lecture on the 19th of October 2011 at Leiden Univ

Charles C. Mann (19th of October 2011)

writer of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus will give a lecture on the 19th of October 2011 about his newest book with special thanks to Publisher Nieuw Amsterdam and the Faculty of Archaeology.

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Having resurrected the isolated splendors of the pre-Columbian Americas in his bestselling 1491, Mann explores the global convergences--and upheavals--inaugurated by their discovery in this fascinating survey of the "Homogenocene" era. Mann traces the subtle, epochal influences of the intercontinental "Columbian Exchange" of flora, fauna, commodities, and peoples, showing how European honeybees and earthworms remade New World landscapes; how New World corn, potatoes, and fertilizer ignited Eurasian population booms; how Old World diseases prompted an eruption of slavery in the Western Hemisphere (the influx of Africans, not Europeans, to the Americas, Mann notes, was the main demographic result of the Contact); how Latin American silver undermined China's Ming Dynasty; and how the decimation of Indian peoples changed the world's climate.

To get an impression of the book read The New York Times Review

Fore more detailed information please contact Dr. Alexander Geurds
071-527 2206 or a.geurds@arch.leidenuniv.nl

See: http://www.services-facilities.leiden.edu/studium-generale/activities/charles-c-mann.html