Pre-European Lawless Invasion of America's Population of Hybrid Ethnic People 112 million.

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AMERICAN STUDIES / HISTORY - AMERICAN / LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES / NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES

The Native Population of the Americas in 1492. Second Revised Edition, Edited by William M. Denevan
With a Foreword by W. George Lovell

How many people inhabited the New World when Columbus landed on Hispaniola in 1492? How did the arrival of Europeans spark the population decline of aboriginal people in the New World?

William M. Denevan writes that, “The discovery of America was followed by possibly the greatest demographic disaster in the history of the world.” Research by some scholars provides population estimates of the pre-contact Americans to be as high as 112 million in 1492, while others estimate the population to have been as low as eight million. In any case, the native population declined to less than six million by 1650.

In this collection of essays, historians, anthropologists, and geographers discuss the discrepancies in the population estimates and the evidence for the post-European decline. Woodrow Borah, Angel Rosenblat, William T. Sanders, and others touch on such topics as the Indian slave trade, diseases, military action, and the disruption of the social systems of the native peoples. Offering varying points of view, the contributors critically analyze major hemispheric and regional data and estimates for pre- and post-European contact.

William M.Denevan is the Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. 

Between 1492 and 1600, 90% of the indigenous populations in the Americas had died. "Say What?" That means about 55 million people perished because of violence, and never-before-seen pathogens like smallpox, measles, and influenza.