Americapox: The Missing Plague

[cinepro]

The CGP Grey video has some interesting videos about different technical and anthropological subjects.  In their video about disease in the old world vs. disease in the new world, it brings up some interesting theories regarding domesticated animals and their effect on how societies form (and face disease).  It's largely taken from "Guns, Germs and Steel", but it's a good reminder of some important points in New World development (or lack thereof):

 

So the question is, does "The Book of Mormon" negate this theory?  Or does this theory call into question the accuracy of the claims regarding domesticated animals among Book of Mormon peoples?

 

Quote

1 Nephi 18:25 And it came to pass that we did find upon the land of promise, as we journeyed in the wilderness, that there were beasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the *** and the horse, and the goat and the wild goat, and all manner of wild animals, which were for the use of men. And we did find all manner of ore, both of gold, and of silver, and of copper.

 

Quote

Enos 21 And it came to pass that the people of Nephi did till the land, and raise all manner of grain, and of fruit, and flocks of herds, and flocks of all manner of cattle of every kind, and goats, and wild goats, and also many horses.

 

Quote

Ether 9:16 And the Lord began again to take the curse from off the land, and the house of Emer did prosper exceedingly under the reign of Emer; and in the space of sixty and two years they had become exceedingly strong, insomuch that they became exceedingly rich --

17 Having all manner of fruit, and of grain, and of silks, and of fine linen, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious things;

18 And also all manner of cattle, of oxen, and cows, and of sheep, and of swine, and of goats, and also many other kinds of animals which were useful for the food of man.

[Johnnie Cake]

This was one of the pieces of straw that broke my camels back.  When church apologists abandoned the hemispheric model for the Book Mormon settling to fix the several known problems that existed in the hemispheric model in favor of a limited hemispheric model...little did they know that they were opening up a whole new can of worms of unknown unknowns.  It's a classic "Black Swan" phenomenon.

When they abandoned the hemispheric model it created an entire new set of problems that had to be dealt with...none of which have been satisfactorily explained away.

 

Edited March 8, 2017 by Johnnie Cake

[pogi]

3 hours ago, cinepro said:

So the question is, does "The Book of Mormon" negate this theory?  Or does this theory call into question the accuracy of the claims regarding domesticated animals among Book of Mormon peoples?

This video does not do a very good job of explaining infectious disease and there was a lot of bad information.  Just because domestic animals such as pigs are frequently the hosts of infectious diseases does not mean that all pigs in all countries are infected with the same bugs.  For example, Avian Influenza is endemic in certain countries and not others.  It has mutated enough to infect humans in some countries and not others.  There is a current human outbreak in China right now for example, but in India it has not spread to humans but is endemic in the poultry; and in other countries we don't see Avian influenza in the poultry at all.

The fact that we did not see these infectious diseases in the Americas is not evidence against domestic animals.  And No, animals do not have to be domesticated to be hosts for infectious disease.  Yellow fever is a good example (monkeys are the host - yet you don't see it in all countries that have monkeys or the Aedes mosquito which is the vector) as is leptospirosis which is transmitted by the urine of infected animals and contaminates fresh water and soil, there are other examples as well. 

I don't see this as good evidence against domestic animals in the Americas.  Mutations of microorganisms to spread from animals to humans can take a very long time.  This may just be evidence that domestication of animals was not as old in the Americas as it was in the old world - not enough time for mutations to infect humans.

Edited March 9, 2017 by pogi

[Johnnie Cake]

2 minutes ago, pogi said:

Mutations of microorganisms to spread from animals to humans can take a very long time.  This may just be evidence that domestication of animals was not as old in the Americas as it was in the old world - not enough time for mutations to infect humans.

Actually in the Columbus's party case...Transmission was almost instant and the impact catastrophic for the native populations.  Good book on this subject is 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

[pogi]

17 minutes ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Actually in the Columbus's party case...Transmission was almost instant and the impact catastrophic for the native populations.  Good book on this subject is 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

That is human to human transmission of an already mutated bug.

