HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Expanding on this, CGP Grey had this amazing video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk) of why European diseases in the Americas were so bad on the people that were already here when the two worlds met but you hardly heard of Europeans getting any super contagious illness from the people living in the Americas. Meaning European genomes had some adaptations (as well as antibodies?) from dense and unsanitary living, as well as animal farming in European prior to contact whereas that type of living setup was rarer in the Americas.

⬐ AlotOfReading

It's been discussed in many places on the internet before, but CGP Grey has a lot of profound misunderstandings around the Columbian Exchange and the new world as a whole. Some of it is that he's not an expert, some of it is that he chose particularly bad sources (e.g. the zoonotic hypothesis he cribbed almost directly from one of Diamond's older papers), and some of it is that there's a lot of misinformation about this particular topic on the internet.

The reality is that dense urban settlements (many without good hygiene), domestic animals (e.g. parrots), unsanitary conditions, and widespread trade/social networks all existed, subject to the usual caveats of time and place. We even have strong evidence of highly contagious diseases like Kirsten Bos' paper on zoonotic Tuberculosis in ancient Peru.

There are still many open questions regarding why the Columbian Exchange happened the way it did. Academics are still trying to work out the truth through centuries of mistaken narratives about what went down, including the now-suspect idea that there was ever a single continent-wide epidemic wave. We can reject some ideas (like innate genetic susceptibility) on the basis of scanty evidence, but most of them are hard to definitively reject and few people have the knowledge base to write books challenging the dunning-kruger type academics that are comfortable talking about continent-wide phenomena with simple narratives.

Covid made the social dynamics of epidemics a particularly interesting research topic to grad students, so maybe there'll be more consensus about big questions in a few years.

⬐ chrisco255

You're correct that some cities existed in the Americas on par or larger than most European cities (ie Teotihuacan). I don't know why people don't just chalk it up to an accident of viral/biological disease evolution. You could imagine an alternate timeline where the native Americans had survived similarly horrific incidents as the Justinian and Black Plagues, as well as Smallpox, but then Colombian exchange brought back the diseases to Europe.

Maybe it was just an unfortunate coin flip of history.

Maybe the racial diversity in the Eurasian-African land mass contributed to the disease diversity and acuity?

⬐ mcculley

According to Wikipedia, Teotihuacan had an estimated population of 125,000 or more, "making it at least the sixth-largest city in the world during its epoch at its zenith", which is thought to be no later than 550 CE. Rome is estimated to have had 1,000,000 inhabitants around 0 CE. Certainly the Europeans had much greater population and density. How could they not be carrying around more virulent parasites?

⬐ chrisco255

https://www.jetpunk.com/users/quizmaster/charts/population-o...

Rome's population collapsed dramatically after the fall of the empire, by the medieval period, Rome's population was 20,000. Even London didn't exceed 100,000 until the 17th century and most European towns were small villages with a few hundred to a few thousand at most.

By my reading of history, the Americas were relatively better off than Europe for much of the dark and middle ages, in average health, height and even lifespan. They were probably at least as populous as Europe if not moreso.

Teotihuacan was one of the largest cities in the world for much of the last 2000 years. Modern day Mexico City (25 mi from where Teotihuacan was) has 9 million to this day.

There are also massive ruins of cities in the Amazon for which we know very little about from this era. The biodiversity is also incredible in the Amazon, so there could feasibly be many zoonotic diseases in those jungles. I'm partly playing devil's advocate here, I do think the racial diversity and intercontinental exchange in the old world contributed to it.

⬐ mcculley

I am aware that Rome’s population decreased. My reasoning is that a population that was larger and denser in the past is carrying around more parasites. Rome is just one example. By 1492, Europe had many large cities and lots of travel between them, enormously more population and travel than the Americas. They had a more fertile environment for parasites.

⬐ AlotOfReading

If you just want my idle speculation, my personal guess is that diseases did exist in the Americas, but 1) we lack the ability to see them in the record and 2) the dynamics of how those diseases originated/spread is significantly different between afroeurasia and the new world.

One of the problems with archaeology is that things have to be archeologically visible in order for us to realize they exist. Diseases usually don't leave skeletal evidence and many American cultures were big on cremation besides. It's only under very unique circumstances with certain diseases (e.g. the mummies with tuberculosis mentioned previously) that we can clearly see the evidence to say "hey, these people died in a disease outbreak". In Eurasia we rely heavily on literary sources to supplement this issue, but we have few American sources and they're mostly focused on other things.

The nature of continents is also substantially different. The Americas were hugely affected by late quaternary extinctions that destroyed the mammalian diversity, a main factor in zoonotic transmission [1]. The places where that diversity exists post-LGM like the Amazon basin are very remote and their pre-Columbian history is not well studied, let alone the history of disease there. We have little understanding of how they integrated into broader American trade networks either. Eurasia's biodiversity is spread across large areas of the continent, which happen to be crossed by continental trade routes. If plague had originated in Venezuela instead of from rodents in central Asia, we might not even know about historical outbreaks and simply label it a new disease when modern farmers in the highlands caught it.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1919176117

⬐ jcampbell1

> We can reject some ideas (like innate genetic susceptibility) on the basis of scanty evidence

This is an article about genetic selection due to the plague in Europe. Lol.

⬐ AlotOfReading

The idea I'm talking about here is an older one that virgin soil epidemics devastated American populations because they were innately susceptible to them, often as a result of genetic homogeneity or something. That's not supported by decades of research into those kinds of questions.

This article is talking about selective pressure as a result of epidemics, which is absolutely a thing.

⬐ chrisco255

Selective pressure impacts genetics though, so doesn't it come full circle to the same argument?

⬐ AlotOfReading

No, it's best to think of them as unrelated. On one hand, you have an argument that "virgin soil" epidemics in the columbian exchange were deadly because Native Americans had no genetic diversity (not true) and thus effectively no differential susceptibility. That's a complex narrative causally linking many different processes and observations over centuries.

On the other, you have a statement that disease can cause selective pressure.

The only relationship is that they're both about genetics and disease.

⬐ inglor_cz

"Native Americans had no genetic diversity (not true)"

That feels a bit like a strawman. Few people would claim that Native Americans had no genetic diversity.

But the claim that they had less genetic diversity than Old World populations is plausible. After all, there was a massive population bottleneck/founder effort in their relatively recent history. The groups of people who walked across the Beringia and settled the Americas had to be small-ish, with their total size not exceeding several tens of thousands. Siberia is, until today, very sparsely populated.

Compared to the Old World, the New World population squeezed through a population bottleneck of perhaps 0,1-0,5 per cent of the total human population of that time. It then started diversifying again, but genetic drift is a longish process.

⬐ AlotOfReading

I've seen it (incorrectly) described before that native Americans were practically clones from a genetic perspective, so it's a relatively mild strawman.

Founder effects did reduce genetic diversity of native Americans and it takes a long time to rebuild that. We actually use this to track historical migrations. It's also worth pointing out that a very similar process affected everyone outside Africa. That's why the sharpest dropoff in genetic diversity is between Africa and everywhere else. Not all diversity is equal or generates at the same rate either and the highest diversity genes tend to be the ones related to disease resistance /immune system functioning. Native Americans actually have several new alleles here that apparently evolved independently in the new world. When you talk about specific things like the MHC, they're still quite diverse and not too far off from similar European populations.

⬐ bigmattystyles

Interesting! But wouldn’t a tb outbreak in ancient Peru line up with what cgp grey is saying, in that they had close contact with Llamas?

⬐ AlotOfReading

The tuberculosis came from pacific seals, so no. I wouldn't put it past the llamas to have planned it though.

⬐ bigmattystyles

Good thing we have Winamp then.

⬐ nixcraft

>It's been discussed in many places on the internet before, but CGP Grey has a lot of profound misunderstandings around

It is not just CGP Grey; other popular channels also share tons of misunderstandings and stuff related to tech or science. I believe YouTube also favours popular channels because of the high likes and comments. They dominate both Google and YouTube searches. I started noticing this around topics like Firewalls, RPis, Linux, Coastal Erosion, Global Warming, open source etc. The reason why top YouTubers are popular is because of their presentation style. It would be best if you did your research using multiple sources. Ask a question to university professors on Twitter (or email them), and they will happily guide you to the right resources. At least, that is how I do it and it worked better for me. YMMV.

⬐ Manu40

On the topic of Linux:

To properly install Arch Linux (The way I want it setup) on my machine without any hitches, I need to use like.. 7 different videos, because they each leave something out that the other included.

Yes, yes, I know I should/could just use the Arch wiki. I really should just go do a deep dive into it someday. But my method works, so why fix it?

⬐ bbarnett

I've been in this field a long time, and I cannot think of a single topic which would be better served by video, than reading text. Video takes more time, has more cruft, such as blah blah I made this video because, and I discovered this because...), and video poorly presents for work involving typing.

SysAdmin work, or coding work, is not a visual art. Building a house, or assembling mechanical items are suited to visual work, or pictures, due to their nature.

But videos? How do you copy/paste code snippets from a youtube video? Or go through a list of 7 files to edit and look at?

Are you watching these videos, then making notes? Text instructions are the notes!

Sadly, I will agree that these days, there are endless generated blogs, articles, which are just gibberish or utterly useless. But the Arch wiki seems quite helpful in most respects.

⬐ Manu40

Well, you may or may not like reading this, but here goes...

> I've been in this field a long time, and I cannot think of a single topic which would be better served by video, than reading text. Video takes more time, has more cruft, such as blah blah I made this video because, and I discovered this because...), and video poorly presents for work involving typing.

Ironically, the opposite is why I resorted to the videos. The text was often wrong, or useless due to being for some outdated version that doesn't apply anymore for some reason. A good example of this is text code snippets that use hypens when Arch expects an underscore. Which brings me to this...

> But videos? How do you copy/paste code snippets from a youtube video? Or go through a list of 7 files to edit and look at?

I type it out. I don't copy and paste unless I trust the code I am looking at. And I only trust things as far as I can throw them... Or know them.

So yeah, I write it all out, myself. And so I remember it better that way for the future.

> Are you watching these videos, then making notes? Text instructions are the notes!

More like I write it out in terminal to see if it works and does what I want, then (and I only recently started doing this part) I write down that code for my own use in a notebook for later. Which yes, I still type out. Why?

Because copy and paste is useful, but also lazy. IMHO.

And quite frankly, I think this is part and parcel as to why things are becoming gibberish and utterly useless. The code being shared is either wrong, mistyped, or just missing things entirely.

Arch wiki as I said before, I really should just deep dive into; but it was written by (IMHO) blowhard elites who only wanted people who already knew BASH intricately before installing Arch.

On some level, I don't blame them. I agree with the idea of barriers of entry to some certain things. But that thing is a whole new level of bullshit. Bullshit that I was able to get past and beyond, by just following a few videos where each person added in what the other left out.

I tell ya. The locales file was a pain in the ass for a while until I found the RIGHT way to do it. (Which I forgot again, but that video is still up, so I can thankfully refer to it)

Long story short, each tutorial text/video basically has a person changing it, when really... if you live in Canada or USA, you probably don't need to touch it much or at all. Same goes with the timezones, etc. Only small things need to be done to them. But some of these tutorials just give ya the work around until you bork your installation and have to start over again, wondering what went wrong.

So, with all due respect; I do not agree that following the text is the best method. Videos at least show you that the system works for them, even if they left something out. Which means you just need to find what they left out.

And I'm great at doing that sort of thing.

In the meantime, when I do my next install of Arch, I'll be writing down every little thing this time in my new little notepad, so I have a proper script to follow for any device I come across which has all AMD parts. Then I'll do the same with my laptop that has Nvidia in it... which means dealing with that bloody F'ing gpu switch stuff between integrated and dedicated graphics.

Then I won't need to refer to much else than the Arch Wiki for the few things where it matters. Or some random blog where the information is actually legitimate.

Like the BTRFS blog I came across that helped fix the suddenly filling SSD issue I ran into the first time I decided to leave EXT4 in the past where it belongs. (so many borked file systems because of a power outage because of that tripe.)

And I realize this may all seem wrong to you, but remember... It works on my machine. So that's all that matters.

Once I have this finally mastered as much as I care to master it; I'm moving on to Gentoo.

⬐ LAC-Tech

Yeah I love some of these pop historical/sociological youtubers - until they venture into one of the tiny domains I know a little about, and I listen to their misunderstandings.

Then of course I think about how likely their knowledge of other topics - on which I "trusted" them due to my own ignorance - is similarly surface level.

⬐ colechristensen

The best presentation is the most suspect, particularly if the presenter has little focus and follows on to trending topics (you start to notice a topic does the rounds in several information entertainment venues and presenters in a short time).

Popular science presentations whether it be books, podcasters, or videos are quite low signal to noise.

