1532 wood from dying patients with plague
For the first time, Pathogenic agents’ DNA revealed a “turning point,” which occurred 6500 years ago, during which our biology and our society created a perfect storm that would forever change our evolutionary path.
Human beings have been infected with bacteria and viruses for at least 37,000 years. They can’t stop being.
Scientists at the University of Curtin, Australia, and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Evolutionary chronology of harmful microbes that infected ancient humans in Europe and Asia.
The study on Wednesday revealed this dramatic change in the risk of disease that coincided with the appearance of breeding animals.
The new study analyzed the old DNA of 279 samples of human remains, which cover a period of 37,000 years.
As you refer, dozens of pathogenic agents were identified – from old genetic fragments of bacteria, viruses and parasites – that infected our ancestors.
Many of these insects – belonging to 58 genres – were also identified as the ancestors of microbes that still represent a threat, including the Terminies, hepatitis B virus, salmonella and mycobacteria (tuberculosis).
This is where the Thursdays come in
Looking at the chronology of infectious diseases, there was an explosion of several pathogenic agents who jumped from animals to humans about 6500 years ago, reaching a peak about 1500 years later.
This coincided with the birth of agriculture and with the fact that humans live much closer to animals compared to the lifestyles of previous hunter-recolecting societies.
The domestication of animals such as cows, pigs, sheep and chickens created perfect conditions for zoonotic pathogenic agents (microbes originating from animals) pass to humans.
This was agricultural, as well as the most densely populated communities and bad sanitary conditions, made these zoonotic pathogenic agents evolving to be better transmitted among their new hosts, without the need to use animals as intermediaries.
And the large brains?
But there is another interesting factor that researchers address.
At this point, the beings Humans had developed much larger brains than their ancestors, which facilitated more complex societies and faster development.
However, it also left us more vulnerable to disease.
A niche for insects
After humans were exposed to many of the animal pathogenic agents in their environment, fewer “new” agents left to jump to us. The most successful became endemic, constantly circulating among populations of humans. In this process, they developed niche characteristics that made them specifically human insects – such as tuberculosis.
Thus, despite the current medical advances, humans continue to be exceptionally vulnerable to some of the most persistent diseases and mortals of the world, which is a byproduct of our biological and social evolution.
History that has affected us forever
“Our study represents a large -scale characterization of ancient pathogenic agents throughout Eurasia, providing clear evidence that identifiable zoonic pathogenic agents emerged about 6,500 years ago and were consistently detected after 6,000 years ago,” the researchers said by New Atlas.
This study presented the most complete image of how agriculture has changed human health forever, essentially establishing the conditions for infectious diseases that still torment us today.
So far, this “Turning Point” In the history of humanity – and the arm race between man and the pathogen agent – had not been fully understood or documented, which makes him a new and fascinating view of evolutionary processes and the interconnection between our species and other organisms.
“Our results demonstrate how the nascent field of Genomic Paleepidemiology can create a map of the spatial and temporal distribution of various human pathogenic agents throughout millennia,” the researchers concluded.
“Our current map shows clear evidence that lifestyle changes In the Holocene they led to an epidemiological transition, resulting in a higher incidence of zoonotic infectious diseases. This transition has profoundly affected human health and history throughout millennia and continues to affect today, ”they conclude.
