The end of the third millennium BC was a troubled time in the Eastern Mediterranean. Social, political and economic changes followed one another. Invasions, revolts… Various crises that caused a sudden decrease in the population in the Ancient Kingdom of Egypt and in the Akkadian Empire during the Bronze Age.
The classic explanation is that this metamorphosis was linked to a combination of social and climatic factors. But a group of researchers from the Max Planck Institute affirms that there were two diseases that played a very important role in destabilizing these civilizations: Yersinis pestis and Salmonella enterica.
Plague bacteria have been involved in some of the most destructive historical pandemics of all time. Specialists believe that it circulated in Eurasia at least since the beginning of the third millennium BC. The problem is that, until now, the difficulties of preserving ancient DNA in hot climates have made identification impossible.
Archaeologists detected a strain of this infection in remains found at a site in the Hagios Charalambos cave on the island of Crete. "It is part of a now extinct lineage of Y. pestis from the late Neolithic and Bronze Age, a variant that was probably not yet adapted for transmission through fleas," they explain in an article published in the journal Current Biology.
But not only that. The specialists were also able to reconstruct two ancient genomes of Salmonella enterica, the causative agent of typhoid fever. "This variant is linked to contemporary strains that were probably not yet fully adapted to humans," they add.
“The appearance of these two virulent pathogens at the end of the early Minoan period on Crete (about 4,000 years ago) emphasizes the need for reintroducing infectious diseases as a factor to consider when analyzing the transformation of early complex societies. in the Aegean and beyond”, the researchers point out.
Their analysis is based on the teeth found inside the cave, remains belonging to various people who lived between 2290 and 1909 BC. Early studies detected typical bacteria found in the modern human mouth, one of which can cause cavities. But there was something else.
The findings of Yersinia pestis and Salmonella enterica suggest that an epidemic could have been responsible for population declines in one or more Bronze Age civilizations. Precisely, at that time it is documented that the Ancient Kingdom of Egypt and the Akkadian Empire were plunged into serious population crises.
This loss of human life led to major cultural changes, a drastic reduction in commercial transactions and also damage to the infrastructure of the different civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East.
The strain of Yersinia pestis they found, however, was not the same one that devastated much of Europe centuries later. That variant of the bacteria became extinct, as did the strain of Salmonella enterica they found. Therefore, it is not known how transmissible they were or how deadly.
