The Fifth History of Man

By John Bershof, MD

In the spirit of medieval writer Chaucer, all human activity lies within the artist’s scope, the History of Man Series uses medicine as a jumping off point to explore precisely that, all history, all science, all human activity since the beginning of time. The jumping off style of writing takes the reader, the listener into worlds unknown, always returning to base, only to jump off again. History of Man are stories and tales of nearly everything.

The Fifth History of Man has a few parting shots at viruses but mostly continues with the world of parasites, from tick disease that tick us off, Old Lyme, Connecticut and Lyme disease, toxoplasmosis, Crazy Cat Lady and her clowder of cats, then on into a discussion of the avatar of parasites: malaria. Our travels will venture down into the valley: Valley Girls, Valspeak, Valley Fever, fungus and fungal infections. We’ll jump into the biology of evolution, Darwin, Huxley and the great debates, the geology of earthquakes, volcanos, the Ring of Fire, and Johnny Cash, and then through the homos: Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and Homo sapiens, and once the dust cleared how the opposable thumbs, walking erect, and bigger brains left one man standing, one woman, too. No discussion of human history can leave out the G.O.A.T. of French history, heck, of European history; the man, the legend, Napoleon Bonaparte, loved and admired by everyone, even his enemies. Our path will take us into war & military, World War I versus the 1918 Swine Flu, some Russian history and how Stalin got Lenin wrong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9781304347091

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I really got nothing. What started out as a single book The First History of Man using infection as jumping off points into history, science, and everything within the writer’s domain, turned into six books. I was told as I was writing the first book that come edit time, I would shorten the book. All I accomplished was greatly lengthening the first book into what is now six books using infection as the underpinning for jumping off into history, science and whatever the moving hand writes. I’m a storyteller. It is highly recommended that the six books be read in order since storylines and sciencey stuff and history stuff thread from one book to the next in sequence. Which also translates into this Introduction being moot. Well, except to say that the infections covered in this book cover parasites and in the next book finishes off with sexually transmitted diseases, two subjects introduced in The First History of Man, but not explored.

The six books using infection as the underlying thread are:

• The First History of Man

• The Second History of Man

• The Third History of Man

• The Fourth History of Man

• The Fifth History of Man

• The Sixth History of Man

I bet you didn’t see that coming.

The Seventh History of Man, not written yet, will leave the world of infections as our medical base subject and incorporate the heart and heart disease as the underlying framework for our journey.

1

RICKETS OR RICKETTS

6East

When I was in medical school, I rotated on the ENT service. It was an elective rotation. ENT is the acronym for Ears Nose Throat, a specialty of surgery formally known as Otolaryngology, oto from the Greek otos for ear, laryn for larynx from the Greek laryngo for upper airway. The first two years of medical school are mostly lectures and lab where you cram everything into your tortured brain, vomiting up the information for exams and then promptly forgetting it. Oddly though, do you ever forget it? Somewhere deep in the recesses of your mysterious and yet still tortured brain bits 'n pieces of the information remain. Thirty years later something will cross your path while practicing medicine, and that long forgotten medical school thingamajig, thought to be forgotten, will percolate to the surface.

The four main medical school rotations in the third year all medical students must do, at least when I was in medical school, are medicine, surgery, obstetrics-gynecology, and pediatrics. Some medical schools require psychiatry, in the likely hope that sympathizing with patient that have emotional issues will somehow make those doctors-in-the-making more empathetic. The rest of the rotations were or are electives, perhaps chosen to help decide what area to enter in residency ... and for that matter, the area of medicine to practice for the rest of your life … or what areas of medicine not to enter. For the rest of your life! That's a tall order. Rotating on the orthopedic service was a popular elective, so too was a stint in the emergency room or on the cardiology service. The pulmonary and kidney rotations were also fashionable. I can't say dermatology or pathology were popular electives except for those considering such areas as a chosen specialty.

So, there I was one bright sunny day rotating on ENT when a young, beautiful brunette in her early twenties was admitted to our service. She was perhaps twenty-two. I was twenty-eight. You can already see where this is heading.

