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by yummyfajitas
3414 days ago
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Mann mentions several instances of the following scenario, happening at various times across the Americas: Year X: European explorer #1 sails up a river/crosses mountains/etc and discovers a vast empire, huge cities, and marvelous civilizations that his European nation might trade with. He brings pigs with him and trades them to the natives for their cool stuff. Year X+20: European explorer #2 follows the path of explorer #1. Then he's all "WTF, there's nobody here." But explorer #2 does discover, e.g., the giant earthworks that explorer #1 said were there - it's just the city on top of the earthworks doesn't exist. He postulates that in years X+1 to X+19, the smallpoxalypse occurred and civilization collapsed. The remaining survivors are just roving tribal bands trying to survive in the remains of their old civilization. (To make a fictional analogy, consider the current civilization in Georgia and then consider the civilization depicted on the Walking Dead. Mann's hypothesis is that most of what we know about American Indians consists of observing the Walking Dead and then drawing conclusions about their pre-apocalyptic civilization.) |
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Which is oddly fitting given the history of siphylis, which was likely carried over from the Americas and sometimes hypothesised to be the inspiration for zombies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis