Americas Epidemics

Yes, it is sad. In the Americas that affected mostly to the small ethnic groups. They were usually acultured and assimilated fast enough, and culture and languages were forgotten. The large groups, though, like some large Native groups in the United States and Canada, the Natives of Mexico, the Mayas, the Quechuas and Aymara of the Andes, the Tupi-Guaranies of Paraguay, the Mapuches in Chile and Argentina, and some others, managed to preserve theirs culture up to the present.

Edited by pinguin - 21-Jul-2007 at 11:25

And estimation I have say 16 millions. Which is not a small number at all for the time. 2 millions is too few, I believe. I bet Mexico alone had that number a century afterwars.

Actually, that's quite interesting. The densities of people in the Americas varied quite a lot in contact. It was very high in Mexico and the Andes. Relative high in Central Chile and Argentina. Amazingly low in Patagonia, and relatively low in the Caribbean, North America and the Amazons.

Well, it is true. The Inuits were not isolated from the Eurasian masses, having contact with Eastern Siberia and also with Europe (Greenland). However, below the Inuits in the map, and with the except of the few norse posts in Newfoundland (and perhaps other places in North America), all the rest of people of the Americas were isolated for more than 20.000 years of the outside world.

Edited by pinguin - 21-Jul-2007 at 23:34

Well, I agree that ephidemics could be transmitted. In the matter of diffusion I was amazed on the similarities of the totem poles of the Amerindians of the Seattle region and the Ainus in Japan. It just doesn't seem a coincidence.

Ainus are actually closer to australoids than to caucasoids. In fact, the "australoids" Amerindians found in the Americas are supposed by some to be Ainus.