"A swarming and consuming army of 110 trillion enemy mosquitoes patrols every inch of the globe save Antarctica, the Seychelles, and a handful of French Polynesian micro-islands." Last year, 830,000 humans died from mosquito bites. "As the pinnacle purveyor of our extermination, the mosquito has consistently been at the front lines of history as the grim reaper....and the ultimate angel of historical change." Traveling around the world with us, the mosquito has affected the outcome of battles and wars, felled civilizations and helped create our present reality.
The female mosquito needs blood to reproduce. The saliva it injects into a host is an anti-coagulant and is the method of transferring disease. Mosquitoes have been around for 190 million years and have haunted, primarily with malaria and yellow-fever, our brief 200,000 year existence as a species. Malaria, which still kills hundreds of thousands of Africans annually, is caused by a parasite transmitted by the mosquito. Yellow-fever is a mosquito transmitted viral infection, as is Nile fever, Zika, dengue and various encephalitides. The transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies meant an increase in human interaction with mosquitoes, in conjunction with the spread of diseases (common cold, flu, chicken pox, smallpox, measles and tuberculosis to name a few) occasioned by mankind's domestication of animals. Ancient texts from India, China, Mesopotamia and Egypt speak of the consequences of malaria.
"On the battlefields of empire building, malaria prejudiced the results of clashes and campaigns during both the rise and fall of Greece and Rome." The miasma of a malarial swamp decimated 70% of a 5th century BCE Athenian army at Syracuse. The mosquitoes and diseases of the Indus River valley marked the easternmost foray of Alexander the Great's army. Three years later, malaria killed him in Babylon. The 310 square miles of the Pontine Marshes of Campagna were a malarial fortress protecting the city of Rome from the Second Punic War onward. Hannibal's army handily outmaneuvered and defeated the Romans in three different battles. But, Hannibal could not directly attack the city because it was too well defended. And, he knew he could not linger near the marshes and so withdrew. He lost his strategic advantage and eventually, the war. As Rome grew with fountains, gardens and aqueducts, its citizens and soldiers were inadvertently exposed to malaria. Those soldiers spread the disease throughout the world. Ongoing and epidemic malaria, along with occasional bouts of bubonic plague, wore down and eventually wore out the western empire and it fell in the fifth century.
When he attributed the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire to the mosquito, I decided to stop reading the book. I re-read the review and noted that the reviewer thought he often overstated his case. There is no doubt that disease has had an overwhelming impact on the history of mankind and perhaps a discussion that included cholera, plague and dysentery would have made more sense.
not sure about hannibal
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