1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann - Book Report/Review Example

BOOK REPORT ON 1491: NEW REVELATIONS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS by CHARLES C. MANN Charles C. Mann’s book provides a revealing account of groups of people which populated the Americas before the Europeans arrived. Mann demonstrates such well-researched accuracy of the life when the Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Amazonian and Indian tribes of North America were settled in the rainforest, were populous and even possessed technology that continues to astound engineers today. This paper looks into these four groups and threads their life prior to the coming of the Europeans, who were accused of bringing diseases that wiped out most of their population. For example, Mann presents mathematical facts and scientific accomplishments that bring to light a bewildering variety of cultures and societies beyond anything the schoolbooks have taught. There were Indian societies that dwelt in permanent settlements and others that wandered; some were wholly democratic, others had very rigid class systems based on property. Some were ruled by gods carried around on litters, some had judicial systems, which at that time, the only known punishment was torture. Some lived in caves, others in tepees of bison skins, and others in cabins. There were tribes ruled by warriors or by women, by sacred elders or by councils, or by fraternities whose rituals and membership were as unknown to the rest of the tribe as those of any college secret society. There were tribes who worshipped the bison or a matriarch or the maize they lived by. There were tribes that have never heard of war, and there were tribes debauched by centuries of fighting. In short, there was a great diversity of Indian nations, speaking over five hundred languages. It is surprising to discover in Mann’s book the different facts that surprise readers. These facts are not just hearsays. Mann backs up his words with evidences and sources in archaeology, anthropology, and epidemiology. Mann quotes Anthropologist Henry F Dobyns who claims that "The Indian population in 1491 was between 90 and 112 million people" (p. 94). This just shows that most of the accounts before underestimated the figures for this. Mann accounts that before America came to be what it is now, the Indians’ way of life seem to compose the “American way of life.” Even if it a long and dark chapter in American history, it is the European discovery of America, and the experience of the whites, who conquered the continent and settled it—that excites most of us. Again, the author pens, "In the 1990s geologists laid out data indicating that the ice sheets were much bigger and longer lasting than previously thought, and that even when the ice free corridor existed it was utterly inhospitable" (p. 169). The Mayan civilization was able to build up itself as well as fall over the stretch of 2,000 years. When Central America was already invaded by Europe, several Mayan cities were left for themselves. Even though the single remaining Mayan outpost was not wrested away by Spain until 1697, the culture of the Mayans had come to its conclusion several centuries earlier. The more popular culture of the Aztec was of a more contemporary origin and had reached its height in only a few hundred years (New World Civilizations). The decline of the Aztec was the direct effect of the Spanish invasion. Mayans and Aztecs had several cultural similarities but they had their share of differences in several fundamental areas such as how a state should be structured and how they relate to other people. The significant difference between the two cultures is that the term Mayan refers to a significant number of Maya-speaking cultures whose political background and unity was very extraordinary for any time or place. Meanwhile, the Mayan people located down south in Yucatan and Guatemala had produced the most amazing cultural achievements of the classical period and had also done so to Native American societies of that time. The intellectual and artistic activity during that period rose to unprecedented heights in several Mayan centers. They boasted of temples, palaces, observatories and ball courts. Even though it borrowed from Teotihuacan before the latter’s fall in the seventh century A.D., the Mayan civilization had cast a large shadow over the entire Mesoamerica. The foremost Mayas were thought to have come from the northwest coast of California to reside in the Guatemalan highlands during the third century B.C. From that homeland, speakers of the Cholian and Yucatec language settled in the northern and central lowlands of the are. This happened around 1500 B.C and A.D. 100, respectively. There, numerous Mayan villages developed over the course of time and many of them became ceremonial centers by the time of the Christian era. The highlands that were home to the Kaminaljuyu had then developed very primitive architecture and primitive writing under the weight of Oaxaca and Teotihuacan culture. The people were able to produce paper and with this, they recorded all of their knowledge on several strips of long paper which they folded up in books. During the Spanish invasion, the Catholic priests who took part in the conquest found these books and considered all of them as pagan literature and proceeded to burn all of them in piles. To date, only three Mayan books have survived and are now being kept in museums. Because of the capacity to write, the knowledge that we currently have about Mayan culture stems from the evidences that they have left in the stone monuments and the pictorials that they left behind. Most of these writings are yet to be deciphered (Heckenberger, M. J. et al, 2003). The Mayan communities laid its foundation on productive economies. It was a culture based on agriculture but was heavily involved in the creation of handicrafts and trade over long distance. They were able to improve upon the soil and eventually raised squash, chili peppers and