Parasites in Past Civilizations and Their Impact upon Health

This interdisciplinary volume brings together medicine and history to investigate the impact that parasites had upon past civilizations globally.

Piers D. Mitchell (Author)

9781107000773, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 April 2023

180 pages
23.5 x 15.4 x 1.4 cm, 0.42 kg

'This volume … challenges us to think about these civilizations without macroparasites - what would they be like day-to-day? How would their histories be different? Thinking in this way, it becomes easy to see the tremendous social and biological impacts that macroparasites had, and continue to have, on humans of the past and present.' Sophie K. Joseph, The Quarterly Review of Biology

Parasites have been infecting humans throughout our evolution. When complex societies developed, the greater population density provided new opportunities for parasites to spread. In this interdisciplinary volume, the author brings his expertise in medicine, archaeology and history to explore the contribution of parasites in causing flourishing past civilizations to falter and decline. By using cutting edge methods, Mitchell presents the evidence for parasites that infected the peoples of key ancient civilizations across the world in order to understand their impact upon those populations. This new understanding of the archaeological and historical evidence for intestinal worms, ectoparasites, and protozoa shows how different cultures were burdened by contrasting types of diseases depending upon their geographical location, endemic insects, food preferences and cultural beliefs.

1. Introduction
2. Near Eastern civilizations
3. Ancient Egypt and Nubia
4. The prehistoric peoples of Europe
5. The Roman world
6. Medieval Europe
7. East Asian civilizations
8. North American indigenous peoples
9. South and Central American civilizations
10. Parasites, migrations and epidemics
11. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Human biology [PSX]