Songs For College Reunion

Mann: A New History of the Americas before Columbus

Original title: 1491. New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Original language: English
Date Published: 2005
Rating: Recommended

choose seems lately attending titles to their numbers: 1421, 1434, 1491 ... does anyone know more? It is pure coincidence or the owner has become fashionable in this way, but the truth is that you stand fast and temporal context.

On the back cover tells us: "Traditionally, we have shown that the first inhabitants of America entered the continent through the Bering Strait twelve thousand years before Columbus. It was assumed that bands were small and nomadic, and lived without altering the earth. But in recent years, archaeologists and anthropologists have shown that these assumptions, as others also argued for some time, were wrong. "

This paragraph summarizes the author's intentions, a correspondent for Science. Through the results of new studies on the region, focuses on three main aspects: demography before American conquest, the origins of the population and its ecology. Thus, far from believing that the continent was virtually uninhabited, except perhaps Mesoamerican and Incan cities, explains how the population was higher than the European, not just in those cities, which reached very high levels of occupancy, but also rest of the continent, such as in Bolivia.

On the origins, we know the Bering Strait theory, which currently has strong detractors, and there is talk of several waves of migration much earlier than twelve thousand years were used to study. Findings in Chile prior to that date confirm that the continent was already inhabited and suggests that Americans ran advances beyond what happened in the East, without his influence. Finally, Mann focuses on the ecology, ie, in the belief that Americans did not transform the landscape in which they lived, not intervening in land development. Well, says quite the contrary, precisely what the Europeans found upon arrival was a completely territory altered by human hand with a complex system of land exploitation.

Reading these over 500 pages is very pleasant, reminding me sometimes style An innocent anthropologist. Quick read that grabs you and leads you and audible gasps of surprise: "Oh."

We can be more or less agree with the conclusions that the author brings to light new findings on the subject, but what is clear is that there are these new discoveries, and this book is a starting point for approaching them.