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The Aztecs and other Indigenous groups affected by the outbreak were disadvantaged due to their lack of exposure to zoonotic diseases. [17] Given that many Old World pathogens may have caused the cocoliztli outbreak, it is significant that all but two of the most common species of domestic mammalian livestock ( llamas and alpacas being the ...
Mexico's native population was one of the first to experience a smallpox epidemic, where many succumbed to the disease. In 1520, the first wave of smallpox killed 5–8 million people. From 1545 to 1576, up to 17 million people died from smallpox. This large amount of deaths in the second wave are thought to be the result of hemorrhagic fevers. [5]
It killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year in the 18th century, including five reigning European monarchs. [28] Most people became infected during their lifetimes, and about 30% of people infected with smallpox died from the disease, presenting a severe selection pressure on the resistant survivors.
The American era of limited infectious disease ended with the arrival of Europeans in the Americas and the Columbian exchange of microorganisms, including those that cause human diseases. European infections and epidemics had major effects on Native American life in the colonial period and nineteenth century, especially.
Boone, Elizabeth H. 1989. "Incarnations of the Aztec Supernatural: The Image of Huitzilopochtli in Mexico and Europe." Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Ser., Vol. 79, No. 2., pp. i–iv+1-107. Boone, Elizabeth H. (2000) Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs. University of Texas Press, Austin.
The Aztecs [a] (/ ˈ æ z t ɛ k s / AZ-teks) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries.
Historian Gregory T. Cushman claims that virgin soil epidemics were not the major cause of deaths due to disease among Pacific Island populations. Rather, diseases like tuberculosis and dysentery were able to take hold in Pacific Island populations that had weakened immune systems because of overworking and exploitation by European colonizers. [23]
The disease, which originated in Asia, was first brought to Europe by the invading Huns in 370. Later invasions of Mongols, led by Genghis Khan and his army, started pandemics in Europe in 1222, 1233 and 1238. The infection subsequently reached England following the importation of cattle from the continent. [42]