Lands of Red and Gold
- Thread starter Jared
- Start date
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Riain
Banned
3 things Jared.
1) Your thread title always makes me think of that Powderfinger song, so I decided to listen to some Powderfinger as I read your stuff and found that my 'Double Allergic' CD is missing. Someone will have to die if I can't find it.
2) Thylacines didn't die out on the mainland until the dingo was introduced in about 1000BC (there were sub-fossilised remains found in the Nullabor dtated to 3000 years old, and apparently people in Gippsland see them every other week), so can they be domesticted or tamed?
3) You have the Condah swamp in red on your map, I'll be over there in a fortnight, do you want a photo or two of what it looks like now?
1) Your thread title always makes me think of that Powderfinger song, so I decided to listen to some Powderfinger as I read your stuff and found that my 'Double Allergic' CD is missing. Someone will have to die if I can't find it.
2) Thylacines didn't die out on the mainland until the dingo was introduced in about 1000BC (there were sub-fossilised remains found in the Nullabor dtated to 3000 years old, and apparently people in Gippsland see them every other week), so can they be domesticted or tamed?
3) You have the Condah swamp in red on your map, I'll be over there in a fortnight, do you want a photo or two of what it looks like now?
Aren't preserves a rather more modern concept?
Assuming they survive to Euro contact perhaps they could live on in zoos until the preserve idea comes around.
Thylacines will have trouble surviving until European contact. No-one knows exactly when the dingo was introduced onto the Australian mainland, but sometime between 2000-1500 BC at the latest. Thylacines did not last much longer on the Australian mainland for much longer after the dingo was introduced. They may have been extremely rare rather than completely extinct, at least until quite recently, but their populations crashed after the dingo appeared. Things are only going to be worse with higher human populations which compete for the same food (kangaroos and emus) and who also breed even more dingos. In Tasmania, well... once the island is colonised, the same will apply.
The Gunnagal do have the idea of preserved hunting grounds - rangelands - but for game animals, not rival predators. Thylacines would be seen as hunting out the preferred game animals, and rivals to be displaced, not preserved. Sadly, I think that the thylacine is going to go extinct even sooner ITTL.
Kudos, on your most excellent updates!
IIRC, you said that emus will not be making the trip to New Zealand. Will Quolls and Ducks?
I'm not sure if emus will make it to NZ. Maybe, maybe not. Domesticated ducks definitely will. Quolls, probably yes. Which will devastate New Zealand's native birds, but c'est la vie. Some even smaller life forms will also be introduced to New Zealand, with significant consequences.
Dingos will be trained for helping to move emus between paddocks and the like, yes. Emus don't herd very well, though. It's almost as bad as trying to herd cats. Moving emus around is somewhat harder than with some other domesticated animals (sheep, cattle) since they aren't natural herd animals, but it can still be done. Emu farmers manage pretty well.
I didn't take it...
Which song do you mean, though? I don't really listen much to Powderfinger, so I'm not sure which song you have in mind.
The exact date of the thylacine's disappearance from the mainland is controversial, but it looks like it was mostly gone by about 1 AD. The reported sightings in Gippsland are intriguing, but if thylacines do survive there, they're a relict population at best.
That'd be great!
Oh dear. Is that all that will last of the non-Gunnagalic languages? Or is it their core areas?
If the former, some may not last to European contact after all....
If the former, some may not last to European contact after all....
Huh, it reminds me of the Bantu migration maps in history textbooks. Very cool, realistic, and well just awesome...
Dude that is one Awesome Map, and Nick's right about it being textbook quality, very impressive. It seems like the Empire period might primarily be on the coastal areas from the map data. So we might see something simmilar to what took place on the Arabian Pennisula in OTL with the Qataban & Himyar kingdoms, complete with successfull trade rout based desert tribes. Can't wait for the next installment
Lands of Red and Gold #8: Of Birds, Bats and Bugs
Lands of Red and Gold #8: Of Birds, Bats and Bugs
When Europeans arrived in Australia, they found a continent without any epidemic diseases to greet them. Eurasian diseases like smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, typhus, chickenpox and a cocktail of other killers devastated the indigenous peoples of Australia, but no epidemic diseases waited in the Great Southern Land for foreign visitors.
In allohistorical Australia, this is not the case.
* * *
Australia, as a continent, has long been isolated from the rest of the world. Some of the neighbouring islands to the north are part of the same continental landmass, and were connected to each other when sea levels lowered during the ice ages [1], but it has always been a separate landmass to the mainland of Asia. Ocean barriers have protected it, but that isolation has never been complete. Over the millennia, many plants and animals have crossed the seas from the north and established themselves on the Australian mainland; birds, bats, rats, monitor lizards, and humans, among many others. Still, with the separation of salt water, indigenous Australian civilization developed in almost complete isolation from the rest of the world.
Almost.
Direct human contact between Australia and its northern neighbours is rare; some sporadic visits have occurred in the north-west or across the waters of Torres Strait, but their main legacy has been the transportation of the dingo to Australia’s shores. Yet some animals do make the crossing, particularly migratory birds. Several plant species are thought to have been established in Australia when carried across by migrating birds. Sometimes, birds bring less welcome influences with them. Such as their diseases.
Early Australian agricultural peoples kept some birds of their own. The most important of these were the domesticated birds used for meat, ducks and emus. These birds often lived in close contact with humans, especially ducks. Some birds were also kept as pets, such as several varieties of parrots. Where there was such close contact between humans and birds, avian diseases could easily spread.
