ABSTRACT
Zoonoses have their historical roots in the rise of human civilization beginning in the Neolithic era. Certain aspects of civilization are, according to Scott, especially linked to zoonotic germinations. The great medieval plagues that devastated medieval Europe in the sixth and fourteenth centuries assumed the magnitude they did owing to the configuration of specific social factors. Specific aspects of civilization are especially linked to the transformation of zoonotic diseases into pandemics that cross continents. Zoonotic spillover from chickens to humans was likely germinated by social conditions generated by the First World War. Human encroachment into hinterland or wilderness ecosystems is associated with changes in patterns of land use, especially those which suck ever more land away from raw nature and ringfence this within the orbit of human urban or semi-urban space and commercial exploitation.
