SYPHILIS WASN’T BROUGHT BY COLUMBUS: A 5,500-Year-Old Skeleton Reveals the Deep Origins of Syphilis. Instead, the traditional belief that it was taken to Europe from the Americas seems correct: “A newly reconstructed genome from the bacterium responsible for syphilis, Treponema pallidum, is providing new clues about the long history of treponemal diseases in the Americas. The research is based on a 5,500-year-old specimen discovered in Colombia. The results indicate that the origins of syphilis were not tied to the rise of agriculture or the crowded living conditions that often accelerate the spread of infectious diseases. Instead, the pathogen appears to have emerged within the environmental and social settings typical of hunter-gatherer communities.”