Syphilis was in South America before Columbus: Debunking Another Woke Anti-White Myth By Chris Knight (Florida)

One of the ani-white post-colonial themes is that theevil Whites brought diseases to the New World, killing of the natives who had no resistance to the bugs. One supposed case of this is syphilis, which the narrative supposes was not in South America at the time of colonisation but was spread by the Spanish conquistadors. But, not so.

A study published in the journal Nature by researchers at the Universities of Basel and Zurich, has discovered the genetic material of the syphilis virus in the bones of people who died in Brazil around 2,000 years ago. So South Americans already has syphilis, over 1,000 years before the first white arrived on their shore. Crash goes another great anti-White myth!

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-syphilis-diseases-widespread-america-columbus.html

"Researchers at the Universities of Basel and Zurich have discovered the genetic material of the pathogen Treponema pallidum in the bones of people who died in Brazil 2,000 years ago. This is the oldest verified discovery of this pathogen thus far, and it proves that humans were suffering from diseases akin to syphilis—known as treponematoses—long before Columbus's discovery of America.

The new findings, published in Nature, call into question previous theories concerning the spread of syphilis by the Spanish conquistadors.

The history of the emergence and spread of infectious diseases was of great importance for global health even before the COVID-19 pandemic. With modern laboratory methods, researchers can now detect the tiniest traces of DNA from pathogens in prehistoric finds. That means they can trace back how these pathogens spread historically and their evolutionary development.

An international research group led by Professor Verena Schünemann from the University of Basel, formerly at the University of Zurich, in collaboration with ETH Zurich and the Universities of Vienna and Sao Paulo, examined prehistoric bones belonging to four individuals who died 2,000 years ago in the coastal region of Santa Caterina in Brazil. For some of the individuals, visible pathological changes to the prehistoric bones were detected, which could indicate that the deceased were suffering from an illness similar to syphilis.

Prehistoric DNA from bones dating over 2,000 years old

The researchers used dentists' drilling tools to remove minuscule samples of bone under sterile conditions. From those samples they isolated prehistoric genetic material (ancient DNA) belonging to the syphilis pathogen. Their study demonstrates that all the bacterial genomes that have been investigated can be attributed to the Treponema pallidum endemicum strain—that is, the pathogen that leads to bejel.

Treponematoses are a group of infectious diseases that includes the sexually transmitted disease syphilis. While syphilis as a venereal disease presents a global health risk, bejel, which is spread by skin contact, only occurs today in very arid regions of Africa and Asia.

"Our study has been able to show that endemic syphilis was already present in humid zones of Brazil around 2,000 years ago," says Schünemann. This means that people were already becoming infected with endemic syphilis, probably via skin contact, more than 1,000 years before the arrival of Columbus in the New World.