Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

Post by caethan » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #174

alwillis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but no European could have credibly believed that the disease would spread throughout the new world to such effect. Certainly not, but once they figured out what was going on, they certainly aided and abetted the spread of these new diseases.

Which particular people? Was it like military people under orders from European leaders? Maybe someone could help me understand -- with such a prolific practice it must have been diaried and such? What are the best primary/secondary sources detailing the practice. I've heard the "they gave blankets but they knew the blankets had smallpox infection". But we presumably know who the they were. Presumably a lot of the co…

Post by caethan » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

AlotOfReading wrote: post #80

irrational wrote: post #49

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Is that true? I've read that 90+% of the population died from diseases, the vast majority without ever knowing about the European conquerors (that is, they never saw a gun). Imagine if 90% of the people in your nearest city died. How difficult would it be for a new group, immune to whatever killed almost everyone in the city, to move in and take over?

This is not accurate. Individual epidemics did not have mortalities even approaching the 90% range. What actually happened were dozens of epidemics over decades or centuries. Moreover, outside the Northeast, Columbian epidemics are closely associated with persistent European contact and colonization. It should also be noted that human populations are incredibly resilient to epidemics. In the absence of "other things"…

Post by Maultasche » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

caethan wrote: post #404

jcranmer wrote: post #258

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> Writing gave a huge advantage to the Western forces. By that I mean military men had access to a couple thousand years of military tactics books. Having advanced weapons is one thing, knowing strategy and tactics is quite another. If memory serves me correctly, military tactics didn't really become a genre until the late 16th century, after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires. And during the early 16…

Here you go, Bernal Diaz del Castillo's account of the conquest of Mexico, written as a soldier in Cortez' company: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:21 AM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #343

BurningFrog wrote: post #253

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This is very far from my expertise, but surely you can also live off the land? Hunting and fishing shouldn't be very different in Newfoundland compared to Norway/Iceland. Bring a few chickens along, and you have another food source. I assume/guess the vikings were better at this stuff than the Mayflower crowd.

They didn't want to live like that. It's one of the things Jared Diamond argues in Collapse: sure, they could have survived longer in Greenland if they adopted more of the customs of the Inuit, but this went against everything they considered important and valuable in life. They wouldn't be themselves any more if they did (and for all we know, a few of them may have been assimilated into the native population and sto…