Spanish conquerors

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. 

In 1532, Pizarro s conquest of the Incas marked a new chapter in the use of the coca bush. Once reserved only for important ceremonies or for the use of select groups, the coca bush became a form of currency. The Spanish conquerors used coca plants as a kind of payment for the natives to ensure their cooperation and to keep them energized for the backbreaking labor they were required to perform. 

Pizarro s conquest of the Incas in the sixteenth century forever changed the use of coca leaves in Peru. Once reserved for Incan priests and soldiers, chewing coca leaves became widespread when Spanish conquerors used coca leaves as payments for Incan laborers. Eventually, the Spanish took over coca production and cultivation completely from the Incas. 

Cacao has been known to the scientific world for only about 450 years but in that time it has become firmly established in our economic, historic, cultural, romantic, and scientific lives. Agronomists from various parts of the world have occupied themselves principally in the tropical areas of production. Economists have dealt with cacao and its effects upon social, political, and national cultures. Historians have recorded its transition from the pre-Columbian world of the Middle American cultures to the Spanish conquerors, and those who followed. 

When the Spanish conquerors melted gold and silver objects, they were surprised to see that the bars obtained were actually rather impure the objects, apparently of gold or silver, were in reality made of alloys of those metals and copper. The smiths produced these alloys and employed a process to give finished objects the appearance of pure gold or silver. 

The name avocado is derived from the word aguacate , which the Spanish conquerors heard from the Aztec Indians of Latin America. It spread from the tropics to the subtropical winter-rain areas. 

Guano was used to fertilize crops along the western coast of South America long before the Inca empire, and the Incas extended the practice to highland crops. Spanish conquerors were impressed by the fertilizer s effects but made no effort to introduce it to Europe. The first small lump of guano was brought to the continent from... 

The Arab conquerors of the Iberian peninsula wasted no time in establishing local mills for the production of paper and by the middle of the twelfth century, papermaking was an industry in the Spanish cities of Xativa (or Jativa) and Toledo. An early reference to papermills in Spain is found in the writings of traveler Abu "Abdallah Muhammad al-Idrisi. Describing Xativa in a.d. 1150, he wrote Schatiba is a charming town with castles whose beauty and strength have become proverbial. Paper is there prepared as nowhere else in the civilized universe and is sent both East and West (3). 

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. 

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