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Friday, July 4, 2014
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A parasitic egg
was discovered by archeologists in Northern Syria, near the pelvis of a
child’s skeleton. They say the skeleton dates back to when the ancient
societies started growing crops using irrigation systems. Farming with
irrigation means farmers spent most of their time on the farms, wading
in warm water. These are ideal conditions for these parasites to get
into the human body. They may also have triggered outbreaks of
schistosomiasis, a water-borne flatworm disease.
A Near Eastern Archeology professor at University of Chicago, Gil Stein in an email said that, “the
invention of irrigation was a major technological breakthrough (but) it
had unintended consequences. A more reliable food supply came at the
cost of more disease.”
As people wade through the warm fresh
water, the flatworm parasite enters their skin: snails carry the worms
and they easily burrow into a human’s skin. When they grow into adult
form, the worms live in the kidneys, bladder, intestines and any other
place in the body for many years. Symptoms caused by these parasites
include rashes, fever, vomiting, abdominal pain, and leg paralysis. The
disease can, however, be treated easily today using drugs that kill the
worms.
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| A skeleton in a grave in northern Syria in 2010 by Gil Stein/Oriental Institute, University of Chicago(taken from www.nationalpost.com) |
Evidence of
barley and wheat farming was found in the town where the skeletons were
found, according to Stein. Irrigation of these crops could have spurred
other diseases like malaria, due to the pools of stagnant water that are
good mosquito breeding grounds.
Another study author, Piers
Mitchell, said that the global transmission of these flatworm parasites
could have been inadvertently launched by ancient farming societies.
These worms now cause sicknesses to many people every year. In
developing countries, modern methods of farming are still helping spread
diseases. “In many parts of Africa, someone clever decides to put in
a dam or an artificial water source and then 10 years later, everyone’s
getting schistosomiasis,” she said.
This research is available in the journal of Lancet Infectious Diseases online.
Other experts
agree that irrigation could have been what helped spread the parasitic
diseases from the beginning, in ancient times. Quentin Bickle, was one
of them. He is a parasite expert at the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine. "Egypt along the Nile was a hotspot for
generations because people were crammed into the flood plain and there
were probably a lot of people who had low-level (flatworm) infections
for their entire lives. People would have known there was something
weird going on but they wouldn't have known what to do”
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