1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

by Charles C. Mann

If Monte Verde is correct, as most believe, people were thriving from Alaska to Chile while much of northern Europe was still empty of mankind and its works.

Sifting through the evidence, it is apparent that many though not all Indians were superbly active land managers—they did not live lightly on the land.

Incredible to imagine today, bison occurred from New York to Georgia. A creature of the prairie, Bison bison was imported to the East by Native Americans along a path of indigenous fire, as they changed enough forest into fallows for it to survive far outside its original range.

Carrying their flints and torches, Native Americans were living in balance with Nature—but they had their thumbs on the scale. Shaped for their comfort and convenience, the American landscape had come to fit their lives like comfortable clothing.

The far north, for example, is home to a constellation of related societies generally known as “Eskimo,” but in the 1980s this term was replaced by “Inuit” in Canada, where most of these groups live, after complaints that “Eskimo” came from a pejorative term in Algonquian language that meant “eater of raw flesh.”