Edited March 9, 2017 by pogi

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

This was one of the pieces of straw that broke my camels back.  When church apologists abandoned the hemispheric model for the Book Mormon settling to fix the several known problems that existed in the hemispheric model in favor of a limited hemispheric model...little did they know that they were opening up a whole new can of worms of unknown unknowns.  It's a classic "Black Swan" phenomenon.

When they abandoned the hemispheric model it created an entire new set of problems that had to be dealt with...none of which have been satisfactorily explained away.

Perhaps i am too thick to understand, Johnnie, but I just don't get how abandonment of the impossible hemispheric model created any sort of problem.  Could you clarify?

[MormonVideoGame]

1 hour ago, pogi said:

  Just because domestic animals such as pigs are frequently the hosts of infectious diseases does not mean that all pigs in all countries are infected with the same bugs.  

No, but I think cinepro's point was that there were no Native American bugs that spread to Europe.The video says at least 8 deadly bugs come from the old world, but none from the Americas. 

1 hour ago, pogi said:

  For example, Avian Influenza is endemic in certain countries and not others.  It has mutated enough to infect humans in some countries and not others.  

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160627160935.htm  ??? 

26 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Perhaps i am too thick to understand, 

I wonder, is there evidence that the deer or the tapir were domesticated in ancient mesoamerica? 

or what animals were domesticated? 

Edited March 9, 2017 by MormonVideoGame

[Robert F. Smith]

8 minutes ago, MormonVideoGame said:

..............................................................

I wonder, is there evidence that the deer or the tapir were domesticated in ancient mesoamerica? 

or what animals were domesticated? 

Your comment is a non sequitur.  I said:

Quote

Perhaps i am too thick to understand, Johnnie, but I just don't get how abandonment of the impossible hemispheric model created any sort of problem.  Could you clarify?

Could you please explain that for me?

[MormonVideoGame]

2 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Could you please explain that for me?

it's the topic, I thought you were a Book of Mormon - Mesoamerica expert. 

[Robert F. Smith]

13 minutes ago, MormonVideoGame said:

it's the topic, I thought you were a Book of Mormon - Mesoamerica expert. 

I said: " Perhaps i am too thick to understand, Johnnie, but I just don't get how abandonment of the impossible hemispheric model created any sort of problem.  Could you clarify?"

Please answer the question for me, if you can.  Or perhaps you agree with my question, and would like Johnnie to clarify it.  Do you understand the question?

[pogi]

15 hours ago, MormonVideoGame said:

No, but I think cinepro's point was that there were no Native American bugs that spread to Europe.The video says at least 8 deadly bugs come from the old world, but none from the Americas. 

Right, that is just evidence that the domestication of animals was relatively new to the new world.

15 hours ago, MormonVideoGame said:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160627160935.htm  ??? 

What is your question exactly?  This article is about swine flu and not avian influenza which I was talking about.  If you are commenting on how viral host transfers can happen in a short amount of time, you have to understand a few things.  International travel was the reason that the swine flu mutation happened at all.  The mutation required the cross between the North American swine virus and the Eurasian swine virus before it could spread from human to human efficiently.  The swine flu had already mutated to infect humans long before it became an epidemic, but it had not yet mutated in a way to be transmitted from human-to-human efficiently which is required for epidemic activity.  If you think the jump took just "10 years" then you are misunderstanding the information in the article. You see, there are multiple steps and multiple mutation that need to take place.  Not only does a bug have to mutate to infect a new host, but it usually has to mutate even further to spread from human-human efficiently.  It took a very very long time for the right conditions to occur for the swine flu to have epidemic activity, and without international travel, we would have never had the epidemic at all.  International travel didn't happen so much in the Americas in Book of Mormon times.

Here is a good article about viral host transfers if you are interested:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2546865/

A couple snippets:

"Fortunately for us, most viral host transfers to infect the new hosts cause only single infections or limited outbreaks, and it is rare for a virus to cause an epidemic in a new host."

