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
+vlogbrothers 'You don't have any tasty snacks, but in compensation here's a load of lethal diseases. You'll be grateful a few millennia from now, trust me.'
As Jared Diamond explained in his book, the problem the New World had with respect to plant cultivation is that it is not very wide, compared with the Old World. Plants tend to require a specific climate to thrive. But in the New World, when when great crops like potatoes and corn, which could potentially support large populations, were first cultivated, there were not many places with the same climate where the cultivation of those crops could spread to. That severely limited the potential of agriculture for ancient civilizations in the New World.
"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.
Based on the internet, I'm pretty sure those germs would kill you if they saw a spider the same reason most people would burn down their house if they saw a spider
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
Veritasium-Fans here? Hbomberguy-Fans here? CGP Grey Fans here? Practical Engineering Fans here? And yes, duh, this is an underhanded way to spread Fun and/or Education: Sue me! Sue me for trying to help my fellow Science-Fans out a bit!!
@@8ofwands300 yes. But it's like the only disease that come from the new world that somewhat affect the old world. And syphilis came no where near the destruction that the old world diseases had (small pox, influenza, bubonic plage,...).
@@duycuongnguyen6300 I realize that ...perhaps because it is sexually transmiited. AND I guess there is even some question about this hypothesis based on some British archeological digs of a pre Columbian monastery with well- preserved remains of Dark Age monks that show signs of advanced syphilis.
@@chebic5095 yeah, just imagine how you must feel when your little trip to a market in some random country exposes the whole world to a massive pandemic.
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.
Thats why we got beer and wine. People used to drink (quite weak) beer all day, cause even a little bit of alcohol means that there are no germs in your water.
@@535phobos more that the production of alcohol involves heating the water, which kills the germs. the amount of alcohol in "small" beer wouldnt do anything to germs
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.
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.
Its a bit misleading though. The real issue with llamas is not so much that they are unruly but that they are just less useful. The produce less and do much much less work than old world animals.
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.
So you're telling me the most useful domesticable animal in the Americas prior to contact with Europe was one that proto-Native-Americans brought with them all the way from Africa?
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.
Also Muskox were a native species of bovine in Alaska and the Canadian artic but were over hunted in modern times. They've been reintroduced. Point is there were opportunities for domestication. The ancestors of our domesticated animals were just about as large, nimble, and powerful as these native species.
But that is most likely how we got Covid 19. Theory is that wildlife habitats are being destroyed in China to feed the ever growing number of slaves to feed the Chinese economic miracle. Those wild animals are forced onto rural arable land where they defecate and urinate their germs for us to catch. Somebody just has to not wash their hands before eating and bingo it's in a human being who will take it to a town then a city a factory and then abroad.
@wantafanta01 Every group of scientists that have looked at it agree that it's a naturally evolved virus. Lab-created viruses look incredibly different. Also bioweapon viruses typically wouldn't be designed to kill less than 1% of the population...
This really helps explain why European colonization had such different outcomes for the Americas and Africa. Europeans brought plagues to which the indigenous people had no immunity. These plagues crippled the Aztec and Inca Empires, caused to the collapse of cultures from the Mississippi to the Amazon and killed so many that it left a vacuum which Europeans (and their imported African slaves) quickly filled. As a result, indigenous Americans are in the minority in most countries in the Americas (with the exception of Peru, Bolivia and Guatamala) and have typically lacked political power and control since colonization. Almost without exception, nations in the western hemisphere are controlled by descendants of the colonizers. In contrast, Africans had the similar exposure to plagues as Europeans, so there was no 'Great Dying' that wiped out 90% of Africa's population. In fact, the situation was somewhat reversed. Africa featured tropical diseases like Malaria, Dengue and Yellow Fever, to which Africans had some adaptation but not so for Europeans. Often entire European colonies would be nearly wiped out by these tropical diseases. As a result, Europeans didn't penetrate into most of Africa (except for Algeria and South Africa) until the advent of more modern medicine in the 19th century, and did not replace the native population like they had done in the Americas. Thus, African countries today all have majority indigenous populations, and are controlled by indigenous people.
Very interesting to read. I also read that the Europeans needed labor in the Americas and black Africans where perfect for that, because they were more less resistant to the diseases of the tropical climates and have a relatively strong physique.
VivaHollandia32 Actually, the strong physique is the result of slavery. Plus They were kidnapped for cheep labor. Slaves died of many illnesses and sicknesses while on the ships. They weren't prized for a strong immune system.
@@soulight6091 yes, but they were made slaves because literally all other options were either 1. too far away(asia) 2.christians(europe) 3.literally died all the time from european disease or knew how to run away(native americans)
@Warhawk - this was all written twenty years ago in the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. The explanation was not created by the author of this video.
@@rusticcloud3325 - I never said there was anything wrong with appreciating the VIDEO. The problem is, Warhawk seemed to think that Grey is the one who came up with the explanation, so I was pointing out that he did not.
@@linusp9316 - It may be that YOU do not respect the book. Many other people do. From GoodReads: "It's well written and informative, and worth reading." And many other comments are similar.
"Nothing but drama, these llamas." Sounds like the opposite of their Old World cousins, the camels. When you're a camel, you can put up with anything. :P
Yep, know an Arab dude who's family raises camels, he told me the same thing camels can be temperamental but they can also put up with a lot before getting nasty.
@@rainmanslim4611 Veritasium-Fans here? Hbomberguy-Fans here? CGP Grey Fans here? Practical Engineering Fans here? And yes, duh, this is an underhanded way to spread Fun and/or Education: Sue me! Sue me for trying to help my fellow Science-Fans out a bit!!
The dog and the sheep never tried to hide it though. Conspiracy theories are just a search for meanings in a meaningless world. There are down to earth conspiracy theories that makes sense. Like the U.S trying to keep democracy down in the middle East because they know the people hates them and would never trade oil with them if they were put in charge. If you can justify a theory with a profit motive it's strong.
Benja Pizarro That’s very unlikely but if it did then the mainly European inspired countries of North and South America would be replaced with mainly native ones
Native american didn't even invented wheels. And most of the "useful" animals took the old world hundred of years to domesticate. Dog came from wolf and wolf is one of the most dangerous animal in wild but the old world still made it. The theory just doesn't hold it very well
The problem with this theory is that the paleo Indians had dogs with them when they crossed the Bering Strait, and when the Europeans contacted them. There are still a couple of these breeds around, even if the European genes have taken over, largely. Anyway, if there was any herding instinct left in the Ameridogs, it could have been used and intensified, just like in Eurasia/Africa (except for the problem of fewer people in the Americas than in Eurasia, so fewer chances for that stubborn set of herders to train them right).
@@Egilhelmson Veritasium-Fans here? Hbomberguy-Fans here? CGP Grey Fans here? Practical Engineering Fans here? And yes, duh, this is an underhanded way to spread Fun and/or Education: Sue me! Sue me for trying to help my fellow Science-Fans out a bit!!
well, look at Antarctica, Alaska, deserts, ... so the new world is not a bad spawn point for the early game villagers. It is just a bad spawn for the civilization in the long run.
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.
Great video, though I feel it leaves out one important factor. Jared Diamonds in his book, 'Guns, Germs and Steel' discusses these questions in depth and also points at the orientation of the continents. In Eurasia, with its East-West orientation, most regions will have a neighbouring region on the same longitude. This means these regions probably have a similar climate, which facilitates the exchange of crops and domesticated animals as these can thrive in both regions. The America’s, on the other hand, have a North-South orientation and on top of this are cut through by various mountain ranges, deserts and jungles. This means that communities in neighbouring regions live on different longitudes and thus in a different climate. This makes for a much slower spread of domesticated plants and animals as direct neighbours have no reason to adopt these from eachother. The societies that do have a similar enough climate to potentially benefit from such an exchange are too far away, being on opposite sides of the equator, to learn about each other's livestock and plants.
He read guns germs and steel to make this video, judging by conversations on his podcast. I don't totally agree with the theories of the book but I think grey has reduced it well.
Guns, Germs, and Steel is pretty outdated by modern Anthropological standards. Some of Diamond's theories are no longer considered correct by popular consensus.
Everyone always thinks all of human history was leading up to their specific point in time, which is the most important to have ever been and will ever be.
