And also the literary director of the library of congress. Much of my own writing has been about the history and the people of latin america, and the purpose of this conversation to share a little bit of that history and talk about how it compares with and connects to the pandemic that were living through right now, right here in april 2020. So many of us are at home, working at home, living at home and sheltering in place as science takes the on the covid19 virus. Im so fortunate to have a truly skilled and knowledgeable colleague joining me today, a scholar who wears many hats spanning history, science, linguistics, archaeology and geography. John hessler is the director of the kislak collection and a specialist on early america. He is the author of a book called collecting for a new world. John is also distinguished curator in the librarys geography and map division and an expert in mapping in general. Now, how does mapping fit in with all of this . Well, he is an adviser to a number of leadingedge institutions in this country as they attempt to track the spread of coi have 19. Covid19 and understand how it moves through populations and time. John, welcome. Thanks, marie. Great to be here. Thank you for joining me. Lets, lets start with the history. The first recorded pandemic in the history of this hemisphere was actually the smallpox pandemic that came on the ships of the conquistadors, the spaniards in the 1500s and tore through the indigenous populations of the americas in that early part of that century. What had been europes experience with smallpox before that . This is a really complex and interesting question. There have been a number of scholars in recent years who have actually gone back and looked at some of the death records from france and italy. Actually seemed to track the mortality rate and what if effect of what the effect of smallpox was well before the conquest, sort of into the early modern period. What they found is even though the mortality rate of the disease is is fairly high 2030 , the virus that causes smallpox there didnt seem to be any large scale epidemics. It seems to be very localized, it seems 2030 of the people died, the rest of the people may have gotten the decide and recovered and the disease and recovered and developed some kind of immunity to it. Smallpox is an interesting virus. It has a lot in common with covid19, but there is a lot thats very different. It has lots of different animal hosts, its related to cow pox and monkeypox and a whole series of other diseases, other viruses. The question, the real evolutionary question for the smallpox virus is why is it only is one of those viruses that is only found in europe. But as far as the European Experience beforehand, people who died it was an important disease,s but there dont seem to have been any large scale pandemics. Had europeans, including the spanish, of course, had they become um newspaper the it by 1492 or immune to it by 1492 . Thats an interesting question. The virus itself has a peculiar history as far as that goes. Modern science kind of started to look at the genome ticks of the smallpox of that period. There have been some interesting discoveries in recent years, a child who died between 1643 and 1665 that weve actually looked at very closely and sequenced some of the genome and looked at some of the disease that were in the fleshy surviving parts of that particular child. And what has been found is that the smallpox that is in that particular mummy has very, very much in common with thed modern strains. Degradation timing and all that kind of stuff has shown this is a particularly virile strain of smallpox that seems to have come into existence at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century, kind of just in time for its importation to the new world. Is so there was some immunity, obviously, with the 20 , 30 mortality rate. Many people recovered, and there definitely was immunity by the time they arrived in the americas. But there was still plenty of europeans dying of smallpox. John, we know from early historians, early chronicles how devastating this particular variety of smallpox was to the native population. Some historians say 90 of all indigenous deaths, which were considerable in those years of the conquest, were attributable to small pock. Could you tell us smallpox. Could you tell us more about this . This is really interesting and a point of scholarly discussion. Some of those sources that we have, for example, a spanish chronicler a arrived in spain in 1524. He wrote, basically, a diary or a memoir which wasnt actually published until 1903. It was in moon you script manuscript until then, and he talks about the actual mortality rate, and he keeps talking in term of 50 . But some of the other sources we have like sam [inaudible] and people like cortes himself really talk in larger terms. I mean, cortes writes about the bodies piled up in the streets and the odor being so bad that he cant actual stand walking through the streets. So were not really sure what the mortality rate was, but it was certainly very high and much, much higher than the 20, 30 that wed be talking about in europe at the time. The interesting thing is theres a peculiar time frame that were dealing with here, and its really from april 1520 til about january 1521 seems to be when the smallpox was really introduced. Theres a very early source, vazquez basically talks about him x he writes a letter back to charles v in august 1520, and this is the first mention we have of smallpox in the new world from a spanish source. And it basically says that he was very surprised when [inaudible] that there were very few Indigenous People there, and he attributes this to them dying from smallpox. He then heads after off to very a cruise and finds very cruz and finds immediately upon the arrival of the expedition, the flotilla that the native peoples began dying of smallpox fairly rapidly. We dont really know the number, but it was very, very high. What fasts nates me fascinates me how quickly, as you say, it moved through that population. In my own research for my book at the library of congress, my book silver sword and stone, its clear from the chronicles that we know that there was trade up and down the coast of latin america, and we know that tribes were communicating with each other either to trade or because they were at war or for some reason or another. But, in fact, the smallpox epidemic reached the coast