On zoonoses and their relevance to paleopathology • 21 



While glanders is kept under relative control in most coun- 

 tries today, and thus tew human cases would be expected to 

 occur, this may not have been the situation in the past, and 

 indeed serious horse "plagues" are known to have occurred in 

 antiquity. The very considerable loss of horses by Charle- 

 magne while fighting the Huns was possibly the result of 

 glanders. To what extent this disease has changed in its de- 

 gree of impact on human groups must remain for the present a 

 matter of speculation, but this does not mean that the disease 

 should be ignored in differential diagnosis. 



Perhaps one of the most interesting yet neglected of the 

 zoonoses is brucellosis. Until early in the 1 9th century, it was 

 not clearly ditTerentiated from malaria and certain other in- 

 fections. The closely related species of Brucella are mainly 

 but not exclusively pathogens of goats, cattle, and pigs (B. 

 melitensis. B. abortus, and fi. suis, respectively). Although 

 diagnosis in humans is often not easy to establish, neverthe- 

 less it can clearly build up to large numbers of infected people 

 (between 1945 and 1949 in the U.S.A. over 26,000 cases 

 were recorded). Commonly, infection is transmitted to hu- 

 mans via milk or cheese, but contaminated meat and even 

 close proximity to livestock can significantly increase 

 chances of infection (Dalrymple-Champneys 1960). 



It could be significant, in terms of how recent human 

 groups became commonly infected, that skeletal changes do 

 not normally occur in other mammals with brucellosis. Hu- 

 man bone changes today occur in from 2% to 70% of infected 

 groups, but could the average frequency have declined 

 through time? The spine is particularly involved, and may 

 show multifocal surface osteitis or cavitating abscesses or a 

 "parrot beak spondylitis." In some of the vertebral changes as 

 well as in other pathology, for instance in the articular bone 

 rarefaction at the hip joint (Zammit 1961 ). the pathology may 

 mimic that of tuberculosis (though vertebral collapse is not 

 typical). The fact that joint involvement in other mammals is 

 relatively mild and affects only the joint soft tissues could 

 surely argue for a long adaptation time to Brucella, while the 

 human pathology could suggest a more recent impact of the 

 disease. As dairying has a prehistory extending back less that 

 10,000 years, we may be viewing in the as yet very limited 

 paleopathology, evidence of a relatively short adaptive mi- 

 croevolution of brucellosis in human populations. There is 

 certainly a need to keep this zoonosis in mind when consider- 

 ing especially vertebral arthropathies and any pathology sug- 

 gestive of early-stage tuberculosis. 



Conclusions 



Although disease in human groups can be viewed clinically 

 in isolation, any broader view of these diseases in adaptive 

 and evolutionary terms demands that we extend our perspec- 

 tives to include social changes, environmental factors, and 

 even other host species. Some diseases very probably 



evolved within the period of hominid evolution, but others 

 may have primate or other mammal precursors. 



Sorting out these categories of disease in evolutionary 

 terms demands that we be acquainted with zoonoses, not 

 only those which leave their mark in ancient bones, but also 

 those which contribute to the more theoretical aspects of 

 studying ancient human diseases. This may perhaps seem to 

 be teaching one's grandmother to suck eggs, but I for one 

 confess to being all too forgetful of the degree to which 

 human diseases are in fact zoonoses of very varying antiq- 

 uity. 



It would be nice to think that we might eventually be able 

 to contribute to a comparative paleopathology. A disease 

 such as tuberculosis might yield to this in a decade or two. 

 Moreover, now that sieving and flotation techniques are pro- 

 ducing numerous small mammal bones from some sites, 

 there is even the possibility of eventually solving the origins 

 of leprosy. Murine leprosy can show incidences of between 

 1% and 5% in wild rodents (Rankin and McDiarmid 1968) 

 and presumably could have been brought into much closer 

 contact with humans with the emergence of high-density 

 urbanism. As yet, it is not conventional to look at rat and 

 mouse bones for signs of bone inflammation which might be 

 suggestive of infection by Mycobacterium lepraemurium. 

 but this will eventually have to be done. 



Finally, mention should be made of the fact that there is 

 clearly much progress in the field of helminthology in rela- 

 tion to the past. Parasite eggs in particular promise to yield an 

 increasing amount of information on certain zoonoses, some 

 facts having particular relevance for human communities. 

 For instance, Zimmerman ( 1980) records in his study of an 

 ancient Alaskan Eskimo body that the intestinal tract con- 

 tained eggs of the fish trematode Crypiocotyle linf>ua. Other 

 genera of helminths which inhabit fish have also been de- 

 scribed, and clearly indicated fishing and fish eating. With 

 further studies of latrine residues and coprolite material, one 

 hopes from earlier and earlier deposits, there is thus a chance 

 that zoonoses will even provide extra information on diet. 



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