Ecological History of Humankind - Confluence of the Disease Pools
Final word count: 1,600 of 1,500 limit
• What does McNeill mean by the confluence of the disease pools of Eurasia?
• How did this place other parts of the world at risk and from what diseases?
• Trace the trade routes and human travel that could have spread disease?
• Describe Mongol society during the great Mongol empire. What were the secrets of its military success?
In 500B.C. there were four disease pools - China, India, the Mediterranean and the Middle East - each distinct, due to climate differences and the separateness caused by their limited mobility. Populations outside or on the fringes of these civilisations were too sparse, small and immobile for disease to spread from pool to pool. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
At the beginning of the Christian era the four disease pools started gradually converging, through cross-cultural exchange via ships and the Silk Road. (McNeill, 1998, pp. 94-160) This latter, traders had begun forging in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, and it grew to run along the south edges of the Takla Makan and Transoxiana deserts from oasis town to oasis town, then forking off to the west Roman Empire and across the Hindu Kush to the Indus plains. (Curtin 1984, p. 94, 101) So, it were the trade routes that facilitated the convergence of the four pools by about A.D.1200. (McNeill, 1998, pp. 94-160)
Of the four disease pools, the Middle East was the oldest and most stable; epidemic diseases date back to 2000B.C. according to Biblical references, and both microparasites and human parasites (i.e.: the ruling classes) had stabilised by 500B.C. From Persian philosopher/ physician, al-Razi (ninth century A.D.), we encounter the first unambiguous description of infectious diseases like measles and smallpox. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
The next most well-adapted region to disease was India. Despite the unreliability of contemporary medical records, it can be logically determined that because of its warm, wet climate India’s ecosystem offered rich opportunities for the proliferation of communicable diseases. This indicates that people living on the sub-continent experienced a heavy load of infestation and infection from non-human parasites. Diseases such as smallpox, bubonic plague and cholera may have come from India through cross-species contamination; for example, black rats, carriers of bubonic plague, are native to India. Although India is not as biologically hazardous as Africa (there is no evidence of the sleeping sickness or waterborne infections of the alimentary track that kept Africa’s population too sparse to become a disease pool), classical Indian civilisation took form under climatic and disease conditions that were too much for the early Chinese to bear. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
Due to China’s cool, dry, northern climate it was less disease experienced than India but its warm wet southern climate gave it more disease experience than the Mediterranean. Because of the climatic differences there was a sharp rise in the disease gradient from north to south, the result of which was prevalent southern diseases such as malaria, bilharzia, dengue fever and schistosomiasis, and hence it took 1000 years longer for Chinese civilisation to establish in the south than in the north. Northern China’s cold climate was unfavourable to microparasites and waterborne diseases, and because the staple diet of rice is an high calorie food the diseases that did exist did not prevent population growth. Jared Diamond suggests that, because pigs were domesticated early in China, it is likely that influenza actually came from China. (Diamond, 1999, p. 330). Evidence suggests that in the north stability between disease and human population was reached by 500B.C., and because Confucian culture strenuously restrained arbitrary or innovative use of power a stable balance between the parasitic ruling classes and peasants was achieved in 300B.C. and lasted until A.D.1900. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
The Mediterranean disease pool was the least experienced due to its temperate climate and sparseness of population and therefore diseases required sea travel to get from one area to another, so needing a longer gestation period to be widely communicable. Also unlike the other pools, here the main crops (wine and olive oil) caused little land disturbance, and grain farming seems to have had little biological impact as it was confined mainly to regions where the grain was native. During A.D.5-11 the Mediterranean disease pool engulfed all of Europe, and as the climate in the rest of Europe was cooler the disease gradient diminished, thus facilitating population growth and colonisation. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
Between 460-377B.C. Hippocrates recorded mumps, malaria, tuberculosis and/or influenza and possibly diphtheria; he makes no mention of smallpox, measles or the bubonic plague, however. Records show that in A.D.165-180 a new plague (possibly smallpox or something ancestral thereto) in which a quarter to a third of the population died, in some places. A.D.100-300 seems the most likely period in which smallpox and measles established themselves in the Mediterranean. From Byzantine historian Procopius’ writings about the plague of Justinian in A.D.542-543, the bubonic plague can be confidently identified as that which killed tens of thousands in Constantinople; in the 16th Century medical scholars had identified measles and smallpox as distinct diseases. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
The macro-parasites (ruling classes) were so endemic here that they reached plague proportions in the form of Roman Imperialism. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
The Middle East seems to have been effectively the trade crossroads, as the most important east-west trade route in Eurasia ran from the Roman centre of Palmyra in Syria, then east to Babylonia and across northern Iran to Merv, then branching off south to the Indus Valley and further east along the Silk Road to China. The Middle East also linked India and Africa to the Mediterranean via the Red Sea or Persian Gulf. (Curtin 1984, p. 96) Sea trade from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to India, and from India to Southeast Asia, was established from the second century B.C. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160).
