Thoughts on 1491 (10/17/11 HW)
What is Charles C. Mann's central premise in his article, 1491? Provide a quote to illuminate your response. And, to wit, what does Mann's article suggest about the state of what we have historically considered (Western) knowledge? What is the relationship between scientific revolution and re-evaluation of Western knowledge and "development" (compared to the pre-Columbian Americas)? Feel free to suggest or link to outside sources or web sites.
Comments
I think that his premise to this article is to make others realize how much the indians really did suffer. As well as to express how much effect and forced change, that was uneccessary, the foreigners brought to america. I feel like there are a few quotes that express this. "The Spaniards arrived, and then Indians died-in huge numbers, at incredible rates. It hit him, Dobyns told me recently, "Like a club right between the eyes."" this quote shows the realization of the force behind the dying native americans, how huge their numbers were, as well as the foreigners effects. "Dobyns estimated that in the first 130 years of contact about 95 percent of the people in the Americas died- the worst demographic calamity in recorded history. Dobyn's ideas were quickly attacked as politically motivated." This shows what a difference in statistics between what was originally thought and what Dobyns is saying now. "The smaller the numbers of Indians, she believes, the easier it is to regard the continent as having been up for grabs." This quote points out the other theme in the article that express how the Indians dwindled slowly and other countries mercefully took it, taking away the original connections on the continent between human and earth. I think that Mann suggests that we are not always correct about pasts when it comes to our own history. Sometimes things can be skewed a certain way in order to justify our right to be where we are today. I think he shows this by pointing out all of the criticism that the new ideas of past events took. Finally, the relationship between scientific revolution and re-evaluation in the article has to do with the process it took to get to this new information and these new insights. If no one had taken the time to rethink the possible outcomes and theories of our western development then the same ideas would remain. The ideas of the past will not always be the same and may pan out through trial and error. But without being explored we are stuck in the same thought process forever.
Mann contends that by the time Columbus had arrived in America, many of the booming cultures that once inhabited the land had been killed by diseases brought to America by previous explorers. This is one of the reasons why Europeans believed that their conquest to move to the new world was a story "of the creation of a civilization where none existed."
1491 proposes the idea that perhaps the knowledge that western indigenous cultures had is more meaningful than once thought. If these cultures were able to survive for thousands of years more than our already declining industrial civilization, than perhaps they were even more advanced than we are. Instead of fragmenting the land like was done in Europe and now in today's culture, natives reshaped the land to benefit all the various parties within the ecosystem. As supported in the article. "Like people everywhere, Indians survived by cleverly exploiting their environment. Europeans tended to manage land by breaking it into fragments for farmers and herders. Indians often worked on such a grand scale that the scope of their ambition can be hard to grasp. They created small plots, as Europeans did (about 1.5 million acres of terraces still exist in the Peruvian Andes), but they also reshaped entire landscapes to suit their purposes."
The scientific revolution created technology that overshadowed tried and true indigenous practices and principles. This absolutely caused non native people to view the natives as, as stated in the article, "feeble barbarians, destitute of commerce and of political connection". Technological, political, and economic achievements may be gratifying in the short term, but is it truly sustainable? The article says that the natives didn't marvel at our achievements but instead they scoffed at our uncleanliness and ill-reverence for the environment. Furthermore it states how European explorers marvel at the natives, completely contradictory of what modern culture describes as unknowlegable savages. Just because technology is possible doesn't mean it's necessary. I for one would rather belong to a culture that survived for thousands of years based on sensibility, as opposed to the culture I am tied to now that will probably leave a legacy as the culture that taught the world how not to live.
Katherine Atkinson
English 101
Mann's central premise is that there were more numbers of Native Americans here before the French, British, Spanish, etc. came; however, the number is debatable. The Native Americans were so good to the land that we would never expect that that many could exist without great damage and there were so many different epidemics that came though slowly making each generation smaller and smaller. "Indians were here far longer than previously thought, these researchers believe, and in much greater numbers. And they were so successful at imposing their will on the landscape that in 1492 Columbus set foot in a hemisphere thoroughly dominated by humankind...Smallpox was only the first epidemic. Typhus (probably) in 1546, influenza and smallpox together in 1558, smallpox again in 1589, diphtheria in 1614, measles in 1618—all ravaged the remains of Incan culture. "
This suggests that the historical western knowledge that the natives were uncivilized could be incorrect and that diseases brought over from Europe killed off many more natives than originally thought.
Scientific revolutions have shown that original ideas about the natives could be wrong. I was always taught that there many less of the natives than the Europeans and so they never had a chance against them. I knew they migrated with the animals and adapted to the land rather than making the land adapt to them. This brings a new idea that yes, they still did that, but a large number of people can still live in one area without an enormous amount of damage done to the land. I think these new ideas should become more popular in schools, so that the children will not only have one idea about the Native Americans. Now that other people have re-evaluated how many Native Americans were here, other generations can too. If that many more people were here then that means that however many more died. The Europeans from the pre Colombian era already have a bad name, but maybe it was all much worse. This is a subject that will never have a correct answer and I don’t think anybody needs to go to war about it, but I should be something thought about.
Suath Penagos
Savannah Morgan
- Aaron Smith
Mann’s view on Western knowledge is that the diseases that the Europeans had brought over with them had killed off many Native American cultures. When Columbus arrived these cultures were not thriving the way they once had, therefore Europeans believed that they helped create the Native American environments but really they just came in and messed up their way of life.
The article presents the notion that previous knowledge of Western civilization is false. Europeans thought that they knew a lot about the land and ways of Native American life, when in fact they knew little to nothing about the Americas. Europeans were wrong about how Native Americans lived and interacted with each other, also certain kinds of foods that they ingested and the landscape surrounding them. The relationship between the re-evaluation of Western knowledge and scientific revolution is that science now shows us that Native Americans had a better understanding of everything around them than first believed.
Man’s central premise is that the Native Americans were a lot more sophisticated than deemed to be by history. In the article Mann says “Indians were here in greater numbers than previously thought, and they imposed their will on the landscape. Columbus set foot in a hemisphere thoroughly dominated by humankind.” When thinking about Native Americans before I read this article I imagined Native Americans as very primitive people. I am glad this article shed some light on how advanced Native Americans were. The relationship between scientific revolution and re-evalutation of Western knowledge and “development” is that science can prove what Western knowledge tells us is true.
What ruined the Native American culture and people, was the Europeans coming over and imposing their will and spreading diseases like wildfire. Had it not been for Columbus's "discovery," the Native Americans would still be around today.
The article agues that a lot of what we believe to be true about Native Americans is false because most of the facts were merely based on assumptions that the Europeans made when they arrived. Science now shows us that these people lived a far more advanced lifestyle than we thought they did, and arguably a much more sustainable lifestyle than we do today.
Mary Eskandari
Mann also gave a lot of evidence on the misinformation of Western knowledge. Many of the widely accepted "facts" of Western knowledge (such as the number of people on the continent before Columbus) are constantly getting uprooted and disproved. It seems that many scientists would just naturally accept anything that had decent evidence without looking into it much.
One of the main factors that caused the re-evaluation of Western knowledge was the scientific revolution. Once the scientific revolution got underway, they started disproving popular beliefs left and right. Basically everything children have been taught about Native Americans was discovered to be completely false. And while it may have taken a long time for the information to get out, it is nice for the Native American people to finally get credit for all the things they gave to Western society and to no longer be seen as a savage people before Columbus arrived.
Charles C. Mann’s central premise in the article 1491 is that far less credit than deserved is given to the indigenous North American people for their sophistication, sustainability, and ability to transform large scale landscapes into useful areas. Mann quotes William Denevan when he brings up the facts about how the Native Americans controlled the landscape by saying “the pristine myth—the belief that the Americas in 1491 were an almost unmarked, even edenic land, untrammeled by man, as said in the words of the Wilderness Act of 1964.” This is just the beginning of the evidence supporting how Indian populations had prospered in sophisticated ways. The Aztec capitol is a good example of how sustainable and remarkable the city itself and the agriculture that supported it actually was. Mann uses references from Cortes himself about how astonishing the capitol city was compared to those in Europe by saying “In the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán the
Spaniards gawped like hayseeds atthe wide streets, ornately carved buildings, and markets bright with goods from hundreds of miles away.” The secondary premise of the article talks about the estimated population of North America before Europeans infected, destroyed, and began to inhabit so many parts of the continent. Over the course of history, estimates have generally been low because it is easier to believe that settlers took a less occupied continent than one that is chock full of inhabitants. However, the truth about the number of people that occupied the land comes out when you know the underlying cause of underestimates such as “Non-Indian ‘experts’ always want to minimize the size of aboriginal populations,” says Lenore
Stiffarm, a native American specialist. The re-evaluation of knowledge comes up when you look at how the natives have been able to sustain themselves and allow the environment to prosper in harmony with one another. The introduction of Europeans, their sciences, and ways of life are what ultimately left the Indians with the shit end of the stick. If you are curious about the opinions of the archeologists that made this information available, then you will be happy to know that Charles Mann asked each of them. “I asked seven anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians if they would rather have been a typical Indian or a typical European in 1491. Every one chose to be an Indian.” As to what they said, I agree in full. I would rather belong to a culture that promotes growth and sustainability, as opposed to the European culture that obliterated centuries of (Western) knowledge and acted as true savages would against the native population.
