1491: ARTICLE SUMMARY

Scholars have tried to estimate the number of indigenous people living in the Americas prior to their contact with the Europeans. The traditional attitude was that people were few and scattered, disintegrated, not civilized and savage; therefore colonization by more advanced races and the concept of social Darwinism justifies the actions the ‘white’ men took in ‘discovering’ the Americas.
Some historians state that there was no ‘discovery’ of the Americas, that civilizations and perhaps even a higher number of inhabitants existed here prior to European contact. The indigenous population not only has a civilization, but served as a keystone species that had already altered and maximized the environment for hunting and cultivation of food. If this is so, and the people were a significant population, possessed of civilization, then the land was taken from them and the decimation of their numbers is due to biological and political genocide.
It is accepted that diseases brought in by Europeans, against which the Indians had no immunization, wiped out large numbers of people – however, if we say that 95% of the population succumbed...