Re:The Viking Invasion of Leicestershire (2012)
by throwaway894345 on Monday February 22, 2021 @04:05PM
(#26230597)
> The page you've linked says as much (though it's quite misleading without background knowledge). "Many Native American tribes suffered high mortality and depopulation, averaging 25–50% of the tribes' members lost to disease."
I interpret that as "many tribes lost 25-50%" but that doesn't necessarily mean that this generalizes to all Native Americans, so I took the 90% figure which made the more precise (if inaccurate) claim.
> The line you've linked is discussing the Northeastern colonization and it links to Denevan, who isn't looking at the actual mechanics of depopulation, but rather the pristine myth.
Fair enough, I'm not a subject matter expert. I'm at the mercy of Wikipedia editors here.
> Let's pay closer attention to the Mexican population graph though. Notice the 3 waves of disease? Two of those, labeled "cocolizti", are thought to be (at least partially) Salmonella. You know, that disease of failing sanitation infrastructure? Hopefully it's clear why sanitation issues might have surfaced around then.
Assuming that cocolizti was directly caused by failing sanitation infrastructure, looking at the graph I would assume that the infrastructure failed due to the preceding smallpox-induced population crash. At least without more information there's nothing clearly pointing to Spanish violence, if that's your implication. Of course, the Spanish conquest was abhorrent and devastating, but I don't have any reason to believe that the Spanish military was more effective than disease at devastating the Mexican population. To answer the disease vs violence question, maybe we could find good points of comparison in the Old World Spanish conquests, where disease was presumably much less significant?
I interpret that as "many tribes lost 25-50%" but that doesn't necessarily mean that this generalizes to all Native Americans, so I took the 90% figure which made the more precise (if inaccurate) claim.
> The line you've linked is discussing the Northeastern colonization and it links to Denevan, who isn't looking at the actual mechanics of depopulation, but rather the pristine myth.
Fair enough, I'm not a subject matter expert. I'm at the mercy of Wikipedia editors here.
> Let's pay closer attention to the Mexican population graph though. Notice the 3 waves of disease? Two of those, labeled "cocolizti", are thought to be (at least partially) Salmonella. You know, that disease of failing sanitation infrastructure? Hopefully it's clear why sanitation issues might have surfaced around then.
Assuming that cocolizti was directly caused by failing sanitation infrastructure, looking at the graph I would assume that the infrastructure failed due to the preceding smallpox-induced population crash. At least without more information there's nothing clearly pointing to Spanish violence, if that's your implication. Of course, the Spanish conquest was abhorrent and devastating, but I don't have any reason to believe that the Spanish military was more effective than disease at devastating the Mexican population. To answer the disease vs violence question, maybe we could find good points of comparison in the Old World Spanish conquests, where disease was presumably much less significant?