How Old is America?

Summary

American History Hit: "How Old is America?" – Episode Summary

Host: Don Wildman
Guest: Professor Carolyn Winterer, William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford University
Release Date: December 23, 2024

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Introduction to Deep Time and American Consciousness (00:33 - 07:23)

Don Wildman opens the episode by delving into a significant shift in American consciousness during the 19th century—the emergence of the Deep Time Revolution. This concept fundamentally challenged the biblical chronology that placed the Earth's age at approximately 6,000 years. Professor Carolyn Winterer introduces her book, How The New World Became the Deep Time Revolution in America, which explores how scientific discoveries and industrial advancements led Americans to reconsider their understanding of time and history.

Key Discussion Points:

• William Parker Foulk’s Discovery: In October 1858, William Parker Foulk excavated dinosaur bones in Haddonfield, New Jersey, leading to the identification of Hadrosaurus foulkii, the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton discovered in North America.
• Challenging Biblical Chronology: The accumulation of fossil evidence suggested that the Earth was much older than the biblical account, prompting a reevaluation of established religious narratives.

Notable Quote:

“Deep time is the idea that emerges in the 19th century that the Earth is not in fact 6,000 years old, as a literal reading of Genesis and the rest of the Bible will tell you, but in fact millions if not billions of years old.”
— Professor Carolyn Winterer [03:32]

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Intersection of Industrial Revolution and Geological Discoveries (07:23 - 12:44)

Winterer explains how the Industrial Revolution and the quest for fossil fuels catalyzed the acceptance of deep time. As Americans dug deeper for coal and other resources, they encountered geological layers that could not have formed within a six-millennia timeframe. This practical necessity led to the adoption of uniformitarianism, the principle that geological processes observed today have operated in the same manner throughout Earth's history.

Key Discussion Points:

• Economic Drivers: The need to access fossil fuels and fertile soil prompted Americans to explore the Earth's depths, revealing evidence that contradicted the biblical timeline.
• Uniformitarianism vs. Catastrophism: The shift from viewing Earth's history as shaped by sudden, catastrophic events to a model of gradual, continuous processes.

Notable Quote:

“They begin to see, wow, this is, you know, it probably took a really long time for these various deposits of earth to, you know, lie on top of these ancient coal forests. They're pretty deep down there.”
— Professor Carolyn Winterer [04:35]

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Deep Time and American Nationalism (12:44 - 18:33)

The conversation transitions to how deep time fostered American exceptionalism. As Americans uncovered ancient geological formations and fossil records, they began to construct a narrative that positioned the United States as both a young and uniquely ancient land. This duality reinforced national pride and supported the ideology of Manifest Destiny, the belief that American expansion across the continent was both justified and divinely ordained.

Key Discussion Points:

• National Parks as Cathedrals: Establishment of parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite as "cathedrals of nature," symbolizing both natural grandeur and divine favor.
• Racial Implications: The interpretation of deep time was also used to justify racial hierarchies, asserting that the land's ancient history affirmed white American claims over native populations.

Notable Quote:

“We have something even older. We have cathedrals of nature. We have glacial flanks in Yosemite Valley that are millions of years old. We have geysers spewing out of Yellowstone that are testament to underground volcanoes.”
— Professor Carolyn Winterer [12:58]

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Louis Agassiz and the Scientific Debate (23:55 - 27:07)

Winterer highlights the role of Louis Agassiz, a prominent Harvard naturalist and geologist, in shaping the deep time narrative. Agassiz was a staunch opponent of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, advocating instead for a view of Earth's history as a series of creations and destructions guided by divine intervention. His contributions to glaciology and the concept of the Ice Age further intertwined geological science with theological interpretations.

Key Discussion Points:

• Agassiz vs. Darwin: Agassiz rejected natural selection, arguing that divine forces were responsible for the Earth’s geological and biological history.
• Ice Age Theory: Agassiz proposed that glaciers had shaped the American landscape, reinforcing the idea of God's active role in preparing the land for human use.

