Guns, Germs And Steel Part 9

WHY DID THE rise of agriculture launch the evolution of our crowd infectious diseases? One reason just mentioned is that agriculture sustains much higher human population densities than does the hunting-gathering lifestyle-on the average, 10 to 100 times higher. In addition, hunter-gatherers frequently shift camp and leave behind their own piles of feces with acc.u.mulated microbes and worm larvae. But farmers are sedentary and live amid their own sewage, thus providing microbes with a short path from one person's body into another's drinking water. rise of agriculture launch the evolution of our crowd infectious diseases? One reason just mentioned is that agriculture sustains much higher human population densities than does the hunting-gathering lifestyle-on the average, 10 to 100 times higher. In addition, hunter-gatherers frequently shift camp and leave behind their own piles of feces with acc.u.mulated microbes and worm larvae. But farmers are sedentary and live amid their own sewage, thus providing microbes with a short path from one person's body into another's drinking water.

Some farming populations make it even easier for their own fecal bacteria and worms to infect new victims, by gathering their feces and urine and spreading them as fertilizer on the fields where people work. Irrigation agriculture and fish farming provide ideal living conditions for the snails carrying schistosomiasis and for flukes that burrow through our skin as we wade through the feces-laden water. Sedentary farmers become surrounded not only by their feces but also by disease transmitting rodents, attracted by the farmers' stored food. The forest clearings made by African farmers also provide ideal breeding habitats for malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.

If the rise of farming was thus a bonanza for our microbes, the rise of cities was a greater one, as still more densely packed human populations festered under even worse sanitation conditions. Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases. Another bonanza was the development of world trade routes, which by Roman times effectively joined the populations of Europe, Asia, and North Africa into one giant breeding ground for microbes. That's when smallpox finally reached Rome, as the Plague of Antoninus, which killed millions of Roman citizens between A.D. A.D. 165 and 180. 165 and 180.

Similarly, bubonic plague first appeared in Europe as the Plague of Justinian (A.D. 54243). But plague didn't begin to hit Europe with full force as the Black Death epidemics until 54243). But plague didn't begin to hit Europe with full force as the Black Death epidemics until A.D. A.D. 1346, when a new route for overland trade with China provided rapid transit, along Eurasia's east-west axis, for flea-infested furs from plague-ridden areas of Central Asia to Europe. Today, our jet planes have made even the longest intercontinental flights briefer than the duration of any human infectious disease. That's how an Aerolineas Argentinas airplane, stopping in Lima (Peru) in 1991, managed to deliver dozens of cholera-infected people that same day to my city of Los Angeles, over 3,000 miles from Lima. The explosive increase in world travel by Americans, and in immigration to the United States, is turning us into another melting pot-this time, of microbes that we previously dismissed as just causing exotic diseases in far-off countries. 1346, when a new route for overland trade with China provided rapid transit, along Eurasia's east-west axis, for flea-infested furs from plague-ridden areas of Central Asia to Europe. Today, our jet planes have made even the longest intercontinental flights briefer than the duration of any human infectious disease. That's how an Aerolineas Argentinas airplane, stopping in Lima (Peru) in 1991, managed to deliver dozens of cholera-infected people that same day to my city of Los Angeles, over 3,000 miles from Lima. The explosive increase in world travel by Americans, and in immigration to the United States, is turning us into another melting pot-this time, of microbes that we previously dismissed as just causing exotic diseases in far-off countries.

THUS, WHEN THE human population became sufficiently large and concentrated, we reached the stage in our history at which we could at last evolve and sustain crowd diseases confined to our own species. But that conclusion presents a paradox: such diseases could never have existed before then! Instead, they had to evolve as new diseases. Where did those new diseases come from? human population became sufficiently large and concentrated, we reached the stage in our history at which we could at last evolve and sustain crowd diseases confined to our own species. But that conclusion presents a paradox: such diseases could never have existed before then! Instead, they had to evolve as new diseases. Where did those new diseases come from?

Evidence has recently been emerging from molecular studies of the disease-causing microbes themselves. For many of the microbes responsible for our unique diseases, molecular biologists can now identify the microbe's closest relatives. These also prove to be agents of crowd infectious diseases-but ones confined to various species of our domestic animals and pets! Among animals, too, epidemic diseases require large, dense populations and don't afflict just any animal: they're confined mainly to social animals providing the necessary large populations. Hence when we domesticated social animals, such as cows and pigs, they were already afflicted by epidemic diseases just waiting to be transferred to us.

For example, measles virus is most closely related to the virus causing rinderpest. That nasty epidemic disease affects cattle and many wild cud-chewing mammals, but not humans. Measles in turn doesn't afflict cattle. The close similarity of the measles virus to the rinderpest virus suggests that the latter transferred from cattle to humans and then evolved into the measles virus by changing its properties to adapt to us. That transfer is not at all surprising, considering that many peasant farmers live and sleep close to cows and their feces, urine, breath, sores, and blood. Our intimacy with cattle has been going on for the 9,000 years since we domesticated them-ample time for the rinderpest virus to discover us nearby. As Table 11.1 ill.u.s.trates, others of our familiar infectious diseases can similarly be traced back to diseases of our animal friends.

GIVEN OUR PROXIMITY to the animals we love, we must be getting constantly bombarded by their microbes. Those invaders get winnowed by natural selection, and only a few of them succeed in establishing themselves as human diseases. A quick survey of current diseases lets us trace out four stages in the evolution of a specialized human disease from an animal precursor. to the animals we love, we must be getting constantly bombarded by their microbes. Those invaders get winnowed by natural selection, and only a few of them succeed in establishing themselves as human diseases. A quick survey of current diseases lets us trace out four stages in the evolution of a specialized human disease from an animal precursor.

The first stage is ill.u.s.trated by dozens of diseases that we now and then pick up directly from our pets and domestic animals. They include catscratch fever from our cats, leptospirosis from our dogs, psittacosis from our chickens and parrots, and brucellosis from our cattle. We're similarly liable to pick up diseases from wild animals, such as the tularemia that hunters can get from skinning wild rabbits. All those microbes are still at an early stage in their evolution into specialized human pathogens. They still don't get transmitted directly from one person to another, and even their transfer to us from animals remains uncommon.

