Feb. 28, 2025

Unwrapping the Past: What Mummies Reveal About Disease Through the Ages

Unwrapping the Past: What Mummies Reveal About Disease Through the Ages
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Season 2

Unravel the intricate stories behind ancient mummies and their connection to various pathogens in our latest podcast episode of this season. This engaging discussion leads listeners through a fascinating exploration of how the health of past civilizations reveals untold secrets about diseases that shaped their societies. We explore the different types of mummies—both anthropogenic and spontaneous—and what their preservation tells us about historical health crises.

From the chilling preservation of bog bodies to the revered Egyptian mummies, we investigate how these artifacts serve as vital sources of knowledge about ancient diseases like malaria, leishmaniasis, and Chagas disease. As we draw connections between these historical pathogens and contemporary health issues, we raise intriguing discussions about how climate change and globalization may affect disease patterns today.

Our conversation is enriched by studies revealing the presence of ancient pathogens in notable figures such as Otzi the Iceman and the Medici mummies. Each discovery unravels a layer of mystery surrounding how societies dealt with illness, healthcare practices, and even the beliefs connected to death and preservation.

Join us as we dive deep into the fascinating interplay between history, culture, and disease. By understanding the past, we illuminate paths for the future. Subscribe now and participate in the conversation about these vital links in our health narrative! Spread the word, leave a review, and let us know what ancient topics inspire your curiosity for future episodes.

Thanks for listening to the Infectious Science Podcast. Be sure to visit infectiousscience.org to join the conversation, access the show notes, and don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter to receive our free materials.

We hope you enjoyed this new episode of Infectious Science, and if you did, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Please share this episode with others who may be interested in this topic!

Also, please don’t hesitate to ask questions or tell us which topics you want us to cover in future episodes. To get in touch, drop us a line in the comment section or send us a message on social media.
Instagram @Infectscipod
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See you next time for a new episode!

Thanks for listening to the Infectious Science Podcast. Be sure to visit infectiousscience.org to join the conversation, access the show notes, and don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter to receive our free materials.

We hope you enjoyed this new episode of Infectious Science, and if you did, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Please share this episode with others who may be interested in this topic!

Also, please don’t hesitate to ask questions or tell us which topics you want us to cover in future episodes. To get in touch, drop us a line in the comment section or send us a message on social media.
Twitter @Infectious_Sci
Instagram @tick_virus
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See you next time for a new episode!

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to Mummies and Pathogens

07:00 - Types of Mummies: Anthropogenic vs. Spontaneous

15:00 - Fascinating Bog Bodies and Their Stories

20:30 - The Role of Egyptian Mummies in Pathogen Research

33:00 - Discovering Malaria and Other Ancient Diseases

44:00 - Toxoplasmosis: A Cultural Connection

56:00 - Chagas Disease in Peruvian Mummies

01:10:00 - The Implications of Climate Change on Ancient Diseases

01:20:00 - Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript
WEBVTT

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This is a podcast about One Health the idea that the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment that we all share are intrinsically linked.

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Coming to you from the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Galveston National Laboratory.

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This is Infectious Science.

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Where enthusiasm for science?

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is contagious.

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All right, Hello everyone.

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Welcome back to another episode of Infectious Science.

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Hello, hello.

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We are very excited to be here with you today.

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It's just Christina and I, and we are going to talk about mummies and pathogens.

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I'm so excited for this episode.

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Yes, I think it's gonna be a good one.

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So we talk a lot about pathogens, on Infectious Science, yet we've somehow like never touched on one major source of information about ancient pathogens and diseases, which is mummies.

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So today we are diving into all different types of mummies.

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So, if you didn't know, there are mummies on every continent, which I think is pretty cool.

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That's incredible.

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Yeah, I didn't actually realize that there were like that many mummies, but yeah, there are mummies on every continent.

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Does it include Antarctica?

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I guess so, because I think they had, like, people who were there and then they died and then they just froze.

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Yeah, yeah, wow.

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That's crazy.

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I recently read a novel about like those type of bodies and they just like thought out, and then of course it was a horror novel, and then they came back.

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Basically.

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Yeah yeah, it's quite fascinating.

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So, moving from science fiction into the realm of reality, there's basically two mummies fall into like two types.

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So you can have anthropogenic mummies, which are those created deliberately by humans, so we're going to talk about those today.

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You can also have spontaneous mummies, which are created unintentionally by extreme temperature.

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That could be something like extreme cold, extreme heat or like the acidic conditions in a bog.

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Bog bodies Bog bodies, yes.

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If you've never read about bog bodies, you should go do that.

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Yeah, honestly, I went into a wormhole.

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I think I was in undergrad and I saw this documentary on bog bodies and I just did not stop researching bog bodies for like a week.

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That's so interesting.

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And a lot of them were murders, right, yeah, yeah, or they were like sacrifices or something.

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Yeah, and then they end up dumping them in these you know bogs, in these very rural areas in Europe, and then the bog itself preserves the bodies.

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It's incredible, it's wild yeah.

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And then so I wonder how they're finding them.

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Are the bogs like drying up, or are they like digging in the bogs for bodies?

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I don't know.

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I think the first one was found.

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I'm guessing it's probably as a result of climate change and a lot of what's going on.

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But then once they found one, they're like let's look for more.

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Just a dredge of bogs.

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They look really creepy they do.

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It's incredible what nature can do to preserve bodies, but also how the body itself decomposes and what it becomes after what's not a living sentient being.

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Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting.

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So that's what we're going to get into today.

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We're going to talk about both types of mummies and what we can learn about ancient pathogens from them.

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So probably the best known example of mummies that everyone thinks of are Egyptian mummies.

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So, christina, let's, let's start there.

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Yes, let's so.

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Camille, I do want to ask you did you end up watching?

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Was it the 1999?

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I did watch the 1999 the Mummy last night.

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If no one's ever watched it, it is a cult classic.

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For a reason I have that was my favorite mummy movie as a child, one of my favorite movies period.

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I don't know how many times I've watched it and every time I watch it it makes me cackle.

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Like I, just I laugh so hard.

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Such a great movie, and I plan on watching the second one tonight when I get home, because why not?

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Is the second one the Scorpion King?

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Yes, yes, yes with the Rock.

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The.

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Rock, yes, yes.

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And then the third one, but that's the Chinese emperor.

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Oh, oh, oh, oh yes.

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Like the terracotta army.

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It's a newer, mummy.

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Yeah, he came out like 10 years ago I don't quite remember, but yeah, I highly recommend the franchise.

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I feel like everyone calls it really campy, but I'm like this is amazing.

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This is like the horror that I can watch because I'm like, oh, there's something kind of scary looking, but like it, it's a great series and there's so many good lines from it.

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I am a librarian.

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I am proud of what I am it really got the balance between action, comedy and horror, such a great balance of the three, and Rachel Wise is just such a talented actress and then Brendan.

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Fraser.

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I do not love him just so great well, moving into reality from our little detour into the fantasy world of the mummy, the movie series.

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Camille actually sent me a paper from Scientific American and it basically touched on this study that was done with 31 mummies.

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These mummies were taken from what was presumed to be ancient Egypt and Nubia, which is now modern day Southern Egypt and Sudan, and 65% of these bodies, these mummies, had parasites.

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We're fun to have parasites.

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Yeah, 22% of the bodies had malaria, which, if you don't know, malaria is a parasite.

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Its vector is the Anopheles mosquito, and the reason that's presumed to be why so many of these bodies had malaria was because of their proximity to the Nile right.

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So the Nile is a major body of water.

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Mosquitoes tend to hang around bodies of water in very humid areas, and so the Nile was probably a really big factor in the presence of malaria at such a big quantity in this area.

