15
Apr
2009
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
It’s hard enough to condense 30,000 years of human culture, movement, and industry into one book, let alone one review of said book, but I’ll give it my best shot.
The important thing, I believe, to take away from this book, is that there were vastly more people on the continents we now call North and South America in 1491 than in the decades that followed. The germs that the Europeans brought with them massacred the native populations as surely as a nuclear detonation would wipe us out now. Some 95% percent of people died. That means millions.
So, yeah, when you think about the villages the explorers found in the 16th centuries, they were the scavenged remains of empires.
The thing about it is, germs travel faster than explorers. The diseases spread through the networks of trade built throughout both continents, carrying a wave of mutilation (sorry Pixies, it’s a good term, so I’m using it) ahead of the white men.
Makes for easy pickins, eh?
Just imagine though if it had gone both ways. There is a case to be made that syphilis originated in the New World, but imagine if large scale plagues hit Europe as a result of new contents between the hemispheres. Think Black Death. Think Great Influenza. Think Aids. Now mix them into one epidemic.
Like I said. Easy pickins.
Now go back and think about what you learned in U.S. History. The native people that the explorers encounted were starving, had abandoned most of their crops, villages, etc. Do you think the accounts written by these explorers could possibly portray Native American life accurately?
The very very first contacts recorded do give a little bit of a different picture. Taking those accounts and archaeological evidence, scholars can piece together what life was like across North and South American prior to Columbus. There were long networks of trade, just as in Europe and Asia. Over generations the Native Americans genetically engineered corn, just as people in Mesopotamia did with wheat.
Overall, Mann gives a comprehensive life in all regions of the Americas (they necessarily differed). There were cities. There was farming. There were great nations. There were complex cultures.
And yet, all of that vanished, both literally, and in the memory of man.
Buy 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus on Amazon
If you like this book/author, you might like:
(my reviews in blue)
Strange but True America by John Hafnor
Flight by Sherman Alexie
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W Loewen
One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark by Colin G Calloway
The Codex Borgia: A Full-Color Restoration of the Ancient Mexican Manuscript by Gisele Diaz
America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus by Alvin M Josephy, Jr
Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World by Jack Weatherford
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
1421: The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies
A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz
After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC by Steven Mithen
Maya Cosmos by David Freidel
The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins
The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history by John M. Barry
Dead Men Do Tell Tales by William R. Maples and Michael Browning
Other works by Charles C. Mann:
With David H. Freedman:
At Large: The Strange Case of the World’s Biggest Internet Invasion
With Mark L. Plummer:
The Aspirin Wars: Money, Medicine and 100 Years of Rampant Competition
Noah’s Choice: The Future of Endangered Species
With Robert P. Crease:
The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics
