ELi5: Why didn’t europeans die too upon contact with new civilization?

464 views

It is widely known that upon contact with new civilization, the indigionous people can be wiped out because they are not immune to our sicknesses; wouldn’t they also have some illness that europeans aren’t immune to?

In: 7

32 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Europeans often did die en mass to things like malaria and yellow fever when in tropical areas, but these have significantly lower death rates (3-20%) even before modern medicine.

Really though while many epidemics spread through the Americas, there is only one disease specifically that did most of the killing in the Americas: Small Pox. In populations without resistance as you have in the Americas it’s a near **90%** death rate.

A disease that easily spread and that deadly is an exceedingly rare and unusual circumstance and the new world simply didn’t have an equivalent.

You are viewing 1 out of 32 answers, click here to view all answers.