"[...] —a policy called congregación. This sort of European settlement pattern, featuring nucleated and typically walled urban centers with largely vacant fields surrounding them, was the product of centuries of total war in which walking great distances to one’s agricultural fields was the price people paid for defense. Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican patterns of warfare and land tenure had developed a more dispersed settlement distribution [...]"

That's interesting. You can read about the European patterns as far back as classical Greece - when the season came, one city would gather some soldiers, go bust up the other city's fields, set up some triumph marker, and get back home ...

It seems to me they’re talking about the small hamlet as a center of defense, not just the city. After all, medieval farmers didn’t walk from the city to their fields every day. They generally lived in outlying hamlets and villages, and brought goods to the city on market day. Nonetheless, the population was concentrated in the villages and not dispersed in homesteads or something. Most of London, for example, is actually outlying towns that were gradually absorbed into the metropolis.

You could also suggest another reason the population was concentrated, that was probably at work in the new world as well: if you’re the local aristocrat, and your job is to tax the peasants and muster them in wartime, it really helps to have them all in one place.

As for the Greeks, what’s funny is that they were hilariously bad at siege warfare. In almost 30 years of on and off warfare, neither Athens nor Sparta was ever seriously threatened until the very end. And while it’s totally dumb to compare a bronze age epic with actual history, let’s be real, the Romans would’ve finished off Troy in a month.

I hope it was mostly defensively and not offensively oriented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_concentration_camps would be an example of the latter.

In these days of economic cold warfare, it's interesting to think of metropolitan areas as those settlements which have sufficiently-developed economies that they are resistant to single-factor speculative attacks (whether on a currency or an actual basket of goods). Internal economies would be the safest protection, as trade networks may or may not be useful, depending upon the relative interdiction capabilities of one's friends and foes.

see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_League_of_Armed_Neutrali...

On a further tangent:

Because spain reached the philippines from one direction and portugal reached malacca from the opposite, dates in southeast asia were a day off from each other, depending upon colonising power. It is a logical truth that all babies born in the philippines on Tuesday, 31 Dec 1845 were neon green and spoke hebrew.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter_caetera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas

https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/idl/idl_philippines...

The Roman Catholic Church had a prominent role in the Spanish colonization of the Americas:

- How Bishop Diego de Landa collected every Mayan codex and then did a massive book burning with all of them.

- The Our Lady of Guadalupe apparition, which was used to convert natives to Christianity.

Another aspect that is missing is the Spanish caste system, where there was a racial hierarchy where indians and blacks had a lower social status.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta

And finally, other aspects are missing, such as the economic systems put in place by the Spanish:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacienda

Also, how the Spanish Phillipines were governed by the Viceroy of New Spain.

Amazing article. I love reading well documented history. Thanks for sharing, is your book on Amazon?

Forget whatever this nerd wrote: Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote the Iberian Anabasis.

Sub title How the Spanish arrival transformed the land—and decimated the population—of Mesoamerica is an understatement. “Decimation” is the death of 1 of 10. The indigenous people in the Americas died at rates much higher. The article describes details of 60-95% death rates. The article reinforces downplaying the scale of horror in the title by science-washing its ruthlessness as an agricultural lifestyle choice.

How can you be so angry at history that even an article that plainly exposes the huge population declines and gives pointers to causes (disease mostly, not agriculture) bothers you?

What should it say instead to appease you? It's a really good excerpt, interesting and by no means whitewashes anything. If it did it wouldn't give you the figures.

It's a fact that the common usage of the word decimate has diverged from the original meaning.

Dictionary: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/decimat...

Yeah.

I read "decimate" with the broader definition.

I would write "decimate" with the narrower definition. But that scenario doesn't come up much.

That scenario seems like a recipe for miscommunication though, unless you first lecture the reader on what decimate 'should' mean :).

Could the Spanish have known at the time that they carried diseases that would nearly wipe out the natives?

The miasma theory of disease was the dominant understanding of Europeans at the time. Miasma was understood to emanate from putrescence but was not communicable between people.

Germ theory did not take hold until the 19th century.

In the memoirs of Bernal Diaz Del Castillo, there were already several Spanish people living in the Yucatan when Cortez first landed in Veracruz.

He documented evidence that some of these diseases had already made their rounds around the Americas before Cortez ever stepped foot on the continent: "Xicotencatl made various other offers of his services in the name of his country. This Xicotencatl was a tall man, broad shouldered, and well built, with a large fresh coloured face, full of scars, as if pitted with the smallpox."

