Charles C. Mann, the author of 1491, New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, is a writer not a scientist. This book is a compilation of ideas, theories, and research primarily from archeologists and anthropologists on what the American Continents were like after Pangaea split to form North and South America and Europe. The results are very different from what I learned in high school, and what is still being taught in our school systems.

According to the best information available Mesoamerica and South America were some of the most populous places on earth for many centuries dating back to before the Common Era. The pristine wildernesses of our own homeland that is the United States came into being after European civilization as a result of the deaths of most of the indigenous peoples that were here.

Mann raises the possibility that the US Revolution was influenced in a very large way by the native people known as the Five Nations and their "Great Law of Peace." This group of tribes dates back to somewhere between the 11th and 12th centuries. In the first two centuries of European colonization, "the border between natives and newcomers was porous, almost nonexistent." Both John Adams and Ben Franklin refer to them and were heavily influenced by their egalitarian life styles. The Indians were amazed and perplexed over the social class system that the new people lived under. The natives were living models of human liberty. It seems apparent that many of the seminal thinkers of the American Experiment of 1776 were greatly influenced by the local Indians.

This book is an interesting read that may well challenge many ideas that you have held as fact since childhood.

--Wayne Wilson