1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann#

An overview of this book would go like this: Everything you thought you knew about Indians is wrong.#

An early comment about the mounds in America that contain pottery:#

The mounds cover such an enormous area that they seem unlikely to be the byproduct of waste. Monte Testaccio, the hill of broken pots southeast of Rome, was a garbage dump for the entire imperial city. Ibibate is larger than Monte Testaccio and but one of hundreds of similar mounds. Surely the Beni did not generate more waste than Rome [p. 7]

On early reckonings of Native Americans:#

It was as if [they] had come across refugees from a Nazi concentration camp, and concluded that they belonged to a culture that had always been barefoot and starving. [p. 10]

On the Mayan disintegration:#

Incredibly, some of the last inscriptions are gibberish, as if scribes had lost the knowledge of writing and were reduced to meaningless imitation of their ancestors. [p. 26]

On trade with Indians:#

[They] would exchange [European goods] for cheap furs of the sort used by Indians as blankets. It was like happening upon a dingy kiosk that would swap fancy electronic goods for customer' used socks---almost anyone would be willing to overlook the shopkeeper's peculiarities. [p. 34]

There is an interesting discussion (around p. 46) on the importance of property lines to the Patuxet and other tribes. I find this appealing, given that so many people say that when Europeans bought the land, the Indians thought they were joking.#

You can tell I think like a Libertarian Economist when I read this:#

The Inka did not even have markets. Economists would predict that this nonmarket economy---vertical socialism, it has been called---should produce gross inefficiencies. These surely occurred, but the errors were of surplus, not want. The Spanish invaders were stunned to find warehouses overflowing with untouched cloth and supplies. [p. 81]

This is a fallacy. Since people have limited resources, they have to decide between doing A or B. By choosing A, they will have less B. Thus, those overflowing, untouched warehouses represent a lack of something. This is an example of a Seen and Unseen fallacy.

Another example of their inefficiency:

Because the Inka believe that idleness fomented rebellion, ..., he ordered unemployed work brigades "to move a mountain from one spot to another" for no practical purpose. Cieza de Leon once came upon three different highways running between the same two towns, each built by a different Inka. [p. 84]

On Inkan ruler worship:#

Minions collected and stored every object he touched, food waste included, to ensure that no lesser person could profane these objects with their touch. The ground was too dirty to receive the Inka's saliva so he always spat into the hand of a courtier. The courtier wiped the spittle with a special cloth and stored it for safekeeping. Once a year everything touched by the Inka---clothing, garbage, bedding, saliva---was ceremonially burned. [p. 82]

When the Inka died his panaqa [lineage] mummified his body. Because the Inka was believed to be an immortal deity, his mummy was treated, logically enough, as if it were still living. Soon after arriving in Qosqo, Pizarro's companion Miguel de Estete saw a parade of defunct emperors. They were brought out on litters, "seated on their thrones and surrounded by pages and women with flywhisks in their hands, who ministered to them with as much respect as if they had been alive."

Because the royal mummies were not considered dead, their successors obviously could not inherit their wealth. Each Inka's panaqa retained all of his possessions forever, including his palaces, residences, and shrines; all of his remaining clothes, eating utensils, fingernail parings, and hair clippings; and the tribute from the land he had conquered. In consequence, as Pedro Pizarro realized, "the greater part of the people, treasure, expenses, and vices [in Tawantinsuyu] were under the control of the dead." The mummies spoke through female mediums who represented the panaqa's surviving courtiers or their descendents. With almost a dozen immortal emperors jostling for position, high-level Inka society was characterized by ramose political intrigue of a scale that would have delighted the Medici. Emblematically, Wayna Qhapaq could not construct his own villa on Awkaypata---his undead ancestors had used up all available space. Inka society had a serious mummy problem. [p. 98-99]

On pre-Columbian population:#

When Columbus sailed more people lived in the Americas than in Europe. [p. 104]

On this note, there is an interesting discussion on how there is no conceivable way to have quarantined the New World from the Old, so the disease disaster was basically unavoidable. (p. 118)

Most people know that the Spanish destroyed much Mesoamerican writing. What few people know is that the Mexica destroyed their own writing, probably to hide their past as poor. (p. 133)#

Mormonism: The Book of Mormon is mentioned once (p. 159, middle of the page, in a discussion on origin of Native Americans), but the whole book makes me think about it. In particular, the fact that are so many different civilizations, helps me see how reasonable it is for the Book of Mormon civilization to have existed in the New World (the main question would then be about the supernatural happenings and the voyage.) Furthermore, given that almost none of the writing systems are extant or deciphereable, I am a nay-sayer on finding secondary evidence of the Book of Mormon's validity. And I think that is a good thing: it will keep faith a necessity.#

The Atacama Desert, just south of Peru on the Chilean shore, is the driest place on earth---in some places rain has literally never been recorded. Space researchers use the Atacama as a model for the sands of Mars. [p. 199]

An interesting discussion of how the Norte Chico people invented government, but there is no appearance of common indulgences of states: monuments, etc. It seems that people could easily get out of the power sphere, so the state had to stay useful and out of the way. (p. 206-207)#

On temples:#

Using a network of concealed vents and channels, priests piped loud, roaring sounds at those who entered the temple. Visitors walked up three flights of stairs, growls echoing around them, and into a long. windowless passageway. At the end of the corridor, in a cross-shaped room that flickered with torchlight, was a fifteen-foot-high stone figure with a catlike face, taloned fingers, fierce tusks, and Medusa hair. Nobody today is sure of the god's identity. Immediately above it, hidden from visitor's eyes, say a priestly functionary, who provided the god's voice. After the long, torchlit approach, walking straight into the gaze of the snarling deity, mysterious bellows reverberating off the stone, the oracular declamation from above must have been spine-chilling. [p. 269]

Nice map of mounds on page 289.#

On the difficulty of studying monuments:#

Piecing together events from these sources is like trying to understand the U.S. Civil War from the plaques on park statues: possible, but tricky. [p. 303]

On the Mayan environment:#

So toxic is the groundwater, a U.S.-Mexican research team remarked in 2002, that the Maya realm was "geochemically hostile" to urban colonization. Its occupation "more resembled settlement on the moon or Antarctica than most other terrestrial habitats." [p. 306]

Until Columbus, Indians were a keystone species in most of the hemisphere. [p. 353]

Indians actually sought out pregnant or nursing does, which hunters today are instructed to let go. They hunted wild turkey in spring, just before they laid eggs (if they had waited until the eggs hatched, the poults could have survived, because they will follow any hen). The effect was to remove competition for tree nuts. The pattern was so consistent, Neumann told me, that Indians must have been purposefully reducing the number of deer, raccoons, and turkeys. [p. 356]