Charles Mann's 1493. It could be subtitled, How Things Got So Fucked Up.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/books/...eview.html
One thing for sure is that except to the most determined of pseudo-scientist or conspiracy freaks, this is the death knell to any idea of pre-Columbian contact between the Old World and the New. The Vikings in L'Anse aux Meadows must have landed in an uninhabited spot else the microbes would have begun their work centuries earlier.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/books/...eview.html
Quote:“1493” picks up where Mann’s best seller, “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus,” left off. In 1491, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were almost impassable barriers. America might as well have been on another planet from Europe and Asia. But Columbus’s arrival in the Caribbean the following year changed everything. Plants, animals, microbes and cultures began washing around the world, taking tomatoes to Massachusetts, corn to the Philippines and slaves, markets and malaria almost everywhere. It was one world, ready or not.
One thing for sure is that except to the most determined of pseudo-scientist or conspiracy freaks, this is the death knell to any idea of pre-Columbian contact between the Old World and the New. The Vikings in L'Anse aux Meadows must have landed in an uninhabited spot else the microbes would have begun their work centuries earlier.
