Smallpox - Statistics & FactsThroughout history, smallpox was one of the most devastating and widespread diseases known to humanity, and was responsible for an immeasurable number of fatalities. The earliest recorded cases took place in either Egypt or India over 5,000 years ago. Over the next five millennia, smallpox was endemic to Afro-Eurasia. The sixteenth century saw Europeans bring virgin soil pandemics to the Americas (i.e. they introduced new diseases to populations who were genetically defenceless), and historians estimate that the indigenous population fell to less than ten percent of its pre-colonization level by the late-1700s, with smallpox as the driving force behind this change.