Quote:
Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin
I don't think the founding of New Amsterdam would represent a continuous line of habitation from where the Lenape villages of Manhattan Island left off. The history or New York as we know it really begins in 1624.
Likewise, many other cities of North America have the ruins of former indigenous settlements within their present-day borders (which in most cases were abandoned prior to the arrival of European settlers anyway; so not continuous). But those European colonial settlements were founded independently of whatever might have already existed in its surrounding area. This is a bit different from places like Mexico City or Cusco, where the process of colonization moreso took the form of the existing cities changing hands to new rulers - thus we can still say that today's Mexico City was founded as Tenochtitlan in 1325.
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Most of the places that lacked habitation only did so because of illness shortly before Europeans actually physically arrived. As depopulated as they were it was never total and it was not very long maybe a few decades.