Can bush meat "save" South America ?

In our history after coming in contact with European explorer/settler the Native population of South America was pretty much wiped out by their disease. The reason, to my understanding was, that the close contact with a wide array of domesticated animal, meant that a lot of deadly disease could breed in in the old world population of humanity.
Now, on the other side the consumption of bush meat (especially apes/monkey who naturally have disease that are most likely to cross over to humans) led to some nasty stuff like AIDS and Ebola emerging in Africa.

Maybe, with some "luck" the Amazonian rain forest civilization catches similar disease which then become endemic, long before Europeans arrive. Additionally some avian flue, from chicken imported by the Polynesian trader, might help as well. In short how much of a disease ridden scum hole could South America plausibly become ?
 
While Jared Diamond claims most diseases as coming from livestock, some of the diseases he describes such as smallpox and malaria likely did not (smallpox is related to diseases in ungulates, yes, but could have come from wild rodents). These diseases had wild ancestors that were widespread in the Old World, and jumped to humanity because they had time to-time to evolve and adapt to the presence of old hosts. This is a lot less likely to happen in the Americas, for the simple reason that humans have been in the Americas for a lot less long than they have been in Europe and Africa.

And even if diseases do jump to the Native Americans, unless their populations are high enough to sustain the diseases, then the germs will die out long before Europeans arrive. While there is debate about how high the Native American population was, it doesn't appear to have been very dense population outside of a few areas like the Valley of Mexico.

Now, obviously hunted meat can transmit zoonoses to humans, but to really create a different result from OTL I think you would still need some major cultural/technological POD's or agricultural POD's to create alternate Americas where the population is higher, denser, and more connected than OTL for Native Americans to be able to have useable bioweapons.
 
South American natives did eat New World monkeys. Where Africa has the advantage is that they had more livestock and a better transportation system. Plus a much longer history for diseases to grow and mutate. Millenia of trade,conquest and allover interaction is what gives the Old World {Europe/Asia/Africa} the edge over the New World {North America/South America/Oceania}
 
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There's also the minor matter that

Humans are Old World (specifically African) creatures. There's been millions of years for things like Malaria to co-evolve with humans. There has only been 12k years or so for that to happen in the New World.
 
Well, Old World monkeys are more closely related to humans than they are to any New World monkey, and AIDS and Ebola either spread from or can at least be carried by other apes. So, I doubt New World monkeys would pose much more of a disease vector threat to humans than any other wild mammals.

And even if diseases do jump to the Native Americans, unless their populations are high enough to sustain the diseases, then the germs will die out long before Europeans arrive. While there is debate about how high the Native American population was, it doesn't appear to have been very dense population outside of a few areas like the Valley of Mexico.

Between the Valley of Mexico and the Incan cities, couldn't there have been enough of a population to sustain some serious diseases, periodically spreading out to the surrounding populations? Maybe not anything on the level of the Black Death, but it seems like if the animal hosts were there, some nasty flu-like diseases would have enough people to thrive.

Also, the thing about domestic animals is that they can practically double the pool of hosts for a disease, and slight mutations can be enough for the diseases to jump hosts when the two are living in close contact.
 
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There's also the minor matter that

Humans are Old World (specifically African) creatures. There's been millions of years for things like Malaria to co-evolve with humans. There has only been 12k years or so for that to happen in the New World.


Actually I was thinking about some of the more recent disease like AIDS, which made its jump in the 1920s onto humans, nothing a "million years ago". But as others pointed out, New world mokey don't seem to be a particulary (better) fertile breeding ground for some useful disease so this topic may as well rest.
 
Maybe, with some "luck" the Amazonian rain forest civilization catches similar disease which then become endemic, long before Europeans arrive. Additionally some avian flue, from chicken imported by the Polynesian trader, might help as well. In short how much of a disease ridden scum hole could South America plausibly become ?


How would you build an Amazonian rain forest civilization? What POD would you use? That's an interesting TL idea.
 
Perhaps another disease vector in the New World could be via birds? Not too many big animals to domesticate in the Americas, but we do have turkeys, parrots, and ducks.
 
Perhaps another disease vector in the New World could be via birds? Not too many big animals to domesticate in the Americas, but we do have turkeys, parrots, and ducks.

IIRC the equine encephalitis viruses IOTL normally use birds as hosts and mosquitoes as vectors.

The problem is that the mosquitoes that feed on birds tend not to feed on mammals too often (which is why the eev's haven't become a disaster-movie type pandemic yet). You'd need to solve this problem, though I'm not sure how you'd do it beyond 'mutation' handwavium. Which I did do for my timeline, guilty as charged.
 
IIRC the equine encephalitis viruses IOTL normally use birds as hosts and mosquitoes as vectors.

The problem is that the mosquitoes that feed on birds tend not to feed on mammals too often (which is why the eev's haven't become a disaster-movie type pandemic yet). You'd need to solve this problem, though I'm not sure how you'd do it beyond 'mutation' handwavium. Which I did do for my timeline, guilty as charged.

Wow, googled EEVs, terrifying but unlikely possibility! :eek:
 
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