Indeed, but if there were some large urban centers around, De Vaca would have know it. Come on, when the Spaniards reached Panama they knew the Inca Empire was down South! In Panama they had the news.
It is hard to believe there were 5 million people around his path, and all the battles he had weren’t with more than a handfull of natives. He would have been easily destroyed if attacked by a hundred or a thousand people :rolleyes:
Nope. The impression that gives me it is that there were few people along the path, and people that had quite problems to survive, and that lived in hunger as a matter of routine.
Then why he didn’t exagerate the numbers? I have read other chronicles, and the exageration of the sizes of the enemy forces was a routine.
Obviously, I can’t trust modern scientists that love large numbers either. The difference is that De Vaca witnessed the events while modern researchers are just guessing.
Why not. I can stay at the subway, count the trains that comes during an hour, and from the fact each train carry 1.000 people, and comes every minute, I can make a pretty good estimation of how many people crossed the city at peak hour per hour. Then I can do the same with a highway, and go to the higher hill downtown to count the buildings, and I am pretty sure I can get a figure close enough to the population of the city.
“Close enough” such an estimate could easily be off by an order of magnitude. Honestly the fact that you even think this is a valid way to count population, and that a first hand account of a single Spaniard is a more inclusive and holistic approach to population estimation than actual study and research on the whole area basically means the debate is over. I’m quite confident saying no rational individuals would look at your methods and accept them.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but it’s an interesting question.
I’d say one fact arguing against the high counters is the profusion of languages among Native Americans. To me, numbers as high as the high counters propose suggest large, stable societies, which I would think would mean less language variation. But I’m no linguist.
Perhaps you can’t understand it because you aren’t a Catholic of the old school, I guess. Or perhaps you don’t read Spanish and something is missing in translation.
De Vaca says clearly:
“all the appearances of death”. If he believed the man was dead, why to use the word “appearances”?
I read the story in Spanish, and for me it clearly describe a limit situation he had, where he took its chances, and he won thanks to the help of God,
All conquerors were believers. Otherwise, you can’t understand how they took so many risks so willingly and with such confidence.
This is getting silly. There’s been a lot of goal post shifting going on, and it should end.
pinguin has finally given one source and an unrelated quote from that source as an initial attempt to back up some numbers.
Ok, that’s fine for a beginning. Now, how about some more sources (again, they don’t have to be in English - just title and author should be ok to start)? This shouldn’t take very long, especially for anybody claiming to have a well researched argument.
Beyond that, how about some actual citations and figures for coming up with a population estimate? This part might take longer. But again, anybody claiming to have a well researched argument should already have a lot of the material assembled in some form.
Until we get a full accounting of pinguin’s numbers and sources, we’ll repeat the same pattern that’s existed for the last 300 posts: outrageous claim, a partial source, a digression from the main point, and finally a return to the original outrageous claim only to be sidetracked to yet another distraction.
You maybe aren’t a linguist, but you are a genious.
Indeed, when populations are large there is an uniformity of language. In Chile and Argentine, for instance, natives could talk each other in the same language for thousand of miles. In Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, Guarani was spoken in a large area as well, like Quechua and Aymara in the Andes.
In the U.S., by contrasts, natives couldn’t communicate each other that well, and sign language was widespread. This shows, the tribes were small, were distant and probably they move quite often from place to place.
You should write a paper and publish it. This is a very interesting idea.
You support a range of population for pre-contact Americas of 8 million to 15 million. You pointed to a few passages from de Vaca’s work that suggested a sparse population.
What specifically in those passages suggests a population of 8 to 15 million for the entire Americas? Please elaborate, use detail and don’t just say something like “because it’s obvious.”
What it really comes down to is you’ve made a very specific claim about population numbers and the only citation you’ve given is one that doesn’t talk about numbers at all, and in fact does so so infrequently that we can’t do any sort of numerical estimation from that source. So surely you have more sources that actually go into detail?
Didn’t you read the three scientists I quoted? It was one of my first posts. They had estimations between 8 to 20 millions (more or less) for the Americas at contact. I even shown the figures region by region.
If you want to advance in the discussion, talk about regional populations, then.
Wow! I’m impressed at your ability to try and wriggle out. Let’s read some of it again shall we.
What condition is the man in? Dead.
Why would they be weeping? Because he is dead.
The other natives had torn down the man’s house… Why?
Because he is dead… as mentioned earlier in the thread, a tradition in the area is to destroy a man’s possessions after his death.
No pulse… that is a solid sign of death.
Again no equivocating there… the man was dead. de Vaca thought so. The natives thought so. And we was dead long enough for them to start preparing the body under a funeral mat and tear down the man’s house.
I think I am understanding the quote just fine. I would suggest that you are the one who is having trouble understanding.
OK. What do you want to know?
Why don’t we start to analyze the population of the Americas by country? Otherwise, we won’t advance anything. We must study the population country by country and region by region, before adding it up.
Earlier in the thread Bartman replied to your claim of having provided citations for your numbers with this:
You have done little to change things since then, still having given us no solid citations for your numbers. Even assuming that you are accurately representing the numbers, you still haven’t made any argument about why we should accept those numbers. Bartman again responded to you with this:
You have given us a few passages from Cabeza de Vaca (which actually in another thread another poster even demonstrated there are many passages from de Vaca’s work describing regions that de Vaca said were as populated as his home country.) That certainly isn’t a source for your numbers, because de Vaca’s account is just a first hand account of a long ordeal, it isn’t a numerical estimate an no estimates can be made from it, thus it is worthless in that regard.
A debate is about making an argument and then supporting that argument. Your argument is that the population of the New World prior to contact was 8-15 million. You cite a few researchers that agree with you. I can cite a few researchers that say it was 100 million.
Your response is, “well, those researchers who say the number is > 15 million are garbage” I could respond “well those researchers who say the number is < 80 million are garbage.” Do you see the problem? Both of us can just pick people who agree with our conclusions and then simply dismiss any other evidence because it doesn’t agree with our conclusion. Do you see how circular that is?
Unless you’re willing to actually make an argument as to why the estimates at the low end are intrinsically more valid than the estimates at the high end, you’ve posted in this thread dozens of times for no purpose at all. Do you understand at all what we’re doing here? If all you’re willing to do is post the numbers you think are correct and then say “any other numbers are wrong” but without giving a reason why, then you are not making an argument, you’re just stating an opinion over and over again.
Saying that the low count must be right because the high count “doesn’t agree with historical chronicles” and then the historical chronicles you show us aren’t really instructive at all in terms of making an accurate population estimate, that just doesn’t cut it. I’m sorry if this forum is too “hard” for you, but the purpose of this forum isn’t to let someone just get on a soap box and preach their views about something without being contested.