Experimental Blog #113

Comments on "1491 - New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus" by Charles C. Mann

This book is a summary of very recent, controversial, and academically revolutionary studies of American history, both North and South, before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492.

The earlier arrival of people from Asia has been discussed for a long time. However, it is increasingly argued, and supported by scientific research, that there were many more people in the Americas when Columbus arrived than was previously thought, and that they lived at a much higher level of cultural developement. They also had a very large affect on vast areas of their natural environments over many centuries: encluding even the Amazon rain forest.

The arrival of Europeans in 1492, and later, Africans, brought diseases to which the American Indians had very little resistance. The result was that the great majority of American Indian tribes lost 90%, and more, of their populations a century, and even more, before the arrival of the later European explorers and colonists who encountered them. By then even the American Indian tribes had "forgotten" about these old calamities and much of their old cultures as well.