Avian influenza is a species of virus which has numerous subtypes, like most viruses, but which is primarily adapted to infect birds. Infections of avian influenza are often unnoticed among their main carrier bird species; infected birds often show no symptoms, even when they can infect other birds. Strains of avian influenza can jump between bird species to new hosts, and in the new host species, these strains are often more infectious and much more deadly. Avian influenza is endemic amongst many water birds, and has long been spread to Australia from migratory birds crossing to and from Asia.
Gunnagal farmers along the Murray lived in close contact with domesticated ducks, and also lived near to human-shaped wetlands populated by an abundance of wild water birds. Strains of avian influenza regularly afflicted domesticated ducks, sometimes causing substantial die-offs to farmers’ flocks. In time, the domesticated ducks would develop resistance, sometimes becoming asymptomatic carriers themselves, and thus be largely unaffected until a new strain evolved.
In 349 AD, a particularly harsh strain of avian influenza spread from wild swans in Lake Alexandrina at the mouth of the Murray to domesticated ducks raised by nearby farming peoples. As had happened with many previous strains of avian influenza, the disease killed up to a third of the domesticated ducks in the region, and spread up the Murray. In 350 AD it reached Tjibarr, devastating duck populations and farmers’ livelihoods. In 351 AD the strain reached Gundabingee, where it also struck farmers’ flocks. Most epidemics of avian influenza burned out here; farming communities beyond the Murray were too scattered to allow for easy spread of the virus. But the strain in 351 AD was different; unlike previous epidemics, this one mutated into a form which spread easily between humans.
This strain of influenza was the first epidemic disease which Australia had experienced. Some endemic waterborne diseases were spread by poor hygiene, and a few endemic but rarely fatal diseases were transmitted by mosquitoes. But the influenza epidemic was like nothing which had been seen before on the island continent. Like all flu epidemics, this one spread mostly by airborne transmission, particularly through victims coughing and sneezing. In a population with no previous exposure to epidemic diseases, its symptoms were swift, severe, and often fatal. The first visible sign was usually a blue tint to the lips, combined with a sudden sense of weariness, which led the afflicted Gunnagal to christen the disease “blue-sleep.”
Blue-sleep struck quickly; it sometimes took only a matter of hours for newly-infected victims to be too fatigued to move themselves. The most severe symptoms affected the lungs; the virus attacked the lung lining, usually causing haemorrhaging until the victims coughed up blood and died from pneumonia when their lungs filled with fluid. Blue-sleep also affected other parts of the body; it often infected the intestines, which sometimes caused its victims to die from blood and fluid loss. Victims who survived the initial assault of the virus were weakened for days or weeks; secondary pneumonia often spread from opportunistic bacteria, and victims who had no-one to care for them often died of dehydration or even malnutrition.
Blue-sleep spread throughout the farming peoples of south-eastern Australia, killing up to ten percent of the population in the worst-affected areas. It spread to the nearer hunter-gatherer peoples as well, but those communities were more fortunate since the virus affected people so quickly that it often prevented them from travelling to spread it further. Blue-sleep killed about five percent of the agricultural population of the south-east, and a smaller percentage of the hunter-gatherer peoples who lived nearby. The Yuduwungu peoples of south-western Australia were fortunate to be spared; the desert of the Nullarbor was too thinly-populated to spread the virus.
After its initial ravages, blue-sleep became an endemic disease in south-eastern Australia. It lost the worst aspects of its virulence, and in evolved into a disease whose symptoms were largely similar to strains of flu seen elsewhere in the world, although it retained the distinctive blue tinge to the lips, and the early onset of fatigue. Like all flu viruses, it mutated rapidly, and new strains appeared every few years. Occasional major epidemics occurred when blue-sleep evolved into a form where people had no resistance. Australian peoples would never be truly rid of the blue-sleep virus.
When Europeans contact Australia, they will quickly recognise blue-sleep as a form of influenza. Its symptoms are more severe than ones which they are familiar with, but they will still know what to call the illness. And they will die from it.
* * *
Creating artificial wetlands is one of the hallmarks of early Australian civilization. Wetlands supply them with value sources of fish and meat and feathers from birds. In the wetlands, people gather plants for food, fibre and dyes, and cultivate some herbs and spices which cannot tolerate drier climes. The wetlands even help to filter the water of the Murray and other major rivers. Human waste and other pollutants which are dumped into the waterways are carried into artificial wetlands downstream, which cleanse the water of many of the contaminants.
Yet artificial wetlands are a mixed blessing. Swamps, ponds and marshes are excellent for harbouring fish and birds, but they also offer an ideal environment for biting insects and a host of waterborne parasites. The waters of Australian wetlands harbour a variety of pathogens such as giardia, cryptosporidium and parasitic worms which often infest human hosts. These parasites are widespread throughout the Murray basin and other areas with artificial wetlands. Fortunately for their human hosts, the illnesses caused by these parasites are debilitating but rarely fatal.
Wetlands also harbour myriads of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes transmit many of the deadliest diseases in human history, particularly malaria, which is thought to have caused more human deaths than any other single cause. Luckily for Australian civilization, the worst mosquito-borne diseases were either confined to the tropical north, or never became established in Australia [2]. They will also be helped by a side-effect of their wetland management practices. Several species of Australian sundews produce edible tubers which are valued as a food source, and so the Gunnagal cultivate sundews. Since sundews are carnivorous plants which trap flying insects in sticky leaves, this helps to limit the number of mosquitoes in the artificial wetlands.
