During the nineteenth century, Americans were shocked to learn that the land beneath their feet had once been stalked by terrifying beasts. T. rex and Brontosaurus ruled the continent. North America was home to saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths, great herds of camels and hippos, and sultry tropical forests now fossilized into massive coal seams. How the New World Became Old tells the extraordinary story of how Americans discovered that the New World was not just old—it was a place rooted in deep time.
In this panoramic book, Caroline Winterer traces the history of an idea that today lies at the heart of the nation’s identity as a place of primordial natural beauty. Europeans called America the New World, and literal readings of the Bible suggested that Earth was only six thousand years old. Winterer takes readers from glacier-capped peaks in Yosemite to Alabama slave plantations and canal works in upstate New York, describing how naturalists, explorers, engineers, and ordinary Americans unearthed a past they never suspected, a history more ancient than anyone ever could have imagined.
Drawing on archival evidence ranging from unpublished field notes and letters to early stratigraphic diagrams, How the New World Became Old reveals how the deep time revolution ushered in profound changes in science, literature, art, and religion, and how Americans came to realize that the New World might in fact be the oldest world of all.
Caroline Winterer is the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford University. Her books include American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason and (with Kären Wigen) Time in Maps: From the Age of Discovery to Our Digital Era.
“How the New World Became Old is full of fresh insights about the intellectual history of geology in the nineteenth-century United States and the cultural context in which the science developed. Winterer’s lively, lucid writing makes the book engaging and accessible.”—Marcia Bjornerud, author of Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World and Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks
“A compelling story of culture, fossils, and American history intertwined. Winterer brings a historian’s scholarship and an abiding enthusiasm for fossils to explore America’s long and complicated relationship with the antiquity of deep geological time. Authoritative and engaging, How the New World Became Old gives a fresh perspective on how geology and paleontology helped transform American society.”—Steve Brusatte, New York Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
“How the New World Became Old is exceptional. Winterer’s book is beautifully written, immensely learned but remarkably accessible and extremely timely. No question: this is a tour de force written by a terrifically creative, original, and erudite American cultural historian.”—Suzanne L. Marchand, author of Porcelain: A History from the Heart of Europe
“The lost world of deep time in America is now found—the discovery of the profound antiquity of the newly discovered continent is marvelously detailed in Caroline Winterer’s absorbing and important How the New World Became Old. Winterer reveals, through intense research and compelling narratives, how people came to grips with the radical idea of an unimaginably ancient America.”—Adrienne Mayor, author of Fossil Legends of the First Americans
“Caroline Winterer is a leading light in American intellectual and cultural history, and this book reminds us why. Vivid, luminous, lyrical, nuanced, playful, striking—How the New World Became Old offers a master class in historical research and imagination.”—Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, author of American Intellectual History: A Very Short Introduction and American Nietzsche
