Description
- Certain cities-such as Tenochtitl n, the Aztec capital-were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitl n, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.
- The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.
- Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a breeding process so sophisticated that the journal Science recently described it as "man's first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering."
- Amazonian Indians learned how to farm the rain forest without destroying it-a process scientists are studying today in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge.
- Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively "landscaped" by human beings. Mann sheds clarifying light on the methods used to arrive at these new visions of the pre-Columbian Americas and how they have affected our understanding of our history and our thinking about the environment. His book is an exciting and learned account of scientific inquiry and revelation.
Author: Charles C. Mann
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 08/09/2005
Pages: 480
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.85lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.60w x 1.60d
ISBN13: 9781400040063
ISBN10: 140004006X
BISAC Categories:
- History | Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
- History | Americas (North Central South West Indies)
- History | United States | General
About the Author
Charles C. Mann is a correspondent for Science and The Atlantic Monthly, and has cowritten four previous books including Noah's Choice: The Future of Endangered Species and The Second Creation. A three-time National Magazine Award finalist, he has won awards from the American Bar Association, the Margaret Sanger Foundation, the American Institute of Physics, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, among others. His writing was selected for The Best American Science Writing 2003 and The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003. He lives with his wife and their children in Amherst, Massachusetts.