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Mexico's native population was one of the first to experience a smallpox epidemic, where many succumbed to the disease. In 1520, the first wave of smallpox killed 5–8 million people. From 1545 to 1576, up to 17 million people died from smallpox. This large amount of deaths in the second wave are thought to be the result of hemorrhagic fevers. [5]
During the 18th century the disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year, including five reigning monarchs, and was responsible for a third of all blindness. [4] Between 20 and 60% of all those infected—and over 80% of infected children—died from the disease.
Diseases like smallpox could travel great distances and spread throughout large populations, which was the case with the Aztecs having lost approximately 50% of its population from smallpox and other diseases. [33] The disease killed an estimated forty percent of the native population in the area within a year.
Even before the Spanish themselves arrived, epidemics of their diseases such as smallpox and measles had severely affected the Purépecha population, and likely killed the emperor. A new, young emperor was hastily installed, who had little political experience and hoped to work around Spanish rule, and avoid Tenochtitlán's fate of utter ...
The bulk of the Spanish infantry, left behind by Cortés and the other horsemen, had to cut their way through the masses of Aztec warriors opposing them. Many of the Spaniards, weighed down by their armor and booty, drowned in the causeway gaps or were killed by the Aztecs. Much of the wealth the Spaniards had acquired in Tenochtitlan was lost.
Boone, Elizabeth H. 1989. "Incarnations of the Aztec Supernatural: The Image of Huitzilopochtli in Mexico and Europe." Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Ser., Vol. 79, No. 2., pp. i–iv+1-107. Boone, Elizabeth H. (2000) Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs. University of Texas Press, Austin.
The Aztecs and other Indigenous groups affected by the outbreak were disadvantaged due to their lack of exposure to zoonotic diseases. [17] Given that many Old World pathogens may have caused the cocoliztli outbreak, it is significant that all but two of the most common species of domestic mammalian livestock ( llamas and alpacas being the ...
The Aztecs left rulers of conquered cities in power so long as they agreed to pay semi-annual tribute to the alliance, as well as supply military forces when needed for the Aztec war efforts. In return, the imperial authority offered protection and political stability and facilitated an integrated economic network of diverse lands and peoples ...