However, he does not shy away from presenting the counter-arguments. The author is not without bias - he makes it clear which theories and perspectives he finds more convincing. As such, 1491 is a book that probably has an inbuilt 'Best Before Date'. 100 years from now, perhaps many of the current consensus theories will have been replaced by others. 1491 presents current knowledge, current consensus, current thinking. Outliers sometimes gathered momentum, became mainstream, replaced an old consensus with a new one. Often, there seemed to be a consensus in the past, only for it to be overturned by later theories. 1491 spends a lot of pages describing how knowledge and theories evolved. The danger of a book that tries to cover a topic where much is still under contention is that it might end up on 'the wrong side of history' - not the evil side, but simply the side that comes to incorrect conclusions. Fortunately, the reader gets only the rough brush strokes picture of the essence of those spats and is spared the petty detail. The book ignores the quacks, fraudsters and fantasists, but even the experts evidently have frequently been wrong in the past.Īcademics in the humanities and social sciences seem to spend half their professional lives forming loose tribes and having spats with each other.

unsurprisingly, many did.ġ491 tries to give a reasonably balanced account of what is known, what is theorised (by credible experts), and what is contentious and why. And where something is unknown, some people will see 'mystery', or worse, a blank canvas to project their own theories and biases onto. As such, the story of human life in the Americas before the conquest is largely unknown. However, these cultures cover only small regions and brief glimpses into time. There are notable exceptions: the Maya, the Aztecs, and, perhaps, the Inka, though their khipus have not yet been decoded. Pre-Columbus America is often described as 'prehistoric' - because historians rely on written records, and, for the most part, such records were not generated by Indians / people who lived in the Western hemisphere. All I can say is I'm glad I eventually looked past the naff cover. It's also a book that tends to have unimpressive covers, both in the US and the UK editions.

In particular, what the people, cultures and human ways of living were like (though animals and nature get a bit of a mention, too). 1491 is a book trying to give an overview of current thinking about what America was like before Columbus arrived.

Before columbus the americas of 1491