No one knows how many indigenous peoples there were in the Americas before the 'invasion' by Europeans. Some accounts say there were hundreds of millions; but rational historians call this estimate "pseudo-scientific number crunching". There are very few if any references written by the indigenous concerning population statistics, and records written by the British military are unreliable and extremely hard to read. There are some accounts written by early settlers though that mention 'very few Indians in West Virginia when they arrived. Some estimates by rational historians who have no political agendas put the number of Native Americans present at the time of the arrival of the Europeans at only 2 million, not the 150 million that we are told. Not only are there few reliable documents, there is no archeological evidence like skeletons and grave sites to prove the natives died en mass by aggression of the Europeans or by their diseases. So why are we constantly being told that Christian Europeans wiped out tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples like the Native Americans, Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs? Who is telling these stories, and for what reason? There are written records of the Spanish conquistadors which in no way jive with the 'official' accounts of mass murder and genocide. In fact some of the letters written home by the Spaniard Herman Cortez describe an entirely different scenario. Cortez describes how the indigenous were more that happy to go to war against their fellow Aztecs, that human sacrifice was rampant, and, in one letter, describes a famine which seems to have decimated much of the Aztec population. He also describes the good rapport he had with many of the Aztecs. (From the American Historical Society: Letters of Hernan Cortez.) From the information I could find after researching for five hours: there were only about 1000 Spaniards in the first wave of the 'invasions' of Mexico and Peru. Still it is insisted that we believe that through biological warfare and with their superior steel weapons, these first Spaniards conquered and wiped out entire populations equaling tens of millions of indigenous people. We are led to believe that the indigenous people carried few if any diseases before the Europeans arrived. In fact, in one account, the Spaniards arrived to find the indigenous dying from a hemorrhagic disease, sounding quite like Ebola. Other diseases they no doubt succumbed to were cholera, the plague as it is caused by the hanta virus found in mice, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, bacterial infections, pneumonia, malaria, Chagas, typhoid, and even TB, etc. In short, the indigenous died from native-born diseases and did so before the entry of Europeans to the Americas. They also were regularly wiped out by catastrophes like famine, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. So why are we and our children being told that their demise was strictly the fault of the Europeans? Then there is the story that Christian Europeans were the slave traders when in fact the Jews were front and center of the slave trade. And concerning the slave trade, history books tell us that millions of Africans died due to slavery. But this is ridiculous. Slavery was a business and you don't damage your goods before you sell them and when you need them to make a profit. There is so much more to be said on this topic but I would have to write a thesis to list all the hype and lies about Europeans wiping out, and enslaving entire populations of indigenous people. So the big question is why is there so much fiction written about the Europeans. What is the point? The point is to demonize European Christians, while elevating certain other people to be the guardians, defenders and caretakers of non-whites in the world. The most important point is that you tell a lie enough times and it becomes the truth. So, to the indigenous peoples in the world, the murderous Christian Europeans wiped out their ancestors. This is serious business as the rule of law is breaking down, and the indigenous may soon get the license to pay us back for all the pain and suffering we supposedly caused their ancestors, and are still causing them. Our children are at risk and in serious danger because of these lies. It is time to confront mainstream historians about the lies they have been spreading for a hundred years--before we are massacred en mass by the billions of indigenous peoples in the world. Make them produce reliable references about all the atrocities we have supposedly committed before it is too late. Make them tell the truth before the indigenous of the world kill us all.
The reason the population of North America was so low, for anyone who was curious, can be summed in this graph: It's the average annual rainfall level in the month of July. July is a very important time of the year for growing crops because that's the part of the year that is at its warmest, potentially conducive to growth, and also the part of the year when plants would be under the most heat stress. The problem on the North American continent is that most of the rainfall comes in the Winter. That presents some problems. In the North, it is too cold for food crops to grow in the Winter. In the South it can be really hot and difficult for plants to grow in the Summer if they do not get enough water at that time. There is a section of the continental U.S. that's in the deep South and gets a fair amount of rain all year, but similar to other tropical parts of the world, the humidity is very high, there's a lot of mosquitoes carrying disease, and it was traditionally more difficult for people to live there. There was a fairly high native population in the Mississippi river delta and around the forests of Tennessee, but not very high. The forests in Tennessee were fairly remote and inaccessible at that time. The mid-lower part of the Mississippi river has a lack of trees; while in the upper parts the soil is not as fertile and the growing season is shorter, with unpredictable cold-snaps in early Spring that can ruin crops. In the great lakes reason wild rice was grown, but that only grows in the lake water and takes a lot of labor to harvest, and the Winters can be pretty cold. In the Southwest, agriculture was limited to availability of water, so not a lot of locations. There's simply no part of the present-day continental U.S. that was favorable to the birth of a large civilization, with the technology and crops available at that time.