TABLE II. I Deadly Gifts from Our Animal Friends Deadly Gifts from Our Animal Friends

Human Disease Animal with Most Closely Related Pathogen Measles cattle (rinderpest) Tuberculosis cattle Smallpox cattle (cowpox) or other livestock with related pox viruses Flu pigs and ducks Pertussis pigs, dogs Falc.i.p.arum malaria birds (chickens and ducks?)

In the second stage a former animal pathogen evolves to the point where it does get transmitted directly between people and causes epidemics. However, the epidemic dies out for any of several reasons, such as being cured by modern medicine, or being stopped when everybody around has already been infected and either becomes immune or dies. For example, a previously unknown fever termed O'nyong-nyong fever appeared in East Africa in 1959 and proceeded to infect several million Africans. It probably arose from a virus of monkeys and was transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. The fact that patients recovered quickly and became immune to further attack helped the new disease die out quickly. Closer to home for Americans, Fort Bragg fever was the name applied to a new leptospiral disease that broke out in the United States in the summer of 1942 and soon disappeared.

A fatal disease vanishing for another reason was New Guinea's laughing sickness, transmitted by cannibalism and caused by a slow-acting virus from which no one has ever recovered. Kuru was on its way to exterminating New Guinea's Fore tribe of 20,000 people, until the establishment of Australian government control around 1959 ended cannibalism and thereby the transmission of kuru. The annals of medicine are full of accounts of diseases that sound like no disease known today, but that once caused terrifying epidemics and then disappeared as mysteriously as they had come. The "English sweating sickness," which swept and terrified Europe between 1485 and 1552, and the "Picardy sweats" of 18th- and 19th-century France, are just two of the many epidemic illnesses that vanished long before modern medicine had devised methods for identifying the responsible microbes.

A third stage in the evolution of our major diseases is represented by former animal pathogens that did establish themselves in humans, that have not (not yet?) died out, and that may or may not still become major killers of humanity. The future remains very uncertain for La.s.sa fever, caused by a virus derived probably from rodents. La.s.sa fever was first observed in 1969 in Nigeria, where it causes a fatal illness so contagious that Nigerian hospitals have been closed down if even a single case appears. Better established is Lyme disease, caused by a spirochete that we get from the bite of ticks carried by mice and deer. Although the first known human cases in the United States appeared only as recently as 1962, Lyme disease is already reaching epidemic proportions in many parts of our country. The future of AIDS, derived from monkey viruses and first doc.u.mented in humans around 1959, is even more secure (from the virus's perspective).

The final stage of this evolution is represented by the major, long-established epidemic diseases confined to humans. These diseases must have been the evolutionary survivors of far more pathogens that tried to make the jump to us from animals-and mostly failed.

What is actually going on in those stages, as an exclusive disease of animals transforms itself into an exclusive disease of humans? One transformation involves a change of intermediate vector: when a microbe relying on some arthropod vector for transmission switches to a new host, the microbe may be forced to find a new arthropod as well. For example, typhus was initially transmitted between rats by rat fleas, which sufficed for a while to transfer typhus from rats to humans. Eventually, typhus microbes discovered that human body lice offered a much more efficient method of traveling directly between humans. Now that Americans have mostly deloused themselves, typhus has discovered a new route into us: by infecting eastern North American flying squirrels and then transferring to people whose attics harbor flying squirrels.

In short, diseases represent evolution in progress, and microbes adapt by natural selection to new hosts and vectors. But compared with cows' bodies, ours offer different immune defenses, lice, feces, and chemistries. In that new environment, a microbe must evolve new ways to live and to propagate itself. In several instructive cases doctors or veterinarians have actually been able to observe microbes evolving those new ways.

The best-studied case involves what happened when myxomatosis. .h.i.t Australian rabbits. The myxo virus, native to a wild species of Brazilian rabbit, had been observed to cause a lethal epidemic in European domestic rabbits, which are a different species. Hence the virus was intentionally introduced to Australia in 1950 in the hopes of ridding the continent of its plague of European rabbits, foolishly introduced in the nineteenth century. In the first year, myxo produced a gratifying (to Australian farmers) 99.8 percent mortality rate in infected rabbits. Unfortunately for the farmers, the death rate then dropped in the second year to 90 percent and eventually to 25 percent, frustrating hopes of eradicating rabbits completely from Australia. The problem was that the myxo virus evolved to serve its own interests, which differed from ours as well as from those of the rabbits. The virus changed so as to kill fewer rabbits and to permit lethally infected ones to live longer before dying. As a result, a less lethal myxo virus spreads baby viruses to more rabbits than did the original, highly virulent myxo.

For a similar example in humans, we have only to consider the surprising evolution of syphilis. Today, our two immediate a.s.sociations to syphilis are genital sores and a very slowly developing disease, leading to the death of many untreated victims only after many years. However, when syphilis was first definitely recorded in Europe in 1495, its pustules often covered the body from the head to the knees, caused flesh to fall off people's faces, and led to death within a few months. By 1546, syphilis had evolved into the disease with the symptoms so well known to us today. Apparently, just as with myxomatosis, those syphilis spirochetes that evolved so as to keep their victims alive for longer were thereby able to transmit their spirochete offspring into more victims.

