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There’s an incredible story about Orellana, who captained the first journey down the Amazon River in the 1500’s with Gaspar de Carvajal taking notes. They descr
by guywithahat 2mo ago
There’s an incredible story about Orellana, who captained the first journey down the Amazon River in the 1500’s with Gaspar de Carvajal taking notes. They described cities of hundreds of thousands of people, and sailing for days going through city after city.
Decades later people tried to repeat the journey and didn’t find major cities, ultimately calling Carvajal a liar. The reality was everyone died due to new diseases. It’s hard to imagine the impact disease had on South America in particular
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- tastyfreeze 2mo agoNorth America as well. Estimates are that 80-95% of the native population on the continent in 1492 had died from new diseases. Unfortunately, much of the evidence of large scale habitation in North America was plowed under to build farms. In South America the forest at least slowed the complete destruction of evidence. I suspect that as more of the Amazon gets scanned with lidar Carvajal will be vindicated.