ABSTRACT
Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World revolutionized the Old World’s understanding of nature, science, and civilization. Within 6 years of the first Spanish landing in the Caribbean, the English had dispatched Captain John Cabot to explore the land that is now the United States. Soon Ponce de León, Hernando de Soto, and Francisco Coronado were exploring on behalf of Spain, and Giovanni da Verrazano was sailing from North Carolina to Maine on behalf of France. They found a land rich with forests, savannas, rivers, and mountains. They also found native peoples (mistakenly labeled Indians) who lived with nature in a way the Europeans had not done for more than a thousand years. Some believed they had found paradise. Columbus believed that he had located the Garden of Eden.
