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I'm reading this now and it's excellent. It has the important characteristic so many popular revisionist histories lack, restraint. Later day American archaeolo
by DubiousPusher 9y ago
I'm reading this now and it's excellent. It has the important characteristic so many popular revisionist histories lack, restraint. Later day American archaeology practically oozes with opportunities to speculate. Actual physical discoveries beg to be contextualized by our modern imaginations. Mann does visit some of these tangents of the imagination but he is also very careful to bracket these with explanations of what is known for a fact and what is not.
- jcranmer 9y agoMann does pick the most optimistic ranges of estimates to try to paint a particular narrative, but he is also very frank that he is doing that, and he repeats this fact several times throughout the book. It would be wonderful if more books were willing to do that sort of guarding to emphasize how much the evidence really supports the thesis. Considering that pre-Columbian America tends to get the short-end of the stick in history, I'm willing to tolerate the constant pushing on the narrative to help emphasize that the popular view of pre-Columbian American is more often incorrect to correct.