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Message:: [QUOTE="900fine, post: 279151, member: 6036"]Here's an interesting thought : Jared Diamond is a UCLA physiology professor and author of the widely acclaimed bestseller "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies," in which he writes: "Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-Columbian Native American population. The most populous and highly organized native societies of North America, the Mississippian chiefdoms, disappeared in that way between 1492 and the late 1600's, even before Europeans themselves made their first settlement on the Mississippi River (page 78)....  "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 rank top among the killers." (page 212).  "As for the most advanced native societies of North America, those of the U.S. Southeast and the Mississippi River system, their destruction was accomplished largely by germs alone, introduced by early European explorers and advancing ahead of them" p374 A book well worth reading. It might give some insight into the question posed by Invictus above. It certainly strikes hard at the "blame America for everything" crowd. This is a complex topic.[/QUOTE]