* Most anthropologists of the *New World* now generally accept a figure
of 80 million for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Contrary
to an idea that this would have made the land *crowded*, it only
equates to a ratio of 7-8/square mile. Connecticut has 3.5 million
people living on only 4,200 sqare miles, with no urban with a pop. over
150,000 and is still over 80% forest. One must remember that maize
horticulture is very labor intensive, and for populations to sustain
themselve in such a way, they need to have fairly substantial numbers.
*An earlier poster was correct in stating that Snow's _Science_ article
only deals with supposed low mortality rates among the Haudenosaunee
and Algonquin populations of New York, but it should be added that such
arguments for low Haudenosaunee mortalities are _highly_ controversial
(one only needed to have been at last year's NEAA to recognize such),
namely because they _do not_ take into account the numbers of
Haudenosaunee *adopted* (forcibly or otherwise) during the Contact
Period (thus making post-epidemic populations appear considerably
larger.)
*European diseases travelled well ahead of Europeans... Thus, by the
time Europeans appeared on the frontier, many groups had been decimated
for a dozen or more years, giving the appearance of a *vacant* land.
In addition, due to lower numbers, many groups had abandon year-round
sedentism and accompanying maize agriculture and return to nomadic
hunting and gathering, lending more credence to the impression of an
*uninhabited* wilderness.
*There is a lot of controversy regarding whether Native immune systems
*inferior* to those of their European invaders, and this is why there
were such high mortalities, but such arguments are not even necessary.
Mortality among Indian groups was high for a number of reasons:
- Unlike Europeans who had contracted many *childhood* diseases as
children, and thus *acquired* immunity (or died), noone in infected
Native communities had ever been exposed, and so _everyone_ got the
disease at the same time. Most childhood diseases are more serious
when adult get them (adults can deal with high temperatures as well as
children), and incapacitated adults couldn't take care of children.
With everyone sick, there was noone to take care of anyone, in fact.
Most anthropologists now agree that many, many fatalities were caused
by dehydration, not the diseases themselves.
- Diseases spread from town to town as people left infected villages,
already contagieous, and went to live with relatives. With noone to
tend fields, harvests rotted, and famine, or nomadism, set in.
As an addendum, I wanted to add a few more cents regarding the
*tropical* debate. I'm not sure if the parties involved are aware that
_much_ of the Mid-Atlantic coast (Virginia and the Carolinas) are
considered _sub-tropical_ during the summer. In fact, many countries
consider Washington, DC a _hardship_ post during the summer. At
Jamestown, there was a 80% mortality rate for new European inhabitants
over their first 10 years, namely from _tropical_ diseases, yellow
fever, cholera, etc.
Well, that must have added up to more than .02, so I'll end here <g>...
MB Williams
Dept. of Anthropology, UMass-Amherst