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Originally Posted by Rain Man
I think I mentioned this in a thread a while back, but the thing I don't get is why this was a one-way deal. Europeans show up and cough, and 90 million Native Americans start dying. But why didn't the Native Americans cough and kill all of the arriving Europeans?
And presumably no diseases went back to Europe with Columbus and John Smith and Verrazano and all those guys. Why not? Why didn't Europe take the same disease beatdown that the Native Americans took? Was it just sheer luck? Did the Viking expeditions somehow inoculate Europeans? And why didn't the Vikings start the North American plague? Or is it possible that something like the Black Plague was carried from America with the Vikings and nailed the white folk 200 years earlier?
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Off the top of my head, the reason the NA's were so susceptible is because they were such a homogeneous group that they genetically weren't prepared to deal with the infections. Things that would just get a European under the weather could be devastating to NA's. More diverse groups like the Europeans were actually more susceptible to parasites.
Sorry for the shoddy explanation. It was in the book that I mentioned above but it's been awhile since I've read that part and I don't remember the exact reasoning.