New World disease causes an pandemic in Europe

4 diseases of the New World were transmitted to Europe, but none of them caused as much damage as there was between the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
What if an disease was transmitted from the New World to Europe and caused an pandemic in the late 16th century, causing deaths as the Black Death in the 14th century, killing 50% of the european population?
 
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4 diseases of the New World were transmitted to Europe, but none of them caused as much damage as there was between the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
What if an disease was transmitted from the New World to Europe and caused an epidemic in the late 16th century, causing deaths as the Black Death in the 14th century, killing 50% of the european population?
unless you come up with some novel vector I think its extremely unlikely that a disease could develop in mostly non-livestock holding Indigenous nations.
 
4 diseases of the New World were transmitted to Europe, but none of them caused as much damage as there was between the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
What if an disease was transmitted from the New World to Europe and caused an epidemic in the late 16th century, causing deaths as the Black Death in the 14th century, killing 50% of the european population?
The New world would need more and better domesticates to evolve Eurasian-style crowd diseases.
 
unless you come up with some novel vector I think its extremely unlikely that a disease could develop in mostly non-livestock holding Indigenous nations.
(Emphasis mine)
The New world would need more and better domesticates to evolve Eurasian-style crowd diseases.
This is a common but misleading claim spread by Jared Diamond and other largely non-specialist writers.

71.8% of diseases of modern emerging infectious diseases that originate from animal sources (which is 60.3% of total EIDs) come from wild sources. This appears to have been largely true in the past, e.g. smallpox from rodents and malaria apparently from gorillas. Many other diseases, such as tuberculosis or whooping cough, also long predate livestock by tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

Of course there are diseases like measles, which do appear to have come from livestock diseases. But my point is that they do not appear to constitute a majority.
 
(Emphasis mine)

This is a common but misleading claim spread by Jared Diamond and other largely non-specialist writers.

71.8% of diseases of modern emerging infectious diseases that originate from animal sources (which is 60.3% of total EIDs) come from wild sources. This appears to have been largely true in the past, e.g. smallpox from rodents and malaria apparently from gorillas. Many other diseases, such as tuberculosis or whooping cough, also long predate livestock by tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

Of course there are diseases like measles, which do appear to have come from livestock diseases. But my point is that they do not appear to constitute a majority.
which, if true, begs the question of just why there were so many more epidemic diseases in the old world, so few in the new world...
 
Syphilis is thought to be a New World disease as it was unknown in Europe prior to Columbus. And it killed millions of Europeans from the Renaissance up to WW2.
 
(Emphasis mine)

This is a common but misleading claim spread by Jared Diamond and other largely non-specialist writers.

71.8% of diseases of modern emerging infectious diseases that originate from animal sources (which is 60.3% of total EIDs) come from wild sources. This appears to have been largely true in the past, e.g. smallpox from rodents and malaria apparently from gorillas. Many other diseases, such as tuberculosis or whooping cough, also long predate livestock by tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

Of course there are diseases like measles, which do appear to have come from livestock diseases. But my point is that they do not appear to constitute a majority.
You know while I appreciate you posting that you have not contexualized those diseases; Secondly Tuberculosis is not older than agriculture or animal husbandry the oldest remains is 9,000 years in the eastern mediterranean and the first documented european cases of a "pertussis epidemic occurred in Paris in 1578. In the 16th and 17th centuries, descriptions of pertussis epidemics in Europe were documented more frequently in the literature, possibly suggesting an expansion of the disease. The apparent emergence of pertussis in Europe over the last 600 years may be due to import, as symptoms similar to pertussis were described in a classical Korean medical textbook from the 15th century." Thirdly; I stated "vector" because ultimately while livestock and close relationships with animals are historically the greatest factors in transmission and spread of diseases in agricultural societies its insects and other biting things that affect humans and animals they eat.

Regardless though I would say that a significant proportion of said non-domesticated animal transmitted diseases derive ultimately from tsetse fly ranges around Africa, where the history of Africans and these bacteria/viruses with a myriad of hosts have a much older relationship than OOA populations and the diseases/viruses found outside of Africa.

which, if true, begs the question of just why there were so many more epidemic diseases in the old world, so few in the new world...
its because livestock can harbor and often transmit "wild" sourced derived diseases to humans. I would also say that with a "younger" human population in the Americas the degree with which viruses and bacteria mutated to actually effect human populations was much lower. With overall lower densities of humans and a lower degree of animal-human relations in places of higher human populations (Aztecs and urban Inca) said diseases would not be at the same levels as say banana growers in the Great Lakes Region who even without much livestock where so densely inhabited and so often connected to both hunting primates and deforestation that it brought them in contact with disease harboring mosquitoes and african simians who themselves have long derived diseases that are easier to adapt/mutate into human hosts.
 
You've also got the fact that while things like Ebola and West Nile come from a wild animal reservoir, that they aren't really adapted to humans and don't form epidemics that last.

Also. The diseases that are good at being 'epidemic' usually require a fairly large population in close contact. Since most bacterial and viral diseases confer lasting immunity on the survivors, you need a large group of interconnected communities otherwise the disease burns out. That's one of the problems with Measles and Smallpox, for instance, in the New World. North of the Rio Grande, the population was just too sparse to make the disease endemic, so every time it was reintroduced, it was a new virgin field epidemic with the fatalities associated therewith.
 
Syphilis is thought to be a New World disease as it was unknown in Europe prior to Columbus. And it killed millions of Europeans from the Renaissance up to WW2.
Recent work has shown that it's an old world disease, i believe. There's an example of a disease with symptoms close to syphilis in a, IIRC, Persian medical text and just last year it was confirmed by the discovery of Thirteenth Century Neapolitan skeletons with marks on the bones that were confirmed to be caused by syphilis.
 
Recent work has shown that it's an old world disease, i believe. There's an example of a disease with symptoms close to syphilis in a, IIRC, Persian medical text and just last year it was confirmed by the discovery of Thirteenth Century Neapolitan skeletons with marks on the bones that were confirmed to be caused by syphilis.
Plus, Syphilis, while debilitating, isn't gonna have the same effect as Smallpox in the Native Americans.

What happens to the Europeans depends on what kind of disease is being spread. Is it like a Smallpox, or a Black Death, or a pneumonia, or something different?
 
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