She was admitted to our ENT service because she had bilateral acoustic neuromas, and at that, recurrent bilateral acoustic neuromas, which are brain tumors. The eighth cranial nerve also termed the acoustic nerve or the auditory nerve or the vestibulocochlear nerve, supplies the inner ear cochlea organ of hearing and the inner ear vestibular organ of balance. These two locales are within what is termed the pons and medulla oblongata, the very base of the brain before it becomes the brainstem and the spinal cord. Not a lot of room here, which figures heavily into this story. And to be crystal clear, acoustic neuromas are brain tumors, benign brain tumors but brain tumors, nonetheless.

An acoustic neuroma is a tumor on the sheath of the acoustic nerve right there at the brainstem. It is not a tumor of the nerve fiber itself but of the lining, the sheath that protect the nerve. If you're wondering why a person with a brain tumor would be admitted to the ENT service and not neurosurgery—she actually had two acoustic neuroma brain tumors, one for each acoustic nerve servicing the right and left ears—it is because the surgical approach to removing acoustic neuromas is through the mastoid part of the ear, the bony area behind the ear discussed in an earlier narrative, mastoid from the Greek mastos for breast. As I maintained before, and I'll maintain again, that bony mastoid bone looks nothing like a woman's breast.

As for the brunette admitted to our service, I had a crush on her the moment I saw her.

And speaking of crushes, as we previously covered in quite some detail in previous volumes of History of Man Series, early European explorers to the Americas, and the colonists who followed, brought devastating infections that crushed the life out of huge swathes of Indigenous Peoples. Likewise, a few infections flowed the other way, from the Americas to Europe, the most infamous of which was syphilis—a story to be fleshed out further along in this narrative. Fleshed out and sins of the flesh? There must be a joke there. Other microbes, such as the Rickettsia bacteria, although known to exist in Siberia, seems to have a fondness for the North American continent; that is, some infectious culprits, oddly, did not find any urge to exist in Europe. Perhaps these species of bacteria evolved after the single continent of Pangaea had already broken into several continents and were then unable or unwilling to ply their trade, that is infect humans on the Eurasian continent.

Rickettsia and rickettsia-like bacteria can cause infection in humans, and they are generally transmitted to humans by the bite of an arthropod or insect, such as ticks, mites, fleas, and lice. Rickettsia bacteria are also called obligate intracellular parasites; that is, they are obligated to live inside the host cell. Most bacterial infections live on the host cell or around it, they don’t invade into cell cytoplasm like viruses need to, like some bacteria and parasites also must need to. Strep bacteria grow on the surface of the throat, in example. But needing to live inside the host cell, that is a higher order of complexity.

Saybrook Colony was established in 1635 at the mouth of the Connecticut River, right where it flows into Long Island Sound. It was established fifteen years after the Mayflower group set up the Plymouth Rock colony, in 1620, and twenty-eight years after the first European colony in the country, which was Jamestown in 1607. The reason the Mayflower folk are often taken to be the first settlers in America, even though Jamestown was established thirteen years earlier, is that the Plymouth Rock colony survived while the Jamestown settlement did not. And, of course, the real first settlers on the North American continent—American Native Indians, the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas—had begun their trek 30,000 years ago across the Bering land bridge and physically were on what we call the Alaska and North American continent 16,500 years ago.

Early settlers of Saybrook were ardent supports of Oliver Cromwell back home in Britain, who was Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England and a zealous follower of the Puritan faith. His father was Thomas Cromwell, an English lawyer and statesman, who also happened to be King Henry VIII’s chief minister—yes, the same Henry VIII who dispensed with wives like us regular folk might dispense with last night’s over-cooked meatloaf. Saybrook colonists were Puritans, and the colony they established was an offshoot of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—modern-day Boston and Salem—which was originally settled by those most famous of famous pilgrims, the Mayflower pilgrims, so named because their ship was christened the Mayflower. There was a second sister ship christened the Speedwell, but no one ever talks about it or what would be the Speedwell pilgrims. The Mayflower pilgrims emigrated from Plymouth, England—at least that is where their ship set sail from—and the rocky shore they landed upon in America was, obviously, dubbed Plymouth Rock. They must have really missed home, naming some rocky shore after their homeland … yet they persevered, and the settlement became Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The Puritans were English protestants who sought to purify themselves from the Church of England, a church they believed had not completely cleansed itself of the Catholic Church’s influence in Rome during the Protestant Reformation. Nor did the Puritans believe the Church of England, with or without Catholic overtones, was pure. Puritans were mostly prevalent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, seeking religious Protestant freedom from their own Protestant church. Such Puritans accounted for many of the original English settlers in the so-called New World. Just like Edward’s family—the physician with Alzheimer's in Room 536 we introduced in The Third History of Man—and many other immigrants both before and after them, they were seeking freedom from religious persecution and a place where they could practice their faith in peace.

Part of the Saybrook settlement and plantation on the east side of the Connecticut River is now modern-day Old Lyme and Lyme, Connecticut, two side-by-side towns. Today, between the two towns, there are barely 10,000 inhabitants. You now likely see where this is going, right? Lyme is also the namesake for Lyme disease, a rickettsia bacteria parasite infection.

Lyme disease, although not originally called that, was initially described in the Lyme, Connecticut area in 1775, where the first documented cluster of infections occurred. Those outbreaks—featuring a constellation of odd symptoms—were perhaps more pronounced and frequent in the 1600 and into the 1700s. But as colonist settlements expanded and, as population centers grew in the New England area, requiring more wood for homes and stoves, as more thickets of trees were felled, the result was a deforestation of the once dense New England woods. Along with loss of the woods, the tick vector needed to extend the life of the Lyme bacteria was depopulated. So, in a strange stroke of luck, leveling trees for homes and firewood decreased the incidence of this mysterious infection. Only a few pockets of forest were left standing that were agreeable to the tick vector for the disagreeable rickettsial bacteria. Lyme, Connecticut, was home to one such pocket of trees.

Lyme disease is a zoonotic infection, originally present in rodents and then humans, transferred to humans via the tick vector. The causative bacteria are various species of the genus Borrelia, which is similar to Rickettsia genus. There are a great number of tick vector diseases besides Lyme, which we’ll discuss momentarily. Symptoms like Lyme disease have occurred sporadically elsewhere in the world. For instance, the good reverend and physician John Walker on Deer Island, on the west coast of Scotland, in 1764 described a patient with a constellation of symptoms like those of Lyme. Lyme-like illnesses are also reported in the German medical literature from the 1800s. And, in the early 1900s, some French medical folk depicted descriptions of a Lyme disease presentation in a patient. The current name of Lyme disease was assigned by investigators based at Yale University in 1975. Unsurprisingly, Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, is a mere forty-mile drive from Lyme. I guess since the Yale men gave the first full description, they chose the naming rights to christen this new infection, and they chose Lyme disease.

For the disease to transfer, a tick carrier must be attached to human skin for over twenty-four hours—you know, the classic dug in like a tick. This long transfer period of twenty-four hours is needed to allow a sufficient inoculum of tick saliva laced with Lyme bacteria to enter the bloodstream and set up infection. The initial infection is a radiating rash at the bite site. The skin rash is soon followed by a disseminated infection targeting multiple organs, meningitis, encephalitis, heart arrhythmias, and a spreading rash. Untreated or inadequately treated, Lyme disease can progress to a chronic condition, including impaired motor and sensory nerves with chronic pain, joint pain, and arthritis (known as Lyme arthritis), chronic brain encephalopathy with diminished cognition, poor memory, uneasiness, and personality changes.

As a parasite, the Lyme bacterium does several things. First, rather than bringing its own tools to spread itself within the body, it uses an enzyme from the host’s body called plasmin. This protease enzyme allows the bacteria to travel throughout the body, cleaving protein barriers, thus the name protease from the Greek protos for protein which means coming first plus -ase also from the Greek for diastasis or separating. The reason proteins are named proteins was because the Greeks thought as a nutrient, they were the most important, they came first. The host plasmin enzyme attaches to the Lyme bacteria and then can cleave open gates for the bacteria to advance its cause, that is, separate and then penetrate barriers—including barriers into the skin, joint spaces, and even across the blood-brain barrier. It’s sort of like a snowplow on the front of a truck, bulldozing itself throughout the body, except it is a protease enzyme that does precisely that, enzymatically bulldozing through protein barriers.

