1491 notes - Summary 1491 - 1491 PDF

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Summary

Summary of the book, required reading for student presentation to the class. ...

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Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus’s landing had   

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crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; Existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; Lived so “lightly” on the land, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. o (b) Humans probably arrived in the Americas earlier than thought, over the course of multiple waves of migration to the New World (not solely by the Bering land bridge over a relatively short period of time). Charles C. Mann - archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last thirty years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong. o The level of cultural advancement and the settlement range of humans was higher and broader than previously imagined.

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In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe.

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Certain cities–such as Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital–were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitlán, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets. , a huge artificially constructed set of islands demonstrating the technological prowess of the people of the region.

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The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.

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Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a breeding process so sophisticated that the journal Science recently described it as "man’s first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering."

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Amazonian Indians learned how to farm the rain forest without destroying it–a process scientists are studying today in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge.

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Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively "landscaped" by human beings.

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New World was not a wilderness at time of European contact, but an environment which the indigenous peoples had altered for thousands of years for their benefit, mostly with fire. (slash and burn) o create grasslands for cultivation o encourage the abundance of game animals o Native Americans domesticated fewer animals and cultivated plant life differently from their European counterparts, but did so quite intensively. New England 17th century. Mann disagrees with popular idea that European technologies were superior to those of Native Americans, o Guns E.G. o Native Americans considered them little more than "noisemakers", o Concluded they were more difficult to aim than arrows.

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John Smith of Jamestown noted "the awful truth ... it [a gun] could not shoot as far as an arrow could fly". (broke a gun when captured so Natives would not know this to be true??) o Moccasins were more comfortable and sturdy than the boots Europeans wore, o Preferred by most during that era because their padding offered a more silent approach to warfare (adapted to environment) o Birchbark canoes could be paddled faster and were more maneuverable than any small European boats. o Shined – sun block, mosquito repellant (oil, lard) o Hircut for practical reasons 0 don’t get in way of bow. Agriculture development of maize o significant for the rise in crop surpluses o populations o Complex cultures, o Pivotal in the rise of civilizations such as the Olmec. Earliest known major civilization Mesoamericans o did not have the luxury of "stealing" inventions from others, geographically isolated in comparison to the cultures of Eurasia, o Leading to an absence of inventions that played fundamental roles in other cultures (such as the wheel) and also lacked domesticated large animals. Mann argues that Native Americans were a keystone species, o One that "affects the survival and abundance of many other species". Decreased environmental influence and resource competition led to population explosions o American bison and the passenger pigeon, o Because fire clearing had ceased, forests would have expanded and become denser. Holmburg Mistake – Early 1940’s, Allan R. Holmberg, a doctoral student, lived among the Sirionó tribe in the Beni (A Bolivian Province). Holmberg reported them to be “among the most culturally backward peoples of the world.” o assume that these people had always lived this way, o That their way of life had remained unchanged from primitive times, o And that they were essentially a people who had “no real history.” o Also includes the belief that the native peoples of the Americas had little impact on the land, that they did not change it in any lasting, purposeful way. Mann mentions the neolithic revolution, o Invention of farming. o Middle East, where farming began, is known as the cradle of civilization o The neolithic revolution was a defining event in human history. o What is not widely known is that another, completely independent neolithic revolution also took place, in Mesoamerica. o Archaeologists estimate it occurred about 10,000 years ago, slightly later than the Middle Eastern version. o However, as recently as 2003, seeds of cultivated squashes found in coastal Ecuador predate ancient Sumerian accomplishment. o

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Mann notes two of the six independent centers of civilization in the world arose in the Americas: 1. Norte Chico or Caral-Supe, in present-day northern Peru; 2. Mesoamerica in what is now Central America.

The Land as Testament        

Mann argues based on discovered evidence that from New England to South Carolina was covered with farms built by the Native Americans. These farms would be on cleared flat land. Large wooden wall would be in place to protect densely populated encampments of Native Americans. Further south were enormous stone chiefdoms. The city of Tenochtitlan was larger than the Europeans' centers in London or France. Tenochtitlan was the capital of the Aztec Empire between the 1300s and 1500s and its ruins are still visible in Mexico City. Just outside of Tenochtitlan was Lake Texcoco Continued south is the Inca Empire the largest nation-state in existence at the time. o Stretch from Stockholm to Egypt. A piece of land that large would also prove how dense the populations in America were prior to Columbus' arrival. o Thin and long 32 degrees of latitude – 75 miles at widest point o 14,000 ft above sea level o Slopes 65 degrees – san fran steepest hill is 31.5 degrees o Pizarro conquered – 168 men, 68 horses, and hills negated horse advantage o Smallpox -

Disease, the First Explorer Technology – European had different tech, but not necessarily better. Indians were here far longer than previously thought, these researchers believe, and in much greater numbers. And they were so successful at imposing their will on the landscape that in 1492 Columbus set foot in a hemisphere thoroughly marked by humankind. (chapter 1 paragraph 5) Before Columbus, Holmberg believed, both the people and the land had no real history. Stated so baldly, this notion – that the indigenous peoples of the Americas floated changelessly through the millennia until 1492, -- may seem ludicrous. But flaws in perspective often appear obvious only after they are pointed out. In this case they took decades to rectify.” (chapter 1 paragraph 23) “Here, at last, we begin to appreciate the enormity of the calamity, for the disintegration of native America was a loss not just to those societies but to the human enterprise as a whole. . . . The Americas were a boundless sea of novel ideas, dreams, stories, philosophies, religions, moralities, discoveries, and all the other products of the mind” [p. 137]. Mann writes, “Native Americans were living in balance with Nature–but they had their thumbs on the scale. . . . The American landscape had come to fit their lives like

comfortable clothing. It was a highly successful and stable system, if ‘stable’ is the appropriate word for a regime that involves routinely enshrouding miles of countryside in smoke and ash” [p. 284]....