1491

New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

34,95 €

inkl. MwSt. und Versand · Lieferzeit 1–2 Werktage

Gesetzliche Gewährleistung: 2 Jahre · Details

Nur noch 1 verfügbar

Beschreibung

A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.<br><br>Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus's landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas was, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last thirty years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.<br><br>In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques came to previously unheard-of conclusions. Among them:<br><br>• In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe.<br>• Certain cities-such as Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital-were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitlán, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.<br>• The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.<br>• 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.”<br>• 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.<br>• Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively "landscaped” by human beings.<br><br>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 understa

Artikeldetails

EAN

9781400040063

Sprache

Englisch

Einband / Art

Buch

Maße

239 x 168 x 38 mm

Erscheinungsjahr

2005

Verlag / Hersteller

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group