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Do they know if these bodies were the aristocracy, or were these people that were working and therefore might've been more exposed?

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I don't know.

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I do know that with Leishmaniasis at least they yeah, so that was also found.

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So Leishmaniasis inspectors, the sandfly, and this is another study, but bodies that were found from the middle kingdom era in Egypt were analyzed and 9.5% of those bodies had Leishmaniasis.

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And then Nubian mummies from around the same era.

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13.5% of them had, and so apparently during this time Egyptians had journeyed into Nubia for gold and slaves.

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I didn't really look too much into this culturally or historically, why that happened.

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They kind of drew the conclusion that sand flies and leishmaniasis could have potentially been endemic to this Nubian area.

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So fun fact, if anyone is interested in a more modern day version of this, there is a book called the Lost City of the Monkey God and they're looking at ruins in Central South America.

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I should remember, but I read this like a decade ago, so I do not.

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They had found some suggestions that there was likely to be ruins there.

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They wanted to explore those ruins and almost everyone on that expedition ended up getting Leishmaniasis.

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Oh my.

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God, yeah, and so potentially possibly that city was abandoned and fell to ruin because Leishmaniasis was so endemic there from the sandpipe population.

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That's crazy, yeah, and so I feel like it's not something people really think of a lot.

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No, yeah, but if you have the vector there, for sure, and it's really hard to get rid of leishmaniasis, it's very hard to treat and it also can cause really significant symptoms.

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There's like the open sores, yeah, the visceral, which is like the organ based form, the cutaneous which causes those big open sores, and the mucosal.

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So basically it affects the mucous membranes of the nose, the throat and your mouth as well.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, oh, wow.

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Yeah, there you go Wild.

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Okay, also, something that I thought was hilarious kind was that 40% of these bodies had head lice and that tended to be a trend that I saw while doing some research for this episode.

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So yeah, head lice fairly prominent as well, Wow Well.

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I wonder though and I don't know what time period this started, but I know ancient Egyptians wore wigs.

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I wonder if wigs got infested with the head lice.

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I would assume they could be only because of an episode of the comedy Schitt's Creek, where Moira Rose is terrified that her wigs are going to get infested with lice.

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I don't know if they can actually be infested with lice, but I would assume they could be.

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I wouldn't assume that the lice could live for a long time on the wigs, but I think lice can be transmitted through clothing and stuff like that, and so if you're wearing a, wig every day.

00:08:04.350 --> 00:08:07.555
Yeah, that's so interesting that they would just find like dead lice.

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That just that kind of sends a chill down my back.

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Something else that had to do with ancient Egyptian culture that I thought was interesting.

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So obviously we know that they really venerated a lot of animal forms, one of the main ones being the cat, and so that came along with the cult of the cat was also potentially the present of toxoplasma.

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Oh yeah, so toxocysts were found in some of these mummies, so interesting.

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Right and it's presumed that because these populations had higher exposures to cats, whether it be through just like cats in the general area or also the mummification of cats, that they had a higher exposure to cats and toxoplasmosis in general.

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Oh, that is so interesting If anyone wants to learn more about toxoplasmosis season one.

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There's a whole episode on it from Infectious Science, so check that out.

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It can affect risk-taking behavior and stuff and it's very interesting.

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It's also not as easy to get as you think.

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Check out that episode if you want to know more.

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It is.

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And then I will say there's plenty of data that states that these mummies were exposed in pretty high quantities to M leprae, which we've also done an episode on.

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That's actually the first episode of season two.

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Go ahead and check it out if you haven't already.

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And that's mycobacterium leprae.

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But in this mummy that they were specifically analyzing in this paper, there weren't actually physical signs of the infection yet.

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They had taken this sample from bone from the mummy, which they drew the conclusion that it was just really early on in the infection that there weren't actually signs or manifestations yet, but yeah.

00:09:40.522 --> 00:09:44.942
That's so curious that it would be like on bone, because normally it needs to live.

00:09:44.942 --> 00:09:51.889
Yeah, and it's also colder, colder areas, right, I guess, though, if it's like bones, like finger bones or something you might have it Like, if that's where it's coming from.

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But yeah, that's very interesting.

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I know that you can also find a lot of evidence of leprosy in not mummies, but skeletons from Europe.

00:10:00.596 --> 00:10:08.798
Okay, yeah, pretty cool, for sure, mummies you would probably get more out of, though, because it's like a actual full body instead of just bones.

00:10:09.059 --> 00:10:11.504
Yeah, that's true, and I thought it was cool.

00:10:11.504 --> 00:10:22.581
Going into the biochemistry of this is that both of the genomes of hepatitis B, which was also found, and M leprosy from this paper that I was reading both of them were fully reconstructed their genomes.

00:10:22.581 --> 00:10:29.226
However, these genomes were shortened compared to the strains that we know of today, which really is indicative right.

00:10:29.226 --> 00:10:34.879
So they were saying it's indicative of, basically, the ancient form of M lebray is shorter.

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It's closer to the root of their at least more ancient organisms of M lebray that they do have.

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And so it's just interesting to see how the genomes of certain bacteria and viruses and stuff like that change over time and how we can kind of trace it back to its root.

00:10:51.071 --> 00:10:51.832
Yeah, I thought that was cool.

00:10:52.620 --> 00:10:57.889
That is very neat, yeah, and then we were talking about the necrobiome also.

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Yes, so mummies in general, we know they do undergo decomposure, even though they are carefully preserved.

00:11:04.500 --> 00:11:24.722
But the necrobiome itself consists of basically the pathogens that help to decompose the body, and when you analyze the necrobiome you really get to see a lot of what the environment was around these bodies, not only when they were first mummified and first started decomposing, but throughout the era too.

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I didn't really go into any research on the necrobiome because I already had a lot of information, but I thought it was interesting.

00:11:31.706 --> 00:11:40.533
Yeah, I actually have an interesting tidbit to add to this, so I always just love to bring this up whenever it comes up in context that from a public health standpoint, dead bodies usually aren't that dangerous to us.

00:11:40.533 --> 00:11:59.091
And particularly in a lot of the Western world now we have like a funeral industry around handling bodies and there's kind of arisen this sort of myth that, like after a natural disaster or things like that, that like bodies are dangerous but the bacteria and such that are causing this decomposition, not the same stuff that's going to really infect you.

00:11:59.091 --> 00:12:07.846
There are some instances of infections that people can have that can remain viable for a little bit after death, but it's not very long.

00:12:07.846 --> 00:12:14.070
And if you think about that, that's because something like a virus needs you know living cells in order to continue to replicate.

00:12:14.530 --> 00:12:21.052
So, barring some more rare viruses that you're unlikely to encounter, bodies usually aren't that dangerous.

00:12:21.052 --> 00:12:25.004
So yeah, so I like to throw that out there because I think it's important and it's.

00:12:25.004 --> 00:12:27.972
You know, we're myth busting, that's our little myth busting fun fact.

00:12:28.100 --> 00:12:29.123
Yes, I love that.

00:12:29.123 --> 00:12:31.268
No, and that's so true, that's absolutely correct.

00:12:31.268 --> 00:12:36.350
So, yeah, I'm not going to say, you know, go and bury the next body you find necessarily.

00:12:36.350 --> 00:12:41.051
Please don't just bury a body, you find we have concerns, however.

00:12:45.940 --> 00:12:46.381
If you just find one.

00:12:46.381 --> 00:12:55.732
But I think it's important to bring up in the context, especially of mummies, when we talk about anthropogenic mummies, like people were handling these bodies extensively to prepare them for burial and so clearly there was a different culture around where bodies dangerous or not.

00:12:55.732 --> 00:12:59.870
So just for anyone who's ever curious, most dead bodies are not dangerous to you.

00:13:00.159 --> 00:13:01.482
Yeah, yep, I love it.

00:13:01.482 --> 00:13:02.565
Thanks for bringing that up.

00:13:02.565 --> 00:13:07.394
Yeah, another infection that I think we're all very aware of was smallpox.

00:13:07.394 --> 00:13:20.833
So smallpox was apparently prevalent in the Egyptian kingdom the new kingdom to be exact between the years 1570 BC and 1085 BC, and smallpox caused by the variola virus.

00:13:20.833 --> 00:13:31.253
Apparently, there's evidence that King Ramses V, who apparently only reigned for, I think, four-ish years, he was depicted with smallpox-like pustules on his face.

00:13:31.253 --> 00:13:36.299
Oh yeah, so a little cultural tidbit right there, yeah, and.

00:13:36.299 --> 00:13:37.504
I would assume you know.

00:13:38.607 --> 00:13:45.494
I feel like Compared to like European monarchs that are like, let me put a quarter inch of makeup on my face to hide any perceived imperfections.

00:13:45.494 --> 00:13:48.729
But of course that makeup was made of arsenic, so you end up with problems.

00:13:48.749 --> 00:13:49.751
That's awesome.

00:13:49.772 --> 00:13:51.496
That's different.

00:13:51.496 --> 00:13:53.100
That's different yeah.

00:13:53.120 --> 00:13:58.032
So, he was depicted with those pox-like bumps on his face and that really short roll too.

00:13:58.032 --> 00:14:02.370
I guess potentially, you know, smock pox didn't let him roll for long.

00:14:02.370 --> 00:14:21.980
Yeah, and even the Hittite clay tablets accused Egyptian prisoners of war of passing on a disease that's described similarly to smallpox that ended up causing this Hittite plague, essentially, and that plague itself was described in one of the tablets as 20 years of constant dying.

00:14:21.980 --> 00:14:23.186
Yeah, so that sounds very smallpox-y.

00:14:23.186 --> 00:14:24.191
Yes, that does, that does sound a lot like smallpox.

00:14:24.211 --> 00:14:24.936
Yeah, so that sounds very smallpox-y.

00:14:24.936 --> 00:14:25.258
Yes, that does.

00:14:25.258 --> 00:14:26.520
That does sound a lot like smallpox.

00:14:26.741 --> 00:14:34.581
Yes, two other honorable mentions were tuberculosis, as we are well aware of.

00:14:34.581 --> 00:14:42.682
Samples between Middle Kingdom and the late period were analyzed and mycobacterium tuberculosis was found.

00:14:42.682 --> 00:14:45.047
And then this study did spoligotyping.

00:14:45.047 --> 00:14:55.173
I don't necessarily know too much about what this is, but from what I could see it assesses direct repeat strains of bacteria using the PCR to determine the relatedness between certain strains.

00:14:55.173 --> 00:15:07.985
Gotcha and compared MTB with M africanum, so Mycobacterium africanum, and their conclusion was that TB potentially originated from a precursor complex related to M africanum.

00:15:07.985 --> 00:15:12.905
And their conclusion was that TB potentially originated from a precursor complex related to M africanum because they were both found in the mummy itself, that's very interesting.

00:15:12.966 --> 00:15:16.976
Yeah, and then the last one I wanted to mention was plague, too.

00:15:16.976 --> 00:15:18.163
Good old plague, good old plague.

00:15:18.163 --> 00:15:18.765
She's everywhere.

00:15:20.782 --> 00:15:21.625
Anywhere there's rats.

00:15:22.701 --> 00:15:23.784
And where were there rats?

00:15:23.784 --> 00:15:29.965
Along the Nile, and so these Nile rats is what they called them during these huge Nile floods.

00:15:29.965 --> 00:15:42.061
Obviously, the rats are pushed closer and closer to the human civilization or the society, and that just allowed them to basically spread the flies and spread the fleas and spread the plague.

00:15:42.280 --> 00:15:42.961
Yeah, yeah.

00:15:42.961 --> 00:15:50.693
And Egypt was also a very wealthy, wealthy kingdom and they had surplus grain stores when things were good.

00:15:50.693 --> 00:15:52.221
And what does that attract?

00:15:52.221 --> 00:15:53.284
Rats, if not pests.

00:15:53.284 --> 00:15:59.769
Yes, so it attracts rats, so I'm sure that that didn't help anything as far as any diseases that those rodents might've been carrying.

00:16:00.009 --> 00:16:12.751
There's actually this medical text that I saw a sample of, from 1500 BC, that described this plague in Egypt and it said that the disease has produced a bubo and the pus has petrified.

00:16:12.751 --> 00:16:14.346
The disease has hit.

00:16:14.346 --> 00:16:16.907
I was like oh, that's rough.

00:16:17.561 --> 00:16:18.886
Plague's coming for you, rip.

00:16:18.886 --> 00:16:22.543
Yeah, I do kind of wonder if they were like exporting grain or they just exporting diseases on these rats.

00:16:22.562 --> 00:16:36.455
I wonder if they were like exporting grain or they just exporting diseases on these rats, and so I was reading also that a lot of what came from Egypt was actually incorporated in the trade also potentially had effects with Europe and then also Asia, yeah, through trade.

00:16:36.455 --> 00:16:39.277
So potentially Egypt just spreading that plague around.

00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:41.461
Just not doing its part.

00:16:41.461 --> 00:16:54.655
But as always, as you have, and we see this, you know, in the modern day just to kind of bring this into context as you have war, like you were describing, you certainly see increases in disease as public health infrastructure breaks down.

00:16:54.655 --> 00:17:02.573
And as you have trade and we have globalized trade and you can get anywhere anywhere in the world, whoever you trade with your health is interconnected.

00:17:02.573 --> 00:17:06.493
And whoever they trade with your health is interconnected and whoever they trade with your health is also interconnected.

00:17:06.513 --> 00:17:07.597
So I think that that's you know something.

00:17:07.597 --> 00:17:11.317
Just to highlight that that has existed for as long as human civilization has been around.

00:17:11.317 --> 00:17:23.386
If we're coming into contact with each other, we're not only sharing lovely, amazing things like a surplus of grain and a beautiful culture and, you know, gold and all that jazz, but we're also sharing the diseases that are prevalent in our population.

00:17:23.607 --> 00:17:24.049
Exactly.

00:17:24.049 --> 00:17:29.343
We're also susceptible to you know the same things, and it really just shows how we are so interconnected.

00:17:29.343 --> 00:17:34.084
Yes, yes, for sure, for sure, but that's really the main stuff that I have about Egypt.

00:17:34.084 --> 00:17:39.490
I know that you had really interesting information on other ancient bodies.

00:17:39.911 --> 00:17:41.078
Yes, would you like to?

00:17:41.078 --> 00:17:43.343
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely Take the wheel.

00:17:43.343 --> 00:17:49.978
So I'm going to dive into European mummies, all right, but first I just want to say that I found this out and I was absolutely floored.

00:17:49.978 --> 00:17:51.857
Like this shocked me to the core.

00:17:51.857 --> 00:18:01.442
So, sadly, due to a mistranslation and some misinformation, europeans for a time imported and ate Egyptian mummies as medicine.

00:18:01.582 --> 00:18:04.343
Oh, my days, yeah, oh no.

00:18:04.383 --> 00:18:05.703
Yeah, so you can look this up.

00:18:05.703 --> 00:18:09.965
You can find like little apothecary things to say, like mummia, I believe.

