Ron Peters's Reviews > 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

1491 does not really accomplish what it sets out to do, but it is an entertaining and instructive read nonetheless, and it accomplishes an unintended goal very well. The main purpose of the book is to address controversies about what the Americas were like before contact by Europeans, based on modern research findings. Mann addresses three main issues.

1. How large was the precontact population of Amerindians? The first two chapters of this section say practically nothing about this, though they are interesting. The question is addressed on and off in the third chapter.

2. When did Amerindians arrive in the Americas, and how did they get here? A side question is whether it is true that Amerindians made extinct the large mammal population of the Americas almost immediately upon arrival. All three of these chapters address these questions, albeit in a meandering, discursive manner.

3 Did Amerindians shape their natural environments in major ways? I found this the most interesting section, containing ideas that were new to me. Mann argues that Amerindians skillfully managed their landscapes, which were not pristine wildernesses. He makes a good case for the idea that the enormous buffalo herds and huge primeval forests discovered as settlers moved west were the results of the decimation of the native population which left the lands unmanaged. This was a post-human change, not a natural state.

The first interesting thing about this book is that you get no definitive answer to the key questions, though you are introduced to much interesting modern research along the way. Mann leans to the liberal side of each question. He believes that Amerindians formed an extremely large population, were here very early, were not mass ecocidal terrorists, and managed their environments thoughtfully.

The one definitive thing you learn from this book, its great unintended goal, is that the academic sciences contain a great many extraordinarily petty, egotistic, bitchy people who fight one another relentlessly and would happily do nasty things to their own grandmothers to ensure their place in the sun. It’s maybe not why you’d buy the book, but this point is crystal clear once you’ve read it, and their endless bickering and back-stabbing is in itself entertaining.