What Killed the Aztecs ?

[uniface]

When Hernando Cortes and his army conquered Mexico starting in 1519, there were roughly about 25 million people living in what is now Mexico. A hundred years later, after a series of epidemics decimated the local population, perhaps as few as 1.2 million natives survived.
Records confirm there was a smallpox epidemic in 1519 and 1520, immediately after the Europeans arrived, killing between 5 and 8 million people. But it was two cataclysmic epidemics that occurred in 1545 and 1576, 25 and 55 years after the Spanish conquest, which swept through the Mexican highlands and claimed as many as 17 million lives.

To Dr. Rodolfo Acuna-Soto, a Harvard-trained infectious disease specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, it made no sense that a deadly outbreak of European origin could occur so long after the Spanish arrived, because the natives who survived previous plagues would have passed on their immunities.

To find answers, Acuna-Soto spent a dozen year pouring through ancient documents written by 16th century Spanish priests who worked with the Aztecs to preserve a record of their history, language and culture.

These texts also tracked key natural events—storms, droughts, frosts and illness. In particular, they detailed the plagues of cocoliztli (Nahuati for “pest”), a disease that seemed far more virulent than smallpox.

“Nobody had the health or strength to help the diseased or bury the dead,” one Franciscan friar wrote in 1577 about the devastation from cocolitzli. “In the cities and large towns, big ditches were dug, and from morning to sunset the priests did nothing else but carry the dead bodies and throw them into the ditches.”

Acuna-Soto also had access to exhaustive diaries kept by Francisco Hernandez, the surgeon general of New Spain who witnessed the second catastrophic epidemic in 1576. He described a highly contagious and lethal scourge that killed within a few days, causing raging fevers, jaundice, tremors, dysentery, abdominal and chest pains, enormous thirst, delirium and seizures.

“Blood flowed from the ears,” the physician observed, “and in many cases blood truly gushed from the nose.”

“These symptoms didn’t sound like smallpox or any other known European disease that was in Mexico during the 16th century,” Acuna-Soto told me. “This sounded like a hemorrhagic fever.

So if the Spanish didn’t bring about the fever, what did?” In his research, Acuna-Soto had noticed a pattern: the plague was preceded by years of severe drought but the epidemics occurred only during wet weather, and heavy rainfall. To confirm his observations, Acuna-Soto worked with a Mexican-American team of dendrochronologists—scientists who study tree rings to date changes in climate—and compared the 16th century historical accounts with tree-ring records from a forest of 450-year-old Douglas fir trees in a remote region of central Mexico near Durango.

The tree rings indicated that the most severe and sustained drought in North America in the past 500 years occurred in the mid-16th century. But there were heavy downpours in the years around 1545 and 1576, which coincided with the cocolitzli outbreaks.

“The smoking gun was the tree ring data,” Acuna-Soto said . . .

(continued @

http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013 ... he-aztecs/

[kbs2244]

I seem to remember a related story about the massive NA die off, that was inspired by this study, from a year or two ago. The evidence pointed away from the classic small pox blamed on De Soato and to this type of fever.

This particular story is good history but bad prophecy.

The last couple of sentences are classic fear mongering. And in contradiction to the main story.

If “the Southwest bakes under increasingly prolonged droughts, epidemics like cocolitzli will doubtless return.”

The plague came with the return of the rains.
If the Southwest faces increasingly prolonged droughts cocolitzli is near the last of their worries.

[Minimalist]

I always apply the "What is more reasonable" test to situations like this.

Mann suggests that native-Americans were blasted by European diseases which spread along N-A commercial routes in many cases before the Europeans got anywhere near them.

So, is it more likely that Cortez with 500 Spaniards conquered a few million Aztecs or that Pizzaro with 169 Spaniards wiped out a few million Inca, OR, is it more likely that the Spaniards advanced into territories which had been devastated by plagues and took over. After all, what glory is there for the conquistadors if their enemies were nothing more than a few sick Indians?

[kbs2244]

The Pilgrims related exploring, and robbing the grain storage, of deserted villages with skeletons lying in the streets.
They couldn’t even make back home to die in their beds.

[Minimalist]

Henry Hudson sailed up the Hudson River in 1609. However Giovanni da Verrazzano was there 90 years before him and specifically met a group of Wampanoag after leaving NY and sailing to Narragansett Bay.

Besides, again as Mann pointed out, there were numerous anonymous European fisherman who fished the Grand Banks and would surely have put ashore for provisions long before colonization began.

[kbs2244]

I am a big believer in pre-Columbian contact.
But small pox doesn’t kill in hours.
Sufferers don’t die walking across the street.

But then could the rats on those ships carried been the carriers of the fever?
Very possible.
But, as this story points out, it take a climate change to trigger it.

[Cognito]

I am a big believer in pre-Columbian contact.
But small pox doesn’t kill in hours.
Sufferers don’t die walking across the street.

The symptoms described do not indicate smallpox.

But then could the rats on those ships carried been the carriers of the fever?
Very possible.
But, as this story points out, it take a climate change to trigger it.

Seems to me that the affliction was Hantavirus, but why the Spaniards didn't succumb to it is unknown since they would not have had any immunity either.

