Disease as a Factor in the African Archaeological Record
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Disease as a Factor in the African Archaeological Record Susan Pfeiffer
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract It is clear from their natural histories that various kinds of diseases would have affected African communities in the distant past. Climatic factors may have reduced the impact of plague-like epidemics across much of the continent. Because of the link between environment and disease vectors, the presence of a disease may have been a stimulus for some group movements in the African past. Evidence of the direct effects of diseases on human populations is generally elusive. Paleopathologists can identify some endemic diseases, but evidence from Africa is sparse. Paleogenomics research can also identify some (not all) endemic and epidemic disease vectors. Recent African aDNA discoveries of inherited resistance to endemic diseases suggest that future paleogenomic research may help us learn much more about the impact of diseases on the African past. Résumé Il ressort clairement de leur histoire naturelle que divers types de maladies auraient affecté les communautés africaines dans un passé lointain. Les S. Pfeiffer Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 19 Ursula Franklin Street, Toronto M5S 2S2, Canada S. Pfeiffer Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa S. Pfeiffer (*) Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected]
facteurs climatiques peuvent avoir réduit l'impact des épidémies de type peste sur une grande partie du continent. En raison du lien entre l'environnement et les vecteurs de maladies, la présence d'une maladie peut avoir été un stimulant pour certains mouvements de groupe dans le passé africain. Les preuves des effets directs des maladies sur les populations humaines sont généralement insaisissables. Les paléopathologistes peuvent identifier certaines maladies endémiques, mais les preuves provenant d'Afrique sont rares. La recherche en paléogénomique peut également identifier certains (pas tous) des vecteurs de maladies endémiques et épidémiques. Les découvertes récentes de l'ADN fossile en Afrique sur la résistance héréditaire aux maladies endémiques suggèrent que les futures recherches paléogénomiques pourraient nous aider à en apprendre beaucoup plus sur l'impact des maladies sur le passé africain. Keywords Bioarchaeology . Climate . Disease . Migration . Paleopathology . Paleogenomics
Bioarchaeologists and paleopathologists who study ancient human skeletons acknowledge that cause of death is rarely discernable. We repeat this mantra, and we know the fact is unlikely to change, yet the quest to determine cause of death drives the development of new theories and new methods. This quest is now amplified by the broad public interest in epidemics created by the current COVID-19 pandemic. There are many webbased resources about past epidemics (see notes below
Afr Archaeol Rev
for some examples).1 Why are the exam
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