What If...?
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Harshaw
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They taught this shit to us in like 4-5th grade history in Indiana.
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Look at who's conflating what now.
So 1500s (spanish/portugese) or earlier if from the viking encounters, some great dying happened across north america (somehow, even tho they only encountered a handful of tribes along the coasts/carribean/florida area or newfoundland/canuckistan area for vikings.)
They magically contracted some unknown disease that had no symptoms but was highly infectious which allowed it to spread across the entire north american continent by people traveling by fucking foot with clear territorial areas who did not intermingle outside of wars with other tribes so it must of took a century or more for this magical disease to infect the whole population.
Then after a century long incubation period this disease turned lethal and just wiped out 85% of the population, and the few stragglers who remained where then powerless to stop the french/english/spanish/dutch etc colonist's who arrived another century later after and only after having established Colonies here did they then set up and establish trade in the 1700/1800s with these tiny bands of survivors of this great dying that had happened hundreds of years before the colonists came?
That's what the fuck are you saying.
No retard, the 50-100 man tribes who made contact with the explorers contracted diseases and when 10 people die out of 50 it's a fucking huge impact. if half the tribe dies 25 out of 50 the tribe dies off. Other tribes who made contact with the survivors learned about it and passed those stories down orally but to think that 85% of the goddamn population of north american tribes died to a disease with a 2 week infectivity rate when 99.99% of them never made contact with the explorers OR anyone who ever had is fucking absurd.
btw look at the swedish small pox records from that era(1500-1700s), despite the fact that they had cities and traveled far greater distances than native americans (they were vikings, after all, and had boats and horses), Small pox killed 7 out of 1000 people infected, less than 1% mortality rate. It's the clearest data we have on the impact of that disease on a population of people before medicine/vaccinations/etc.
So 1500s (spanish/portugese) or earlier if from the viking encounters, some great dying happened across north america (somehow, even tho they only encountered a handful of tribes along the coasts/carribean/florida area or newfoundland/canuckistan area for vikings.)
They magically contracted some unknown disease that had no symptoms but was highly infectious which allowed it to spread across the entire north american continent by people traveling by fucking foot with clear territorial areas who did not intermingle outside of wars with other tribes so it must of took a century or more for this magical disease to infect the whole population.
Then after a century long incubation period this disease turned lethal and just wiped out 85% of the population, and the few stragglers who remained where then powerless to stop the french/english/spanish/dutch etc colonist's who arrived another century later after and only after having established Colonies here did they then set up and establish trade in the 1700/1800s with these tiny bands of survivors of this great dying that had happened hundreds of years before the colonists came?
That's what the fuck are you saying.
No retard, the 50-100 man tribes who made contact with the explorers contracted diseases and when 10 people die out of 50 it's a fucking huge impact. if half the tribe dies 25 out of 50 the tribe dies off. Other tribes who made contact with the survivors learned about it and passed those stories down orally but to think that 85% of the goddamn population of north american tribes died to a disease with a 2 week infectivity rate when 99.99% of them never made contact with the explorers OR anyone who ever had is fucking absurd.
btw look at the swedish small pox records from that era(1500-1700s), despite the fact that they had cities and traveled far greater distances than native americans (they were vikings, after all, and had boats and horses), Small pox killed 7 out of 1000 people infected, less than 1% mortality rate. It's the clearest data we have on the impact of that disease on a population of people before medicine/vaccinations/etc.
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Cybsled
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I'm not commenting on the 85% figure (that seems high). You're underplaying the impact of a disease on a population that has not had multiple generations to essentially select against genes that make a person predisposed for having a bad/lethal outcome to the disease. Of course Europe is going to have less lethal outcomes during times of records - because the genepool got selected against over the centuries and most of the surviving populations and their decedents are better able to cope with the disease. In fact, it is theorized that Neanderthal genes in Europeans that survived to the modern era primarily had beneficial impacts on the immune system, which is why it still gets passed on.
Europe/Asia had been dealing with smallpox or malaria or measles or typhus for thousands of years. The Americas did not. Remember it wasn't just smallpox, even though that gets most of the focus.
On a side note, we saw the opposite happen. Syphilis was from the Americas based on most research. When it was first introduced to Europe, it was REALLY bad. It took almost half a century for it to become less lethal or serious and presumably most of that initial lethality or severe impacts were due to the people predisposed to bad outcomes taking the initial bad brunt.
To use a simple analogy: If a tree has weak limbs and a strong storm happens, the weak limbs on the tree are more likely to snap off the tree. If another strong storm happens, the tree in theory may see less limb loss because the weaker limbs were already destroyed by the earlier storms.
