Americapox: The Missing Plague

Why didn't the Europeans get sick when they made contact with the American Indians?

Special Thanks:

[vlogbrothers]

Great, great video. I'd add one thing: As Grey points out, living in a city pre-1900 had some downsides, specifically you were quite likely to die of plague. But living outside of cities also had some disadvantages--you were quite likely to die of starvation. The Old World had all the domesticatable animals, but the New World had much better non-animal food. Tomatoes, potatoes, corn, avocados, beans, squash, blueberries, and the list goes on. Most of the non-meat, non-wheat foods we associate with contemporary life--from peanuts to peppers--existed only in the New World. -John

[pinecone]

The YouTube algorithm has a real dark sense of humour.

[StevenKluber]

“You can’t build a civilization on honey alone.”
I guess hexagons aren't the bestagons.

[sandrasandra]

Thank you so much for this episode! Back when we learned about American colonization in school my history teacher actually told the class that most natives got killed by european diseases, but when I asked why the same didn’t happen to the europeans with american diseases, the answer I got was: “They just didn’t.” This has bothered me for ages

[Trinexx]

"Now most germs don't want to kill you for the same reason you don't want to burn down your house" this quote is absolutely perfect in every sense of the word.

[RickFrz]

i love how he used hexagons even back then

[TehVulpez]

7:38 Even now, "buffalo" have only really been domesticated because they've been interbred with cattle. Breeders say the percent of cow DNA is basically how tame they are.

[blazingsilver]

Speaking of cholera, I remember in high school when talking about Britain, my teacher said she rather have any alcohol than water back in those days, cause alcohol isn’t going to kill you like cholera.

[wisedred]

"Being the patient zero of a new animal-to-human plague is winning a terrible lottery"
Sheesh, couldn't be more right

[electrosthefella]

If smallpox is so deadly, I can't imagine how deadly BIGpox is

[entropy-cat]

"But you can't build a civilization on a foundation of honey alone."

[Citation needed]

[Taospark]

It is also worth bearing in mind that Europeans did continually have outbreaks from their own plagues after arriving in the New World but they simply died at lower rates.

[boyinaband]

The narration was slower but for some reason that didn't feel like a 12 minute video, felt like 4 or 5. Probably because it's really frickin' interesting! Awesome topic, can't wait for part 2.

[endofinnocence]

sheep 1: "You're a conspiracy theorist."
sheep 2: "No. The dog and the man are working together!"

[parallax]

Is nobody gonna talk about that CGP Grey changed the thumbnail of a 4 year old vid?

[fiberFLIM]

"You can't build a civilization on a foundation of honey alone"
Ok then how did the bees do it?

[statelyelms]

"Why is there no Americapox?"
"Germs jumping from animals to humans is extraordinarily rare"
Thanks, youtube algorithm. I feel better already.

[jier]

"nothing but drama, these llamas"
-- CGP Grey (2015)

[matheusm.santana]

Fun fact, the americas had dogs, and since we didn't have domesticatable animals a few of the 'jobs' went to dog breeds. The alaskan malamute can pull a sled in the cold weather and we have records of the groups of chihuahua-like breeds pulling each a small cart of goods, or being used to hunt by traveling in the backpack and being relesed once the animal is spotted (yes they hunted with purse dogs). And the north america had a breed of dog called wool dog that, you guessed it, had wool like fur that people used to make clothes. The americas also had a dog breeds that were raised as food, to the horror of europeans.
TLDR: The americas didn't have domesticatable animals so they had to work with what they had, aka dogs.

[mistahgrimm]

It doesn't really change things. But North America does have a number of native goat and sheep species. The NA Mountain Goat, Bighorn Sheep, and Dall Sheep being among the ones I know of. Natives used to collect their molted fur for weaving, but never domesticated them.

Cool thing about Lamas is that coyotes and wolves are afraid of them. I used to work on a goat farm that had a number of lamas for the purpose of scaring away the coyotes.

These species are also highly susceptible to diseases such as pneumonic plague from the old world.