1491: The Truth About the Americas Before Columbus
In this piece, Ben Dangl, editor of Toward Freedom writes that Charles Mann's famous book, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, should be required reading in high schools. But he contends that Mann doesn't draw enough on the stories and histories that exist among the descendants of the Mayan, Mapuche, Incan and Aymara people, who still practice their ancient politics, customs and religions.Dangl goes on to say that while reading this book, he realized how inaccurate it is to describe the Americas as the "New World", since the Americas were inhabited by people 20-30,000 years ago. In comparison, Europe was occupied by humans more recently, 18,000 years at the most. Indeed, the real 'savages' were the Europeans, as you will read further in Dangl's article.
"In many high school history classes students are told that before Columbus arrived the Americas were full of untamed wilderness loosely populated with savage Indians. Charles Mann’s book, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus proves that the opposite is true.
He draws from recent archeological and scientific discoveries to describe booming civilizations which thrived throughout the Americas centuries before the arrival of Europeans. Like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States this book made me want to call up my old history teachers and tell them they were very wrong. In fact, Mann’s self-described thesis is to show that indigenous societies before the arrival of Columbus deserve more than a few misleading pages in a textbook.
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Read Ben Dangl's full article here. (Toward Freedom)
Tags for this entry: The Americas, New World, Indigenous Peoples.
posted by Annamarie at
10:52 PM
1 comment(s):
hey thanks for posting this...i'd just heard of the book a few weeks ago and was going to go to our local library to pick it up. geeze, this review sounds so typical of so much.
remember my post on mesa verde? sounds like the same thing. one couldn't just go and ask, could they? i think some of the ethnobotanists are bringing about far better work then many anthros and archeos when it comes to culture of indigenous people. that's just me.
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scout, at
8:00 PM
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