 

"...where the alternative hosts are frequently exposed to new animal viruses, transfer is impeded by the requirement for multiple and complex adaptive virus changes."

 

 

 

Edited March 9, 2017 by pogi

[Johnnie Cake]

3 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Perhaps i am too thick to understand, Johnnie, but I just don't get how abandonment of the impossible hemispheric model created any sort of problem.  Could you clarify?

Haha...nice try...  you know exactly what I'm referring to.  Hemispheric became untenable to intellectually support due to all the obvious problems...which led to the limited...claimed have been arrived at through a more direct reading of the book...ah huh...but this led to unforeseen problems of its own...the effects described in the OP being only one

[Johnnie Cake]

4 hours ago, pogi said:

That is human to human transmission of an already mutated bug.

Which the European's evolved an immunity from through generations of exposure to their domesticated animals. An immunity which Native Americans did not have because they were not exposed to these same domesticated animals...despite the BoM claiming otherwise

Edited March 9, 2017 by Johnnie Cake

[pogi]

10 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Which the European's evolved an immunity from through generations of exposure to their domesticated animals. An immunity which Native Americans did not have because they were not exposed to these same domesticated animals...despite the BoM claiming otherwise

Of course they didn't have exposure to the same domesticated animals, they were on the other side of the world.  As I mentioned previously, there is a geographic distribution of disease.  Pigs and cattle are a major source of many of the diseases mentioned. I have never seen pigs or cattle mentioned in the Book of Mormon.  Even if there were, just because pigs in Europe carry a certain disease doesn't mean that pigs in the Americas will carry the same diseases - especially when the pigs come from an entirely different gene pool, and where domesticating animals is a young practice, and where there is no international travel.  

Just because you are a domestic animal does not mean that you will breed disease.  Take the llama for example (a new world domestic animal), it is not known to be the source of any infectious diseases.  It is also inaccurate to say that the Europeans were not introduced to new diseases in the new world.  They were just not exposed to any diseases with epidemic capacity.

 

[Johnnie Cake]

29 minutes ago, pogi said:

Of course they didn't have exposure to the same domesticated animals, they were on the other side of the world.  As I mentioned previously, there is a geographic distribution of disease.  Pigs and cattle are a major source of many of the diseases mentioned. I have never seen pigs or cattle mentioned in the Book of Mormon.  Even if there were, just because pigs in Europe carry a certain disease doesn't mean that pigs in the Americas will carry the same diseases - especially when the pigs come from an entirely different gene pool, and where domesticating animals is a young practice, and where there is no international travel.  

Just because you are a domestic animal does not mean that you will breed disease.  Take the llama for example (a new world domestic animal), it is not known to be the source of any infectious diseases.  It is also inaccurate to say that the Europeans were not introduced to new diseases in the new world.  They were just not exposed to any diseases with epidemic capacity.

 

The diseases brought to this continent by the Europeans included bubonic plague, chicken pox, pneumonic plague, cholera, diphtheria, influenza, measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, typhus, tuberculosis, and whooping cough. It's been estimated that European diseases wiped out nearly 95% of the Native populations...entire the populations within Indian villages and regions simple disappear...their bodies left to rot.

And for the record, the Book of Mormon does claim that pigs  and cattle were part of the American domesticated animals either brought or present upon arrival...of course we know that this claims is false...see

Quote

Ether 9:18And also all manner of cattle, of oxen, and cows, and of sheep, and of swine, and of goats, and also many other kinds of animals which were useful for the food of man. 

Europeans were able to build up immunities to their domesticated animals diseases due to their long exposure to these animals...indigenous American population despite BoM claims...did not have this advantage.  Need proof? The fact that 95% were killed once exposed.

Obviously the problem is that had Lehi or Ether's immigrations actually occurred and merged with existing populations...this mass infection would have occurred earlier in 2200 BC and 600 BC instead of post 1492...of course none of this happened. And that is a problem for the veracity of the BoM narrative.