Nonetheless, there will enough mosquitoes in the wetlands to transmit diseases, and Australia harbours several pathogens which are easily spread by mosquitoes. Ross River fever (also called epidemic polyarthritis) is a virus which produces a variety of flu-like symptoms such as fevers, chills, headaches, fatigue, and sometimes stiff or swollen joints. Most victims recover within a few days, although about ten percent experience a chronic form of the illness which produces ongoing joint pains, depression and fatigue which persists for months or years. It is fortunately a non-fatal infection, but it will become established in the wetlands surrounding Gunnagal cities. While it will not kill visiting Europeans, many of them will be struck down by what they see as a mysterious malady. The Gunnagal will have a long familiarity with the disease, which they will call “old man’s curse,” from the arthritis-like symptoms which it produces even in the young.
The disease which another history will call Murray Valley encephalitis (MVE) is another virus that is transmitted by mosquitoes. Despite its name, it is historically more common in the tropical north than the Murray basin, but it can become established further south. The wild host of MVE are herons, cormorants and related birds, which are common throughout the Gunnagal wetlands. MVE will become endemic throughout the Murray. Fortunately, most of its victims experience no symptoms more severe than occasional nausea, headaches or vomiting. A small proportion - less than one percent - go on to develop encephalitis (brain inflammation), with symptoms such as drowsiness, fits, weariness, and fatigue. Of those so afflicted, a quarter will die and up to half of the rest will experience permanent effects such as paralysis or brain damage.
Still, of all the gifts which Australian mosquitoes give to humans, the one which will kill the most people is the one which initially was the least dangerous. Barmah Forest virus is related to the Ross River virus, and often has symptoms so similar that it requires a blood test to tell them apart, although Barmah Forest virus is usually less severe. Hosted by a variety of wild birds, it quickly became established in the Gunnagal wetlands, where for centuries it was a minor malady. Like the other mosquito-borne viruses, Barmah Forest virus was originally transmitted mostly between animals, where humans were simply incidental infections. Over time, however, the virus evolved into a strain where humans were amongst its preferred hosts. When it did, the results were deadly.
A virulent strain of Barmah Forest virus appeared along the central Murray basin during the sixth century AD. Victims who were infected by this strain first suffered from chills, then fever and a blistery rash which spread across most of their body. The distinctiveness of the rash, and the realisation that the illness was suffered by people who had been near wetlands, led the Gunnagal to christen the illness “swamp rash.” The initial rash would be followed by fatigue and swollen joints. Many victims recovered at that point. A minority entered the toxic stage of the infection, where the lymphatic system was infected, leading to severely swollen lymph nodes over most of the body, extreme pain, and eventual coma and death.
Swamp rash became endemic to the Gunnagal wetlands, although it did not spread far beyond the Murray basin. The virus is well-adapted to infecting humans, although there are also animal reservoirs amongst several kinds of wild water birds, and sometimes domesticated ducks. Birds rarely die from swamp rash, but humans are not so fortunate. When swamp rash first became virulent, the death rate amongst unexposed adults was around ten percent, and up to double that rate for infected children. Centuries of infection from swamp rash has meant that the Gunnagal who live near wetlands have evolved some natural resistance; the death rate amongst infected children is about five percent, and less for adults. For Eurasians, who lack such resistance, the death rate will continue to be around ten percent for adults and worse for children. The higher death rates are not limited to people of Eurasian descent; since swamp rash did not evolve into its virulent form until after the Great Migrations, people who come from other parts of Australia are as badly-affected as Eurasians.
* * *
While the Australian continent holds relatively few infectious diseases which can be transmitted to humans, there are some potential killers. Of those which do exist, some of the most deadly are carried by bats. Australian bats harbour several endemic diseases which are potentially fatal to humans. As long as Aboriginal peoples remained hunter-gatherers, their population densities were too low for any of these diseases to turn into epidemics. With farming practices transforming the landscape, bat populations were increasingly disturbed, and came into more contact with humans. This sometimes meant that their diseases infected humans, too; viruses such as Australian bat lyssavirus, Hendra virus, and Menangle virus sometimes spread to the human population [3]. With the larger human populations, particularly the larger urban populations, this now meant that bat diseases could turn into epidemic human diseases.
Still, many of these bat-carried diseases are not easily transmissible between humans. Initial exposure was usually either from a bat bite, or farmers accidentally coming into contact with bat urine or other bodily fluids. In many cases, this result in the death of the person infected, but rarely infection of other humans.
The first bat-borne disease to become endemic in allohistorical Australian civilization was Australian bat lyssavirus (ABLV). A close relative of rabies, this virus produces similar symptoms. The infection spreads slowly along the nervous system until it reaches the brain. Once there, symptoms begin with headaches and fever, and progress to severe pain, violent fits and spasms, extreme weakness, and mental instability. Eventually, the victim dies from inability to breathe properly.
A few early Gunnagal farmers died from direct infection of ABLV caused by bat bites. However, the disease only became endemic when domesticated dingos were infected by ABLV. In dingos, ABLV produced similar effects to rabies; aggressive behaviour including biting, which often transmits the virus to other dogs or to humans. Aboriginal peoples did not know that ABLV as being originally from bats, but they quickly learned to recognise the behaviour of “mad dingos” that could lead to a fatal bite. The Atjuntja of south-western Australia had a name for the illness, drun-nju, which literally translated as “barking mad.” The Dutch who first encountered the disease there would transliterate the Atjuntja name into Drongo disease, the name by which it would be known to the world.
Still, while Drongo disease was almost universally fatal for people infected, it was almost impossible to transmit directly between humans. This meant that it never became a major epidemic disease.
Unfortunately, another Australian bat-borne virus is both often fatal and capable of easy transmission between people.
* * *
History does not record exactly where the disease that came to be called Marnitja was first transmitted from bats to humans. Written sources do, however, describe the first time it appeared in one of the major urban centres along the Murray. The city of Garrkimang, the former imperial capital, still possessed a fastidious and methodical bureaucracy who recorded all important events that affected the city. No event since the deposition of the last emperor would make a more lasting impression on their city than the arrival of a disease which they called the Waiting Death.
