I'm John Batsch with Professor Dan Flores whose no book Wild New World tells the epic

story of animals and people in America. First contact from European diary keepers and chronologies

that are important here, 16th, 17th century.

And what I learn is that the Europeans were amazed, flabbergasted at the range of animals

they had no comparable name for or had never experienced. This was the Eurasian people who came

13,000 years ago but in those 13,000 year differences there had been major

changes in Europe and in North America

for the biosphere that they're now entering. And at first, Dan, there are quotes, one young

man named Wood,'s he's amazed he's overwhelmed he sees

this as awe with awe does that go away quickly or does that remain into the 18th century that awe of the

scale of wildlife? It remains through a great deal of American history in part because Europeans bring with

them a knowledge of the old world that goes back to the Greeks and Romans and in some cases even

farther, they have what's called a great chain of being that enumerates and illustrates all the creatures that you know as a European, but they have no

conception that there are other grand continents across the oceans.

And when they arrive in the Americas and then begin confronting

thousands of new birds, new mammals, new reptiles, new plants that they have no idea about.

They are frankly flabberg acid.

And they're flabberg acid in particular,

after the great dying, we call it it when old world diseases kill as many as 80

85% of native people in the Americas and all of this preserved biology begins to undergo a kind of

of an ecological release Europeans are simply stunned at the abundance of creatures that are available in the Americas.

So it's a wholehearted kind of confronting the wonder of the Americas for the first time and I go to some links to

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