For everyone wondering about the thumbnail Yes it's changed The original one is the grim reaper image you can see at 2:41 Then it got updated to the image of the old time world map used throughout the video
I love this video, it had such a high rewatchability score. Grey just keeps asking the right questions and it leads to such an in-depth answer to a complex question
This is what everyone had for domestication, everywhere. And they did it. The Siberian-Americans (also called "native americans") just did not try hard enough. The europeans/asians did not domesticate cows, those are the result of domestication. They domesticated aurochs, and bred them to be cows. Try looking it up, there is a reason the guy shows a picture of the cow in his video and not a picture of an auroch.
@@baltazarvok2564 The number of domesticated animals corresponds to the number of animal species. Eurasia-Africa is the biggest land mass on Earth, and has the number of animal species corresponds to this size. Jared Diamond pointed this out. It's not about not trying. It's that only a very small number of species have the right combination of being social, hierarchical, and not too aggressive so they can be fully domesticated. And as maths suggests, most of these animal species live in the biggest land mass.
@@eljanrimsa5843 Yes Euro-asia had an advantage, but it was not an owerwhelming advantage (Americas had potatoes and maize - advantage on the crops side to compensate), bison could be tamed, some deer species could be tamed a lot of food animals and llamas actually were tamed (and llamas are excelent animals for domestic use replacing both sheep and goats). As for tamability, even African elephants were tamed (much later, but they were). The first tamed horses could not carry a rider, that came from an extensive breeding effort. What Jared Diamond is doing in his book is throwing smokescreen to hide the most significant factor that decides the level of civilization. Make a guess on what that is.
@@baltazarvok2564 You confuse taming and domestication. Llamas, alpacas, guinea pigs, turkeys were the animals available for domestication in the Americas. Bisons have historically not been domesticated, neither American bisons nor Eurasian bisons. You need 20-feet high steel fences to hold them in. Elephants have never been domesticated. The domestication of deer has been attempted many times, but without success. Of the many species of ungulates in Eurasia and Africa, many have been tamed, and people have been trying to breed them, but only very few have been domesticated. The Americas started out with less species of ungulates, and only the 2 relatively small camelids could be domesticated.
@@numatichades0175 Yeah bruv, the white man doesn't want us to believe that the natives (before the whites came) had space travel tech and huge cities spanning the entire country!
@@a_lucientes Yeah, the white man can't use their superior technology so they hid it away! In a serious note this is as believable as the flat earth 'theory'. It's honestly amazing what people will believe in no matter how mindnumbingly stupid.
@@nessa6135 To imply the natives at the time had running water and plumbing is completely stupid. Did they have toilets, sinks, or even basic water wells? Well no, because they were too busy killing each other and performing sacrifices. It's the same reason why they didn't have spanning farms or any basic farming techniques and tools... they were nomadic, they had to be. Otherwise they would die staying in one place for too long.
An unintentional playground for plagues A Plague-ground if you will. If someone hasn't already made this joke in the 13k comments I will be very disappointed.
Man this video really hits different in 2020, huh... "Cities are playgrounds for plagues" "Sneezing spreads faster than shaking hands which spreads faster than intimacy" and m a n...
@Benjamin La Tour What is wrong with the word 'intimacy'? It's defined as 'a closeness or familiarity' or 'a private atmosphere'. It's only vulgar if you make it vulgar.
@@fresagrus4490 why? He didn't compare the severity or symptoms, just compared principles of transmission mentioned in the video to the transmission of covid
And wrong. As Balkans, North Africa, Middle east and Asia can attest. That's an experiement run 5 times. It failed on all but western Europe. My take is Philosophy (and taking it seriously) was the special sauce of the west. Phil puts thinking prior to the ego (or the thinkers motivation), providing the birthseed for law, politics, economy, sicence etc. And still, having it isn't a guarantee to success, as most of those regions had access to philosophy's style, but none other than the west took it to heart.
@@Untilitpases Yes , the medieval scholastics developed the modern style of scholarship , hyper-abstract meticulous close reasoning ,citing sources ,etc and made - notably Thoma Aquino -very persuade arguments that not only did every area of have substantial autonomy each other but also that every field of scholarship had substantial autonomy from each other. The society that relative to it's resources devouted more to it's intellectuals was medieval Europe via the Roman Catholic Church. The medieval universities and many of the monastic orders consumed a substantial amount of quite limited resources . Medieval Europe was not technology stagnant -the moldboard plow , while neither the waterwheel or windmill was new the systematic massive use unique , the stirrup , while iron wasn't new production on a scale where rather than being hideously expensive high-tech material for military and occasional luxury display it was the most common metal was unprecedented , the horse collar which allowed plowing the same amount of land in half the time at half the feed cost , and allowed tansportation of goods at twice the speed of the alternatives was a medieval European development . modern science is a straight line development of medieval natural philosophy , The innovation was going from careful observation to meticulous arranged circumstances for meticulous , ultra-close precise observation that allowed replaced of some ratio by precise numbers . Galilean inertia is medieval impetus theory with some ratio replaced by a precise number .
+Kasper Kruse Jensen Look at the differences between the populations of central america at the time, and the far northern east coast. The land in that part of canada wouldn't be able to support large populations. Vikings might have only rarely encountered natives along the coasts and probably slaughter them if they did.
That's what school teachers do. Most of them actually, rather poorly educated, know nothing more than their textbooks contain. Also, most of them are afraid to say "I don't know" in the fear of losing their authority.
@@michaelcrockis7679 Thats very stupid. I had a teacher who said I dont know sometimes to a question. Next lesson he would start with answering it because he would look it up at home.
I once asked my cousin who has spent extended periods of time in Britain if the Welsh hated the English. I told him I asked because I knew a lot of Scots hate the English, and a lot of Irish hate the English, but I didn't know about the Welsh. He replied "Yes; one of the factors that made the English such effective rulers, is they treated everyone the same." It made me fall over laughing.
@@scottcantdance804 😂😂 so true! And it can get daft if you are, say, half English/half Scottish, or have parents from one country but live in another. I've had a few friends who speak with a Scottish accent when at home with their families, but speak with an English accent when out with their English friends! This wasn't because of enmity between the countries, they did it more because their parents liked it, and to fit in. And yeah. As a history loving half Scottish/English person myself I can tell you that any country that's had the English lording it over them hates us with good reason. We were proper evil during the Empire, and we still treat the Scots Irish and Welsh terribly at every opportunity.
@*_Lucky LiLy_* the same devastating effects were visited on the First Nations peoples of Australia. Only by then the colonizers had realised the vulnerability of people previously unexposed to these microbes and set about using this to the advantage of the invaders to "clear" areas of resistance to their infiltration by passing out items like deliberately infected blankets. Their go to favourites were smallpox and measles. Thus was weapons imposed genocide abetted.
Bad in different ways, as far as I'm aware Australia is actually lacking in the "Tank with hooves" department and is more about the "venomous arms race."
America (both continents i mean) has far worse animals coming from an Australian. We just have some deadly snakes + spiders and some cute but half braindead marsupials. They have bears wolves moose big cats and a plethora of deadly snakes and spiders that only have the power to kill 5 men per bite instead of our 6
Amazing video. This doesn't just explain why there were no American plagues, but so much more about why there were so many differences between the Eastern and Western worlds before colonization.
"You can't build a civilization on the foundation of honey alone." I'm gonna take that as a challenge. Who wants to come with me to build Honeyopolis? Honey for everyone!
Just a side note: llamas aren’t the only major domesticated animal in South America. Guinea pigs are very prominent livestock. The timeline as to when they were popularized and where they originated I’m unsure of however.
While they were prominent livestock, I don't think they were domesticated by a big civilization like Inca. The same goes for Alpacas and the Fuegian 'Dog'
Grey, you're my absolute favorite TH-camr. You make seemingly mundane topics exciting, even enthralling to learn about. I eagerly await the next notification bell from your channel!
Syphilis, also known as great pox is no cholera or smallpox, and doesn't count as a plague by these standards. That being said, the first recorded epidemic in Europe started a few years after Colombus little trip, and there is debate about what continent it came from. So maybe there was an americapox, a really nasty one, just not a civilization wiping plague.
There actually is some evidence that it was actually on both continents. They found monks skulls before America trade happened with syphilis holes in their skulls. Also the syphilis in America was much milder. The reason is that syphilis in the new world spread by touch. People touched each other all the time, so syphilis had no trouble staying alive. I'm Europe no one touched each other so to survive syphilis mutated into a more serious version of itself that spread via fluid exchange.
