Charles Mann -- 1491: new revelations of the Americas before Columbus
========================================================================

It's a fascinating book and a real mind expander.  But, this book
will do more that radically change the way you think about the
arrival of Europeans in the Americas.

Consider our views about how we manage our forests (if we do that at
all).  You may finish this book thinking that our forests would be
radically different and would be much less fire prone if they were
managed as earlier people had.  When you visit Yosemite Valley in
Yosemite National park, enjoy the magnificent sights, for sure, but
also take the time to walk around the valley floor and notice the
small forests (carpets almost) of small cedar tree sprouts and the
larger cedars that are crowding out the large oaks that should
dominate the valley floor.  Indians, when they had control, would
never have allowed that.  They would have used fire to suppress the
cedars and make more room for oaks and the meadows that supported
deer and other wildlife.

And the forests that covered the North American continent?  In part
those thick forests where there only because the Indians were killed
in huge numbers by disease and, therefore, could not manage them and
keep them from crowding out the meadows and prairies as they had
formerly done for so many years.

Consider your views about the huge herds of American bison that
we're told were here before Europeans arrived.  Yes, but the story
that Mann relates says that those large herds were there for only a
few years and only because the Indians, who controlled them, were
wiped out by diseases brought be Europeans and, in particular, by
their pigs.  An analogous story explains the huge flocks of
passenger pigeons which were here (almost) before Europeans.

If you have a view of pre-European Americans as unorganized
hunter-gatherers, then you really do need to read this book.  They
were not only highly organized, but their management of their
environment and their ability to keep the land around them in a
sustainable productive state was admirable.

Not all of this story is pretty.  Some of those early American
societies were brutal and warlike.  The way in which they dealt with
neighboring societies savage, but not because they were savages,
rather because they were highly organized and well trained fighting
forces.  And, some of these early societies had increadible extremes
of wealth and poverty, some even worse than our own in the United
States.

This book touches on much of what we believe about our history and
about ourselves.  It's a very radical view.  And, you won't have the
same picture of our society and our history after you've read it.
You also may be left with the uncomfortable feeling that the
Americas were not intended for Europeans to take and that there were
superior people here before the Europeans came.  And, you may come
to feel that "American history" should cover much more than the
period after the arrival of the Pilgrims.  Often, the ideas that
make us uncomfortable are the ones we need the most.

02/20/2012

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