The 500th anniversary of the first circumnavigation of the globe and ‘globalisation’

Fernando Sáez Lara

Director, National Anthropology Museum

On returning to Sanlúcar, their port of departure, in September 1522, the survivors of the expedition led by Magellan and then by Elcano, following the former’s death on Mactan, confirmed the Copernican Projection of the spherical shape of the Earth. And just thirty years on,they completed Columbus’s dream of reaching the Indies from Europeby sailing westward. Along the way, they confirmed the enormous expanse to the south of that great and ‘unknown’ obstacle that had stood in the way of the aims of the man from Genoa’s fleet – never had an accident had more tremendous consequences for humanity! And especially, they established the finitude, and as we would state today with a technoneologism, the ‘connectibility’, of the sphere on which we live: it was possible to travel in many fewer years than those which the average life then lasted on any part of the planet, and more importantly, to also make the return voyage, bringing goodsof all kinds whose value, increased by their exoticism, made the ‘investment’ worth it. Later, it would also be possible to ‘triangulate’ various points on the sphere to carry goods – including human beings – from one region to another with the aim of improving the profitability of certain types of production, blurring without consideration the previously existing outlines of ancient cultural environments; On returning to Sanlúcar, their port of departure, in September 1522, the survivors of the expedition led by Magellan and then by Elcano, following the former’s death on Mactan, confirmed the Copernican Projection of the spherical shape of the Earth. And just thirty years on,they completed Columbus’s dream of reaching the Indies from Europeby sailing westward. Along the way, they confirmed the enormous expanse to the south of that great and ‘unknown’ obstacle that had stood in the way of the aims of the man from Genoa’s fleet – never had an accident had more tremendous consequences for humanity! And especially, they established the finitude, and as we would state today with a technoneologism, the ‘connectibility’, of the sphere on which we live: it was possible to travel in many fewer years than those which the average life then lasted on any part of the planet, and more importantly, to also make the return voyage, bringing goodsof all kinds whose value, increased by their exoticism, made the ‘investment’ worth it. Later, it would also be possible to ‘triangulate’ various points on the sphere to carry goods – including human beings – from one region to another with the aim of improving the profitability of certain types of production, blurring without consideration the previously existing outlines of ancient cultural environments