Hunting the Double Helix: How the Double Helix is Solving Puzzles of the Past by Anna Meyer

Author:Anna Meyer [Meyer, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1560258632
Barnesnoble:
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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in what we now call the Bahamas, they could see people on the beach, watching them. They rowed ashore carrying flags and, in a manner typical of the colonial European attitude, proclaimed the land to be theirs, naming it San Salvador.

There is no record of what the local inhabitants thought of the new arrivals, but apparently they were friendly. Not realising that he had ended up in an entirely new part of the world, Columbus believed he had reached Asia. In fact, he thought he was quite near India and, because the people of the island had darker skin than Europeans, he called them Indians. They were in reality Tainos, members of the Arawak language group that inhabited an area from the Amazon to the Caribbean.

After exploring the region a little further, Columbus sailed back to Spain, still thinking he had been to Asia. Back home, he told tales of his adventures and of the people he had met and of all the things he had seen.

The new lands that Columbus had stumbled upon were a fascination and a complete mystery to people in Europe. It was quite clear that a previously unknown part of the world had been discovered, but no one was sure just how it fitted into the map of the world that they knew at the time. When people began to realise more about what exactly Columbus had found—a whole new part of the world that no one in Europe had known to exist before—he became a hero.

A year later, Columbus led a second voyage to the new lands, this time with 17 ships carrying 1200 people, the first Europeans to settle permanently in the Americas. The travellers brought horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs and wheat, and, in a sinister sign of things to come, they also brought mounted, armed troops.

Further European voyages soon followed, with explorers venturing deeper into Central America and the South American

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H U N T I N G T H E D O U B L E H E L I X

mainland, making contact with the people there. Relationships between the indigenous Americans and the Europeans soon took a turn for the worse. Power struggles began, and the local inhabitants, who simply could not compete with the European weaponry and mounted troops, were taken captive as slaves.

The indigenous Americans were to suffer from more than the violence of war and slavery. From the time Columbus and his crew first made contact with them, they began to suffer dreadfully from a wide range of diseases, including influenza, smallpox, measles, plague, the common cold, malaria and tuberculosis.

The effects of these outbreaks were appalling. The epidemics were so severe that it is estimated between 50 and 80 per cent of the American population was killed. A whole generation of adults of child-bearing age was wiped out by disease, making it impossible for population levels to recover. Birth rates dropped and, as a result, population levels dropped even further.

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