Chapter 11: Lethal Gift of Livestock
RJ Stangherlin | English 5: Guns, Germs, and Steel | Salisbury High School
Title: Lethal Gift of Livestock: is the title an oxymoron or a paradox?  Why?

Subtitle: The evolution of germs
  • the evolution of germs is linked, in part, to the answers we have so far to Yali's question
  • those answer are twofold:
    • unequal rates of food production
    • denser populations that farmer power could supply
      • which lead to germs, literacy, technology, and central government
  • therefore, ultimate causes of food production led to proximate causes of germs, literacy, technology, and centralized government
  • or, livestock + crops = germs => and germs are the decisive shapers of history => what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, aka, immunizes you [think allergy injections...]
  • germs spread through microbes:
    • from infected person to number of new persons infectable
    • from animals to people
    • microbe modification [germs are opportunitst waitng to happen]
    • passive carrier [from mother to chikd]
    • modify anatomy [host on open wound]
  • how do we mobilize our immune system?
    • fevers
    • antibodies
    • antigens
    • natural selection [Darwinian]
  • spread of crowd diseases or epidemics
    • acute from person to person: die or recover
    • develop antibodies
    • however, susceptible hosts from outside [actually outsiders or new generation] can repeat the epidemic as new hosts
    • called crowd diseases because microbes thrive in dense populations [which also happen to have domesticables]
  • connection between crowd diseases and agriculture [animals, people, soil]
    • dense populations are breeding grounds for crowd diseases
    • farmers live among sewage [think Brontes] and water is contaminated
    • hunter-gatherer feces
    • animal feces
    • rodents
    • forest clearings
    • cities
    • immigration
    • world trade routes
    • plague epidemics
  • Conclusions:
    • historical importance of animal-derived diseases occurred in prehistory and can do so today
    • if we look at why Europeans developed a big advantage in weaponry, technology and political organization over most non-European peoples that they conquered, then look at the following:
      • Eurasis has:
        • largest land mass
        • widest diversity of flora/fauna
        • widest diversity of climate and ecology
        • most time w/germs from domesticated animals

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