3 ms·

"Remains of people who lived on the eastern coast of South America nearly 2,000 years ago have yielded the oldest known evidence for the family of microorganism

"Remains of people who lived on the eastern coast of South America nearly 2,000 years ago have yielded the oldest known evidence for the family of microorganisms that cause syphilis1. The discovery, reported today in Nature, casts further doubt on the already shaky idea that Christopher Columbus’s crew exported syphilis to Europe." Can someone explain this to me? Why would this cast doubt? Wouldn't this just be more evidence to the export theory?

lostlogin 3y ago
Maybe the idea is that if it had been there for vastly longer, it would likely have spread up the coast to North America > Asia > Europe over that time?
abhijat 3y ago
Near the end of the article it states: 'The discovery of bejel-causing Treponema in Brazil 2,000 years ago doesn’t directly disprove the idea that syphilis came back with Columbus, the researchers say. But the previous evidence for diverse Treponema strains in fifteenth century Europe and the revised evolutionary timescale for T. pallidum makes it even more unlikely. “All this points in the direction that they are not being imported from the Americas,” says Schuenemann. One possibility is that treponemal diseases emerged even earlier in Eurasia or Africa, and reached the Americas with the first humans to migrate there at least 15,000 years ago.'
samus 3y ago
> The researchers found that the T. pallidum genomes recovered from the bones were most similar to those of the modern subspecies that usually causes bejel — a disease that is not typically found in the Americas today. The ancient genomes were less similar to those of the strains usually associated with yaws or syphilis, which are both found in South America. This implies that the current distribution of T. pallidum subspecies differs from that of the past. TA basically describes that the story is a whole lot more complicated than a single spread in one direction. Together with the quote from a sibling comment it rather seems that a syphilis strain evolved in Europe replaced American strains.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
RecycledEle 3y ago
The authors have new evidence, but are so politically correct that they can not reason.

lostlogin 3y ago

Maybe the idea is that if it had been there for vastly longer, it would likely have spread up the coast to North America > Asia > Europe over that time?

abhijat 3y ago

Near the end of the article it states: 'The discovery of bejel-causing Treponema in Brazil 2,000 years ago doesn’t directly disprove the idea that syphilis came back with Columbus, the researchers say. But the previous evidence for diverse Treponema strains in fifteenth century Europe and the revised evolutionary timescale for T. pallidum makes it even more unlikely. “All this points in the direction that they are not being imported from the Americas,” says Schuenemann. One possibility is that treponemal diseases emerged even earlier in Eurasia or Africa, and reached the Americas with the first humans to migrate there at least 15,000 years ago.'

samus 3y ago

> The researchers found that the T. pallidum genomes recovered from the bones were most similar to those of the modern subspecies that usually causes bejel — a disease that is not typically found in the Americas today. The ancient genomes were less similar to those of the strains usually associated with yaws or syphilis, which are both found in South America. This implies that the current distribution of T. pallidum subspecies differs from that of the past. TA basically describes that the story is a whole lot more complicated than a single spread in one direction. Together with the quote from a sibling comment it rather seems that a syphilis strain evolved in Europe replaced American strains.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

RecycledEle 3y ago

The authors have new evidence, but are so politically correct that they can not reason.