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 Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital
-- were far greater in population than any contemporary
European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitlán, unlike any capital
in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful
botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.
The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were
thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.
Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a
breeding process so sophisticated that the journal
Science recently described it as man s first, and
perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering.
Amazonian Indians learned how to farm the rain forest
without destroying it -- a process scientists are studying
today in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge.
Native Americans transformed their land so completely that
Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively
landscaped by human beings.
Mann sheds clarifying light on the methods used to arrive at
these new visions of the pre-Columbian Americas and how they
have affected our understanding of our history and our
thinking about the environment. His book is an exciting and
learned account of scientific inquiry and revelation.
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