Europe/Asia had been dealing with smallpox or malaria or measles or typhus for thousands of years. The Americas did not. Remember it wasn't just smallpox, even though that gets most of the focus.
On a side note, we saw the opposite happen. Syphilis was from the Americas based on most research. When it was first introduced to Europe, it was REALLY bad. It took almost half a century for it to become less lethal or serious and presumably most of that initial lethality or severe impacts were due to the people predisposed to bad outcomes taking the initial bad brunt.
To use a simple analogy: If a tree has weak limbs and a strong storm happens, the weak limbs on the tree are more likely to snap off the tree. If another strong storm happens, the tree in theory may see less limb loss because the weaker limbs were already destroyed by the earlier storms.
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The 85% number and the idea that the coming of colonists spoiled the noble savages who were peacefully coexisting is all Western propaganda to make us feel bad.
Complete bullshit.
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Cybsled
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They were just like humans all over the earth. You had the peaceful ones, the warlike ones, the trustworthy ones, and scheming ones. Some fought each other, some didn’t, etc.
Same with the colonists or European ventures. Although a good chunk of that initial wave (like from Spain) it was “time to make money, I don’t care how”
Same with the colonists or European ventures. Although a good chunk of that initial wave (like from Spain) it was “time to make money, I don’t care how”
Burns
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There is evidence for pre-Colombian trade from all over the Americas in archaeological sites; which are from excavations from at least the past 40+ years (not necessarily at high volumes, but it was there (also, some of that "trade" was by payed with blood not barter)).
While I may have made a mistake in college and used one of my electives on an anthropology of North America class, I do remember that the Hopi sites in current day Arizona and New Mexico had a bunch of different goods found from 100s of miles away. Most of which were abandoned before the Spanish got there. "Current" theory (when I took the class) for the decline of the Hopi is that they were a people/culture that liked to trade, not fight, and the Comanche (I think it was), who were very warlike, moved in and killed the Hopi.
Hell, for as long as I can remember, the various Indian tribes seem to be generally pissed at researchers digging up their burial sites to find out what people were buried with. A lot of data was gleamed from those sites; so much so, that the tribes that left their dead out to "return" to the circle of life, by letting wild animals eat them, have far less known about them, due to that.
The pop-history book Guns, Germs, and Steel is a major contributing factor for pushing the narrative of 99% of Indians were killed by viruses before the Euros even made it inland. AFAIK, there aren't a lot of historians who take that book seriously, even back when it was published, before school admins pushed DEI into every department.
While I may have made a mistake in college and used one of my electives on an anthropology of North America class, I do remember that the Hopi sites in current day Arizona and New Mexico had a bunch of different goods found from 100s of miles away. Most of which were abandoned before the Spanish got there. "Current" theory (when I took the class) for the decline of the Hopi is that they were a people/culture that liked to trade, not fight, and the Comanche (I think it was), who were very warlike, moved in and killed the Hopi.
Hell, for as long as I can remember, the various Indian tribes seem to be generally pissed at researchers digging up their burial sites to find out what people were buried with. A lot of data was gleamed from those sites; so much so, that the tribes that left their dead out to "return" to the circle of life, by letting wild animals eat them, have far less known about them, due to that.
The pop-history book Guns, Germs, and Steel is a major contributing factor for pushing the narrative of 99% of Indians were killed by viruses before the Euros even made it inland. AFAIK, there aren't a lot of historians who take that book seriously, even back when it was published, before school admins pushed DEI into every department.
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Seananigans
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Nobody was suggesting they didn't move around and trade.
I personally was suggesting that the idea of natives in north america having the established *transportation networks* (or towns/cities) required to effectively transmit a disease across an entire continent to achieve an 85% death rate from smallpox is completely absurd. Like, you know, roads and carts/wagons. Things that make transportation easier such that it happens quickly and often enough to transmit disease effectively across distance.
Burns
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Off hand, anything over 30% seems absurd. The mass Indian extinction event theory, due to the Spanish invasion, would certainly need to show some solid vectors of how the various diseases spread. I would assume they have that, for it to get any traction at all, but then again, it could all be pop-history that professionals scoff at.
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Just like they have solid evidence that diversity is our strength? Or solid evidence that blacks can perform just as well as whites with no racism? Etc etc etc
All of their positions are fantasy, and honestly anthropology is one of the WORST now.
