I actually, only want to leave the thread!
I have shown my arguments, my ideas and sources.
And I have learned nothing in return. It doesn’t make sense to continue.
Mod, please close this thread.
So leave. No one is forcing you to post in this thread.
I’m not going to touch your second line. But it is unfortunate that you learned nothing in this thread. I learned several things from the other posters and have now added several new books to my reading list.
And I don’t think the thread needs to be closed. There is still a chance that a useful discussion can take place. And if it doesn’t it’ll die all on its own pretty quickly.
I’m curious. Let’s say for the sake of argument that the population was 10 to 20 million. What I want to know is “so what”? Why should we care, one way or the other? I have no idea what the various scholarly factions are saying, so I’m prepared to accept these figures as provisionally true. I want to know what difference it makes in looking at history.
I’ve lost count, is this the fourth or fifth time you’ve said you were leaving?
So, just so we keep this thread going, let’s all take our own (inexpert) stab at assigning populations to the pre-Columbian Americas, shall we?
ME, I’m firmly on the higher High Count side - I have been ever since I found out the evidence for the full extent of the Mississipian & Pueblo civilizations and N-Eastern Woodlands Agriculturalist, and PNW cultures (note italicized technical terms).
So 100 million sounds about right to me. Anything below 50 million sounds all kinds of wrong given what we know about all these cultures.
This looks like a quote. Where is it from?
Yup. He’s got an axe to grind, but we don’t know why.
Before you go, I wanted to mention that before you started posting, I’d not thought much about this issue, so thanks for that. On the down side, I think your thread made more gains for the high estimate side than for a low estimate, so there’s that as well.
Rather you made one.
Oddly enough, that seems exactly to be what you’re interested in.
You did, which you then hand-waved away because it did not fit your own pre-conceptions. You were simply asked to logically argue your position (actually even show some basic logic in it), supported by actual proper sourcing, rather than an incoherent stream of ad hominems against sources you did not like and fairly leaping around in moving goal posts.
Thanks to you. The idea was just to discuss the figures. I believe in the low estimations simply because it makes more sense to me, given the historical records I know, but I am not going to force anyone to believe on it. In fact, my only point is that there isn’t any certainty about the actual size of the local population at contact.
If all you’re doing is trying to validate your preconceived ideas (which is clearly what you;'re doing), you’re wasting your time here.
Ok, I’m gonna try to start from the beginning here.
I am not a native to central or south america, and my knowledge of the history of those regions is not great.
May I ask, what is it in the modern nation and your knowledge of the history of the regions that makes you believe that the population numbers are lower than is generally accepted?
You’re welcome.
Generally accepted? As I said before, there is no generally accepted figure.
I doubt about those large figures simply because I know how few people lived in certain regions of South America. Did you know the population of Southern Patagonia when the Europeans settlers arrived was 6.000 people :eek:
Yes, I am not fooling around. It was only 6.000 people. Easter Island was even smaller. There were about 500 people only when it was incorporated to Chile.
Our native population on the whole country was around 200.000 when the conquerors arrived, and we were a populous country that time.
Those figures that put the Inca Empire in 15 millions or more doesn’t fit the reality. Our region didn’t even had that number at the beginning of the 20th century! Even today, that would be about the current population of my country. A figure of 2 millions would be a lot more rational.
Incas never had those numbers of people. With respect to Amazonians, they were a people with lot less density, as it is remembered even from the times of the Inca empire.
-
How do you know any of the things you state as fact? Aren’t they all just figures arrived at by number-crunching pseudo-scientists?
-
You need to show your work. You have not made the necessary connections that lead from a premise like this:
To a conclusion like this:
I bet the number-crunching pseudoscientists have justified their lines of reasoning far better than you have here.
Okay, just for fun, I’ll try this time. I’m not particularly invested in pre-contact populations, however, I note that the easily accessed Wikipedia article gives an estimate by Jakob Roggeveen of 3000, although since his men were shooting at them, this may be an underestimate.
Now, by the standards of the dope, or of academic scholarship, this is pretty shoddy work - I’ve referenced an online encyclopedia. Would you be so kind as to come up with at least this minimum this level of citation for your various assertions? Just for starters.
And: So, 3000 or more on Easter Island at contact, 500 (using your estimate) at incorporation with Chile. Hm, so a massive decrease in the number of people in the interval after European contact and documented slave raids, tuberculosis and smallpox. Not sure I’m seeing the value of this example for your point.
Plus: Southern Patagonia? Seriously? I’ve been there, it’s pretty inhospitable. If you’re basing your back-of-the-envelope calculations on southern Patagonia, no wonder you’ve got low estimates.
Yes, that’s a good experiment. Easter Island. There is a piece of information you don’t know.
At contact perhaps there were 3000, but it is likely the figure is lower. You must remember that contact happened after the ecological disaster of Easter Island, that forced a drastic population decline by hunger, before the Europeans arrived.
But now the piece you are missing. The most dramatic population decline after contact was because SLAVE RAIDS from Peru. a thousand or more natives were hijacked from the island to never return. Yes, there were some contagious diseases as well, but blaming contagious diseases for the decline is just excusing Peruvians for the crime they comitted on Easter Island.
In fact, after the raids, the reading of Rongo Rongo tablets was lost forever, among many other cultural things!
Southern Patagonia, the channels and the Land of Fire has a few thousand natives when the European settlers came to the region. It wasn’t very populated at all.
The pampas had more people, but not much either. Not in the scale some people imagine, anyways.
And you conducted these censuses personally, right?
I have pretty good local antropological information. Some that is not even published in English.
Oh, this is information not even available to the world’s anthropologists? Why don’t you write about them? You might win a Nobel prize.
Why don’t you come here, intead, to read our books?
Perhaps you learn something.
Why don’t you pay my way? Maybe I will. Then again, I’m not the one claiming knowledge superior to that of scholars in the field. Maybe you should offer to pay their expenses to come down and see exactly how they’re getting everything wrong.
But somehow I can’t see your persuading them to make a trip. After all this, I still don’t see a cogent argument regarding why we should take your word over any of the “number-crunching pseudoscientists” you’ve been doing down.