THE IMPORTANCE OF lethal microbes in human history is well ill.u.s.trated by Europeans' conquest and depopulation of the New World. Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasian germs than on the battlefield from European guns and swords. Those germs undermined Indian resistance by killing most Indians and their leaders and by sapping the survivors' morale. For instance, in 1519 Cortes landed on the coast of Mexico with 600 Spaniards, to conquer the fiercely militaristic Aztec Empire with a population of many millions. That Cortes reached the Aztec capital of Tenocht.i.tlan, escaped with the loss of "only" two-thirds of his force, and managed to fight his way back to the coast demonstrates both Spanish military advantages and the initial navete of the Aztecs. But when Cortes's next onslaught came, the Aztecs were no longer naive and fought street by street with the utmost tenacity. What gave the Spaniards a decisive advantage was smallpox, which reached Mexico in 1520 with one infected slave arriving from Spanish Cuba. The resulting epidemic proceeded to kill nearly half of the Aztecs, including Emperor Cuitlahuac. Aztec survivors were demoralized by the mysterious illness that killed Indians and spared Spaniards, as if advertising the Spaniards' invincibility. By 1618, Mexico's initial population of about 20 million had plummeted to about 1.6 million. lethal microbes in human history is well ill.u.s.trated by Europeans' conquest and depopulation of the New World. Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasian germs than on the battlefield from European guns and swords. Those germs undermined Indian resistance by killing most Indians and their leaders and by sapping the survivors' morale. For instance, in 1519 Cortes landed on the coast of Mexico with 600 Spaniards, to conquer the fiercely militaristic Aztec Empire with a population of many millions. That Cortes reached the Aztec capital of Tenocht.i.tlan, escaped with the loss of "only" two-thirds of his force, and managed to fight his way back to the coast demonstrates both Spanish military advantages and the initial navete of the Aztecs. But when Cortes's next onslaught came, the Aztecs were no longer naive and fought street by street with the utmost tenacity. What gave the Spaniards a decisive advantage was smallpox, which reached Mexico in 1520 with one infected slave arriving from Spanish Cuba. The resulting epidemic proceeded to kill nearly half of the Aztecs, including Emperor Cuitlahuac. Aztec survivors were demoralized by the mysterious illness that killed Indians and spared Spaniards, as if advertising the Spaniards' invincibility. By 1618, Mexico's initial population of about 20 million had plummeted to about 1.6 million.

Pizarro had similarly grim luck when he landed on the coast of Peru in 1531 with 168 men to conquer the Inca Empire of millions. Fortunately for Pizarro and unfortunately for the Incas, smallpox had arrived overland around 1526, killing much of the Inca population, including both the emperor Huayna Capac and his designated successor. As we saw in Chapter 3, the result of the throne's being left vacant was that two other sons of Huayna Capac, Atahuallpa and Huascar, became embroiled in a civil war that Pizarro exploited to conquer the divided Incas.

When we in the United States think of the most populous New World societies existing in 1492, only those of the Aztecs and the Incas tend to come to our minds. We forget that North America also supported populous Indian societies in the most logical place, the Mississippi Valley, which contains some of our best farmland today. In that case, however, conquistadores contributed nothing directly to the societies' destruction; Eurasian germs, spreading in advance, did everything. When Hernando de Soto became the first European conquistador to march through the southeastern United States, in 1540, he came across Indian town sites abandoned two years earlier because the inhabitants had died in epidemics. These epidemics had been transmitted from coastal Indians infected by Spaniards visiting the coast. The Spaniards' microbes spread to the interior in advance of the Spaniards themselves.

De Soto was still able to see some of the densely populated Indian towns lining the lower Mississippi. After the end of his expedition, it was a long time before Europeans again reached the Mississippi Valley, but Eurasian microbes were now established in North America and kept spreading. By the time of the next appearance of Europeans on the lower Mississippi, that of French settlers in the late 1600s, almost all of those big Indian towns had vanished. Their relics are the great mound sites of the Mississippi Valley. Only recently have we come to realize that many of the mound-building societies were still largely intact when Columbus reached the New World, and that they collapsed (probably as a result of disease) between 1492 and the systematic European exploration of the Mississippi.

When I was young, American schoolchildren were taught that North America had originally been occupied by only about one million Indians. That low number was useful in justifying the white conquest of what could be viewed as an almost empty continent. However, archaeological excavations, and scrutiny of descriptions left by the very first European explorers on our coasts, now suggest an initial number of around 20 million Indians. For the New World as a whole, the Indian population decline in the century or two following Columbus's arrival is estimated to have been as large as 95 percent.

The main killers were Old World germs to which Indians had never been exposed, and against which they therefore had neither immune nor genetic resistance. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus competed for top rank among the killers. As if these had not been enough, diphtheria, malaria, mumps, pertussis, plague, tuberculosis, and yellow fever came up close behind. In countless cases, whites were actually there to witness the destruction occurring when the germs arrived. For example, in 1837 the Mandan Indian tribe, with one of the most elaborate cultures in our Great Plains, contracted smallpox from a steamboat traveling up the Missouri River from St. Louis. The population of one Mandan village plummeted from 2,000 to fewer than 40 within a few weeks.

WHILE OVER A dozen major infectious diseases of Old World origins became established in the New World, perhaps not a single major killer reached Europe from the Americas. The sole possible exception is syphilis, whose area of origin remains controversial. The one-sidedness of that exchange of germs becomes even more striking when we recall that large, dense human populations are a prerequisite for the evolution of our crowd infectious diseases. If recent reappraisals of the pre-Columbian New World population are correct, it was not far below the contemporary population of Eurasia. Some New World cities like Tenocht.i.tlan were among the world's most populous cities at the time. Why didn't Tenocht.i.tlan have awful germs waiting for the Spaniards? dozen major infectious diseases of Old World origins became established in the New World, perhaps not a single major killer reached Europe from the Americas. The sole possible exception is syphilis, whose area of origin remains controversial. The one-sidedness of that exchange of germs becomes even more striking when we recall that large, dense human populations are a prerequisite for the evolution of our crowd infectious diseases. If recent reappraisals of the pre-Columbian New World population are correct, it was not far below the contemporary population of Eurasia. Some New World cities like Tenocht.i.tlan were among the world's most populous cities at the time. Why didn't Tenocht.i.tlan have awful germs waiting for the Spaniards?

One possible contributing factor is that the rise of dense human populations began somewhat later in the New World than in the Old World. Another is that the three most densely populated American centers-the Andes, Mesoamerica, and the Mississippi Valley-never became connected by regular fast trade into one huge breeding ground for microbes, in the way that Europe, North Africa, India, and China became linked in Roman times. Those factors still don't explain, though, why the New World apparently ended up with no lethal crowd epidemics at all. (Tuberculosis DNA has been reported from the mummy of a Peruvian Indian who died 1,000 years ago, but the identification procedure used did not distinguish human tuberculosis from a closely related pathogen (Mycobacterium bovis) that is widespread in wild animals.) Instead, what must be the main reason for the failure of lethal crowd epidemics to arise in the Americas becomes clear when we pause to ask a simple question. From what microbes could they conceivably have evolved? We've seen that Eurasian crowd diseases evolved out of diseases of Eurasian herd animals that became domesticated. Whereas many such animals existed in Eurasia, only five animals of any sort became domesticated in the Americas: the turkey in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, the llama / alpaca and the guinea pig in the Andes, the Muscovy duck in tropical South America, and the dog throughout the Americas.

