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
“The Olmec were but the first of many societies that arose in Mesoamerica in this epoch. Most had religions that focused on… — Charles C. Mann Success Copy Share Image
“In contemporary hunting and gathering societies, anthropologists have learned, gathering by women usually supplies most of the daily diet. The meat provided… — Charles C. Mann Hunters Copy Share Image
“Carrying their flints and torches, Native Americans were living in balance with Nature—but they had their thumbs on the scale. Shaped for… — Charles C. Mann Life Copy Share Image
“Most of the salt occurred in the sediments on the swamp bottoms. To make the water potable, the Maya laid a layer… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
The Paris pact was correctly described by its opponents - greens and anti-greens alike - as toothless. But it was also the… — Charles C. Mann Around the world Copy Share Image
“the Inka style was severe, abstract, stripped down to geometric forms—startlingly contemporary, in fact. (According to the Peruvian critic César Paternosto, such… — Charles C. Mann Art Copy Share Image
“In Deloria's opinion, archaeology is mainly about easing white guilt. Determining that Indians superseded other people fits neatly into this plan. "If… — Charles C. Mann Indians Copy Share Image
“In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, the aging John Adams recalled the Massachusetts of his youth as a multiracial society. “Aaron Pomham… — Charles C. Mann John adams Copy Share Image
“all states can be parceled into four types: pluralist, in which the state is seen by its people as having moral legitimacy;… — Charles C. Mann Politics Copy Share Image
Prediction is a mug's game, but taking the side of water polluters has not been a winning political strategy for 50 years.… — Charles C. Mann Economic growth Copy Share Image
Rather than forcing local factories to clean up after themselves, Changzhou decided to outsource the job of managing its water supply to… — Charles C. Mann Business Copy Share Image
Major power and telephone grids have long been controlled by computer networks, but now similar systems are embedded in such mundane objects… — Charles C. Mann Alarm clock Copy Share Image
A smartphone links patients' bodies and doctors' computers, which in turn are connected to the Internet, which in turn is connected to… — Charles C. Mann Body Copy Share Image
“Until Columbus, Indians were a keystone species in most of the hemisphere. Annually burning undergrowth, clearing and replanting forests, building canals and… — Charles C. Mann Environment Copy Share Image
“Before Columbus, Holmberg believed, both the people and the land had no real history. Stated so baldly, this notion-that the indigenous peoples… — Charles C. Mann History Copy Share Image
“Cultures are like books, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss once remarked, each a volume in the great library of humankind. In the sixteenth… — Charles C. Mann Books Copy Share Image
Japanese maps tend to come in two varieties: small, schematic, and bewildering; and large, fantastically detailed, and bewildering. — Charles C. Mann Come Copy Share Image
Not only are utilities switching from coal and oil to gas, but also trucking, schoolbuses, garbage trucks, and even taxi fleets. — Charles C. Mann Climate Copy Share Image
The Japanese are great at inventing complex systems of rules, and not so great at explaining those rules to foreign visitors. — Charles C. Mann Complex systems Copy Share Image
“After 1492 the world’s ecosystems collided and mixed as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.” — Charles C. Mann Thousands Species Copy Share Image
There are several types of greenhouse gasses, but carbon dioxide is the most important. — Charles C. Mann Carbon Copy Share Image
Compared with U.S. cities, Japanese cities bend over backward to help foreigners. The countryside is another matter. — Charles C. Mann Backward Copy Share Image
Indeed, for all Donald Trump's railing about the efforts to curb climate change, nobody in his administration seems to have paid any… — Charles C. Mann About Copy Share Image
“Colón’s signal accomplishment was, in the phrase of historian Alfred W. Crosby, to reknit the seams of Pangaea.” — Charles C. Mann Success Copy Share Image
The legal fight over climate change begins in the United States with the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977. Under the Act,… — Charles C. Mann Air pollution Copy Share Image
So many wells have been dug in Changzhou that its groundwater has been over-exploited, and the local ground level has sunk by… — Charles C. Mann City Copy Share Image
Farmers can't plant much more land because almost every accessible acre of arable soil is already in use. Nor can the use… — Charles C. Mann Being Copy Share Image
“Half of the 102 people on the Mayflower made it through the first winter, which to me seemed amazing. How did they… — Charles C. Mann History Copy Share Image
“The viruses that cause smallpox, influenza, hepatitis, measles, encephalitis, and viral pneumonia; the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, diphtheria, cholera, typhus, scarlet fever,… — Charles C. Mann History Copy Share Image
Big Water makes an argument straight out of Economics 101. The best way to deliver water to people's homes efficiently, the water… — Charles C. Mann Best Copy Share Image
“At Marajó, Meggers and Evans soon noticed an oddity: the earliest traces of Marajóara culture were the most elaborate. As the centuries… — Charles C. Mann Ceramics Copy Share Image
Under the Paris agreement, every one of the 147 signatories issues what is called an 'intended nationally determined contribution' (INDC), which amounts… — Charles C. Mann Climate Copy Share Image
“Colonial writers knew that disease tilled the virgin soil of the Americas countless times in the sixteenth century. But what they did… — Charles C. Mann Writing Copy Share Image
“In Mesoamerica, timekeeping provided the stimulus that accounting gave to the Middle East. Like contemporary astrologers, the Olmec, Maya, and Zapotec believed… — Charles C. Mann Daily life Copy Share Image
“I kept waiting for the book to appear. The wait grew more frustrating when my son entered school and was taught the… — Charles C. Mann Book Copy Share Image
“What happened in 1518 and 1519 is not. In those years, according to Bartolomé de Las Casas, a missionary priest who lived… — Charles C. Mann De Las Casas Copy Share Image
“At the same time, Wari and Tiwanaku kept themselves separate. Although they shared resources, there is little evidence that people from one… — Charles C. Mann Different languages Copy Share Image
“In the first two centuries of colonization, the border between natives and newcomers was porous, almost nonexistent. The two societies mingled in… — Charles C. Mann John adams Copy Share Image
“the king was talking with Bartolomé de las Casas, a fiery Dominican priest who had just completed Brief Account of the Destruction… — Charles C. Mann De Las Casas Copy Share Image
