1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Encyclopedia
Charles C. Mann
Charles C. Mann is an American journalist and author, specializing in scientific topics.He is the coauthor of four books, and contributing editor for Science and Atlantic Monthly. In 2005 he wrote 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, followed in 2011 by 1493: Uncovering the New...
about the pre-Columbian
Pre-Columbian
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...
Americas. The book argues that a combination of recent findings in different fields of research suggests that human populations in the Western Hemisphere
Western Hemisphere
The Western Hemisphere or western hemisphere is mainly used as a geographical term for the half of the Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian and east of the Antimeridian , the other half being called the Eastern Hemisphere.In this sense, the western hemisphere consists of the western portions...
—that is, the indigenous peoples of the Americas
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
—were more numerous, had arrived earlier, were more sophisticated culturally, and controlled and shaped the natural landscape
Natural landscape
A natural landscape is a landscape that is unaffected by human activity. A natural landscape is intact when all living and nonliving elements are free to move and change. The nonliving elements distinguish a natural landscape from a wilderness. A wilderness includes areas within which natural...
to a greater extent than scholars had previously thought.
Book summary
The past 140 years have seen scientific revolutionsParadigm shift
A Paradigm shift is, according to Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science...
in many fields, including demography
Demography
Demography is the statistical study of human population. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic human population, that is, one that changes over time or space...
, climatology
Climatology
Climatology is the study of climate, scientifically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of time, and is a branch of the atmospheric sciences...
, epidemiology
Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study of health-event, health-characteristic, or health-determinant patterns in a population. It is the cornerstone method of public health research, and helps inform policy decisions and evidence-based medicine by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive...
, economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
, genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
, image analysis
Image analysis
Image analysis is the extraction of meaningful information from images; mainly from digital images by means of digital image processing techniques...
, palynology
Palynology
Palynology is the science that studies contemporary and fossil palynomorphs, including pollen, spores, orbicules, dinoflagellate cysts, acritarchs, chitinozoans and scolecodonts, together with particulate organic matter and kerogen found in sedimentary rocks and sediments...
, molecular biology
Molecular biology
Molecular biology is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry...
, biochemistry
Biochemistry
Biochemistry, sometimes called biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes in living organisms, including, but not limited to, living matter. Biochemistry governs all living organisms and living processes...
, and soil science
Soil science
Soil science is the study of soil as a natural resource on the surface of the earth including soil formation, classification and mapping; physical, chemical, biological, and fertility properties of soils; and these properties in relation to the use and management of soils.Sometimes terms which...
. As new evidence has accumulated, long-standing views about the pre-Columbian world have been challenged and reexamined. Although there is no consensus, and Mann acknowledges controversies, Mann asserts that the general trend among scientists is to acknowledge:
1. (a) population levels in the Native Americans were probably higher than traditionally believed among scientists and closer to the number estimated by "high counters";
humans probably arrived in the Americas earlier than thought, over the course of multiple waves of migration to the New World
Models of migration to the New World
There have been several models for the human settlement of the Americas proposed by various academic communities. The question of how, when and why humans first entered the Americas is of intense interest to archaeologists and anthropologists, and has been a subject of heated debate for centuries...
(not solely by the Bering land bridge
Bering land bridge
The Bering land bridge was a land bridge roughly 1,000 miles wide at its greatest extent, which joined present-day Alaska and eastern Siberia at various times during the Pleistocene ice ages. Like most of Siberia and all of Manchuria, Beringia was not glaciated because snowfall was extremely light...
over a relatively short period of time);
2. The level of cultural advancement and the settlement range of humans was higher and broader than previously imagined; and
3. The New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
was not a wilderness at the time of European contact, but an environment which the indigenous peoples had altered for thousands of years for their benefit, mostly with fire
Fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition....
.
These three main foci (origins/population, culture, and environment) form the basis for three parts of the book.
Introduction
"Native Americans came across the Bering Strait 20,000 to 25,000 years ago, that they had so little impact on their environment that even after millennia of habitation the continents remain mostly wilderness."Part One: Numbers From Nowhere
Mann first tackles New EnglandNew England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
in the 17th century. He disagrees with the popular idea that European technologies were superior to those of Indians. Guns were a prime example, as they were seen by Indians as nothing more than "noisemakers", and they were difficult to aim. Famous colonist John Smith
John Smith of Jamestown
Captain John Smith Admiral of New England was an English soldier, explorer, and author. He was knighted for his services to Sigismund Bathory, Prince of Transylvania and friend Mózes Székely...
noted that "the awful truth...it could not shoot as far as an arrow could fly." Indian technology was more impressive, such as moccasin
Moccasin
A Moccasin is a form of shoe worn by Native Americans, as well as by hunters, traders, and settlers in the frontier regions of North America.Moccasin may also refer to:* Moccasin , an American Thoroughbred racehorse-Places:...
