I'm surprised at Grey. There are no buffalo in America (the continent). Those are Bison.

Buffalo live in Africa and Asia.

Still, *quality video!

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by ChaosEngine.

*documentary *health *nature

Adding video to channels (Health, Nature) - requested by ant.

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, November 23rd, 2015 7:29am PST - promote requested by eric3579.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'America, North America, Plague, No Plague, New World, Old World' to 'CGP Grey, America, North America, Plague, No Plague, New World, Old World' - edited by eric3579

Actually, the Americas did export viruses -- syphilis and herpes. Of course, they weren't nearly as deadly as their imports.

The American buffalo (Bison bison) is also commonly known as the American buffalo. Same for the European bison (Bison bonasus). From wikipedia:

The term "buffalo" is sometimes considered to be a misnomer for this animal, and could be confused with two "true buffalo", the Asian water buffalo and the African buffalo. However, "bison" is a Greek word meaning ox-like animal, while "buffalo" originated with the French fur trappers who called these massive beasts bœufs, meaning ox or bullock—so both names, "bison" and "buffalo", have a similar meaning. The name "buffalo" is listed in many dictionaries as an acceptable name for American buffalo or bison.

Meh, just because lots of people are wrong doesn't make them right.

I read Guns Germs and Steel cover to cover, was fascinating

There is something innately fascinating in finding technical, biological and economical explanations of historical developments, and it's definitely so much more satisfying than having to resort to nationalism, racism, or religion to explain one region or another's successes.

The risk, I guess, in treating human history as a set of engineering problems, is that the human mind is so attuned to finding cause and effect that it might make us a little blind to situations where the answer is actually more blind chance than anything else.

One of my favorite of these explanations is when China's 'failure' to colonize the world is attributed to the success of porcelain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0OhXxx7cQg

It seems almost too neat to be true - like the false etymology of Marie est malade - so does anyone know if there are scholars who poke holes in the Porcelain vs Glass explanation?

Edit: Improving my googling shows that this explanation remains reasonable but still also involves a bit of blind historical chance. Colored glass was available in ancient Greece, and the Romans and Egyptians used manganese oxide to decolor it, which led to transparent glass and the basis for lens-grinding... that decolorization process apparently didn't pass on to China or wasn't valued by their culture, perhaps due to the clear competitive advantages of porcelain.

Actually, when it comes to the evolution of language, being wrong en masse does tend to make you right - eventually.

In Defense of Columbus: An Exaggerated Evil has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine on that post.