About the book
Science writer Charles C. Mann gathers recent research suggesting that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before Columbus were more numerous, arrived earlier, were more culturally advanced and shaped their land far more than scholars once believed. He draws on fields from demography and epidemiology to genetics and soil science. Examples include Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, larger than any European city of its day; cities in the Western Hemisphere older than the Egyptian pyramids; the breeding of corn in Mexico; and farming that left the Amazon rain forest intact. Mann argues that smallpox and other epidemics had ravaged the Inca Empire before Europeans arrived in force. The book is organized in three parts, on population and origins, culture, and environment.
Scott Keyes, co-founder of Scott's Cheap Flights, said it overturns much of what readers believe about European colonists and Indigenous groups, questioning ideas many were taught in school.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Scott Keyes (Co-Founder/Scott's Cheap Flights)
It’s one of those books that takes everything you thought you knew about the history of European colonialists and indigenous groups in the Americas and turns it on its head. Just a fascinating deep-dive into early American history that questions a lot of dogma we were taught in school.
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