1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

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.

My daughter is reading [b:Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491|6415223|Before Columbus The Americas of 1491|Charles C. Mann|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348956360l/6415223.SX50.jpg|89240007] as part of her American History studies this year, and while cataloging that book, I came across this one. For the most part I listened to the audiobook, but in the end I discovered when the audiobook ended there was still about 200+ pages of appendices, annotated bibliography, notes, credits and more in the after section.

I found this entire book to be fascinating as I was listening to the audio book. I did start reading with the Kindle book as well, and was even more enamored with the illustrations and pictures embedded within the text. My daughter just finished reading Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491 and it was my start in on that to where I discovered 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. I will absolutely be following this up with 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. One of the things I love best is that Charles C. Mann will be taking you down and avenue of common theory and then u-turn to tell you what the historical facts and science actually shows. While I don't necessarily take to every supposition, there is a lot that has opened my mind further and made me even more curious.

I borrowed this book from #LibbyApp but own the oversize picture book style paperback of Before Columbus.

“History is written by the winners.”

This is a really fascinating book. The basic theme is that pre-Columbian natives in the Americas were both more numerous and more culturally developed AND had a greater impact on their ecosystem than we're usually taught in school.

Sadly, we don't have a very robust set of artifacts from native tribes to provide us with the opportunity to study these cultures in greater depth. For that reason, I suspect that the the evidence for a lot of the things discussed is lighter than the author really lets us know, but he does for a great job of making a persuasive argument for these views.

This book is far from reliable accounts. It's full of hearsay statements using words like, "speculations, maybe, may..." It's great someone's writing a book about pre-columbus America. However, the slim evidence presented was weak to me. It felt like a story was being told rather than a "supposedly" scientific book.

This was a fascinating read. I had a nebulous understanding of Mann's basic thesis (that pre-European contact American societies were larger and more complex than are usually taught) but seeing it all laid out in a systematic fashion was greatly appreciated. This is especially true for situations were Mann makes direct comparisons between aboriginal cultures and where European cultures were developmentally at the same time; for someone with a Eurocentric education it helped me put everything in context.

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.

Still digesting this wide-ranging work.
A few things are very clear. First, the pre-Columbian history of the Americas was very deep, very complex, and in many cases very different from the Euro-Asian experience.
Second, the multiple waves of disease introduced by the Europeans were even more deadly than I had thought. They totally changed the Americas politically, economically, and biologically. Those plagues emptied the landscape and paved the way for domination by the Europeans.
Just as important, the cross-pollination of ideas and the transfer of animals and plant-foods between Euro-Asia/Africa and the Americas changed the world.
Well written and well researched, 1491 doesn't shy away from some contentious topics.
A good read. 4+stars.

This is a fantastic exploration of the Americas pre-European intervention, but it is extremely dry. I'm used to historical texts and academic readings but even with interest in the topic and a willingness to power through, I found myself spacing out and having to backtrack a bit. Persevering did reap reward, though, as the ideas explored in this book are worth examining. Well worth the effort, but it does take effort.