What if? (Historical Events version)

[Guest Vitamin X]

I wonder if there were any American plagues on the level of smallpox that could have decimated Europe the way smallpox decimated the Americas? There must have been...

 

Not likely. The only place where the Europeans were affected by foreign diseases was in Africa. Check out Guns, Germs, and Steel (Either the video documentary or the book, both will provide fascinating insight about these sorts of things).

 

If the native Americans had guns (they DID in fact have horses, at least in North America..) suffice to say they would have annihilated the invading Europeans. One big reason is that Native Americans had grown accustomed to guerilla warfare whereas the Europeans somehow lost the idea during the Renaissance and had that whole "civilized warfare" thing going from roughly centuries XVI-XIX.

 

I think it makes sense that the first transcontinental ships went from Europe to America, considering trade winds and currents run from east to west, and human expansion in general has gone in that way. Had it been the other way around, I don't think I've ever considered that possibility, actually. They probably would have been slaughtered for looking different and having different beliefs.

[The Metal Maniac]

If the native Americans had guns (they DID in fact have horses, at least in North America..)

 

You sure about that? All the info I've seen says that Europeans brought horses with them to North America, and that while horses did live in North America millions of years ago, they all left, or died, and there were none left on the continent by about 10,000 years ago.

 

Also:

 

One big reason is that Native Americans had grown accustomed to guerilla warfare whereas the Europeans somehow lost the idea during the Renaissance and had that whole "civilized warfare" thing going from roughly centuries XVI-XIX.

 

Guerilla warfare doesn't work so well when your shitty musket can barely hit a target 30 feet in front of you. Kind of hard to shoot at someone from a hiding place when you had no guarantee you could hit them even if you weren't behind a tree.

[EricMM]

Yes, all the horses the Natives used were from Europeans initially.

 

And Cortez never would have beaten the Aztec without smallpox.

[Danville_Wrestling]

I wonder if there were any American plagues on the level of smallpox that could have decimated Europe the way smallpox decimated the Americas? There must have been...

 

I actually read a very interesting article in my Introduction to Anthropology class sophomore year of college that discussed this very issue. The article said that the plagues of the magnitude of smallpox couldn't have decimated Europe due to several factors:

 

#1: The Native Americans did not live in tightly confined areas for the most part. Instead, they followed their food on a seasonal basis and due to them not being confined in large areas it didn't allow bacteria to build up and create any crazy bugs.

 

#2: The Native Americans did not have pigs or other nasty animals like the Europeans which also didn't allow for the chance of a transmission of an animal-type disease to humans. I remember that the article compared the livestock situations in Native American groups with Europeans but I don't remember which ones they did.

 

#3: The Native Americans were a more sanitary people. They bathed regularly, unlike the Europeans who first saw the Native Americans as "savages" because they bathed on a regular basis, and had more proper ways of disposing of waste. This also reduced their chances of having any crazy diseases pop up.

 

I think the author made another point about climate but I'm not sure. However, the basic theme of the article was that because Europeans lived in such nasty misery they were constantly surrounded by superbugs like smallpox and that allowed them to build up immunity to these diseases over time whereas the Native Americans, not used to confronting these superbugs because they lived a cleaner lifestyle, did not build up immunity to those same diseases or ones comparable to it and were decimated when the Europeans arrived.

 

Very interesting study to say the least. I wish I remember the title of it because if I did I'd definitely recommend it to any history buffs here.

[EricMM]

That may be, but I believe Tenochtitlan was one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, cities at the time.

 

They may've bathed more, but they certainly lived in squalor.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Perhaps he's referring to the Northern First Nations, and not necessarily the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan empires?

[Kahran Ramsus]

Yes, all the horses the Natives used were from Europeans initially.

 

Right. The only American pack animal was the llama and even they were only in the south.

 

And Cortez never would have beaten the Aztec without smallpox.

 

Possibly. Remember though that he had a lot of help from the Tlaxcalans and other Mesoamerican allies that hated the Aztecs and were more than happy to help eliminate them.

 

They may've bathed more, but they certainly lived in squalor.

 

The Amerindians were bigger, stronger and healthier than the inital Europeans. They also had a far more uniform genetic makeup that allowed for the easy spread of disease once it took hold in the population.

[At Home]

What if Bismarck included Austria in the unification of Germany?

[A Happy Medium]

What if the Roman Empire never fell?

[At Home]

What if the Roman Empire never fell?

 

The Holy Roman Empire was not Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. It was a loose collection of feudal states, and typically very small ones at that. It was on a slow decline of power since the 30 years war. To make the Holy Roman Empire fall was a simple matter of reorganization. There was no avoiding it.

[Big Ol' Smitty]

I don't think he's really asking about the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was just an (failed) attempt to revive the Western Roman Empire, which had fallen 300 years earlier.

[At Home]

I don't think he's really asking about the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was just an (failed) attempt to revive the Western Roman Empire, which had fallen 300 years earlier.

 

Yeah, I completely misread that.

[Scarlett_Rayne]

What if Napoleon's Navy did not lose at Trafalger and Army did not lose at Waterloo?

[theintensifier]

What if nuclear weapons were never invented?

 

I wouldn't be typing this if it were true.