... wrote on Apr 9
th, 2012 at 6:13pm:
The creation and spread of disease is an unavoidable by-product of close living, as in cities. If there really were great cities in the new world, they would have given rise to diseases that Europeans settlers would have had no immunity to. It would have been very hard for them to have got established if they had a mortality rate of even half the 90% claimed for the natives.
You don't think the Aztecs lived in cities?
Tenochtitlan, the capital city was enormous, probably the biggest city in the World at the time, with a population of around 200,000. It's sister city of Tlatelolco had a population of 60,000.
It was probably their high standards of sanitation that prevented disease.
Quote:Two double aqueducts, each more than 4 km (2.5 mi) long and made of terracotta, provided the city with fresh water from the springs at Chapultepec. This was intended mainly for cleaning and washing. For drinking, water from mountain springs was preferred. Most of the population liked to bathe twice a day; Moctezuma was said to take four baths a day. As soap they used the root of a plant called copalxocotl.
Quote:When we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry land we were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments on account of the great towers and cues and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream? I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about.
from Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain