Plagues upon the Earth

Harper, Kyle

doi:10.1515/9780691224725

Cited by 16 publications

(23 citation statements)

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“…Our study specifically considers a small subset of human pathogens, chosen both for their historical impact and because they permit simple modeling approaches. Historical scholarship, together with recent advances in paleogenomic sequencing, demonstrates that transoceanic shipping enabled the diffusion of a much broader range of diseases [12,55,56]. These include pathogens with food-, water-and fomite-borne transmission (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the 1970s, pioneering environmental histories such as Alfred Crosby's "Columbian Exchange", Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's "microbial unification of the world", and William McNeill's "common market of microbes" expanded the scope of Borah's analyses to show that first introductions of "Old World" pathogens into previously isolated regions spanned one or two centuries following European arrival [3][4][5]. Subsequent historians have shown that pathogen exchange across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans occurred slowly, with some introductions causing only transient outbreaks [2,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. These outcomes were highly contingent on local human processes such as trade, warfare, and colonialism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Transoceanic pathogen circulation in the age of sail and steam

Blackmore,

Lloyd-Smith

2024

Preprint

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In the centuries following Christopher Columbus’s 1492 journey to the Americas, transoceanic voyages opened unprecedented pathways for global pathogen circulation. Yet no biological transfer is a single, discrete event. We use mathematical modeling to quantify historical risk of shipborne pathogen introduction, exploring the respective contributions of journey time, ship size, population susceptibility, transmission intensity, density dependence, and pathogen biology. We contextualize our results using port arrivals data from San Francisco, 1850–1852, and from a selection of historically significant voyages, 1492–1918. We offer numerical estimates of introduction risk across historically-realistic journey times and ship population sizes, and show that steam travel and shipping regimes that involved frequent, large-scale movement of people both substantially increased risk of transoceanic pathogen circulation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transoceanic pathogen circulation in the age of sail and steam

Blackmore,

Lloyd-Smith

2024

Preprint

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“…Plows and petroleum have largely fuelled the food systems but despite successes has not served the poor or the planet that well [40-42] (Figures 2 and 3). Food insecurity underlies widespread micro-and macro-nutrient malnutrition, emigration and pandemics in this "nomadic" and "pandemic era" spread by commerce from zoonotic microbial cauldrons [43][44][45][46]. Such mega-challenges to feed with "sustainable intensification" increasing populations in the South rarely discuss a relationship between diet and fertility and the interactions with climate change [47][48][49].…”

Section: More Background and Current Relevancementioning

confidence: 99%

Pellagra: Down Not Out If Down and Out (and South) – Part 2

Williams¹,

Wood²,

Hill³

2024

Vitamin B and Vitamin E - Pleiotropic and Nutritional Benefits

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North-South variation in the supply of meat has always been present. Sharing of meat was the rule but in the multi-centric Neolithic revolution when domestication of animals and plants co-evolved class differences became pronounced-aristocrats and inferior proletariats and “lesser breeds and lower orders” started to form. The distribution of natural domesticates was uneven with the near-east and a temperate band across Europe well off compared with Africa and the Americas. The Columbian exchange changed this as meat became abundant in the New World who then exported to Europe. Wars, expropriations and genocides were over the meat supply and acquiring pastureland or water. Colonial plantation profits paid for meat imports from “settler colonies” indigenous or poor peoples on low meat pro-pellagrous diets were considered inferior whatever their colour and had poorer health and life expectancy. Attempts to correct hunger in the resultant ramshackle “Third world” concentrated on calories fuelling population booms and busts and delaying demographic, epidemiological and economic transitions. High meat variances are narrowing in China and Asia but need help elsewhere in the South. Dangers of not developing with a safe and sufficient meat supply include the emergence of zoonoses and mass migration. Reparations, rehabilitation and rejuvenation should concentrate on reconstituting a meat commons giving us a shot at redemption and survival.

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“…47 The rapid spread of agriculture completely transformed human disease. 70,71 Long-term, close interactions between people and their domestic animals allowed zoonotic diseases to make the leap from nonhuman to human hosts, creating the conditions for plagues and pandemics. 71 Higher-density, sedentary populations allowed these diseases to be passed from person to person.…”

Section: Environmentalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…70,71 Long-term, close interactions between people and their domestic animals allowed zoonotic diseases to make the leap from nonhuman to human hosts, creating the conditions for plagues and pandemics. 71 Higher-density, sedentary populations allowed these diseases to be passed from person to person. Close physical associations with domestic animals, sedentary human populations, and the difficulties of disposing of human waste in these permanent settlements promoted new oral−fecal diseases and parasites.…”

Section: Environmentalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Earth Systems to Anthropocene Systems: An Evolutionary, System-of-Systems, Convergence Paradigm for Interdependent Societal Challenges

Little

Kaaronen

Hukkinen

et al. 2023

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Humans have made profound changes to the Earth. The resulting societal challenges of the Anthropocene (e.g., climate change and impacts, renewable energy, adaptive infrastructure, disasters, pandemics, food insecurity, and biodiversity loss) are complex and systemic, with causes, interactions, and consequences that cascade across a globally connected system of systems. In this Critical Review, we turn to our “origin story” for insight, briefly tracing the formation of the Universe and the Earth, the emergence of life, the evolution of multicellular organisms, mammals, primates, and humans, as well as the more recent societal transitions involving agriculture, urbanization, industrialization, and computerization. Focusing on the evolution of the Earth, genetic evolution, the evolution of the brain, and cultural evolution, which includes technological evolution, we identify a nested evolutionary sequence of geophysical, biophysical, sociocultural, and sociotechnical systems, emphasizing the causal mechanisms that first formed, and then transformed, Earth systems into Anthropocene systems. Describing how the Anthropocene systems coevolved, and briefly illustrating how the ensuing societal challenges became tightly integrated across multiple spatial, temporal, and organizational scales, we conclude by proposing an evolutionary, system-of-systems, convergence paradigm for the entire family of interdependent societal challenges of the Anthropocene.

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Plagues upon the Earth

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

Transoceanic pathogen circulation in the age of sail and steam

Transoceanic pathogen circulation in the age of sail and steam

Pellagra: Down Not Out If Down and Out (and South) – Part 2

Earth Systems to Anthropocene Systems: An Evolutionary, System-of-Systems, Convergence Paradigm for Interdependent Societal Challenges

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