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Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

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Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#211

Post by foxhop »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #117
danjac wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the animals that were there mostly didn't contribute serious new ones Aren't syphilis and Lyme disease of New World origin?

There's quite a lot of debate over the precise origins of syphilis. I'm only peripherally familiar with the literature, but my understanding is that recent work suggests (but not concludes) that it might have been endemic to afroeurasia rather than or as well as the Americas. Lyme disease is indeed wholly American, but it's not epidemic or even particularly mortal.

Lyme is a scary to go through, I've had it twice now, here is my latest encounter: https://youtu.be/xbPr7DHwSIw

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#212

Post by sampo »

ren_engineer wrote: post #192
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #28

An interesting counter-factual that comes to mind - if the Norse Greenlanders had brought smallpox or other diseases with them, then Native Americans would have had 500 years to recover (and keep immunity?) - The conquistadors would have faced millions of not-dying-natives. A much different world would have resulted.

is there any explanation for why disease didn't kill in the reverse direction? Why weren't Europeans wiped out by Native American diseases?

According to Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond, Europeans had a history of living in close encounters with farm animals, so they had adopted diseases from the animals.

And also the Eurasian geography made trade, and exchange of both culture and domesticated animals, and also diseases, easier in the east-west direction. Because in east-west direction the exchange happens inside the same climate zone. Cow, horse, pig, sheep, goat, donkey, chicken, duck, goose, cat, dog, these didn't all originate in a single location. But in Eurasia, people were able to adopt domesticated animals and plants from their eastern and western neighbors.

The geography in the Americas makes it more easy to travel and trade in the south-north direction. But this is less useful, because you would only get access to domesticated plants and animals from different climate zones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel#Outline...

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#213

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

mtoohig wrote: post #207
waserwill wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it is meaningless since they did not write about it not they stablished commerce Depends on what you find meaningful! There was almost certainly exchange of goods between Polynesians and South Americans. The presence of early sweet potato agriculture in Polynesia and genetic admixture in both regions points to non-trivial contact. There are even parallels in terms of folk-tales [0]! (Though these are likely old…

I live in Vanuatu and is it very far to the west side of the Pacific yet the almost southern most island of Vanuatu, Aneityum, has stories of what they called the "Yellow People" that were on the island before they, Melanesians, arrived from northern islands. These people on the island were excellent stone carvers and could make stone walls which the current locals admit they never learned from the "yellow people". O…

Could also be that last push of Denisovans that was recently discovered through the genetic record.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#214

Post by paganel »

pasabagi wrote: post #178
kibwen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In particular we can imagine it might look more similar to how China, India, Africa, etc. turned out, with subjugated local populations serving under foreign imperial governors. The eventual collapse of the empire might then result in most of the Americas being populated by ethnically Native American states.

Not sure. China, India, Africa etc were colonized for much shorter periods of time. One point of comparison would be Ireland. They didn't suffer from colonist-brought diseases, because obviously they had all the same diseases already, but they did suffer a precipitous decline in population. Another example would be the west coast of Africa, which was similarly colonized from early modernity on.

> but they did suffer a precipitous decline in population.

That was a TIL for me, because I was about to say tat the "precipitous decline in population" only happened in the mid-19th century, i.e. a couple of centuries after Cromwell's campaign (the point where the English power over Ireland really became a colonial one), but then I skimmed through the History section of the Ireland wikipedia page [1] and I read this:

> This control was consolidated during the wars and conflicts of the 17th century, including the English and Scottish colonisation in the Plantations of Ireland, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Williamite War.

and

> Physician-general William Petty estimated that 504,000 Catholic Irish and 112,000 Protestant settlers died, and 100,000 people were transported, as a result of the war.[66] If a prewar population of 1.5 million is assumed, this would mean that the population was reduced by almost half.

Again, I personally had no idea that Ireland's population was reduced by almost half immediately after the English conquest that happened during Cromwell's time, that's kind of gruesome and imo not studied enough outside of Ireland and the UK (I suppose that this subject is studied in there).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland#The_Kingdom_of_Ireland

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#215

Post by HarryHirsch »

gremloni wrote: post #198
BurningFrog wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting! Of course, if the native population died off around them, the Vikings would probably have expanded their settlements and perhaps ruled North America instead.

Maybe but the Viking’s modus operandi seemed like it was pillage/rape/kidnap the best looking women and then head out. I can only think of one settlement the Vikings set up in Gaul.

Not really - they had a three-pronged business model based on ranching sheep, trading and, yes, raiding. Wasn't it Erik the Red who had two brothers, and their father asked all three what they were going to be when they had grown up. Says the first he is going to be a farmer and his sheepflock is going to be so large that he will have to dig another waterhole. Says the second he will go trading and he will have to build another barn to keep his wares in. Says Erik, who was the youngest, he is going to be a Viking and he is going to raid both of them.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#216

Post by [deleted] »

munk-a wrote: post #42
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #28

An interesting counter-factual that comes to mind - if the Norse Greenlanders had brought smallpox or other diseases with them, then Native Americans would have had 500 years to recover (and keep immunity?) - The conquistadors would have faced millions of not-dying-natives. A much different world would have resulted.

