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Comment by 29athrowaway | Hacker News Reader

How do you contract syphilis other than sexually? The Spanish did not bring many women with them in their expeditions, and people that don't bathe are not precisely sex symbols... so it's not hard to figure out what happened.

The fact that Spain still has monuments dedicated to murderers, human traffickers, slave owners, serial child abusers says a lot about a country.

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I mean, we have also left the Mayan pyramids standing despite being monuments to sacrificial human murder. Nobody is looking at Conquistadors in the 21st century as some sort of inspiration for the future. History happened, it was significant, over a billion people speak Spanish because of it, for better or for worse. That's all of human history, it's one giant mess. It's frankly amazing that it turned out as well as it did, because war and conquering was always a constant in human history...of course, what we're experiencing now could be a relatively temporary time of stability before we descend into a world war again.

You might be interested in "The Mutiny of the Bounty" by Sir John Barrow for what went on between sailing ships and indigenous peoples of the islands they visited. I.e. quite a lot of sexual congress went on. In fact, one of the reasons for the mutiny was the sailors' unhappiness at being separated from their partners. When the mutineers returned, many of the indigenous women chose to accompany them on their trip to exile on Pitcairn Island.

We can also argue that saliors who went on such expedition were not average people, they probably had funding and had resources which they could trade with others for sex.

Also, once they've reached the shore, they wouldn't want to bath after such a long voyage?

You are saying if sailors didn't bath out of habit not because of necessity.

Or Genghis Khan, Muhammed, the zulus, Egyptians, Assyrians, romans, Aztecs etc etc etc. every single color, creed you pick it. All mass murder and colonization. Human history in a nutshell.

No no, those were all victims of circumstance. Western cultures are uniquely capable of moral reasoning and are therefore more culpable than everyone else. I think that's what pop culture is telling me...

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