New Nature paper uses genetic evidence to argue that pre-1492 population of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico was **much** lower than previously thought—fewer than 80,000 people.

Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03053-2

NY Times op-ed by one co-author: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/opinion/dna-caribbean-genocide.html 1/8

A few comments:

This is a serious piece of work by a very good scientific team. It is getting attention, as it should. But it also sets up a riddle. 2/8

**All** of the Spanish sources from that time and place state that the 1492 population was much higher. 16th-century Spaniards knew how to count. Were they all wrong? (Table source: Livi-Bacci 2003.) 3/8

9 Spaniards estimated the 1492 population. All did it after the fact. But all but one thought there were at least 1M ppl in Hispaniola—an order of magnitude more than the geneticists. (Image: Las Casas, Apologética historia sumaria [1551-54], describing Hispaniola) 4/8

Las Casas’s #s should be treated with caution. He hated the Spanish slaughter of natives & may have exaggerated the #s to make his point. But it’s not obvious the others would have done the same. 5/8 (Image: de Bry, in Las Casas’ Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies)

Note, too, that other geneticists have estimated the popn of these islands and found higher numbers. This spring this team estimated (to judge from their graph) a pre-contact pop’n of 50-100K for Puerto Rico alone, which is 1/8 the size of Hispaniola. 6/8 https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/37/3/611/5618728

On a back-of-the-envelope level, if one assumes that Hispaniola and Puerto Rico had similar pop'n densities, you get numbers not far from the original Spanish numbers.
To me, this says the new paper is an outlier—which, to repeat, does not mean it is wrong or bad. 7/8

Another nice thing: unlike some earlier genetics work, both of these efforts were done in consultation with the people involved. Good on them. I personally hope that this new work stimulates further research. 8/8