The archives of Garrkimang record that Marnitja first struck the city in 1206. A myriad of clay tablets describe with painful precision the course of the disease. Victims first experienced an initial fever, chills and weariness. These symptoms were reminiscent of the other epidemic disease, blue-sleep, although they lacked the hallmark blue lips of that sickness. However, Marnitja progressed to much more striking symptoms. Victims started to cough and splutter up a pinkish-red, frothy fluid mixed with saliva. Although the archivists and Garrkimang did not know and thus not could record it, the pink fluid was a result of haemorrhaging of the lungs.
The more fortunate victims of Marnitja started to recover from the “pink cough” after a couple of days, although fatigue and milder coughs would continue for another fortnight. The less fortunate victims did not recover, but suffered worsening coughs and increasing weariness. Some of the victims died through difficulty breathing, others from blood and fluid loss caused by excessive coughing. Other victims died of renal failure, or simply slipped into a coma from which they never awoke. Survivors of the pink cough sometimes suffered permanent damage to their lungs, which produced life-long breathing difficulties.
Pink cough, the first stage of Marnitja, was devastating enough in itself, but what followed was worse. Victims who had recovered from the early stages of the pink cough, or rare survivals from the later stages, were not completely free of the disease. Many of the survivors started to suffer from strange new symptoms about two months later: headaches, a fresh bout of fever, confusion, seizures, and eventually delirium. Every victim who showed these new symptoms would die from them; a few succumbed to the fever or killed themselves by mischance from the seizures, while most eventually slipped into a coma from which they never recovered. The excruciating period of uncertainty for survivors of the pink cough, waiting to know whether they would suffer the fatal second stage, led the people of Garrkimang to christen the new disease the Waiting Death (Marnitja).
Marnitja spread far beyond its first outbreak in Garrkimang. The archives of the imperial city and the other major Murray cities do not record precise numbers, but it appears that about a third of the population were infected by the disease. Of those infected, about half died from the first or second stage. Marnitja slowly burned its way across the continent, and in time touched even the hunter-gatherer peoples on the farthest northern shores. The first epidemic killed perhaps fifteen percent of the Australian population. Nor would the disease disappear easily. A small percentage (0.2-0.5%) of those who came into contact with the virus became asymptomatic carriers, who would never suffer the symptoms of Marnitja but who remained infectious throughout their lives. So, like blue-sleep before it, Marnitja became established as an epidemic disease. It struck again every generation or two, although subsequent generations started to develop some resistance to the Waiting Death.
* * *
Australia thus has two epidemic diseases waiting for any contact with overseas peoples: blue-sleep and Marnitja [4]. These diseases first spread to New Zealand after 1310 when the Maori made first contact. They caused considerable death amongst the Maori, but in time the Maori developed a similar level of resistance to these diseases as the Aboriginal peoples.
By 1618, blue-sleep is endemic across Australasia. Within that region, it mutates every few years, as flu viruses usually do, although these new strains are rarely fatal to people who have survived the previous variants. Blue-sleep sometimes mixes with other strains of influenza from wild birds to create particularly severe epidemics, although even then the mortality rate is usually less than 0.5% of those infected. (Amongst Aboriginal peoples, at least.)
As a disease, blue-sleep has become a variant of influenza with a couple of distinctive symptoms. The blueness of the lips remains a persistent and recognisable symptom, and in lighter-skinned peoples will show up as a bluish tint to the entire face. Blue-sleep has an incubation of 2-3 days before the first symptoms appear, although victims remain infectious for up to two weeks while recovering from the illness. European and Asian visitors will recognise it as a form of influenza, but it is a strain of flu virus to which non-Australian peoples will have no immunity. The death toll when it is spread to the rest of the world will be as bad or worse than the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918; somewhere between 2.5 to 5% of the global population will die when blue-sleep spreads around the world.
While Europeans will have some familiarity with blue-sleep, they will be completely unprepared for Australia’s biggest killer, the Waiting Death. Marnitja is a henipavirus related to Hendra virus and Nipah virus, and more distantly to measles and mumps. Its original animal hosts were flying foxes (fruit bats), which became agricultural pests that raided Gunnagal fruit orchards. The virus was not transmitted directly to humans, but first infected dingos which came into contact with bat droppings and bodily fluids left beneath fruit trees. Infected animals spread the virus to other dingos, and eventually to humans, where it became an epidemic disease [5].
Marnitja spreads through airborne transmission or in bodily fluids. The virus has an incubation period of 7-14 days. Infected people are contagious for most of that time, although more so later in the incubation period. The haemorrhagic (pink cough) stage of the disease can last for up to two weeks, although some victims die within two days of the first signs of the pink cough. Infected people are contagious throughout the haemorrhagic stage, although not once the pink cough has subsided. After the haemorrhagic stage, the majority of the survivors are free of the virus (and have lifelong immunity), but a minority will develop a form of encephalitis over the next two or three months. If the virus reaches the encephalitic stage, then it is almost (99.5%) universally fatal.
The Marnitja virus is capable of producing deadly pandemics. Even after several centuries of afflicting Aboriginal peoples, who have evolved some resistance, fresh epidemics still kill 3 to 5% of the non-immune population. Elsewhere in the world, virgin-soil epidemics will have considerably higher mortality rates. Depending on their overall level of health (well-fed peoples are more likely to survive), Marnitja will kill anywhere from 10-15% of the population of a given region. Transmission of the disease beyond Australia’s shores may take some time; sea travel in the seventeenth century was often slow. Still, sooner or later, the rest of the world will discover the affliction of the Waiting Death...