The problem with writing a book and then calming it to be real history is that things like this that Joseph couldn't possibly have imagined crop up to undermine his claims.  its just another example of reality coming back to bite the BoM in the ...

 

Edited March 9, 2017 by Johnnie Cake

[Robert F. Smith]

12 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Haha...nice try...  you know exactly what I'm referring to.  Hemispheric became untenable to intellectually support due to all the obvious problems...which led to the limited...claimed have been arrived at through a more direct reading of the book...ah huh...but this led to unforeseen problems of its own...the effects described in the OP being only one

Actually, I wasn't putting you on, and your attempted explanation here just doesn't do the job of explaining your initial claim that abandonment of the hemispheric idea created problems.  I don't see that at all, aside from your failure to understand why that abandonment took place.  I can see no causal, degenerative sequence.  Just the opposite.

[notHagoth7]

20 hours ago, cinepro said:

The CGP Grey video has some interesting videos about different technical and anthropological subjects.  In their video about disease in the old world vs. disease in the new world, it brings up some interesting theories regarding domesticated animals and their effect on how societies form (and face disease).  It's largely taken from "Guns, Germs and Steel", but it's a good reminder of some important points in New World development (or lack thereof):

...So the question is, does "The Book of Mormon" negate this theory?  Or does this theory call into question the accuracy of the claims regarding domesticated animals among Book of Mormon peoples?

Initial thoughts after reviewing the video:

Why didn't Europeans get sick when first coming to America ?

Likely, in addition to differences in livestock practices, in part because Nephites migrated to Europe ca. 15 centuries earlier....inoculating Europeans to ancient American strains. Generations later, when European descendants (Nephite, mixed Nephite, and non-Nephite) went to America, they were thereby largely immune to non-mutated native-american sicknesses. (Columbus, for example, based on his birthplace and name, was likely partially of Lombard/Nephite descent.)

What of Nephites in ancient Europe?

Not enough data to make a conclusion. However, the most obvious first-generation Nephite in Europe was repeatedly ill after his arrival - so much so that his benefactor, Cicero, frequently feared he might die. Essentially as expected for a newly-arrived quasi-native-american. 

Also, one admittedly-very-dated history of Europe claims that the ring-forts in Europe became vacant/abandoned (like Mayan/Incan ruins) contemporary with Julius Caesar's advance into northern Europe - which just happened to be contemporary with Hagoth and with the Romanized Nephite mentioned above. I don't yet know what to make of that assertion about abandoned forts, since I don't yet know who initially/later occupied them, and haven't seen recent archaeological confirmation whether they date to the right time period.

Thoughts?

Edited March 9, 2017 by notHagoth7

[pogi]

1 hour ago, Johnnie Cake said:

The diseases brought to this continent by the Europeans included bubonic plague, chicken pox, pneumonic plague, cholera, diphtheria, influenza, measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, typhus, tuberculosis, and whooping cough. It's been estimated that European diseases wiped out nearly 95% of the Native populations...entire the populations within Indian villages and regions simple disappear...their bodies left to rot.

And for the record, the Book of Mormon does claim that pigs  and cattle were part of the American domesticated animals either brought or present upon arrival...of course we know that this claims is false...see

Europeans were able to build up immunities to their domesticated animals diseases due to their long exposure to these animals...indigenous American population despite BoM claims...did not have this advantage.  Need proof? The fact that 95% were killed once exposed.

Obviously the problem is that had Lehi or Ether's immigrations actually occurred and merged with existing populations...this mass infection would have occurred earlier in 2200 BC and 600 BC instead of post 1492...of course none of this happened. And that is a problem for the veracity of the BoM narrative.

The problem with writing a book and then calming it to be real history is that things like this that Joseph couldn't possibly have imagined crop up to undermine his claims.  its just another example of reality coming back to bite the BoM in the ...

I will concede that cattle and pigs were used in America as domestic animals, but that does not change anything.