As we know, the blood-brain barrier is a terribly selective membrane—although not foolproof—and it evolved to separate the very precious brain and spinal cord, an organ system with little reparative properties, from miscreants that might be running amok in the bloodstream at large. The blood-brain barrier is built by contributions from the blood vessel lining and the brain lining to form a unique semipermeable border. Sort of like how the placenta has contributions from both momma and baby. The purpose of the blood-brain barrier, of course, is to attempt to restrict the passage of poisons and toxins and pathogens and other stuff the brain does not want, need, and cannot handle. If the blood-brain barrier determines something is just not quite copacetic, it rejects it at the wall. Most of the time, the blood-brain barrier does a terrific job; occasionally, however, it is outwitted or caught off guard.

In addition to using the host’s plasmin enzyme to penetrate areas where it is not welcome, including crossing the blood-brain barrier, Lyme bacteria also have the ability to hide in the extracellular matrix of cells—that is, outside cells but pushing right up against the cell membrane. Hiding intracellular—inside cells—to avoid immune detection is a concept that’s easier to understand and obvious in its ability to succeed. HIV, tuberculosis, the plague bacteria, malaria, and many other pathogens seek sanctuary inside cells, which is why they’re more difficult to annihilate either by the immune defenses or by antimicrobials. But hiding extracellular but snuggled up against the cell membrane, like Lyme does, is an entirely different order of cloaking, maybe not a good as intracellular but still dope.

When we think of the outside of a cell, the cell membrane, we imagine something smooth like a balloon. It is anything but smooth. A cell membrane is more like an old sweater that has a bunch of pilling on the surface. The extracellular matrix is the outer cell membrane’s thin film, right outside the cellular fortress. On a microscopic level, the extracellular matrix is like a bunch of bushes and landscaping in which villains can hide. The cell membrane has docking stations for the transport of desirable things into and out of the cell across that film. But, sometimes, those docking stations are abused, with viruses, some bacteria and harmful chemicals gaining entry through a docking station or just through the membrane itself. The ability of Lyme to hide within the extracellular matrix, which designates it neither as a facultative intracellular parasite (can live inside or outside the cell) nor as an obligate intracellular parasite (must live inside the cell), still rises to the definition of a parasite.

As an aside, plants have two layers, they possess both an outer cell wall and an inner cell membrane forming its lamina, or should I say bi-lamina. This arrangement also applies to fungi, some bacteria, and algae. The outer cell wall protects the cell from the external environment more forcefully than the inner membrane, plus it gives the cell some rigidity, but is itself metabolically inactive. That is, a plant cell wall is still not perfect, and due to its relative porousness, its permeability, it allows molecules of certain sizes, molecules it needs, to pass along to the inner cell membrane, but also allows other compounds not needed or desired to also pass. Animals including us humans, only have a cell membrane, no outer cell wall, as is true with many bacteria. The cell membrane is metabolically active, that is, active transport is the name of the game, although some stuff can diffuse across a cell membrane without a Lyft transport. Active transport means the cell membrane uses those docking stations plus the expenditure of energy, namely ATP, to move items along, in both directions. So, plants, fungi, some bacteria, and algae have both a cell wall and a cell membrane; animals and some bacteria only have a cell membrane.

The diagnosis of Lyme disease is usually made on clinical presentation in endemic areas, although blood tests are performed to confirm. Despite being a relatively uncommon infection, it shouldn’t be overlooked when some poor soul presents with what is to a doctor an obvious constellation of symptoms. It’s like the adage If you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras (unless you live on the savannah, of course). In other words: if you’re in a Lyme endemic area and have Lyme symptoms, think Lyme disease.

The mainstay treatment of Lyme is antibiotics, especially the tetracycline derivatives, but this next bit is important: the antibiotics need to be given for a continuous and extended period—like one month. It’s not your typical one-week course of antibiotics for strep throat or a bladder infection, there and done. If treatment is not long enough, on account of the Lyme bacteria hiding in the extracellular pilling, the Lyme culprits are not only not killed but also continue to smolder—with a vengeance.

In children younger than eight, due to side effects of tetracycline in newborns, infants, and children—tetracycline irreversibly deposits in growing bones and teeth enamel—other options include amoxicillin, erythromycin derivatives, and some of the cephalosporin derivatives. Treatment is up to four weeks—again, you need time for the antibiotics to find and hammer all those Lyme bacteria hiding in the extracellular space—although many children are treated beyond four weeks. Better safe than sorry. That might sound like piss-poor science—better safe than sorry—but due to the child's growing brain, and the predilection of Lyme bacteria to target the brain, well, what can I say? It is better to be safe than sorry.

Prevention in endemic areas, especially wooded areas, might be achieved with DEET applied to the skin, which ticks avoid like the plague (there’s got to be a joke in there somewhere). DEET screws up insect and arachnid navigating antennae, rendering them unable to perch on a person’s skin and take a nibble. Killing the insect vector with widespread insecticide spraying, like with DDT, in forested areas where people like to hike, and camp, and have picnics is not an option. Insecticides seldom pair nicely with a family picnic of hot dogs and chips, and it wouldn’t work anyway. Forest is too thick. You would have to use something like Agent Orange and wipe out the entire forest, which presumably is not a desirable option for the tranquil village of Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Since we’re on the subject, Agent Orange is an herbicide in the dioxin family and, more importantly, a defoliant. Defoliant is a pleasant enough sounding word, but what a defoliant does to plants and trees is not terribly pleasant. It kills the leaves of plants and trees, and without the leaves, the plant dies. You know that whole photosynthesis rigmarole is interrupted without leaves, the blood line of capturing sunlight energy, adding in some water and carbon dioxide and presto! you have carbohydrates:

water H

2

O + carbon dioxide CO 2 + light energy = the base carbohydrate backbone -CHO plus oxygen O 2.

Agent Orange rose to infamy during the Vietnam War in a program termed Operation Ranch Hand (1962–71), which was a US military war effort to deprive the Viet Cong of South Vietnam of both food as well as jungle coverage by scorching the jungle with a defoliant. Agent Orange was not only reasonably successful in defoliation but also sadly successful in harming the health of American soldiers and Vietnamese soldiers and citizens alike. Agent Orange exposure has been linked to an increase in blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma. If you were wondering, or even if you weren’t, Agent Orange works in an unintuitive manner. In defoliation doses, it doesn’t, as a matter of fact kill the plant outright but oddly stimulates the plant, especially the leaves to grow, but to grow beyond the ability of the plant to sustain itself, and the plant then dies. Strange, really.

And if you’re wondering why Agent Orange is called Agent Orange, well, it’s not because the chemical is orange in color, although that would make sense. Rather, it’s because orange was the color code for the fifty-five-gallon drums that held the chemical. In other words, the US military had a variety of herbicides at its disposal, but rather than rely on some pilot to select the correct drum name to unload above a patch of Viet Cong jungle, they were simply instructed to unload the orange barrel. The actual name for Agent Orange is too long to report here, but I’m going to anyway: it’s equal amounts of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T), containing two chemicals with forebodingly ominous words like dioxin. The US military also had stores of Agent White, Agent Purple, Agent Blue, Agent Pink, and Agent Green, all in their respective color-coded fifty-five-gallon drums. Together, they comprised the Rainbow Herbicides, intended for tactical use in warfare. I will spare you and myself what chemicals comprised the Rainbow Herbicides, but suffice it to say, they were as unpronounceable and foreboding as Agent Orange. It was simply easier to instruct the pilot and crew to load the orange barrels into the US Air Force C-123 cargo plane and spray the nasty stuff over Bình Định and Kon Tum provinces.

Any tick bite demands the tick be removed expeditiously, lest it be carrying Lyme, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, another tick infection, or otherwise, if allowed to stay dug in like a tick, it will be a gateway for a sufficient inoculum of pathogen-laced saliva to make its way into the blood that then triggers infection. A pair of tweezers is all that’s needed to remove a tick embedded in the skin—just grasp the little bugger at the skin’s surface and gently pull it away. Then smash the bejesus out of the tick before it scoots away. Now wash the area of skin with alcohol, then soap, rinse well and as for the smashed tick, grab some disinfectant wipes to sluice it away.

