Infections In Neanderthal Research

Food production led to the causes of many things, some such as germs carried by farmers usually, technology, and literacy. Infections and diseases were led by various animals, being around them or being involved with them caused this. Some of the major diseases we get as humans are smallpox, tuberculosis, flu, plague, measles, malaria, and cholera. These are evolved and mainly gotten from animals, usually animals like house pets or farm animals, since humans interact with them more than other kinds of animals. Germs and microbes pass through victims and spread around fairly simple or not simple at all. Usually, the easiest way for a germ to spread is through waiting to be passed to another victim. As if someone who is “sick” is contagious and

The first disease that stood out was hemochromatosis. This disease messes up how much iron the host’s body is producing, and how it 's distributed. Usually, hemochromatosis builds up iron to dangerous levels that can harm almost any part of the host body, and may lead to death. Some symptoms include physical difficulty, an “achy feeling”, and pain in joints. Hemochromatosis was discovered to have most likely originated with the Vikings and the Vikings kept spreading the disease as they expanded their territories over Northern Europe. Though at first, hemochromatosis wasn 't diagnosed properly (nowadays, we can diagnose hemochromatosis through blood tests), it was being treated by blood-letting (which actually did and still does work). After a recent study,

Humans were once infected by ancient viruses, but today, 8% of human DNA contains these ancient viruses

Amazonian Indians and Pacific Islanders, however, were not able to develop these kinds of diseases, since they lived a nomadic lifestyle devoid of complex agriculture. Because they constantly moved in small groups, did not settle down, and did not live in close proximity with domesticated animals, they were unable to develop the bacteria that led to diseases, like the Eurasians did, leading to the gap in disease vulnerability.

infection not only hit the humans but animals were also able to contract it. Not many people

In Chapter 11, Diamond talks about how infections from diseases carried by animals where the “killers of humanity”. Diseases would start in animals and then get transferred to humans where it would mutate and spread across human populations killing almost anyone it touches. When Europe went to conquer the New World, disease such as smallpox, measles, and the flu, killed up to 95% of the population of Native Americans. Syphilis, however, may have been brought back to Europe from the New World, even though no one knows how.

Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted for well over 100,000 years.  Then suddenly Homo neandertalensis began to die out and surrender the earth to Homo sapiens.  Paleontologists and anthropologists have entertained several possibilities to the causes of this event: interbreeding among Neanderthals and humans, competition for natural resources, and Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest.”  What the real cause has been has plagued scientists for years. Now, due to an international research team from Germany, those possibilities have been even further deduced, making it easier to pinpoint the exact reason Homo neandertalensis became extinct.

Several different hypotheses have been formulated to explain the extinction of Neanderthals, from climate changes to intoxication from cave-associated contaminants like smoke, from cannibalism to diseases (Herrera et al., 2009). It is only certain that Neanderthals disappeared from fossil record after the arrival of modern humans, around 40,000 years in Asia, and 10,000-15,000 years in Europe (Shreeve, 1995). Fossil evidence shows the presence of modern humans in Middle East from 130,000 to 75,000 years ago, in the same areas where Neanderthals retreated between 65,000 and 47,000 years ago (Mellars, 2004).

The transmission of these diseases resulted in progression of human history because it increased awareness, knowledge and eventually cures for some. However, this progression did not come without some downfalls. The disease introduced to the New World caused the Indians to die in droves but it also allowed new cultures to be formed. “Disease took more than human life; it extinguished entire cultures and occasionally helped shape new ones” (Kennedy and Cohen 30; Ch.2). The introduction of Syphilis to the Old World also aided in progression because now we have knowledge about the disease and today syphilis is nonfatal and can be treated with

The Americas before colonization were certainly not free of disease, but the natives had developed immunities to the diseases to which they had been exposed. The Europeans brought with them a plethora of new diseases to which the Native Americans had no immunities, and the results were catastrophic. Due to nearly all of diseases being communicable by air and touch, they spread like wildfire. The diseases the explorers brought included smallpox, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, diphtheria, scarlet fever, trachoma, malaria, typhus fever, typhoid fever, influenza, cholera, and bubonic plague. However, the Europeans contracted several new diseases from the natives; these diseases included yellow fever and syphilis. Among the diseases spread to the New World, smallpox had the most devastating effect, followed by measles, influenza, and bubonic plague respectively. It has been estimated that between 25% and 50% of the Native American population was affected by smallpox. While the exact impact of these illnesses is hard to be sure of, it is inarguable that these epidemics had a devastating effect on the Native American

The colonization of Africa created countries riddled with disease because they forced the native Africans away from their homes to mine and take away the continent’s resources. Putting all those people with the people who have already been infected together, germs are spread

When Europeans first came to this continent, they brought diseases with them, such as smallpox, influenza, and tuberculosis. Later, slaves shipped to America from Africa brought even more diseases, such as yellow fever and malaria. Ever since, American history has been riddled with infectious diseases and epidemics. Although the United States has eliminated some horrible diseases that plagued it in the past, and helped other countries cope with epidemics, deadly diseases still pose problems in America.

People of the Old World had domesticated pigs, horses, sheep, and cattle(1), which had acted as pathogens to infect the Europeans with diseases. In addition, diseases were constantly circulated with centuries of war, exploration, and city building. During the process of natural selection, disease-intolerant

Human mobility, in terms of European transcontinental exploration and colonization, began to truly flourish after the 1400s. This travel, inspired by financial motives and justified by religious goals, resulted in the European dominance and decimation of countless cultures in both the Americas and Eurasia. While at first glance it seems as though this dominance was achieved through mainly military means - European militias, like Spanish conquistadors, rolling over native tribes with their technologically advanced weapons - the reality is significantly more complex. The Europeans, most likely unknowingly, employed another, equally deadly weapon during their exploits.

In the Old Stone Age (30,000 to 7000 BCE), individual small groups of hunters and gatherers led a nomadic existence rather than living in larger groups with other people. This lifestyle and the absence of domesticated animals limited the spread of disease. Most infections in this period occurred as a result of one of several distinct factors: trauma, zoonotic diseases, and animal diseases that spread to humans; or infections acquired by eating, being injured by, or having contact with wild animals and their excreta. In addition, some diseases would have been contracted from the soil, such as anaerobic bacteria that penetrate the skin, and tapeworms (Arnott 2008). The New Stone Age occurred in Europe and the Near East from approximately