1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

published	2006 by Vintage
binding	Paperback
isbn	1400032059 (isbn13: 9781400032051)
pages	560
description	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 civiliz...more [close] 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 <p align="center"> *A 1491* Timeline <table cellpadding="4" border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="4"> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%">Europe and Asia</td> <td width="10%">Dates</td> <td width="70%">The Americas*</td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%"></td> <td width="10%">25000-35000 B.C.</td> <td width="70%">Time of paleo-Indian migration to Americas from Siberia, according to genetic evidence. Groups likely traveled across the Pacific in boats.</td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%">Wheat and barley grown from wild ancestors in Sumer.</td> <td width="10%">6000</td> <td width="70%"></td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%"></td> <td width="10%">5000</td> <td width="70%">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.</td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%">First cities established in Sumer.</td> <td width="10%">4000</td> <td width="70%"></td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%"></td> <td width="10%">3000</td> <td width="70%">The Americas' first urban complex, in coastal Peru, of at least 30 closely packed cities, each centered around large pyramid-like structures</td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%">Great Pyramid at Giza</td> <td width="10%">2650</td> <td width="70%"></td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%"></td> <td width="10%">32</td> <td width="70%">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)</td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%"></td> <td width="10%">800-840 A.D.</td> <td width="70%">Sudden collapse of most central Maya cities in the face of severe drought and lengthy war</td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%">Vikings briefly establish first European settlements in North America.</td> <td width="10%">1000</td> <td width="70%"><table cellpadding="0" align="left" width="255" cellspacing="0"> <tr><td align="left"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="left"> Reconstruction of Cahokia, c. 1250 A.D. </td></tr> </table>Abrupt rise of Cahokia, near modern St. Louis, the largest city north of the Rio Grande. Population estimates vary from at least 15,000 to 100,000.</td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%">Black Death devastates Europe.</td> <td width="10%">1347-1351</td> <td width="70%"></td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%"></td> <td width="10%">1398</td> <td width="70%">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.</td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%">The Encounter: Columbus sails from Europe to the Caribbean.</td> <td width="10%">1492</td> <td width="70%">The Encounter: Columbus sails from Europe to the Caribbean.</td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%">Syphilis apparently brought to Europe by Columbus's returning crew.</td> <td width="10%">1493</td> <td width="70%"></td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%">Ferdinand Magellan departs from Spain on around-the-world voyage.</td> <td width="10%">1519</td> <td width="70%"><table cellpadding="0" align="left" width="255" cellspacing="0"> <tr><td align="left"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="left"> Sixteenth-century Mexica drawing of the effects of smallpox** </td></tr> </table>Cortes driven from Tenochtitlán, capital of the Triple Alliance, and then gains victory as smallpox, a European disease never before seen in the Americas, kills at least one of three in the empire.</td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%"></td> <td width="10%">1525-1533</td> <td width="70%">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.</td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%"></td> <td width="10%">1617</td> <td width="70%">Huge areas of New England nearly depopulated by epidemic brought by shipwrecked French sailors.</td> </tr> <tr valign="top" align="left"> <td width="20%">English Pilgrims arrive at Patuxet, an Indian village emptied by disease, and survive on stored Indian food, renaming the village Plymouth.</td> <td width="10%">1620</td> <td width="70%"></td> </tr> <tr> </table> <table cellpadding="4" border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="4"> <tr> <td align="left" width="100%"> 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). </td></tr></table>
date added	01-19-07 edit book

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Deborah rated it:

01/20/08

Read in January, 2008

Full Title: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Overall, 1491 provided a fascinating and fresh perspective on history as a lively, evolving field of knowledge--not the stuff of dry textbooks at all. My primary criticism of the book is that it is difficult to keep a sense of chronology without taking notes; the book is divided into different cultures and the research and theories behind their histories--not a chronological ordering of developments in the continents. Of the ma...more Full Title: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Overall, 1491 provided a fascinating and fresh perspective on history as a lively, evolving field of knowledge--not the stuff of dry textbooks at all. My primary criticism of the book is that it is difficult to keep a sense of chronology without taking notes; the book is divided into different cultures and the research and theories behind their histories--not a chronological ordering of developments in the continents. Of the many useful illustrations, I'm surprised a standard time line was not included.

