let's consider this a little bit. it bears thinking about. let's imagine that maybe 50 million Native Americans were living in the USA at some earlier time before 1492. and let's also guess that whatever wiped them out was not the Black Plague. that would leave some other virulent disease as a possible cause. A conceivable explanation is some form of a 'flu virus which was a completely different strain from anything the people had seen before. Or an outbreak of a European 'flu virus carried by travelers on small ships from Iceland or Scandinavia.

But if it wasn't a 'flu virus - that means that some other virulent disease existed on the historical US continent that wiped out millions of people. and not inconceivably, remnants from that virus could still exist in archeological artefacts buried with those people today.

Pete2