This is MY America!

[Rexmons]

i dont know what this previous drama is about, but regarding your post:

The Vikings were here well before anyone, they planted the grapes at Marthas Vineyard. :

[Flint]

The Vikings didn't settle permanently here.

They lacked the pandemic biological advantage of more disease-ridden Europeans, as the Vikings came through the decontamination zone of frigid lands where nasty microbes cannot survive outside the human body. Incidentally, the same reason the Natives had no resistance to Europeans sicknesses, they had come through the decontamination zone of the Bering Strait, and peopled a continent with no resistance to common bugs.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Flint

They lacked the pandemic biological advantage of more disease-ridden Europeans, as the Vikings came through the decontamination zone of frigid lands where nasty microbes cannot survive outside the human body. Incidentally, the same reason the Natives had no resistance to Europeans sicknesses, they had come through the decontamination zone of the Bering Strait, and peopled a continent with no resistance to common bugs.

Interesting point, but here's another that seems even more valid: Europe, Africa, and Asia are all land-connected and in each of these places, animal husbandry is practiced. Smallpox in particular is associated with keeping cattle, as in all likelihood it's a small mutation of cowpox. Waves of smallpox infections can travel back and forth from one end of a continent and then back, like reflected waves off a seawall. Multiple continents, inhabited by humans, seem to mean a deeper pool of varied human diseases. Add in some other vectors (by a roll of the genetic dice) and look what you come up with.

Nor did it, we suspect, all go one way. In the early 1490s, syphilis, then present in Europe, suddenly turned virulent and a plague of it swept across the Continent. The timing seems more than a little suspicious.

[Flint]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Interesting point, but here's another that seems even more valid: Europe, Africa, and Asia are all land-connected and in each of these places, animal husbandry is practiced. Smallpox in particular is associated with keeping cattle, as in all likelihood it's a small mutation of cowpox. Waves of smallpox infections can travel back and forth from one end of a continent and then back, like reflected waves off a seawall. Multiple continents, inhabited by humans, seem to mean a deeper pool of varied human diseases. Add in some other vectors (by a roll of the genetic dice) and look what you come up with.

Excellent point.
These cattle-vector disease were not present in the Americas; because #1 no cattle! and #2 the aforementioned decontaminated populace.

A curiously overlooked factor in the "settling" of the "new lands" was that everywhere the Europeans went, there were empty villages and crops already planted! At the time, the massive scale of biological depopulation was well-documented, usually attributed to a gift from God. It is questionable whether European culture would have been able to sustain an outpost of their civilization, had it not been for nature's "helping hand" ...

Our history textbooks, by omitting the disease factor, leave a story in which the Europeans, even if not sqeaky clean on a moral basis, at least prevailed due to some inherent superiority over the Native people. This is Eurocentricism, in other words White Supremacy.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I thought the diseases that wiped out many of the tribal villages came from the Spanish explorers that traveled all the major river in the Americas for a look-see. This was well before anyone came with the intension of staying.

[Flint]

Yes, the diseases came from Europe with the Europeans that came from Europe.

[xoxoxoBruce]

OK, just pointing out it wasn't a start at the east coast and sweep across the continent. They were strategically bombed.

I wonder, since there were apparently many group migrations to the Americas, over thousands of years, could this have happened more than once?