s, which were more comfortable and sturdy than the boot
Boot
A boot is a type of footwear but they are not shoes. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle and extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is clearly distinguishable from the rest of the sole, even if the two are made of one piece....
s Europeans wore, and were preferred by most of them during that era because their padding offered a more silent approach to warfare. Canoe
Canoe
A canoe or Canadian canoe is a small narrow boat, typically human-powered, though it may also be powered by sails or small electric or gas motors. Canoes are usually pointed at both bow and stern and are normally open on top, but can be decked over A canoe (North American English) or Canadian...
s are a prime example that disproves the myth of superior technology of the Europeans. The canoes made by Indians were faster and more maneuverable than any small European boats.
By the 1960s, anthropologist Henry F. Dobyns researched records in the central cathedral in Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
, Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
, and found that upon European arrival, there were far more burials than baptisms recorded. "The Spaniards arrived and the Indians died—in huge numbers and incredible rates." By marking the social and cultural impact of infectious disease among Native Americans, Dobyns changed the way pre-Columbus America was regarded.
Mann attempts to piece together exactly how the Inca Empire
Inca Empire
The Inca Empire, or Inka Empire , was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cusco in modern-day Peru. The Inca civilization arose from the highlands of Peru sometime in the early 13th century...
fell, and if their population numbers far exceeded the armies of conquistadors, such as Francisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro González, Marquess was a Spanish conquistador, conqueror of the Incan Empire, and founder of Lima, the modern-day capital of the Republic of Peru.-Early life:...
. Heather Lechtmen explains that Europeans took metals and optimized their value by using them for their "hardness, strength, toughness, and sharpness,” while Indian cultures such as the Inca used metals for “plasticity, malleability, and toughness". Simply put, Europeans used metals to produce materially resilient arms and assorted weapons ("swords and armor, rifles and cannons"), whereas metal for the natives was more common within decoration and the creation of arts and craft. Although both cultures had access to and made use of metal, it was for differing purposes: "Europeans used metal for tools [while] Andean
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
societies primarily used it as a token of wealth, power, and community affiliation."
Use of the horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
was thought to have been an advantage for the Europeans, but in cases such as the Inca, their stepped roads were impassable to horses. Anti-horse inventions were not used efficiently enough to successfully stop the Spanish intruders. The Inca Empire collapsed because by the time Europeans arrived, smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
and other epidemics had already swept through cities, due both to population density and mostly to the natives' lack of immunity to Eurasian diseases. Dobyns concluded, "[T]he Inca were not defeated by steel and horses, but by disease and factionalism", referring to the civil war that came before clashes with the Spanish. From that point on, Dobyns became a "High Counter" (those who thought the number of Native Americans was close to 100 million) by estimating that more people lived in the Americas than previously thought.
The Aztecs were also more advanced than previously conceived. Their societies had tlamatini
Tlamatini
Tlamatini is a Nahuatl language word meaning "someone who knows something", generally translated as "wise man". The word is analyzable as derived from the transitive verb mati "to know" with the prefix tla- indicating an unspecified inanimate object translatable by "something" and the...
, analogous to the Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
"thinker-teacher". "[T]he disintegration of Native America was a loss not just to those societies but to the human enterprise as a whole."
Critics of the High Counters included David Henige
David Henige
David Patrick Henige is an American historian, bibliographer, academic librarian and Africanist scholar. The majority of Henige's academic career has been spent in affiliation with the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where for over three decades he has held the position of bibliographer in...
, who wrote Numbers from Nowhere (1998). Was it possible to just invent millions of people that there was no way of proving existed? Yet "Low Counters" commit the "intellectual sin of arguing from silence".
The invention of carbon dating in 1949 made it possible to find out how old bones were, with the Clovis culture
Clovis culture
The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleo-Indian culture that first appears 11,500 RCYBP , at the end of the last glacial period, characterized by the manufacture of "Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools...
in New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
being one of the first to be examined. The culture first appeared between 13,500 and 12,900 years ago, which Mann said was "just after the only time period in which migration from Siberia seemed to have been possible." Essentially, archaeologists have spent the time since pushing back the date at which Indians were first present in the Americas, and the battle between High Counters and Low Counters went on.
Part Two: Very Old Bones
Evidence linked to the Lagoa SantaLagoa Santa
For Lagoa Santa, a municipality in Goiás see Lagoa Santa, GoiásLagoa Santa is a municipality and region in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil...
skeletons uncovered in caves in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, proved that Indians could have been living there for many thousands of years. Indians in this area come from the same haplogroup
Haplogroup
In the study of molecular evolution, a haplogroup is a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor having the same single nucleotide polymorphism mutation in both haplotypes. Because a haplogroup consists of similar haplotypes, this is what makes it possible to predict a haplogroup...
as natives in Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, making the conclusion "that Indians and Siberians share common ancestry".
Agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
is another focus of this section, as Mann explores Andean and Mesoamerican cultures. The agricultural development of maize
Maize
Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...
was significant for the rise in crop surpluses, populations and complex cultures. Indians basically bred maize from scratch, as it had "no wild ancestor"—unlike wheat, barley, and oats, which have wild relatives which can be harvested and eaten, maize's nearest relatives, the teosinte
Teosinte
Zea is a genus of grasses in the family Poaceae. Several species are commonly known as teosintes and are found in Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua....
s, are essentially not edible. Maize was grown on a milpa
Milpa
right|thumb|A typical modern Central American Milpa. The corn stalks have been bent and left to dry with cobs still on, for other crops, such as beans, to be planted. Milpa is a crop-growing system used throughout Mesoamerica...
, an intricate system of planting multiple crops in one area that would be "nutritionally and environmentally complementary", and also promoted "long-term success". The development of maize was a pivotal part of Mesoamerican life that promoted high culture
High culture
High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture...
in civilizations such as the Olmec
Olmec
The Olmec were the first major Pre-Columbian civilization in Mexico. They lived in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco....
.
Evidence was discovered that some Mesoamerican cultures used calendars and developed the wheel
Wheel
A wheel is a device that allows heavy objects to be moved easily through rotating on an axle through its center, facilitating movement or transportation while supporting a load, or performing labor in machines. Common examples found in transport applications. A wheel, together with an axle,...
, proving how complex their societies were. However, the wheel was only used for small toys, and not in advantageous ways. "Every society missed out on obvious technologies", and Mesoamericans did not have the luxury of "stealing" inventions from others, since they were geographically isolated in comparison to Eurasia
Eurasia
Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...
. They lacked the domesticated animals
Working animal
A working animal is an animal, usually domesticated, that is kept by humans and trained to perform tasks. They may be close members of the family, such as guide or service dogs, or they may be animals trained strictly to perform a job, such as logging elephants. They may also be used for milk, a...
. In some populated areas, the land was typically wet and boggy, thus limiting further advancement from the invention of the wheel.
Part Three: Landscape With Figures
In his third section, Mann attempts a synthesis. He focuses on the MayaMaya civilization
The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...
, whose population growth was about as rapid as its decline. Why did they disappear? Sylvanus Morley
Sylvanus Morley
Sylvanus Griswold Morley was an American archaeologist, epigrapher, and Mayanist scholar who made significant contributions toward the study of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in the early twentieth century....
gave the best-known theory: "the Maya collapsed because they overshot the carrying capacity
Carrying capacity
The carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment...
of their environment. They exhausted their resource base, began to die of starvation and thirst, and fled their cities 'en masse', leaving them as silent warnings of the perils of ecological hubris." This pattern is common among many Indian cultures.
The myth that Indians were not active in transforming the land is untrue. Most Indians shaped their environment with fire. Fire was used to burn shrubs and trees, opening an area to sunlight, thereby benefitting plants that need sun, while inhibiting others. Burning encourages abundance of certain animals, while discouraging others. The 20th century environmental historian William Cronon
William Cronon
William 'Bill' Cronon is the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison...
explained that "people accustomed to keeping domesticated animals [Europeans] lacked the conceptual tools to recognize that the Indians were practicing a more distant kind of husbandry of their own." Indians domesticated fewer animals and cultivated plant life differently than their European counterparts.
Europeans held biased and sometimes racist views of Indians, in addition to not speaking a common language with them. This fact led to people being misled with the result that they misunderstood Indians unjustly. In Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise, Betty J. Meggers suggests the "law of environmental limitation of culture", meaning they "reached their optimal level of environment". Whatever Indians did before slash and burn
Slash and burn
Slash-and-burn is an agricultural technique which involves cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields. It is subsistence agriculture that typically uses little technology or other tools. It is typically part of shifting cultivation agriculture, and of transhumance livestock...
the logic goes, had to have worked thanks to the acres of healthy forest seen before Europeans arrived.
Mann concludes that Indians were a "keystone species
Keystone species
A keystone species is a species that has a disproportionately large effect on its environment relative to its abundance. Such species play a critical role in maintaining the structure of an ecological community, affecting many other organisms in an ecosystem and helping to determine the types and...