A specific case of smallpox did arrive later, according to the conquistador, on one of the ships sent by Governor Velázquez to capture Cortez (the ships were captured instead by Cortez, and their supplies used to take the Mexican capital): "But to return to Narvaez. He happened to have a negro servant with him ill with the smallpox, through whom this terrific disease, which, according to the accounts of the inhabitants, was previously unknown in the country, spread itself through New Spain, where it created the greater devastation, from the poor Indians, in their ignorance, solely applying cold water as a remedy, with which they constantly bathed themselves; so that vast numbers were cut off before they had the blessing of being received into the bosom of the Christian church."

He goes on to document several contact dying from Smallpox afterwards. It does seem highly likely however though, that the moment Columbus made his expedition around the Caribbean, the introduction of these novel diseases already had likely begun spreading in waves through the Americas.

How? Their understanding of disease was surely rudimentary?

In the 1500s, nobody knew better.

No, but they became aware of it as the diseases were spreading and took the opportunity to conquer the areas.

The picture is incomplete in any case.

Some researchers talk about a sustained decline linked with environmental problems and bad manage of a too fast growing population long before the arrival of spanish.

Paleontological data from Mexico show a dry period extended between 500 and 1150 A.D. Mayans where wipped just by environmental problems and climate change after they distroyed the nature trying to feed their growing population. It seems that we are wired to commit the same stupid mistake again and again (Ethiopy, Sahara, Indonesia, Brazil... No forest -> no water -> no agriculture -> no humans). Big cities where deserted by climate changes when agriculture stopped to work, entering in a "tragedy of commons" process.

We must take in mind also that the "before" number is just that, a stimate. Is adopted because it fits with the narrative but is also possible that the population numbers given to invaders were inflated for tactical purposes.

>Paleontological data from Mexico show a dry period extended between 500 and 1150 A.D. Mayans where wipped just by environmental problems and climate change after they distroyed the nature trying to feed their growing population

This is 500-1000 years before the Spanish invasion. About as long ago as the Spanish conquest is to us. It is not a relevant event when considering the population at the time.

>Is adopted because it fits with the narrative but is also possible that the population numbers given to invaders were inflated for tactical purposes.

The narrative is that most of the death happens well outside the knowledge of the invaders, there isn't much trust in the invaders estimates as a whole.

> This is 500-1000 years before the Spanish invasion

And some people still blame spanish conquerors today for it...

This article is probably related with the Mexico independence celebrations planned for 2021. In this context maybe will be a temptation to reinforce the relate of spaniards bad / natives innocent (even if they ate the hearts of other people to appease their gods).

>And some people still blame spanish conquerors today for it...

Rightfully so. That the area had experienced a separate collapse over five hundred years before is completely unrelated.

>In this context maybe will be a temptation to reinforce the relate of spaniards bad / natives innocent (even if they ate the hearts of other people to appease their gods).

The Spanish invaded, conquered, and enslaved. Nobody is claiming the native population were some saintly people who did nothing wrong, but the Spaniards were definitely bad. Bringing religion into it only makes them look worse.

> The Spanish invaded, conquered, and enslaved.

Name me one single culture that never invaded, conquered and enslaved other people. From Egyptians to Romans, Chinese, Muslims, Aztecs, Belgians, and of course US Americans. Everybody did it, and the other are dead.

Some people could argue that christianism, occidental medicine, and an unique lingua franca was definitely an improvement over the former myriad of isolated tribes unable to understand and speak with their neighbors, the trepanations to cure diseases, the wars against everybody and the human sacrifices and spreading terror as part of the way of life.

The current situation can be improved of course, but nobody would want today a world with followers of mayan or aztec gods.

>Name me one single culture that never invaded, conquered and enslaved other people.

This doesn't make it morally acceptable.

>Some people could argue that christianism...

What I think is your description of the areas Spain conquered, quoted here,

>former myriad of isolated tribes unable to understand and speak with their neighbors, the trepanations to cure diseases, the wars against everybody and the human sacrifices and spreading terror as part of the way of life.

Describes sixteenth century Europe perfectly.

> This doesn't make it morally acceptable.

Not of course, but to blame your neighbor for acting evil, when everybody, including your own people does exactly the same thing, is an exercise on hypocrisy written in the sky in flashing giant neon letters.

