There are serious worries about unconventional gas and oil, especially those concerning the environment. — Charles C. Mann Climate Copy Share Image
“Farmers learned to plant fallow fields with clover, which recharges the soil with nutrients.” — Charles C. Mann Farmers Copy Share Image
The human propensity is to believe that flukes of good fortune will never come to an end. — Charles C. Mann Believe Copy Share Image
Like other parents, I want my children to be comfortable in their adult lives. — Charles C. Mann Children Copy Share Image
The Japanese drive on the left side of the road. Most streets literally do not have names. — Charles C. Mann Drive Copy Share Image
The embrace of a new technology by ordinary people leads inevitably to its embrace by people of malign intent. — Charles C. Mann Embrace Copy Share Image
“It is always easy for those living in the present to feel superior to those who lived in the past.” — Charles C. Mann Life Copy Share Image
“mounting a sustained war. Unhappily, these intriguing speculations” — Charles C. Mann Peace Copy Share Image
Americans are willing to cheer on politicians who denounce bureaucratic overreach and job-killing red tape in abstract terms. But they turn out… — Charles C. Mann Drinking water Copy Share Image
“That was why archaeologists and anthropologists had come across the ruins of complex societies throughout Mesoamerica and the Andes, but saw only… — Charles C. Mann Archaeologists Copy Share Image
“The varieties are not like islands, carefully apart,” Perales explained. “They are more like gentle hills in a landscape—you see them, they… — Charles C. Mann Like Islands Copy Share Image
“In the classic successional course, each suite of plants replaces its predecessor, until the arrival of the final, “climax” ecosystem, usually tall… — Charles C. Mann Flower Copy Share Image
Historically, large-scale global trade has served two functions: 1) the exchange of goods between willing sellers and buyers described in Econ 101… — Charles C. Mann Buyers Copy Share Image
A whole bunch of big technological shocks occurred when Asian innovations - paper, gunpowder, the stirrup, the moldboard plow and so on… — Charles C. Mann Asian Copy Share Image
All parents remember the moment when they first held their children - the tiny crumpled face, an entire new person, emerging from… — Charles C. Mann Children Copy Share Image
Smartphones can relay patients' data to hospital computers in a continuous stream. Doctors can alter treatment regimens remotely, instead of making patients… — Charles C. Mann Come Copy Share Image
“Every society, big or little, misses out on “obvious” technologies. The lacunae have enormous impact on people’s lives—imagine Europe with efficient plows… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
“Having grown separately for millennia, the Americas were a boundless sea of novel ideas, dreams, stories, philosophies, religions, moralities, discoveries, and all… — Charles C. Mann Dreams Copy Share Image
“Because they did not burn the land with the same skill and frequency as its previous occupants, the forests grew thicker. Left… — Charles C. Mann Trees Copy Share Image
“A milpa is a field, usually but not always recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once, including maize,… — Charles C. Mann Crops Copy Share Image
“The staple crop of the highlands was the potato, which unlike maize regularly grows at altitudes of 14,000 feet; the tubers, cultivated… — Charles C. Mann Crop Highlands Copy Share Image
“To we moderns the sensation of being in a constructed environment is so ubiquitous as to be invisible—in the cocoon of our… — Charles C. Mann Environment Copy Share Image
“Chestnut was especially popular—not the imported European chestnut roasted on Manhattan street corners in the fall, but the smaller, soft-shelled, deeply sweet… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
In 1491 the Inka ruled the greatest empire on earth. Bigger than Ming Dynasty China, bigger than Ivan the Great’s expanding Russia,… — Charles C. Mann Alliances Copy Share Image
“Menaced by environmental problems, torn by struggles between the tiny coterie of wealthy Spaniards at the center and a teeming, fractious polyglot… — Charles C. Mann Environmental problems Copy Share Image
“Early farming villages worldwide were much less authoritarian places than later societies. But the Indians of the eastern seaboard institutionalized their liberty… — Charles C. Mann Free people Copy Share Image
“Mesoamerica would deserve its place in the human pantheon if its inhabitants had only created maize, in terms of harvest weight the… — Charles C. Mann Around the world Copy Share Image
“The portraits were intended to parade their fellows like specimens in a zoo. Yet at the same time most show the castizos,… — Charles C. Mann Business Copy Share Image
“The monks explain that they have been sent by “the one who on the earth is the greater speaker of divine things,”… — Charles C. Mann Nature Copy Share Image
A world with a sudden limit on air travel would be tremendously different from the one we live in now. — Charles C. Mann Air Copy Share Image
“Anything goes now, apparently,” Fiedel told me. “The lunatics have taken over the asylum.” — Charles C. Mann Lunatics Copy Share Image
“visitors to Andean history note certain ways of doing things that recur in ways striking to the outsider, sometimes in one variant,… — Charles C. Mann Doing things Copy Share Image
You know how in movies the new president comes in and promises to perform sweeping actions with a stroke of a pen?… — Charles C. Mann How Copy Share Image
The queue of activists, interest groups, and ordinary people wringing their hands over what a President Donald Trump might do in office… — Charles C. Mann Activists Copy Share Image
Some Western states have collaborative water agreements with Indian tribes - Washington state, for instance, monitors a number of its rivers to… — Charles C. Mann Indian Copy Share Image
Seoul and Shanghai, Jaipur and Jakarta; shining skyscrapers, pricey hotels, traffic-jammed streets ablaze with neon - all were built atop a foundation… — Charles C. Mann Foundation Copy Share Image
“export of food from Ireland during the famine: 430,000 tons of grain in 1846 and 1847, the two worst years. “The Almighty… — Charles C. Mann Famine Copy Share Image
“The Maya collapsed because they overshot the carrying capacity of their environment. They exhausted their resource base, began to die of starvation… — Charles C. Mann Collapsed Copy Share Image
“More than a hundred sets of casta paintings are known. Many are beautifully crafted. Some were painted by mixed people themselves. Looking” — Charles C. Mann Casta Paintings Copy Share Image
The way I think of it, economics and ecology occupy two intellectual silos, isolated from each other. Even when they do take… — Charles C. Mann Consideration Copy Share Image
