1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

by Charles C. Mann

The ground was too dirty to receive the Inka’s saliva so he always spat into the hand of a courtier. The courtier wiped the spittle with a special cloth and stored it for safekeeping.

Nope.

Wearing soft, loose clothing of vampire-bat wool,

Pardon me?

the new Inka demanded that his mother participate ex post facto in a wedding ceremony with his father’s mummy.

Nooooope.

Atawallpa, in Ecuador, had a wartested army and the best generals but a weaker claim to the throne (his mother was merely his father’s cousin, not his sister).

Ah yes that will do it.

The victors captured and beheaded Washkar’s main general. Atawallpa mounted a bowl atop the skull, inserted a spout between the teeth, and used it as a cup for his chicha.

Bruh.

Each Inka’s panaqa retained all of his possessions forever, including his palaces, residences, and shrines; all of his remaining clothes, eating utensils, fingernail parings, and hair clippings; and the tribute from the land he had conquered.

Pls stop

the Hopi were constantly under attack by the Nermernuh (or Nemene), a fluid collection of hunting bands known today as the Comanche (the name, awarded by an enemy group, means “people who fight us all the time”).

Looooool

*Just one major disease, syphilis, is believed to have spread the other way, from the Americas to Europe, though this has long been controversial. See Appendix C, “The Syphilis Exception.”

Wait what

masa must be cooked within a few hours of being ground, and the tortilla should be eaten soon after it is cooked. Hot is best, perhaps folded over with mushrooms or cheese in a tlacoyo.

This sounds amazing

Perhaps the best-known subject is a man or boy gingerly holding a “were-jaguar”: a limp, fat, sexless baby with a flattened nose and a snarling jaguar mouth.

Wat

Thinking it was a drip of latex sap, I plucked at one. It was the cover for a termite superhighway. Termites boiled out of the little tunnel and all over my hand. Termites bite.

Naaaaaaaahhh