The plague may have caused the downfall of the Stone Age farmers

[Judi Lynn]

Date:
July 10, 2024
Source:
University of Copenhagen - The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences

Ancient DNA from bones and teeth hints at a role of the plague in Stone Age population collapse. Contrary to previous beliefs, the plague may have diminished Europe's populations long before the major plague outbreaks of the Middle Ages, new research shows.

In the 14th century Europe, the plague ravaged the population during the so-called 'Black Death,' claiming the lives of nearly a third of the population. But the plague arrived in Scandinavia several thousand years earlier, and despite several theories suggesting otherwise, the plague might have caused an epidemic, according to new research from the University of Copenhagen.

In collaboration with researchers from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, researchers from the Globe Institute, have analyzed DNA from ancient teeth and bones of 108 individuals who died 5,000 years ago.

"The analyses show that 18 of these individuals, 17 percent, were infected with the plague when they died. Furthermore, our results suggests that the youngest plague strain we identify might have had epidemic potential," says postdoc Frederik Seersholm, who led the DNA analysis.

This means that the plague at that time may have been a contributing factor to the population collapse in the end of the Neolithic, known as the Neolithic decline. This population bust caused large parts of the farming population in Scandinavia and Northwestern Europe to disappear within just a few centuries, 5000 years ago.

More:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/07/240710130812.htm

[RockRaven]

1. If one wishes to hear an interview with the researcher, he was on the

BBC World Service program "Science in Action" last week talking about this study. I listened to it as a podcast, but it is also available via web browser/site here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct5vcz

[et tu]

2. thank you judi and rock

for posting and the links.
very interesting!

[Warpy]

3. Not surprising. I't's long been known that health and life expectancy declined

as people settled into farming. On an individual bases, agriculture was a disaster. On a Darwinian basis, not so much, since a constant food supply allowed women to have more children.

There weren't just zoonotic diseases transferred from farm animals, the need to store grain also drew rodents who carried the fleas that carried plague. There was also no going back, once they'd started farming, they couldn't quit. They'd gotten too used to a steady supply of nutritionally dense foods.

[sybylla]

4. "They'd gotten to used to a steady supply of nutritionally dense foods." You mean...

Like not dying? Like having kids live and thrive until adulthood?

I assume you also know that before ag, gatherers still needed to store foods that would have attracted rodents.

I assume you also know about the neolithic/bronze age/iron age European method of storing grains in the ground in a way that would have prevented rodents access.

I assume you also know about how early Americans kept their gathered and harvested foods in containers stored in various ways to prevent animal intrusion.

It wasn't just farming that caused people to have to hide food from rodents and to store it for long-term use. Farming is what allowed people to have a more steady supply of food over the course of a year.

[Warpy]

5. Disease was rampant and dying in infancy was common

While hunter-gatherers also had high infant mortality, the adult remains showed them to be in much better overall health than their contemporaries who had turned to farming.

Farmers might eat more year round but the diet was also a lot more restricted

In addition, I don't think hunter-gatheres were as hungry as you seem to think since meat and fish would have been smoked and dried and grains harvested when patches of them were found, berries dried, and legumes harvested when they had dried out enough. All of those foodstuffs would have been light enough to transport via travois as the band moved to a place where they could winter over, often an aggregation site where other bands would assemble, also. In spring, when animals would start to move north, people would follow.

Both lifestyles were tough but both supplied adequate calories to continue. However, the skeletal remains tell the story of increased disease and overall poorer health and increased disease among farmers.

[sybylla]

6. A) Correlation is not causation.

First it's rodents carrying disease. Then it's a restricted diet, when that clearly wouldn't have been the case. I know of no farmers this century or centuries ago who would not have had a varied diet and found ways to preserve foods from all seasons. Since when would farmers not have had access to all the same things the hunter-gatherers did? Smoked fish? Smoked and live caught meats? Preserved and gathered berries, other fruits and veg?

B) the skeletal remains "studied" are not an inclusive subset of all cultures over all times. It's the few skeletons that actually survive and are preserved through a fluke of circumstances, often improved by larger societies made possible by the support of intentional cultivation of foodstuffs. It's not even as good a sample set as political polling right now and that's shite.

C) diseases, including childhood diseases have been around since before agriculture changed societies - which all happened at various times in different locations/continents.

D) animals bringing disease and sharing it with human communities is certainly a contributory factor to mortality and morbidity rates, but I sincerely doubt that a significant percentage of death from parasites, animal injuries, and contagion appeared by consuming a domesticated cow/sheep/horse/pig than those harvested from the wild in circumstances that were far more likely to result in the death of the hunter or hunters.

E) Neolithic, bronze age and iron age cultures lived in small groups, whether hunter-gathers, agriculture focused, or mixed sustenance cultures. The diseases they would have died from would not likely be the kind shared from person to person, but more likely from insect/animal to person or nutrition based. Sanitation is always an issue with fixed housing. Some Native American groups farmed in one season but kept their movements about the region as they had previously to harvest wild plants, seeds, berries, etc. I have no idea why anyone would assume that early ag development in Europe or other continents would have been different.

Agriculture didn't all of a sudden make people dumb. The old ways didn't die. It wasn't an either/or; it was a both/and. But I'm getting the sense that we'll have to agree to disagree.

[Warpy]

7. The data are in and when people turned to farming, their health tood a dive

It certainly wasn't a lack of exercise, farming is the hardest work out there.

Farming required a learning curve that took millennia to achieve.

And it made them sick and shortened their lives for a very long time.

[sybylla]

8. Because the data necessarily encompasses lives lived thousands of years ago...

...and so much data has been lost, the data set cannot be complete.

This reminds me when all the white European scientists said that New World populations could not have crossed before the last ice age. Now, a combination of new scientific analyses show they have been here for as long as 33,000 years.

Clearly, you and I are going nowhere. So have a nice life.

[Warpy]

9. Either people accept science or they don't

Have a nice day.