Part One: The World Around 1000 CE

Around 1000 CE, societies across the world were building kingdoms, maintaining trade networks, developing cities, and adapting to changing environments. This map provides a broad geographical view of the world at the beginning of our journey.

Credit: World map: OER Project, “1000 CE Political Map,” CC BY 4.0.

PART ONE: A WORLD ALREADY IN MOTION

Before Atascosa County

Part One: A World Already in Motion

Long before Atascosa County had a name, long before its towns, roads, ranches, and communities took shape, people were already making lives on this land.

Their stories are part of a much longer human history, one that reaches far beyond the boundaries we recognize today.

To understand the place we now call Atascosa County, we have to begin by looking beyond it. We have to consider the world its earliest inhabitants lived in, the societies developing across distant continents, and the networks of trade, migration, and exchange connecting people across enormous distances.

So we begin around the year 1000 CE, more than eight centuries before Atascosa County would officially exist.

This is a journey through the world as it was, the changes that followed, and the events that would eventually bring us closer to the history of this place.

This is Before Atascosa County.

The World Around Us

The year is 1000 CE. We zoom out from the land that will one day become Atascosa County, taking a moment to understand the wider world as it existed when Indigenous communities were already making their homes here.

We pause as the land now called North America comes into view. Along the rivers and waterways, people move through familiar landscapes, following seasonal resources, hunting, fishing, gathering, and maintaining relationships with the places that sustain them. They leave behind evidence of their lives in the form of stone tools, projectile points, pottery, and other artifacts. These remnants of material culture offer us glimpses into the daily lives of people who inhabited this region long before the boundaries of Atascosa County existed.

Their world is not isolated from the changes taking place elsewhere. Across North America and throughout the Americas, Indigenous societies maintain trade networks, develop agricultural systems, establish settlements, and organize their communities in ways that reflect their environments and histories. Some live in large population centers supported by extensive agriculture. Others maintain more mobile ways of life, following the seasonal availability of plants, animals, and other resources. These are different ways of living in a world already full of human ingenuity, knowledge, and adaptation.

We will return to the people of this region shortly. For now, we pull back even farther.

A World of Trade and Opportunity

While communities across North America maintain their own relationships with the land, trade, and one another, societies elsewhere in the world are developing along different paths. The year is 1000 CE, and beyond the Americas, people build cities, establish kingdoms, expand trade networks, and explore distant coastlines.

Across the Pacific

Our attention turns across the Pacific to China.

We descend toward one of the cities of the Song Dynasty. Below us, crowded streets wind between shops, workshops, temples, and homes. Merchants display silk, ceramics, food, and other goods. Along the waterways, boats carry cargo between ports and inland markets. Craftspeople work in specialized trades, producing goods for customers both near and far. In the larger cities, commerce fills the streets, and the movement of people and goods connects communities across enormous distances.

Pavilion with Figures, an unidentified Chinese handscroll dating to the Five Dynasties or early Song period. Works such as this provide a glimpse into the artistic traditions of China during the period.

Credit: Song Dynasty artwork: Pavilion with Figures, unidentified Chinese artist, 10th century (possibly). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Object 47.18.119. Public domain.

China is governed by the Song Dynasty, which came to power in 960 CE. Its rulers preside over an extensive bureaucracy, supported by a system of examinations through which educated men can pursue positions in government. Beyond the cities, farmers cultivate the land that supports a growing population and an increasingly commercial economy.

Over the centuries that follow, Song China will see remarkable developments in printing, manufacturing, and technology. Government-issued paper currency will come into use during the 1020s, while gunpowder will find increasingly sophisticated military applications. Chinese merchants will continue to carry silk, porcelain, textiles, and other goods through extensive networks of land and maritime trade.

This is a society with large urban centers, specialized industries, an established system of government, and commercial connections reaching far beyond its borders.

Westward to Europe

Now we turn west.

Across much of Europe, the landscape is made up of villages, farms, monasteries, small towns, and fortified settlements. We descend toward a rural community. Fields stretch beyond its homes, where farmers work the soil and tend livestock. A church stands near the center of village life. At a nearby market, people exchange food, tools, cloth, and other necessities. Travelers bring news from neighboring communities, while merchants carry goods along roads and waterways.

But Europe is not one country. Political authority is divided among competing kingdoms, principalities, and territories. Kings depend on alliances, inheritance, military strength, and the loyalty of powerful local lords to maintain control. Religious institutions also hold considerable influence, with bishops and monasteries possessing land, wealth, and authority of their own.

Farther east, the Byzantine Empire, centered on Constantinople, remains a powerful continuation of the Roman imperial world. Across the continent, political boundaries and loyalties are complicated, and they will continue to change over the centuries ahead.

Europe's communities are not isolated from the rest of the world, however. Merchants, travelers, and traders carry goods and information across regional and continental networks. The goods arriving in European markets often have traveled enormous distances before reaching their final buyers.

Medieval plowing scene depicting two workers guiding an ox-drawn plow. Illustration from a 14th-century manuscript, reproduced in Philip Van Ness Myers, Medieval and Modern History (1905).

A World Connected by Trade

These connections extend far beyond Europe and China. For centuries, merchants have carried goods between East Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe through interconnected networks of land and maritime routes. These are not single roads or journeys made by one merchant from beginning to end. Goods pass through many hands, moving between markets, ports, and trading communities along the way.

Trade across the Indian Ocean connected East African, Arabian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian communities. Seasonal monsoon winds helped sailors navigate these routes and maintain commercial relationships across long distances.

Credit: Map: KhasEkadashTili, “Ancient Indian Maritime Trade Routes” (2025), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The reconstructed Norse buildings at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. Archaeological evidence establishes a Norse presence in North America around the year 1000.

