Numbers from Nowhere

The size of the population of the Americas before European contact was once a topic of intense debate. For the past decade or so, however, it has been regarded as settled, and estimates on the order of 50 to one 100 million people have been accepted as proven. David Henige’s book questions if this should be the case. In fact, the book not only takes issue with current estimates but attempts to argue that the contact population is, in fact, unknowable on the basis of the currently available evidence.Henige’s basic point is excellent. Most of the current estimates have been derived from an extrapolation based on rather dicey figures taken from less-than-reliable sources. In reminding us that these estimates are actually built on flimsy presuppositions that often involve circular reasoning, the author has provided a much-needed reality check for this field.Unfortunately, his argument suffers from overkill. Henige is at his best when casting doubt upon the veracity of contemporary population estimates made by the conquistadores or Spanish colonial observers. But the book is poorly organized, and the author spends an inordinate amount of time criticizing estimates that are only marginally (if at all) relevant to the population estimates advanced by those to whom he refers as the “high counters.” His argument does not unfold in a coherent fashion. Rather, it reads as though he had assembled every possible criticism of the high counters’ methods and evidence in an almost random fashion. At times, the book cries out for a more detailed discussion of technical issues from the fields of epidemiology or population demography, and the author’s methodological criticisms of archaeological evidence appear thoroughly misplaced.The strongest criticism of the high counters’ estimates comes from a statistician named Rudolph Zambardino, whom Henige discusses in chapter 4. Zambardino pointed out that fairly small margins of error in the assumptions made by the high counters (for example, the number of uncounted dependents per family) rapidly compound themselves and lead to a huge vagueness in the final estimates. For example, the population of Central Mexico in 1532 could be anywhere between 2.7 million and 35 million, based on this method of calculation.However, Henige’s book attacks the entire idea of attempting to estimate the pre-contact population, rather than simply criticize specific estimates. This reasoning preempts several potentially useful exercises. For example, if the lower bound of the estimates monotonically decreases despite assumptions that bias against the hypothesis of a population decrease, then we can take that as evidence of a sustained population decline. The high counters’ methodology is flawed only in application. Had they been trained as statisticians or economic historians, and therefore been more cognizant of the need to consistently bias their assumptions against their hypotheses, then they would not have attempted to push their calculations so far. Henige is correct that these methods cannot yield specific population estimates, but they might shed light on the timing and pace of the population decline.Henige convincingly criticizes several accounts of the epidemics which putatively swept through the New World after the Spanish arrival, but at times the reader is left wondering whether he means to argue that the epidemics never happened at all. The “contact does not equal contagion” chapter cries out for more discussion of what we know about the epidemiology of the various diseases blamed for the depopulation. What do we know about the spread of these diseases? Are there better-documented cases of their introduction into unexposed populations that we could use? What evidence do we have about the epidemics?In addition, Henige makes several unjustified epistemological claims that weaken an otherwise excellent case. For example, after an incisive criticism of several arguments by archaeologists about the timing of apparent depopulations in North America, Henige pointlessly begins to criticize archaeology by making specious comparisons between archaeological and historical argumentation. A lack of archaeological remains of settlements is not the same as a lack of written materials from a period of Roman history, and it is unclear what point Henige is attempting to make. In other cases, Henige moves from arguing that the high counters are not scientific enough, since they do not make adequate attempts to falsify their arguments, to implicitly arguing that the scientific method is not applicable to the “variety, complexity, and diversity” of history (p. 165).Henige’s exhaustive criticism of the high counters is a useful check on the often specious nature of current estimates. However, his main point could have been made in a far more succinct manner. In sum, the author presents too little demographic, archaeological, or epidemiological theory to allow the reader to make a conclusive judgment about what can or cannot be known from the available evidence

Argument (complex analysis) · Criticism · Economics · Epistemology · Point (geometry) · Political science · Population · Positive economics · Presupposition · Sociology · Census and Population Estimation · Demography · History · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy

• Pots and Pox

  Open Access•Colin M Betts•American Antiquity•2006

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