1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
LC Class E61 .M266 2005 | | |
Followed by | 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created |
---|
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus is a 2005 non-fiction book by American author and science writer
The book presents recent research findings from different fields which suggest human populations in the Western Hemisphere—that is, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas—were more numerous, had arrived earlier, were more sophisticated culturally, and controlled and shaped the natural landscape to a greater extent than scholars had previously thought.
The author notes that, according to these findings, two of the first six
Book summary
Mann develops his arguments from a variety of recent re-assessments of long-standing views about the pre-Columbian world, based on new findings in demography, climatology, epidemiology, economics, botany, genetics, image analysis, palynology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and soil science. Although there is no consensus, and Mann acknowledges controversies, he asserts that the general trend among scientists currently is to acknowledge:
-
- (a) Population levels of indigenous peoples in the Americas were probably higher than had been traditionally believed among scientists and closer to the numbers estimated by "high counters".
- (b) Humans probably arrived in the Americas earlier than traditionally thought, over the course of multiple waves of Bering land bridgeover a relatively short period of time.
- The level of cultural advancement and the settlement range of humans was higher and broader than previously imagined.
- The New World was not a wilderness at the time of European contact, but an environment which Indigenous peoples had been altering for thousands of years for their benefit, mostly with fire.
These three main foci (origins/population, culture, and environment) form the basis for the three parts of the book.
In the introduction, Mann challenges the thesis that Native Americans "
Part One: Numbers from Nowhere
Mann first treats
Mann explores the fall of the
The contrasting approaches of "High Counters" and "Low Counters" among historians in estimating pre-Columbian population levels are discussed. Among the former, anthropologist Henry F. Dobyns estimated the number of pre-Columbian Native Americans as close to 100 million, while critics of the High Counters include David Henige, who wrote Numbers from Nowhere (1998).
Part Two: Very Old Bones
Mann discusses the provenance and dating of human remains, which may provide evidence of the period of the first settlement of the Americas. The
Part Three: Landscape With Figures
In the third section, Mann attempts a synthesis. He focuses on the Maya, whose abrupt decline appears to have been as rapid as its population growth had been. The canonical theory about the sudden disappearance of Mayan civilization, a pattern common among many Native American cultures, was stated by Sylvanus Morley:
"the Maya collapsed because they overshot the carrying capacity of their environment. They exhausted their resource base, began to die of starvation and thirst, and fled their cities 'en masse', leaving them as silent warnings of the perils of ecological hubris."
Mann discusses the growing evidence that shows Native Americans did indeed transform their lands. Most Native Americans shaped their environment with fire, using
The author suggests that Europeans' limited and often racist views about indigenous peoples, in addition to the lack of a common language among the indigenous peoples, often resulted in the failure of Europeans to recognize how Native Americans managed their lands. Some historians have drawn conclusions such as the "law of environmental limitation of culture" (
Mann argues that in the ecological sense Native Americans were in fact a keystone species, one that "affects the survival and abundance of many other species". By the time Europeans arrived in numbers to supplant the indigenous populations in the Americas, the previous dominant cultures had already been nearly eliminated, mostly by disease. There was extensive disruption of societies and loss of environmental control as a result. Decreased environmental influence and resource competition would have led to population explosions in species such as the American bison and the passenger pigeon. Because fire clearing had ceased, forests would have expanded and become denser. The world discovered by Christopher Columbus began to change immediately after his arrival, such that Columbus "was also one of the last to see it in pure form".
Mann concludes that we must look to the past to write the future. "Native Americans ran the continent as they saw fit. Modern nations must do the same. If they want to return as much of the landscape as possible to its state in 1491, they will have to create the world's largest gardens."
Reception
A review by The New York Times in 2005 stated that the book's approach is "in the best scientific tradition, carefully sifting the evidence, never jumping to hasty conclusions, giving everyone a fair hearing—the experts and the amateurs, the accounts of the Indians and their conquerors. And rarely is he less than enthralling."[1]
Editions
- 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Knopf, 2005 ISBN 1-4000-3205-9.
- Ancient Americans: Rewriting the History of the New World. First UK edition. Published by ISBN 1862076170
- 1491: The Americas Before Columbus. Granta Bookson 6 November 2006.
- 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Second edition. Vintage, 2011 ISBN 978-1-4000-3205-1
- 1491: Una nueva historia de las Américas antes de Colón (Spanish-language edition). Seven Stories Press, 2013.[2]
Sequel
In 2011, Mann published a sequel,
Adaptation
In 2017, an eight-episode documentary miniseries titled 1491: The Untold Story of the Americas Before Columbus was released by Animiki See Digital Production, Inc. and Arrow Productions.
See also
- Archaeology of the Americas
- Beni savanna
- Columbian Exchange
- European colonization of the Americas
- Forest gardening
- Indian massacres
- Megafauna
- Population history of American indigenous peoples
- Quaternary extinction event
- Terra preta, anthropogenic soil found in the Amazon Basin
- Pre-Columbian agriculture in the Amazon Basin
- Books
- Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts by Daniel K. Richter
- Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World
- Nomads of the Longbow
- Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?
References
- ^ Baker, Kevin (October 2005). "'1491': Vanished Americans". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 December 2011.
- ^ "Seven Stories Press".
Further reading
- Charles Mann, "1491", from The Atlantic Monthly, March 2002. Original article that inspired the book.
- "An interview with Charles C. Mann" (Part 1, Part 2), from Indian Country Today December 20, 2005.
- "A Conversation with Charles C. Mann", by Bookbrowse.com
- Paper challenges 1491 Amazonian population theories, Argues, contra Mann, that the activities of pre-Columbian Amazonians did not reshape or "build up" the Amazon into its current state. Accessed August 18, 2008.
- University of Gothenburg (17 October 2010). "New discoveries concerning pre-Columbian settlements in the Amazon". EurekAlert!. Archived from the original on 10 November 2010. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
Together with Brazilian colleagues, archaeologists from the University of Gothenburg have found the remains of approximately 90 settlements in an area South of the city of Santarém, in the Brazilian part of the Amazon.
Reviews
- Michael Coe, "The Old New World", American Scientist, July–August 2006 issue.
- Mary D'Ambrosio, "The myth of an empty frontier: Explorers' diseases wiped out native populations long before settlers arrived", San Francisco Chronicle, August 14, 2005.
- Alan Taylor, "A Cultivated World", The Washington Post, August 7, 2005; BW05
- Bruce Ramsey, ""1491": Discovering what Americas were like before Columbus", The Seattle Times, August 12, 2005