Re: New world populations
Paul J. Gans (gans@scholar.chem.nyu.edu)
25 Dec 1994 00:54:55 GMT
MBAWilliam (mbawilliam@aol.com) wrote:
: >I'd like to know more about how one can "keep the *plague* chained up
: >in a cellar,..." since, with the exception of the pneumonic form
: >of the plague it is not human-human contagious. And the pneumonic
: >form is *very quickly* fatal, with time to death measured in hours...
: Wouldn't have been wonderful if you had lived 500 years ago to explain
: that to the millions of indigenous peoples who were rapidly decimated by a
: culprit they never saw.... So much for relativism in archaeology...
: MB Williams
First, it is good to maintain attributions. I wrote the
quoted line above.
Second, it is polite to pay attention to context. I was
replying to a claim that the plague was kept chained up
in a cellar so that it could be released on demand. I
still don't know *what* was kept chained up. It certainly
wasn't a person with the plague. Was it, perhaps, an
infected flea?
Third, it does not say much about scientific independence
to reply to a statement of fact with a wildly emotional
statement.
Last: I don't believe anyone has ever claimed that an
epidemic of plague wiped out indigineous Americans.
------ Paul J. Gans [gans@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
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