Also, from Bill Ruddiman's article in Scientific American, March, 2005: "An even worse catastrophe followed in the Americas after 1492, when Europeans introduced smallpox and a host of other diseases that killed around 50 million people, or about 90 percent of the pre-Columbian population. The American pandemic coincides with the largest CO2 drop of all, from 1550 to 1800." [Pre-Columbian natives regularly burnt forests to encourage certain types of wildlife & to allow farming.] "Global climate would have cooled as a result, until each pandemic passed and rebounding populations began cutting and burning forests anew." From: https://physics.ucf.edu/~britt/Climate/Reading5-Did%20humans%20alter%20globa... To: C:\Reading5-Did humans alter global climate.pdf Size: 1.5 MB (1,569,673 bytes) At 02:41 PM 5/12/2016, Mike Beeler wrote:
Here's a recent post that claims ~95% of native Americans were killed by disease Columbus brought;
discusses why Europeans generally had stronger immune systems; and says it wasn't all one-way:
the native Americans gave the Old World syphilis!
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/native-americans-didnt-wipe-... <http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/native-americans-didnt-wipe-europeans-diseases/>
-- Mike
On May 12, 2016, at 2:44 PM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
[...] Good example: the indigenous Americans were cut off from Europeans for at least 10,000 and possibly as much as 20,000 years. Yes, Columbus brought over diseases that likely wiped out 60-80% of indigenous Americans. Nevertheless, these diseases didn't wipe them *all* out. (I don't recall specifically, but I think the indigenous Americans gave Columbus & the other explorers some diseases that Europeans hadn't seen for quite a while, as well.)
<shields up for incoming flack>