1545 is well after European contact and close enough that it seems unlikely to be a coincidence. 1519–1521: Hernán Cortés conquers the Aztec Empire. 1532–1533: Francisco Pizarro conquers the Inca Empire.

Further low 10’s of millions of deaths on its own really doesn’t explain the 90% population drop across several hundred years here. Smallpox killed between 65% to 95% of Native American populations but it was far from alone. We’re talking devastating plague after plague for generations which canceled out the tendency for populations to rebound when competition is low. Something like 200+ million deaths on the conservative side over a few hundred years not just one or two devastating but short lived outbreaks.

> There was a hemorrhagic fever in ~1545 an ~1576 that killed tens of millions of people

I haven’t heard of this - do you have any material to recommend on the subject?

> disease we can’t explain

Disease we can't explain that spread a few decades after European ships full of plagues arrived.

I mean, yeah, sure.

[dead]

Around 90% of the people died of plagues.

It's really impossible to speculate how things would have progressed without those plagues.

Or worse, if Native Americans were full of plagues that the conquistadors would bring back to Europe to cull 90% of Eurasia.

It’s impossible to tell. If it had taken decades or a century longer because their numbers were higher, they might have had time to start up their own production of technology.

So a lack of animal husbandry is the same as lower technology and a lack of farming.

I never understand the “lack of animals to domesticate” angle. They did domesticate animals, such as the llama and alpaca.

More could have been domesticated and presumably would have been if the had more time to advance. It’s a shame giant sloths were killed off…

I just read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cajamarca

It seems like the Incans were overconfident and didn't expect a surprise attack (didn't have their weapons, only a small retinue around the rule in ceremonial garb instead of armor), and then the 8000 warriors were outside and didn't even attempt to fight the Spaniards because they were so demoralized.

> the Incan didn't fight at night!

To be fair to the Inca, I didn't expect the night–vision–equipped Spanish Inquisition, either.

You're missing a zero. It was EIGHTY thousand, not 8000.

Around the same time, 460 men in 6 ships destroyed 30000 men in 400 ships taking over Ormuz. Portugal and Spain were just incredibly OP during that time period. And the people in Ormuz were more advanced than the natives in US. And they still got absolutely destroyed.

American agriculture was very advanced for the time and the crops and ideas developed transformed food and agriculture throughout the rest of the world. What was lacking were beasts of burden and metallurgy and resistance to smallpox.

> we happened upon them

That's the thinking. It's not that people arrived. It's not that ancestors landed. It's that European's happened. This was unavoidable. The rest of the world was deficient for not being ready.

The wheel isn't that useful if you live on terrible terrain and have nothing to drive it with.

they did invent the wheel, they just didnt use it for transportion.

> The person you're replying to never implied that the Natives were stupid savages.

They did. Natives didn't have agriculture:

> It definitely did. Also note that agriculture was invented in multiple places over time. Unfortunately, the Native Americans did not invent it quickly enough, so they had far less time for technological development before Europeans arrived. At which point, it was too late.

The unfortunate thing is that those dumb Natives didn't learn to grow things. Something that had been observed for thousands of years.