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1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C Mann is a great book about the Americas before Columbus (who arrived in 1492). One of the thi

by rmc 11y ago

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C Mann is a great book about the Americas before Columbus (who arrived in 1492). One of the things it covers (with evidence), is the disease outbreak which killed millions and millions of people. He's a pop-sci author, so it's half a history book and half a science book ("We know this because of these historical documents, and then because of this scientific evidence)

patsplat 11y ago
That and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created are great reads. One of the main points of 1491 was the evidence of disease decimating the Americas even prior to the arrival of Cortes.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
Stories like this were one of the most interesting things I learned with home schooling. When you are bringing information to your kids to teach them about history, you want it to be accurate so, if you are like me, you try to find a number of sources about major events. And what I discovered was how these events are slanted, sometimes radically so, in service to a particular narrative. Of the few things we found that were pretty universal, one was that a lot of people died from disease, before, during, and after people from Europe were visiting the American continents (both North and South), and upper class Europeans were often unashamedly racists and classists. The origin of these appear to be the lack of understanding about diseases (transmission and virality) and our inability to proactively protect ourselves (vaccinate). And the history of feudal warlords favoring 'bloodlines' over individual competence. Often looking at events from the present, with the benefit if hindsight and greater knowledge, its easy to see how things could have been avoided and so it is easy to believe that they weren't avoided due to malice. And taking advantage of that, a number of historians have painted events to look like either malice of their enemies or heroism of their allies, rather than a dispassionate retelling of facts and figures. Even today we see tragic events quickly contextualized into a conspiracy of shadowy groups with malicious agendas. when those re-contextualized accounts become the only surviving account, we lose a lot of perspective.
YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago
The Conquest of Mexico and New Spain, by Bernal Diaz del Castillo: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32475/32475-h/32475-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32475/32475-h/32475-h.htm That's the bees knees and the cat's pajamas when it comes to the downfall of the Aztec Empire at the hands of Cortes' small band of conquistadores (plus a few thousand Tlascalans and other enemies of the Empire), a first-hand account from one of the conquistadores. It's all in there: the pious, self-mutilating Aztec priests who practiced human sacrifice, the strange way the Mexicans did warfare and their reaction to muskets and horses, La Noche Triste and Alvarado's Leap, Moctezuma's death at the hands of his captors, Dona Marina, and of course, the deadliest part of it all, the decimation of the Mexican population by smallpox carried by the Europeans. It's been called the most beautiful story ever told (no link, sorry) and it is. Beautiful, but also tragic, brutal, horrifying, bloody and full of senseless killing and pointless death and destruction. You might want to read it if you enjoyed New Revelations...

by rmc 11y ago

patsplat 11y ago

That and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created are great reads. One of the main points of 1491 was the evidence of disease decimating the Americas even prior to the arrival of Cortes.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

Stories like this were one of the most interesting things I learned with home schooling. When you are bringing information to your kids to teach them about history, you want it to be accurate so, if you are like me, you try to find a number of sources about major events. And what I discovered was how these events are slanted, sometimes radically so, in service to a particular narrative. Of the few things we found that were pretty universal, one was that a lot of people died from disease, before, during, and after people from Europe were visiting the American continents (both North and South), and upper class Europeans were often unashamedly racists and classists. The origin of these appear to be the lack of understanding about diseases (transmission and virality) and our inability to proactively protect ourselves (vaccinate). And the history of feudal warlords favoring 'bloodlines' over individual competence. Often looking at events from the present, with the benefit if hindsight and greater knowledge, its easy to see how things could have been avoided and so it is easy to believe that they weren't avoided due to malice. And taking advantage of that, a number of historians have painted events to look like either malice of their enemies or heroism of their allies, rather than a dispassionate retelling of facts and figures. Even today we see tragic events quickly contextualized into a conspiracy of shadowy groups with malicious agendas. when those re-contextualized accounts become the only surviving account, we lose a lot of perspective.

YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago

The Conquest of Mexico and New Spain, by Bernal Diaz del Castillo: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32475/32475-h/32475-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32475/32475-h/32475-h.htm That's the bees knees and the cat's pajamas when it comes to the downfall of the Aztec Empire at the hands of Cortes' small band of conquistadores (plus a few thousand Tlascalans and other enemies of the Empire), a first-hand account from one of the conquistadores. It's all in there: the pious, self-mutilating Aztec priests who practiced human sacrifice, the strange way the Mexicans did warfare and their reaction to muskets and horses, La Noche Triste and Alvarado's Leap, Moctezuma's death at the hands of his captors, Dona Marina, and of course, the deadliest part of it all, the decimation of the Mexican population by smallpox carried by the Europeans. It's been called the most beautiful story ever told (no link, sorry) and it is. Beautiful, but also tragic, brutal, horrifying, bloody and full of senseless killing and pointless death and destruction. You might want to read it if you enjoyed New Revelations...