From National Geographic:
When the English arrived in 1607, more than 15,000 Indians lived around Chesapeake Bay. Within 60 years, English settlers had pushed the Indians off the most fertile waterfront land. Only 2,000 Indians remained.
1607 on the left. 1670 on the right.
Its common knowledge that the Native Americans were decimated by smallpox and typhoid introduced by the Europeans, but how did the first English settlement manage survive before those diseases took hold? This National Geographic article comes to some surprising conclusions.
Earthworms, honeybees, mosquitoes, and pigs brought by the colonists changed the ecosystem within a generation. Who would have guessed that North American forests didn’t have any earthworms? That, and the local Indians, seeing how many of the colonists were dying didn’t consider them a threat. They valued the guns and metal tools the colonists traded, and failed to comprehend how many more Europeans would arrive until it was too late.
Charles C. Mann | America, Found & Lost
If you like this article, you should like Jared Diamond’s books:
