Page 204 - Encyclopedia Of World History

554 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

The Old and the and their worldview, which had been dramatically
New Worlds reshaped by their own experience with contagious dis-
The importance of animal diseases in shaping both ease only a few centuries earlier. Europeans sometimes
human history and cultural attitudes toward the envi- occupied large parts of Africa and Asia, but without the
ronment can be illustrated by comparing the Old World decimating impact of introduced contagious diseases,
(Eurasia and North Africa) with the New World (North they did not significantly reduce the indigenous human
and South America). Many cultures in the Americas populations of these areas. As a consequence, as the age
developed agriculture, but New World agriculture was of colonialism draws to a close, the indigenous peoples
based almost exclusively around agronomy, for example, of Africa and Asia have been able to regain social and
corn, potatoes, squash, and beans, rather than on pas- political control of their own lands because they have
toralism, the herding and domestication of ungulates.The remained numerically dominant in their homelands.
only domestic animals in the Americas were dogs, guinea In contrast, in the Americas the introduction of animal
pigs, guanacos (llama and alpaca), and turkeys. Unlike diseases into susceptible human populations was much
the domesticated ungulates of the Old World, these New more devastating to indigenous human populations than
World domesticates were never maintained at high den- during the plague in Europe, leading to what has been
sities, humans did not drink their milk, nor were any of referred to as the first, or microbial, phase of the Euro-
these animals except dogs kept in close proximity to pean conquest of the Americas. It is estimated that 90–
humans, as were livestock in the Old World. 95 percent of the indigenous human population of the
Many New World cultures existed at densities compa- Americas perished from introduced diseases.
rable to those found in Europe. The Aztec capital of Contrary to popular mythology, this holocaust did not
Tenochtitlán may have been one of the largest cities in the begin with the “discovery of the Americas” by Columbus
world during its heyday, and there is evidence that in cen- in 1492 but was initiated some time earlier by Basque
tral Mexico human populations surpassed the long-term whalers,Viking settlers, and English fishermen who began
carrying capacity of the land. Similarly, many other New landing along the Atlantic coast of the Americas hundreds
World communities, such as cities of the Mayans, Incas, of years before Columbus arrived in the Caribbean and
and the Mound Builder cultures along the Mississippi other Spanish explorers (conquistadors) arrived in the
and Ohio River valleys, lived at densities comparable to NewWorld.There is evidence that some tribes originally
those found in European and Asian cultures. Despite living along the Atlantic Ocean retreated inland in an
high population densities, epidemic (crowd) diseases effort to escape epidemics that devastated their popula-
appear to be virtually nonexistent in these indigenous tions well before the arrival of Cristóbal Colón at the end
New World cultures, which is almost certainly attributa- of the fifteenth century.
ble to the absence of domestic ungulates that have been Despite the success of supposed conquistadors like
the source of most epidemic diseases (other than bubonic Cortez and Pizarro, it was smallpox that really led to the
plague) in Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa. collapse of the Aztec and Inca empires. Cortez’s initial
1519 foray into the Aztec civilization was much less suc-
Impact of Animal Diseases cessful than his subsequent 1520 effort after smallpox
on the New World arrived in Tenochtitlán. By the early seventeenth century,
One of the greatest ironies of the history of animal dis- the indigenous population of Mexico had experienced
eases is that the absence of nonhuman-derived conta- devastation exceeding 90 percent, falling from an esti-
gious diseases and associated immune responses in New mated 20 million to less than 2 million.The impact of the
World humans was almost certainly the major factor in disease was demoralizing and crushed the ability of the
the successful invasion of the New World by Europeans Aztecs to resist Cortez. Similarly, smallpox arrived in Inca