How epidemics devastated the indigenous people of the Americas

GONZÁLEZ JOSÉ, ROLANDO; RAMALLO VIRGINIA

Austin, Texas

Congreso; ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 87th AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGISTS; 2018

American Association of Physical Anthropologists

The effect of the European contact on Native American populations has been the focus of intense debate in the anthropological literature. Specifically, fluctuations in pre and postcontact mortality have been inferred from historical sources, mission and civil records, archaeological information, human skeletal remains, and patterns of both ancient and modern genetic variation. Even when the decline of Native American populations after European contact has been linked to several factors including warfare and alterations in social structure, the overwhelming introduction of European-borne pathogens (Walker and Johnson, 1994, Thornton, 1997; Lindo et al. 2016) suggest a major effect of epidemics in the decline of Native American populations (Figure 1). Although the extent of the population decline remains contentious, European borne epidemics may have disproportionately contributed to the phenomenon. Indeed, infectious diseases are among the most significant selective forces in human evolution (Armelagos and Dewey, 1970) and, combined with under-nutrition, it is the largest contributor to morbidity and mortality worldwide (Martin and Goodman 2002). Even though the spread of pathogens of European origin across non-immune Native American is suspected to be responsible for a great proportion of the post-contact mortality, the situation cannot be extrapolated straightforwardly to all the New World populations. Local genetic, environmental, and cultural particularities need to be considered in order to achieve a more detailed picture. Here we present some concordant patterns regarding epidemics in post-contact epochs. Furthermore, we discuss genetic and non-genetic factors that potentially generated differential responses to pathogen, post-contact exposure.