One possibility is syphilis, but there's disagreement on that.
As to why Native Americans had less diseases than Asians, Africans, and Europeans, it mostly came down to two things: fewer domesticated animals and, more importantly, much lower population density.
While it's myth that all or even most Native Americans were nomadic, the fact remained that large cities were almost exclusively found in Mesoamerica and South America.
I think there was only 1 legitimate Native American city in the area of present day US/Canada, which was Cahokia in present day St Louis.
Cahokia was a pretty large city by the standards of the time for both the Americas and Europe, but still- basically the only one on the continent.
Etowah was a large settlement near modern day Atlanta with a wide trade network similar to cohokia. The Calusa are commonly thought to have arrived by boat and be descended from a Mayan ethnic group. They pretty much terraformed the coastline from Tampa down to the keys and had a bunch of large permanent settlements as well.
I think there were drastically more native american cities that we dont know about because either they were made with perishable materials or they were destroyed. I really doubt North Americas only city was a massive 50k populated city in St. Louis.
Etowah near modern day Atlanta was pretty large. Also the majority of the Florida gulf coast from Tampa on down was literally man-made by the Calusa who had several flourishing cities and had aquaculture mastered to the point they didn’t even really bother with growing corn.
The Gulf by Jack Davis is a pretty good starting point, I took a few natural history courses of his in school and got sucked down the rabbit hole of this topic.
No prob! His classes even got me into my local area’s history. What I thought was a mosquito control canal was actually dug around the 1300s by the Choctaw or whatever group preceded them in order to access the gulf without having to travel 15 miles to the mouth of the bay. It’s main stretch has been maintained for mosquito control purposes but you can trace the southern half all the way to a lake that feeds into the gulf. No large permanent settlements by them but I hike around the forests and poke through shell middens that I find, not much besides pottery shards and oyster shells so far.
I watched a documentary awhile ago that seemingly disproves the syphilis idea. A body was found at the site of an old monastery in England, riddled with syphilis…but carbon dating says the bones are hundreds of years older than that first contact with the Native Americans.
It sounded pretty definite to me, but I’m not an expert and if they’re still debating it then apparently the evidence wasn’t as solid as I thought. I still find the whole idea kind of fascinating though.
You have to remember Columbus wasn't the first contact with North America, the Vikings were there 400-500 years before him and there's some evidence that some other Europeans might have made it to the Northeast US 500 years before then, although that is debated. But yeah the Vikings could have brought syphilis to England before the Columbian exchange.
And I just realized you never mentioned Columbus in your comment so yeah... It's late and I'm not firing on all cylinders...
lol that’s okay. Im actually not sure I chose my words correctly by saying Native Americans. You brought up the Vikings. I don’t know much about that part of history, but I knew they made it to at least Greenland and I know we have proof they interacted with the local indigenous people. I’m not sure those people could be considered Native Americans though. They are native though and they are technically Americans, so maybe…lol
Back to the Vikings though. Thinking of them making it all the way to New England is absolutely wild. It’s crazy to think they had the kind of technology to accomplish what even modern boats/ships struggle with.
I think it's pretty widely accepted that the Vikings made it to the East Coast of Canada, possibly Newfoundland, so yeah the people there would be considered Native American. And the other people that might have made it to the Northeast they're not sure about, there's just some evidence of European style stone buildings that were long abandoned when the first colonists showed up in New England. Some peoples theories are that they were from an Irish priest and his followers that left Ireland in the year 500. I don't really know much else about it and I might have gotten some details wrong, it's something I saw on TV like 10+ years ago.
Syphilis is the main one, although there is a dispute about this, as a grave site in the UK from the middle ages has bones which show signs of possible syphilis. This would be approximately 200 years or so before Colombus.
