(Washington Post via MSN) – From a 5,500-year-old human shin bone, scientists have discovered a close cousin of the pathogen that causes syphilis, providing the oldest evidence yet that the disease has ancient roots in the Americas, millennia before European contact.

A historical and scientific debate has raged about the origins of syphilis for hundreds of years, a geopolitical blame game intertwined with European colonialism, treatment of Indigenous people and stigma. Was the sexually transmitted disease that began to tear through Europe at the end of the 15th century brought back to the continent by Columbus, or was it already circulating in medieval Europe? (Read More)