GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

HEMISPHERES COLLIDING • 3 7 5
black Africans, along with Asian Indians and Javanese in Suriname).
In parts of Central America and the Andes, the Native Americans were
originally so numerous that, even after epidemics and wars, much of the
population today remains Native American or mixed. That is especially
true at high altitudes in the Andes, where genetically European women
have physiological difficulties even in reproducing, and where native
Andean crops still offer the most suitable basis for food production. However,
even where Native Americans do survive, there has been extensive
replacement of their culture and languages with those of the Old World.
Of the hundreds of Native American languages originally spoken in North
America, all except 187 are no longer spoken at all, and 149 of these last
187 are moribund in the sense that they are being spoken only by old
people and no longer learned by children. Of the approximately 40 New
World nations, all now have an Indo-European language or Creole as the
official language. Even in the countries with the largest surviving Native
American populations, such as Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, and Guatemala, a
glance at photographs of political and business leaders shows that they are
disproportionately Europeans, while several Caribbean nations have black
African leaders and Guyana has had Asian Indian leaders.
The original Native American population has been reduced by a
debated large percentage: estimates for North America range up to 95 percent.
But the total human population of the Americas is now approximately
ten times what it was in 1492, because of arrivals of Old World
peoples (Europeans, Africans, and Asians). The Americas' population now
consists of a mixture of peoples originating from all continents except Australia.
That demographic shift of the last 500 years—the most massive
shift on any continent except Australia—has its ultimate roots in developments
between about 11,000 B.C. and A.D. 1.