Nearly everything about the Indians is currently a matter of contention. This would be a formidable task under any circumstance, and it is complicated by the fact that so much of the deep American past is embroiled in vituperative political and scientific controversies. Mann, a science journalist and co-author of four previous books on subjects ranging from aspirin to physics to the Internet, provides an important corrective - a sweeping portrait of human life in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus.
Because history is change, they were people without history." For cultural reasons of their own, Europeans and white Americans have "implicitly depicted Indians as people who never changed their environment from its original wild state. Mann points out in his marvelous new book, "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus," is that they are essentially dehumanizing.
The trouble with all such stereotypes, as Charles C. Small wonder that, right up to the present day, American Indians have usually been presented as either underachieving metahippies, tree-hugging saints or some combination of the two. Plants and animals, corn, chili peppers, tomatoes What is the evidence of God's 2nd creation that Europeans send back home? The French Pox (Syphilis) What is the unwelcomed passenger and unintentional gift with deadly consequences in Europe? England Who is the new "superpower of Europe"? Lots of resources that they lacked in Europe There was no gold in the rivers, but what did Europeans find there that amazed them? 200 years How long does it take for European settlements to create 'overfishing'? They were expected to support Europe's lack of trees Why were American trees "doomed'? The Caribbean Islands Other than the man's head who is chopping down a tress, what other areas of the Americas are 'completely bald'? The one they left Europeans create the new world in the image of _.MOST of us know, or think we know, what the first Europeans encountered when they began their formal invasion of the Americas in 1492: a pristine world of overwhelming natural abundance and precious few people a hemisphere where - save perhaps for the Aztec and Mayan civilizations of Central America and the Incan state in Peru - human beings indeed trod lightly upon the earth.
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