Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-6876762-20130303211712/@comment-32656-20130403090704

Anon, Viva is incorrect.

Viva, it is not "some" sources - rather, it is all sources that say that now.

Yes, all it needs is one person. In fact, that is how the plagues got to the Americas in the first place.

Those tribes were nearly eliminated by disease when it came to them. They then had a few generations before Europeans arrived on the scene. Hence, their "sizable numbers." Which were 10% of what they had been before the diseases.

The diseases reached the plains centuries before the Europeans themselves did.

Only a single attempt at spreading disease artificially has ever been found to have occurred - and it failed, by and large. Only a couple small outbreaks because of those "blankets" were "artificial." Heck, smallpox got to the Inca Empire before the Spanish did, and was a direct cause of the successful conquest. Same thing with the Aztecs. There's also records of it hitting the Interior decades before the natives even saw a "white" person.

5-10% survived the initial diseases. But you are very wrong about them getting any "immunity" - these diseases, in fact, continued to kill large numbers of the surviving natives until the last century.

Only in the Caribbean was the natives used for slaves. And no, it did not work - the native populations of those islands was killed off very rapidly. That is what led to the importation of Africans. Nor were the natives very good at it - the historical record is full of complaints about them making poor slaves.

The Maya are wholly different from the Aztecs. That is like comparing Iran and France.

Yes, they would have dealt with them in the usual manner. I know a fair amount about their culture, and I can definitely say they would not have tolerated it. Heck, by the time the Spanish came to conquer, the Aztecs did know that something was up, having observed them offshore before. And don't get me started on that "thinking them gods" foolishness.

Not even "some." Animals don't survive shipwrecks of any kind well, and in that era? Not happening.

These people have no experience whatsoever with disease - and to the Europeans the disease is more or less harmless. "Containment" is a dream applied in retrospect. Not happening.

Settling Piticarn is wholly different. There was no population on that island when the mutineers landed. And there's evidence that they stole at least some of their women from Tahiti, as well. You cannot make such a comparision, because it does not exist.