Plagues in Pre-European Americas?
score:5
The one pandemic disease we know of that has a good chance for having an origin in the Americas is syphilis.
When it first hit Europe in 1494 it spread rapidly and the mortality rate was very high (as is typical with new diseases that hit an immunologically naieve population).
As Jared Diamond describes it, "[W]hen syphilis was first definitely recorded in Europe in 1495, its pustules often covered the body from the head to the knees, caused flesh to fall from people's faces, and led to death within a few months." The disease then was much more lethal than it is today. Diamond concludes,"[B]y 1546, the disease had evolved into the disease with the symptoms so well known to us today."
Given the history of other pandemic diseases, it isn't too much of a stretch to speculate that it would have been even more devestating when it first broke out in the Americas, at least among the more densely settled communities, before both disease and host evolved to live with each other better.
I'm unaware of any archeological proof of this though (skeleton bone studies, etc). Most of the evidence behind the Americas theory of syphilis is currently circumstantial.
Upvote:1
When I was out west a number of years ago, a friend asserted that the disappearance of the "Anasazi" civilization of native Americans could have occurred for any number of reasons, including disease. Unfortunately, I don't think modern scholarship on the subject agrees with his assertion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anasazi
Widespread disease generally requires a lot of people to reside in close proximity (cities). While there is evidence of cities of 20,000 to 30,000 among native Americans, the major population centers of Europe during the Black Plague were likely far larger (over 100,000). I would assume that since there were cities, there was also trade, so disease could have been spread from city to city. I'm not at all familiar with the cities or the culture, so have no idea whether sanitation, animal-keeping, large numbers of rodents or other contributing factors were similar to the European experience.
Upvote:4
You can find the answer to that question in Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel. He states that people get infected by their pets and that all great epidemics (variola, tuberculosis, malaria, plague, influenza ...) evolved from animals. Microbes needs a mass of people to spread around so big societies, living in cities and connected with good trading roads, were is the best place for them. They can't survive in small societies because they kill anyone who isn't resistant and therefore fails to spread. Those who survive develop antibodies. Microbes can't survive in small communities of farmers and hunters.
Because american Indians didn't have antibodies to European diseases so many died - sometimes the whole villages. In this diseases it is also success in Pizarro's and Cortes' success. Some scientist believe that there were 95 % decrease in population in 200 years after Columbus.
The only infectious disease coming from America to Europe was syphilis.
In America there were great civilizations living in big cities: Aztecs, Incas and Indians who lived in Mississippi. But this cities were never connected with trading paths so microbes couldn't spread as they did in Europe and Asia. The main reason for lack of infectious diseases is that there were no animals, living in herds. There were only five domestic animals: a turkey, a lama, a cavy, some bird and a dog - and they were no source of microbes as cows, sheep.
It doesn't mean that there are no infectious diseases, but there are not so many. But epidemics, diseases of masses, can appear only in dense crowd. This started with agriculture 10.000 years ago and increased with building cities. People live close to each other, they also have pets ...
If I sum it up: according to Jared Diamond there were no epidemics in Americas before 1492.
More post
- 📝 What were the most common reactions to Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott?
- 📝 What buildings could be found in the inner ward of a castle?
- 📝 Rationale for mounted infantry?
- 📝 Did healers in medieval Europe use moldy bread in poultices for wounds?
- 📝 Why did so few militaries use semi automatic rifles as their standard issue infantry weapon?
- 📝 Where to get historical Finland railways map for 1939 year?
- 📝 Is there a correlation or causation between generalized economic crises and world wars?
- 📝 In Francoist Spain, what steps were required for non-Catholics to marry?
- 📝 Why couldn't soldiers sight their own weapons without officers' orders?
- 📝 What did babies eat before the advent of modern blenders?
- 📝 Who was Christophorus Uveida?
- 📝 Did the Netherlands join the anti-Japanese oil embargo later than US? If so why?
- 📝 What did people in 13th century England know about Greek mythology?
- 📝 Was Rachel Carson the first person to discover the environmental impact of fertilizers? If not, why was she the first one to talk about it publicly?
- 📝 How many digits of Pi did the old Egyptians know?
- 📝 Is this costume plate from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum correctly colored?
- 📝 Is it true that Newton ordered the hanging of counterfeiters?
- 📝 When did the use of "Contact!" by soldiers emerge?
- 📝 Was there a fighter jet designed without cannons?
- 📝 Proportion of population that works in agriculture (1000 - today)
- 📝 How did first humans build tools?
- 📝 Were there inns and hostels in medieval Europe?
- 📝 Why were Spain and Portugal neutral / not invaded in WWII?
- 📝 What are the intellectual roots of the "French Republican identity" pursuit?
- 📝 Did Roosevelt's New Deal lift the U.S. out of the depression or did it actually prolong the Depression and cripple American capitalism?
- 📝 Did the Iraqis really only use landlines during Desert Storm?
- 📝 What happened to US's Lend-Lease machinery given to the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Did Serbian businessman Tadija Sondermayer serve in French Air Force Escadrille 3 during WW1?
- 📝 Why were 40,000 German troops left in Prague instead of pulled back to defend Berlin?
- 📝 Are there historic examples of slave emancipation leading to mass starvation?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How densely populated were the Americas prior to European colonization?
- 📝 Is there a painting from before the colonization of the Americas depicting travelers from far away visiting European nobles?
- 📝 Why did Native Americans die from European diseases while Europeans didn't catch serious diseases from the New World?
- 📝 When were swords last used in European warfare?
- 📝 Which European Languages are not Indo-European?
- 📝 Why could China keep most of the lands it conquered after 17th century but European powers could not?
- 📝 What is the most number of times someone has become leader of a European country?
- 📝 What is the oldest European royal house?
- 📝 Did Muslim states hire Western European knights as mercenaries before the Crusades?
- 📝 Was there a European response to the trail of tears?
- 📝 Did Saladin speak any European languages?
- 📝 Did any European ever witness a major Inca religious festival?
- 📝 Who was the longest lived European monarch of the middle ages?
- 📝 Which European monarch of the middle ages died furthest from home?
- 📝 Who was the last European king to actively engage in combat?
- 📝 Why didn't Britain or any other European power colonize Abyssinia/Ethiopia before 1936?
- 📝 Before the Land Bridge Theory, how was human presence in the Americas explained?
- 📝 To what extent were Polynesians in contact with one-another before European contact?
- 📝 What did other European powers say when Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Tordesillas?
- 📝 How have European microstates survived?
- 📝 Was the European slave market in the East during the colonial era similar to the transatlantic slave market? If not (less brutal, etc), why?
- 📝 Before European influence circa 1600, did any Chinese believe the Earth was spherical, and did they ever try to measure it?
- 📝 Non-Italian European mafias in USA?
- 📝 In 19th century India, pre and post Raj, did any private British citizens actually own land in India?
- 📝 How did former Spanish colonies in the Americas become so fragmented?
- 📝 How were the borders of small European principalities maintained or secured?
- 📝 What were the thoughts of the Celts, Romans and other ancient European people about the standing stones which survive from prehistoric times?
- 📝 At what point, and why, did snuff tobacco fall out of favor with European nobility?
- 📝 Which European countries did not have a revolution in the aftermath of the French Revolution and why?
- 📝 When did European building interiors partitioned into rooms become commonplace?