It’s well known that the European conquest of the Americas was aided by the locals having been severely hit by disease, but how do we know that it was European diseases that were the diseases involved? European populations were subject to pandemics, so why should American populations be exempt? And why didn’t disease follow the Vikings hundreds of years earlier? Or did it?
Has there been any analysis done? Graves exhumed etc?
Malaria had a disastrous effect, and it was probably West African in origin.
https://en.ird.fr/the-media-centre/scientific-newssheets/394-malaria-how-did-it-reach-the-americas
Wasn’t the slave trade significantly after the original conquest?
Maybe I don’t understand the question because the answer seems pretty obvious. Other than the malaria mentioned, who else could’ve brought the diseases but Europeans? Considering the fact that natives had virtually no immunity to smallpox Or any other diseases commonly carried by Europeans, it’s a pretty safe bet they hadn’t been exposed before the post-Columbian arrival of said Europeans. As for the Vikings, I believe their contact with natives was fairly limited and remote, given the fact they landed in present-day Newfoundland and didn’t venture very far south (if I remember correctly.) Any outbreak they caused would’ve been fairly contained.
Not really. Spain and Portugal were dealing in African slaves before Columbus’ first voyage.
New World populations were descended from a small group of migrants who had passed through arctic and subarctic areas where tropical diseases couldn’t survive. Because they bands were small and dispersed, infectious diseases couldn’t propagate themselves. Epidemic diseases are mainly a feature of agricultural societies with dense populations.
New World cultures mostly lacked domestic animals, with a very few exceptions. Most epidemic human diseases have “jumped” to us from domestic animals.
Due to their origin in a small population and lack of selection from epidemics, Native Americans show less variability in the genes affecting the immune system than Old World populations, making them less able to fend off infectious diseases.
It very well might have to some extent. However, the Vikings themselves came in very small groups in which infectious disease was unlikely to persist, and were in contact with only small isolated populations of Native Americans. Under these conditions disease was unlikely to spread to the rest of the government.
Too bad, too bad.
Most of the diseases were initially brought by Europeans themselves, but there were a few African slaves among them very early. Smallpox was introduced to Mexico in 1520, by the Narvaez expedition that was a followup after Cortes began his campaign against the Aztecs. It has generally been said that smallpox was introduced to the Aztecs themselves via an African slave who was with Cortes’ expedition (although there is some dispute about this). Smallpox decimated the native population and facilitated the Conquest.
The major slave trade between West Africa and the Americas was started to replace the native populations which had declined in the West Indies due to disease. It was this trade that probably brought in malaria and yellow fever (and the species of mosquitoes that spread them). But although malaria and yellow fever may have arrived a little later, they still contributed to the decline of Native Americans.
I meant continent, of course. But a plague that only affected politicians and bureaucrats might be a good thing. 
Because correlation does not necessarily equal causation.
It’s also known that there was trade - and thus contact - among the Inuit across the Bering Strait providing an alternative infection route.
I meant the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery is recorded in the old world since writing began. African slaves were sought-after in Persia.
Are there rats native to the Americas? Or did they come with Columbus too? Wikipedia indicates the current presence of plague-infected animals in the Americas
Let’s backtrack a little: are there any known pandemics in the Americas which pre-date Columbus?
It would also seem logical that the Vikings would have made few stops on the way to the New World, other than in very northern lands, whereas later European explorers often stopped at more tropical ports to restock supplies and were more likely to take on diseased vermin, malaria, etc.
Possibly syphilis, but I’m not sure it was pandemic.
Most of the hugely infectious pandemic diseases we’re familiar with are tropical in origin. That alone makes a route though the far north less likely.
There are also many contemporary accounts of illnesses written by Europeans who were familiar with their symptoms and progress.
Of course, anthropologists have studied skeletal remains for evidence of disease. Isn’t that like asking if any scientist has done any science? Here’s one paper that discusses Health conditions before Columbus: paleopathology of native North Americans. Native Americans had many chronic illnesses and conditions. What they didn’t have were the short-term acute illnesses that the Europeans brought.
ISTM that if indigenous people’s health was declining, they would be harder hit by the new diseases to which they had no resistance.
Again, because of very sparse population, not a likely route for the spread of infectious disease. Although there are plenty of mosquitoes in the subarctic, they are not the ones that transmit malaria and yellow fever.
The rats involved with the spread of human disease, especially the Black Rat Rattus rattus and the Norway Rat Rattus norvegicus, were introduced to the Americas from Europe.
Not that I am aware of. Of course, most cultures didn’t have a written language. Those that did, like the Mayans, recorded lots of wars and historical events but I am unaware that they ever recorded a widespread plague. Nor is there much evidence of large-scale mortality in burials, etc.
The plague among rodents in western North America was introduced about 1900 by a ship coming to San Francisco from Hong Kong.
This is a pretty good synopsis of the situation 
Americapox: The Missing Plague - YouTube
Not really, no.
That’s the sort of thing I’m after.
Actually, that article says they did. Just not the ones we brought over:
In that case, you’re too close to what you wrote to see how it came across.
Well, to be exact it says:
The Old World still has chronic and episodic diseases. And I think I’d call the Black Death both episodic and epidemic.