> This is a strong assertion. I'd like to see a more complete argument for it.

I understand. This came as a surprise to me too, and it took a lot of my own research before realizing how much the scientific consensus is changing in just a few years. This is covered at length by modern historians and geographers, who are revisiting the work of previous generations, and realizing that much of it is distorted by the political and ideological biases of the past centuries. As it turns out, a large share of history we take for granted is basically cargo-culting.

Here are a few pointers to get you started.

William M Denevan: The Pristine Myth. In this work Denevan acknowleges the role of disease, but highlights the many other causes of death which have been overlooked or intentionally downplayed in the past. Link: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~alcoze/for398/class/pristinemyth.htm...

Sherburne F. Cook: The conflict between the California Indian and white civilization. Here Cook tallies up specific death numbers by cause in California. Spoiler alert: disease was not the main cause of death, neither in early conflicts with the Spanish, nor in later conflict with the US Army. (A reminder: the primary role of the US Army for a long time was killing Indians, another topic modern Americans are not too comfortable discussing). Link: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7ck1w556

Benjamin Keen: The White Legend Revisited. In this work Keen explains that historians "accept uncritically a fatalistic 'epidemic plus lack of acquired immunity' explanation for the shrinkage of Indian populations, without sufficient attention to the socioeconomic factors... which predisposed the natives to succumb to even slight infections." (spoiler alert: by socioeconomic factors, he means the adverse effects of war, colonization and the destruction of traditional lifestyle). Link: https://www.scribd.com/document/264650329/B-White-Legend-Rev...

And a few longer reads:

Ned Blackhawk. Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West.

David E. Stennard. American Holocaust: the Conquest of the New World.

Winona Laduke. The Militarization of Indian Country

> In a lot of cases what Europeans did would have been impossible without an initial spread of disease. For example, when Pizarro invaded Peru, he was preceded by a plague that upset the political order in a way that made it possible for him to insert himself into it. It's unlikely the Inca would have been as easily conquered (if at all) without that plague. Likewise, when the Plymouth colony settled in Massachusetts, they moved into the homes of recently deceased natives. Had the original natives been alive, they never would have been able to settle there. That's just a couple of examples and this whole thread is about civilizations that disappeared completely just prior to European colonization, too quickly for the Europeans to have done it through conquest.

This is a strong assertion. I'd like to see a more complete argument for it. :-)

More seriously, the way you present these facts is a good illustration of the problem I'm describing. For example, you are correct that the Plymouth colony found native colonies already weakened by disease spread by earlier traders. However, they did not just "move into the homes of recently deceased natives". They pressed their advantage and waged total war against the tribes, in several cases killing entire villages including women and children. Then they moved in. This is amply documented, but oddly absent from the popular narrative which we were tought in school.

So, as you can see, even when disease has played a role, the way that role is depicted is problematic, because it creates a narrative where violence is swept under the rug. You yourself just perpetuaded that narrative in your comment.

Pre-empting your request for more documentation, here is a quote from a participant in one of the massacres:

those that scaped the fire were slain with the sword, some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived that they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Plymouth_Plantation

> > allowing us descendants of settlers to conveniently avoid taking responsibility for the institutionalized genocide that is at the heart of our culture.

> This is a silly thing to say. European settlers obviously weren't angels, but conquest and colonization is a common thread through most civilizations worldwide, including pre-Columbian American civilizations. (Both the Inca and the Aztecs were empires after all.) The difference with European expansion was simply the scale of the process.

You are engaging in whataboutism. What other cultures are guilty of is irrelevant, this isn't an innocence contest. My culture (descendant of the Europeans who colonized North America), which presumably is yours too, is guilty of not acknowledging the central role that institutionalized genocide played in our history. As long as we don't come to terms with that past, honestly and openly, we will be crippled as a society, and even worse we will be blind to the role of that past in modern problems. Do you really think our modern crisis, from gun violence to the resurgence of white supremacy, have nothing to do with our history of killing people to take their land, and building a political system celebrating those who managed to secure the most land in the process? To me it's obvious that there is a connection. By refusing to acknowledging where we came from, we are robbing ourselves of the chance to control where we go.