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Comment by Gualdrapo | Hacker News Reader

Not sure if it's 100% clickbait, there is some really interesting stuff I didn't know.

Also it makes me realize that all indigenous peoples across what you call the Americas have been/are being subjected to all kinds of discrimination and systematic extermination, from North America all the way to the island of Tierra del Fuego, and of course here in Colombia. We all try to hide our own past for some reason and feel ashamed of it while ignoring the spaniard/european culture and beliefs they brought there have huge flaws compared to what was already here for thousands of years.

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That's true, the European explorers and colonists did commit horrific crimes against humanity. But let's not romanticize the indigenous cultures either. They were equally flawed and did just as terrible things to other local groups.

https://www.science.org/content/article/feeding-gods-hundred...

> the European explorers and colonists did commit horrific crimes against humanity

not only horrific but the biggest hollocaust in the entire human history, with around 34 million people killed from 1500 up to 2025

with that said, people romanticize them too much. canibalism, war and also a (probably) big impact in one of the most rich ecosystems of Earth: the Amazon was ripped with their practices of burning stuff and planting dominant species among the forest that reduced for sure the amount of biodiversity in their +15,000 years of existence there. tho not defending EU ppl ripping out their forest till the border of rivers

>not only horrific but the biggest hollocaust in the entire human history

Does this number include deaths due to introduced diseases?

If it does then the Black Death introduced by Genghis Khan in the Middle East and Europe is likely higher.

That number is statistically too high.

Most historians pinpoint it at around 5-15 million. Communist Russia (3-20 million) and Communist China (15-40 million) both killed more.

your number is about North America. i hate when people sum America to the North. we are chatting about everyone from both continents

i went to check on the doc. i watched (https://youtu.be/laW_Yf6N4kU?si=vi3KY9prfdqfNybC&t=1176) and i have to make a correction: they point out that the majority of the 80 million people living on America were killed on the first 100 years of colonization. they do talk impartially as it being one of the biggest holocaust known to the humanity. i don't agree on excluding death numbers from disease. it wasn't something like the Black Death (25 million) where effected countries weren't in war, nor they were also being blown out of existence by superior (war) technology

and 80 million aren't even the highest estimations historians suggest [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi... ¶ some historians point up to 100 million people killed

> they point out that the majority of the 80 million people living on America were killed on the first 100 years of colonization. they do talk impartially as it being one of the biggest holocaust known to the humanity. i don't agree on excluding death numbers from disease. it wasn't something like the Black Death (25 million) where effected countries weren't in war, nor they were also being blown out of existence by superior (war) technology

A majority of deaths by disease occurred before Europeans even made contact with the regional population. So to differentiate the Black Death because it didn't involve a state of conflict doesn't make sense. Most of the natives who died had never even seen a European, let alone live in a state of conflict with them. In fact, AFAIU disease began sweeping across the Americas before colonial conquests had even begun, initial transmission occurring during exploratory and trade missions.

source of this claim?

because when we type about "disease" on the context of the America holocaust, we are typing about colonizers actively spreading disease as biological weapons {0}

{0} https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41109292/

High end estimates of people killed due to the deliberate spread of disease are dozens to hundreds. The pre-real-contact wave was obviously many orders of magnitude more deadly. Even your own link mentions one reason it was ineffective was prior exposure.

the vast majority of indigenous people died on the 1° 100 years of colonization (from 1500 (when America was "found") -> 1600); the number goes up to 80 million people dead... the paper i mentioned says partial immunity didn't taking effect on a war past 1700! do you really think pox wasn't abused the time they were killing millions of natives per year? that's what i'm reffering to, not (somehow) recent wars

Yes, there is no credible evidence of your claim. The big disease waves stuck most natives before they ever saw a European, after contacted peoples caught disease in the normal fashion. The very few later documented attempts we have are almost completely ineffective, and often from people in a very desperate situation (e.g., besieged and dying of smallpox) - just a last ditch gambit that never accomplished its goal.

Where can I read this certainty of destroyed biodiversity? That sounds like an extremely unsupported position, considering that the Amazon has the highest rates of biodiversity today.

The continued belittling of indigenous forestry practices contributes to out of control wildfires.

https://portal.amelica.org/ameli/journal/181/1813954027/html...

https://www.sp-amazon.org/publications

> The forest itself, paleo-scientists of all stripes say, is much more domesticated than previously thought.