of peru, what is now peru and ecuador, and affected actually the inca emperor before the conquistadors even arrived. There was this quick communication. Yeah, theres some really interesting, actually, theres some very interesting sources like the annals of [inaudible] who this is a maya source is. But the earliest manuscript we have of it is from the 17th century. The first epidemic it talks about seems to describe smallpox. And it actually is before the arrival of the conquistadors. Its just a few months before, but we dont really know whats happening from the islands into the, just the native populations moving from the islands. One really porn thing that cortes important thing that cortes does tell us though, he does say the death thats occurring on the mainland is exactly the same as he saw on the islands are. So he definitely relates the two. There, of course, is the story of the introduction of the, of smallpox, the possibility being that it was done by an ethiopian slave, a slave who had been with one of the expeditions, the one who actually introduced it. Whats interesting about that is we really only is have one source, and the rest of the sources kind of copy from that source. But it shows an important aspect of the way the spanish were thinking of this disease. They actually had a theory of the disease. They actually had an idea that it had to be transmitted by people who didnt have immunity and that something new was going on here. So they were kind of theorizing it, even just historians who are chronicling this in just the earliest periods of contact. But they were thinking about it. So you work at the library of congress, john, and you have youre the director of this fantastic collection which is on permanent exhibit at the library. Its a collection of all kinds of artifacts and textiles and object toes of jade objects of jade and all sorts of things and maps even. Can you tell us what do those artifacts, chronicles, maps and things, objects, actually do they educates us in any way about the pandemic and how the disease spreads . Obviously, theres some very important sources. Some of the actual indigenous sources themselves, theres some extremely important work. The florentine kodaks has images, actually, engravings that show the Indigenous Peoples with smallpox. We see things like [inaudible] the earliest, from 1550s, the earliest image we see of actual smallpox in the indigenous population. And we have other things. For instance, at the library most importantly we have things like [inaudible] which kind of show us botanical information. We have copies of her man hernandezs work, a physician who was on the expedition in the 1550s and 1570s basically chronicling plants and indigenous medicine. He also did autopsies on Indigenous Peoples who had die of smallpox, and he was an amazing source. So a lot of these sources, a lot of these sources that really give us some insight into the indigenous mind, into what was going on in their world and how they pictured their world give us a lot of insight in how they reacted to it. Weve talked about the spanish and how the spanish are reacting to it and how cortes is talking about it, but how are they reacting to fit, what are they thinking of. And, you know, like all populations like this, they have their own medicine, they have their own ways of thinking about it. As i said, the [inaudible] gives us lots of botanical information. But we also have actual sources which tell us about a test of plants that theyre using. Theres something called the sand tomato which is a climbing vine which the roots are prepared and used as something to help fever in smallpox. And hernandez basically tells us the name for this and various other uses for it. He also tells us that, in fact, it doesnt work, that the only way to actually help cure smallpox is to burn the gallbladder of a hummingbird. So theres this mix in the indigenous world of how theyre reacting to disease from the sort of spiritual side attempting to control their world through ritual, but theres also a very detailed and extremely complex ethnobotany and pharmacological sources that theyre trying to use. The historical collections at the library and at other libraries a around the world are really important to looking at this. Not only the science of the epidemics, but what was the human cost, whats the human reaction. And we see that here today. Even the masks that are generated, we have all kinds of scientific masks, but we also have people doing drawings of their lockdown masks, things like that, you know, perceive their way, how theyre feeling in this time. Right. Right. Of course, when a novelvirus appears, no medicine equipped the deal with it. How sophisticated exactly was these tremendously highlydeveloped precolombian empires, how fist cased sophisticated were their medicines . Very sophisticated. The plants they used and some of the other things that they used in order to develop medicines, its still something we dont really understand that well. Theres some really important manuscripts which we really get deep into botany and nawa medicines. A lot of those medicines today are, we see that they have analgesic properties or serb or certain properties, and there is a movement and there has been for many years to look to ethnobotany and some of these traditional treatment for whats going on today to help cancer treatments and things like that. So it was very sophisticated. Were not really sure exactly how it developed because in developing, when youre live anything a place where theres 50,000 different plants and you kind of zoom in on 2 or 3 with certain analgesic properties, how you get there is an interesting question. What is the empirical way that Indigenous Peoples developed this. But when the spanish arrived, there was quite an, a very healthy me decemberal medicinalling way of looking at disease or looking at treatments. Besides the ritualistic aspects. So, john, the question of ancient knowledge and medical sophistication actually brings us to the question of how does all of this tie to the present day . What can history tell us about whats going on right now . And what were going through right now . What do we really know with any certainty about the patterns of disease in the early americas, and what does that history really teach us about the viral spread of coi have today . I covid today . I think one of the interesting things is specifically one can begin to look for the way patterns