@MadVader
When the word genocide was first coined some time ago, it encapsulated what you call "cultural genocide" and even to some extent acts targeting political groups (like say massacres of leftist groups in Cold War Latin America or Stalinist purges of political opponents). This is because targeting the culture of a people or ethnic group effectively does the same thing as just shooting all of them would do: ultimately they cease to exist as a culture. Part of the reason that genocide is to be considered a heinous crime is the destruction of the cultural diversity of mankind: genocide is, in its original conception, anything anthropogenic which threatens that diversity.
Unfortunately the UN is an organization that had to compromise between a bunch of genocidal colonial democracies and a bunch of genocidal authoritarian empires, some of which were major powers with a big hand in drafting the international law that is quoted there. That you say it's broad - even too broad - is actually like bewildering considering it was deliberately tailored to be insanely specific so that the parties responsible could not be blamed for genocide by their own declaration. Take #5 on your list: it specifies that children being removed from their families is genocide. Children specifically: if you do the same thing to adults, which does happen and with often if not always has exactly the same motivations and repressive means, it apparently does not count as genocide according to the United Nations. Awkward. All you have to do to get off scot-free by #5 is wait a couple years for them to grow up before genociding them.
So when we are saying that "normal people conceive of #1 when they hear the word genocide" which uh... I'd be curious on the stats of that, we would do well not to forget that it was in the interests of numerous powerful people on both sides of the Cold War to influence people a certain way. You also conveniently leave out the opening paragraph which specifies who can be a target of genocide, so you can say "you're genociding ME lol".
Also normal people aren't a hive mind. Certain incidents during the dictatorships of Latin America are known to people from those countries as genocides, even though they targeted political groups. If you're gonna pick just certain "normal" people to listen to I have to wonder what the justification is for that.
Okay tell you what - I'll humor you. You want sources, data, good faith. Alas, so vast is the history and achievements of pre-Columbian civilization that I must content myself with a focus on Mexico and the United States. Luckily (but not for you), this is an area I have a scholarly expertise in and the passion to match, so I hope you won't mind if I attempt once again to broach the subject you keep begging for facts about. Unfortunately I must disagree with you though, revisionism has generally been unkind to Spain, but most of the sources I talk about here do not mention Spain (apart from like, spaniard man #231 says XYZ) and so do not express opinions one way or the other. Hardly 'black legend' stuff.
Urban planning: You could probably read like literally any archaeological review but Sanders' The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization would be a good start. Has a big chapter dedicated to and a map of Teotihuacan, city with flush toilets, apartment blocks, and a grid pattern that was vibin' with 200k people 1000 years before contact.
"The Xolalpan phase center of Teotihuacan, on the basis of data from Millon's Teotihuacan mapping project, was a large, compact center. During this phase it covered 20 km^2, had an estimated mean population of 125,000 (Million et al 1973 suggest a maximum of 200,000) and a mean density of 7000 per square kilometer. In terms of the monumentality of civic architecture, degree of planning, and overall size it ranks with the greatest pre-industrial centers of the world"
Nothing in Spain ca. the Xolalpan phase, or 400-500 AD, would even compare.
One city not good enough? Marilyn Masson's Kukulkan's Realm: Urban Life at Ancient Mayapaan. Definite example of urban planning, divided by four sections with four gatehouses presided over by the city's four dynasties. 9.1 kilometers of walls. Urban and market institutions compared in the book to "Europe north of the Alps".
Ah but Pixel, those are just two cities in Mexico. Spain brought cities to the Caribbean and Central America and American Southwest and beyond! Okay I simply do not have time to list every city ever and tell you what study to read. If you really are in good faith and intellectually open as you insist you are, then you can look for yourself at Cahokia (US state of Illinois), Pueblo Bonito (in the US state of Colorado), Ciudad Perdido (in Santa Marta, Colombia), the Marajoara earthworks... and of course Mesoamerica and the Andes were home to thousands of settlements in the range of 10,000 people or so, similar to medieval Europe. None of these are isolated examples: Ancient Americans were city builders far back as 3000 BC. Aspero and Caral-Supe are contemporary with Sumer.
