authors
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Product: Book
ISBN-10: 1-4000-3205-9
ISBN-13: 9781400032051
Publisher: Vintage
Country:
Year: October 10, 2006
Size: 13.21 x 20.07 x 3.05cm
Number of pages: 541
Weight: 544gr
Binding: Paperback
ISBN-10: 1-4000-3205-9
ISBN-13: 9781400032051
Publisher: Vintage
Country:
Year: October 10, 2006
Size: 13.21 x 20.07 x 3.05cm
Number of pages: 541
Weight: 544gr
Binding: Paperback
editions
Charles C. Mann
Highbridge Audio; 2005
Audio Cassette
Charles C. Mann
Highbridge Audio; 2005
Audio CD
Charles C. Mann, Peter Johnson (narrator)
Playaway; 2009
Unknown Binding
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description
Product Description
In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492. Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. From the astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, which had running water, immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city, to the Mexican corn that was so carefully created in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.
In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492. Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. From the astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, which had running water, immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city, to the Mexican corn that was so carefully created in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.
Amazon.com Review
1491 is not so much the story of a year, as of what that year stands for: the long-debated (and often-dismissed) question of what human civilization in the Americas was like before the Europeans crashed the party. The history books most Americans were (and still are) raised on describe the continents before Columbus as a vast, underused territory, sparsely populated by primitives whose cultures would inevitably bow before the advanced technologies of the Europeans. For decades, though, among the archaeologists, anthropologists, paleolinguists, and others whose discoveries Charles C. Mann brings together in 1491, different stories have been emerging. Among the revelations: the first Americans may not have come over the Bering land bridge around 12,000 B.C. but by boat along the Pacific coast 10 or even 20 thousand years earlier; the Americas were a far more urban, more populated, and more technologically advanced region than generally assumed; and the Indians, rather than living in static harmony with nature, radically engineered the landscape across the continents, to the point that even »timeless« natural features like the Amazon rainforest can be seen as products of human intervention.
1491 is not so much the story of a year, as of what that year stands for: the long-debated (and often-dismissed) question of what human civilization in the Americas was like before the Europeans crashed the party. The history books most Americans were (and still are) raised on describe the continents before Columbus as a vast, underused territory, sparsely populated by primitives whose cultures would inevitably bow before the advanced technologies of the Europeans. For decades, though, among the archaeologists, anthropologists, paleolinguists, and others whose discoveries Charles C. Mann brings together in 1491, different stories have been emerging. Among the revelations: the first Americans may not have come over the Bering land bridge around 12,000 B.C. but by boat along the Pacific coast 10 or even 20 thousand years earlier; the Americas were a far more urban, more populated, and more technologically advanced region than generally assumed; and the Indians, rather than living in static harmony with nature, radically engineered the landscape across the continents, to the point that even »timeless« natural features like the Amazon rainforest can be seen as products of human intervention.
Mann is well aware that much of the history he relates is necessarily speculative, the product of pot-shard interpretation and precise scientific measurements that often end up being radically revised in later decades. But the most compelling of his eye-opening revisionist stories are among the best-founded: the stories of early American-European contact. To many of those who were there, the earliest encounters felt more like a meeting of equals than one of natural domination. And those who came later and found an emptied landscape that seemed ripe for the taking, Mann argues convincingly, encountered not the natural and unchanging state of the native American, but the evidence of a sudden calamity: the ravages of what was likely the greatest epidemic in human history, the smallpox and other diseases introduced inadvertently by Europeans to a population without immunity, which swept through the Americas faster than the explorers who brought it, and left behind for their discovery a land that held only a shadow of the thriving cultures that it had sustained for centuries before. --Tom Nissley
A 1491 Timeline
| Europe and Asia | Dates | The Americas | ||
| 25000-35000 B.C. | Time of paleo-Indian migration to Americas from Siberia, according to genetic evidence. Groups likely traveled across the Pacific in boats. | |||
| Wheat and barley grown from wild ancestors in Sumer. | 6000 | |||
| 5000 | In what many scientists regard as humankind's first and greatest feat of genetic engineering, Indians in southern Mexico systematically breed maize (corn) from dissimilar ancestor species. | |||
