That the arrival of Europeans in the New World in 1492 led to a massive shift in the ecological landscape has been widely accepted for the past 50 years. Suddenly a trans-Atlantic exchange – maize for wheat, tomatoes for apples, tobacco for horses – meant that plants and animals were moving between continents for the first time.
It was the same for pathogens, according to historian Alfred W. Crosby and his influential book “The Columbian Exchange.” Diseases like smallpox and measles, brought to the Western Hemisphere by the invaders, soon killed almost the entire Indigenous population. In return, Europeans fell prey to syphilis, a venereal disease they picked up from the native people. Crosby’s idea about the exchange of diseases was an interesting one and it made for a good story, suggesting that with the arrival of syphilis in Europe justice of a sort had been done.
The only problem is that this syphilis scenario is wrong, according to ongoing research by paleopathologists, scientists who study skeletal remains for evidence of disease. After decades of painstaking work, they have concluded that the syphilis-causing spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum already existed in the Old World long before Columbus boarded his ship and sailed to Hispaniola.
As a women’s historian who has studied documents and artworks for evidence of syphilis in the medieval period, I believe the paleopathologists are right. Like skeletal remains, paintings show life as it was. Even manuscripts, although more open to interpretation, can reveal the truth once readers open their minds to new possibilities. Here’s a sample of the evidence that Europeans suffered from syphilis long before they reached the Americas.
Treponema pallidum is a spiral-shaped bacterium that causes the disease syphilis.
CDC/Susan Lindsley/Smith Collection/Gado via Getty Images
Evidence from bones and teeth in the Old World
In a cemetery in West Sussex, U.K., archaeologists uncovered the skeleton of a young man with extensive damage to his skull, clavicles, arms and legs – a combination typical of syphilis. He died in the sixth century.
View of a human skull damaged by late-stage syphilis, the kind of evidence paleopathologists can look for.
Canley/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
In St. Polten, Austria, a medieval cemetery holds the remains of a child age 6 with deformed teeth consistent with a diagnosis of treponematosis, perhaps a case of congenital syphilis, when the Treponema pallidum bacteria are passed from mother to child during pregnancy or birth.
In Anatolia in western Turkey, the skeleton of a teenager revealed not only the same deformed incisors as in St. Polten, but also damage to the entire skeleton below the head. Involvement of both teeth and bones in the same specimen, and especially the large number of bones affected in this case, points to syphilis. The victim died in the…