Law: I'll make this one quick and link a virtual exhibit from a University website. Law and legal systems are discussed in numerous books and articles as, of course, it varies from time to time, place to place, culture to culture. I admit I do not know much about legal systems outside of Mesoamerica. Regardless, Mesoamerica had codified legal systems written down and interpreted by judges based on certain principles. Y'know. Law.
tarlton.law.utexas.edu
Structured economies: I mean every society has an economy, which is structured in some way that we can categorize. But I'll take this to mean some kind of feudalism, market economy, or centralized palace economy, economies which are associated with state-level societies as they involve hierarchies of settlements, a characteristic of states.
Mesoamerica: Frances Berdan, Deborah Nichols, Michael Smith, Rethinking the Aztec Economy among other things discussing the calpolli-teccali system of land management as well as markets, trade routes, currency, and taxation. Berdan's other works such as Aztec Archaeology and Ethnohistory are obvious candidates as well, also the aforementioned Kukulkan's Realm and Basin of Mexico. Mesoamerican states (altepetl federations) are characterized as feudal with some twists, but in the Late Postclassic there is a powerful market economy.
Andes: Craig Morgens, Adriana von Hagen The Inka Empire and its Andean Origins a good overview of Andean civilization in general, explores the ayllu-kuraka-suyu system of land management, the centralized palace economy held on the principle of Ayni or sacred reciprocation, as wel as the market economies of northern South America which includes the use of metal coinage and long-distance maritime trade routes that reached Mexico, also discussed in Dorothy Hosler's West Mexican Metallurgy: Revisited and Revised as they are considered the means by which bronzeworking technology diffused to Mesoamerica.
See also Herbert Harvey Public Health in Aztec Society, Deborah Chiconautla, Mexico: A Crossroads of Aztec Trade and Politics and Berdan's Aztec Merchants and Markets: Local-Level Economic Activity in a Non-Industrial Empire
Agriculture: The Americas are home to several hearths of agriculture: the Three Sisters Complex, Great Lakes Complex, Amazonian Complex, Andean Complex. This is most definitely a field in which the old world was outclassed, sorry. It was an exchange: it could just as much be said that the Americas taught the Old World agriculture. European methods of farming these complexes were also objectively inferior, see Jane Pleasant's Paradox of Plows and Productivity.
"Iroquois maize farmers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced three to five times more grain per acre than wheat farmers in Europe. The higher productivity of Iroquois agriculture can be attributed to two factors. First, the absence of plows in the western hemisphere allowed Iroquois farmers to maintain high levels of soil organic matter, critical for grain yields. Second, maize has a higher yield potential than wheat because of its C4 photosynthetic pathway and lower protein content. However, tillage alone accounted for a significant portion of the yield advantage of the Iroquois farmers. When the Iroquois were removed from their territories at the end of the eighteenth century, US farmers occupied and plowed these lands. Within fifty years, maize yields in five counties of western New York dropped to less than thirty bushels per acre. They rebounded when US farmers adopted practices that countered the harmful effects of plowing."
Universities/cathedrals Ok I'm not sure how the Cathedrals matter. I guess I admit the Americas indeed did not build catholic Cathedrals prior to European conquest. I also admit that during my time in Mexico and Guatemala the colonial cathedrals are indeed very beautiful structures and deserve the protection given to them. Nonetheless the equivalent of cathedral certainly existed, as in a large religious structure around which communities congregate, including the Great Pyramid of Cholula, largest pyramid in the world by volume, which unfortunately was demolished and an ugly orange church on top built to symbolize Mexico's religious conquest. Several other pyramids like La Danta, Teotihuacan's Sun pyramid, and Tikal IV, two of which I have climbed, are held to be among the top 5 tallest buildings of their respective time periods, worldwide. To go back to the urban planning a bit, that modern Latin American cities are basically organized around a 'sacred precinct' plaza with a cathedral in place of a temple is a pretty good example of things
Institutions of higher education also existed, in Mesoamerica these are calmecac in Nahuatl. I am unaware what the term is for the Andes or I have just forgotten, but nobles also attended similar institutions. Mesoamerica is home also to the first recorded instance of mandatory public education, in Tenochtitlan with all children in certain age groups going to school to study subjects which included the arts (mainly for women, like dancing/singing). Some people could potentially earn the privilege of going to calmecac, also.
Nobles went to such places to learn to read and write (including a rich poetry tradition) just like they did in Europe. I guess, however, you may contend that these institutions are not the same thing as modern universities, but I'm not actually very enthralled in semantic arguments. Last time I shared words with you, you ignored Spanish universities which had less savory things to say about Spanish actions, so it's not like you hold European education of the time in very high regard.
