A bit of American history


Another Look At Indians (native Americans, Amerindians)

Native Americans are often cast in the roleedited by Dr. Richard H. Steckel and Dr.
of victims of White aggression and unbridledJerome C. Rose - discovered that the haleness
avarice-driven or gratuitous violence,of Native-Americans declined markedly in the
especially in the territories known1000 years before Columbus "discovered" them.
collectively today as the United States. But
the first massacre was perpetrated by IndiansThe vast majority of the skeletons showed
in the British colony Jamestown, in Virginiatelltale signs of advanced degenerative joint
in 1622. They slaughtered 347 white men,disease, deteriorating dental health,
women  and  children  on  that  occasion.stature, anemia, arrested tissue development,
infections and trauma from injuries. These
Europeans are also accused of importingwere attributed by the participants to
pathogens, disease causing agents, such aslimited diets and urban congestion. People
smallpox and measles, malaria and yellowbecame shorter and died earlier - on average
fever. Indigenous people had no immunologicalat  age  35  -  as  the  centuries  passed.
resistance to these illnesses as they were
never  exposed  to  them."Pre-Columbian populations were among the
healthiest and the least healthy in our
But recent findings by a team ofsample," Dr. Steckel and Dr. Rose said.
anthropologists, economists and"While pre-Columbian natives may have lived
paleopathologists who have completed ain a disease environment substantially
massive study of the health of people livingdifferent from that in other parts of the
in the Western Hemisphere in the last 7,000globe, the original inhabitants also brought
years - suggest that Native American's healthwith them, or evolved with, enough pathogens
was severely run down long before theto create chronic conditions of ill health
Europeans  delivered  the  coup  de  grace.under conditions of systematic agriculture
and  urban  living."
The researchers analyzed more than 12,500
skeletons - half of them pre-Columbian - fromMoreover, there are signs that diseases
65 sites in North and South America forhitherto thought to have been introduced by
evidence of infections, malnutrition andthe white explorers were actually
other  health  problems.indigenous.1,000-year-old Peruvian mummies,
for instance, were found to have been
The study - "The Backbone of History: Healthinfected with tuberculosis in their lungs.
and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere",



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