FIRST CONTACTS 28000 BCE 1821 CE
NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY ORIGINS OF EARLY PEOPLE IN THE AMERICAS
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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Poor diet and living conditions.
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War between Natives and Europeans.
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New diseases brought by Europeans.
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Changing climate conditions in the region.
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Detailed explanation-1: -They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent, killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans. Smallpox is believed to have arrived in the Americas in 1520 on a Spanish ship sailing from Cuba, carried by an infected African slave.
Detailed explanation-2: -Smallpox was the disease brought by Europeans that was most destructive to the Native Americans, both in terms of morbidity and mortality.
Detailed explanation-3: -Indigenous people both north and south were displaced, died of disease, and were killed by Europeans through slavery, rape, and war. In 1491, about 145 million people lived in the western hemisphere. By 1691, the population of indigenous Americans had declined by 90–95 percent, or by around 130 million people.
Detailed explanation-4: -In addition to deliberate killings and wars, Native Americans died in massive numbers from infections endemic among Europeans. Much of this was associated with respiratory tract infections, including smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, and influenza (1, 2).
Detailed explanation-5: -Most scholars agree that diseases introduced from the Eastern Hemisphere, including smallpox, measles, and influenza, were the overwhelming cause of population decline (Cook, 1998). The relationship between epidemic disease and American Indian population decline is relatively well documented in the nineteenth century.