john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Tuberculosis in an archaic human

Fri, 2007-12-07 08:23 -- John Hawks

Based on a press release from John Kappelman, this is pretty interesting:

Although most scientists believe tuberculosis emerged only several thousand years ago, new research from The University of Texas at Austin reveals the most ancient evidence of the disease has been found in a 500,000-year-old human fossil from Turkey.

...

The researchers identified this specimen of Homo erectus as a young male based on aspects of the cranial suture closure, sinus formation and the size of the ridges of the brow. They also found a series of small lesions etched into the bone of the cranium whose shape and location are characteristic of the Leptomeningitis tuberculosa, a form of tuberculosis that attacks the meninges of the brain.

I'll have quite a bit more on this when the paper becomes available (in AJPA); most tuberculosis strains in living people originated within the last 35,000 years, but a couple of years ago it was suggested that these stem from a much older bacillus species in hominids.

There's a lot of fluff in the press release about skin pigmentation, vitamin D and depressed immune systems. It's just fluff -- we don't know what color these hominids were, and there are plenty of light-skinned people in the world with tuberculosis. I don't see why finding tuberculosis roughly 500,000 years earlier than ever before isn't interesting enough!

Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.