Maya/Mesoamerican Colonization of the Caribbean

[twovultures]

In this thread (which is fascinating BTW) I've seen several posters suggest this... shall we say Neo-Mayan civilization... would develop quarantine practices which would allow it to endure the onslaught of European-borne diseases. But do we know if the Mayans even knew what a quarantine was? I'm not expert but pretty much all pre-industrial civilizations believed diseases were caused by evil spirits or angry gods. What leads us to believe that the Mayans would recognize that diseases are spread by the movement of people? Maybe they would ban Europeans from their ports, thinking they brought the sickness with them, but that wouldn't be enough once locals carried the pathogens.

There is no guarantee that the Mayans would develop quarantines, but quarantines were adopted by pre-modern peoples. The early modern Italian city-states, for example, practiced quarantine during outbreaks of plague and the English made an attempt at quarantine during outbreaks of the sweating sickness. Even if you don't have germ theory, observation can show how at least some diseases are 'sticky', transferring from contact between people and not transferring when healthy people avoid the infected.

I think the neo-Mayans may get this principle by observing diseases that could be found in their territory-colds, maybe flu, tuberculosis and yaws are infectious diseases which could become epidemic when accidentally spread by sailors.