Having read Charles C. Mann's 1491 and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel back to back, I'm inclined to favor Mann's book over Diamond's. Although it's probably not fair to compare them in this manner, I actually set up a spreadsheet comparing differences in suggested dates for pre-Colombian historical events in the Americas, along with theories to explain them. (I should note that Mann actually cites two of Diamond's books, and not from a position of disparagement. It's just tempting for me to compare these books because of their proximity to one another on my reading list, so indulge me!)

Mann's book has the advantage of being written a decade after that of Diamond, and while some of the "new revelations" are fifty or more years old, some of them are very, very new--having been revealed within the last few years, or in some cases, still in the research stage. This time gap makes Diamond's assertions about the Americas seem more conservative and dated than they probably were at the time of publication. (One exciting revelation became apparent just last year, missing the cutoff for both books--pre-Colombian chicken bones from Polynesian chickens were found in South America, proving that Polynesians arrived in South America before European explorers! While both books referenced the theory that Polynesian watercraft may have reached the Americas, Diamond expressed more skepticism than Mann.)

The other factor which made me favor Mann's book over Diamond's was that the former is written from a journalistic viewpoint, whereas the latter is written with the intent to persuade the reader to believe the author's central theory. That isn't to say that Mann's writing is disinterested or dispassionate; his writing is sprinkled with praise and criticism of the various accounts of pre-Colombian life in the Americas he selected for inclusion in his book. Diamond, on the other hand, tries to weave the histories of all the populated continents into parallel narratives--narratives in which the losers are defeated by the guns, germs, and steel of the winners, and then he explains why he thinks the winners happened upon their tools of victory before the losers could acquire them....less

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Douglas rated it:

07/30/07

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: readers of history, ethnohistory, First Nations history

As someone who writes professionally in this area (unabashed plug: watch for God's Mercies, Doubleday Canada, in October 07) I have high praise for this title, a long-overdue assessment of native culture and civilization before (and at) contact with Europeans. I'm still reading it, but I've been impressed so far.[I've now finished, see below.] Anyone who enjoyed it should also consider Elaine Dewar's Bones, which explores the archaeological controversy of how long people have been in the New Wor...more As someone who writes professionally in this area (unabashed plug: watch for God's Mercies, Doubleday Canada, in October 07) I have high praise for this title, a long-overdue assessment of native culture and civilization before (and at) contact with Europeans. I'm still reading it, but I've been impressed so far.[I've now finished, see below.] Anyone who enjoyed it should also consider Elaine Dewar's Bones, which explores the archaeological controversy of how long people have been in the New World. (She wholeheartedly supports the "a really, really long time" camp.)
My only critique of 1491, and it is minor, is that the author I feel overstates the case that Europeans (mainly English) did not enjoy a military superiority over the natives, that their powder weapons were ineffective. This is a rather generous reading of native military capability. The English army did away with the longbow in 1598, and for all their problems, powder weapons were a clear advantage. Frenchman Samuel de Champlain used just three harquebus to devastating effect against the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) in 1609, and in his trade and colonization monopoly, secured in 1612 under the Prince de Condé, the terms specifically forbid anyone to trade powder weapons with the natives, under penalty of a 10,000 livre fine and corporal punishment. One of the key factors in European inability not to immediately conquer or eradicate native populations by force was the sheer lack of firepower. (They also needed them as trade partners.) These commercial ventures (English and French in particular) didn't have the full might of their states behind them in the early contact period. Had England or France made up their mind to truly "conquer" these shores and their peoples, they would have marched through them much like de Soto did in the southeastern US in the mid 16th century, for good or for ill (pretty well for ill). But an idea the author does well to advance is the fact that coastal nations or tribes that made contact with the newcomers often came to decide that they should secure a strategic advantage and enlist the newcomers' aid in fighting their own enemies. It was a complicated time, and 1491 is a worthy overview.
Having now finished, I'll still recommend it. For those interested in precontact cultures north of 49 (as in half of North America) the lack of material about French Canada is a little disappointing. There's nothing about the much-debated vanishing of the Iroquoian-speaking residents of the St. Lawrence (at Hochelaga and Stadacona) who were there in large numbers in palisade villages when Cartier first visited in the 1530s, but had vanished utterly by the time Champlain showed up in 1603. But that's nitpicky, considering the enormous scope of this work. ...less

