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A review by jasonfurman
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
5.0
An amazing book. I learned an awful lot from it that will change the way I think about America's pre-contact history. What I appreciated most and the reason for the five stars is that although Mann was conveying a clear and major thesis, he didn't do it by overstating or oversimplifying the evidence. Instead he took you right up the cutting edge by presenting the debates in archeology and a number of related fields that are all trying to make sense of millennia of history that are a lot less definitively understood than one would like.
Perhaps the most interesting chapter was the one on the ways that much of the "pristine" and "natural" wilderness we see was really the deliberate product of thousands of years of effort by Indians. And that includes one of the most supposedly wild places in the world -- the Amazon -- with its many edible fruit trees likely the result of deliberate cultivation by the large population living there.
I'm tempted to follow up with a subscription to Latin American Antiquity so I can follow the sequel to this book in real time.
Perhaps the most interesting chapter was the one on the ways that much of the "pristine" and "natural" wilderness we see was really the deliberate product of thousands of years of effort by Indians. And that includes one of the most supposedly wild places in the world -- the Amazon -- with its many edible fruit trees likely the result of deliberate cultivation by the large population living there.
I'm tempted to follow up with a subscription to Latin American Antiquity so I can follow the sequel to this book in real time.