A new study published in the journal Nature provides compelling evidence that syphilis originated in the Americas and spread globally through European colonization. The study used ancient DNA to reconstruct five genomes from individuals who lived in Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico before or around the time of Christopher Columbus, finding that they are sister lineages to modern strains of the bacterium that causes syphilis. The findings support the theory that syphilis was brought to Europe from the Americas following Columbus' voyages. However, the debate about the origins of syphilis is unlikely to be settled completely by this study.