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. :^)
Thanks-I do believe there is truth to that-I doubt that the Native Emperors/chiefs were much different from the Roman ones-or the European kings later on-they obviously had their Neros, Caligulas and Henry the VIIIs, just like everyone else’s-and theirs met the same fate for being tyrants, too eventually...