Pirate Skeletons From 1717 Shipwreck Discovered Off Cape Cod

New York Post ^

[Alas Babylon!]

No, I don’t think that’s been “proven” at all.

Smallpox, measles, influenza, malaria, cholera, typhoid and even corona and rhinovirus all took their toll.

Now I have read that SOME are proposing the plagues in early New Spain (Central Mexico today) were hemorrhagic fevers but that was a localized event only and did not spread north or south, and certainly NOT to the lands that would become the USA and Canada, or South America and the Caribbean.

[Varda]

Not to the extent that native diseases did.
When half of the population died: the epidemic of hemorrhagic fevers of 1576 in Mexico
"During the 16th century, Mexico suffered a demographic catastrophe with few parallels in world's history. In 1519, the year of the arrival of the Spaniards, the population in Mexico was estimated to be between 15 and 30 million inhabitants. Eighty-one years later, in 1600, only two million remained. Epidemics (smallpox, measles, mumps), together with war, and famine have been considered to be the main causes of this enormous population loss. However, re-evaluation of historical data suggests that approximately 60-70% of the death toll was caused by a series of epidemics of hemorrhagic fevers of unknown origin."https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15500972/

Megadrought and Megadeath in 16th Century Mexico
"Recent epidemiologic research suggests that the events in 1545 and 1576, associated with a high death rate and referred to as cocoliztli (Nahuatl for "pest"), may have been due to indigenous hemorrhagic fevers"https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/8/4/01-0175_article

Recent in this context was about 20 years ago when they isolated the pathogen.

These were the most densely inhabited parts of the New World outside Peru. Once you get to the future US, Canada and other areas populations weren't large.

[Alas Babylon!]

Once you get to the future US, Canada and other areas populations weren't large.

Are you kidding me?

Have you ever heard of Cahokia? The Mississippian Culture? These places were heavily populated. As many as 10 Million people in the Southeastern USA at that time. Read about Hernando De Soto and the many kingdoms, cities and towns he went through on his fatal discovery.

Moreover, the Mexico in your reply only included the areas around the Valley of Mexico proper, and the distinct Mayans of the Yucatan, not the much larger country today. The huge indigenous population centers in Campache, Chiapas, and Central America were not as effected by the particular fever outbreaks.

The Incas were not confined to Peru but were as much in Bolivia and Ecuador as well.

Finally, there were huge areas of Brazil, where now there is just jungle, that was once under cultivation and heavily populated. Estimates say Brazil had at least 12 million souls in this vast area in 1491.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this, so we can agree to disagree:

The vehemence with which scholars, and at times the larger public, have debated these figures is not just because it is very difficult to determine population size. It is also because the debate over the population is part of the debate over whether the arrival of Columbus—and the millions of Europeans who followed him—was a great advance in the history of civilization (as most Americans believed in 1892 when they joyously celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage) or an unparalleled catastrophe that virtually exterminated a large and flourishing native population (as some Americans and Europeans argued during the far more somber commemoration of the 500th anniversary in 1992). How to balance the many achievements of European civilization in the New World after 1492 against the terrible destruction of native peoples that accompanied it is, in the end, less a historical question, perhaps, than a moral one.

Note that I consider Columbus's discovery one of the greatest events of Mankind, but no one KNEW about disease vectors, so the modern attempt to "Blame" the Europeans for the deaths of American Indians is rubbish.

[21twelve]

The show “The Lost Pirate Kingdom” on Netflix is pretty interesting. It is mostly a movie (series) with historians injecting some commentary every so often. Maybe 10 minutes of action, 1 minute of commentary, etc.

I knew from reading about pirates years ago that they were one of the first truly democratic societies where decisions were based on voting. Who the captain of the ship would be, what ships to take, etc. The show talks about that quite a bit.