1491

I have been reading Charles Mann's 1491. Good book! I recommend it.

The History

It tells a surprising amount of the pre-Columbian history of the Western Hemisphere, at least an amount that surprised me. It seems that not only has it been possible to reconstitute histories because the Mayan writings have been deciphered, but there are a fair number of writings by native Americans and Spanish from the 16th century that tell histories. Combining these with anthropological information, a lot is known.

I must admit, that history of warfare and the stories of kings and warriors seemed not very interesting, and not something I would want to remember. It was interesting that so much could be recovered. A fair amount of history of the conquest also gets retold.

Mann makes the point that the Columbian exchange brought Eurasian diseases to the previously unexposed native American populations, and that as a result perhaps 95 percent of the peoples of the 1491 population of the Western Hemisphere died off. With the crash of their populations, ways of life crumbled. The European Americans of the 18th and 19th centuries simply did not understand that the tribal civilizations that they knew were merely the tattered ruminant of older, much richer civilizations.

Mann suggests that this earlier history was temporarily lost but is being reclaimed. He is perhaps is too kind to the Europeans. The Spanish – who, for example, burned the Mayan codexes -- were clearly trying to disempower their subject people, and succeeded in doing so in part by denying their histories. The Europeans of various brands tended to describe the peoples that they were dominating and exploiting as less than themselves, and their exploitation as a civilizing mission. The seem to have succeeded well in writing history as they wanted it to be.

Archaeological Evidence

The book draws on archaeology to show the rise and fall of many urban cultures. It makes the point that time and again, the greatest American cities were larger and more impressive than the comparable European cities of their time. It also suggests, as one might expect considering histories of Europe, Africa and Asia, that urban societies fell time and again. I think, however, that the book suggests that there was some cultural learning taking place in the region as a whole. In 1401 there were more people living in cities and large political entities than at earlier periods. I believe the book suggests that an increasing ability to produce food was the critical element in allowing large populations and larger political entities to form.

Mann also draws on information from physical geography and climatology. He goes back to the debate on when the first people arrived in the Western Hemisphere, drawing on relatively recent studies that suggest a longer pre-history than did earlier studies. He makes the point that before Columbus, there were maybe 100 million inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, the descendents of people who had lived here for thousands of years. He looks at the civilizations who have left impressive ruins -- in Mexico, the Andes, and the Peruvian coast, as well as the Anasazi, Cahokia mounds, etc. to demonstrate the advanced civilizations that existed “among the savages”.

He perhaps misses the point that there can be very rich cultures without leaving archaeological ruins. The Navajo are an example of a culture with a rich heritage of philosophy and religion, who were not builders of pyramids. Think of Homer or of other classic epics written by people who did not have cultures richly endowed with material goods.

The History of History

The book spends some time on historiography, considering why historians have not in the past covered native American history. I think the discussion is in part one of the growth of knowledge accumulated by the work of many scholars over time. Mann also, of course, points out that historians (and anthropologists) are people of their times, and sometimes make culturally based assumptions or interpretations that do not stand the test of time; that they are argumentative and will sometimes hold a position too long in the face of contrary evidence.

I think there are issues with popular history that he might have addressed. The movies and pulp fiction were not interested in the real native Americans, but something akin to science fiction, but they left a lasting impression in American society. Mann points out, correctly I think, that in Mexico and some other nations of Latin America, popular culture was kinder to the native American heritage.

Perhaps more of concern is the collection of history text books in U.S. schools that don't tell the story of the pre-Columbian American peoples, as that story is known today to experts in the field. I can not but suspect that the text book approval boards in key large states are more interested in preserving a mythical American past favorable to the cowboys than in providing a more accurate and credible version to the youth of the country. European history before Columbus is more taught than American history in U.S, schools!

The Human Built Environment

One of Mann's themes is that the environment of the Americas in 1491 was already a human artifact. He makes the point especially in his discussion of the Amazon basin, where more than 100 edible trees and plants are widely distributed. (I remember the shock of walking into a juice bar in Colombia the first time and finding it had 100 juices, most of which I had never heard of.) He cites evidence that this is because the peoples of the region fostered the wide distribution of these useful plants. But he also mentions the use of fire by plains Indians in North America to manipulate the environment.

I think it is reasonable to assume that 100 million or so people living in this hemisphere had a big impact on the environment. Indeed, given that their ancestors were also having an impact for thousands of years, it seems likely that there was a strongly human affected American environment in 1491. However, the native America people used less energy than we do, and had not only a less mechanical culture, but did not have large animals. So there were limits to the impact that they could have on the environment. But fire used to clear land is a technology that has large scale impact, and draws upon the energy in the available biomass.

In later, agricultural days before the Spanish arrival, people in the Andes made damns and terraces. The terraces in Peru are indeed impressive, and were the raised bed agricultural areas and canals left in other areas of the Americas. But these are relatively limited in extent, as compared with the overall size of the North and South American continents.

I have been wondering how much impact a hunting and gathering society could have. Clearly hunters can exert considerable leverage in affecting the environment. Reducing the predators that competed with humans for bigger game could have had wide impacts on grazing animals, which in turn might have affected plant communities when done with increasing effect over thousands of years. So too might humans have changed the density of prey species, and thereby affected the larger environment.

Mann looks at the possible effect of native Americans promoting the growth of trees that produce the rich fruit assortment in the tropics, and the mast (nuts and acorns) of the forests of what is now the eastern United States. He does not focus on the effect of such people in reducing the biomass of trees that they don't utilize. It seems to me that it is relatively more simple to kill a tree that is not useful than to plant and grow one that is useful. You ring the bark of a large tree, or just pull up the shoot of a small tree. If people over thousands of years eliminated trees that they didn't want, then the surviving population of trees would be enriched with the desired species.

Mann makes the interesting point that when 95 percent of the population were killed off after 1491, there would have been large scale environmental changes. Populations of animals that had been kept in check by man might have exploded, with further repercussions on other species. That seems obvious once it is said. Mann focuses on the passenger pigeon and the bison, and I don't know whether their populations exploded as he suggests. But is seems likely that the early European settlers were not only dealing with environments that were heavily affected by humans before 1491, but that were also in a state of flux as a result of the crash of those pre-Columbian populations. Combine that with the flux due to the introduction of European, Asian and African species, and of the new, more energy intensive culture brought by the settlers, and you have an environment that would seem really hard to understand.

Mann suggests that this environmental history is being manipulated for political ends. Conservationists tend to downplay the importance of human impact on the environment, allowing them to advocate a preservation of the "pristine environment" where it remains. Others emphasize that the native Americans had impact on the environment too, suggesting that it is OK for European Americans to continue to have a big environmental impact. I suspect he is right that people do seek to pick and choose the information that they believe and they communicate to others in ways that promote the interests that they hold dear.

The Commercial

Real knowledge and understanding of the past human impacts on the environment, and of past cultures and their achievements, seem important for themselves, and as a guide to future action. The fact that others may have affected the environment in the past would not seem to remove from us the obligation to do the best we can to protect and manage the environment now for the future. Recognition that pre-Columbian peoples had a rich cultural heritage that was all but destroyed in wave after wave of epidemic diseases might make us more respectful of their survivors and more thoughtful about our own future.