I have always felt that the alleged sophistication of pre-Columbian society, and the alleged post-Columbian death toll from European diseases, have been greatly exaggerated, for the purpose of political correctness.
It is very hard to believe that a functional city of 140,000 people, mentioned in the link, could exist in 1500, without wheeled carts and a written language.
I am also very skeptical that 80%-95% of indigenous Americans died from European diseases. There would have to be many well preserved mass graves that contained dozens, or even hundreds, of un-injured bodies, from all age groups.
If such mass graves exist, I have not read about them.
Those are my Aztec Two Links. /rimshot
My old Latin Am history prof (turns out he died 40 years ago) spoke of the Aztecs’ “Flower Wars”, which they fought with other cities in order to extract tribute in the form of young people to sacrifice.
The population of the Americas was quite large in spots, but largely in the same spots were the population is large now. They built cities under the direction of despots (which is clearly a worldwide phenomenon ;^) and fought really monstrous wars with other cities (ditto). The rulers of losing cities were generally butchered in painful ways, along with their families.
IOW, they weren’t uniquely noble, they were doin’ what came naturally as part of the human race. It’s likely that the Aztecs would have been overthrown in their turn if the Spanish hadn’t arrived.
The estimates for disease deaths are pretty rough, and based on things like Bernal Diaz’ “the Conquest of New Spain” — when Cortez led his tattered band back to the Gulf, the towns they’d formerly passed through were deserted, and on the way in they’d been heavily populated. I doubt that anything that virulent has ever been around in a population that is also completely immune to its effects.
The dead prof noted that the precolumbian cultures and civs showed population crashes that were followed by slow rebuilding to new zeniths, at least four times prior to 1492. It’s not farfetched to suggest that they were all on the cusp of another crash, and that the earlier crashes were at least in part due to earlier periods of transoceanic contact. That keeps everyone happy. :^)
I don’t buy the European disease-killed-almost-everyone theory, either-there is certainly evidence that this was not the 1st time those Native Americans had been exposed to people from Europe and/or other places in the world through trade, etc-so they would have at least some exposure/immunity to the diseases of foreigners.
Being Hispanic, and a lover of history-real history, where the truth is not pretty, no matter who your ancestors are-I’m always amused by those who thank God for the conquistadors who brought the Spanish Inquisition to meso/south America-or the Puritans who brought the Brit version of it to N America. How anyone can think that torturing another human for days in various bloody, agonizing ways until they died-because they were an enemy and/or a pagan-is any more noble than that same pagan/enemy cutting out an enemy’s heart or otherwise sacrificing them. Or that it was more noble for the Puritans to torture, drown or burn alive anyone-Native American or their own folks-anyone they decided was a “witch” than it was for the Natives to shoot an enemy full of arrows, impale him on a spear, etc-what an ignorant notion...
My Spanish ancestors were no better/more noble than my Native ones, in my opinion-they were just more sophisticated and intentionally cruel in their methods of murder...