geographically isolated from one another, and
that a major portion of these populations later
became extinct following European contact.
This closely matches the historical reports of a
major demographic collapse immediately after
the Spaniards arrived in the late 1400s.”
Francisco Pizarro’s treachery and murder in 1532
of the last Incan emperor, Atahualpa, is a symbol
of that willful extermination. With the blessing of
King Charles V, Pizarro marched to the Incan
capital under the banner of Christianity and greed.
Pizarro invited Atahualpa to a feast in honor of
the new emperor’s rise to the throne. At the feast,
Pizarro had his friar, Vicente de Valverde, urge
that Atahualpa convert to Christianity and accept
Charles V as their king — which was a calculated
move to infuriate the ruler. When Atahualpa
refused, Pizarro ordered his men to open fire,
whereupon they slaughtered 5,000 Incan soldiers
in an hour.
The Spanish account speaks of the event with
great pride and thanks to God. Pizarro kept
Atahualpa alive long enough to get a ransom of
gold and silver, and then, even after Atahualpa
converted to Christianity under duress, he was
strangled to death.
These tales of barbarity are a common theme of
European conquest all over the Americas. The
accounts of torture and mass murder carried
out by Columbus and his men in the Caribbean
islands are truly disturbing.
deaths were the result of diseases that were
completely new to their populations.
The DNA study carried out by ACAD also adds
valuable information on the timing of the first
people entering the Americas, which produced
this genetic isolation.
“Our genetic reconstruction confirms that the first
Americans entered around 16,000 years ago via
the Pacific coast, skirting around the massive ice
sheets that blocked an inland corridor route which
only opened much later,” says Professor Alan
Cooper, Director of ACAD. “They spread southward remarkably swiftly, reaching southern Chile
by 14,600 years ago.“
“Genetic diversity in these early people from Asia
was limited by the small founding populations
which were isolated on the Beringian land bridge
for around 2400 to 9000 years,” says joint lead
author Dr. Lars Fehren-Schmitz, from UCSC.
“It was at the peak of the last Ice Age, when cold
deserts and ice sheets blocked human movement,
and limited resources would have constrained
population size. This long isolation of a small
group of people brewed the unique genetic
diversity observed in the early Americans.”
The tale of Native Americans sadly turned out to
be one of extermination by Europeans bent on
conquest and riches. It will forever remain a mystery what these untold numbers of extinct, unique
populations could have contributed to humanity.
There was another culprit in the death of Native
Americans. Europeans, being from densely
populated cities, were vectors of chronic diseases
such as influenza, bubonic plague, smallpox, and
measles. Indigenous Americans, on the other
hand, had become genetically isolated over their
thousands of years of migration from the Beringian
land bridge to the farther reaches of South
America. A vast number of Native American
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