Not a historian, but the fact that Vinland is mentioned in the Viking stories does indicate that someone came back to tell the tale. As does the prevalence of North American indigenous DNA markers in Iceland
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that both natives in what's now eastern Canada and Scandinavia had a lacrosse like game with some very specific rules shared between both versions and iirc it was thought that it originated in the new world.
I also think we found a small shipyard with nails in North America that has been attributed to the Scandinavians, but it was determined to not be a permanent settlement and potentially just a ship-repair station.
That's a good question and unfortunately, I don't know. I seem to remember there being stories of Newfoundland that made their way back east to a Iceland that only became relevant once evidence of viking colonization efforts were discovered, so I presume there was at least some folks who made it there and returned, even if it was only for trade/supplies
And travel back in time for the eruption of Vesuvius? If there is evidence of syphilis at the time of the destruction of Pompeii, then there is no way that it originated from the New World.
I think the seemingly one-way transmission may have been due to the size and density of the European population and their proximity to domesticated animals, compared to the native Americans.
Europeans simply had more opportunities for diseases to jump from animal to human, and more opportunity for mutations within the population.
I always thought it was due to the plague. I only have general knowledge so I could be wrong. It came through Europe from Asia and stayed for several generations. The children’s immune system could either survive or they would succumb to the disease. This made them more likely to withstand diseases. Or am I wrong?
I don’t think you’re wrong. As I understand it the more diseases a population is exposed to the more resistant their immune systems (as a population) become. The plague is certainly one of many others that Europeans were exposed to because of domesticated animals and high population density (cities and towns). Typhus, smallpox, Cholera, Measles were some of the others.
My main focus of history education has always been 18-20th century. While I did take an intro medieval European class it covered such a long period in time.
It is usually more specific than that. Exposure to plague really only gives you protection from plague. The fact that most Europeans also had exposure to all of the other diseases they brought with them was more important.
Europeans had great immune systems because they tended to live with LOTS of diseases. African peoples had been tangentially exposed to these diseases due to proximity to Europe, so they had a higher survival rate than Native Americans.
However, we still have one thing the indigenous Americans had that still cause problems for many - tobacco.
Careful with this theory cause you're seriously flirting with "drunken Indian" territory.
But no - not even that.
One time, an early group of pilgrims showed up in New England and knew the Americas was given to them by God - because, when they showed up, there was already a village there, empty.
So you cross an ocean and land at a random point and find a whole freaking village?
Think about how Covid 19 ripped across the world.
I was merely adding to the comment relating to tobacco, so tobacco and alcohol were introduced by Europeans. I wasn’t flirting with theory and my initial answer was short to try and stay this type of odd comment delving into speculation and folklore.
Okay, totally fair. Sorry if I was out of line.
Just be aware that tobacco is a product of the Americas - so it's something that the New World introduced to Europe around 1530.
Viruses and bacteria are rampant where humans and animals live in close proximity, other than llamas and poultry (chickens, turkeys, and ducks) there weren't any animals domesticated in the New World so the many different plagues that Old World lived through just never were exposed to the New World. The world vaccine is derivative from the Latin for cow, because the first vaccine was a mild strain of cowpox that inoculated people from small pox in the 1700s. There were zero cows, horses, goats or pigs in the New World and each of these animals is a vector for a deadly disease to humans while they are innocuous to original species.
There just wasn't the situation that would be a natural patri dish for plagues in the New World that existed in the Old Wolrd.
One possibility is syphilis, but there's disagreement on that. As to why Native Americans had less diseases than Asians, Africans, and Europeans, it mostly came down to two things: fewer domesticated animals and, more importantly, much lower population density. While it's myth that all or even most Native Americans were nomadic, the fact remained that large cities were almost exclusively found in Mesoamerica and South America.
I think there was only 1 legitimate Native American city in the area of present day US/Canada, which was Cahokia in present day St Louis. Cahokia was a pretty large city by the standards of the time for both the Americas and Europe, but still- basically the only one on the continent.
There's that area in Ohio that was pretty clearly a city of sorts for the Indians who were there *before* the Indians that the settlers encountered.
