When European diseases were deleted up to 90% of America’s population, abandoned agricultural land was … [+]
We tend to think of ourselves as recipients – sources that extract, changing landscapes and reshaping ecosystems to suit our needs. Nature, assume, exists independently, adapting and evolving regardless of our presence.
But history tells another story. As much as we rely on the environment, the environment, in many ways, rests on us.
Nothing makes this clearer than the great death – the cataclysmic collapse of the indigenous populations in America after European contact. In just over a century, up to 90% of the people of the continent disappeared, not by war or occupation, but by invisible killers: Smallpox, measles and flu. The loss of tens of millions of lives was not just a human tragedy – it had unintentional consequences for the whole planet.
Pontiac, an Indian Ottawa, faces Colonel Henry Buquet (1719 – 1765) who authorized his officers … [+]
The human spirit of exploration set the catastrophe phase
By the end of the 15th century, the old world was prepared for enlargement.
Europe was leaving the Middle Ages, its kingdoms fighting for power, trade and influence. With the Ottoman Empire controlling the main roads of Earth to Asia, the search for alternative routes for wealth became an obsession.
The ships began to sail from Spain, Portugal, England, France and the Netherlands, driven by a mixture of ambition, necessity and curiosity. These expeditions had a primary purpose: access to birth asset – spaces, silk and gold.
But they also carried the seeds of something much bigger: the beginning of a globalized world.
European monarchs supported these trips with fierce competition, seeking new trade routes, colonies and territorial claims. While many aimed at Asia, one of the subsequent discoveries was America.
Dies big in America wreaked havoc – in more ways than one
Old world diseases like Smallpox, measles and flu traveled to European ships, rapidly spreading to lands where immune systems of indigenous populations had never encountered them. What followed was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history – a catastrophe as wide as its effects appeared beyond human civilization and the environment itself.
Great death began with the first contact. For the indigenous peoples of America, these diseases were foreign invaders, spreading faster than the European occupation itself. The entire villages were deleted before their people even saw a single European soldier.
Smallpox, in particular, moved across the continent, leaving a path of empty settlements, abandoned fields and social collapse. Some estimates suggest that 50 to 90% of the indigenous population disappeared – such a devastating case that historians compare it to black death in Europe, but to an even greater degree.
But the consequences did not focus on the loss of man. Great death had a sudden, broad impact of the planet-it helped to climb the Earth in a colder era.
With tens of millions of missing people, large stretches of cultivated land were unwittingly left. Heights, orchards and settlements were overcome by forests, pastures and wetlands. This sudden reset of America absorbed a massive amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere – so much, in fact, that some scientists believe it contributed to the era of the ice, a period of global cooling that lasted for centuries.
The Little Era of Ice – How much a perfect storm of events froze the planet
The small era of ice, which lasted from the beginning of the 1300s to the mid -1800s was not caused by a single event, but by the complex effects of a series of environmental shifts, volcanic eruptions and unintentional consequences of human deficiency.
The 1257 explosion of Samala, one of the most powerful in registered history, is believed to have begun the cooling trend. Subsequent explosions – Huaynaputin (1600), Laki (1783) and Tambora (1815) – large amounts of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere appeared, blocking sunlight and immersing global temperatures.
Only Tambora’s explosion in 1815 caused the infamous “year without wine” in 1816, when the snow fell in June and July, the crops failed and hunger spread across the continents.
Adding cooling, the sun itself entered an extremely quiet phase. During the minimum of Maunder (1645-1715) and Spörer minimum (1460-1550), the sunlight almost disappeared, weakening the production of sun energy. With the least solar radiation reaching the Earth, the winters became even more brutal.
These forces – volcanic winters, a weakened sun and carbon fall from great death – worked at the same time, keeping the planet locked in deep freezing for centuries.
What is the ultimate taking of great death?
Some argue that people are an invading species, an unnatural force that disrupts the balance of nature. And in many ways, we are.
However, we are also deeply intertwined with the rhythms of the planet, capable of affecting its climate on a massive scale – sometimes by chance. Learning is not only that we can cause destruction, but that the Earth is self-regulated beyond our control. Happens what happens afterwards does not depend on whether we act, but how.
If our absence changed the Earth so dramatically, what does this tell us about our presence? Get a 2-minute test to see where you stay in The degree of disturbance of climate change.