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population of somewhere between a half and three-quarters of a million. Fifty years later
that population was less than 500. When Cortes came ashore, the population of Mexico is
estimated to have been sixteen million. In less than one hundred years, only one million
remained. Overall it is estimated that more than 90 percent of Native Americans died in the
first century of their initial encounter with the people and diseases of Europe. Wasted and
weakened by disease, they were easily defeated by the people from across the sea. As Jared
Diamond recounts and as the title of his admirable book succinctly states, germs, guns, and
steel were the keys to the Spanish conquest of the New World.
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