[botswana99]

This really shook up my worldview when I read it. American history as told in my schooling was about a vast empty with an occasional violent native.

This is not what happened

I read this book twice. I recommend 1493 and his latest book ‘wizard and prophet’ as well. His twitter is also interesting

[tracerbulletx]

A chilling realization that follows from this picture is that the inhabitants of North America encountered by most of the Europeans who came later were more or less the post-apocalyptic remnants of once large civilizations that had already collapsed in a continent wide pandemic.

[beloch]

If Europe's luck had been a little different, the Mongols might have arrived after the black death and stayed rather than immediately leaving because of internal dynastic struggles. I can't even imagine how different the modern world would be if people had spoken Mongolian in Paris and Stockholm for the last half millennia. It could easily have been Turkish or Arabic too!

That being said, one thing Mann pointed out in 1491 that is worth stressing is that population estimates of the Americas before contact are highly controversial. Most current estimates are based on assumed mortality rates and observed post-contact bottleneck populations rather than archaeological remains. Change the assumed mortality rates just a little and the pre-contact population estimates fluctuate by tens of millions. It's likely the new diseases had a range of different mortality rates in different regions, just as the Black death killed wildly varying proportions of the population in different parts of Europe. While it's clear that the Americas were not empty and waiting to be colonized, we should not make the equal and opposite mistake of assuming all parts were densely populated prior to contact. We just don't know.

Quibbling over numbers aside, 1491 and 1493 do a brilliant job of explaining how breaking the isolation imposed by the ocean transformed both the Americas and the rest of the world. In 1493, Mann recounts a song in the Philippines he likens to their version of "Home on the Range". It's an old song, meant to depict the ideal house and garden before the modern world changed everything. Practically none of the plant species it mentions are native to the Philippines and many originated in the Americas. The world we now live in is more novel than we realize.

[throwaway6734]

>It could easily have been Turkish or Arabic too!

Yep, during the rise of Islam, they caliphate almost captured Constantinople and could've ended up pushing into Europe had they been successful. They eventually made it into Spain and Sicily.

Its also possible that had the Persians or Byzantines been able to defeat the caliphate early, we might consider a good chunk of the middle east and north Africa to be "European".

[FooBarBizBazz]

Your first paragraph is something like the premise of The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson.

[culi]

Graeber and Wengrow have a different interpretation than "post-apocalyptic". More like they underwent a successful revolution to overthrow their hierarchical society and create radically egalitarian societies instead

The early European colonists came across these groups and that's pretty much the origin of the myth that "the natural state of man" is this radically egalitarian society. In reality it's an explicitly political culture that came about as a reaction to their lived experiences with "civilization"

Rather than "post-apocalyptic" they can also be seen as "post-civilization"

[russdill]

Given that European epidemics literally decimated the native population and the military marched many of the remaining natives to reservations that is the reality that most settlers encountered.

[throwaway6734]

The spread of disease was guaranteed to happen sooner or later. Europe and the middle east went through the same thing, just earlier in time

[idontwantthis]

Not nearly as bad in Europe. The Black Death killed 1/3. Pandemics may have killed 95% in America.

[throwaway6734]

Other pandemics were raging across Europe for the thousand years before that. For example, the Antonine plague and plague of Justinian

[Tagbert]

In my American schools we did learn more about North American natives though it was often through the point of view of European explorers and colonists. We got the usual stories about interactions with Jamestown/Pocahontas and Mayflower colonists /Squanto. There was more about Ponce de Leon and Coronado and the peoples they encountered. We got more details about the Aztec, Maya, and Olmec. I also remember sections about the mound builders and the Iroquois Confederacy. There were lessons on the American westward expansion and the conflicts that caused though I suspect that was downplayed a bit. The only South American people we studied were the Inca.

Obviously that misses whole sections of the continents.

[dr_dshiv]

What’s the bit about the Aztec and Mayans not having Markets?