[Wiseghy]

I was reading this last night in Discover. The point is the Spanish spread small pox was definitely not behind the epidemics of the mid to late 16th century in Mexico. The symptoms and epidemiology don't match, nor did any contemporaries call the pandemic Small Pox. This is despite the popular PC notion that only European illnesses nearly destroyed the Aztec race.

The article points to the vulnerability of stressed and marginal populations to pandemics (even today) and the complexity of historical epidemiology when considering local as well as exotic illnesses.

[blam]

"This is despite the popular PC notion that only European illnesses nearly destroyed the Aztec race."

I immediately wondered if this disease was connected to other 'lost civilizations' there and in South America.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

I also first caught this story in Discover. In fact, I was going to post the story from their website but my search turned this up.

I find this story very interesting because we've always been taught that the 'New World' was an Eden full of happy harmonious people that the white man destroyed when he brought over horrible diseases and greed for natural resources. We're all supposed to have a national culture of guilt and shame over this.

The scientific community probably won't give these researchers the time of day. If they did research to "prove" that the white man was even more horrible and destructive than previously thought, they'd give them Nobel prizes.