Lewis Dartnell, biologist: ‘One of the problems with the modern world is a loss of scarcity in many things’
In his book ‘Being Human’, the expert offers examples of how genetics and pandemics have determined universal history
When Hernán Cortés mounted his final siege of Tenochtitlan in 1521, its Mexica defenders offered little resistance. The diseases the Europeans had brought with them, particularly smallpox, had weakened the region’s inhabitants, who were defenseless against the previously unknown pathogens. Years before, during the seventh century, another dazzling civilization, that of the Muslim Empire, rose up with the assistance of microbes, in its case the bacteria that produced the plague and left the Byzantines and Sassanids weakened. Two empires that had been invincible for centuries were supplanted by other factions who proved better at resisting unexpected outbreaks of epidemic.
