Beutifuly done visualisation of human population throughout time.

Everything you say is correct, I just feel like its important to add the nuance that most estimates say that at least 80-95% of the American population died of disease between 1492 and 1600. The overwhelming majority of the genocide was inadvertent and essentially doomed to happen. The tribes and cultures that most Europeans dealt with were essentially survivors of the apocalypse. By the time North America was subject to serious immigration from Western Europe the native numbers were dramatically low, and there was relatively little in the way or writing or monuments that would signify the people that were once there. How are we supposed to have any idea what pre-columbian America looked like, when all the evidence vanished in roughly 5 generations? There are plenty of anthropologists and archaeologists that study Native Americans, but the fact remains that the historical record is paper thin.

/r/dataisbeautiful Thread Parent Link - youtube.com