stuff like this continues to justify the "high-counters" theory that the native population of the western hemisphere was much much higher than we though. conversely that means the smallpox/etc plagues were much much deadlier than we thought. somewhere on the order of a quarter of humanity died in just a few decades.
What they are finding are archelogical sites from the classical period—before the collapse. The collapse was pre-contact. Also, it appears their civ went through periodic collapses.
Now, you can still be right, but this evidence of density was for the classical period pre collapse.
A lot of evidence points to a collapse of civilization prior to European arrival. Agricultural collapse is thought to be likely for more than a few civilizations in the Americas.
You have to consider that European and Asian populations spent centuries building up resistance to various plagues that would quickly kill off a quarter of the population. It’s hard to imagine what it would mean to have all those various infectious agents sprung on a new population all at once.
...conversely that means the smallpox/etc plagues were much much deadlier than we thought. somewhere on the order of a quarter of humanity died in just a few decades..."
Makes me wonder what would happen today? We're more densely populated and mobility (local, national and international travel) is much greater.
The travel of information is so incredibly fast. Just thinking back to the ebola scare (my memory may be fuzzy) but we even knew when someone had broken quarantine out in Texas.
We have exact low number counts of how many people even got infected coming into the US.
A hypothetical disease that spreads quickly without apparent symptoms but takes a really long time to incubate would be pretty deadly in the current world.
Remember, drug discovery is still not a very scientific process.
Yes. But a long time today (fast and fluid travel) is not the same long time of decades ago. The faster and more frequest we move, the small the long time window gets.
I suppose the only way it could have been prevented would be knowing in advance what would happen in case of contact, having the self restraint to not allow any intrusion and to spread vaccines. Ie. having our current technology.
But really it seems like it would have happened whenever American population centers contacted more than a dozen Eurasians.
if you're curious, this book does a great job of laying it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...