> the animals that were there mostly didn't contribute serious new ones

Aren't syphilis and Lyme disease of New World origin?

There is evidence that syphillis came from the Americas. There is evidence it was introduced to the Americas by Europeans. One problem is that it's hard to distinguish teritiary syphillis from tuberculosis or leprosy on bones.

As for Borreliosis, there are many variants of it endemic to Europe and spread by ticks. No evidence that it came from the Americas.

Neither of those spirochetes are zoonotic.

Why is a tic biting a human and transferring Borreliosis not considered zoonotic?

My understanding is that if the tick was only a vector between two humans (for instance, malaria isn't a zoonosis, because the mosquito is just transmitting the disease between humans), then it would not be a zoonosis. But in most cases with Lyme disease, the tick is actually transmitting the disease from another animal to a human, therefore it is indeed a zoonosis.[1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Transmission

According to everyone favourite source, Lyme disease is zoonotic.

I had never heard the term until today, so take the claim with a pinch.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis

I agree, Lyme disease definitely isn't primarily human.

There's quite a lot of debate over the precise origins of syphilis. I'm only peripherally familiar with the literature, but my understanding is that recent work suggests (but not concludes) that it might have been endemic to afroeurasia rather than or as well as the Americas. Lyme disease is indeed wholly American, but it's not epidemic or even particularly mortal.

Lyme disease is not wholly American, though its incidence may be in more recent times.

"Ötzi the iceman" had it 5kya: https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-researchers-find-ancient-ic...

An ancestor to that bacteria was found in a tick that lived 15Mya: https://www.livescience.com/46007-lyme-disease-ancient-amber...

Lyme is a scary to go through, I've had it twice now, here is my latest encounter: https://youtu.be/xbPr7DHwSIw

I enjoyed this paper on the origins and distribution of Treponema (the bug that causes syphilis and a few other skin diseases).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956094/

I'm surprised that paper got published, considering the basic spelling errors ("jaws" for "yaws") and errors of fact ("Española Island…a part of the Galápagos Islands").

> considering the basic spelling errors ("jaws" for "yaws")

Missing a single erroroneous instance of a word that won't get caught by spell check may be embarrassing, but it's hardly material.

> ("Española Island…a part of the Galápagos Islands")

https://www.galapagos.org/about_galapagos/about-galapagos/th...

What is the error here?

There are several islands in the world that have had the name Española. The one that is relevant to the discussion about syphilis is now more commonly known as Hispanola, home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Columbus visited in 1492/3 and supposedly brought back Syphilis in 1493. The Galapagos islands are in the Pacific, and were never visited by Columbus.

Ah, yeah that make sense. I just looked at the immediate sentence, rather than question which island it referred to. I'm assuming that's the cause for the error too - just someone wanting to reference location and popping the name into Google -, though it's certainly a much more serious error than the spelling mistake.

Yaws is found in Africa and was there before 1492. But syphilis was in the Americas before 1492 as well..

Roman Spain had high population densities much earlier.

Not true. Large Maya cities existed hundreds of years before Romans colonized Hispania. Nakbe was abandoned, hundreds of years after its peak, ca. 200-100 BCE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakbe

> before Spain was even a thing

note: Spain was unified in 1491.

Not all. Navarre was out, then it was conquered in 1512. And yet, it was not fully integrated into Spain. They had their own currency and customs. Also, they had no military service duties. That until mid 1800s.

> Mesoamerica had high population densities long before Spain was even a thing.

Citation needed?

According to NASA archaeologist Tom Sever, the Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica was one of the densest populations in human history. Around 800 A.D., after two millennia of steady growth, the Mayan population reached an all-time high. Population density ranged from 500 to 700 people per square mile in the rural areas, and from 1,800 to 2,600 people per square mile near the center of the Mayan Empire (in what is now northern Guatemala). In comparison, Los Angeles County averaged 2,345 people per square mile in 2000.[1]

[1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Maya

Right, agreed entirely, this is higher than the numbers I recall from reading, but same order of magnitude. It was the flippant reference to Spain regarding chronology that I took umbrage with. Thats ~700 years after the area of Spain was named Spain (Latin Hispaniola in the Roman empire, iirc).

I always find the slightly emotional charge discussions (and subsequent downvotes) odd. There seems to be a very strong interest in certain groups to downplay or deride either the colonized, or colonizing side on measurements such as perceived development.

It's true even if we're very pedantic. Mesoamerica has had urbanization and high population densities for quite a long time. Michael Smith has pointed out pretty high urbanization rates (approaching 20%) even in the terminal formative period. Typical numbers I've seen are somewhere in the 8-12+ish people/km^2 range. That's roughly comparable to the western Roman empire at the time. But yes, I did mean the kingdom, not a separate term in another language for a peninsula that doesn't really correspond to the modern area.

> It was the flippant reference to Spain regarding chronology that I took umbrage with. Thats ~700 years after the area of Spain was named Spain (Latin Hispaniola in the Roman empire, iirc).

Obviously the land area of Spain has "always" existed. I think referring to "Spain's existence" as the socio-political entity established during the Reconquista is a reasonable position for a throw-away line during a HN discussion.