Did Mexico and Peru not have similar problems? The American river system has always been prime real estate. I think you're overthinking it. Europe north of the Alps wasn't always the demographic giant it would become. Neither were the river systems of what are now Ukraine and Russia. North America wasn't the giant it's real estate suggested it could be because people simply didn't start showing up in suitable numbers until the 17th Century.
Peru has a high up mountain elevation, so the climate is a bit similar to Europe during Spring, but year round. (In fact it's from Peru that the modern large sized strawberry originated, before that Europe only had tiny wild strawberries) If you look at the Aztec capital (precursor to modern Mexico) it's very ingenous what they did. Their entire city was made up of artificial islands in a lake, so there was plenty of water for agriculture. There used to be quite a number of trees surrounding that part of Mexico too. The population of pre-Columbian Mexico was higher than what it was in the present day area of the U.S. and Canada.
Which explains why the midwest is called the bread basket of the US, and California is the largest producer. And what about hunting? It makes one wonder how the Inca's and Aztecs ever survived.
So much ignorance. Wheat was brought to the Americas later. Wheat can survive colder temperatures but more importantly requires less water than maize. Most commercial wheat agriculture today involves high-tech irrigation from deep underground water aquifers. (And actually there is a big problem today because a lot of these aquifers have been over-depleted and run the risk of running dry) If you try to farm wheat in Kansas the old way, the production will be very low. Kansas doesn't get a lot of rain. There's also some evidence to suggest that the native people of the Americas aren't as well-adapted to digesting wheat as people from Europe or the Middle East. Reliance primarily on hunting cannot sustain large populations or population densities. The game animals become depleted too quickly, and hunting (especially before the advent of guns) is also much more labor intensive than a civilization that specializes in agriculture. Many common game animals, such as rabbits and deer, are pretty lean and their meat lacks fat. This is also something important, especially in the diets of people who expend most of their day moving around. This is something mountain men and trappers who ventured out West found out. Despite hunting game everyday they nearly starved and had gaunt figures. Today it's often seen as unhealthy, but in the ancient world fat was seen as very important, across different cultures. Go to Asia, it's the fatty cuts of meat that a seen as especially desirable. Part of this is technological innovation that has made fatty plant oils so readily available. Imagine for a moment your life without cooking oil, fried foods, chips, butter, or fat-rich cake. Try it for 2 weeks, and you will likely be feeling cravings for fat. No salad dressing either, ice cream and chocolate is also a no-no, since the people of the Americas didn't have milk or cream, and chocolate only grew in Southern Mexico. Acorns (18% fat) used to be an important part of the diets of native Americans, but that was only possible where oak trees grew and it took a lot of labor to pound the acorns and leach them out in stream water to make them edible. Probably would have been difficult to completely rely on acorns because, even after leaching, they still contain traces of bitter tannins (too much is difficult for the kidneys to metabolize), so they were still relying to some extent on hunting.
This is obviously a failed thread. How embarrassing and frustrating. I appreciate the few responses; but the purpose of the thread wasn't to discuss the means of subsistence of the indigenous people. The purpose was to call attention to the propaganda non-whites are being fed regarding how murderous and evil the white race is supposed to be; and how, when the rule of law breaks down, our children and grandchildren will be at risk being slaughtered by non-whites--in a 'payback' frenzy. South Africa is a good example of what it will be like if minorities get a stronghold in developed countries. First of all, we will all be living in third-world conditions, but worse than that will be brutally tortured like the farmers are in South Africa. This is a Boer ghetto in South Africa. Many of these sprung up after apartheid; and after whitey got run out of their jobs because of affirmative action. South Africa is a third-world hell-hole now after minorities took over the government. It is the number one rape capital in the world, has one of the highest murder rates in the world. This is mostly because the police force is all minority, and is horribly corrupt.
It looks like many of these civilizations that left behind large mounds declined hundreds of years before the white man came, from the archeologic evidence. With the exception of the Aztecs (Mexico) and the Incas (Peru), European explorers never encountered any large-scale centralized civilizations in the Americas.