Since Christopher Columbus first landed in 1492 in the Mayflower to today, census' are taken to determine the number of people living in an area. However, when it comes to native American's, an issue arrises-there is no way to tell from 1492 of how many were living in America. Estimates have come out that there may have been between 1.8 million to 25 million Native American's living during the colonialization period. However, as soon as the European's arrived, in the following years, nearly all (95%) of the indigenous population became "extinct." Many theories as to how this happened have come about, but the most probable cause was illness. Because the Native American's had no line of defense towards European diseases, they simply kept dying. However, because of their harmony with the environment, there are theories that suggest that the Native American's have survived longer than the Europeans. In order for this to occur, however, the land had to have been properly used. The final question arrises now-who was more civilized? The Europeans, or the Native Americans?
In Charles C. Mann's 1491, the main premise is that the pre scientific revolutionary beliefs of the Native American people before they were conquered by Columbus were proven to be far from accurate with the coming of the scientific revolution. "Indians were here far longer than previously thought, these researchers believe, and in much greater numbers. And they were so successful at imposing their will on the landscape that in 1492 Columbus set foot in a hemisphere thoroughly dominated by humankind", verifies this premise. Mann's article suggests that as Americans, we simply absorbed what was taught to us as fact without any real scientific evidence. We believed that the Native Americans were simply savages and wild when in reality they were intelligent people who had a very sustainable society. With the scientific revolution, Americans have been able to re evaluate these long held false beliefs and replace them with scientific facts about what actually occured in the 1940's.
The idea of indigenous sustainability in America has always astounded many people but if it was in fact used to the extent that Mann is implying then Europeans should be the "savages" in the story.
It is very unfortunate that many historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists can not accept that Western knowledge by Mann's comparison is not as superior as they once thought. If the assumptions some have presented are true, then humans in the present day are actually not as intellectually advanced in many ways.
"They were in the process of terraforming the Amazon when Columbus showed up and ruined everything"
- Katherine Barrows
Cameron Luper
The quote that illuminates my response is "Before Columbus, Dobyns calculated, the Western Hemisphere held ninety to 112 million people. Another way of saying this is that in 1491 more people lived in the Americas than in Europe." Mann gives information on many different cases of Native American and Europeans situations when the two groups of people came in contact with each other. The central premise is that Western knowledge is a bit skeptic. The history we've learned from a young age has been misleading. Native Americans were a thriving culture with many diversities that helped them to become strong powerful societies with a great amount of faith and wisdom. For one, Christopher Columbus did not discover America, he happened to come across an area of land that was inhabited by people who were doing just fine. The biggest issue I had with European society after first learning about them inhabiting America, was that no group of people are the same and just because someone does not look, talk, or act like you does not mean they need to be changed. When the Europeans started to come over to America, they didn't just try to take over the land, they basically manipulated, stole, and killed to get what they wanted. It is absolutely astonishing that the number of Native Americans who died from European diseases was greater than all the people living in Europe at the time. That is a very high number that makes you really wonder if settling in the Americas was worth the casualty rate.
The relationship between scientific revolution and re-evaluation of Western knowledge and "development" proves that what we learned in elementary school was completely false. Information and concepts discovered by different type of scientists (anthropologist, biologist, e.t.c) is what fills textbooks, magazines, and scientific journals. People read these texts and grow to get a better understanding on how things use to be and why things are the way they are today. It is just important to learn about Native American history as it is for European history because Native Americans are the original people. They were the first natives of America.
Jaclyn Mills
swept from the coastlines initially visited by Europeans to
inland areas controlled by Indians who had never seen a
white person. The first whites to explore many parts of the
Americas could therefore have encountered places that
were already depopulated." The reason this large complex population of Indians was never truly acknowledged is because disease traveled faster than the Europeans. As the Europeans traveled west, they came across a decimated population and mistook them for the true population that had been there for hundreds of years.
This reevaluation of history is due to the constant progress made by science and technology. History should be constantly reread and reanalyzed to get closer to the truth of what actually happened in the past.history is written in stone, but the language of the writing is still being deciphered.
The central premise of Charles C. Mann’s article 1491 is to show how vastly misinformed current Americans have been. In history books they tell the story of Native Americans as savages, or wild beings with a free spirit, not the intellectual meticulous individuals that are described to be in this article. I believe with this premise Mann uses the murder of the Native Americans to drive home the unconscionable severity of the misconception that history books have told. "The Spaniards arrived, and then Indians died-in huge numbers, at incredible rates. It hit him, Dobyns told me recently, "Like a club right between the eyes." this shows the realization of the dying Native Americans, and how because they were looked at as savages they were treated as such. "Dobyns estimated that in the first 130 years of contact about 95 percent of the people in the Americas died- the worst demographic calamity in recorded history. "If all those people died, how many had been living there to begin with? Before Columbus, Dobyns calculated, the Western Hemisphere held ninety to 112 million people. Another way of saying this is that in 1491 more people lived in the Americas than in Europe." Mann also says, “Like people everywhere, Indians survived by cleverly exploiting their environment.” Mann believed that what we have historically considered (Western) knowledge as accurate, but the things people were taught in school are not accurate. The relationship between scientific revolution and re-evaluation of Western knowledge is that they both show what is told from history may not be the whole truth.
Mann argues that education focuses only on the theory of Indians as hunter gatherers who did not develop the land around them. Because the theory of larger and more advanced Indian societies is ignored by the American education system, “Western” knowledge is based only on one side of the debate. As a result, Mann suggests Western knowledge is flawed and incomplete because the theory of larger advanced Indian cultures has not been given enough attention. Generally, people are more likely to believe what they have been taught for years as opposed to a new idea.
Mann discusses differences between the development and advancement of European societies versus pre-Columbian Indian societies. The scientific revolution refers to the period in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries in which the development of new information regarding science sparked the industrial revolution in the 19th century creating major industries. These industries allowed humanity to advance technologically. However, these industries are currently viewed as having negative environmental consequences. As a result, environmentalists and ecologists argue that humanity must return the earth to its natural state before humans developed the land. Essentially, this means that the foundation of environmental and ecological movements rests on the “pristine myth.” If experts such as Henry Dobyns who believes pre-Columbian Indians lived in large, advanced societies and created major changes in the landscape is correct, the basis for environmental movements is challenged.
Because of this conflict, a key area of debate centers on size of the pre-Columbian Indian population. Experts, such as Douglas Ubelaker, who believe in small Indian populations, base their argument on Indian populations that had been decimated by European diseases. Henry Dobyn’s argues that over 95 percent of the entire Indian population was wiped out over a period of 130 years due to various European diseases such as smallpox. Therefore, Dobyns promotes the idea that the Indian population was significantly larger.
Mann’s article reveals a relationship between re-evaluated Western knowledge and the practices of pre-Columbian Indians. Mann depicts the development and advancement of pre-Columbian Indian cultures as environmentally friendly rather than harmful. Soil geographer William Woods proposes that Amazonian Indians created “terra preta” soil which is extremely fertile and regenerates due to the presence of unique microorganisms. Additionally, wildlife ecologist Charles Kay describes Indians as a keystone species that had a major effect on the survival and population of other species. If this is true, all humans must be considered keystone species. Due to the success of the pre-Columbian Indians, present day humanity must learn to develop methods similar to the Indians in order to make the most of the earth.
Alexis McDade
The relationship between scientific revolution and re-evaluation of Western knowledge and development is that the previoudly thought ideas about Indians is becoming out-dated and is being re-evaluated because we now know much more about the topic that previously known. The historical Western Knowledge is just that, historical. Nowadays there is a new way to look at Western development.
Sharese Roberts
I think American's highly underestimated the development that the natives had accomplished. Our media and textbooks have been integrating ideas that have changed the way we view that first, true American culture. The justification for this was that A) natives living there didn't really count (or the territory really wasn’t theirs, they just lived there), and B) that the English knew how to do things better and therefore needed to take over and control the people and their land. The relationship between scientific revolution and re-evaluation of Western knowledge is fairly easy to grasp. Even though there might be evidence to suggest large numbers of Indian inhabitants, many people do not want to let of the original premises they operated under that the so-called “savages” were few and uncivilized.
Miguel Quinto