* * *
[1] Or, for the pedantic, during the glacial periods of the ice age. Strictly speaking, the world is still in an ice age, just during an interglacial period.
[2] Malaria existed in northern Australia (until recently eradicated). However, the deadliest form, falciparum malaria, did not become established there. Dengue fever is also present in northern Australia, but does not spread very far south. Yellow fever, the other major mosquito-borne disease, has never become established in Australia.
[3] This is a process which is happening in modern Australia, although several of the bat viruses have only recently been recognised. Australian bats harbour a number of diseases which are capable of infecting and sometimes killing humans. These include: Australian bat lyssavirus, a close relative of rabies which produces similar symptoms; Hendra virus, which can cause respiratory haemorrhaging and fluid build-up in the lungs, and which sometimes infects the brain causing a form of encephalitis; and Menangle virus, which produces severe flu-like symptoms.
[4] One of the side-effects of having epidemic diseases like blue-sleep and Marnitja (and the other less fatal mosquito-borne diseases) is that Aboriginal peoples will have developed generally stronger immune systems. There is evidence that exposure to some infectious diseases during childhood produces a stronger immune system which offers somewhat more protection against all diseases. (See the work of James V. Neel, for instance.) Virgin soil epidemics will still be devastating to Aboriginal peoples, but not quite as deadly as the equivalent epidemics which ravaged the Americas.
[5] Marnitja is an allohistorical virus, but based on an extrapolation of what the real-world Hendra virus might do if it evolves into a form which can be easily transmitted between humans.
* * *
Thoughts?
When Europeans arrived in Australia, they found a continent without any epidemic diseases to greet them. Eurasian diseases like smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, typhus, chickenpox and a cocktail of other killers devastated the indigenous peoples of Australia, but no epidemic diseases waited in the Great Southern Land for foreign visitors.
In allohistorical Australia, this is not the case.
* * *
Australia, as a continent, has long been isolated from the rest of the world. Some of the neighbouring islands to the north are part of the same continental landmass, and were connected to each other when sea levels lowered during the ice ages [1], but it has always been a separate landmass to the mainland of Asia. Ocean barriers have protected it, but that isolation has never been complete. Over the millennia, many plants and animals have crossed the seas from the north and established themselves on the Australian mainland; birds, bats, rats, monitor lizards, and humans, among many others. Still, with the separation of salt water, indigenous Australian civilization developed in almost complete isolation from the rest of the world.
Almost.
Direct human contact between Australia and its northern neighbours is rare; some sporadic visits have occurred in the north-west or across the waters of Torres Strait, but their main legacy has been the transportation of the dingo to Australia’s shores. Yet some animals do make the crossing, particularly migratory birds. Several plant species are thought to have been established in Australia when carried across by migrating birds. Sometimes, birds bring less welcome influences with them. Such as their diseases.
Early Australian agricultural peoples kept some birds of their own. The most important of these were the domesticated birds used for meat, ducks and emus. These birds often lived in close contact with humans, especially ducks. Some birds were also kept as pets, such as several varieties of parrots. Where there was such close contact between humans and birds, avian diseases could easily spread.
Avian influenza is a species of virus which has numerous subtypes, like most viruses, but which is primarily adapted to infect birds. Infections of avian influenza are often unnoticed among their main carrier bird species; infected birds often show no symptoms, even when they can infect other birds. Strains of avian influenza can jump between bird species to new hosts, and in the new host species, these strains are often more infectious and much more deadly. Avian influenza is endemic amongst many water birds, and has long been spread to Australia from migratory birds crossing to and from Asia.
Gunnagal farmers along the Murray lived in close contact with domesticated ducks, and also lived near to human-shaped wetlands populated by an abundance of wild water birds. Strains of avian influenza regularly afflicted domesticated ducks, sometimes causing substantial die-offs to farmers’ flocks. In time, the domesticated ducks would develop resistance, sometimes becoming asymptomatic carriers themselves, and thus be largely unaffected until a new strain evolved.
In 349 AD, a particularly harsh strain of avian influenza spread from wild swans in Lake Alexandrina at the mouth of the Murray to domesticated ducks raised by nearby farming peoples. As had happened with many previous strains of avian influenza, the disease killed up to a third of the domesticated ducks in the region, and spread up the Murray. In 350 AD it reached Tjibarr, devastating duck populations and farmers’ livelihoods. In 351 AD the strain reached Gundabingee, where it also struck farmers’ flocks. Most epidemics of avian influenza burned out here; farming communities beyond the Murray were too scattered to allow for easy spread of the virus. But the strain in 351 AD was different; unlike previous epidemics, this one mutated into a form which spread easily between humans.
This strain of influenza was the first epidemic disease which Australia had experienced. Some endemic waterborne diseases were spread by poor hygiene, and a few endemic but rarely fatal diseases were transmitted by mosquitoes. But the influenza epidemic was like nothing which had been seen before on the island continent. Like all flu epidemics, this one spread mostly by airborne transmission, particularly through victims coughing and sneezing. In a population with no previous exposure to epidemic diseases, its symptoms were swift, severe, and often fatal. The first visible sign was usually a blue tint to the lips, combined with a sudden sense of weariness, which led the afflicted Gunnagal to christen the disease “blue-sleep.”
Blue-sleep struck quickly; it sometimes took only a matter of hours for newly-infected victims to be too fatigued to move themselves. The most severe symptoms affected the lungs; the virus attacked the lung lining, usually causing haemorrhaging until the victims coughed up blood and died from pneumonia when their lungs filled with fluid. Blue-sleep also affected other parts of the body; it often infected the intestines, which sometimes caused its victims to die from blood and fluid loss. Victims who survived the initial assault of the virus were weakened for days or weeks; secondary pneumonia often spread from opportunistic bacteria, and victims who had no-one to care for them often died of dehydration or even malnutrition.
