[Aztlan] African Olmecs

[Steven Zoraster]

A Web search shows that smallpox did not arrive in the Americas until 25 years after Columbus.  The delay probably due to luck and to the fact that the infectious period of the disease is less than the time required to sail across the Atlantic.  An online web page [http://tinyurl.com/2zrcum] reports that a population of at least 230,000 persons is needed to sustain endemic measles.  Otherwise, it "burns itself out" after infecting everyone in a given population, providing temporary immunity to the whole community.

Cholera was restricted to India until the 19th century.  Another web page says that "Yellow fever was brought to the Americas on slave ships in the 1500s." The primary yellow fever vector, the mosquito Aedes aegypti, is identified as native to West Africa at: http://tinyurl.com/3284ak .

Pre-Columbian contact does not necessarily imply the early introduction of old world diseases.  Not that I am arguing that pre-Columbian contact occurred.

Steven Zoraster


> On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:03:11 -0500, Sam Edgerton wrote:
> One bit of circumstantial evidence that there was no consequential
> "peopling of the Americas" after the Beringian crossing until the
> arrival of Columbus is that neither of our two continents was
> likewise ever visited by the terrible plagues that swept over the
> conjoined Eurasian and African continents from biblical times
> through the Middle Ages. In fact native America was suddenly and
> horribly vulnerable to a flock of diseases which the European
> invaders brought over for the first time. While the Europeans and
> even their later imported African slaves were partially immune due
> to ancient exposure, the indigenous Indian population had no such
> genetic defense, and were almost immediately ravaged by what may
> have spread from a single infected sailor who deposited his germs
> on the beach of  "San Salvador" on October 12, 1492. Sam Edgerton
>
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