USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Smallpox contributed to the decline of the Aztec Empire, in what is now Mexico, following the virus’s arrival with Spanish conquerors in 1519. More than three million Aztec succumbed to the disease. Severely weakened, the Aztec were easily defeated.

Detailed explanation-2: -Smallpox took its toll on the Aztecs in several ways. First, it killed many of its victims outright, particularly infants and young children.

Detailed explanation-3: -The most devastating epidemics – called cocoliztli – have been blamed variously on measles, smallpox and typhus. Recent analysis of DNA from the teeth of people buried during a cocoliztli suggests that Salmonella enterica may have been partly to blame.

Detailed explanation-4: -Within five years as many as 15 million people – an estimated 80% of the population – were wiped out in an epidemic the locals named “cocoliztli”.

Detailed explanation-5: -The introduction of smallpox among the Aztecs has been attributed to an African slave (by the name of Francisco Eguía, according to one account) but this has been disputed. From May to September, smallpox spread slowly to Tepeaca and Tlaxcala, and to Tenochtitlán by the fall of 1520.