Writer of 1491, 1493, Wizard & The Prophet, etc. New: Everyday Abundance, podcast w/ @vpostrel on the history of things you didn't know even *had* a history.
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Articles by Charles C. Mann
Cómo salvar a las abejas
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1493: Cómo el descubrimiento de América transformó el resto del mundo
Ayuda Buscar en la ayuda Buscar en la ayuda 1493: Cómo el descubrimiento de América transformó el resto del mundo Autores: Charles C. Mann, Stella Mastrangelo (trad.) Editores: Capitán Swing Año de publicación: 2025 País: España Idioma: español ISBN: 978-84-129532-4-4 Títulos paralelos: 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus created Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
Solo ante el peligro. Cortés derrotado en Otumba
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Así era América antes de que Colón la descubriera
Imaginemos, por un momento, un viaje imposible: tomamos un avión y despegamos del este de Bolivia, pero estamos en el año 1000 d. C., y realizamos un vuelo de reconocimiento a lo largo de todo el hemisferio occidental. ¿Qué sería visible desde las ventanillas del aparato?
The Gangster In My Tub
One of the first things to ask yourself when walking into a Japanese bath is, Am I Angelina Jolie? If the answer is yes, consider leaving. For a reason I’ll explain in a minute, most Japanese baths don’t let in people who are heavily tattooed. The baths are known as onsen—hot springs. Japan being made up of volcanic islands, hot springs are plentiful.
How Will the Coronavirus Change Us?
Doctors treat an influenza patient at the U.S. Naval Hospital in New Orleans during the 1918 pandemic. (MPI / Getty) In 2008 a young economist named Craig Garthwaite went looking for sick people. He found them in the National Health Interview Survey. Conducted annually by the U.S. Census Bureau since 1957, the NHIS is the oldest and biggest continuing effort to track Americans’ health.
Looking at Colours Again EP, by Distant Voices
"...a brilliant EP filled with moments of true honesty and vulnerability, not to mention excellent musical arrangements" - The Skinny Vox Liminis is proud to present ‘Looking at Colours Again': a new EP from the Distant Voices project. The songs on this EP were written in Vox Sessions in HMP Barlinnie, HMP Inverness, HMP Castle Huntly and HMYOI Polmont during 2018-19. Vox Sessions are short song-writing workshops developed in partnership with groups of people with criminal justice experience.
Is There Still a Good Case for Water Fluoridation?
I blame my dentists. Not for poor dental care—Barbara and Gordon do great work. I blame them for sending me into a vortex of dento-epistemological anxiety. On a tooth-cleaning visit not long ago, Barbara told me that in the late 1970s, when she attended dental school, her professors expected that most middle-class patients would lose a lot of their teeth and need dentures by the time they were in their 60s. Today, she said, most middle-class people keep their teeth until they are 80.
Let’s Farm Chestnuts Again
Many Americans know the sad tale of how the American chestnut tree was driven almost to extinction in the 20th century. The chestnut once grew from Maine to Mississippi, an area of more than 200 million acres. It was the most common tree in the forests of the eastern U.S.; indeed, scientists have estimated that one out of four trees in its range was a chestnut. Mature trees could be more than 100 feet tall, with trunks 7 feet in diameter that produced strong, straight-grained, rot-resistant wood.
The Bluewater Revolution
About 9 miles southeast of New Hampshire, near the Isles of Shoals, what seems to be an ordinary yellow navigation buoy sways in the Atlantic chop. Like a regular buoy, it's a metal cylinder that extends 10 feet above the surface and blinks its lights to warn away passing ships. Unlike a regular buoy, though, it has an access hatch that leads to an inner chamber crammed with enough electronics to merit its own IT staff.
‘Silent Spring & Other Writings’ Review: The Right and Wrong of Rachel Carson
It is strange to read Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” today, more than 50 years after its publication, in a handsome new edition from the Library of America. At the time the book hit the shelves, it read as a relentless, densely factual indictment of the world’s growing use of industrial pesticides and herbicides.
