num_pages: 640
description: Exploring the development of humankindbetween the Old World and the Newfrom15000 BC to AD 1500the acclaimed authorof Ideas and The German Genius offers agroundbreaking new understandingof human history.Why did Asia and Europe develop far earlier than the Americas? What were thefactors that acceleratedor impededdevelopment? How did the experiences of OldWorld inhabitants differ from their New Worldcounterpartsand what factors influenced thosedifferences?In this fascinating and erudite history PeterWatson ponders these questions central to thehuman story. By 15000 BC humans had migratedfrom northeastern Asia across the frozen Beringland bridge to the Americas. When the world warmed up and the last Ice Age came to an endthe Bering Strait refilled with water dividing America from Eurasia. This divisionwith two great populations on Earth each unaware of theatercontinued until Christopher Columbus voyaged to the New World in the fifteenth century.The Great Divide compares the development of human kind in the Old World and the New between 15000 BC and AD 1500. Watson identifies three major differences between the two worldsclimate domesticable mammals and hallucinogenic plantsthat combined to produce very different trajectories of civilization in the two hemispheres. Combining the most up-to-date knowledge in archaeology anthropology geology meteorology cosmology and mythology this unprecedented masterful study offers uniquely revealing insight into what it means to be human.
language: English
title: The Great Divide: History and Human Nature in the Old World and the New
publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson