| Native Americans are often cast in the
| |
| | Steckel and Dr. Jerome C. Rose -
|
| role of victims of White aggression and
| |
| | discovered that the haleness of
|
| unbridled avarice-driven or gratuitous
| |
| | Native-Americans declined markedly in the
|
| violence, especially in the territories
| |
| | 1000 years before Columbus "discovered"
|
| known collectively today as the United
| |
| | them.
|
| States. But the first massacre was
| |
| | The vast majority of the skeletons showed
|
| perpetrated by Indians in the British
| |
| | telltale signs of advanced degenerative
|
| colony Jamestown, in Virginia in 1622.
| |
| | joint disease, deteriorating dental
|
| They slaughtered 347 white men, women and
| |
| | health, stature, anemia, arrested tissue
|
| children on that occasion.
| |
| | development, infections and trauma from
|
| Europeans are also accused of importing
| |
| | injuries. These were attributed by the
|
| pathogens, disease causing agents, such
| |
| | participants to limited diets and urban
|
| as smallpox and measles, malaria and
| |
| | congestion. People became shorter and
|
| yellow fever. Indigenous people had no
| |
| | died earlier - on average at age 35 - as
|
| immunological resistance to these
| |
| | the centuries passed.
|
| illnesses as they were never exposed to
| |
| | "Pre-Columbian populations were among the
|
| them.
| |
| | healthiest and the least healthy in our
|
| But recent findings by a team of
| |
| | sample," Dr. Steckel and Dr. Rose said.
|
| anthropologists, economists and
| |
| | "While pre-Columbian natives may have
|
| paleopathologists who have completed a
| |
| | lived in a disease environment
|
| massive study of the health of people
| |
| | substantially different from that in
|
| living in the Western Hemisphere in the
| |
| | other parts of the globe, the original
|
| last 7,000 years - suggest that Native
| |
| | inhabitants also brought with them, or
|
| American's health was severely run down
| |
| | evolved with, enough pathogens to create
|
| long before the Europeans delivered the
| |
| | chronic conditions of ill health under
|
| coup de grace.
| |
| | conditions of systematic agriculture and
|
| The researchers analyzed more than 12,500
| |
| | urban living."
|
| skeletons - half of them pre-Columbian -
| |
| | Moreover, there are signs that diseases
|
| from 65 sites in North and South America
| |
| | hitherto thought to have been introduced
|
| for evidence of infections, malnutrition
| |
| | by the white explorers were actually
|
| and other health problems.
| |
| | indigenous.1,000-year-old Peruvian
|
| The study - "The Backbone of History:
| |
| | mummies, for instance, were found to have
|
| Health and Nutrition in the Western
| |
| | been infected with tuberculosis in their
|
| Hemisphere", edited by Dr. Richard H.
| |
| | lungs.
|