I don't know about the others, but as a non-native English speaker, I personally thank you for making an effort to speak a bit slower that usual in this video. I do manage to understand you in other videos, but not after replaying some parts of the video or pausing here and there to repeat what you said inside my head to comprehend the whole thing. So yeah, thank you.
Aldrich Allen Barcenas Ah right, that helps. But sometimes, the CC or the subtitle distracts me from focusing on the video because I focused way too much on the subtitle. And because I do understand and speak English even though I'm not native, I'm making an effort to not use any kind of aid when watching English stuffs. Hahaha. (On another note, I've never had a hard time understanding another TH-camrs' video, probably because the other videos' content are about lighter stuffs compared to CGP Grey's videos.)
+Aldrich Allen Barcenas Actually, the caption make it worse for me. It distract me. And I can't read them in time anyway. Consider the sheer amount of information Grey put out per second. It sometime obstruct with visual as well. I'm better off concentrate solely on listening. I personally have no problem with most of his video. I can understand him fine in one go. Only the earlier one like UK or Pluto video that is a bit too fast. Perhaps, I'm just adapted to his speed. I can't deny that this is a very good listening execise. lol However I do appreciate his effort for slowing down. It would help most non-native English speakers out there.
Domestication technique has been developed independently multiple times. There has to be another factor. My guess is that there were other easier sources of food or the society in general lacked the ambition. There are hormonal and chemical factors to ambition and it's entirely possible that these play as much a role as anything else. The drive to create, figure out, invent, explore... doesn't appear to be consistent across all cultures.
Yes, there was a lack of domesticated animals but some of that was self-inflicted. I don't know which species went extinct from climate change (ice age to today) or which were extinct due to over-hunting but the Americas did have camels, mammoths and mastodons. Wolves were in abundance but were not widely domesticated to help with livestock management and horses were in the Americas but went extinct.
Not sure what is worse, dying to it or living and knowing that you are responsible for countless deaths. I wonder if there is a guy walking around Wuhan thinking about it.
There is one major exception though: Syphilis. It's the one seriously bad disease that was spread to Europe from the New World. It was no plague though, or at least not anything on par with Smalll Pox. I probably wouldn't have been here writing this if it had been.
Earlier in the video, he prefaced the differences between diseases and plagues and one big difference is transmission methods. If Syphilis can be spread via sneezes then it maybe would count as an exception.
I understand that you want to slow down your talking in order to make your Videos more understandable to non-native speakers, but I'm missing a bit of the good old CGP Tempo, good that I can watch your Video in 1.25 Tempo :) Thank you for all your efforts!
+Moondye7 To be honest, as a non-native speaker I don't think it's the videomaker's duty to make sure non-natives understand the video, unless it's specifically a language-learning video which this is not. :P
But what about Turkeys? Turkeys were plentiful in the new world and they're basically just big chickens! The Europeans immediately domesticated Turkeys and brought them back to Europe when they found them.
@@Scourge728 My point is that he leaves this out of the video. He acts like there is NOTHING in North America to domesticate when in reality there was and it did happen, just not to the same extent as in Europe.
@@thenecromorpher But to take it back to the assertions of the video... Influenza doesn't care that your turkey or duck isn't pulling a cart. The argument being made is that domestic animals spread disease to humans through proximity. The purpose of that proximity isn't considered as a factor.
We appreciate your feedback but the map creator has gone missing, therefore the Earth map won't be patched soon. We'll send you a notification once the update is available. Just keep playing as it is and make the best of it. Thanks!
I actually wondered this since 3rd grade when I was first told about the diseases being much worse than the Europeans. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity
wanted to say the same, although that isn't confirmed, it's still a hypothesis. another note, there were more domesticated animals, but fowls: the turkey and I think the duck. guess they don't spread diseases like mammals or the chicken.
In theory it is quite simple. Don't focus on the life of celebrities that don't know you or care about you. Don't make your life into one boring habit. Educate yourself. And most importantly, ask questions.
This is ANOTHER change I swear - so this version has a mask, the previous one showed stick figure sneezing some spiky viruses... and the original had a depiction of the grim reaper (looking through Wayback archive)
+Anduin Wrynn Come to think of it... disease is something not readily apparent in Civ 5. Having some mechanics based around that would make the game more interesting.
+Alexey Zabrodsky It was odd at the beginning, cause we are so used to his diabolically fast pace. But after some seconds of mental adjustment it was ok.
+Alexey Zabrodsky have a feeling this experimental pace may have a fair bit to do with how creators seem to be getting paid TH-cam Red money (i.e. watch time). Not that I'm complaining, I love this more HI-y pace!
One note is that Rome didn't have these plagues. Partially because they were earlier in history, yes, but also because they had proper public health. Send Romans across and you get plagueless American cities. (This comment brought to you by the "Let's have Rome conquer everything" foundation)
Rome also had DISASTROUS malaria outbreaks. It still relied on immigrants to replace the dying. Remember. Rome “a city of glory built on a river of shit”
They are the very first species we domesticated, dating to before anyone crossed over the Siberia-Alaska bridge. The dogs just followed along. As you said they were specifically in North America, where settlements were small, because dogs don't have much industry built around them. They just support industries.
Some dogs are better than cats for killing rodents. Chihuahuas are one. I've seen good feline mousers get bored and distracted. I got a chihuahua through rehoming. It won't stop the hunt until its certain there's nothing left to be found. Distractions like praise and treats are a nuisance to be ignored. They're also great at raising the alarm night or day. Without becoming the archetypal yappy dog.
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
Bump. Also, John, Last Week tonight tore pennies up!
+vlogbrothers 'You don't have any tasty snacks, but in compensation here's a load of lethal diseases. You'll be grateful a few millennia from now, trust me.'
+CGP Grey Please do listen to him, I think a lot of people would appreciate the effort.
As Jared Diamond explained in his book, the problem the New World had with respect to plant cultivation is that it is not very wide, compared with the Old World.
Plants tend to require a specific climate to thrive. But in the New World, when when great crops like potatoes and corn, which could potentially support large populations, were first cultivated, there were not many places with the same climate where the cultivation of those crops could spread to. That severely limited the potential of agriculture for ancient civilizations in the New World.
+vlogbrothers Hey, it's the owner of VidCon that Brady talked about!
The TH-cam algorithm has a real dark sense of humour.
😔
And yet it works because here you are
No, it's just that it sees more people watching this video and then sends it out to more people. Repeat.
Jonah Nichols figures
Yep
"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.
Based on the internet, I'm pretty sure those germs would kill you if they saw a spider the same reason most people would burn down their house if they saw a spider
Sounds like Logan Paul is the black death
@@PramkLuna if there are spiders inside me, fuck it I'll burn myself alive
My spider sense is tiggling
Bold of you to assume I don't want to burn down my house.
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
Veritasium-Fans here?
Hbomberguy-Fans here?
CGP Grey Fans here?
Practical Engineering Fans here?
And yes, duh, this is an underhanded way to spread Fun and/or Education: Sue me!
Sue me for trying to help my fellow Science-Fans out a bit!!
@@nenmaster5218 Based
I thought syphilis came from the New World? Or at least that is the prevailing theory.
@@8ofwands300 yes. But it's like the only disease that come from the new world that somewhat affect the old world. And syphilis came no where near the destruction that the old world diseases had (small pox, influenza, bubonic plage,...).
@@duycuongnguyen6300 I realize that ...perhaps because it is sexually transmiited. AND I guess there is even some question about this hypothesis based on some British archeological digs of a pre Columbian monastery with well- preserved remains of Dark Age monks that show signs of advanced syphilis.
“You can’t build a civilization on honey alone.”
I guess hexagons aren't the bestagons.
Yet hexagons are not honey, they are made of wax. Hexagons, still the bestagons.
@@noinfo101roblox2 :O
@@noinfo101roblox2 you can't build a civilization on wax alone too
@@User-jj1ng of course you can, if you put the wax in hexagon formations. M
@@User-jj1ng Bees disagree.
i love how he used hexagons even back then
Hexagons are the bestagons!
HEXAGON CULT RISE
Pretty sure it was a civ reference.
This is actually an updated thumbnail.
300th like
"Being the patient zero of a new animal-to-human plague is winning a terrible lottery"
Sheesh, couldn't be more right
Patient zeros of those diseases are like some kind of nega-Dream
@@chebic5095 yeah, just imagine how you must feel when your little trip to a market in some random country exposes the whole world to a massive pandemic.
