100,000 Years ago The Europe Hominids Use their Disease to Spoil Hybrid Brains.

demographic collapse. We have a reliable estimate of the size of the Indigenous population at its nadir at the beginning of the twentieth century. And, along with this information, we can apply an important demographic insight articulated by Thornton as we work through these inevitably grim and saddening computations. Stannard has estimated that almost 100 million Indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere have been killed or died prematurely because of the Europeans and their descendants during the past five centuries. Stannard reached this conclusion by estimating the original Native population at approximately 100 million and by noting that this number had fallen about 95% by the beginning of the twentieth century.57 Ward Churchill has estimated the total of Indigenous deaths to be somewhat greater than 100 million.58 As staggering as these numbers are, Thornton’s research provides a compelling reason to believe that the human costs of the Indigenous Holocaust were much greater. As noted above, Thornton developed a smaller estimate of about 75 million Indigenous inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere in 1492, and this population declined to less than 5 million by 1900. These numbers would appear to indicate that the loss of life was around 70 million for the hemisphere. Also, as previously remarked, Thornton estimated that the Indigenous population of the present-day coterminous United States was more than 5 million in 1492 and only about 250,000 in 1900. These numbers would appear to indicate that the loss of life was around 5 million here. However, it is at this point in the computation of Indigenous deaths in the present-day coterminous United States that Thornton has raised a vital issue. He has explained: Such a population decline implies not only that some 5 million American Indians died during the 400 years but also that, in fact, many times the approximate figure of 5 million died.