Europe's Sinister Gift

Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasian germs than on the battlefield from European Guns and Swords

We all know about how smallpox decimated the Incan and Aztec civilizations from an initial population of 20 million to around 1.6 million in just a hundred years. But where does such disparity come from and how do the Europeans possess such deadly and grim allies? Diamond explains this phenomenon in chapter 12, titled 'The lethal gift of livestock', by opening up with my opinion of the funniest and most awkward anecdote I have read in the novel.

A short recap of the anecdote:
There was a couple were the husband was sick because he contracted a mysterious illness. The doctor, who was stressed-out from over-work asked him if he had any sexual experiences that might have caused the infection. This was illicit because it breached patient confidentiality. But the husband goes on and whispers the answer where the wife heard it and turned into a fitful rage and smashed a heavy metal bottle on the husbands head. Through the husband's broken English, the doctor finally understood what he said that got his wife so mad: "He had confessed to repeated intercourse with sheep on a recent visit to the family farm".

I laughed out loud when I read this, but I realized that Diamond did not tell this story just for the heck of it (maybe), but it was to bring a connection that most of our current infectious diseases were all some sort of derivative of an illness that came from animals. For example:

Measles	cattle (rinderpest)
Tuberculosis	cattle
Smallpox	cattle (cow pox) or other livestock with related pox viruses
Flu	pigs, ducks
Pertussis	pigs, dogs
Falciparum malaria	birds (chickens and ducks?)

Reading over this chapter, I could not forget the spread of swine flu that has plagued the world today and how it has exploded across the world because as Diamond notes, "The explosive increase in world travel by Americans is turning us into another melting pot- not of immigrants of different nations but this time, of microbes that we previously dismissed as just exotic diseases in far-off countries".

In fact, we cannot forget where swine flu is originated: pigs. In addition, this website dictates some of the diseases that originated from animals, also known as zoonosis. But it was missing one significant infection: AIDS that is known to have originated from African monkeys. Some of these diseases have known to be so deadly due to their abilities to evolve and recycle new strains. Evolution, which has created mankind from just a few small cells has also created mankind's greatest enemy and a conquering force that decimated native populations.

So where is the connection between agriculture and the rise of diseases? We bring up agriculture once again to note how important it was to the developmental of civilizations comparative to hunter-gatherer societies where they could not develop such necessary tools for domination. One main reason is population densities of agricultural nations are much higher and denser than hunter-gatherer lifestyles. In fact, since many of these hunters are nomadic, their wastes are left all over the place unlike the farmers who run amok in their own sewage. This sewage, as we know now, is the birthplace of infections and harmful bacteria.

Farmers also utilized their own sewage or poop as a form of fertilizer, thus sometimes eating this food. Runoff was common as they would bathe in rivers that were polluted with their feces and thus contract diseases there. One infamous example is rodents that would be attracted to the farmer's food. Rodents were the main cause for the spread of the black plague that decimated Europe's population in 1346 A.D. This infection was proliferated across half the world due to the silk road. The silk road was known to be the trading gateway between China and Europe but it also turned the world into "one giant breeding ground for microbes". Bubonic Plague

I liked this chapter a lot. My interest in epidemiology jumped in and absorbed me into this chapter. But most of all, that awkward anecdote of the chapter made the reading so much more smoother and easier. Thanks Mr. Diamond!

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