Why didn't Native American diseases wipe out European settlers?

Question

European diseases brought by settlers in the 1600s killed 90 percent of the Native American population. Why didn't the reverse also happen, i.e. Native American diseases kill the Europeans, both in America and in Europe when people went back?

Answer 1

Jared Diamond has written extensively about this in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel. It's _very_ interesting.

The short version is that Europeans had several things that the native Americans did not: large, densely populated cities, a variety of domesticated animals, and specific farming practices. These all created a situation in which diseases crossed over from the animals due to the close contact on the farms and consumption of meat, and then raged through the cities. The repeated plagues selected for immune systems that resisted the germs, which in turn caused the germs to evolve into more dangerous strains.

After centuries of this, the Europeans were walking germ warfare weapons ... and when they landed their germs in the Americas, the Natives - who had never been exposed to these cross species germs - had little immunity. The results were devastating.

There were diseases in the New World to which Europeans had not been exposed, but without the variety of domesticated animals or similar farming practices, and with a less urbanized population, the diseases had not evolved to become so dangerous. Syphilis is thought to be one example of a New World disease that jumped back to Europe to wreak some havoc, though the results were not nearly as overwhelming.


On a totally different note, may I point out that President Bush's current budget cuts funding to PBS ... threatening the broadcaster of the program that gave me this information? Call your Congressional delegation ...

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Incidentally, the farming practices today in parts of Asia recreate some of the hazards of European farms of the past, and this is why the 'bird flu' keeps jumping to humans in SE Asia. The great fear with regards to this influenza is that if it evolves into a variety that passes easily between people, then we will all be facing a virus that is so novel our immune systems will not be effective - much as happened to the Native Americans. Since the bird flu kills about 2/3 or so of the people who contract it, this could become an epidemic which would kill tens, if not hundreds, of millions.

Answer 2

Native American Diseases

Answer 3

Most of the diseases came about through the domestication of animals. Europe had the most animals in which to domesticate back then. The Europeans had a big head start in developing immunities to these diseases. The Native Americans had very few if any animals to domestic and, of course, did not developed any immunities to these types of diseases. There is no doubt that Native Americans did have diseases, but more then likely the Europeans had already developed immunities to these as well.

Answer 4

I think Indigo may be the closest, although this has nothing to do with the Spanish being white.

Europeans before reaching the Americas were part of a large human/bacterial//viral ecosystem encompassing Africa, Asia and Europe. European populations had been exposed to a variety of diseases from many parts of the globe, including diseases that were likely common to East Asia and the Americas. In a way, they had ben inoculated.

The Americans, by contrast, had not been exposed to the same range of diseases because the oceans had prevented recent spread of diseases between the Old World of Africa, Asia and Europe and the New World of the Americas.

When the Europeans and Americans shared their stores of germs, each community was sickened by the unfamiliar germs encountered. The Europeans brought many more - often lethal - germs to the encounter.

Answer 5

My theory would be based in two aspects, the immune system and the nature of the viruses. The immune system of Europeans were stronger against many diseases that the Native Americans might had have. Europeans lived in way more populated areas and were exposed to many different diseases, whereas the Native Americans lived in groups separated from other tribes therefore had been exposed to less diseases therefore they didn't have defenses against many viruses. The other aspect it would be the virus itself, the Europeans had these diseases for a long time giving the virus time to mutate and grew stronger and making them harder to fight by the weak immune system of the Native Americans.

Answer 6

"Smallpox, typhus, influenza, diphtheria, measles and other epidemics swept into the aboriginal population of the Americas after European contact, killing a large portion of the indigenous peoples."

Syphilis may have come from the America's. And maybe the sweating sickness that hit Europe first in the 1485 but that may have been too early for it to be an American disease. But Columbus did voyage earlier for the pope. That pope died, and the new pope was just not interested in what Columbus had attempted.That's why he went to the Spanish. But Syphilis does look to be an American illness. See this article for more info.

http://www.archaeology.org/9701/newsbriefs/syphilis.html

Answer 7

Europeans had infectious diseases but the Americas did not.
Two reasons caused this. One, the Americas did not have a s dense a population, nor a dense population for as long as the Eurasian continent. THe Americas are seperated by the Isthmus of Panama, only 50 miles wide, rugged and tropical, with tropical rainforest to the south. This effectively seperated the Mexican Aztec empire from the Inca empire in the Andes. The Aztecs were seperated from the North American crop growers in the North east by deserts, and the hard to plant Great Plains.
So they had fewer people, not linked by trade routes to spead diseases.
2nd, most Eurasian infectious diseases-small pox, plague, typhous, etc, are derived from animal diseases picked up from the domesicated animals not found in the Americas.

Answer 8

The Native Americans had been isolated, probably for centuries, when the Europeans came over. Europeans, on the other hand, had experienced just about every kind of disease known at the time. The fact that Native Americans just lived simpler and healthier lives is the best answer I can give.

Answer 9

History books don't talk about it much, but the Spanish explorers brought new strains of STDs back to Europe along with their other souvenirs. Of course, you could also make a case for introducing Europeans to tobacco smoking as the natives' revenge for European diseases.

Answer 10

Most of the native Americans were immune only to indigenous environmental diseases from their natural climate. The Europeans brought diseases from an industrial culture that came from bad diets, experimental chemicals, and they were people who were for many centuries highy urban, carrying diseases that could be traced back to the Roman Empire. Their urban lifestyle exposed them to rats, bird diseases, and early pesticides they used to control the creature population.

To indigenous Americans, Europeans were like walking, breathing poison.