Pigs ran rampant through the Americas, transforming the landscape as the spread throughout both continents.

After two years of conflict, a million-person strong empire was toppled by disease, dissension, and a thousand European conquerors.

But without the rich gold and silver mines of Mexico, the plantation-friendly climate of the Caribbean, or the exploitive potential of large Indian empires, North America offered little incentive for Spanish officials.

Native Americans lacked the immunities that Europeans and Africans had developed over centuries of deadly epidemic

Men typically hunted and women typically gathered and prepared wild foods. Rich and diverse diets fueled massive population growth across the continent.

When crop yields began to decline, farmers would simply move to another field and allow the land to recover and the forest to regrow before they would again cut the forest, burn the undergrowth, and restart the cycle

Portuguese established forts along the Atlantic coast of Africa during the fifteenth century, inaugurating centuries of European colonization there

Native Americans lacked the immunities that Europeans and Africans had developed over centuries of deadly epidemics and so when Europeans arrived, carrying smallpox, typhus, influenza, diphtheria, measles, and hepatitis, plagues decimated native communities. Death rates tended to be highest near European communities who traveled with children, as children tended to carry the deadliest diseases.9 Many died in war and slavery, but millions died in epidemics. All told, in fact, some scholars estimate that as much as 90 percent of the population of the Americas perished within the first century and a half of European contact

By presuming the natives had no humanity, the Spaniards utterly abandoned theirs.

Native cultures understood ancestry as matrilineal: family and clan identity proceeded along the female line, through mothers and daughters, rather than fathers and sons.

One single building, Pueblo Bonito, stretched over two acres and rose five stories.

Cahokia experienced what one archeologist has called a “big bang” around the year 1050 that included “a virtually instantaneous and pervasive shift in all things political, social, and ideological.”4

“They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor the sins of murder or theft,

Obatala, another god, reflected upon this situation, then went to Olorun for permission to create dry land for all kinds of living creatures to inhabit.

When Obatala returned to his home in the sky for a visit, Olokun summoned the great waves of her vast oceans and sent them surging across the land.

He was given permission, so he sought advice from Orunmila, oldest son of Olorun and the god of prophecy.

The new people built huts as Obatala had done, and soon Ife prospered and became a city

Everyday she had something new that she had to have. These were the results of being pregnant and carrying her child.

So pretty soon, the otter decided he said, “ I think there is some dirt or mud way, way down at the bottom of the ocean. IF we brought up some of that mud, perhaps we could put it on turtle’s back and perhaps this creature from the sky world could live and sustain herself on the back of turtle.”

In the sky world, there were beautiful, beautiful trees and wonderful plants with bright colors and delicious fruits to be eaten.

they flew underneath her and sure enough they caught her

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.