In turn, we also saw that this extreme paucity of domestic animals in the New World reflects the paucity of wild starting material. About 80 percent of the big wild mammals of the Americas became extinct at the end of the last Ice Age, around 13,000 years ago. The few domesticates that remained to Native Americans were not likely sources of crowd diseases, compared with cows and pigs. Muscovy ducks and turkeys don't live in enormous flocks, and they're not cuddly species (like young lambs) with which we have much physical contact. Guinea pigs may have contributed a trypanosome infection like Chagas' disease or leishmaniasis to our catalog of woes, but that's uncertain. Initially, most surprising is the absence of any human disease derived from llamas (or alpacas), which it's tempting to consider the Andean equivalent of Eurasian livestock. However, llamas had four strikes against them as a source of human pathogens: they were kept in smaller herds than were sheep and goats and pigs; their total numbers were never remotely as large as those of the Eurasian populations of domestic livestock, since llamas never spread beyond the Andes; people don't drink (and get infected by) llama milk; and llamas aren't kept indoors, in close a.s.sociation with people. In contrast, human mothers in the New Guinea highlands often nurse piglets, and pigs as well as cows are frequently kept inside the huts of peasant farmers.

THE HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE of animal-derived diseases extends far beyond the collision of the Old and the New Worlds. Eurasian germs played a key role in decimating native peoples in many other parts of the world, including Pacific islanders, Aboriginal Australians, and the Khoisan peoples (Hottentots and Bushmen) of southern Africa. c.u.mulative mortalities of these previously unexposed peoples from Eurasian germs ranged from 50 percent to 100 percent. For instance, the Indian population of Hispaniola declined from around 8 million, when Columbus arrived in of animal-derived diseases extends far beyond the collision of the Old and the New Worlds. Eurasian germs played a key role in decimating native peoples in many other parts of the world, including Pacific islanders, Aboriginal Australians, and the Khoisan peoples (Hottentots and Bushmen) of southern Africa. c.u.mulative mortalities of these previously unexposed peoples from Eurasian germs ranged from 50 percent to 100 percent. For instance, the Indian population of Hispaniola declined from around 8 million, when Columbus arrived in A.D. A.D. 1492, to zero by 1535. Measles reached Fiji with a Fijian chief returning from a visit to Australia in 1875, and proceeded to kill about one-quarter of all Fijians then alive (after most Fijians had already been killed by epidemics beginning with the first European visit, in 1791). Syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, and influenza arriving with Captain Cook in 1779, followed by a big typhoid epidemic in 1804 and numerous "minor" epidemics, reduced Hawaii's population from around half a million in 1779 to 84,000 in 1853, the year when smallpox finally reached Hawaii and killed around 10,000 of the survivors. These examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely. 1492, to zero by 1535. Measles reached Fiji with a Fijian chief returning from a visit to Australia in 1875, and proceeded to kill about one-quarter of all Fijians then alive (after most Fijians had already been killed by epidemics beginning with the first European visit, in 1791). Syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, and influenza arriving with Captain Cook in 1779, followed by a big typhoid epidemic in 1804 and numerous "minor" epidemics, reduced Hawaii's population from around half a million in 1779 to 84,000 in 1853, the year when smallpox finally reached Hawaii and killed around 10,000 of the survivors. These examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely.

However, germs did not act solely to Europeans' advantage. While the New World and Australia did not harbor native epidemic diseases awaiting Europeans, tropical Asia, Africa, Indonesia, and New Guinea certainly did. Malaria throughout the tropical Old World, cholera in tropical Southeast Asia, and yellow fever in tropical Africa were (and still are) the most notorious of the tropical killers. They posed the most serious obstacle to European colonization of the tropics, and they explain why the European colonial part.i.tioning of New Guinea and most of Africa was not accomplished until nearly 400 years after European part.i.tioning of the New World began. Furthermore, once malaria and yellow fever did become transmitted to the Americas by European ship traffic, they emerged as the major impediment to colonization of the New World tropics as well. A familiar example is the role of those two diseases in aborting the French effort, and nearly aborting the ultimately successful American effort, to construct the Panama Ca.n.a.l.

Bearing all these facts in mind, let's try to regain our sense of perspective about the role of germs in answering Yali's question. There is no doubt that Europeans developed a big advantage in weaponry, technology, and political organization over most of the non-European peoples that they conquered. But that advantage alone doesn't fully explain how initially so few European immigrants came to supplant so much of the native population of the Americas and some other parts of the world. That might not have happened without Europe's sinister gift to other continents-the germs evolving from Eurasians' long intimacy with domestic animals.

CHAPTER 12

BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS

NINETEENTH-CENTURY AUTHORS TENDED TO INTERPRET history as a progression from savagery to civilization. Key hallmarks of this transition included the development of agriculture, metallurgy, complex technology, centralized government, and writing. Of these, writing was traditionally the one most restricted geographically: until the expansions of Islam and of colonial Europeans, it was absent from Australia, Pacific islands, subequatorial Africa, and the whole New World except for a small part of Mesoamerica. As a result of that confined distribution, peoples who pride themselves on being civilized have always viewed writing as the sharpest distinction raising them above "barbarians" or "savages." history as a progression from savagery to civilization. Key hallmarks of this transition included the development of agriculture, metallurgy, complex technology, centralized government, and writing. Of these, writing was traditionally the one most restricted geographically: until the expansions of Islam and of colonial Europeans, it was absent from Australia, Pacific islands, subequatorial Africa, and the whole New World except for a small part of Mesoamerica. As a result of that confined distribution, peoples who pride themselves on being civilized have always viewed writing as the sharpest distinction raising them above "barbarians" or "savages."

