Transcript 1491 and beyond: of paradise, purgatory and hells …Main points: » 1.

1491 and beyond: of paradise,
purgatory and hells …Main points:
» 1. 1491: Americas: paradise for some, purgatory for many—even at Machu Picchu,
»
»
the Inca’s “paradise”.
2. 1492+: Demographic disaster cannot be explained by disease alone
3. The “virgin soil” thesis (European diseases were new to the Americas, causing
catastrophic mortality) may be correct for small populations, but not for large ones:
Mexico, Peru
» Caribbean: first smallpox epidemic: 1518, 26 years after demographic catastrophe
» Mexico:
» 2 of 3 major epidemics in 16th century Mexico were native diseases
» Smallpox struck only twice in 16th century: 1520, 1538
» Peru:
»
» Disaster began before virgin soil epidemics struck
» Smallpox first appeared in Peru in 1558, after the demographic catastrophe
4. Reflections
» Pre-1492: American populations were fragile, high pressure demographic systems.
» Post-1492: European diseases were deadly; their effects were heightened by:
» the catastrophes of conquest and colonization
» and the fact that natives did not know how to protect against European diseases or care
for the ill.
1491/2+: Paradise, Purgatory, & Hell
1
Demographic catastrophe and
its causes: viruses, mistreatment and
the social context of epidemics
Mexico: Alonso de Zorita (~1565):
“...and it is certain that from the day that D. Hernando Cortes,
the Marquis del Valle, entered this land ...the natives suffered
many deaths, and many terrible dealings, robberies and
oppressions were inflicted on them, taking advantage of their
persons and their lands, without order, weight nor measure;
...the people diminished in great number, as much due to excessive
taxes and mistreatment, as to illness and smallpox, such that now
a very great and notable fraction of the people are gone, and
especially in the hot country.”
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1491 and beyond: of Paradise,
Purgatory and Hells
• 1. Ancient America was no paradise:
– slow rate of natural increase
– widespread paleo-pathologies
– diminishing height over millennia due to enormous
dependence on corn (2/3rds – 3/4ths of diet)
• 2. Demographic catastrophe of Christian
conquest and colonization
• 3. Causes of catastrophe:
– Virgin soil epidemics (European diseases,
smallpox)?
– War?
– Exploitation?
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1491: Pristine Paradise?
(1491, C.C. Mann, Knopf: 2005)
Followed by tragedy!
• 1. Ancient America was no paradise:
– slow rate of natural increase
– widespread paleopathologies
– diminishing height
Thecatastrophe
Backbone
• 2. Demographic
of Christian
of History:
conquest and colonization
Health and
• 3. Causes of catastrophe:
Nutrition in
Virgin soil epidemics?
the Western
Exploitation? Hemisphere
(Cambridge 2002
Care?
pbk: 2005)
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Basin of Mexico: a long view
population (thousands, log scale)
Cycles of growth and decline (3000 - 500 BP), disaster (1519-1650 AD) and recovery
Population figures in thousands
10000
1000
1000
250
125
100
160
200
60
25
10
+50%
point 5
estimate
-50%
1
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
present
years ago
Population of1491/2+:
the Basin
ofPurgatory,
Mexico
across the Millennia
Paradise,
& Hell
5
Shovel
shaped
incisors:
genetic
trait of
Native
Americans
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Fertility (average no. of daughters) in Ancient Americas
Low fertility: Foragers and Fishers: 2.3-2.6
Highest: Villagers 2.6-2.8
Lowest: Urban: 2.2-2.5
Foragers and Fishers, GRR=2.3-2.6
20
30
40
20
30
.5
20
30
30
20 40
40
2
3
grr
30
20
40
p
50
.5
20
30
30
20
40
20
2
20
30
.05
Ancient Urban, GRR=2.2-2.5
.05
.5
50
2.5
.95
40
50
20
.05
LNC
.95
50
p
p
.95
Ancient Villagers, GRR=~2.7
50
40
50
50
2.5
3
grr
3.5
4
2
2.5
50
3
grr
3.5
4
No. of skeletons by settlement type and age
(used to derive models and draw figures)
age
mobile
village
urban
5
43
215
38
10
22
151
11
15
37
250
22
20
53
244
30
25
64
233
25
30
51
329
70
35
64
377
73
3.5
4
40
42
319
57
45 villagers,71and townsfolk
397
116
Settlement types: foragers,
Sum
447
2515
442
Fig. 5. Village fertility is highest; urban, lowest
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Hard Times in Ancient Mexico
» Epidemics happened (e.g., matlazahuatl, a severe
form of typhus?), but not European crowd
diseases like smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow
fever, or bubonic plague.
