eli5: Why Weren’t European Colonizers As Impacted By New World Diseases as The Natives were by European Diseases?

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eli5: Why Weren’t European Colonizers As Impacted By New World Diseases as The Natives were by European Diseases?

In: Biology

13 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

In the end, its because there were lots of animals in Europe/Asia/Africa that could be domesticated, and almost none in the americas. As far as I know, only the Lama was somewhat suited for that.

Therefore europeans, asians and africans had a lot more direct contact to animals, and by the 15th century, were already exposed and then immune to a wide variety of diseases, but still carried them. Europe having some megacities (for that time) probably also helped spreading diseases and therby making the survivors immune.

So when europeans and amaricans met, the americans got the same crap that europeans sufferd through in their entire history, except all at once.

The extent of this effect can also be seen in another way: Europeans were just as evil to africans as they were to americans, but, bluntly speaking, today Africa is still full of africans.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The New World didn’t have any pandemic style diseases. The only major one might have been syphillis.

CGP Grey does a good (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk) about it.

In short, to create a pandemic sized disease, it needs to come from animals, and needs a large and dense population to survive. The New World lacked domesticated animals, and they lack dense cities. The absence of these two factors made diseases in the New World rare, and if they occur, they would have burn out rather quick.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Europeans lived in more densely populated areas and closer with domesticated animals so diseases spread quickly and the evolutionary arms race for bacteria went into overdrive. It allowed for european immune systems to slowly develop alongside it while people in the new world did not have that advantage.

Anonymous 0 Comments

We’re going to leave this thread locked for a combination of Rule 3 and Rule 7, and the fact that, like I say later… the mods really don’t like to ban people. So… if this is a topic that interests you, I recommend /r/askhistorians, /r/history, /r/answers, etc. Make sure you search first, but there’s some *really great* information there, too.

~~This thread has been (temporarily) locked while we clean up the comments.~~

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Anonymous 0 Comments

There is a possible explanation Europeans were already affected by similarly catastrophic bugs, [just way earlier](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07673-7). Europe had larger settlements that were (possibly) wiped out/destroyed by plague, and (possibly) affecting settlement patterns in the region as people from the steppes moved in. *Y. pestis* beta version craters the population and strangers from elsewhere come in and see “Oooh, nice open land…”

Had the Native Americans been able to sail across the ocean during those times, what would they have found?

Anonymous 0 Comments

Europeans had been living with animals and close together, and large amounts if the population had been wiped out by diseases before. The people left have been the ones that handle disease well.

Anonymous 0 Comments

u/Pseudo_Sponge I really recommend you read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. It covers (among many other fascinating things) this question and is a great read.

The short answer is that the new world had not domesticated the same animals as the Europeans.