It’s probably good to take a moment to pause here to talk a bit about what a bunch of high falutin science types call the Columbia Exchange, which is of course named after good old Christopher Columbus because being a good person is historically not a factor in getting stuff named after you. Anyways, the Columbian Exchange is how historians refer to the various things that started getting passed back and forth between the Old World and New World after 1492. In many ways, these two parts of the world had effectively been on two completely different planets for thousands of years, developing unique biomes that suddenly got smashed back together again. Though we tend to think of it just in terms of the Old World and the New World, the Columbian Exchange was actually just one of many such exchanges brought about by the development of effective long-range sailing ships at the end of the fifteenth century, opening up extensive trade routes which cut out multitudes of middle men who previously moved goods over long distances to Europe. The opening of these trade routes were the first steps towards globalization, steps which led to many benefits as new ideas and commodities made their way around the globe, and to many consequences as new diseases reached far off shores and western Europe rose to culturally and politically dominate the world. It was the start of a new epoch in human history.
Anyways, regarding the Columbia Exchange specifically, the exchange of agricultural goods had a significant effect. The introduction of high yielding New World crops like corn and potatoes to the Old World allowed for extensive population growth in both Europe and Asia. Concurrently the introduction of wheat allowed for agriculture to develop in parts of the New World previously thought too dry and the introduction of livestock and horses completely transformed the cultures and diets of some Native American tribes. However, an even more immediate and significant effect was the spreading of diseases. Prior to 1492, the world effectively had two human populations, both with their own separate worlds of germs and microbes.
In case for some reason your a little thick and don’t already know, the Native Americans definitely got the shittier end of the stick when it came to disease. Though the first Europeans proved themselves to be rather douchey when they arrived in the New World, even if they had been the most perfect of guests, the die was cast the moment they set foot in the New World. In 1492, it is estimated that the Native American population was somewhere in the vicinity of 50 to 100 million people. For comparison, the population of Europe at the time was around 90 million with a total of around 350 million living in the entirety of the Old World. Within 150 years of initial contact, 90 percent of the Native Americans were dead from diseases like measles and small pox, dangerous diseases in the Old World, but an outright Armageddon in the New World. Advanced civilizations across the Americas collapsed before the onslaught, emptying entire regions and leaving behind scattered post-apocalyptic survivors, struggling to re-establish themselves in a world no longer familiar, battling against expanding waves of pale faced invaders. Few moments in human history can match these pandemics in terms of devastation and destruction. There’s more that can be said, but this certainly isn’t the last time this topic is going to come up.
Anyways, of course, the Columbian Exchange was not a one sided affair when it came to disease. Several mysterious ailments spread amongst early explorers and colonists, but by far the worse of them was a little sexually transmitted disease called syphilis. Brought back by sailors from Columbus’ very first voyage, syphilis quickly spread across Europe. For the Native Americans, it was a slow burning disease involving drippy genital sores and one’s brain rotting away over decades. For the Europeans it was a horrifying shit show of open sores turning into sloughing off rotting flesh, exposing bones and muscle underneath. It literally turned people into the living dead, melting them over a period of months and leaving survivors horrificaly scarred. Over a thirty year period, syphilis killed some 5% of Europe’s population before shifting into something more similar to what the Native Americans experienced. However, even afterwards it had long term effects on European society, infecting some 20% of the population, affecting everything from politics to culture, to fashion.
Now of course after reading all of this, it is perfectly fair to ask the question, why in the hell did the Native Americans see such comparitively devastating losses compared to their European counterparts when it came to coming into contact with new diseases. Well, in the end it comes down to immune systems and the fact that the Europeans of the era were pretty fucking gross. The first major factor was the fact that the Old World had five times the population of the New World. This meant five times the opportunities for new diseases to develop, mutate, and what have you. The second factor was the fact that the Old World was chock full of domesticated animals, something the New World decidedly lacked. Living in close proximity to domesticated animals meant there was a much higher chance of diseases making the leap from animals to humans. This only got worse as people moved into crowded cities where people basically just dumped shit onto the street and into the same rivers where they got their water. The final factor was that Europe had recently been through the Black Death some 150 years prior, which killed around 30 to 50% of the European population. Now for some reason, the lesson Europeans took from this experience was that they should really avoid bathing, so that by the time 1492 rolled round it was not uncommon for some Europeans to spend their entire lives never once taking a bath. Taken all together, the final result is a group of people with some super robust immune systems. Comparatively, most Native American cultures tended to put a lot of emphasis on keeping clean and not shitting in their own water supplies.
All of this is not to say that the way Europeans treated Native Americans over the past 500 years is in any way okay. There is plenty of fucked up history that in no way had to happen. However, even if Columbus had never sailed the ocean blue, contact between the two worlds was likely to happen at some point. Unfortunately, in many ways the pandemics that followed were inevitable.