Edward Masters, who described the tick disease southern tick-associated rash illness or STARI, which is sometimes called Masters disease, was an expert in Rickettsia bacterial infections. During the early days when physicians and scientists were attempting to characterize Lyme disease, so many incorrect assumptions were being batted around that Masters, very annoyed about all this, felt obliged to comment, in the poetic prose recounted below, about the inherent flaws in making assumptions with thin proof:

First off, they said it was a new disease, which it wasn’t. Then it was thought to be viral, but it isn’t. Then it was thought that sero-negativity didn’t exist, which it does. They thought it was easily treated by short courses of antibiotics, which sometimes it isn’t. Then it was only the Ixodes dammini tick, which we now know is not even a separate valid tick species. If you look throughout the history, almost every time a major dogmatic statement has been made about what we know about this disease, it was subsequently proven wrong or underwent major modifications.

You can take that last line and substitute this disease with whatever drives your fancy—miasmas, climate change, global warming, and so on. It’s easy to see why the Greeks invented the word dogma in the first place. Sometimes us miserable creatures think we know something when in fact, we don't. That's not to say fact is not fact. Scientific facts are proven to be true and are true, but on occasion things presented as fact are indeed not fact, just supposition. It doesn't mean the person who claimed something to be true that later turned out not to be true was intentionally lying. It just means with the information at hand it seemed to be true but eventually was disproven ... or refined. In science, a fact, a truth, can be proven, can be proven by others, and the results are reproducible. But science also corrects itself when a fact turns out not to be a fact.

Howard Taylor Ricketts was born in Findlay, Ohio, in 1871. He received his pathology research education at Northwestern University in Illinois, writing his thesis on a type of fungus disease called blastomycosis—a disease we’ll cover further down this road. Ricketts became interested in certain diseases that appeared to be transmitted to humans via a vector. While working for the University of Chicago doing fieldwork in Montana, Ricketts discovered that the illness Rocky Mountain spotted fever is transmitted to humans via the bite of a contaminated Rocky Mountain wood tick. Oddly, Ricketts discovered the vector connection—the tick—but it was unknown what the pathogen inside the tick was: virus, bacteria, or something else? In other words, with Rocky Mountain spotted fever, the mode of transmission was known before the pathogen was identified. A bit unusual.

When the causative bacterium was eventually identified and determined to be a new genus of bacteria, the genus was named Rickettsia in honor of Ricketts. And apparently that honor needed further praise by his contemporaries, because that species of bacteria that causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever was also named after him: Rickettsia rickettsii. Almost sounds like an echo.

A different Rickettsia member causes the infection typhus—not to be confused with typhoid fever, which is an entirely different bacterial infection. However, these two infectious diseases share a phonetic similarity for good reason. Typhoid fever is caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi, whereas Rickettsia bacteria cause several varieties of typhus. Similarities between the signs and symptoms of typhoid fever and typhus led ancient healers to believe they were one and the same infection, which is why they share similar names. That is, typhoid and typhus share a symptoms palette of abdominal pain, muscle aches and pains, chills, fever, and malaise.

Typhus is derived from the Greek typhos and means fever with stupor. When typhoid fever was identified as being distinct from typhus, yet still thought to be caused by a bacterium related to typhus (which it was not), it was given the name typhoid, which means typhus-like. Typhoid fever is caused by a Salmonella bacteria species and is transmitted human-to-human via my least favorite avenue of infection transmission: the fecal-oral route. Typhus, on the other hand, being a Rickettsia bacteria species, is transmitted to humans by a vector. Because typhoid fever is at times so like typhus, it can be frustratingly annoying to treat since the selection of antibiotics is entirely different for each. Both typhus and typhoid were more thoroughly reviewed in The Second History of Man.

The name Montana, where Ricketts did his field work with the wood tick and the spotted fever bacteria, comes from the Spanish, and means mountainous country. And it’s true: parts of the Rocky Mountains do course through Montana. If you’ve ever been to that state, you’ll appreciate that the vastness of the horizon and varied geography—mountains, canyons, forests, river valleys, grassy high plaints badlands, and caverns—the Montana vistas all so captivating, which is why it is also called Big Sky Country. Those unobstructed panoramas are beautiful. The badlands as appreciated in Montana and the Dakotas, by the way are not lands so named because they're inhabited by bad men, although to watch the TV miniseries Yellowstone starring Kevin Costner as John Dutton you come away thinking them cowboys up there in Montana are bad to the bone. So is Kelly Reilly’s character Beth Dutton—pure evil. The Spanish name montaña simply means mountain, but as for the Badlands, it means land composed of dried-out soft sedimentary rocks with reddish clay soil. Their ravines, buttes, and gullies are steep. The land is difficult to cross, even on foot and the ground is unsuitable for agriculture. Little grows in badlands.

