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
Genocide of indigenous peoples considered genocide can be a matter of scholarly debate. Historians often draw on broader definitions such as Lemkin's, which sees colonialist violence against indigenous peoples as inherently genocidal. For example, in the case of the colonization of the Americas, where 90% of the indigenous people of the Americas were wiped out in 500 years of European colonization, it can be debatable whether genocide occurs when disease is considered the main cause of population decline since the introduction of disease was mostly unintentional. Some genocide scholars separate the population declines due to disease from the genocidal aggression of one group toward