[Soliton]

Yawn, somebody got grant money for this.

The theory that Christopher Columbus’s crew carried syphilis back to Europe from the New World has sprung another leak. Skeletons recently unearthed from a medieval friary in the U.K. show unmistakable signs of the disease, researchers say, suggesting that England was hit by the scourge at least 50 years before Columbus’s voyage.
The so-called Columbian theory of syphilis’s spread was based on finding skeletal remains bearing the signature of the disease—thickened leg and arm bones and skull scars—in a suggestive pattern. Although 18th and 19th century archaeologists had discovered plenty of diseased remains at prehistoric sites in the Americas, they found no traces of the disease in European bones until a major epidemic hit Europe about 1500, just after Columbus returned from his 1493 voyage. In the last decade, however, researchers have unearthed about a dozen pre-Columbian skeletons in England and Ireland that also showed signs of the disease. But until recently the oddball cases weren’t enough to sink the Columbian theory.

[ChildOfThe60s]

Beat me to it. I read some good stuff on that. They made some persuasive scientific arguments that it is more likely that syphilis was carried from new world to old.

[djf]

PBS covered this a while back. And while they seem to have pretty good evidence that there were remote pockets of infection in Europe during pre-Columbian times, it is almost certainly true that the largest spread of the infections came after he returned to Europe.

And they had (PBS) discussed yaws and a few other related infections. Seems there are/were variants that almost all children got, acting with little more damage than chicken pox, and providing lifelong immunity to the more deadly venereal type.

[VOA]

The Syphilis Enigma
(episode from PBS’s “Secrets of the Dead)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_syphilis/index.html

[GoLightly]

Skeletons recently unearthed from a medieval friary in the U.K. show unmistakable signs of the disease, researchers say, suggesting that England was hit by the scourge at least 50 years before Columbus’s voyage.

Skeletons excavated at Hull, dated to between 1300 and 1450, had clear signs of syphilis

From my link, "David Evans, who directed excavations at the Augustinian friary, dated the skeletons somewhat later — between 1450 and 1475 — based on stratification."