By 500 b.c. an unstable relationship
existed between civilised man and microbe as ancient empires
reached their natural, arable limits. Disease, too, may have
reached its limits. Irrigation farmers had stabilized their responses
to parasites after 3,000 years, and civilized people were adjusting
to infections. At this time the Greeks traded luxury products
like wine and oil to the Black Sea barbarians for grain. Because
they traded by sea they were insulated from the barbarian surplus
producers. Ships would later prove to be swift-moving incubators
of infection, but in the meantime the Greeks were safe from raids
and invasions. The whole society was involved in trade and politics,
not just the upper classes, and this spirit of autonomy and democracy
prevented empire in the Mediterranean until the Romans.
The Mediterranean was then a relatively healthy place despite
a population surge after 700 b.c.. It was too cool ( the Black
Sea ) or too dry ( Carthage ) to foster much malaria. The Europeans
drained swamps on occaision and herded cattle the malarial mosquitoes
preferred to man. European agriculture (olives, grapes, millet,
and wheat ) was also less disruptive to the ecosystem than Asian
rice farming. There was some malaria, however, and Hippocrates
( 460-377 b.c. ) also mentions mumps, influenza, diptheria, and
tuberculosis, but not measles, smallpox, or bubonic plague.
In 431 b.c. the Greeks became embroiled in the Pelopponesian
War, which would eventually destroy Athens. A year after the
war began, a quarter of Athens' army died of a plague that came
to Piraeus harbor from Ethiopia, via the Red Sea trade route.
Greek pre-eminence continued through Alexander the Great,
however. Alexander conquered Egypt, Asia Minor, Syria, and Persia.
In 323 b.c. his plague-decimated army reached India, where many
refused to continue, and Alexander died of plague or malaria
on this campaign, aged 33. Greek cultural influence on India
was strong, and even Asian Buddhas began to display the top-knot
associated with Apollo, the Healer.
India unified under the Gupta princes a few years after the arrival
of the Greeks, but India's plethora of diseases prevented any
lasting political stability and attempts to expand into the Ganges
area were frustrated. The Indus Valley, home of Gupta civilisation,
was dry and depended on irrigation; the Ganges was watered by
monsoons and protected from frost by the formidable Himalyas.
This warm, wet region was probably the home of
cholera, which is still endemic there, along with
dengue and malaria. The prevalence of disease in India may account
for the stoic and transcendental nature of Hindu and Buddhist
philosophy.
The Han empire ( 220 b.c.-221
a.d. ) had arisen in cool, dry, Northern China as a response
to the need to control the wild Yellow River for irrigation.
The peasants were productive and the parasitism of the government
was restrained by the moderation and responsibility emphasized
by Confusian philosophy. Attempts to expand south into the warm,
wet, mountain-sheltered Yangtse Valley were likewise frustrated
by the presence of malaria, dysentery, dengue fever, and schistosomiasis.
In the meanwhile, Chinese and Greek encountered each other at
the Gupta courts, and active trading by sea developed throughout
the Indian Ocean, with the Mediterranean connected via the Red
Sea. As Greece declined, the Romans, after defeating rival Carthage,
absorbed the old Greek world and forged an empire that included
the entire Mediterranean and the Near East.
In 166 a.d., Roman ambassadors of Marcus
Aurelius appeared in the Han court of China. Both
empires had huge populations. According to contemporary tax records
of 14 a.d. there were 54,000,000 people in the Roman empire,
and almost 59,000,000 in Han China. The Romans traded with India
from Red Sea ports across the Indian Ocean. India, in turn, traded
by sea with Southeast Asia and influenced the cultures there,
exporting Hinduism and Buddhism, but disease again prevented
anything lasting beyond the religions. The great abandoned cities
of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom in Cambodia may have been victims
of a plague or war but the complete and intact ruins suggest
disease.
Between 100 a.d. and 600 a.d. epidemic diseases began to affect
Rome and China, the two vulnerable, temparate-zone ends of this
ancient trading circle. The diseases probably came from India
and the Middle East, whose populations were more immunoresistant.
In 165 a.d., Roman troops returning from Mesopotamia introduced
what was probably smallpox or measles to the Mediterranean. This
epidemic killed 25-33% of the population in affected areas and
initiated a process of decline in Mediterranean culture that
lasted over 500 years. In 251 another plague hit Rome and lasted
until 266: 5,000 people died a day
in Rome alone at the height of the epidemic. So many died that
Roman emperors were forced to conclude deals with barbarian leaders:
military service in return for land and settlement. During the
reign of Diocletian ( 285-305 ) cultivators were forbidden by
law to leave the land, thus creating the institution of sefdom.
( An idea that would find favor with the Spanish when the same
thing happened among the Indians more than a thousand years later.
) To keep the empire alive certain occupations became obligatory
and hereditary. Tax revenues diminished as formerly wealthy Mediterranean
cities and cultures collapsed, and unpaid border troops mutinied
and turned on the local civil populations, further eroding the
peace, stability, and the economy of the Roman empire. Local
warlords became powerful enough to cease tax payments and tribute
to Rome. Local languages began to replace Latin, which retreated
to the priesthood and officialdom, as in the case of Sumer. The
loss of Latin increased illiteracy.
The empire remained alive only in the more populous east,
as the west yielded to barbarian invasions, civil disorders,
the decay of the cities, the deaths of the farmers, famines,
increased illiteracy, and the migrations of survivors who then
spread more disease among unexposed populations.
Christianity moved rapidly into the cultural vacuum:
its healing traditions and promise of a better life to come made
it doubly attractive to the survivors.
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