Paper Prompt
In an essay of at least 5 pages, please consider one of the following prompts:
• Charles Mann has a particular vision for how and why Indians in the Americas failed to advance in ways that Africans, Asians, and Europeans did. What are his notions on why American agricultural, architectural, and environmental advances, many of which predated or outpaced Old World concepts at the time, were unable to expand to all the regions of the Americas? How did the Old World evolve into a network of technological innovation and advancement that surpassed the Americas? How did ideas on American Indian development change over time, globally?
• Charles Mann is not only interested in how American societies arrived, developed, and evolved, but also how they adapted to the multiple environments of the Americas. How did indigenous Americans find ways to overcome environmental obstacles? What techniques, attitudes, or actions did indigenous Americans share? What techniques were unique to certain areas? Why did some communities and societies thrive in the years before 1492 while others fell apart and disbanded into new groups or the landscape? How did scholars of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries differ on their ideas of American Indian development?
This essay should be in 12pt font, properly cited, and posted to CARMEN by November 14 by 5pm Columbus time.
* A note on citation. After every paragraph you write, please ask yourself the following question:
Did I write anything here that is paraphrased or taken directly from the text of 1491? If that answer is "Yes" and it really should be for 95% of your essay, please do one of the following things:
1) Put a footnote at the end of every paragraph that has paraphrased material and tell me the page number.1
2) Put a page number in parenthesis after every sentence or paragraph with paraphrased material. (#, #-#)
3) Put direct quotes around things that are "taken directly from the text" and cite where you got that quote, either in a footnote or in a parenthesis, at the end of the sentence in which it is being used. (Like this).