1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

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  Some good and some bad in this book. There is a lot of information here, but most of it I had seen before in other sources. If you're new to the subject, this provides a broad overview, but please read additional material. The book presents the pre-Columbian Americas as a very complex mix of societies who modified their environment to perhaps a heretofore uninmagined degree. That's worth further investigation and I certainly hope we can learn from both their triumphs and their failures.

  I... (show more)

  Some good and some bad in this book. There is a lot of information here, but most of it I had seen before in other sources. If you're new to the subject, this provides a broad overview, but please read additional material. The book presents the pre-Columbian Americas as a very complex mix of societies who modified their environment to perhaps a heretofore uninmagined degree. That's worth further investigation and I certainly hope we can learn from both their triumphs and their failures.

  I found it problematic that the author told about professional archeaologists who excavated Indian burial grounds with bulldozers, and then, within a few pages, lumps all amateur archeologists into one group and call them a bunch of "Altantis hunting quacks". This is extremely disrespectful towards the many amateurs who have done amazing work in this area and who have spearheaded the efforts to decipher evidence that has long been ignored by main stream archeologists.

  Secondly, the broad claim that there was no meaningful contact between the Americas and the other continents is likely not accurate. Epigraphers are now finding more and more links between ancient scripts in the Americas and abroad. Also, there is significant evidence of an ancient trans-Atlantic copper trade. Please see Michigan Copper: The Untold Story by Fred Rydholm and Contact with Ancient America by Ida Jane Gallagher for additional information.

  Third, the author touts that the "three sisters" cutivation method used in the Andes is the only horticultural method that had been used for centuries without wearing out the soil. Obviously he hasn't spent much time researching Chinese history. The Chinese have kept many areas in continuous cultivation for centuries by utilizing every scrap of available biomatter to enrich the soil. They've cut terraces and dug irrigation ditches and provided an amazing amount of food for their people in an often inhospitable climate and terrain. Personally, as an organic gardener and a histroy buff, I've tried the three sisters combo with less than stellar results in my location. I've also used the Chinese method of enriching the soil with anything that can be composted and have had excellent results.

  Worth a read, but don't stop with this book. (show less)

   

   

  by Facebook-användare on Mar 05, 2009 at 10:45PM

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  Informative, engaging, and well written account of the Americas before the arrival of Europeans. This is not, however, a straightforward narrative of condiditon of the New World the year before Columbus discovered it. Most of it, in fact, takes place in the twentieth century. Mann engages with many of the main issues about the pre-contact world, such as the origins of Native Americans, the population of the two continents, the size and structure of Indian societies, the role of disease, the r... (show more)

  Informative, engaging, and well written account of the Americas before the arrival of Europeans. This is not, however, a straightforward narrative of condiditon of the New World the year before Columbus discovered it. Most of it, in fact, takes place in the twentieth century. Mann engages with many of the main issues about the pre-contact world, such as the origins of Native Americans, the population of the two continents, the size and structure of Indian societies, the role of disease, the relationship of Indians to the environment, and so forth. Hence the book in reality is a a survey of how knowledge and conceptions of pre-Columbian America have evolved, and Mann takes us through the various fields which have contributed and shaped those views, and their practitioners: historians, archaeologists, botanists, biologists, paleobiologists, anthropologists, linguists, ethnographers, and the like. Mann interviewed many of the leading names in the field, and these along with the many personal anecdotes lend the book a journalistic feel. But it is journalism of a high order, and Mann has a firm grasp of the issues and the vast literatures which have been created by the profusion of evidence about the early Americas. Mann takes sides in several controversies, and some will disagree with his depiction of the consensus in the field as it now stands. But he never takes sides unreasonably, and he gives ample space to minority views, which given how vigorous the debates continue to be, are unsurprisingly vocal. If the reader wants a solid, brief introduction to scholars' considered judgments about what America was like before it was integrated into the wider world, they will not go wrong picking up Mann's volume.

  There are a few issues, however, mostly caused by Mann's carelessness. For example, he suggests that what he calls "Holmberg's Mistake" (a now discredited view about the condition of the Americas before 1492) persisted for five centuries. However, given that Holmberg first propounded his "mistake" in the 1920s, it can hardly have lasted for five centuries (p.13). The view in question perhaps did, but it was not Holmberg's mistake for the first four centuries, then. At another point he declares that in June of 1790 the French Revolution "swept away a corrupt and ineffectual monarchy" (p. 210). This would be news to the monarch and the revolutionaries, given that the monarchy was not abolished until 1792. Last, Mann repeats the dubious old claim that there was a substantial Native American contribution to the foundations of the governing institutions of the US. This has never been a particularly robust claim, and Mann rehashes it at the end of the book with much more vigor than rigor. It is perhaps not surprising that it is the only section in the book without notes. Having spend the previous 380 pages explaining the perils of making logical leaps from a non-existent evidentiary record, it would not have been too much to ask Mann to heed his own warning. (show less)

   

   

  by Facebook-användare on Aug 18, 2009 at 10:31PM

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