00:18:09.965 --> 00:18:15.107
A lot of times these mummies can be coated in like a resin and they thought that that resin had like a health property.

00:18:15.107 --> 00:18:17.669
So they were like, well, we'll eat it.

00:18:17.669 --> 00:18:28.393
And so they just like stole or otherwise acquired mummies and brought them back to be kind of mashed into pieces and used in medicine.

00:18:28.393 --> 00:18:28.913
Oh, no.

00:18:29.134 --> 00:18:32.714
So yeah, mashed into pieces and used in medicine, so yeah.

00:18:32.714 --> 00:18:36.422
So later, as legit and not fraudulent mummies became hard to find, europeans began to use local bodies.

00:18:36.422 --> 00:18:38.602
So you know, don't import, but local.

00:18:38.602 --> 00:18:42.039
Does this sound like anything you've ever heard in a grocery store?

00:18:42.039 --> 00:18:46.762
Scarily enough, so this is called corpse medicine and it was a thing in Europe for a while.

00:18:47.035 --> 00:18:50.742
And was this thought to bring you general health or was it specifically for something?

00:18:51.134 --> 00:18:59.719
So one 1643 remedy for seizures includes a recipe that calls for a disturbing central ingredient the unburied skulls of three men who died a violent death.

00:18:59.719 --> 00:19:02.180
Jeez, so very specific.

00:19:02.180 --> 00:19:10.798
It kind of sounds more like witchcraft than medicine, which is kind of wild, because at that time they were definitely persecuting witches, but you could eat bodies and that was okay.

00:19:10.798 --> 00:19:23.888
What's also wild about this is that in once again a typical paradigm of colonialism, they were like wow, it's so savage to be a cannibal, and yet that is exactly what they were doing for their health.

00:19:24.269 --> 00:19:27.451
Oh fun yeah, so just thought I'd point that out.

00:19:27.551 --> 00:19:34.338
Totally yeah in other news In other less disgusting news In other less news.

00:19:34.358 --> 00:19:37.501
So that's my first fun point on Europe and mummies.

00:19:37.501 --> 00:19:45.009
My next one is actually not mummies, but it's back to plague, so it's DNA that's extracted from teeth from a London plague pit.

00:19:45.009 --> 00:19:46.289
Oh, plague pit.

00:19:46.349 --> 00:19:46.750
Yeah.

00:19:46.770 --> 00:19:47.171
Fun.

00:19:47.371 --> 00:19:48.731
Okay, a plague pit yeah.

00:19:53.454 --> 00:20:00.345
So at some points in history, so many people were dying of the plague that they just dug mass graves and they just put them in plague pit, and that's how that they found that it was Yersinia pestis that caused it.

00:20:00.394 --> 00:20:11.903
And so, like we take that, as a fact nowadays that it was, you know, the Black Death and it's Yersinia pestis, but of course, for a long time no one really knew.

00:20:11.903 --> 00:20:12.515
Oh, it was the miasma man.

00:20:12.515 --> 00:20:13.034
Yeah, no one really knew what caused it.

00:20:13.034 --> 00:20:14.380
But if we hadn't believed in miasma you wouldn't have cool plague, Dr.

00:20:14.305 --> 00:20:14.670
Mask today.

00:20:14.670 --> 00:20:16.115
Absolutely, that is hands down.

00:20:16.115 --> 00:20:16.898
No one steal it.

00:20:16.898 --> 00:20:18.203
My Halloween costume next year.

00:20:19.296 --> 00:20:19.616
It's great.

00:20:19.616 --> 00:20:20.619
It's a great Halloween costume.

00:20:20.619 --> 00:20:21.142
I respect it.

00:20:21.242 --> 00:20:21.683
I respect it.

00:20:22.457 --> 00:20:24.744
But only if you go like full, like with the cape and everything.

00:20:24.954 --> 00:20:25.315
Absolutely.

00:20:25.315 --> 00:20:27.999
You know, cape cane hat, oh yeah, Just all out.

00:20:28.019 --> 00:20:28.980
Yep Steampunk.

00:20:29.319 --> 00:20:30.080
Absolutely Okay.

00:20:30.361 --> 00:20:30.922
I respect it.

00:20:30.922 --> 00:20:32.564
I respect it, so yeah.

00:20:32.564 --> 00:20:34.625
So now to actual mummies, so actual European mummies.

00:20:34.625 --> 00:20:35.366
So I have two examples.

00:20:35.366 --> 00:20:51.009
The first I want to talk about is the Medici mummies Nice, so you've probably heard of the Medici, if do now in the United.

00:20:51.048 --> 00:20:51.348
States.

00:20:51.730 --> 00:20:54.534
So their organs were removed, the body was cleaned and then stuffed.

00:20:54.534 --> 00:21:13.868
Interestingly enough, researchers recently I believe it's from 2023, so, like very recent found parasite-like structures on red blood cells from this kind of like preserved tissue, and so these structures, when examined, were found to be the malaria parasite, plasmodium falciparum, which is really interesting that you have this issue from hundreds of years ago.

00:21:13.868 --> 00:21:19.224
We know that you can preserve red blood cells, but to actually see parasites was wild.

00:21:19.224 --> 00:21:21.249
So what's interesting?

00:21:21.249 --> 00:21:24.832
I feel like people don't know that malaria was endemic in Europe for a while.

00:21:24.832 --> 00:21:26.938
It also was endemic in the United States for a very long time.

00:21:26.938 --> 00:21:34.571
There was a lot of big public health campaigns to get rid of that, but with climate change, malaria is likely coming to a city near you soon.

00:21:34.571 --> 00:21:35.153
Oh, no.

00:21:35.192 --> 00:21:37.238
Something to keep in mind.

00:21:37.238 --> 00:21:44.535
But anyways, the Medici mummy this belonged to, and they kind of have some trouble like figuring out who's who, because of course you didn't necessarily label things.

00:21:44.654 --> 00:21:53.269
Everybody at the time knew who they were right, so the Medici that these red blood cells were from probably picked up malaria when hunting in the marshlands of Florence, italy.

00:21:53.269 --> 00:22:00.540
So because they were basically an aristocratic family, they just had like leisure time to hunt, so because of that they probably picked up malaria.

00:22:00.540 --> 00:22:02.787
Got malaria, yeah Darn, yeah, jeez.

00:22:02.787 --> 00:22:04.842
So that's the anthropogenic mummies.

00:22:04.842 --> 00:22:07.002
So those are the mummies that people made in Europe.

00:22:07.002 --> 00:22:11.898
I didn't find a lot of other examples.

00:22:11.898 --> 00:22:16.679
I know there are mummies elsewhere in Europe, but the one that I next wanted to talk about was a spontaneous mummy that probably everyone's familiar with is Otzi the Iceman.

00:22:16.679 --> 00:22:20.208
Yes, so some Europeans found him when hiking.

00:22:20.208 --> 00:22:22.646
That to me sounds like something out of a horror novel.

00:22:22.646 --> 00:22:24.596
I have actually read a horror novel with that premise.

00:22:24.816 --> 00:22:25.396
Absolutely.

00:22:25.396 --> 00:22:28.862
Yeah, imagine, imagine you're just going hiking one beautiful day.

00:22:28.862 --> 00:22:37.454
It's nice and cool outside, you know, you're just having a great time in the mountains, and then you come across a buddy.

00:22:37.494 --> 00:22:41.665
A really old dead guy, like a really really old dead guy, yeah.

00:22:42.655 --> 00:22:43.922
So that's how we got our love of Otzi.

00:22:44.275 --> 00:22:50.363
Yeah, yeah, and Otzi's taught us a lot right Like and there's so much information on Otzi that I could not possibly cover it all.

