Actually, just in the area we now call the United States. I’ve been searching the 'Net and have come across estimates ranging from 1 to 15 million. Anyone have any sort of a scholarly cite that gives a definitive number?
I’m reading “Are You Being Lied To: The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths” at the moment. I thought I might do a thread called Get this book! You need this book! It’s so worth reading and although the opinions in it on Al Qaida turned out to be way off I would recommend it to anyone. In a chapter called Amnesia in America it says: “The crucial role played by the plagues in the Americas (and Hawaii and Australia) can be inferred from two historical population estimates: William McNeill reckons the population of the Americas at 100 million in 1492 while William Langer suggests that Europe had only about 70 million people when Columbus set forth.” Europeans couldn’t “settle” China, India etc because there were too many people there. Apparently, before the plagues wiped the Indians out, it was the same situation in America. So says James W. Loewen.
I’ll have to get that book!
Yes, but note that the OP asks for the population of ‘present-day US’, which would be a lot less that the population of the entire Americas. According to The Master the estimates of the pre-columbian population north of current Mexico ranges between 1 and 18 million.
The figure for Europe is also difficult to assess, as it is difficult to define what belongs to Europe. In most classical texts the early European colonies around the Mediterranean are included, but not the cis-uralian Russians. According to this site the population of Europe in 1500 was about 80million.
At that point the European population was increasing rapidly, recovering from the bubonic plague.
tc: The book is basically about American corruption and it is very revealing but after reading it my philosophy remains largely unchanged. I go along with P.J. O’Rourke who says something (very vaguely) like: “after all is said and done, at the end of the day, the American way is preferable to a lot of ways”. A Chinese version of that book would be inconceivable as would a North Korean or Saudi Arabian version. American politics may be corrupt but no-one gets a fast bullet in the back of the neck for attempting to discuss it.