The west Indian Ocean’s winds were favourable for trade between southern India and the Middle East; during the warm season winds blow from the southwest and during the cool season, from the northeast. The trade-winds for sailing to and from India to Indonesia, China and Japan were equally advantageous. (Curtin 1984, p. 99, 101) By 200B.C. Asoka, ruler of India, had unified most of South Asia and was trading, and spreading Hinduism, throughout via sea and land. By the Christian Era Indian traders were taking advantage of the Indian Ocean trade-winds, the Silk Road and the route from northeast India across the mountains of eastern Bengal to Burma and on to China’s Yunnan Province. (Curtin 1984, p. 90, 101-102)
McNeill states that the bubonic plague penetrated the Mediterranean either from Central Africa or northeast India via the sea trade of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
By the second century B.C., China had begun forging the Silk Road and trading with the surrounding barbarians. Its land and sea trade routes gradually developed a cross-cultural trade that continued into the 18th century. By the first century A.D, China’s trade with India was extensive and trade between China and Rome was well established. (Curtin 1984, p. 91-93)
China and the Mediterranean were at the far most, opposite ends of the trade routes. Trade with and within the Mediterranean was extensive as the Mediterranean was dependent upon transport and barbarian society for food and slaves. War was profitable; when losses occurred they were relatively easy to overcome and winning expanded the empire to encompass new populations of workers, slaves and supplies. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
Contemporary accounts confirm that smallpox and measles arrived in China overland from the North-West in A.D.653 They also cite the arrival of bubonic plague via sea in A.D.610 and A.D.640. There are also accounts of the plague claiming half the population of both Shantung province in A.D.762 and Chekiang province in A.D.806. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160) As trade between the disease pools increased, so too did cross-contamination between them, but the final event that sealed the confluence of the four pools into one was the forming of the Mongol empire.
The Mongol empire was founded by Genghis Khan (1162-1227) in 1206 and became the largest continuous empire in world history (see figure III). Historian R. J. Rummel estimates that 30 million people were killed during the Mongol empire and that the population of China fell by half in merely fifty years of Mongol rule (Rummel, 1997, p. 64). Besides the fact that the Mongols were ruthless warriors, part of the reason for this mass loss of life was that this empire not only opened trade routes through the Eurasian steppes where, as David Christian states, ‘…the plague bacillus had long been endemic…’ (Christian, 1998, p.426), but also because the Mongol empire made overland travel fast and predatorily safe throughout, thus encouraging unprecedented traffic from one side of Eurasia to the other.
Being nomadic horse-herders, the Mongols had a mobile advantage over the sedentary 12th century Eurasian civilisations and they were able, therefore, to quickly conquer most of Eurasia. The military success of the Mongols was in fact dependent on them being great horsemen and tacticians. Horses not only provided speed but the Mongol’s diet largely comprised horses’ milk, meat and blood, thus providing them with protein-rich staples. The Mongols also ate any kind of meat from mouse to, in desperation, human. (Christine, 1998, p. 419-421) However, while horses were key to the Mongol empire they also rigidly bound it through a lack of suitable grazing land beyond empirical limits.
Mongol government ensured ruling class loyalty from hostage taking, army numbers, income revenue taxes, excellent communication via the yam (post-horse system) and easy travel with safe, clear roads. (Christine, 1998, p. 417)
Although Mongol society was patriarchal, women were valued as important members in both work and decision-making. The Mongols had a very tolerant religious outlook; as Mongke Kahn once said, “…God gave different fingers to the hand so has He given different ways [religious paths] to men.” (Christine, 1998, p. 425) They were also absorbtive learners who took ideas and technology from every contact and spread them throughout Eurasia. (Christine, 1998, p. 426)
Ultimately, the Mongol empire proved a violent explosion of cross-cultural interaction that facilitated world knowledge and ensured the confluence of the disease pools.
Bibliography
Christian, David, A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, Blackwell, London 1998.
Curtin, Philip, Cross-cultural trade in world history, Cambridge 1984.
Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs and Steel, W. W. Norton, New York 1999.
McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, revised (ed), Anchor Books, New York 1998.
Rummel, R. J., Death by Government, Transaction Publishers, Somerset 1997.
• What does McNeill mean by the confluence of the disease pools of Eurasia?
• How did this place other parts of the world at risk and from what diseases?