corn. These supplied around two-thirds of their food. Their social structure consisted of slaves, followed by the peasants, craftsmen and merchants. This was followed by priests and nobles which had intersecting functions because their religion and government were so closely related. Essentially, their social class was defined with a set of distinct rights and responsibilities (Durán, D. 1971). Mayan culture was already civilized and even their religion was seen everywhere. The very issues of law and taxes were seen as religious principles and were regarded as religious offerings. To them, education was also conducted primarily as training for priests who considered writing, learning and reading as caste specialties. The Mayans conducted several public rituals that included human sacrifices to their gods. They made this sacrifice by decapitating. The Mayans relied heavily on rituals more than scientific evidence. The subjects of mathematics and astronomy were imperative to schedule their ceremonies which were used to honor the deities that they worshiped. On the other hand, the Aztecs were composed of a tribe that came from the north, possibly even from the Rocky Mountains or California. They were assumed to be a primitive tribe who sought out to conquer different lands at that time. They settled on the shores of the Texcoco lake in the Mexican valley at the start of the fourteenth century. As they went about conquering their neighbors in the Valley, the Aztecs also assimilated the various religions that surrounded them. The tribes that they conquered were able to pass on their religion to the Aztecs and thus shaped their religion based on the Toltecs and the Teotihuacans (Mowery, Michelle). Because of these factors of assimilation, the Aztecs consequently worshipped a vast number of divinities. The most revered and most powerful of them all was the one named Huitzlopochtli. This god was supposedly the god of war and the guardian of their city. Huitzlopochtli’s temple became the main pyramid that was housed in the center of Tenochtitlan. This is where they made their human sacrifices. Aside from the god of war, the Aztecs also were in reverence of two other gods of possibly equal importance. They worshipped Quetzalcoatl who was the serpent god of civilization and learning. Quetzalcoatl is also the name of a priest legend who ruled with the title of high priest. The god Quetzalcoatl was believed to have been acquired from the Toltec tribe wherein he reigned simultaneously as a god and a priest. Another god of the Aztecs was Tlaloc. Tlaloc was the god of rain and he shared his place in the temple with Huitzlopochtli. He was quite significant to the Aztecs because their civilization was based primarily on agriculture. Without him, the Aztecs believed that their crops and plantations would not flourish that well. The Aztecs also had a corn god in the person of Centeotl. This was not as strange because corn was the staple food of the Aztecs. The Aztecs revered a lot of gods from the god of war to the god of corn and the god of death. What is important to note is that the gods of the Aztecs represented what they valued in their culture and their lives (Mowery, Michelle). Unlike the Mayans, the Aztecs’ writings did not suffer the same fate. They were preserved and were generally seen as a window to the Mayan civilization because that is where the Aztecs had gotten their knowledge of the Mayans. They assimilated whatever they knew of the Mayan society and were able to create and record manuscripts that told of how their science and knowledge evolved and how they were able to educate their children through music and dancing (Science in pre-Columbian America). Evidence tells us that some important parts of Mississippian life may have been brought to North America by traders. These traders may have visited the Aztecs and other groups. It is possible that parts of Mississippian culture came up the river in boats along with seashells, copper and jewelry. Several times in the book Mann gives the readers some recollections of different information than what most Americans know. He opines, “What seems unlikely to be undone is the theory that Native Americans may have been in America for twenty thousand or even thirty thousand years" (p. 172). The Indians transformed their environment. They were responsible in changing their environment whether in the Amazon rainforests or the Great Plains. Even the Indian alliance known as the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) believed in checks and balances and personal liberty. They possessed ideas that contributed and enhanced the evolution of America today. Indeed, these societies had complex civilization and they too, were able to transform their environment in such a way that they were already doing several complex activities in their society, more than the hunting that one probably may imagine it to be. It is clear though, and Mann states this unequivocally, that the main thing that felled these societies and civilization were the coming of the Europeans and the germs they brought with them. Probably, it would have been a different story had these civilizations been left to themselves. They could probably have worked together and built a great nation, too. WORK CITED Main Source: Mann, Charles, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Aug. 2005 OTHER WORKS CITED Heckenberger, M. J., A. Kuikuro, U. T. Kuikuro, J. C. Russell, M. Schmidt, C. Fausto and B. Franchetto (2003) Amazonia 1492: Pristine forest or cultural parkland? Science 301, 1710 - 1714. Knopf, A. America. Borzai Book, 1973. Mowery, Michelle. Religions of the Aztec and Spanish: How do they Compare? Accessed 27 February 2006 at: http://muweb.millersville.edu/~columbus/papers/mowery-m.html New World Civilizations Accessed 27 February 2006 http://www.emayzine.com/lectures/classical%20maya.html Science in pre-Columbian America. The South Pacific. Accessed 27 February 2006 at: http://www.es.flinders.edu.au/~mattom/science+society/lectures/lecture18.html Read More