1491

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/1491-charles-c-mann/1100618256?ean=9781400032051

This is an interesting book that tries to construct the history of North America before Columbus arrived. It has a few exciting and controverial ideas in it-- that Nature is not normative and that Native Americans tended and farmed the forests. Burning them every year in some parts of North america. Spreading edible trees in South America.

That the idea of an unchanging wilderness is wrong. Species come and go, wax and wane. A warm century will cause some animals and plants to spread. A cold century will the previous successors to die out. New plants and animals will take over. Another warm century later on will cause a different set of plants and animals to grow, not the same set that thrived the previous warm century. The winderness can radically change over time. Our modern idea that natural winderness is unchanging is probably not helpful.

The winderness we know today is not the winderness the Indias had in 1491, which was different than the winderness of 10,000 BC.  The vast herds of buffalo that roamed the plains in the 1600's and 1700's were probably there not because vast herds of buffalo are natural in North America, but because the Indians who hunted the buffalo and kept them in check, died from small pox. Without the Indians hunting the buffalo, the buffalo numbers skyrocketed.