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1491_ New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus - Charles C. Mann [210]

By Root 1888 0
date to at least 3000 B.C. Five centuries later, the writing had become a unified system and the city of Uruk had a population of forty thousand.

“The human career”: Wright 2005:45. Sumer was the first to develop agriculture, laying the foundation for later civilizations in Egypt, Greece, India, and Mesopotamia. China apparently invented farming on its own, but borrowed mathematics, writing, art, and much else from Sumer. This last claim is fiercely debated, though, and some believe China to have been as independent of Sumer as Peru and Mesoamerica.

Maize and early American domestications, Olmec accomplishments: See Chaps. 6, 7.

“one of the greatest”: Dantzig 1967:35. I am grateful to Dick Teresi for introducing me to this terrific book.

History of zero: Kaplan 1999:11–57; Teresi 2002:22–25, 86–87, 379–82.

“bleak, frigid land”: von Hagen, V., commentary, in Cieza de León 1959:272.

Tiwanaku: See chap. 7.

Populations of Tiwanaku and Paris: Kolata 1993:204–05; Bairoch, Batou, and Chévre 1988:28. Metropolitan Paris reached a quarter million in about 1400.

Wari: See chap. 7.

Glacial evidence of dust storms: Thompson, Davis, and Mosley-Thompson 1994. More than a few archaeologists are skeptical of this evidence (Erickson, pers. comm.).

Mega-Niños: Schimmelmann, Lange, and Meggers 2003; Meggers 1994.

Climate and Tiwanaku, Wari decline: Kolata 2000; Binford et al. 1997; Thompson, Davis, and Mosley-Thompson 1994.

Little Ice Age: Lamb 1995:Chaps. 12, 13; Fagan 2001.

Maya: See Chap. 8.

Toltecs and Yucatán: Diehl 1983 (basic history); Coe 1999:165–80 (favoring invasion scenario); Schele and Mathews 1998:198–201, esp. fn. 13 (arguing against). The Schele-Mathews arguments center on disputed radiocarbon dates and interpretations of artworks’ styles that to my mind seem all but to ignore their content.

Mississippians: See Chap. 8.

Plains Indians rock rings: Teresi 2002:107–09.

Lake Superior copper: S. R. Martin 1999.

Newly discovered Acre sites: Pärssinen et al. 2003. See also Erickson 2002.

Amazon: See Chap. 9.

Early world histories: E.g., Otto I 1966; Dinawari 1986.

2 / Why Billington Survived

Massasoit, Samoset, and Tisquantum: Bradford 1981:87–88; Winslow 1963b:37, 43–59 (“tall proper men,” 53); Deetz and Deetz 2000:61–62. In quotations I have modernized the use of “f” and “v.”

Negotiations: Bradford 1981:87–89; Winslow 1963b:50–59 (“very lusty,” 57); Deetz and Deetz 2000:61–62; Kuppermann 2000:7.

“A friendly Indian”: Wood et al. 1971:73.

Tisquantum’s life: I have relied greatly on Salisbury 1989. See also Adams 1892–93 (vol. 1): 22–44; Foreman 1943:20–21; Humins 1987; Kinnicutt 1914; Shuffelton 1976.

Tisquantum, and fish fertilizer: Accounts of Squanto and fish fertilizer include Winslow 1963a:81–82 (“increase,” 82); Bradford 1981:94–95; Morton 1632:89. Skepticism about the aboriginality of fish fertilization dates back to 1939, but the question was first raised forcefully in Rostlund 1957a and then still more strongly in Ceci 1975a, 1975b, 1990b. Ceci’s conclusions were disputed (Nanepashemet 1991; Russell 1975, 1980:166–67; Warden 1975), but much of the critique boiled down to refuting the charge that the Indians were too stupid to figure out the use of fertilizer, an argument Ceci did not make. Instead Ceci suggested that the added productivity would not have been worth the added trouble, given the alternative of fallowing. Because Europeans had much less land per person and less mobility, they had to resort to fertilization. In the early 1990s Stephen A. Mrozowski, an archaeologist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, unearthed evidence on Cape Cod suggesting that fish were used there as fertilizer a few decades before the Mayflower, but he has not yet published it (interview, Mrozowski). The fish may have been ordinary household waste, though. Incidentally, fish fertilizer was common in Peru (Denevan 2001:35–36).

Pilgrims’ lack of curiosity about Indian motives: The early chroniclers did

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