1491: Uncovering New Revelations About the Americas Before Columbus

Amazon Customer: Opens one's eyes to a whole new view of the western hemisphere before Columbus. Timely with recent findings. Fascinating !

Canada on Jan 26, 2024

Verity Brown: This book challenges the notion that the Americas were a barely inhabited pristine wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. It presents multiple examples of environment-altering societies that both rose and fell centuries before the ultimate tragedy: the encounter with European diseases that wiped out millions of people who had never seen a European.

Rather than damning Europeans for this tragedy (which was not intentional on the part of those who accidentally introduced those microbes), this book delves into the reasons the population was so susceptible: a narrower range of DNA immune responses and the lack of domestic animals (which would have served as a disease-producing reservoir to familiarize the people's immune systems with a wider range of diseases). In other words, any contact between hemispheres was inevitably going to be fatal to the people of the Americas.

While I was reading this book, I spied a news headline about yet another culture, similar to the ones in the far-western Amazon region, discovered in Ecuador. The amount still to learn is vast.

This book serves as a useful reminder that we cannot assume that humans of...

United States on Jan 20, 2024

Jawbox: An engaging and culturally rich book which displays a rich range of knowledge and many years’ study. I came to this book after reading one of Mann’s articles in National Geographic where I was struck by the sensitivity and grasp he had of the topic (not always a luxury in journalistic coverage but something many feature writers would ideally like to achieve). The book challenges conventional nationalistic history using an evidence-based approach, rather than polemic, and with an engaging humorous and anecdotal structure. The book is rightly (gently) critical of the way that the topic has been dealt with from an imperialist academic perspective and highlighting the often obfuscated role of the ordinary people who came across archaeological sites. At the same time it pulls no punches when discussing the politicisation of Mesoamerican histories, whether imperialist apology or native activism. A series of endnotes and bibliographic sources opens the door to further enquiry.

United Kingdom on Oct 24, 2022

José Macaya: Apasionante. Todos los descubrimientos recientes que cambian la historia que creíamos cierta de América hasta Colón. Muy bien documentado. Fue una historia inmensamente más rica que lo que creíamos. Pasados sorprendentes en todo el hemisferio. Increíble el del Amazonas. También el "invento" del maíz, que no era un cereal silvestre. Algunos capítulos pueden hacerse largos, pero vale la pena seguir. El último es imperdible. La coda es polémica, y por ello buen "food for thought".

Spain on Oct 06, 2022

paul peretz: what was expected

Sweden on Aug 18, 2022

Maap: Muy buen libro y el paquete llegó en tiempo y buenas condiciones

Mexico on Dec 08, 2019

Walter W. Olson, Ph.D, P.E.: Charles C. Mann’s book, 1491, provides us with an eye opener about the pre-Columbus populations of the North and South America. It is not an easy read: it is very detailed and well researched with references to critical scientific studies. It is not a chronological or systematic account, and this makes the book somewhat disjointed. Mann’s main intents were to examine Indian demography, Indian origins and Indian ecology.

In my opinion, he is not successful in the first objective of describing Indian demography. However, I doubt there are enough research available to tackle this objective. They may never be enough research as there were multiple occupations of land by unknown populations throughout the period from the first arrivals of the peoples loosely described as Indians to the present day. Also, the populations were dynamic, growing and shrinking depending on the social and natural environments of various groups of Indians. The task may just be too difficult to build a record of Indian populations prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Mann has tried to report the research faithfully but the Indian populations of Western United States and...

United States on Feb 19, 2019

flashgordon: Highlights of the dark ages were the Spanish Arabs and the Byzantine. A people that were partly protected from the Germanic barbarians of the dark ages by the Byzantines was the Venitians. They'd go on to dominate the second half of the dark ages(from 1000 A.d to about 1500 A.D. Part of what happened was the Byzantine's were overrun by the Turks in the mid 1400s. Now, if you wanted to get silk and spices from the mysterious east, you needed to pay crazy amount of money or find another way. The Europeans found another way. - find the Aristotle quote and note it here - I think I've noted it in my finite and infinite write up.

I've put up pictures of the Haglia Sophia before, but why not show it again?

I'll just say watch John Romer's Testament episode 6 I do believe for good video of the inside and outside of the Haglia Sophia. He goes straight up the outside doors and knocks on them . . . and opens them up! It's like something out of the 'Lord of the Rings"!

How about a Venice picture,

When the Portuguese, Spanish, English and French went west, they found a world of riches. This wealth essentially made Venice a relic of the past. A...

United States on Oct 16, 2014