» Epidemics in 1450, 1456, 1496, and 1507
(according to Anales de Cuahtitlan)
» “There’s hardly a person who walks who doesn’t
complain of the bowels.”
» Skeletal archaeology shows porotic hyperostosis
as nearly universal (due to extreme dependence
on corn).
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1
rabbit
(1454):
“a
great
hunger
killed
many
of the
people”
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Porotic Hyperostosis:
a physiological adaptation to
inadequate absorption of oxygen
• High frequency: 1/3 – 1/12 of adults in
these communities show signs of
extraordinary bone remodeling.
• Increase over time: as the transition to
sedentary agriculture proceeded,
physiological conditions worsened.
• No gendered difference: “A near complete
absence of sex differentials in pathologies is
surprising.”
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Degenerative joint disease (DJD)
• One or two in five of adults of both sexes suffered
from degenerative joint disease.
• From age 20, hard, repetitive work exacted severe
wear on both sexes, particularly of joints
required for mobility, manipulation of objects,
and carrying loads.
• Sex differences: the only statistically significant
gender difference in pathologies discovered so far
are in DJD and cranial fractures.
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Degenerative joint disease (DJD), spine:
picture worsens
• Generally high levels ranging from 25 to 83%
for adults from the Mesoamerican sites leave
little doubt about the ubiquity of an affliction
(DJD) which is principally due to hard labor.
• Where the means of carrying heavy burdens is
almost solely the human body [as in Ancient
Americas], an enormous biological cost is
exacted from the organism.
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Stature, 3 features stand out:
• 1. Males decline over time: in mean height
(1 cm. per thousand years)--due to
worsening nutrition?
• 2. Female stature constant over time even
from pre-historic period.
• 3. Decreasing male stature from north (164
cm) to south (161 cm).
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Machu-Picchu: Paradise of the
Incas, but conditions were not ideal
» Dental disease (caries, abscesses)
ubiquitous and life threatening
» Dental hypoplasia and cribra
orbitalia (nutritional stress)
»
»
»
»
Tuberculosis: without a doubt
Porotic hyperostosis: common
Skeletal fractures: common
Arthritis (hard work): not common!
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Paradise,
Purgatory, & images
Hell
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Machu
Picchu
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Background demography:
Ancient Americas pre-1492,
a high pressure demographic system
» Crude birth rate: ~50-60 per thousand
» Early, universal marriage (vs. Western Europe with
late marriage, and high % celibate)
» Total fertility rate = 6-8 children (higher than Europe,
TFR of <6 children)
» Crude death rate = ~45-55 per thousand
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Precocious marriage among
the Aztecs
• The Codex Mendoza (1540) shows
the life stages of boys and girls:
marriage is celebrated at age 15 (and
not at 18, 20 or 25 as often stated by
historians):
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Marriage (at 15)
15:
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Female age at marriage:
Italy (lower pressure)
vs. Mexico (higher pressure)
• Italy: Florence
Prato
1372
16.3
1427
17.6
1427
17.6 years
1458
19.5
1480
20.8
1470
• Mexico: Aztecs
Codex Mendoza (urban, 1540)
Nahuatl censuses (rural, 1538)
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21.1
“15” years
12.8
29
Thomas Robert Malthus,
Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)
Two checks to population growth:
positive (1st ed.): famine, epidemics, war
preventive (2nd ed., 1803): “moral restraint”-delayed marriage, chastity
Malthus, the optimist: with education,
masses would adopt middle class fertility
education -->
higher wages -->
taste for conveniences --->
later marriage, smaller families
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Museo de Antropología, Mexico City:
“Here is the house of someone named...”
...transcribed
…and translated
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Household H-38
9 people, 3 generations
Widow
10 years ago
Married
Married
head
Married
Son
7 years old
Daughter
1 year old
Married
Widow
4 years ago
Son,
unmarried
15 years old
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Rules of household formation
among rural Aztecs.
The head is:
• 1. male (311 of 315 households)
• 2. married (97%) or recently
widowed (3%).
• 3. the one who has the most sons
resident (or who has the oldest son
resident).
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The Amerindian mode of
reproduction
• 1. Precocious marriage: a solution to high
mortality, a high pressure demographic regime
(paleolithic).
• 2. Societies that did not learn to maximize their
reproduction, disappeared.
• 3. Those that did, survived--and survived the
biological conquest of the Americas, “the
greatest demographic catastrophe in human
history” (Woodrow Borah).
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1491: Pristine Paradise?
Followed by tragedy!