Lets take the current destruction of statues. I'm 100% against the glorification of evil people but also against the infantilisation of the society. I couldn't care less if all US Columbus statues have their head replaced with a whooper, a gun or a nice cast of the head of Terry Crews. Is their country, after all, and this is just a fully replaceable object... but I can't hardly wait for this people to eventually discover that the Greek philosophers fathers of the concept of democracy had slaves.

Maybe we should abolish the democracy as the rotten symbol of slavery that it is, and behead the Aristotle statues because the father of modern medicine was also a slave owner. Maybe we should rename America to Shalalaland (How we can still allow in 2021 an entire continent having the name of a despicable slave trader?)

It seems that after all those years we aren't much more mature as society than the people that broke the Venus de Nilo's arms

>Not of course, but to blame your neighbor for acting evil, when everybody, including your own people does exactly the same thing, is an exercise on hypocrisy written in the sky in flashing giant neon letters

No, hypocrisy would be engaging in or supporting similar acts carried out by my nation, and I also view those as evil. Discussing one of the many bad acts that have happened without mentioning every other one doesn't make me a hypocrite.

>Maybe we should abolish the democracy as the rotten symbol of slavery that it is, and behead the Aristotle statues because the father of modern medicine was also a slave owner

Or we can judge historical actions independently without either the hero worship or the condemnation of every thing connected to them. Aristotle was a flawed human being who wrote a fantastic treatise on logic.

> there isn't much trust in the invaders estimates

I can't see why. Invaders must report to the crown, and be very precise about what they were seeing, each city, each wall and each new culture or useful plant. Historians have many particularly detailed reports about this historical period.

Though I think you're over valuing explorers logs, that doesn't matter when an epidemic is spreading across two continents.

What do you mean by science-washing? Are you implying that the Spanish intentionally killed 60 to 95% of indigenous Americans?

In Uruguay it was closer to 98%, when the indigenous people didn't want to conform with property rights, the order was given to wipe them out.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matanza_del_Salsipuedes (There's no English article unfortunately)

That was after the Spanish authorities were kicked out of that region. The New Laws and Laws of the Indies, which had been in place for nearly three centuries by then, forbade such actions.

> Decimation” is the death of 1 of 10.

No, the primary modern definition is “kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of.”

Etymologically, it comes from the name of a Roman punitive practice of deliberately killing one in ten of a group as a form of collective punishment of the group, but outside the context of describing that specific practice it is pretty much never used to refer to the death of 1/10 of a group.

Anecdotal evidence that the title may not be downplaying the scale: while you are probably right about the ethymology of decimate, I, for one always understood the word as meaning virtual total destruction.

I’ve never heard it used to mean 1 in 10 either. I wonder if GP is a native English speaker

I try to use it to mean ~ 1/10th - given the origins of the word, and the availability of 'devastate' as a more appropriate word to describe 'near total destruction'.

I think it's one of those cases where people have heard decimate, not known what it means, think it sounds more sophisticated than devastate, and have substituted it in. It makes the language poorer for people who understand the distinction, as our communication would benefit from increased nuance, rather than myriad synonyms.

Hah. I only use it when members of a group are forced to encircle and club one in ten of their comrades to death in front of their officers.

I don't use it very often.

Very droll.

I think if we were speaking Italian (or similar) and using the word 'decimātus' or 'decimatio' then that could be more convincingly argued.

In the case of English assimilating, as it does so often and so eagerly, words from other languages, decimate was probably first used in English only a half millennia ago - so it was adopting the generic 1/10th, rather than the murder your friends, context.

I note dictionary.org has a nod to the etymology. From https://www.dictionary.com/browse/decimated :

"The earliest English sense of decimate is “to select by lot and execute every tenth soldier of (a unit).” The extended sense “destroy a great number or proportion of” developed in the 19th century: Cholera decimated the urban population. Because the etymological sense of one-tenth remains to some extent, decimate is not ordinarily used with exact fractions or percentages: Drought has destroyed (not decimated) nearly 80 percent of the cattle."

I don't know if this works as proof that languages get poorer (overall). What I do know is that it is not uncommon for meanings to evolve and for new words to appear to (possibly?) cover for lost meanings.

Considering that most languages now are considered to be part of handful root-languages (ie. Indoeuropean) the macrotrend I see is for languages to get more diverse - for many a measurement of richness.

I think it's a somewhat snobbish assumption that a language becomes poorer because the meaning of particular words drift. It doesn't take into account, as you say, the many, many new words that enter our lexicon.

