That the arrival of Europeans in the New World in 1492 led to a massive shift in the ecological landscape has been widely accepted for the past 50 years. Suddenly a trans-Atlantic exchange—maize for wheat, tomatoes for apples, tobacco for horses—meant that plants and animals were moving between continents for the first time.
It was the same for pathogens, according to historian Alfred W. Crosby and his influential book “The Columbian Exchange.” Diseases like smallpox and measles, brought to the Western Hemisphere by the invaders, soon killed almost the entire Indigenous population. In return, Europeans fell prey to syphilis, a venereal disease they picked up from the native people. Crosby’s idea about the exchange of diseases was an interesting one and it made for a good story, suggesting that with the arrival of syphilis in Europe justice of a sort had been done.
The only problem is that this syphilis ...
