Conquistadors

Carmine is a colored pigment extracted from the female insect Coccus cacti or Dactylopius coccus, or its eggs. These insects live on prickly pear cactus in Mexico. The Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes brought the dye to Europe after seeing the Aztecs use it. 

Smallpox is a very ancient disease that has been mentioned in medical writing dating back to the third century AD. It originated in Egypt or India and became endemic in both of these countries. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is estimated to have killed almost half a million people every year in Europe. The Spanish conquerors (conquistadors) of Mexico and Peru took smallpox with them. It is estimated to have killed over three million Aztec Indians, who had no immunity against this disease because, until then, it was unknown in the New World. 

Spanish conquistadors introduced coca to Europe and the original missionaries unsuccessfully attempted to ban it use. The Catholic Church viewed its use as an act of paganism and a remnant of native religious ceremonies. Despite this position and the Church s destruction of cultured coca crops, cocas widespread use among many isolated cultures prevented significant... 

Although the use of the mushrooms and morning glories was documented by the Spanish conquistadores... 

When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in America they were impressed with the brilliant red fabrics worn by the Aztecs. Then the Spaniards learned that the Aztecs knew of another dye-producing insect — the cochineal. A type of cactus known as opuntia, plentiful in South America, was the ideal breeding ground for these insects, and the females produced the dye. The Aztecs had developed the technique of sweeping the insects off the leaves into hot water to kill them before drying the corpses in the sun. There was no gender separation the useless males were sacrificed to the fascinating chemistry of the female. 

At the cocaine/amphetamine drugstore we thus buy one dream (immediate energy) at the expense of another (long-term restoration). It s a bit like mixed portfolio investing or hedging one s bets. Take a quick hit (and with it, risk) or be patient (and play it safe). As is typical of the ambitious conquistador type, Freud achieved some instant notoriety with his claims for cocaine but incurred doubt about his judgment when the addiction potential that he had underestimated reared its ugly head. 

Lycopene was introduced into the Western world after the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes was offered some tomatoes by the Aztec emperor Montezuma. Cortes disregarded this courteous gesture and went on to conquer Mexico from 1529 to 1531. In the states bordering Mexico — Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California — tomatoes and other Mexican-Indian foods soon began to be adopted but also made their way to Europe. In Italy, tomatoes were mentioned as early as in 1554 and were then slowly assimilated. Their initial color was yellow (porno d oro) they obtained their red appearance only after years of cultivation. Today, tomatoes, the major source of lycopene, are an important part of the Mediterranean diet. 

Vanilla was highly regarded in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and was brought back to Europe, and from there to the rest of the world, by the Spanish Conquistadors. In ancient Mexico, the Totonac people (present state of Veracruz (Papantla), Mexico) were regarded as the producers of the best vanilla. 

When the Conquistadores subdued the Aztecs, early chroniclers recorded that the Indians made religious and medicinal use of peyote, another psychoactive plant named tlitliltzin, and a small lentil-like seed called ololiuqui. The third, alleged to have been used also for purposes of divination, came from a vine known in the Ndhuatl language as coaxihuitl (or "snakeplant ). 

Archaeological evidence discovered recently in caves in Texas, including stores of still-psychoactive cacti, indicates that peyote was used ceremonially 3,000 or more years ago. When the Conquistadores wrote about its widespread use, they remarked mainly on the Chichimeca, Toltec and Aztec regions. However, many anthropologists think it was first used by the Tarahumaris, who live closer to its growing area. 

This was the state of our knowledge of the structure of the atom when Langmuir, the modern scientific conquistador, attempted to invade the tiny world of the atom. There was an unmistakable conflict between Bohr s theory of the hydrogen atom and the conception of Lewis. Chemists could see but little use in the Bohr atom. They wanted an atom which would explain chemical reactions. The first World War over, Langmuir undertook to reconcile the two theories by publishing his concentric shell theory of atomic structure. 

The tree is said to have been discovered in the Amazon or Orinoco basin at least 4000 years ago. Christopher Columbus was the first European to encounter the beans, during his fourth voyage to the New World in 1502, but he virtually ignored them. It was two decades later that the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes helped spread the valuable cocoa bean crop to the Caribbean and Africa, and then he introduced drinking chocolate into Spain in 1528. The cacao tree is now cultivated in West Africa, South America, Central America, and the Far East. At world level, the demand for cocoa is generally measured by reference to world grindings. The world grindings of cocoa beans in 2003/2004 approached three million metric tons. 

The Spanish Conquistadors of the Sixteenth Century sent back news to Spain that the indigenous population used Stevia to sweeten their herbal teas since ancient times, i.e. predating 1500 AD. 

Spanish conquistadores recounted tales of early coca use as in this quote from the journal of Pedro Cieza de Leon ... 

Hemp is beheved to have been brought to Mexico by Pedro Cuadrado, a conquistador in Cortes s army, when the conqueror made his second expedition to Mexico. Cuadrado and a friend went into business raising hemp in Mexico and were very successful at it. In 1550, however, the Spanish governor forced the two entrepreneurs to limit production because the natives were beginning to use the plants for something other than rope. 

HLA is thus said to be highly polymorphic the protein products differ between us by several more than the average one to two amino acids. The blood group factors A and B are examples of them (group O is just an absence). They reflect and determine population genomics in Amerindians, B and almost all A blood groups have been wiped out by susceptibility to syphilis introduced by conquistadors (the detailed mechanism of this is not clear). 

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