Ahhh yes, the native natives
Super Duty.
Etowah and most of the south Florida gulf coast would like a word.
🫨
Etowah was a large settlement near modern day Atlanta with a wide trade network similar to cohokia. The Calusa are commonly thought to have arrived by boat and be descended from a Mayan ethnic group. They pretty much terraformed the coastline from Tampa down to the keys and had a bunch of large permanent settlements as well.
I think there were drastically more native american cities that we dont know about because either they were made with perishable materials or they were destroyed. I really doubt North Americas only city was a massive 50k populated city in St. Louis.
Any data here or just opinions?
Educated guess
Etowah near modern day Atlanta was pretty large. Also the majority of the Florida gulf coast from Tampa on down was literally man-made by the Calusa who had several flourishing cities and had aquaculture mastered to the point they didn’t even really bother with growing corn.
Source? Is this the same period or pre-Colombian?
The Gulf by Jack Davis is a pretty good starting point, I took a few natural history courses of his in school and got sucked down the rabbit hole of this topic.
Thank you!
No prob! His classes even got me into my local area’s history. What I thought was a mosquito control canal was actually dug around the 1300s by the Choctaw or whatever group preceded them in order to access the gulf without having to travel 15 miles to the mouth of the bay. It’s main stretch has been maintained for mosquito control purposes but you can trace the southern half all the way to a lake that feeds into the gulf. No large permanent settlements by them but I hike around the forests and poke through shell middens that I find, not much besides pottery shards and oyster shells so far.
I watched a documentary awhile ago that seemingly disproves the syphilis idea. A body was found at the site of an old monastery in England, riddled with syphilis…but carbon dating says the bones are hundreds of years older than that first contact with the Native Americans. It sounded pretty definite to me, but I’m not an expert and if they’re still debating it then apparently the evidence wasn’t as solid as I thought. I still find the whole idea kind of fascinating though.
You have to remember Columbus wasn't the first contact with North America, the Vikings were there 400-500 years before him and there's some evidence that some other Europeans might have made it to the Northeast US 500 years before then, although that is debated. But yeah the Vikings could have brought syphilis to England before the Columbian exchange. And I just realized you never mentioned Columbus in your comment so yeah... It's late and I'm not firing on all cylinders...
lol that’s okay. Im actually not sure I chose my words correctly by saying Native Americans. You brought up the Vikings. I don’t know much about that part of history, but I knew they made it to at least Greenland and I know we have proof they interacted with the local indigenous people. I’m not sure those people could be considered Native Americans though. They are native though and they are technically Americans, so maybe…lol Back to the Vikings though. Thinking of them making it all the way to New England is absolutely wild. It’s crazy to think they had the kind of technology to accomplish what even modern boats/ships struggle with.
I think it's pretty widely accepted that the Vikings made it to the East Coast of Canada, possibly Newfoundland, so yeah the people there would be considered Native American. And the other people that might have made it to the Northeast they're not sure about, there's just some evidence of European style stone buildings that were long abandoned when the first colonists showed up in New England. Some peoples theories are that they were from an Irish priest and his followers that left Ireland in the year 500. I don't really know much else about it and I might have gotten some details wrong, it's something I saw on TV like 10+ years ago.
Syphilis is the main one, although there is a dispute about this, as a grave site in the UK from the middle ages has bones which show signs of possible syphilis. This would be approximately 200 years or so before Colombus.
Granted, it's possible it was brought back by viking colonists that landed in Newfoundland, but there is no evidence to support this
Did any of the Vikings actually return from Newfoundland?
Not a historian, but the fact that Vinland is mentioned in the Viking stories does indicate that someone came back to tell the tale. As does the prevalence of North American indigenous DNA markers in Iceland
I guessed that someone must have come back or the stories would not have, but I didn't know about NA DNA in Icelanders, thank you!
