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