# How do we know it was European diseases that killed the native Americans **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 22, 2016, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-know-it-was-european-diseases-that-killed-the-native-americans/755366 "2016-05-22T15:16:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 35
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2016, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-know-it-was-european-diseases-that-killed-the-native-americans/755366/35 "2016-05-23T07:34:04Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > And why didn’t disease follow the Vikings hundreds of years earlier? Smallpox and measles (two candidates for highest body count in the New World) weren’t established in the Viking part of Europe at the time they voyaged West. Also, Viking culture wasn’t highly urbanized, and a certain level of urbanization is needed to sustain a pool of infectious diseases inbetween epidemics. The rise of plagues like the various poxes goes hand-in-hand with the rise in urbanization, and the people coming to America after 1492 were from those highly urban cultures (so often were asymptomatic carriers or recovered victims), unlike the Vikings. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-know-it-was-european-diseases-that-killed-the-native-americans/755366)._