Study Says Columbus Brought Syphilis to Europe

Well, it's a small price to pay for centuries of conquest and exploitation, no?

A new study from Emory University provides new evidence to the claim that somebody aboard Christopher Columbus' 1492 voyage to the New World brought back a little souvenir to Europe that hasn't left yet: syphilis. The theory has persisted in one form or another for years, although earlier researchers had claimed that skeletal remains found in the Old World from before 1492 showed signs of syphilis. But the Emory team says they've determined that all those remains from the Old World don't hold up to scrutiny. For one, most of them are missing the telltale signs of syphilis – pits in bones such as the skull, femur, and tibia. Likewise, the remains were from regions near oceans, meaning they likely ate a lot of seafood. So what does eating crab and herring have anything to do with this? Well, ocean currents can bring old carbon from the depths of the seas up to the surface, where it can enter aquatic food chains. That old carbon can skew radiocarbon dating, meaning those remains likely came from after 1492. With no other proof of syphilis in Europe before then, and a recorded instance of an epidemic of the disease dating from 1495, the team says the only explanation can be Columbus' crew, confirming, perhaps, that one of age-old stereotypes of sailors is a little more true than they'd like it to be.