• Trace the trade routes and human travel that could have spread disease?
• Describe Mongol society during the great Mongol empire. What were the secrets of its military success?
In 500B.C. there were four disease pools - China, India, the Mediterranean and the Middle East - each distinct, due to climate differences and the separateness caused by their limited mobility. Populations outside or on the fringes of these civilisations were too sparse, small and immobile for disease to spread from pool to pool. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
At the beginning of the Christian era the four disease pools started gradually converging, through cross-cultural exchange via ships and the Silk Road. (McNeill, 1998, pp. 94-160) This latter, traders had begun forging in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, and it grew to run along the south edges of the Takla Makan and Transoxiana deserts from oasis town to oasis town, then forking off to the west Roman Empire and across the Hindu Kush to the Indus plains. (Curtin 1984, p. 94, 101) So, it were the trade routes that facilitated the convergence of the four pools by about A.D.1200. (McNeill, 1998, pp. 94-160)
Of the four disease pools, the Middle East was the oldest and most stable; epidemic diseases date back to 2000B.C. according to Biblical references, and both microparasites and human parasites (i.e.: the ruling classes) had stabilised by 500B.C. From Persian philosopher/ physician, al-Razi (ninth century A.D.), we encounter the first unambiguous description of infectious diseases like measles and smallpox. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
The next most well-adapted region to disease was India. Despite the unreliability of contemporary medical records, it can be logically determined that because of its warm, wet climate India’s ecosystem offered rich opportunities for the proliferation of communicable diseases. This indicates that people living on the sub-continent experienced a heavy load of infestation and infection from non-human parasites. Diseases such as smallpox, bubonic plague and cholera may have come from India through cross-species contamination; for example, black rats, carriers of bubonic plague, are native to India. Although India is not as biologically hazardous as Africa (there is no evidence of the sleeping sickness or waterborne infections of the alimentary track that kept Africa’s population too sparse to become a disease pool), classical Indian civilisation took form under climatic and disease conditions that were too much for the early Chinese to bear. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
Due to China’s cool, dry, northern climate it was less disease experienced than India but its warm wet southern climate gave it more disease experience than the Mediterranean. Because of the climatic differences there was a sharp rise in the disease gradient from north to south, the result of which was prevalent southern diseases such as malaria, bilharzia, dengue fever and schistosomiasis, and hence it took 1000 years longer for Chinese civilisation to establish in the south than in the north. Northern China’s cold climate was unfavourable to microparasites and waterborne diseases, and because the staple diet of rice is an high calorie food the diseases that did exist did not prevent population growth. Jared Diamond suggests that, because pigs were domesticated early in China, it is likely that influenza actually came from China. (Diamond, 1999, p. 330). Evidence suggests that in the north stability between disease and human population was reached by 500B.C., and because Confucian culture strenuously restrained arbitrary or innovative use of power a stable balance between the parasitic ruling classes and peasants was achieved in 300B.C. and lasted until A.D.1900. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
The Mediterranean disease pool was the least experienced due to its temperate climate and sparseness of population and therefore diseases required sea travel to get from one area to another, so needing a longer gestation period to be widely communicable. Also unlike the other pools, here the main crops (wine and olive oil) caused little land disturbance, and grain farming seems to have had little biological impact as it was confined mainly to regions where the grain was native. During A.D.5-11 the Mediterranean disease pool engulfed all of Europe, and as the climate in the rest of Europe was cooler the disease gradient diminished, thus facilitating population growth and colonisation. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
Between 460-377B.C. Hippocrates recorded mumps, malaria, tuberculosis and/or influenza and possibly diphtheria; he makes no mention of smallpox, measles or the bubonic plague, however. Records show that in A.D.165-180 a new plague (possibly smallpox or something ancestral thereto) in which a quarter to a third of the population died, in some places. A.D.100-300 seems the most likely period in which smallpox and measles established themselves in the Mediterranean. From Byzantine historian Procopius’ writings about the plague of Justinian in A.D.542-543, the bubonic plague can be confidently identified as that which killed tens of thousands in Constantinople; in the 16th Century medical scholars had identified measles and smallpox as distinct diseases. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
The macro-parasites (ruling classes) were so endemic here that they reached plague proportions in the form of Roman Imperialism. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
The Middle East seems to have been effectively the trade crossroads, as the most important east-west trade route in Eurasia ran from the Roman centre of Palmyra in Syria, then east to Babylonia and across northern Iran to Merv, then branching off south to the Indus Valley and further east along the Silk Road to China. The Middle East also linked India and Africa to the Mediterranean via the Red Sea or Persian Gulf. (Curtin 1984, p. 96) Sea trade from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to India, and from India to Southeast Asia, was established from the second century B.C. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160).
