It replaces that fallacy with evidence of a different genesis, exciting and closer to true. 1491 erases our myth of a wilderness Eden. The Boston Globe A ripping, man-on-the-ground tour of a world most of us barely intuit. A landmark of a book that drops ingrained images of colonial American into the dustbin, one after the other. The New York Times Book Review Fascinating. A sweeping portrait of human life in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus. Review Quotes A journalistic masterpiece. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand.

Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called mans first feat of genetic engineering. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492. Book Synopsis In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. About the Book Mann offers a groundbreaking study that radically alters readers understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.

1492 book mann