The World That Wasn’t There tells the story of what became known to the West only after the voyages of Columbus and other European explorers: the beautiful and superbly crafted art of North and South America. From the best-known and most ancient civilizations— such as the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec—to the spectacular vestiges of Teotihuacan, Veracruz, and Nayarit, from the ceramic Venuses of Valdivia, Ecuador, to the gold objects of Tairona, the ceramics of the Incas, and the fabrics and pots of the Nazca region, it is all here, in a stunning book presenting one of the most important private collections of pre-Columbian art in the world. This publication of treasures from the Ligabue Collection, assembled by the Italian palaeontologist and archaeological and anthropo­logical scholar Giancarlo Ligabue (1931–2015), provides an unprecedented opportunity for collectors, scholars, and all those interested in pre-Columbian art.