It's long been debated what started the 1789 smallpox outbreak that devastated the Indigenous population in Australia. Now, a new modeling study has the likely answer: It was brought in 1788 by the "First Fleet" of British ships to settle Australia.
The finding is based on mathematical modeling of the disease's impact on Indigenous Australians and rejects a contrary idea that the outbreak originated through contact with Indonesian islanders fishing in the far North of the country.
Alan Williams — an archaeologist at the private firm EMM Consulting and co-author of the study, published July 9 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour — told Live Science that the likely source of the outbreak were vials of dried smallpox scabs that British medics kept for inoculations (a precursor of smallpox vaccines, which weren't invented by Edward Jenner until the 1790s).
Some historians had argued that the live smallpox virus could not have survive...
English (US)