Yeah imagine eating something almost nobody eats like a bat for example and catching some new sickness
@@igorwojtyna2158 Why does it feel too relatable-
@@igorwojtyna2158 It was from WHCDC lab doing gain of function studies.
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.
Thats why we got beer and wine. People used to drink (quite weak) beer all day, cause even a little bit of alcohol means that there are no germs in your water.
@@535phobos wow, thats interesting
but the drunkness' is worth it right ?
@@jintanarawdsukumaal3000 It was quite dilute.
It did harm people in the long run, but they didn't live as long as nowadays anyway
@@535phobos more that the production of alcohol involves heating the water, which kills the germs. the amount of alcohol in "small" beer wouldnt do anything to germs
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.
My takeaway from that is we should just stick to cattle domestication.
@@alexandertownsend3291 Look up heck cattle. Scary milk suckers...
anyway those are bisons not buffalos
If smallpox is so deadly, I can't imagine how deadly BIGpox is
You mean chickenpox?
The Legend Heard of a joke.
maybe not but you can look it up, known as the Great Pox or Syphilis.
Booooooo
Get off the stage!
"But you can't build a civilization on a foundation of honey alone."
[Citation needed]
Time to crack open that civ launcher and give it a try 🤣
*ahem* minecraft 1.15 *cough*
@@chairwithoutwheels9148 Worst update ever
@@TitaniumSteelGreatest i agree i hated it, but worst update goes to 1.17
@@chairwithoutwheels9148 wh- why??
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.
Is nobody gonna talk about that CGP Grey changed the thumbnail of a 4 year old vid?
I have no idea what the previous thumbnail was or that it changed, and I'm probably not alone in that aspect.
@@peperoni_pepino i remember it was like an old world map.
@@parallax5543 Ah, then this is a pretty large change. Strange. I thought it would be something Covid-ly offensive.
@@peperoni_pepino i think cgp grey is just trying to appeal to newer audiences by changing the thumbnail.
@@parallax5543 I feel like that has to be it. It definitely got me to watch the video again
"nothing but drama, these llamas"
-- CGP Grey (2015)
"Ever try to manage a herd of llamas in the mountains of Peru?!"
yea that's why new world was lesser deavolepd than the old world
Its a bit misleading though. The real issue with llamas is not so much that they are unruly but that they are just less useful. The produce less and do much much less work than old world animals.
Muhajir the Obama lama drama.
Drama Llama is my spirit animal lol
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.
Javelinas (peccaries) are a new world pig like animal the Mayans domesticated
This deserves more attention 👏
Also Guinea pigs! It was a staple for the incans and It's still consumed in peru
So you're telling me the most useful domesticable animal in the Americas prior to contact with Europe was one that proto-Native-Americans brought with them all the way from Africa?
Oh wow very fun fact thanks
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.
Also Muskox were a native species of bovine in Alaska and the Canadian artic but were over hunted in modern times. They've been reintroduced. Point is there were opportunities for domestication. The ancestors of our domesticated animals were just about as large, nimble, and powerful as these native species.
People probably complained about him talking too fast, so now he slows down and people still complain, yep...
TO HELL WITH THOSE PEOPLE!
Complainers will always complain
As a part-deaf Newfoundlander, being told i'm talking to loud/fast is the norm for me
+Madelyn Miller ikr
+Madelyn Miller It's not the same people complaining, you know that right..?
I shivered as I was reminded how many times I would restart a game of Civilization 3 Gold Edition, specifically because my starting location SUCKED.
Damn, haha
If only the native american had that chance xD
@@skipp3252 Well they did in the millions of games where I turned the Aztec empire into the world's most dominant militant country.
SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME
der Skipp they did, since natives didn’t arrive in the America’s until they crossed the ice land bridge in Russia, the bridge that is now underwater.
"Why is there no Americapox?"
"Germs jumping from animals to humans is extraordinarily rare"
Thanks, youtube algorithm. I feel better already.
We got lucky.
But that is most likely how we got Covid 19. Theory is that wildlife habitats are being destroyed in China to feed the ever growing number of slaves to feed the Chinese economic miracle. Those wild animals are forced onto rural arable land where they defecate and urinate their germs for us to catch. Somebody just has to not wash their hands before eating and bingo it's in a human being who will take it to a town then a city a factory and then abroad.
extraordinarily rare means that, given enough animals and enough people and enough time it WILL happen
@wantafanta01 Every group of scientists that have looked at it agree that it's a naturally evolved virus. Lab-created viruses look incredibly different.
Also bioweapon viruses typically wouldn't be designed to kill less than 1% of the population...
"Why is there no Americapox?"
Syphilis: "Am I a joke to you???"
"You can't build a civilization on a foundation of honey alone"
Ok then how did the bees do it?
They used the hexagon
@@theeclipsemaster the bestagon
@@featgoose972 YES!
They didn't.
@@mrosskne do you hear that sound? That's the joke going over your head
This really helps explain why European colonization had such different outcomes for the Americas and Africa.
Europeans brought plagues to which the indigenous people had no immunity. These plagues crippled the Aztec and Inca Empires, caused to the collapse of cultures from the Mississippi to the Amazon and killed so many that it left a vacuum which Europeans (and their imported African slaves) quickly filled. As a result, indigenous Americans are in the minority in most countries in the Americas (with the exception of Peru, Bolivia and Guatamala) and have typically lacked political power and control since colonization. Almost without exception, nations in the western hemisphere are controlled by descendants of the colonizers.
In contrast, Africans had the similar exposure to plagues as Europeans, so there was no 'Great Dying' that wiped out 90% of Africa's population. In fact, the situation was somewhat reversed. Africa featured tropical diseases like Malaria, Dengue and Yellow Fever, to which Africans had some adaptation but not so for Europeans. Often entire European colonies would be nearly wiped out by these tropical diseases. As a result, Europeans didn't penetrate into most of Africa (except for Algeria and South Africa) until the advent of more modern medicine in the 19th century, and did not replace the native population like they had done in the Americas. Thus, African countries today all have majority indigenous populations, and are controlled by indigenous people.
I wouldnt say controlled...
Very interesting to read.
I also read that the Europeans needed labor in the Americas and black Africans where perfect for that, because they were more less resistant to the diseases of the tropical climates and have a relatively strong physique.
VivaHollandia32 Actually, the strong physique is the result of slavery. Plus They were kidnapped for cheep labor. Slaves died of many illnesses and sicknesses while on the ships. They weren't prized for a strong immune system.
@@soulight6091
yes, but they were made slaves because literally all other options were either
1. too far away(asia)
2.christians(europe)
3.literally died all the time from european disease or knew how to run away(native americans)
@Queen_PLATINE!
I mean,the Brits had a pretty easy time slapping india around, since the princely states were easily used against each other.
As a microbiologist I really appreciated your simple and accurate explanation of this subject. Well done sir!
@Warhawk - this was all written twenty years ago in the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. The explanation was not created by the author of this video.
@@billb7636 At least Grey made this video, and Warhawk76 appreciates Grey for making this video. There's nothing wrong with such kind of appreciation.
@@billb7636 That book is not well respected. Loads of errors, poor evidence, unsupported conclusions, etc.
@@rusticcloud3325 - I never said there was anything wrong with appreciating the VIDEO. The problem is, Warhawk seemed to think that Grey is the one who came up with the explanation, so I was pointing out that he did not.
@@linusp9316 - It may be that YOU do not respect the book. Many other people do. From GoodReads: "It's well written and informative, and worth reading." And many other comments are similar.
3:47 “playground for plagues” you really missed an opportunity to say “plagueground”
edit: puns are the best humor and it would not mess up the vibe
bruh if grey used a pun in a video his vibe would be over
Miles Kuma yo clearly haven’t seen his recent videos
@@mileskuma4448
8:33
you are wrong
If only he had known about Plague Inc.
maybe it's because this kind of humor is sub par?
"Nothing but drama, these llamas."
Sounds like the opposite of their Old World cousins, the camels. When you're a camel, you can put up with anything. :P
Yep, know an Arab dude who's family raises camels, he told me the same thing camels can be temperamental but they can also put up with a lot before getting nasty.
weirdly... Camels' ancestors came from the new world ... llamas are camelids also.
@@rainmanslim4611 Veritasium-Fans here?
Hbomberguy-Fans here?
CGP Grey Fans here?
Practical Engineering Fans here?
And yes, duh, this is an underhanded way to spread Fun and/or Education: Sue me!
Sue me for trying to help my fellow Science-Fans out a bit!!