00:22:50.363 --> 00:22:58.683
And I believe actually, when I was looking, I found someone at UTMB made like a podcast episode about Otzi, like way, like maybe like 2012 or something.

00:22:58.683 --> 00:23:09.380
So I was like, yeah, I didn't know, I stumbled across this, but the point I wanted to bring up for Otzi is that mitochondrial DNA analysis showed Borrelia burgdorferi, which is the bacteria that causes.

00:23:09.500 --> 00:23:10.340
Lyme disease.

00:23:10.340 --> 00:23:16.084
So Lyme disease is really really a big problem in the United States.

00:23:16.084 --> 00:23:18.685
You often get it from exposure to ticks.

00:23:18.685 --> 00:23:20.747
It's also a big issue in pets, right?

00:23:20.747 --> 00:23:28.932
So if your pets are outside and they're not on flea and tick medication, they pick it up and it certainly can cause all kinds of issues and can just cause damage.

00:23:28.932 --> 00:23:38.583
Of course, it's treatable with antibiotics, but what's really interesting is that because this disease was found to be present in Otzi's bones, that makes him the first documented case of Lyme disease in humans.

00:23:38.742 --> 00:23:43.424
Wow, yeah so potentially, it's you know, existed for this longer, but he's the first.

00:23:43.996 --> 00:23:45.521
How far back does Otzi date to?

00:23:45.521 --> 00:23:45.923
Do you know?

00:23:46.095 --> 00:23:47.220
That is a great question.

00:23:47.220 --> 00:23:47.895
Look it up.

00:23:47.895 --> 00:23:51.988
Yeah, we should look that up real quick yes, but that is fascinating.

00:23:51.988 --> 00:23:59.781
Yeah, I think it's really cool and, of course, like so, so much more has been done and if anyone is interested in seeing Otzi's body, it is on display.

00:23:59.781 --> 00:24:00.763
Oh where.

00:24:00.784 --> 00:24:01.125
I believe in.

00:24:01.204 --> 00:24:01.464
Italy.

00:24:01.464 --> 00:24:03.855
So you can see it, it's like in a refrigerated case.

00:24:03.855 --> 00:24:07.380
Yeah, also speaking mummies seeing the King Tut.

00:24:08.121 --> 00:24:08.721
Yes.

00:24:08.741 --> 00:24:11.023
I mean, there's an exhibit in Houston.

00:24:11.404 --> 00:24:13.606
It's a replica of everything.

00:24:14.027 --> 00:24:14.647
But it's really good.

00:24:14.647 --> 00:24:16.730
I went to it like a month or two ago and it was really good.

00:24:16.990 --> 00:24:17.971
Yeah, it was fantastic.

00:24:17.971 --> 00:24:20.121
I went to it, I think last year.

00:24:20.121 --> 00:24:21.104
I really enjoyed it.

00:24:21.444 --> 00:24:22.125
Yeah, it's really neat.

00:24:22.555 --> 00:24:24.255
Recommend that 100%.

00:24:24.255 --> 00:24:33.602
I was going to say, with King Tut speaking of they found two strains of malaria in this poor man when they were assessing his body.

00:24:33.602 --> 00:24:37.664
Otzi, sorry, going back to Otzi now, he is 5,300 years old.

00:24:38.224 --> 00:24:48.813
Wow, so Lyme disease has been with us at least that long, and I think that's important to bring up, because there was definitely some misinformation when Lyme first became an issue in the United States about where Lyme came from.

00:24:48.813 --> 00:24:55.646
Lyme has been with humans a very long time 5,300 years is a very long time and he was also likely not the first case, right?

00:24:55.646 --> 00:24:58.301
He's just the first case that we can prove because we have a body.

00:24:58.502 --> 00:24:59.786
Yeah, and that's so interesting.

00:24:59.786 --> 00:25:06.224
So I guess Borrelia really needs a very cold climate in order to survive, and I guess that's why here in the US it's predominantly found in the Northeast.

00:25:06.445 --> 00:25:09.029
Yeah, right, but it it is, oh my gosh.

00:25:09.029 --> 00:25:17.980
I grew up in the northeast and it is a major public health concern because, if you are anywhere where there's taller grass yeah, oh my gosh and ticks are everywhere, yeah, everywhere.

00:25:18.362 --> 00:25:27.880
I used to go walking on my parents farm and when the nymphs would be out, you would step on the ground and it's like the whole ground would be moving with them, like you're like stepping and it's like they look like little spiders just going everywhere.

00:25:27.880 --> 00:25:29.301
That's crazy.

00:25:29.301 --> 00:25:34.068
Interestingly enough, I grew up there and I have never been bitten by a tick.

00:25:34.068 --> 00:25:35.941
What, never, ever, ever.

00:25:35.941 --> 00:25:43.885
And I grew up like working in hayfields, which is tall grass, you know, being on a farm, I'm out like in the dirt and I never have been bitten by a tick.

00:25:44.375 --> 00:25:49.244
If Dennis were here, he'd be like at least that you know of, at least that you know of, at least that you know of, at least that you know of, yeah, at least that you know of.

00:25:49.244 --> 00:25:50.527
And I think he has said that to me before, but I don't have.

00:25:50.567 --> 00:25:50.887
Lyme.

00:25:50.887 --> 00:25:54.234
And if I had been bitten by a tick in the Northeast, odds are I wouldn't have Lyme, chances are getting.

00:25:54.255 --> 00:25:55.980
Lyme, yeah, very high, very high.

00:25:55.980 --> 00:25:56.923
Interesting.

00:25:57.255 --> 00:26:05.616
So it's something you have to test, like every pet for up North a little blood test, oh for sure.

00:26:05.616 --> 00:26:12.999
Speaking of permafrost bodies, I want to talk now a little bit about the 1918 influenza and what we learned from spontaneous mummies.

00:26:13.058 --> 00:26:13.619
Let's do it.

00:26:13.759 --> 00:26:14.079
Yeah.

00:26:14.079 --> 00:26:18.901
So, for those who don't know, the 1918 influenza was incredibly severe.

00:26:18.901 --> 00:26:22.301
Oh yeah, killed 20 to 40 million people worldwide.

00:26:22.301 --> 00:26:28.324
That may not sound a lot like a lot to you today, but consider that the population was much lower than it is right now.

00:26:28.324 --> 00:26:28.663
Yes, absolutely.

00:26:28.683 --> 00:26:30.084
It's an incredible amount of people, and people would just like drop.

00:26:30.104 --> 00:26:31.403
consider that the population was much lower than it is right now.

00:26:31.403 --> 00:26:35.445
Absolutely, it's an incredible amount of people and people would just like drop dead in the streets.

00:26:35.445 --> 00:26:42.928
I mean it was absolutely wild Caused, basically these cytokine storms in the lungs like massive hemorrhages.

00:26:42.928 --> 00:26:45.709
I mean it was gruesome, gruesome.

00:26:46.209 --> 00:26:47.608
That sounds horrible.

00:26:47.788 --> 00:26:49.170
Yeah, really horrible.

00:26:49.170 --> 00:26:58.132
But what's really wild is that at some point people wanted to kind of look at the strain and figure out why it was so bad.

00:26:58.392 --> 00:27:11.798
Right yeah, which is important because like influenza, because of shift and drift, is constantly going to nag at the heels of humans, so you might hear that flu shots every year are only like 40, 60% effective.

00:27:11.798 --> 00:27:21.364
As someone who has actually truly had the flu when I was 16, I was in the hospital for two weeks and I'm otherwise a very healthy individual and I was 16, right, so like you, should be able to shake stuff off when you're a teenager.