", one that "affects the survival and abundance of many other species". By the time the Europeans arrived and supplanted the indigenous population in the Americas, the previous dominant people (Indians) had been almost completely eliminated. Disease ran rampant and killed off the Indians, disrupting their control of the environment. When Indians died, animal populations, such as that of the buffalo grew immensely. "Because they (Europeans) did not burn the land with the same skill and frequency and need as its previous occupants, the forests grew thicker." The world discovered by Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
was to begin to change from that point on, so Columbus "was also one of the last to see it in pure form".
Mann concludes with the idea that we must look to the past to right the future. "Native Americans ran the continent as they saw fit. Modern nations must do the same. If they want to return as much of the landscape as possible to its state in 1491, they will have to create the world’s largest gardens."
Editions
- 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Knopf, 2005 ISBN 1-4000-3205-9.
- 1491: The Americas Before Columbus. ISBN 1-86207-876-9 European edition. Published in EuropeEuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
by Granta Books on 6 November 2006.
See also
- Archaeology of the AmericasArchaeology of the AmericasThe archaeology of the Americas is the study of the archaeology of North America , Central America, South America and the Caribbean...
- European colonization of the AmericasEuropean colonization of the AmericasThe start of the European colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492. The first Europeans to reach the Americas were the Vikings during the 11th century, who established several colonies in Greenland and one short-lived settlement in present day Newfoundland...
- Indian massacresIndian massacresIn the history of the European colonization of North America, the term "Indian massacre" was often used to describe either mass killings of Europeans by indigenous people of the North American continent or mass killings of indigenous people by the Europeans and by Americans of European origin.-...
- MegafaunaMegafaunaIn terrestrial zoology, megafauna are "giant", "very large" or "large" animals. The most common thresholds used are or...
- Quaternary extinction eventQuaternary extinction eventThe Quaternary period saw the extinctions of numerous predominantly larger, especially megafaunal, species, many of which occurred during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epoch. However, the extinction wave did not stop at the end of the Pleistocene, but continued especially on...
- PermaforestryPermaforestryPermaforestry is an approach to the wildcrafting and harvesting of the forest biomass that uses cultivation to improve the natural harmonious systems...
- Population history of American indigenous peoplesPopulation history of American indigenous peoplesThe population figures for Indigenous peoples in the Americas before the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus have proven difficult to establish and rely on archaeological data and written records from European settlers...
- Terra pretaTerra pretaTerra preta is a type of very dark, fertile anthropogenic soil found in the Amazon Basin. Terra preta owes its name to its very high charcoal content, and was indeed made by adding a mixture of charcoal, bone, and manure to the otherwise relatively infertile Amazonian soil, and stays there for...
, anthropogenic soil found in the Amazon Basin
Further reading
- Charles Mann, "1491", from The Atlantic MonthlyThe Atlantic MonthlyThe Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...
, March 2002. Original article that inspired the book. - "An interview with Charles C. Mann" (Part 1, Part 2), from Indian Country TodayIndian Country TodayIndian Country Today Media Network is a weekly U.S. newsmagazine that is the primary national news source for Natives, American Indians, and Tribes in the U.S. and Alaska. The ICT Media Network revealed their new online multi-media news platform in January 2011; it is a daily, hourly, or "as news...
December 20, 2005. - "A Conversation with Charles C. Mann", by Bookbrowse.com
- Paper challenges 1491 Amazonian population theories, Argues, contra Mann, that the activities of pre-Columbian Amazonians did not reshape or "build up" the Amazon into its current state. Accessed Aug 18, 2008.
Reviews
- Michael Coe, "The Old New World", American ScientistAmerican ScientistAmerican Scientist is the bimonthly science and technology magazine published since 1913 by Sigma Xi. Each issue includes four to five feature articles written by scientists and engineers. These authors review research in all fields of science...
, Jul-Aug 2006 issue. - Mary D'Ambrosio, "The myth of an empty frontier: Explorers' diseases wiped out native populations long before settlers arrived", San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chroniclethumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, August 14, 2005. - Alan TaylorAlan TaylorAlan Shaw Taylor is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian specializing in early American history. He is the author of a number of books about colonial America, the American Revolution, and the Early American Republic.-Life:...
, "A Cultivated World", The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, August 7, 2005; BW05 - Bruce RamseyBruce RamseyBruce Ramsey is an American journalist and editorial writer for the Seattle Times, as well as contributing editor to Liberty magazine.Ramsey has edited several books of the writings of American novelist, financial writer and Old Right figure Garet Garrett as well as written Garrett's first full...
, ""1491": Discovering what Americas were like before Columbus", The Seattle TimesThe Seattle TimesThe Seattle Times is a newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, US. It is the largest daily newspaper in the state of Washington. It has been, since the demise in 2009 of the printed version of the rival Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle's only major daily print newspaper.-History:The Seattle Times...
, August 12, 2005