In 1493, by contrast, the world abruptly contracts as Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas become linked together through a frenetic movement of people and goods, as well as plants and animals, across the globe. In 1491 Mann naturally focused mainly on the Indian societies of the Americas, communities that from a European, Asian or African perspective may as well have been located on another planet before 1492. Thus he personalizes for the reader what might otherwise have become just a forced march through a series of dry historical events and facts in this way we don’t just learn about the changes that occurred, we also experience a bit of the awe, and the trauma, of those who lived through them. As in his earlier work, 1491, which described the American continents and their inhabitants before Colón, as Mann refers to Christopher Columbus throughout the book, first reached the New World, Mann enlivens his history by bringing in anecdotes and stories from the diaries, journals and books of individuals who experienced the many upheavals that came with the interconnecting of the continents. With these lines near the beginning of 1493, author Charles Mann sets the stage for a fascinating exploration of the dramatic, far-reaching and largely unforeseen changes that occurred in the time after this sudden linking of the world’s hemispheres, an era he calls the Homogenocene, a period - still on-going - of global homogenization of economics, ecology and humanity. … After 1492 the world’s ecosystems collided and mixed as European vessels carried thousands of spices to new homes across the oceans. Over the two divided halves of Pangaea developed wildly different suites of plants and animals. Geological forces broke up this vast expanse, splitting Eurasia and the Americas. Two hundred and fifty million years ago the world contained a single landmass known to scientists as Pangaea.
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