Johnnie, you would be mistaken to use this video as a reliable source for understanding the origins, evolution, and spread of infectious disease.  There is a lot of really bad information in the video.  It is simplistic and naive.  Domestication of animals is not the only variable in the origins and spread of infectious disease among humans.  You have to take in climate (tropical disease vs temperate), genetic variance of animals, population density of animals and humans, proximity of animals and humans, hygiene, old vs relatively young human populations, long history of domestication vs short history, level of interaction between domestic animals and humans etc.  For example, in the old world it was common for humans to cuddle or keep their calves, lambs and piglets in doors, as opposed to the new world where humans did not interact with llamas in the same way.  

There are so many variables that you are completely blind to.  Consider tropical diseases.  According to your reasoning, tropical diseases should be equal in both the new world and the old world where non-human primates exist in both areas, where there are no domestic animals, and no large human populations, but you would be wrong!  Among tropical diseases 9 to 1 arose in the old world.  It just so happens to be that the genetic distance between humans and new world monkeys is almost double that between humans and old world monkeys.  So there was WAY more available evolutionary time for transfer from animals to humans in the Old world (5 million years vs 14,000 years).  This is not as simple a subject as you and this video are making it out to be.  There are way more variables to consider. 

First of all, plague, typhus, smallpox and all other pox diseases are thought to have originated from rodents and not domestic animals - rodents didn't exist in America! Those diseases alone were some of the biggest killers along with measles.  Rodents, not domestic animals were to blame for the biggest ones!  Second, there are still HUGE (in Trumps voice) gaps in our understanding of the origins of just about all of the major established diseases you have listed.  

Quote

Origins of established diseases. This review illustrates big gaps in our understanding of the origins of even the established major infectious diseases. Almost all the studies that we have reviewed were based on specimens collected opportunistically from domestic animals and a few easily sampled wild animal species, rather than on systematic surveys for particular classes of agents over the spectrum of domestic and wild animals. A case in point is our ignorance even about smallpox virus, the virus that has had perhaps the greatest impact on human history in the past 4,000 years. Despite some knowledge of poxviruses infecting our domestic mammals, we know little about poxvirus diversity among African rodents, from which those poxviruses of domestic mammals are thought to have evolved. We do not even know whether ‘camelpox’, the closest known relative of smallpox virus, is truly confined to camels as its name implies or is instead a rodent virus with a broad host range. There could be still-unknown poxviruses more similar to smallpox virus in yet unstudied animal reservoirs, and those unknown poxviruses could be important not only as disease threats but also as reagents for drug and vaccine development.

In the case of rubella, a human crowd disease that must have emerged only in the past 11,000 years and for which some close relative may thus still exist among animals, no even remotely related virus is known; one or more may be lurking undiscovered somewhere. Does the recent identification of porcine rubulavirus and the Mapuera virus in bats as the closest known relatives of mumps virus mean that pigs infected humans, or that human mumps infected pigs, or that bats independently infected both humans and pigs? Is human tuberculosis descended from a ruminant mycobacterium that recently infected humans from domestic animals (a formerly prevalent view), or from an ancient human mycobacterium that has come to infect domestic and wild ruminants (a currently popular view)?

To fill these and other yawning gaps in our understanding of disease origins, we propose an ‘origins initiative’ aimed at identifying the origins of a dozen of the most important human infectious diseases: for example, AIDS, cholera, dengue fever, falciparum malaria, hepatitis B, influenza A, measles, plague, rotavirus, smallpox, tuberculosis and typhoid. Although more is already known about the origins of some of these agents (AIDS, influenza A and measles) than about others (rotavirus, smallpox and tuberculosis), more comprehensive screening is still likely to yield significant new information about even the most studied agents, as illustrated by the recent demonstration that gorillas rather than chimpanzees were probably the donor species for the O-group of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 (Van Heuverswyn et al., 2006). The proposed effort would involve systematic sampling and phylogeographic analysis of related pathogens in diverse animal species: not just pigs and other species chosen for their ready availability, but a wider range of wild and domestic species whose direct contact (for example, as bushmeat) or indirect contact (for example, vector-mediated) with humans could plausibly have led to human infections. In addition to the historical and evolutionary significance of knowledge gained through such an origins initiative, it could yield other benefits such as: identifying the closest relatives of human pathogens; a better understanding of how diseases have emerged; new laboratory models for studying public health threats; and perhaps clues that could aid in predictions of future disease threats. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK114494/

 

 

Edited March 9, 2017 by pogi

[cinepro]

1 hour ago, Johnnie Cake said:

The problem with writing a book and then calming it to be real history is that things like this that Joseph couldn't possibly have imagined crop up to undermine his claims.  its just another example of reality coming back to bite the BoM in the ...

