Book Reviews: 1491

1491 is a non-fiction book on the history of the Americas before Columbus arrived there. The focus is not as much on providing a comprehensive history as on debunking a lot of myths propagated about the Americas by the colonists. These myths have been proved wrong by latest archaeological findings but not accepted as much as they should have been. There is a clear bias visible in the book against the so called white intellectuals. And while reading it, you also realise how much archaeologists are still finding about the Americas. Its still not as well known as we all assume and it may be that whatever was known till now may be absolutely wrong!

There are three major myths that the author disproves, citing latest findings over the years and across the continent. The review below is not a comprehensive review, just a couple of interesting tidbits I found interesting.

P.s. I use Indians below instead of Red Indians in keeping with the terminology in the book

Myth : there were very few Indians occupying the Americas by the time the Europeans came, and they hadn't been there long either

Americas were densely populated for centuries. But new diseases took their toll on them and "so thorough was the erasure of the world that within a few generations neither the conqueror nor the conquered knew that this world had existed before"

- Most of Americas and the Indians were battered by epidemics even before the Europeans came, by various estimates even up to 95% of the population. So population of Americas was abt 100 million before the conquests!! For example, the Sirionos were down from 3000 to 150 in a generation due to smallpox and genetic bottlenecks! Therefore when a famous scholar Homsberg wrote about them as primitive beings, he was writing about them not at their peak but about the persecuted survivors of a recently shattered culture

- One of the reasons for the Indians being wiped out so terribly by epidemics was their genetic homogeneity, given they had all evolved from a smaller gene pool of the peoples who had crossed over from Asia. This homogeneity made them less susceptible to survive epidemics

- Most people believe that Red Indians came from Asia across the Bering Strait. That is true except there were people living in Americas even before, from the Pleistocene era - the Clovis and Folsom people. Maybe people were in Americas 20-30k years ago. Maybe even before Europe! There are still different theories about it - some say there were 3 waves of immigration through Alaska. But it's still not clear.

- Europeans were not willing to accept that Indians had been in Americas for so long, in huge numbers and living in relatively advanced cultures. At one point they kept arguing that Red Indians were actually the Lost Tribes of Israel!! And not as old as they actually are! It took years of convincing and scoffing to convince the Western intellectuals about the truth of the Clovis and Folsom people

Myth : the Indians were not culturally advanced and lived in primitive societies

The western world propagated the view that the Indians did not have a history at all. However, new research suggests that a lot of cultures of the Americas were culturally and scientifically quite advanced. A lot of that knowledge was lost for centuries but is being rediscovered only now...

- The New England Indians had better insulated wetu huts and ate more nourishing meals than the British! And they focused a lot more on their cleanliness than the French and English of that time who didn't even have baths regularly! They were quite advanced and even militarily strong (without the steel and guns though). They had trading relations with Europeans which they controlled, sometimes allowing them to stay for sometime on the coast and much later allowing them to settle. But the diseases from the visitors left them weak and then it was their politics that made them lose

- In North America, Cahokia was an old city with city-like structure

- The Mayas invented the wheel much before a lot of other cultures (but never thought of using it for transport!)

- The Olmecs were mother culture of Mesoamerica, even before Mayas

- Carvajal (one of the conquistadors) wrote about Amazonia women he had seen! They might be real:)

- In the Andes the Wari and Tiwanaku were the big civilisations before the Incas. Wari practiced a form of advanced terrace farming. Tiwanaku capital was just a religious park and not a city!

- The Incas empires functioned in the form of vertical archipelagos - people lived both on the mountains and all along down the slope. The ones from the slopes regularly sent materials to their homelands which they rarely saw, but supported

- The Norte Chico civilisations in South America developed near the river mouths, basing themselves on food from the sea and growing cotton - they may have been one of the earliest civilisations in the world!!

Myth : the Indians did not affect nature much and had no control over it

Indians changed nature in many ways and at such a scale, that it would surprise anyone...

- In North America, lot of Indians made mounds - huge structures which have been found in the middle of forests. They also used forest fires to create the vast grasslands of most of North America

- The Amazon forest does not have fertile soil unlike what you would expect! It survives by plants dying and providing manure. The soil is actually dead and has been for long. For ages the Indians who lived here survived by crash and burn logic - burn and grow something for short periods only so that the forest comes back soon. That was the only way to survive, but it was not sustainable and could sustain only a small population. That's why the population never exploded in the Amazon. Also apparently the Indians planted a lot of the forest area with fruit trees (that we sometimes find nowadays). Maybe even up to 10% of the forests were created by them! They also created the fertile soil in some parts of the forest - its called terra peta and was created by putting pottery pieces into the soil. So from 1 to 10% of the soil in Amazon is man-made and hence more fertile than the soil around!!

- The Columbian exchange happened after Columbus discovered America. The human control on nature reduced and so wilderness grew; some animals disappeared while a lot more flourished and changed the Americas ecology that we all know now from what it was before Columbus came there. Some of the early writers describe landscapes that don't exist anymore!

Other random interesting facts

- Maize was created (and not discovered) from multiple existing wild varieties by Indians in Mexico!! Also when maize spread to Africa it provided the population with better nutrition, led to a population explosion and provided more slaves for slave trade!!! Talk about cause and effect...

- The Mayas used to write in codices, and the Spanish destroyed all but 4 of these codices! They really did a very good job of erasing whole civilisations!

- Lot of the the South American Indian civilisations thought that preserving the dead had a powerful impact on the living. So they would keep the bodies of the dead and the kings would have their palaces maintained for years. So you would have multiple kings and their relatives playing a part in the local politics long after they are gone

- One of the Inca ruler at one point to keep his people busy, asked them to move mountains from one place to another:) and they did!

- Pizarro conquered the Inca empire with 200 men! The emperor came to meet him with a ceremonial procession but he had other ideas. He caught the king, took a huge ransom (rooms full of gold and silver) and then killed him! After that it was easy to gain control of his huge empire...

- The Incas used to 'write' using different coloured and intricately knotted threads! This way of storing information was called khipu and is the only known three-dimensional writing language known till today. The Spaniards obviously burnt them all:)

- Random fact from today - Chile won over a small part of Bolivia's coast when its Italian leader messed with Chile! Till today they have not forgotten it. Even though they lost the land, Bolivians still have a representative in Parliament and a Miss Bolivia contestant from the area till today 😁

- The important conquistadors to read about if you want to know more are - Smith (NA), Pilgrims (New England), Tisquantum (An Indian who helped the British in New England area), Pizarro (Incas), De Soto (Florida) and Cortes (Mexico)

And best of all...

The concept of liberty and equality present in the Americas today came from the original Indians who lived there, from the five nations on New England who developed the concept including gender equality. When the British and French colonists started staying next to (and with) the Indians, they were exposed to these ideas, and slowly started preferring and adopting these as opposed to their own class based lives. It is not too much to say then that the concept of equality came from the Indians and spread to the entire world as opposed to the class based society of Europe of those times.