1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

by Charles C. Mann

The first Europeans in Ohio found woodlands that resembled English parks—they could drive carriages through the trees.

In conversation, native people whom I have met (I think without exception) have used “Indian” rather than “Native American.”

Later the Spanish became so infuriated when khipu records contradicted their version of events that in 1583 they ordered that all the knotted strings in Peru be burned as idolatrous objects.

putative

No one doubts today that European bacteria and viruses had a ruinous effect on the Americas. So, too, did African diseases like malaria and yellow fever when they arrived. The question inevitably arises as to whether there were any correspondingly lethal infections from the Americas, payback to the conquistadors. One candidate was long ago nominated: syphilis.

Did Columbus bring the disease from the Americas, as the timing of the first epidemic suggests?

Orthodox Darwinian theory predicts that over time the effect of most transmissible diseases should moderate—the most lethal strains kill their hosts so fast they cannot be passed on to other hosts.

Indeed, some medical researchers propose that syphilis has always existed worldwide, but manifested itself differently in different places.

Venus is visible for about 263 consecutive days as the morning star, then goes behind the sun for 50 days, then reappears for another 263 days as the evening star.