Charles C. Mann - Americas Before Columbus & Scientific Wizardry

One of the weird things is that, um, about podcasts, is that as far as I can tell, the average podcast interviewer, uh, is far more knowledgeable and, uh, thoughtful than the average sort of mainstreamed, uh, journalist (laughs) um, interview they had. I just find that amazing. I don't under- I don't understand it, so I think you guys should be hired by the, uh, you know, they should switch roles or something. (laughs) Yes, there's this thing that I think is not stressed enough in history, which is that often the elites kind of recognize each other and, uh, they- they- (laughs) they join up, um, in arrangements that increase both of their power and, you know, exploit the, uh, the- the poor schmucks down below. And that's exactly what happened in- with the East India Company and it's exactly what happened with- with- with Spain. Science and technology properly applied can allow you to produce your way out of these environmental dilemmas. You turn on the science machine essentially and we can, you know, we can escape these kind of, um, dilemmas. And the prophets say no. There's- there's- there's- There- that natural systems are governed by, um, laws, um, and there's an inherent carrying capacity or limits or planetary boundaries.

Okay. (laughs) Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Charles Mann, who is the author of three of my favorite books, including 1491: New Revelations of America Before Columbus; 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created; and The Wizard and The Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Vision to Shape Tomorrow's World. Charles, welcome to The Lunar Society.

It's a pleasure to be here.

My first question is, how much of the new world was basically baked into the cake? So at some point, people from Eurasia were going to travel to the New World and they were gonna bring their diseases, and o- uh, because of disparities in where they would survive, if the Acemoglu Theory that you cite is correct, then at s- some of these places were bound to be better, have good institutions, some of them were bound to have bad institutions. And all- uh, because of malaria, there were gonna be shortages in labor that people would try to fix with, um, African slaves. So, how much of this was just bound to happen? If s- if Columbus hadn't done it, maybe 50 years down the line, somebody from, you know, uh, Italy does it? What- like, what- what is the contingency here?

Well, I think some of it was baked into the cake. It's pretty clear that, you know, sometime people from Eurasia and, uh, people from the Western Hemisphere were going to come into contact with each other. I mean, how could that not happen, right? And there was a huge epi- epidemiological disparity between the two hemispheres, um, largely because, by a quirk of evolutionary history, there were many more domesticable animals, um, in Eurasia in the Eastern Hemisphere, and that led almost inevitably to the creation of zoonotic diseases, diseases that start off in animals and jump the species barrier and become human diseases. And most of the great killers, um, in human history are that kind of disease. So, they're gonna meet. There's gonna be those kinds of, um, diseases. But, you know, it's possible to, uh, imagine, you know, if you wanted to, some, you know, alternative histories. There's a wonderful, um, uh, book by Laurent Binet, uh, called Civilizations that in fact just does that. It's a great alternative history, uh, book, and he imagines that some of the Vikings came and they actually extended further into, um, North America than they did, and they brought the diseases so that by the time of Columbus and so forth, the- the epidemiological balance was different, um, and what happened was that they, uh, when Columbus and those guys came, these, uh, societies killed him, grabbed his boats, and went to-