What if life in the Americas was much more awesome than in Europe before Columbus arrived? A fascinating 2002 article from The Atlantic archives speculates that conditions in the native empires of North, Central, and South America were superior to the world Columbus left behind.
The interesting possibility of massive civilizations with a total population greater than Europe is proposed based on a reexamination of historical census counts and new evidence of extraordinary terraforming projects.
Old census counts estimated the native population of the Americas to be between 10-15 million individuals; however, those surveys may have missed a crucial fact… Explorers were in contact with the indigenous population well before settlers actually became established. These initial points of contact are theorized to have spread European diseases like wildfire – killing off 90 to 95% of native peoples before the first census estimates were conducted.
It’s no wonder that as colonists moved west from the Atlantic coasts the whole place seemed deserted. Historical accounts of abandoned earthen projects larger than the Great Pyramids hinted at massive civilizations wiped from the Earth well before most Columbus and other European conquerors arrived to mop up what their various plagues left behind. New research even suggests that some of the most recognizable geographic features of the Western hemisphere may have been deliberately planned: the Great Plains of North America created and maintained with controlled burns, and the Amazon Rain Forest created through planting and soil cultivation.
Read more at The Atlantic. (Its long but very interesting.) Also check out the book 1491 by Charles Mann.
Happy Columbus Day!