This implies that the biodiversity is a result of (or, at the very least, supported by) the indigenous practices, which is a far cry from your claim that biodiversity suffered from those practices.

have you actually read anything? indigenous were pointed as responsibles for cultivating dominant species which had an impact and shaped the flora. the last website i published is a whole book showing how its rich biodiversity happened over multi million year processes. it also points out the impact on the "funneling" of species indigenous occupations had

i still think despite their impact, they were exemplar compared to what we had on the rest of the world (but i never studied Asia). but it's not like they were magicians that had no impact on anything and lived in complete synergy with nature by increasing biodiversity. and if you think cultivating biological dominant species across a forest has no impact i suggest you to research on the many examples of alien flora effects on various ecosystem on modernity or even try to throw some Hawaiian Baby Woodrose somewhere out their native land to check how much these species take over anothers. they probably killed and reduced species expression to settle themselves there. but cest la vie. living has an impact after all

You said certainty but now you say probably. Which is it?

I never claimed that they had no impact, but it is clear that the impact tended towards neutral to positive because: a) the forest was still there; and b) it had the higher rate of biodiversity in the world.

Indigenous burns in California are recognized as being a net positive for the old growth forests and the biodiversity within. It doesn’t take a lot to extrapolate that the same was true in the Amazon.

To state it a different way: yes, of course and without doubt their very presence affected biodiversity.

But you were talking about their practices, which tended towards custodial over exploitative. And overall these practices clearly supported biodiversity as a whole, otherwise we wouldn’t note the biodiversity of this region as anything special (see again the quote I took from your first article).

I apologize anyway for my slightly combative tone. I appreciate the resources you shared even if I haven’t had time to absorb them in full yet.

i'm just typing the way i de-romanticize them. we don't know much about their culture nor how much effected Amazon's biodiversity. what if it had twice the amount of species before their extensive practice of growing hyper dominant species? 11,000 years of human settlement on a land that evolved for millions of years in various separated isles that later got together via geologic events (thus the rich biodiversity of the region) can have a great impact

from the very 1° comment i made i typed a (probably) when i touched this subject. if Europeans took indigenous knowledge to their land, maybe Europe forests wouldn't be ripped out. maybe it wouldn't work because their ecosystem. who knows. i'm not comparing indigenous people to anyone, i'm just trying to reflect they weren't magic saints of the forest as people portray. as a vegan i also dismiss a bunch of their living practices

also California has nothing to do with the Amazon. that land catches fires naturally by lightning. various places that this phenomena happens evolved to deal with it. have you ever been to Amazon? it's so humid. regions of "terra preta" (indigenous practice of making the soil fertile, which involves burning) allowed them to grow various stuff but again, they were into hyper dominant species not expanding the forest (i guess). and as far i researched, terra preta regions are less than 2% of the whole Amazon forest

Fair points and thank you for expanding.

These super lative rich western diabolism always sounds like trump when i read it.

all of my arguments made on this thread don't try to justify the colonization. that's why i typed 'holocaust'. heck i would even like Portuguese churches melting their gold back to Brazil make electronics and their government having to actively help the extensive social problems the country still has to deal with

don't link me with that guy

These numbers are surely numbers on a spreadsheet, unless you are referring to literal bodies that have been counted.

In this article itself, we read that:

> When Estrada-Belli first came to Tikal as a child, the best estimate for the classic-era (AD600-900) population of the surrounding Maya lowlands – encompassing present day southern Mexico, Belize and northern Guatemala – would have been about 2 million people. Today, his team believes that the region was home to up to 16 million

The point is that spreadsheet estimates can be so wrong, they are verging on meaningless.

The Aztecs in particular were kind of uniquely terrible, both for their own citizens and for every oppressed pseudo-vassal-state around them. It's one of those weird accidents of history that Spanish colonizers were able to step into the power vacuum after the fall of Tenochtitlan and have at least some people genuinely think 'yes, this is better than the last boss'.

They were kind of to blame for the fall of Tenochtitlan no? Cortez was welcomed as an "Ambassador" vs as a conqueror.

They rather put in with Cortez then send their kids off to the annual Aztec Hunger Games [Flower Wars].

Cortez came to Tenochtitlan as an 'ambassador' at the head of an army of 200,000 angry neighbors of the Aztecs, who had realized pretty fast that even a few of these 'gun' things would be really useful for cracking the city's structural resistance to sieges.

