64 pages • 2 hours read
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Chapter 8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: "Made in America"
Chapter 8 describes the rise, flourishing, and decline of a range of civilizations in Mesoamerica and North America. The first of these is the conflict between the city-states of Kaan and Mutal, in 4th-century A.D.; following the war, over the next several centuries, the Mayans abandon their cities. Mann states that among the possible hypotheses for this urban abandonment, severe drought is the most likely; this drought would have been compounded by overpopulation and land deformation. The large city-states, Mann argues, were vulnerable to local fluctuations in the climate, which in turn caused massive urban exodus.
This pattern of land deformation appears in Mann's next section, which details societies along the Hudson and Mississippi rivers. The chief tool of these progressive deformations is fire, which gradually reshapes the land. Up the Mississippi River, near the border of Illinois and Missouri, the author describes the city-state of Cahokia, the most famous of the "mound cities"—mysterious sites characterized by semi-circular constructions believed to be pyramidal at one time but which now resemble large circular mounds. For these communities, erosion and flooding proves to be a devastating combination.
Chapter 8 Analysis
Chapter 8 attempts to challenge the assumption that Native populations and civilizations were not able to react to and reflect upon their environments—an assumption Mann believes minimizes the impact and substance of these civilizations. Taking up communities in Mesoamerica and North America, the author illustrates the ways in which Native societies attempted to shape the environment to their own ends, for better or worse. The author's argument is that these changes to the land had profound consequences for not only these societies, their allies, and their rivals, but greatly affected the land that Europeans began to arrive to in the 15th century. Mann uses a number of dissimilar examples and societies to prove his point, yet links them all in their aggressive approach to the use of the environment. Together with scientific understanding of patterns of geography and climate, this analysis creates a better picture of both the scale of these ancient societies and the continual precariousness of understanding what they did, and what happened to them.
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