Typhus existed in epidemic form and could have life long asymptomatic carriers so that is a good option for one. Tuberculosis is another option that was around and has long lived asymptomatic carriers. With TB most people infected with it actually are asymptomatic carriers that can turn infection at any time. As for how likely... hell if I know. If I had a good handle on the percentages I could be getting a paper in Nature about historical epidemiology. I'm just trying to give an option that is possible and would actually have an effect beyond some weird guys show up on a boat half starved and just become a weird story people tell after a few hundred years.
Could a Carthaginian Ship have ever reached the Americas?
- Thread starter AwanRiel
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- exploration america shipping ships
Typhus existed in epidemic form and could have life long asymptomatic carriers so that is a good option for one. Tuberculosis is another option that was around and has long lived asymptomatic carriers. With TB most people infected with it actually are asymptomatic carriers that can turn infection at any time. As for how likely... hell if I know. If I had a good handle on the percentages I could be getting a paper in Nature about historical epidemiology. I'm just trying to give an option that is possible and would actually have an effect beyond some weird guys show up on a boat half starved and just become a weird story people tell after a few hundred years.
- Location
- Huezil
There's Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago - Wikipedia too, around 1.676,28 km between it and Cape Verde, them it's a 500 km to Fernando de Noronha, and another 350 to the brazilian coast, (around Touros Municipality)
By 146 B.C.E. animal husbandry was many thousands of years old, urban living was thousands of years old, and the "first great international age" during the late Bronze Age was already a thousand years in the past; I think it's probable that the more challenging disease environment of the Old World was already established by then. I have a hazy memory of reading speculation that maybe the increasing trade of the "first international age" caused epidemics the same way the Columbian Exchange did and this was what caused the Bronze Age Collapse, though I might just be mentally scrambling parts of Ian Morris's Why the West Rules - For Now that talk about the later parts of history.
On the other hand, @Tasrill's scenario didn't happen when Vikings discovered Vinland or when Polynesians traded with South American coastal cultures.
If @Tasrill's scenario does happen, I suspect it would lead to a less lethal Columbian Exchange overall, because "person with acquired immunity to smallpox gets infected with a version of smallpox that has 2000 years of divergent evolution from the version they have acquired immunity to" is probably less likely to be fatal than "person with no immunity to smallpox gets infected with smallpox" (and ditto for other common Old World diseases).
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- Beyond Bojador, and therefore Beyond Pain
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- She/Hers
Actually, there is some evidence that at least some of the plagues that hit Mesoamerica around the time the Spanish showed up initiated in northeastern Canada from the Norse and spread down into the Mississippi Valley in time to contribute to Mississippian culture's collapse. In particular, while Measles and Smallpox were certainly introduced by the Spanish, Typhus may have been introduced by the Norse.
There are approximately 1.3 trillion different ideas of what caused the bronze age collapse including 'what if all of them are true at the same time' which might even be the leading answer. But in general the point there were already a good host of epidemic diseases going around by that point in history is very much true. 1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline is a good book if you want to know more about the Murder on the Orient express therory of the bronze age collapse.
On Polynesian contact in general better DNA studies have been showing that both the bottle gourd and the sweat potato were originally spread by rafting events and not Polynesian contact. In the sweat potato's case it actually points to two independent domestication events of it with one in south american and one in Polynesia. DNA tests on pre-contact Rapanui peoples remains has not found any admixture with south americans and even the chicken evidence has been found to be lacking after more modern testing methods. We also can be rather sure they didn't hit the Juan Fernández Islands because there are some prime island real estate that would have been colonized and yet it remained empty until europeans found it. Evidence largely is pointing to no contact. Though the mental image of Easter Islanders making this huge journey, hitting a couple of the tiny, rocky islands without even permanent water and forging on for better prospects only to hit the Atacama Desert in one of the riverless parts and just turning around cause fuck that is both funny and also plausible.
@Turandokht brought up something that I didn't know so it seems more plausible that you could get some transfer of disease with a single contact if you were unlucky. It should also even spread quicker as you have a much quicker trade network in the amazon basin then you do up in the north.
No.