Recently I have noticed an high amount of attention towards Viking Explorers in North America around the year 1000.
The biological impact of various Euro groups in their first contacts with Indigenous Americans around 1500 and later is also well known. The explanation is considered to be a lack of natural immunity to diseases that had previous been contained to the Euro-Asian-African landmass, diseases that had been present on that landmass for thousands of years, diseases that had wreaked havoc on mankind long enough for some sort of natural immunity to develop.
Do we have any evidence the Vikings initiated any similar biological catastrophics when they first contacted America? Is there any scholarly discussion as to why various indigenous communities were still so sensitive to diseases like small pox and other infectious and lethal 'Old World' diseases, when they may have already encountered them a half century early?
Was 500 years not long enough to develop and significant immunity? Is Viking contact with indigenous groups exaggerated, or were the indigenous Americans groups the vikings encountered themselves isolated? What can of scholarly discussion existed on the subject?
Thank you so much in advance to any who may take the time to answer.
While there is always more to be said on the topic, the basic outline that I summarized before in Were any diseases brought to America by the Vikings? is still valid (though a recent scientific article published since my linked post (Ledger, Girdland-Fink & Forbes 2019) suggests that the Norse people might sometimes take a visit in L'Anse aux Mewdows in course of the 11th century).
In short, the degree of contact between the Norse people and the indigenous people must have been very limited (if any), so it is not so unnatural to suppose that the pathogens that the Norse people had had did not transmitted to the indigenous people if they really met in the 11th century and later.
Additional References:
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(Added): /u/anthropology_nerd also posted excellent answers to the following relevant question threads, from different point of view from mine: