenient shorthand for tracing the power of convergence. As the result of political consolidation some languages gained in importance, whether as first or second languages, while others became marginalized or disappeared. From an estimated 10,000 or 18,000 in use in 1000 ce, the number of spoken languages fell to half that by the late twentieth century. Globalization is expected to cut the number in half again before 2100, but envisioning a world in which everyone speaks a single language seems farfetched. The 500 to 600 languages that are now the mother tongues of 96 percent of the world's people seem destined to survive.[172] In language, creed, and custom the products of millennia of divergence persist as a powerful subtext in the age of convergence.There are a number of advantages to conceptualizing the past as two great eras: one dominated by divergence, the other dominated by convergence. In the first place, these eras include the entire human past and provide insight into unfolding future events. Prehistory ceases to be a meaningless prelude to “real” history. The dramatic changes of the present day cease to be novelties and become meaningful lenses through which to understand major historical trends. Secondly, divergence and convergence are neutral concepts compared to the value-laden “classical antiquity” and “modern.” Divergence is not a story of disintegration or failure any more than convergence is a story of providence or progress. The age of divergence produced successful adaptations to different environments and the development of a wealth of ideas, technologies, and forms of artistic expression that could be borrowed, exchanged, or discarded as contacts increased.
Divergence also laid the basis for violent conflicts based in identity, many of which still smolder. Convergence has promoted cooperation and understanding, but has also increased the size and destructiveness of global clashes. As Tom Friedman suggested in his first major meditation on globalization, the internationally produced technological perfection of the Lexus and the passionately defended, local olive tree reflect human values, values that may be equally prized, even if they may not be equally relevant to the present stage of history.[173] Pairing divergence and convergence as coequal themes makes it easier to talk about diversity as a norm, not an exception. Finally, it should be stressed that convergence is more complex than homogenization, just as divergence is more complex than disintegration. Elements of divergence and convergence are evident in both eras, even if they are not dominant. For all their importance as centrifugal forces, empires need to be understood as operating within a rich cultural heritage rather than as the beginning of history.