Born Then1576–1578
Life during the Cocoliztli epidemic of 1576
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
A second great cocoliztli epidemic struck in 1576, after a long drought. It killed perhaps half of the native people who had survived earlier epidemics. By 1600 the native population of central Mexico was perhaps a tenth of what it had been in 1519.
Deaths: perhaps 2 to 2.5 million, roughly half of the remaining 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
- Atlantic slave trade (West Africa) 1501–1799
- Atlantic slave trade (Kongo and Angola) 1514–1799
- Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire 1532–1572
- Plantation slavery in Brazil 1550–1799
- Cocoliztli epidemic of 1576 1576–1578
- Russian conquest of Siberia 1580–1700
- Moroccan invasion of the Songhai Empire 1591–1599
- Imjin War 1592–1598