Between the first Europeans arriving in 1492 and the Victorian age, the indigenous population

of the new world dropped by at least 90%.

The cause? Not the conquistadors and company.

They killed lots of people, but their death count is nothing compared to what they brought with them.

Smallpox, typhus, tuberculosis, influenza bubonic plague, cholera, mumps, measles, and more,

leapt from those first explorers to the coastal tribes, then onward the microscopic invaders spread

through a hemisphere of people with no defenses against them.

Tens of millions died.

These germs decided the fate of these battles long before the fighting started.

Now ask yourself, why didn't the Europeans get sick?

If new worlders were vulnerable to old world diseases, then surely old worlders would be vulnerable to new world diseases.

Yet there was no America pox spreading eastward, infecting Europe and cutting the population from 90 million to nine.

Had America pox existed, it would have rather dampened European ability

for transatlantic expansion. To answer why this didn't happen, we need first to distinguish

regular diseases like the common cold from what we'll call plagues. First, plagues spread quickly between people. Sneezes

spread plagues faster than handshakes which are faster than closeness. Plagues use more

of this than this. Secondly and importantly, they kill you quickly or you become immune.

Catch a plague and you're dead within seven to 30 days. Survive and you'll never

get it again. Your body has learned to fight it. You might still carry it. The plague lives in you.

You can spread it, but it can't hurt you. The surface answer to this question isn't that Europeans

had better immune systems to fight off new world plagues. it's that the New World didn't have plagues for them to catch.

They had regular diseases, but there was no Americapox to carry.

...