| First cities established in Sumer. | 4000 | |||
| 3000 | The Americas' first urban complex, in coastal Peru, of at least 30 closely packed cities, each centered around large pyramid-like structures | |||
| Great Pyramid at Giza | 2650 | |||
| 32 | First clear evidence of Olmec use of zero--an invention, widely described as the most important mathematical discovery ever made, which did not occur in Eurasia until about 600 A.D., in India (zero was not introduced to Europe until the 1200s and not widely used until the 1700s) | |||
| 800-840 A.D. | Sudden collapse of most central Maya cities in the face of severe drought and lengthy war | |||
| Vikings briefly establish first European settlements in North America. | 1000 |
| ||
| Black Death devastates Europe. | 1347-1351 | |||
| 1398 | Birth of Tlacaélel, the brilliant Mexican strategist behind the Triple Alliance (also known as the Aztec empire), which within decades controls central Mexico, then the most densely settled place on Earth. | |||
| The Encounter: Columbus sails from Europe to the Caribbean. | 1492 | The Encounter: Columbus sails from Europe to the Caribbean. | ||
| Syphilis apparently brought to Europe by Columbus's returning crew. | 1493 | |||
| Ferdinand Magellan departs from Spain on around-the-world voyage. | 1519 |
| ||
| 1525-1533 | The smallpox epidemic sweeps into Peru, killing as much as half the population of the Inka empire and opening the door to conquest by Spanish forces led by Pizarro. | |||
| 1617 | Huge areas of New England nearly depopulated by epidemic brought by shipwrecked French sailors. | |||
| English Pilgrims arrive at Patuxet, an Indian village emptied by disease, and survive on stored Indian food, renaming the village Plymouth. | 1620 | |||
| *Courtesy Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Collinsville, Ill., painting by Michael Hampshire. **Courtesy Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, N.M. (Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España, 1547-77). |
reviews
Superb review of a contentious debate 
I find it interesting that a new scientific discovery, or new evidence that helps correct previous errors, is hailed as »important progress« while refinements or corrections to historical narratives are often derided as »revisionism.« History, like science, is subject to constant correction and alteration as new material becomes available. This especially true today, since history has become such an integrative topic. In the past, historical research was confined to documents, oral histories, and a few other areas. Today, historians are able to integrate data from multiple sources –- archaeology, geology, ethnography, and many others –- to produce a far more accurate picture of the past. Thus is the case with Mann's book. I've read a number of the primary sources he cites, and just completed a short article on this topic. The evidence is there. Colonial and Conquistador accounts of mass deaths among natives, medical/genetic research showing American tribes with higher susceptibility to European disease, and other data all point to the Americas having a far higher population than is generally believed. I also fail to understand why those who scream »political correctness« don't make the same accusation against US school history texts, which are adopted and edited based on politics rather than accuracy. They contain sanitized, Disney-esque versions of history designed not to »confuse« children or anger parents. They're often grossly out of date as well. Mann's book, along with James Loewen's _Lies My Teacher Told Me_, should be required reading. Are they absolutely accurate? Probably not. But they're far more cutting edge and realistic than the history most of us were taught in school.
I find it interesting that a new scientific discovery, or new evidence that helps correct previous errors, is hailed as »important progress« while refinements or corrections to historical narratives are often derided as »revisionism.« History, like science, is subject to constant correction and alteration as new material becomes available. This especially true today, since history has become such an integrative topic. In the past, historical research was confined to documents, oral histories, and a few other areas. Today, historians are able to integrate data from multiple sources –- archaeology, geology, ethnography, and many others –- to produce a far more accurate picture of the past. Thus is the case with Mann's book. I've read a number of the primary sources he cites, and just completed a short article on this topic. The evidence is there. Colonial and Conquistador accounts of mass deaths among natives, medical/genetic research showing American tribes with higher susceptibility to European disease, and other data all point to the Americas having a far higher population than is generally believed. I also fail to understand why those who scream »political correctness« don't make the same accusation against US school history texts, which are adopted and edited based on politics rather than accuracy. They contain sanitized, Disney-esque versions of history designed not to »confuse« children or anger parents. They're often grossly out of date as well. Mann's book, along with James Loewen's _Lies My Teacher Told Me_, should be required reading. Are they absolutely accurate? Probably not. But they're far more cutting edge and realistic than the history most of us were taught in school.