Knowledge brings power. Hence writing brings power to modern societies, by making it possible to transmit knowledge with far greater accuracy and in far greater quant.i.ty and detail, from more distant lands and more remote times. Of course, some peoples (notably the Incas) managed to administer empires without writing, and "civilized" peoples don't always defeat "barbarians," as Roman armies facing the Huns learned. But the European conquests of the Americas, Siberia, and Australia ill.u.s.trate the typical recent outcome.

Writing marched together with weapons, microbes, and centralized political organization as a modern agent of conquest. The commands of the monarchs and merchants who organized colonizing fleets were conveyed in writing. The fleets set their courses by maps and written sailing directions prepared by previous expeditions. Written accounts of earlier expeditions motivated later ones, by describing the wealth and fertile lands awaiting the conquerors. The accounts taught subsequent explorers what conditions to expect, and helped them prepare themselves. The resulting empires were administered with the aid of writing. While all those types of information were also transmitted by other means in preliterate societies, writing made the transmission easier, more detailed, more accurate, and more persuasive.

Why, then, did only some peoples and not others develop writing, given its overwhelming value? For example, why did no traditional hunters-gatherers evolve or adopt writing? Among island empires, why did writing arise in Minoan Crete but not in Polynesian Tonga? How many separate times did writing evolve in human history, under what circ.u.mstances, and for what uses? Of those peoples who did develop it, why did some do so much earlier than others? For instance, today almost all j.a.panese and Scandinavians are literate but most Iraqis are not: why did writing nevertheless arise nearly four thousand years earlier in Iraq?

The diffusion of writing from its sites of origin also raises important questions. Why, for instance, did it spread to Ethiopia and Arabia from the Fertile Crescent, but not to the Andes from Mexico? Did writing systems spread by being copied, or did existing systems merely inspire neighboring peoples to invent their own systems? Given a writing system that works well for one language, how do you devise a system for a different language? Similar questions arise whenever one tries to understand the origins and spread of many other aspects of human culture-such as technology, religion, and food production. The historian interested in such questions about writing has the advantage that they can often be answered in unique detail by means of the written record itself. We shall therefore trace writing's development not only because of its inherent importance, but also for the general insights into cultural history that it provides.

THE THREE BASIC strategies underlying writing systems differ in the size of the speech unit denoted by one written sign: either a single basic sound, a whole syllable, or a whole word. Of these, the one employed today by most peoples is the alphabet, which ideally would provide a unique sign (termed a letter) for each basic sound of the language (a phoneme). Actually, most alphabets consist of only about 20 or 30 letters, and most languages have more phonemes than their alphabets have letters. For example, English transcribes about 40 phonemes with a mere 26 letters. Hence most alphabetically written languages, including English, are forced to a.s.sign several different phonemes to the same letter and to represent some phonemes by combinations of letters, such as the English two-letter combinations strategies underlying writing systems differ in the size of the speech unit denoted by one written sign: either a single basic sound, a whole syllable, or a whole word. Of these, the one employed today by most peoples is the alphabet, which ideally would provide a unique sign (termed a letter) for each basic sound of the language (a phoneme). Actually, most alphabets consist of only about 20 or 30 letters, and most languages have more phonemes than their alphabets have letters. For example, English transcribes about 40 phonemes with a mere 26 letters. Hence most alphabetically written languages, including English, are forced to a.s.sign several different phonemes to the same letter and to represent some phonemes by combinations of letters, such as the English two-letter combinations sh sh and and th th (each represented by a single letter in the Russian and Greek alphabets, respectively). (each represented by a single letter in the Russian and Greek alphabets, respectively).

The second strategy uses so-called logograms, meaning that one written sign stands for a whole word. That's the function of many signs of Chinese writing and of the predominant j.a.panese writing system (termed kanji). Before the spread of alphabetic writing, systems making much use of logograms were more common and included Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya glyphs, and Sumerian cuneiform.

The third strategy, least familiar to most readers of this book, uses a sign for each syllable. In practice, most such writing systems (termed syllabaries) provide distinct signs just for syllables of one consonant followed by one vowel (like the syllables of the word "fa-mi-ly"), and resort to various tricks in order to write other types of syllables by means of those signs. Syllabaries were common in ancient times, as exemplified by the Linear B writing of Mycenaean Greece. Some syllabaries persist today, the most important being the kana syllabary that the j.a.panese use for telegrams, bank statements, and texts for blind readers.

I've intentionally termed these three approaches strategies rather than writing systems. No actual writing system employs one strategy exclusively. Chinese writing is not purely logographic, nor is English writing purely alphabetic. Like all alphabetic writing systems, English uses many logograms, such as numerals, $, %, and + : that is, arbitrary signs, not made up of phonetic elements, representing whole words. "Syllabic" Linear B had many logograms, and "logographic" Egyptian hieroglyphs included many syllabic signs as well as a virtual alphabet of individual letters for each consonant.

INVENTING A WRITING system from scratch must have been incomparably more difficult than borrowing and adapting one. The first scribes had to settle on basic principles that we now take for granted. For example, they had to figure out how to decompose a continuous utterance into speech units, regardless of whether those units were taken as words, syllables, or phonemes. They had to learn to recognize the same sound or speech unit through all our normal variations in speech volume, pitch, speed, emphasis, phrase grouping, and individual idiosyncrasies of p.r.o.nunciation. They had to decide that a writing system should ignore all of that variation. They then had to devise ways to represent sounds by symbols. system from scratch must have been incomparably more difficult than borrowing and adapting one. The first scribes had to settle on basic principles that we now take for granted. For example, they had to figure out how to decompose a continuous utterance into speech units, regardless of whether those units were taken as words, syllables, or phonemes. They had to learn to recognize the same sound or speech unit through all our normal variations in speech volume, pitch, speed, emphasis, phrase grouping, and individual idiosyncrasies of p.r.o.nunciation. They had to decide that a writing system should ignore all of that variation. They then had to devise ways to represent sounds by symbols.

