These readings are intended to broaden and deepen my perspective and understanding of Native American cultures and their relationships with European settlers.
Bibliographic Note:
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1999). Most of this work deals with non-Europeans, but Diamond's thesis sheds light on why Western civilization became hegemonic: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Those who domesticated plants and animals early got a head start on developing writing, government, technology, weapons of war, and immunity to deadly germs. (Library Journal 2/15/97)
Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, (New York, Random House, 2005). The book marshals evidence accumulated over the last several decades about pre-columbian human population and natural environments in the New World and concludes that human populations were much higher, more sophisticated, and more in control of the land than is commonly thought, in line with the earliest reports of Europeans such as Gaspar de Carvajal and Hernando de Soto.
Old World diseases spread through the Americas in great pandemics the century following 1492. Without these diseases, the conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires, as well as subsequent conquests, would have been impossible. Perhaps the most audacious observation in the book is that the Amazon Rainforest has been largely shaped by forgotten agricultural methods, including the creation of terra preta. (Wikipedia, 9/20/06)
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