Globalization - going strong after 500,000 years

Sojourners Online has a historical study on globalization.

But contrary to that conventional wisdom, globalization is not a new phenomenon: It is at least half a million years old, and began when our prehistoric ancestors walked out of Africa, into the Middle East, Europe, and Asia—and eventually Australasia and the Americas. Long after that first-stage globalization, human beings gradually settled down in fixed communities and territories and began exchanging hunting and gathering for farming.

Now a new sort of "globalization" started. It was the exchange of culturally specific knowledge and things, cultivatable plants and domesticated animals, weapons and jewelry, tools and toys, techniques for casting pots and weaving cloth and shaping metals, and stories—crucial stories about who we are, why we are here, who we worship and obey, and why. This second stage of globalization, of course, is hardly new either - it had been underway for at least 15,000 to 20,000 years before Christ's birth.

There's more, of course, but I promised when I started One Hand Clapping that I'd try to keep postings shorter than they were at Gunner20.