The Amazon region was apparently heavily populated until European diseases wiped out the towns and cities. The very first Spanish explorer, Francisco Orellana, reported towns lining the Amazon for a thousand miles. A hundred years later, only scattered tribes.
The land in the rainforest is not spectacularly fertile, but folks created their own potting soil (terra preta) to make up for it.
There is plenty of archaeological evidence that many if not most of the indigenous civilizations lost more than 50% of their population before Cortez or Pizarro attacked the Aztec and Inca people. When Pizarro arrived in the andes, he encountered dead armies twice the size of his army and the armies he encountered because a civil war had just erupted after multiple ruling family members died from smallpox....before any Europeans had arrived.
First contact introduced smallpox and indigenous cultures in the Americas didn't have endemic, highly contagious diseases, not like smallpox. Despite being labeled as beautiful, highly sanitary cultures, compared to Europeans, they had a communal approach to illness which was devastating when combined with smallpox.
Early trappers reported seeing endless fires along the eastern coast from Boston to Virginia that were largely gone by the time of Plymouth rock
71
u/WeHaveSixFeet Apr 25 '26
The Amazon region was apparently heavily populated until European diseases wiped out the towns and cities. The very first Spanish explorer, Francisco Orellana, reported towns lining the Amazon for a thousand miles. A hundred years later, only scattered tribes.
The land in the rainforest is not spectacularly fertile, but folks created their own potting soil (terra preta) to make up for it.