America before Columbus (2009)

This documentary gets you thinking about huge events in human history. One of the first sentences is: "In Europe the nobles have grown wealthy by trading with the East." Wow, that got me thinking-- does the peasantry just provide a tax base for the subsistence of the elite, but then they have to trade or war with other nations to get ahead?While not the Marxist propaganda another commenter says it is, it does not really look at things in a modern scientific dispassionate way. Despite their trying to be balanced, they always take the side of the noble savage and the tree and the fish. Towards the end of part 2, they say "The forests must fall if the settlers are to succeed" and "From now on, the trees are doomed". Oh puuleezzz, have you ever flown over the USA? Most of New Jersey is still wooded. Later on they make the absurd statement, "The settlers defend themselves inside sturdy forts, but there are no shortages of any kind." A few seconds later they say "Hides are in great demand." Shortage huh? Rather than get unhinged by the Gaia tree-worship noble savage bias, just enjoy the tons of mostly factual material and beautiful images. Some things are cherry-picked, like how European pigs ruined the Indian's crops. I am sure that happened, but it was not a major social change in contrast to what else was going on. I did notice the documentary completely ignored the fact that the Indian tribes were in a constant state of brutal heartless war.Some things I learned or thought about or were obvious BS: Spain's conquest of the Americas was like Crusades 2.0 (Maybe Muslim Ottoman conquest of Spain gave Spain the math and geography skills to be the first to the New World.) 1500s trade was the province of the nobility, not a separate merchant class. America got smallpox, Europe got syphilis. The New World had a population of 100 million (take grain of salt). Midland Indian success was based on corn agriculture. Indians hybridized and created modern corn. Indians burned all the plains to make grassland. Indians never domesticated large mammals. Indians were big on turkeys. Inca Indians dried potatoes. You could blame the lack of large mammals on climate change or the Indians killing them all-- guess which gets glossed over? Somehow documentarians don't count elk, bison, deer and bears as large mammals, nor wonder why Indians never bothered to domesticate any of them. Indians increased the range of bison by their slash and burn of the forests. Christianity fish days caused European over-fishing, until Europeans fished the ocean and had more than they could eat. European lakes and rivers are all screwed up. When Europeans trade fish it is "industry", when Indians do it, well aren't they just darling, those noble savages? Indians never take more fish than nature can replace, the fish wars were just for fun I guess. Modern documentarians think subsistence living is paradise. A rain forest where you would die in 2 weeks is the Garden of Eden. There was an Amazon Indian culture predating the present rain forest. You can blame the dissolution of the New Mexico Indians on climate change or their cutting down all the wood. (Actually it was irrigation making the ground alkali.) Indians did not always live in harmony with nature. Europe leveled its forests for metal smelting and building castles. The tiny city of Venice denuded the entire European continent of trees. Columbus's crew were all criminals. Part 2: Columbus's crew were conquistadors, farmers, and criminals. Queen Isabella can't keep a secret. Horses and pigs got away from conquistadors and flourished. Smallpox wiped out the Indians to the point America was almost unpopulated. England was pretty bad-ass in view of the head-start Spain had. America exported fish to Europe. America has lots of wood, another good export crop to Europe. European visitors actually think Americans keep all the room fires going even when he is not there. Settlers plowed every square foot of land in New England. Europeans brought many weed species. Anything species settlers bring is invasive, anything the Indians bring is natural. Settlers brought better bees. Settlers exported apples. Potatoes doubled the population of Ireland. Turkeys were the only American animal raised in Europe. Europe didn't have disease depopulate its people (the black plague was just a fad I guess). Sugar and tobacco thrilled the European elite. This drove the slave trade (see, pretty interesting stuff). Actors don't know how to drive a railroad spike. Animals and plants were more important than the people involved. Success of the colonizations was an "accident of ecology." (same guy that never heard of the Black Plague.)OK, so keep a Wikipedia page open since there is some BS in the show, as I have stated above, but there is also lots of really good things, as I've stated above. Its up to you to decide which is which, and that is why this is a thinking person's show.

This is one of those riveting documentaries that comes along once in a while. The cinematography is beautiful. Using many motion shots over landscapes and forests and computer animation, a useful overview of the conquest of the Americas and the Columbian Exchange is given. Many of the ideas are strongly reminiscent of Jarrod Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel.Contrary to the sentiments expressed in the inexplicable and unjustified rant by SanFernandoCurt in his review here, the language is relatively neutral and non-political -- it tells it like it is. There were many things -- good and bad -- that resulted from the Columbian Exchange. There is no hint of "Marxism" or spin in this documentary.There is mention of biological imperialism once in the second episode. I'll admit that the 100 million population estimate is at the high end of the range -- Europe only had 60 million in 1492. But why not? As the documentary states the Americas are a fertile land that was managed by the natives and is 10 times the size of Europe. Diseases like smallpox and influenza probably wiped out 90%+ of the native American population.

@SanFernandoCurtObviously "SanFernandoCurt" doesn't know a whole lot about history.When the Europeans first arrived in the Americas, they were mainly after one thing: Gold. There are numerous factual writings of how they would arrive on the continent and begin looking for gold instead of preparing to live.The Native Americans were agricultural geniuses who taught the Europeans how to farm. There is much evidence that the Americans had massive cultural centers that could be seen and heard from miles away.I refer you to the book "Lies My Teacher Told Me" as a necessary read for anyone who wants to learn the truth about history in America.

Marxism has codified the great crimes of Western civilization in constantly changing terms, to conform to relentlessly evolving cultural history. First, the general term was "colonialism", and when European colonies were no more, and Europe flourished, it changed to "neo-colonialism". That gradually puffed up to "imperialism", which can mean - anything, really. Today it's virtually derogatory terminology for anything American or Northern European."America Before Columbus" spends much of its vastly wasted time prattling something it calls "biological imperialism", which boils down to "European imperialists took the potato and gave nothing back". We evil honkies pollute genetically! In the very germ of plants! Is there no end to our iniquity? The propaganda is hysterically heavy-handed with super-bad stuff like Christianity constantly bashed through unsubtle editing and imagery. In one of many missteps, the program implies Europeans even cursed the new world with pigs, although it pictures the collared peccary, merely pig-like and native ONLY to the Western Hemisphere. And what about the claim that the Americas were filled with urban centers, and had higher population than Europe at the time? This claim is made on zero evidence. What? Were there census-takers in the 15th century? Native Americans lived mostly hunter-gatherer, neolithic lives of grinding hardship - walking for transportation, surviving vagaries of nature. Lifespan in those conditions is 30 years - tops. Yeah... it was one big communal paradise. Hogwash! History of the last 500 years on these two Western continents is nothing less than epic - tragic, triumphant, sad and ridiculous. It needs fair account and appraisal after decades getting festooned with this kind of silly, failed dogma.