Could Native Americans pass diseases to Europeans?

Population density. If you had a nasty disease emerge in the New World, it would be as devastating to the local population at first as it would be to a later colonizing European. If something that nasty gets loose in a population like the Native Americans, you end up with so few survivors that the group/tribe is wiped out and the disease fades away. The issue is that if disease "X" kills a high percentage of the population, if it hits a large population the absolute number of survivors is enough to carry on, in a small popualtion with the same percentage die-off you're screwed. This scenario is what happened to a lot of native American societies/tribes when European Disease hit them - there weren't enough survivors to care for those who needed care (like young children who survived) or to farm/hunt/make clothes etc and the survivors succumbed to other causes of mortality or were absorbed in other tribes and the original culture vanished.

The Mongols do not represent a low density population originating a disease. The were a vector conveying the disease from dense China to the dense west.
 
RE Syphillis. There is some evidence of a young woman from Essex, England who died in 1488 having had syphillis from bone studies, 4 years before Columbus. This story broke about 3 years ago. Of course there are tales of English Merchants trading with the Americas from the mid 1480's, backed by
Custom's records in Bristol.

The story also caused a few Essex Girl jokes.
 
There is some evidence of a young woman from Essex, England who died in 1488 having had syphillis from bone studies
First, it's impossible to date a skeleton that precisely. You make reference to this, that was date from being from somewhere between XIIIth and XVth century.

It was eventually prooved wrong by a wider analysis, including other possible remains, these remains being attributed to normal damages or to presence in coastal aeras that make datation relativly hard to determine.

Of course there are tales of English Merchants trading with the Americas from the mid 1480's, backed by Custom's records in Bristol.
Basically bogus, as all "They did knew about before Colombus" theories for anything but Norses.
 
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