Bacterial poisoning via food and water – but also via contact such as kisses – caused a lot of suffering during the Stone Age. Diseases that today can be treated with antibiotics were then fatal, a new study shows.
Living With Disease in the Stone Age
People living close together and not having access to antibiotics sound like a nightmare. Yet, this is how we spent much of our history and prehistory. A new international study coordinated from the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm explores microbes during the Stone Age in Scandinavia.
Different types of microbes are described, both the kind of microbes which are expected in a healthy person, but also several that must have caused pain and problems: Neisseria meningitidis that spreads through close contact between humans – for example when kissing, Yersinia entrecolitica that is often picked up from contaminated food and water, and Salmonella enterica that is a common cause of today’s food poisonings.
Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph showing Salmonella Typhimurium (red) invading cultured human cells. (Public Domain)
“Especially the case of Salmonella enterica shows us how difficult it could be. In a Battle Axe culture burial, Bergsgraven in Linköping, we find two infected individuals, and it is actually possible that we are witnessing their cause of death,” says Nora Bergfeldt at the Department of Zoology, Stockholm University who is conducting her research on bacterial diseases in prehistoric societies.
“This, and…