@@nenmaster5218
Best I can do is sam o nella
@@baranjan6969 ??
sheep 1: "You're a conspiracy theorist."
sheep 2: "No. The dog and the man are working together!"
Gold.
@Il Portico Dipinto A Shepard might use a dog to herd the sheep into a location.
"Wake up! You're all just sheep!"
"Well....yeah."
"Oh. Right."
Best thing I ever let was the wolf to get that big ole bite... sheep ain't all that bad... check out what's in the wolf...
The dog and the sheep never tried to hide it though. Conspiracy theories are just a search for meanings in a meaningless world. There are down to earth conspiracy theories that makes sense.
Like the U.S trying to keep democracy down in the middle East because they know the people hates them and would never trade oil with them if they were put in charge. If you can justify a theory with a profit motive it's strong.
"The game of civilization has nothing to do with the players and everything to do with the map. "
Obviously it has to do with both but this domesticatable animal point beautifully explains so much of the disparities between civilizations.
Imagine if america progressed first
Benja Pizarro That’s very unlikely but if it did then the mainly European inspired countries of North and South America would be replaced with mainly native ones
@@goldeviolets4314 yeah, imagine a native culture but whit years of economical progress, damn, how would it be
Native american didn't even invented wheels. And most of the "useful" animals took the old world hundred of years to domesticate. Dog came from wolf and wolf is one of the most dangerous animal in wild but the old world still made it. The theory just doesn't hold it very well
Get it. Plague-ground.
+TheJman0205 That's because it got reporter and isn't showing up
+TheJman0205 Because you didn't delete it and it's not showing up.
+TheJman0205 Oh, sorry I thought you meant reply. Then it's probably because nobody has replied to or liked your post.
soundlyawake [Nicola Foti] hanahahahahahah
soundlyawake [Nicola Foti] xD
I have frequently wondered why the plagues from Western exploration of the new world only went one way. Thanks for explaining that one.
"...an unintentional playground for plagues."
A plagueground?
plagueround ftfy
You savvy human being
fhck
God dammit barb!
Well ok SANS
Hex tiles, strategic resources...
civilization, baby
CIV V ftw
Who else hyped for Civ VI this November?
...settlers of catan
WOOHOO!!!
I remember wiping out a whole continent by lining up a huge line of infantry and tanks.
Who is going on a cgp marathon after the new video came out?
EstherTheNicey I do that every weekend
EstherTheNicey same
nailed it
EstherTheNicey I just saw my first video today, and have been watching all day! Lol
I can`t stop re-watching his videos
Humans after dog domestication: “Hey bud, could you guard my cheeseburger factory?”
The problem with this theory is that the paleo Indians had dogs with them when they crossed the Bering Strait, and when the Europeans contacted them. There are still a couple of these breeds around, even if the European genes have taken over, largely.
Anyway, if there was any herding instinct left in the Ameridogs, it could have been used and intensified, just like in Eurasia/Africa (except for the problem of fewer people in the Americas than in Eurasia, so fewer chances for that stubborn set of herders to train them right).
@@Egilhelmson Veritasium-Fans here?
Hbomberguy-Fans here?
CGP Grey Fans here?
Practical Engineering Fans here?
And yes, duh, this is an underhanded way to spread Fun and/or Education: Sue me!
Sue me for trying to help my fellow Science-Fans out a bit!!
@@Egilhelmson the dogs from america and Europeans dogs are the same dogs, just they were separated for a long time
So the new world was basically the worst spawn point conceivable.
Yup
But it was not a spawn point. It was just a bad decision to fast expand too early in the game.
well, look at Antarctica, Alaska, deserts, ... so the new world is not a bad spawn point for the early game villagers. It is just a bad spawn for the civilization in the long run.
Not really, I mean there was lots of fertile land, in contrast with Africa, which as much fewer rivers to use.
It's not a bad spawn it has a diverse set of biomes and plentiful resources, it just has the disadvantage of not having disease insurance.
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.
I love it when I watch an old video from a TH-camr I've just discovered and find a comment from another TH-camr I love
Boyinaband
Hey! It’s you!
Still hate school?
omff daveee:3
WADDYA DOI; HERE
9:30
Which there is more people, so you need more houses for more people, and there's business, laws, money.....
SOCIETYYY~
Coming soon to a Dank river valley near you.
YES I KNOW THIS REFERENCE
Bill Returned, my friend
Guess who controls all the islands?
I understood that reference
Great video, though I feel it leaves out one important factor. Jared Diamonds in his book, 'Guns, Germs and Steel' discusses these questions in depth and also points at the orientation of the continents. In Eurasia, with its East-West orientation, most regions will have a neighbouring region on the same longitude. This means these regions probably have a similar climate, which facilitates the exchange of crops and domesticated animals as these can thrive in both regions. The America’s, on the other hand, have a North-South orientation and on top of this are cut through by various mountain ranges, deserts and jungles. This means that communities in neighbouring regions live on different longitudes and thus in a different climate. This makes for a much slower spread of domesticated plants and animals as direct neighbours have no reason to adopt these from eachother. The societies that do have a similar enough climate to potentially benefit from such an exchange are too far away, being on opposite sides of the equator, to learn about each other's livestock and plants.
In world history we watched the show they made on the book, great to see it mentioned and some of the points it covered that this didn't
He read guns germs and steel to make this video, judging by conversations on his podcast. I don't totally agree with the theories of the book but I think grey has reduced it well.
Guns, Germs, and Steel is pretty outdated by modern Anthropological standards. Some of Diamond's theories are no longer considered correct by popular consensus.
That seems like a pretty weak theory
@Are You Going To Do The 'Ora Ora' Thing?
ora ora what
"Nothing but drama, these llamas."
Horrible joke. 50 points from Ravenclaw.
Prince Thunderflare Snape……
*to
200 points to Slytherin for the explanation
Yeah ravenclaw is the only house smart enough to understand that
DEATH TO THE STORMCLOAKS!!
TH-cam channel: mentions the word "pandemic"
Comment section: OMG HE PREDICTED CORONA
Everyone always thinks all of human history was leading up to their specific point in time, which is the most important to have ever been and will ever be.
@@AlwaysSomeone That's one of the wisest comments I've ever read on YT. I have to note that somewhere.
Well so did Bill Gates in a Vox interview but nobody really believed him
I get what you mean but in all honesty a LOT of people did predict coronavirus. We'll have another one again before a crazy amount of time passes.
Lmao he explicitly says in the video that plagues are less common these days due to modern sanitation
For everyone wondering about the thumbnail
Yes it's changed
The original one is the grim reaper image you can see at 2:41
Then it got updated to the image of the old time world map used throughout the video
Bruh your time stamp on mobile is cursed I tried to hit read more and it kept jumping to that time stamp
@@jordank6961 same
Any idea how you can find old illustrations like that and the ones from old cities?
@@jordank6961 this type of bug keeps happening on mobile when a hyperlink is cut off by "read more"
I love this video, it had such a high rewatchability score. Grey just keeps asking the right questions and it leads to such an in-depth answer to a complex question
I want Civilization 6 made by CGP Grey!
pleasepleasePLEEAASE
Mimzy Spire My life needs it.
+Yue Tian Siah
Agreed
+Yue Tian Siah YES omg please! Grey if you are reading this i am begging you!
+Yue Tian Siah Yeah, he's got the money to do that just laying around. Purchase that IP grey.
" Its just you, couple buddies, and a few stone based tools "
Sounds like school
Lenny Kenny 100% agree.
This is what everyone had for domestication, everywhere. And they did it. The Siberian-Americans (also called "native americans") just did not try hard enough. The europeans/asians did not domesticate cows, those are the result of domestication. They domesticated aurochs, and bred them to be cows. Try looking it up, there is a reason the guy shows a picture of the cow in his video and not a picture of an auroch.
@@baltazarvok2564 The number of domesticated animals corresponds to the number of animal species. Eurasia-Africa is the biggest land mass on Earth, and has the number of animal species corresponds to this size. Jared Diamond pointed this out. It's not about not trying. It's that only a very small number of species have the right combination of being social, hierarchical, and not too aggressive so they can be fully domesticated. And as maths suggests, most of these animal species live in the biggest land mass.
@@eljanrimsa5843 Yes Euro-asia had an advantage, but it was not an owerwhelming advantage (Americas had potatoes and maize - advantage on the crops side to compensate), bison could be tamed, some deer species could be tamed a lot of food animals and llamas actually were tamed (and llamas are excelent animals for domestic use replacing both sheep and goats). As for tamability, even African elephants were tamed (much later, but they were). The first tamed horses could not carry a rider, that came from an extensive breeding effort. What Jared Diamond is doing in his book is throwing smokescreen to hide the most significant factor that decides the level of civilization. Make a guess on what that is.
