Author: Charles C. Mann

What was the "new world" like before Columbus came along and screwed everything up? The traditional model is an untouched wilderland, a veritable garden of Eden, where isolated pockets of Native Americans lived in harmony with nature, buffalo wandered waving plains of grass, and the pristine wilderness of the Amazon basin was inhabited by small bands of roving peoples who used the bounty of the forest as it was provided...

According to Dr. Mann, the real picture was somewhat different. What the European explorers found was not a pristine untouched wilderness, but the runaway aftermath of an ecology suddenly unchained from it's control species - humanity. The introduction of European diseases into the Native American population wiped out huge swaths of the population, possibly incurring a 95% mortality rate.

Whether or not you agree with the science, the book makes a fascinating read. It definitely makes one question the "Noble Savage" archetype that is perpetrated - for example, he argues that the Yanomamo of the Amazon were actually pushed back into their "primitive" state as survivors of a pre-Columbus society that engineered the Amazon basin in feats of agriculture which we still lack the proper understanding of today.

Highly recommended.

In fact, the argument he makes is that bison weren't exactly very numerous or a staple diet until their control species (humanity) was decimated by disease - at which point they grew to the massive herd sizes that were reported later...