I just finished 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. A fascinating and highly recommendable book about the long held and lingering misperceptions of 'indigenous' life in our hemisphere prior to the arrival of European colonial powers. Unless you were more perceptive than me or more interested in the subject matter over the years I think you can throw away most of what you thought you knew, and most of what we were taught.
Everything about those living in our hemisphere prior to Columbus has to be considered through the lens of the small pox he (and his fellow 'explorers') brought with him. There is a strong belief that it wiped out as many as 95% of all people living in the Americas. That would include 20% of all people living on Earth at the time (the equivalent of killing 1.2 BILLION people today). It killed most of the people long before they ever saw Europeans, and it so totally changed the reality that when Europeans got to most places they found vast empty places, places that would have been thickly settled and developed before.
The deaths of so many people that for centuries had been manipulating the environment to suit their needs set off a chain reaction of events that led to the general perception of our hemisphere as a vast untouched wilderness, where it had actually been a highly 'artificial' environment.
Acres of hardwood forests blanketing the eastern United States, the trees laden with nuts -made possible by the careful manipulation of indigenous peoples.
The great plains, home to herds of large herbivores extending to an even greater extent than we realize due to extensive regular burning.
Massive earthworks throughout the Amazon used to manipulate and deal with the regular floods and to make it possible to farm in an otherwise difficult environment.
Once the populations were decimated 'nature' was free to rebalance itself, with species that had been highly regulated (bison, passenger pigeons) allowed to explode in number, both of which were later decimated by the white settlers.
The pre-Columbian populations of the Americas were almost universally healthier, living off of a much more balanced and healthy diet than the scrawny and malnourished Europeans that came later. But they were more adept at dealing with parasites and other such biological afflictions, while the Europeans had spent a millennium or more fighting of and developing immunity to plagues (including the dreaded small pox). And so they were highly susceptible.
And ultimately these were highly complex and sophisticated cultures, some with mathematical skills 1000 years ahead of their European and Asian brethren. Not to say that they weren't violent or petty or imperfect in lots of ways. They certainly were. They weren't the noble savages or any of the other derogatory terms we descendants of the Europeans have called them. And if it hadn't been for the incomprehendable effects of small pox, they probably would have kicked the Europeans asses. The guns and horses that the colonial powers brought were either less of an advantage than we give them credit (arrows were far more accurate and nearly as deadly - horses ill suited for Andean roads designed for more sure-footed llamas) or certainly not enough to dislodge a hemisphere with a population equal to Europe. Disease won the day, and everything we know since then has to be understood as a product of unintentional calamity.
And maybe most interestingly, the effect of the philosophies of New England's indigenous cultures on the history of our country cannot be underestimated. They had a commitment to individual rights and liberty unheard of from an culture in history, and our founding fathers had direct contact with the surviving members of those groups. They were centuries ahead on women's rights and slavery.
The book is very well-written, keeping me fascinated all the way through.
5 comments:
Very interesting post. Wow - the idea of bison and pigeon populations exploding because they were not being regulated by American Natives - wow! Are you saying that small-pox,once introduced by the very FIRST settlers, simply spread and killed so many people BEFORE the settlers began westward expansion?
Any chance there's any wild theories in there that don't hold water?
I'm all for entertaining the idea, but isn't there a lack of evidence (e.g. artifacts, dwellings, remains, even oral histories etc.) of such a massive population, at least in North America?
the exploding populations is interesting
on what Dan said, are there any Church of Latter Day Saint connections to this book, author, publishers, editors - the wildness of it did strike me as a wee bit Mormonish.
Mighty-on your first comment: Don't forget that Columbus landed over a hundred years before the pilgrims. The disease would have had plenty of time to spread & kill in the meantime.
There is a range of belief on all of these theories, though the general consensus is heading this way.
Look up Cahokia at Wikipedia for a sense of the scale of North American settlements. And even still, the Americas is a HUGE place and we're talking about a population vastly smaller than the current one, even if large by our previous understanding.
Most of these population seem to have either a minimal written history or most of that history was destroyed by the Spanish (this is especially true in Central and South America). What they did 'write' was often on very fragile stuff.
More later....
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