Читать книгу The Skull of Quadruped and Bipedal Vertebrates - Djillali Hadjouis - Страница 18

Since the Paleolithic, mosquitoes and animals have been in contact with humans through which the majority of infectious or parasitic agents have had as breeding grounds different species, whose great contamination revealed its first symptoms during the Neolithic period.

Some of these infectious diseases, especially those of epidemic origin such as the plague (Yersinia pestis) or parasitic diseases such as malaria (Plasmodium falciparum), are systematically researched by laboratory teams, and particularly the skeletons that are part of the burial complexes that are currently being excavated. Because zoonoses (diseases transmitted by animals), vectors of parasitic illnesses developed after the sedentarization and breeding of animals since Neolithic times, are becoming more and more significant by promoting the emergence of pathologies carried by domesticated species: mange, roundworms, ringworm in dogs, bovine tuberculosis, measles, chickenpox, distomatosis in cattle, Malta fever, small fluke in goats and sheep, tapeworm in pigs, influenza in migratory birds and plague in rodents (Biraben 1995). While the epidemic spread has occupied these territories for several centuries, we must not neglect thalassemia, also known in this same Mediterranean region, particularly in Greece since the Bronze Age. For Biraben (1976), the existence of the plague before its penetration into Europe can be traced back to the 2nd century BCE. Its traces were found in the Mediterranean all along the route corresponding to the late Phoenician expansion, and also to the Roman conquest. The example of tuberculosis is well known in Egypt through DNA, radiography and macroscopy, while elsewhere it remains unknown as for other infections, because it is not systematically researched due to the lack of adequate programs.