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it was also empty during modern times Except for all of the people who lived there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_California https://en.w

• moate 8y ago
  100% with you on the "we can't just pretend like people weren't living here just because they weren't white" BUT, from your article: "Prior to European contact, California Indians had 500 distinct sub-tribes or groups, each consisting of 50 to 500 individual members." Assuming that all 500 tribes were 500 people, that's only 250,000 people. Relative to the geographic size of the state, that's a pretty low population density. And many of the the areas of large growth wouldn't have been useful to a pre-industrial civilization, since they required so much labor and technology to exist (like say, pumping in water from 4 neighboring states in order to meet the needs of the population). Let's settle on "It had a relatively low population of Indigenous people to area" instead of "it was empty", and call it a day?
• Spooky23 8y ago
  Even as a remote outpost from the world, the population of indigenous people in California was devastated by epidemics before substantial numbers of europeans arrived there. Smallpox alone probably wiped out all densely populated areas. They certainly weren't treated well, and I make no excuses for that, but the place was essentially empty by the time California started hockey-sticking.