| Abstract: | There is no longer any doubt that treponemal infections existed in the pre-Columbian New World. In Europe, a few reported pre-Columbian cases seem to be rather firm both in diagnosis and dating. The possibility of treponema having been brought from the New World by Norsemen has been suggested. A New World origin hypothesis ignores the extremely high prevalence of yaws in pre-Spanish western Micronesia. On a sample of 486 individuals, we found 17–27 per cent of adults and 10 per cent of children to have skeletal yaws. It was present at least as early as the ninth centuryAD . Speculation on the origin of treponema must be global in scope, not just Euro-American. |
