Posted on 05/06/2019 6:15:09 AM PDT by artichokegrower
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, bringing to the New World a bounty of wonder: coffee, horses, turnips, grapes, wine.
But Columbus and his fellow explorers, in addition to importing crops and animals we now take for granted, were also the Typhoid Marys of their time.
The New World before Columbus: no typhoid, no flu, no smallpox, no measles.
The New World after Columbus: epidemics of death.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Not to mention the horse.
Alright, but apart from the wheel, printed language, metals, agriculture, science, medicine, what has Columbus EVER done for us?
They couldn’t even come up with the idea of The Wheel?
Sheesh....
True... no rocks every rolled down a hill in their territory. /s
Actually, they did think of the wheel — if I remember correctly, it was in the form of a toy, perhaps Incan?
All of these things resulted in Europeans being regularly exposed to many more pathogens than Native Americans were. The Europeans’ immune systems simply developed to ward off the worst of some of the nastier diseases that incapacitated entire Native American populations. That same immunity protected them from diseases that Native Americans might have given them, or at least made it so the new diseases that they encountered were not as deadly.
That said, it should be noted that Europeans were also commonly killed off by the diseases they brought to the New World. It’s just that over time those who were more susceptible to these diseases died off and the survivors’ immune systems had developed to the point where the general populace wasn’t typically being wiped out at rates anywhere close to 95%, though the numbers were often still extreme by today’s standards.
But contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t all one sided. It’s believed that one Native American disease did slip on to the European ships and sailed onward to Europe doing some major damage in the process. That disease was syphilis.
Columbus “sailed the ocean blue” in 1492. Just three years later, in 1495, the first syphilis epidemic broke out among armies in Italy at the Siege of Naples, seemingly brought by French soldiers who in turn probably got the disease from Spanish mercenaries. Because of the French popularly spreading it, syphilis was initially known as the “French disease.”
There was up until very recently some debate about whether or not syphilis was in fact a “New World” disease because there are over 50 skeletons that have been found with all the markings of syphilis being the cause of death and that were once thought to date to pre-Columbian times. However, advancements in dating technology and a recent (2011) comprehensive study published in the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology looking at all of the skeletons placed those people’s deaths after Columbus returned from the Americas.
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/native-americans-didnt-wipe-europeans-diseases/
Germ theory was never so much as postulated until about half a century later (Girolamo Fracastoro, 1546) so Chris gets a pass on this one.
life is a bitch, progress is a bitch if you’re the inferior society. Stop whining and open another casino
Would the workers at the San Jose newspaper lead the way back to Europe or Asia?
Yes, didnt you the great prehistoric healthcare they had OgabamaCare...it was so great the everyone had to live in caves because AO-C's ancestor created the Prehistoric Green New Deal, and they banned Dinosaur farts, no Flintetonemobiles and they had to rebuild caves...😋
Indeed.
Death: the great Equalizer.
It seems to me that if measles were present on his ships when he sailed, the disease would have run the full course and would have been over by the time he reached the new world. At any rate, where is the author’s evidence?
So now we know why we must change Columbus Day to Indian Day. Indians were victims, perfect Democrats. Columbus was a risk taker, a conservative. We cannot have Holiday’s named after these people.
If it wasn’t Columbus, it would have been the next guy.
There had to have been contact between Europeans and North American Indians for years before Columbus. First the Viking colony of ‘Vinland’ during the Medieval Warm Epoch. And then Basques who had been providing Europe with cod from sources that they kept secret, but which were surely the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
Would the Indians have been better off if the Chinese got here first? They only murdered 40? million of their own in the 20th century. What if the Russians were here first. They only murdered 30? Million of their own in the 20th century. What if the muslims were here first. They’ve only murdered 189? Million world wide in the last 1400 years. Not saying what Columbus and those who followed did was right, but the world had always been governed by force. The Indians still have the greatest opportunity to have a good life (if they choose to participate) under the “white man”.
There had to have been contact between Europeans and North American Indians for years before Columbus.
There has been speculation that Columbus may have caught word of the fishing grounds when he was trying to peddle his scheme in England. In any case, the Indians were pretty much doomed when Europeans started sailing the Atlantic. They were especially doomed when fertile land for growing sugar cane and later gold was discovered by the Spanish.
Syphilis went to Europe on the return voyage.
And eventually cocaine although in all fairness to Chris C that would be more Pizarros doing.
OK, but we should open our borders to unvaccinated people. Yeah.
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