The Study of Ancient Remains

The study of ancient remains allows us to reconstruct scenes and events that happened in the remote past.

For example, from the study of the mummy of Saqnounri, a pharaoh of the XVIIth dynasty has been deduced that he met his death in an attack by at eats two and probably more person armed with at least two (probably three or more) implements one of which was probably an axe and another a spear.

The absence of any injuries to the arms or to any other part of the body shows that no resistance could have been offered to the attack. It is quite possible that the wound may have been inflicted while Saqnounri was lying down on his right side.

The study of ancient human remains has confirmed that many present day illness affected man in the remote past.

Skeletal; remains show signs of such diseases of development and metabolism as hydrocephalus, spina bifida, congenital club foot, Paget’s disease, osteoporosis, rickets, osteomalacia, acromegaly, microcephaly, achondroplasia.

Many tumors have been identified in mummies an ancient bones: osteomas, osteochondromas, agiomas, meningiomas, osteosarcomas and others.

The tumor from prehistoric and early historic periods, however is quite small, possibly because in ancient times people died at an early age, whereas tumors tend to develop later in life.
The Study of Ancient Remains

Paleopathology and Tuberculosis

Paleopathology and Tuberculosis
Paleopathology tells us that infections sand infectious disease affected living beings in the every remote past.

Bacteria have been found in a one of a Permian reptile (about 200 million years old) and in many other specimens of man and animal up to historical times.

Pathological alterations indicating tuberculosis of the bones (e.g., Pott’s disease have been found in many early Old World’s specimens, which indicate that the disease has existed there since antiquity while it has long been suspected that it existed in the New World as well.

Until recently, no clear signs of pulmonary tuberculosis had been found in mummies the only remains that could show such a disease in the remote past.

Paleopathologists, however in view of the unlikelihood of osseous tuberculosis in the absence of the pulmonary kind, have held that the absence of findings probably due to technical reasons and that “some form of granulomatous tuberculosis has infected man since Neolithic times.”
Paleopathology and Tuberculosis

Paleopathology in History of Medicine

Paleopathology in History of Medicine
The study of history of medicine is greatly helped by paleopathology, which is “the science of the disease which can be demonstrated in human and animal remains of ancient time.”

Paleopathology is concerned with evidence of disease that occurred during the long period that includes prehistory and continues until the beginning of scientific pathological anatomy.

By necessity, therefore, its object of study are almost exclusively biological specimens capable of lasting centuries and even millennia, namely bones and mummies.

The first study of bone paleopathology was published in 1774 by Esper, who described the femur of a cave bear with a lesion that he thought to be an osteosarcoma but which he later found to be fracture callus.

Subsequently, other naturalists (e.g Goldfuss, Cuvier, Walther, Schmerling, Mayer) described pathological lesions in bones of cave bears and lions.

About the middle of the nineteenth century, anthropologists and paleontologists became interested in the subject and the number of publications increased.

In the first decades of this century, Egyptian mummies were extensively studied, especially by Ruffer, whose papers were posthumously collected in a volume that became a classic on the subject.

In 1923, the American anatomist and anthropologist Roy L. Moonie published the first comprehensive book on paleopathology.

In 1930, a French army physician, Leon Pales, published another comprehensive monograph on the subject with the most complete bibliography up to that time.

Since 1930, interest in the field has continued and modern techniques have been applied to paleopathology.
Paleopathology in History of Medicine

Paleopathology

Paleopathology
One of our most appealing and persistent myths is that of the Golden Age, a time before the discovery of good and evil, when death and disease were unknown.

But scientific evidence – meager fragmentary and tantalizing though it often is – proves that disease is older than the human race.

Thus, understanding the pattern of disease and injury that afflicted our earliest ancestors requires the perspective of the paleopathologist.

Si Marc Armand Ruffer (1859-1917), one of the founders of paleopathology, defined it as the science o the disease that can be demonstrated in human and animal remains of ancient times.

Evidence form the study of fossils, stratigraphy, and molecular biology suggest that separation of the human line from that of the apes place in Africa some 5 million years ago.

It took several million years before large-brained, tool making modern human beings evolved.

Homo sapiens sapiens, the oldest human beings of morphologically modern character, appeared approximately 50,000 years ago.

The Paleolithic Era, or Old Stone Age, when the most important steps in cultural evolution occurred, coincides with geological epoch known as the Pleistocene, or Great Ice Age, which ended about 10,000 years ago with the last retreat of the glaciers.

Early humans were hunter gatherers, that are opportunistic omnivores, who learned to make tools, build shelters carry and share food and create uniquely human social structures.

Although Paleolithic technology is characterized by the manufacture of crude tools made of bone and chipped stones and the absence of pottery and metal objects, the people of this era produced the dramatic cave painting at Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain.

Presumably, they also produced useful inventions that were fully biodegradable and left no traces in the fossil record.

Indeed, during the 19603 feminist challenged prevailing about the importance of hunting as a source of food among gatherers; the vegetables an small animals gathered by women probably constituted the more reliable component of the Paleolithic diet.

Moreover because women were often burdened by carrying infants, they probably invented disposable digging sticks and biodegradable bags or basket in which to carry and store food.
Paleopathology