1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

560 páginas

Idioma English

Publicado el 10 de octubre de 2006

ISBN:: 978-1-4000-3205-1
Goodreads:: 39020

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 …

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.

16 ediciones

Sagecoyote@bookwyrm.social reseñó 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus de Charles C. Mann

Disappointing mainstream hit

3 estrellas

I braced myself for a somewhat limited perspective given this book is 20 years old and a mainstream hit, but even then I was disappointed. The author does a decent-enough job at describing in rich detail Indigenous American cultures and lives. However, he does little to place in social context the genocidal and forcefully destructive European "contact", glossing over historical anthropological accounts as "offensive by today's standards but socially acceptable at the time". He dances around the genocidal impact, never once calling it genocide by name, and taking great lengths to excuse the contact as primarily caused by disease inadvertently, with a only a footnote cautioning readers to not take his argument as support for white supremacist arguments of "genetic superiority" (following a long tradition of manipulating medical science to "accidentally" justify Euro-dominance). The author occasionally veers into the 20th explorer tropes of disgust, casually mentioning cannibalism intended to shock …

I braced myself for a somewhat limited perspective given this book is 20 years old and a mainstream hit, but even then I was disappointed. The author does a decent-enough job at describing in rich detail Indigenous American cultures and lives. However, he does little to place in social context the genocidal and forcefully destructive European "contact", glossing over historical anthropological accounts as "offensive by today's standards but socially acceptable at the time". He dances around the genocidal impact, never once calling it genocide by name, and taking great lengths to excuse the contact as primarily caused by disease inadvertently, with a only a footnote cautioning readers to not take his argument as support for white supremacist arguments of "genetic superiority" (following a long tradition of manipulating medical science to "accidentally" justify Euro-dominance). The author occasionally veers into the 20th explorer tropes of disgust, casually mentioning cannibalism intended to shock or anecdotes about remote towns having only octopus and liver to eat (sorry pal, they were messing with you!). And even when trying to give credence to the Haudenosaunee for originating ideals of US democracy, he whole-heartedly accepts the validity of the US-settler colony, with no acknowledgement to the full history. He appears to try to give full authority and ownership to Indigenous peoples, but ends up reframing a genocide as an unfortunate meeting of conflicting values, showing more sympathy and understanding for the extinction of American fauna and flora in 10 pages than he does for the Indigenous people and cultures whose destruction he so readily overlooks. Not to mention the shallow strawmen arguments he sets up throughout the book, pitting developers against environmentalists, with an undertone comparing Indigenous agroforestry to contemporary development. How he could present Meggers' horribly infantilizing view of Amazonia with NO context or appropriate rebuttal is incredible. I'll give him three stars for trying to present a more holistic view of Indigenous cultures in the Americas but overall, his biased perspective made it challenging to read without getting angry. The book may be useful if this is the first history of Indigenous America you've learned since US public school. Read "Dawn of Everything" by Graeber/Wengrow or "An Indigenous History of the US" by Dunbar-Ortiz instead.