Blue-sleep spread throughout the farming peoples of south-eastern Australia, killing up to ten percent of the population in the worst-affected areas. It spread to the nearer hunter-gatherer peoples as well, but those communities were more fortunate since the virus affected people so quickly that it often prevented them from travelling to spread it further. Blue-sleep killed about five percent of the agricultural population of the south-east, and a smaller percentage of the hunter-gatherer peoples who lived nearby. The Yuduwungu peoples of south-western Australia were fortunate to be spared; the desert of the Nullarbor was too thinly-populated to spread the virus.
After its initial ravages, blue-sleep became an endemic disease in south-eastern Australia. It lost the worst aspects of its virulence, and in evolved into a disease whose symptoms were largely similar to strains of flu seen elsewhere in the world, although it retained the distinctive blue tinge to the lips, and the early onset of fatigue. Like all flu viruses, it mutated rapidly, and new strains appeared every few years. Occasional major epidemics occurred when blue-sleep evolved into a form where people had no resistance. Australian peoples would never be truly rid of the blue-sleep virus.
When Europeans contact Australia, they will quickly recognise blue-sleep as a form of influenza. Its symptoms are more severe than ones which they are familiar with, but they will still know what to call the illness. And they will die from it.
* * *
Creating artificial wetlands is one of the hallmarks of early Australian civilization. Wetlands supply them with value sources of fish and meat and feathers from birds. In the wetlands, people gather plants for food, fibre and dyes, and cultivate some herbs and spices which cannot tolerate drier climes. The wetlands even help to filter the water of the Murray and other major rivers. Human waste and other pollutants which are dumped into the waterways are carried into artificial wetlands downstream, which cleanse the water of many of the contaminants.
Yet artificial wetlands are a mixed blessing. Swamps, ponds and marshes are excellent for harbouring fish and birds, but they also offer an ideal environment for biting insects and a host of waterborne parasites. The waters of Australian wetlands harbour a variety of pathogens such as giardia, cryptosporidium and parasitic worms which often infest human hosts. These parasites are widespread throughout the Murray basin and other areas with artificial wetlands. Fortunately for their human hosts, the illnesses caused by these parasites are debilitating but rarely fatal.
Wetlands also harbour myriads of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes transmit many of the deadliest diseases in human history, particularly malaria, which is thought to have caused more human deaths than any other single cause. Luckily for Australian civilization, the worst mosquito-borne diseases were either confined to the tropical north, or never became established in Australia [2]. They will also be helped by a side-effect of their wetland management practices. Several species of Australian sundews produce edible tubers which are valued as a food source, and so the Gunnagal cultivate sundews. Since sundews are carnivorous plants which trap flying insects in sticky leaves, this helps to limit the number of mosquitoes in the artificial wetlands.
Nonetheless, there will enough mosquitoes in the wetlands to transmit diseases, and Australia harbours several pathogens which are easily spread by mosquitoes. Ross River fever (also called epidemic polyarthritis) is a virus which produces a variety of flu-like symptoms such as fevers, chills, headaches, fatigue, and sometimes stiff or swollen joints. Most victims recover within a few days, although about ten percent experience a chronic form of the illness which produces ongoing joint pains, depression and fatigue which persists for months or years. It is fortunately a non-fatal infection, but it will become established in the wetlands surrounding Gunnagal cities. While it will not kill visiting Europeans, many of them will be struck down by what they see as a mysterious malady. The Gunnagal will have a long familiarity with the disease, which they will call “old man’s curse,” from the arthritis-like symptoms which it produces even in the young.
The disease which another history will call Murray Valley encephalitis (MVE) is another virus that is transmitted by mosquitoes. Despite its name, it is historically more common in the tropical north than the Murray basin, but it can become established further south. The wild host of MVE are herons, cormorants and related birds, which are common throughout the Gunnagal wetlands. MVE will become endemic throughout the Murray. Fortunately, most of its victims experience no symptoms more severe than occasional nausea, headaches or vomiting. A small proportion - less than one percent - go on to develop encephalitis (brain inflammation), with symptoms such as drowsiness, fits, weariness, and fatigue. Of those so afflicted, a quarter will die and up to half of the rest will experience permanent effects such as paralysis or brain damage.
Still, of all the gifts which Australian mosquitoes give to humans, the one which will kill the most people is the one which initially was the least dangerous. Barmah Forest virus is related to the Ross River virus, and often has symptoms so similar that it requires a blood test to tell them apart, although Barmah Forest virus is usually less severe. Hosted by a variety of wild birds, it quickly became established in the Gunnagal wetlands, where for centuries it was a minor malady. Like the other mosquito-borne viruses, Barmah Forest virus was originally transmitted mostly between animals, where humans were simply incidental infections. Over time, however, the virus evolved into a strain where humans were amongst its preferred hosts. When it did, the results were deadly.
A virulent strain of Barmah Forest virus appeared along the central Murray basin during the sixth century AD. Victims who were infected by this strain first suffered from chills, then fever and a blistery rash which spread across most of their body. The distinctiveness of the rash, and the realisation that the illness was suffered by people who had been near wetlands, led the Gunnagal to christen the illness “swamp rash.” The initial rash would be followed by fatigue and swollen joints. Many victims recovered at that point. A minority entered the toxic stage of the infection, where the lymphatic system was infected, leading to severely swollen lymph nodes over most of the body, extreme pain, and eventual coma and death.
