History of American Indians and the United States

Disease & Technology

Dr. Kane

mkane2@albany.edu Humanities 109 | MWF 9:20 - 10:15 AM

Office Hrs: M 10:20 - 11:20 & F 1:30 - 3:30

Social Science 60S

Friday, November 10

coming up

• Final proposal - Nov 13 guidelines on Bb
• Researching NY conference Thurs Nov 16 - Sat Nov 18
• Friday lunch keynote, Revolutionary Times
• Midterm II - Dec 1
• studyguide Nov 17
• review day?

today's class

• Mexica pre-contact politics & conquest
• epidemic disease
• disease in the Americas

Mann, 1491

• what was Holmberg's Mistake? (6-11)
• what's the problem with Holmberg's Mistake and earlier scholarship of the pre-contact Americas? (11-17)
• how did Native people initially view Europeans?

Mexica politics

• "imperial" consolidation 1400 - 1520
• dissolution of the Triple Alliance
• centralization of power with tributary city states
• cult of Huitzilopochtli and integration of new gods in alliances

Aztec empire

cartography

Americapox?

what about American diseases?

• endemic vs. epidemic
• bacteria: lyme's, staph, strep, yellow fever, typhus
• parasites: chagas, ring worm
• syphilis & disease evolution - sexually transmitted or not?
• how is a disease transmitted and where did it come from