Globalization and disease Eurasian diseases to the Americas was that many more native peoples were killed by disease and germs than by the colonists' use of guns or other weapons. Scholars estimate that over a period of four centuries, epidemic diseases wiped out as much as 90 percent of the American indigenous populations. In Europe during the age of exploration, diseases such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis (TB) had already been introduced centuries before through trade with Asia and Africa. People had developed some antibodies to these and other diseases from the Eurasian continent. When the Europeans traveled to new lands, they carried
Influx of disease in the Caribbean almost assured the likelihood that people in these areas would be exposed to the diseases. While the Africans were genetically protected, the Europeans were not. Many Europeans living in the new lands would contract the diseases and die. The resistance of Africans to these diseases, which allowed them to survive and work in infested areas where Europeans couldn't, ironically increased their usefulness there and caused increased slave trade. The introduction of these two diseases into the Caribbean changed the ethnic makeup of the area, and decimating the indigenous population. Influx of disease in the Caribbean The Atlantic slave trade brought