1491 - A Book Review

I just finished reading 1491 - New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann and wanted to take some time this week to review this robust and exhaustive study of the ancient Americas.

This review comes fittingly as today is Columbus Day; which as an aside, has to be the the most moronic and unhistorical holiday this country has. What really are we celebrating? Are we celebrating the year that a borderline traitorous European, certainly tyrannical, was the "first" to step foot on the Americas? And by "first" do we really mean "first wealthy, well-funded, European explorer"? As this book points out, the Americas were more populated, and in some ways advanced, than Europe of the same time period. Furthermore, to disregard Leif Ericson's (and probably countless others) landing here some 500 years earlier is questionable at best. But history needs a face, and being that Spain and Portugal ruled the world at the time, Christopher Columbus is that man.

But I digress, the book 1491, is phenomenal. In my eyes, Charles Mann provides one of the most exhaustive and well-documented studies of historical North and South America ever put to print. To capture the findings in this book in a single review would be near impossible, but to summarize I'll do my best. Mann's 1491 title serves facetiously as the account of the America's prior to European "discovery".

I was taught, as every other school child was, that the populating of this country was a direct result of individuals (likely of Asian-descent) crossing the Bering Strait some 12,000 years ago. In turn, these nomads gradually wandered as far south as Chile, gradually populating and creating pocket societies along the way. In turn, we're led to believe that the Americas (certainly North America) had a population of people existing mainly in small, nomadic bands; living sparsely on the land, and that, for all practical purposes, America was still a vast wilderness upon Columbus' "discovery". Further, Columbus "discovered" this sparsely populated, and very unsophisticated, land in 1492. Charles C. Mann makes abundantly clear that archaeologists and anthropologists in the last thirty years have proved nearly every aspect of those assumptions wrong (and in some cases, very, very wrong).

Here are a few random and ground-breaking discoveries outlined in detail throughout this book:
• In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe (likely 10's of millions).
• At Olmec in 30 A.D., use of the zero has been discovered: An invention, widely described as the most important mathematical discovery ever made, which did not occur in Eurasia until 600 A.D.
• At the time of Columbus' landing, cities like Tenochtitlán (on Lake Texcoco, outside of present-day Mexico City), were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Tenochtitlán, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.
• The Spanish conquest and successful overthrow of empires in South America was likely due to the fact that the societies had been decimated by smallpox (introduced by Europeans and spread rapidly), in many cases up to 90% of the populations, allowing the conquistadorss to "win" so easily.
• The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.
• In many cases, the mathematical and scientific accomplishments of the Americas preceded those oft credited to European and Asian counterparts. These include many aspects of astronomy, the modern day calendar, farming, the wheel, plumbing, government and writing.
• The first paleo-Indian migration to the Americas could have occurred as early as 25,000-35,000 B.C. arriving in boats, not by foot.
• Large-scale pyramids, with surrounding societies, have been discovered in Peru preceding those built at the Great Pyramids of Giza by several hundred years.
• Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a breeding process so sophisticated that the journal Science recently described it as “man’s first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering.”
• Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively “landscaped” by human beings.