| Native Americans are often cast in the role | | | | edited by Dr. Richard H. Steckel and Dr. |
| of victims of White aggression and unbridled | | | | Jerome C. Rose - discovered that the haleness |
| avarice-driven or gratuitous violence, | | | | of Native-Americans declined markedly in the |
| especially in the territories known | | | | 1000 years before Columbus "discovered" them. |
| collectively today as the United States. But | | | | |
| the first massacre was perpetrated by Indians | | | | The vast majority of the skeletons showed |
| in the British colony Jamestown, in Virginia | | | | telltale 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 importing | | | | were attributed by the participants to |
| pathogens, disease causing agents, such as | | | | limited diets and urban congestion. People |
| smallpox and measles, malaria and yellow | | | | became shorter and died earlier - on average |
| fever. Indigenous people had no immunological | | | | at 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 of | | | | sample," Dr. Steckel and Dr. Rose said. |
| anthropologists, economists and | | | | "While pre-Columbian natives may have lived |
| paleopathologists who have completed a | | | | in a disease environment substantially |
| massive study of the health of people living | | | | different from that in other parts of the |
| in the Western Hemisphere in the last 7,000 | | | | globe, the original inhabitants also brought |
| years - suggest that Native American's health | | | | with them, or evolved with, enough pathogens |
| was severely run down long before the | | | | to 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 - from | | | | Moreover, there are signs that diseases |
| 65 sites in North and South America for | | | | hitherto thought to have been introduced by |
| evidence of infections, malnutrition and | | | | the 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: Health | | | | infected with tuberculosis in their lungs. |
| and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere", | | | | |