“It was a tremendous ecological convulsion — the greatest event in the history of life since the death of the dinosaurs,” says Mann. “And this underlies a huge amount of history learned in schools: the Industrial Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, the rise of the West — all of these are tied up in what’s been called the ‘Columbian exchange.’ ”
Mann writes about the changed world after Columbus’ voyage in 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, a sequel to his 2006 pre-Columbian history, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. He tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross that almost nothing we consider locally grown was, in fact, native to the Americas.