Notable Quote:

“He [Agassiz] calls it that great agent, capital G, capital A, by which he saw the hand of God in the great geological workings of the world.”
— Professor Carolyn Winterer [24:07]

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Deep Time’s Role in American Exceptionalism and Racial Justifications (27:07 - 18:33)

The discussion returns to how deep time underpinned American exceptionalism, making the United States appear both a newborn nation and a land with an ancient, divinely crafted foundation. This narrative was leveraged to assert dominance over indigenous populations and justify the exploitation of natural resources, including the use of enslaved labor in the fertile Southern states.

Key Discussion Points:

• National Identity: The belief that North America held unique geological and historical significance, reinforcing national pride and expansionist policies.
• Racial Arguments: The ancient history of the land was used to undermine the claims of native peoples, asserting that the land rightfully belonged to white Americans who were seen as its rightful stewards.

Notable Quote:

“Deep time is at the heart of American exceptionalism because what it is saying to Americans is that, well, you know, God may have been crafting the entirety of the planet, but he was lavishing special attention on North America.”
— Professor Carolyn Winterer [27:17]

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Challenges from Young Earth Creationism (18:33 - 28:55)

Winterer addresses the resistance to deep time from Young Earth Creationists, who sought to preserve a literal interpretation of the Bible despite scientific evidence. Groups like Answers in Genesis established institutions such as the Creation Museum to promote a 6,000-year-old Earth narrative, maintaining that dinosaurs coexisted with humans and rejecting the vast timelines proposed by scientists.

Key Discussion Points:

• Scofield Bible: Published in the early 20th century, it reinforced the 4004 B.C. creation date, integrating young Earth beliefs into mainstream education.
• Cultural Impact: The persistence of Young Earth Creationism highlights the ongoing tension between scientific understanding and religious beliefs in American society.

Notable Quote:

“They [Young Earth Creationists] deny the antiquity of the earth. They deny the Deep time revolution. So they've built an ark recently where there are dinosaurs aboard.”
— Professor Carolyn Winterer [21:00]

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Conclusion and Reflections on Modern Implications (28:55 - End)

In wrapping up the episode, Don Wildman reflects on how the Deep Time Revolution not only reshaped scientific and national narratives but also left enduring legacies in American culture and education. The dialogue underscores the complexities of reconciling scientific discoveries with established beliefs and the ongoing influence of these historical shifts on contemporary American identity.

Key Discussion Points:

• Legacy of Deep Time: The acceptance of deep time continues to influence American science, education, and cultural identity.
• Interplay of Science and Religion: The episode highlights the nuanced ways in which Americans have navigated the relationship between scientific advancements and religious doctrines.

Closing Quote:

“It's fascinating how we can carry multiple and in fact contradictory stories in our heads at the same time.”
— Professor Carolyn Winterer [18:11]

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Key Takeaways

1. Deep Time Revolution: The 19th-century shift towards understanding Earth's history as millions of years old significantly impacted American scientific thought, national identity, and cultural narratives.
2. American Exceptionalism: Deep time reinforced the idea that North America held a unique and divinely favored place in the world, fueling expansionist ideologies like Manifest Destiny.
3. Racial and Cultural Justifications: Geological discoveries were intertwined with racial ideologies, providing pseudo-scientific support for the displacement of indigenous peoples and the institution of slavery.
4. Scientific vs. Religious Narratives: The conflict between emerging geological science and traditional biblical chronology persists, as evidenced by movements like Young Earth Creationism.
5. Legacy and Modern Implications: The Deep Time Revolution laid the groundwork for America's ongoing relationship with science, education, and cultural identity, highlighting the complexities of integrating scientific understanding with established beliefs.

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For Further Exploration:

• Book Highlight: How The New World Became the Deep Time Revolution in America by Professor Carolyn Winterer provides an in-depth analysis of the topics discussed.
• Additional Resources: Listeners interested in the intersection of science, religion, and American history may explore related episodes and documentaries offered by History Hit.

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements and non-content sections to focus solely on the educational and historical discussions presented in the episode.