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Micah rated it:

10/09/07

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: History buffs, and anyone who is really really interested in maize

Here is a fine collection of the modern anthropological, sociological and historical scholarship concerning pre-Columbian America, well presented in one volume.
For about 200 pages. Sadly the book goes on for another 100 or so.
It is very informative, and presented well for those first 200 pages with only a few blips of the author’s agenda. To give him credit, he plays it very close to the middle for most of those pages. There are hints of the stretching to come. For example, he equa...more

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Brendan rated it:

09/28/07

Read in September, 2007

The survey of current thinking on the population of the americas via that Beringia land bridge and the subsequent summary of the evolutions of early american society is interesting.

But the repeated comparisons between american society and eurasian society are really fraught and often belabored. The comparisons between the two hemisphere's agriculture is fine, but the assertion that Aztec (apparently it's more politically correct to call them Mexica) philosophy was as rich as medieval europe...more

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Aili rated it:

08/27/07

Read in August, 2007

So the major thing to note here is that this is a history of the inhabitants of pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere... written by a feature journalist. It has a lot of straight history, but also a lot of information gleaned from non-standard or new techniques, such as archaeology, forensic science, and linguistics. Oh, and actually talking to folks who identify as indigenous -- who are, lots of them, still around.

A fair amount of the material was familiar to me from taking Colonial Latin Americ...more

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John rated it:

04/11/08

Read in June, 2007

recommended to John by: no one
recommends it for: History buffs and non-fiction fans

If your American paradigm includes an historical view of European settlers desecrating the "Forest Primeval," guess again! Recent archeological and anthropological discoveries have revealed that the Pre-Columbrian Americas were vastly more populated and civilized than we had previously believed. For example, Spanish explorers of the 1500s discovered a Mississippi River lined with villages trading up and down the river; French explorers of the 1600s, on the other hand, encountered a hea...more

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Mike rated it:

02/09/08

bookshelves: recently-completed

Read in March, 2008

For anyone who enjoyed "Guns, Germs, and Steel," this is an excellent follow-up. The author is a journalist, not an academic, and that's good for us laymen. What could have been a dry, scholarly treatise on current research into pre-Colombian America is instead a compelling first-person account of his exploration into the field. He explains some of the vicious debates going on over big questions, like when the Indians crossed the Bering land bridge, making sense of all the information ...more

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Jason rated it:

08/25/07

Read in June, 2007

recommends it for: everyone

Very well written, a good mixture of factual evidence and narrative. The main take home point here should be known to everyone, especially Americans. There is a reason why there was a period of 128 years between Colombus' landing and a permanent European settlement in North America. Namely, there were millions of Native Americans there who thought Europeans were dirty, amusing creatures who had interesting objects but were not fit for being neighbors. Attempted European settlers were continuousl...more

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Rocklynn rated it:

(review of isbn 1565119789)

04/04/08

I listened to an abridged version of this, and even that was LONG. 1491 goes into great depth about the history of north and south america pre-Columbus. What I enjoyed: I learned a lot about native "history", and also the hows and whys of what is "known"; I was engaged and intrigued with the ideas presented, the comparisons with European culture in the same time frame, and the fact that so much of what has been assumed/presented as fact is highly disputable; and also I rea...more

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Ian rated it:

(review of isbn 140004006X)

07/06/07

Read in January, 2006

recommends it for: anyone

Mann is not a historian, but rather is a journalist. And for that reason, this book does read like a history text (like Guns, Germs, and Steel). But it is exceptionally researched and fantastic.

Mann describes North and South America in a way that traditional textbooks and contemporary rhetoric never acknowledges. He combats the old-fashioned and anti-academic beliefs that pervade our Eurocentric version of world history (summed up in what he calls "Holmberg's Mistake," a rea...more

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Tripp rated it:

02/03/08

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: Non-specialists

Author Charles Mann's purpose is to debunk three commonly held ideas about the Americas before Columbus: that the continents were sparsely populated, that the social and technical development was limited and that the locals left the environment untouched.

