In article <travers-2901961134070001 at macmhc.cryst.bbk.ac.uk>,
travers at europa.lif.icnet.uk (Paul J Travers) wrote:
> In article <4ebme0$qj at hydra.acs.ttu.edu>, Ted Joys <mictmj at ttuhsc.edu> wrote:
>> > There has been much information lately on PBS showing that american
> > natives were decimated by diseases brought by european invaders.
> > The explanation usually given is that the natives had never been exposed
> > to these agents and were a "virgin" population
> >
> --------- stuff deleted ------
>> > Is there any evidence that exposure to the diseases which killed the
> > natives had altered the immune systems of the europeans - altered the B
> > cell Ig gene pool, altered the TCR gene pool, selected out MHC genes
> > which would carry the epitopes of the infectious agents, etc ????
>> I've wondered about this on and off ever since hearing Peter Parham
> talking about the differences between N American indian MHC sequences
> versus S American indian sequences and commenting that the N American
> sequences were similar to european sequences while the S American were
> distinct.
Question; Are south american indian peoples more or less interbred with
europeans than north american indians?
I understand that south amercian populations were also decimated by
diseases introduced by europeans.
> So did diseases that had already depleted european populations
> of susceptible MHC haplotypes also deplete Amerindian haplotypes in the
> same way, leaving a population of haplotypes similar to those in Europ
>> Or did the original European colonists simply screw around a lot?
STDs, though likely responsible for much suffering by Amerindian peoples,
were not, I think, the source of most of the disease (or is this just a
turn of phrase?).
