Sunday, November 5, 2017

Pregnancy complication took the life of this woman from Ancient Troy

From CBS News:
Death during pregnancy or childbirth would have been common in the ancient world, but these stories are often invisible in the archaeological record. However, in a new study of ancient DNA, researchers reported evidence of a woman who died of a pregnancy complication — specifically, a fatal bacterial infection — 800 years ago at Troy.
The woman was about 30 years old when she died, in the 13th century A.D. She was buried in a stone-lined grave at a Byzantine-era farming community’s cemetery in Troy, the ancient city located in what is now northwest Turkey, immortalized by Homer in the “Iliad.”
“It looks like the bug that caused her disease was in a different niche than what we see associated with human infections today… We speculate that human infections in the ancient world were acquired from a pool of bacteria that moved readily between humans, livestock and the environment.”
read more here @ CBS News

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