The science does not support you. We have some of our greatest if not our greatest genetic diversity on immune related DNA. The American population lost that immunity. So where any population in Africa, Asia or Europe will have 100s of different genes on each Alleles, in Native American Tribe, a single gene dominates. Against rapidly mutating germs, one wins, one loses.

Denial of clearly established scientific facts simply leads to incorrect analysis. If the European has been pure traders that limited themselves to 10 trading towns of a few thousand European each, the Native American still would have been depopulated by disease. The proof is the Amazon basin where a thriving group of civilizations vanished with almost no (single passing expedition) direct European contact. The Aztecs and Incas were likewise doomed, it just so happens they got conquered before the disease accomplished the same feat.
I notice people often speak like the natives in America were nearly wiped out but isn't much of Latin America just natives who assimilated to Spanish culture? Many Mexicans or people in Peru are mostly Native American in blood?
 

Lusitania

Donor
I notice people often speak like the natives in America were nearly wiped out but isn't much of Latin America just natives who assimilated to Spanish culture? Many Mexicans or people in Peru are mostly Native American in blood?

They are but 70-90% of pre-Columbus natives died out over the next 200 years after first contact. What you are seeing today is the offspring of the remaining natives and also mixed race.
 

SwampTiger

Banned
This is not true. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is false. It is astonishingly false. It's so false I'm not exactly sure how to debate it. Do you really want to discuss this? If so, I'm going to need some kind of citation first so that we have a ground to discuss on.

If you are going to request a citation, you may offer one or more yourself. BlondieBC has stated the standard accepted anthropological position of the collapse of pre-colonial Amazon cultures and population. Who has provided an alternate theory? What proof has been provided?
 
This is not true. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is false. It is astonishingly false. It's so false I'm not exactly sure how to debate it. Do you really want to discuss this? If so, I'm going to need some kind of citation first so that we have a ground to discuss on.

Well, I think de Orelleana is most of the written sources we have directly observing Amazonian populations. Archeological remains include the Terra Preta and Terra Mulatta soils, as well as cultures such as the Marajorara, in addition to hundreds of earthwork remains some hundreds of meters across. Also, areas with dense road networks and areas with concentrations of settlements. The notion of the Amazon as an area sparsely populated by hunter-gatherer bands is pretty much dated, I'm afraid.

Its like the notion that Great Zimbabwe had to have been built by some lost European derived tribe. There were a lot of theories by European-descended establishments downplaying native numbers and accomplishments in both the Americas and Africa, and they don't hold up.

And the general consensus seem to be that they went exactly the same way as the natives which encountered De Sotos expeditions in the US southeast.
 
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If the European has been pure traders that limited themselves to 10 trading towns of a few thousand European each, the Native American still would have been depopulated by disease. The proof is the Amazon basin where a thriving group of civilizations vanished with almost no (single passing expedition) direct European contact. The Aztecs and Incas were likewise doomed, it just so happens they got conquered before the disease accomplished the same feat.

I used to think like this, but tend to think it's more a mixture of factors now. I'm sure having more HLA diversity would help, and clearly there's a reason that European/African HLA and other adaptive variants are selected for (and this has obviously happened and wouldn't happen if there was no selective advantage)...

But there has to be factors in the great dying that were influenced by the adaptive immune system, the consequences of having HLA diversity that they did have not distributed in a way affected by prior plagues, and in the snowballing consequences of death of abilities of communities to resist disease (because deaths from disease in some lead to starvation and malnutrition in others and that snowballs deaths).

I mean, in support of what I say, look at this paper on Andean populations - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/07/31/381905.full.pdf+html.

They infer a 25% collapse in highlanders (adapted to life in the highlands) vs lowlanders about 95%. Some of the later is going to be due to absorption into the post-Columbian population, but it clearly mattered that the highlanders were lived in regions where Europeans could not and lowlanders lived in regions where they could, and population collapse can't just be a factor of lack of prior exposure alone (because that's the same between highlanders and lowlanders).
 
They infer a 25% collapse in highlanders (adapted to life in the highlands) vs lowlanders about 95%. Some of the later is going to be due to absorption into the post-Columbian population, but it clearly mattered that the highlanders were lived in regions where Europeans could not and lowlanders lived in regions where they could, and population collapse can't just be a factor of lack of prior exposure alone (because that's the same between highlanders and lowlanders).

Without glancing at the paper, one of the issues the Native Americans had was being hit with a large number of diseases close together. Highland climate may have stopped or limited the spread of several plagues or reservoirs. Also lowland communities could have been far denser. Highland areas could have been more spread, facilitating natural quarantines.
 
If you are going to request a citation, you may offer one or more yourself. BlondieBC has stated the standard accepted anthropological position of the collapse of pre-colonial Amazon cultures and population. Who has provided an alternate theory? What proof has been provided?
Well, I think de Orelleana is most of the written sources we have directly observing Amazonian populations. Archeological remains include the Terra Preta and Terra Mulatta soils, as well as cultures such as the Marajorara, in addition to hundreds of earthwork remains some hundreds of meters across. Also, areas with dense road networks and areas with concentrations of settlements. The notion of the Amazon as an area sparsely populated by hunter-gatherer bands is pretty much dated, I'm afraid.

Its like the notion that Great Zimbabwe had to have been built by some lost European derived tribe. There were a lot of theories by European-descended establishments downplaying native numbers and accomplishments in both the Americas and Africa, and they don't hold up.

