Aztecs Dbq

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There are varied accounts of the percentage of Aztec casualties due to smallpox, ranging from 33.3%-60%. The reason why the Aztecs were affected by the disease so badly is because the smallpox virus is not native to the Americas, so the Aztecs’ immune systems were not prepared for it. Official historical documents state that this might have been one of the only times in history, cleanliness worked against a civilisation. The Aztec civilization prided itself on how clean its cities were, and so disease was far less common among them than it was among the Europeans, for whom a common practice was throwing one’s own excrement out of a window and into the streets. The Aztecs thought cleanliness was important so they documented personal hygiene

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