Among other surprises we learn that Pocahontas means 'little hellion' and there are less people living in the Amazon now than there were in 1491.

The book is brimming with shocking information like the fact that the city of Tiwanaku, in what is now Bolivia, had 115,000 people living in it in 1000 A.D., a population that Paris would not reach for five centuries. Not only is he able to make squabbles between European archeologists interesting, but he’s able to smoothly describe scientific data and Mayan politics in the same breath. Mann was able to hold my attention not just with the details of complex indigenous societies, but also with controversies, adventures and divisions among the scientists and archeologists which have contributed to what we know of pre-Columbian history. In fact, Mann’s self-described thesis is to show that indigenous societies before the arrival of Columbus deserve more than a few misleading pages in a textbook. Like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States this book made me want to call up my old history teachers and tell them they were very wrong.

He draws from recent archeological and scientific discoveries to describe booming civilizations which thrived throughout the Americas centuries before the arrival of Europeans. Charles Mann’s book, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus proves that the opposite is true. In many high school history classes students are told that before Columbus arrived the Americas were full of untamed wilderness loosely populated with savage Indians.

1491 before columbus