Transcript

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[Don Wildman]

Haddonfield, New Jersey, is about 10 miles east of Philadelphia. And on this day in October 1858, lawyer, philanthropist and social reformer William Parker Foulk is a filthy mess covered in marl, a clay like substance. As he finishes up a day of meticulous excavation, Falk is searching for dinosaur bones. Twenty years ago, it seems, farm laborers working in this same pit happened upon unusual skeletal remains, large bones they couldn't identify. They reported the find, but without much consequence. Decades later, Foulk wonders if he can find more. Paleontology is still a new science in America, and there have been important findings. Imprints of feet, individual teeth and bones. But these have been mostly scattered and incomplete. This pit, where Fulk now digs, will eventually produce the first complete set of dino bones in North America. A skeleton that will be named Hadrosaurus folke, after the man himself. Nose to tail, it will measure more than 20ft. The animal would have weighed an estimated 2.5 tons. It's a discovery that will alter the course of paleontology, not to mention how museums are designed and constructed to display the beasts. But it will also change Americans understanding of the age of their continent and, by association, how they feel about themselves. Hi there, I'm Don Wildman. Thanks for clicking through to another episode of American History hit. Glad you're here. Back in the 19th century, against a backdrop of so much industrial, economic and social transformation, a tectonic shift happened to American consciousness. It had to do with time, specifically, the time the North American continent had existed. Prior to the 1800s, there was widespread acceptance of the biblical version of cosmic origin. The planet was 6000 years old, and the great flood came about 1500 years later. Noah built the ark, saved the animals and mankind from death by drowning. But that theory would be fundamentally challenged as humans began to closely consider the fossilized bones and other evidence of prehistoric creatures. All of it suggesting the Earth was much older than the Bible would have us believe. A new book released this year grapples with this entire phenomenon and its profound implications. Entitled How The New World became the Deep Time Revolution in America, authored by historian Carolyn Winterer, the William Robertson Coe professor of History and American Studies at Stanford University, where she also chairs the department. It is an honor to meet you, Professor. May I call you Carolyn?

[Carolyn Winterer]

Absolutely. And it's a pleasure to be here as well.

[Don Wildman]

The Deep Time Revolution. Let's first consider the book's title. What is the concept of deep time?

[Carolyn Winterer]

Deep time is the idea that emerges in the 19th century that the Earth is not in fact 6,000 years old, as a literal reading of Genesis and the rest of the Bible will tell you, but in fact millions if not billions of years old. And that idea emerges quite rapidly in our very modern history.

[Don Wildman]

Of course, they were finding dinosaur bones way back when, including fossils, but no one had really brought this together until the scientific age comes along.

[Carolyn Winterer]

That's right, yeah. They had definitely found fossils of scary creatures before. And the word fossil simply means coming out of the ground. It doesn't mean particularly ancient. So you could imagine that, for example, the dinosaurs had been around swimming around the waters of Noah's Ark, for example. So you didn't need deep time for dinosaurs. You need intellectual revolution to begin to imagine enormous expanse of time in which the history of the earth plays out, instead of a tiny expanse of time which the history of the earth plays out.

[Don Wildman]

As if human beings are not coping with enough in the 19th century. I mean, the whole world is changing under their feet with industry and technology. Suddenly the one accepted truth, you know, that Noah saved us, is gone, or at least disappearing. How was this absorbed? How did it enter into the lexicon of American thinking? What went on then?

