Born Then1545–1548
Life during the Cocoliztli epidemic of 1545
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
In 1545 a haemorrhagic fever the Nahuatl speakers called cocoliztli swept through central Mexico. It killed mostly native people. DNA from a cemetery points to a form of Salmonella, though the cause is still debated.
Deaths: perhaps 5 to 15 million, a large share of the native population.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
- Indian Ocean slave trade 700–1799
- Sengoku period 1467–1590
- Collapse of the Taíno population 1493–1530
- Atlantic slave trade (West Africa) 1501–1799
- Atlantic slave trade (Kongo and Angola) 1514–1799
- Smallpox in the Inca Empire 1525–1527
- Ethiopian–Adal war 1529–1543
- Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire 1532–1572
- Cocoliztli epidemic of 1545 1545–1548
- Plantation slavery in Brazil 1550–1799