I’m not saying they weren’t affected at all, but something like 90% of Native Americans were wiped out while places like Japan and deep parts of the African interior didn’t suffer nearly as hard, even though they previously had basically no contact with Europe.
In: 1583
Lots of good answers here.
A limited number of traders interacted for centuries between Europe, Asia and Africa. Millions of Europeans moved to the Americas and started interacting with hundreds of thousands of native Americans.
Few people went from China to Europe until Marco polo, but more traders along the silk road had shorter stunts long before then. One trader from the Middle east to persia. Another from Persia to India, and another from India to China. This limited the contact and slowed it down disease transmission giving people time to adjust. Limited contact means one disease can spread one at a time and over the course of many years.
If we look at the mongol army (lots of people), it spred the area between China and Europe. Along with this improved connection, we have the spread of the bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis), which has an outbreak 2000 years ago (and still persists) in China. This is an example of lots of people interacting with lots of new people in a short amount of time and spreading diseases.
When the Spanish visited the inca cities, hundreds of thousands lived in the inca capital with no previous immunity. Lots of people meeting lots of new people in a short amount of time is great for spreading diseases. Here we see a whole range of different diseases all impacting at once.
Another factor I don’t see here is survivor bias. Those diseases probably did impact remote places in Africa and Asia, but those communities didn’t survive.
Even if they were remote in one generation, they could have had more contact in previous generations or earlier in life.
The low number of people meeting infrequently in remote locations also makes it harder for diseases to travel.
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