The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator

by Timothy C. Winegard

also possessed the previously mentioned genetic hereditary defenses of Duffy negativity, thalassemia, favism, and perhaps even sickle cell.

Muslim contributions to navigation techniques, including the modern magnetic compass, and ship design, such as the sternpost rudder and triangular lateen three-mast sails allowing ships to tack against the wind.

Temujin

By this time, his Mongol subjects had given Temujin a new name—Genghis Khan, or the “Universal Ruler.” After completing his coalition of the competing and combative Mongol tribes, Genghis (or Chingiz) and his skillful mounted archers initiated a flurry of quick-striking outward military campaigns to secure living space . . . and then some.

we collected all the descendants of Genghis Khan into one country, it would be the thirtieth most populous nation in the world today, ahead of countries like Canada, Iraq, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and Australia.

There are numerous well-known reasons why zoonotic diseases were absent from the pre-Columbian Americas. Indigenous peoples did not domesticate many livestock, making the disease jump from animals to humans highly improbable, if not impossible.

These colonies of European lust, while teeming with mosquitoes, were not yet tainted by the disease-carrying Anopheles and Aedes breeds. These angels of death were stowaways on board European ships. Foreign migrant mosquito populations thrived in the sanguine climates of their new homes, pushing out or destroying several local mosquito species.

Repeatedly, the history books tell us that the use of steel weapons and guns versus those fashioned of stone or wood safeguarded European victories. The real reason that European colonizers displaced or destroyed indigenous peoples, however, was largely a matter of disease and differing immunities.

is not surprising that Brazil was the leading destination for African slaves, accounting for an astonishing 40% (or 5 to 6 million people) of the entire transatlantic slave trade.

an astonishing 86% of European American babies died before they reached the age of twenty, with 35% dying before the age of five.

It is estimated that 40% of the current African American population are descendants of slaves who entered through the port of Charleston with their imported mosquito-borne diseases.*

He would release the hostages and depart peacefully when all the medicine in Charleston was safely aboard his ship Queen Anne’s Revenge. His rotten swashbuckling crew was festering with mosquito-borne disease. Within a few days, his demands were met by the frightened citizens of Charleston. When the chests of drugs were furnished, Blackbeard honored his word. He released all ships and captives without harm, albeit only after relieving them of their valuables and fine festoons and frocks.

Most experts agree that John Smith was a con man and a fraud.

In truth, the situation at Jamestown was a cannibalistic, mosquito-ravaged mess. The early, improvident colonists were devoured by malaria. It was reported that a first-wave settler was burned at the stake for murdering and cooking his pregnant wife during the winter of 1609–1610, known as the “Starving Time.”

Since pregnant women possess a magnetism for both the mosquito and the malaria parasite, one “merry fellow” nonchalantly explained to Defoe that when young women “came out of their native air into the marshes among the fogs and damps, there they presently changed their complexion, got an ague or two, and seldom held [survived] it above half a year, or a year at most; ‘And then,’ said he, ‘we go to the uplands again and fetch another.’” Children also died disproportionately.

According to estimates, as many as two-thirds of the crow population inhabiting New York City and surrounds may have died from the virus.