2000 years of population swings among Indigenous Americans | Hacker News Reader

2000 years of population swings among Indigenous Americans

science.org

25 pointsgmays23 comments

If you have the chance, it's really worth making the trip to Cahokia, IL. It was the capital of one of those civilizations that peaked in the 12th century, and you can still climb the monumental earthworks and gain a sense of the place. Any society that DIYs a mountain in Illinois deserves to be remembered.

See also: The Piasa and Pere Marquette https://youtu.be/G14hwyYsPTo

The population was already declining when Europeans got here. But it dropped precipitously thereafter, starting almost immediately due to disease. By the 1600s, tribes in the east were nearly wiped out. Since the majority of "explorers" came to America after this time, the accounts of the native cultures reflect an already-defeated society.

For years, it was thought inconceivable that the native cultures encountered in the 1600s could have built such elaborate structures. The common understanding was full of racist overtones - these cultures were too "primitive" to have built cities. Reality is that if Europeans met Native Americans in say 1100, the situation would be reversed - the Americas were thriving with trade and cities while Europeans were largely subsistence-farming peasants caught in the dark ages.

If you're interested in this topic, definitely check out "Origin: A genetic history of the Americas" by Jennifer Raff.

The "Dark Ages" are a complete myth and Europeans were far more technologically, culturally, and economically advanced and prolific than Native Americans in the Early Middle Ages, in spite of deurbanization and the other recessions of the time period.

> The "Dark Ages" are a complete myth

I think you are greatly exaggerating an argument that merely attacks a strawperson: That everything was bad, etc. in the Dark Ages. The world isn't as simple as the strawperson, but the Dark Ages were pretty dark compared to ancient Rome before and, of course, the Englightenment that followed (in which, by a broader definition, we still live).

> Europeans were far more technologically, culturally, and economically advanced and prolific than Native Americans in the Early Middle Ages

Could you share some source to support that, where people can read more?

>First paragraph

The argument posited was that Europeans during the "Dark Ages" were inferior economically and culturally to the Native Americans. There's virtually no point in history in which this was true.

>Could you share some source to support that, where people can read more?

The Iron Age

Prolific Written Language

Interstate Commerce

Sophisticated Art, particularly music

Prolific Agrarian societies

Prolific complex architecture

That's just a few examples. There's no single source, it's self evident when surveying the Early Middle Ages.

Those are more claims; in what sources could we find support for them? Or maybe you are an historian or archaeologist?

> Prolific complex architecture

> Prolific Agrarian societies

Those did exist in the Americas, off the top of my head, and problably others did too.

> Or maybe you are an historian or archaeologist?

I don't mean that sarcastically - maybe you have some expertise.

Em. In 1492, most of the European population were still subsistence farming peasants. Those generally weren't the people who became explorers.

Given disease still would have wiped out the bulk of the Americas had people started to arrive in 1100 and it still would have taken a while before they got very far inland, I'm not entirely sure impressions would have been all that much different.

Read Hernan Cortez’s own description of the Aztec empire when he arrived.

I get a deep sense of gell-man amnesia from this paper. I don't have familiarity with all of the regions in the analysis, but the analysis don't match existing RC data for the southwest region at all. The well-understood RC peak numbers for AZ (HU 15) should be about century later than in the study (~1100). The 4 corners region (HU14) should be about 350 years later (~1150). The rio grande should be about 150 years later (~1200-1400), with a barely noticeable decline from 1400-1600. They explain this away as regional averaging, but it's sloppy to have some of the best regional RC datasets in the world available and not use them as analysis controls or even cite the relevant landmark papers. That's to say nothing of the much-discussed difficulty matching RC data to demography.

I don't know how bad the data is in some of the other areas, but I suspect it's not much better.

The paper gives a relative population loss between 1150 and 1500 CE of ~30%, with caveats.

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