Mann, a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly and Science, masterfully assembles a diverse body of scholarship into a first-rate history of Native America and its inhabitants. The author also weighs the evidence that Native populations were far larger than previously calculated. Most notably, according to Mann, the Haudenosaunee, in what is now the Northeast U.S., constructed a loose confederation of tribes governed by the principles of individual liberty and social equality. Mann also shows that the Maya constructed huge cities and governed them with a cohesive set of political ideals. What defeated the Inca was not steel but smallpox and resulting internecine warfare. In fact, scholars say, the Inca had a highly refined metallurgy, but valued plasticity over strength. For example, it has long been believed the Inca fell to Pizarro because they had no metallurgy to produce steel for weapons. The new researchers have turned received wisdom on its head. Reviewing the latest, not widely reported research in Indian demography, origins and ecology, Mann zestfully demonstrates that long before any European explorers set foot in the New World, Native American cultures were flourishing with a high degree of sophistication. In a riveting and fast-paced history, massing archeological, anthropological, scientific and literary evidence, Mann debunks much of what we thought we knew about pre-Columbian America. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city.
A groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492-from “a remarkably engaging writer” ( The New York Times Book Review).Ĭontrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them.
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