PRIMATIVE AMERICAN ARMOR

[pallas]

Originally Posted by fearn

Hi Celtan,

The weird part, come to think of it, is disease. There's this theory out there that the Americas were largely depopulated in the 16th Century by epidemic diseases introduced from Europe. Actually, it's a bit more than a theory...

So...I guess everyone before the Conquistadors who made it to America was perfectly healthy. Now there's a weird thought. Did ships get that much faster after 1492? Fast enough, I mean, to bring infectious people to the New World.

F

i agree with the the general lack of old world illness as evidence of unsustained precolumbian (actually "pre norse-scandanavian") contact between the new and old worlds, however was there not a general lack of large damaging plagues/waves of diseases in europe before the 1200's? i know that they occured here and there (the plauge that afflicted the huns in italy and that which afflicted byzantine troops of justinian in byzantium as examples) but they dident seem to be as widespread or as devastating as those that swept over europe in the 12-1300s. could the vikings/celts and/or other european visitors have been largely communacable-disease free at the time they landed? im excluding STDS of course as theyve always been present in most world populations..

[aiontay]

Pallas,

I've read that part of the reason the New World was relatively disease free is that the cold temperatures of Beringia killed most germs, viruses etc. Assuming this is true, then maybe the Norse, coming via Greenland would have been relatively disease free.

[fearn]

Hi Aiontay,

The Western Hemisphere has all sorts of indigenous diseases. What was missing in Beringia wasn't diseases, it was the ability to spread quickly. If someone in a hunter-gatherer band falls sick (say, he picked up influenza from a migratory duck he shot for dinner) then the worst that could happen is that he and his family would die. Others would be unaffected, and a potentially lethal epidemic would fizzle. That kind of disease screen showed up all over the world, including Polynesia, Australia, and so forth. Diseases hit hard there too.

As for why the Norse didn't bring anything with them, I think Pallas might be onto something, in that they happened to voyage at a time when there weren't massive epidemics scudding around. So far as I know, the Black Death made it into Scandanavia, and, well, we all suffer from influenza in cold weather. Cold isn't necessarily a barrier to disease.

F