AoR 93: After 1492, Nature Rebounds -- William Denevan on the Pristine Myth

The Art of Range

"Nature’s regeneration was the primary source of the Pristine Myth." --Shawn Miller. The influence of the idea that the American continent was essentially untouched by man at the time of European arrival is great. The Pristine Myth, a term coined by William Denevan, a cultural geographer, strikes at prejudicial ideas about the primitive-ness of indigenous peoples. And the persistence of this idea reveals a desire to coerce modern man into a preservationist policy toward most public places. In this episode, Tip reads an article by William Denevan (91 yo, who declined to be interviewed about it but granted permission to release a verbatim reading. "After 1492: Nature Rebounds" is a 2016 article in Geographical Review, the oldest journal in the United States devoted to geography. The article makes the case that the apparent wilderness encountered in the 16th through 18th centuries reflected a landscape recently wiped clean of people, that there were a lot of people prior to 1492, and that our conception of wildlands mostly comes from an entire hemisphere that suddenly had few humans to influence it. For links to more articles by William Denevan and related resources, go to https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-93-after-1492-nature-rebounds-william-denevan-pristine-myth TRANSCRIPT: https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-93-after-1492-nature-rebounds-william-denevan-pristine-myth