american-holocaust

AMERICAN HOLOCAUSTtype not associated with pulmonary disease, as well as a relatively benignnonvenereal (that is, not sexually transmitted) treponema! infection thatwas related to syphilis. 102 However, there is no evidence that either disease(whatever it may have been) was at all widespread in either North or SouthAmerica. And the most detailed recent studies of large-scale sedentary societiesin the Americas-where such diseases would have taken hold if theywere to do so anywhere-have found no evidence of either tuberculosis orsyphilis (or anything like them) as causing significant damage prior to Europeancontact. 103 Similarly, ancient small-scale migratory societies, evenin such harsh environments as those of the frigid northwestern plains, producedpeople who, in the words of the most recent and extensive study ofthe subject, "appear to have lived very long lives without significant infectiousconditions, or even much serious injury." 104 Moreover, the limitedrange of potentially serious diseases that did exist among the Americas'indigenous peoples (primarily gastrointestinal disease and various minorinfections) had long since been mitigated by millennia of exposure to them,as well as by generally beneficent living environments and more than adequatenutrition. 105All that was to change, however, with shocking and deadly suddenness,once those first three Spanish ships bobbed into view on the rim ofthe Caribbean horizon. For it was then only a matter of months beforethere would begin the worst series of human disease disasters, combinedwith the most extensive and most violent programs of human eradication,that this world has ever seen.