Tyler Palka
History 100D
1491 Book Review
Charles Mann is a very intelligent journalist who wrote the book 1491 New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, he is simply just trying to get things right when it comes to history and more specifically pre Columbian America. Charles Mann’s thesis is to educate others on Native Americans because he feels everyone before him was wrong or didn’t do a well enough job finding out the truth. Charles is a very persuasive journalist I think because of all the resources he used and the way he presented it in the book. Throughout the book Mann essentially tries to look into or paint a portrait of what human life was like in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and the European history in some …show more content…
On the other hand his book is kind of confusing at parts, or at least difficult at times to keep up with because he hops from different spots, different civilizations, and different ages a lot. All in all the book balances out to be an educational book.
Being a science journalist helps people expand their range from native history to physics to the Internet; this provides any questions you may have as a reader. Charles gave a view of human life in the Americas before technology took its course. He even argues the notion that the Europeans had greater technology and greater weapons then that compared to the Indians of the Pre Columbian times. He points out that Indian bows shot better, more precisely, and did more dynamic damage to the target than firearms, which was used by the …show more content…
It is important that their explanation was looked at a different way because the Europeans actions are what have influenced our thoughts on the Indians up to the present day. Charles says that the Indians had been infected by disease as a result of the Europeans arrival and because of that they couldn’t fight against the colonialists. He then takes it a step further by saying that disease destroyed multiples of what was a lot more then what people thought. Eventually an agreement of all the work is that rather than the Indians being followers of the land, they were actually active landscapers, building the land all around them. One very interesting example of this and their landscaping ability is the theory that Indian groups purposely created the Amazon Jungle.
In the end Charles Mann achieves the goal of displaying that the Indians did not live an unaffected life for several thousand years. Instead they had a deep and rich history and culture that merits to be studied and respected more so than what we are left with by false information. The scientific work in this area is constantly being updated and revised and it is extremely interesting to even average people among us. There are several mysteries to be solved and historical work to be done and I am sure soon we will have even a few new views of what happened in Europe before they experienced
History 100D
1491 Book Review
Charles Mann is a very intelligent journalist who wrote the book 1491 New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, he is simply just trying to get things right when it comes to history and more specifically pre Columbian America. Charles Mann’s thesis is to educate others on Native Americans because he feels everyone before him was wrong or didn’t do a well enough job finding out the truth. Charles is a very persuasive journalist I think because of all the resources he used and the way he presented it in the book. Throughout the book Mann essentially tries to look into or paint a portrait of what human life was like in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and the European history in some …show more content…
On the other hand his book is kind of confusing at parts, or at least difficult at times to keep up with because he hops from different spots, different civilizations, and different ages a lot. All in all the book balances out to be an educational book.
Being a science journalist helps people expand their range from native history to physics to the Internet; this provides any questions you may have as a reader. Charles gave a view of human life in the Americas before technology took its course. He even argues the notion that the Europeans had greater technology and greater weapons then that compared to the Indians of the Pre Columbian times. He points out that Indian bows shot better, more precisely, and did more dynamic damage to the target than firearms, which was used by the …show more content…
It is important that their explanation was looked at a different way because the Europeans actions are what have influenced our thoughts on the Indians up to the present day. Charles says that the Indians had been infected by disease as a result of the Europeans arrival and because of that they couldn’t fight against the colonialists. He then takes it a step further by saying that disease destroyed multiples of what was a lot more then what people thought. Eventually an agreement of all the work is that rather than the Indians being followers of the land, they were actually active landscapers, building the land all around them. One very interesting example of this and their landscaping ability is the theory that Indian groups purposely created the Amazon Jungle.
In the end Charles Mann achieves the goal of displaying that the Indians did not live an unaffected life for several thousand years. Instead they had a deep and rich history and culture that merits to be studied and respected more so than what we are left with by false information. The scientific work in this area is constantly being updated and revised and it is extremely interesting to even average people among us. There are several mysteries to be solved and historical work to be done and I am sure soon we will have even a few new views of what happened in Europe before they experienced