This book investigates the fundamental role that tropical bioproductivity - or more specifically net primary productivity - has played in shaping the global geographies of food, finance, governance and people. The book examines the basic astronomical and thermal properties of our planet to illustrate the dynamic nature of the tropics and how the region resides at the very heart of global energetics, driving the environmental flows that shape planetary climate and bioproductivity. The author explores how the region's relatively small, but hyper-productive, land area provided the groundswell for the economic, social, political and demographic changes that fuelled empires, European colonialism and nation-building. Also covered are discussions on how the critical intake of capital needed to fuel the industrial and technological revolutions driving modern globalization was first expropriated from the tropics by harnessing the region's natural productivity and biological crop diversity and then transforming it into tradeable commodities using the inhabitants' labour and knowledge. With modern tropical nations accounting for the bulk of people living in poverty and registering some of the highest income disparities, the author presents cross-cutting evidence showing that their histories and the persistence of expropriating institutions have fostered anocratic tendencies, poor governance, unorthodox financial flows and mass migration. Tropical Bioproductivity cuts across vast geographies, topics and histories to deliver a readable narrative that links people, places and events with the environmental mechanics of our planet. It will be of interest to students and researchers in the areas of environmental studies, economics, history, agriculture, anthropology and geography.

This book investigates the fundamental role that tropical bioproductivity - or more specifically net primary productivity - has played in shaping the global geographies of food, finance, governance and people. The book examines the basic astronomical and thermal properties of our planet to illustrate the dynamic nature of the tropics and how the region resides at the very heart of global energetics, driving the environmental flows that shape planetary climate and bioproductivity. The author explores how the region's relatively small, but hyper-productive, land area provided the groundswell for the economic, social, political and demographic changes that fuelled empires, European colonialism and nation-building. Also covered are discussions on how the critical intake of capital needed to fuel the industrial and technological revolutions driving modern globalization was first expropriated from the tropics by harnessing the region's natural productivity and biological crop diversity and then transforming it into tradeable commodities using the inhabitants' labour and knowledge. With modern tropical nations accounting for the bulk of people living in poverty and registering some of the highest income disparities, the author presents cross-cutting evidence showing that their histories and the persistence of expropriating institutions have fostered anocratic tendencies, poor governance, unorthodox financial flows and mass migration. Tropical Bioproductivity cuts across vast geographies, topics and histories to deliver a readable narrative that links people, places and events with the environmental mechanics of our planet. It will be of interest to students and researchers in the areas of environmental studies, economics, history, agriculture, anthropology and geography.

A revolution took place in southern Africa in the early centuries of the first millennium AD. Suddenly, in the warm lowveld and bushveld of what is now Gauteng, there emerged settled communities, tilling the land, working metal, and creating a distinctive type of pottery. Before this time the country south of the Limpopo had been inhabited only by nomadic hunter-gatherers who used Late Stone Age tools. Slowly these newcomers - the ancestors of today's black South Africans - spread, with their herds of cattle, onto the savannah of the highveld and down into the coastal plains of the east.
Since the time of the missionary Henri Alexandre Junod (1895), anthropologists and archaeologists have been piecing together South Africa's past, and knowledge of how these early South Africans lived - their laws and social structures, how they celebrated birth and marriage, worshipped and propitiated their gods, socialised their children and treated the sick. The Roots of Black South Africa is an evocation of that knowledge of the past, a celebration of a way of life that may still have something to tell its inheritors.
David Hammond-Tooke, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, has conducted extensive research among South African groups, especially the South Nguni and North Sotho. He has occupied chairs of Social Anthropology at both Rhodes University and the University of the Witwatersrand.

Lupus, rheumatic fever, colitis, arthritis, dermatitis, insomnia, depression, hallucinations - what do all these illnesses have in common?

They were all experienced by a 12-year-old girl in a case study in an American journal of child psychiatry.

The cause? - mercury vapor she inhaled from mercury that had been spilled on the carpet in the room she slept in. After removing the carpet and treatment with chelation drugs, the girl returned to good health.

Mercury poisoning can cause a variety of illnesses such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, ADHD, bipolar disorder, sinusitis, tinnitus, balance problems, tremor, insomnia, inflammatory bowel disease, dermatitis, excessive thirst, salivation and a host of other symptoms.

Is mercury from dental amalgams affecting your health? Dental associations claim the mercury in fillings is perfectly safe, but the mercury inhaled from "silver" fillings is 15 times more toxic than lead.

The World Health Organization report states that people with amalgams have a daily mercury intake of 4 to 21 micrograms of mercury per day. For many people this exceeds the Environmental Protection Agencies limit of just 7 micrograms per day.

Yet there are no Government warnings about this exposure.

Those who grind their teeth or chew gum will have even higher exposure. If you eat 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of tuna, that adds another 35 micrograms.

Even if your mercury blood level is within the so-called "normal" range, if you don't excrete mercury efficiently it can build up in your brain, liver, kidney, thyroid and other organs over years of continuous exposure.

The effects of prolonged exposure to mercury can be delayed for years, making it difficult to determine the cause of your illness.

Diseases such as chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia affect millions of people around the world. Doctors say the causes of these illnesses are unknown and there is no cure. This book provides cases histories of many diseases which were caused by mercury and subsequently cured using chelation therapy.

It also takes you step by step through the process of safely chelating heavy metals from your body.