Syphilis originated as a mutated strain of yaws on the Colorado Plateau around the time of Jesus. It spread across Americas & Caribbean in next 1500 years before Columbus’ crew brought it to Europe. 
A lot of prehistoric Amerindian contacts could be figured out by coming up with a good historical syphilis phylogeny.
As of 2016 only 10 syphilis genomes had been published: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27498082/
Decline in promiscuity (particularly among gay men) in 1980s led to medium term decline in syphilis rates, apparently reversed by Grindr in mid-2010s. Sequencing syphilis DNA was very difficult until last few years. nature.com/articles/s4146…
Currently two main strains of syphilis - the more diverse Nichols strain found almost exclusively in N America, & the relatively homogeneous SS14 strain that comprises over 90% of syphilis cases outside of N America.
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