[Carolyn Winterer]

Well, as you mentioned, the Industrial revolution and in fact, that momentous revolution is accompan by the Deep Time revolution. They are completely related to one another. One would not have happened without the other. So as Americans and Europeans in Europe begin digging for, for example, fossil fuels in the ancient coal forests that lie under North America, they begin to ask themselves, huh, I wonder what rocks lie underneath this, I wonder what rocks lie above that? And that's an economic question, right? How deeply do I have to dig into the earth in order to get to the fossil fuel forests layered where the coal is, for example. But they begin to see, wow, this is, you know, it probably took a really long time for these various deposits of earth to, you know, lie on top of these ancient coal forests. They're pretty deep down there. I'm looking at the processes around me and I'm having a hard time imagining that this could have happened in 6,000 years, so probably it happened much longer. Same thing happens with the fertility of the cotton plantations in the South. They begin to sort of dig around, like, which parts of the south are most fertile. Ah, oh, here's a layer way down deep that we're digging probably was not deposited in 6,000 years because as I'm looking at the weather and erosion around me, it's not happening very fast. So they begin to hit upon this concept that today is called uniformitarianism, which is a fancy way of saying that the processes that we observe around us today are also occurring probably in the past. And that's crucial, crucial for the idea of deep time, that things happened long ago the way they are happening now. And it flies absolutely directly in the face of catastrophic myths like the Noah flood story, which, you know, a flood is a catastrophe, right? And biblical history imagined many of these catastrophes happening to explain the modern world. But by the 19th century, the industrial Revolution and the expansion of slavery into the cotton south and, you know, a series of other economic and industrial transformations are bringing to Americans attention that it's possible actually that the Earth's history happened not only in a very different way, but in a much, much longer way.

[Don Wildman]

And we can't underestimate the intelligence of this, of these generations. I mean, they were kind of, you know, connecting the dots. It was the fact that so much of common belief was in their face that it was hard to challenge it. But there must have been a lot of writing, a lot of thinking being done on this fact.

[Carolyn Winterer]

People actually aren't really worried about the age of the earth until the 17th century, when Europeans begin to be confronted with alternative chronologies from other places that they're visiting, like China. And so that's why they actually become obsessed with this 6,000 year number, which didn't really exist before that time. It's Europeans saying, well, you know, we want the Bible to be not just the unique history of the Hebrew people, we want the Bible to be the history of the whole world. So we're going to run the numbers on the Bible, right? We're going to get our calculators or our abacus or, you know, whatever sheets of paper, and we're going to add up all of the generations and the Begats and whatever dates we can find, and we're going to come up with this number. And 4004 B.C. in fact, it's October 23, 4004 B.C. on a Saturday night, is determined by James Usher, an Irish archbishop, to be the age of the Earth as he declares it in 1660. So this is sort of floating around for couple hundred years as authoritative science, right? It's religion, but it's also science at a time that people didn't see a conflict between the two. But it's only in the course of the 19th century when people are intensively coming into contact with the ground underneath their feet because of the Industrial Revolution. And over the course of various digging programs, you know, trying to find fertile soil in New Jersey. Calcium carbonate, enriched soil, soil, because they've exhausted the soil after 200 years of colonization again the fossil fuels of the coal forests stratum that is today called the Carboniferous era. It's very, very long ago. They begin to be just confronted from all side with the fact that this could really not have happened super quickly without a critical thing, which is a miracle. And they are now also in the business of denying miracles. Right. They're starting to imagine that the earth is disenchanted, that maybe God put the earth into motion, but he's certainly not reaching into our daily lives, you know, saying here's a comet, here's a flood, you know, as they might have imagined before. And so that's why uniformitarianism, this idea of slow, you know, boring, non catastrophic changes becomes a substitute for, for catastrophic flood stories like the story of Noah.

[Don Wildman]

It all really intersects with the rise, the triumphalism in the United States, the rise of manifest Destiny and all that sort of thing. The idea that the North American continent had so much of evidence of this deep time in it, from the vast abundance of coal to the amount of dinosaur bones they eventually find out, west especially, but they were all already up and down the east coast as well. This all contributes to this real feeling of like we're special because we have a continent that's actually older than everyone else. And that was real, right?

