The Atlantic Ocean was just as wide and deep and as wet and salty before the beginning of the thirteenth century as after, but it took the human touch to make it what it is today – a bridge between the New World and the Old, the highway for the commerce between East and West.
For thousands of years the endless Russian plains lay ready to offer their abundant harvests to whomsoever should take the trouble to sow the first grain. But the aspect of that country today would be a very different one if the hand of a German or a Frank, rather than that of a Slav, had guided the iron-pointed stick that ploughed the first furrows.