Why didn't Indian diseases transfer over to Europeans?

Question

If most of the Indian population was wiped out after the Europeans got there and gave them smallpox, why didn't some corresponding Indian disease transfer over to Europe? The lifestyle theory (Indians were more free-roaming and therefore diseases didn't transfer as easily among them) goes some way to explain this, but it's impossible that they would have been entirely disease-free, and also, why didn't they develop certain immunities to European diseases which transfered to humans via animals, some of which were common between the two continents. Also, they had come from Asia originally, so I don't think in 10,000 years they would have changed that drastically from Europeans.

Answer 1

idk

Answer 2

They were passed to them from infected animals from europe who got on the ship. There were any animals sneeking on the boats back to europe so that helped and many of the europeans had immunities to the diseases already bc desease is spread more easily in europe bc of the combined areas at that time compared to america.

Answer 3

Short of universal agreement, I believe the modern consensus on the question of 'why did European diseases lay low the Native Americans, but not vice versa' is that, unlike the Europeans, indigenous peoples of the Americas developed ways of life largely absent of domesticated animals (barring a few exceptions).

Diseases like smallpox, like cows and humans, are organisms driven by the will to survive and propagate.  As such, they are constantly evolving to find new hosts to transform into vessels for their propagation.  Diseases have countless times in the course of biological history jumped from one species to another.  And pathology recapitulates biochemistry; when species are similar (man and cow) and live in close proximity, disease (cow pox) is more likely to evolve another strain (smallpox) to infect both host species.  Until the discovery of artificial vaccination, host species could only combat germs the hard way, i.e., losing a significant portion of its members to the disease so the resistant members can live on.  By 1500, countless Europeans (and other members of the 'Eurasian agriculture package' from Iberia to the Indus Valley) had been killed by diseases over the span of millennia.  The remaining ones, including those who paid the Native Americans a fatal visit in 1492 and on, were the victors of millennia of biological warfare, and, as such, were far better prepared immunologically.  On the flip side, the Native Americans, having lived in the absence of Eurasian domesticated animals, developed no resistance to the diseases that came from them.  And, having few domesticated animals of their own, they were ill-equipped to repay the Europeans' microscopic gifts in kind.

While the Americas did not lack in large mammals (bison, pronghorn) and other fauna, none of these species were and are as yet proven to be domesticable.  There are many factors contributing to a species' candidacy for domestication; that's beyond the scope of this question.

I should also point out that the 'animals, some of which were common between the two continents' (like the horse, cow, pig, and sheep) in actuality did not exist in the Americas in wild or domesticated form.  They, like the Europeans, came on ships from the other side of the ocean.

Jared Diamond's novel _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ lays out a categorical explanation for this asymmetry.  I would read Chapter 11 for more details.

Answer 4

well there might have been diseases that europeans had cures for.

Answer 5

It's because Europeans came from cities, living in close-quarters, and those Europeans that survived plagues, had built up immunity towards many killer diseases...

Native Americans Indians, 10,000 years removed from Eastern Asia, when they encountered Smallpox,  Tuberculosis, etc., never had a chance!

This is why Neegroid individuals with sickle-shaped red blood cells, are immune to malaria! They evolved that way, in order to survive in a highly concentrated Malarial environment!

Even today, there is a minority Blood Type, of RH-- Europeans, that are totally immune to AIDS/HIV, because their ancestors survived an AIDS-like plague, in the 18th Century...

Also, Native American tribes had low-density populations, and tended to be nomadic Hunter/Gatherers. By comparison, Europeans lived, city on top of city, at the same location, for the past 2,000 years, where bacteria and viruses spread by rats, had a chance to "evolve", so too, the human immune systems had to counter...Still, they unknowingly became "carriers" of diseases, to these unsuspecting locals!

Answer 6

Many sexually transmitted diseases were passed from the Indians to the Europeans.

Answer 7

I read that the Indian population was low because they had just recovered from a widespread disease at the time the Europeans arrived. The settlers were able to succeed because the land had been cleared for planting by the natives

but unused. Only the very healthy remained thus the diseases had already killed themselves off.  This might explain the Vikings being run off but not the later Europeans. I'm not sure if there is proof behind this explanation.

Answer 8

i dont really know but maybe they had less diseases.

Answer 9

You know with my being Native American, as a child I showed postive in blood test  of being arthritic but I don't show it now,  another time my bone reflexes ( the knees) I did not reflex but I am doing great! Doctors were puzzled.  Oh by the way I have microtia, I have great balance. As a infant I made do of 50% of hearing and balance.  Being as pride of who  I am I have great sense of time and direction.

Lastly, it's a theory we came from Asia or South East  and the 10,000 years,  what you already discovered  the last ever human remains found in America?  Just like the lost Christopher Columbus ??   It's all theory. There's still undiscovered  America's.

So hard to believe there are  people  like you, who want to be in  social science  and already theorize  toward Native Americans where they came from. Just pathetic.

We fight and struggle being Native, but with you being American its all great, the great white american.

Answer 10

They did, syphilis is thought to have originated in America.

http://www.archaeology.org/9701/newsbrie...