Neue Modelle deuten stark darauf hin, dass die erste Pockenepidemie unter australischen Ureinwohnern vom britischen Außenposten in Sydney ausging und möglicherweise bis zu 220.000 Aborigines getötet hat

Hi r/science – flagging that the contents of this research are confronting and may cause distress.

The above study that our researchers contributed to has been published in Nature Human Behaviour and can be accessed here: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02504-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02504-6)

The study used modelling of smallpox transmission and the connections between Indigenous societies to understand how the first outbreak among Indigenous Australians originated and how much of an impact it had on the Indigenous population.

In April 1789, the first smallpox epidemic among Aboriginal people in Sydney began 16 months after Europeans arrived on the First Fleet. Some historians have sometimes argued it was not caused by the newcomers.

The results of this study strongly suggest the disease did come from the British outpost and that it might have spread thousands of kilometres north and west, lasting decades and killing as many as 220,000 Aboriginal people.

Dr Karl did a good piece on this

https://www.abc.net.au/radio/archived-programs/greatmomentsinscience/sydney-smallpox-epidemic/13792766