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from the science-debunks-finger-pointing dept.
El Reg reports
The skeleton of a six-year-old infant unearthed in Austria is challenging the theory that syphilis was imported into Europe from the New World by the ship's crew of Christopher Columbus.
The well-preserved remains (above) were found in a cemetery in St. Pölten, some 65km west of Vienna, by a team from the city's Medical University. Several of the child's teeth display "lesions suggestive of or consistent with congenital syphilis", according to the research published in Anthropologischer Anzeiger.
These include "mulberry molar" and "Hutchinson's teeth". The former is a molar with "alternating nonanatomic depressions and rounded enamel nodules on its crown surface". The latter is where "permanent incisors have a screwdriver-like shape, sometimes associated with notching of the incisal edges".
Critically, carbon dating aged the skeleton to sometime between 1390 and 1440 AD, with a "mean" of 1415 AD. Since Columbus didn't sail off to the New World until 1492, "syphilis was probably not introduced to Europe by Columbus' returning crew", the researchers conclude. The first recorded outbreak of the disease in Europe was in Naples in 1494 or 1495. If the Treponema pallidum bacteria had already been present in the Old World for many years, then this event may ultimately have been attributed to Columbus's men simply because of a co-incidence of date. (They returned from their first voyage in 1493.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday November 25 2015, @06:09PM
Europe Didn't Get Syphilis From The New World
Unless, of course, they did. Even if syphilis (or some closely related disease which has similar symptoms) were around in Europe before Columbus, it doesn't mean the epidemic form of syphilis, which appeared in the literature in 1494-1495) was. And I wouldn't embrace the results from one skeleton when we have contrary evidence [sciencedaily.com] as well.
For me, the key problem with asserting that syphilis was an existing disease, which mutated, is that it started precisely where you'd expect a New World disease to start, in a Spanish-controlled sea-based trade hub (Naples was a dependency of the Spanish Empire in 1494).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2015, @08:10PM
The conclusion that if it was found in the early 1400 that it didn't come from the new world is also false. Remember people Vikings came and went first. Many many years before 1400.