even an extremely conservative extrapolation of known figures would still project a precontact population in central Mexico alone of five to ten million, “a very high population, not only in terms of the sixteenth century, but indeed on any terms.” Even Henige, of Numbers from Nowhere, is no Low Counter. In Numbers from Nowhere, he argues that “perhaps 40 million throughout the Western Hemisphere” is a “not unreasonable” figure—putting him at the low end of the High Counters, but a High Counter nonetheless.
