Born Then1520–1521
Life during the Smallpox epidemic in Mexico
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
Smallpox arrived in Mexico with a member of the Spanish expedition in 1520. The people of Mesoamerica had no immunity, and it killed a large share of them, including the emperor Cuitláhuac. It weakened Tenochtitlan just before the final siege.
Deaths: perhaps 5 to 8 million; estimates are highly uncertain.
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
- Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire 1519–1521
- Smallpox epidemic in Mexico 1520–1521
- Smallpox in the Inca Empire 1525–1527
- Ethiopian–Adal war 1529–1543
- Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire 1532–1572