>90% of North America's population just keeled over dead from disease the second Columbus stepped off the boatAnyone else not buying this?
>>18581734About as accurate as 3 kangdoms army numbers. In reality theres probably only a few thousand
>>18581734>150 years >about a second You can just google the diseases. Cocoliztli and smallpox were the biggest ones, but typhus, measles, influenza, and diphtheria played a role too. The black plague bagged about 1/3 of much of Europe and Asia and that was just one disease.
>>18581813The black death still took multiple centuries to take full effect and thats with much denser population bases. We're supposed to believe that the supposedly advanced north American civilizations across the continent all broke down because of a few isolated white devils on the east coast?
>>18581734What books about the subject have you read to confidently say that you are not buying it? Have you tried to learn what the reason for these numbers even is?
>>18581858Wut? The Black Death went from 1346 to 1353. It killed like half of Europe and all it took was a handful of white devils landing on the coast of Italy. Ffs, you know Spain started running galleons from Acapulco on the WEST coast of Mexico to Manila in the Philippines twice a year starting in 1565, right?
Yeah that is not the story. Population collapse in Mesoamerica was triggered by about seven or eight rounds of epidemics between 1520s and 1620 carving out a chunk of every generation.
>>18581858Why do you use terms like North American Civilization and East Coast? The Spanish landed in Yucatan and Veracruz in Mexico and invaded the mesoamerican civilization, coming to control Mexico coast to coast by 1530s.
>>18581734>90% of North America's population just keeled over dead from diseaseYes unironically. That's literally what happened.>A Dutch observer in New Netherland (present day New York) in North America reported in 1656 that indigenous peoples told him their population had been "melted down" by disease with "nine-tenths of them" having died since the arrival of Europeans
>the second Columbus stepped off the boatFor the Taíno in Hispaniola (which is where Columbus first landed) this is the case.>Having no immunity to Old World pathogens the Taíno were devastated by epidemics of diseases like smallpox and influenza.>On Columbus's second voyage in 1493 cattle carrying influenza were brought to Hispaniola which sparked an epidemic that spread to Cuba and Florida along Taíno trade routes.>The first recorded smallpox outbreak in Hispaniola occurred in December 1518 or January 1519. This disease was particularly deadly.>The Taíno population plummeted. By 1514 there were only about 30,000 Taíno left. A census around 1565 recorded just 200 Taíno living in Hispaniola.
>>18582018So Columbus did it and he didn't even know
>>18582022Nobody back then knew so yes. Germ theory wasn't even a thing yet. They thought it was the will of God for his chosen people.>In a letter to a friend in England John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1634), wrote this:>"But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place..."Some thought it was the New World climate and some others thought it was the stars and planets.
>>18582040So he killed millions with biological weapons without firing a shot and then assumed this meant it was a clear license to settle the area with spanish rejects who will never achieve a gdp per capita above that of their homeland? They'll live in squalor like third worlders and consider themselves superior to the spanish?I had no idea how directly Columbus was involved, he literally watched them die out.
>>18582060>he literally watched them die outUh yeah? What else was he supposed to do?
>>18582060"Killed" means intent that he didn't have. He had no idea what was really going on. Frankly it doesn't matter who arrived from the Old World and why for. The natives of the Americas were screwed no matter what because they had no immunity to the diseases they got when they made contact.
>>18581932>The Black Death went from 1346 to 1353The Black Death had flare ups for over two hundred years after the initial outbreak, particularly in places like England.
>>18581734I buy it. , Imagine having your society never suffer from any form of mass plague, and then you get exposed to some diseases that are basically designed to spread human to human all at an instance. It's basically like getting hit with the Black Death, Justinian Plague, and the Cyprian Plague all at the same time. Of course, you would have catastrophic loss of life.
>>18582344The black plague had flare ups, and had them potentially well before the pandemic that killed millions in Europe in the 1300s. Just the primary event with the vast majority of the casualties was 1346 to 1353. IIRC it went on at different times in parts of Asia and Africa, but the point is that less than ten years killed off half of Europe. One disease. The native Americans got smacked with several. A population collapse over more than 150 years is not an unexpected result.
>>18582364My question is why pandemics were almost nonexistent in Central America prior to Columbus or is there not enough evidence to prove there were?
Just like what the Yamnayas did to neolithic Europeans.
>>18582731They had diseases, just not Old World diseases.
>>18581734>Anyone else not buying this?Same thing happened around the Yamnaya migration across Europe.Plague preceded them, devastating EEF population around them. They moved into the empty space.
