1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
2006 • 578 pages
Ratings45
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings45
Average rating4.1
A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus's landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas was, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last thirty years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques came to previously unheard-of conclusions. Among them:- In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe.- Certain cities--such as Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital--were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitlan, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.- The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.- Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a breeding process so sophisticated that the journal Science recently described it as "man's first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering."- Amazonian Indians learned how to farm the rain forest without destroying it--a process scientists are studying today in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge.- Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively "landscaped" by human beings.Mann sheds clarifying light on the methods used to arrive at these new visions of the pre-Columbian Americas and how they have affected our understanding of our history and our thinking about the environment. His book is an exciting and learned account of scientific inquiry and revelation.From the Hardcover edition.
Reviews with the most likes.
Human history is replete with tragedy. But when we're talking the annihilation (both intentional and inadvertent) of entire civilizations; when those civilizations have no written records or their records are deliberately destroyed; when an entire hemisphere's cultures vanish with barely a ripple; I think we need a better word than tragedy.
This is a must-read. Some material will be familiar; the majority may not be but should be. I'm not arguing that everything in the book is correct, merely that there seems to be worthy scholarly debate about the standard narrative. Time and science and research will build upon this knowledge, and probably only add to the heartbreak.
Mann's writing can be dense at times, and his forays into moral culpability are IMHO unnecessary, hence the four stars. The material itself is five. Recommended.
The prehistory of the Americas is a concept I find fascinating.
The idea that North and South America were bristling with cities and towns and people isn't the way it was taught in school when I was a kid and I get a kick out of un-learning that the facts I was taught.
It's tough subject matter to present in a gripping way. There are lots of ancient New England Indian names and my South American geography isn't what it used to be so there was defintiely a “reading a text book” vibe that was hard to shake.
Still, the broad strokes were compelling and since it was a subject I really wanted to read more about I enjoyed 1491 a lot.
This continent populated much earlier than 12,000 years ago. Earliest European contacts record post-epidemic population levels; North and South America had millions of people before earliest visitors from Europe brought pigs and diseases. North American populations had less diverse genetic ability to fight disease, so more died in epidemics than Europeans would have done.
Berengia land bridge - theory that Siberians crossed while chasing mastodons is questionable given gatherer nature of other people from similar era.
“Mother cultures” (Olmecs) of middle American weren't - “sister” cultures may have developed in parallel.
p. 311 (conclusion) “Faced with an ecological problem, the Indians fixed it. Rather than adapt to nature, they created it. They were in the midst of terra-forming the Amazon when Columbus showed up and ruined everything.”
Early occupants adopted agricultural methods that would work in the environment. Fruit cultivators and breeding not recognized as “farming” by Europeans but it was. Yanomami can survive “in the wild” because their ancestors created the landscape around them.
Huge numbers of e.g. bison and passenger pigeons resulted from predators (Indians) dying from European diseases - they did not exist in such disproportionate numbers before 1491.
“Virgin forest” created in 18th century when Indians who controlled the growth died and growth was no longer planned and controlled.
Fascinating overview of native cultures in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus. Very readable, with interesting anecdotes everywhere.
