Yesterday I discussed 1421, a book in which the author makes extraordinary claims – without extraordinary evidence – about the Chinese “discovery” of the Americas in 1421.

1491, however, is a completely different kettle of fish. This is also a fun book to read, illuminating an area of the world that most of us don’t know enough about – but it’s actually based in science.

Let’s start with what we learned in American history in schools: Europeans came to America, which was a wilderness, sparsely populated by small bands of indigenous peoples who were underutilizing the land.

Now we all know that is inaccurate: every day, it seems, scientists announce a Central or South American lidar study that shows that areas that we had assumed were vacant lands between indigenous towns were actually urban sprawl. But, when this book came out, the idea that the people who had lived here before the Europeans arrived had actually formed civilizations was novel.

I think sometimes about Apocalypto, that movie that Mel Gibson produced in 2006 about Mesoamerica just before the conquistadors arrived. Controversial for it’s violent portrayal of Mayan culture (possibly, given Gibson’s political and religious conservatism, aimed at showing that the Maya deserved to be – and would be better off – conquered by the Christian Europeans) – and controversial because, more importantly for U.S. audiences, the characters spoke Mesoamerican dialects instead of English and you had to read subtitles. (Insert eyeroll emoji here.) What stuck with me about the movie, however, was how heavily populated Gibson portrayed the Mesoamerican world as. It’s downright crowded – although growing less so throughout the movie, given the diseases that are raging throughout the land, transmitted by those who had already encountered Europeans.

This book came out in 2005, so clearly something was in the air. Mann describes how populated the Americas were, prior to encountering Europeans and their diseases. He also describes how sophisticated the civilizations of the Americas were – not just in their built communities, but in how they managed the land. He weaves together evidence from a cross-section of scientific studies, pulling in not just archaeology but also (to quote Wikipedia, who summarizes this part nicely) “demography, climatology, epidemiology, economics, botany, genetics, image analysis, palynology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and soil science.” Mann weaves all these sciences together seamlessly into a cohesive narrative that helps us look back and understand how rich and varied the world the Europeans encountered really was.

I like books that make me look at the world different ways, that challenge my understanding of the world. Sometimes, as with 1421, the journey is a thought exercise, kept firmly in check by my inner sceptic. Sometimes, as with 1491, my journeys are more grounded in reality. At the time that I first read this – I’ve read it several times – I was also reading Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse.

They all, in my mind, hang together.