VOTD: "6 Mysterious Ancient Outbreaks"

"6 Mysterious Ancient Outbreaks"--SciShow (14 min.)

This video addresses some of the most recent discoveries concerning 6 of the deadliest outbreaks of disease, including the Black Plague and a couple about which you might not have heard. The first two are particularly interesting just from a propaganda standpoint. They are "the Great Dying" that wiped out much of the North American Indian population just prior to the Mayflower and the founding of the Plymouth Colony. The second is the 16th Century Cocoliztli Epidemic which was responsible for the depopulation of Mexico. Both of these epidemics have been blamed on European settlers bringing Old World diseases, and, at least when I was in school, were attributed to small pox. However, the narrator of this video explains that not only do scientists not know what disease caused these epidemics, but many think that they might have been diseases native to the Americas.