How We Got Here: 8 Books on the Science of Culture
If you’re trying to understand why our culture is the way it is, or how we got to be this way, look no further. The eight books below will allow you to take a deep dive into our past, our present, and our potential future to learn more about how our culture developed and evolved, and where we’re headed from here.
Can Planet Earth Feed 10 Billion People?
All parents remember the moment when they first held their children—the tiny crumpled face, an entire new person, emerging from the hospital blanket. I extended my hands and took my daughter in my arms. I was so overwhelmed that I could hardly think. Afterward I wandered outside so that mother and child could rest. It was three in the morning, late February in New England. There was ice on the sidewalk and a cold drizzle in the air.
Meet the Amateur Scientist Who Discovered Climate Change
Today Guy Callendar is a historical footnote, but tomorrow he will have a chapter of his own. Born in 1898, Callendar was the son of Britain’s leading steam engineer, a successful academic and inventor who raised his children in a 22-room mansion. A greenhouse on the grounds was converted into a laboratory for the children until one of Callendar’s three brothers blew it up trying to make TNT. The same brother put out Callendar’s left eye.
Book Review: The Statues That Walked
Easter Island was first an enigma, then a parable. The world's most isolated inhabited place, 1,500 miles from the next populated island in the Pacific, it was discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday, 1722. Those first visitors—an expedition led by the Dutch lawyer Jakob Roggeveen—came upon an almost treeless expanse with perhaps 3,000 occupants, Polynesians who spoke their own distinct language.
The Coming Death Shortage
Anna Nicole Smith's role as a harbinger of the future is not widely acknowledged. Born Vickie Lynn Hogan, Smith first came to the attention of the American public in 1993, when she earned the title Playmate of the Year. In 1994 she married J. Howard Marshall, a Houston oil magnate said to be worth more than half a billion dollars. He was eighty-nine and wheelchairbound; she was twenty-six and quiveringly mobile. Fourteen months later Marshall died.
Review: ‘A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived’ Is a Family Portrait for All Humanity
‘A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived” is not particularly brief, not exactly a history and not concerned with everyone who ever lived. A more accurate title would be something like “An Omnium-gatherum about Genetics by a Real Smart Guy With an Amusing Prose Style.” Whatever the title, this enjoyable book has a great deal to say about our genetic code—or, more precisely, about how our knowledge of genetics is misused and misconstrued.
Unintended Consequences: Fracking and the Flow of Drugs
WEBB COUNTY, Texas — Fracking and the drug war are colliding in Texas. Head north from the border city of Laredo, and the wide freeways dwindle to two-lane roadways flanked by the brush and mesquite trees that fill the vast ranch lands. Just five years ago, perhaps a dozen vehicles per day would be traveling on the even smaller, private roads that cut directly through the big ranches here, according to the federal Border Patrol.
How Nature Scales Up
By June 23, 2017 1:33 pm ET Like a hardcover version of the Veg-o-Matic in those old television commercials, Geoffrey West’s “Scale” is three—three!—three books in one. The first is among the most fascinating popular-science books I’ve read in a long while, and the other two are consistently provocative. But like that Veg-o-Matic on the shelf, it’s unclear how useful the whole package will be in the end.
Taking On Chomsky (and Darwin)
Tom Wolfe is back, but which Tom Wolfe? The nose-thumbing satirical novelist? The journalistic anatomist of the American id? No: It’s the pop-intellectual historian, the guy who eviscerated modernist art in “The Painted Word,” modernist architecture in “From Bauhaus to Our House” and modernist literature in “The New Journalism.” In a twist, “The Kingdom of Speech” is an Olympic dive into the Rio-murky waters of evolution and language.
Five Books: Louise Fresco recommends the best books on Food
Louise O. Fresco is a food and agricultural scientist and president of Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands. She is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Council of Advisors for the World Food Prize. Louise O. Fresco is a food and agricultural scientist and president of Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands.
An Economic History of the World since 1400
Superb narrative and intriguing perspectives What made the experience of listening to An Economic History of the World since 1400 the most enjoyable? The title could be misleading, because it is neither purely economics-based, nor is it correspondingly dry. Instead, it focusses on a range of technological developments that enhanced the economic advantages of different nation-states etc. at key points in history.
