The Stone Age was a tough time to be alive. On top of dealing with ferocious predators, unforgiving weather, and the constant struggle for food, there was the ever-present deadly threat of bacterial poisoning from food, tainted water, and – oddly enough – kissing.
In a new study, scientists at Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History looked at the pathogenic microbes that were swirling around in Stone Age Scandinavia. They did this by analyzing the microbiome of 38 individuals, some from ancient hunter-gatherer communities and others from Neolithic farming settlements.
In total, they identified 660 microbial species. Some of the most prolific were Yersinia enterocolitica and Salmonella enterica, two bacteria commonly associated with food poisoning from undercooked meat or food contaminated with feces.
Food poisoning is often seen today as a short-lived (albeit deeply unpleasant) illness, but it still kills around 3,000 people in the US each year. During the Stone Age, millennia before antibiotics and modern medicine, it would have been even more troublesome.
“The case of Salmonella enterica in particular shows how difficult it can be. In a grave from the battle ax culture, the so-called Bergsgraven in Linköping, we found two infected individuals, which may have actually been the cause of death. Salmonella enterica and other bacterial diseases that we have found in the individuals are easy to treat with antibiotics today, but then they could be fatal,” said study author Nora Bergfeldt, of the Department of Zoology at Stockholm University, in a statement.
Another common bug found among the samples was Neisseria meningitidis, the bacterial species responsible for meningococcal disease. Around 10 percent of the population have these bacteria living harmlessly in their throat and nasal cavity.
However, it can make some people, such as those with a weak immune system, very sick. In 2022, a deadly outbreak of meningococcal disease caused by Neisseria meningitidis swept through a cluster of gay and bisexual men living in Florida.
It’s spread by close contact with people who carry the bacteria. This can involve simply living in the same house as someone with the infection, although it is closely linked to direct contact with an infected person’s oral secretions, aka smooching.
One of the ancient individuals in the study was also found to be infected with Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes the plague. While you might assume the plague was the most significant peril to Stone Age Scandinavians, the researchers found that the foodborne illnesses were much more common – and, therefore, perhaps more problematic.
“The more people who interacted, the more opportunities to infect each other. But even if we come across bacteria with the potential to affect societies such as Yersinia pestis, it is the infections spread through the food that are most prominent in this study,” explained Anders Götherström, another of the study’s authors and professor of molecular archaeology at Stockholm University.
Meningococcal disease wasn’t the only “kissing disease” that humans were spreading around in the ancient past. Thousands of years later in ancient Mesopotamia, written sources show kissing was part of intimate social life around 4,500 years ago. With all this snogging, we see the emergence of herpes simplex virus 1 – the pesky virus that causes cold sores – which now infects around 3.7 billion people, 67 percent of the world population.
The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Source Link: In The Stone Age, Even Kissing Could Be A Dangerous Business
