The History Room
Aztecs not killed off by small pox
For the last several hundred years there has been a debate about what killed off the natives when the Europeans arrived. Sure the Europeans killed many in war. But the millions that died- that is the question. The fashionable theory was that the Europeans brought small pox with them and that decimated the locals- who had no resistance to the European disease. Radicals maintained that the Europeans infected blankets with small pox (which isn't really practical or possible for mass killing) and gave the blankets to the Indians.
Well, DNA tests now have found the actual cause.
Read the rest at the link.The word means “pestilence” in the Aztec Nahuatl language.
Its cause, however, has been in question for nearly 500 years.
On Monday, scientists swept aside smallpox, measles, mumps, and influenza as likely suspects, fingering a typhoid-like “enteric fever” for which they found DNA evidence on the teeth of long-dead victims, reports news.com.au.
Ashild Vagene, of the University of Tuebingen in Germany, said: “The 1545-50 cocoliztli was one of many epidemics to affect Mexico after the arrival of Europeans, but was specifically the second of three epidemics that were most devastating and led to the largest number of human losses.
“The cause of this epidemic has been debated for over a century by historians and now we are able to provide direct evidence through the use of ancient DNA to contribute to a longstanding historical question."
Vagene co-authored a study published in the science journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The cocoliztli outbreak is considered one of the deadliest epidemics in human history, approaching the “Black Death” bubonic plague that felled some 25 million people in western Europe in the 14th century — about half the regional population.
Analysing DNA extracted from 29 skeletons buried in a cocoliztli cemetery, scientists found traces of the salmonella enterica bacterium, of the Paratyphi C variety.
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Originally Posted by Mister D