While I have no doubt that most Western colonial empires did not have the conquered's best interests at heart, I've read a theory (particularly about the Spaniards and Portugese in Latin America), is just Westerners are in aggregate were just better at running civilization, which is a horrible crime to utter in some circles, but I feel like the evolution of Western systems of governance, diplomacy, technology, culture made it superior to most civilizations in the marketplace of ideas.

One could see the mass appeal of a faraway king who promises three square meals, a decent lodging, a reasonable legal system, and preaches unconditional brotherly love, to every human being. And even if some of those things are only true some of the time, when taken in aggregate, this led to these people winning just often enough that the scales tipped in their favor over time.

And while most non-Western civilizations were certainly superior over certain time periods in some aspect, those who ended up not being conquered, either had constant contact with the West to know what to expect, or recognized their own shortcomings and rapidly endeavored to remedy them.

I don't think military conquest of a faraway land can be maintained without the consent of the populance, certainly not as a profitable endeavor, and that usually involves offering something to the populance they couldn't get otherwise.

There are plenty of examples of people subjugated for centuries who have kept their religion, customs and identity, likewise most of the jihadists who shout 'Death To America!' probably still like Star Wars.

Civilisations in the Americas were significantly less technologically developed than those in Eurasia. We focus our analysis on the Spanish and Portuguese, but the outcome would not have been much different had their place been taken by the Ottoman or the Chinese.

The Mayan and the Aztecs were roughly at a similar level of development as ancient Sumer or Babylon: good agricultural practices, irrigation, astronomy, elaborated culture, rich mythologies, very basic metallurgy, early state structures, etc.

Sumer and Babylon were great civilisations whose legacy can still be traced today. The same is true for the Maya and the Aztec. Had you visited any of them in their prime, you would have been awed by their skill and sophistication.

And yet, think of everything that happened in Eurasia between Hammurabi and Columbus, and you will get a sense of how wide the gap was when the two worlds met.

I'm glad you brought up the contrast between the Aztecs and Ottomans - the majority of South America was inhabited by tribes similar to Native Americans in the North.

The Aztecs are noteworthy because of having an empire to conquer.

I am not suggesting that their civilizations did not have artistic or cultural merit, but I think even in a fictional alternate history where the Spanish decided to peacefully trade with Montezuma, I bet a couple hundred years later these people would've had mechanical looms and walked around in tailored suits just the same as their European counterparts.

Not to speak of an what an empire gaing such powerful technologies and ideas about running society would've done to its neighbors.

What a bunch of nonsense. I really urge you to look into more contemporary research on it.

By which measure were they less advanced? Tenochtitlan had a population of north of 200k when the Spanish arrived - bigger than most European cities at that time, bar a couple. When you read the chronicles of the conquistadores you realise how advanced they were in many ways compared with Europeans.

Th Maya were contemporary to and very similar to Greece in many ways - definitely more advanced in some aspects of mathematics and astronomy, and had an extremely complex architecture.

The gap wasn’t so big, and in some cases American cities were even more advanced - probably the complex sanitation system of most mesoamerican cities contributed to the biggest asymmetry of all - European cities were a Petri dish of filth and disease.

Ironically it was that Petri dish of filth and disease which gave the Europeans their largest (unintentional) military advantage in the New World. Of course the horses and steel weapons were also a factor.

Europe was technologically advanced but lacked in state capacity. The Aztecs and the Maya were the opposite.

Sanitation is a literal stone age technology, originally developed by societies we have very little evidence of. It doesn't require technological sophistication — only a government capable of and willing to administer it.

European middle ages were characterized by the lack of state capacity. Cities and trade declined after the fall of the West Roman Empire. Governments became weak and incapable, and the society was structured around regional warlords and their personal relationships. But technology kept moving on. While European societies had limited resources, they could do things their more capable predecessors could not.

And then, towards the end of the middle ages, states started consolidating again.

population size does not equal advanced. it implies some civilizational skill, of course, but to act like the gap wasn't gigantic is pretty unfounded.

european guns, ships, philosophy, math, physics, etc. etc. was hilariously beyond the aztecs.

Rome during Trajan's rule had over 500k and maybe even 1M people, and ruled half of Europe.

But I would still say that it was a less advanced civilization than Europe in 1500 AD. Trajan's Romans weren't able to sail the oceans, print books, didn't know what gunpowder was and could not use positional numeric system to actually calculate things in abstract; their way of counting stuff was the abacus, which sorta works for everyday tasks, but you cannot develop any higher maths with it. Even steel was non-trivially worse in Roman times than in 1500 AD.

