Skeletons don’t lie. But sometimes they can mislead, as in the case of bones that reputedly showed evidence of syphilis in Europe and other parts of the Old World before Christopher Columbus made his historic voyage in 1492.

A strong case

None of this skeletal evidence, including 54 previously published reports, holds up when subjected to standardised analyses for both diagnosis and dating, according to an new appraisal in the current Yearbook of Physical Anthropology. In fact, the skeletal data strengthens the case that syphilis did not exist in Europe before Columbus set sail.

“This is the first time that all 54 of these cases have been evaluated systematically,” says George Armelagos, an anthropologist at Emory University and co-author of the appraisal. “The evidence keeps accumulating that a progenitor of syphilis came from the New World with Columbus’ crew and rapidly evolved into the venereal disease that remains with us today.”

The appraisal was led by two of Armelagos’ former graduate students at Emory: Molly Zuckerman, who is now an assistant professor at Mississippi State University, and Kristin Harper, currently a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University. Additional authors include Emory anthropologist John Kingston and Megan Harper from the University of Missouri.

A global diseasesyphilis

Christopher Columbus, by Carl von Piloty, (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons

Syphilis has been around for 500 years,” Zuckerman says. “People started debating where it came from shortly afterwards, and they haven’t stopped since. It was one of the first global diseases, and understanding where it came from and how it spread may help us combat diseases today.”

The history of syphilis, and society’s reactions to the disease, have eerie parallels to the more modern story of HIV/AIDS.

The treponemal family of bacteria causes syphilis and related diseases that share some symptoms but spread differently. Syphilis is sexually transmitted. Yaws and bejel, which occurred in early New World populations, are tropical diseases that are transmitted through skin-to-skin contact or oral contact.

The first recorded epidemic of venereal syphilis occurred in Europe in 1495. One hypothesis is that a subspecies of Treponema from the warm, moist climate of the tropical New World mutated into the venereal subspecies to survive in the cooler and relatively more hygienic European environment.

The fact that syphilis is a stigmatized, sexual disease has added to the controversy over its origins, Zuckerman says.

“In reality, it appears that venereal syphilis was the by-product of two different populations meeting and exchanging a pathogen,” she says. “It was an adaptive event, the natural selection of a disease, independent of morality or blame.”

A biopsy of Treponema pallidum spirochetes in tissue. In 2008, anthropologist Kristin Harper completed a comprehensive comparative genetic analysis of syphilis's family of bacteria. The results further supported the Columbus theory for its origins. Image credit: CDC/Dr. Edwin P. Ewing, Jr. (PHIL #836), 1986

Armelagos, a pioneer of the field of bioarchaeology, was one of the doubters decades ago, when he first heard the Columbus theory for syphilis. “I laughed at the idea that a small group of sailors brought back this disease that caused this major European epidemic,” he recalls.

While teaching at the University of Massachusetts, he and graduate student Brenda Baker decided to investigate the matter and got a shock: All of the available evidence at the time actually supported the Columbus theory. “It was a paradigm shift,” Armelagos says. The pair published their results in 1988.

In 2008, Harper and Armelagos published the most comprehensive comparative genetic analysis ever conducted on syphilis’s family of bacteria. The results again supported the hypothesis that syphilis, or some progenitor, came from the New World.

A confusion arises

About one-fourth of untreated syphilis patients progress to the tertiary stage of the disease, in which the bacterium damages the heart, eyes, brain, nervous system, liver, bones, joints — virtually any part of the body. Tertiary syphilis can cause muscle coordination problems, mental illness, blindness, heart disease — and, ultimately, death. Only patients who have progressed to the tertiary stage will exhibit the tell-tale skeletal changes — such as the thickening of the lower leg bones and cranial damage — and this is exactly what was observed for example by palaeopathologists in a skeleton at the Hull friary carbon-dated to the 14th century.

A series of 18th-century prints called "A Harlot's Progress" begins with innocent country girl Molly, left, arriving in London, where she is immediately procured by a madame. The lesions on the madame's face are the tell-tale signs of syphilis, which Molly tragically dies of in the last print of the series. Image: Wikimedia commons

These reports of pre-Columbian ( i.e. pre 1492–3)  skeletons showing the lesions of chronic syphilis kept cropping up in the Old World. For this latest appraisal of the skeletal evidence however, the researchers gathered all of the published reports.

They found that most of the skeletal material did not meet at least one of the standardized, diagnostic criteria for chronic syphilis, including pitting on the skull known as caries sicca and pitting and swelling of the long bones.

Radiocarbon dates may be in error

The few published cases that did meet the criteria tended to come from coastal regions where seafood was a big part of the diet. The so-called “marine reservoir effect,” caused by eating seafood which contains “old carbon” from up-welling, deep ocean waters, can throw off radiocarbon dating of a skeleton by hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Analysing the collagen levels of the skeletal material enabled the researchers to estimate the seafood consumption and factor that result into the radiocarbon dating.

“Once we adjusted for the marine signature, all of the skeletons that showed definite signs of treponemal disease appeared to be dated to after Columbus returned to Europe,” Harper says.

“The origin of syphilis is a fascinating, compelling question,” Zuckerman says. “The current evidence is pretty definitive, but we shouldn’t close the book and say we’re done with the subject. The great thing about science is constantly being able to understand things in a new light.”

More information:

• Harper, K. N., Zuckerman, M. K., Harper, M. L., Kingston, J. D. and Armelagos, G. J. (2011), The origin and antiquity of syphilis revisited: An Appraisal of Old World pre-Columbian evidence for treponemal infection. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 146: 99–133. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.21613
• R S Morton S Rashi,d, (2001)  “The syphilis enigma”: the riddle resolved? Sexually Transmitted Infections Vol 77  (Full text)
• Revisiting Syphilis in the Old World (Bones don’t lie – Katy Meyers 01-12-2011)

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