If the an average Joe from today’s Europe (or the US, for that matter) and, say, 100 of his mates were time-transported to the New World in place of Columbus, would the 500 years of medical development in between have made them less or more toxic to the local population?
Well syphillis wouldn’t wipe out millions and end civilizations.
Ditto smallpox, which was a major killer, and measles and mumps. As a semi-educated WAG, I’d say that you’d see epidemics, but they’d be different diseases (HIV, for instance) and I’d guess they’d probably be less lethal.
We got syphillis from them.
I don’t know, the main killer seems to have been smallpox, and it’s possible the 101 mates would have never be exposed to smallpox these days. On the other hand it was all about what we immune to that they weren’t, and certainly modern medicine has made us immune to a whole lot of things we might still be carriers for, for people with no immunity.
HIV would be…well, no more or less devestating than it is in the modern world. As it’s hard to catch (compared to smallpox, say) and no populations have built up immunity to it.
I think assuming no smallpox, they’d be less lethal. But hard to say.
P.S.
I haven’t read the book, just a review but apparently according to 1491 devasation from European diseases may have spread before Columbus. Just thought I’d throw that in there.
Actually, there is a gene that provides some protection against HIV infection; though this gene is found in up to 20% of Europeans, the cite says it is rare in African and Asian populations, so I would assume that any NA wouldn’t have immunity either.
Of course social factors play a big role in how much HIV spreads - of course, the native Americans wouldn’t have to worry about IV drug users spreading the disease, so the disease would strike tribes at different rates, depending mostly on their sexual habits.
Are you sure about that? Some European diseases are thought to have spread in in particular areas before Europeans arrived due to trasmission between indigenous groups, but I have never heard that they spread before the arrival of Columbus himself.
Actually, that’s still being debated. It’s not entirely clear.
I would imagine that since most or all of these average Joes have been immunized against things like measels, mumps, whooping cough, smallpox (depending on how old these Joes are), polio, rubella, etc., they wouldn’t be able to transmit those diseases.
I’m showing my ignorance of medical science here, but could these average Joes still be carriers of the mentioned diseases despite immunisation? And are the strains of flu and cold present nowadays stronger (when compared against a base value of their threat to native Americans of 500 years ago) than they were back then?
Well with 500 years of contact between Europeans and Eskimos/Inuit, I’d be surprised that no European diseases were transmitted to North America before Columbus.
Perhaps I should be a little clearer. I’m talking about the pre-columbian contact in the Greenland vicinity.
Poorly organized and in need of an editor, this book Pox gives a pretty good arguement that Columbus brought syphillis to Europe.
Ok, that’s quite possible. However, I have not heard that diseases that might have been introduced by Norse contact spread widely in the Americas.