Mann attempts to reconstruct what the Americas were like before European contact. More importantly, he makes a case that some American Indians had a higher standard of living than Europeans.
More importantly, everything really was mostly "good, peaceful and stable ... until the colonizers" showed up. The disrupting factor were the pandemics that happened; not that one culture was superior than the other.
> More importantly, everything really was mostly "good, peaceful and stable ... until the colonizers" showed up. The disrupting factor were the pandemics that happened; not that one culture was superior than the other.
The peaceful, noble savage myth.
Native Americans engaged in wars, enslavement, and horrific torture - as did the Europeans.
The League of Five Nations was noted for a stable (and therefore largely peaceful) inter-tribe arrangement, but it was a new and exceptional development, just prior to the coincidental arrival of Europeans.
Mann attempts to reconstruct what the Americas were like before European contact. More importantly, he makes a case that some American Indians had a higher standard of living than Europeans.
More importantly, everything really was mostly "good, peaceful and stable ... until the colonizers" showed up. The disrupting factor were the pandemics that happened; not that one culture was superior than the other.