Book Analysis Essay on The Atlantic

Introduction

The book by Mann presents research discoveries in various fields that propose that the indigenous people in the Americas were more, had come earlier, were progressively sophisticated socially, and influenced and formed the natural scene of the area more prominently than researchers had recently suspected. Mann takes note that, from these discoveries, two of the initial six free civilization centers of human progress emerged in the Americas. Based on the research studies, I agree with the argument that more people had arrived and settled in the Western Hemisphere than initially thought by researchers. Besides, these people had a significant impact on shaping the scenery of the Amazon.

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To support this claim, the author provides different pieces of evidence. The first evidence is a study that was done by Dobyns. According to him, more people lived in the Western Hemisphere than in Europe during the fifteenth century. From the data he collected from ledgers on local births and deaths kept by Jesuits, Dobyns learned that the Spaniards arrived and the aboriginal Indians died. The Indians had been killed from the plagues brought by their visitors, the Spaniards. Smallpox had attacked the Indians and killed more than half the population of the Incan empire, and it was not the only epidemic. Thus, Dobyns estimated that before Columbus, the Western Hemisphere had ninety to one hundred and twelve million people (Mann, 2002). Therefore, Dobyns concluded that the population figures used by earlier researchers had not taken into consideration the smallpox epidemic on the Indians.

The second piece of evidence given by Mann to support his argument is the research by Charles Hudson. The anthropologist rebuilt the path of excursion by Soto, a Spaniard who wreaked havoc on the Indians. According to him, Soto encountered thousands of Indian warriors, but he matched on and stole food (Mann, 2002). Besides, Soto came across cities, which means that the inhabitants were civilized. However, when the French came to the area a century later, they found wretched cities with crumbled civilization.

Further, according to Patricia Galloway, the pigs which Soto had come with were instrumental in leading to the catastrophe of measles experienced during the time. He believes that the pigs spread the disease to wildlife. Thus, the epidemic of illnesses that struck the Indians can be explained by zoonotic diseases. In the period between Soto's arrival and the Frenchmen arrival, some historians think that the population of Caddoan fell from two hundred thousand to eight thousand (Mann, 2002).

Other research studies discovered that agriculture had its heart in the Western Hemisphere. Mann in his book says "But in agriculture, they handily outstripped the children of Sumeria" (Mann, 2002) It is because they believe that every crop in Europe came from the West and more than half the crops grown in the world were developed by ancient Americans. The success of Agriculture in the Western Hemisphere was also evident in the large cities that it sustained like the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1519 (Mann, 2002).

Lastly, Meggers supports the argument, although she states that the Indian villages were forced to remain small because they felt that bigger communities would overuse forest earth (Mann, 2002). The argument gets its support from an excavated chiefdom on Marajo, which was a refined culture in the Andes.

Conclusion

To sum up, I believe that the author is right. The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus was not the first instance the Europeans set foot in the Western Hemisphere. The population of the people who resided in this area in the early fifteenth century was higher than presented in early research studies. Besides, the first inhabitants had an impact on shaping the environmental conditions in the hemisphere.

Reference

Mann, C. C., (2002). 1491. The Atlantic, 2- 22.