Ancient Skeletons Challenge Syphilis Origin Theories
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- Dr. Melandri Vlok of Charles Sturt University led an international team that analyzed 309 individuals from 16 archaeological sites across Vietnam, spanning 10,000 to 1,000 years before present, publishing in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.
- Three young children from prehistoric Vietnam displayed distinctive dental abnormalities and skeletal lesions dating back at least 3,500 years — diagnostic signs of congenital treponematosis — with two of them recovered from the Man Bac site in northern Vietnam.
- The study found that congenital transmission occurred in a population whose overall age-distribution pattern pointed toward non-venereal yaws rather than venereal syphilis, challenging the decades-old assumption that congenital infection in ancient remains is strong evidence of venereal syphilis.
- The findings complicate the long-running Columbus-origin debate: some archaeological cases previously labeled congenital syphilis may instead represent entirely different treponemal diseases, and no confirmed genetic evidence of pre-Columbian venereal syphilis has yet been identified inside or outside the Americas.
- Co-lead Ms. Minh Tran of the University of the Philippines Diliman highlighted that ancient DNA preservation in tropical Southeast Asia is extremely difficult and that destructive sampling raises serious ethical questions requiring partnership with descendant communities.
- Dr. Vlok noted that yaws still affects more than 150,000 people in tropical regions and is re-emerging due to the climate crisis, arguing that understanding how treponemal diseases evolved alongside human populations matters for contemporary public health.
Why it matters: Researchers have leaned on congenital-infection evidence in skeletons for decades to argue syphilis existed outside the Americas before Columbus. This Vietnamese dataset, with three pediatric cases embedded in a population showing non-venereal disease patterns, shows that shortcut was unreliable — meaning some old claims about pre-Columbian syphilis may need to be re-examined without that anchor.
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