Posted on 11/23/2015 9:54:22 AM PST by SunkenCiv
In 1495, a "new" disease spread throughout Europe: syphilis. Christopher Columbus was said to have brought this sexually transmitted disease back from his voyage to America.
At least, that has been the accepted theory up until now. Using morphological and structural evidence, researchers from the Department of Forensic Medicine and the Center for Anatomy and Cell Biology (bone laboratory) at MedUni Vienna have now identified several cases of congenital syphilis dating back to as early as 1320 AD in skeletons from excavations at the cathedral square of St. Polten, Austria...
Congenital syphilis, which is passed from a pregnant mother to her unborn child, was primarily identified by changes to the teeth of skeletons from the 14th century. "We found so-called Hutchinson's teeth with central notches and converging edges and mulberry molars, which are characteristic signs of syphilis," study authors Kanz and Grobschmidt (Department of Cell and Developmental Biology) explained. Their findings have now been published in the renowned Journal of Biological and Clinical Anthropology...
Up to now, a total of 9000 skeletons as old as the 9th century AD have been recovered from the excavations in the cathedral square in St. Polten. The large number of unearthed individuals at one archaeological site is unique in Europe. The recovery was conducted in close collaboration with the Urban Archaeology Department of the state capital of Lower Austria. Additional studies of the living conditions and diseases evident from the skeletons were started.
This remarkable discovery of the earliest evidence of syphilis between 1320 and 1390 now awaits confirmation by molecular biological tests and proteomics (examination of the proteome using biochemical methods). The scientists hope to gain further insights from the proteomic analysis, in particular, because the DNA of syphilis decays very rapidly.
(Excerpt) Read more at healthcanal.com ...
...the earliest evidence of syphilis between 1320 and 1390 now awaits confirmation by molecular biological tests and proteomics (examination of the proteome using biochemical methods).IOW, it hasn't been confirmed. Nice news story though, eh?
Another one of Mohammed’s gifts to mankind?
> It may be that, or it may be the fact that if you say you’ve found hard evidence of pre-Colombian syphilis you get a lot of publicity for your otherwise fairly pedestrian documentary. None of this conjecture has passed peer review as yet though, so it’s perfectly possible like the many previous examples of “pre-Colombian syphilis” victims, it’s not going to stand up to rational academic scrutiny.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28b1xf/did_syphilis_exist_in_pompeii/
> This article discusses the presentation of scientific finding via documentary and absent the process of peer-review. We use, as an example, PBS’s Syphilis Enigma, in which researchers presented novel evidence concerning the origin of syphilis that had never been reviewed by other scientists. These “findings” then entered the world of peer-reviewed literature through citations of the documentary itself or material associated with the documentary. Here, we demonstrate that the case for pre-Columbian syphilis in Europe that was made in the documentary does not withstand scientific scrutiny. We also situate this example from paleopathology within a larger trend of “science by documentary” or “science by press conference,” in which researchers seek to bypass the peer review process by presenting unvetted findings directly to the public.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3413456/
That’s exhibit A that it’s ‘new world’. ;’) Even if it wasn’t before, it is now. ;’)
I thought they had gonorrhea
Look, I come like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and remains clothed, so as not to go naked and be shamefully exposed.
“Ah the politically correct revisionist history version of syphilis”
Ha! Yeah, Columbus was the Charlie Sheen of the 15th Century - what they’re teaching kids these days...
I have in my posession an extremely rare artifact that seems to contradict the study in the story.
It’s Columbus’s tee-shirt that say’s “I Went to the New World and All I Got Was the Clap”.
:’) His was also the first account of Precolumbian contact evidence — an old-timer on a Caribbean island had a gold pendant strung around his neck, turned out to be an Old World coin. The old man had found it when he was young, free diving.
Well there goes another “Europeans” are bad meme.
That’s so BBAAAAADDD.
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