Man vs. Nature, again … 
Mann's historical account of the Americas before the Europeans arrived remains a bit of a patchwork quilt. There is simply so much ground to cover that the material overwhelms even the most circumspect author. In California alone, there were as many as 100 different tongues upon the arrival of the Spanish. This kind of richness never reveals itself here. But how could it? What does fascinate, as Pirsig points out already in his follow up to Motorcycle Maintenance, Lila, is the impact from the American Indian culture on the western cultures in the United States, and thereby the rest of the world. It is the impact of the immunologically damned, but a stunning impact nonetheless. Finally, I can't help but notice the repetition of the man versus nature dichotomy, as if that is the only pedagogically shaping influence around. There is the constant drum beat of the impact of man on nature, as if such a separation existed. Are men not of nature? And nature not of men? How much have the birds affected the migration of seeds? And what of the impact of bees on pollen, the migration of microorganisms in the belly of the whale? Look, we are all in this earthly mixup together. Let's not re-create again and again the world of men and everything else. This homo-centric view tires.
Mann's historical account of the Americas before the Europeans arrived remains a bit of a patchwork quilt. There is simply so much ground to cover that the material overwhelms even the most circumspect author. In California alone, there were as many as 100 different tongues upon the arrival of the Spanish. This kind of richness never reveals itself here. But how could it? What does fascinate, as Pirsig points out already in his follow up to Motorcycle Maintenance, Lila, is the impact from the American Indian culture on the western cultures in the United States, and thereby the rest of the world. It is the impact of the immunologically damned, but a stunning impact nonetheless. Finally, I can't help but notice the repetition of the man versus nature dichotomy, as if that is the only pedagogically shaping influence around. There is the constant drum beat of the impact of man on nature, as if such a separation existed. Are men not of nature? And nature not of men? How much have the birds affected the migration of seeds? And what of the impact of bees on pollen, the migration of microorganisms in the belly of the whale? Look, we are all in this earthly mixup together. Let's not re-create again and again the world of men and everything else. This homo-centric view tires.
The Revisionist Debate 
Mann, a journalist, presents here a summary of the views of the current crop of archaeologists, ethnographers, geographers, and epigraphers regarding the Americas before the arrival of Columbus. Both the extreme negative reviewers and the extreme positive reviewers have missed a couple of things. First, Mann repeatedly mentions the necessarily speculative nature of much of the narrative. Second, he makes it clear that we have here an academic debate that shares the same problems that any debate in the academic arena shares. That is, the debate becomes so vicious because the stakes are so minimal. Two phrases that he used toward the end of the book appropriately summarize the situation. The first is »dialogs of the deaf« which makes the point that the various sides in the dispute are often either talking past each other, or not really hearing each other. The other phrase is »the earnestly opaque language« of academia. That is, academic discourse is so filled with technical jargon that it is often almost incomprehensible to the average non-academic reader. That being said, Mann's reporting of these views makes two strong cases. First, that the population of the Americas was probably orders of magnitude greater than has usually been thought in the past. Here, I think the data are compelling. Second, that the native population of the Americas probably were more active in the »farming« of their ecosystem than has usually been assumed to be the case. Here again, the data are compelling. The »Coda« of the book was the worst part. in this section, Mann made a lame case in »a Rousseauvian« fashion--to quote another reviewer) for the »noble« savage, conveniently forgetting the »savage« part of that phrase, and trotting out the almost non-existent evidence for Indian influence on the constitutional system of the US form of government. This was similar to Mann's correlation earlier in the book between New World human sacrifice and Old World public execution. The numbers of dead are in a certain sense irrelevant. In the latter case, people were executed for crimes committed. In the former case, people were executed for the crime of being human in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Mann, a journalist, presents here a summary of the views of the current crop of archaeologists, ethnographers, geographers, and epigraphers regarding the Americas before the arrival of Columbus. Both the extreme negative reviewers and the extreme positive reviewers have missed a couple of things. First, Mann repeatedly mentions the necessarily speculative nature of much of the narrative. Second, he makes it clear that we have here an academic debate that shares the same problems that any debate in the academic arena shares. That is, the debate becomes so vicious because the stakes are so minimal. Two phrases that he used toward the end of the book