How Colonization of the Americas Killed 90 Percent of Their Indigenous People—and Changed the Climate [yesmagazine.org]

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies in 1552. He even described “more than thirty other islands in the vicinity of San Juan are for the most part and for the same reason depopulated, and the land laid waste. On these islands I estimate there are 2,100 leagues of land that have been ruined and depopulated, empty of people.”

Now a new study adds hard data, documenting the global cost of colonialism.

Why does it matter? Because the invasion of the Americas changed everything on the planet. There was a death rate of more than 90 percent of the people (labeled “depopulation” in the scientific report). At that time, the Indigenous population of the Americas was 10 percent of the world’s population and home to the largest and most complex cities.

[For more on this story by Mark Trahant, go to https://www.yesmagazine.org/pl...the-climate-20190213]