Charles C. Mann is a science writer who has won numer

ous awards and has coauthored several books before this one, all his own.

1491 contains "New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus." Mann believes, and presents convincing evidence for the thesis, that the "Indians" most colonists saw were the destitute survivors of ancient civilizations.

He is disappointed that high school textbooks still say, as his did, that the story of Europeans in the New World "is the story of the creation of a civilization where none existed."

"Advertisements still celebrate nomadic, ecologically pure Indians on horseback chasing bison in the Great Plains of North America, but at the time of Columbus the great majority of Native Americans could be found south of the Rio Grande. . . . The Americas were immeasurably busier, more diverse, and more populous than researchers had previously imagined.

And older, too."

Mann wants the reader to understand that the world that Columbus found, thriving and well-populated, was changed so quickly by disease and subjugation, that neither conqueror nor conquered remembered that it had ever existed. Through archaeology, anthropology, mapping, language studies, and intense study, scientists have learned a great deal about he early peoples of the Americas.

He begins with the well-known and tragic story of the Inka (not Incas), believed now to be "the most impressive empire builders of their day." Andean cultures made tools out of fiber and used sheets of metal that "glittered in the sun" because buildings and jewelry needed to shine to proclaim the owner's status. They designed highways and bridges for llamas rather than the horses they didn't have. They did not discover in time the advantage the roads gave them over the invaders.

The whole book could have been devoted (and of course many have been) to the culture of the Andes. However, Mann has many more stories to tell. In addition to the people of Mexico and the Amazon Basin, he deals with Paleo-Indian migration routes, the Lost Tribes of Israel, the Moundbuilders, and the development of cotton and maize. The question quickly arises of what happened to these civilizations.

We know that explorers and colonists brought diseases to the Native Americans. What may be news to some readers is how early and how devastating those diseases were. Mann speculates that if the colonizers on the East coast had met the native people before the devastation, the early colonial experience might have been very different.

1491 is entertaining as well as informative because Mann writes so well. He introduces the scientists who have done the research that he recounts, making the history warm and vital. Appendices include "loaded words" (what should we call "Native Americans?") and discussions of Mesoamerican "writing" and calendars.

His most important point is that "Faced with an ecological point, the Indians fixed it. Rather than adapt to Nature, they created it. They were in the midst of terraforming the Amazon when Columbus came and ruined everything."

1491 is available at the Mary Willis Library.