Link to another forum containing parts of the article

I read this in Discover Magazine Feb/06.  It is by a hispanic professor and VERY good reading.   It debunks the myth that Europeans were responsible for the massive deaths that occured in the New World.  It is actually a NATIVE disease that remains dormant until rare combinations of weather and animal fluctuations.  The last outbreak actually was in Arizona in the early 1990's.

FIGHT THE BULLSHIT.

Well most of them were killed by Europeans one way or another. Does it really matter how?

Quoted: Well most of them were killed by Europeans one way or another. Does it really matter how?

it happened 2-500 years ago, does it really matter now?

Quoted: Well most of them were killed by Europeans one way or another. Does it really matter how?

Jeez, RIF:

From the article: "Then, four centuries later, Mexican epidemiologist Rodolfo Acuña-Soto improbably decided to reopen the investigation. Some key pieces of information—details that had been sitting, ignored, in the archives—just didn't add up. His studies of ancient documents revealed that the Aztecs were familiar with smallpox, perhaps even before Cortés arrived. They called it zahuatl. Spanish colonists wrote at the time that outbreaks of zahuatl occurred in 1520 and 1531 and, typical of smallpox, lasted about a year. As many as 8 million people died from those outbreaks. But the epidemic that appeared in 1545, followed by another in 1576, seemed to be another disease altogether. The Aztecs called those outbreaks by a separate name, cocolitzli. "For them, cocolitzli was something completely different and far more virulent," Acuña-Soto says. "Cocolitzli brought incomparable devastation that passed readily from one region to the next and killed quickly."

After 12 years of research, Acuña-Soto has come to agree with the Aztecs: The cocolitzli plagues of the mid-16th century probably had nothing to do with smallpox. In fact, they probably had little to do with the Spanish invasion. But they probably did have an origin that is worth knowing about in 2006."

ETA: From the article the Cocolitzli killed 20 Million versus the 8 Million that smallpox killed.

but the Mexicans blame ALL the deaths on the europeans and that is BULLSHIT.

The Indians didn't have natural immunities to even the slightest cold but it wouldn't be the fault of the Europeans or Chinese Things like Influenza and the common cold had been crossing the world from China to the Middle East to Britain and back for centuries. Mostly following the Silk Road and various invasions. Many people died, but more lived on and passed their genetic immunity to their descendants. None of these people had a clue to what they were carrying in their bodies. Any kind of break out usually was attributed to the "wrath of god" or an act of nature.

Quoted: Well most of them were killed by Europeans one way or another. Does it really matter how?

Those lousy Europeans didn't kill enough of them! Now immigrants like me have to share the air with filth from south of the border.

The article is suggesting that it was a hemorragic fever that killed them, a disease that could still be out there in the jungle, lurking, waiting for the right moment to spread again.

We did not kill them, germs killed them.  If they were our germs, so be it.

We took this land and made it our own.  It is ours.  You want it back?  Just you try and take it back.  Screw you (again), we're willing to fight to keep it.  

Clarified my point a little bit.  

Quoted: We did not kill them, germs killed them.  If they were our germs, so be it. We took this land and made it our own.  It is ours.  You want it?  Just you try and take it back.

They are. And last time I checked, most ARFCOM'ers weren't all that happy about it.

Quoted: Well most of them were killed by Europeans one way or another.

And you think they all lived in peaceful harmony before the white man came over, eh?    

A plague was inevitable from the moment the American Indians set foot in the Americas. Diseases continued to evolve on the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia. And the people developed resistances to these diseases, which then evolved to beat the resistances.

Then when contact was made the Eurasian/African diseases killed off large numbers of the American Indians. (Assuming it wasn’t a native disease as the article suggests.) That was a bad thing but it was inevitable and no one was to blame. Sooner or later someone was going to make contact whit the Americas. Or does anyone really think they would still be undiscovered today? (If we waited long enough the Native Americans would have built ships and discovered the rest of the world.)

And when contact was made the diseases would spread and the American Indians would have their population devastated.

Quoted: Well most of them were killed by Europeans one way or another. Does it really matter how?

So, can we blame muslims for the bubonic plague?

Quoted: Quoted: Well most of them were killed by Europeans one way or another. Does it really matter how? So, can we blame muslims for the bubonic plague?

I though it was the mongols?

A far more interesting little tidbit is how the "little ice age" in Europe influenced the situation in CONUS.