@@baltazarvok2564 You confuse taming and domestication. Llamas, alpacas, guinea pigs, turkeys were the animals available for domestication in the Americas. Bisons have historically not been domesticated, neither American bisons nor Eurasian bisons. You need 20-feet high steel fences to hold them in. Elephants have never been domesticated. The domestication of deer has been attempted many times, but without success. Of the many species of ungulates in Eurasia and Africa, many have been tamed, and people have been trying to breed them, but only very few have been domesticated. The Americas started out with less species of ungulates, and only the 2 relatively small camelids could be domesticated.
"Mommy, why are we the last ones of our kind?"
"Because there where no cows in America."
@@numatichades0175 Yeah bruv, the white man doesn't want us to believe that the natives (before the whites came) had space travel tech and huge cities spanning the entire country!
@@chase522 _space travel tech?_
@@a_lucientes Yeah, the white man can't use their superior technology so they hid it away!
In a serious note this is as believable as the flat earth 'theory'. It's honestly amazing what people will believe in no matter how mindnumbingly stupid.
Chase What? Then whats the real answer, in that case? I thought this theory has been agreed upon for years.
@@nessa6135 To imply the natives at the time had running water and plumbing is completely stupid. Did they have toilets, sinks, or even basic water wells? Well no, because they were too busy killing each other and performing sacrifices. It's the same reason why they didn't have spanning farms or any basic farming techniques and tools... they were nomadic, they had to be. Otherwise they would die staying in one place for too long.
This had literally never occurred to me before, and you answered it so thoroughly and succinctly. Thank you!
Be! 🤪
An unintentional playground for plagues
A Plague-ground if you will.
If someone hasn't already made this joke in the 13k comments I will be very disappointed.
I second this motion! 😀
A+
Laugh while you can
I’m getting real sick of these puns
So what's the opinion of the ebola virus
Until the ceramic water filter was invented in London in the 1850’s,The Thames River killed the crap out of people
I think it was the crap in the Thames River that killed the crap out of people.
Gabriel Hamilton:Of course😂It was the primary drinking water source for centuries...its a wonder the city had a population survive at all🤦♂️
Much more likely Bazalgette's sanitary sewers. The filter would remove particulate material but still leave most disease causing microbes.
*BA DUM TING!*
Was that a cholera joke? Well done.
Man this video really hits different in 2020, huh... "Cities are playgrounds for plagues" "Sneezing spreads faster than shaking hands which spreads faster than intimacy" and m a n...
@Benjamin La Tour What is wrong with the word 'intimacy'? It's defined as 'a closeness or familiarity' or 'a private atmosphere'. It's only vulgar if you make it vulgar.
@@Kaiheart I think it was intended as a joke, exaggerating the vulgarity of the word "intimacy" (as opposed to sex)
Comparing Coronavirus to the things mentioned in the video (cholera, black plague, typhus) is ridiculous and hysterical.
@@fresagrus4490 why? He didn't compare the severity or symptoms, just compared principles of transmission mentioned in the video to the transmission of covid
bruh people really actin like this hits different in 2020
like as if these things didnt transmit diseases as easily as it is transmitting corona
"The game of civilisation is decided not by the civilisations but by the map they play on" -Grey
This is such a salient quote
And wrong.
As Balkans, North Africa, Middle east and Asia can attest.
That's an experiement run 5 times. It failed on all but western Europe.
My take is Philosophy (and taking it seriously) was the special sauce of the west. Phil puts thinking prior to the ego (or the thinkers motivation), providing the birthseed for law, politics, economy, sicence etc.
And still, having it isn't a guarantee to success, as most of those regions had access to philosophy's style, but none other than the west took it to heart.
@@Untilitpases Yes , the medieval scholastics developed the modern style of scholarship , hyper-abstract meticulous close reasoning ,citing sources ,etc and made - notably Thoma Aquino -very persuade arguments that not only did every area of have substantial autonomy each other but also that every field of scholarship had substantial autonomy from each other. The society that relative to it's resources devouted more to it's intellectuals was medieval Europe via the Roman Catholic Church. The medieval universities and many of the monastic orders consumed a substantial amount of quite limited resources . Medieval Europe was not technology stagnant -the moldboard plow , while neither the waterwheel or windmill was new the systematic massive use unique , the stirrup , while iron wasn't new production on a scale where rather than being hideously expensive high-tech material for military and occasional luxury display it was the most common metal was unprecedented , the horse collar which allowed plowing the same amount of land in half the time at half the feed cost , and allowed tansportation of goods at twice the speed of the alternatives was a medieval European development . modern science is a straight line development of medieval natural philosophy , The innovation was going from careful observation to meticulous arranged circumstances for meticulous , ultra-close precise observation that allowed replaced of some ratio by precise numbers . Galilean inertia is medieval impetus theory with some ratio replaced by a precise number .
Great insights. No americapox but smoking might´ve been a close second...
+CGP Grey Epitome of "getting the last laugh"
+Nick Verhoeven Absolutely not. As bad as smoking is for you, it's not killing 90% of popilaiton bad.
+Kasper Kruse Jensen Earlier in history and the plagues hadn't been created yet.
+Kasper Kruse Jensen vikings stayed for a very short time in an isolated area in Newfoundland so that's why it never spread.
+Kasper Kruse Jensen Look at the differences between the populations of central america at the time, and the far northern east coast. The land in that part of canada wouldn't be able to support large populations. Vikings might have only rarely encountered natives along the coasts and probably slaughter them if they did.
I asked my teacher this question in middle school and she just gave me a nonsensical answer and then yelled at me.
That's what school teachers do. Most of them actually, rather poorly educated, know nothing more than their textbooks contain. Also, most of them are afraid to say "I don't know" in the fear of losing their authority.
@@michaelcrockis7679 Which, ironcially enough, makes them really untrustworthy and comparably useless, thus also decreasing their authority.
@@michaelcrockis7679 Thats very stupid. I had a teacher who said I dont know sometimes to a question. Next lesson he would start with answering it because he would look it up at home.
@O. M. You may have misunderstood me. I meant that this behavior you just explained is stupid. I completely agree with you.
Michael Crockis not just school teachers. Many of the professors do the same thing.
You can't build a civilization on honey alone, no but you can with tea.
*Rule Britannia intensifies*
I once asked my cousin who has spent extended periods of time in Britain if the Welsh hated the English.
I told him I asked because I knew a lot of Scots hate the English, and a lot of Irish hate the English, but I didn't know about the Welsh.
He replied "Yes; one of the factors that made the English such effective rulers, is they treated everyone the same."
It made me fall over laughing.
@@scottcantdance804 😂😂 so true! And it can get daft if you are, say, half English/half Scottish, or have parents from one country but live in another. I've had a few friends who speak with a Scottish accent when at home with their families, but speak with an English accent when out with their English friends! This wasn't because of enmity between the countries, they did it more because their parents liked it, and to fit in.
And yeah. As a history loving half Scottish/English person myself I can tell you that any country that's had the English lording it over them hates us with good reason. We were proper evil during the Empire, and we still treat the Scots Irish and Welsh terribly at every opportunity.
@@scottcantdance804 Hate everyone the same
What if the honey and tea civilizations did a fox-Disney merger... They would outlaw plain water.
Or with worms
*RUNS CHINESE ANTHEM*
This video has changed thumbnails more than any other video on TH-cam
That's a Bold Claim.
at the last part the plague covered the entire old world except Madagascar and as someone whos played pandemic 2 I applaud your accuracy
shame, should have left Iceland out too...
@@pdes_ Greenland as well
Sorry kid, video games aren’t real life. But, you are right.
@*_Lucky LiLy_* the same devastating effects were visited on the First Nations peoples of Australia. Only by then the colonizers had realised the vulnerability of people previously unexposed to these microbes and set about using this to the advantage of the invaders to "clear" areas of resistance to their infiltration by passing out items like deliberately infected blankets. Their go to favourites were smallpox and measles. Thus was weapons imposed genocide abetted.
Almandine Fox You...understood that it was intentonnaly simplified, right ?
"Nothing but dramas these llamas"
Still laughing at that one.
Also: A llama is no cow.
Are llamas assholes?
>America had bad animals
: Laughs in Australian
Don’t complain now, get your herd of kookaburras and have them pull a plow.
Bad in different ways, as far as I'm aware Australia is actually lacking in the "Tank with hooves" department and is more about the "venomous arms race."
tbh the aboriginal people basically domesticated the wildlife in a broad sense of the term
America (both continents i mean) has far worse animals coming from an Australian. We just have some deadly snakes + spiders and some cute but half braindead marsupials. They have bears wolves moose big cats and a plethora of deadly snakes and spiders that only have the power to kill 5 men per bite instead of our 6
@@kingt0295 man i love that i live in canada where we don't have many deadly snakes/spiders, but i guess we trade that for a lot of powerful beasts
Amazing video. This doesn't just explain why there were no American plagues, but so much more about why there were so many differences between the Eastern and Western worlds before colonization.
You changed the thumbnail after 4 years, perfectionism at it's highest
@Roshaun Roache wdYm
?
@Roshaun Roache is this "What Do You Mean"??
He added a mask
4 years ago the picture was the manifest destiny.
"You can't build a civilization on the foundation of honey alone."
I'm gonna take that as a challenge. Who wants to come with me to build Honeyopolis? Honey for everyone!
Spenfen honeypolis hey that's pretty good!
Can we ride battle bears?
owbu yes
I go
Funny thing is, if this Honeyopolis plan succeeds it might just save the entire human race
Just a side note: llamas aren’t the only major domesticated animal in South America. Guinea pigs are very prominent livestock. The timeline as to when they were popularized and where they originated I’m unsure of however.
While they were prominent livestock, I don't think they were domesticated by a big civilization like Inca. The same goes for Alpacas and the Fuegian 'Dog'
@@gundorf2063 They were domesticated by the Inca.
Guinea pigs, interesting. Now I know where my floofy chub-sub is from,
Also aurochs were not that easy animals.
But how useful were guinea pigs? Llamas were probably the only domesticated animal that provided considerable use.
Grey, you're my absolute favorite TH-camr. You make seemingly mundane topics exciting, even enthralling to learn about. I eagerly await the next notification bell from your channel!
They could have domesticated the Chupacubra and baby sasquatches.
Don't forget the New Jersey Devil!
*midwest intensifies*
_mothman_
Or... maybe a turkey?
@@Noneofyourbusiness2000 turkeys don't exist dummy
I guess you could say that back then London was pretty...shitty.
Holy London
Cole get out
disliked
London's fine now
Apart from all the machete and acid attacks, it's great.
Syphilis, also known as great pox is no cholera or smallpox, and doesn't count as a plague by these standards.
That being said, the first recorded epidemic in Europe started a few years after Colombus little trip, and there is debate about what continent it came from.
So maybe there was an americapox, a really nasty one, just not a civilization wiping plague.
I like to rewatch this video a lot. Helps put a lot of things in perspective.
You could have mentioned syphilis, which probably went west-to-east.
Could have but it doesn't really qualify as a "plague"
There actually is some evidence that it was actually on both continents. They found monks skulls before America trade happened with syphilis holes in their skulls. Also the syphilis in America was much milder. The reason is that syphilis in the new world spread by touch. People touched each other all the time, so syphilis had no trouble staying alive. I'm Europe no one touched each other so to survive syphilis mutated into a more serious version of itself that spread via fluid exchange.
Lindy!
The Native American has been severed from his family, his culture, and his history; condemned to live on as a lost soul
@@hollyplyler9840 Yes, which is why it is an interesting case. Did the disease evolve more than once? Is it evidence of older contact?
I don't know about the others, but as a non-native English speaker, I personally thank you for making an effort to speak a bit slower that usual in this video. I do manage to understand you in other videos, but not after replaying some parts of the video or pausing here and there to repeat what you said inside my head to comprehend the whole thing. So yeah, thank you.
+nakaharaindria There's close captioning available if its hard to follow.
Aldrich Allen Barcenas Ah right, that helps. But sometimes, the CC or the subtitle distracts me from focusing on the video because I focused way too much on the subtitle. And because I do understand and speak English even though I'm not native, I'm making an effort to not use any kind of aid when watching English stuffs. Hahaha. (On another note, I've never had a hard time understanding another TH-camrs' video, probably because the other videos' content are about lighter stuffs compared to CGP Grey's videos.)
+nakaharaindria I am a native Finnish speaker but I can understand everything he is saying even at 2x speed.
+Alxndr J. Good for you, then. That you have a magnificent understanding of English language. Congrats.
+Aldrich Allen Barcenas Actually, the caption make it worse for me. It distract me. And I can't read them in time anyway. Consider the sheer amount of information Grey put out per second. It sometime obstruct with visual as well. I'm better off concentrate solely on listening.
I personally have no problem with most of his video. I can understand him fine in one go. Only the earlier one like UK or Pluto video that is a bit too fast. Perhaps, I'm just adapted to his speed. I can't deny that this is a very good listening execise. lol
However I do appreciate his effort for slowing down. It would help most non-native English speakers out there.
You can't build a civilization off honey??? Why not? The bees did it!
Human civilization is a bit more complicated than bee civilization
@@michaelwier1222
More problematic and much less efficient.
Andrew Fishburn…..So very true.
@@michaelwier1222 you've never seen the Bee movie then.
The Emperor...No I haven't
Fun fact: what the US commonly calls 'buffalo' is properly a bison not a true buffalo. They are different genus, though closely related.
Idea for a Novel: Time traveler goes back in time, domesticates Buffalo. Distributes domestication technique, boom! PLAGUE VS PLAGUE
SirVyre Buffalo Pox ftw!
Yes, just yes
Then write it
Domestication technique has been developed independently multiple times.
There has to be another factor. My guess is that there were other easier sources of food or the society in general lacked the ambition. There are hormonal and chemical factors to ambition and it's entirely possible that these play as much a role as anything else.
The drive to create, figure out, invent, explore... doesn't appear to be consistent across all cultures.
eschelar How do you explain the existence of the Aztec and Inca empires?
I can domesticate a buffalo, just hold my beer
+Riley Johnson You have no chance I heard they have wings.
+Riley Johnson RIP
+Riley Johnson I believe you mean an American Buffalo, aka Bison. Normal buffalo come from Africa.
+Brett Tady and Asia
+Riley Johnson I can domesticate a beer, just hold my buffalo.
all hail the dreaded lamapox! biding its time it'll strike any day now!!
I knew it! I knew EA would be behind the next big plague!
"llama pox"
+Pokemario Fan
SHIFT+CTRL+C
EnableLlamas!!!
And here I was thinking it did nothing!
+PitchBlackFox como se llama?
+PendulumFTW I am sorry to tell you this but lama, is llama.
Yes, there was a lack of domesticated animals but some of that was self-inflicted. I don't know which species went extinct from climate change (ice age to today) or which were extinct due to over-hunting but the Americas did have camels, mammoths and mastodons. Wolves were in abundance but were not widely domesticated to help with livestock management and horses were in the Americas but went extinct.
"Being the patient zero of a new animal-to-human plague is winning a terrible lottery "
Hey at least i'm winning!
well... i came here to llook after the coronavirus plague, i think i found a glad zero patient here
*ahem* seems like somebody won it now and for a weird reason we aren't happy about it😂
Not sure what is worse, dying to it or living and knowing that you are responsible for countless deaths. I wonder if there is a guy walking around Wuhan thinking about it.
There is one major exception though: Syphilis. It's the one seriously bad disease that was spread to Europe from the New World. It was no plague though, or at least not anything on par with Smalll Pox. I probably wouldn't have been here writing this if it had been.
The recent find of a 9th century syphilitic in an English monastery graveyard disproves that.
@@honourhorne-jaruk8252 yes
Earlier in the video, he prefaced the differences between diseases and plagues and one big difference is transmission methods. If Syphilis can be spread via sneezes then it maybe would count as an exception.
Syphilis has been infecting humans for at least 10,000 years.
@@metallicarchaea1820 It's an STD ao that's why it isn't a plague.
On a side note, that honeycomb looks great-
Source?
@@TotallyRealAIWoman 9:07
@@matthewmcclain1316 I don't remember replying to this and now I'm confused why I asked for a source
@@TotallyRealAIWoman lol. I figured you were replying to a comment that got deleted... Just thought it was funny tho
@@matthewmcclain1316 thanks for a source tho that's a damn good honeycomb
I love how Grey basically does Guns, Germs, and Steel in like three videos for free
I understand that you want to slow down your talking in order to make your Videos more understandable to non-native speakers, but I'm missing a bit of the good old CGP Tempo, good that I can watch your Video in 1.25 Tempo :) Thank you for all your efforts!
