1491: Part Three

by Charles C. Mann
This nonfiction book presents research about the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere before the arrival of Europeans in 1492, shedding new light on the knowledge that these groups had in the fields of science, engineering, medicine, agriculture, and more.


Here are links to our lists for the book: Introduction, Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Coda
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. euphemism
    an inoffensive expression substituted for an offensive one
    The Maya saw the afterworld as a kind of endless, foggy sea. “Entering the water” was thus a euphemism on the order of “passed on to a better place.”
  2. penury
    a state of extreme poverty or destitution
    The beaten, humiliated Kaan lost the support of its vassals and was reduced to penury.
  3. hubris
    overbearing pride or presumption
    They exhausted their resource base, began to die of starvation and thirst, and fled their cities en masse, leaving them as silent warnings of the perils of ecological hubris.
  4. husbandry
    the practice of cultivating the land or raising stock
    People accustomed to keeping domesticated animals lacked the conceptual tools to recognize that the Indians were practicing a more distant kind of husbandry of their own.
  5. preeminent
    greatest in importance, degree, or significance
    At any one time a few larger polities dominated the dozens or scores of small chiefdoms. Cahokia, biggest of all, was preeminent from about 950 to about 1250 A.D.
  6. hoi polloi
    the common people generally
    Instead it was probably created to separate elite from hoi polloi, with the goal of emphasizing the priestly rulers' separate, superior, socially critical connection to the divine.
  7. preemptive
    designed to prevent an anticipated situation or occurrence
    Sky Witness may have thought that Mutal was becoming a dangerous neighbor and decided to take preemptive action.
  8. pernicious
    working or spreading in a hidden and usually injurious way
    Grube told me that he thought the kings of Kaan, never allied with Teotihuacan, may have wanted to stamp out pernicious foreign influences — xenophobia is a powerful motive in every culture.
  9. xenophobia
    a fear of foreigners or strangers
    Grube told me that he thought the kings of Kaan, never allied with Teotihuacan, may have wanted to stamp out pernicious foreign influences — xenophobia is a powerful motive in every culture.
  10. dearth
    an insufficient quantity or number
    Moreover, the collapse did not occur in the pattern one would expect if drought were the cause: in general, the wetter southern cities fell first and hardest. Meanwhile, northern cities like Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, and Coba not only survived the dearth of rain, they prospered.
  11. quixotic
    not sensible about practical matters
    Gonzalo’s quest descended rapidly from the quixotic to the calamitous. Having no idea where to find El Dorado, he blundered randomly for months about the eastern foothills of the Andes, then as now a country of deep forest.
  12. stasis
    inactivity resulting from a balance between opposing forces
    From the first days of contact, Europeans have perceived the Indians of the tropics as living in timeless stasis.
  13. superfluous
    more than is needed, desired, or required
    They abided, he said, "without toil or travail” in a “bounteous” forest that “furnishes them abundantly with all they need....They are still in that blessed state of desiring nothing beyond what is ordained by their natural necessities: for them anything further is merely superfluous.”
  14. canard
    a deliberately misleading fabrication
    “But that’s the old archaeological canard — if you can’t figure out the function of something, you say it was for ritual."
  15. avarice
    extreme greed for material wealth
    In 1947 the conservationist Aldo Leopold dedicated a monument to the pigeon near the site of its greatest recorded nesting, at which hunters slaughtered 1.5 million birds. The plaque read: “This species became extinct through the avarice and thoughtlessness of man.”
Created on Wed Mar 23 14:20:25 EDT 2022 (updated Mon Jun 30 11:50:47 EDT 2025)

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