The Natives’ Encounter with the Europeans As Hernán Cortés came in contact with the natives, he was able to unknowingly transfer smallpox along with other various diseases to natives. Therefore, after their first battle with the Spaniards, the Aztecs were overwhelmed with illness. This led to the fall of great Aztec Empire. However, even before this the Inca Empire had been swept by with the illness, smallpox, too.…
never been exposed to such diseases. Also, the native leaders kept passing away from diseases…
Smallpox emerged around 200 years after the Black Death, during the mid-14th century, and quickly became one of the biggest killers in the expanding world. (Dobson,p.130) Smallpox changed the beauty standards in Europe through the use of makeup, fashion, and accessories. This disease struck in all social classes of society and was not dependent on status, wealth, sanitary conditions, or hygiene. Because of that, smallpox was sometimes referred to as the “democratic” disease (Skold,p.145) People believe that the Inca and Aztec empire likely collapsed because of smallpox. Hernan Cortes and his 300 men attacked the Aztec capital a force of 300,00 and captured the city within the span of three months. (Altman. p.42) This likely occurred because the Spaniards have had years of exposure to smallpox due to Columbus crossing the Atlantic from Europe to Africa and carrying the disease. (Dobson,p.130) On the other hand, the Aztecs and Incas were not immune to the ravages of the disease and quickly became weak which led to the collapse of the civilizations. (Altman, p.42)…
9. What was the primary agent by which European language and culture was transmitted to Brazil and Spanish America? P.435…
smallpox was their most deadly weapon. All of these are reasonable answers but one has to…
The negative effects of this grand exchange, however, include the distribution of deadly diseases such as malaria, the bubonic plague, the flu, and smallpox from the Old World to the New World. The smallpox accounted for most of the deaths of the Native Americans. This disease had killed probably millions of Native…
Smallpox is the disease that killed most Natives; second was measles, then influenza, and then lastly the Plague/Black Death. There was no cure for the disease at the time, and the cramped conditions with very little food and improper hygiene when the Natives were enslaved only exacerbated the effects of smallpox, killing virtually all of them. The native people were more vulnerable to this plague than the Spanish because they hadn’t built up any immunity to this disease. Humans who live in close contact with domestic animals, like the Europeans who kept their animals inside of their houses, are at a greater risk to contract diseases (zoonotic diseases). Diseases such as smallpox (which wiped out Native Americans by the millions) were transmitted from human to human, however; the Natives hadn't built up any immunity to these zoonotic diseases because the only domestic animal in the Americas was the llama.…
Not only did the Columbus exchange brought tools, animals, plants and foods, but also diseases like small pox, measles and influenza whom the Natives American were not immune to and were very much…
When Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Hispañola in 1492, and brought the news of rich new lands to the west back to Spain, the European powers have fought for and brutalized the people living on the land they wanted to reap. Academic classes of that period’s history make sure never to forget to teach that old world European diseases swept through the Americas like a flash fire. And, when pathology and epidemiology became relatively understood in Europe, settlers and military units in North America, the Caribbean, and South America used their innate disease immunity to propagate the deadliest of diseases on to the vulnerable natives.…
The most immediate consequence of British settlement was the appearance of European diseases. Most were epidemic diseases such as chickenpox, smallpox, influenza and measles. As these diseases were infectious, they spread very quickly and killed many Aboriginal people since they did not have the immunity to the diseases that were common to the European. In large Aboriginal communities, the diseases spread even more quickly. However, small pox was for most the worst disease since it wiped out entire Aboriginal tribes. As you can see in the graph below in only 9 months from during 1925 in Milwaykee, the infectious disease killed approximately 92 people in only one…
The conquest of Spanish conquistadors was greatly influenced by the negative effects of the diseases they brought from Europe. The major diseases brought by the Spanish included the common Flu, smallpox and Typhus. These diseases wreaked havoc on the Aztec societies, and decimated the population by approximately 70 percent. This was incredibly important to the Spanish as It weakened the Aztecs to a point where trying to amass an army of sick and dying people would have been pointless. Making it easier for the well-armed and healthy Spanish to crush the Aztec’s resistance. At first the Spanish were unaware of the damage the diseases would cause, armed with the knowledge that the previously un-exposed Aztecs were highly susceptible to becoming…
the Taino natives as things to be used for Spanish benefit. He saw the islands as commercial…
Exposure to diseases affects the development of civilizations in a positive and negative way. Animals help you get immunity to diseases but not all people had animals due to their location. Immunity to diseases helped a civilization dominated countries without immunity. The Spanish and other Europeans were exposed to diseases because they had domesticated animals, and drank their milk and were exposed to them every day. This built up their immune system and they became immune to diseases like smallpox. Many of the other civilizations were not immune to diseases because they didn’t have animals to get immunity from. The Incas did have the llama but they did not have close contact with them so, they didnt built an immunity. So when the Spanish attacked the Incas not only did they had steel but they brought smallpox with them. They spread it to the Incas, without even knowing it, and they became infected and eventually died. When it came time for them to fight they were to weak so it allowed the Spanish to conquer them and their land. Since the Spanish lived where they were able to domesticate animals, which gave them immunity to smallpox, it allowed them to spread it to the incas and conquer…
America was not a paradise and saw diseases like in any other continent, tuberculosis, and intestinal worms are just two examples, but there were a handful of other infectious diseases that had not crossed the Pacific prior to 1492. To mention some of them the following apply smallpox, measles, and cholera. The Indian’s immune system was accustomed to local diseases, but the European men brought with them diseases of the Old World, which the aboriginals were not physically prepared to handle. The American geographer Carl Sauer remarks in the following quote his understanding on the matter of depopulation:…
Smallpox was obviously dreadful for the victims, but ‘twas also politically helpful to conquerors. Smallpox aided Spanish efforts in taking over peoples. Since smallpox nearly killed most of a region’s population, there were not a lot of people which meant less defensive forces. As stated before, most social cultural and political traditions of the native peoples had moreover so fallen or vanished beneath Spanish control.…