velocicrafter:

oportspangles: curliestofcrowns: squeetothegee: blackgirlphresh: aomuse: nprfreshair:

When Columbus crossed the Atlantic, he didn’t just bring ideas. He also started the exchange of food, animals, insects and disease around the world: “All of the great diseases from smallpox to measles to influenza … [did not] exist in the Americas because they didn’t have any domesticated animals. When the Europeans came over, it was as if all the deaths over the millennium caused by these diseases were compressed into 150 years in the Americas. The result was to wipe out between two-thirds and 90 percent of the people in the Americas. It was the worst demographic disaster in history.”

I should think we will have to rewrite that old bard’s poem, “in fourteen hundred ninety two / Columbus sailed the ocean flu / he had three ships and left from Spain / with cargo of superstition, xenophobia and gain / he sailed by night ; he sailed by day / a bounded slave to guide his way / a compass also helped him know / he had no idea which way to go”.  Okay.  I’m done slapping history around for now.  Perhaps I shall come back and finish my revisions someday.

im wid it.

The pre-Columbus Americas didn’t have any domesticated animals?  Really?! Not even horses? (I’m seriously asking here. I was under the impression that many Native American peoples used horses for various things before 1492, but I could be wrong..)

horses were introduced by the spanish; before their arrival plains indians used dogs to do their hauling, coastal people didn’t travel very far except on foot, and south americans, at least in the incan empire, used llamas, although not to ride. this stuff is FASCINATING. my favorite history prof in college wrote an entire book on the impact domesticated animals like cows and pigs had on north american indians. oh god pigs.

GERM WARFARE VIA FERAL PIG

basically all of this, especially the commentary.