
Medieval DNA suggests Columbus didn’t trigger syphilis epidemic in Europe - Hooke
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/medieval-dna-suggests-columbus-didn-t-trigger-syphilis-epidemic-europe
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xhkkffbf
This is all interesting, but the second half of the article pretty much says
that the headline is a bit of a stretch. The potential date range for the
tested bones is wide enough that they could have died after Columbus's return.

> Molly Zuckerman, a bioarchaeologist at Mississippi State University who
> studies ancient Treponemal disease, praises the researchers’ feat of
> extracting Treponemal DNA, but notes that the sample date ranges are wide
> and can’t fully disprove the Columbus hypothesis. “This paper does not
> provide that kind of golden prize of evidence of syphilis in the pre-
> Columbian period in the Old World.”

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gwern
The diversity argument is stronger. Even if you argue that the skeletons post-
date Columbus, now you also need to argue that it wasn't just one case that
came back but several (or that the understanding of its mutation clock &
strains are wrong).

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xhkkffbf
Well, there were more than one sailor on the expedition -- and there's no
reason why one sailor couldn't bring back multiple strains. In some cases, a
dominant strain drives out the others, but not in all microbes.

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raducu
Am I missing something here?

Why is this about Columbus, the skeletons are dated mid 1400's - 1600's.

This is quite ridiculous. This is like that one star that is like 80 million
years older than the Big Bang, in the estimated age range.

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Cactus2018
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis)

> Until that time, as Fracastoro notes, syphilis had been called the "French
> disease" (Italian: mal francese) in Italy, Malta, Poland and Germany, and
> the "Italian disease" in France. In addition, the Dutch called it the
> "Spanish disease", the Russians called it the "Polish disease", and the
> Turks called it the "Christian disease" or "Frank (Western European)
> disease" (frengi).

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koboll
Reminds me of the way the US administration likes to use the term "China
virus". Nothing ever changes.

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generalizations
China did try to pin the virus on US intelligence agencies (IIRC). Guess
you're right?

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gxqoz
Alfred Crosby's classic history The Columbian Exchange explores how syphilis
was perhaps the only major disease that went from the New World to the Old
World. Well worth a read even though it's almost 50 years old at this point.

Also I hadn't realized until recently that the "syphilis spread via Columbus"
theory was current in the 18th century. There's a section in Voltaire's
Candide where it's discussed.

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29athrowaway
How do you contract syphilis other than sexually? The Spanish did not bring
many women with them in their expeditions, and people that don't bathe are not
precisely sex symbols... so it's not hard to figure out what happened.

The fact that Spain still has monuments dedicated to murderers, human
traffickers, slave owners, serial child abusers says a lot about a country.

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christkv
Or Genghis Khan, Muhammed, the zulus, Egyptians, Assyrians, romans, Aztecs etc
etc etc. every single color, creed you pick it. All mass murder and
colonization. Human history in a nutshell.

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saas_sam
No no, those were all victims of circumstance. Western cultures are uniquely
capable of moral reasoning and are therefore more culpable than everyone else.
I think that's what pop culture is telling me...

