AFAIK, that “idiotic theory” is the consensus of historians and not at all controversial.
It is controversial! There is no evidence of census at contact.
If a scientists say that only “10%” of people survive to the waves of diseases, the least I expect from it is to prove it.
These studies are as scientific as pyramidology, Ufology or Feng Shui.
The early European invaders certainly were ruthless enough, but they weren’t powerful enough to accomplish what you suggest without some help from disease. Look at how things played out differently in Africa and India, for example.
What you’re proposing is actually kind of insulting to Native Americans. What sort of hapless weaklings do you think the Europeans were up against?
An alternative scenario is a lot more realistic. Native American population of the U.S. had a very low density, closer to the Amazon or Patagonia.
That, at least, is what you can read in the chronicles of Cabeza de Vaca, when he crossed from Florida to New Mexico… walking. He described a world with a very low population density, and lot of problems to survive for lack of food.
If you read the colonial statistics, Native groups were always small, with a few hundred individuals, and at most a couple of thousands.
In South America, populations were dense, and they didn’t disapeared at all, but mixed with the newcommers.
Can you cite some historians for all this? At least, as to it being a controversial matter to anyone but you?
I can. The estimations vary from 8 to 112 millions people at contact.
That is not science. That is ridiculous.
Here, from a book of William M. Denevan. See how ridiculous is his argument, because if the population was 8 millions, the decline would have been only of 25%. But that in the case you don’t consider mixed people. Today it is known that Cubans are 30% Indigenous, for instance.
http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0289.htm
*How many people inhabited the New World when Columbus landed on Hispaniola in 1492? How did the arrival of Europeans spark the population decline of aboriginal people in the New World?
William M. Denevan writes that, “The discovery of America was followed by possibly the greatest demographic disaster in the history of the world.” Research by some scholars provides population estimates of the pre-contact Americas to be as high as 112 million in 1492, while others estimate the population to have been as low as eight million. In any case, the native population declined to less than six million by 1650.
*
Sure. Cahokia and the entire Missisippian civilization was built by a scattered people numbering hundreds at any one point.
You’re as wrong on this as you were about Africa. Historic ethnography, geography & archeology are clearly not your strong suite.
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The Amazon never had a low population density prior to European contact. Look at the extent of these canal systems, for example, and tell me that they were constructed by a group of less than a hundred people to transport goods to another group of less than 100 people. It’s an utterly absurd idea. We also have sattellite images highlighting even more extensive road an canal networks. And of course we have explorers accounts that describe the central Amazon as farmland with islands of forest, towns with hundreds of inhabitants and hereditary chiefs who ruled multiple towns. Further south in the Amazon we have the remains of fortified towns of hundreds. You don;t build fortified town unless you are expecting to face an aggressive enemy that is as large as yourself on a regular basis. IOW one fortified town is evidence of both multiple fortified towns and resource scarcity. Neither of those is compatible with a low population density.
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We know of the existence of even larger fortified city in the US. The largest is estimated at between 2, 000 and 10, 00 people and evidence suggests there was one of these every 40 kilometres along most of the length of the Mississippi. That is not a low population density. And once again, in the East, we have numerous explorer accounts of dense Indian villages and continuous farmland. IN contrast we have no evidence at all of low pre-Columbian population densities over the majority of the US.
The problem is that you have looked at post-Columbion population densities in the US and Amazon, assumed they were representative of pre-Columbian densities and then tried to extrapolate that flawed conclusion to Central America and the Andes.
But just to be clear, nobody is arguing that the US density was anomalously high. It probably was lower than for the Amazon. But since the Amazon was densely populated farmland with an extensive system of roadways and canals, that is not really a point in favour of your beliefs.
This sorta reminds me of whenever I’m over the West of Ireland and see these desolate landscapes, I have to remind myself that once they were teeming with people.
A million people for the Amazons is not a small number. For instance, the famous Moais, platforms and towns of Eastern Island were made by a population of 2.000 individuals :eek:
The problem is that some people, following theirs wildest fantasies, wants to claim dozens of millions people in that area, in a time where intensive agriculture wasn’t known.
I have no idea what your point is with these two apparently unrealted sentences.
There are two ways of defining intensive agriculture.
Using the first definition there was no intensive agriculture in Eastern China, Japan and Korea either, yet that region supported a population of dozens of millions in an area 1/5th that of the Amazon
Under the second definition there has been intensive agriculture in the Amazon for at least 2, 000 years.
