Ancient bones from Jericho to be used for tuberculosis cure: We are moving beyond Jurassic Park
Now, this truly is a fascinating story on so many levels:
Ancient bones from the city of Jericho are to be used by British scientists to develop treatments for tuberculosis. The project is part of a new scientific discipline in which archaeologists and medical researchers are cooperating to gain insights into modern ailments.
Other diseases being tackled this way include syphilis, malaria, arthritis and influenza. Ancient history holds vital clues in seeking out treatments for modern diseases. The team, which also includes Israeli, Palestinian and German researchers, will be following up pioneering work by British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon. In the Fifties she made a series of important digs at Jericho and found bones from thousands of humans, some dating back 8,000 years. When these bones were examined, it was discovered many had lesions, indicating that the city’s men and women had suffered from tuberculosis. The walls of Jericho may have come down, not with a trumpet blast, but with epidemic of coughing, it seems.
Now Spigelman and his team have begun studying DNA from these remains in order to identify genes that might have helped to make the people of Jericho susceptible or resistant to tuberculosis, and so help in the development of more effective treatments for the disease.
Okay, first the conceit: That the walls of Jericho came down ‘not with a trumpet blast, but with an epidemic of coughing.’ It’s an entertaining image but most probably incorrect. Never mind whether you believe the Biblical story or not, a tuberculosis epidemic would, in itself, simply not be enough to destroy a big city totally. Look at the series of outbreaks of the Bubonic plague in Europe. This from medievalhistory.suite101.com:
The progress of the disease was lightning quick, and the death toll was nothing short of disastrous. As living conditions were unsanitary and the bodies of the dead were piled high in the streets, the infection continued to spread. Genoan ships that carried infected sailors brought the disease to Italy through port cities and fishing villages, and soon Venice and Florence were overrun by the plague. France was not spared either. Marseilles, Avignon and Paris suffered huge casualties and by 1348 plague-bearing vessels had entered Weymouth in the United Kingdom. A few months later, and with frightening speed, the disease claimed 100,000 lives in London alone.
That’s a lot of lives lost in an incredibly short time – and yet, London is still standing. Hell, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki got hit with atom bombs and they are still there. When a city has been around for a long time and has grown to a certain size, it becomes incredibly hard to destroy totally. So, it’s extremely unlikely an outbreak of tuberculosis would be able to do so, however epidemic it was.
Anyway, back to the real story – and, in another aside, isn’t it good to hear how this research team also included Israeli, Palestinian and German experts? When you read the papers and watch the news day by dreary, soul-destroying day, it’s easy to forget that behind all those glaring headlines, life does go on – including scientific studies, where Palestinians and Jews (and Germans) can work peacefully together, at times even for the good of all of mankind.
It’s amazing though, don’t you think, the way science has evolved: That we now can study some ancient bones from renowned, Biblical places and may be able to use these observations to cure present and future diseases. Strangely enough, to me at least, this is almost a humbling fact – that we have developed our scientific theories and technology over these many centuries, to such a degree, that we now are able to look this closely at the past, so that we can explore the ways in which we are bound to these ruins and graveyards, in order to find the answers we need in the presence.
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July 14th, 2008 at 14:45
There are no British researchers involved in this project. Please refer to the press release below:
News Release
________________________________________________________
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ??????????? ?????? ????????___
Excavated Jericho Bones May Help
Israeli-Palestinian-German Team Combat Tuberculosis
Jerusalem, July 14, 2008 – Six-thousand year old bones excavated in Jericho may help a joint Israeli-Palestinian-German research group combat tuberculosis.
According to Prof. Mark Spigelman of the Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is leading the Israeli team, the bones, which were all excavated by Dr. Kathleen Kenyon between fifty and seventy years ago, will be tested for tuberculosis, leprosy, leishmania and malaria. However, the primary focus will be tuberculosis.
Spigelman is known for his pioneering studies of ancient diseases (palaeoepidemiology) found on mummified bodies and human remains from Hungary and Korea to Sudan, in his quest to provide answers to the development of diseases affecting us today, such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and malaria.
‘TB still the biggest killer’
Tuberculosis - or TB - is a deadly infectious bacterial disease that usually attacks the lungs. Acknowledged as a disease of crowds, it is transmitted from human to human living in close contact.
Dating back thousands of years, tuberculosis was well known in antiquity. However, according to Spigelman, it is still the biggest killer even today. One-third of the world’s current population has been infected by tuberculosis, resulting, in recent years, in approximately three million deaths per year.
Why Jericho?
While the origins of tuberculosis and its evolution remain unclear, it is thought it came from the first villages and small towns in the Fertile Crescent region about 9-10,000 years ago. Jericho is one of the earliest towns on earth, dating back to 9,000 B.C., and so a lot of communicable - or town - diseases would have had a good start in this community.
By examining human and animal bones from this site, the researchers will be able to see how the first people living in a crowded situation developed the diseases of crowds and how this affected the disease through changes in DNA – of both the microbes and the people.
The most significant results of this research will come from a comparison between those data for humans and corresponding animal remains which may allow the identification of animal-human vectors and their interaction.
How can this research help us today?
Preliminary work suggests that there is sufficient DNA in the bone samples to make a contribution to our understanding of the origin and development of microbial disease which could provide crucial information in the evolution of tuberculosis.
Spigelman believes that knowing how a disease developed 6,000 years ago helps us understand what it will do as it continues to evolve, and will ultimately alter the practice of public health officials in combating it.
Where were the bones until now?
Spigelman came across the long-forgotten bones while examining mummies at Sydney University’s Nicholson Museum.
“They told me they had lots of boxes of bones and didn’t know what they were because they’d been deposited there fifty years earlier by an anthropologist who’d worked with Dr. Kathleen Kenyon who’d been excavating at Jericho. When I examined them, I recognized that these were the bones from Jericho, and I told them not throw them out!”
Some of the bones, which were then brought to Israel by Spigelman while on a Sir Zelman Cowan Fund fellowship, will be studied along with other bones from Jericho that have been contributed by the Duckworth Collection at Cambridge University who have agreed to participate in the project.
Israeli-Palestinian-German cooperation
The research, which is being sponsored by a grant from the German Science Foundation, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), will be conducted by the Hebrew University, Al Quds University and the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich. In Israel, Ph.D. and master’s students from both Al-Quds and the Hebrew Universities will devote their time exclusively to this project.
According to Spigelman, the project will also help the Palestinians develop the technology and set up their own ancient DNA lab at Al Quds University.
This is one of eleven trilateral research projects at the Hebrew University involving Palestinian, Israeli and German cooperation.
Internet site: http://media.huji.ac.il
July 16th, 2008 at 04:36
Wow, thanks for the comment! (Sorry I spotted it so late…)
J.
July 23rd, 2008 at 23:15
german, jew and palestinian scientists work together