By way of explanation, I'm current taking a course at the Community College of Philadelphia for transfer to the history program at SNHU. The course is Global History II, which covers 1492 to the present. The below is my short paper for the first week of class.
The assigned reading (see footnote 1 below for the link) was an essay published in The Atlantic in 2002, in which the author, Charles C. Mann, fleshed out some of the concepts that would eventually appear in his 2006 book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
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In his article "1491,"[1] Charles C. Mann attempts to demonstrate the extent to which our typical assumptions about pre-Columbian life in the Americas might be wrong. To prove his points, he brings to bear mostly the opinions of experts in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and history, discussing the largely academic controversies that have arisen over the course the last half-century in determining, among other factors, the native population figures of the continent, the causes of the fates of these peoples, and the extent to which the ecology of the Western Hemisphere interacted with native Americans. He also uses some personal experiences to make his points. Mann is ultimately successful in making his case, although it is unclear whether his representation of opposing points of view is complete or wholly accurate.
The assigned reading (see footnote 1 below for the link) was an essay published in The Atlantic in 2002, in which the author, Charles C. Mann, fleshed out some of the concepts that would eventually appear in his 2006 book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
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In his article "1491,"[1] Charles C. Mann attempts to demonstrate the extent to which our typical assumptions about pre-Columbian life in the Americas might be wrong. To prove his points, he brings to bear mostly the opinions of experts in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and history, discussing the largely academic controversies that have arisen over the course the last half-century in determining, among other factors, the native population figures of the continent, the causes of the fates of these peoples, and the extent to which the ecology of the Western Hemisphere interacted with native Americans. He also uses some personal experiences to make his points. Mann is ultimately successful in making his case, although it is unclear whether his representation of opposing points of view is complete or wholly accurate.
For instance, Mann's article engages the academic controversy over population data immediately, as he sets the point of view of the archaeologists Clark Erickson and William Balée that "Indians were here [in the Beni province of Bolivia] far longer than previously thought … and in much greater numbers"[2] against that of the anthropologists Betty J. Meggers and Dean R. Snow, who argue that the former's arguments lack evidence and are based on wishful thinking. The essay culminates in the dispute over the origins of the Amazon rain forest, with Meggers's position of native Amazonian societies dependent on soil with poor yield and thus limited in population size for Malthusian reasons compared to Anna C. Roosevelt's conclusion that the rain forest was both exploited for its rich soil (which Roosevelt, an archaeologist, excavated) and partially created by the choice of native people to plant orchards rather than more regularly rotated crops.
Mann's own position in this ongoing debate is not overtly stated but can be gleaned from certain details in the essay. For instance, it is with the aforementioned Balée and Erickson that Mann visits Beni himself, and he provides a firsthand account of Painted Rock Cave to present Roosevelt's opinion and that of the anthropologist/botanist Charles R. Clement, who agrees with her. In contrast, Meggers's opinion, while presented in direct quotations, does not benefit from such a specific setting, which seems to validate more the reports of Roosevelt. To his credit, Mann presents Meggers's rebuttal of Roosevelt as well meaning, motivated in part by conservationism,[3] but his emphasis of the negative tone of her rebuttal -- at turns calling Roosevelt's work "extravagant" and "defamatory"[4] -- leaves the impression that her argument is overly emotional and, thus, inferior.
If nothing else, Mann provides in "1491" a solid overview of the battleground that has arisen over these opposing claims. In this sense, the essay is enormously successful. Moreover, as a person with some interest in pre-Columbian cultures, I found the essay downright fascinating. In the end, however, I was left to wonder whether the presentation was entirely fair. The impression finally left, as well written and gripping as the article might be, is that the positions of scholars such as Meggers and Snow are outdated and, more importantly, that their resistance to new ideas is mean-spirited and petty. While this impression does not detract from the overall entertainment value of the essay, it does leave open the question of how well Meggers's and Snow's argument might succeed if assessed a bit more fairly.
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[1] Charles C. Mann, "1491," The Atlantic, March 2002, accessed October 27, 2015 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/
[2] Ibid.
[3] Not stated by Mann directly but likely unavoidable to perceive given her surname is that Roosevelt is the great-grand-daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, who made no small contribution to conservation.
[4] Mann, ibid.
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