500 лет

500 лет назад эпидемия оспы подкосила цивилизацию ацтеков на американском континенте и сделала их землю легкой добычей испанских конкистадоров во главе с Фернандо Кортесом.

Although Cortés was a skilled leader, he and his force of perhaps a thousand Spaniards and indigenous allies would not have been able to overcome a city of 200,000 without help. He got it in the form of a smallpox epidemic that gradually spread inward from the coast of Mexico and decimated the densely populated city of Tenochtitlan in 1520, reducing its population by 40 percent in a single year.
Smallpox is caused by an inhaled virus, which causes fever, vomiting and a rash, soon covering the body with fluid-filled blisters. These turn into scabs which leave scars. Fatal in approximately one-third of cases, another third of those afflicted with the disease typically develop blindness.
Smallpox existed in ancient times in Egyptian, Indian and Chinese cultures. It remained endemic in human populations for millennia, coming to Europe during the 11th century’s Crusades. When Europeans began to explore and colonize other parts of the world, smallpox traveled with them.
The native people of the Americas, including the Aztecs, were especially vulnerable to smallpox because they’d never been exposed to the virus and thus possessed no natural immunity. No effective anti-viral therapies were available.
Recalling the epidemic, one victim reported:
“The plague lasted for 70 days, striking everywhere in the city and killing a vast number of our people. Sores erupted on our faces, our breasts, our bellies; we were covered with agonizing sores from head to foot.”
A Franciscan monk who accompanied Cortés provided this description:
“As the Indians did not know the remedy of the disease, they died in heaps, like bedbugs. In many places it happened that everyone in a house died, and as it was impossible to bury the great number of dead, they pulled down the houses over them, so that their homes became their tombs.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/how-smallpox-devastated-the-aztecs-and-helped-spain-conquer-an-american-civilization-500-years-ago



Но важные потрясения в это время происходили и на других континентах.

С разницей в один год умерли Леонардо да Винчи и Рафаэль, подводя черту в эпохе Возрождения.

Эпоха географических открытий продолжилась кругосветным плаванием Магеллана.

Португальцев прогнали из Китая за то, что они похищали китайских детей и продавали их в рабство https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tunmen

В Европе возникало неразрешимое противоречие между доминирующей идеологией католицизма и новыми веяниями времени в виде гуманистического разворота Возрождения и географических открытий, явно демонстрирующих библейскую зашоренность.

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