Book reviews: 1491
Jan. 28, 2010
In addition to modern literature, I've also been trying to read more history and anthropology. For Christmas I received Charles Mann's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, which presents the results of new research into pre-Columbian American civilizations. For the most part, everything we learned in school is wrong, and this books sets out to correct it. Intellectually, it seeks to popularize post-colonial anthropology.
My previous experience with early American history is from my public school education, random conversations with anthropology majors in college, and Jared Diamond's excellent Guns, Germs, and Steel. From this experience, I had some vague notions that the story we learned in school – America as a vast, sparsely populated wilderness whose only inhabitants were barely out of the paleolithic culturally - was at best incomplete. Diamond's book gave me the idea that the reason the American empires was conquered so easily is a combination of unfortunate circumstances entirely due to South American geography. 1491 refutes both of those ideas.
The book opens with a discussion of academic efforts to estimate the population of the Americas before Columbus arrived. Estimates on this vary wildly, but it appears the academic consensus has slowly been moving upwards. Many anthropologists now think there may have been as many as 30 million inhabitants in the New World. Early Spanish explorers reported large cities and heavily populated regions. However, later explorers and colonists found the region mostly empty. Of course, the Great Emptying of the Americas is entirely due to the spread of new diseases. Wave after wave of plague spread throughout the land killing as much as 95% of the population. Considering the black plague in Europe killed 50-70% of the people there in the 14th century (and that was only one disease!) I don't consider this to be much of a stretch. The book continues to emphasize this point: the Americas were not empty when the Spanish arrived. In fact, Tenochtitlan was likely the largest city in the world, with over one million inhabitants.
After this opening, the book focuses on a few other topics unrelated to any one particular culture. Agriculture, textiles, and the surprising lack of the wheel are all discussed. Despite the notion in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Indian agriculture appears to have been superior to Asian and European. Maize (corn) provides more calories per acre than other grains and if planted along side beans and squash, which use the corn stalks as support for their vines, does not require rotation to preserve the nutritious content of the fields.
Even more surprising, North Americans and the cultures of Amazonia appear to have practiced a form of agriculture that was previously unknown to me. Rather than clear fields, plant crops, and harvest every year, these cultures instead developed techniques for manipulating the landscape on a vast and more permanent scale. Plains Indians would set fire to massive areas in order to keep the prairie clear of trees and brush. This provided more grass for the bison which they would then eat. It is likely the entire Midwestern prairie is an engineered human artifact. Similarly, Indians in the northeast burned out the undergrowth from the forests and encouraged nut and fruit trees to grow. This produced more game animals for hunting and more foods. Amazonian cultures domesticated and planted fruit trees in vast areas of the rain-forest. The early American colonists were all surprised at the abundance of the Americas, but they had just stumbled not into wilderness, but someone's garden.
Indian textiles were superior to European varieties. The conquistadors eschewed their steel breastplates for Inkan quilted armor; it was better at stopping arrows and spears. The also wove entire boats from reeds. The wheel was not entirely absent, however they only used it for children's toys. This makes more sense than you might guess. The Andes are very steep and Inkan roads are gigantic staircases, for the most part. The Mayans lived in a swamp and the Aztecs lived on a lake. They also did not have any domesticated animals large enough to pull a cart. Thus, there was no need for wheeled transports.
The biggest treat of the book for me comes not from discussions of who had what technology and so on, but rather the history of the pre-Columbian empires. I'd never heard the history of the Inkan empire or the story of the centuries-long conflict between rival Mayan city-states Mutal and Kaan. Both are full of intrigue and turnabouts as fascinating as anything in European history. My captivation was only enhanced by my complete ignorance.
There is so much material here that I have a hard time doing it all justice. If you, like me, believe that this was a horrendously neglected part of your education, reading 1491 will be not only a pleasure but also enlightening.