Thousands of years ago, across the Eastern Mediterranean, multiple Bronze Age civilizations took a distinct turn for the worse at around the same time.
– in two others. This discovery suggests that both pathogens were present and possibly transmissible in Bronze Age Crete.But there's a caveat. Each of the lineages discovered is now extinct, making it harder to determine just how their infections might have affected communities.they uncovered probably couldn't be transmitted through fleas – one of the traits that made other lineages of the bacterium so contagious in human populations.
The flea vector carries the bubonic version of the plague; humans become infected when the bacterium enters the lymphatic system via a flea bite. Therefore, the transmission route of this ancient form of the bacterium could be different and cause a different form of plague; pneumonic plague, which is transmitted via aerosols, for example.lineages also lacked key traits that contribute to severe disease in humans, so the virulence and transmission routes of both pathogens remain unknown.
Nevertheless, the discovery suggests that both pathogens were circulating; in regions of Crete with high population densities, they could have run somewhat rampant.
Because diseases like plague and typhoid do not leave traces on bones, they are not frequently noticed in the archaeological record. The team suggests that more detailed genetic screening of more remains from the Eastern Mediterranean could help uncover the extent of the impact these diseases had on the civilizations who lived there.
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