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Chapter 11

Chapter 11. The Lethal Gift of Livestock. Farmer Power. Farmers have greater numbers than hunter/ gatherers 10 or 100 to 1 Own better weapons and armor Have more powerful technology Have centralized governments with literate elites better able to wage wars of conquest

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Chapter 11

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  1. Chapter 11 The Lethal Gift of Livestock

  2. Farmer Power • Farmers have greater numbers than hunter/ gatherers • 10 or 100 to 1 • Own better weapons and armor • Have more powerful technology • Have centralized governments with literate elites • better able to wage wars of conquest • Breathe out nastier germs.

  3. Major Killers • Major killers of humanity throughout recent history are all infectious diseases that evolved from diseases of animals • Smallpox • Flu • Tuberculosis • Malaria • Plague (pictured) • Measles • cholera.

  4. Disease victims in war • Until WWII, more victims of war died of disease than battle wounds. • 95% of Native Americans died from diseases brought by Europeans. • Why not the other way around? • Europeans had the animals and the large populations that produced the diseases.

  5. How Diseases Spread • Passively • Salmonella • insect vector • Malaria • Plague • Typhus • Sleeping sickness • Lesions • Syphilis • Smallpox

  6. How Diseases Spread • Coughing • Flu • Cold • Whooping cough • Diarrhea • Cholera

  7. How Diseases Spread • Killing humans is an unintended byproduct of disease growth and spread

  8. How We Respond to Diseases • Fever (bake out microbe) • Immune response. • This may give us lifelong immunity (measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, smallpox) • or not, if microbe evolves quickly (flu, malaria, sleeping sickness, AIDS) • Natural selection. • Not everybody dies, resistant genes selected for in population. Children with AIDS

  9. Epidemic Diseases • Epidemic diseases spread quickly to an entire population • Run their course quickly • Result in either death or resistance. • Tend to be restricted to humans. • ex: measles, rubella, mumps, pertussis, smallpox Smallpox

  10. Epidemic Diseases • Flu killed 21 million people at end of WWI. • Black Death killed 1/4 of Europe's population between 1346 and 1352. • Disease dies out if population is under a half million because everybody has been exposed and is either dead or resistant. Plague, 14th Century Europe

  11. Epidemic Diseases • Disease only survives with travel between populations or between uninfected pockets within a population. • These diseases cannot sustain themselves in small populations of hunters/gatherers

  12. Diseases in Small Populations • Dysentery from a sailor on a whaling ship killed 51 of 56 Sadlermiut Eskimos in 1902. • Then disease died out.

  13. Diseases in Small Populations • Diseases in small populations restricted to • ones that can live in animals: • yellow fever • ones that take a long time to kill: • leprosy • ones that humans don't develop immunity to. • worms and parasites Leprosy

  14. Agriculture and Disease • Why did agriculture launch the major infectious diseases? • high human populations • Sedentary life among sewage • Close proximity to herd animals

  15. Disease Transfer from Animals • Four stages of animal to human disease transfer: • 1) diseases directly from animals. • Don't get transmitted human to human • ex: brucellosis from cattle, leptospirosis from dogs • 2) Does transfer human to human, but dies out • ex: Fort Bragg fever in 1942 • 3) Transfers human to human but not yet long-established • ex: Lyme disease, AIDS • 4) long established epidemic diseases. • Diseases evolve to effectively work in new host • ex: syphilis

  16. Role of Disease in Conquest • Diseases played huge part in conquest of New World. • Hispaniola had 8 million inhabitants in 1492, zero by 1535. • There were estimated 20 million Indians in USA before European diseases. 19 million died

  17. Role of Disease in Conquest • Were 20 million in Mexico, reduced by disease to 1.6 million. • With 20 million, why not more infectious diseases? • Answer: No large domestic animals.

