What struck my curiosity was that as Asians and Europeans and farmers and hunter gatherers began to meet, interact, and expand geographically, skin color changed, but immune system DNA did not.
It seems likely that the northeastern Asians who crossed the Alaskan land bridge 12-15,000 years ago would have had a very similar immune system to the rest of Eurasia.
The best estimates for the maximum death toll from the most deadly plague in recorded European history are in the 50%-60% range.
But the estimates for the New World plagues are consistently over 90%.
I have always thought the 90%-plus claim was more political correctness than medical science.
I mean, it has to be really embarrassing that about 10,000 European soldiers conquered 100 million indigenous Americans in less than a century.
I think 90% could very well be accurate. The Black Death in Europe was only a few generations passed when Columbus sailed.
I was trying to point out just how virulent Europe and Asia had become. Massive populations in giant cities, animals living in most homes all winter. In most of Eurasia, cleanliness a forgotten thing (compared to Romans and their love of bathing and the Chinese wealthy who still did), the spread of rapid transportation in ships, often laden with disease carrying vermin... It’s no wonder people were sick all the time.
I would say that most of these killer diseases really became widespread right around 200 years or so BEFORE during and after Columbus, thus giving some immunity to those who lived through them.
When the Europeans arrived, all dirty and in rat infested ships, it’s no wonder so many people, living in a much less—by a huge factor—virulent world, succumbed like they did.
Think about it. It just wasn’t one disease, but dozens—all at once. Smallpox, Bubonic Plague, Yellow Fever, Mumps, Measles, influenza (derived from pig, duck and chicken diseases totally foreign to Indians), rinovirus, cholera, pertussis, Typhoid fever, and tuberculosis, just to name a few.
That is HUGE! And not a soul in the New World had ever had any of them. And they came aboard with every new vessel.
I live in Alabama, right on the route De Soto took when he came through and fought Tuscaloosa of the Alibamios. Almost all of De Soto’s men died of disease. Imagine what happened to all the non-immune Indians he encountered. In fact, he named off splendid royal town after royal town along his journey here, each with a temple on a mound and surrounded by extensive agriculture. This was the heyday of the Mississippian culture. They were all gone in 50 years. The Creeks and Cherokees were the remnants of that culture, and the Southeast was almost back to wilderness by the time the French and English arrived.
The Creek town, Tuckabatchee, only 10 miles from me, had a population of 10,000 souls in 1812 when Jackson defeated the Red Sticks at Horseshoe Bend, and that was considered the largest Indian town in all the Southeast.
De Soto encountered dozens of towns this size in his journey from 1539-1542. By 1600, they were all gone.