This is something I have been curious about for a while, and haven’t been able to find anything as an answer, but how do we know the population statistics for the native populations? How do we know that so many people died, and how do we know that they were killed by disease? did explorers find cities filled with festering corpses, or skeletons? are there native accounts of a “great sickness” over taking their people? Where does the information come from?
I know it makes sense as an explanation, but I’m asking where the evidence that it happened came from.
In: 0
Because not all of them did die, and the ones that didn’t sure as hell didn’t forget the time 90% of their community died of a plague. (By comparison: are you going to forget covid, the disease that killed <1% of *your* population?)
The plagues moved ahead of European settlement, so:
* In places where Europeans already were, they observed (and recorded) the plagues directly. This was the case in, say, the conquered Aztec Empire under Cortez.
* In places where Europeans were just exploring, they could see the effects and hear accounts from natives.
* And in distant places, native accounts survived until later.
Latest Answers