appropriately summarize the situation. The first is »dialogs of the deaf« which makes the point that the various sides in the dispute are often either talking past each other, or not really hearing each other. The other phrase is »the earnestly opaque language« of academia. That is, academic discourse is so filled with technical jargon that it is often almost incomprehensible to the average non-academic reader. That being said, Mann's reporting of these views makes two strong cases. First, that the population of the Americas was probably orders of magnitude greater than has usually been thought in the past. Here, I think the data are compelling. Second, that the native population of the Americas probably were more active in the »farming« of their ecosystem than has usually been assumed to be the case. Here again, the data are compelling. The »Coda« of the book was the worst part. in this section, Mann made a lame case in »a Rousseauvian« fashion--to quote another reviewer) for the »noble« savage, conveniently forgetting the »savage« part of that phrase, and trotting out the almost non-existent evidence for Indian influence on the constitutional system of the US form of government. This was similar to Mann's correlation earlier in the book between New World human sacrifice and Old World public execution. The numbers of dead are in a certain sense irrelevant. In the latter case, people were executed for crimes committed. In the former case, people were executed for the crime of being human in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A revolutionary new look at the history of the Americas and the American Indians
This is an outstanding book, and probably one of the most eye-opening books I have read in a long, long time. It is not an exaggeration to say that, having been indoctrinated in school with the standard history of the American Indians, reading this book was like discovering an alternative universe, one where nearly EVERYTHING I had learned before was either wrong or completely twisted around. The real history of Thanksgiving presented in this book is but one example. I remember first learning about the traditional version of Thanksgiving in fourth grade, and thinking that there was something odd about the whole story. Why had the Indians, who could have snuffed out or driven away the Pilgrims, not done so? We had learned about other failed colonies and many conflicts between the Indians and white invaders – the Lost Colony of Roanoke and Jamestown, for example. It was clear that by helping the Pilgrim colony to succeed, the Indians were allowing competitors in and planting the seeds for the destruction of their own world. Few vigorous and thriving human cultures would have failed to forsee that possibility. Why had these Indians reached out to help the Pilgrims? »1491" details the real truth behind the story of «Squanto" and the Pilgrims, and how the First Thanksgiving dinner came about. It turns the celebration of Thanksgiving on its head, from a time of thanks to God for saving the Pilgrims to realizing that the Pilgrims had in fact accidentally landed in the midst of an Indian holocaust, a part of Massachusetts recently depopulated of its original Indian inhabitants by accidental germ warfare brought in by earlier European contacts. Even the food that kept the Pilgrims alive in their first harsh winter came from the recently dead Indian villagers, stored in the ground and still edible. This book explains the reasons for the success of the Spanish conquistadors, how disease both paved the way for the Europeans to take over America and made necessary the importation of African slaves to provide cheap labor. It explains the massive herds of buffalo and giant flocks of passenger pigeons (a response to the sudden collapse of the thriving Indian population in North America, who had been hunting both species). It explains the mysterious Amazon, which has large swaths of fertile soil filled with charcoal and broken pottery. It explains how Indian maize came to be and how corn and other foods developed by the Indians came to feed the entire world. It explains how the principles of individual freedom and disdain for rigid hierarchies were learned by the American colonists from the Indians; these values continue to set American society apart from the rest of the world even today. It is, in summary, nothing short of a revolutionary new look at the pre-Columbian history of the Americas and the American Indians. The Indians were an immensely thriving human culture that filled all of the Americas and changed its landscape and lifeforms, and then were nearly wiped out in a few short years by European diseases. We are still trying to piece together the details of their world. This book should be standard reading for advanced high school and college level courses on American and World History. It's high time that our schools stopped teaching the wrong history of our continent
