Did Salmonella Cause the Aztec Society to Collapse? Kristine Moore - The Inquisitr
go to original February 23, 2017

Scientists propose that S. Paratyphi C contributed to the population decline during the 1545 cocoliztli outbreak in Mexico (Pinterest)

Aztec society perished for a number of reasons, but new evidence is now pointing to a deadly outbreak of salmonella as very possibly being the main culprit responsible for the demise of the Aztecs. In 1519, Spanish forces arrived in Mexico, and the Aztec population was then estimated to be at 25 million. In the century that followed, Aztec society had dwindled to just 1 million people.

Scientists have now put forward fresh evidence from the DNA of a bacterial species, suggesting that a deadly salmonella outbreak may have been responsible for the death of Aztec society.

Science Alert reports that after the Spanish arrived in Mexico, there were a number of forces at play that would have affected the Aztecs. One of these includes the fact that Spaniards brought with them a number of European diseases, which caused outbreaks in the native population and which the Aztecs would not have built up a resistance to. The worst out of all of these outbreaks was called cocoliztli, which is from the word “pestilence” in Nahuatl, the Aztec language.

Scientists working at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany described in a paper how cocoliztli was responsible for wiping out 80 percent of the Aztec population between the years 1545 and 1550.

Previously, scientists have attributed what was called cocoliztli to a variety of different diseases, including smallpox, measles, or typhus. In 2002, one paper noted that it may have even been a viral haemorrhagic fever. This, combined with a severe drought, was said to have been another possible reason that the Aztecs disappeared. But up until now, there has been no solid DNA evidence to concretely prove any hypothesis.

To show that salmonella may have actually been responsible for killing off 80 percent of the Aztec population, scientists from Max Planck chose to examine a burial ground out in the Oaxacan highlands of Mexico. They used this burial site to painstakingly extract the DNA contained in the teeth of 29 people who were buried here, with 24 out of the 29 people buried having died from the cocoliztli epidemic.

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