Post Description

1491:
Based on the latest scientific findings, this breakthrough book argues that most of what we thought we knew about the Americas before Columbus was wrong.
In the last 20 years, archaeologists and anthropologists equipped with new scientific techniques have made far-reaching discoveries about the Americas. For example, Indians did not cross the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago, as most of us learned in school. They were already here. Their numbers were vast, not few. And instead of living lightly on the land, they managed it beautifully and left behind an enormous ecological legacy.
In this riveting, accessible work of science, Charles Mann takes us on an enthralling journey of scientific exploration. We learn that the Indian development of modern corn was one of the most complex feats of genetic engineering ever performed. That the Great Plains are a third smaller today than they were in 1700 because the Indians who maintained them by burning died. And that the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact.
Compelling and eye-opening, this book has the potential to vastly alter our understanding of our history and change the course of today's environmental disputes.

1493:
This is the exciting and totally engrossing companion volume to the bestselling 1491, picking up where the last volume left off. For 200 million years before Columbus landed in the Americas, geological forces had kept apart the two halves of the world. In that time, Europe and Asia and the Americas had ended up with two completely different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's landing marked the beginning of what biologists call the "Columbian Exchange." A plethora of plants and animal species that were over there came over here, and vice versa. It was the biggest event in the history of life since the death of the dinosaurs. The biological world changed so radically that scientists say that Columbus didn't discover a new world so much as create one. And this ecological tumult underlies--and explains--much of the subsequent human history as well, as Charles Mann so brilliantly demonstrates. Then, in 1571, a Spaniard named Legazpi finally did what Columbus and a host of others had tried to do--sail west and begin trade with China, then the richest, most powerful country in the world. That year, Legazpi founded Manila, where silver from the Americas, mined by African and Indian slaves, was sold to Asians in return for silk for Europeans. It was the first time that goods and people from every corner of the globe were connected in a single worldwide exchange. Much as Columbus created a new world biologically, Legazpi and the Spanish empire he served created a new world economically. Like 1491, 1493 is a guide to a generation of research by scholars in diverse disciplines just now coming into view. Aided by new scientific techniques that allow researchers to peer into the past, historians have begun to realize than events 400 years ago set the template, for good and for ill, for our existences today. It also marked the beginning of some of our fiercest political disputes, from immigration to invasive species, from trade policy to culture war. With 1493, Charles Mann enhances his standing as one of the finest scientific interpreters of our past.




Was verzoek:
admar | idFjLg op woensdag 29 augustus 2018 | 0:59 
Hoi Truman en anderen, ik ben op zoek naar het boek "1493" 
van Thomas C. Mann; iemand dit boek gevonden? 
En van dezelfde schrijver "1491" zou helemaal super zijn.
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Alsjeblieft.