From: nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle)
Subject: Re: Columbus vs Indians (was Re: PC lives)
Organization: Psych Department, Indiana University
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 17:40:50 GMT

dbernard@clesun.Central.Sun.COM (Dave Bernard) writes:
>Nathan writes:
>>>Are you saying that 95% of the American population was wiped out by 
>>>Smallpox? That seems incredibly high!

>>    Smallpox and a few others. Basically all those great Old World 
>>diseases like tuberculosis, plague, measles, mumps, malaria, and yellow 
>>fever.

>       Then it would seem that the surviving Indians today arose from
>       that 5%.  What was the birthrate following the devastation, and
>       how quickly did the population figure grow?

    Unfortunately those numbers are very difficult to determine. The best 
surviving records from that time period are the diaries of Spanish 
missionaries, and they understandably concentrated on their own activities 
rather than those of the Indians.

>       I am even surprised
>       that the region of hunter/gatherer/farmers could support an 
>       original population of 100,000,000.	

    Your question was on the verge of answering itself. The chief clue 
is that the Incas, Mayas, and Aztecs were not hunter-gatherers. The Incas 
had some fairly sophistocated terraced irrigation techniques, and in 
general the cereal and tuber agricultural products (maize and yams, for 
the most part) in the New World yielded more nutrition per acre than 
anything that was known in the Old World except rice.

>>>If Plague-suffering is so conducive to conversion, why didn't Europeans 
>>>convert en masse to whatever animistic religions were practiced by the 
>>>Central Asian nomads?

>>    Perhaps because the Mongols themselves weren't immune to the plague. 
>>The Mongols "inherited" their plague problems when they conquered vast 

>       I see what you're saying, but the Europeans were certainly not
>       immune to any of those diseases, and succumbed in large numbers.
>       What I had, no doubt mistakenly, thought you were getting at is 
>       that the Indians were somehow more-- gullible?  superstitious?
>       simple?-- in being quick to adapt a new religion in those 
>       circumstances than were Europeans.

    Well, in the case of smallpox the Europeans actually *were* immune 
for the most part since smallpox was endemic in their disease-ridden 
societies. Smallpox, cow pox, and chicken pox were childhood diseases 
to which people either developed immunity early in their lives or 
eventually succombed. Diseases like tuberculosis and typhus were certainly 
a problem; the first recorded cases of Typhus occurred in a Spanish army 
sometime during the 1490's and its spread across Europe was very nasty. 
So you're correct that Europeans still suffered greatly from disease, but 
the important thing to bear in mind is that most of that suffering was 
taking place where the Indians couldn't see it.

>       Incidentally, didn't the Spanish explorers bring back to Europe
>       various SDTs, with devastating results to Europe?  The Europeans were
>       for centuries obsessed with inherited insanity, as depicted in Poe,
>       Byron, Ibsen-- because of their helplessness before syphilis.

    Yes, syphilis was definitely one of the less pleasant "discoveries" 
brought back from the New World, but it's overall impact on the already 
disease-ridden European societies was proportionately much less devastating 
than the impact of the whole littany of European diseases was on the natives 
of the New World. Ultimately the access to new and better food crops more 
than offset the negative population affects that were associated with 
syphilis.

--
Nathan Engle                        Software Juggler
Psychology Department               Indiana University
nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu      nengle@copper.ucs.indiana.edu
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