[Carolyn Winterer]

Oh, that was so real. Americans enter the American Revolution with this terminal inferiority complex relative to Europe because, you know, boom, 1776, yeah, they're a young republic, but there's no evidence that this is going to last very long. So they're this untried new democratic republic and versus the ancient monarchies of Europe who are always threatening to reinvade them. So, you know, the end. They come into the 19th century still with this chip on their shoulder. We're such a young nation, we have so much to prove. At any moment the Brits are going to reinvade, or maybe France will. So they start casting about for a different foundation on which to build their nationalism. And they end up kind of hitting on this beautiful solution. They say, well, yes, you know, we are the youngest nation politically, so we are fresh. We are like the atom among nations, you know, in this Garden of Eden that is the new United States. But we are also simultaneously the oldest world of all when you start thinking in terms of the age of the rocks that lie beneath us. And so behind our story of Manifest Destiny, that God is watching over our land, there's now this really deep backstory. God, at the very beginning of Earth's history, pulled North America out of the oceans and said, this is my country. This is my land. And Americans feel so strongly about this that by the late 19th century, they consecrate the first national parks. Yellowstone, Yosemite, all of these, quote, national parks. They're like natural cathedrals. They're where Americans go to say, this is where I see God in the antiquity of American nature. No other nation in the world has the same concept at that time. It's a very American idea and the.

[Don Wildman]

Celebration of the landscape as you're saying, these national parks. But it goes back to even the Hudson river school painting, where they're attaching these natural. The majesty of the land to a sort of theology of this place.

[Carolyn Winterer]

That's right. You know, Europe has what Americans do not have. It has the Greco Roman ruins, which Americans are terminally envious about. And it also has the remnants of castles and cathedrals, you know, and they just love going there to see these ruins and all of this kind of remnants of high culture. And they look around and they say, we have none of this in the United States, but we actually have something better. They convinced themselves over the course of the 19th century, we have something even older. We have cathedrals of nature. We have glacial flanks in Yosemite Valley that are millions of years old. We have geysers spewing out of Yellowstone that are testament to underground volcanoes. And only a power as majestic and overwhelming as the Christian God could have endowed the United States with this level of super grandeur. So take that old world, you know.

[Don Wildman]

Right.

[Carolyn Winterer]

We're the new World, but we're even older than you are.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. And it plays, of course, into the whole racial argument of American society. If this place is so old, then it predates everything. And so we belong here as much as anyone who we found here or who we brought here. You know, it's a. It's this whole idea of white America attaching itself to this ideal.

[Carolyn Winterer]

That's right. As Americans begin to excavate in essentially the Nebraska Territory, after The Civil War. They encounter numerous peoples, the plains tribes of Indians. And underneath them, they also find the remnants of dinosaurs. And so they begin to craft a new argument and say, okay, the native peoples of the Americas, all right, you know, they may have been the first peoples in the Americas, but, gosh, that's not very old, because many layers underneath, we're finding the first animals that were in North America. There's the huge first mammals like the Brontotherium and other crazy huge mammals of the era that was called the Miocene. But even underneath those, my goodness, we're finding Brontosaurus, Tyrannosaurus rex. You know, they give these mega muscular names to these animals and say, well, these were here before the Indians, and we are finding them, so they are ours and the land is ours. And the native peoples really have no claim. And they also don't understand deep time, so we can safely take this land from them. So that's the argument that they make.

[Don Wildman]

But it also has to do with the South. As you say, there's so much good soil down there. This Cretaceous soil, which is a black soil, should be worked by black people. So God had made the soil of the Southern states that way for the ease of using enslaved labor.

[Carolyn Winterer]

That's exactly right. As white Americans move into the lands that we call the cotton South, So Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, in the decades after 1800, they have to encounter the question, how do we get this soil to be fertile? So again, they start digging, and they uncover this very rich layer of what is called the Cretaceous. It just means chalky, right? Very rich in minerals. And they say, aha, this is a great fertile place on which to build cotton plantations. And it must mean that long ago, God prepared the Southern states of America for chattel slavery, because there used to be an ancient ocean here, which we're finding in the Cretaceous, where, you know, we find these giant sea monsters, and they're like, amazing. But now they've all formed this very rich layer of soil on which we can create cotton plantations. And it's obvious that God would not have created this soil if he did not want us to use black people to work that soil. So that's where we get the term black belt for the sort of layers of the Lower South. First it refers to the black soil that is exceptionally rich. And then eventually it begins to refer to the black people who work the land there.

