Publication #51 - EN - Columbus and Pandemic Contagion- Historical Antecedents to COVID-19

Because of this novelty of contact between autochthonous peoples and alien pathogens, a key determinant in the global scheme of empire, the arrival of Europeans on American shores may well have triggered the greatest destruction of human lives in history. [...] Scrutiny by historians Juan Gil and Consuelo Varela (1997) of a hitherto unknown report of Columbus establishes the presence of “viruelas,” the Spanish word for smallpox, which they date as having arrived in Hispaniola in the wake of the admiral’s second voyage of 1493. [...] Half the people threw themselves into the ravines, and the dogs and foxes lived on the bodies of the men. [...] She estimates the contact population to have been 1.6 million, about half of whom lived in the sierra region, one-third on the coast, and the remainder (15 percent) in the Amazonian lowlands east of the Andes. [...] The two imperial powers disputed territorial ownership even before either had any sense of the enormity of the Amazon interior, which the Portuguese laid claim to in forays from the east despite a Spaniard, Francisco de Orellana, being the first to navigate the mighty river downstream from the west in 1542.