Ancient parasite egg found in Syria

Archeology

London, (ST) In a new finding, the egg of a parasite that still infects people today was found in the burial plot of a child who lived 6,200 years ago in what is now known as Syria.

“We found the earliest evidence for a parasite (that causes) Schistosomiasis in humans,” Piers Mitchell, biological anthropologist at University of Cambridge in Britain, was quoted as saying.

The parasite’s egg was found in the area around Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where some of the first irrigation techniques were invented about 7,500 years ago.

The egg was found in a cemetery with 26 skeletons at a site called Tell Zeidan in Syria.

The site was occupied by people from about 7,800-5,800 years ago, and may have housed a few thousand people, said Gil Stein, archaeologist at University of Chicago in the US.

The oldest Schistosoma egg found previously, in Egyptian mummies, was dated to 5,200 years ago.

The findings suggest that advances in farming technologies caused the rise of human infections with the water-borne worm.

Schistosoma parasites live in fresh water snails and burrow into human skin when people wade into warm, fresh water, Live Science reported.

Agricultural technologies are tied to the parasite’s prevalence.

The findings appeared in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Source: IANS

M. Wassouf

You might also like
Archeology

Church Restored In Daraa

Archeology

Restoration of archaeological castle of Bosra

Archeology

The discovery of a Roman burial in Masyaf

Archeology

The first phase of the project to restore the famous archaeological arch in Palmyra…

.. _copyright: Copyright ========= .. code-block:: none Copyright (C) 1998-2000 Tobias Ratschiller Copyright (C) 2001-2018 Marc Delisle Olivier Müller Robin Johnson Alexander M. Turek Michal Čihař Garvin Hicking Michael Keck Sebastian Mendel [check credits for more details] This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2, as published by the Free Software Foundation. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see . Third party licenses ++++++++++++++++++++ phpMyAdmin includes several third-party libraries which come under their respective licenses. jQuery's license, which is where we got the files under js/vendor/jquery/ is (MIT|GPL), a copy of each license is available in this repository (GPL is available as LICENSE, MIT as js/vendor/jquery/MIT-LICENSE.txt). The download kit additionally includes several composer libraries. See their licensing information in the vendor/ directory.