[Don Wildman]

I don't get the connection between finding black soil and then justifying slavery. That seems like a leap.

[Carolyn Winterer]

It's a leap, but they are up against A growing number of northerners and, you know, former enslaved people themselves saying slavery is unjust. It is a human rights violation and we need to get rid of slavery. We know these people as the abolitionists. And Southern planters are grasping at straws. Any argument that is going to justify the existence of 4 million slaves below the Mason Dixon line. And so if God made an ancient ocean and wants black people to work the land on that ancient ocean, so be it. They form part of what's called the pro slavery argument. And it is preached from every pulpit in the south.

[Don Wildman]

But the pulpit of deep Time.

[Carolyn Winterer]

The pulpit of deep Time. Yeah. You have to kind of simultaneously, you know, believe that the Genesis myth is maybe sort of true. I mean, they're all, you know, Bible reading people. But now alongside the Genesis story, there is the Deep Time story. So that's. It is fascinating how we can carry multiple and in fact contradictory stories in our heads at the same time.

[Don Wildman]

Well, that's the modern world, isn't it? I'll be right back after this short break. Meantime, if you'd like us to cover anything specifically, if you have any ideas of subject matter we should be looking at, send us an [e-mail] we'd love to hear from you.

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[Don Wildman]

It all happens in the context of the second great awakening, which was all throughout the 19th century, which was so much about reaching back to, you know, the Bible, for strength in the face of this modern emerging world. That group you Know, must have been very threatened by this idea for obvious reasons. But how do they absorb it and I imagine use it to their own good.

[Carolyn Winterer]

By the end of the Civil War era, there are a growing number of evangelical Protestants who begin to push back against what they see as the sidelining of the Genesis story of creation. So many, many Protestants say, yeah, I can do both, right? I can read the Genesis story on Sunday and then go out and dig for really ancient fossils on Monday. And fine, I have no problem with that because, you know, science, right? But there are a growing number who today are known as the Young Earth Creationists who begin to craft the first modern objection to deep time. And they hang on to Archbishop Usher's 4004 BC creation date. And they begin to form a sort of onslaught against deep time. By the early 1900s, they have a new Bible called the Scofield Bible, which, you know, begins with Genesis, but then it has the date 4004 BC above it saying, you know, this is our date. Right. This is not mythological. This is not just a story that was told long ago. This is true. And they begin to craft whole school curricula and textbooks that say, yeah, you know, there's dinosaurs. We have no problem with dinosaurs, but they're not ancient. They're less than 6,000 years old. Today you can visit the Creation Museum outside of sin, Cincinnati, Ohio, which is enormous. It's very well attended. Millions of people go there every year. It's run by a group called Answers in Genesis. And they deny the antiquity of the earth. They deny the Deep time revolution. So they've built an ark recently where there are dinosaurs aboard. So it's interesting. Yeah, they track science in order to absorb it and reject it. It's very interesting.

[Don Wildman]

I'm taken by your idea that this, you know, there's two tracks for the average American citizen. You can go to church, but then you can also make money. That's the religion, other religion of the United States back then, the emerging mercantile era, where making money is part of a spiritual existence where you can better yourself and the growth is tangible. That's always been the balancer in American society.

[Carolyn Winterer]

Yes. And you know, the Deep time revolution carries all that with it. That as you're absorbing deep time, you're absorbing. Absorbing what at the time were believed to be the God given gifts of the industrial revolution. Trains, fossil fuels, which actually is a term coined in the 1820s along with natural resources. And at that time, natural resources was meant to imply that long ago God had planted these first baby forests on the baby Earth as gifts for us modern people. So they're super optimistic about the discovery of sources of heat and light, you know, because for thousands of years, humans, you know, it had been dark and they were always tired. You know, we, we forget how hard life was before the Industrial Revolution. And suddenly they found a solution and they directed their energies toward using science and engineering to dig up the fossil forest, but then also on Sundays, giving thanks to the God who implanted those forests long ago. It's quite extraordinary.

