book reviews

A sense of place The Mapping of North America by Philip D. Burden Raleigh Publications, 46 Talbot Road, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire WD3 1HE, UK (US office: PO Box 16910, Stamford, Connecticut 06905): 1996. Pp. 568. $195, £120 Jared M. Diamond

Today, no prudent motorist, sailor, pilot or hiker sets out into unfamiliar terrain without a printed map. We of the twentieth century take this dependence of travel on maps so completely for granted that we forget how recent it is. The first printed maps date only from the 1470s, a mere two decades after Gutenberg’s perfection of printing with movable type around 1455. Techniques of mapmaking evolved rapidly thereafter. So the most revolutionary change in the history of cartography coincides with the most revolutionary change in Europeans’ Abraham Ortelius’s classic map of the American continents published in Antwerp in 1570. knowledge of world geography, following Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the beliefs that California is an island, that north- no longer existed, having been destroyed by Americas in 1492. west America has a land connection to Siberia, European-born epidemic diseases spread The earliest sketch map of any part of the that a strait separates Central America from from contacts with de Soto and from Euro- Americas dates from 1492 or 1493; the earli- South America, and that the Amazon River pean visitors to the coast — diseases to which est preserved printed map of the Americas flows northwards rather than eastwards. Ini- Europeans had acquired genetic and from 1506. The succession of printed New tially less obvious, but even more important, immune resistance through a long history of World maps that followed is triply interest- is the book’s relevance to the fields of anthro- exposure, but to which Native Americans ing: it illustrates the development of carto- pology, biology, epidemiology and linguistics. had no resistance. graphy, the acquisition of European geo- One example of that relevance must suffice. C. Hudson, C. DePratter and M. Smith graphic knowledge of an entire hemisphere, Burden reproduces and discusses the first (pp 77–98 in First Encounters, eds. J. T. and a series of time-machine-like snapshots printed detailed regional map of the south- Milanich and S. Milbrath, University of of Native American and European colonial eastern United States: the map prepared by Florida Press, Gainesville, 1989) have recon- settlements. the Spanish cosmographer-royal Gerónimo structed de Soto’s route through the south- Philip Burden’s lavish book assembles and de Chaves, published in 1584 in the Addita- east in detail, by correlating the Chaves/ discusses all 410 known printed maps of mentum III of Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum Ortelius map and the Spanish archival map North America from that earliest one of 1506 Orbis Terrarum. As the primary printed con- underlying it with archaeological evidence up to 1670. For each map, Burden provides a temporary map that drew heavily on find- of de Soto’s passage. That evidence includes detailed photograph, a description of its ings by the expedition of the Spanish explor- datable sixteenth-century European glass publication, an account of the sources and er Hernando de Soto through the southeast beads and skeletons of Indians whose bones explorations on which it is based, a list of all in 1539–43, this document possesses unique show wounds inflicted by European swords surviving copies, and an analysis of variants. significance. and lances. The Chaves/Ortelius map there- This last analysis is critical for identifying Along with the Fertile Crescent and by comes to life, as the sole preserved blue- which particular map was the model and China, the southeastern United States was print of an independently evolved human which were copies or derivatives, what are the one of barely half-a-dozen areas of the world universe depicted at its peak, and on the eve differences among them, and the relative con- where agriculture arose independently. of its disintegration. tributions of new geographic knowledge and Between about 2500 BC and AD 1539, that rise The interpreted map shows us the geo- copying changes or errors to those differences. of southeastern agriculture fuelled in turn graphic extent of the chiefdoms; relations Many of the maps are ones that Burden the independent emergence of towns, chief- between chiefdom size, political complexity himself rediscovered in collections; even doms, complexly structured societies, and and social organization that are central in more of the maps are preserved only as single the incipient use of metal. So those develop- theories of the evolution of human institu- copies; and many in private collections ments in the southeast are important to any tions; the fascinatingly wide uninhabited remain inaccessible to the public except for anthropologist and sociologist interested in buffer zones (up to 200 km) separating chief- the reproductions in this book. understanding the evolution of human soci- doms locked in chronic warfare; the pre-col- Important discoveries are still to be eties around the world. lapse distributions of Native American lan- expected, as tantalizingly indicated by an But de Soto and his companions proved guage groups; the westward attenuation of appendix listing “lost maps” to whose for- to be the last as well as the first literate Native American agricultural systems mer existence Burden found clues. observers to encounter those southeastern towards the arid zone of Texas; and the east- Through these 410 maps we see vividly the societies intact, because the next European ward attenuation of bison hunting. development of geographic knowledge of penetration of the region did not take place All these unique snapshots are important North America: for instance, the gradual until the late 1600s. to linguists, anthropologists and biogeogra- abandonment of long-persisting erroneous By that time, the southeastern chiefdoms phers, while the depopulation of those soci-

