# What is the largest group of people that's ever been wiped out? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 13, 2016, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829 "2016-07-13T18:35:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/41 "2016-07-14T23:20:23Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Not by any normal definition of genocide. You can’t just use an analogy with homicide. > > Merriam-Webster: > > Bolding mine. > > The OP makes a distinction between genocide, disease, or natural disaster. Yes, I agree with you, as to definition and initial post. I am recognizing, for better or worse, there has become a usage of “genocide” to mean “[everybody] dead”, not “[everybody] murdered” which I take issue with. But many people throughout the world have appropriated the word wildly (hey, search “genocide of Palestinians” or of “US Blacks” for an example), while others–not OP–have been uncareful, one of whom posted in this thread, to whom (and anyone else perhaps unremarking of it) I was responding: > [@Mijin](#): > > I’d also nominate the native peoples of the Caribbean; the Arawak / Taino. > Genocide of the population plus culture, language etc gone. > > While many Puerto Ricans have Taino ancestry, if that is sufficient to say the Taino haven’t been wiped out then probably no group has ever been wiped out. > [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Yes…Taino (or other) extinction by plague is a genocide–in its broadest sense now–just as manslaughter is a homocide, not necessarily aggravated manslaughter or murder. > > However, I believe “genocide” the word was coined to cover the last case only. > > “How _x_ is _x_” ethnically is hard enough at any time, and all the harder if complicated by the “how many _x_ were there?” proviso in OP. > > I spent a long time in the Canary Islands, where, to consider in the thread, the echo of the vanquished Guanches ([Guanches - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanches)) is quite loud. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/42 "2016-07-15T00:51:29Z")
> [@YogSothoth](#): > > And I think Genghis Khan also once destroyed a whole city by killing or enslaving everyone in it and diverting a river to wipe it off the map. I understand that he not only killed all the people in the city (except probably a number of women kept as slaves), but also decapitated them and stacked their heads in a large hill. Didn’t hear about the diverting the river part, though. Don’t remember which city, but somewhere in the Middle East, I think. This may be apocryphal, since doing all that would take a lot of work for no real purpose. While they may have wiped out most of a city’s population, the hill of heads and diverting the river parts may have just been a story told to terrorize other cities into submission. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/43 "2016-07-15T00:52:54Z")
Not a complete “success,” but the [genocide of the Moriori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori_people) at least counts for a runner-up. ---
**Author:** ![Baffle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dec6dc/32.png) [@Baffle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baffle)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/44 "2016-07-15T03:10:47Z")
> [@YogSothoth](#): > > There seems to have only been up to 500 to 700 of them? I think the generous estimates go as high as 2000. But I don’t think you’ll find any larger group with no known descendants. There’s just too much interbreeding going on. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/45 "2016-07-15T03:49:30Z")
Some of the peoples in the Ancient Near East whose existence is only recorded in Stelas celebrating their destruction? ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/46 "2016-07-15T04:05:42Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Yes…Taino (or other) extinction by plague is a genocide–in its broadest sense now–just as manslaughter is a homocide, not necessarily aggravated manslaughter or murder. Actually I was using genocide because it _did_ involve deliberate killing, manslaughter and mutilation on a huge scale. While it’s true that the majority probably perished due to smallpox, that doesn’t make colonialists’ deliberate actions not count. All indications are that the life expectancy was significantly curtailed whether or not a person survived the new infectious diseases. It should be noted that many Spanish contemporaries considered it genocide. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/47 "2016-07-15T17:37:49Z")
> [@DerekMichaels00](#): > > The largest one is easily the Holocaust; 6 million of the 9 million European Jews (and 18 million Jews worldwide) were deliberately murdered. Not even close to what the Op asked. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/48 "2016-07-15T17:44:08Z")
Well, since it all wraps nicely at this point In the discussion, and since I first brought up etymology _only_, not what’s being predominantly kicked around here, …Genocide has become an official term used in international relations. Before 1944, various terms, including “massacre” and “crimes against humanity” were used to describe intentional, systematic killings (and in 1941, Winston Churchill described the mass killing of Russian POWs and civilians by the German army as “a crime without a name.”[4] In 1944, a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin created the term genocide to describe policies of systematic murder, in particular those being carried out by the Nazis, and the word was quickly adopted by many in the international community. > **[Genocide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide)** > > Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people\[a\] in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word γένος (genos, "race, people") with the Latin suffix -caedo ("act of killing"). > In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or men... ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/49 "2016-07-15T18:55:00Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > German and Polish Jewish culture. Destroyed in about 5 years. > [@DerekMichaels00](#): > > The largest one is easily the Holocaust; 6 million of the 9 million European Jews (and 18 million Jews worldwide) were deliberately murdered. As **DrDeth** noted, these aren’t what the OP was asking about. The question isn’t “what’s the largest number of people killed in genocide”, but rather “what’s the largest group of modern humans that was actually completely eradicated”? World War II and the Holocaust didn’t actually “wipe out” either German or Polish Jews. Even if you ignore the fact that many German and Polish Jews survived via emigration, there still remain small Jewish communities in both Germany and Poland, some of whom are descended from pre-WWII Jewish inhabitants. ---
