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Recent genetic studies have tended to throw cold water on the size and decimation of American Indian populations on European contact after 1492. A new study shows the falsehood of this thinking, and perhaps we are back to using the word "conquest" instead of the euphemistic term "contact." The conqueror of the Americas was not Europeans, though, but the diseases they unleashed on Indians.

According to Science magazine, "a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences pushes the pendulum back toward dramatic population declines. Using both modern and ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from Native Americans, an international team concludes that about 500 years ago, the number of reproductively active Native American women quickly plunged by half, indicating a 'widespread and severe' contraction in population size."

The study summarized is:  Brendan O'Fallon and Lars Fehren-Schmitz, "Native Americans Experienced a Strong Population Bottleneck Coincident with European Contact," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (Dec. 5, 2011);  doi:  10.1073/pnas.1112563108.

Critics of the study say that the conclusions may be illusory since we do not have a lot of ancient Native American DNA. But we will never have a lot of Native American DNA. That objection seems lame, and we applaud the new study as at least a step in the right direction of rectifying the true story of the Americas and escaping the apologist blinkers of colonial "Smithsonian-styled" methodologies and mindsets.