From: nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle)
Subject: Re: Columbus vs Indians (was Re: PC lives)
Organization: Psych Department, Indiana University
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 20:31:37 GMT

dbernard@clesun.Central.Sun.COM (Dave Bernard) writes:
>Nathan Engle writes:
>>    Your theory concerning cannibalism amongst the Carribs is hardly 
>>sufficient to account for the deaths of over 95 million people in scarcely 
>>30 years

>Er, what theory was that?  I never said anything about a dinner with 95,000,000
>entrees... perhaps you're getting me confused with someone else?

    No, I must obviously have misunderstood your reference to cannibalism 
amongst the Carribs. They would certainly have had to have been 
exceptionally voracious to eat that many people.

>Are you saying that 95% of the American population was wiped out by 
>Smallpox? That seems incredibly high!

    Smallpox and a few others. Basically all those great Old World 
diseases like tuberculosis, plague, measles, mumps, malaria, and yellow 
fever. A 95% die-off rate is certainly demographically devastating; I 
would agree that it boggles the mind to imagine such widespread 
catastrophe, but it's not without historical precedent. Some provinces 
and cities in China may well have suffered 99% die-offs during waves 
of pneumonic plague. Pneumonic plague is related to bubonic, but whereas 
bubonic lesions occur on the skin, pneumonic (which is airborne) causes 
its lesions in the lungs where the infection occurs and the lungs fill 
with fluid. In the absense of anti-biotics pneumonic plague is almost 
invariably fatal, and it can spread like wildfire.

    The important thing to bear in mind is that the inhabitants of the 
Americas were faced with the prospect of catching up with thousands of 
years of Old World micro-parasitic evolution in a couple years.

>Estimates of European deaths from the Plague during the Middle Ages range 
>up to 2/3 of the population.  Rumors were that the most virulent forms 
>came from the Central Asian steppes, spread by various waves of your 
>basic Huns and Mongols. Are Europeans then justified in despising 
>Asiatics?

    Perhaps they used to be. These days we have a more or less global 
disease pool. Population densities have gotten high enough that diseases 
which used to be fearsome epidemic diseases are now endemic "childhood" 
diseases (which increases the incidence of immunity and limits the chance 
of epidemic spread).

>If Plague-suffering is so conducive to conversion, why didn't Europeans 
>convert en masse to whatever animistic religions were practiced by the 
>Central Asian nomads?

    Perhaps because the Mongols themselves weren't immune to the plague. 
The Mongols "inherited" their plague problems when they conquered vast 
regions of central Asia whose rodent populations carried the disease. 
Previous occupants of at least some of those areas appear to have had 
social taboos against killing or even associating with the host species, 
but these taboos were lost or ignored by Mongol conquerors. The vast 
extent of the Mongol empire enabled the creation of long distance  
overland caravan routes which catalysed the infection's spread.

--
Nathan Engle                        Software Juggler
Psychology Department               Indiana University
nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu      nengle@copper.ucs.indiana.edu
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh