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"! The only question I've had is that when Columbus' men arrived here, European diseases quickly decimated the local population. While I firmly believe that earlier explorers got here as well, I've wondered why disease was not a larger problem. Or was it?

I'm a strong believer in early and continuous (interrupted) contact between the 'new' and 'old' worlds (tens of thousands of years). This question has baffled me for a long time. Now, recently I've read an article that pushes the date of the arrival of TB in the Americas back by 1,000 years.

Thanks. I'd like to know as much about early diseases as I can learn. What was that which was found in the early Egyptian mummies that was only grown in the Americas? Was it nicotine? (A senior moment here). Have you read any Barry Fell? The primary problem I see with him is that not many other researchers have his background and cannot confirm or deny his theories based on his knowledge. Interesting reading, though. I tend to agree with you about continuous contact with the Americas.

The Spanish also had no immunity to AMERICAN diseases, and it was they who were few and half starved and seasick, and had had to land with no ports.

The reason the Amerindian population was so weak immunologically, was its extreme inbredness. Over 90% of all American Indians, from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego, are descended from just four women.

While the separatists are technically wrong, and boats were landing here or there all the time, most of those people just starved, perished, were murdered where they landed.

The boaters had major cultural and religious effect, but were few and male and could not much impact the genetic picture, nor could their small craft be packed with enough artifacts to convince all of today's skeptics.

Yet genetically it is the diffusionists who are wrong, and the whole aboriginal population of both continents and the Caribbean too, is still basically descended from a single boatload of Asians, apparently with just four breeding females, that landed in SOUTH America in a time of high antiquity indeed, some 35 to 39.5 thousand years ago.

It may well have floated with the clockwise current around the Pacific rim from the Sakhalin/Korea area all the way to Chile before finally coming ashore. See Monte Verde, Popiapo, etc.