[lbo-talk] vaca reading

c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Tue May 10 07:45:24 PDT 2011


Andy

WRT Charles's comment about germs: All the blankets in the world wouldn't explain the asymmetry of the spread of virulent infectious diseases. So there's a biological question in there, like it or not, one that Diamond might actually have the background (in zoology) to addr

^^^^^^^ CB: Sure he might make a technical contribution in biology, historical public health.. There are many physical or biological anthropological studies of this type. For example, Biological anthropologist, Professor Frank Livingstone ( not the legendary Livingstone) did a famous study explaining sickle cell trait in African Americans and West Africans, tracing it to introduction of large agriculture in West Africa , resultant standing bodies of water, mosquito population, and spread of malaria, as heterozygous for the sickle cell gene is immune to malaria. So, heterozygous sickle cell has an adaptive advantage over homozygous non-sickle cell in that malarial environment.  Yes, the Indigenous peoples didn't have immunities to several diseases for which the Europeans did.

To get to the point on this, just because the Europeans infected the indigenous people with diseases for which the former had immunities and the latter did not, did not mean that the Europeans had to take advantage of the population loss by taking all their land. The taking of the land is not _caused_ by the "germs" or the biological relationship of the two populations to the germs. But the European ideology of conquest based on their Greco-Roman heritage and values of conquest ( U know Alexander was Great at what ? Conqueriing, no ? Same with Caesar, Julius and Augustus both) was the historical cause of the way the Europeans responded to the population loss due to disease of the Indigenous peoples, i.e. by conquering the sickened peoples. It's not "human nature" to just conquer people because they are conquerable. It's European -Greco-Roman values or ideology or culture to do so.



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