⬐ unmole

https://theportal.wiki/wiki/The_Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect

⬐ billfruit

Syphilis is a disease thought to have come from the Americas to the Old World.

⬐ photochemsyn

Apparently native populations had a different immunogenic profile and that made them more susceptible to European diseases such as smallpox, and this was amplified by the lack of any immunity acquired by childhood exposures:

https://psmag.com/news/how-native-american-genes-tell-the-st...

Charles C. Mann has a whole chapter on the epidemics that ravaged the Americas after the European arrival, in "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Colombus (2005)", and discusses this and other theories.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39020.1491

CGP Grey explains: https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk

If a disease native to the Americas emerged and became endemic, it would have infected Europeans when they arrived. There’s a good CGP Grey video on this called Americapox.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

Aha! A chance to plug one of my favorite CGP Grey videos that explores this very question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

⬐ Teknoman117

That's a super interesting video. Thanks!

CPG Grey has a great video on this exact subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

In short, you need cities to develop these types of viruses. Cities where the virus can just keep killing, without ever hitting a dead end.

⬐ johncessna

I think the other, more important, factor CPG Grey mentions in the video is domesticated animals.

⬐ seph-reed

Sorry. You're correct. I haven't watched the video in a bit.

⬐ VHRanger

Fwiw that's based on "Guns, Germs and Steel" which is not very respected as an academic work

⬐ vintermann

A lot of what he says in it is uncontroversial stuff that he didn't come up with himself. But you don't get much academic respect for things others have said before you, even if you succeed at bringing it to a new audience (especially if you don't pepper it with source references, which I don't recall GGS doing!)

Being a wildly successful popularizer is always risky for an academic. The most serious criticisms I've seen have been about tangential stuff.

⬐ seph-reed

So, I just went down a rabbit hole of criticisms on Guns, Germs, and Steel... it's largely coming from the far left and far right. Very few moderates.

The far left says it's a cop out on racism, blaming white evil on natural conditions. The far right says that it's too PC, that plenty of other places had the right conditions and gives no credit to culture or innovation.

So both the far left and far right want to take credit from chaos and put it on the people: either to hate them, or to take pride.

This in and of itself is not proof of anything. But if something pisses off far left and right at the same time, I tend to think of it as a green flag.

⬐ VHRanger

Uh, go to a place like r/badhistory where they actually cite sources for their problems with it for a start

Actual academics have problems with it

⬐ seph-reed

I went down another rabbit hole on r/badhistory.

There's definitely plenty of holes in the theories of GG&S, if that's what you mean by "academics have problems with it" === "it is not a perfect theory."

But overall, it seems most of the points hold more than enough water to be worth merit. None of them perfect, but vastly better than throwing the whole thing out.

-----

Also, holy crap I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, but the first few threads I went into were... blatantly far left (as Reddit tends to be). Seriously though: spiraling into tangents of communism, your classic woke/sassy "dunk" lingo, clearly had some external bias bone to pick. I'm not sure r/badhistory is a community worth considering the acme of academia, only based off my short interactions with it. But maybe the worst just came up first?

⬐ VHRanger

IDK, I'm generally on r/badeconomics which is the best one of the badX gang, but as far as I saw, badhistory was very informal but generally fine?

Like, sure there's probably a bias to the left but it's not the hellhole of r/badphilosophy for instance there. They won't advocate for nonsense stuff,just use the terminology from social sciences

⬐ bnralt

Yeah, in my experience there's a lot of misinformation floating around r/badhistory. It's not uncommon to have some comments halfway down (below all the highly upvoted snark and attempts at humor) that point out the inaccuracies in a post, so that's something at least.

But a large part of the problem with r/badhistory, and r/AskHistorians as well, is that it seems like most of the users don't realize that being better at history than most of Reddit is an extremely low bar. There's certainly some good stuff that ends up there (well, in r/AskHistorians, less so in r/badhistory), but there's still a lot of junk as well, and too many people act as if the stuff there is equivalent to published work by professional historians.

⬐ jcranmer

I don't read r/badhistory but occasionally r/AskHistorians instead (where why GG&S is bad is literally in the FAQ), and in perusing old threads there, I came across this take that might be interesting to you: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4o1n26/i_wan...

While I think you are probably more likely to sympathize with restricteddata than anthropology_nerd, I do think that anthropology_nerd's comments may be able to elucidate a little bit why GG&S provokes such hostility among academics.

⬐ seph-reed

Thanks a ton for sharing that. This is -- so far -- the highest calibre of this debate I've seen.

I think both parties are talking passed each-other, having missed a very, very important statement:

> You recommended people read GG&S with a grain of salt, but the vast majority of casual readers lack that salt when it comes to understanding the flaws in the book.

Whether or not this salt is there seems like the addition / omission from which each side argues. With salt, it's a fine enough book. The broad strokes are close enough. Without salt -- as in "I'm a professional because I read this book" -- it probably gets really, really annoying.

I definitely agree that nuance is important, and the book should put more effort into not presenting itself as fact. But it's pop-history. It wouldn't be pop if it didn't, and what would be pop would be even worse IMO.

⬐ jcranmer

You're not looking at any of the criticisms I've seen, then. Here's a brief summary, off the top of my head:

* Jared Diamond posits an explanation of megafauna extinction in North America that's heavily predicated on the Clovis-first hypothesis and the overextinction hypothesis. The former hypothesis is very thoroughly discredited, and the latter is also generally disfavored, especially in the it's-the-primary-cause way that Jared Diamond uses it. (Specifically, it should be noted that the megafauna extinction in North America also coincides pretty closely with the Younger Dryas, whose climatic effects were most pronounced in North America).

* The primary north-south/east-west transmission hypothesis doesn't actually hold that well up to evidence. The two things I'd note are a) local topography has a major effect on climate that's not accounted for, and b) if you look at the transmission of cereal crops, there's very little transmission between the Mediterranean/Mesopotamian basin and China basin but universal spread of maize along the vertical axis of the Americas--the complete opposite of what the theory predicts.

* I don't have a link handy, but I've seen someone more versed in the history of infectious diseases point out that the killer diseases that Diamond identifies don't appear to have actually become epidemic in the manner that Diamond asserts.

* Diamond also places way too heavy on emphasis on the unreliable accounts of the conquistadors in explaining how the Spanish conquests happened.

In short, the main problem with Guns, Germs, and Steel is that... it gets the facts wrong. And people have brought these complaints to Diamond previously, so it's not like he's aware that there are facts which destroy his thesis, and Diamond's response is to double-down on the thesis without trying to explain why the countervailing facts might be incorrect interpretations or whatnot, or providing other nuggets of insight to bolster his thesis, just continually reassert that he's right.

Try reading Charles Mann's 1491. It goes into more well-researched explanations of pre-Columbian cultures that would help you understand why Diamond's thesis is wrong.

⬐ seph-reed

Most of these points don't seem central to Diamonds thesis as I interpreted it.

They do negate some of the spurious theories, but the central theory (IMO) is that there's a whole lot of luck involved in global domination, and that luck is not evenly spread.

The one about germs being less of a killer is definitely very interesting though. That's totally central, though -- if not germs doing the killing -- it'd just fall back onto guns. If you happen to dig up the link, I'd love to read through it.

⬐ tptacek

If it's just guns, you have to account for the number of failed attempts, and the century-long military effort it took to hold territory. Cortés got his ass handed to him repeatedly in military conflicts.

⬐ jcranmer

> century-long military effort it took to hold territory

Centuries, actually. Indigenous peoples in the Americas were able to hold out against European, and later successor state, attempts to acquire their territory until around 1900.

CGP Grey has a great video about this topic: Americapox: The Missing Plague

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

TL;DR; You need big cities to keep plagues ongoing.

CGP Grey has a interesting video on this:

Americapox: The Missing Plague - YouTube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

⬐ tormeh

tl;dr: The Americas had very few animals suitable for domestication, and so Americans had less animal-to-human spread of diseases.

Epidemics are a relatively new phenomenon as far as human evolution is concerned. Within a purely human set of hosts, germs don't feel evolutionary pressure to become more deadly. If anything, it's advantageous for a germ to be less deadly. The most successful viruses are the common cold viruses, not SARS or Ebola.

Epidemics only really became a thing once we started domesticating animals and therefore being around live animals for prolonged periods of time. This allowed germs originally adapted to these animals the opportunity to jump over to human hosts, for which they may be more dangerous than for the original host animal.

For more details on this point, I can recommend this video on why the native Americans were killed by diseases imported by the European conquerors, but the conquerors didn't bring any deadly diseases back to Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

It's not the same. Live ocean creatures are isolated from each other. They're stored in water-tight containers by necessity. By contrast, live land animals are stored in cages and often stacked on top of each other.