And the general consensus seem to be that they went exactly the same way as the natives which encountered De Sotos expeditions in the US southeast.
I won't disagree with them losing large numbers of people but I think around 70 percent at most since many people with native blood still exist. In a good number of areas as a majority. In the United States I think many just got bred out of noticeable exist especially dna wise due to the larger influx of immigrants. My ancestors got to stay east of Mississippi during the trial of tears because they renounced the Charokee tribe. The Native Americans who did this faded into the white population and downplayed or lied about their native blood until they mixed so much with the white population it wasn't noticeable or important. This is probably repeated in other areas. I see people on both side of the spectrum are really guilty of exaggerating the stats and research done about this. If you look at some of the full blooded Native Americans from more north they probably had a easier time blending in with Europeans if they wanted to then people currently give them credit for. I think a big factor for population decline by Native Americans is just the swarms of European settlers coming in and mixing with them. If mixing with Europeans or trying to pretend to be one helps you live in better conditions many people are going to do it. I think the colonization of Americas is similar to the great migrations we see in Europe after fall of Rome in some way.
 
Good quarantine practice would be far more important than marginal genetic resistance. Before modern medicine, should your community get exposed to smallpox, the best thing to do is quarantine, burn all clothing and blankets, keep the quarantined subjects separated, well rested, hydrated and fed, and have them wash themselves thoroughly. It’s not too late to keep washing your hands while quarantined after exposure.
 
They infer a 25% collapse in highlanders (adapted to life in the highlands) vs lowlanders about 95%. Some of the later is going to be due to absorption into the post-Columbian population, but it clearly mattered that the highlanders were lived in regions where Europeans could not and lowlanders lived in regions where they could, and population collapse can't just be a factor of lack of prior exposure alone (because that's the same between highlanders and lowlanders).
I'm gonna poke two big holes in this theory of yours:
Malaria and yellow fever.
 
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The science does not support you. We have some of our greatest if not our greatest genetic diversity on immune related DNA. The American population lost that immunity. So where any population in Africa, Asia or Europe will have 100s of different genes on each Alleles, in Native American Tribe, a single gene dominates. Against rapidly mutating germs, one wins, one loses.

Denial of clearly established scientific facts simply leads to incorrect analysis. If the European has been pure traders that limited themselves to 10 trading towns of a few thousand European each, the Native American still would have been depopulated by disease. The proof is the Amazon basin where a thriving group of civilizations vanished with almost no (single passing expedition) direct European contact. The Aztecs and Incas were likewise doomed, it just so happens they got conquered before the disease accomplished the same feat.

Well, it seems possible to me that the Aztec or Inca state (more likely the Inca as the Aztecs had a lot of neighbors and tributary states with a grudge) could survive in a reduced form if Pizarro and Cortez hadn't been so epically lucky. But yes, disease and not direct warfare/oppression/etc killed the majority of Natives who died post-European contact. Not that that makes things like the slave mines of Potosi or wars of extermination morally any better.
 
Good quarantine practice would be far more important than marginal genetic resistance. Before modern medicine, should your community get exposed to smallpox, the best thing to do is quarantine, burn all clothing and blankets, keep the quarantined subjects separated, well rested, hydrated and fed, and have them wash themselves thoroughly. It’s not too late to keep washing your hands while quarantined after exposure.

And there is the possibility of working out or learning variolation, though it's not ideal it does kind of work.
 
I'm gonna poke two big holes in this theory of yours:
Malaria and yellow fever.

In your theory then, exposure to malaria and yellow fever are alone responsible for taking a 25% population reduction down to 95%, with no role in this difference being down to living in a buffer where Europeans could not easily colonise (as in the highlans).

In this scenario then, if this is the general case, we should expect malaria and yellow fever to be the major agents of population decline in the Americas, and declines of the 95% level should not happen where mosquitos and these infections are not present.

We should also expect that Europeans should not really be able to colonise the Americas at all, since they have no adaptive advantage with either of these infections, and no prior experience with either infection (other than a weak malaria adapation in Southern Europe), and they posed a major problem in African for European colonies and where a major factor in why settler colonies and mass replacement couldn't happen there.

Are either of these things true?

Though I don't see big regional differences among Native American groups depending on the climate they live in and not purely evolved response as contrary to what I'm saying in any case.
 
In your theory then, exposure to malaria and yellow fever are alone responsible for taking a 25% population reduction down to 95%, with no role in this difference being down to living in a buffer where Europeans could not easily colonise (as in the highlans).

In this scenario then, if this is the general case, we should expect malaria and yellow fever to be the major agents of population decline in the Americas, and declines of the 95% level should not happen where mosquitos and these infections are not present.

We should also expect that Europeans should not really be able to colonise the Americas at all, since they have no adaptive advantage with either of these infections, and no prior experience with either infection (other than a weak malaria adapation in Southern Europe), and they posed a major problem in African for European colonies and where a major factor in why settler colonies and mass replacement couldn't happen there.

Are either of these things true?

Though I don't see big regional differences among Native American groups depending on the climate they live in and not purely evolved response as contrary to what I'm saying in any case.
25% for what period in time though? That seems unrealistically small.

Also if I'm reading right that 90% doesn't even involve core areas of European settlement, actually it compromises Southern colonial Chile, which was a frontier region AFAIK.
 
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