Somehow, the first scribes solved all those problems, without having in front of them any example of the final result to guide their efforts. That task was evidently so difficult that there have been only a few occasions in history when people invented writing entirely on their own. The two indisputably independent inventions of writing were achieved by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia somewhat before 3000 B.C. B.C. and by Mexican Indians before 600 and by Mexican Indians before 600 B.C. B.C. (Figure 12.1); Egyptian writing of 3000 (Figure 12.1); Egyptian writing of 3000 B.C. B.C. and Chinese writing (by 1300 and Chinese writing (by 1300 B.C. B.C.) may also have arisen independently. Probably all other peoples who have developed writing since then have borrowed, adapted, or at least been inspired by existing systems.

The independent invention that we can trace in greatest detail is history's oldest writing system, Sumerian cuneiform (Figure 12.1). For thousands of years before it jelled, people in some farming villages of the Fertile Crescent had been using clay tokens of various simple shapes for accounting purposes, such as recording numbers of sheep and amounts of grain. In the last centuries before 3000 B.C. B.C., developments in accounting technology, format, and signs rapidly led to the first system of writing. One such technological innovation was the use of flat clay tablets as a convenient writing surface. Initially, the clay was scratched with pointed tools, which gradually yielded to reed styluses for neatly pressing a mark into the tablet. Developments in format included the gradual adoption of conventions whose necessity is now universally accepted: that writing should be organized into ruled rows or columns (horizontal rows for the Sumerians, as for modern Europeans); that the lines should be read in a constant direction (left to right for Sumerians, as for modern Europeans); and that the lines should be read from top to bottom of the tablet rather than vice versa.

But the crucial change involved the solution of the problem basic to virtually all writing systems: how to devise agreed-on visible marks that represent actual spoken sounds, rather than only ideas or else words independent of their p.r.o.nunciation. Early stages in the development of the solution have been detected especially in thousands of clay tablets excavated from the ruins of the former Sumerian city of Uruk, on the Euphrates River about 200 miles southeast of modern Baghdad. The first Sumerian writing signs were recognizable pictures of the object referred to (for instance, a picture of a fish or a bird). Naturally, those pictorial signs consisted mainly of numerals plus nouns for visible objects; the resulting texts were merely accounting reports in a telegraphic shorthand devoid of grammatical elements. Gradually, the forms of the signs became more abstract, especially when the pointed writing tools were replaced by reed styluses. New signs were created by combining old signs to produce new meanings: for example, the sign for head head was combined with the sign for was combined with the sign for bread bread in order to produce a sign signifying in order to produce a sign signifying eat eat.

The earliest Sumerian writing consisted of nonphonetic logograms. That's to say, it was not based on the specific sounds of the Sumerian language, and it could have been p.r.o.nounced with entirely different sounds to yield the same meaning in any other language-just as the numeral sign 4 4 is variously p.r.o.nounced is variously p.r.o.nounced four, chetwire, nelja four, chetwire, nelja, and empat empat by speakers of English, Russian, Finnish, and Indonesian, respectively. Perhaps the most important single step in the whole history of writing was the Sumerians' introduction of phonetic representation, initially by writing an abstract noun (which could not be readily drawn as a picture) by means of the sign for a depictable noun that had the same phonetic p.r.o.nunciation. For instance, it's easy to draw a recognizable picture of by speakers of English, Russian, Finnish, and Indonesian, respectively. Perhaps the most important single step in the whole history of writing was the Sumerians' introduction of phonetic representation, initially by writing an abstract noun (which could not be readily drawn as a picture) by means of the sign for a depictable noun that had the same phonetic p.r.o.nunciation. For instance, it's easy to draw a recognizable picture of arrow arrow, hard to draw a recognizable picture of life life, but both are p.r.o.nounced ti ti in Sumerian, so a picture of an arrow came to mean either in Sumerian, so a picture of an arrow came to mean either arrow arrow or or life life. The resulting ambiguity was resolved by the addition of a silent sign called a determinative, to indicate the category of nouns to which the intended object belonged. Linguists term this decisive innovation, which also underlies puns today, the rebus principle.

Once Sumerians had hit upon this phonetic principle, they began to use it for much more than just writing abstract nouns. They employed it to write syllables or letters const.i.tuting grammatical endings. For instance, in English it's not obvious how to draw a picture of the common syllable-tion, but we could instead draw a picture ill.u.s.trating the verb shun shun, which has the same p.r.o.nunciation. Phonetically interpreted signs were also used to "spell out" longer words, as a series of pictures each depicting the sound of one syllable. That's as if an English speaker were to write the word believe believe as a picture of a bee followed by a picture of a leaf. Phonetic signs also permitted scribes to use the same pictorial sign for a set of related words (such as as a picture of a bee followed by a picture of a leaf. Phonetic signs also permitted scribes to use the same pictorial sign for a set of related words (such as tooth, speech tooth, speech, and speaker speaker), but to resolve the ambiguity with an additional phonetically interpreted sign (such as selecting the sign for two, each, or peak two, each, or peak).

Thus, Sumerian writing came to consist of a complex mixture of three types of signs: logograms, referring to a whole word or name; phonetic signs, used in effect for spelling syllables, letters, grammatical elements, or parts of words; and determinatives, which were not p.r.o.nounced but were used to resolve ambiguities. Nevertheless, the phonetic signs in Sumerian writing fell far short of a complete syllabary or alphabet. Some Sumerian syllables lacked any written signs; the same sign could be p.r.o.nounced in different ways; and the same sign could variously be read as a word, a syllable, or a letter.

Besides Sumerian cuneiform, the other certain instance of independent origins of writing in human history comes from Native American societies of Mesoamerica, probably southern Mexico. Mesoamerican writing is believed to have arisen independently of Old World writing, because there is no convincing evidence for pre-Norse contact of New World societies with Old World societies possessing writing. In addition, the forms of Mesoamerican writing signs were entirely different from those of any Old World script. About a dozen Mesoamerican scripts are known, all or most of them apparently related to each other (for example, in their numerical and calendrical systems), and most of them still only partially deciphered. At the moment, the earliest preserved Mesoamerican script is from the Zapotec area of southern Mexico around 600 B.C. B.C., but by far the best-understood one is of the Lowland Maya region, where the oldest known written date corresponds to A.D. A.D. 292. 292.

