way off the list center

[Craig Clark]

Monte Davis writes:

> When those pathogens -- smallpox above all -- hit the New World and
> Australia/NZ, mortality was horrific. In the 1630s and 1640s, to take one
> small example that could have eased the way for Constant Slothrop, the
> Hurons and Iroquois may have lost 50%. Apparently the diseases had
> percolated overland through Africa, because there wasn't the same wave of
> death there. Africa (and other tropics) did the best job of biting back,
> killing a lot of imperialists with malaria, yellow fever, parasites etc.

Not quite true - the indigenous San people of southern Africa were 
decimated by smallpox contracted from the earliest European settlers 
around the Cape of Good Hope.

Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
 the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
 on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"