ICT [2005/10/11]��May I Suggest ...

ICT [2005/10/11]��May I Suggest ...: "Journalist and science writer Charles Mann has an investigator's skepticism and a scientist's yearning to cover new ground. In ''1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus,'' he describes an extraordinary medley of research and personal experiences to support three fundamental hypotheses: the accepted estimate of the number of American Indians inhabiting the Western Hemisphere in 1492 is much too low; Indian societies were more complex, more technologically accomplished and older than archaeologists and anthropologists (though not Indians themselves) have previously thought; and indigenous peoples did not live in a pristine wilderness but managed and modified their environments to an astonishing degree.

Mann cited linguistic, dental and DNA research that strongly suggests the Bering Strait ''ice corridor'' theory that has Paleo-Indians not arriving in North America until the end of the last Ice Age about 13,000 years ago is wrong, that the New World may have been populated by as many as 112 million people before Columbus landed, and that what the Pilgrims and other early Europeans saw as a pristine wilderness inhabited by savages - noble and otherwise - was probably the result of the massive depopulation that had occurred since first contact. "