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zoom_zip wrote

why was this downvoted? it is literally the correct answer. colonial settlers brought a myriad of diseases that were non-native to the continent. diseases that the settlers had developed greater immunity to over generations of exposure. many of them were dormant when carried. influenza, yellow fever, smallpox, plague etc. ran rampant through the native population who had never experienced it before. imagine never having experienced these diseases in your genetic history and then bam, you get all of them at once. the settlers also brought non-native animal species that spread zoonotic diseases like tuberculosis.

the settler’s greatest weapon was a sweeping epidemic of diseases that hit the continent all at once.

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ziq wrote

why was this downvoted?

Can't wait for the anarcho-settler revolution when an army of pasty professional students march into indigenous lands clenching Kindles with copies of the bread book, declare the lands their democratic communal property and call the inhabitants tree fascists when they resist the bulldozers.

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zoom_zip wrote

that’s not to say exposure to these diseases wouldn’t have happened eventually, but it could have happened slower, over a longer period of time, and not at a time when you are being invaded by slave-trading land-grabbers

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dsfsf4ewtb wrote

It did not hit the continent all at once. Disease spread in colonized areas. Disease spread west, slowly, with colonization (at least in north america)

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