Re: Brithenig/Aelyan North America (was: Re: Languages in theBrithenig universe)

>From: Matt Pearson <jmpearson@...>
>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
>To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
>Subject: Re: Brithenig/Aelyan North America (was: Re: Languages in
>     theBrithenig universe)
>Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 09:19:04 -0500
>
>John Cowan wrote:
>
> >> But even if that were the case, that doesn't explain everything.  How,
>for
> >> example, did the Europeans prevent the introduction of new diseases
>from
> >> exterminating large numbers of indigenous people?  Or, if there was
>indeed
> >> such extermination *there*, how did the indigenous peoples recover from
> >> it sufficiently to establish autonomous states?
> >
> >The Black Death exterminated 35%+ of the European population, but no
>countries
> >were destroyed as a result.
>
>That's hardly the same thing.  Just some of the differences:
>
>(1)  The death rates among the Native Americans was probably much higher
>than among Europeans suffering from the Black Death.  This is just a wild
>guess, but the figure 50%-100% (depending on area) rings a bell.  The
>Black Death was pretty horrific, but it didn't wipe out entire cities and
>tribes.
>
>(2)  The extermination caused by the Black Death was not followed by
>intensive colonisation.  If the Black Death had been introduced by, say,
>conquering Mongols instead of Italians trading in the Crimea, the nations
>of Europe would probably have fared a lot worse.
>
>(3)  Unless you count the Iroquois Nations and other such alliances,
>the indigenous peoples north and east of Mexico/Arizona were not
>organised into what we would call nations, so any nation-building would
>have had to come after massive depopulation rather than before.  Europe,
>by contrast, was already beginning to organise into nation-states by
>the time they got hit by the Black Death.
>
>Massive extermination due to disease seems to be an inevitable
>consequence of large-scale colonisation (Jared Diamond has a lot of
>interesting things to say about this in his book "Guns, Germs, and
>Steel", which, even if you don't agree with his arguments, should
>be required reading for all conculturists).  Thus, it seems to me that
>the only way in which the indigenous Americans could have survived
>in sufficient numbers to establish nation-states is if European
>colonisation
>had been a *lot* more gradual and a *lot* less fanatical there than here.
>
>Matt.
Perhaps the difference was the Aelya migration, if they introduced
smallpox, the population could have recovered by the time of intensive
colonization

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