Charles Mann's work 1491 is an archaeological exploration of pre-Columbian American societies. He examines the historical dynamics between Native American tribes and tries to extrapolate as much about their culture as possible from the little we have on record of their lives prior to the arrival of Europeans.
The primary thesis in his text is that Native American society was much more advanced and civilized than we imagine or was understood by Europeans. The idea of Native Americans as savages is a very pejorative one which discounts their many accomplishments. Mann argues in this text that the Native Americans did not live in some sort of untamed wilderness but had a mutually beneficial relationship with nature and were able to live comfortably and efficiently while impacting the environment as little as possible.
Mann also argues that the society was much more advanced, both intellectually and technology, than they are given credit for. Native American people were skilled hunters and had their own forms of technology that served their purposes incredibly effectively, including easily made canoes and portable housing. The main reason for their treatment as "savages" comes from European ignorance and ethnocentrism which led them to believe that the lack of large cities or immobile communities may them less advanced because they were unlike Europeans.
In 1491, Mann makes two main arguments. The first is that the Native Americans did not live in an untamed wilderness. In fact, he argues, they were far more agriculturally sophisticated than the Europeans who conquered them. As evidence, he notes the large number of foods the Europeans brought back from the New World, such as potatoes (which became a European staple), tomatoes, and corn. He argues that the Native Americans had a different approach to land management than the Europeans. Rather than divide land up into plots to be given to individuals and fenced in, Native Americans treated the ecosystem in a large scale, collectivist way, burning large swathes of forest, building up soil en masse in different places, and preserving other spots as hunting grounds. Though this could look to untrained eyes like a wilderness, in fact it represented an advanced form of cultivation from which we can still learn. Mann even contends that the rain forest in South America shows evidence of deliberate cultivation by the natives to amend and enrich the soil and create a lush agricultural environment.
Second, Mann contends that the pre-1492 native population was larger than has been estimated. He believes the devastation from diseases brought by the Europeans was more extensive and destructive than previously understood. We don't realize how advanced the native cultures once were in the Americas were because by the time we started exploring, say, the interior of what is now the United States, the civilizations that had flourished there were gone. What we saw an untamed wilderness was in fact a post-holocaust landscape in which native civilizations had been destroyed by disease.
Charles Mann writes mainly to support the idea that the half of the world that was probably unknown to Europeans before 1492 was the site of many diverse civilizations. He selected the year 1491 specifically because Columbus arrived in 1492, and he acknowledges the limits of accurately documenting specific dates one year earlier. In supporting the idea of Native American civilization, Mann also writes against two dominant, interrelated ideas that have persisted since early European exploration: that the indigenous people were uncivilized (further elaborated in the Enlightenment as the “noble savage”) and that the territory was largely empty (what William Denevan called the “pristine myth”).
His thesis depends in part on the kind of information he uses, and that he reminds us has only recently become available, which is based on research in anthropology, archaeology, geography, history, and other disciplines. But he also reviews earlier accounts going back to the fifteenth century and points to the religious and political programs of the people who described the inhabitants of what became known as the Americas—continents for which those people had different, now largely unknown names. Throughout those territories, people labored ceaselessly to alter the landscape and grow crops, engaged in trade, and built massive cities; because of these and other factors, their total population far exceeded Europe's at the time.
1491 is the title of a 2005 book by Charles C. Mann in which Mann looks at the archaeological record to demonstrate that the people of the Americas have lived there longer than previously thought and that their civilizations were every bit as vibrant and advanced as the civilizations of Europe and Africa of the same time period. Mann states that the old theory that the native Americans arrived via the Bering Strait is largely incorrect and that Pre-Columbian societies enjoyed trade networks which spanned that entire continent. Mann also devotes a chapter to the Columbian Exchange in which he examines the role of earthworms and wheat in the development of the Americas for Europeans.
Mann's work is unique in that he adds to the historiography surrounding Pre-Columbian civilizations. Mann does not use the words "native" or "indigenous" as the Pre-Columbian people were not native to the area. He also uses science to prove that the Pre-Columbian societies did not live peacefully with nature; rather, they adjusted their environment to suit their own needs in ways similar to European and African societies.
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