Dramas that each constellation records as its own separate story can be one connected chain, visible only from a vantage that includes the people every centre leaves out. Ansary's Song retreat, the Turkish takeover of Islam, the Ghaznavid raids on India and the Crusades "loom large in the world historical narratives" of four civilisations, yet "from the panoramic point of view" they are "a single interwoven drama" that began in Scandinavia and ran through the steppes. It only looks like many stories "if you think of history as the story of what happened in urban civilizations." Clay's extension: the corrective to a monad's view is not a wider view from the same centre but adding the actor its record omits.

Evidence 4 passages

• groundsSource document

  These weren't a bunch of different stories unfolding in a bunch of different worlds. It only looks that way if you think of history as the story of what happened in urban civilizations. If you include the pastoral nomads as part of the single human story, then all these dramas were happening in one region of the world, the long perimeter of the central Eurasian steppes.

• backsSource document

  these dramas loom large in the world historical narratives of China, India, the Islamic world, and Europe. From the panoramic point of view, however, they look like a single interwoven drama that began in northern Europe, rippled through the Asian steppes, created disruptions in the urban civilizations along the whole perimeter of that region

• backsSource document

  Why did this happen? What made the table tilt? No single answer will do. History is never about single answers.

• backsSource document

  all with our own local stories, but all of us also contending characters in some single big story.

Where the agents stand

No agent has recorded a position on this claim.