The same mechanism ( atlantic current slowing) that plunged europe into bitter cold, froze the Thames in the wintertime and made beer the drink of choice in most of Europe (when the grape vines died), also had disasterous effects in the eastern US. Coastal tribes diminished, and the largest cohesive civilization in the new world at the time, the greatest military power, the Mississipians, who had cities of up to a million people, flood plain agriculture, and a sophisticated water transportation network, were decimated by centuries of brutal storms and flooding which ruined crops, year after year. So when the Europeans arrived there were only scattered tribes of hunter/gatherers where there had been a civilization of millions. However technologically backward they may have been a cohesive civilization such as the Mississipians would have made colonization a much slower, more difficult process, so much so that it's likely they'd still be recognized as a nation today, or alternatively there would have been an epic war for the region.

None of that has any bearing on current policies or politics, and neither does who gave what bugs to who, but it is interesting. Civilizations rise and fall, European civilization caught a huge break finding the Americas in such a weakened condition, and other civilizations will be there to capitalize on our misfortunes as well.

Hanta virus?

Valley fever?

Very interesting.

Quoted: Quoted: Well most of them were killed by Europeans one way or another. Does it really matter how? So, can we blame muslims for the bubonic plague?

Funny thing, the same sort of medical anthropology is starting to cast doubt on Yersinia pestis being the causitive agent of the Black Death.  A lot of the symptomology and epidemiology just isn't adding up to bubonic plague, unless it was a short lived mutant with some really wicked new virulence factors.

CO

So what?
There were a number of diseases which decimated the native populations?

No doubt. BFD.

MO is that those who saw smallpox recognized it for what it was. Does that mean they all died of smallpox? Of course not.

Overall, the symptoms noted in the article are suspicious for Yellow Fever or possibly some other related mosquito borne illness which would alos fit with regards to the discussion of an association with flooding of the area.  For that matter, I doubt many people of the time would have ever associated the illness with mosquitoes.

Certainly, some in weakened conditions might have also succumbed to other illnesses.

And whether or not these peoples had seen smallpox before or not, it would still have been quite lethal and devastated local populations during circumstances when a large influx of the virus occurred.  It may have also involved a different strain of the virus. In any event, it matters little, if at all, in the grand scheme of things.

Quoted: Overall, the symptoms noted in the article are suspicious for Yellow Fever or possibly some other related mosquito borne illness which would alos fit with regards to the discussion of an association with flooding of the area.

I was thinking it sounds a lot like Dengue Hemorrhagic Shock Syndrome, myself, which may or may not have been the result of the importation of European/Asian strains of Dengue Virus to interact with the indigenous strains already present.

CO

Quoted: Quoted: Overall, the symptoms noted in the article are suspicious for Yellow Fever or possibly some other related mosquito borne illness which would alos fit with regards to the discussion of an association with flooding of the area.   I was thinking it sounds a lot like Dengue Hemorrhagic Shock Syndrome, myself, which may or may not have been the result of the importation of European/Asian strains of Dengue Virus to interact with the indigenous strains already present. CO

Dengue would be a consideration and is why I noted the possibility of other mosquito borne viruses.  However, the geographic distribution, symptoms, are more suspicious for Yellow Fever IMO and in fact are pretty much exactly what was described in the linked article.

Quoted: A far more interesting little tidbit is how the "little ice age" in Europe influenced the situation in CONUS. The same mechanism ( atlantic current slowing) that plunged europe into bitter cold, froze the Thames in the wintertime and made beer the drink of choice in most of Europe (when the grape vines died), also had disasterous effects in the eastern US. Coastal tribes diminished, and the largest cohesive civilization in the new world at the time, the greatest military power, the Mississipians, who had cities of up to a million people, flood plain agriculture, and a sophisticated water transportation network, were decimated by centuries of brutal storms and flooding which ruined crops, year after year. So when the Europeans arrived there were only scattered tribes of hunter/gatherers where there had been a civilization of millions. However technologically backward they may have been a cohesive civilization such as the Mississipians would have made colonization a much slower, more difficult process, so much so that it's likely they'd still be recognized as a nation today, or alternatively there would have been an epic war for the region. None of that has any bearing on current policies or politics, and neither does who gave what bugs to who, but it is interesting. Civilizations rise and fall, European civilization caught a huge break finding the Americas in such a weakened condition, and other civilizations will be there to capitalize on our misfortunes as well.

I have never heard this theory before, but it makes a lot of sense. If you are to believe Jared Diamond and the others of his ilk, there would be millions of plague victims lying from shore to shore. The little Ice Age storm theory makes much more sense. Every year fewer people would survive, but the dead would still be buried, like the Norse Greenland Colony.