Swamp rash became endemic to the Gunnagal wetlands, although it did not spread far beyond the Murray basin. The virus is well-adapted to infecting humans, although there are also animal reservoirs amongst several kinds of wild water birds, and sometimes domesticated ducks. Birds rarely die from swamp rash, but humans are not so fortunate. When swamp rash first became virulent, the death rate amongst unexposed adults was around ten percent, and up to double that rate for infected children. Centuries of infection from swamp rash has meant that the Gunnagal who live near wetlands have evolved some natural resistance; the death rate amongst infected children is about five percent, and less for adults. For Eurasians, who lack such resistance, the death rate will continue to be around ten percent for adults and worse for children. The higher death rates are not limited to people of Eurasian descent; since swamp rash did not evolve into its virulent form until after the Great Migrations, people who come from other parts of Australia are as badly-affected as Eurasians.
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While the Australian continent holds relatively few infectious diseases which can be transmitted to humans, there are some potential killers. Of those which do exist, some of the most deadly are carried by bats. Australian bats harbour several endemic diseases which are potentially fatal to humans. As long as Aboriginal peoples remained hunter-gatherers, their population densities were too low for any of these diseases to turn into epidemics. With farming practices transforming the landscape, bat populations were increasingly disturbed, and came into more contact with humans. This sometimes meant that their diseases infected humans, too; viruses such as Australian bat lyssavirus, Hendra virus, and Menangle virus sometimes spread to the human population [3]. With the larger human populations, particularly the larger urban populations, this now meant that bat diseases could turn into epidemic human diseases.
Still, many of these bat-carried diseases are not easily transmissible between humans. Initial exposure was usually either from a bat bite, or farmers accidentally coming into contact with bat urine or other bodily fluids. In many cases, this result in the death of the person infected, but rarely infection of other humans.
The first bat-borne disease to become endemic in allohistorical Australian civilization was Australian bat lyssavirus (ABLV). A close relative of rabies, this virus produces similar symptoms. The infection spreads slowly along the nervous system until it reaches the brain. Once there, symptoms begin with headaches and fever, and progress to severe pain, violent fits and spasms, extreme weakness, and mental instability. Eventually, the victim dies from inability to breathe properly.
A few early Gunnagal farmers died from direct infection of ABLV caused by bat bites. However, the disease only became endemic when domesticated dingos were infected by ABLV. In dingos, ABLV produced similar effects to rabies; aggressive behaviour including biting, which often transmits the virus to other dogs or to humans. Aboriginal peoples did not know that ABLV as being originally from bats, but they quickly learned to recognise the behaviour of “mad dingos” that could lead to a fatal bite. The Atjuntja of south-western Australia had a name for the illness, drun-nju, which literally translated as “barking mad.” The Dutch who first encountered the disease there would transliterate the Atjuntja name into Drongo disease, the name by which it would be known to the world.
Still, while Drongo disease was almost universally fatal for people infected, it was almost impossible to transmit directly between humans. This meant that it never became a major epidemic disease.
Unfortunately, another Australian bat-borne virus is both often fatal and capable of easy transmission between people.
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History does not record exactly where the disease that came to be called Marnitja was first transmitted from bats to humans. Written sources do, however, describe the first time it appeared in one of the major urban centres along the Murray. The city of Garrkimang, the former imperial capital, still possessed a fastidious and methodical bureaucracy who recorded all important events that affected the city. No event since the deposition of the last emperor would make a more lasting impression on their city than the arrival of a disease which they called the Waiting Death.
The archives of Garrkimang record that Marnitja first struck the city in 1206. A myriad of clay tablets describe with painful precision the course of the disease. Victims first experienced an initial fever, chills and weariness. These symptoms were reminiscent of the other epidemic disease, blue-sleep, although they lacked the hallmark blue lips of that sickness. However, Marnitja progressed to much more striking symptoms. Victims started to cough and splutter up a pinkish-red, frothy fluid mixed with saliva. Although the archivists and Garrkimang did not know and thus not could record it, the pink fluid was a result of haemorrhaging of the lungs.
The more fortunate victims of Marnitja started to recover from the “pink cough” after a couple of days, although fatigue and milder coughs would continue for another fortnight. The less fortunate victims did not recover, but suffered worsening coughs and increasing weariness. Some of the victims died through difficulty breathing, others from blood and fluid loss caused by excessive coughing. Other victims died of renal failure, or simply slipped into a coma from which they never awoke. Survivors of the pink cough sometimes suffered permanent damage to their lungs, which produced life-long breathing difficulties.
Pink cough, the first stage of Marnitja, was devastating enough in itself, but what followed was worse. Victims who had recovered from the early stages of the pink cough, or rare survivals from the later stages, were not completely free of the disease. Many of the survivors started to suffer from strange new symptoms about two months later: headaches, a fresh bout of fever, confusion, seizures, and eventually delirium. Every victim who showed these new symptoms would die from them; a few succumbed to the fever or killed themselves by mischance from the seizures, while most eventually slipped into a coma from which they never recovered. The excruciating period of uncertainty for survivors of the pink cough, waiting to know whether they would suffer the fatal second stage, led the people of Garrkimang to christen the new disease the Waiting Death (Marnitja).
Marnitja spread far beyond its first outbreak in Garrkimang. The archives of the imperial city and the other major Murray cities do not record precise numbers, but it appears that about a third of the population were infected by the disease. Of those infected, about half died from the first or second stage. Marnitja slowly burned its way across the continent, and in time touched even the hunter-gatherer peoples on the farthest northern shores. The first epidemic killed perhaps fifteen percent of the Australian population. Nor would the disease disappear easily. A small percentage (0.2-0.5%) of those who came into contact with the virus became asymptomatic carriers, who would never suffer the symptoms of Marnitja but who remained infectious throughout their lives. So, like blue-sleep before it, Marnitja became established as an epidemic disease. It struck again every generation or two, although subsequent generations started to develop some resistance to the Waiting Death.