[uniface]

The REAL beauty of the past is that it's insusceptible to rational explanation.

[Minimalist]

but why the Spaniards didn't succumb to it is unknown since they would not have had any immunity either.

Good point.

[shawomet]

Henry Hudson sailed up the Hudson River in 1609. However Giovanni da Verrazzano was there 90 years before him and specifically met a group of Wampanoag after leaving NY and sailing to Narragansett Bay.

Besides, again as Mann pointed out, there were numerous anonymous European fisherman who fished the Grand Banks and would surely have put ashore for provisions long before colonization began.

It's very possible it was the Narragansett who met Verrazzano. His journal stated before they entered Refugio that 20 boats of natives greeted them. Sailing from Block Island to Newport Harbour, one must pass Pt. Judith.(see map below) At the head of Pt. Judith Pond, the largest of the Salt Ponds with inlets to the sea, was located the largest and principle Narragansett village, occupied from about 950-1550 AD. Verrazxano's ship would have been impossible not to spot from Point Judith Pond and Point Judith, it seems likely the canoe party came from there to greet Verrazzano. Also, Verrazzano describes the natives as having 2 "kings", a younger and an older, which was the same arrangement as the Narragansett when the English arrived in the 17th century, Miantanomi the younger sachem, Cananicus the older at the time of Roger Williams. (from William's "A key into the Language of America": "Their government is monarchical, yet at present the chiefest government of the country is divided between a younger Sachem Miantunnomo, and an elder Sachem, Canonicus, about four score years old, this young man's uncle, and their agreement in the government is temarkable") While still at sea due to unfavorable conditions, the natives returned and led Verrazano to the best harbour in Narragansett Bay, Newport Harbour. But, approaching Narragansett Bay from Block Island, as Verrazzano did, would be most noticeable from Point Judith and the huge Narragansett village located there.

Here is Verrazzano's letter to the King of France. The description of Narragansett Bay and natives begins on page 6 through page 10.

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds ... azzano.pdf

Looking at the map at the link below, one sees Block Island, which Verrazzano saw first, and Point Judith is the southern tip of the town of Narragansett, the dark red area. The Narragansett village was located at the head of Point Judith Pond, with an inlet to the sea, and it's the pond bordering Narragansett on the left. This shows how clearly visible Verrazzano's ship would have been to the Narragansetts in that area, location of their largest year round village. Block Island is easily visible from that point, as is any ship sailing north from Block Island, and Point Judith the nearest point of mainland to Block Island. On any clear day, one can see the ferry to the mainland as soon as it leaves New Harbor on the east side of Block Island. Verrazzano's ship would have been seen quite easily visible from there. Point Judith Pond is directly NNW of Block Island. So it's possible it was they who greeted Verrazzano, and not the Wampanoag. Newport Harbour is at the southern end of Aquidneck Island, the largest island in Narragansett Bay as seen on this map. The harbour is sheltered from the south as you can see on the map. The island just to the left or west of Newport harbor and Aquidneck Island is Conanicut Island, and it was clearly Narragansett territory. There is a large contact period Narragansett burial ground on Conanicut Island.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Narra ... _RI_lg.PNG

Finally, here is a description of that important Narragansett village, one of the most important East Coast Late Woodland village site discoveries in recent years. It is conceivable that this was the very village described by Verrazzano.

http://www.pettaquamscutt.org/ri110arch ... alsite.htm



"Archeological investigation of RI 110 was performed by Rhode Island College (1986-1988) and PAL, Inc. (1993-1995; 2006-07). The site is a large Narragansett Indian village that was occupied on a year-round basis for many centuries, and it includes houses and other village structures, cooking hearths, storage pits, cache pits, and refuse pits, as well as graves. Most features date from about the year 950 to 1550.

The project area was an ideal location for a major Indian settlement. It is on the largest and most ecologically rich of the salt ponds, and it is near the major Indian trail (Post Road) along the state’s south coast. Early European accounts of the Indians suggest the character of the village. In 1524 Verrazano visited Narragansett Bay and recorded what he saw, including a village whose residents grew corn and who lived in houses “circular in form…made from semi-circles of wood (i.e., arched saplings, bent in the form of an arbor) separated one from the other, without system of architecture, covered with mats of straw ingeniously worked, which protect them from rain and wind” (Wroth 1970). Roger Williams wrote in 1682 that the name “Narragansett” came from “a little island” within view of Sugar Loaf Hill in Wakefield. Later scholars have since identified this as a small unnamed island near the shore of Point Judith Pond, about 1.3 miles from the project area. As late as 1929, a map shows an Indian campsite nearby and perhaps within the project area (the scale of the map makes precision impossible)."
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Interestingly, it was the Narragansett who best survived the 1617 epidemic and were the most powerful southern New England tribe when the English arrived and described deserted village after deserted village occupied by the tribe that gave that state it's name, the Massachusett.

2 weeks in the region in 1524, including explorations inland by the crew, and yet there does not seem to be an indication that the tribes there were decimated by Verrazzano's visit.

[kbs2244]

The original study says that the rats could carry the parasite that caused the disease for years before climate change triggered an outbreak.

Thus the outbreak could be decades after contact.