• 1. Ancient America was no paradise
slow rate of natural increase
widespread paleopathologies
diminishing height
• 2. Demographic catastrophe of Christian
conquest and colonization
• 3. Causes of catastrophe:
Virgin soil epidemics?
Exploitation?
Care?
1491/2+: Paradise, Purgatory, & Hell
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Demographic catastrophe in 16th
century Mexico: 50%+ decline
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First epidemic,
1520:
“Large bumps spread on
people, some were
entirely covered.
They spread
everywhere, on the
face, the head, the
chest, etc.
[The disease] brought
great desolation; a
great many died of it.”
--Sahagun,
General History 1491/2+: Paradise, Purgatory, & Hell
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Codice
Santa
Maria:
darkened
faces show
deaths—
many due to
“cocoliztli”,
1546
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1491: Pristine Paradise?
Followed by tragedy!
• 1. Ancient America was no paradise
slow rate of natural increase
widespread paleopathologies
diminishing height
• 2. Demographic catastrophe of Christian
conquest and colonization
• 3. Causes of catastrophe:
Virgin soil epidemics?
Exploitation?
Lack of Care?
1491/2+: Paradise, Purgatory, & Hell
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Demographic catastrophe:
Due to “virgin soil” epidemics?
Or/and war, exploitation,
environmental disruption?
• Smallpox: Epidemic of 1520 was
devastating; 1538 less so. Only 3 in 100 yrs.
• More severe was native diseases: cocoliztli
of 1545-6 and matlazahuatl of 1577-79
• Most chroniclers list few epidemics of
European origin
• Exploitation weakened native population
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Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun’s General History
(Florentine Codex, 1576), native voices:
smallpox epidemic of 1520 in Mexico
Mexico, 1520:
“...Indeed many
people died of
them (pustules),
and many just
died of hunger.
There was death
from hunger;
there was no one
to take care of
another; there
was no one to
attend to
1491/2+: Paradise, Purgatory, & Hell
another.”
41
1157 BC: Earliest recorded case of
smallpox, Egyptian Pharaoh
Rameses V, died
Last case of smallpox, Oct. 26, 1977:
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Purgatory, & Hell
Ali Maow Maalin (Somalia),
survived
42
Smallpox at day 9 and day 20
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Pox myths: a. chronology
» “...on the very evening that the Aztecs drove the
conquistadors out of what is now Mexico City
[June 30, 1520], killing many while routing the
rest, a smallpox epidemic began.” --Oldstone,
Viruses, Plagues and History (Oxford, 1998
[derived from McNeil’s Plagues and People]);
same exaggeration in Tucker, Scourge (2001).
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First epidemic: little effect on the
outcome of the conquest
» Chronology:
» Spaniards defeated June 30, 1520
» Smallpox epidemic erupted in late Sept.
» Ended in December
» Siege of Mexico City began April, 1521.
» Mexico City fell August 14, 1521.
» Hugh Thomas, Conquest of Mexico (1993):
“Extravagant” the notion that the smallpox
epidemic had an effect on the outcome of the
conquest.
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1520: Death of Montezuma’s
successor, from smallpox
“…he governed only 80 days…”
corpse enshrouded in
glyphs for smallpox
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Rhetorical exaggeration vs.
evidence
• Smallpox epidemic of 1520 “raged across the
continent”, but note how slowly it spread from
Veracruz to Mexico City, 300 miles, 4 to 5
months (May to September or October).
• “In Mexico, ever since 1520, the natives had
suffered from severe smallpox epidemics
recurring every seventeen or eighteen years.” -Stearn and Stearn, 42.
• 1520-1740: of 17 great epidemics in Mexico only 3
due to smallpox (according to the chronicler
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Purgatory, & Hell
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Cayetano Cabrera
yParadise,
Quintero).
Of the three most devastating
th
epidemic in the 16 century only
smallpox was a “virgin soil” disease
3 deadliest epidemics in 16th century Mexico:
• *Huey zahuatl (smallpox)
1520
• cocoliztli (Mexican typhus?)
1546-47
• matlazahuatl (hemorrhagic fever?)
1576-79
Epidemics of lesser importance:
• *tepitonzahuatl (measles)
1531, 1563-4, 1590, 92, 95
• *smallpox
1538
• *mumps
1550, 1595
• famine
1558-59
• *influenza
1559-60
*=virgin soil epidemic
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1538
“This year of
seven rabbits of
1538 many
people died of
smallpox.”
[note pustules
on arms and
legs.]
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Genes or exploitation/care: Why
did natives suffer so greatly from
disease?
• Genes: Stearn and Stearn (1945): “...even in the
nineteenth century when some immunity had
already been acquired by this race...”
