|
|
|
|
Wednesday, 30 May, 2001, 13:44 GMT 14:44 UK
Did Christopher Columbus Bring Syphilis To Europe? Bones rewrite
syphilis history.
|
Columbus is blamed for syphilis in Europe
|
Documentary evidence had suggested that epidemics, which raged through Europe in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, could be connected with the return of Columbus from America.
Skeletons found in the United States, which showed the disease present before 1492, seemed to support this theory.
Analysing bones
The skeleton was found in a churchyard in Rivenhall, near Chelmsford.
Tests on the Essex bones suggest the woman was aged somewhere between 25 and 50 years old.
The roughness of the bones and the pitted surface indicate she had syphilis.
Archaeologists from English Heritage believe this was the venereal form of the disease, caught through sexual intercourse.
Work including DNA tests will now continue on this and related specimens.
Dr Mays said he wants to find more evidence to convince doubters once and for all that syphilis was here before Columbus.
"Then the big question will be to find out exactly where this disease came from, if not from America," he added.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1359000/1359758.stm
THURSDAY MAY 31 2001
BY HELEN STUDD, The London Times
IT was Voltaire who gave weight to the belief that not everything the
conquistadores brought from the Americas was life-enhancing when he
wrote: “The first fruit the Spaniards brought from the New World was
syphilis.”
But now the skeleton of an early Essex girl has cast doubt on the
traditional origins of syphilis in this country.
Female bones dug up in a churchyard in Rivenhall, near Witham, are
thought to disprove the long-standing belief that Christopher Columbus
was responsible for importing the disease into Europe in the late 15th
century.
English Heritage has unearthed a skeleton of a woman, aged between 25
and 50, who suffered from the venereal disease at least 50 years before
Columbus discovered America in 1492.
Scientists are 95 per cent certain that the woman, who is believed to
have contracted the disease up to a decade before her death, lived in
the medieval settlement between 1290 and 1445.
Historians have previously assumed that the Spanish adventurer and his
crew imported the disease into Europe from the New World after
contracting it during sexual trysts with the natives.
This is the first time that any example of the sexually transmitted
disease has been found in Europe which can be dated prior to Columbus’s
time.
Simon Mays, a researcher from English Heritage who made the discovery
with Gillian Crane-Kramer, an American PhD student, said he was
confident it was an accurate diagnosis. “People have always attacked
finds like this on the grounds that the diagnosis or the dating was
problematic. The importance of this find is that it is well dated by
scientific methods and it’s a firm diagnosis,” he said.
“While it is difficult to distinguish endemic syphilis from venereal
syphilis, we are almost certain that in this case it is the latter.
“It entirely undermines the theory that Columbus brought the disease
back from the New World.”
The skeleton was exhumed in the 1970s but had remained locked away until
last year. Miss Crane-Kramer rediscovered the bones by chance while
conducting research for her PhD project and sent them to a laboratory in
Toronto, Canada, to be radio-carbon dated
Source: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-2001182158,00.html
|
www.skfriends.com
|
|