All of that was meaningful progress. Sure, some knowledge was lost (Roman concrete, Greek fire). But much more has been acquired.

"Westerners are in aggregate were just better at running civilization"

If being good at running a civilisation means being good at making war and enslaving, then we objectivly were better, as we conquered and they lost.

But if civilized means being in higher spirit and have a more happy population, then the proof needs to be different.

The reason the entire concept of 'Westerners' exist, is because empires who became dominant in the aforementioned dimensions conquered, subjugated other peoples on the continent, or others were forced to adapt to their standards to avoid the same fate.

In a couple hundred years these populations in many ways were quite indistinguishable from their conquerors, as they adopted their customs and ways of running society.

Many of these conqured peoples while becoming Westernized culturally, didn't escape the yoke of their conquerors until much later.

This process was repeated in Latin America.

I know there are a lot of politically motivated people are interested in simple stories of the virtuous locals versus the evil West, but the same story played out pretty much everywhere over different continents and timeframes.

I'm not sure if Romes conquest of the Gauls was any less brutal than the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

"I'm not sure if Romes conquest of the Gauls was any less brutal than the Spanish conquest of Mexico."

Likely not, but both Rome and Spanish are usually considered "western" civilisations. But the Mayas did conquer too (and partly sacrificed the captured).

Spain still uses the Roman Law and save for the Basques (which are the cousins of Iberians) the 95% of the culture it's Western. The 5% it's just pre-Roman folklore (Basque, Celtic, Celtic-Iberian and so on) which survived Romanization and Christianization. But, even when being fully assimilated, I can always find some older Iberian substrate surviving in the North of Spain and the French Basque Country, some social behaviour predating Rome and the Catholic Kingdoms, such as the concept of the communal assemblies in towns and villages found all over in Spain.

From these arrangements between the people and Kingdoms the concept of Fueros (some kind of agreement/constution between the villages' ruling and the King) was born and if some king was about to rule a Kingdom, he/she was prompty required to respect them 'by the grace of God' AKA 'respect these scrolls or you will be kicked from the throne faster than a drunk knight falling off from a horse'.

The middle eastern cultures where better at that and that wasnt enough. Its in the ability to peoduce institutions which then produce a tech/power gradient that allows exploitation. Keeping cultures artificially alive that can not do that is artificially prolonging inevitable change.

> better at running civilization

If by 'running' you mean 'colonizing', then yes.

If the "marketplace of ideas" with regards to civilizations had been some sort of borderless utopia where people would just naturally emigrate to the best civilization and become members in equal standing there, you could argue like this.

Unfortunately, what actually happened was brutal invasion and dehumanization.

"We are higher developed than this other group, therefore we have the right to subjugate them, take all their resources, enslave them and even kill them" was essentially the classic justification of colonialism for a long time.

No empire in the world would have been able to accomplish what the Spaniards did if the indigenous population of millions decided to put up a strong resistance against them.

The 2014 Ukraine invasion worked because the nation was splintered and demoralized, and the Russians could just roll in and take what tey wanted. The 2022 didn't because the Ukrainians were unified and willing to fight, despite a much higher degree of military readiness on the Russian side.

But going back, over time, the native population became serfs, picked up the language, culture, religion of their conquerors, they even intermarried to a significant degree. Latin America is full of people with both European and native ancestry to some degree.

Yes they were serfs, but so were most European peasants at that time.

And only a couple hundred years later, as the Spanish empire collapsed, these people, culturally Westernized at this point, threw off the yoke and formed their independent countries, with Mexico starting it's own empire.

I just cannot imagine a credible scenario in which even if Western colonial powers didn't manage to conquer the territory of Mexico, they wouldn't have been Westernized to a significant degree, by the Aztec rulers themselves starting a Meiji style modernization.

The proof is in the pudding. You can not conquer with so few so much unless, the locals welcome you as a useful liberator from grotesq tyranny and try to use you as a tool of liberation. The conquistadores are a display of how volatile tyranny based empires are. To then only be replaced by even more tyranny, after the chaos of revolution and disease.

Here is the main cause why the conquistadores won:

80-90% of the natives died from European diseases before they had a chance to oppose the invaders. This was purely accidental! 300 years before germ theory, no one knew how and why this happened, but in the end conquering nations that were mostly dead already isn't that hard.

Of course, the conquistadores were incredibly cruel by modern standards, as were the natives. But that's not why they won.

Guatemala is a great place to visit if you want to experience it first hand. Lake Atitlan is breathtaking.

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