Ernie's Reviews > 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
My rating:
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
by Charles C. Mann
by Charles C. Mann
Obviously, like Guns Germs and Steel. A journalist compiles the information that has been coming out during the last 60 years about American Indians but which conflicts with the school lessons about them from 50 years ago. Basically.... the Americas were densely populated before Europeans came with infectious diseases that decimated them. The Americas were populated long before the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago, and their civilizations were very sophisticated but remarkably unlike those of Europe and Asia. What I found interesting was the suggestion that the Amazon region was densely populated and that the people had a type of Agriculture that could use the forests. The current "stone age" tribes are the consequence of European incursions. Interesting idea. It was difficult to determine what the author's main point. He contradicted himself in several places. A lot of the material had already been covered in small parts in other recent magazines. I had hoped for a synthesis...but none was forthcoming. He seemed to have his own biases... basically, "don't believe anything they told you before". Ho-hum.
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While I agree with your point about this book I just want to note that Jared Diamond merely dusted off and exhaustively re-researched a really really old sociology argument called "geography theory" when he wrote Guns, Germs and Steel. It isn't novel as much as reintroduced after a period of time such that it had been relegated to the dusty bins of academia. I only knew about it myself because my undergrad school required that all the poli sci majors complete a number of credits in sociology + history and my prof was one of the first proponents of geography theory and very attached to it. He's actually cited by Diamond in his book.
My major problem with 1491 to date is that he seems to have selectively edited out longstanding theories for historical events-for instance, in discussing Aztec cannibalism I did note a single paragraph about protein deficiency theory even though I know a lot of people in anthropology still seem really attached to it. It's fine if he thinks it's stupid and not as valid-but it smacks of selective editing to make his point.
Maybe I'm just sensitive to these things because I have a social science background (so I know all the prevailing theories) and I'm a lawyer so I always look at both sides of the issue but this whole book, while very well written, feels very selectively presented. OTOH, I agree with his overarching point that the popular understanding of the Americas might be in need of reevaluation.
