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?