Just got in the mail

1491 by Charles Mann. I don't get books to review like big name bloggers. This promises to be really fascinating, however. The Americas before Columbus were far different than most people know.

Of course, I'm interested in this because of The Book of Mormon, which is a religious history of a people who lived in this hemisphere from 600 BC until around 400 CE. It was assumed that their descendents are the American Indians, but it has always seemed more complicated than that.

BTW, Indian is the term most, if not all, descendents of Pre-Columbian Americans use to refer to themselves. So Native American is mediaspeak. They think of Americans as people in the US. Mann's discussion of the naming problems is lucid and logical.

Now if we could just figure out a way to refer to Americans of African ancestry that made sense and they wouldn't take offense at. They aren't really black. They're brown skinned. They're not African any longer. When they go to Africa, Africans don't see them as black like themselves. Of course, most negroes in Africa don't think of themselves as Africans so much as members of their own peoples.