Of course, those who make this assumption will probably thumb their nose at how 'unsophisticated' these new words are.

It's a weird hill to die on. Language should be fun!

> I think it's a somewhat snobbish assumption that a language becomes poorer because the meaning of particular words drift.

This is very much not what I said.

My claim is that by reducing the variation and nuance available in the language by reducing the precision of some words such that they are then mere synonyms of several other words -- results in a poorer language, and (perhaps) poorer cognitive opportunities for speakers & writers of that language.

Meaning of words definitely do drift, and that's okay. What I resist is the perhaps ineluctable drift towards a lowest common denominator of usage.

For what it's worth I find language much more fun when I can stretch it to its (or rather my) fullest, appreciating the history and subtlety of words and phrases I employ, rather than wishing for language to be pedestrian and exclusively utilitarian.

>> Of course, those who make this assumption will probably thumb their nose at how 'unsophisticated' these new words are.

> For what it's worth I find language much more fun when I can stretch it to its (or rather my) fullest, appreciating the history and subtlety of words and phrases I employ, rather than wishing for language to be pedestrian and exclusively utilitarian.

Thanks for confirming my suspicion.

You're dismissing the ever-evolving lexicon as 'pedestrian' and 'utilitarian'? I mean, really?

"Pedestrian": the cup final was a pedestrian affair: dull, plodding, boring, tedious, monotonous, uneventful, unremarkable, tiresome, wearisome, uninspired, uncreative, unimaginative, unexciting, uninteresting, lifeless, dry; unvarying, unvaried, repetitive, repetitious, routine, commonplace, average, workaday; ordinary, everyday, unoriginal, derivative, mediocre, run-of-the-mill, flat, prosaic, matter-of-fact, turgid, stodgy, mundane, humdrum; informal OK, so-so, bog-standard, vanilla, plain vanilla, nothing to write home about, not so hot, not up to much

How does that describe the vibrant new words used all around us? "Lol" is old-skool at this point, perhaps, but it carries meaning that is very different from "Haha" or "That's funny". "old-skool" itself has kind of made a come-back, but not quite. it's confusing, but far from dull. I imagine anyone using it to be either a millennial or a Gen-X'er.

Then we've got 'woke', which is definitely not 'woke' anymore, but it was, and it means something specific.

That's not to mention how local slang may or may not break out onto the national stage. A word like 'matties' could be considered similar to 'buddies' or 'mates', but it's not. it's a bit more like 'brothers' or 'bros' but then it really isn't.

I fully respect and share your enjoyment of the history and subtlety of language. I probably look up etymologies of various words more than once a day. It excited me to find out what decimate meant once upon a time.

But holy fucking shit is it not possible to enjoy all that without being a snob? I can't even. Surely you can enjoy what has been without dismissing what is going on and what will come? I mean, are you like fifty and mad about it or some shit? Gosh!

(that last paragraph was me mashing together what I feel are generationally distinct expressions, more than me actually being really upset about all this)

My point is that I love the exact meanings of words but I really don't have any reason to believe language is becoming more impoverished as it evolves. If anything English is like the Borg assimilating all other cultures or languages. I'd love to hear anything but what seems to me to be plain pretentiousness or snobbishness as an argument to the contrary, though. Truly.

> You're dismissing the ever-evolving lexicon as 'pedestrian' and 'utilitarian'? I mean, really?

Again, you're attributing things to me that I am not saying.

> "Lol" is old-skool at this point, perhaps, but it carries meaning that is very different from "Haha" or "That's funny".

It sounds like you actually do understand my point -- that the subtle distinctions between words that may, prima facie, appear synonyms, is a useful feature of the language.

Imagine your reaction to 'lol' being given the same meaning as 'haha' or 'that's funny' ... and you will understand my point about 'decimate' becoming just another way of spelling 'devastate'.

It has nothing to do with English. It was a practice that some ancient armies (Romans, IIRC) did with defeated populations, when they had refused to surrender.

It's now used when you mean that a sizeable part of a population dies, not necessarily one tenth, but it's interesting to remember the origin of the expression.

It was actually used on Roman soldiers for capital offenses (cowardice, rebellion/treason, etc). The cohort being punished would be divided into groups of 10, then draw lots. The "lucky" 9 were then expected to kill the 10th.

That's incorrect. It had nothing to do with defeated populations either.