Summary Of Man The Hunter Chapter Summary

In the first chapter, Man the Hunter, William H. McNeill talks about the relationships between populations and parasites. He first talks about how there is a balanced relationship between the population and parasites. A balanced relationship is a relationship where the parasite lives off of the host or inside of the host. An example of a parasite and a host might be tapeworms inside of the human body and getting into your digestive tract. McNeill says that different people react differently to different parasites. Some people may resist the parasite and other people can be devastated by these parasites. McNeil says, “In the absence of some such disturbance, however, a tolerable state of health can be supposed, such as exists among wild primates

of the forest today”. This quote helps explain that parasites don’t only hurt humans, they can also hurt animals, but animals can also adapt to parasites like humans. In the second half of chapter one, McNeill starts to talk about is the evolution of parasites over the years. When our ancestors were alive, parasites may have been able to live in different conditions but now most parasites only have the ability to live in warm conditions because they do not function correctly in cold temperatures. The rise of civilization, cultures and agriculture is starting to disrupt the balance between parasites and the hosts in a lot of different ways because of evolution. At the end of the chapter McNeill talks about different kinds of parasites like malaria or trypanosome that affect a certain location rather than the whole world because that is the environment where they can live and strive the best.
In the second chapter, Breakthrough to History, William H. McNeill starts the chapter off with the topic of extinction and how the climate and other factors have led to extinctions all over the world. He says that the old world had lots of animals and plants but the new world was impoverished with animals and had many plants. McNeil then talks about diseases that have been going around the world for many years and the diseases that have just started. Diseases were originally originated from wild animals and that is how humans contracted these diseases and then spread them around the world. An example that Mcneil uses is that, irrigation farming in warm climates is a very easy way that diseases spread because some of these parasites and diseases need moisture, and this irrigation contributes the moisture that is needed. He also talks about the evolution of these diseases. These diseases used to be not easily transported but now parasites and the transformation of humankind have made it easier for diseases to spread throughout each continent. McNeill says, “Most and probably all of the distinctive infectious diseases of civilization transferred to human populations from animal herds”. The quote reiterates the topic about wild animals originally spreading the diseases to humans through all different form of contact. McNeill finishes the chapter with information about viruses that affect certain people. Tuberculosis didn’t affect some organs in white people but then when it attacked some Indian’s bodies, they had different organs that were affected by the virus. This shows the diseases and viruses keep on changing throughout history and keep on evolving.
In the third chapter, Confluence of the Civilized Disease, Pools of Eurasia: 500 B.C. to A.D. 1200, William H. McNeill starts the chapter off by talking about why cities and towns are where there are. He says that the earth has a certain terrain so towns first picked the best terrain and built there towns on it. The Chineses picked the Yellow River because it was one of the biggest streams in the world and it had drainage systems that were in the towns. A big disadvantage was that the river would get a hole it the dike, so it would shift because all of the water would move a different direction so that led to the river moving hundreds of feet from where it originally started. He then starts to talk about the four great civilizations from the first millennium and how they started the different diseases that spread around the world. Next, McNeill starts to talk about the immunities that were built up to these diseases. During the Han Dynasty in China, many people needed help fighting off these deadly diseases so the immunities helped them fight the diseases. The Mediterranean had a very interesting history of outbreaks of diseases. First many people were moving to the coasts of the Mediterranean because of the good soil to have crops but then the cities were becoming to dense with people and the infectious diseases started. The main disease was malaria because of the water on the coasts but there was also a lot of parasites that lived in these towns. The chapter ends with McNeill talking about the diseases that had the opportunities to spread in the Old World.
In the fourth chapter, The Impact of the Mongol Empire on Shifting Disease Balances, 1200-1500, William H.

McNeill starts the chapter off by talking about the Mongol Empire which was located in southeast Asia to eastern Europe. Diseases in Asia were easily spreaded by different factors and they also had a cultural impact to the people that it affected in each area. Asia was controlled by one man and his name was Genghis Khan. He became such a big leader because people started to move to the Far East and Far West. The Mongol empire was renown for there different ways of communication. McNeill says that, “Not only did large numbers of persons travel very long distances across cultural and epidemiological frontiers; they also traversed a more northerly route than had ever been intensively traveled before”. This shows that they were inventors of many different routes in Asia. The big event that happened in Asia was the Black Death. McNeill says that the infectious disease killed up to thirty five percent of people in some towns and was transported from city to city, by the fleas and rodents that would live in the steamboats. This was a pandemic and not an epidemic because it spread throughout the world and not just through a couple of communities and towns. McNeill finishes the chapter by talking about the Horseman that would travel to different empires and they would also transmit the disease from empire to empire. They could spread the disease faster than any other thing because they moved so fast on the

horses.
In the fifth chapter, Transoceanic Exchanges, 1500-1700, William H. McNeill starts the chapter off by talking about how diseases were spreading in the Old World. McNeill states that domesticable animals must have carried the diseases from Eurasia and would spread diseases from the intermediate hosts. In Mexico, the diseases would spread fast because the populations were dense where the crops would grow and that would mean that the diseases are spreading faster. Next, McNeill talks about European diseases that were brought to America in the late 15th century and so on. In 1518 smallpox had reached the Hispaniola from Europe and then attacked the Indian population which spread onto Cortez’s Tlaxcalan allies. Theses European diseases had made it impossible for Cortez to win his battles so he ultimately had to withdraw and that was very unlike Cortez to withdraw from a battle. The disease that started to spread in 1530-31 after the epidemic of smallpox that killed one third of the population was measles. Measles started to attack Peru and Mexico and then moved up to America. The epidemics that followed the measles was typhus, influenza and many other deadly epidemics. The chapter ends with a section about cannons and the new weaponry available for all of the big empires. McNeill says, “The late Ming and Manchu empires of China, together with the Mughal, Tokugawa, Safavid, Ottoman, Muscovite, Spanish and Portuguese empires all may be classed as imperial states held together by a monopoly of decisive force exercised by a few cannoneers.” This means that all these big empires could easily take over because they had the money to get these weapons and they would bring chaos to all of the smaller empires.
In the sixth chapter, The Ecological Impact of Medical Science and Organization Since 1700, William H. McNeill starts the chapter with information about cures and how they have been changed throughout the years. “Some cures were helpful; some indifferent; some, like the practice of bleeding for fevers, must have been positively harmful to most patients”. People usually relates cures to good things but they were always good because they sometimes would hurt people. McNeill explains how it took Europe almost a full century to call an emergency for the effects of plagues because they didn’t really think that they would keep on spreading and killing thousands of people but they kept on doing that. McNeill then starts to talk about the technology that started to modernize the way that people grow crops. All different kinds of new technologies like fertilizer or seed selection helped this simple way of growing food and it helped everybody who had a job in the agriculture field. McNeill then talks about the Germ Theory and how it affected the European countries. The Germ Theory states that all diseases are caused by microorganisms so ports in the Mediterranean were closed because of this theory. The chapter ends with a passages about diseases that have to do with the cleanliness of people. Some of these diseases include cholera, “Asian” flu, typhus, leprosy, tuberculosis and many other infectious diseases. This chapter was mostly focused on the 20th century diseases rather than the 19th century and below, because this is when the new technology and medical improvements were coming out.