Let’s make a few assumptions. Both North American tribes and European tribes are made up of people. People are people. You have short and tall. Some are smart, some dumb. All the varieties of humanity apply to both. Sure there might be some small differences but not enough to be significant. What happened to all the people who should have been in North America?
You can’t blame it on disease. Remember that they theoretically had no immunity to European disease so they must not have had to deal with the same bugs. If they had different ones, why didn’t they send plagues to Europe. Yes, I know about syphilis. It did not wipe out Europe.
It certainly can’t be wars and famine. Europe is one long litany of war and famine.
Where did all the people go?
I have a theory based on culture. Culture is not innate. Culture is implanted. Culture is more powerful than heredity. Most cultures of North America were a type of warrior culture. Not all but the vast majority. You were not considered a real man until you had been to war and shown you had the proper skills. This by it’s very nature would automatically start by cutting your population in half. That is a minimum. If each surviving male killed at least one other male, half would survive. Since the men did the hunting there was a limit on how many wives and children they could support. And in a warrior culture it would not stop at just one. Status and rank would depend on how great a warrior you were. One reason there were not more people is that they worked hard at killing each other off.
Are you seeing where the people had gone?
To be continued...
homo unius libri
I still tend to go with the disease theory. They find more evidence all the time that Europeans were here much earlier than originally believed.
ReplyDeleteI have a talk I share at school about all the evidence we have for pre-Colombian visits by Europeans. There was even one Norseman who tried to start a colony in the time of Leif Erickson. He lasted three years and was finally driven out by the locals. The Norse visited regularly to harvest lumber. I guess that disease could have been passed that way. Then you have the Aztec legends that said a god would appear that fit Cortez very well.
ReplyDeleteMaybe someday we will know.
Thanks for sharing.
Grace and peace.