Prompt Cast
The Great Dying of the Americas: How European arrival led to the largest loss of life in human history
TLDR The arrival of Europeans in the Americas in 1492 brought about the largest loss of life in human history due to the spread of diseases, resulting in a decrease of the native population by 90% and an estimated death toll of 50 to 100 million people. This event, known as the Great Dying, had profound impacts on the environment and contributed to the little ice age.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
The arrival of Europeans in the New World in 1492 marked the beginning of a series of events that had a profound impact on humanity, known as the great dying of the Americas.
01:50
For the last 11,000 years, the peoples of the Western Hemisphere and the Eastern Hemisphere had no contact with each other and took very different paths of social and technical development, resulting in a lack of immunity to diseases that arose in the Old World.
03:27
Initial estimates of the population of the New World were very low, but as more archaeological discoveries were made, it became clear that pre-Columbian Americans had much larger populations and were more sophisticated in their land management than previously thought.
04:58
The controlled burns and land management practices of pre-Columbian Americans led to an increase in population estimates, with the consensus being around 55 to 60 million people in the Western Hemisphere before European arrival, but the arrival of Europeans brought about the largest loss of life in human history due to the spread of diseases.
06:34
The arrival of Europeans in the Americas led to the spread of diseases that resulted in a decrease of the native population by 90% and an estimated death toll of 50 to 100 million people, making up 10% of the Earth's population at the time.
08:17
The drop in population in the Americas due to European diseases led to increased forest growth, a decrease in CO2, and potentially contributed to the little ice age, as well as causing famines and a decline in bison populations.
09:48
The massive pandemic in the Americas caused by the lack of disease immunities resulted in the loss of more lives than any war, plague, or famine in history.
