"The inhabitants of the New World were bearers of no serious new infection transferable to the European and African populations that intruded upon their territory...whereas the abrupt confrontation with the long array of infections that European and African populations had encountered piecemeal across some four thousand years of civilized history provoked massive demographic disaster among Amerindians." William McNeill, world historian, 1976.
Which of the following best illustrates the argument described in the passage above?
a. Spanish and Portuguese plantation owners imported large numbers of African slaves to work their fields.
b. Amerindians were killed in large numbers by diseases such as smallpox and measles.
c. Some Amerindian societies prior to European contact had high population densities and large urban centers of comparable scale to those in Europe.
d. The Spanish system of forced labor in mines such as those in Potosi resulted in thousands of deaths among the
Amerindian population.