17.2 Colonial ImpactsAlthough there has been continued speculation aboutearlier

17.2 Colonial ImpactsAlthough there has been continued speculation aboutearlier contacts, particularly by voyagers from Africa,Polynesia, and Japan, the north coast of South America wascertainly contacted by Columbus during his third voyage inlate 1498, followed in swift succession by other navigatorsand leaders of military expeditions. The conquest of the IncaEmpire may have been facilitated by an early smallpox epi-demic in the 1520s that propagated through indigenouspopulations in advance of the Spanish military (Crosby,1973; Dobyns, 1963; Cook, 1998). Caviedes (2001) ha