of viral transmission. Obviously, we dont have maps from the earliest period of the americas, but we do have these ideas of how the virus spread, we have letters, we have kind of knowledge that through reading sources, we also look back into history. The people who have looked back into the records of the european transmission, and we can begin to get a sense even without science of whats kind of going on, okay . Weve got something that we see in europe that isnt really causing a large pandemic, isnt really causing an epidemic or people dying, and then we see that the death records arent really telling us that the disease has had serious Global Implications for europe during the period. And then we see all of this incident textual knowledge thats coming through thats telling us that people are dying in the americas. Theres these ideas from the early spanish chroniclers and some of the nawa sources of how this disease is being transmitted. So they kind of give us at least a sense of the way its working and kind of the time frame. When we start looking at it from a more scientific perspective, however, especially today, we have a lot more tools to look at it. So in the case of smallpox, you know, the archaeological evidence has been unearthed combined with ancient dna and the technology we have today gives a real sense of how those historical sources are correct or incorrect, however it may be. But it kind of gives us a package of the way that these things actually occur and these things spread. Other sources, you know, as we get into epidemics that have occurred throughout the history of the exploration of the americas, weve seen diaries and things like that, we get a real sense of how some of it spread. But obviously its, of course, not as good as what we have today, what were looking at and how were trying to map and figure out the spread of covid19 and where covid19 came from. Right. So studying and analyzing former diseases like the great influenza of 1918 or hiv aids or sars can actually predict patterns of infection and transmission. Youve spent a great part of your career, john, in the study of maps and the scholarship of mapping, and youre now working with a number of organizations mapping covid19 and the possibility it was originally transmitted from an animal host. I realize this is ongoing work, and theres much to study thats still to be done, but tell us what exactly mapping has told us about covid19 so far. Well, whats interesting about this is were in a situation now where because we have a worldwide pandemic is and we have a laboratories all over the world that are full of secret dna, were getting a really good sense of what the overall genetic structure, what the genome of covid19 is. Now, covid19 is an interesting its part of a larger group of coronaviruses, corona meaning crown in london or in latin, and that really is because it looks like a crown, and it has these spikes coming out of it which are gliocoe proteins. And it was part of a larger family of viruses which for the most part find their host in [inaudible] this was a yes us in of bats genus of bats, horseshoe bats for the most part. And what weve really found is the sequence, the nucleo, the amino acid sequence of covid19 which is actually sars covid ii, the original name of it, 96 of that, that genome is actually found in the version thats found in this particular bat. So people believe that it actually came from a bat making the crossover to human beings. And what the mechanism of that crossover is is not really well understood. But what its allowed us to do is its allowed us as time goes on and as it spreads a around the world, we can develop whats called a genetic try. And that basically shows where the test was done, in other words, a person in new york or seattle or wuhan or somewhere in europe tested, can and so we have a location. We also have a time. So we have got a location and a time, and weve got the actual genome. And what were trying to do, what were actually trying to map is the mutation through time and through space. And so in the case of covid19, we can look at the figures that are on screen, and you see the [inaudible] through time. And we can look at some of the really important moments here. You can see the rise of it in wuhan, and the purple you see is all the transmission from china. When with we start looking at the colors in the tree, you can see that there are reds, is and those reds are really the transmission to north america and to the united states. Theres two groups. Theres kind of one up at the top and one at the bottom. Whats interesting is and what the mapping can actually tell us, for example, is the fact that the part that came to seattle, the initial seattle and illinois, are actually from china. So those are, they had the mutations that are very much like the chinese virus. But the one thats up at the top is really from europe. It has mutations that that comes from a european strain. So we can sort of see and get an idea, a very detailed idea like we could never before. This is really technology, really mapping this pandemic in a way that weve never really done before. And those details that we can get. Now, all this in a sense is theoretical. These genetic trees are built by very complex computer algorithms, mathematics, looking at mutations of the virus as it goes along are. But theres a sort of historical metaphor because the tree that you see before us, like i said, theyre based on mutations which are kind of like errors accumulate aring in the virus. Very much like in the way that a medieval historian would look at a manuscript as they kind of look at mistakes in the map you script as it moveses through time and space and get a sense of heres the initial manuscript, and heres how it changed, and it went to this place. Because this error happens to be in a manuscript that came from germany and its also in a manuscript that is in england that you you could say that they came from the same place, theyve got the same error, so the errors transmitted through time and space. To a certain extent, thats what were doing here with the viral mapping. Theres a lot of data being put out. Theres so many really amazing organizations like gis who are basically making the data, all of the sequence Data Available in realtime. And so there are people all over the world who are able to work on this project. John, that thats really remarkable, theyre so interesting. Lets take moment to take a moment to t