Architectural techniques This one is weird. Every building has some kind of architecture, even if it is the wattle-and-daub hut which typified a commoner's housing in both sides of the world for centuries. Hopefully I do not need to repeat myself though. American architecture is pretty advanced, see my list under urban planning. Spain introduced European architecture (like Baroque stuff) but I'm not sure how that's relevant unless you're saying Baroque is superior somehow to like, idk, Talud-Tablero.
Influence of the Renaissance The intellectual foment caused by the Columbian Exchange went both ways. That is to say that the mere existence of the Americas defines later Renaissance thought in many, hopefully obvious ways. Anyway, it seems you mean to imply that the Renaissance (a historical construct) is superior to cultural and philosophical movements and aesthetics of the Americas. I'll assume you meant better than that - anyway, the Post-Classic period was a "Renaissance" (we even borrow the word) for Mesoamerica, which was cut short by Spanish intervention. See Berdan and Smith's The Postclassic Mesoamerican World and Michael Coe's Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs. It's literally got philosophers debating metaphysics over chocolate at the bathhouse.
Printing press It is true no culture in the Americas had printing. I believe the first operational was in Santo Domingo. Mesoamerica was, however, only a couple steps away, as they had stamps and rollers, which are the precursors to early means of printing in China. Amatl paper is also pretty good.
The wheel The Americas did have the wheel, and used it in several "utilitarian" applications. I saw some non-utilitarian examples while I was in Mexico with my own eyes. What you probably want to say is Europeans introduced draft animals, which could overcome the inherent friction between the rotating wheel and non-rotating axle enough to be useful and iterate wheel development. Again, the Columbian Exchange went both ways. Livestock revolutionized native life, American crops revolutionized Old World life.
There actually is a lot to say on this topic. If you are in fact genuinely intellectually curious, maybe I can return to this.
Music and faith I... music is a cultural universal. All humankind does it. Europeans certainly introduced new instruments (particularly the brass family) but otherwise are you saying European music is just innately better? See Arnd Adje Both's Aztec Music Culture
Faith, again, if you're referring to religion, this only makes sense for your argument if Christianity is just innately better than say Zuyuanism or Katsina or whatever else. Considering the verbose philosophy and esteemed art produced in light of these religions, and the mostly fruitless theological debates during the colonial period which ended up with the super-warped syncretized idea of Catholicism which prevails in Mexico today, I would say no. The religion which ultimately spread to the Americas is really not Catholicism at all, nor is it fully indigenous, it is something new entirely just with Christian/Baroque aesthetic. Jesus actually was just the teotl of metal tools and horses.
Writing At least in this case, one could actually think to make the argument about the merits of the Latin alphabet over indigenous semasiographic and logosyllabic writing systems. Certainly there are advantages to Latin, however, there are also advantages the latter two systems possess: semasiographic systems sharing with ideographic ones the ability to be read without knowledge of the spoken language, which in a land with as many language families as Mesoamerica, was a pretty significant advantage. Reading Latin required knowledge either of Spanish or occasionally Nahuatl when allowed... uh I hope it's clear where I'm going with that. There were hundreds of languages in Mesoamerica, now everyone is being forced to speak just the language of the imperialist and their local lackeys. Aka perpetuating an oppressive system, obviously. "Luckily" with the literal non-stop warfare, pointless forced labor projects, along with outbreaks, most languages aside from those two went extinct anyway so I guess it's ok.
As for all that dated narrative about the diseases, unfortunately that would require a longer post and sources that are less... uh, neutral about Spain's empire in the Americas. I should inform you however that the biggest disease killer in Mesoamerica at least (I do not know if this is corroborated in other places, however the epidemiology and genetics are pretty similar) was not smallpox, it was probably salmonella. Salmonella leaves a detectable trace in the skeletons of those it kills: the numbers don't lie. The reason that this is significant is because salmonella would only have been so virulent if, all of a sudden, somehow, social institutions including healthcare and sanitation infrastructure as well as uncontaminated food supplies were to catastrophically implode. I'll give you a hint: they didn't sabotage these things on their own.
By the way. Just so there is literally no excuse. If you want the links to download any of the above articles and books, among others which have gone unmentioned for sanity's sake or plain forgetfulness, send me a PM and you'll get them. There's like $2000 worth of research from the last 15-20 years alone and dozens if not hundreds of authors on my hard-drive - FREE for your perusal! I guess that goes for anyone else, too.
Also this hilarious article https://phys.org/news/2020-03-mesoamerican-copper-smelting-technology-aided.html
When the word genocide was first coined some time ago, it encapsulated what you call "cultural genocide" and even to some extent acts targeting political groups (like say massacres of leftist groups in Cold War Latin America or Stalinist purges of political opponents). This is because targeting the culture of a people or ethnic group effectively does the same thing as just shooting all of them would do: ultimately they cease to exist as a culture. Part of the reason that genocide is to be considered a heinous crime is the destruction of the cultural diversity of mankind: genocide is, in its original conception, anything anthropogenic which threatens that diversity.
Unfortunately the UN is an organization that had to compromise between a bunch of genocidal colonial democracies and a bunch of genocidal authoritarian empires, some of which were major powers with a big hand in drafting the international law that is quoted there. That you say it's broad - even too broad - is actually like bewildering considering it was deliberately tailored to be insanely specific so that the parties responsible could not be blamed for genocide by their own declaration. Take #5 on your list: it specifies that children being removed from their families is genocide. Children specifically: if you do the same thing to adults, which does happen and with often if not always has exactly the same motivations and repressive means, it apparently does not count as genocide according to the United Nations. Awkward. All you have to do to get off scot-free by #5 is wait a couple years for them to grow up before genociding them.
So when we are saying that "normal people conceive of #1 when they hear the word genocide" which uh... I'd be curious on the stats of that, we would do well not to forget that it was in the interests of numerous powerful people on both sides of the Cold War to influence people a certain way. You also conveniently leave out the opening paragraph which specifies who can be a target of genocide, so you can say "you're genociding ME lol".
Also normal people aren't a hive mind. Certain incidents during the dictatorships of Latin America are known to people from those countries as genocides, even though they targeted political groups. If you're gonna pick just certain "normal" people to listen to I have to wonder what the justification is for that.
Okay tell you what - I'll humor you. You want sources, data, good faith. Alas, so vast is the history and achievements of pre-Columbian civilization that I must content myself with a focus on Mexico and the United States. Luckily (but not for you), this is an area I have a scholarly expertise in and the passion to match, so I hope you won't mind if I attempt once again to broach the subject you keep begging for facts about. Unfortunately I must disagree with you though, revisionism has generally been unkind to Spain, but most of the sources I talk about here do not mention Spain (apart from like, spaniard man #231 says XYZ) and so do not express opinions one way or the other. Hardly 'black legend' stuff.
Urban planning: You could probably read like literally any archaeological review but Sanders' The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization would be a good start. Has a big chapter dedicated to and a map of Teotihuacan, city with flush toilets, apartment blocks, and a grid pattern that was vibin' with 200k people 1000 years before contact.
Nothing in Spain ca. the Xolalpan phase, or 400-500 AD, would even compare.
One city not good enough? Marilyn Masson's Kukulkan's Realm: Urban Life at Ancient Mayapaan. Definite example of urban planning, divided by four sections with four gatehouses presided over by the city's four dynasties. 9.1 kilometers of walls. Urban and market institutions compared in the book to "Europe north of the Alps".
Ah but Pixel, those are just two cities in Mexico. Spain brought cities to the Caribbean and Central America and American Southwest and beyond! Okay I simply do not have time to list every city ever and tell you what study to read. If you really are in good faith and intellectually open as you insist you are, then you can look for yourself at Cahokia (US state of Illinois), Pueblo Bonito (in the US state of Colorado), Ciudad Perdido (in Santa Marta, Colombia), the Marajoara earthworks... and of course Mesoamerica and the Andes were home to thousands of settlements in the range of 10,000 people or so, similar to medieval Europe. None of these are isolated examples: Ancient Americans were city builders far back as 3000 BC. Aspero and Caral-Supe are contemporary with Sumer.
Law: I'll make this one quick and link a virtual exhibit from a University website. Law and legal systems are discussed in numerous books and articles as, of course, it varies from time to time, place to place, culture to culture. I admit I do not know much about legal systems outside of Mesoamerica. Regardless, Mesoamerica had codified legal systems written down and interpreted by judges based on certain principles. Y'know. Law.
Tarlton Law Library: Exhibit - Aztec and Maya Law: Introduction
Tarlton Law Library: Exhibit - Aztec and Maya Law: Introduction
tarlton.law.utexas.edu
Structured economies: I mean every society has an economy, which is structured in some way that we can categorize. But I'll take this to mean some kind of feudalism, market economy, or centralized palace economy, economies which are associated with state-level societies as they involve hierarchies of settlements, a characteristic of states.
Mesoamerica: Frances Berdan, Deborah Nichols, Michael Smith, Rethinking the Aztec Economy among other things discussing the calpolli-teccali system of land management as well as markets, trade routes, currency, and taxation. Berdan's other works such as Aztec Archaeology and Ethnohistory are obvious candidates as well, also the aforementioned Kukulkan's Realm and Basin of Mexico. Mesoamerican states (altepetl federations) are characterized as feudal with some twists, but in the Late Postclassic there is a powerful market economy.
Andes: Craig Morgens, Adriana von Hagen The Inka Empire and its Andean Origins a good overview of Andean civilization in general, explores the ayllu-kuraka-suyu system of land management, the centralized palace economy held on the principle of Ayni or sacred reciprocation, as wel as the market economies of northern South America which includes the use of metal coinage and long-distance maritime trade routes that reached Mexico, also discussed in Dorothy Hosler's West Mexican Metallurgy: Revisited and Revised as they are considered the means by which bronzeworking technology diffused to Mesoamerica.
See also Herbert Harvey Public Health in Aztec Society, Deborah Chiconautla, Mexico: A Crossroads of Aztec Trade and Politics and Berdan's Aztec Merchants and Markets: Local-Level Economic Activity in a Non-Industrial Empire
Agriculture: The Americas are home to several hearths of agriculture: the Three Sisters Complex, Great Lakes Complex, Amazonian Complex, Andean Complex. This is most definitely a field in which the old world was outclassed, sorry. It was an exchange: it could just as much be said that the Americas taught the Old World agriculture. European methods of farming these complexes were also objectively inferior, see Jane Pleasant's Paradox of Plows and Productivity.
"Iroquois maize farmers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced three to five times more grain per acre than wheat farmers in Europe. The higher productivity of Iroquois agriculture can be attributed to two factors. First, the absence of plows in the western hemisphere allowed Iroquois farmers to maintain high levels of soil organic matter, critical for grain yields. Second, maize has a higher yield potential than wheat because of its C4 photosynthetic pathway and lower protein content. However, tillage alone accounted for a significant portion of the yield advantage of the Iroquois farmers. When the Iroquois were removed from their territories at the end of the eighteenth century, US farmers occupied and plowed these lands. Within fifty years, maize yields in five counties of western New York dropped to less than thirty bushels per acre. They rebounded when US farmers adopted practices that countered the harmful effects of plowing."
Universities/cathedrals Ok I'm not sure how the Cathedrals matter. I guess I admit the Americas indeed did not build catholic Cathedrals prior to European conquest. I also admit that during my time in Mexico and Guatemala the colonial cathedrals are indeed very beautiful structures and deserve the protection given to them. Nonetheless the equivalent of cathedral certainly existed, as in a large religious structure around which communities congregate, including the Great Pyramid of Cholula, largest pyramid in the world by volume, which unfortunately was demolished and an ugly orange church on top built to symbolize Mexico's religious conquest. Several other pyramids like La Danta, Teotihuacan's Sun pyramid, and Tikal IV, two of which I have climbed, are held to be among the top 5 tallest buildings of their respective time periods, worldwide. To go back to the urban planning a bit, that modern Latin American cities are basically organized around a 'sacred precinct' plaza with a cathedral in place of a temple is a pretty good example of things
Institutions of higher education also existed, in Mesoamerica these are calmecac in Nahuatl. I am unaware what the term is for the Andes or I have just forgotten, but nobles also attended similar institutions. Mesoamerica is home also to the first recorded instance of mandatory public education, in Tenochtitlan with all children in certain age groups going to school to study subjects which included the arts (mainly for women, like dancing/singing). Some people could potentially earn the privilege of going to calmecac, also.
Nobles went to such places to learn to read and write (including a rich poetry tradition) just like they did in Europe. I guess, however, you may contend that these institutions are not the same thing as modern universities, but I'm not actually very enthralled in semantic arguments. Last time I shared words with you, you ignored Spanish universities which had less savory things to say about Spanish actions, so it's not like you hold European education of the time in very high regard.
