ZKEA

Emerging Diseases : Biological Terrorism : Biological Warfare

Summary

No one will ever know the exact numbers, but it's clear that Native American populations were certainly larger than originally thought. Aztec and Incan cities, in particular, were large and extremely sophisticated. And yet, in a few short decades, these cities and their supporting rural populations were virtually destroyed. Subsequent European immigrants thus became use to thinking of the Americas as being sparsely populated by a few nomadic tribes. They had little or no memory of the original urban populations. This heavily biased their later demographic estimates, helping to explain why the notion of a densely-populated America took so long to become accepted.

What caused this demographic disaster?

It's now known that emerging disease - in the form of novel infections brought over by the European invaders and colonialists - was responsible for this catastrophe. Europeans had been exposed to these microorganisms for centuries. Therefore their immune systems had some degree of resistance to the more lethal effects. In contrast, Native Americans had no immunity to these diseases. Their immune systems were biologically naive, unprimed to resist these imported microorganisms. Thus the first European explorers brought to America a form of biological genocide. The combination of large populations and naive immune systems created a perfect ecology for epidemic diseases such as smallpox, measles and others. Once these microorganisms reached the New World, the result was apocalyptic for the Native American cultures. North and South America were never conquered by invading armies, they was conquered by invading microorganisms.

Smallpox was probably the first invader. It's believed that the primary carrier was one of Cortez's men. This individual transmitted the virus to a few Native Americans who then, in turn, infected others. In this manner the virus gradually moved north and south over the next century, decimating the local population with each incremental advance. Generally the virus explored the continents much more quickly than the Europeans. Therefore, by the time the Europeans fully reached a given region, they'd find it already depopulated.

No testimony can convey the devastation. Native populations in some areas fell over 90% in just a few years. Beyond the obvious demographic toll, there was fatal psychological and cultural impact as well. With political and religious leaders dead and the culture destroyed, surviving natives were simply incapable of resisting the Europeans any further. This opened the continents to European conquest and domination. This included the imposition of foreign languages and religions. It also, by the way, opened the door towards the institution of slavery. With the continents depopulated, a serious labor shortage ensued in the newly established plantations. Remaining Native Americans were simply too few and too weak to ease this shortage. Africans, however, broadly shared the same immune defenses as Europeans. Thus they became the preferred "import", and the slave trade began.

This effect was dramatic. Some heavily populated islands - such as Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) - lost their entire native populations to disease. The natives went extinct. In their place came African slaves. Within a few years these islands were demographically totally transformed from populous Native American tribal societies to black plantation economies administered by a small white aristocracy.

Elsewhere the result was much the same. For example, until quite recently the Amazon Basin was thought to have always been a sparsely populated jungle wilderness. Recently uncovered early historical accounts, however, speak of the banks of the Amazon as teeming with fishing villages and towns. In addition there appears to have been a large farming industry. Recent discoveries of extensive bands of fertile farming soil - leftovers from the days of intensive agriculture - now indicate that a very large settled population inhabited the region as well. It seems probable that this modern wilderness was in the past a settled region with millions of inhabitants.

Later explorations of the Amazon Basin found something quite different. Rather than vibrant fishing and farming communities, all they found was jungle and a few scattered tribal groups. Viruses had proceeded then in the previous century, wiping out these river civilizations long before they could be "discovered" by Europeans.

The America's received a number of new diseases during this period. It is likely that, in return, some American pathogens were then imported back to Europe. Syphilis, in particular, is believed to have originated in the Americas. This exchange of microorganisms between the two cultures was part of a broader interaction involving many plants and animals, known as the "Columbian Exchange". However, in general the Americas received the worst end of the bargain. Far more lethal diseases immigrated to the Americas from the Old World rather than the reverse. In retrospect this result was predictable: the Old World (including Africa) had much longer in which to evolve human pathogens, whereas the New World had only recently been settled by humans and thus had developed a very limited range of human diseases. When these two populations finally connected, therefore, pathogenic microorganisms flowed largely in one direction.

The biological annihilation of the Native Americans is a story that is just being told. Beyond serving to correct the historical record, this story also contains profound warnings about the broader fate of mankind. What happened in the America's a few centuries ago may soon be repeated on a more global scale. For not does the world population face the dark legacy of existing diseases, but new organisms are being increasingly engineered as well.

Link: Demographics In Mexico, And Smallpox
Link: The Columbian Exchange
Link: Effect On Cherokees
Link: The Columbian Exchange - An Outline
Link: Smallpox History