[cracrecry]

"When he plunged the red and gold flag of Spain into the ground on the Paria Peninsula in Venezuela, it marked the beginning of a "great dying". It's been estimated that 56 million indigenous people were killed across the Americas by 1600 – so many, it cooled the Earth's climate."

Oh man,What a piece of bullisht! comming from what was a respected medium in the past like the BBC.

There are some people that believe that millions of people could have died because of the illnesses coming from Europe, that at the same time came Asia and Africa as they are united. To say that those people were killed on purpose is a piece of sht, and propaganda without proof.

Not to mention the 50 million that is absolutely outrageous. Not even the British and North Americans(now US and Canada)native extermination had such high numbers, and that was on purpose("the only good Indian is the dead Indian" founder's fathers quote) and using technology available in almost 20th century.

Spaniards and Portuguese in 1600s were very small numbers and technology was more advanced but not that much. They conquered South America with the help of native tribes, something that is well documented.

And the queen of Spain made native Indians that had baptised by law equal to Spaniards. Something that people in the USA only made in the middle of 20th century with Indians, Mexicans(from conquered territories like California) and black people.

[neffy]

I think you will find the numbers come from 1491 by Charles C. Mann, which is one of the books that kicked off a reexamination of the entire settlement by Europeans of North And South America, and which also goes into the reasons why the native population had little resistance to the European diseases. The climate change theories compete with Volcanic explanations, but there was certainly an impact, the great swarms of the now extinct passenger pigeon for example are believed to be due to the die off.

It wasn´t in some sense on purpose, smallpox blankets aside, the first contacts from Europe spread disease everywhere they went, mortality rates have been estimated at 90% or more. No coherent society survives that kind of event. Francisco de Orellana or somebody on his expedition probably carried the diseases that depopulated the Amazon, and led to it being empty when it was revisited..

And had that not happened. If the native population had been resistant to the new diseases, then the Europeans would have been thrown back, as the first US colonies seem to have been. The technological advantage was certainly there, but would have been impossible to sustain on a sea based invasion across an entire ocean at that time.

[biorach]

> To say that those people were killed on purpose

The article does not say these people were killed on purpose

> And the queen of Spain made native Indians that had baptised by law equal to Spaniards

The reality on the ground was very different nearly everywhere in Spanish America. This is well documented in many reputable histories

[philbo]

The passage you quote says "across the Americas", so presumably includes both the northern and southern continents.

[T-A]

> 50 million that is absolutely outrageous. Not even the British and North Americans(now US and Canada)native extermination had such high numbers

North America was far less populated than South America to begin with; 7-18 million vs maybe 60 million, according to the estimates quoted at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi...

[__alexs]

A genocide that was accidentally extra effective because you happened to be resistant to a different set of diseases to the other people is still a genocide. They the same playbook as the founding fathers did.