The west Indian Ocean’s winds were favourable for trade between southern India and the Middle East; during the warm season winds blow from the southwest and during the cool season, from the northeast. The trade-winds for sailing to and from India to Indonesia, China and Japan were equally advantageous. (Curtin 1984, p. 99, 101) By 200B.C. Asoka, ruler of India, had unified most of South Asia and was trading, and spreading Hinduism, throughout via sea and land. By the Christian Era Indian traders were taking advantage of the Indian Ocean trade-winds, the Silk Road and the route from northeast India across the mountains of eastern Bengal to Burma and on to China’s Yunnan Province. (Curtin 1984, p. 90, 101-102)
McNeill states that the bubonic plague penetrated the Mediterranean either from Central Africa or northeast India via the sea trade of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
By the second century B.C., China had begun forging the Silk Road and trading with the surrounding barbarians. Its land and sea trade routes gradually developed a cross-cultural trade that continued into the 18th century. By the first century A.D, China’s trade with India was extensive and trade between China and Rome was well established. (Curtin 1984, p. 91-93)
China and the Mediterranean were at the far most, opposite ends of the trade routes. Trade with and within the Mediterranean was extensive as the Mediterranean was dependent upon transport and barbarian society for food and slaves. War was profitable; when losses occurred they were relatively easy to overcome and winning expanded the empire to encompass new populations of workers, slaves and supplies. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160)
Contemporary accounts confirm that smallpox and measles arrived in China overland from the North-West in A.D.653 They also cite the arrival of bubonic plague via sea in A.D.610 and A.D.640. There are also accounts of the plague claiming half the population of both Shantung province in A.D.762 and Chekiang province in A.D.806. (McNeill, 1998, p. 94-160) As trade between the disease pools increased, so too did cross-contamination between them, but the final event that sealed the confluence of the four pools into one was the forming of the Mongol empire.
The Mongol empire was founded by Genghis Khan (1162-1227) in 1206 and became the largest continuous empire in world history (see figure III). Historian R. J. Rummel estimates that 30 million people were killed during the Mongol empire and that the population of China fell by half in merely fifty years of Mongol rule (Rummel, 1997, p. 64). Besides the fact that the Mongols were ruthless warriors, part of the reason for this mass loss of life was that this empire not only opened trade routes through the Eurasian steppes where, as David Christian states, ‘…the plague bacillus had long been endemic…’ (Christian, 1998, p.426), but also because the Mongol empire made overland travel fast and predatorily safe throughout, thus encouraging unprecedented traffic from one side of Eurasia to the other.
Being nomadic horse-herders, the Mongols had a mobile advantage over the sedentary 12th century Eurasian civilisations and they were able, therefore, to quickly conquer most of Eurasia. The military success of the Mongols was in fact dependent on them being great horsemen and tacticians. Horses not only provided speed but the Mongol’s diet largely comprised horses’ milk, meat and blood, thus providing them with protein-rich staples. The Mongols also ate any kind of meat from mouse to, in desperation, human. (Christine, 1998, p. 419-421) However, while horses were key to the Mongol empire they also rigidly bound it through a lack of suitable grazing land beyond empirical limits.
Mongol government ensured ruling class loyalty from hostage taking, army numbers, income revenue taxes, excellent communication via the yam (post-horse system) and easy travel with safe, clear roads. (Christine, 1998, p. 417)
Although Mongol society was patriarchal, women were valued as important members in both work and decision-making. The Mongols had a very tolerant religious outlook; as Mongke Kahn once said, “…God gave different fingers to the hand so has He given different ways [religious paths] to men.” (Christine, 1998, p. 425) They were also absorbtive learners who took ideas and technology from every contact and spread them throughout Eurasia. (Christine, 1998, p. 426)
Ultimately, the Mongol empire proved a violent explosion of cross-cultural interaction that facilitated world knowledge and ensured the confluence of the disease pools.
Bibliography
Christian, David, A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, Blackwell, London 1998.
Curtin, Philip, Cross-cultural trade in world history, Cambridge 1984.
Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs and Steel, W. W. Norton, New York 1999.
McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, revised (ed), Anchor Books, New York 1998.
Rummel, R. J., Death by Government, Transaction Publishers, Somerset 1997.
posted by Assignment Nerd at 12:43 am
1 Comments:
University: University of Melbourne
Subject: Ecological History of Humankind
Semester: 2, 2005
Mark: I think about 72
Comments: This was an amazing subject. It really opened my eyes to the fact that information is a powerful tool that is often abused in the wrong hands. And it often ends up in the wrong hands.
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