Joe Rogan on history: what the evidence says · JRE #2215
SUBJECT: HISTORY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
Everyone knows there was a genocide of Native Americans in this country but most people don't know that 90% of them were wiped out by disease.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The scale is well supported: demographic-history reviews place the post-1492 decline of Indigenous populations in the Americas at roughly 75 to 95 percent, so the 90 percent figure sits squarely within the accepted range. One peer-reviewed review states that during the initial phase of European colonization infectious diseases were the primary killer among Native American communities, with an estimate that about 95 percent of the deaths were caused by introduced pathogens (smallpox, measles, influenza and others) to which populations had no prior immunity, the so-called virgin-soil effect. The caveat is that the framing of disease versus genocide is contested: scholars increasingly note that colonial violence, enslavement, forced labor and social disruption also drove mortality and often created the conditions in which epidemics became so lethal, and whether disease was the sole primary driver remains a matter of active debate. In short, the 90 percent disease figure reflects mainstream estimates, but treating disease and colonial violence as cleanly separable causes oversimplifies the current scholarship.