re: Americas: Conquest-Era Quiz Winners

JE writes: We have a tie! Congratulations to WAISers Richard Hancock (no surprise here: Richard was a student of Prof. Hilton) and Alice Whealey for winning Tim Brown’s Conquest-Era Americas quiz. Both Alice and Richard answered at least 3 of the 4 questions correctly. I’ll send a dozen WAIS “pax et lux” twisty-pens to each.

Here are the answers supplied by Tim:

1. Name the five largest pre-Columbian populations of the Americas.

From north to south, they were the Aztecs (Nahua-Mexica), Maya (highland plus lowland), Chibcha, Inca (Quechua/Aymara) and Guarani. The Aztec, Maya and Inca are famous. Those that did not build enduring monuments, the Chibcha and Guarani, are not.

2. What was the estimated population of the Western Hemisphere before Columbus?

This is a matter of debate, but most estimates run about 55 million.

3. How many descendants of the hemisphere’s pre-Columbian peoples still speak a native language as their mother tongue?

About 55 million. It’s taken five centuries or so for the population to recover.

4. In 1492, which was the capital of a major empire, Madrid or Mexico City (Tenochtitlan?)

Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). Madrid didn’t become Spain’s capital until 1561, 140 years after Cortés conquered Tenochtitlan.

JE comments: Alice Whealey’s answer to question 2 includes an interesting analysis on estimating populations during the pre-Modern period. Her commentary is worth posting in its own right:

“(2) This one is almost impossible to answer, although probably considerably less than the estimated population of Europe in 1492, which has been put at about 80 million. Modern estimates of Old World populations are based on back projection of known trends from the time of the first reliable national censuses, which one can do with reasonable accuracy if there was relatively little net migration, as was true of Europe or China say from 1000 AD to the time of the first reliable censuses (c. 1750-1850). But the New World in the early modern and modern period saw massive immigration from Africa and Europe, as well as an unknown mortality of the native population (estimated as being anywhere from 1/3 to 90% of pre-contact). An example of the wildly divergent estimates about pre-Columbian populations, is in Massimo Livi-Bacci’s recent book, which I looked at mainly because he was visiting UC Demography Dept. when I was there getting a degree, so I trust his general approach to demographic questions. He mentions 100,000 and 10 million as the lower and upper estimates by some academics of the population of Hispaniola in 1491. The latter figure is not believable, as this would put the population of Hispaniola slightly higher than that of Spain at the time, and the early descriptions (Columbus, Chanca etc.) portray a horticultural society of smallish villages. Mexico City as described by Cortez, of course, is a city at least as big as the cities of Spain in the 1520s.”

Once again, congratulations to Alice and Richard!