1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Book Review)

Is it possible that the greatest civilizations of ancient times did not exist in the fertile crescent of the Middle East as has been taught in primary, secondary, and post-secondary classrooms the world over? This is the question addressed by journalist Charles C. Mann in his book, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. In answering this question, Mann explores what he believes are the three main focal points of the new findings in Native American history: Indian demography, Indian origins, and Indian ecology. Throughout the book he also addresses the controversy raised by the findings he reports which he divides into two categories: historians, archeologists, and anthropologists who claim such findings are based on a “perverse kind of political correctness,” and environmentalists unwilling to let go of “the pristine myth” (pp. 4-5).

Mann begins his account by describing a phenomena he calls “Holmberg’s Mistake.” To summarize, Allen Holmberg was an anthropologist studying the Siriono Indians in Bolivia during the early 1940’s. He wrote a groundbreaking book about his experiences in which he characterized this group of people as “among the most culturally backward peoples of the world” who “for millennia had existed almost without change in a landscape unmarked by their presence. Then they encountered European society and for the first time their history acquired a narrative flow” (pp. 8-9). However, the reality was that the Siriono had been decimated by disease in the 1920’s when they lost over 95% of their population to smallpox and influenza. At about the same time, the Bolivian military was imprisoning or enslaving the Siriono as they fought to protect their land from white cattle ranchers.

Mann uses this account as particularly instructive in revealing the overarching fallacy widely held regarding Native American populations into the twenty-first century. Like Ronald Takaki in A Different Mirror, Mann reveals the American and European understanding of indigenous populations as small, wandering bands of primitive and uncivilized people. He argues that a view such as Holmberg’s is analogous to encountering a small group of refugees from a Nazi concentration camp and concluding that they belonged to a culture that had always been naked and starving (p. 10). Holmberg’s mistake becomes the overarching principle behind Mann’s book. Within several decades of Columbus’ first arrival on American shores, native civilizations throughout North and South America were shattered beyond a point of recognition. Mann records how quickly and decisively this destruction swept across the two continents to the extent where only a handful of European conquistadors, missionaries and settlers were privileged enough to see any of these civilizations at or near their apex. Consequently, the reality and extent of their existence became lost to Europeans.

Throughout the book, Mann shows how “Holmberg’s Mistake” has obscured the reality of Indian demographics, Indian origins and Indian ecology. He accomplished this by compiling decades of research from experts in a tremendous range of fields including history, anthropology, genetics and biology. First, Mann focuses on information regarding the vast numbers of Indians who populated both North and South America prior to Columbus’ arrival in 1492. He provides significant evidence that the number of Indians in the Americas was exponentially higher than previously believed. Also, the civilizations they developed were much more advanced than previously believed. Though recognizing the greatness of the Inca, Maya, and Aztec, existing literature in the field has always maintained that the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley, the fertile crescent, as the mother of earth’s most advanced ancient civilizations. Though his purpose in writing is not to discredit this information, Mann submits significant evidence proving that several Mesoamerican and South American tribes developed civilizations which rivaled, if not surpassed, the greatness of those in the fertile crescent.
Next, Mann explores fascinating and innovative new research taking place within the fields of genetics and biology, among other areas, to prove that the Americas were inhabited centuries, possibly millennia earlier than previously believed. "Native Americans may have been in the Americas for twenty thousand or even thirty thousand years. Given that the Ice Age made Europe north of the Loire Valley uninhabitable until some eighteen thousand years ago, the Western Hemisphere should perhaps no longer be described as the ‘New World.’ . . . [P]eople were thriving from Alaska to Chile while much of northern Europe was still empty of mankind and its works" (p. 192).

He also looks at how Holmberg’s Mistake has led to a significantly distorted view of the ecology of native people groups. As in contemporary society, the first inhabitants of the Americas interacted with and ultimately impacted their environment in many significant ways. Mann’s explanation and many examples easily disprove Rousseau’s idea of the “natural state” in which “noble savages” lived. The evidence shows that “Indian societies had built up a remarkable body of knowledge about how to manage and improve their environment” (p. 321). According to Mann, the reality is that the “wilderness” experienced by European invaders was a landscape significantly impacted by millennia of human occupation.

The two main focal points of controversy in the compilation of research Mann reports are strategic places to begin a discussion of how issues of race and racism play a significant role in this discussion. The first source of criticism Mann addresses comes from researchers within the fields of history, archeology, and anthropology. These professionals fervently claim the research revealing higher numbers of pre-Columbian Indians, more advanced levels of civilization, and earlier origins of these civilizations to be, at best, misinterpreted and, at worst, manufactured. The essential question to ask here is this: What are the vested interests of those who so passionately disbelieve (or want to disbelieve) these new discoveries?

One answer lies in the concept of “white guilt.” The more numerous the people and the more grand the civilizations, the greater was the death and destruction caused by Europeans. Though speculative, a possible influence in this reaction is the fact that many of these new discoveries were being made during the social upheaval of the Civil Rights Era. Mann comments that critics of this research are primarily from the older generations, presumably those coming of age during a racially contentious time when “whiteness” had been charged and found very guilty. Another answer lies in the long-perpetuated myth of the “Noble Savage.” “The symbolic opposition between ‘wild’ and ‘domesticated’ peoples, between ‘savages’ and ‘civilization’ was constructed as part of the discourse of European hegemony, projecting cultural inferiority as an ideological ground for political subordination” (Ellingson 2001, p. xiii).

Further implications of race and racism are found in the intense pressure from ecologists and environmentalists not to reveal information regarding the manipulation of the environment by indigenous people groups. Most egregious to this camp are new revelations of life in Pre-Columbian Amazonia. “With bulldozers poised to destroy one of the planet’s last great wild places, environmentalists say, claiming that the [Amazon] comfortably housed large numbers of people for millennia is so irresponsible as to be almost immoral--it is tantamount to giving developers a green light” (p. 321). Ostensibly sound-minded, such arguments reveal an insidious example of racism. Hiding important historical, sociological, and scientific information about a group of people in order to serve a “good cause” is manipulative and, furthermore, indicative of white hegemony in two important ways: Our seemingly unending belief that we know what is in the best interests of others, and our unending, audacious capacity for boldly imposing our will on them.

Through his research and reporting, Mann has shed light on one of the last and largest bastions of unknown history. “Much of this world vanished after Columbus, swept away by disease and subjugation. So thorough was the erasure that within a few generations neither conquerer nor conquered knew that this world had existed” (p. 30). Though he does not specifically address issues of race, Mann’s exploration of these people groups reveals not only the blatant racial hegemony leading to their devastation, but also the contemporary effects privilege and power have on our willingness to uncover them.



References

Ellingson, T. (2001). The myth of the noble savage. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Mann, C. C. (2006). 1491: New revelations of the Americas before columbus. New York: Random House.
Takaki, R. (1993). A different mirror: A history of multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.