JC> JK> As far as the Pacific Northwest is concerned, the Spanish got here
  > JK> first and introduced both syphillis and smallpox.
Actually, there is no real agreement about where syphillis came from.
I've heard well reasoned arguements that it came from the Indians.  But
there doesnt' seem to have been a lot of evidence of the Indians having
had it before the Europeans came over; and most Indian groups say the
white man brought it (and some historians say that, too).  I'm inclined
to think that the Europeans brought it over after contacting it in
eastern Asia in the late 1400s and early 1500s; and that it began to
spread through both Europe and the Americas at the same time.  That is,
however, strictly *my* thought on the subject, and I have read *no*
historians at all who even talk about that as a possibility.  All of
*them* see it as either a European *or* an American Indian disease.
JC> Uh, as North American Prehistory Anthropology and Archaeology is my Minor
  > in college, perhaps you can give me your sources for the Vikings being
  > much more than a few miles inland from any Eastern coastline?
JC> I don't mean to sound "nitpicky" or accusatory, but there is a LOT of 
hat
  > I will call "trash" regarding the reality of Ancient America. (People 
ike
  > Von Daniken, Hancock, Velikovsky, etc., for instance). But, I'm always
  > looking for more information from reliable sources.
Many of them are folks who believe that all creative and intelligent
things come from the Europeans and the Egyptians; and therefore use all
examples of intelligence and creativity among the Indians as proof they
had been influenced by Whites.
Actually, I've always thought that the fact that there were pyramids in
Egypt was proof that the American Indians had been trading with them;
and had taught the Egyptians how to build the pyramids.  (g)  And the
fact that they had fire in Europe:  it's because some very early
Cherokees sailed across the ocean, and taught some folks in the eastern
world how to build a fire.
                       Sondra
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 þ SLMR 2.1a þ I don't suffer from insanity.  I love it!
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