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Re: You Want Evidence of Contact? Here It Is.....


Well.  It seems that Mr Yuri Kuchinsky wants some serious depth in this issue 
of diffusion, so I humbly request he takes into account a pasting from a post 
of mine 2 months ago on the recurrent (4 times a year) topic of disease after 
contact.

Suggestive that Greg Keyes raises the issue of smallpox transportation in a 
thread where Panfilo de Narvaez expeditions are also mentioned, given the fact 
that there is evidence that smallpox arrived to Mexico in the person of a 
slave that was part of Narvaez party that came from the Antilles to Veracruz 
to stop the "adventure" of Cortes (or Cortez, like they use in English).

Smallpox is only one of the several epidemic diseases that destroyed American 
civilizations, and with the exception of Mexico, they went places without 
waiting for the Europeans to give them a ride, including the Andes and the 
Mississippi basin (I would like to know more about what is being found out 
about the latter case, for as far as I remember Soto's expedition found plenty 
of places that seemed to have been depopulated shortly before the Spaniards 
got there).  Re the Vikings, we do need information if those or other 
epidemics were present among them when they came to Vinland (I trust people in 
this thread do not believe they settled around Kensington, Mn).

What follows is the older post:

---------

As this topic shows up its head 2 or 3 times per year, I may end up 
putting somewhere a list of references.  For starters:

Crosby, Alfred W.
The Columbian exchange; biological and cultural consequences of 1492
Greenwood Pub. Co., Westport, Conn.,  c.1972

c1992
Verano, John W.   and Douglas H. Ubelaker (editors)
 Disease and demography in the Americas .
 Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press

gopher://marauder.millersv.edu/00/otherMU/columbus/data/art/DIAMOND1.ART

Brothwell, Don
"On Biological Exchanges between the Two Worlds"
in
Bray, Warwick (editor)
The Meeting of Two Worlds.  Europe and the Americas 1492-1650.
Oxford University Press, New York, 1993
pp. 233-246

Noble David Cook and W. George Lovell
Secret judgments of God : Old World disease in colonial Spanish  America
Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, c1992.

1992
Denevan, William M. (editor)
The Native population of the Americas in 1492 (2nd edition)
University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wis.

Newson, Linda A.
"The Demographic Collapse of Native Peoples of the Americas, 1492-1650"
in
Bray, Warwick (editor), op. cit.

-----

If you read Spanish, I published an article on the topic of disease some 3 
years ago, and it is now in the web:

http://www.andes.missouri.edu/andes/historia/algermen.html

Superficially yours,

Domingo


This is my fizzling gun to the issue of diffusion.


Domingo Martinez Castilla
agdndmc@showme.missouri.edu
References: