畅销书展现哥伦布发现美洲之前美洲人的生活

Bestselling Book Challenges Long-held Theories about Life in America before Columbus

畅销书展现哥伦布发现美洲之前美洲人的生活

Americans celebrate Columbus Day on October 10, commemorating 1 the arrival of explorer Christopher Columbus in the New World. A best-selling new book looks at evolving ideas about what that world was like before Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, and how it was changed forever by the new year of European exploration that followed. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Alfred A. Knopf) was written by Charles C. Mann, a correspondent for the magazines Science and The Atlantic Monthly.

Charles Mann's new book was sparked by a reporting assignment more than 20 years ago, that took him to Maya ruins in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. That led him to other ancient Indian sites, to interviews with archaeologists and anthropologists, and to the realization 3 that their ideas about the pre-Columbian Americas differed dramatically from what he had learned in school, and from what his son was being taught, as well.

Charles Mann: He was learning the same thing I was learning, which was that Native Americans probably walked across the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age, that they lived for the most part in small, scattered 4 bands, and that they had so little impact on the environment that for all intents and purposes when Columbus landed the hemisphere was a wilderness 5. And one way to summarize the perspective held I think by most researchers now is that none of these things are true.

In 1491, Charles Mann looks at newer theories about pre-Columbian Indians, how some are replacing older ideas, and how others still provoke heated debate. These theories include revised thinking about when and how the first Native Americans arrived in the New World.

Charles Mann: There has been a lot of doubt cast on the part about the ice-free corridor they went through, whether it actually existed, whether it was actually habitable. And if it wasn't, then you have to wonder, how did those people get across the 2,500 hundred miles of ice with nothing on it? How was it that they crossed the Bering Strait and raced down there just in time to settle. There are interesting pieces of evidence that suggest that the current Native Americans separated from their Siberian ancestors perhaps 20,000 to 40,000 years ago, and if that was the case, they probably would have come down by boat.

Researchers are also challenging estimates as to how many Indians were in the Americas by the time Columbus arrived. Charles Mann says the hotly contested figures reach an extreme high of 150 to 200 million and a low of 20 to 30 million, with the heaviest concentration in central Mexico.

Charles Mann: And that, according to a number of researchers, probably was the most densely 6 settled place on earth at that time. There were something like 30 million people in that area alone. You also had an awful lot of people in the Inca Empire, which ran along the Andes down much of South America, and there are estimates of populations on the order of 20 million there.

In fact, Charles Mann says the Inca Empire was the largest empire on earth at that time.

Charles Mann: One way to put it is that the Inca Empire extended from the equivalent of Stockholm to the equivalent of Cairo, and had the world's largest road network at the time.

Stereotypes 7 about pre-Columbian Indians as having only simple technologies are being dispelled 8 as well.

Charles Mann: In fact their technology was quite sophisticated, it was just very different from ours. And the example is metallurgy. They didn't use metals for tools very much, but they did have all kinds of complicated ways of making alloys 9, of smelting 10 and creating these very thin foils. They prized flexibility 11 and all these other things that weren't as important in Europe where they prized hardness and making a sharp edge.

Early land of Americans also had a profound impact on the landscapes they inhabited, Charles Mann maintains. He sites the Amazon rainforest as a prime example.

Charles Mann: They used techniques to take the notoriously poor soil of the Amazon and create what is called terra preta do Indio, which is Indian black earth, these long lasting 12, very fertile soils. It's a program of environmental modification 13 that has enormous implications in the sense that if we could learn how they did this, there's a possibility we could apply these techniques to places in Africa and Asia where the soils are poor or exhausted 14.

Charles Mann notes that the theories he explores in his book are debated for ideological 15 reasons across the political spectrum 16, as well as throughout the scholarly community. Dean Snow is a professor of archaeological anthropology 17 at Pennsylvania State University. He takes issue with several findings in 1491, including the high population figures that have emerged from recent research. But he too sees a gap between what the public knows about pre-Columbian history, and what scholars continue to learn. And he too sees an impressive record of accomplishment 18 in that history.

Dean Snow: The reason that the American Indian experience is so important for the rest of us is that here they were virtually isolated 19 from the rest of the world for 14,000 years, and yet the track of achievements you can trace archaeologically 20 in the Americas remarkably 21 parallels what went on in what we like to call the Old World. So it is a wonderful laboratory, the Americas, in which to study what is possible in human nature over time.

That isolation 22 ended in 1492. In the centuries that followed, Native Americans died from imported diseases in huge numbers -- numbers far greater than previously 23 thought, if the population figures cited in 1491 are correct.

Whether the arrival of Columbus is viewed as the end of a flourishing era of accomplishment for Native Americans, or the start of a new era of opportunity for Europeans, author Charles Mann believes that Columbus Day represents a major milestone 24.

Charles Mann: Completely different ecosystems 26, different species and human beings that developed in extraordinarily 27 different ways -- these all mixed together in a wild jumble 28. You know to some extent that's the world we still live in today, a world that has been violently shaken by an unprecedented 29 collision of ecosystems and cultures.

This is Nancy Beardsley.

注释：

Columbus Day 哥伦布发现美洲纪念日

correspondent [7kCris5pCndEnt] n. 通讯记者

Maya [5mB:jE] n. 马雅人

Yucatan Peninsula 尤卡坦半岛

archaeologist [7B:ki5ClEdVist] n. 考古学家

anthropologist 2 [7AnWrE5pClEdVist] n. 人类学家

hemisphere [5hemisfiE] n. 半球

corridor [5kCridC:] n. 走廊

habitable [5hAbitEbl] adj. 可居住的

Bering strait 白令海峡（西伯利亚和阿拉斯加间的海峡）

Inca Empire 印加王国

Andes [5Andi:z] n. 安第斯山脉

Stockholm [5stCkhEum] n. 斯德哥尔摩（瑞典首都）

Cairo [5kaiErEu] n. 开罗（埃及首都）

sophisticated [sE5fistikeitid] adj. 高度发展的，富有经验的

metallurgy [me5tAlEdVi] n. 冶金，冶金术

Amazon [5AmEzEn] n. 亚马逊河（南美洲大河）

milestone [5mailstEun] n. 里程碑

ecosystem 25 [i:kE5sistEm] n. 生态系统

jumble [5dVQmbl] n. 混杂

collision [kE5liVEn] n. 碰撞，冲突