• Exploitation, the social context of epidemics:
Audiencia Judge Alonso de Zorita (~1560) “So
the Indian returns home from his toil [for
Spaniards] ... famished, unhappy, distraught, and
shattered in health. For these reasons pestilence
always rages among
the Indians.”
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Genes: Francis Jennings,
The Invasion of America (1975:22)
• “...the Europeans’ capacity to resist certain diseases
made them superior, in the pure Darwinian sense, to the
Indians who succumbed.”
• “smallpox was smallpox...the Indians on the north [bank
of the Rio Grande] had as little biological immunity to
this epidemic scourge as the Aztecs had.”
• Genetic vs. lifetime immunity.
Did Europeans have genetic immunity to smallpox?
…if so, why is the USA stockpiling smallpox vaccine to
protect against bioterrorism?
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Science: F. Black (1994)
and Peter J. Bianchine &
Thomas A. Russo (1995)
• Black: “Smallpox was clearly more virulent in
the Americas than in Europe but the causes for
this remain an open question.”
• Bianchine & Russo: “given comparable care
when ill and knowledge regarding the potential
for surviving the illness, the death rates for
virgin-soil Indian populations and repeatedly
exposed Caucasian populations for measles were
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similar.”
Peru:
The Death of Huayna Capac led to
a War of Succession, but the proof
that he died of smallpox is weak
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379: The mummy
of Huayna Capac
enroute to Cuzco
 Guaman Poma’s
illustration—no
signs of pockmarks
 Yet, other GP
illustrations often
depict facial
features
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Peru: first 16th century epidemic (1524?) was
bartonellosis not a virgin soil epidemic (such
as smallpox or leprosy)
Bartonellosis
Smallpox
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Leprosy
55
First medical photo in Peru:
Bartonellosis, 1857
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Bartonellosis:
an ancient disease in Ecuador/Peru,
still a medical problem
» Ancient Chimu pottery depicts symptoms of
bartonellosis
» Early chroniclers vaguely ascribed Huayna Capac’s
death as due to “fever” (smallpox?, bartonellosis?)
» Only in 17th century was bartonellosis recognized by
European medicine
» In 1871, Bartonellosis killed 8,000 Peruvian railroad
workers
» Today, bartonellosis is still a public health problem in
Ecuador and Peru, although mortality is reduced by
antibiotics
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Reflections: Why Blame Smallpox for the
Demographic Destruction of Peru?
Too many…
Contradictions and contingencies in the chronicles
Silences in the historical record
No mentions of pockmarked survivors
No mention of smallpox in the earliest dictionary
Improbables
That the disease would leap ahead of the Spaniards—through one of
the most impenetrable regions on the planet
That Huayna Capac would die, but not his embalmers or his son
Atahualpa who kept some of his father’s flesh did not.
There is a convincing, alternative explanation for the
destruction of Tawantinsuyu:
decades of war, famine, wanton rapine
The issue is the demographic catastrophe, not Huayna Capac
Until there is more persuasive evidence (texts or remains)
the smallpox/virgin soil hypothesis should be discounted for the
Andean region—before
1558
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Wars in Peru:
1532-: Conquest
1536: Manco Inca revolt
1538: The Pizarros
executed Diego de
Almagro
1541: Almagristas killed
Fco. Pizarro
1546: Gonzalo Pizarro
revolted, killing the
viceroy
1548: Gonzalo executed;
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Hapsburg rule restored
Reflections
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Summary:
» 1491: Americas: paradise for some, purgatory for
»
»
many.
1492+: Demographic disaster cannot be explained by
disease alone
The virgin soil thesis may be correct for small
populations, but not for large ones: Mexico, Peru
» Mexico:
»
» Two of three major epidemics were native diseases
» Smallpox struck only twice in 16th century: 1520, 1538
Peru:
» Disaster began before virgin soil epidemics struck
» First smallpox epidemic in the Andes: 1558, 25 years after conquest
1491/2+: Paradise, Purgatory, & Hell
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Demographic catastrophe and
its causes: viruses, mistreatment and
the social context of epidemics
Mexico: Alonso de Zorita (~1565):
“...and it is certain that from the day that D. Hernando Cortes,
the Marquis del Valle, entered this land ...the natives suffered
many deaths, and many terrible dealings, robberies and
oppressions were inflicted on them, taking advantage of their
persons and their lands, without order, weight nor measure;
...the people diminished in great number, as much due to excessive
taxes and mistreatment, as to illness and smallpox, such that now
a very great and notable fraction of the people are gone, and
especially in the hot country.”
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62
END
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