Despite its independent origins and distinctive sign forms, Maya writing is organized on principles basically similar to those of Sumerian writing and other western Eurasian writing systems that Sumerian inspired. Like Sumerian, Maya writing used both logograms and phonetic signs. Logograms for abstract words were often derived by the rebus principle. That is, an abstract word was written with the sign for another word p.r.o.nounced similarly but with a different meaning that could be readily depicted. Like the signs of j.a.pan's kana and Mycenaean Greece's Linear B syllabaries, Maya phonetic signs were mostly signs for syllables of one consonant plus one vowel (such as ta, te, ti, to, tu ta, te, ti, to, tu). Like letters of the early Semitic alphabet, Maya syllabic signs were derived from pictures of the object whose p.r.o.nunciation began with that syllable (for example, the Maya syllabic sign "ne" resembles a tail, for which the Maya word is neh neh).

All of these parallels between Mesoamerican and ancient western Eurasian writing testify to the underlying universality of human creativity. While Sumerian and Mesoamerican languages bear no special relation to each other among the world's languages, both raised similar basic issues in reducing them to writing. The solutions that Sumerians invented before 3000 B.C. B.C. were reinvented, halfway around the world, by early Mesoamerican Indians before 600 were reinvented, halfway around the world, by early Mesoamerican Indians before 600 B.C. B.C.

WITH THE POSSIBLE exceptions of the Egyptian, Chinese, and Easter Island writing to be considered later, all other writing systems devised anywhere in the world, at any time, appear to have been descendants of systems modified from or at least inspired by Sumerian or early Mesoamerican writing. One reason why there were so few independent origins of writing is the great difficulty of inventing it, as we have already discussed. The other reason is that other opportunities for the independent invention of writing were preempted by Sumerian or early Mesoamerican writing and their derivatives. exceptions of the Egyptian, Chinese, and Easter Island writing to be considered later, all other writing systems devised anywhere in the world, at any time, appear to have been descendants of systems modified from or at least inspired by Sumerian or early Mesoamerican writing. One reason why there were so few independent origins of writing is the great difficulty of inventing it, as we have already discussed. The other reason is that other opportunities for the independent invention of writing were preempted by Sumerian or early Mesoamerican writing and their derivatives.

We know that the development of Sumerian writing took at least hundreds, possibly thousands, of years. As we shall see, the prerequisites for those developments consisted of several features of human society that determined whether a society would find writing useful, and whether the society could support the necessary specialist scribes. Many other human societies besides those of the Sumerians and early Mexicans-such as those of ancient India, Crete, and Ethiopia-evolved these prerequisites. However, the Sumerians and early Mexicans happened to have been the first to evolve them in the Old World and the New World, respectively. Once the Sumerians and early Mexicans had invented writing, the details or principles of their writing spread rapidly to other societies, before they could go through the necessary centuries or millennia of independent experimentation with writing themselves. Thus, that potential for other, independent experiments was preempted or aborted.

The spread of writing has occurred by either of two contrasting methods, which find parallels throughout the history of technology and ideas. Someone invents something and puts it to use. How do you, another would-be user, then design something similar for your own use, knowing that other people have already got their own model built and working?

Such transmission of inventions a.s.sumes a whole spectrum of forms. At the one end lies "blueprint copying," when you copy or modify an available detailed blueprint. At the opposite end lies "idea diffusion," when you receive little more than the basic idea and have to reinvent the details. Knowing that it can be done stimulates you to try to do it yourself, but your eventual specific solution may or may not resemble that of the first inventor.

To take a recent example, historians are still debating whether blueprint copying or idea diffusion contributed more to Russia's building of an atomic bomb. Did Russia's bomb-building efforts depend critically on blueprints of the already constructed American bomb, stolen and transmitted to Russia by spies? Or was it merely that the revelation of America's A-bomb at Hiroshima at last convinced Stalin of the feasibility of building such a bomb, and that Russian scientists then reinvented the principles in an independent crash program, with little detailed guidance from the earlier American effort? Similar questions arise for the history of the development of wheels, pyramids, and gunpowder. Let's now examine how blueprint copying and idea diffusion contributed to the spread of writing systems.

TODAY, PROFESSIONAL LINGUISTS design writing systems for unwritten languages by the method of blueprint copying. Most such tailor-made systems modify existing alphabets, though some instead design syllabaries. For example, missionary linguists are working on modified Roman alphabets for hundreds of New Guinea and Native American languages. Government linguists devised the modified Roman alphabet adopted in 1928 by Turkey for writing Turkish, as well as the modified Cyrillic alphabets designed for many tribal languages of Russia. design writing systems for unwritten languages by the method of blueprint copying. Most such tailor-made systems modify existing alphabets, though some instead design syllabaries. For example, missionary linguists are working on modified Roman alphabets for hundreds of New Guinea and Native American languages. Government linguists devised the modified Roman alphabet adopted in 1928 by Turkey for writing Turkish, as well as the modified Cyrillic alphabets designed for many tribal languages of Russia.

In a few cases, we also know something about the individuals who designed writing systems by blueprint copying in the remote past. For instance, the Cyrillic alphabet itself (the one still used today in Russia) is descended from an adaptation of Greek and Hebrew letters devised by Saint Cyril, a Greek missionary to the Slavs in the ninth century A.D. A.D. The first preserved texts for any Germanic language (the language family that includes English) are in the Gothic alphabet created by Bishop Ulfilas, a missionary living with the Visigoths in what is now Bulgaria in the fourth century The first preserved texts for any Germanic language (the language family that includes English) are in the Gothic alphabet created by Bishop Ulfilas, a missionary living with the Visigoths in what is now Bulgaria in the fourth century A.D. A.D. Like Saint Cyril's invention, Ulfilas's alphabet was a mishmash of letters borrowed from different sources: about 20 Greek letters, about five Roman letters, and two letters either taken from the runic alphabet or invented by Ulfilas himself. Much more often, we know nothing about the individuals responsible for devising famous alphabets of the past. But it's still possible to compare newly emerged alphabets of the past with previously existing ones, and to deduce from letter forms which existing ones served as models. For the same reason, we can be sure that the Linear B syllabary of Mycenaean Greece had been adapted by around 1400 Like Saint Cyril's invention, Ulfilas's alphabet was a mishmash of letters borrowed from different sources: about 20 Greek letters, about five Roman letters, and two letters either taken from the runic alphabet or invented by Ulfilas himself. Much more often, we know nothing about the individuals responsible for devising famous alphabets of the past. But it's still possible to compare newly emerged alphabets of the past with previously existing ones, and to deduce from letter forms which existing ones served as models. For the same reason, we can be sure that the Linear B syllabary of Mycenaean Greece had been adapted by around 1400 B.C. B.C. from the Linear A syllabary of Minoan Crete. from the Linear A syllabary of Minoan Crete.

