Ebola may have killed the Aztecs (2/23/2007)

The fall of the Aztecs has long become legendary: upon the arrival of the Spaniards in the early 16th century, European diseases carried by conquistadors obliterated a once-thriving Aztec population. The population plummeted from 22–25 million in 1519 to 2m in 1600.

It is generally accepted that smallpox and measles had killed 2–8m Aztecs by 1530. But what caused the major epidemics of 1545 and 1576 that killed another 9–19m people? Conventional accounts maintain that it was continued influx of these imported ailments, but research by a Mexican epidemiologist casts a shadow on these assumptions.

After more than a decade of research, Dr Rodolfo Acuña-Soto maintains that indigenous diseases – called cocoliztli and akin to the Ebola virus suffered by African populations – eradicated the Aztec population during a period of severe drought. He cites royal physician notes, in which Philip II's doctor wrote, "Blood flowed from the ears and in some cases truly gushed from the mouth." These symptoms are that of a haemorrhagic fever, he says, which couldn't have originated with the Spanish as they aren't easily passed from person to person. These types of filovirus are transmitted through close bodily contact and fluids and generally are not airborne. Dr Acuña-Soto believes this malady still lurks in small Mexican villages even today.

His hypothesis has its detractors – notably historian Elsa Malvido of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico. She argues that it was bubonic plague, spread by rats from Spanish ships, that killed off the population, and points to the heightened vulnerability of the Aztec immune system as to why the plague caused such massive loss of life.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by the Wellcome Trust

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