ABSTRACT
European cultural centres opened up to new experiences with reports from what they soon called the New World, following Columbus's first voyage of 1492. In the course of the sixteenth century, Iberian reports of what was to be found in the Americas were published to reveal novelties unimagined in the classical texts that had long informed the worldview of learned Europeans. Natural history and forms of comparative anthropology expanded the conceivable in previously unexampled ways. Acosta's Natural and Moral History of the Indies is one of the most celebrated such works, and was translated into English during the period precisely because of the immense interest that it generated. Acosta is especially concerned in assessing these recent novelties in the light of accepted scriptural and historical authorities, so as to integrate existing established knowledge with the novelties that are its chief subject.
