My thoughts on Binet, Civilizations

I usually have a hard time jumping into readings. I usually can’t really get into it until around 40 or so pages in. However, I jumped head first into Civilizations after the first page. Binet’s writing style and the fact that he breaks it up into very small bite sized pieces makes it a very entertaining and easy read. Perhaps what I found most plausible in the reading so far was the Vikings continuously passing on diseases to the indigenous people. This is because in our history, the different plagues and illnesses that came from the western Europeans are one of the main causes for the genocides of indigenous peoples in the Americas. In the article, “How Europeans Brought Sickness to the New World,” Heather Pringle discusses the effect illness had on the natives. Pringle states that in 1520, Spanish forces brought small pox to Mexico after bringing “an African slave,” upon land. “By mid-October,” Pringle says, “the virus was sweeping through the city… killing nearly half of the population” (Pringle, How Europeans Brought Sickness to the New World). It is unclear what illnesses the Vikings had taken with them, but Binet writes them to have a very similar effect of the mass spread of illnesses. If they happen to be the same illnesses as the ones later Europeans bring to the Americas, how will history change if the indigenous people have already been exposed?

https://www.science.org/content/article/how-europeans-brought-sickness-new-world