Pathogens Detected in Bronze Age Remains in Greece

Archaeology mag news page ^ | Friday, August 12, 2022 | editors / unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

JENA, GERMANY—Phys.org reports that a study of genetic material recovered from the teeth of people buried in the Hagios Charalambos cave on the Greek island of Crete between about 2290 and 1909 B.C. detected the presence of extinct strains of two pathogens. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the British School at Athens, and Temple University suggest that epidemics brought about by Y. pestis, which causes plague, and S. enterica, which causes typhoid fever, could have contributed to the collapse of Egypt’s Old Kingdom and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia. It had been previously suggested that climate change may have triggered these Bronze Age population declines. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Current Biology. To read about DNA sequencing of Y. pestis recovered from two skeletons in southwestern Russia, go to "Bronze Age Plague," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2018.

[SunkenCiv]

• Evidence of pathogens in ancient DNA could help explain the fall of two civilizations [Phys.org]
• Ancient Yersinia pestis and Salmonella enterica genomes from Bronze Age Crete [Current Biology]
• Bronze Age Plague [Archaeology, 2018]

[SunkenCiv]

Ooh, I kinda like how that worked out / looked when I got done.

https://www.archaeology.org/news

https://www.archaeologica.org/news

[SunkenCiv]

One of *those* topics.

---

join or quit view topics view or post blog bookmark post new topic subscribe

---

[SunkenCiv]

[stars & stripes forever]

How long until there is a comeback of ancient pathogens?

[GingisK]

What will future archeologists make of our junk? I feel certain that when they find caskets with men wearing neck ties that they will conclude we wiped ourselves out in some strange religious ceremony that involved mass strangulation.

[bondjamesbond]

We should get this to the Cuban Institute for Virology immediately so they can start messing with it.

[bondjamesbond]

Wuhan not Cuban. I hate Woke Spellcheck.

[Verginius Rufus]

The book The Motel of the Mysteries has future archaeologists trying to make sense of a 20th-century American motel.

[GeorgianaCavendish]

The bronze age collapse may be one of my most favorite historical topics

[GingisK]

Thank you, went for it on Amazon.

[SunkenCiv]

It could happen, but more likely will not, due to mutation rates and gene swappin’ with hosts.

[SunkenCiv]

https://freerepublic.com/tag/bronzeage/index

[SunkenCiv]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body

[SunkenCiv]

Glad you said that, I was a few minutes away from searching for some new revelation about Fauci’s dealing with the Cubans.

[SunkenCiv]

• Black Death origin mystery solved after 675 years, researchers say [06/15/2022]
• How the black rat colonized Europe in the Roman and Medieval periods [05/07/2022]

  ---

• A 5,000-year-old hunter-gatherer already plagued by Yersinia pestis (Yersinia pestis is discovered in a 5,000-year-old hunter-gatherer from Latvia) [06/30/2021]
• How did the plague reshape Bronze Age Europe? [05/20/2020]
• Origins Of The Black Death Traced Back To China, Gene Sequencing Has Revealed; A Plague That Killed Over a Third of Europe's Population [02/27/2020]
• Plague in humans 'twice as old' but didn't begin as flea-borne, ancient DNA reveals [07/28/2019]
• Did a new form of plague destroy Europe's Stone Age societies? [06/13/2019]
• Oldest Bubonic Plague Genome Decoded [06/11/2018]
• Black Death may have been lurking for centuries: DNA of plague victims in France backs up theory... [01/23/2016]
• In Ancient DNA, Evidence of Plague Much Earlier Than Previously Known [11/06/2015]
• Plague Infected Humans Much Earlier Than Previously Thought [10/24/2015]
• Is Ebola the Same Virus as the Black Death? Historical Similarities are Striking [10/14/2014]
• Study of ancient and modern plagues finds common features [11/21/2008]
• Plague Victims Discovered After 1500 Years (Justinian) [04/10/2008]
• Bubonic Plague Traced To Ancient Egypt (Black Death) [03/11/2004]

[GingisK]

The “bog bodies” was a great article. It is wonderful to have that sort of glimpse of ancient people. Thank you!!

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

**The book The Motel of the Mysteries**

I remember reading that over fifty years ago!

[SunkenCiv]

:^) Human sacrifice in a bog — that’s what happens when the people don’t drain the swamp.

[GingisK]

That has to be true. We have work to do. We really shouldn’t bestow Pelosi on future generations. The dust-to-dust clause needs to be enforced with her.