Book Report

Part Next
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Last part was about (mostly) the northeastern US.

More about the US. According to first hand reports, by the Spainyards mostly, the interior of the US was highly populated in the fifteen and sixteen hundred.

DeSoto mounted an expedition that left florida and traveled all thru what is now the deep south, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and even parts of Texas. According to his journals there were people everywhere. Along all the major rivers, especially the mississippi, there were small villages about ever ten or twenty miles. He was looking for gold...didn't find any but he did find slaves.

Problem was that he had about two hundred pigs with him. His mobile food supply. Some of those pigs escaped. The descendents of which are the Arkansas razorbacks. The bad part was that the pigs carried all kinds of disease. The spanyards were immune but the indians weren't.

When the English appeared decades later all they saw were bones.

Moving on.

MesoAmerica...(Mexico) was densely populated around what is now Mexico City. Millions and Millions of people in North America. 95% fatality rate from the plagues. Almost everyone died.

The number of dead were well reported at the time. As the years passed however the 'historians' who hadn't seen the bones didn't believe the numbers. They kept cutting the estimates of the number of Indians who had died further and further. Eventualy the 'received' wisdom was that North American had been sparsely populated by nomads.

Not true. What they encountered were the decedents of a holocaust unlike anything that had ever happened before or since.