Reading 1491

A wonderful read about the history of the Americas pre-Columbian.

Anyone else reading it?

It looked good, but I wasn't sure. I will read it when I get the opportunity.

the descriptions of native terra-forming -
The great renewing prairie grass fires
The 'open' forests of the eastern seaboard

the population estimations and how they were determined

It's a damn bloody shame that greed, ignorance and prejudice won over
sustainability and stewardship.

Not really all that different today,

what got me first.

Also how similar people are everywhere throughout time.

The fire parts was interesting as was the Amazonia parts. Turns out that our pristine wildernesses weren't that at all, but were people molded environments for thousands of years.

Great book - highly recommended.

In the process of assigning blame he was very correct and careful to minimize criticism of barely-formed and short-sighted european motives, while wordily missing what might have been the thesis of the entire project: the catastrophic death by disease of American cultures was the result of its genetic "purity" or isolation, while the resistances of its European replacements was based upon an genetic diversity or "mongrelization", as a racial purist might derisively say.

Thus it might be stated, in the context of this work, that clearly, practically, and obviously, all arguments for the "separation of the races" may lead inevitably to similar immunological disasters.

that the isolation of the "New" World people made the plagues worse.

He also talked about less genetic variation of New Worlders using blood type as one example if I remember.

pg 105, in a footnote, discussed the notion of genetic "inferiority". Perhaps it is just my impression of lost opportunity to press a point, in the midst of abundant and well presented supporting evidence, but my issue is that the replacement of large scale Indian culture in the America's is almost by default given by history as a sad tale of the inevitable success of superior western culture, as the corresponding physical replacement of Indian populations is given as the inevitable result of physical superiority. A resulting attitude might be toward the proud insulation and defense of this success - a "borders, language, culture" type of approach. Which taken to an extreme leads to the same "inferiority" or result of genetic isolation....

I thought is was fascinating. Like most Americans, I don't know very much at all about pre-Columbian America. I found it to be very informative and well-written, and very accessible to the non-expert like myself.

This is one of those topics that is fraught with controversy, but I thought he handled it very well. I did not get the sense that his writing was motivated by any sort of political agenda, other than to present the facts as they are currently understood by the scientific community.

I would highly recommend it.

:thumbsup: