'People Die Very Much': How imported diseases wiped out entire continents

Eliminationism in America, Part 4: If Europeans weren't deliberately spreading diseases in the New World, they were content to let them wreak havoc on as Natives lost 90% of their populations

Part 4 of 12. [Parts 1, 2, and 3.]

Although life in Mesoamerica was not exactly idyllic, given its warring and rituals that included human sacrifice, it is clear that most of the pre-contact Amerindians were relatively healthy societies. This same good health, however, was precisely what made them so vulnerable to conquest.

Though disease almost certainly…