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  • From: Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] disease / genetics
  • Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 21:48:47 -0500

Fascinating. Perhaps Paul Stamets was really onto something when he said, "I think the mixing of the gene pool is very important. I'm the absolute oposite of a racist. I believe that the races should mix very, very quickly in order to prevent genetic diseases or other diseases so we can borrow the immunity from multiple cultures because our cultures are really under assault now. I believe in the preservation of native cultures...but from a biologists point of view, it is really important that we get every possible genetic advantage from every strain of human that ever existed at this point in time."

Shall we now suggest in our courses to marry outside our race...or at least be willing to "share" ? :-)
Sounds like a lot more fun than racism.
Keith



Rick Valley wrote:


From: Claude Genest <genest@together.net>
( Jarred ?). DIAMOND- Guns, Germs and Steel
In any event, the hypothesis is that what gave Whitey a genetic advantage over
others with regards to immunity to disease, is that the Europeeans had
co-evolved in very close proximity to their domestic animals like pigs and
cows, animals not indigenouus in the Americas. As a result, they had evolved
immunities to the diseases caught from those animals, while the "Americans"
had not.

Which is one of the human/disease interactions; there's also the human/wild
animal interaction (malaria, yellow fever, etc.) which is why we Euros
"partnered" in much of our expansion with Africans and Asians; we weren't
resistant enough to the tropical diseases. And in both cases it was the
pattern of creatures from a larger land mass tending to move into a smaller
land mass more successfully than vice-versa. And there is the human/animal
partnership, which was more developed for the invaders (more domesticates,
esp. large ones) and in large part due to the megafaunal massacre which took
place during the initial human expansion into non Afro-Eurasian regions of
the globe.
And now it's fun to toss in Tim Flannery's observation that species that
move into the Americas tend to rapid evolutionary diversification.
One example would be the mixed origin peoples throughout the Americas-
Garifuna, Seminole, Caboclo, etc. etc.; very interesting cultures all.

-Rick















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