Credit: L'Anse aux Meadows photograph: Eric Titcombe, “L'Anse Aux Meadows: Exterior of reconstructed Viking house,” 2013. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

Across the Sahara

Now we travel south, toward the western edge of the Sahara Desert, where the dry grasslands of the Sahel meet the great trade routes crossing North Africa.

We arrive at a trading center. Merchants and travelers gather with goods brought from different corners of the region. Caravans arrive from the north carrying salt from the Sahara, along with textiles, copper, and other manufactured goods. Traders from the south bring gold, ivory, and products from communities farther inland. Goods are weighed, exchanged, and prepared for journeys that may carry them hundreds or even thousands of miles. Languages and customs meet in these markets, where commercial relationships connect people who may never see the distant places from which their goods originated.

This region is part of the sphere of influence of the Empire of Ghana, often associated with the Soninke tradition of Wagadu, a powerful West African state whose rulers benefit from the trade moving through their territories. By regulating and taxing commerce, they accumulate wealth and strengthen their political authority. The empire's influence rests not only on the movement of gold, but also on agriculture, local industries, established communities, and relationships with neighboring peoples.

The Empire of Ghana occupied an important position within West African commercial networks. Gold, salt, and other goods moved through trading centers connecting the Sahel with North Africa.

Credit: Ghana Empire map: Amitchell125, “The Ghana Empire,” 2021. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Sahara is not an impassable barrier separating two worlds. It is crossed by established trade routes, linking West African societies with North Africa and the Mediterranean. These networks have existed for centuries, and they will become increasingly important to the ambitions of European merchants and rulers in the centuries ahead.

The world around 1000 CE is already interconnected in countless ways. But the centuries that follow will bring enormous changes to the political, economic, and cultural landscape of several continents.

Several Centuries of Change

Our journey through this world does not end in the year 1000. We now move forward through the centuries, watching as kingdoms rise and fall, empires expand, and trade networks reshape relationships between distant societies.

In West Africa, the Mali Empire emerges as a powerful kingdom, drawing wealth from its control of important trade routes and access to gold-producing regions. Its rulers become known far beyond the African continent. In 1324, Mansa Musa, the ruler of Mali, travels to Mecca on a pilgrimage that brings the extraordinary wealth of his kingdom to the attention of merchants and observers throughout the Mediterranean world.

Across Eurasia, the Mongol Empire connects vast territories through conquest, commerce, and diplomacy. Meanwhile, the Black Death sweeps through interconnected trade networks during the fourteenth century, devastating populations across Europe, North Africa, and Asia.

On the Iberian Peninsula, the Christian kingdoms continue their centuries-long expansion southward. Portugal consolidates its territory and emerges from a succession crisis in the late fourteenth century under a new ruling dynasty. Its position along the Atlantic coast, combined with growing commercial and political ambitions, will soon encourage its rulers to look beyond the familiar boundaries of Europe.

And far to the east, China's Ming Dynasty prepares its own ambitious maritime expeditions. Beginning in 1405, the fleets of Admiral Zheng He travel across the Indian Ocean, reaching ports along the coasts of Asia and Africa. [Columbia University's overview of the Ming voyages](https://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1000ce_mingvoyages.htm) documents the seven expeditions between 1405 and 1433.

The world has not stood still. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, societies across several continents are pursuing new opportunities through trade, diplomacy, exploration, and expansion.

For Portugal, the next step will begin across the Strait of Gibraltar.

The Story Continues

By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the world has changed considerably from the one we encountered around 1000 CE. Kingdoms have risen and fallen, empires have expanded, trade networks have carried goods and ideas across continents, and new political ambitions are reshaping relationships between distant societies.

Across the Atlantic, Portugal is preparing to take a more active role in this changing world.

In 1415, Portuguese forces will cross the Strait of Gibraltar and capture the North African port of Ceuta. The event will mark an important turning point in Portugal's overseas ambitions and open a new chapter in the history of European expansion.

But Portugal is not entering an empty world. The lands and waters its ships will reach are already home to established communities, kingdoms, and trading networks with histories of their own.

In the next installment of Before Atascosa County, we turn toward Portugal, West Africa, and the beginnings of a new era of Atlantic exploration.

Part Two: The Atlantic Opens
Coming Monday, November 9.

Sources and Further Reading

The following sources informed the historical background and subjects explored in this installment. They offer additional reading on the societies, trade networks, and political developments shaping the world around 1000 CE and in the centuries that followed.

Song China and the Ming Voyages

• Columbia University, Asia for Educators. “China in 1000 CE: The Song Economic Revolution.”

• Columbia University, Asia for Educators. “The Ming Voyages.”

Europe and the Byzantine Empire

• Holmes, Catherine. Basil II and the Governance of Empire (976–1025). Oxford University Press, 2005.

Indian Ocean Trade

• Library of Congress. “Africa in the Indian Ocean World.”

• Ducène, Jean-Charles. “The Islamic Trade Network in the Indian Ocean (Ninth to Eleventh Centuries).” 2025.

Norse Exploration

• Parks Canada. “L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site.”

West African Kingdoms

• Gestrich, Nikolas. “The Empire of Ghana.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, 2019.

• Canós-Donnay, Sirio. “The Empire of Mali.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, 2019.

The Mongol Empire and the Black Death

• Kalra, Prajakti. “Pax Mongolica: Trade and Traders in the Mongol Empire.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, 2020.

• Barker, Hannah. “Laying the Corpses to Rest: Grain, Embargoes, and Yersinia pestis in the Black Sea, 1346–48.” Speculum 96, no. 1 (2021).

This is a selective bibliography of sources consulted for this installment, not an exhaustive list of every work related to the subjects discussed.