Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. #1 The birthplace of agriculture and the cities that followed, America is ancient, not a new world. The same human societies began domesticating animals in the American continents, while in Africa and Asia, animal husbandry was avoided in favor of game management. #2 Indigenous American agriculture was based on corn, which was a sacred gift from their gods. It could not have grown without centuries of cultural and commercial exchange between the peoples of North, Central, and South America. #3 The population of the Americas was around one hundred million at the end of the fifteenth century, with about two-fifths in North America. Central Mexico alone supported some thirty million people. The population of Europe as far east as the Ural Mountains was around fifty million. #4 The first great cultivators of corn were the Mayans, who were initially centered in present-day northern Guatemala and the Mexican state of Tabasco. They built city-states as far south as Belize and Honduras.