Europeans arriving in the New World met people all the way from the frozen north to the frozen south. All had rich and mature cultures and established languages... The Inca of Peru, the Maya of Mexico, the Aztecs of Mexico, and the Cherokee of North Carolina are just three of these groups. Europe’s closest neighbors, the Maya, were not 'primitive' in any sense of the word.Charles C. Mann
Before Columbus, Indians were here, far more than Europe's population, far more diverse than we shall ever know.Charles C. Mann
The chief was not a lord but, to use an anthropological term, a 'big man'—a leader of generosity, a master of redistribution.Charles C. Mann
Part of the cause of the 'holocaust' was not the Europeans themselves but what they brought with them from the Old World—smallpox, influenza, tuberculosis, malaria, yellow fever, and the like. Diseases that Amerindians had no experience or genetic immunity to.Charles C. Mann
By the time Europeans arrived in America, the hemisphere was thickly settled. In the Amazon, the natives had transformed the earth beneath their feet.Charles C. Mann
What we call the New World did not appear in that manner to its ancient inhabitants. Many indigenous groups at the height of their 'pre-contact' cultures exhibit far more sophistication—social, technological, agricultural, philosophical, artistic, and in some cases, militaristic—than a 'New World' label implies.Charles C. Mann
The Indians were so healthy because they lived in vibrant, social communities, ate complex, varied diets, and got plenty of exercise.Charles C. Mann
Frankly, Indian people are everywhere in the hemisphere, and they are not going away, or keeping quiet, or holding still. Why would they? They are us. And at least in a demographic sense, we are them.Charles C. Mann
Often portrayed as easygoing and indolent, they (Amerindians) were in fact workaholics. And the work at hand was to transform the landscape wholesale, a task they had been engaged in for thousands of years.Charles C. Mann
Because the inhabitants were not humans but squirrels who had taken on the form of men and women, God destroyed them in a flood....But even this failed to satisfy Him, and He resolved to make, once and for all, a people who would speak His words and live in a manner pleasing to Him.Oral Tradition as told in '1491'