1491, by Charles Mann Promises

¶ … 1491, by Charles Mann promises on its title: "New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus." As promised, the book reveals how the "New World" for the Europeans was not new at all. Mann shows how archeologists and anthropologists have verified that at least 100 million people lived in the Americas, more than in Europe, before Columbus arrived. About two-thirds of the United States continent was farmed.

Charles Mann, who is a correspondent for Science and The Atlantic Monthly, explores findings in three specific areas: Indian demography (Part I), Indian origins (Part II) and Indian ecology (Part III).

The most interesting aspect about 1491 is Mann compiles information from a large number of reputable sources, which has never been done before. Many anthropologists and archeologists have written studies on the topics contained in the book, but they remained in academia and not for the layman. Mann not only assembles many of these scientific findings (he apologizes that it would be impossible to cover everything written), but writes about them in an understandable and appealing fashion. At times, he gets the readers muddled with too much technical information and names of tribes, but most often it is just an interesting read.

To write this book, which Mann says was on his mind even as a kid, he talked with scores of scientists and traveled numerous times to the Americas to interview anyone who knew something on the subject. His objective of showing how there were many advanced cultures living in the Americas before Columbus is definitely reached. The mind is boggled by the level of sophistication of these civilizations that Mann describes as covering a huge geographical area, from the coast of Massachusetts to the heights of the Andes and the Amazon rain forest.

For example, in the 6th Century at the Andes foothills, resided the states called Wari and Tiwanaku, who for 200 years were two of the largest societies, similar in scale to the Mayas (225). They created their states about the time that a drought hit for several decades. They survived by developing terracing and irrigation and diverting snowmelt from the Andes icecaps to the high farm terraces. They rose above the drought and grew potatoes. Today, a few of the terraces are used.

The book also includes photographs (nice if there were more, but that takes up too much space), interesting conversations with some of the archeologists studying a specific area, and the dilemmas they still have about certain aspects of the Indian life. On the southern coast of Peru, not far from where the Wari lived, there are huge patterns set into the ground. These include giant figures of animals, plants, about a 1,000 geometric symbols, and arrow-straight lines many miles long. Although it was once hypothesized that these were made by giant extraterrestrial figures, scientists now say that the Indians could have made them with special techniques. However, the why's still remain.

Many of the Indian groups used a numbering sequence to count objects, timekeeping and calendars, and dozens of writing systems. In the Adena villages in the Ohio Valley, the residents grew "a multifarious suite of crops," such as tobacco, barley, maygrass, and knotweed. The Adena also built huge tombs for their nobles, which included copper beads and bracelets, stone tablets and collars, textiles and awls and stone pipes (256). The "Rubber People" may have invented rubber and used it themselves. The first traces of these people go back to 1800 BC.

That brings up another interesting aspect about the book -- it is not only the number of people who lived here that is amazing, but also the length of time they were established before the settlers came. The book includes the rise and fall of empires over a 20 millennia time period. The U.S., in comparison, is just a minor bump in the time line.

In many situations, Mann further describes information about a location and the different theories that are still not resolved in the endnotes. Although the notes to go with the copy are way in the back of the book, rather than at the end of the chapter or at the bottom of the page, they are easy to find with corresponding page numbers. There are also appendixes giving additional in-depth material not contained in the front copy.