The Europeans did not “proceed with a controlled extermination of the population”. Yet, what happened to that population?
You don’t need to start with a deliberate decision to exterminate in order to end up with almost none of the original population. Sometimes you just need to not care much.
The Europeans did not “proceed with a controlled extermination of the population”. Yet, what happened to that population?
They still exist… so they were not exterminated? They did not carry out purposeful extermination, and in fact the indigenous people were not exterminated. So what exactly are you arguing?
The only thing that was very truly devastating to indigenous populations was smallpox exposure, and that was an accident. Also lots of internal wars, famine, civilization collapse, etc. But most of that was triggered by the smallpox plague 30+% die-off.
The fact that Europeans outnumber indigenous people 100:1 in north america (less so in central and south america) isn’t some purposeful, master plan of the European colonialists. It’s just the inevitable outcome of a number of historical accidents with compounding effects.
The development of Native Americans has been stunted and they simply exist within the controlled conditions imposed by the new civilization now. They aren’t all dead, but they can’t actually control their own destiny as a people. Native American reservations seem like exactly the sort of thing aliens might put us in. Very limited control over our own affairs in desolate parts of the universe with the addition of welfare payments to give us some sort of quality of life.
True, the scenario is not implausible for a non-hostile alien civilization to arrive who are more efficient than us, and in the long term they will out-compete and out-breed us.
Such non-hostile assimilation is not unheard of in real life. It is happening now (or at least claimed by many to be happening) in Europe, both in the form of the migrant crisis and also in the form of smaller countries fearing that their cultural identities and values are being eroded by the larger, richer countries of the union.
You misunderstood my point.
The Europeans did not “proceed with a controlled extermination of the population”. Yet, what happened to that population?
You don’t need to start with a deliberate decision to exterminate in order to end up with almost none of the original population. Sometimes you just need to not care much.
They still exist… so they were not exterminated? They did not carry out purposeful extermination, and in fact the indigenous people were not exterminated. So what exactly are you arguing?
The only thing that was very truly devastating to indigenous populations was smallpox exposure, and that was an accident. Also lots of internal wars, famine, civilization collapse, etc. But most of that was triggered by the smallpox plague 30+% die-off.
The fact that Europeans outnumber indigenous people 100:1 in north america (less so in central and south america) isn’t some purposeful, master plan of the European colonialists. It’s just the inevitable outcome of a number of historical accidents with compounding effects.
The development of Native Americans has been stunted and they simply exist within the controlled conditions imposed by the new civilization now. They aren’t all dead, but they can’t actually control their own destiny as a people. Native American reservations seem like exactly the sort of thing aliens might put us in. Very limited control over our own affairs in desolate parts of the universe with the addition of welfare payments to give us some sort of quality of life.
True, the scenario is not implausible for a non-hostile alien civilization to arrive who are more efficient than us, and in the long term they will out-compete and out-breed us.
Such non-hostile assimilation is not unheard of in real life. It is happening now (or at least claimed by many to be happening) in Europe, both in the form of the migrant crisis and also in the form of smaller countries fearing that their cultural identities and values are being eroded by the larger, richer countries of the union.