I have frequently heard about how smallpox devastated the new world’s indigenous populations during the beginning of colonization because they had no natural immunity. What I don’t understand is how did the reverse not happen. I naively assume indigenous diseases would impact Europeans and probably be brought back to Europe but I have never read of this happening.
In: Biology
This is based on an erroneous assumption. The widespread epidemic had started well before the Europeans came and was just as likely to affect them except so many natives had already died they struggled to fight the settlers, otherwise they would have trounced them as they did earlier explorers. When the wave of settlers came that succeeded here, so many natives has ALREADY died that the population was small and spaced out. All people got sick from eachother, but massive numbers of natives were already gone. Lands were cleared and farmed land areas just left out all over making America seem a natural paradise- it wasn’t, it was the abandoned remains of a dying population.
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