Ocean: A History of the Atlantic Before Columbus

Historian Haywood (Timelines: The Events That Shaped History) has penned a sweeping, eye-opening maritime history of the North Atlantic Ocean. Crammed with fascinating stories and details, this narrative spans thousands of years, from Stone Age hunter-gatherers who put dugout canoes to sea, to the transoceanic voyages of Christopher Columbus in the 1490s. The book also touches on the maritime activities (mostly harvesting of fish and shellfish) of Indigenous peoples in North America. For example, readers learn about the Calusa people of what is now southwest Florida, whose towns were constructed on built-up piles of oyster shells; the royal palace’s foundation was 18.5 billion shells. However, the book’s primary focus is on Celtic, Norse, and other European seafarers, such as Irish hermits, Basque whalers, German merchants, Andalusian explorers, and even mice, which came over on a Viking ship to the isolated Madeira islands a thousand years ago. Haywood explores millennia of seaborne trading and raiding, cultural and genetic interchange, immigration, and colonization from Greenland to Cabo Verde.