Free Revelations Of The Americas Essay Example

Charles Mann describes the indigenous population of both North and South America as even more civilized than the Europeans. First of all, there were supposedly much more people living in the America than in Europe. The Aztec capital Tenochtitlan already had a canalization and a running water all over the city. Moreover, unlike European cities, Tenochtitlan had extremely clean streets without the smell of wastes.
Until 1492, the pre-Columbian civilization of Indians managed to develop corn by a breeding process. Even today, most of the scientists of bioengineering call this process as one of the greatest achievement of biotechnology. At last, but not the least, Mann remind us about Amazonian Indians. These tribes could farm the rain forest without any damage to the forest. Unfortunately, their knowledge got lost and scientists from all over the world are striving to regain this experience.
Taking into account the facts posted above, Mann showed us that the American Indians also were quite a developed nation and it was wrong calling them barbarians. The European colonists should have been called barbarians instead. British, Spanish and Portuguese people, who were the first to visit the “New World”, brought unknown diseases to this land. Then, up to 95% of the indigenous American population died because of different illnesses, mainly smallpox.
After all, only now we can understand the consequences of losing the experience of the indigenous American civilizations. As Mann told us, those Americans were full of new ideas, dreams, philosophies, stories and experience. We should have learnt from them instead of conquer these nations and take their land. On top of the knowledge we could receive, we were able to set a groundwork for mutually beneficial social and economic relationships. Unfortunately, we did not.