Why We (Still) Can't Live Without Rubber -- National Geographic Magazine
Sometimes you just want to spend a few hours washing your truck. It’s a beautiful day, all of northern Thailand vibrant in the spring sun, so you drive your new Isuzu into the stream that runs through your village, Tung Nha Noi. Cows and people walk by as you stand in the water, a 21-year-old guy with a hot ride, sponging it so clean that the vehicle gleams like hope in the sun.
Solar or Coal? The Energy India Picks May Decide Earth’s Fate
A few minutes after I meet E. V. R. Raju, a vision pops into my head. I can see him on one of those lists of the World’s Most Important People released by the likes of CNN, Forbes, and Time. Besides the obvious entrants like the president and the pope, the lists always also include a few buzzy, click-generating names: Emma Watson, perhaps, or Bono. Raju is certainly not in either of those categories. He is the environmental manager of a coalfield in northeastern India.
Quest for a Superbee
Brother Adam must have known he had become a beekeeper at an unlucky time. It was 1915, and he was a 16-year-old novice at Buckfast Abbey in southwest England. Rapid bee die-offs have been recorded for centuries, but the catastrophe that confronted the young monk was unprecedented. A mysterious disease had wiped out almost every apiary on the Isle of Wight and now was devastating the rest of England. Brother Adam found his hives suddenly vacant, bees crawling beneath them, unable to fly.
Nourishing Broth: An Old-Fashioned Remedy for the Modern World
The follow-up book to the hugely best-selling Nourishing Traditions, which has sold over 500,000 copies, this time focusing on the immense health benefits of bone broth by the founder of the popular Weston A Price Foundation. Nourishing Broth: An Old-Fashioned Remedy for the Modern World Nourishing Traditions examines where the modern food industry has hurt our nutrition and health through over-processed foods and fears of animal fats.
Our Good Earth - National Geographic Magazine
On a warm September day, farmers from all over the state gather around the enormous machines. Combines, balers, rippers, cultivators, diskers, tractors of every variety—all can be found at the annual Wisconsin Farm Technology Days show. But the stars of the show are the great harvesters, looming over the crowd. They have names like hot rods—the Claas Jaguar 970, the Krone BiG X 1000—and are painted with colors bright as fireworks. The machines weigh 15 tons apiece and have tires tall as a tall man.
Book Review: ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ by Yuval Noah Harari
Humans beings developed language, anthropologists tell us, tens of thousands of years ago. Presumably the first spoken utterance was something practical, like “Lions are attacking!” or “Your hair is on fire!” But not long after came, “Who are we and how did we get here?” Homo sapiens, that congeries of narcissists, has been contemplating its journey ever since. Religion provided early versions of the human story: Zoroastrian sacred texts, the Book of Genesis, the Popul Vuh.
‘1491’ - New York Times
On March 22, 1621, an official Native American delegation walked through what is now southern New England to negotiate with a group of foreigners who had taken over a recently deserted Indian settlement.
The Tricky Ethics of Intergalactic Colonization
Zheng He! Zheng He! Is there a better icon for interstellar voyaging? Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng set out from China on massive naval expeditions that reached as far as Mecca and Mombasa, journeys with more than 300 vessels and 28,000 crew, excursions far bigger and longer than those of Columbus more than a half century later.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus: 9781400032051: Mann, Charles C.: Books
Mann gives the reader a comprehensive overview of the new theories concerning native American societies before the colonial period. The story is intriguing, and the fascinating narrative will hold the reader's complete attention. The assertions made are too numerous and complex to go into in any detail here, but in brief: we are told that the Western Hemisphere was actually much more populous than anyone had imagined previously.
1491 - Charles C. Mann - The Atlantic
Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact After we landed, I asked Balée, Should we let people keep burning the Beni?
1491 - Atlantic Mobile
Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact The plane took off in weather that was surprisingly cool for north-central Bolivia and flew east, toward the Brazilian border.
How to Talk About Climate Change So People Will Listen
Environmentalists warn us that apocalypse awaits. Economists tell us that minimal fixes will get us through. Here's how we can move beyond the impasse.