+Moondye7 I think it's also that this is a much more serious and dark topic to talk about, so he wants to sound serious.
It's all about the ambiance.
+Moondye7 My thoughts exactly! I get the slow version, but I love fast talking CGPGrey a lot more!
+Moondye7 To the contrary, I found the slower pace to be beneficial.
+Moondye7 To be honest, as a non-native speaker I don't think it's the videomaker's duty to make sure non-natives understand the video, unless it's specifically a language-learning video which this is not. :P
“You can’t build a civilisation on honey alone.”
The Bees from The Bee Movie: 👁👄👁
Your profile pic is perfect
"It is what it is."
Uhm, FICTIO- oh, wait. I can't do this, or else I'll be wooshed.
Bees in real life....
@@deleetiusproductions3497 /r woosh
"But you can't build a civilization on honey alone" hold my beer
Surely you mean hold my mead?
Not just honey, honeycomb and mead, but also wax which gives at least the potential for candles and some form of preservation.
Honey bees would like to disagree with CGP Grey.
We can make a religion out of this!
Surely you mean "bear"?
Probably my favorite video on TH-cam, masterfully executed, as always.
When you talked about Llamas all I could think about was Carl the Llama wiping out 90% of the Americas population single-handedly... Carl...
+GuruJudge21 Caaaaaaaarl... That killlllllls people. :(
That was the opposite of my intention.
+GuruJudge21 Yeah, the blood vortex in Paris was pretty impressive.
+GuruJudge21 Did he do it single-handedly because he ate the other hand?
Carl what did you do?
But what about Turkeys? Turkeys were plentiful in the new world and they're basically just big chickens! The Europeans immediately domesticated Turkeys and brought them back to Europe when they found them.
So did the Native Americans, they also domesticated ducks
@@Scourge728 My point is that he leaves this out of the video. He acts like there is NOTHING in North America to domesticate when in reality there was and it did happen, just not to the same extent as in Europe.
Fair enough
@@program4215 Birds make for poor beasts of burden.
@@thenecromorpher But to take it back to the assertions of the video... Influenza doesn't care that your turkey or duck isn't pulling a cart. The argument being made is that domestic animals spread disease to humans through proximity. The purpose of that proximity isn't considered as a factor.
Map is not balanced, worst workshop map to date, waiting for future balance patch.
what are you talking abou- OOOOOH
To op pls nerf
We appreciate your feedback but the map creator has gone missing, therefore the Earth map won't be patched soon. We'll send you a notification once the update is available. Just keep playing as it is and make the best of it. Thanks!
It just works
Yeah right,good thing the map rotation will happen again in a few million years
"The game of civilization has nothing to do with the players and everything to do with the map." 👏 well said
Also nonsense
I actually wondered this since 3rd grade when I was first told about the diseases being much worse than the Europeans. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity
There was one Americapox: Syphillis. Didn't kill as quickly but generated centuries of pain.
wanted to say the same, although that isn't confirmed, it's still a hypothesis. another note, there were more domesticated animals, but fowls: the turkey and I think the duck. guess they don't spread diseases like mammals or the chicken.
The video points out that plagues spread quickly and are highly contagious. Syphilis doesn't get airborne like the flu.
Now it's the turn of Lyme-Borelliosis absolutely America-pox and the first cousin of syphilis.
@@3tou6bi88 How come you have never heard of bird 'flu?
@@bloggsie45 which came from chickens, originally. thanks for confirming my point, despite ignorance.
c.g.p grey must be an alien who has lived through many centuries studying humans.
Abhinandan B nah, he's just not an average joe
That's basically what you become when you read books
In theory it is quite simple.
Don't focus on the life of celebrities that don't know you or care about you.
Don't make your life into one boring habit.
Educate yourself.
And most importantly, ask questions.
G.G. PERFECT
mollistuff I'm an alien then.
Such brilliant, magnificent, erudite, and intelligent oversimplification! Positively breathtaking!
The game of civilization has nothing to do with the players and everything to do with the map.
Ayyyyyyyy
FALSE
@@somedude3448 woke
10:10 "The Game of Civilization has nothing to do with the players, and everything to do with the map" Wow
So THAT's why I always get rated Dan Quayle!
just one of the reasons I love maps.
Americapox: The Missing Plague V2: A new thumbnail
I feel like the old one really set the tone
This is ANOTHER change I swear -
so this version has a mask, the previous one showed stick figure sneezing some spiky viruses...
and the original had a depiction of the grim reaper
(looking through Wayback archive)
@@iamthinking2252_ Yeah, I don't understand all the thumbnail changes.
I believe he is trying to uniform the thumbnail design more
Had a weird dream a while back that Cholera had a B-Strain that began surviving Water treatment and spreading quickly, killing fast. Weird as hell.
Was Earthworm Jim Jude Law in the dream?
I miss the fast talking :(
+Rogers Klein I think it really set the mood for this video.
+Indoor Kite Yeah, it's grown on me, I like the voice for the subject matter of this video
+putbye1 see my above statement about realising it was a good tone for the video
+Rogers Klein 1.25x speed mate
I take it you like civ 5...
+Anduin Wrynn Imagine a Civ 5 MP game with Grey and Brady.
Harry Strong A lot of umming and ahhing.
+Harry Strong I imagin brady would have no idea what the hell is going on
+Anduin Wrynn Come to think of it... disease is something not readily apparent in Civ 5. Having some mechanics based around that would make the game more interesting.
+SchiferlED
I wonder if some of those grand strategy games like uE4 have diseases.
Never really got into them because they are..too grand?
Glad to see someone read Guns, Germs and Steel
+Eoin Meenaghan Right? I'm surprised he didn't list that book at the end for those who want a deeper understanding.
+TheStateOfEarth He DID do that though...Like the last 30-45 seconds are him talking about Guns, germs and steel.
+TheStateOfEarth I would go so far as to say he should have cited that book in this video.
+geringasG He cited it at the end.
+geringasG He spent the last 30 seconds or so giving credit to Diamond, and telling the viewers to go read Guns, Germs and Steel.
These little mini documentaries are incredible for short meal breaks at work.
At first I was thinking my browser plays video in slow-motion, but I guess this is a new experimental pace of Grey.
+Alexey Zabrodsky Feels quite unusual indeed!
+Alexey Zabrodsky
Also the music. Creeps me out.
+Alexey Zabrodsky It was odd at the beginning, cause we are so used to his diabolically fast pace. But after some seconds of mental adjustment it was ok.
+Alexey Zabrodsky have a feeling this experimental pace may have a fair bit to do with how creators seem to be getting paid TH-cam Red money (i.e. watch time). Not that I'm complaining, I love this more HI-y pace!
I listen to my podcasts at 130% speed, so I'm used to hearing Grey's voice much faster than this.
One note is that Rome didn't have these plagues. Partially because they were earlier in history, yes, but also because they had proper public health. Send Romans across and you get plagueless American cities. (This comment brought to you by the "Let's have Rome conquer everything" foundation)
Just lead poisoning from their pipes :D
Rome also had DISASTROUS malaria outbreaks. It still relied on immigrants to replace the dying. Remember. Rome “a city of glory built on a river of shit”
This comment was made by Rome gang
And yet it was the Papal Bulls - moral filth issued from Rome - that sanctioned the exploration that delivered the diseases and destruction.
@@susmith6380 It was also Papal Bulls that called for equal treatment of native-americans.
Dogs were in the new world North America specifically. They were domesticated but just dogs isn’t good enough.
They are the very first species we domesticated, dating to before anyone crossed over the Siberia-Alaska bridge. The dogs just followed along. As you said they were specifically in North America, where settlements were small, because dogs don't have much industry built around them. They just support industries.
And turkeys.
You mean, bad enough?
Some dogs are better than cats for killing rodents. Chihuahuas are one. I've seen good feline mousers get bored and distracted. I got a chihuahua through rehoming. It won't stop the hunt until its certain there's nothing left to be found. Distractions like praise and treats are a nuisance to be ignored. They're also great at raising the alarm night or day. Without becoming the archetypal yappy dog.
dogs are a nice to have, but they arent a game changer like horses, cows, chickens, pigs, etc.....
One of my favorite of your videos, and it watches so different in 2021