A Study in Scarlet 2012 - Background and Resources

[MadgeUK]

I do not agree that the isolated communities in Africa which slavers visited had been exposed to these diseases. That the disease had been present in populations where Europeans had visited does not mean that there weren't large areas in this vast continent where they had never seen white men - as testified by numerous explorers. Parts of Africa and parts of the Caribbean were also severely depopulated by epidemics and the conditions to which Africans were exposed as slaves just made the matter worse.

The fact is that wherever the white man went he depopulated indegenous populations through disease and no experience was 'better or worse' for those affected.

http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/death-rat...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigeno...

In Tahiti: 'After European contact, the population fell rapidly and traditional society was disrupted by guns, prostitution, venereal disease, and alcohol. Introduced diseases including typhus, influenza and smallpox killed so many Tahitians that by 1797, the population had dropped from 35,000 to 16,000. Later it was to drop as low as 6,000.' (Wikipedia.)

On the other hand the worst epidemic ever seen was the Black Death and that depopulated the European continent by millions!

I think this topic is exhausted!:)

Edited.

[☯Emily]

Thanks, BunWat. I found both of these assumptions made by Madge offensive. No one has said or implied either statement that you highlighted in your last comment. I won't continue the conversation and I hope it stops here.

[MadgeUK]

Sorry if you found my statements offensive Emily. I apologise. Because of our personal experiences I feel strongly about black history and you feel strongly about Indian history, that is the why I emphasise one and you emphasise the other. No ill-will is intended on either side.

[Lynnm]

I think we have to be careful wjhen we use words like racist and offensive in these types of discussions. It minimizes the words. There are people who are truly racist and offensive, and who are truly hateful.

Here we just have people trying to understsnd the consequences of American and British treatment of people.from other lands. And if we use those terms, people will be unwilling to discuss because they don't want to be accused of something they are not. And we need to have these types of discussions so that we understand and through understanding, keep history from repeating itself.

[MadgeUK]

Well put Lynn. It is als one thing to comment that a person is being racist and another to point out that a concept is racist. We can unwittingly quote sources that are racist without meaning to be racist ourselves. As Bunwat pointed out earlier, there is a lot of misinformation in this field and there may also be differences of interpretation between the new world and the old.

[☯Emily]

I feel strongly about all oppressed peoples. My special interest is Black history. I have nephews and nieces that are black (Haitian on one side.) I don't believe I have denigrated blacks in anything I've written, nor do I believe that I have given any concepts that are racist. If I emphasized Indians in my recent comments, it has been because of the misunderstandings you have shown about them.

[MadgeUK]

I have not said that you (or anyone else) have denigrated blacks Emily, I am saying that some ideas which are promulgated about them are racist. Those historically who have promoted the idea that the black man is superior in strength, or more able to withstand certain diseases because of immunity, are propping up a racial stereotype. As the quote I gave above from Kenneth Kiple's 'pioneering study' (post 112) shows, they were no more immune to them than any other indigenous race, which their huge death and disease rate shows.

(BTW I may not have had a scientific education but I have read a great deal upon the political subject of the treatment of indigenous peoples by past conquerers.)

[MadgeUK]

BunWat wrote: "? Nobody has said Africans were stronger, Madge. I said they had more exposure to European disease. Because Africa and Europe had more contact. Africans and Europeans had been exposed to the sam..."

I am talking about the literature in general, not about what has been said here. That literature has given rise to certain misconceptions such as Africans being more immune to European diseases, therefore stronger candidates for slavery.

Thousands (possibly millions) of them had NOT been exposed to European diseases, that is the point I am trying to make. They were therefore just like the American Indians (or Maoris, or Aborigines...) in this respect.

Initially, the slave trade had followed land routes to Europe to/from areas where Africans were traditionally in contact with Europeans but when the Portuguese opened up the Atlantic slave trade a whole new class of slave trading middlemen emerged. Numerous forts along the western coast of Africa were supplied with slaves from the interior by African slave dealers and they had NOT been exposed to Europeans. (The first of the major European trading 'forts', Elmina, was founded on the Gold Coast by the Portuguese in 1482 and was modelled on the Castello de Sao Jorge, the first Portuguese Royal residence in Lisbon.)

