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1491 - New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Hardcover, New)
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1491 - New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Hardcover, New)
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A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of
the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.
Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of
the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of
Columbus's landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand
years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so
lightly on the land that the Americas was, for all practical
purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes
clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last
thirty years proving these and many other long-held assumptions
wrong.
In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new
generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques
came to previously unheard-of conclusions. Among them:
- In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas
than in Europe.
- Certain cities-such as Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital-were far
greater in population than any contemporary European city.
Furthermore, Tenochtitlan, unlike any capital in Europe at that
time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and
immaculately clean streets.
- The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving
before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.
- 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."
- 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.
- Native Americans transformed their land so completely that
Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively "landscaped" by
human beings.
Mann" "sheds clarifying light on the methods used to arrive at
these new visions of the pre-Columbian Americas and how they have
affected our understanding of our history and our thinking about
the environment. His book is an exciting and learned account of
scientific inquiry and revelation.
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