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Australia thus has two epidemic diseases waiting for any contact with overseas peoples: blue-sleep and Marnitja [4]. These diseases first spread to New Zealand after 1310 when the Maori made first contact. They caused considerable death amongst the Maori, but in time the Maori developed a similar level of resistance to these diseases as the Aboriginal peoples.
By 1618, blue-sleep is endemic across Australasia. Within that region, it mutates every few years, as flu viruses usually do, although these new strains are rarely fatal to people who have survived the previous variants. Blue-sleep sometimes mixes with other strains of influenza from wild birds to create particularly severe epidemics, although even then the mortality rate is usually less than 0.5% of those infected. (Amongst Aboriginal peoples, at least.)
As a disease, blue-sleep has become a variant of influenza with a couple of distinctive symptoms. The blueness of the lips remains a persistent and recognisable symptom, and in lighter-skinned peoples will show up as a bluish tint to the entire face. Blue-sleep has an incubation of 2-3 days before the first symptoms appear, although victims remain infectious for up to two weeks while recovering from the illness. European and Asian visitors will recognise it as a form of influenza, but it is a strain of flu virus to which non-Australian peoples will have no immunity. The death toll when it is spread to the rest of the world will be as bad or worse than the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918; somewhere between 2.5 to 5% of the global population will die when blue-sleep spreads around the world.
While Europeans will have some familiarity with blue-sleep, they will be completely unprepared for Australia’s biggest killer, the Waiting Death. Marnitja is a henipavirus related to Hendra virus and Nipah virus, and more distantly to measles and mumps. Its original animal hosts were flying foxes (fruit bats), which became agricultural pests that raided Gunnagal fruit orchards. The virus was not transmitted directly to humans, but first infected dingos which came into contact with bat droppings and bodily fluids left beneath fruit trees. Infected animals spread the virus to other dingos, and eventually to humans, where it became an epidemic disease [5].
Marnitja spreads through airborne transmission or in bodily fluids. The virus has an incubation period of 7-14 days. Infected people are contagious for most of that time, although more so later in the incubation period. The haemorrhagic (pink cough) stage of the disease can last for up to two weeks, although some victims die within two days of the first signs of the pink cough. Infected people are contagious throughout the haemorrhagic stage, although not once the pink cough has subsided. After the haemorrhagic stage, the majority of the survivors are free of the virus (and have lifelong immunity), but a minority will develop a form of encephalitis over the next two or three months. If the virus reaches the encephalitic stage, then it is almost (99.5%) universally fatal.
The Marnitja virus is capable of producing deadly pandemics. Even after several centuries of afflicting Aboriginal peoples, who have evolved some resistance, fresh epidemics still kill 3 to 5% of the non-immune population. Elsewhere in the world, virgin-soil epidemics will have considerably higher mortality rates. Depending on their overall level of health (well-fed peoples are more likely to survive), Marnitja will kill anywhere from 10-15% of the population of a given region. Transmission of the disease beyond Australia’s shores may take some time; sea travel in the seventeenth century was often slow. Still, sooner or later, the rest of the world will discover the affliction of the Waiting Death...
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[1] Or, for the pedantic, during the glacial periods of the ice age. Strictly speaking, the world is still in an ice age, just during an interglacial period.
[2] Malaria existed in northern Australia (until recently eradicated). However, the deadliest form, falciparum malaria, did not become established there. Dengue fever is also present in northern Australia, but does not spread very far south. Yellow fever, the other major mosquito-borne disease, has never become established in Australia.
[3] This is a process which is happening in modern Australia, although several of the bat viruses have only recently been recognised. Australian bats harbour a number of diseases which are capable of infecting and sometimes killing humans. These include: Australian bat lyssavirus, a close relative of rabies which produces similar symptoms; Hendra virus, which can cause respiratory haemorrhaging and fluid build-up in the lungs, and which sometimes infects the brain causing a form of encephalitis; and Menangle virus, which produces severe flu-like symptoms.
[4] One of the side-effects of having epidemic diseases like blue-sleep and Marnitja (and the other less fatal mosquito-borne diseases) is that Aboriginal peoples will have developed generally stronger immune systems. There is evidence that exposure to some infectious diseases during childhood produces a stronger immune system which offers somewhat more protection against all diseases. (See the work of James V. Neel, for instance.) Virgin soil epidemics will still be devastating to Aboriginal peoples, but not quite as deadly as the equivalent epidemics which ravaged the Americas.
[5] Marnitja is an allohistorical virus, but based on an extrapolation of what the real-world Hendra virus might do if it evolves into a form which can be easily transmitted between humans.
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Thoughts?
With all these interesting pathogens (if that's the right word) around will the Gunnagals and other settled Australians develop health care systems and philosophies at least on par with the Greeks and Romans?
IOW, do we get Gunnagalian hospitals and sanatoriums with doctors (not just medicine men and home care)?
IOW, do we get Gunnagalian hospitals and sanatoriums with doctors (not just medicine men and home care)?
Wow. Inspired, researched, and insidious.
You set the Alt-History bar higher with every post.
Question: do the *Australians develop any notable sexually-transmitted diseases?
You set the Alt-History bar higher with every post.
Question: do the *Australians develop any notable sexually-transmitted diseases?
Then again, alternate history isn’t about what we want—it’s about what was likely to happen. And, unfortunately, the existence of a major agricultural civilization spanning much of a continent makes the rise of at least some major epidemic diseases a near-certainty. Nobody’s celebrating about this—it’s just what was likely to occur.
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