Architectural techniques This one is weird. Every building has some kind of architecture, even if it is the wattle-and-daub hut which typified a commoner's housing in both sides of the world for centuries. Hopefully I do not need to repeat myself though. American architecture is pretty advanced, see my list under urban planning. Spain introduced European architecture (like Baroque stuff) but I'm not sure how that's relevant unless you're saying Baroque is superior somehow to like, idk, Talud-Tablero.
Influence of the Renaissance The intellectual foment caused by the Columbian Exchange went both ways. That is to say that the mere existence of the Americas defines later Renaissance thought in many, hopefully obvious ways. Anyway, it seems you mean to imply that the Renaissance (a historical construct) is superior to cultural and philosophical movements and aesthetics of the Americas. I'll assume you meant better than that - anyway, the Post-Classic period was a "Renaissance" (we even borrow the word) for Mesoamerica, which was cut short by Spanish intervention. See Berdan and Smith's The Postclassic Mesoamerican World and Michael Coe's Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs. It's literally got philosophers debating metaphysics over chocolate at the bathhouse.
Printing press It is true no culture in the Americas had printing. I believe the first operational was in Santo Domingo. Mesoamerica was, however, only a couple steps away, as they had stamps and rollers, which are the precursors to early means of printing in China. Amatl paper is also pretty good.
The wheel The Americas did have the wheel, and used it in several "utilitarian" applications. I saw some non-utilitarian examples while I was in Mexico with my own eyes. What you probably want to say is Europeans introduced draft animals, which could overcome the inherent friction between the rotating wheel and non-rotating axle enough to be useful and iterate wheel development. Again, the Columbian Exchange went both ways. Livestock revolutionized native life, American crops revolutionized Old World life.
There actually is a lot to say on this topic. If you are in fact genuinely intellectually curious, maybe I can return to this.
Music and faith I... music is a cultural universal. All humankind does it. Europeans certainly introduced new instruments (particularly the brass family) but otherwise are you saying European music is just innately better? See Arnd Adje Both's Aztec Music Culture
Faith, again, if you're referring to religion, this only makes sense for your argument if Christianity is just innately better than say Zuyuanism or Katsina or whatever else. Considering the verbose philosophy and esteemed art produced in light of these religions, and the mostly fruitless theological debates during the colonial period which ended up with the super-warped syncretized idea of Catholicism which prevails in Mexico today, I would say no. The religion which ultimately spread to the Americas is really not Catholicism at all, nor is it fully indigenous, it is something new entirely just with Christian/Baroque aesthetic. Jesus actually was just the teotl of metal tools and horses.
Writing At least in this case, one could actually think to make the argument about the merits of the Latin alphabet over indigenous semasiographic and logosyllabic writing systems. Certainly there are advantages to Latin, however, there are also advantages the latter two systems possess: semasiographic systems sharing with ideographic ones the ability to be read without knowledge of the spoken language, which in a land with as many language families as Mesoamerica, was a pretty significant advantage. Reading Latin required knowledge either of Spanish or occasionally Nahuatl when allowed... uh I hope it's clear where I'm going with that. There were hundreds of languages in Mesoamerica, now everyone is being forced to speak just the language of the imperialist and their local lackeys. Aka perpetuating an oppressive system, obviously. "Luckily" with the literal non-stop warfare, pointless forced labor projects, along with outbreaks, most languages aside from those two went extinct anyway so I guess it's ok.
As for all that dated narrative about the diseases, unfortunately that would require a longer post and sources that are less... uh, neutral about Spain's empire in the Americas. I should inform you however that the biggest disease killer in Mesoamerica at least (I do not know if this is corroborated in other places, however the epidemiology and genetics are pretty similar) was not smallpox, it was probably salmonella. Salmonella leaves a detectable trace in the skeletons of those it kills: the numbers don't lie. The reason that this is significant is because salmonella would only have been so virulent if, all of a sudden, somehow, social institutions including healthcare and sanitation infrastructure as well as uncontaminated food supplies were to catastrophically implode. I'll give you a hint: they didn't sabotage these things on their own.
By the way. Just so there is literally no excuse. If you want the links to download any of the above articles and books, among others which have gone unmentioned for sanity's sake or plain forgetfulness, send me a PM and you'll get them. There's like $2000 worth of research from the last 15-20 years alone and dozens if not hundreds of authors on my hard-drive - FREE for your perusal! I guess that goes for anyone else, too.
Also this hilarious article https://phys.org/news/2020-03-mesoamerican-copper-smelting-technology-aided.html