In short, no matter how you define the term, your assertion is dead wrong. As usual.
Again, you confuse the numbers Europeans first encountered with those of a culture at its height. The Moais were built by a population of 15000 people, not 2000. Read Jared Diamond’s Collapse.
I’m starting to wonder if you do any research at all before you spout off.
I would also point out, Pinguin, that New Mexico is mostly desert. It was known that the first period of contact was both early and with extremely small populations. That doesn’t hold for everywhere. The Mississippi, Tennessee, and Ohio river valleys, the Pacific Northwest, and many parts of the northeast all had significant populations, including primitive but substantial cities (for pre-metal civilization with limited agricultural technology).
I usually roll with a figure of about 10 million in NorthAm and 30 in South. But of course, something like 75%-90% of these died of disease, often before European contact was even intiated.
Of course. I bet you also have evidence of Santa in the North Pole.
Please read Cabeza de Vaca chronicles and come back.
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca survived the ill-fated Narvaez expedition that planned to found a colony in what is now Florida. But his group wasn’t reduced to walking until their last raft capsized near what is now Galveston, Texas. They traveled through Texas & parts of the American Southwest, then headed down through Northern Mexico on their way back to civilization. (I’ve become tired of typing “what is now”…)
Most of the area they traversed was, indeed, sparsely settled. Food was scarce & farming was rare until they made it into Mexico. But, fascinating as* La Relación* is, it only recounts a journey through a small part of The New World. Yes, I read it in English. But that grueling land journey began not very far from where I live now.
Accounts of the conquest of Tenochtitlan do not describe “a few hundred individuals, and at most a couple of thousands.” Last time I checked, Mexico is in North America.
Yes, I believe a man named Donald Santa did visit the North Pole. I’m sure there’s a record somewhere.
I have. What, precisely, would be your point?
Indeed, but the trip of Cabeza the Vaca was a trip for thousand of kilomenters, from Miami to Mexico and he didn’t find much people there. Tenochtitlan, on the other hand, was a single city, and wasn’t even the more populated in the Americas at the time. The population of that city was circa 100.000.
Conclusion? The Americas wasn’t in the past populated evenly. Even today, the Americas are curiousily populated with large urban centers and large spaces of very low population density. By the way, at the time, most people in the Americas were still hunter gatherers, with the exception of the civilized regions of Mesoamerica and the Andes, and some exceptional places elsewhere. Of all these region, the only one that has an ensured supply of food was the Inca Empire, thanks to potatoes. Even in the Aztec empire, people has to hunt to supply the poor animal protein diet they had.
Cabeza de Vaca had a very long trek but he hardly made a comprehensive survey of North America. Some of the areas he walked through are still sparsely settled. This site has one suggestion for his route.
From the Wikipedia article on Tenochtitlan:
So, estimates vary. But you can check out the references. We are still waiting for yours.
We are also still waiting for your point…
OK, I know you’re responding to someone else, but so what? That has nothing to do with overall population levels. We KNOW there were large cities and towns throughout large parts of the Americas. Experts know this and the available evidence does
By-the-by, Tenochtitlan should in fact have been the largest single site in the pre-Columbian world. I’m certainly not aware of any greater concentration. Moreover, you seem ot be changing your argument every other post. I literally have no idea what your argument is, aside from claiming that Europeans carried out a huge genocide. As far as that goes, we can say that:
- We have extensive if hardly complete records.
- Many settlers were not shy about viewing AmerIndians as not having a moral right to the land yet did not note much in the way of massacres, which remained the distinct exception. Similarly, forced migrations were rather unsual.
- Those records record no systematic genocide, despite the presence of many sympathetic writers.
- Any such extermination would be comparable in numbers and vastly greater in scope than the Nazi gencides.
- The economic resources and force projection available to the individuals and even large states at the time do not suggest any ability to carry out murder on that scale.
- Our available population records and archeological findings show that mass death occurred before direct contact with Europeans - specifically, for most tribes who were not the first in their area to meet white explorers and settlers.
- We know of many large sites and cities/towns In North America. Yet these were largely abandoned, often before whites ever set foot nearby.
Utter and total nonsense. We have incontrovertible proof that agriculture was practiced throughout South America outside the extreme South and the desert regions. It was practiced throughout North America outside those regions of the Great Plains too remote from water, the deserts and the extreme north.
So please proovdie some evidence for this ludicrous claim that “most people in the Americas were still hunter gatherers”.
This claim alone puts paid to any possibility that you have done any actual research on this topic.