Health conditions before Columbus: paleopathology of native North Americans

Abstract

Information about the health status of the earliest inhabitants of North America provides a chronology of health problems that spans more than a thousand years. Studies of disease in ancient times add an important dimension to our understanding of the life struggles of a largely unknown past. In this article, we provide a brief overview of health conditions and quality of life in North America before contact and colonization. Data on health in ancient societies are inferred from the analysis of a wide range of archaeologic materials, but human bones and teeth form by far the largest body of evidence. For several regions in the United States, there are health chronologies spanning hundreds of years. For example, Walker, using a multimethod approach involving the analysis of skeletal lesions and detailed reconstruction of the environment, demonstrated that Indians of southern California who lived in marginal island environments (about 800 BC to AD 1150) showed greater evidence of health problems than those who lived on the mainland, where food was more abundant and diverse.1 He also showed increased rates of infectious diseases over time. There has been a shift toward conducting population-level analyses that shed light on epidemiologic characteristics of the health of ancient societies by providing frequencies and patterning of disease within and between populations.2 Much of the recent paleopathology literature emphasizes temporal and spatial variability in patterns of disease and the shift in many parts of North America at different times from an economy based on gathering and hunting to agriculture. Although not all groups in North America adopted full-blown maize agriculture, many did, and it has been the focus of intense debate.2 The study of North American archaeologic remains has been under protest by native groups because historically they have had little say over the excavation and curatorship of their ancestors' remains.3 These protests led to legislation passed in 1990 entitled the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (US Public Law 101-601). This law ensures that Native Americans have the final say regarding the nature of studies that rely on ancestral and historic human remains. In many ways, this legislation has redefined the nature of archaeologic research in the United States and has opened new venues of study as Native Americans and anthropologists have begun working together to reconstruct the past.4