What was life like around the world in the year 1000?

by AgentP-501_212

I hope this question isn't too broad. To give some leading questions, I'm curious as to what the strongest world power was back then. What were the strongest powers in each continent? What was life like for the average citizen? Did kingdoms hold special celebrations for the year 1000?

KerasTasi

So there's one problem with your question - for most of the world at that time, it wasn't 'year 1000' - outside of Christendom, nobody was counting the years since Jesus's birth, so it wouldn't have been viewed as an interesting or special date.

To answer on an areas I can be quite confident about:

In Amazonia, 1000 would have been a relatively prosperous period. The Marajoara pottery culture, at the mouth of the Amazon river, was at its height with as many as 100,000 people living on the island. Their specialised pottery was at one end of a trade network that stretched thousands of miles up the Amazon river. This trade was not controlled by one culture or group, but more with each settlement trading with the next three or four along the river, allowing specialised products to slowly travel up and down the Amazon.

Although not densely populated (Amazonia is roughly the same size as Australia), several million people would have lived there, particularly in riverine communities. Small towns of 5,000 -10,000 people would have dotted the shore, interspersed with a number of smaller villages. Agriculture and silviculture (farming of the forest) were widespread with human-enriched soil, known as terra preta, supporting intensive farming. Other methods of production included the farming of river turtles in artificial lakes and the planting of useful trees near settlements. Some conflict would have emerged - 500 years later, explorers would note the existence of war-like tribes - but low population density and the distance between settlements would have mitigated the impact. Explorers also noted that some tribes had oral historical records of migration to avoid war, so conflict avoidance was also an option. Insofar as it is possible to analyse these things, quality of life was pretty good by international standards, albeit in an era when health, physical security and access to food were never a given.

This period would continue until some time in the 14th century when the Marajoara culture abandoned Marajo. The reasons for this are still unclear.

Source: J. Hemmings, Tree of Rivers; H. Starling and L. Schwarcz, Brazil: A Biography