1491

New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Hardcover, 480 pages

English language

Published Aug. 9, 2005 by Knopf.

ISBN:
978-1-4000-4006-3
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OCLC Number:
56632601

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5 stars (1 review)

A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus's landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas was, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last thirty years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques came to previously unheard-of conclusions. Among them:- In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe.- Certain cities--such as Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital--were far greater in population …

7 editions

A genuine "must read"

5 stars

This is deservedly a classic work of history even though it is recent. We believe all sorts of things that just are not true about the world of the western hemisphere. Much of this is due to essential racism, since we cannot believe that the people who lived here before the Europeans arrived could have developed large and complex societies. But as this book shows, they did indeed. And it was not our superior civilization, or gunpowder, or other military advantages of the Europeans that allowed them to conquer this hemisphere, it was their diseases that brought down what was in some ways a superior civilization.

Subjects

  • Native Americans - History
  • Indians
  • History
  • History - General History
  • Origin
  • History: World
  • North American
  • Native American
  • Americas (North Central South West Indies)
  • History / Native American
  • Antiquities
  • America

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