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The Vertue of the Coffee Drink [c.1652]
“It is a simple innocent thing,” says this very first English-language advertisement for coffee. There the document stands on solid ground. Today there are some indications—possibly too eagerly seized upon by the likes of me, maybe—that coffee is a wonder drink. However no present-day claim can come even close to the wonders and “vertues” of […]
Why Disease Conquered the Americas
May 17, 2013
History of Aboriginal America 15. Disease and the conquest of the Americas, pt.2 The scale of what happened in the Americas is unparalleled in human history. An estimated 80 to 100 million people died in the century or two following Columbus. Some are dying still. For comparison, Europe itself contained only about 80 million people when […]
Flagellants in London, 1349
May 7, 2013
Sir Robert of Avesbury, Keeper of the Registry of the Court of Canterbury, recounts the following visit of flagellants to London in 1349. Flagellants, who became relatively common in Europe at the time of the Black Death, were attempting to repel the plague with acts of horrific ritual purity—one of many responses to that most […]
Boccaccio – The Black Death Comes to Florence
May 6, 2013
The Decameron, from which the following passage is taken, was written in the middle of the 14th century while the Black Death–a particularly deadly form of the bubonic plague–was still raging. The pandemic was to eventually kill one person in three in Europe. The author of the passage, Giovanni Boccaccio, certainly witnessed the epidemic himself […]
What Defeated the Mexica?
May 5, 2013
History of Aboriginal America 14. Disease and the conquest of the Americas, pt. 1 When Cortés entered Tenochtitlan in 1521 with his 200,000 Aboriginal allies, he made acquaintance with the true conqueror of Mexico along that great city’s causeways. He did not salute it. Bodies lay along all the causeways in great piles, killed by […]
Genetics and the Decline of Sparta
May 3, 2013
The quest for genetic purity may have been Sparta’s Achilles heel. When I encountered Plutarch’s Lives a decade or two ago, I was surprised to find an old history lesson embedded there. I was surprised because Plutarch is not what I would call a reliable source. He presents Romulus and Remus (who were supposedly raised […]
The People Who Invented the Wheel
April 16, 2013
Once upon a time there was a guy named George. He was a real guy. He really lived. Maybe his name wasn’t George. The thing about George is that one day he invented the wheel. That was the really special thing about George. He was the only guy who ever invented the wheel. Not that […]
Also at the Conquest
April 5, 2013
History of Aboriginal America 13 The Invisible Allies of the Conquistadors Columbus was notorious for continuing to insist, despite growing evidence to the contrary—and his own encounter with the South American continent on his fourth voyage—that he had found the route to the Indies in 1492. You could call this insistence peculiar stubbornness (of which […]
The Conquistador’s Playbook
March 13, 2013
History of Aboriginal America 12 Cortés and the Seven Protocols of Conquest Shortly after he came ashore on the Central American mainland in 1519, Hernán Cortés symbolically “founded” the city of Vera Cruz, and after dispatching an agent to Spain, he thereafter grounded and scuttled his remaining ships. What were these mad Spaniards up to […]
A Handful of Myths
March 11, 2013
History of Aboriginal America 11 Cortés, the conquistadors, and the myth of the “handful of adventurers.” When 19th century historian William Prescott wrote about Hernán Cortés’ and his role in the invasion and destruction of the Aztec empire beginning in 1521, he described the event as “the subversion of a great empire by a handful […]
Grandpa Theo
With Malaika
Klick This Pic
An Informal Chronology of the Aboriginal Land Question in BC
Father Theo's Blog 
July 30, 2013
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