whatilearned
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics
TIL that most Native Americans died because of Eurasian Germs like Smallpox, not because of European military success in the New World
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“European military success” is a funny way to spell genocide. Which smallpox also was utilized for.
Great book for understanding this is Guns, Germs and Steel, the Fates of Human Societies by Author Jared Diamond.
Also, the smallpox-blankets story is an urban legend. It was proposed once, and immediately shot down. There was one incident where a guy in a fort under siege gave some blankets to the native dignitaries, but there’s no evidence that anyone got sick.
What?
Europeans found out NAs could easily kill them and knew the landscape better. Smallpox was an intentional weapon used against them.
Thats like saying the US’s success in bullying other countries wasn’t the military but the extensive harm of the blasts from the bombs.
this happened in Africa too. in the 19th century, Germans brought smallpox in Rwanda and this eased their workload by tenfold
It was still deliberately spread. about 90% of the genocide was germs, 10% was military. 100% genocide.
It’s not terribly surprising that Europeans brought with them multiple plagues that wiped out indigenous populations in the Americas.
But what’s really interesting is that there was no “Americapox” plagues that were passed the other direction.
After all, the issue was immunity…or rather, the native Americans’ lack of immunity to European diseases. So it seems reasonable to think that in turn Europeans would have brought American diseases back to Europe.
But that didn’t happen.
[Here’s](https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk) one video on the subject, for anyone interested.
this is probally why the ccp was developing covid, think about that for a second