The Rocky Mountains are part of the American Cordillera, which we discussed much earlier in The Third History of Man, and which we will touch upon again in case we forgot. So as a quick reminder, the American Cordillera is that chain of mountain ranges that begin underwater near the south pole in the Antarctica Ocean, course along South America as the Andes, pass through Central America as the Sierra Madres, thereupon forming three shoots: the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada, and Cascades in the continental US. These then change into the Columbia Mountains, Canadian Cascades, and Canadian Rockies in Canada, then the Brooks and Alaska Ranges in Alaska, before diving into the Arctic Ocean near the north pole. Although the Cordillera formed from massive plate tectonics, when the Americas broke free from the single supercontinent Pangaea 250 million years ago, each range achieved its current majesty at different times through continued plate tectonics, both major and minor.

The Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada and Cascades formed about 80 million years ago through the process of plate tectonics, when several minor geological plates subducted or dove underneath the large North American plate. This subduction pushed the Rocky Mountains up high and into a long, broad mountain range. Following that subduction, subsequent erosion, including ice sheets first advancing and then retreating during the last ice age, coupled with massive ancient rivers, carved the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains we enjoy today.

The Andes in South America began to form earlier than the Rocky Mountains—about 200 million years ago—when the South American plate broke free of Pangaea. Interestingly, though, it is believed that more recently, perhaps a mere 15 million years ago, the final, or should I say current, uplift of the Andes occurred, when the leading edge of its land crust wasn't pushed up but rather broke off due to compression against the Pacific Ocean plate. The name Andes likely comes from the Incan language and means east or the lands in the east.

You might be wondering why Australia is a continent and not an island, whereas a landmass such as Greenland, which is comparable in size to Australia, is considered an island and not a continent. The answer lies in plate tectonics. You must get into the dirt to see the difference. Greenland is linked to part of the North American tectonic plate up there in Canada making it an island of another plate surrounded by ocean. In other words, Greenland is sort of an island of North America. Australia, on the other hand, is not linked to any major plate such as the Asian plate but instead enjoys its own major tectonic plate, making it a continent. The same is true of Antarctica, it is a tectonic plate all its own with ice sheets. If you're crying foul and wondering why the South Pole and Antarctica is a continent and the North Pole is not, who could blame you? But the truth is, there is absolutely no land under the ice at the North Pole Artic Circle. It is all just frozen Artic Ocean on the surface, about a mere ten feet thick, and not frozen Arctic Ocean underneath the ice the goes to a depth of 13,000 feet until the seafloor is reached. Who would have thought? Not me.

The Alps, even older than the Andes and the Rockies, began to form when there was still one single continent on Earth. When Pangaea began to break up 300 million years ago, an ancient sea called Tethys appeared between the two large continents of Laurasia in the north, which would become Europe, Asia, and North America, and the continent of Gondwana in the south, what is now Africa, Australia, Antarctica, and South America. These two ancient plates, Laurasia and Gondwana, after first separating like a quarreling couple on a rocky course (rocky pun intended) went splitsville. Then, also like a bickering couple, they had second thoughts, changed course, and crashed back into each other (again, imagery intended) around 250 million years ago. In the embrace of love, they squeezed the daylights out of the ancient sea of Tethys and began pushing up the beginnings of the Alps. The Alps are the oldest major mountain range on the planet. The name Alps likely comes from the Latin and means hill … which is a bit of an understatement.

