The disease of leprosy has been eating away at humankind for the past 4,000 years, according to a newly discovered skeleton that showed signs of the ailment. Researchers say that the ancient leper provides clues to how the disease spread through the human population. The skeleton was found at the site of Balathal, near Udaipur in northwestern India. Historians have long considered the Indian subcontinent to be the source of the leprosy that was first reported in Europe in the fourth century B.C., shortly after the armies of Alexander the Great returned from India [The New York Times].
The skeleton was buried, which is uncommon in the Hindu tradition unless the person is highly respected or unfit to be cremated, a category that included outcasts, pregnant women, children under 5, victims of magic or curses, and lepers. The leper’s skeleton was interred within a large stone enclosure that had been filled with vitrified ash from burned cow dung, the most sacred and purifying of substances in Vedic tradition [LiveScience]. A close examination of the skull showed eroded pits typical of advanced leprosy, as well as tooth loss and root exposure.
Experts on leprosy have debated whether the disease was disseminated when humans originally left Africa and began to spread out over the globe, or whether it began to circulate and spread from India in a more recent age. The new study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, supports the idea that the disease didn’t really catch hold until humans began clustering together in cities, and engaging in long-distance trade. While leprosy is infectious, it is relatively hard to catch, requiring prolonged association with someone who has the disease [AP]. To further probe the disease’s origins, lead researcher Gwen Robbins said she planned to extract ancient bacterial DNA from the Indian skeleton and hoped it might resolve how the disease originated [The New York Times].
Leprosy is closely tied to human history because it has only one other animal host, the armadillo…. It is a bacterial disease affecting the skin and nerves, especially of the hands and feet [AP]. It produces unsightly skin lesions and can deform hands and feet (it doesn’t make limbs to fall off, despite popular belief), and lepers have historically been ostracized in many cultures. Today, however, the bacterial infection is easy to treat.
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Image: PLoS ONE / Gwen Robbins, et al.
May 27th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
“The disease of leprosy has been eating away at humankind for the past 4,000 years, according to a newly discovered skeleton that showed signs of the ailment”
“Experts on leprosy have debated whether the disease was disseminated when humans originally left Africa and began to spread out over the globe, or whether it began to circulate and spread from India in a more recent age.”
From what I’ve read modern humans left Africa closer to 100 000 years ago.
If the oldest leprosy evidence is 4000 years old then how come people still think it might originate from when we left Africa?
May 28th, 2009 at 2:42 am
Re: Ford
A) Leprosy didn’t just spring into being one day – that’s creationism. It evolved, so it’s safe to say it’s been around an awful long time.
B) Modern humans didn’t exist until 50,000 years ago.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:57 am
Re: Nick
A) You’re the one bringing up creationism, not me.
B) Wrong. Modern humans have been around for about 200 000 years.
C) You’re making a fool of youself so stop trying to answer things you know nothing about.
May 28th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Boys, Boys.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:18 am
Hmmm..200,000 years. I have yet to see the evidence. If I say humans appeared less than 9000 years ago, based on the freedom of thought I have as much as your freedom to believe in 200,000 years, and if I say leprosy developed thereafter, why do I feel as if I am about to be thumped by the know-alls, experts and gurus. And if I say the Bible documents leprosy more than 2000 BC which source of information is priceless, yet we choose to dump the whole volume because it is ‘religious’. How clever!
September 16th, 2009 at 3:36 am
Question: Years ago I heard a local MD, who’s personal interest was ancient disease, say that Biblical leprosy did not look like modern leprosy because no Biblical skeletons had been dis-interred with the same digit loss as ‘modern’ skeletons show.
As this is a bacterial disease, is it possible that the changes over time are simply those of mutation?
Is it also possible that, with sufficient nutrition in the Middle Ages, the disease could be overcome, as with any modern, bacterial ‘cold’?