00:27:21.364 --> 00:27:24.423
And if we did not have modern medicine, I would absolutely be dead.

00:27:24.584 --> 00:27:26.720
I was on an IV Like it was awful.

00:27:26.720 --> 00:27:28.676
The flu is no joke Absolutely, like it was awful.

00:27:28.676 --> 00:27:29.617
Yeah, the flu is no joke Absolutely.

00:27:29.617 --> 00:27:35.970
And the reason you need shots every year is because the strain constantly changes every single year.

00:27:36.335 --> 00:27:43.260
And that's also because we pick it up from a lot of different animal reservoirs where you can see change occurring.

00:27:43.260 --> 00:27:47.602
You've definitely heard of avian flu, probably at this point Also swine flu, things like that.

00:27:47.602 --> 00:27:48.920
So you know where we pick up.

00:27:48.940 --> 00:28:03.787
A pathogen does matter, but I just want to point out that I always get my flu shot and I think it's really important to do that, because if there's any chance it's going to reduce the severity and duration of it, absolutely do it, because I think a lot of people mistake getting the flu for like what.

00:28:03.787 --> 00:28:11.528
It is actually like a cold or like like a you know a GI thing and in reality the flu will knock you down.

00:28:11.848 --> 00:28:12.609
It is bad.

00:28:12.609 --> 00:28:20.324
It is not just the cold, it is not just a sinus infection Like the flu is hard on your body and we have deaths every single year from the flu even in the United.

00:28:20.344 --> 00:28:27.497
States and you don't really hear about them because it's basically kind of what COVID has become and that it's this socially acceptable number of deaths which is actually really sad.

00:28:27.656 --> 00:28:33.346
Yeah, it is Absolutely so, if you can do your part to help yourself and also help others and help your community.

00:28:33.407 --> 00:28:41.476
Yeah, yeah, yeah, please do, please do so.

00:28:41.476 --> 00:28:43.522
Anyways, back to this 1918 influenza, which was really severe.

00:28:43.522 --> 00:28:48.218
So RNA from the 1918 influenza was obtained from a lung biopsy from a victim of the flu who had been buried in the permafrost.

00:28:48.218 --> 00:28:49.803
So basically, here's the story.

00:28:49.803 --> 00:28:58.657
So in November of 1918, the influenza pandemic struck the Seward Peninsula in Alaska in an Inuit village called Brevig Mission.

00:28:58.657 --> 00:29:13.826
So according to historical records, the 1918 flu spread through the village in about five days and within those five days it killed 85% of the adult population, oh my gosh, yeah, so massively just wiping people out.

00:29:15.595 --> 00:29:20.186
So victims because there were so many were buried in a mass grave in the permafrost.

00:29:20.186 --> 00:29:41.498
79 years later, in 1997, four victims were exhumed from this mass grave by Dr Johan Hulten, who basically received permission from the village council to dig Frozen lung tissue, was biopsied and the grave was closed, and so that was kind of the first time this was done.

00:29:41.498 --> 00:29:50.248
He then later ended up going back a second time and doing this, dug deeper and then again took lung biopsy tissue.

00:29:50.248 --> 00:29:56.530
This time, one of the bodies that was exhumed was an Inuit female who was positive for the influenza RNA.

00:29:56.530 --> 00:30:02.186
She had significant fat deposits around her lungs which had protected the lungs more from degradation.

00:30:03.555 --> 00:30:07.450
They were able to basically get the viral RNA from this lung tissue.

00:30:07.450 --> 00:30:11.701
However, the RNA templates greater than 120 nucleotides could not be amplified from this.

00:30:11.701 --> 00:30:22.480
So that means that it's not a live virus, but that it could be sequenced, and so that was important because we really wanted to figure out what similarly was circulating and when could this happen again?

00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:26.862
This is, of course, a really big topic that's alive in the world right now, as we think about avian flu.

00:30:26.862 --> 00:30:32.641
So that goal of that research was to basically find out the origin of 1918 flu and if it could happen again.

00:30:32.641 --> 00:30:48.318
They basically determined that the 1918 influenza virus was similar to swine and bird viruses, but thankfully, as we have previously said, dead bodies are not super dangerous, and so the virus was of course not alive 79 years later when he dug it up, thank you.

00:30:48.400 --> 00:30:49.146
Thank you, science.

00:30:49.146 --> 00:30:57.883
But moving from permafrost bodies back on over to the Americas, here we are going to take a little dive into Peruvian mummies.

00:30:57.883 --> 00:31:07.659
Yes, so the first paper I came across really spoke about the gut microbiome of the Incan Empire, so this is around the 10th and 14th centuries.

00:31:07.659 --> 00:31:23.195
Thought it was really cool, because the microbiome, or the bacteria that were found to comprise this microbiome that was assessed, actually were bacteria that were resistant already to many of the strongest antibiotics that we use today.

00:31:23.195 --> 00:31:26.712
So some of those included vancomycin, penicillin, tetracyclines.

00:31:26.712 --> 00:31:33.275
One bug that was specifically mentioned was enterococcus, which is a very strong bacteria.

00:31:33.275 --> 00:31:40.500
It's resistant to a lot of things, and so the question that was brought into play here was why are they resistant?

00:31:40.500 --> 00:31:51.656
Is this a natural resistant, like it makes sense, our modern antibiotics come from natural sources, like we've previously spoken about, or are there other forces at play?

00:31:51.656 --> 00:31:56.471
Like were there Peruvian antibiotics back in the day, during?

00:31:56.492 --> 00:31:57.276
the Incan Empire.

00:31:58.690 --> 00:32:01.518
So I thought that was really interesting to bring up, yeah.

00:32:02.810 --> 00:32:07.137
And also, I'm sure, very hard to draw conclusions on it because, again, you're only working with what you have.

00:32:07.137 --> 00:32:09.712
But yeah, I think that that's important to keep in mind.

00:32:09.712 --> 00:32:20.683
We did a whole episode on this that bacteria produce these antibiotics because it's like, hey, we're living in close quarters and I need to kill off competition.

00:32:20.683 --> 00:32:30.188
So sometimes these things do just arise naturally, yes, and bacteria just are kind of wild in the fact that they can just kind of pick up DNA from a lot of different places.

00:32:30.188 --> 00:32:32.375
Oh my gosh, that's really interesting.

00:32:32.375 --> 00:32:36.279
Medicinally, they could have potentially been using something, or it could have just been a diet thing.

00:32:36.441 --> 00:32:36.961
It's hard to tell.

00:32:36.961 --> 00:32:38.775
Yeah, exactly, and I always wonder.

00:32:38.775 --> 00:32:43.303
There are so many bugs in this world, there are so many pathogens, there are so many diseases and illnesses.

00:32:43.303 --> 00:32:52.275
I understand that the mortality rate was so much higher back in the day, before antibiotics, before modern medicine, but still so many people survived and persevered.

00:32:52.275 --> 00:32:57.604
You would think that these people contracted in their lifetime at least a couple of infections, or a couple.

00:32:57.604 --> 00:32:58.164
You know what I mean.

00:32:58.164 --> 00:33:02.742
So what were the ways that they were able to combat these illnesses?

00:33:02.742 --> 00:33:03.325
Absolutely?

00:33:03.325 --> 00:33:04.268
I've always wondered that.

00:33:04.387 --> 00:33:16.171
Yeah, yeah, and I think that we often like to discount, potentially, remedies that have been passed down generation to generation, that people used as a way of caring for anyone who is sick.