With the North and South American plates off on their own, pushing into the Pacific Ocean, driving up the American Cordillera and creating the Atlantic Ocean in their wake, that left one more most majestic mountain range to be born. About 70 million years ago, the Australian plate, as well as several minor plates of India, converged on the Eurasian plate (Europe and Asia), pushing up the mighty Himalayas. That makes the Himalayas the youngest major mountain range on Earth. The name Himalaya comes from Sanskrit and means snow dwelling. In moons ago, these are when Earth’s four major mountain ranges formed:

• Alps 250 million years back

• Andes 200 million years ago

• Rocky Mountains and friends (Sierra Madres, Sierra Nevada, Columbia, Cascades, and the Canadian and Alaskan equivalents) 80 million years in the past

• Himalayas 70 million many long years ago

Just a bit of clarification about mountain building: it’s not all tectonic plates crashing into each other. Several important mountains did not form because of tectonics. Consider the Galápagos Islands, some 600 miles off the coastline of Ecuador. Although the Andes might have formed 200 million years ago from tectonic plate shenanigans, the Galápagos formed a mere 5 million years ago from the antics of intraplate volcanos, what we call volcano mountain building, which can occur both on land and on the ocean floor. Intraplate cracks allow hot lava magma to spew out of the crust and build mountains. Never mind that these events happened on the ocean floor—the depth of the frigid seas was no match for the determination of those ocean floor volcanos to build mountain peaks that easily pushed above sea level. That is likewise where Hawaii came from. The Hawaiian Islands are the result of volcano mountain building from intraplate cracks on the ocean floor 30 million years ago. Their plumes of hot magma reaching the sea’s surface have given us some quite wonderful and breath-taking vacation islands to relax on.

And just to add some jingle to your coffee, riddle me this: What is the tallest mountain on the planet? If you were to say Mount Everest at 29,032 feet, who could blame you. It is indeed the highest mountain … whose base is at or above sea level. However, Mauna Kea within the Hawaiian archipelago is technically taller. Its base is the ocean floor, and it has a total height, from sea floor to the very tip of its dry peak, of 33,500 feet—making it 4,468 feet taller than Everest. Its dry peak above sea level is 13,796 feet and its wet base below sea level is 19,704 feet under water.

If you have ever visited Yellowstone National Park, you might be delighted to learn that it was once a supervolcano, perhaps the biggest one that has ever existed on Earth. When it blew, it blew everything out of its away. All life within 1,000 miles was killed. The reason Yellowstone was not initially appreciated as a volcano is that, from ground level, it’s hard to see that Yellowstone is a caldera. A caldera is a volcano that blew away every bit of its own self, or vaporized itself, leaving a cauldron-like crater in the land crust. And with the last ice age pushing all sorts of tilled goodies and rich dirt into the caldera, Yellowstone was filled with till and became so forested you literally cannot see the caldera for the trees. The Yellowstone volcano has erupted at least three times: 2.1 million years ago, 1.2 million years ago, and 640,000 years ago. Let’s hope on that timeline that it doesn’t erupt again anytime soon because it’s about due. If it blows it will annihilate everything within a thousand miles … except Beth Dutton.

How, then, was it finally discovered that Yellowstone is a volcano caldera that is nearly 50 miles wide? If we couldn't see it from the trees, how was it figured out? In the 1970s, NASA was fooling around with one of its space cameras and snapped some engagingly nifty images of Yellowstone Park. The clever folks at NASA figured the Yellowstone Park’s managers would probably want some fancy-schmancy aerial images of Yellowstone from outer space to decorate their visitor centers. A geologist among the Yellowstone staff knew almost instantly upon gazing at those images that the entire park—nearly all of Yellowstone—is one huge ancient caldera.

As mentioned, Yellowstone is the largest volcano on Earth, and likely the largest volcano that has ever existed on the planet, although in the early days of Earth, there were likely some real whoppers. And it is an active volcano. As you drive through Yellowstone on a family vacation, your snot-nosed kid in the back seat ignoring the scenery and playing Minecraft on his iPhone, geysers like Old Faithful, hot springs, bubbling mud pots, and steam rising from the tundra are all venting from the hot magma chamber deep below. You’re driving over an active volcano. Old Faithful spews steam and hot water every ninety minutes (although that has ranged from fifty to ninety minutes) up to 180 feet into the air, and it has been doing so for at least the last 150 years. The water is really ground water from rain and snow that works its way into a chamber, which then gets heated by the geological plumbing system of cracks and fissures in the volcano crust. The top layer of the water gets pushed into cracks, exposing the superheated water below, which then erupts. It is rhythmic for the same reason a tea kettle boils