2024-03-26 03:07:20
Bacterial poisonings via food and water – but also via contact between two people, for example during a kiss – caused their share of suffering during the Stone Age. Diseases that today can be treated with antibiotics were then often fatal, concludes a new study published in Scientific Reports.
People living in close proximity to each other and not having access to antibiotics: it seems to sound like a nightmare. Despite everything, this is how humans have lived most of our history, as well as our prehistory. And with this in mind, researchers linked to the Center for Paleogenetics, in Stockholm, explored microbes and their effects during the Stone Age, on Scandinavian territory.
Two types of microbes are thus described, both the kinds of microbes one would expect to find in healthy people, but also several others that must have caused pain and medical problems.
So, Neisseria meningitidis spreads through contact between two humans, for example when kissing another person. Yersinia entrecoliticafor its part, is found in water and food, while Salmonella enterica is one of the widespread causes of food poisoning today.
“Particularly in the case of Salmonella enterica, this shows us how difficult things might be. When examining bodies buried according to a certain culture, we discovered two infected people, and it is possible that we observed the reason for their death,” emphasizes Nora Bergfeldt, from the department of zoology at Stockholm University, who is interested in bacterial diseases in prehistoric societies.
“Along with other bacterial diseases that we have found in our individuals, salmonella is easy to treat with antibiotics these days. But back then, it might be deadly. »
Examine 38 people for microbes
As part of the work, around forty individuals who worked in an agricultural field, but also people linked to hunting and gathering, were examined to find microbes in what remained of their remains. Remains ranging in age from 4,500 years in Sweden to 9,500 years in southern Norway were tested.
In microbes, including bacteria, as well as in certain viruses, the genetic material is organized according to a DNA structure, as is also the case in humans. This is why microbial DNA can be detected in the remains of infected humans.
So this is the type of microbial DNA that researchers have used to trace diseases dating back to the Stone Age in Scandinavia.
Moreover, they say, the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to that of agriculture is “particularly interesting”, since it can be detected based on bacterial diseases.
“We know when people started farming on a large scale in Scandinavia, but we don’t yet know what impact this may have had on people’s general health,” says Helena Malmström of Uppsala University, who focuses largely on lifestyle transitions during this period in history.
“The more people interacted with each other, the more likely they were to infect each other. But even though we encounter bacteria with the potential to impact societies, such as Yersinia pestis (which can lead to the plague, Editor’s note), it was the infections which spread via food which were the most widespread across the different lifestyles, within the framework of this study”, for his part mentioned Anders Götherström, the principal responsible for the study.
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