Mexican archaeologists find dwelling for Aztec survivors of Spanish conquest

[csziggy]

1. Right now I am reading "1491" by Charles C. Mann about the Americas before Columbus arrived

In fact, since most of the data is taken from the first contacts between Europeans and Native Americans (or Indians) the author discusses that initial period extensively.

The portion I am currently reading gets into the controversy of how many people lived in the Americas prior to European contact. By some estimates diseases killed 90-95% of all the inhabitants which means the population had been greater than that of European. One estimate is that the die off in the Americas killed 20-25% of the human population of the world. Conservative estimates of the numbers that died are about 50% - even that "low" of a figure would disrupt life. During the Black Death in Europe about 30% died and that threw that area into the Dark Ages.

No wonder the continents seemed to be empty and that the few people the colonists saw seemed to be with little culture or technology - the entire structure of the societies of the Americas had been destroyed!