Extensive research: Smallpox was already present in South America before the arrival of Europeans

Venereal disease the origin of syphilis has been clarified. It sickened people in South America even before European conquerors first came to the continent at the end of the 15th century.

The smallpox riddle was solved by DNA studies of old South American bones. A team from the University of Helsinki, led by a professor of forensic medicine, participated in the international study Antti Sajantila.

Now it’s university bulletin it is clear that the American continent was already the ancient center of syphilis and its family of diseases thousands of years before the arrival of the Europeans. Extensive the research was led by the German Max Planck Institute. It was published In the journal Nature.

The hive the genome that tells about the origin was found, among other things, in Peruvian mummies. They were studied by Sajantila’s group, which has studied these mummies for a long time. The group’s Peruvian researcher Evelyn Guevara has done his dissertation in Helsinki.

The international team revealed a total of five ancient syphilis family genomes not only from Peru but also from Mexico, Chile and Argentina using DNA techniques.

“We found extinct sister lines for all known forms of the syphilis family. Syphilis, frambesia and bejel are modern-day legacies of diseases that once roamed the Americas”, says Sajantila in the press release.

Frambesia and bejel of the syphilis family are tropical bacterial skin diseases.

The hive the direction of spread has been debated for decades. Did they take Christopher Columbus and crews of other European sailors brought syphilis to America or did they bring the disease back to Europe?

Syphilis began to spread in Europe at the end of the 15th century, a few years after Columbus (1451–1506) and his crew returned from their early voyages of exploration to the Americas. Therefore, it has been thought that they brought syphilis with them.

According to the opposite theory, syphilis was already in Europe before Columbus’ travels in 1492. This is supported by European skeletons found older than the 15th century. Lesions, or damage, typical of syphilis have been seen in them.

The hive ascertaining the origin has been difficult. Infections like that have existed in America for millennia. With the help of DNA, a lot of information about the history of plague, tuberculosis, leprosy and smallpox has already been obtained from bones. Syphilis has been a more difficult case.

The study was now able to reliably connect the extinct forms of syphilis with the current strains affecting global health, says Guevara in the press release

Archaeological bones have not found an answer to the question of whether syphilis came from Asia even earlier. This could have happened at the time of the settlement of the American continent about 15,000 years ago.

Syphilis spread explosively after the first cases were detected in the study bulletin among the French soldiers in the mid-1490s. Columbus had already returned by then.

The spread of syphilis to the world was facilitated by the slave trade and further expansion of European colonialism in America and Africa in the following decades and centuries.

“Although indigenous peoples in the Americas carried early forms of these diseases, Europeans were instrumental in spreading them around the world,” says Guevara in the release.

Brought to America by Europeans

diseases in turn destroyed the vast majority

from the completely unprotected native population exposed to them.

The hive the cause is Treponema pale– a bacterium that spreads from one mucous membrane to another, but cannot penetrate healthy skin.

The most common way of transmission is unprotected sex. About 200 infections are found in Finland every year, he said Health library in 2023. Syphilis is usually treated with penicillin injections.