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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Henry Volquardsen who wrote (66073)	8/10/1999 9:37:00 PM
From: Sid Turtlman	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

As an additional benefit ascribed to the plague, it helped weed out from the gene pool those who were, well, susceptible to plague. In a few centuries European explorers made extensive contact with people in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. In most cases the Europeans' initial contacts caused diseases to spread and decimate the locals, making the subsequent military conflicts one sided. The Europeans themselves didn't pick up anything terribly fatal from the locals, partially because the descendents of plague survivors were relatively disease resistant. A good book discussing this and other reasons why Europeans ended up dominating the world in the age of colonization (it wasn't because of any innate intelligence advantage) is "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond, which came out a year or two ago.