The effect of human travel has been twofold on the course of human history. It has served to transfer technologies, and it has also served to facilitate the spread diseases. There are examples of how technology travels from one culture to another all over the place, from the readings and movies we watch to things that we surround ourselves with everyday. Most of these technologies serve to make the lives of humans easier or more fun, but there are some inventions that have served to only destroy or make others lives worse. In some cases the technology’s originally intended usage was preserved, but in others the technology is used in different manners. An example from one of the first readings from this class is the Chinese invention of gunpowder. Originally it was used for religious purposes, but once the technology spread west through human travel, Europeans used the gunpowder and invented guns and ammunition. Once guns were invented, though, their use has not been altered. Though there are many different models, and types of guns, they all operate under the same principles and for the same purpose.

As I was trying to think of other examples of transfer of human technology through travel the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy” came to mind. I know that this movie doesn’t represent real life, and might not be based on a true story, but it shows an example of how technology from one culture can influence and change another. The basic premise of the movie is that a pilot is flying his plane over the African bush lands, and drops his Coke bottle out the window. The bottle falls into the hands of a tribe of bushmen who still live a relatively primitive lifestyle. The Coke bottle serves many different uses for them. This glass bottle is harder than most things that they had access to, and its mouth and base are circular. Eventually everyone in the tribe wanted to use the bottle for their own purposes. The drawback was that there was only one bottle, so everyone in the tribe begins to fight over it. The rest of the plot is irrelevant, but what I have retold so far serves to illustrate how human travel influences the spread of technology. It also illustrates that the use of one culture’s technology in another culture may not be the originally intended purpose.

There is a more solid example of the transfer of technology in the readings that we have done for class. The story of William Smith on an expedition to the Gambia River was retold in the Introduction of Michael Adas’ book Machines as the Measure of Men. The story, as retold by Smith and cited by Adas, involved Smith encountering a group of natives that felt antagonized by Smith and his landing party, apparently because of the never-before seen instruments they were using to measure distances on the beach. Eventually the group of Africans was scared away by these machines, and Smith discovered that “the guns that the warriors dropped… were of European manufacture.” (Adas) This fact indicates that the technology of guns traveled faster than the European explorers traveled. The story also says many things about the how new technologies may be perceived. All of these are facts are founded on the ability of humans to travel, otherwise technologies would stay in the geographical places where they originated, and no technology would be shared.

Similarly the spread of disease is facilitated by human travel. If we look at Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) specifically, we see that it is a disease that has reached pandemic proportions infecting 138 out of 175 countries across the globe. It has been compared to other historically significant epidemics such as the Black Plague in 14th century Europe, leprosy in the bible, and the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920(Shannon and Pyle). There are theories about its origin in the African continent, and how it spread from there to eventually every other continent. From a socioecological point of view there are three factors that effect the spread of disease: host factors like genetic susceptibility and biological factors, external environmental factors like the presence or absence of the pathogen, and personal behavior factors that effect the acquiring, transmitting, and other effects of the pathogen.

HIV is a known pathogen for AIDS. Studies have shown that there are three main ways to transmit this pathogen from human to human. These three ways are sexual intercourse, venous drug use and blood transfusions, and from a mother to her child. The first cases of AIDS and HIV were identified in the United States, but evidence of spatial, temporal and biological factors point to the origin of these diseases being central Africa. There have been biological evolutions in isolated HIV surface proteins that suggest that the virus in Africa has been around longer than those isolated in the United States. There has also been relatives of HIV and HTLV(another human retrovirus discovered before HIV) found in primates in the region of central Africa. Note that these examples do not constitute proof that Africa is the geographic origin, but they provide a strong epidemiological and etiological case for Africa as the origin (Shannon and Pyle). The isolation of these diseases related to HIV and HTLV was first found in the African Green Monkey. Possible transmission vectors from monkey to human include insect bites, monkey bites, or the consumption of monkey meat. These possibilities have widely been disputed for several reasons, all of which boil down to the difficulty of transmission through such media. However, a ritualistic behavior that was discovered in a small tribe involves the application of monkey blood to the pubic region, inner thighs and back of a couple to induce fertility. If this ritual is accurately described, then it provides optimal conditions for the transmission of a retrovirus from monkey to human. What remains to be explained is the transmission of the disease from human to human.

Transfer of diseases from human to human can only logically be due to human mobility. The presence of pockets of infected people can feasibly infect larger populations of people only if there is travel in and out of the infected area. Infected people would eventually make their way to urban centers, a.k.a. cities, and thereby infect a wider range of people including international travelers. There are several countries in Europe that have close ties with central Africa, and are involved in frequent business transactions that involve travel to and from central Africa. There are also many frequent travelers between the United States, Africa and Europe. These travelers serve as pathogen carriers that facilitate the intercontinental spread of diseases like AIDS and HIV. There are also factors that effect the transmission of diseases within a country and culture. Within the United States the most prevalent forms of transferring HIV and AIDS are intravenous drug use and sexual activity, particularly homosexual intercourse as evident in the 19:1 male-female ration of infection (Shannon and Pyle).

The travel of humans has brought with it benefits and downfalls. There have been cases of humans acting as pathogen carriers dating back to the age of European expansion. “The Spanish conquistadors brought with them a wide range of European diseases.” (Ponting) The diseases they carried include smallpox, measles typhus and influenza. The spread of these diseases helped the Europeans conquer many lands since the lands where they brought these diseases were akin to a breeding ground for these diseases. There had been minimal or no exposure to these diseases beforehand, so they ran wild with little to no controlling factors that slowed them down. However, recently with the spread of knowledge and technology there have been fewer and fewer people that have died from infectious diseases. Medical technologies are responsible for prolonging many lives, and other technologies have brought an easier life for a wide majority of people.

Works Cited:

Adas, Michael, "Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance", Cornell Univ. Press, 1989, pp. 1-35.

Gary W. Shannon; Gerald F. Pyle, “The Origin and Diffusion of AIDS: A View from Medical Geography”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 79, No. 1. (Mar., 1989), pp. 1-24.