As we’ve mentioned before, when the news gives us space, we’re going to work to bring you a review of a space-related book, movie, or other merchandise each week. This week, we’re looking at Charles C. Mann’s book, 1491, which looks at how humans have terraformed our own world, both on purpose and by mistake. 

This fast-paced history book looks back to the first mixing of peoples from the old and new world and combines data from traditional archaeology digs and novel satellite techniques to tell a richer story than is told in your standard history book. As a fan of satellite imagery, I delighted in learning how lidar, or laser altimetry, and other remote sensing techniques can be used not just to learn about the earth today, but about the earth in the past, and things that could potentially affect humanity’s ability to terraform other worlds in the future.

One of the oddest things I learned in this book is that earthworms are not native to North America. These earth aerating creepy crawlers had been eradicated during the last glacial period. They weren’t so much purposely re-introduced, as they made their way over in root balls and ships ballast. With the arrival of earthworms, the forests of the northeast suffered a sudden decrease in biodiversity as the earthworms rapidly changed the soil, and removed the thick layers of leaves and debris that once covered the forest floor. This made room for invasive plants and the related invasive bugs and other critters to carve out spaces in the environment, changing North America forever.

This book is filled with these kinds of facts that show how seemingly small changes to a world can change the ecosystem forever. It also shows how these changes are nothing new but have been going on for thousands of years, with fish farming, canals and irrigation, and other aquascaping being evident in South America more than 2,000 years ago. Humans shape our world.

Inspired by this more than 500-page epic reality tale, I am now off to go pour through Google Earth to see the ancient places where now lost civilizations transformed our planet to build thriving cultures that spanned continents. If you are intimidated by the size of this tome, I’d like to assure you that it is written in a way that you can set it down and come back to it over time. It is also available as an audiobook, so if you’re like me, you can learn about how humans have long changed the Earth while you terraform your backyard for that next big garden project.

1491 by Charles Mann is published by Alfred Knopf of New York, is copyright 2005, and has been sitting on my “to review” pile for an embarrassingly long period of time. Go get it now, read about what we knew, and know that here on Daily Space we’ll bring you all the updates as we discover more about our world.