The section of this magnificent work you want to examine
is Chapter Eleven, entitled "The Lethal Gift of Livestock." In this chapter, the author
explores how the domestication of animals by some societies resulted in their exposure
to a greater number of germs and bacteria, allowing them to develop resistance to such
germs that gave them a significant advantage over other societies that did not
domesticate animals, and therefore did not have the opportunity to develop resistance to
diseases that find their origin in animals.
This chapter
explores how the microbes that domesticated animals bombard us with turn into diseases,
such as how smallpox emerged from cattle. Initially, such civilisations suffered greatly
as such diseases developed and infected humans, but afterwards they gained immunity--an
immunity that other civilisations lacked. Note the importance that the author places on
such germs in the conflict of the Old and New Worlds:
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.
Thus we can see
how the author establishes a causal link between owning livestock and therefore gaining
immunity to diseases that had such a massive impact when such civilisations met
others.
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