Europeans may not have been deadly as thought to Aztecs

San Antonio Express- News/Houston Chronicle ^ | 10/15/2006 | Marion Lloyd

[SwinneySwitch]

"....he warns that the fever — which the Aztecs called "cocoliztli" in their native Nahuatl language — still may be lurking in remote rural areas of Mexico."

[ClearCase_guy]

Hemorrhagic diseases — which include such terrifying killers as Ebola, Marburg, and Lassa — don't readily pass from one person to another.

Indeed. Very hard to spread these diseases. You practically have to wallow in the other person's blood, ripping their beating heart out of their chest and perhaps ritually eating body parts.

What are the chances the Aztecs did stuff like that??

[Seruzawa]

Either way the Aztecs are gone, which is a good thing.

[End Times Sentinel]

Sounds awesome! I sure hope I can get my hands on some of that sweet, sweet hemoragic fever. Maybe I ought to start hanging out in the parking lot of the Home Depot. Or send my kids to public school...

Owl_Eagle

If what I just wrote made you sad or angry,
it was probably just a joke.

[KC_Conspirator]

I think I am one of the few people who can understand your wit.

[Michael Goldsberry]

Link

[SaltyJoe]

I'm sure the Aztecs have mass graves from their own victims of cannibalism. Getting a before plague and after plague samplings will help.

I wonder if ships made a trip from Africa to South America which might explain the filovirus like symptoms.




This might be an earlier/original strain? that was more resistant than the present ebola strains. Would be interesting to examine the actual everyday living conditions that would allow a virus to jump from victim to victim as if it did exist in Mexico. Otherwise, a bacterial infection seems more likely.

Could vampire bats have spread a filovirus throughout a very agrarian population?

[Socratic]

What are the chances the Aztecs did stuff like that??

The purity of indiginous people would preclude such a thing.

[blam]

Historical Review: Megadrought And Megadeath In 16th Century Mexico

"The epidemic of cocoliztli from1545 to 1548 killed an estimated 5 million to 15 million people, or up to 80% of the native population of Mexico (Figure 1). In absolute and relative terms the 1545 epidemic was one of the worst demographic catastrophes in human history, approaching even the Black Death of bubonic plague, which killed approximately 25 million in western Europe from 1347 to 1351 or about 50% of the regional population."

"The cocoliztli epidemic from 1576 to 1578 cocoliztli epidemic killed an additional 2 to 2.5 million people, or about 50% of the remaining native population."

[Oklahoma]

Maybe it was an unusually deadly form of something like Dengue Fever?

[SwinneySwitch]

Cocoliztli Ping!

[BenLurkin]

LOL!

[BenLurkin]

They were not nice people.

[2banana]

And the Native Americans gave the world tobacco and syphilis..which has killed orders of magnitude more people...

[Enterprise]

If the politicians have their way, the fever may soon be lurking all over the United States.

NAFTA - North American Fever Transmission Act

[13Sisters76]

I am a historian who hasn't bought the PC "we killed the native peoples" whine in quite a long time.

Considering that the "native peoples" waged ongoing war with other native tribes, enslaved them and practiced cannibalism and horrifying religious rituals, I'm surprised the Euros agreed to stay.

The Southwestern Annasazi, it has been specualted, were wiped out by a disease that afflicts those who eat human flesh.

[olinr]

Any chance we can get it to the traitor RAT's for consumption?

[ClaireSolt]

I am an historian, too, and of partly Indian ancestry. There has never been a day in my life when I yearned for the life of my Indian ancestors. I never wintered in a warm house with central heat secretly harboring a sentimental desire to be in a tee pee, instead, with the blizzard whipping at its flimsy walls. I have seen buffalo covered in snow with icicles hanging from their fur. There but for the grace of God, go I.

[ASOC]

Could it be the Spanish brought a 'tipping point" to an already volatile situation, and thus began the spread chaos though an already crumbling society?

[Mach9]

"It's a key piece of the "Black Legend," the tales of atrocities committed by the Spanish Inquisition and colonizers of the New World."

Interesting take on "legend." Wasn't this, like the Columbus "legend," created in the mid-1960s? No wonder our elite colleges are failing simple civics & history tests.