How to Talk About Climate Change So People Will Listen
Environmentalists warn us that apocalypse awaits. Economists tell us that minimal fixes will get us through. Here's how we can move beyond the impasse. Charles C.
Growing Pains, Solved
FORGIVE THE FIRST-TIME visitor flying into New Mexico who looks down and mutters: “Sure looks gray, brown, and dry.” From the air, that may be the case. But when your feet touch ground, sage green, pine green, cholla green, and more shades appear. Put a spade into soil, add some compost, sprinkle with water, and you might even coax red, yellow, pink, and purple from trees, shrubs, vegetables, flowers, and succulents. Desert gardens provide challenges only worsened by our ongoing regional drought.
Renewables Aren't Enough. Clean Coal Is the Future
Proof that good things don't always come in nice packages can be found by taking the fast train from Beijing to Tianjin and then driving to the coast. Tianjin, China's third-biggest city, originated as Beijing's port on the Yellow Sea. But in recent years Tianjin has reclaimed so much of its muddy, unstable shoreline that the city has effectively moved inland and a new, crazily active port has sprung up at the water's edge.
Before Christopher Columbus: 1491
Below us was the Beni, a Bolivian province about the size of Illinois and Indiana put together, and nearly as flat. For almost half the year rain and snowmelt from the mountains to the south and west cover the land with an irregular, slowly moving skin of water that eventually ends up in the province's northern rivers, which are sub-subtributaries of the Amazon. The rest of the year the water dries up and the bright-green vastness turns into something that resembles a desert.
Cultivating Lush Gardens in the Desert
Dry, scruffy, and struggling is no way to go through life, but these are conditions often encountered in cultivating water-challenged New Mexico landscapes. Fortunately, there’s a revolution afoot that looks beyond xeriscaping to the next generation of design: permaculture. Melissa McDonald, her husband, Nate Downey, and their company, Santa Fe Permaculture, use this approach to put the beauty back in the beast of high-desert gardening.
1491―先コロンブス期アメリカ大陸をめぐる新発見 | チャールズ・C. マン, Mann,Charles C., 由紀子, 布施 |本 | 通販 | Amazon
1492年のコロンブス到達以前のアメリカ大陸について、私たち の常識を根本から覆す画期的な研究。 従来アメリカ人は、南北アメリカに住む先住民たちの祖先は、1万2千年前に ベーリング地峡を渡ってやってきたと学校の授業で習ってきた。彼らは小数の狩 猟採集民集団で、この両大陸にまばらに散らばって暮らし、そこには依然とし て、手つかずの広大な自然が広がっていたのだ、と。しかし本書でチャールズ C.マンが明らかにするように、考古学者や人類学者はこの30年にわたって、 「長らく信じられてきた」こうした仮定の多くが誤りであることを次々と証明し てきたのだ。 本書において著者は、新世代の研究者たちが最新の科学技術を用いることで、 如何にかつて聞いたこともないような驚くべき結論を説得力をもって導き出した かを明らかにしている。たとえば ・ 1491年のアメリカ両大陸には、恐らく当時のヨーロッパ全体を越える数の 人々が暮らしていた。 ・ アステカの首都ティノチティトランなどいくつかの都市は、同時代のヨー ロッパのどの都市よりもはるかに多くの人口を擁していた。さらには、ティノチ...
Opinion | The Founding Sachems (Published 2005)
Op-Ed Contributor July 4, 2005 AMHERST, Mass. - SEEKING to understand this nation's democratic spirit, Alexis de Tocqueville journeyed to the famous centers of American liberty (Boston, Philadelphia, Washington), stoically enduring their "infernal" accommodations, food and roads and chatting up almost everyone he saw.
Living With Linux
(The online version of this article appears in two parts. Click here to go to part two.) A FEW years ago I worked on a small publishing project in northern California. As often happens now, the project was entirely edited and laid out on a computer network -- four Apple Macintoshes in this case. Because the project had many pictures, which computers treat as very large files, we added a powerful new-model Mac to the network and a fancy laser printer that could produce photo-quality images.
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