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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Taro who wrote (359868)	11/22/2007 1:20:50 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575985

Probably wrong. The natives were free of sin until the Euros taught them that they were sinning. en.wikipedia.org "Origins There have been three theories on the origin of syphilis which formed an ongoing debate in anthropological and historical fields. The pre-Columbian theory holds that syphilis symptoms are described by Hippocrates in Classical Greece in its venereal/tertiary form. There are other suspected syphilis findings for pre-contact Europe, including at a 13–14th century Augustinian friary in the northeastern English port of Kingston upon Hull. This city's maritime history is thought to have been a key factor in the transmission of syphilis, through its connections with the Scandinavian traders and raiders known as the Vikings.[1] Carbon dated skeletons of monks who lived in the friary showed bone lesions typical of venereal syphilis. The find in Hull disputes the assertion that syphilis came from the New World through contact of Christopher Columbus's crew with American natives,[2] although others counter that a more virulent strain was re-introduced from the New World to Europe through Viking contact.[1] Skeletons in pre-Columbus Pompeii and Metaponto in Italy demonstrating signs of congenital syphilis have also been found[3], although the interpretation of the evidence has been disputed.[4] The Columbian Exchange theory holds that syphilis was a New World disease brought back by Columbus and Martin Alonzo Pinzon. Supporters of the Columbian theory find syphilis lesions on pre-contact Native Americans and cite documentary evidence linking crewmen of Columbus's voyages to the Naples outbreak of 1494.[5] Evidence for the pre-Columbian and Columbian Exchange theories are each disputed by the opposing school of thought, but historian Alfred Crosby suggests both are correct in a combination theory. Crosby's argument is built on the similarities of the species of bacteria which cause yaws and syphilis. The bacteria that causes syphilis belongs to the same phylogenetic family as the bacteria which cause yaws and several other diseases. Despite a tradition of assigning yaws's homeland to sub-Saharan Africa, Crosby notes that there is no unequivocal evidence of any related disease being present in pre-Columbian Europe, Africa, or Asia, while there is indisputable evidence of syphilis' presence in the pre-Columbian Americas. Conceding this point, Crosby writes, "It is not impossible that the organisms causing treponematosis arrived from America in the 1490s...and evolved into both venereal and non-venereal syphilis and yaws."[6] However, Crosby considers it somewhat more likely that a highly contagious ancestral species of bacteria moved with early human ancestors across the land bridge of the Bering Straits many thousands of years ago without dying out in the original source population. He hypothesizes that "the differing ecological conditions produced different types of treponematosis and, in time, closely related but different diseases".[7] In other words, according to Crosby, a common ancestor of the syphilis bacterium existed on both the Old and New Worlds, easily spread by poor hygiene, and through the process of divergent evolution, became at least four diseases. A weak, non-syphilitic bacteria survived in the Old World to eventually give rise to yaws or bejel, while a New World version evolved into the milder pinta and the more aggressive syphilis. Going further than Crosby in arguing for worldwide incidence of syphilis prior to Columbus, Douglas Owsley, the famed physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institute, has written that many medieval European cases of leprosy, colloquially called "lepra," were actually cases of syphilis. Although folklore claimed that syphilis was unknown in Europe until the return of the diseased sailors of the Columbian voyages, “ . . . syphilis probably cannot be "blamed"—as it often is—on any geographical area or specific race. The evidence suggests that the disease existed in both hemispheres from prehistoric times. It is only coincidental with the Columbus expeditions that the syphilis previously thought of as "lepra" flared into virulence at the end of the fifteenth century.[8] ” Owsley noted that a Chinese medical case recorded in 2637 B.C.E. seems to be describing a case of syphilis, and that a European writer who recorded an outbreak of "lepra" in 1303 C.E. is clearly describing syphilis.[8]"