00:33:16.171 --> 00:33:36.182
And I think what's interesting to keep in mind is that if you really look at a lot of these systems of accessing care, the focus is on that there's someone there providing care, like if someone's doing acupuncture on you, they are there with you for like 40 minutes doing it, whereas, like in Western medicine, you might see a doctor for 20 minutes if you're lucky.

00:33:36.182 --> 00:33:39.056
And that's due to a lot of reasons, right, and that's not physician's fault.

00:33:39.056 --> 00:33:41.838
There's a lot of pressures on the system that shape it that way.

00:33:42.413 --> 00:33:46.596
I was in China for a bit in 2019 and we had a lecture on this.

00:33:46.596 --> 00:33:50.531
They're not really teas, but these simmering things that you have and someone is taking them.

00:33:50.531 --> 00:34:12.387
It's like a traditional Chinese medicine medication, but what is very effective and that they talk about is like it's not just that we're prescribing something to people, which often makes people feel good, right, placebo effect is a real thing, but there is someone there making it for them to then take, and I think that that's something that ancient cultures probably did better than we do and that there's someone who's there providing care.

00:34:13.231 --> 00:34:19.186
Yeah, and there's an emphasis on like, the actual physical providing the care.

00:34:19.186 --> 00:34:19.646
You know what I mean.

00:34:19.646 --> 00:34:22.739
It's not just like here's your remedy next, here's your remedy next.

00:34:22.739 --> 00:34:36.505
Absolutely, it's so important to have that connection with your patient and to be able to like, recognize your patient as a human being and as someone who also needs to be provided care and they're coming to you, vulnerable, and you need to acknowledge that and you need to appreciate that.

00:34:37.050 --> 00:34:38.978
And providing culturally confident care.

00:34:38.978 --> 00:34:46.963
Right, that's such a huge thing and that's something that it's marvelous that we live in such a diverse, fascinating community.

00:34:46.963 --> 00:34:55.782
But it can also mean that when you're seeking care, you might be seeking care from somebody who doesn't come from your background and therefore might not instinctively kind of be like.

00:34:55.782 --> 00:35:07.972
This is how I meet people where they're at, Whereas if you were back in more ancient times, you're in a more isolated setting, which is not entirely isolated, but much more isolated than today, and that was probably different and the expectations around what that care looks like.

00:35:08.373 --> 00:35:09.637
So people might've been happier with it.

00:35:09.637 --> 00:35:10.599
We don't know.

00:35:20.730 --> 00:35:21.833
We'll never know, but I think that's a good conversation.

00:35:21.833 --> 00:35:22.416
That's a topic to touch, yeah.

00:35:22.416 --> 00:35:24.945
My second point, though, with the peruvian mummies, was basically based on this paper that assessed this one body that was found.

00:35:24.945 --> 00:35:26.510
It was a young woman between the ages of 20 and 25.

00:35:26.510 --> 00:35:28.797
Is what she was assumed to have been when she passed.

00:35:28.797 --> 00:35:37.202
She passed from blunt force trauma, yeah, but they were thinking in this paper that she was part of a ritualistic homicide.

00:35:37.202 --> 00:35:38.403
Oh, okay.

00:35:38.603 --> 00:35:48.577
Yeah, because her body was prepared in the way and it was placed in a way that would be assumed, and then the actual blunt force trauma came from what they seem to be clubbing to the head.

00:35:48.577 --> 00:35:50.855
Oh ouch, yeah, it's pretty rough.

00:35:50.855 --> 00:36:13.884
But basically the fractures in the skull and everything led them to believe that the trauma that the skull sustained was done pre-mortem instead of post-mortem, because this body was also kind of damaged during World War II, apparently from a bombing, and World War II because this body was brought from Peru to Germany and then it was kept there for a while but not analyzed, it was just preserved.

00:36:13.884 --> 00:36:14.605
Damage happened but not analyzed.

00:36:14.626 --> 00:36:15.047
It was just preserved.

00:36:15.067 --> 00:36:20.579
Damage happened, years went on Wow, and then in the 2000s, they started actually diving into it.

00:36:20.579 --> 00:36:28.262
Oh, that's wild what the body could tell us, yeah, but basically what was found in this body was T cruzi or Chagas.

00:36:28.262 --> 00:36:42.992
Oh yeah, so T cruzi causes what is called Chagas disease, and it is very prevalent, especially in South America, and what happens is the kissing bug, I think is what it's called right, yeah kissing bug, assassin's bug.

00:36:43.052 --> 00:36:45.820
Yeah, basically comes in what you study in medical schools.

00:36:45.820 --> 00:36:54.931
There's these two bites that are by the eye, because it comes and it kind of gets to the face and then that's how the I believe it's attracted to CO2, which is why it goes to the face, gets to the face, and then that's how the.

00:36:54.931 --> 00:36:56.300
I believe it's attracted to CO2, which is why it goes to the face.

00:36:56.300 --> 00:36:56.702
Ah, that makes sense.

00:36:56.702 --> 00:36:57.085
I think that's why.

00:36:57.106 --> 00:36:57.750
Okay, yeah, but I think that's why.

00:36:57.929 --> 00:37:01.139
That's okay, that makes sense and that's how you contract T cruzi.

00:37:01.139 --> 00:37:29.297
But this body was assessed for T cruzi predominantly because on paleoradiology the body was found to have cardiac hypertrophy, so enlargement of the heart, a distended bowel, thickened bowel and also distended rectum, and in the rectum there was actually evidence of massive fibrosis which, in order for there to be a fibrosis of that extent, this disease had to be going on chronically.

00:37:29.297 --> 00:37:37.079
Yeah, it's a chronic pathology, and so what they did was they actually took samples of the smooth muscle within there, because the fibrotic muscle there's a chronic pathology, and so what they did was they actually took samples of the smooth muscle within there, because the fibrotic muscle there's no nucleus.

00:37:37.590 --> 00:37:49.081
You can't really get DNA but from the smooth muscle, and that's what they histologically examined first and they found that there were intracellular parasitic inclusions within that.

00:37:49.081 --> 00:37:52.297
And then the DNA analysis revealed T cruzi.

00:37:52.297 --> 00:37:54.222
That is wild, yeah.

00:37:54.222 --> 00:38:01.693
So this poor woman was presumed to have chronic T-Cruzi infection.

00:38:01.713 --> 00:38:12.753
And yeah, she also had other signs so the cardiomegaly so enlarged heart is a big sign of T-Cruzi the rectal findings, the fibrosis and the enlargement of the bowel, and then hepatomegaly.

00:38:12.753 --> 00:38:18.018
So she also had an enlarged liver and just other signs that really pointed towards the T-Cruise infection.

00:38:18.018 --> 00:38:20.634
And then once they did the DNA analysis it came out positive.

00:38:21.036 --> 00:38:22.259
That is really, really wild.

00:38:22.920 --> 00:38:25.498
Oh, yeah, and this was a long time ago.

00:38:25.498 --> 00:38:29.231
I also read more socially about what they figured out about the body.

00:38:29.231 --> 00:38:35.121
So basically, from her hair they could assess that her diet had changed recently before her death.

00:38:35.121 --> 00:38:47.565
Okay, prepared, yeah, either prepared, or they found some like carbon markers, I think, in her body that indicated that she predominantly had ingested a seafood diet all her life.

00:38:47.565 --> 00:38:51.012
So they had put together that she lived on the coast of Peru.

00:38:51.012 --> 00:38:59.860
She lived on the coast of Peru and then before her death, within a recent timeframe she had moved further inland because of certain markers that had changed.

00:38:59.860 --> 00:39:02.182
Yeah, so I thought that was pretty interesting.

00:39:02.202 --> 00:39:04.985
I wonder what my hair would say about my diet.

