Globalization and disease Eurasian diseases to the Americas was that many more native peoples were killed by disease and germs than by the colonists' use of guns or other weapons. Scholars estimate that over a period of four centuries, epidemic diseases wiped out as much as 90 percent of the American indigenous populations. In Europe during the age of exploration, diseases such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis (TB) had already been introduced centuries before through trade with Asia and Africa. People had developed some antibodies to these and other diseases from the Eurasian continent. When the Europeans traveled to new lands, they carried
Indigenous peoples of the Americas was the general rule in the rest of North America, the history of the colony of New Spain was one of racial intermingling ("mestizaje"). "Mestizos", which in Mexico designate people who do not identify culturally with any indigenous grouping, quickly came to account for a majority of the colony's population; but 6% of the Mexican population identify as speakers of one of the indigenous languages. The CDI identifies 62 indigenous groups in Mexico, each with a unique language. In the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca and in the interior of the Yucatán Peninsula the majority of the population is indigenous.