BTW, I would also question the quote you posted about smallpox originating in Africa. A great many claims have been made about deadly diseases originating there, via the sinful black man, the latest one being AIDS. I would like to see solid research about the smallpox claim before I accept it. The first scientific description of measles and its distinction from smallpox and chickenpox is credited to the Persian physician, Rhazes (860–932) but Galen described The Antonine Plague of AD 165–180, which became known as the Plague of Galen and is now thought to have been a smallpox epidemic. Those deaths decimated the Roman army and total deaths in and around Rome were estimated at 5 million.

[MadgeUK]

BTW re blood groups/types: There have been DNA samples taken from various anthropological digs in Africa which corroborate Darwin's hypothesis that humankind has a single origin. Has blood also been analysed and if so what blood group/type were our earliest black/brown ancestors? And what diseases have been found in these early fossilised people?

And another query arising from our interesting discussion: Has the Bering Straits Land Bridge theory for Indian migration now been discredited? I was reading a book recently about Shamanism and the 40,000 year old cave and rock drawings in Europe, Siberia where it was postulated by a reliable anthropologist that there were similarities between them and the rock art of North American Indians, which indicated that there had been an East to West migration across the Northern Hemisphere. I can't remember whether the Bering Straits were mentioned specifically.

[MadgeUK]

LOL. Which question - blood or Bering Straits? The problem with me asking scientific type questions is that I do not have the right language so I frame them badly. I know this from other scentific friends. Forget it, I'll ask my adult education teacher friends, who are used to dealing with ignorant old gits like me:) Meanwhile I have found these links, which I found helpful:-

http://www.oldthingsforgotten.com/dna...

http://haplogroupq1a3a1.blogspot.co.u...

Those here of Irish origin may be interested in these DNA findings:-

http://marie-mckeown.hubpages.com/hub...

[Jessie J]

BunWat wrote: "MadgeUK wrote: "BTW re blood groups/types: There have been DNA samples taken from various anthropological digs in Africa which corroborate Darwin's hypothesis that humankind has a single origin. Ha..."

MadgeUK, I still recommend the National Geographic site on the Genographic project. That has the best current information that I know of. You can also google phrases like "Walk through the Y" or "human haplogroups" or "deep ancestry and genealogy."

From previous reading, I seem to recall that the oldest blood *type* is considered to be O. That was in relationship to some studies on diet and metabolism, however, and not disease, so I can't answer the disease portion of the question.

And the Bering Strait migration has been confirmed by the latest DNA studies, but it was a little more complicated than just a single migration, and it could have gone back and forth. Again, the National Geographic site is a good place to start.

[MadgeUK]

Thankyou Jessie, that is very helpful. (I think the links I have given are also based on the National Geographic project.)

[MadgeUK]

Thankyou. My remark about our black/brown ancestors was not to do with blood type, it was a joke. I know there are all kinds of blood types in all races but I thought there was sometimes a preponderance of one type in some areas/countries where races had not mixed, although that is of course less common nowadays. One of the links above says of L0 and Ll groups, for instance: 'Importantly, current genetic data indicates that indigenous people belonging to these groups are found exclusively in Africa....Haplogroups L1 and L0 likely originated in East Africa and then spread throughout the rest of the continent. Today, these lineages are found at highest frequencies in Africa's indigenous populations, the hunter-gatherer groups who have maintained their ancestors' culture, language, and customs for thousands of years.'

I know the Bering land bridge theory, I was querying whether it still had legs as I have seen it challenged in recent years.

[☯Emily]

Nicely phrased and clearly stated.

[MadgeUK]

Yes, especially when you are 80 and were unable to take science subjects at school! I am well and truly admonished so won't put my hand up in class again.

[MadgeUK]

That's fine Bunwat, no problems.

[Lynnm]

Very proud of myself. After starting our read at the end of June, I read the last story in the canon yesterday.

What will I do without having Sherlock to read everyday? :-)

[☯Emily]

Guess your next step is to read all the books about Sherlock Holmes currently on the market, including books for children about his cases solved as a lad.

[Lynnm]

☯Emily wrote: "Guess your next step is to read all the books about Sherlock Holmes currently on the market, including books for children about his cases solved as a lad."

Yes, I was thinking about that. :-)

And of course, the new show Elementary will start in a couple of weeks.