Could an ancient children's burial ground contain clues about how one of the world's greatest empires came to an end? Andrew Thompson explores the theory that malaria was the silent killer responsible for the fall of Rome. Today in the west, most people have forgotten how deadly malaria used to be, although there were serious malarial epidemics in many parts of Italy as recently as the 1950s. But each year, mainly in Africa, it still kills over two million people, most of them children. While there are several mentions of a disease sounding very similar to malaria in historical documents...