NATURE | VOL 389 | 4 SEPTEMBER 1997 Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1997 31 book reviews eties continues to provoke a lively debate among epidemiologists and students of Classic writings infectious diseases. So much can be gleaned from this map, Galileo’s Commandment: An but each of Burden’s 409 other maps has its Anthology of Great Science Writing own corresponding context. Although the edited by Edmund Blair Bolles resulting book is expensive, it gives value for W. H. Freeman, $26.95 money with its large format (14 x 10 inches), A bumper collection that ranges widely across length (568 pages), and lavish illustrations time and disciplines, from Herodotus on the Nile and referencing. Much of the information is Valley to Isaac Asimov on death in the laboratory. unobtainable elsewhere. The editor, who introduces each piece, divides Any large institution of knowledge, and the book into three parts: an opening section in individual scholars concerned with North which scientists try to understand science, a long American colonial history and Native Ameri- middle section that shows how the scientific can societies, will require the book. For non- imagination attempts to understand nature, and specialists it is fun to browse, beautiful to look a third section in which writers transform at, and an inexhaustible source of interest. scientific efforts into literary achievements. The Mapping of North Americawould be a nice upmarket present to one of your Great Essays in Science treasured friends — or to yourself. From a plate in The Birds of Africa: Volume V edited by Martin Gardner Jared M. Diamond is in the Department of edited by E. K. Urban, C. H. Fry and S. Keith with OUP, £8.99 (pbk) Physiology, University of California Medical illustrations by Martin Woodcock and Ian Willis. First published in 1957 and later reissued under School, Los Angeles, California 90095-1751, USA. In a review in Nature of volume three, C. M. the title The Sacred Beetle and Other Great Perrins said that the project “continues on its Essays in Science, this anthology aims, in way to becoming the standard work on African Gardner’s words, “to spread before the reader, ornithology for the twenty-first century”. whether his or her interest in science be Winged wonders Academic, $145, £85. passionate or mild, a sumptuous feast of great The Atlas of Southern African Birds writing — absorbing, thought-disturbing edited by J. A. Harrison, D. G. Allan, L. G. ical and subtropical climates, or summer and pieces that have something important to say Underhill, M. Herremans, A. J. Tree, winter rainfall areas, and these analyses pro- about science and say it forcibly and well”. V. Parker and C. J. Brown vide revealing insight into these patterns. For “There are many pleasurable surprises in this BirdLife South Africa, PO Box 34046, Rhodes biologists engaged in, or planning, studies highly individual selection”, wrote Nature’s Gift, 7707, South Africa: 1997. Two volumes. on southern African birds, this work will reviewer of an earlier edition. Pp. 1,500. R648 prove indispensable. Michael Cherry There are some minor faults: the texts for Essential Classics in Science each species, for example, are not similarly CD-ROM edited by John Gribbin and Pat Coyne This atlas is the result of the largest biodiver- enlightening. Of necessity, reporting for all Electric Book Company, 20 Cambridge Drive, sity project yet completed on the African areas has not been uniformly regular, as the London SE12 8AJ, UK (tel./fax: +44 (0)181 488 continent. Covering 932 bird species, it rep- density of competent observers is not evenly 3872; e-mail: [email protected]), resents the work of 5,000 field volunteers distributed throughout the subcontinent. £19.95 over a five-year period, with another five But rather than being disingenuous, the edi- Complete and unabridged works by Darwin years for data-processing, writing and edit- tors are at pains to point out, in a quantifiable (Origin of Species), Einstein (The Meaning of ing the contributions of 60 authors. way, exactly what the limitations of the data Relativity), Faraday (The Chemical History of a The result has been well worth the wait. are, which provides a valuable insight into Candle), Lyell (Elements of Geology), Malthus For 775 species (all but those that are either what remains to be done. (Essay on the Principle of Population), Maxwell vagrants or marginal for the subcontinent), What is extraordinary about this achieve- (Matter and Motion) and Wallace (The Malay there is a distribution map reflecting the ment is that it could never have been accom- Archipelago). reporting rate for every quarter-degree plished even 25 years ago — there simply square of the surface area of six countries would not have been enough volunteers to Darwin, second edition (South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbab- complete the task of recording the data. The CD-ROM we, Lesotho and Swaziland) as well as a past quarter century has seen a surge of inter- Lightbinders, 2325 3rd St, Suite 324, San Francisco, breakdown of the reporting rate for each est in birding in southern Africa, which has California 94107, USA (tel: +1 415 621 5746; fax: vegetation type. allowed this project to come to fruition. +1 415 621 5898; e-mail: [email protected]), A particularly useful feature is a monthly There are two wishes on my list. The first $49.95 graph of distribution and breeding for each is that someone has the drive to repeat the Reproduces all of Darwin’s major works, a of eight zones into which the subcontinent exercise before too long, so that the effects of selection of his lesser-known short papers and has been divided (albeit arbitrarily). This development on the region’s avifauna, as a his 1,200-page monograph on barnacles. Also allows the reader to infer seasonal patterns, flagship group, can be accurately monitored. included are an extensive timeline, biographical which in Africa are highly variable because of The second is that it will inspire the produc- dictionary and bibliography of 1,500 primary differing climatic conditions. For 51 species tion of atlases for other taxa, so that the and secondary sources as well as the text of with marked seasonality in occurrence, an extraordinary biodiversity of this corner of Michael T. Ghiselin’s Triumph of the Darwinian expanded format with six additional season- the Earth, currently experiencing an expo- Method. al distribution maps is provided. The advan- nential increase in development, can be tage of such analysis for migrant species is better documented. New Journals immediately obvious. Michael Cherry is in the Department of Zoology, Next week’s issue will contain Nature’s annual More importantly, the breeding season University of Stellenbosch, Private Bag New Journals review supplement. for a given species often differs between trop- X1, Matieland 7602, South Africa.

32 Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1997 NATURE | VOL 389 | 4 SEPTEMBER 1997