New evidence dishes on Columbus and syphilis

Christopher Columbus / Wikipedia

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but when he returned from 'cross the seas, did he bring with him a new disease?

New skeletal evidence suggests Columbus and his crew not only introduced the Old World to the New World, but brought back syphilis as well, researchers say.

Syphilis is caused by Treponema pallidum bacteria, and is usually curable nowadays with antibiotics. Untreated, it can damage the heart, brain, eyes and bones; it can also be fatal.

The first known epidemic of syphilis occurred during the Renaissance in 1495. Initially its plague broke out among the army of Charles the VIII after the French king invaded Naples. It then proceeded to devastate Europe, said researcher George Armelagos, a skeletal biologist at Emory University in Atlanta.

"Syphilis has been around for 500 years," said researcher Molly Zuckerman at Mississippi State University. "People started debating where it came from shortly afterward, and they haven't stopped since. It was one of the first global diseases, and understanding where it came from and how it spread may help us combat diseases today."

Stigmatized disease

The fact that syphilis is a stigmatized sexually transmitted disease has added to the controversy over its origins. People often seem to want to blame some other country for it, said researcher Kristin Harper, an evolutionary biologist at Emory. [Top 10 Stigmatized Health Disorders]

Armelagos originally doubted the so-called Columbian theory for syphilis when he first heard about it decades ago. "I laughed at the idea that a small group of sailors brought back this disease that caused this major European epidemic," he recalled. Critics of the Columbian theory have proposed that syphilis had always bedeviled the Old World but simply had not been set apart from other rotting diseases such as leprosy until 1500 or so.

However, upon further investigation, Armelagos and his colleagues got a shock — all of the available evidence they found supported the Columbian theory, findings they published in 1988. "It was a paradigm shift," Armelagos says. Then in 2008, genetic analysis by Armelagos and his collaborators of syphilis's family of bacteria lent further support to the theory.

Still, there have been reports of 50 skeletons from Europe dating back from before Columbus set sail that apparently showed the lesions of chronic syphilis. These seemed to be evidence that syphilis originated in the Old World and that Columbus was not to blame.

Armelagos and his colleagues took a closer look at all the data from these prior reports. They found most of the skeletal material didn't actually meet at least one of the standard diagnostic criteria for chronic syphilis, such as pitting on the skull, known as caries sicca, and pitting and swelling of the long bones.

"There's no really good evidence of a syphilis case before 1492 in Europe," Armelagos told LiveScience.

In the seafood?

The 16 reports that did meet the criteria for syphilis came from coastal regions where seafood was a large part of the diet. This seafood contains "old carbon" from deep, upwelling ocean waters. As such, they might fall prey to the so-called "marine reservoir effect" that can throw off radiocarbon dating of a skeleton by hundreds or even thousands of years. To adjust for this effect, the researchers figured out the amount of seafood these individuals ate when alive. Since our bodies constantly break down and rebuild our bones, measurements of bone-collagen protein can provide a record of diet.

"Once we adjusted for the marine signature, all of the skeletons that showed definite signs of treponemal disease appeared to be dated to after Columbus returned to Europe," Harper said, findings detailed in the current Yearbook of Physical Anthropology.

"What it really shows to me is that globalization of disease is not a modern condition," Armelagos said. "In 1492, you had the transmission of a number of diseases from Europe that decimated Native Americans, and you also had disease from Native Americans to Europe."

"The lesson we can learn for today from history is that these epidemics are the result of unrest," Armelagos added. "With syphilis, wars were going on in Europe at the time, and all the turmoil set the stage for the disease. Nowadays, a lot of diseases jump the species barrier due to environmental unrest."

"The origin of syphilis is a fascinating, compelling question," Zuckerman said. "The current evidence is pretty definitive, but we shouldn't close the book and say we're done with the subject. The great thing about science is constantly being able to understand things in a new light."

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[Cynical_Politician]

I am not sure about this radio carbon dating method, because the method has never been so exact that it could pinpoint the age of tissue within the lifespan of any human. With the half-life of 64,000 years, how can precision be realized?

The next question is "How can bone lesions be accurately assessed for their age?" Guessing the age of a skeleton and subtracting the maximum attained lesion symptoms assumes that disease spreads equally on all it's victims, and we know that not to be the case. If just one sailor contracted the disease before departing Europe and spread it to his shipmates, after reaching the New World, the theory is considered flawed. Just one error is required. So how can carbon 14 be so free of error beyond a shadow of a doubt? Could other factors skew the results like the so-called marine reservoir effect?

People, including forensic scientists, can make theirselves believe what ever they want to believe, especially if it helps make something "Fit".

Many bacterias are transmitted through parasites and express their toxicity when virus infects the parasite itself to the point where the human host falls or succumbs. Other human hosts can survive exposure to the same viral infection because parasites are not present. This was the case of the swine flu epidemic that killed Mexicans, but not many others from the USA just a few years ago. Those facts were reported here on CBS.

[involved_indi]

If introducing a new exotic plant or animal into a biosphere can be devastating as everyone knows, why are we surprised that the same thing happens with humans.

[unclebernies]

The single most destructive act put upon the American continent was Colombus and the europeans coming over. Nothing could have been worse for the people that were already here.

[truthvtold]

And the amount of seafood eaten could "throw off radiocarbon dating of a skeleton by hundreds or even thousands of years". And this is for evidence less than 600 years old. How's come we never hear about this when scientists are pontificating about the latest "discovery" that proves their theory at the expense of others that have come before it?

[signseeker1717]

ALL scientific advancements are built on the findings of those who came before. What exactly are you objecting to?

[truthvtold]

And the amount of seafood eaten could "throw off radiocarbon dating of a skeleton by hundreds or even thousands of years". And this is for evidence less than 600 years old. How's come we never hear about this when scientists are pontificating about the latest "discovery" that proves their theory at the expense of others that have come before it?

[HRPuffinstuff]

" the researchers figured out the amount of seafood these individuals ate when alive"

And just how did they do that? Ask someone that lived a few hundred years ago how much seafood they ate? Sounds to me like they just manipulated the data to support their already determined conclusions.

[signseeker1717]

Bone chemistry analysis.

[democracy8]

HRPuffinstuff: Sounds to me like you don't know squat about science.

[randomites]

So it appears that the Europeans gave the native Americans smallpox and the natives gave the Europeans syphilis in return.
Seems like an even exchange to me.