This is an outstanding book, and probably one of the most eye-opening books I have read in a long, long time. It is not an exaggeration to say that, having been indoctrinated in school with the standard history of the American Indians, reading this book was like discovering an alternative universe, one where nearly EVERYTHING I had learned before was either wrong or completely twisted around. The real history of Thanksgiving presented in this book is but one example. I remember first learning about the traditional version of Thanksgiving in fourth grade, and thinking that there was something odd about the whole story. Why had the Indians, who could have snuffed out or driven away the Pilgrims, not done so? We had learned about other failed colonies and many conflicts between the Indians and white invaders – the Lost Colony of Roanoke and Jamestown, for example. It was clear that by helping the Pilgrim colony to succeed, the Indians were allowing competitors in and planting the seeds for the destruction of their own world. Few vigorous and thriving human cultures would have failed to forsee that possibility. Why had these Indians reached out to help the Pilgrims? »1491" details the real truth behind the story of «Squanto" and the Pilgrims, and how the First Thanksgiving dinner came about. It turns the celebration of Thanksgiving on its head, from a time of thanks to God for saving the Pilgrims to realizing that the Pilgrims had in fact accidentally landed in the midst of an Indian holocaust, a part of Massachusetts recently depopulated of its original Indian inhabitants by accidental germ warfare brought in by earlier European contacts. Even the food that kept the Pilgrims alive in their first harsh winter came from the recently dead Indian villagers, stored in the ground and still edible. This book explains the reasons for the success of the Spanish conquistadors, how disease both paved the way for the Europeans to take over America and made necessary the importation of African slaves to provide cheap labor. It explains the massive herds of buffalo and giant flocks of passenger pigeons (a response to the sudden collapse of the thriving Indian population in North America, who had been hunting both species). It explains the mysterious Amazon, which has large swaths of fertile soil filled with charcoal and broken pottery. It explains how Indian maize came to be and how corn and other foods developed by the Indians came to feed the entire world. It explains how the principles of individual freedom and disdain for rigid hierarchies were learned by the American colonists from the Indians; these values continue to set American society apart from the rest of the world even today. It is, in summary, nothing short of a revolutionary new look at the pre-Columbian history of the Americas and the American Indians. The Indians were an immensely thriving human culture that filled all of the Americas and changed its landscape and lifeforms, and then were nearly wiped out in a few short years by European diseases. We are still trying to piece together the details of their world. This book should be standard reading for advanced high school and college level courses on American and World History. It's high time that our schools stopped teaching the wrong history of our continent
1491
This book should be required high school reading. Spanning thousands of years and two continents Mann recounts the accomplishments and destroys the myths about Native Americans, and he does it in an easy to read narrative. These accomplishments include: Creating a city if not older then Uruk in Mesopotamia (the first city in world history) then in close second; Inventing the concept of zero as a number in 32 B.C., centuries before India was supposed to have invented it (Europe didn't even adopt zero as a number until the 15th Century A.D.); Genetically engineering maze; and basically creating the biodiversity of the Amazonian rainforest! One myth Mann destroys is that the New World was sparsely populated when Columbus arrived. In actuality the population of the Americas made up 1/5 of the entire world population in the 15th century. The only reason it seemed so sparse is because European diseases advanced before Europeans and depopulated native communities before natives Europeans encountered these communities. None of this is taught in high school history books. Most only dedicate 6 pages to the accomplishments and history of TWO CONTINENTS, and most of what they teach is just plain wrong. In my view this is a very important book which must be read. Great for those interested in history, archaeology, or science.
This book should be required high school reading. Spanning thousands of years and two continents Mann recounts the accomplishments and destroys the myths about Native Americans, and he does it in an easy to read narrative. These accomplishments include: Creating a city if not older then Uruk in Mesopotamia (the first city in world history) then in close second; Inventing the concept of zero as a number in 32 B.C., centuries before India was supposed to have invented it (Europe didn't even adopt zero as a number until the 15th Century A.D.); Genetically engineering maze; and basically creating the biodiversity of the Amazonian rainforest! One myth Mann destroys is that the New World was sparsely populated when Columbus arrived. In actuality the population of the Americas made up 1/5 of the entire world population in the 15th century. The only reason it seemed so sparse is because European diseases advanced before Europeans and depopulated native communities before natives Europeans encountered these communities. None of this is taught in high school history books. Most only dedicate 6 pages to the accomplishments and history of TWO CONTINENTS, and most of what they teach is just plain wrong. In my view this is a very important book which must be read. Great for those interested in history, archaeology, or science.
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