Smallpox DNA is recovered from Spanish conquest-era Chilean mummies

When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World some five centuries ago, they brought muskets, cannons, armor, horses and attack dogs as they set about colonizing the Americas. But the biggest blow they delivered came from something else entirely — smallpox and other infectious diseases that ravaged indigenous populations.

Researchers now have obtained the first direct molecular evidence of the smallpox unwittingly carried from the Old World to the New World that wiped out untold millions...