Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas scope of the epidemics over the years was tremendous, killing millions of people—possibly in excess of 90% of the population in the hardest hit areas—and creating one of "the greatest human catastrophe in history, far exceeding even the disaster of the Black Death of medieval Europe", which had killed up to one-third of the people in Europe and Asia between 1347 and 1351. One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, yellow fever and pertussis, which were chronic in Eurasia. This transfer of disease between the
Indigenous religious beliefs of the Tagalog people Indigenous religious beliefs of the Tagalog people The indigenous religious beliefs of the Tagalog people (sometimes referred to as Anitism, or, less accurately, using the general term ""animism"") were well documented by Spanish missionaries, mostly in the form of epistolary accounts ("relaciones") and as entries in the various dictionaries put together by missionary friars. Archeological and linguistic evidence indicates that these beliefs date back to the arrival of Austronesian peoples, although elements were later syncretistically adapted from Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Islam. Many of these indigenous beliefs persist to this day, in sycretistic forms discussed by scholars as Philippine variations