 

...domesticated ***?

[notHagoth7]

58 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Actually, I wasn't putting you on, and your attempted explanation here just doesn't do the job of explaining your initial claim that abandonment of the hemispheric idea created problems.  I don't see that at all, aside from your failure to understand why that abandonment took place.  I can see no causal, degenerative sequence.  Just the opposite.

As to the supposed *shrinking*  (or retreating) American-hemisphere model.

I'm instead all in for *expanding* and advancing the Nephite model to include the expanse of western civilization (including Rome, northern Europe)...and then some. 

Johnnie Cake - I'm curious. What's your response to that?

Edited March 9, 2017 by notHagoth7

[pogi]

56 minutes ago, notHagoth7 said:

Why didn't Europeans get sick when first coming to America ?

Likely, in addition to differences in livestock practices, in part because Nephites migrated to Europe ca. 15 centuries earlier....inoculating Europeans to ancient American strains. Generations later, when European descendants (Nephite, mixed Nephite, and non-Nephite) went to America, they were thereby largely immune to non-mutated native-american sicknesses. (Columbus, for example, based on his birthplace and name, was likely partially of Lombard/Nephite descent.)

Actually, there really is no good evidence for any diseases capable of epidemic activity which originated from the new world.  That is not to say that American diseases do not exist - Chagas disease a.k.a. American Trypanosomiasis for example, which is spread by the kissing/assassin/reduviid bug which likes to live in mud/adobe brick/palm thatch structures, but the disease does not spread from human to human.  While I like the creative effort, there is no evidence of Nephites inoculating Europeans with ancient American strains of disease 15 centuries before Europeans went to America.

[Robert F. Smith]

6 minutes ago, pogi said:

Actually, there really is no good evidence for any diseases capable of epidemic activity which originated from the new world.  That is not to say that American diseases do not exist - Chagas disease a.k.a. American Trypanosomiasis for example, which is spread by the kissing/assassin/reduviid bug which likes to live in mud/adobe brick/palm thatch structures, but the disease does not spread from human to human.  While I like the creative effort, there is no evidence of Nephites inoculating Europeans with ancient American strains of disease 15 centuries before Europeans went to America.

What about syphilis?  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/27/wellcome-prize-katherine-wright-syphilis-columbus .

[pogi]

12 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

What about syphilis?  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/27/wellcome-prize-katherine-wright-syphilis-columbus .

I would put syphilis in the same inconclusive origin category as rubella, tetanus, and typhoid.  It very well may have come from the Americas, but it is still unsettled.  One thing is certain however that if it did originate in America, syphilis was introduced to Europe by Columbus' group and not by Nephite sailors 15 centuries earlier.     

Edited March 9, 2017 by pogi

[Johnnie Cake]

I'm skiing today so forgive me if I don't reply immediately 

[notHagoth7]

1 hour ago, pogi said:

Actually, there really is no good evidence for any diseases capable of epidemic activity which originated from the new world...

I only thumbed through this briefly about a year ago, but IIRC, I believe you're incorrect.

https://www.amazon.com/PRE-COLUMBIAN-CONTACTS-AMERICAS-ACROSS-OCEANS/dp/B00K8GF1T6/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1489088418&sr=8-5&keywords=pre-columbian+contact+sorenson

If it were not boxed up, I might take a closer gander to confirm.

And Robert did bring up a valid rejoinder.

While I like the creative effort...

It's an ongoing process... :0)