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> Small pox wiped out double digit percentages of the indigenous population and devastated their society. This is the kind of cherry picking I was talking abou

> Small pox wiped out double digit percentages of the indigenous population and devastated their society. This is the kind of cherry picking I was talking about. It'd be like saying "disease killed a large portion of Jews during WWII". Technically, it's true. A lot of Jews died from disease (in concentration camps). But it avoids asking the question of "were there any aggravating factors (like sudden displacement from homes, famine, violence, etc.) that caused them to become more susceptible"?

nyolfen 4y ago
it is estimated that 90% of new world natives died of smallpox and viral herpes immediately following contact with europeans -- that is, after initial contact with a small number of europeans on the western fringes, disease swept across the entire hemisphere and destroyed civilizations. it is literally the single most important factor in the history of western colonization. the europeans that colonized the americas arrived in a postapocalyptic wasteland.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- karpierz 4y ago
  > it is estimated that 90% of new world natives died of smallpox and viral herpes immediately following contact with europeans Can you give an academic citation for this? I can't find anything that would support these numbers, they're high even for older work that's since been debunked (and especially not "immediately"). I suspect that there's a methodological error, but I can't say for certain until I actually see how you've come to these numbers.
treis 4y ago
It's not cherry picking. We have millenia's worth of evidence that people without immunity to Smallpox die at a very high rate if infected. The indigenous population of the Americas had no immunity when exposed to small pox. So they died at a very high rate.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Historians have no idea what the pre-Columbian population was, so estimates of death rates have huge error bars.
  - treis 4y ago
    We know the mortality and virulence of smallpox and the other diseases that the indigenous population had never seen. From that you can estimate a death rate and it's clear that the toll would have been devestating. How devestating might be subject of some debate but no doubt that it was very bad.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      No, we don't, because we have no remotely accurate numbers on the pre-Columbian population. The reason we have reasonably accurate measures of the mortality of the Black Death in medieval Europe is some areas kept written records of who died and who didn't. Yet the mortality rate of that is still in dispute.
      - treis 4y ago
        I'm not sure what part you're disagreeing with. Do you dispute that we know smallpox's mortality rate? Or that we have a reasonable idea of what it (and other diseases) would do to a population with no natural immunity?
        WalterBright 4y ago
        I dispute that we have a reasonable idea of how many native americans it killed, because we have no idea how many pre-Columbians there were.
        treis 4y ago
        AFAICT nobody is talking about "how many" except for you. My argument was percentage based and for that the total population is irrelevant.
ALittleLight 4y ago
I read Guns, Germs, and Steel a long time ago, but I'm pretty sure it focuses quite heavily on disease wiping 90+% of the native population and how decisive that was. I remember this because I was shocked when reading it that the percentage might be that high. One clue that the book is concerned with disease is the second word in the title.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  It might not be that high. Estimates of pre-Columbian population vary by a factor of 10.
inglor_cz 4y ago
Like being a virgin population in which the new pathogens could spread like wildfire, being totally unknown to their immune systems? We have just seen the same with covid, where the entire humanity was a virgin population. And covid mortality was basically nothing compared to smallpox and a host of other Old World diseases. Notably, the only disease to spread the other way round, syphilis, was very severe too. It took several generations for syphilis to mutate to a more chronic form. And, notably, even though famine and violence weren't exactly rare during the later colonial conquest of Africa, it usually wasn't the natives who died of diseases, but the whites, who just couldn't tolerate local diseases such as malaria, to which the indigenous population was somewhat resistant. There is a reason why the only significant white population in Africa is located in territories with more European-like climate, where the disease situation wasn't as dire as, say, in Congo.

nyolfen 4y ago

it is estimated that 90% of new world natives died of smallpox and viral herpes immediately following contact with europeans -- that is, after initial contact with a small number of europeans on the western fringes, disease swept across the entire hemisphere and destroyed civilizations. it is literally the single most important factor in the history of western colonization. the europeans that colonized the americas arrived in a postapocalyptic wasteland.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
karpierz 4y ago
> it is estimated that 90% of new world natives died of smallpox and viral herpes immediately following contact with europeans Can you give an academic citation for this? I can't find anything that would support these numbers, they're high even for older work that's since been debunked (and especially not "immediately"). I suspect that there's a methodological error, but I can't say for certain until I actually see how you've come to these numbers.

treis 4y ago

It's not cherry picking. We have millenia's worth of evidence that people without immunity to Smallpox die at a very high rate if infected. The indigenous population of the Americas had no immunity when exposed to small pox. So they died at a very high rate.

WalterBright 4y ago
Historians have no idea what the pre-Columbian population was, so estimates of death rates have huge error bars.
- treis 4y ago
  We know the mortality and virulence of smallpox and the other diseases that the indigenous population had never seen. From that you can estimate a death rate and it's clear that the toll would have been devestating. How devestating might be subject of some debate but no doubt that it was very bad.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    No, we don't, because we have no remotely accurate numbers on the pre-Columbian population. The reason we have reasonably accurate measures of the mortality of the Black Death in medieval Europe is some areas kept written records of who died and who didn't. Yet the mortality rate of that is still in dispute.
    - treis 4y ago
      I'm not sure what part you're disagreeing with. Do you dispute that we know smallpox's mortality rate? Or that we have a reasonable idea of what it (and other diseases) would do to a population with no natural immunity?
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        I dispute that we have a reasonable idea of how many native americans it killed, because we have no idea how many pre-Columbians there were.
        treis 4y ago
        AFAICT nobody is talking about "how many" except for you. My argument was percentage based and for that the total population is irrelevant.

ALittleLight 4y ago

I read Guns, Germs, and Steel a long time ago, but I'm pretty sure it focuses quite heavily on disease wiping 90+% of the native population and how decisive that was. I remember this because I was shocked when reading it that the percentage might be that high. One clue that the book is concerned with disease is the second word in the title.

WalterBright 4y ago
It might not be that high. Estimates of pre-Columbian population vary by a factor of 10.

inglor_cz 4y ago

Like being a virgin population in which the new pathogens could spread like wildfire, being totally unknown to their immune systems? We have just seen the same with covid, where the entire humanity was a virgin population. And covid mortality was basically nothing compared to smallpox and a host of other Old World diseases. Notably, the only disease to spread the other way round, syphilis, was very severe too. It took several generations for syphilis to mutate to a more chronic form. And, notably, even though famine and violence weren't exactly rare during the later colonial conquest of Africa, it usually wasn't the natives who died of diseases, but the whites, who just couldn't tolerate local diseases such as malaria, to which the indigenous population was somewhat resistant. There is a reason why the only significant white population in Africa is located in territories with more European-like climate, where the disease situation wasn't as dire as, say, in Congo.