At all of the hundreds of times when an existing writing system of one language has been used as a blueprint to adapt to a different language, some problems have arisen, because no two languages have exactly the same sets of sounds. Some inherited letters or signs may simply be dropped, when the sounds that those letters represent in the lending language do not exist in the borrowing language. For example, Finnish lacks the sounds that many other European languages express by the letters b, c, f, g, w, x b, c, f, g, w, x, and z z, so the Finns dropped these letters from their version of the Roman alphabet. There has also been a frequent reverse problem, of devising letters to represent "new" sounds present in the borrowing language but absent in the lending language. That problem has been solved in several different ways: such as using an arbitrary combination of two or more letters (like the English th th to represent a sound for which the Greek and runic alphabets used a single letter); adding a small distinguishing mark to an existing letter (like the Spanish tilde to represent a sound for which the Greek and runic alphabets used a single letter); adding a small distinguishing mark to an existing letter (like the Spanish tilde n n, the German umlaut o o, and the proliferation of marks dancing around Polish and Turkish letters); co-opting existing letters for which the borrowing language had no use (such as modern Czechs recycling the letter c c of the Roman alphabet to express the Czech sound of the Roman alphabet to express the Czech sound ts ts); or just inventing a new letter (as our medieval ancestors did when they created the new letters j, u j, u, and w w).

The Roman alphabet itself was the end product of a long sequence of blueprint copying. Alphabets apparently arose only once in human history: among speakers of Semitic languages, in the area from modern Syria to the Sinai, during the second millennium B.C. B.C. All of the hundreds of historical and now existing alphabets were ultimately derived from that ancestral Semitic alphabet, in a few cases (such as the Irish ogham alphabet) by idea diffusion, but in most by actual copying and modification of letter forms. All of the hundreds of historical and now existing alphabets were ultimately derived from that ancestral Semitic alphabet, in a few cases (such as the Irish ogham alphabet) by idea diffusion, but in most by actual copying and modification of letter forms.

That evolution of the alphabet can be traced back to Egyptian hieroglyphs, which included a complete set of 24 signs for the 24 Egyptian consonants. The Egyptians never took the logical (to us) next step of discarding all their logograms, determinatives, and signs for pairs and trios of consonants, and using just their consonantal alphabet. Starting around 1700 B.C. B.C., though, Semites familiar with Egyptian hieroglyphs did begin to experiment with that logical step.

Restricting signs to those for single consonants was only the first of three crucial innovations that distinguished alphabets from other writing systems. The second was to help users memorize the alphabet by placing the letters in a fixed sequence and giving them easy-to-remember names. Our English names are mostly meaningless monosyllables ("a," "bee," "cee," "dee," and so on). But the Semitic names did possess meaning in Semitic languages: they were the words for familiar objects ('aleph = ox, beth = house, gimel = camel, daleth = door, and so on). These Semitic words were related "acrophonically" to the Semitic consonants to which they refer: that is, the first letter of the word for the object was also the letter named for the object ('a, b, g, d, and so on). In addition, the earliest forms of the Semitic letters appear in many cases to have been pictures of those same objects. All these features made the forms, names, and sequence of Semitic alphabet letters easy to remember. Many modern alphabets, including ours, retain with minor modifications that original sequence (and, in the case of Greek, even the letters' original names: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and so on) over 3,000 years later. One minor modification that readers will already have noticed is that the Semitic and Greek g g became the Roman and English became the Roman and English c c, while the Romans invented a new g g in its present position. in its present position.

The third and last innovation leading to modern alphabets was to provide for vowels. Already in the early days of the Semitic alphabet, experiments began with methods for writing vowels by adding small extra letters to indicate selected vowels, or else by dots, lines, or hooks sprinkled over the consonantal letters. In the eighth century B.C. B.C. the Greeks became the first people to indicate all vowels systematically by the same types of letters used for consonants. Greeks derived the forms of their vowel letters the Greeks became the first people to indicate all vowels systematically by the same types of letters used for consonants. Greeks derived the forms of their vowel letters by "co-opting" five letters used in the Phoenician alphabet for consonantal sounds lacking in Greek. by "co-opting" five letters used in the Phoenician alphabet for consonantal sounds lacking in Greek.

From those earliest Semitic alphabets, one line of blueprint copying and evolutionary modification led via early Arabian alphabets to the modern Ethiopian alphabet. A far more important line evolved by way of the Aramaic alphabet, used for official doc.u.ments of the Persian Empire, into the modern Arabic, Hebrew, Indian, and Southeast Asian alphabets. But the line most familiar to European and American readers is the one that led via the Phoenicians to the Greeks by the early eighth century B.C. B.C., thence to the Etruscans in the same century, and in the next century to the Romans, whose alphabet with slight modifications is the one used to print this book. Thanks to their potential advantage of combining precision with simplicity, alphabets have now been adopted in most areas of the modern world.

WHILE BLUEPRINT COPYING and modification are the most straightforward option for transmitting technology, that option is sometimes unavailable. Blueprints may be kept secret, or they may be unreadable to someone not already steeped in the technology. Word may trickle through about an invention made somewhere far away, but the details may not get transmitted. Perhaps only the basic idea is known: someone has succeeded, somehow, in achieving a certain final result. That knowledge may nevertheless inspire others, by idea diffusion, to devise their own routes to such a result. and modification are the most straightforward option for transmitting technology, that option is sometimes unavailable. Blueprints may be kept secret, or they may be unreadable to someone not already steeped in the technology. Word may trickle through about an invention made somewhere far away, but the details may not get transmitted. Perhaps only the basic idea is known: someone has succeeded, somehow, in achieving a certain final result. That knowledge may nevertheless inspire others, by idea diffusion, to devise their own routes to such a result.