  18. Chapter 12 Blueprints and Borrowed Letters

  19. Writing • Writing marched together with weapons, microbes and centralized political organization as a modern agent of conquest. • Why did only some peoples and not others develop writing, given its overwhelming value? Pizarro’s conquest of Atahuallpa

  20. Strategies for Writing • Three strategies for writing: • 1) logogram • One symbol stands for a word • Ex: Chinese • Syllabary • One symbol stands for a syllable • Alphabet • One symbol stands for a basic sound Chinese

  21. Invention of Writing • Writing invented independently just four times • Mesopotamia (3,000 BC) • Egypt (3,000 BC) • China (1300 BC) • Mexico (600 BC) • All others borrowed, adapted or inspired by these systems. Egyptian hieroglyphics

  22. Invention of the Alphabet • Alphabet invented just once: by Semites starting 1700 BC • Three steps in Alphabet development: • Started with 24 Egyptian consonants, discarded all logograms • Ordered the consonants in fixed sequence • Greek: Alpha, Beta, etc. gave Alphabet its name • Invented vowel symbols

  23. “Blueprint” Copying • “Blueprint” copying of Semitic alphabet (with modifications) led to these alphabets: • Aramaic, Southeast Asian • Persian, Phoenician • Arabic, Greek • Hebrew, Roman • Indian, Cyrillic

  24. “Idea Diffusion” • Writing systems have also spread by “idea diffusion” • Ex: Cherokee Indian named Sequoyah, 1820s • Illiterate • Devised a writing system for Cherokee language • Was a syllabary of 85 symbols • Based only on knowledge that English could be written Sequoyah

  25. “Idea Diffusion” • Other writing systems originated by “idea diffusion”: • Korean • Celtic Ogham • Polynesian Korean alphabet: 24 letters

  26. Early Writing • Early writing was like shorthand • For record keeping • Required Scribes to write • Arose in stratified societies that could support bureaucrats • Hunter/Gatherers • No use for scribes • No extra food to feed scribes • Since most societies acquired writing from others, isolated complex societies less likely to have it: • Incas • Sub-Saharan Africa • Native Americans in Mississippi valley Egyptian scribe

  27. Chapter 13 Necessity’s Mother

  28. Technology • Why did technology evolve at different rates on different continents? • Many inventions are the mother of necessity • Without a clear need • In search of practical application • Or their application evolves • Automobiles were not “needed” at first: toys of rich • Phonograph was not for music: Edison objected!

  29. Tinkering • Inventors have to tinker for a long time for inventions to be accepted • TV • Cameras • Typewriters

  30. Inventions • Inventions rest on a long history of previous inventions: • James Watt’s steam engine (1769) • Was based on Newcomb’s (1712) • Which was based on Savery’s (1698), etc. • Therefore, if not Watt, would be someone else

  31. Acceptance by Society • Inventions depend on society being ready to accept or exploit the invention • Four Factors influence acceptance: • 1) economic advantage • 2) social value and prestige • 3) vested interests • QWERTY typewriters designed to slow down typing for 1870 typewriter • Once widely accepted, can’t change although very inefficient • 4) ease of observing advantages • English immediately saw advantage of cannons QWERTY keys once an advantage

  32. Resistance to Technology • For any given society, most inventions come from elsewhere • either accepted or not • Many reasons societies resistant to technology adoption • Each continent has more and less resistant cultures • Reception to technology varies over time in the same culture • Japan adopted firearm technology in 1540s • improved them and became best in the world • then banned them by 1600s.

  33. Acceptance of Technology • Societies accept technologies because: • They see an advantage • Conquered by others with technology • Invention spreads by “Idea Diffusion” • Porcelain china manufacture in England British Porcelain China

  34. Autocatalysis • Technology begets more technology: Autocatalysis • Current rate very fast • Reasons: • Advances depend on previous mastery of simpler problems • Ex: Metallurgy from copper to iron • Combinations of technologies make new technologies possible • Ex: Printing Press

  35. Technology Development • Three Factors in Technology Development: • 1) Time of onset of food production • 2) Lack of barriers to diffusion (isolation) • 3) Human population size • Huge advantage of Eurasia in all three areas!

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