| Great interregional networks of trade, conquests, and exchanges of ideas blurred the boundaries between the major societies in the Eastern Hemisphere, and oceanic travel opened the way for a fully global network. In this emerging global network, as Europeans began to cross the Atlantic, the older temple-palace civilizations of the Western Hemisphere were destroyed. Although the nomadic peoples of central Eurasia played a significant role in hemispheric interactions, by 1500 they had become peripheral peoples with little ability to influence major developments. The emerging great powers were the monarchical states of western Europe and the bureaucratic gunpowder empires in the rest of the Eastern Hemisphere. (See Global and Comparative Dimensions) | 1 |