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Ambiturner
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Not sure where you're going with this, but nobody's arguing that smallpox wouldn't be more deadly to unga-bunga people who can't quite grasp the whole "wheel" concept and thinking sacrificing children makes the sun happy.
It's that for the disease to kill them, it has to actually get to them and despite these magical "trade routes or something" that shit's just not happening in those days with the way the population is spread out and lack of interaction between most of them
Cybsled
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Ya, those silly people. Too bad they didn't believe in a real religion with more believable and rational things like a dude talking to a burning bush and then using magic to make the ocean spread apart. Also, don't forget burning heretics to appease the skyman!
You have to keep in mind the time span. We aren't talking a couple weeks. Shit like this could take years or decades to spread. Trading aside, don't forget the Spanish also reintroduced the horse to the Americas. That opened up much more rapid travel options for the native people that would have opened up more long distance interaction options. You don't 'need' trade to be the reason, you just need infected people interacting with other people and infecting them. Trade just happens to be a convenient reason for different people to meet up.
Ambiturner
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Not sure why you feel there need to defend the sacrifice of little kids, but it's pretty clear your entire argument on this subject is emotional and not factual
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for the record I think you are also conflating the Americas (that is the whole of North and South america, central america, the carribean, etc, ie the "New World") with what we're talking about which is American (US) native american populations.
Population estimates vary wildly from anywhere from 8 million to over 100 million people, but that's for the entirety of the "New World" and the majority of that population was in central/south america, which coincidently was where the majority of the initial exploration/colonization occurred. The US was extremely sparsely populated, practically pure wilderness, which is why it was a hundreds of years later before real attempts were made at colonizing it beyond a handful of coastal areas.
"What happened to the indians" depends entirely on what populations you are discussing. What happened to the incans and mayans and aztecs vs the spanish conquistadors vs what happened to the creek and cherokee vs the pilgrims are very different stories.
The population of what you would consider US (as well as lower Canada) Native Americans was about 2 million people spread across 3 million square miles of land before contact. It was 2 million people spread across 3 million square miles during colonization. It's now 2 million people (2.7mil actually) spread across 3 million square miles held in reservations of which most "reservations" to the east of the mississippi are just large enough to house a casino today in 2024.
What happened to them? fucking nothing, really. Over 500 years since contact, sure some died from disease. some died from war/conquest during the push west. some died on the trail of tears as they were forcefully relocated. Was the shit that happened to them "Bad"? sure. They were conquered, and while getting conquered is never nice, it's happened to virtually every population on the earth throughout history. They were not eradicated, they were not "wiped out." They were moved because we wanted the land and knew what the fuck gun powder was when they hadn't even figured out the wheel. Fuck them.
Population estimates vary wildly from anywhere from 8 million to over 100 million people, but that's for the entirety of the "New World" and the majority of that population was in central/south america, which coincidently was where the majority of the initial exploration/colonization occurred. The US was extremely sparsely populated, practically pure wilderness, which is why it was a hundreds of years later before real attempts were made at colonizing it beyond a handful of coastal areas.
"What happened to the indians" depends entirely on what populations you are discussing. What happened to the incans and mayans and aztecs vs the spanish conquistadors vs what happened to the creek and cherokee vs the pilgrims are very different stories.
The population of what you would consider US (as well as lower Canada) Native Americans was about 2 million people spread across 3 million square miles of land before contact. It was 2 million people spread across 3 million square miles during colonization. It's now 2 million people (2.7mil actually) spread across 3 million square miles held in reservations of which most "reservations" to the east of the mississippi are just large enough to house a casino today in 2024.
What happened to them? fucking nothing, really. Over 500 years since contact, sure some died from disease. some died from war/conquest during the push west. some died on the trail of tears as they were forcefully relocated. Was the shit that happened to them "Bad"? sure. They were conquered, and while getting conquered is never nice, it's happened to virtually every population on the earth throughout history. They were not eradicated, they were not "wiped out." They were moved because we wanted the land and knew what the fuck gun powder was when they hadn't even figured out the wheel. Fuck them.
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Cybsled
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Nah, my point is people trying to use a specific religion as a basis for putting down a particular culture is ultimately hypocrisy if you follow another religion, because they’re all ultimately a) equally as illogical when you boil right down to it - literally the only thing almost all religions have in common is the concept of a soul or spirit and rituals. After that, there are thousands of concepts on what happens to that spirit or soul or what is expected of followers b) they’re almost always hijacked by bad actors who use it to enrich themselves or gain power.
B is what creates situations like human sacrifice, execution of heretics, etc
Hoss
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