00:39:04.985 --> 00:39:06.387
I was going to say Sugar probably.

00:39:11.851 --> 00:39:20.742
Also, when they started assessing her hair, I was like, hmm, makes me think of drug tests, and so they did do some drug tests to see if it was part of a ritual been given any kind of hallucinogenics or anything like that, and she hadn't been.

00:39:20.742 --> 00:39:25.222
That sounds very painful to have been ritualistically murdered.

00:39:25.510 --> 00:39:28.721
I also do want to note that that is not something that's specific to Peru.

00:39:28.721 --> 00:39:50.342
In Egypt, this didn't continue through all the dynasties, but for some of the first, when the pharaoh had passed, there would be this mass killing of people to basically ensure that heir to the throne oftentimes a young individual right, because people did not live long, that there would be no challengers to their throne.

00:39:50.342 --> 00:39:54.360
So they often just killed off mass amounts of people as part of a ritual.

00:39:54.360 --> 00:39:55.773
So it's not unique.

00:39:55.773 --> 00:39:58.342
And also, if you think about the bog bodies, europeans also did this.

00:39:58.342 --> 00:40:03.742
So, like you see this, wherever we find evidence of human civilization that people were killed ritualistically.

00:40:04.050 --> 00:40:14.737
I feel like I've read somewhere, I heard somewhere, that also pharaohs were buried with their court essentially, or at least members of their court, and those members were buried alive when it came down to it.

00:40:14.737 --> 00:40:15.079
Is that true?

00:40:15.079 --> 00:40:15.139
I?

00:40:15.159 --> 00:40:17.061
don't know if they were buried alive.

00:40:17.061 --> 00:40:17.842
I don't know.

00:40:17.842 --> 00:40:24.782
I do know that in some cases people were definitely buried with what was assumed to be kind of like concubines.

00:40:24.782 --> 00:40:39.356
Okay, but they certainly buried animals right, so you had use of the animals in the afterlife and so that was done very intentionally, yeah, and the fact to go through and mummify some of them right, like the amount of cat mummies they found from Egypt is wild.

00:40:39.889 --> 00:40:45.278
I would be interested to see the difference in toxoplasma from then to now, based on those mummies.

00:40:45.278 --> 00:40:46.534
I bet somebody's looked at that.

00:40:46.534 --> 00:40:48.376
That's probably been done.

00:40:48.456 --> 00:40:49.039
That's pretty cool.

00:40:49.309 --> 00:40:51.375
So maybe that's a whole other side.

00:40:51.375 --> 00:40:55.884
Tangent is animal mummies and what we can learn from animal reservoirs.

00:40:56.030 --> 00:40:57.534
Let us know if you want to hear that episode.

00:40:57.534 --> 00:40:59.179
Yeah, for sure, for sure.

00:40:59.179 --> 00:41:01.875
Yeah, but just kind of going off of really quickly.

00:41:01.875 --> 00:41:05.822
I know that you touched on malaria being found in the Italian mummies.

00:41:05.822 --> 00:41:08.378
I touched on malaria being found in Egyptian mummies.

00:41:08.378 --> 00:41:15.003
Malaria is such a debilitating thing at times because it is such a strong infection.

00:41:15.003 --> 00:41:20.202
Basically, what malaria does is it's transmitted to a human when the Anopheles mosquito bites you.

00:41:20.202 --> 00:41:31.922
Then the parasite itself goes and remains dormant in your liver and then, once it's ready, it comes and infects your red blood cells yes, and it lyses them after it's done with them, which means it explodes them.

00:41:32.327 --> 00:41:32.590
Exactly.

00:41:32.590 --> 00:41:34.876
As you can imagine that does not feel good.

00:41:34.876 --> 00:41:35.739
It does not feel good.

00:41:35.739 --> 00:41:49.275
You need to erode blood cells, because your blood cells carry oxygen throughout your body, and so that's why people who have malaria can sometimes experience like really severe fatigue and weakness and tiredness as well as cyclical fevers.

00:41:49.690 --> 00:41:50.853
Yes, exactly.

00:41:51.233 --> 00:42:01.052
So when you think about such a high population having infections like malaria, like it has such a big effect on the actual society itself, when you think about it, you know what I mean.

00:42:01.052 --> 00:42:12.143
Yes, and I know that malaria is not by any means gone today, like you've made a good point in stating, and in fact it's like such a big issue and the range is increasing.

00:42:12.329 --> 00:42:24.862
Yeah, as the world warms up, it's such a big issue in, and the range is increasing as the world warms up, big issue in certain parts of the world and it's so important to note not only just like the health effects of malaria on these populations, but also the social effects that malaria has.

00:42:24.862 --> 00:42:25.994
It can be crippling.

00:42:26.414 --> 00:42:27.057
Oh, absolutely.

00:42:27.057 --> 00:42:32.472
And speaking of, you mentioned Chagas and we've actually discussed potentially doing an episode on this.

00:42:32.472 --> 00:42:44.454
But Chagas for a while in some countries was really sort of condemned because it was considered that you might have been part of the guerrilla movement, so you were more likely to be exposed to Chagas.

00:42:44.454 --> 00:43:11.835
Of course, if you are living potentially more rural areas, yes, you might be living more temporary housing, and so it might have been a sign that you were part of a political group that was essentially trying to oust the other political group, and so people had a lot of apprehension towards presenting with this disease because there was this fear that you would be associated with that and then persecuted right, and so there was a lot of persecution around this disease because of that for a while.

00:43:11.835 --> 00:43:20.257
And also, chagas is really mostly seen in South American countries, but again, that can change as the range of the kissing bug changes.

00:43:20.858 --> 00:43:22.353
So yeah, I know it's found in.

00:43:22.393 --> 00:43:22.494
Texas.

00:43:22.494 --> 00:43:23.338
You can find it in Texas.

00:43:23.469 --> 00:43:25.056
Yeah, it's definitely found in Texas.

00:43:25.056 --> 00:43:27.829
So yeah, it's here, Jeez man yeah.

00:43:27.829 --> 00:43:33.757
And it just shows like climate change doesn't just affect, you know, certain things that we predominantly think it affects.

00:43:33.757 --> 00:43:39.449
It has a huge effect on our health and on global health, as is, and with you know, and everyone's health yes, now and in the future.

00:43:39.449 --> 00:43:48.755
And with a warming climate globally comes broader access to different environments for these bugs, and so you just have to be more aware of that.

00:43:49.317 --> 00:43:50.701
Absolutely, absolutely.

00:43:50.701 --> 00:44:20.110
I think that that's a great point and that just brings us full circle with why it's important to look at ancient pathogens because it tells us about the world at that time, and now we are changing and editing our world and our climate so much so it's important to look at how globalization and warfare and what was present in your environment at the time, because that's going to change and it's changed from ancient times to now, and now it's changing at an ever more rapid pace.

00:44:20.271 --> 00:44:22.657
Yeah, absolutely A hundred percent agree.

00:44:22.657 --> 00:44:24.681
Great way to end this episode, I think.

00:44:25.449 --> 00:44:29.621
Yeah, thank you for joining us for this episode of Infectious Science.

00:44:29.621 --> 00:44:31.391
I'm Camila Du, one of your co-hosts.

00:44:31.612 --> 00:44:33.818
And I'm Christina Rios, your other co-hosts.

00:44:33.818 --> 00:44:38.217
Thank you guys so much and we will see you guys next time on Infectious Science.

00:44:38.318 --> 00:44:38.820
Heck, yeah.

00:44:38.820 --> 00:44:39.601
Thanks for listening.

00:44:39.601 --> 00:44:42.679
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00:44:42.679 --> 00:44:50.699
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