In 2014, I posted about hookworm and how they could be linked to the peopling of America. Today I came across an article published 37 years ago, that discusses the presence of intestinal parasites in Pre-Contact Amerindians and its implications.
The article is: A. Araújo, Ferreira L. Confalonieri U., and Chame M. (1988). Hookworms and the peopling of America, Saúde Pública 4 (2), June 1988 https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-311X1988000200006.
The fact that these parasites require warm climates for their life cycles makes it difficult for them to have crossed the Beringian land bridge into America during Glacial times with the freezing weather that prevailed at that time. This raises the question of how did they reach America?
The first explanations were that they came via Europe after the 1492 discovery of America, or from Africa with the slave trade into America, or, from Asia and Oceania with trade during the post-discovery period. However, when these parasites were found in ancient Pre-Columbian remains, so, these explanations had to be rejected.
Below, I quote the 1988 article's most substantial part on the ancient remains and their implications.
"But the discovery of the infection at 7230 ± 80 years in Brazil (Ferreira et al., 1987) is a new fact and two possibilities can be raised. First the transpacific contacts dates from before 7230 years BP (Before Present) and the paleoparasitological data indicates that archaeological research in the Pacific coast of South America may reveal more remote relations with Asiatic population than is known today. Second, if transatlantic migrations were responsible for the hookworm infection in South America, the neolithic people coming from Europe or North Africa introduced the parasite.
It is also to be noted that paleoparasitological data show that navigation technology had been known to man for more than 7230 years.
It is interesting to note that together with hookworm infection two other prehistoric helminth infections, found in human coprolites in America, support these hypothesis: Trichuris trichiura (Pizzi and Schenone, 1954; Ferreira et al., 1980; 1983; Reinhard et al., 1987), and Strongyloides stercoralis (Hall, 1972; Fry, 1980; Reinhard, 1985)."
7,000 years BP is well before Stonhenge or the Egyptian pyramids were bult. This is the Stone age. Did these people have watercraft and the knowhow to navigate them across the Pacific or the Atlantic Oceans? (see my post on the The North Atlantic Route into America).
Could the parasites have reached the New World during a warmer period in Beringia?
This does not seem feasible because the sea level only remained low enough to form a land bridge during the peak of an Ice Age (Glacial Maximums), and that means freezing temperatures in this polar region.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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