
1491 (2002) - primroot
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/?single_page=true
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stevecalifornia
There are a lot of first hand accounts from the first Spaniards in the New
World. I've read them and they are fascinating. They also provide a direct
look at the peoples they encountered.

Cabeza de Vaca provided a very interesting account. Marooned, he wandered the
New World alone for many years. He often found groups of people living in
incredible squalor and constant warfare-- barely able to feed themselves. He
ended up surviving, in part, because he acted as a middle-man between tribes
who needed to trade with each other but were constantly at war.

Cortes found fairly advanced civilizations with amazing infrastructure that
also suffered from warfare, slavery and ridiculous amounts of human
sacrifices.

There is also a lot of evidence in the DNA of Native Americans that tell how
and when they migrated here.

The point I am making is that Native Americans were and are Native Americans.
They had good things and bad things going for them. This article (and book)
seems pre-occupied with trying to tell you that everything we've learned up to
this point is entirely wrong and that the New World was a utopia before the
filthy Europeans arrived. It wasn't, and there is a ton of evidence to support
that. It just was what it was. To be honest, I feel like this is trying to re-
focus history with a politically correct slant-- which is what bothers me.

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meatysnapper
There is of course the theory that the reason the Spaniards found it so easy
to whoop dat Aztec was because of the hostility caused by so much human
sacrifice.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There is of course the theory that the reason the Spaniards found it so easy
> to whoop dat Aztec was because of the hostility caused by so much human
> sacrifice.

The Aztecs weren't unique in the practice of human sacrifice. It seems a lot
more likely that resent of the Aztec Empire by its peripheries _in general_
was the reason than human sacrifice specifically, the former exacerbated by
general discontent resulting from the wave of disease the region was facing --
as a result of European contact with the Caribbean islands and trade between
the islands and the mainland.

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mlinksva
An article so good it was expanded into a book. In contrast with most books
which never have been more than articles. :)

The book was reviewed thousands of times but here's mine
[http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2005/12/28/1491/](http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2005/12/28/1491/)

Or there's
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus)
and about the followup
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1493:_Uncovering_the_New_World...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1493:_Uncovering_the_New_World_Columbus_Created)

~~~
b_emery
The article is pretty old. Do the books, or other articles address the
criticisms? eg:

" "I have seen no evidence that large numbers of people ever lived in the
Beni," says Betty J. Meggers, of the Smithsonian Institution. "Claiming
otherwise is just wishful thinking." Similar criticisms apply to many of the
new scholarly claims about Indians, according to Dean R. Snow, an
anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University. The problem is that "you can
make the meager evidence from the ethnohistorical record tell you anything you
want," he says. "It's really easy to kid yourself.""

I just wonder how it's viewed by experts in the field, now.

~~~
mlinksva
It's been a very long time since I read the first book, afraid I recall few
details. The second book probably not as it covers the biological effects of
the 'great exchange' and IIRC doesn't retread the 1491 material.

But I had those sorts of questions while reading, and generally do about
books. I wish all were continually revised, or at least the articles on
English Wikipedia about them would point out obsolete and incorrect claims.

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walterbell
PBS has a good documentary called "Cracking the Maya Code",
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=H5ppfC6y-5s](https://youtube.com/watch?v=H5ppfC6y-5s),
about deciphering of Mayan glyphs, centuries after most books were burnt. Much
credit goes to Linda Schele, an art teacher who made breakthroughs in decoding
the glyphs,
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Schele](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Schele)

There's a longer version of the documentary called "Breaking the Maya Code",
including interview clips with Schele,
[http://www.nightfirefilms.org/breakingthemayacode/interviews...](http://www.nightfirefilms.org/breakingthemayacode/interviews/ScheleTRANSCRIPT.pdf)

" _The Maya use story.. The advantage to me of stories, like what the Maya
used, and the painting onto the patterns of the stars and the Milky Way of
images of these great narratives, is you don’t have to be a Ph.D. to
understand it. You could be a child and understand it and learn it through
stories. In our world, to access that, you either have to be one of the
scientists who creates the legend of the Big Bang, or you have to be one of
the scientific writers who act as translators for the people in our world._ "

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jvm
Fascinating excerpt from the book by Tyler Cowen:

> the modern species [of maize] had to have been consciously developed by a
> small group of breeders who hunted through teosinte strands for plants with
> desired traits…"To get corn out of teosinte is so — you couldn't get a grant
> to do that now, because it would sound so crazy…Somebody who did that today
> would get a Nobel Prize!"

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/08/149...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/08/1491.html#sthash.wNlmQJ0Z.dpuf)

~~~
soperj
Makes you wonder what else is out there just waiting to be selected...

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hyperion2010
One of the best articles I have read on the state of NA civilization pre
colonization. [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/native-
intelligence-10...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/native-
intelligence-109314481/)

The short version is that Europeans really did not have any idea about the
civilization they were replacing, and by the time they really arrived European
diseases had killed most of the population, leading to the myth that the
continent was empty. Can't really do justice with a summary.

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animefan
There are fascinating parallels between this debate and the debate on the
size, economic development and political cohesion of the Palestinian
population before the establishment of modern day Israel.