Vox has a video explaining "Why new diseases keep appearing in China" [1]. They include footage of Chinese wet markets around the 2:00 mark. I think they make an excellent case for strictly regulating, or even outright banning wet markets.

Long ago, Europe had the same problem. The cities were full of wet markets, and were basically the perfect conditions for creating new plagues. There's a nice CGP Grey video on this, "Americapox: The Missing Plague" [2].

[1]: https://youtu.be/TPpoJGYlW54 [2]: https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk

Yes. Two other sources for this are the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, [1] and the video Americapox by CGPGrey. [2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel

[2]: https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk

The New World lacked domesticated animals.

https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk

There is a great video by CGP Grey which covers exactly that topic: https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk

CCP Makes a pretty good case regarding livestock - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

America did offer a new disease that ravaged Europe. Syphillis.

⬐ weberc2

And like this disease, Syphillis was initially terrifying, with flesh falling off of victims' faces, before the disease "decided" that it was better to let its victims live with genital sores rather than die horrific deaths. For the disease, it could infect more people on a longer-living host.

I remember being struck by his anecdotes of Papua New Guineans seeming just as smart as anyone else as supposed evidence of... What exactly?

I don't think Neil Diamond is wrong but it's kind of baby's first reading on the differences between groups in the world.

I think CGP Grey does a great job at communicating the actual meat of Guns, Germs, and Steel here https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk

Here's your answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

I recommend the following video by CGP Grey, largely based on the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

Now, history doesn't give a lot of merit to natives. The largest battle in the Americas, the siege of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, was won with the help of 80,000 to 200,000 Tlaxcalan natives, which amounted for 99% of the infantry used.

Cholera only existed in the old world and is a byproduct of animal domestication and urbanization[1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

This video by CGP Grey covers some similar issues/hypotheses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

Supposedly, the animals available in South America aren't great candidates for domestication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

>Indians had no trouble crisscrossing America

Well yeah there weren't any human infectious illness where... there aren't any humans.

This video explains the history of man kind's infectious illness very well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

> the primary reason for greater productivity of European settlers compared to native inhabitants of Americas would be culture

More likely, simple domestication. The "culture" of cities are born of the variety of euro-domestication. Horses, Sheep, etc. (https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk?t=387)

See the later half of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk Starting about 6:40.

⬐ soperj

It's not like the cows weren't domesticated from something similar to a bison (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs). Bulls are still be very violent animals. That video also forgets alpacas.

On the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

Good video on that, which a lot of people might have seen but still worth linking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

⬐ None

None

⬐ dang

Url changed from https://medium.com/scientifically-quite-smarter/americapox-t..., which points to this.

⬐ markhelo

Professor Jared Diamond explains more of this beautifully in his book Guns, Germs and Steel. Definitely a great read and there is also a Nat Geo documentary narrated by him.

⬐ ccarnino

That's very interesting. I will search for it. If anybody else is interested http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475043/

> So any theory of "geographical stunting" would need to explain what changed in the geography after 1492.

What changed was technology. Once you have ships going back and forth across the Atlantic, everything changes. Europeans introduced cows, sheep, pigs, chickens. The New World's only domesticable native animal is the llama, which is the main reason why civilizations sprung up in Central and the northern parts of South America, that's where llamas were.

Now, to the Europeans, with vastly superior farming technology, the Caribbean and North America were veritable cornucopias of geopolitical possibility. Islands sheltered plantations. Europe could project real power only very closely to the shore, where the big naval guns could reach. The reason was supply. To maintain a group of soldiers requires not just food but adequate clothing, weapons, ammunition, and horses to carry all of that.

It took over a century of growth for a colony to get to the point to where it could maintain and supply an army for deeper treks inland. By that time the colonies would have been deeply entrenched in native political systems. Because the warships protecting your colony could only hang around for so long, colonies were quite vulnerable to native military action, or even just having them hang around outside the settlement and killing whoever goes outside, say, to chop wood. It made sense for settlers to be nice to the locals, at least at first.

CGPGrey just put out a fantastic video comparing the Old and New Worlds that neatly explains why Europe won and the Western Hemisphere lost. The actual mechanism was disease, which does not require a supply train, but there's a lot more to the story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk