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1545 is well after European contact and close enough that it seems unlikely to be a coincidence. 1519–1521: Hernán Cortés conquers the Aztec Empire. 1532–1533: Francisco Pizarro conquers the Inca Empire.

Further low 10’s of millions of deaths on its own really doesn’t explain the 90% population drop across several hundred years here. Smallpox killed between 65% to 95% of Native American populations but it was far from alone. We’re talking devastating plague after plague for generations which canceled out the tendency for populations to rebound when competition is low. Something like 200+ million deaths on the conservative side over a few hundred years not just one or two devastating but short lived outbreaks.

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Well, we have plenty of plagues to go around in Eurasia. There's plenty of diseases we barely notice, because pretty much everyone has enough immunity to mostly shrug it off.
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> There was a hemorrhagic fever in ~1545 an ~1576 that killed tens of millions of people

I haven’t heard of this - do you have any material to recommend on the subject?

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> disease we can’t explain

Disease we can't explain that spread a few decades after European ships full of plagues arrived.

I mean, yeah, sure.

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You're making a fair point. Any native pathogens would have been shipped back to Europe with slave populations.

The fact that Europe didn't have the same catastrophic population decline suggests that either that didn't happen (possible, but a stretch) or that Europeans already had immunity.

Which would only be true if there was some freak genetic immunity (also a stretch) or the disease was already in wide circulation (far more likely).

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