Today Jessica Saraceni treated Archaeology readers to syphilis (and yaws)... to Charlotte Hartley's article thereabouts, that is. Itself referring to VeneraVerena Schuenemann. Who might have got it from Agnes.
The bacterium in question is the Treponema - rather, bacteria-plural. The ladies inform us that this bug has strains: some we know, some that may have caused some disease nobody remembers for its own symptoms. These fifteenth-century strains are (now) found together in the deepest Baltic - Finland/Estonia - as well as in the Habsburg Netherlands where we'd expect it. They suggest it was a Lithuanian disease - perhaps brought to Riga, Danzig, Koenigsburg, and Memel upon the German encroachments into Old Prussia.
These instances of the bacteria remind me of what they found of TB over at Lund a couple centuries later. The late 1400s was an age of exploration, of lands and of women. Old Prussia is, yes, possible. But the Portuguese were also probing Africa. Even for the Americas, Columbus' maiden voyage is just the first we know about. I don't think it be idle nationalism that the Portuguese had made some quiet explorations southwest beforehand.
Given how yaws is tropical, I don't see its origins in Lithuania. It follows that I doubt the rest of 'em here, as well. I'd narrow the Treponema origin to Kongo or Amazon. The Portuguese did the rest, either way.
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