Book Review: 1491
Posted by
Kevin
1491 is a re-examination of what life was like in the Americas before the permanent arrival of Europeans. It is based on the most recent scientific work and is written by someone who knows how to explain even the most complicated scientific process in a clear and enlightening fashion. And I didn’t enjoy it anywhere as much as I think I should have.
The story itself is fascinating. The Americas before the arrival of Europeans turn out to have been much more populated than is generally understood. Places that we traditionally think of as largely empty — the Amazon and the interior of North America, for example — where actually the home of large, complex, city-building cultures. Those cultures were destroyed ahead of European history by the diseases that the first European explorers and their animals brought with them. The final numbers are in dispute, (a dispute covered very fairly by the author) but up to 95% of the original population of the Americas could have been killed by diseases and the resultant societal collapse. What is not in doubt that is that entire cultures disappeared after their first contact with European explorers. Further, the coastal Native Americans in North America more than held their own against European incursions for the first few decades of contact. It was only after diseases had shattered those nations that the conquest of North America could begin in earnest.
The portions of the book that focus on the lost cultures and the history of interaction between European invaders and Native Americans are the best portions of the book. The discussions of the science, as I mentioned, are nearly as interesting. Unfortunately, the book spends too much time dealing with the personalities behind the science. I am sure that most of the people profiled are nice, smart, and love kittens. But they are not one tenth as fascinating as the cultures they re-discovered, and time spent on them is time that could have been spent giving more detail about the fascinating and doomed cultures of the Americas.
It is th examination of those cultures — in many case, cultures that no school textbook has ever introduced you too — that make this book worth buying. For all its fault’s, 1491 does a marvelous job of conveying a sense of the lost cultures and a sense of the magnitude of that loss. And entire world, with cultures that were sometime much more enlightened (and some times not; 1491 is no hagiography of Native Americans), was destroyed in a handful of decades by greed, religious bigotry, and a terrible quirk of biology. 1491 is a good first attempt to explain what was lost and how it was destroyed.
Too bad the native tribes were such a violent people toward one another. Their inability to live in peace with one another weakened them. Just think what a wonderful land this would be if they had been able to work together with other tribes of their own race and resist the invasions of the evil white tribes.
Comment 1/2/2007
Yeah, Fred, because nowhere else in the world are groups of people violent toward one another. In fact, the entire history of Europe is untarnished by such inter-group violence. Nope, those enlightened Europeans were nowhere near as violent toward one another as those dirty Injuns. Nor did the Europeans spend a good portion of their time and energy and resources inventing more efficient ways to kill each other.
Next time, try thinking before you type.
Comment 1/4/2007
Tgirsch
No, what got him was this, I am sure:
“It is th examination of those cultures — in many case, cultures that no school textbook has ever introduced you too — that make this book worth buying. For all its fault’s, 1491 does a marvelous job of conveying a sense of the lost cultures and a sense of the magnitude of that loss. And entire world, with cultures that were sometime much more enlightened (and some times not; 1491 is no hagiography of Native Americans), was destroyed in a handful of decades by greed, religious bigotry, and a terrible quirk of biology”
the notion that some Native American cultures could be more enlightened than European cultures, or that the colonists history with the Native Americans was one largely driven by desire for land, coupled with religious and race based bigotry, is what I suspect sent him up the wall.
And it is a tragedy that we lost some of those Native American cultures. Many of them were more enlightned than their European contemporaries, and I think its possible that the world in general would have been a better place if thay had been able to surive the European onslaught and instead had interacted with with european culture from a positon resembling equality.
Comment 1/4/2007
What a dunce you are! The point is that all people of all races have problems living with other tribes. The idea that the native Americans (or whatever they should be called) were people who lived in harmony with nature and with each other is garbage. Next time, think before you respond. At least respond to what has been said and not to what your feeble mind thinks has been said.
Comment 1/4/2007
My response was to tg, but you qualify as well.
Comment 1/4/2007
“he point is that all people of all races have problems living with other tribes. The idea that the native Americans (or whatever they should be called) were people who lived in harmony with nature and with each other is garbage. Next time, think before you respond. At least respond to what has been said and not to what your feeble mind thinks has been said.”
I am just going to sit back and marvel at that, considering that this sentiment:
“he point is that all people of all races have problems living with other tribes. The idea that the native Americans (or whatever they should be called) were people who lived in harmony with nature and with each other is garbage.”
exists exactly nowhere in the book or the review.
Comment 1/4/2007
“exists exactly nowhere in the book or the review”
I didn’t say it did. Once again you choose to argue against something that you made up in your head.
Comment 1/4/2007
Fred:
I didn’t say it did.
Then why did you bring it up? You didn’t say that it did, but you did say that it was the point of your initial comment. Your words: “The point is that…” So if that was indeed the point of your initial comment, what was that comment intended to be in response to? By your own admission, it’s not relevant to the book or this review.
See our problem is, we keep assuming (apparently incorrectly) that your comments are intended to be relevant to the post at hand.
Comment 1/4/2007
Actually folks, 1491 is an egregiously bad piece of crap.Charles Mann is a journalist, not a scientistand as such he doesn’t adequately evaluate the often outrageous and virtually unsupported claims made by some members of the achaeological community.
Comment 11/27/2007
I think that the book was very poorly written. The structure of jumping chronologically is ridiculous. It is hard to follow, and is incredibly misleading. While fascinating, it is hard to believe in all that the book tries to imply.
Comment 3/8/2008