Ancient Mummy's Tooth Shows Scarlet Fever in Americas Before Columbus

European colonists are off the hook for this one 3:00 PM CDT on April 17, 2026 Share on X (formerly Twitter) When European explorers came to the New World they brought horses, cattle, guns, and loads of diseases. With no defense against them, Indigenous populations were ravaged by smallpox, cholera, measles, and other exotic illnesses endemic to Europeans. The same was thought to be true of scarlet fever, but according to new research published in Nature Communications, that no longer seems to be the case. Researchers from the Eurac Research Institute in Italy made the discovery while studying the genomes of Bolivian mummies, which are remarkably well-preserved due to the cool, dry air of the Andean highlands. Hidden within a tooth from a man who lived between 1283 and 1383, they found DNA from Streptococcus pyogenes, the bacterium that causes scarlet fever, indicating that it was circulating among Indigenous populations long before Columbus showed up. The DNA was so well-preserved that the researchers were able to reconstruct the bacterium’s entire genome from fragments. “You can think of it like putting together a puzzle without knowing the picture on the box,” study author Mohamed Sarhan said in a statement. Their analysis revealed that the bacterium was strikingly similar to modern strains and capable of causing disease, despite lacking some pathogenic genes. You've run out of free articles. Access unlimited ad-free stories, including this one, by subscribing now.