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Sto caricando le informazioni... 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbusdi Charles C. Mann
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Charles C. Mann clarifies North, Central, and South America's misty history by examining the continents' past landscapes, archeological records, and legends. While this book was published almost two decades ago, there was a lot of information here that was new to me. Mann doesn't do most of his research from a desk. Instead, he travels to the places he discusses and talks to local residents and experts. I appreciate his honesty in discussing the disagreements between the experts on topics like whether the Amazon basin ever had advanced civilizations. He explains the debates and why they matter. In doing so, he clarifies that archeologists, like everyone else, sometimes allow their values to color their conclusions. My only wish was that he had skipped around a little less geographically. Switching from North to South to Central America caused occasional mental whiplash. While the stories cover a dizzying amount of material, the quantity is not unreasonable considering he's covering tens of thousands of years and that the acreage covers two massive continents. Mann weaves in stories that provide entertainment and humor. Whoever knew "Squanto," the friend of the Pilgrims, introduced himself to them as, roughly translated, "The Wrath of God." Things have always been more complicated than we are led to believe from a distance. I enjoyed this book. It's densely packed with information, and this was generally welcome for someone interested in history. I'm sure since Mann wrote this book, scientists and historians have discovered many new artifacts, so I would love to see it updated. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in indigenous cultures or early American history. Un innovador estudio que altera radicalmente nuestra percepción de las Américas antes de la llegada de Colón en 1492 Insightful! True confession? I have a rather large obsession with pre-history land masses. "Pre-history" meaning: before being found by "civilized" white folks. My obession started in Washington State and checking out glacial mounds there, fasicnating. Living in Louisiana and checking out Poverty Point, not realizing from this book that there was an even larger one closer to me.... Living in Illinois and dragging my family to Cahokia Mound by the Mississippi River. Traveling to Ireland to check out Newgrange. I do have it rather bad. Then this book mentions SO. MANY. MORE! I must admit I skimmed the first parts as they were more in South and Central America, but boy do I want to go to Belize even more now! Then, the chapters about North America, and it was right where I have been before. So exciting! I just love this stuff and really try to hold in the urge to recreate these things in my backyard but it is getting harder to do that. Anyway....I won't recommend this book to any of my friends because they will think I am crazier than I am. But, if any friends read this review and have their interests piqued, please let me know. :)
Mann has written an impressive and highly readable book. Even though one can disagree with some of his inferences from the data, he does give both sides of the most important arguments. 1491 is a fitting tribute to those Indians, present and past, whose cause he is championing. Mann has chronicled an important shift in our vision of world development, one our young children could end up studying in their textbooks when they reach junior high. Mann does not present his thesis as an argument for unrestrained development. It is an argument, though, for human management of natural lands and against what he calls the "ecological nihilism" of insisting that forests be wholly untouched. Mann's style is journalistic, employing the vivid (and sometimes mixed) metaphors of popular science writing: "Peru is the cow-catcher on the train of continental drift. . . . its coastline hits the ocean floor and crumples up like a carpet shoved into a chairleg." Similarly, the book is not a comprehensive history, but a series of reporter's tales: He describes personal encounters with scientists in their labs, archaeologists at their digs, historians in their studies and Indian activists in their frustrations. Readers vicariously share Mann's exposure to fire ants and the tension as his guide's plane runs low on fuel over Mayan ruins. These episodes introduce readers to the debates between older and newer scholars. Initially fresh, the journalistic approach eventually falters as his disorganized narrative rambles forward and backward through the centuries and across vast continents and back again, producing repetition and contradiction. The resulting blur unwittingly conveys a new sort of the old timelessness that Mann so wisely wishes to defeat. Ha l'adattamentoÈ riassunto in
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I only wish Mann was a bit clearer on the premise/theme of each section. Instead, I had to figure it out myself. (