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@Oliver Schick
Something I always find interesting is when evidence is uncovered of ancient trade links.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/26/images-of-cockatoo-on-13-century-vatican-manuscript-inspire-trade-route-rethink
We tend to assume nowadays that the pre-steam and pre-electricity world was very disconnected, but I don't think that's true. I strongly suspect that our current population estimates are too low and that there were much larger human populations in ancient times than we think there were, but that they were often decimated by exhaustion of their environments (sometimes brought on by climate change, e.g. Mayan or Tiwanakuan agriculture seems to have pushed the environment to its limits so that even fairly minor climate change would have had a terrible impact--but, of course, there would have been other factors at play simultaneously, too).