[Don Wildman]

I can't miss the chance to mention someone who doesn't get enough notice, Louis Agassiz, the Harvard naturalist and geologist of that time, who had so much to do with everything, didn't he?

[Carolyn Winterer]

Louis Agassiz is the greatest scientist you have never heard of. He's been completely eclipsed by Charles Darwin. But Louis Agassiz, a Swiss scientist who is a Sikh French accent, comes to the United States in 1848 and he becomes this nationally famous figure. He goes out on the lecture circuit and everyone thinks he's handsome and he has a million students. But he believes in deep time. But he does not believe in Charles Darwin's idea that deep time is the container for species evolution. He says, oh, no, no, no, no, no. God created each layer of life in a sequence of creation and destruction and creation and destruction over many, many millions of years. So what you're seeing in the fossil record over deep time is, is the constant workings of the benevolent creator God, not some weird idea that says that God is not necessary. Yes, but God, you know, natural selection basically says, well, you know, maybe God is out there, but we don't need God for natural selection. It could happen just according to nature. Nature is a kind of way of talking about God without talking about God. And so Darwin is very, very threatening. When the Origin of Species is published in 1850 and Agassiz just is just jumping up and down in rage. He can't stand the Origin of Species. And he becomes the chief American opponent to this kind of heretical idea that somehow the long story of life can be told without reference to the creator God. And because he sort of lost the battle with Charles Darwin, we've forgotten about him. But he had many ideas up his sleeve. He's the guy who invented the idea of the Ice Age, that that long ago at some point, the earth was encased in a layer of ice. It was a snowball earth. And that the reason that the United States is so flat from the Appalachians all the way to the Rocky Mountains is because an enormous Blanket of ice not that long ago crushed the whole American landscape. And who was behind the icy blanket? None other than God himself preparing America for the great fertile plains that we farm today. So he called the Ice Age that great agent, capital G, capital A, by which he saw the hand of God in the great geological workings of the world, so different from his contemporary Charles Darwin, who sees maybe God, but maybe not God in the workings of deep time. It's very extraordinary.

[Don Wildman]

Carolyn, how does deep time, all of which is in your book? The themes of deep time intersect with the idea of American exceptionalism, which was such a big part of the 19th century.

[Carolyn Winterer]

Deep time is at the heart of American exceptionalism because what it is saying to Americans is that, well, you know, God may have been crafting the entirety of the planet, but he was lavishing special attention on North America. And we can tell because this is such a fertile land. All of the geological processes extending from millions of years to the present have yielded the fossil forests that are fueling the Industrial Revolution, the Cretaceous lands of the south that are fueling the cotton boom that makes the US the largest cotton exporter in the world before the Civil War. It is creating the great fertility of the North American plains. So of course, even though the United States is still so new, Americans are at pains to, to constantly say, yes, yes, yes, we are new. But that is just a sign of God's special benediction, special mission for the United States.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. All this and more you can find between the covers of this important new book, how the New World Became Old, the Deep Time Revolution in America. This is a really exciting conversation for me. I mean, it's rare that you land on something that is a really academic idea that doesn't get enough articulation. And this is just that. Carolyn Winter, who has been our guest today, William Robertson, co professor of History and American Studies at Stanford University. It is an honor to talk to you, Carolyn. Nice to meet you.

[Carolyn Winterer]

Nice to meet you. This was a great pleasure.

[Don Wildman]

Hello folks. Thanks for listening to American History hit. Each week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of great content like mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share with a friend. American History hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Bye for now.

[Carolyn Winterer]

Foreign.

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[Don Wildman]

The pandemic may have faded from the headlines, but for some reason, the questions haven't Was Covid actually a natural disaster? What happens when the scientist and the science are at odds? Who are we supposed to trust from award winning director Jenner? First, check out his new documentary, thank youk, Dr. Fauci, available now. Go to tydfmovie.com to learn more.