Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by AlotOfReading on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @04:11PM (#28935774)

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.

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Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by klyrs on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @05:05PM (#28936602)

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...

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Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by foxhop on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @06:29PM (#28937658)

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

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Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by COGlory on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @04:31PM (#28936065)

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/

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Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by Telemakhos on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:21AM (#28943358)

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").

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Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by vidarh on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:50AM (#28943668)

> 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?

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Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by Telemakhos on Thursday October 21, 2021 @11:52AM (#28946306)

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.

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Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by vidarh on Friday October 22, 2021 @06:47AM (#28955614)

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.

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Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by selimthegrim on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @07:43PM (#28938338)

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

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