History / In the 1,000 years before the conquest of America, the health condition of the continent's inhabitants deteriorated
John Noble Wilford
Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortez and Indians. The researchers attribute the health deterioration to a large extent to the rise of agriculture and the development of cities
The first Europeans who arrived in the Americas carried with them guns, a Christian cross, and without being aware of it, diseases as well. The native inhabitants of America did not stand a chance against the disease carried by the conquerors; Their immune systems were not prepared to deal with smallpox, measles, malaria and yellow fever.
The epidemics that spread across America, and which caused the deaths of tens of millions, were well documented. What was not clear until now is that even before the arrival of the European conquerors, the health condition of the Indians was very bad, after a deterioration that lasted for hundreds of years. This is the conclusion of a team of anthropologists, economists and paleontologists who completed a comprehensive study of the health status of the inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere in the last 7,000 years.
The researchers, whose work is described as the most comprehensive to date, emphasize that the findings of their research in no way minimize the impact of "old world diseases" on the inhabitants of America and the responsibility of Europeans for the death of masses of Indians and the destruction of indigenous societies. However, they state that America before the Spanish conquest was not a paradise full of health, as many perceive it to be.
The researchers analyzed more than 12,500 skeletons from 65 sites in North and South America – more than half of them from people who lived before the Spanish conquest – and looked for evidence of infectious diseases, poor nutrition and other health problems, in a variety of geographic and social settings. The tests showed that the oldest sites, where people lived more than a thousand years before the Spanish conquest, had the best health of the Indians. Then there was a deterioration.
"Our study shows that the health of the people of the Americas deteriorated long before the arrival of Columbus," wrote Dr. Richard Steckel and Dr. Jerome Rose, lead authors of the study, in the book "The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere." ”, published in August.
About fifty scientists assisted in the research and contributed chapters to the book. One of them, Dr. George Armalgus of Emory University, a leading paleontologist, said that the study as a whole charts an "evolutionary history of diseases in the New World." According to Armalgus, the researchers were not surprised by the evidence of the proliferation of infectious diseases but by the fact that the diet of the Indians before the Spanish conquest, and their general state of health, were less than expected.
In the book's epilogue, Dr. Philip Curtin of Johns Hopkins University writes that "the researchers were careful to point out the limitations of the evidence. They recognize that the skeletons provide at most comparative evidence, not absolute evidence."
The researchers attribute the health deterioration to a large extent to the rise of agriculture and the development of cities. The inhabitants of South and Central America began to engage in agriculture about 5,000 years ago, and the rise of cities began about 2,000 years ago. Agriculture reduced the nutritional diversity and the clustering of people in cities caused a faster spread of diseases.
In recent examinations of mummies from a thousand years ago in Peru, the researchers found clear evidence of tuberculosis - further evidence that Indians were infected even before the Spanish conquest with diseases that, according to the accepted opinion, were brought to America from Europe.
The Backbone of History
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