It is widely known that upon contact with new civilization, the indigionous people can be wiped out because they are not immune to our sicknesses; wouldn’t they also have some illness that europeans aren’t immune to?
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A population of 70-88 million connected by strong trade routes to each other and to the wider populations of Asia, 200-300 million, and Africa, 60-70 million, with a wider range of domesticated and wild animals, more history of urban living and animal husbandry and a far broader diversity of genetics meet a population of about 60 million. Size, connectivety, diversity, zoology, everything was against them. If it makes things fairer, and it doesn’t, Europeans colonialists died in their droves of African and Asian diseases, eventually even in America, after they imported them.
Interestingly old world cities were limited by disease, beyond a certain size they became so riddled with plagues that they could not replace their losses by reproduction and needed constant immigration just to maintain a population. New world cities did not have this problem and were limited by food, with no horses, oxen or wheeled transport they had to bring in food by human porters or by boat. Tenochititlan could grow so large because it was connected to tributary areas by lakes and rivers.
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