Charles Mann is not only interested in how American societies arrived, developed, and evolved, but also how they adapted to the multiple environments of the Americas. How did indigenous Americans find ways to overcome environmental obstacles? What techniques, attitudes, or actions did indigenous Americans share? What techniques were unique to certain areas? Why did some communities and societies thrive in the years before 1492 while others fell apart and disbanded into new groups or the landscape? How did scholars of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries differ on their ideas of American Indian development? .

1. Charles Mann is not only interested in how American societies
arrived, developed, and
evolved, but also how they adapted to the multiple environments
of the Americas. How
did indigenous Americans find ways to overcome environmental
obstacles? What
techniques, attitudes, or actions did indigenous Americans
share? What techniques were
unique to certain areas? Why did some communities and
societies thrive in the years
before 1492 while others fell apart and disbanded into new
groups or the landscape? How did scholars of the eighteenth,
nineteenth, and twentieth centuries differ on their ideas of
American Indian development?