**Author:** ![dreamregent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6f9a4e/32.png) [@dreamregent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dreamregent)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2016, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/50 "2016-07-16T12:54:49Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Some of the peoples in the Ancient Near East whose existence is only recorded in Stelas celebrating their destruction? I would suggest genocide was extremely rare in the Ancient Near East, if it ever actually happened. Occasionally, a ruler claimed to have killed everyone but I would suggest that was more likely to be propaganda. While entire cities were leveled at times, that doesn’t mean all the people were killed. Indeed, it would be counterproductive. When a ruler got the bug to expand, he (or even the occasional she) had a primary goal to get tribute in the form of resources and slaves. He needed the locals to produce those resources in whatever dominion he deigned to conquer. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2016, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/51 "2016-07-16T20:25:29Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I’d also nominate the native peoples of the Caribbean; the Arawak / Taino. > Genocide of the population plus culture, language etc gone. > > While many Puerto Ricans have Taino ancestry, if that is sufficient to say the Taino haven’t been wiped out then probably no group has ever been wiped out. I agree with that, and as mentioned that true even of the Neanderthal. If we’re really going to say that hominids other than modern humans still exist now because there’s some Neanderthal DNA in modern humans, then perhaps no significant group of ‘people’, not even limited to modern humans, has ever disappeared. I’m assuming differing connotations of ‘wiped out’ v ‘absorbed’ aren’t the key either. Some native tribes in the America’s have clearly been neither, but plenty one or the other to where they don’t exist as clearly differentiated groups now. And that was presumably true throughout history, but some of the larger groups to which it applies might be native peoples in the America’s, including the possibility that the pre-Columbian population was at the higher rather than lower end of a very wide range of ostensibly credible estimates, and the effect of disease brought by Europeans in cases decades before they actually settled in particular areas. It’s still unclear how populous the natives once were. ---
**Author:** ![russian\_heel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@russian\_heel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/russian_heel)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2016, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/52 "2016-07-17T06:43:26Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > The last surviving [member](http://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2013/04/29062012charliewatt.jpg). No one likes a smart ass. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2016, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/53 "2016-07-17T06:59:22Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > It’s also very difficult to estimate how many Native Americans there were before European contact, as small pox seemed to have been transmitted almost immediately. How many NA’s died before Europeans even tried to settled the New World? Current estimates hover around 90 to 95% of the population. Some experts estimate that Cahokia is likely to have been bigger than London in the XVIth century - a huge sprawling metropolis. All vanished by the time the first waves of settlers landed up there. It’s actually grimly amusing to read accounts of those early settlers thanking God for having provided them with such perfect and pristine lands, with groves of fruit trees one could just go and pick ; nice, flat fields without any rocks ; rivers with naturally great fishing spots and hillocks perfect to settle villages on… The reality of course is that these had all been man-made and very much occupied a hundred or so years before the settlers dropped by. ---
**Author:** ![bardos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bardos/32/1069_2.png) [@bardos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bardos)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2016, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/54 "2016-07-17T07:32:22Z")
I think the title of the thread should be amended to end with: “… in recorded history”. I am sure that there have been mas wipeouts of populations and civilizations well before recorded history on this planet. I would have said the poor dinosaurs, but I guess they are not considered “people” by most. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2016, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/55 "2016-07-17T10:53:28Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > It’s also very difficult to estimate how many Native Americans there were before European contact, as small pox seemed to have been transmitted almost immediately. How many NA’s died before Europeans even tried to settled the New World? [Depends on who you ask.](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/) ---
**Author:** ![NoCoolUserName](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5fc32e/32.png) [@NoCoolUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoCoolUserName)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2016, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/56 "2016-07-17T15:36:57Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > The last surviving [member](http://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2013/04/29062012charliewatt.jpg). Harsh, dude. But funny! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/57 "2016-07-19T23:09:40Z")
> [@NoCoolUserName](#): > > Harsh, dude. > > But funny! I give up. Who the hell is that? ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/58 "2016-07-19T23:20:59Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I give up. > Who the hell is that? > **[WBUR](https://www.wbur.org)** > > WBUR is Boston's NPR News Station, featuring NPR news and programs such as On Point, Here & Now and Radio Boston. He’s the guy on the left. The only one, now, who does not look mummified and recently revived. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/59 "2016-07-20T00:48:30Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > [WBUR](http://hereandnow.legacy.wbur.org/2013/07/23/rolling-stones-janovitz) > He’s the guy on the left. The only one, now, who does not look mummified and recently revived. Cocaine will do that. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829/60 "2016-07-20T06:40:31Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Well, since it all wraps nicely at this point In the discussion, and since I first brought up etymology _only_, not what’s being predominantly kicked around here, > …Genocide has become an official term used in international relations. Before 1944, various terms, including “massacre” and “crimes against humanity” were used to describe intentional, systematic killings (and in 1941, Winston Churchill described the mass killing of Russian POWs and civilians by the German army as “a crime without a name.”[4] In 1944, a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin created the term genocide to describe policies of systematic murder, in particular those being carried out by the Nazis, and the word was quickly adopted by many in the international community. > > [Genocide - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide) In 1948 the newly formed United Nations adopted the “Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” which stated that: _Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group._ This remains the formal definition today but various people have pointed out it does no really cover all the bases, it excludes the destruction of a group by the suppression of its culture, it does not include political and social groups, and the wording is insufficient with regard to intent. The best modern definition I’ve seen was developed by the sociologist Helen Fein in the nineties: _Genocide is sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectivity through interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of the group members, sustained regardless of the surrender or lack of threat of the victim._ The important bits are “sustained and purposeful” and “lack of threat of the victim”. Worrying about formal definitions might seem like hair splitting but it is important if the uniquely awful nature of genocide is not to be diluted by massacre, cruelty and general acts of war time horror. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-group-of-people-thats-ever-been-wiped-out/759829.md?page=2)