America Wasn't Exactly a New World, but a Very Old One Uploaded
by 4micaman December 17, 2011 This is a two part series. Second
part starts @50:03 History books traditionally depict the pre-
Columbus Americas as a pristine wilderness where small native
villages lived in harmony with nature. But scientific evidence
tells a very different story: When Columbus stepped ashore in
1492, millions of people were already living there. America
wasn't exactly a New World, but a very old one whose inhabitants
had built a vast infrastructure of cities, orchards, canals and
causeways. The English brought honeybees to the Americas for
honey, but the bees pollinated orchards along the East Coast.
Thanks to the feral honeybees, many of the plants the Europeans
brought, like apples and peaches, proliferated. Some 12,000
years ago, North American mammoths, ancient horses, and other
large mammals vanished. The first horses in America since the
Pleistocene era arrived with Columbus in 1493. Settlers in the
Americas told of rivers