USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The left drawing shows the mummy of Huayna Cápac, leader of the Inca Empire, being carried from Quito to Cuzco. The monarch succumbed to an unknown disease, likely smallpox, sometime between 1524 and 1528.

Detailed explanation-2: -In addition to North America’s Native American populations, the Mayan and Incan civilizations were also nearly wiped out by smallpox. And other European diseases, such as measles and mumps, also took substantial tolls – altogether reducing some indigenous populations in the new world by 90 percent or more.

Detailed explanation-3: -Within a few years smallpox claimed between 60% and 90% of the Inca population, with other waves of European disease weakening them further. A handful of historians argue that a disease called Bartonellosis might have been responsible for some outbreaks of illness, but this opinion is in the scholarly minority.

Detailed explanation-4: -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.