here's a cheap snark to start of the day (not always a good idea):
And, “The triumph of capitalism in the modern world thus may lie as much in our genes as in ideology or rationality.” - AS
For years, the English told the everyone why they ought to rule. Now they think they have the genetic proof. ... ba da boom.
On the less snarky side:
If these ideas undermine parts of conservatism (its belief in unchanging human nature in history), they also entrench others (that societies cannot be abstracted from their moment in time or culture).
It's true. Conservatives don't like evolution. But they do like Darwinism. Go figure.
More on the political impact of disease in economic history:
1491 . . . Europeans-borne pestilences wiped out Native cultures soon after Columbus
In 1492, more than 3,000,000 Indians lived on the island of Haiti. Forty years later, fewer than 300 remained.
The calamity wrought by Soto apparently extended across the whole Southeast. The Coosa city-states, in western Georgia, and the Caddoan-speaking civilization, centered on the Texas-Arkansas border, disintegrated soon after Soto appeared.
