Mann cites Bartolomé de Las Casas a conquistador who had visited the Americas who believed “Indians were natural creatures who dwelt, gentle as cows. This position is the notion that the indigenous people of the Americas lived an idyllic life prior to the arrival of Columbus or were savage barbarians who did nothing constructive. Mann begins his book by discussing the notion of the “Noble Savage,” a concept that began in the early sixteenth century. Spurred by what he had seen and read and by the fact that his son was being taught the same thing Mann had been taught in high school thirty years earlier, he wrote a book that “explores what I believes to be the three main foci of the new findings: Indian demography. Instead Mann, with considerable documentation and research by scientists, archeologists and geographers supporting this view, argues that the Americas were inhabited thousands of years earlier, existed in far larger numbers, and had been “successful at imposing their will on the landscape that in 1492 Columbus set foot in a hemisphere thoroughly marked by humankind” (Mann, 1491, 4). Allegedly these people lived in small, isolated groups that had little impact on the environment. The commonly held and taught belief that the Americas were inhabited by people who crossed the Bering Sea from Europe about 13,000 years ago was wrong.

Beginning in 1983 Mann began to become aware that research had indicated the commonly held view of the settling of the Americas was wrong. Mann has written an extremely interesting and controversial book. With 1491:New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus Charles C.

1492 book mann