America Before Columbus

Much of this documentary is NOT about America before Columbus. They spend a lot of time talking about parallel developments in Europe and the European "discovery" and invasion of the New World. They also were not detailed or comprehensive in their discussion of pre-Columbian civilizations. I wanted to know more about the many diverse and advanced societies that rose and fell across two continents prior to Europeans but that I've only heard a little about, but it was more of a shallow overview of only a few small areas. How do you title a documentary "America Before Columbus" and then spend the majority of the time talking about Europe?

I think people who have never read Howard Zinn and don't know the true history of the conquest of the New World will learn something, but I didn't learn anything I didn't already know. I don't know about anyone else, but I get tired of learning about every country and land's history based on its contact with Europeans. I thought this would be different, but it wasn't. I was very disappointed. However, I'm giving it 6 out of 10 stars because others could stand to learn something from this documentary.

Marxism has codified the great crimes of Western civilization in constantly changing terms, to conform to relentlessly evolving cultural history. First, the general term was "colonialism", and when European colonies were no more, and Europe flourished, it changed to "neo-colonialism". That gradually puffed up to "imperialism", which can mean - anything, really. Today it's virtually derogatory terminology for anything American or Northern European.

"America Before Columbus" spends much of its vastly wasted time prattling something it calls "biological imperialism", which boils down to "European imperialists took the potato and gave nothing back". We evil honkies pollute genetically! In the very germ of plants! Is there no end to our iniquity? The propaganda is hysterically heavy-handed with super-bad stuff like Christianity constantly bashed through unsubtle editing and imagery. In one of many missteps, the program implies Europeans even cursed the new world with pigs, although it pictures the collared peccary, merely pig-like and native ONLY to the Western Hemisphere. And what about the claim that the Americas were filled with urban centers, and had higher population than Europe at the time? This claim is made on zero evidence. What? Were there census-takers in the 15th century? Native Americans lived mostly hunter-gatherer, neolithic lives of grinding hardship - walking for transportation, surviving vagaries of nature. Lifespan in those conditions is 30 years - tops. Yeah... it was one big communal paradise. Hogwash! History of the last 500 years on these two Western continents is nothing less than epic - tragic, triumphant, sad and ridiculous. It needs fair account and appraisal after decades getting festooned with this kind of silly, failed dogma.

I went into this to try to learn about the cultures and ecology of Pre-Columbian America and instead a large part is about Europe before Columbus's voyage and the latter third of it is about after the colonists got there. Meanwhile, only a handful of the native cultures are talked about and only briefly in a doc that is supposed to be about them, if you are going by the title.

On a technical level, the production value is high and well done. Still considering the title, I think the writing is lazy, regurgitating easy to research material, rather than anything that hasn't already been done over a trillion times already.

The production values are very high and capable of keeping an educational audience interested. It focuses on two ideas: the overall difference between the environment and cultures of the Americas and of Europe in 1492, the affect of the European cultural invasion on both the people and environment of the New World.

@SanFernandoCurt

Obviously "SanFernandoCurt" doesn't know a whole lot about history.

When the Europeans first arrived in the Americas, they were mainly after one thing: Gold. There are numerous factual writings of how they would arrive on the continent and begin looking for gold instead of preparing to live.

The Native Americans were agricultural geniuses who taught the Europeans how to farm. There is much evidence that the Americans had massive cultural centers that could be seen and heard from miles away.

I refer you to the book "Lies My Teacher Told Me" as a necessary read for anyone who wants to learn the truth about history in America.