They did give us tobacco, but I do not consider that quite the same. Why were there not any great scourges of native disease? Well, in the northern hemisphere at least. Or am I wrong, and there were?
Don’t forget syphilis, which Europeans brought back with them from the New World.
And checking the archives, the Master speaks on Why did so many Native Americans die of European diseases but not vice versa?
There is an unproved theory that syphilis originated in the Western Hemisphere, but other than that you are correct that diseases were imprted into the Americas rather than exported from them.
Jared Diamond, in his Guns, Germs, and Steel points out that a great many of the lethal diseases that struck the Americas were associated with cross-species transmission. Smallpox from cowpox, for example. The Americans found only the dog, the llama, and the alpaca to be domesticable, so they did not live in close proximity to large numbers of different animal species that would harbor pathogens that would infect humans. (Cattle and pigs appear to be especially good at breeding critters that will pass to humans.)
The diseases that arose in Eurasia and Africa had thousands of years to develop, one at a time, and pass across those continents with the people who survived any epidemics having many years to build up further immunities. All the endemic diseases from Eurasia and Africa came into the Americas in a very brief period, so that groups who might have developed immunity to one disease were likely to be slain by a different disease before they could recover from the first.
Before anyone can say it, no the natives did not give Columbus syphilis, despite what that hack Voltaire said.
I don’t know of any particular diseases the natives gave Europe. Perhaps this was because Europe had higher population density and intercontinental trade. Europeans may have had hardier immune systems than the Natives, who simply wouldn’t have been exposed to as many foreign diseases then the average European.
Damn. On preview I see I just wasn’t quick enough to beat the syphylis myth.
Many diseases are ‘amplified’ (not the best word for it, but as good as I can think of right now) by living in cities. Since the American natives didn’t have really large permanent communities, the diseases they had didn’t have the chance to get as bad as European pathogens.
If a bad bug developed in the native population, it might kill off a family or two, or even a large piece of one tribe, but it would die out as soon as it ‘used up’ the hosts available. In a city, however, a killer bug can jump from host to host without end, which allows the disease a chance to really settle in and get nastier.
The Essex Syphilitic has not been accepted widely (at least not yet) to be proof of pre-Columbian syph in the Old World. So, no, that “myth” hasn’t been overturned yet.
Darn good question. Scrambling earnestly for an answer, i come up with . . .
hmm . . . i see tomndebb and Saltire already produced variations on this . . .
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There wasn’t enough direct, persistent contact among American Indian tribes to readily pass disease. So the amount of diseases they were exposed to was low, and the “sophistication” of those diseases was low. (Absolutely no cite at all for this.)
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The diseases in Europe and Asia had lots of chance to mutate as they spread, and covered huge territories. I read in Scientific American years ago that viruses were successful nowadays largely because by the time they’d swept around the world, they’d altered slightly so previous immunities became ineffective.
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So when the very advanced diseases of the Europeans met the unsophisticated resistance of the American Indians . . . wham.
Another reason to tell the aliens to get lost.
But this is completely untrue. The Aztecs, Incas, Mayans, Mound-builders, all had very dense populations, and huge cities supported by intensive agriculture. I know that we tend to think of the typical native american as a nomadic hunter, but most pre-columbian indians were farmers. Half of our current food crops originated in the Americas.
The mass deaths from disease disasteriously disrupted native american societies. By the time european settlers were moving in to North America the population had crashed, cities were abandoned, farms were left to go back to forest. With lower population densities, more native americans supported themselves by hunting than before, the introduction of the horse and firearms encouraged mobility and warfare.
originally posted by Saltire
The Aztec capital of Tenochitlan had a population of 200,000 which was five times larger than London at the time.
Cite
I think that trade had something to do with it as well. In contrast to the Old World, the new world had no long range/long term trade routes – well, spondulus shells along the pacific coast, etc. but nothing to compare with the pepper/silk/die trades that were existant in the old world for 1500 years prior to Cristobal Colon.
Also, in the old world, domesticated animals (pigs and ducks) lived in closer contact with people. So cross-species mutations were more common and (due to trade) could spread more readily.
“The Atlantic Monthly” had an excellent cover article covering this subject recently>