In discussing scholarly debates on these subjects, he convincingly argues that the population, before the decimation of disease, was quite high. The debate is just how many people there were rather than whether the continents were pristine u...more

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Noah rated it:

04/18/08

recommends it for: anyone with an interest in history, environmentalism, or politics

Most of what any of us have learned about pre-columbian history is sparse and inaccurate. 1491 fills a void in our history curricula without inciting boredom. Mann is a journalist who's distilled the last 50 or so years worth of American archaeological research into a sort of "missing volume" of American history, and it's stimulating reading. The common misconception that the Americas were sparsely populated with primitive hunter-gatherers living a low-impact lifestyle in the va...more

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Nick rated it:

02/27/08

Confession: I never finished this, leaving about 50 pages (about 15%)on the table. With non-fiction books that are based around a particular theory I feel like as long as I read enough to internalize the argument and really understand some of the evidence I can stop reading when I get bored. If I missed some revelation on page 420 somebody let me know.

The key takeaway here: American societies were almost certainly older, larger, more technically advanced and more complex than they are gi...more

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John rated it:

01/19/07

Read in December, 2006

A very interesting look at pre-Conquest America, containing some relatively new (and far from established) academic theories. The main thesis of the book is that pre-Columbian American societies were far more advanced and populous than recorded by European colonists/invaders/priests. The successive waves of epidemics brought by European contact decimated the Americas to such an extent that these societies caved into anarchy and ruin, which was seen as their original condition by the new arriva...more

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Nomi rated it:

05/02/08

bookshelves: nonfiction

Read in April, 2008

Highly engaging, interesting and often mind-blowing of account of the civilizations who flourished in North and South "America" before colonialism.Mann does a thorough job of researching the various debates within anthropology/archaelogy regarding issues like the time frame paleo-Indians began migrating through the Americas, the extent and rate at which Natives transformed their landscape, reasons for the decline of various empires like teh Inca, Maya, etc. Very dense and packed with c...more

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George rated it:

03/22/07

Read in March, 2007

recommends it for: Americans

This book is profoundly important if only for the subject matter. Mann, a science journalist by trade, reconstructs what indigenous lifeways were like before contact.

Mann is a careful writer and always attempts to present the multiple sides to every argument, yet he is careful to abjure the postmodern ambivalence so prevalent in social studies books these days; he takes stances and explains why he favors his positions. The chapter on Amazonian agroforestry is compelling, the implications ...more

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Grumpus rated it:

(review of isbn 140004006X)

09/24/07

bookshelves: audiblecom, audiobook, history

Read in September, 2007

This is based upon the audio download from www.audible.com.

Narrated by: Peter Johnson

This is one of those books that I had on my “to read” list for over a year. I always thought the concept of the book was interesting but the mixed reviews always kept it down on the list.

I can’t put my finger on a specific thing that keeps me from rating it higher than 3 stars but 3 stars isn’t bad, it does mean I liked it. It’...more

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Sandra rated it:

05/13/08

Read in May, 2008

This is an extremely dense read and tends to drag in the first chapter. However it is a great, basic introduction to various archaeological theories and research about natives cultures in the Americas before Columbus. At times it gets boring reading various scientific research however this helps to explain much of the theories and debates. For example, Mann delves into the theory that European diseases and sickness helped to decimate native populations and goes into DNA and mitochondrial DNA....more

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Xarah rated it:

11/15/07

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: Everybody

It's amazing what people can do. Especially looking back in time and realizing that, in some respects, that past cultures are a whole lot smarter than we are today.

While there was a lot of information in this book I already knew - at least to a degree - there was a lot more detailed information as well as new information about different cultures that I had no idea! It was simply amazing!

I wonder what the world would be like if Columbus never sailed or if Europeans waited to come...more

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Korey rated it:

10/12/07

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: Anyone who enjoys history and anthropology/archeaology

This book is a real eye opener. It is jam packed with great information that goes against pretty much everything we've been taught in school about what North America and South America looked like before Colombus, where the native peoples came from and how many were here and how long ago. It's really facinating and includes lots of pictures and maps (which I love), and the author includes a lot of notes and a huge bibliography. The author does ramble a bit and jumps back and forth between regions...more