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There's increasing evidence that the population of The Americas was heading for a massive reduction even if Columbus had lost all three ships mid-Atlantic.
Probably not the 90-95% reduction they got from exposure to the endemic diseases from Europe, but...
In about 1200 something wiped out Cahokia so hard they didn't recover. Poor sanitation doesn't account for the sudden, and complete, disappearance. It doesn't appear to be from war either.
The place was abandoned, and deserted like it was cursed.
Fear of disease by people who don't know what diseases are does that.
There's no clear consensus on what wiped out Cahokia, we're just getting to agreement about when.
But the populations in South America were going gangbusters compared the plains Indians.
Then...
The diseases imported from Europe really hit hard, but some are thinking too hard.
What if another plague was working its wonders on the indigenous population and making them more vulnerable to outside diseases.
It's an interesting theory.
It also speculates that the population loss would be more like 50% without a native plague, so it's not like they would have been hunky dory with European diseases.
However, it also looks like about 35% were going to be dying even if Europe never met them. That's nothing to sneeze at...
Although there is no doubt that depopulation of Native Americans greatly accellerated due to disease brought by explorers and colonists in the 1400s, it is interesting to note how much the unexplained depopulation of several parts of the Americas between the 1000s and 1300s is ignored due to political motivations. There were depopulations that extended at least as far as Central America and as far west as the Pueblos in the southwest. The latter is widely beileived to be due to land poisoning because of unsustainable agricultural practices (which blows away the "in tune with nature" myths). South of the border, by the time the Mayans were encountered by the Spanish they were already in major decline, their civilization having largely fallen into anarchy and many of their larger cities abandoned. It is apparently not clear why this happened, disease, civil war, problems with resources, we don't know. It is very clear that there is an agenda by liberals in academia to blame Europeans 100% even though they might not have been the sole cause.
ReplyDeleteThere is some speculation that some of the disease from Europe started earlier than the late 1400s as most believe, perhaps by the Vikings, but that doesn't explain population drops for tribes who were well away from places the Nordic peoples explored (perhaps as far west as Minnesota and the Dakotas and as far south maybe as the Carolinas). A lot of that is tried to be explained away by drought, crop failures, tribal wars, etc...
Another thing that caused die-offs around the world, not just in SE America, in the 1300s was the overall drop in temperature in a big way. Serious climate change overall. The once-lush SE went desert, Central and South America dried up also causing the collapse of several civilizations. It hit Africa pretty hard also, and Asia. Europeans just huddled together more.
ReplyDeleteThen the Black Plague blew out of Western China, spreading throughout anywhere that the Chinese had contact with. Which could have been the Western Americas with the Chinese treasure fleets.
As to sudden population drops past expected levels, once you hit a tipping point, population die-offs occur rapidly and almost geometrically. People die, their numbers decrease, the survivors scatter, smaller groups means less out-breeding and makes for less efficient protection against enemies big and small, and less efficient farming, critical skills are lost, less population replacement occurs, more child deaths occur, more adult deaths continue, and it's a vicious cycle in a semi-agrarian mostly hunter-gatherer society.
It's literally a negative spiral of death and destruction.
How to break it? Advance your civilization. Harden your agriculture. Tame more animals. Which Europe did, even while dying in job lots so that when the pressure of disease and bad climate was released, the survivors could pool together rather than continue to shatter apart (which, from what I've read of the Americas' peoples, they continued to shatter from warfare and bad agriculture and hunter-gathering.)
Don't forget, as the climate bombed for people it also bombed for food animals and food crops. Same disease issues that killed humans also killed animals and plants. And same issue that reduced populations of humans makes it harder to re-breed the population also applies to animals and plants.
The introduction of the honey-bee can be seen as an agricultural miracle to the Americas, too. Cold weather killed a lot of native pollinators, which could have collapsed the agriculture just by itself.
Lots of little seemingly unrelated factors all can and probably did contribute to the die-off and probably would have continued even if Europeans never made it to the Americas.
And don't forget the power of stupidity.
ReplyDeleteLook at the great Horse Cultures out of northern Asia. They often invaded and civilized. Over and over again, you see invasions of 'barbarians' that come in waves, and as they take over they integrate and add to the conquered civilizations. The ones that don't burn out and die off. The ones that do survive.
In the Americas? Their barbarians tended to tear everything down to their level, rather than integrating and rising. That h
"However, it also looks like about 35% were going to be dying even if Europe never met them. That's nothing to sneeze at..."
ReplyDeleteISWYDT.
And I approve.