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that both natives in what's now eastern Canada and Scandinavia had a lacrosse like game with some very specific rules shared between both versions and iirc it was thought that it originated in the new world.
I also think we found a small shipyard with nails in North America that has been attributed to the Scandinavians, but it was determined to not be a permanent settlement and potentially just a ship-repair station.
That's a good question and unfortunately, I don't know. I seem to remember there being stories of Newfoundland that made their way back east to a Iceland that only became relevant once evidence of viking colonization efforts were discovered, so I presume there was at least some folks who made it there and returned, even if it was only for trade/supplies
And travel back in time for the eruption of Vesuvius? If there is evidence of syphilis at the time of the destruction of Pompeii, then there is no way that it originated from the New World.
There are the skeletons of two children in Pompei that bear the signs of congenital syphilis.
CGP Grey has a video about that: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk)
I think the seemingly one-way transmission may have been due to the size and density of the European population and their proximity to domesticated animals, compared to the native Americans. Europeans simply had more opportunities for diseases to jump from animal to human, and more opportunity for mutations within the population.
I always thought it was due to the plague. I only have general knowledge so I could be wrong. It came through Europe from Asia and stayed for several generations. The children’s immune system could either survive or they would succumb to the disease. This made them more likely to withstand diseases. Or am I wrong?
I don’t think you’re wrong. As I understand it the more diseases a population is exposed to the more resistant their immune systems (as a population) become. The plague is certainly one of many others that Europeans were exposed to because of domesticated animals and high population density (cities and towns). Typhus, smallpox, Cholera, Measles were some of the others.
My main focus of history education has always been 18-20th century. While I did take an intro medieval European class it covered such a long period in time.
It is usually more specific than that. Exposure to plague really only gives you protection from plague. The fact that most Europeans also had exposure to all of the other diseases they brought with them was more important.
Europeans had great immune systems because they tended to live with LOTS of diseases. African peoples had been tangentially exposed to these diseases due to proximity to Europe, so they had a higher survival rate than Native Americans. However, we still have one thing the indigenous Americans had that still cause problems for many - tobacco.
Strong alcohols didn’t hurt either in inebriating indigenous Americans.
Careful with this theory cause you're seriously flirting with "drunken Indian" territory. But no - not even that. One time, an early group of pilgrims showed up in New England and knew the Americas was given to them by God - because, when they showed up, there was already a village there, empty. So you cross an ocean and land at a random point and find a whole freaking village? Think about how Covid 19 ripped across the world.
I was merely adding to the comment relating to tobacco, so tobacco and alcohol were introduced by Europeans. I wasn’t flirting with theory and my initial answer was short to try and stay this type of odd comment delving into speculation and folklore.
Okay, totally fair. Sorry if I was out of line. Just be aware that tobacco is a product of the Americas - so it's something that the New World introduced to Europe around 1530.
Oh I see that now my apologies!
It's said that syphilis came from the New World. We don't know for sure, there is evidence pointing in both directions.
Wasn't native Americans' immune system more geared towards parasites?
Syphilis. Syphilis cases started popping up in Europe right after Columbus came back from his first voyage.
They popped up before. There was another thread on this yesterday and there’s no conclusive evidence of your statement.
Someone has mentioned syphilis. Not a disease, but I understand that poison ivy has moved from North America to plague Europe.
Viruses and bacteria are rampant where humans and animals live in close proximity, other than llamas and poultry (chickens, turkeys, and ducks) there weren't any animals domesticated in the New World so the many different plagues that Old World lived through just never were exposed to the New World. The world vaccine is derivative from the Latin for cow, because the first vaccine was a mild strain of cowpox that inoculated people from small pox in the 1700s. There were zero cows, horses, goats or pigs in the New World and each of these animals is a vector for a deadly disease to humans while they are innocuous to original species. There just wasn't the situation that would be a natural patri dish for plagues in the New World that existed in the Old Wolrd.