Additionally - if natives had adopted and continued the domestication of animals that norse greenlanders brought over (probably pigs at least) then there might have been a counter-plague when europeans again visited in 500 years.

[deleted]

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#217

Post by philwelch »

mig39 wrote: post #120
philwelch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to some sources, one factor is that Newfoundland was so heavily populated with indigenous people that there wasn’t enough room for a Norse colony to grow. By the time the English made it back to Newfoundland, smallpox and other epidemics had devastated the indigenous population.

Can you cite one of these sources? The archeological record doesn't seem to show a large aboriginal population in Newfoundland around 1000 C.E. I don't think the Beothuk, for example, were ever very numerous, certainly not as numerous as other aboriginal people in Labrador and Greenland at the time. It wasn't just the Norse that had a hard time living in Newfoundland at the time. It wasn't very hospitable to any huma…

A good start is the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann. That book fundamentally changed my understanding of the pre-Colombian Americas.

> It wasn't just the Norse that had a hard time living in Newfoundland at the time. It wasn't very hospitable to any humans.

I don’t think it was as crowded as, say, New England (early explorers of the coast of New England, IIRC, wrote that there wasn’t enough open shoreline to even make landfall on). However much or however little of Newfoundland was habitable, though, was already inhabited by the time the Norse got there.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#218

Post by nl »

voz_ wrote: post #195
AlotOfReading wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mesoamerica had high population densities long before Spain was even a thing. Indigenous Americans didn't carry over many of the serious diseases from the old world and the animals that were there mostly didn't contribute serious new ones. There are a few cases where we can see things like tuberculosis (from seals), but they're limited and evidence of them largely hasn't survived in extant populations. Likewise, Icel…

> Mesoamerica had high population densities long before Spain was even a thing. Citation needed?

According to NASA archaeologist Tom Sever, the Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica was one of the densest populations in human history. Around 800 A.D., after two millennia of steady growth, the Mayan population reached an all-time high. Population density ranged from 500 to 700 people per square mile in the rural areas, and from 1,800 to 2,600 people per square mile near the center of the Mayan Empire (in what is now northern Guatemala). In comparison, Los Angeles County averaged 2,345 people per square mile in 2000.[1]

[1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Maya

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#219

Post by cestith »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #28

An interesting counter-factual that comes to mind - if the Norse Greenlanders had brought smallpox or other diseases with them, then Native Americans would have had 500 years to recover (and keep immunity?) - The conquistadors would have faced millions of not-dying-natives. A much different world would have resulted.

There are quite a few branching subthreads talking about the spread of different diseases, different living conditions leading to different immunity levels, and all sorts of ideas around why it didn't seem to spread deadly illnesses back to Europe as much as Europeans spread deadly ones to the Americas. One I don't see much about is that in the initial exploration, settlement, and colonizing groups the traffic of Europeans was largely one way and screened for serious diseases as best they could before being allowed on a ship.

If Europeans became deathly ill in the Americas, they were probably left in the Americas to die rather than being taken back to Europe. The First Peoples from the Americas were not on average traveling to Europe and staying there for months, years, or lifetimes. They were staying among people in the Americas where they could continue to spread the illnesses. Healthy young soldiers, sailors, and merchants could bring both asymptomatic and presymptomatic cases of illness across an ocean to populations who weren't traveling nearly as much in the opposite direction. When entire colonies of mixed ages, genders, professions, and social roles moved permanently from Europe to the Americas, likewise the trips back to Europe also for former Europeans were far less common and included far fewer than the number of people continuing to interact with others in the Americas.

In short, it was probably easier for mass migrations of Europeans to spread one or more cases of a disease to the Americas where it then spread from more prolonged contact with the population than it was for a European to contract a serious illness in the Americas and take it back to Europe on a military or merchant ship.

As to the Norse and smallpox, the Crusades of the late 11th century and the 12th century were a big part of its spread to most of Europe. There's a very good chance I think there was little risk of a Norse ship spreading it in the early 11th century. As you said, it could be a very different world if they had.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#220

Post by [deleted] »

sillyquiet wrote: post #111
29athrowaway wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time, Europeans fought one tribe at a time, rather than a large alliance of Native Americans. Then, in many cases, they made natives fight each other, and they recruited "auxiliary indians". The siege of Tenochtitlan involved 200,000 Tlaxcalans fighting on the European side. In other cases, such as the Battle of Cajamarca, they used their horse + armor advantage to kidnap the leader and ask everyone else…

"They made" natives fight each other is a weird way of putting it. Warring tribes were more than happy to use the Europeans against their enemies. And many of those enmities long predated the arrival of Europeans.

[deleted]
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